Ichor : Blood & Secrets

Chapter 34

Sulfur—she recognized the smell from last year’s chemistry class. But how did such a horrible smell get into Mrs. Forbes’s elegant house? Octiva turned to Meredith to ask, but Meredith was already shaking her head.

Octiva knew that expression.

Don’t say anything.

Octiva gulped, wiped her watering eyes, and watched Meredith turn the handle of Caroline’s door.

The room was dark. Enough light shone from the hallway to show that Caroline’s curtains had been reinforced by opaque bedspreads nailed over them. No one was in or on the bed.

“Come in! And shut that door fast!”

It was Caroline’s voice, with Caroline’s typical waspishness. A flood of relief swept over Octiva. The voice wasn’t a male bass that shook the room, or a howl, it was Caroline-in-a-bad-mood.

She stepped into the dimness before her.

Casie got into the backseat of the Jaguar and put on a plush aquamarine Tshirt and jeans underneath her nightgown, just in case a police officer—or even someone trying to help the owners of a car apparently stalled by a deserted highway—stopped by. And then she lay down in the Jag’s backseat.

But although she was now warm and comfortable, sleep wouldn’t come. What do I want? Really want right now? she asked herself. And the answer came to her immediately.

I want to see Lucien. I want to feel his arms around me. I want to just look at his face—at his green eyes with that special look that he only ever shows to me. I want him to forgive me and tell me that he knows I’ll always love him.

And I want…Casie felt herself flush as a warmth went through her body, I want Lucien to kiss me. I want Lucien’s kisses…warm and sweet and comforting….

Casie was thinking this as for the second or third time she shut her eyes and shifted position, tears once again welling up. If only she could cry, really cry, for Lucien. But something stopped her. She found it hard to squeeze out a tear.

God, she was exhausted….

Casie tried. She kept her eyes shut and turned back and forth, trying not to think about Lucien for just a few minutes. She had to sleep. Desperate, she gave a mighty heave to try to find a better position—when everything suddenly changed.

Casie was comfortable. Too comfortable. She couldn’t feel the seat at all. She bolted upright and froze, sitting on air. She was almost hitting her head against the Jag’s top.

I’ve lost gravity again! she thought, horrified. But, no—this was different than what had happened when she had first returned from the afterlife, and had floated around like a balloon. She couldn’t explain why, but she was sure.

She was afraid to move in any direction. She wasn’t sure of the cause of her distress—but she didn’t dare move.

And then she saw it.

She saw herself, with her head back and her eyes closed in the backseat of the car. She could make out every tiny detail, from the wrinkles in her plush aquamarine shirt to the braid she’d made from her pale golden hair, which, for the lack of a hair tie, was coming unbraided already. She looked as if

she were serenely sleeping.

So this was how it all ended. This is what they’ll say, that Casie Malrux, one summer day, died peacefully in her sleep. No cause of death was ever found….B

ecause they could never see heartbreak as a cause of death, Casie thought, and in a gesture even more melodramatic than her usual melodramatic gestures, she tried to fling herself down on her own body with one arm covering her face.

It didn’t work. As soon as she reached out to begin to fling herself, she found herself outside the Jaguar.

She’d gone right through the ceiling without feeling anything. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re a ghost, she thought. But this is nothing like the last time. Then I saw the tunnel, I went into the Light.

Maybe I’m not a ghost.

Suddenly Casie felt a rush of exhilaration. I know what this is, she thought triumphantly. This is an out of body experience!

She looked down at her sleeping self again, searching carefully. Yes! Yes! There was a cord attaching her sleeping body—her real body—to her spiritual self. She was tethered! Wherever she went, she could find her way home.

There were only two possible destinations. One was back to Fell’s Church. She knew the general direction from the sun, and she was sure that someone having an O.O.B. (as Octiva, who had once gone through a spiritualist fad and had read lots of books about the subject, familiarly called them) would be able to recognize the crossing of all those ley lines.

The other destination, of course, was to Lucien.

Klaus might think she didn’t know where to go, and it was true that she could only vaguely sense from the rising sun that Lucien was in the other direction—to the west of her. But she’d always heard that the souls of true lovers were connected somehow…by a silver string from heart to heart or a red cord from pinky to pinky.

To her delight, she found it almost immediately.

A thin cord the color of moonlight, that seemed to be stretched taut between the sleeping Casie’s heart, and…yes. When she touched the cord, it resonated so clearly to her of Lucien that she knew it would take her to him.

There was never a doubt in her mind as to which direction she would take. She’d been in Fell’s Church. Octiva was a psychic of some impressive powers, and so was Lucien’s old landlady, Mrs. Theophilia Flowers. They were there, along with Meredith and her brilliant intellect, to protect the town.

And they would all understand, she told herself somewhat desperately. She might not ever have this chance again.

Without another moment’s hesitation, Casie turned toward Lucien and let herself go.

Immediately she found herself rushing through the air, far too quickly to take note of her surroundings. Everything she passed was a blur, differing only in color and texture as Casie realized with a catch in her throat that she was going through objects.

And so, in just a few instants, she found herself looking at a heartwrenching scene: Lucien on a worn and broken pallet, looking gray-faced and thin. Lucien in a hideous, rush-strewn, lice-infested cell with its damned bars of iron from which no vampire could escape.

Casie turned away for a moment so that when she woke him he wouldn’t see her anguish and her tears. She was just composing herself, when Lucien’s voice jolted through her. He was awake already.

“You try and try, don’t you?” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “I guess you should get points for that. But you always get something wrong. Last time it was the little pointed ears. This time it’s the clothes. Casie wouldn’t wear a wrinkled shirt like that and have dirty, bare feet if her life depended on it. Go away.” Shrugging his shoulders under the threadbare blanket, he turned from her.

Casie stared. She was in too many kinds of distress to choose her words: they burst from her like a geyser. “Oh, Lucien! I was just trying to fall asleep in my clothes in case a police officer stopped by while I was in the backseat of the Jag. The Jag you bought me. But I didn’t think you’d care!

My

clothes are wrinkled because I’m living out of my duffel bag and my feet got dirty when Klaus—well—well—never mind that. I have a real nightgown, but I didn’t have it on when I came out of my body and I guess when you come out you still look like yourself in your body….”

Then she threw up her hands in alarm as Lucien swung around. But— marvel of marvels—there was now a tinge of blood in his cheeks. Moreover, he was no longer looking disdainful.

He was looking deadly, his green eyes flashing with menace.

“Your feet got dirty—when Klaus did what?” he demanded, enunciating carefully.

“It doesn’t matter—”

“It damn well does matter—” Lucien stopped short. “Casie?” he whispered, staring at her as if she had only just appeared.

“Lucien!” She couldn’t help holding out her arms to him. She couldn’t control anything. “Lucien, I don’t know how, but I’m here. It’s me! I’m not a

dream or a ghost. I was thinking about you and falling asleep—and here I am!” She tried to touch him with ghostlike hands. “Do you believe me?” “I believe you…because I was thinking about you. Somehow—somehow that brought you here. Because of love. Because we love each other!” And he spoke the words as if they were a revelation.

Casie shut her eyes. If only she could be here in her body, she would show Lucien how much she loved him. As it was, they had to use clumsy words—clichés that just happened to be uniquely true.

“I will always love you, Casie,” Lucien said, whispering again. “But I don’t

want you near Klaus. He’ll find a way to hurt you—” “I can’t help it,” Casie interrupted him.

“You have to help it!”

“—because he’s my only hope, Lucien! He’s not going to hurt me. He’s already killed to protect me. Oh, God, so much has happened! We’re on our way to—” Casie hesitated, her eyes flicking around warily. Lucien’s eyes widened for an instant. But when he spoke his face was deadpan. “Someplace where you’ll be safe.”

“Yes,” she said, just as seriously, knowing that phantom tears were now racing down her bodiless cheeks. “And…oh, Lucien, there’s so much you don’t know. Caroline accused Matt of attacking her while they were on a date because she’s pregnant. But it wasn’t Matt!”

“Of course not!” Lucien said indignantly, and would have said more, but Casie was racing on.

“And I think that the—the litter is really Tyler Smallwood’s because of the

timing, and because Caroline’s changing. Klaus said that—” “A werewolf baby will always turn its mother into a werewolf—” “Yes! But the werewolf part is going to have to fight the malach that’s already inside her. Octiva and Meredith told me things about Caroline— like

how she was scuttling on the floor like a lizard—that just terrified me. But I had to leave them to deal with that so that I could—could get to that safe place.”

“Werewolves and were-foxes,” Lucien said, shaking his head. “Of course, the kitsune, the foxes, are much more powerful magically, but werewolves tend to kill before they think.” He struck his knee with his fist. “I wish I could be there!”

Casie burst out with mixed wonder and despair, “And instead here I am— with you! I never knew I could do this. But I haven’t been able to bring you anything this way, not even myself. My blood.” She made a helpless gesture and saw the smugness in Lucien’s eyes.

He still had the Clarion Loess Black Magic wine she’d smuggled to him! She knew it! It was the only liquid that would—in a pinch—help keep a vampire alive when no blood was available.

Black Magic “wine”—nonalcoholic and never made for humans in the first place, was the only drink that vampires really enjoyed aside from blood. Klaus had told Casie that it was magically made from special grapes that were grown in the soil at the edges of glaciers, loess, and that they were always kept in complete darkness. That was what gave it its velvety dark taste, he’d said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lucien said, undoubtedly for the benefit of anyone who might be spying. “Exactly how did it happen?” he asked then. “This out of body thing? Why don’t you come down here and tell me about it?” He lay back on his pallet, turning aching eyes on her. “I’m sorry that I don’t have a better bed to offer you.” For a moment the humiliation showed clearly in his face. All this time he’d managed to hide it from her: the shame he felt in appearing before her in this way—in a filthy cell, with rags for clothes, and infested with God knew what. He—Lucien Salvatore, who had once been—had once been

—

Casie’s heart truly broke then. She knew it was breaking, because she could feel it inside shattering like glass, with each needle-like shard skewering flesh inside her chest. She knew it was breaking, too, because she was weeping, huge spirit tears that dropped on Lucien’s face like blood, translucent in the air as they fell, but turning deep red when they touched Lucien’s face.

Blood? Of course, it wasn’t blood, she thought. She couldn’t even bring anything so useful to him in this form. She was really sobbing now; her shoulders shaking as the tears continued to fall onto Lucien, who now had one hand held up as if to catch one… “Casie—” There was wonder in his voice.

“Wha—what?” she keened.

“Your tears. Your tears make me feel…” He was staring up at her with something like awe.

Casie still couldn’t stop weeping, although she knew that she had soothed his proud heart—and done something else.

“I d-don’t understand.”

He caught one of her tears and kissed it. Then he looked at her with a sheen in his own eyes. “It’s hard to talk about, lovely little love….”

Then why use words? she thought, still weeping, but coming down to his level so she could snuffle just above his throat.

It’s just…they’re not too free with the refreshments around here, he told her. As you guessed. If you hadn’t—helped me—I’d’ve been dead by now. They can’t figure out why I’m not. So they—well they run out before they get to me, sometimes, you see—

Casie lifted her head, and this time tears of pure rage fell right onto his face. Where are they? I’ll kill them. Don’t tell me I can’t because I’ll find a way. I’ll find a way to kill them even though I’m in this state— He shook his head at her. Angel, angel, don’t you see? You don’t have to kill them. Because your tears, the phantom tears of a pure maiden — She shook her head back at him. Lucien, if anyone knows I’m not a pure maiden, it’s you—

—of a pure maiden, Lucien continued, not even disturbed by her interruption, can cure all ills. And I was ill tonight, Casie, even though I tried to

hide it. But I’m cured now! As good as new! They’ll never be able to understand how it could happen.

Are you sure?

Look at me!

Casie looked at him. Lucien’s face, which had been gray and drawn before, was different now. He was usually pale, but now his fine features looked flushed—as if he had been standing in front of a bonfire and the light was still reflecting off the pure lines and elegant planes of his beloved face.

I…did that? She remembered the first tear droplets falling, and how they had looked like blood on his face. Not like blood, she realized, but like natural color, sinking into him, refreshing him.

She couldn’t help but hide her face again in his throat as she thought, I’m glad. Oh, I’m so glad. But I wish we could touch each other. I want to feel your arms around me.

“At least I can look at you,” Lucien whispered, and Casie knew that even this is like water in the wasteland to him. “And if we could touch, I’d put my

arm around your waist here, and kiss you here and here….”

They spoke to each other this way for a while—just exchanging lovers’ nonsense, each sustained by the sight and sound of the other. And then, softly but firmly, Lucien asked her to tell him all about Klaus—everything since they’d started. By now Casie was cool-headed enough to tell him about the incident with Matt without making Klaus sound too much like a villain.

“And Lucien, Klaus really is protecting us as best he can.” She told him about the two possessed vampires who had been tracking them and what Klaus had done.

Lucien merely shrugged and said wryly, “Most people write with pencils; Klaus writes people off with them.” He added, “And your clothes got dirty?”

“Because I heard a great big crash—which ended up being Matt on top of the car,” she said. “But, to be fair, he was trying to stake Klaus at the time. I made him get rid of the stake.” She added, in the barest of whispers: “Lucien, please don’t mind that Klaus and I have to—to be together a lot right now. It doesn’t change anything between us.”

“I know.”

And the amazing thing was that he did know. Casie was bathed in the deep glow of his trust for her.

After that they “held” each other, Casie snuggling weightlessly above the curve of Lucien’s arm…and it was bliss.

And then abruptly the world—the entire universe—shuddered at the sound of a gigantic slamming sound. It jerked at Casie. It didn’t belong in here with love and trust and the sweetness of sharing every part of her self with Lucien.

It began again—a monstrous booming that terrified Casie. She clutched uselessly at Lucien, who was looking at her with concern. He didn’t hear the clanging that was defeaning her, she realized.

And then something even worse happened. She was torn out of Lucien’s arms bodily, and she was rushing backward, back through objects, back faster and faster until with a jar she landed in her body.

For all her reluctance she landed perfectly on the solid body that until now had been the only one she’d known. She landed on it and melded into it and then she was sitting up and the sounds were the sounds of Matt rapping at the window.

“It’s been over two hours since you went to sleep,” he said as she opened the door. “But I figured you needed it. Are you all right?”

“Oh, Matt,” Casie said. For a moment it seemed impossible that she was going to be able to keep from crying. But then she remembered Lucien’s smile.

Casie blinked, forcing herself to deal with her new situation. She hadn’t seen Lucien for nearly long enough. But her memories of their short, sweet time together were wrapped in jonquils and lavender and nothing could ever take them away from her.

Klaus was irritated. As he flew higher on his wide, black crow’s wings, the landscape beneath him unfolded like a magnificent carpet, the breaking day making the grasslands and rolling hills glow like emerald.

Klaus ignored it. He’d seen it too many times. What he was looking for was una donna splendida.

But his mind kept drifting. Mutt and his stake…Klaus still didn’t see why

Casie wanted to take a fugitive from justice along with them. Casie …Klaus tried to conjure up the same irritated feelings for her as he had for Mutt, but just couldn’t manage it.

He circled down toward the town below, keeping to the residential district, searching for auras. He wanted a strong aura as much as a beautiful one. And he’d been in America long enough to know that this early in the morning you could find three sorts of people up and outdoors. Students were the first, but this was summer, so there were fewer to pick from. Despite Mutt’s assumptions, Klaus seldom sank to high school girls. Joggers were the second. And the third, thinking beautiful thoughts, just like…that one down there…were home gardeners.

The young woman with the pruning shears looked up as Klaus turned the corner and approached her house, deliberately hurrying and then slowing his stride. His very footsteps made it clear that he was delighted to take in the floral extravaganza in front of the charming Victorian house. For a moment the girl looked startled, almost afraid. That was normal. Klaus was wearing black boots, black jeans, a black T-shirt, and black leather jacket, in addition to his Ray-Bans. But then he smiled and at the same moment began the first delicate infiltration of la bella donna’s mind.

One thing was clear even before that. She liked roses.

“A full flush of Dreamweavers,” he said, shaking his head in admiration as he looked at the bushes covered with brilliant pink bloom. “And those White Icebergs climbing the trellis…. Ah, but your Moonstones!” He lightly touched an open rose, its petals moonlight-colored but shading to palest pink at the edges.

The young woman—Krysta—couldn’t help smiling. Klaus felt the information flow effortlessly from her mind to his. She was just twentytwo, not married, still living at home. She had precisely the kind of aura he was looking for, and only a sleeping father in the house.

“You don’t look like the type to know so much about roses,” Krysta said frankly, and then gave a self-conscious laugh. “I’m sorry. I’ve met all sorts at

the Creekville Rose Shows.”

“My mother is an avid gardener,” Klaus lied fluently and without a trace of misgiving. “I guess I got my passion from her. Now I don’t stay in one place long enough to grow them, but I can still dream. Would you like to know what my ultimate dream is?”

By this time Krysta felt as if she were floating on a delicious rose-scented cloud. Klaus felt every delicate nuance with her, enjoyed seeing her flush, enjoyed the slight tremor that shook her body.

“Yes,” Krysta said simply. “I’d love to know your dream.”

Klaus leaned forward, lowered his voice. “I want to breed a true black rose.”

Krysta looked startled and something flashed through her mind too quickly for Klaus to catch. But then she said in an equally hushed voice, “Then there’s something I’d like to show you. If—if you have time to come with me.”

The backyard was even more splendid than the front and there was a hammock gently swinging, Klaus noted with approval. After all, he would soon need a place to put Krysta…while she slept it off.

But at the rear of the bower was something that caused his pace to quicken involuntarily.

“Black Magic roses!” he exclaimed, eyeing the wine-dark, almost burgundy-colored blooms.

“Yes,” Krysta said softly. “Black Magics. The closest anyone has ever gotten to a black rose. I get three flushes a year,” she whispered tremulously, no longer questioning who this young man might be, overwhelmed by her feelings which almost took Klaus with her.

“They’re magnificent,” he said. “The deepest red I’ve ever seen. The closest to black ever bred.”

Krysta was still trembling with joy. “You’re welcome to one, if you like. I’m taking them to the Creekville show next week but I can give you one in full bloom now. Maybe you’ll be able to smell it.” “I’d…like that,” Klaus said.

“You can give it to your girlfriend.”

“No girlfriend,” Klaus said, glad to get back to lying. Krysta’s hands shook slightly as she cut one of the longest, straightest stems for him.

Klaus reached out to take it and their fingers touched.

Klaus smiled at her.

When Krysta’s knees went boneless with pleasure, Klaus caught her easily and went on with what he was doing.

Meredith was right behind Octiva as she stepped into Caroline’s room.

“I said, shut the damn door!” Caroline said—no, snarled.

It was only natural to look to see where the voice was coming from. Just before Meredith cut off the only sliver of light by shutting the door Octiva saw Caroline’s corner desk. The chair that used to sit in front of it was gone.

Caroline was underneath.

It might have been a good hiding space for a ten-year-old, but as an eighteen-year-old Caroline had curled into an impossible position in order to fit there. She was sitting on a pile of what looked like shreds of clothing. Her best clothes, Octiva thought suddenly, as a twinkle of gold lamé flashed and was gone when the door shut.

Then it was just the three of them together in the darkness. No illumination came from above or below the door to the hall.

It’s because the hall is in another world, Octiva thought wildly. “What’s wrong with a little light, Caroline?” Meredith asked quietly. Her voice was steady, comforting. “You asked us to come and see you—but we can’t see you.”

“I said come and talk to me,” Caroline corrected instantly, exactly as she always had in the old days. That should have been comforting, too. Except—except that now that Octiva could hear her voice sort of reverberating under the desk, she could tell it had a new quality. Not so much husky as—

You really don’t want to be thinking this. Not in the midnight darkness of this room, Octiva’s mind told her.

Not so much husky as snarly, Octiva thought helplessly. You could almost say Caroline growled her answers.

Little sounds told Octiva that the girl under the desk was moving. Octiva’s own breathing quickened.

“But we want to see you,” Meredith said quietly. “And you know that

Octiva’s scared of the dark. Can I just turn on your bedside lamp?” Octiva could feel herself trembling. That wasn’t good. It wasn’t smart to show Caroline you were afraid of her. But the pitch-blackness was making her tremble. She could feel that this room was wrong in its angles—or maybe it was only her imagination. She could also hear things that made her jump

—like that loud double clicking noise directly behind her. What had made that?

“All rrright then! Turrn on the one by the bed.” Caroline was definitely snarling. And she was moving toward them; Octiva could hear rustling and breathing getting closer.

Don’t let her get to me in the dark!

It was a panicked, irrational thought, but Octiva couldn’t help thinking it any more than she could help stumbling blindly sideways into… Something tall—and warm.

Not Meredith. Never since Octiva had known her had Meredith smelled like rancid sweat and rotten eggs. But the warm something took hold of both Octiva’s upraised hands, and there were strange little clicking noises as they clenched.

Casie was using all her considerable talents at negotiation to calm Matt down, encouraging him to order a second and third Belgian waffle; smiling at him across the table. But it wasn’t much good. Matt was moving as if he were driven to rush, while at the same time he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He’s still imagining Klaus swooping down and terrorizing some young girl, Casie thought helplessly.

Klaus wasn’t there when they stepped out of the coffee shop. Casie saw the frown between Matt’s eyebrows begin and had a brainstorm.

“Why don’t we take the Jag to a used-car dealership? If we’re going to give up the Jaguar, I want your advice on what we get in return.”

“Yeah, my advice on beat-up, falling-apart heaps has got to be the best,” Matt said, with a wry smile that said he knew Casie was managing him, but he didn’t mind.

The single car dealership in the town didn’t look very promising. But even it was not as depressed-looking as the owner of the lot. Casie and Matt found him asleep inside a small office building with dirty windows. Matt tapped gently on the smudged window and eventually the man started, jerked up in his chair, and angrily waved them away.

But Matt tapped again on the window when the man began to put his head down once more, and this time the man sat up very slowly, gave them a look of bitter despair, and came to the door.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“A trade-in,” Matt said loudly before Casie could say it softly.

“You teenagers have a car to trade,” the little man said darkly. “In all my twenty years owning this place—”

“Look.” Matt stepped back to reveal the brilliant red Jag shining in the morning sun like a giant rose on wheels.