Page 52 of Sleepless Beauties
What stands out the most in this moment though, is the solid metal door just behind them. It frames the display of coffins. Someone really put thought into the black glossy metal, directly behind the fourth croft.
Someone’s in there? A man?
Someone with information?
I try to understand what Vuitton sent me here for, but I can’t imagine a single soul on this Earth who would have details on my sister’s death or the murders happening in this city. Yet I walk over to the center of the room anyway. A smooth metal plate is bolted in the middle. A soft worn spot reveals a lighter color in the center of the plate. Cold seeps into my fingertips as I settle my index finger onto the square and start to trace out a name I haven’t written in so long.
Kyra Vega
The sound of heavy iron grating is all that can be heard in the silence. Unseen gears shift. I watch, but nothing moves as far as I can see.
And then...
Everything goes quiet.
I pause, but I can’t stop my hand from lifting curiously to the cold surface. A pulse reverberates beneath my fingertips. Is it my own anticipation... or something else?
My palm makes full contact and I start to push hard. Power sparks to life in my veins. I shove harder, with both hands. I put my shoulder into it and I’m heaving by the time the door actually starts to swing open with my forceful steps inside.
Darkness blankets the room, but a blue electric light waves above the center of the closet-like space. It’s a cylinder that illuminates from the ceiling to the floor. The beam of color moves continuously, like an ocean drifting out over the endlessness of the Earth.
“Someone new!” A pleased voice calls out from the shadows. “You have her blood, but not her eyes,” an ominous voice says.
The voice circles the room in a terrifying way, and it’s only then that I notice the door behind me has somehow closed.
Without a sound.
“Excuse me?” I say politely, but with an authority I don’t actually possess.
“You entered the name Kyra Vega. I would have turned you away, but your blood matches hers. So please, by all means, introduce yourself. I so rarely get new visitors.” The voice is deep and warming now. Curious, but still powerful.
“I’d rather not,” I say, still clinging to my humility.
“I’d rather devour your soul than have a chat, and yet here we are.” Humor hums through his very creepy words.
“Who are you?” I ask instead.
Actual laughter, asinine amusement shakes through the room as well as the beam of light.
“You come into my confessional, and you have the mortal nerve to askmewhoIam?”
I pause for a moment, but we seem isolated in here.
“You know I’m a human?”
“Incredibly, fragilely,deadlyhuman.” His gravelly voice purrs against only one of those four words.
“But you’re not powerful enough to know my name.”
A quiet chuckle is his only reply.
“Why do you call this a confessional?”
I edge around the bright blue wave of light and try to peer beneath whatever veil he’s hiding under. Only washing colors of white and silver splay within the sapphire beam of light.
“Because that’s what Zavia created it to be.”
“She created you?”
