Ichor : Blood & Secrets

Chapter 33

Casie had already turned again and was making appeasing noises at Klaus when Matt burst out afresh.

“Tell her how you actually woke me up!” he said explosively. Then, without giving Klaus a chance to say anything, he continued, “I was just opening my eyes when he dropped this on me!” Matt squelched over to Casie, holding something up. Casie, truly at a loss, took it from him, turning it over.

It seemed to be a pencil stub, but it was discolored dark reddish-brown. “He dropped that on me and said ‘scratch off two,’” Matt said. “He’d killed two people—and he was bragging about it!”

Casie suddenly didn’t want to be holding the pencil anymore. “Klaus!” she said in a cry of real anguish, as she tried to make something out of his no-expression expression. “Klaus—you didn’t—not really—”

“Don’t beg him, Casie. The thing we’ve got to do—”

“If anybody would let me get a word in,” Klaus said, now sounding truly exasperated, “I might mention that before I could explain about the pencil someone attempted to stake me on the spot, even before getting out of his sleeping bag. And what I was going to say next was that they weren’t people.

They were vampires, thugs, hired muscle—but these were possessed by Shinichi’s malach. And they were on our trail. They’d gotten as far as Warren,

Kentucky, probably by asking questions about the car. We’re definitely going to have to get rid of it.”

“No!” Matt shouted defensively. “This car—this car means something to Lucien and Casie.”

“This car means something to you,” Klaus corrected. “And I might point out that I had to leave my Ferrari in a creek just so we could take you on this little expedition.”

Casie held up her hand. She didn’t want to hear any more. She did have feelings for the car. It was big and brilliantly red and flashy and buoyant —and it expressed how she and Lucien had been feeling on the day that he bought it for her, celebrating the start of their new life together. Just looking at it made her remember the day, and the weight of Lucien’s arm around her shoulder and the way he’d looked down at her, when she’d looked up at him

—his green eyes sparkling with mischief and the joy of getting her something she really wanted.

To Casie’s embarrassment and fury, she found that she was shaking slightly, and that her own eyes were full of tears.

“You see,” Matt said, glaring at Klaus. “Now you’re making her cry.” “I am? I’m not the one who mentioned my dear departed younger brother,” Klaus said urbanely.

“Just stop it! Right now! Both of you,” Casie shouted, trying to find her composure. “And I don’t want this pencil, if you don’t mind,” she added, holding it at arm’s length.

When Klaus took it, Casie wiped her hands on her nightgown, feeling vaguely light-headed. She shivered, thinking of the vampires on their trail. And then, suddenly, as she swayed, there was a warm, strong arm around her and Klaus’s voice beside her saying, “What she needs is some fresh air, and I’m going to give it to her.”

Abruptly Casie was weightless and she was in Klaus’s arms and they were going higher.

“Klaus, could you please put me down?”

“Right now, darling? It’s quite a distance…”

Casie continued to remonstrate with Klaus, but she could tell that he had tuned her out. And the cool morning air was clearing her head a bit, although it also made her shake.

She tried to stop the shivering, but couldn’t help it. Klaus glanced down at her and to her surprise, looking completely serious, began to make motions as if to take his jacket off. Casie hastily said, “No, no—you just drive—fly, I mean, and I’ll hang on.”

“And watch for low-going seagulls,” Klaus said solemnly, but with a quirk at the side of his mouth. Casie had to turn her face away because she was in danger of laughing.

“So, just when did you learn you could pick people up and drop them on cars?” she inquired.

“Oh, just recently. It was like flying: a challenge. And you know I like challenges.”

He was looking down at her with mischief in his eyes, those black on black eyes with such long lashes that they were wasted on a boy. Casie felt as light as if she were dandelion fluff, but also a little light-headed, almost tipsy.

She was much warmer now, because—she realized—Klaus had enfolded her in his aura, which was warm. Not just in temperature, either, but warm with a heady, almost drunken appreciation, as he took her in, her eyes and her face and her hair floating weightlessly in a cloud of gold around her shoulders. Casie couldn’t help but blush, and she almost heard his thought, that blushing suited her very well, pale pink against her fair complexion. And just as blushing was an involuntary physical response to his warmth and appreciation, Casie felt an involuntary emotional response—of thankfulness for what he had done, of gratitude for his appreciation, and of unintentional appreciation of Klaus himself. He had saved her life tonight, if

she knew anything about vampires possessed by Shinichi’s malach, vampires who were thugs to begin with. She couldn’t even imagine what such creatures would do to her, and she didn’t want to. She could only be glad that Klaus had been clever enough and, yes, ruthless enough to take care of them before they got to her.

And she would have to be blind and just plain stupid not to appreciate the fact that Klaus was gorgeous. After having died twice, this fact did not affect her as it would most other girls, but it was still a fact, whether Klaus was pensive or giving one of those rare genuine smiles that he seemed to have only for Casie.

The problem with this was that Klaus was a vampire and could therefore read her mind, especially with Casie being so close, their auras intermingling. And Klaus appreciated Casie’s appreciation, and it became a little cycle of feedback, all on its own. Before Casie could quite focus she was melting, her weightless body feeling heavier as it molded itself to Klaus’s arms.

And the other problem was that Klaus wasn’t Influencing her; he was as caught up in the feedback as Casie was—more so, because he didn’t have any barriers against it. Casie did, but they were blurring, dissolving. She couldn’t think properly. Klaus was gazing at her with wonder and a look she was all too used to seeing—but she couldn’t remember where. Casie had lost the power to analyze. She was simply basking in the warm glow of being cherished, being held and loved and cared for with an intensity that shook her to the bone.

And when Casie gave of herself, she gave completely. Almost without conscious effort, she arched her head back to expose her throat and closed her eyes.Klaus gently positioned her head differently, supported it with one hand, and kissed her.

Time stopped. Casie found that she was instinctively groping for the mind of the one who was kissing her so sweetly. She had never really appreciated a

kiss until she had died, become a spirit, and then been returned to earth with an aura that revealed the hidden meaning of other people’s thoughts, words,

and even their minds and souls. It was as if she had gained a beautiful new sense. When two auras mingled as deeply as this, two souls were laid bare to each other.

Semi-consciously, Casie let her aura expand, and met a mind almost at once. To her surprise, it recoiled from her. That wasn’t right. She managed to snag it before it could retreat behind a great hard stone, like a boulder. The only things left outside the boulder—which reminded her of a picture of a

meteorite she had seen, with a pocked, charred surface—were rudimentary brain functions, and a little boy, chained to the rock by both wrists and both ankles.

Casie was shocked. Whatever she was seeing, she knew it was a metaphor only, and that she should not judge too quickly what the metaphor meant. The images before her were really the symbols of Klaus’s naked soul, but in a form that her own mind could understand and interpret, if only she looked at it from the right perspective.

Instinctively, though, she knew that she was seeing something important. She had come through the breathless delight and dizzying sweetness of joining her soul to another’s. And now, her inherent love and concern drove her to try to communicate.

“Are you cold?” she asked the child, whose chains were long enough to allow him to wrap his arms tightly about his drawn-up legs. He was clothed in ragged black.

He nodded silently. His huge dark eyes seemed to swallow up his face. “Where do you belong?” Casie said doubtfully, thinking of ways to get the child warm. “Not inside that?” She made a gesture toward the giant stone boulder.

The child nodded again. “It’s warmer in there, but he won’t let me inside anymore.”

“He?” Casie was always on the lookout for signs of Shinichi, that malicious fox spirit. “Which ‘he,’ darling?” She had already knelt and taken the child in her arms, and he was cold, ice cold, and the iron was freezing. “Klaus,” the little ragamuffin boy whispered. For the first time the boy’s eyes left her face, to glance fearfully around him.

“Klaus did this?” Casie’s voice started loud and ended up as soft as the boy’s whisper, as he turned pleading eyes on her and desperately patted at her lips, like a velvet-clawed kitten.

This is all just symbols, Casie reminded herself. It’s Klaus’s mind—his soul—that you’re looking at.

But are you? an analytical part of her asked suddenly. Wasn’t there—a time before, when you did this with someone—and you saw a world inside them, entire landscapes full of love and moonlit beauty, all of it symbolizing the normal, healthy workings of an ordinary, extraordinary mind. Casie couldn’t remember the name of the person now, but she remembered the beauty. She knew that her own mind would use such symbols to present itself to another person.

No, she realized abruptly and definitively: she was not seeing Klaus’s soul. Klaus’s soul was somewhere inside that huge, heavy ball of rock. He lived cramped inside that hideous thing, and he wanted it that way. All that was left outside was some ancient memory from his childhood, a boy who had been banished from the rest of his soul.

“If Klaus put you here, then who are you?” Casie asked slowly, testing her theory, while taking in the black-on-black eyes of the child, and the dark hair and the features she knew even if they were so young.

“I’m—Klaus,” the little boy whispered, white around the lips. Maybe even revealing that much was painful, Casie thought. She didn’t want to hurt this symbol of Klaus’s childhood. She wanted him to feel the sweetness and comfort that she was feeling. If Klaus’s mind had been like a house, she would have wanted to tidy it up, and fill every room with flowers and starlight. If it had been a landscape she would have put a halo around the full white moon, or rainbows amongst the clouds. But instead it presented itself as a starving child chained to a ball that no one could breach, and she wanted to comfort and soothe the child.

She cradled the little boy, rubbing his arms and legs hard and nestling him against her spirit body.

At first he felt tense and wary in her arms. But after a little time, when nothing terrible happened as a result of their contact, he relaxed and she felt his small body go warm and drowsy and heavy in her arms. She herself felt a crushingly sweet protectiveness about the little creature.

In just a few minutes, the child in her arms was asleep, and Casie thought that there was the faintest ghost of a smile on his lips. She cuddled his little body, rocking him gently, smiling herself. She was thinking of someone who had held her when she’d cried. Someone who was—was not forgotten, never forgotten—but who made her throat ache with sadness. Someone so important—it was desperately important that she remember him now, now—and that she…she had to…to find…

And then suddenly the peaceful night of Klaus’s mind was split open—by sound, by light, and by energies that even Casie, young as she was in the ways of Power, knew had been kindled by the memory of a single name.

Lucien.

Oh, God, she had forgotten him—she had actually, for a few minutes allowed herself to be drawn into something that meant forgetting him. The anguish of all those lonely late-night hours, sitting and pouring out her grief and fear to her diary—and then the peace and comfort that Klaus had offered had actually made her forget Lucien—to forget what he might be suffering at this very moment.

“No—no!” Casie was struggling alone in darkness. “Let go—I have to find—I can’t believe that I forgot—”

“Casie.” Klaus’s voice was calm and gentle—or at least unemotional. “If you keep jerking around like that you’re going to get free—and it’s a long way to the ground.”

Casie opened her eyes, all her memories of rocks and little children flying away, scattering like white dandelion silk in every direction. She looked at Klaus accusingly.

“You—you—”

“Yes,” Klaus said composedly. “Blame it on me. Why not? But I did not Influence you, and I did not bite you. I merely kissed you. Your Powers did the rest; they may be uncontrollable, but they’re extremely compelling all the same. Frankly, I never intended to get sucked in so deeply—if you’ll forgive a pun.”

His voice was light, but Casie had a sudden inner vision of a weeping child, and she wondered if he were really as indifferent as he seemed. But that’s his speciality, isn’t it? she thought, suddenly bitter. He gives out dreams, fancies, pleasure that stays in the minds of his…donors. Casie knew that the girls and young women that Klaus…preyed on…adored him, their only complaint being that he didn’t visit them often enough. “I understand,” Casie said to him as they drifted closer to the ground. “But this can’t happen again. There’s only one person that I can kiss, and that’s Lucien.”

Klaus opened his mouth, but just then there was the sound of a voice that was as furious and accusing as Casie had been, and which didn’t care about the consequences. Casie remembered the other person she’d forgotten.

“KLAUS, YOU BASTARD, BRING HER DOWN!”

Matt.

Casie and Klaus came to a twirling, elegant stop, right beside the Jaguar. Matt immediately ran to Casie and snatched her away, examining her as if she had been in an accident, with particular attention to her neck. Once again Casie was uncomfortably aware of being dressed in a lacy white nightgown in the presence of two boys.

“I’m fine, honestly,” she said to Matt. “I’m just a little bit dizzy. I’ll be better in a few minutes.”

Matt let out a breath of relief. He might not still be in love with her as he once had been, but Casie knew he cared deeply about her and always would. He cared about her as his friend Lucien’s girlfriend, and also on her own merits. She knew he would never forget the time they had been together.

More, he believed in her. So right now, when she promised that she was all right, he believed that. He was even willing to give Klaus a look that wasn’t completely hostile.

And then both of the boys headed for the driver’s side door of the Jag. “Oh, no,” Matt said. “You drove yesterday—and look what happened! You said it yourself—there are vampires trailing us!”

“You’re saying it’s my fault? Vampires are tracing this fire-engine-redpaint-job giant and it’s somehow my doing?”

Matt simply looked stubborn: his jaw clenched, his tanned skin flushed. “I’m saying we should take turns. You’ve had your turn.”

“I don’t recall anything ever being said about ‘taking turns.’” Klaus managed to give the word an inflection that made it sound like some rather

wicked activity. “And if I go in a car, I drive the car.”

Casie cleared her throat. Neither of them even noticed her.

“I’m not getting into a car if you’re driving!” Matt said furiously.

“I’m not getting into a car if you’re driving!” Klaus said laconically. Casie cleared her throat more loudly, and Matt finally remembered her existence.

“Well, Casie can’t be expected to drive us all the way to wherever we’re going,” he said, before she could even suggest the possibility. “Unless we’re going to get there today,” he added, looking at Klaus sharply. Klaus shook his dark head. “No. I’m taking the scenic route. And the fewer people who know where we’re going the safer we’re going to be. You

can’t tell if you don’t know.”

Casie felt as if someone had just lightly touched the hairs on the back of her neck with an ice cube. The way Klaus said those words… “But they’ll already know where we’re going, won’t they?” she asked, shaking herself back to practicality. “They know we want to rescue Lucien, and they know where Lucien is.”

“Oh, yes. They’ll know we’re trying to get into the Dark Dimension. But by what gate? And when? If we can lose them the only thing we need to

worry about is Lucien and the prison guards.”

Matt looked around. “How many gates are there?”

“Thousands. Wherever three ley lines cross, there’s the potential for a gate. But since the Europeans drove the Native Americans out of their homes, most of the gates aren’t used or maintained as they were in the old days.” Klaus shrugged.

But Casie was tingling all over with excitement, with anxiety. “Why don’t we just find the nearest gate and go through it, then?”

“Travel all the way to the prison underground? Look, you don’t understand at all. First of all, you need me with you to get you into a gate—and even then it isn’t going to be pleasant.”

“Not pleasant for who? Us or you?” Matt asked grimly.

Klaus gave him a long, blank look. “If you tried on your own it would be briefly and terminally unpleasant for you. With me, it should be uncomfortable but a matter of routine. And as for what it’s like traveling for even a few days down there—well, you’ll see for yourselves, eventually,” Klaus said, with an odd smile. “And it would take much, much longer than going by a main gate.”

“Why?” Matt demanded—always ready to ask questions that Casie really, really didn’t want to know the answers to.

“Because it’s either jungle, where five-foot leeches dropping from the trees are going to be the least of your worries, or wasteland, where any enemy can spot you—and everyone is your enemy.”

There was a pause while Casie thought hard. Klaus looked serious. Clearly, he really didn’t want to do it—and not many things bothered Klaus.

He liked fighting. More, if it would only waste time…

“All right,” Casie said slowly. “We’ll go on with your plan.”

Immediately, both boys reached for the driver’s side door handle again. “Listen,” Casie said without looking at either of them. “I am going to drive my Jaguar down to the next town. But first I am going to get in it and get changed into real clothes and maybe even catch a few minutes of sleep. Matt will want to find a brook or something where he can clean up. And then I’m going to whatever town is closest for some brunch. After that—” “—the bickering can begin anew,” Klaus finished for her. “You do that, darling. I’ll meet you at whatever greasy spoon you’ve selected.” Casie nodded. “You’re sure you’ll be able to find us? I am trying to hold my aura down, really.”

“Listen, a fire-engine-red Jaguar in whatever flyspeck of a town you find down this road is going to be as conspicuous as a UFO,” Klaus said. “Why doesn’t he just come with…” Matt’s voice trailed off. Somehow, although it was his deepest grievance against Klaus, he often managed to forget that Klaus was a vampire.

“So you’re going to go down there first and find some young girl walking to summer school,” Matt said, his blue eyes seeming to darken. “And you’re going to swoop down on her and take her away where no one can hear her screaming and then you’re going to pull her head back and you’re going to sink your teeth into her throat.”

There was a fairly long pause. Then Klaus said in a slightly injured tone,

“Am not.”

“That’s what you—people—do. You did it to me.”

Casie saw the need for really drastic intervention: the truth. “Matt, Matt, it wasn’t Klaus who did that. It was Shinichi. You know that.” She gently took Matt by the forearms and turned him until he was facing her. For a long moment Matt wouldn’t look at her. Time stretched and Casie began to fear that he was beyond her reach. But then at last he lifted his head so that she could look into his eyes.

“All right,” he said softly. “I’ll go along with it. But you know that he’s going off to drink human blood.”

“From a willing donor!” Klaus, who had very good hearing, shouted. Matt exploded again. “Because you make them willing! You hypnotize them—”

“No, I don’t.”

“—or ‘Influence’ them, or whatever. How would you like it—” Behind Matt’s back, Casie was now making furious go-away motions at Klaus, as if she were shooing a flock of chickens. At first Klaus just raised an eyebrow at her, but then he shrugged elegantly and obeyed, his form blurring as he took the shape of a crow and rapidly became a dot in the rising sun.

“Do you think,” Casie said quietly, “that you could get rid of your stake? It’s just going to make Klaus completely paranoid.”

Matt looked everywhere but at her and then finally he nodded. “I’ll dump it when I go downhill to wash,” he said, looking at his muddy legs grimly. “Anyway,” he added, “you get in the car and try to get some sleep. You look like you need it.”

“Wake me up in a couple hours,” Casie said—without the first idea that in a couple hours she was going to regret this more than she could say.

“You’re shaking. Let me do it alone,” Meredith said, putting a hand on Octiva’s shoulder as they stood together in front of Caroline Forbes’s house.

Octiva started to lean into the pressure, but made herself stop. It was humiliating to be shaking so obviously on a Virginia morning in late July.

It

was humiliating to be treated like a child, too. But Meredith, who was only six months older, looked more adult than usual today. Her dark hair was pulled back, so that her eyes looked very large and her olive-skinned face with its high cheekbones was shown to its best advantage.

She could practically be my babysitter, Octiva thought dejectedly. Meredith had high heels on, too, instead of her usual flats. Octiva felt smaller

and younger than ever in comparison. She ran a hand through her strawberry-blond curls, trying to fluff them up a precious half inch higher. “I’m not scared. I’m c-cold,” Octiva said with all the dignity she could muster.

“I know. You feel something coming from there, don’t you?” Meredith nodded at the house before them.

Octiva looked sideways at it and then back at Meredith. Suddenly Meredith’s adultness was more comforting than annoying. But before she looked at Caroline’s house again she blurted, “What’s with the spike heels?”

“Oh,” Meredith said, glancing down. “Just practical thinking. If anything tries to grab my ankle this time, it gets this.” She stamped and there was a satisfying clack from the sidewalk.

Octiva almost smiled. “Did you bring your brass knuckles, too?” “I don’t need them; I’ll knock Caroline out again barehanded if she tries anything. But quit changing the subject. I can do this alone.”

Octiva finally let herself put her own small hand on Meredith’s slim, longfingered one. She squeezed. “I know you can. But I’m the one who should. It was me she invited over.”

“Yes,” Meredith said, with a slight, elegant curl of her lip. “She’s always known where to stick in the knife. Well, whatever happens, Caroline’s brought it on herself. First we try to help her, for her sake and ours. Then we try to make her get help. After that—”

“After that,” Octiva said sadly, “there’s no telling.” She looked at Caroline’s house again. It looked…skewed…in some way, as if she were seeing it through a distorting mirror. Besides that, it had a bad aura: black slashed across an ugly shade of gray-green. Octiva had never seen a house with so much energy before.

And it was cold, this energy, like the breath out of a meat locker. Octiva felt as if it would suck out her own life-force and turn it into ice, if it got the chance.

She let Meredith ring the doorbell. It had a slight echo to it, and when Mrs. Forbes answered, her voice seemed to echo slightly, as well. The inside of the house still had that funhouse mirror look to it, Octiva thought, but even stranger was the feel. If she shut her eyes she would imagine herself in a much larger place, where the floor slanted sharply down.

“You came to see Caroline,” Mrs. Forbes said. Her appearance shocked Octiva. Caroline’s mother looked like an old woman, with gray hair and a pinched white face.

“She’s up in her room. I’ll show you,” Caroline’s mother said.

“But Mrs. Forbes, we know where—” Meredith broke off when Octiva put a hand on her arm. The faded, shrunken woman was leading the way. She had almost no aura at all, Octiva realized, and was stricken to the heart. She’d known Caroline and her parents for so long—how could their relationships have come to this?

I won’t call Caroline names, no matter what she does, Octiva vowed silently. No matter what. Even…yes, even after what she’s done to Matt.

I’ll try

to remember something good about her.

But it was difficult to think at all in this house, much less to think of anything good. Octiva knew the staircase was going up; she could see each step above her. But all her other senses told her she was going down. It was a horrifying feeling that made her dizzy: this sharp slant downward as she watched her feet climb.

There was also a smell, strange and pungent, of rotten eggs. It was a reeking, rotten odor that you tasted in the air.

Caroline’s door was shut, and in front of it, lying on the floor, was a plate of food with a fork and carving knife on it. Mrs. Forbes hurried ahead of Octiva and Meredith and quickly snatched up the plate, opened the door opposite Caroline’s, and placed it in there, shutting the door behind her. But just before it disappeared, Octiva thought she saw movement in the heap of food on the fine bone china.

“She’ll barely speak to me,” Mrs. Forbes said in the same empty voice she’d used before. “But she did say that she was expecting you.” She hurried past them, leaving them alone in the corridor. The smell of rotten eggs—no, of sulfur, Octiva realized, was very strong.