Holly Black - The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

“When I woke, they were dragging me toward a farmhouse. They hadn’t been out of Coldtown in so long that they decided to have a feast. Elisabet and the others were drunk with blood, bloated and slow, laughing over what they’d done. And they brought me into the back room, hungry as I was, to show me a boy, already bitten. They’d tied him to the bed and chained me so that he was just out of reach. She said that if I was good, I could have him in the morning. So I sat and watched him writhe.

“Is it still you in there?’ she’d asked me, tapping her knuckles against my head, before she went to ground in the basement. ‘Do you remember all the good times we had?’

I didn’t reply.

“They covered the windows and left me there, the smell of the boy’s blood filling my thoughts. I watched the boy, reminding myself why I needed to wait for dark, but the reasons made less and less sense in my addled mind. Then Tana came in.” He looked over at her. “And she made a plan to save the boy—and to save me. Can you imagine that, Lucien? Who in the world would allow me to be saved?”

“No one with any sense,” said Lucien. “But why did you go? You were being brought directly to me by Elisabet. That was your plan, wasn’t it? Why go on some circuitous road trip with a pair of teenagers?”

Gavriel shrugged, grinning a wide and terrible grin. “I liked the way they looked at me. I liked driving. And I wanted to see what would happen.”

“You’re mad,” Lucien said. “You really are insane.”

“I really am,” Gavriel said. “And I really am here to avenge myself on you. I just took the long way.”

“So kill me then.” Lucien pulled open his shirt, showing pale white skin. “Do it.”

Gavriel took a step closer and hesitated.

Lucien was his maker, the keeper of memories of people and places long gone, the monster who’d seen in Gavriel a talent for monstrousness. Tana thought about what Lucien had said the last time they’d stood in this room, weapons drawn. Every hero is the villain of his own story. She bet that right then, about to kill his maker, Gavriel felt pretty villainous.

And in that half second of hesitation, Lucien lunged for Tana. He got hold of her throat, lifting her high off the ground. She was choking, panicked, lashing the air. She’d seen people do this before in movies, but she’d never guessed how painful it was. She couldn’t breathe, her windpipe crushing inward. Lucien grinned.

“Throw that knife and I break her neck,” Lucien said slowly. “Any of your people move and I break her neck. Say something clever and I break her neck.”

Gavriel nodded, pressing his hands together as if in prayer. “What would you have me do?”

No , she thought, but couldn’t choke out. Don’t let him go. My sister. My sister isn’t safe.

Tana could feel her eyes bulging, her limbs kicking. He raised her higher, his smile cruel as she scrambled for the dagger at her thigh, her hand closing around the hilt.

Lucien was watching Gavriel with great satisfaction. “Take your people and get out of my house. All of you, if you want this mewling creature back. Get out!”

“We’ll leave,” Gavriel said, waving to his gray-clad Corps . They began moving toward the double doors. “But put her down. She’s human. Their throats are fragile, and if she dies, you won’t have much to bargain with.”

Lucien set Tana’s feet against the floor, his hand still at her neck. She only had the one chance. He didn’t know how much vampire blood was inside her. He didn’t know how fast she was or how strong.

Tana sucked in a single breath of air at the same moment she shoved the knife in through his chest, up under his rib. It made a sound going in, like ripping paper.

Lucien’s eyes went wide. “Please,” he said, the word so soft that it felt more like breath. “Stop. I can feel the point at the edge of my heart.” In that moment, he sounded like the young man he must have been once. Just a little older than her and afraid. “Please. I will give you anything.”

“Tell them what you did,” Tana said, nodding with her chin toward the cameras. “Tell the world what you’ve done.”

Lucien closed his eyes and spoke. “Caspar Morales. It was me. I turned him.” Then he opened his ruby eyes and fixed his gaze on her. He looked at her as though she was the only thing that mattered in all the world, the only thing he’d ever loved. “Forgive me and I will make every single impossible dream you’ve ever had come true. You think no one can know what you want, but I know it already. There are those you love that you’re afraid for. There are those who you love who are undeserving. And no one has seen how incredibly special you are, how you glow like a bright flame.”

She felt as though her hand were on the knob of the cellar door, her feet ready to descend dusty steps again. She thought of Gavriel, driving her car through the warm summer night, wind in his hair as she told him that mercy could never be evil and his saying: This is the world I remade with my terrible mercy. She thought of her father lifting a shovel.

She thought of all those things as she drove the wooden knife into Lucien Moreau’s heart.

Black fissures appeared on his face, spreading over him, and a moment later, his skin cracked apart like wet stone.

CHAPTER 38

*This will be the last blog post on Bill Story’s journal. He was drained by two newborn vampires only hours after this went up. Because I’m his friend, he trusted me with his password in the eventuality that he didn’t make it back one day. He’d never intended to be a war zone journalist, but he took up the mantle with enthusiasm and dedication after he was trapped inside Springfield’s Coldtown. And although his death is a terrible tragedy, I believe he would have been glad that he died as he lived—in pursuit of a story. Bill will truly be missed by his friends, by the community of truth-seekers to which he belonged, and by the world.—MG

Tomorrow I should have some really interesting footage to post. One of my neighbors, a young woman going by the name Christobel (perhaps for Coleridge’s poem, Christabel , although the different spelling makes me doubt she knows it) asked to borrow some equipment. She has some new guests staying with her, including another young woman, calling herself Midnight, who wants to record her own transformation into a vampire. If I loan her what she needs and show her how to set everything up, she has promised that I can be one of the witnesses and even tape some footage myself. It’s a rare opportunity—one that I’m surprised to find dropped in my lap after years of trying to find someone willing to let me record this very thing.

Why do I want to do it? For one thing, because there’s very little footage of the change in the public sphere—although I am sure there are reels and reels hidden away in government labs. And, of course, it’s likely to get this blog a lot of traffic. But I have to admit to myself (and to you, because I am a confessional sort of journalist) that what I am eager to try to see is the exact moment of change—the spark, if you will, of transformation. And I am eager to see it with my own eyes.

The big question of vampires, the question that haunts governments and individuals alike, the question that bugs me every night when I see their red eyes watching the citizens of Coldtown the way hungry cats watch fish in a bucket is: What are they? Are they diseased or demonic? Are they citizens who have become ill, deserving hospitals and care, as some have argued? Or are they the bodies of our loved ones animated by some dark force that we ought to seek to destroy? Living here in Coldtown, I’ve tried to observe and document our new world, but I have failed to be able to answer this one question. I have even failed to decide for myself.