Page 41 of Besieger
Mihaela flinched at the recollection of Emerick doing the very same thing to her years ago. He had wanted her to twist and alter the perspective of one of her memories—the memory of how she was made—to look at her maker and let Emerick see him. And Mihaela had refused. Rather than obey she had tried to gouge her eye out so that she would never have to see the man, the thing. Ingenuar. The All Father.My father.
“Once you master this gift and tone out every thought and craving around you, the silence can be deafening—merciless. It is at once freeing and maddening.”
“Do you have star charts from the East?” she asked, eager to change the topic. “Anything from the East, really. I think I got sidetracked with all the poetry, but it set me thinking.”
The library housed its own collection of land maps, nautical charts and celestial atlases. Some of them, she was sure, were made by Emerick—started and left unfinished, or altered to how he perceived the world. Mihaela had seen him take a small, intricate telescope out in the garden at night, but she never hadthe courage to join him. He was always alone, and would answer to no one.
“I want to make my own chart with the connections between different religions and deities. I want to do a comparative study. The skies… the stars are the earliest form of divinity. Of worship,” said Mihaela.
“You are in the wrong place if you are looking for answers on religion.”
“Why?” Mihaela asked with genuine confusion. “I figured you and Silvio would know, considering…” She made a sweeping gesture encompassing the room—the whole tower even.
Emerick gazed up at the celestial bodies looming over them. The gilded halos glistened and danced in the light of the fire and candles. Despite the numerous chandeliers in the house, Mihaela had noticed how her hosts preferred the flickering light of a fire, rather than the cold electric glow of a bulb. The only light she had ever taught herself to avoid was that of the sun.
“My advice to you is to restrict the search for God to the realm of the academic,” he said, still staring at the ceiling. She could not tell if he was pleased or laughing at her. She could never tell. It was never easy to read him. “As for a comparison, you can start withThe Golden Bough[11]. If you have the patience.”
“You don’t believe there is a higher being?”
“Oh, most certainly there is. But why should I devote eternity to it? Why should I pray to it?”
Mihaela turned his words over very slowly in her head. The matter of God, Christian or otherwise, had surfaced before during their lessons. It was impossible not to. Then there were the swords and all the angels and saints peeking from every cornerof the house.At what altar do you worship in this tower?Mihaela mirrored his frown and tried to keep still in an attempt to coax him into talking, to share anything. But Emerick’s beautiful face was a mask of disgust and disappointment. Her question had made him frown, lips crinkle, and his silence and refusal to elaborate further unnerved her. She expected a sharp retort or a mocking remark to follow but he remained silent.
Every vampire started as a human, a mortal with a life, family and loved ones. Who, she wondered, had her hosts been before the Blood found them—before they were theMarquisand theComte? She licked her lips unsure if she wanted to voice her questions.Who were you before you were turned? How long have you been alive?
Emerick smiled at her. She disliked the way he looked at her. She liked that smile even less. It was a smile that pulled you under, either enticing or dooming. Now, in this room—in this tower of wonders—she could not tell which it would be. It was worse when he spoke: the singsong quality of his voice reverberated through the halls of her mind setting every nerve in her body alight with terror. Emerick had been inside Mihaela’s mind more than once and she regretted getting used to the sensation, but she always remembered the first time he did it.
As an immortal she had nothing to fear, and in the beginning Mihaela took grim comfort in knowing that death was not going to find her. Death would not come, but Emerick Gabrielli might. She had never asked, but Mihaela had a feeling he had been the one to find her in Sofia, hunting her down. It had been the nauseating presence ofhisbeing, slithering in her mind, pulling her towards him and his master.
TheComtedragged her across Europe so she could be brought to the court of an undying father, while her parents rotted in falsehood, alone, left without answers, without their child. That sameComtenow entertained her as a guest in his home only at the behest of his lover. Silvio did not fear Emerick, and for Mihaela that alone was cause for alarm.
“You can browse and take note of what I have,” Emerick was speaking, dark eyes never leaving Mihaela’s face. Something began to tap at her knee, like a hand creeping. “But I believe you will find them unsatisfying. Our friends in Antalya may have far better charts. You did want to visit them.”
“Yes,” Mihaela nodded passively.
She looked from Emerick to the warrior in the stained glass, then to the devils and their halos overhead. The memory of the fountain in the bathhouse wove itself among these faces. The features of the male faces overlapped in her mind. The resemblance was so eerie and unsettling she almost spoke it out loud.
Every painting, every sculpture in the house bore Emerick’s likeness. It was as if the house had never been intended to serve as a home, but a mausoleum.
“Have you seen her? The vampire mistress in Greece?” Mihaela asked, forcing herself not to make any sudden movements. Her voice trembled a little, but she blamed the crawling sensation going up her chest, reaching towards her face.
TheComteshook his head and his mouth formed the wordNo, but he did not say it out loud. She heard the echo of it, followed by more words—more assurances and more promises.
Just like that time he had spoken to my parents.
A startled sound tore from Mihaela’s lips, as she began to remember. At the corner of her eyes the window frame tilted and the glass mosaic made as if to engulf her. To her left the colours of the room began to pale, oozing into the lighted corridor of a flat.
Her parents’ flat.
It was said that the worst thing for a parent was to bury a child, to outlive the life they had created. But what of the child who buried their parents and along with them a part of themselves? What of the child who died within a parent’s memory and was still bound to walk the earth? For this was what they had done to Mihaela by erasing something so raw and painful.
The memory tore and reformed in her mind, slowly… like hands caressing her. Her body weightless as if sinking in sand.
Sand…
Her mind felt rearranged. She could not tell the real memory from the lie—or if she had fabricated the false memory herself.Did it really happen, or do Ibelieveit did?
Mihaela saw herself standing at the doorframe of her parents’ flat in Sofia, so many years ago, watching as Emerick unmade her from her father’s mind. She saw him walk among the made-up frescoes and broken statues of her remembrance.
