“I’m glad I got Juliet out of there. I’m glad she’s safe.” If I hadn’t been there, the Old Ones would have grabbed her. I was certain of it.
“I’m glad she’s safe, too. And I honestly hope you’re right about her.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Come on, let’s get to bed. We’ve both got to be up early.”
True. Dawn was a few short hours away. And as soon as the sun cleared the horizon, I’d be knocking on Axel’s door.
8
A CLOSED SIGN HUNG CROOKEDLY IN CREATURE COMFORTS’ window, but the door was unlocked. I pulled it open and stepped into the half-gloom of the unlit room. The bar had been cleaned up since the werewolves left. The tables were in their usual places; the smell of ammonia blotted out any lingering traces of champagne and werewolf musk. I wondered if Kiana had made her friends help Axel tidy up.
“Axel?”
He came forward from the storeroom, wiping his hands on a towel.
“How’s Juliet?”
He flipped the towel onto his shoulder. “Stitched up her leg. Dunno if it helped.”
That didn’t sound good. Vampires shouldn’t need stitches. When a vampire gets injured, the edges of the wound creep back together and knit up invisibly, not even leaving a scar. Of course, that should have happened before we left the holding facility.
Axel gestured for me to follow him. We went down the back hallway, past the ancient payphone, past the restrooms—Axel had labeled them BOOS and GHOULS to amuse tourists—and past the door to Axel’s cellar apartment.
“Um, Axel?”
He stopped, turned around, and raised an eyebrow.
“Isn’t Juliet in your apartment?”
I couldn’t tell whether his grunt was negative or affirmative, but he kept walking toward the storeroom.
Had he actually set up a cot for her back there? It wasn’t secure enough, not with the Goons and the Old Ones looking for her. After I saw Juliet, I’d try to convince Axel to let her into his lair.
But as we entered the storeroom, there was no sign of a cot. No sign of Juliet at all. Axel went over to some beer kegs near the back of the room. He twisted a cap on one of them, and a hidden door slid open. Beyond the door was a staircase descending into the cellar. Axel started down it.
“Wait, this is the door to your place? What about that triplelocked steel door with the oversized NO ENTRY sign?”
“Front door.” He kept going. “This is the guest room.”
“Guest room? You’ve got a guest room?”
At that he stopped and turned around. “For guests,” he said, looking like he thought maybe he’d have to explain the concept to me.
Okay. So Axel was solitary, intimidating, and fierce about his privacy. That didn’t mean he couldn’t have company come to stay once in a while. I guessed.
As I descended the dark, narrow staircase, I couldn’t see anything beyond Axel’s broad back. So I was astonished to step into a room that looked like it belonged in an upscale hotel. A king-sized platform bed took up most of the far wall. To my left was a seating area, with a loveseat and two upholstered chairs. A desk, dresser, and bookcase filled out the furniture. To my right, a half-open door led into a marbletiled bathroom. The windowless room should have felt like a cave, but the light woods and bright colors, along with well-placed lighting, made it feel cozy, even welcoming.
Axel’s guest room. I shook my head. Yeah, it was a tough concept to grasp.
Juliet seemed tiny in the huge bed, propped up against a mountain range of pillows. She looked about the same as when I’d last seen her—pale and thin, with dark circles under her eyes. Again, not good. There should be more evidence she was getting better. But she was sitting up, and an empty bottle on the nightstand showed she’d eaten. That was something.
Axel muttered a few words about letting us talk. As he clomped up the stairs, I noticed those stairs were the only way in or out of the room. No connecting door to Axel’s place. It was the only thing about Axel’s guest room that didn’t surprise me.
I sat on the edge of the bed. “How’s your leg?”
Juliet winced. “Hurts like Hades.”
“Do you feel up to talking? I’ve got a million questions for you.” When Juliet closed her eyes, I added, “But I promise I won’t ask them all at once.”
A smile twitched her lips. “ ‘Ask me what question thou canst possible / And I will answer unpremeditated.’ ”
“Is that Shakespeare?” If it was, I’d take it as a sign that Juliet was feeling better. My roommate was the real Juliet Capulet, the one who’d actually lived in fourteenth-century Verona, and she had a serious Shakespeare obsession. She said she hated the guy because he’d twisted her story so much, but she’d gone on to memorize everything the Bard had ever written. She dropped Shakespeare quotes into conversations like other people add “um” and “you know.”
She nodded, still smiling. “Of course. Nobody else talks like that. So there’s one question answered.” She opened her eyes again. “But I don’t think that one was actually on your list. Let me guess. Question number one is: What are the Old Ones?”
“Sounds like a good place to start. My aunt told me a little about them.” I’d asked Mab about them after they’d spirited away Pryce’s comatose body. “She said they feed off you—off vampires, I mean—in the same way vampires feed from humans.”
“Yes and no. The Old Ones slaughter humans for their physical needs—you saw what they did to those guards. They’re so ancient and desiccated, though, they don’t require much blood to live. What really sustains them is power. And power is what they drain from vampires.”
“But why—?”
“Why do we let them? For the same reason. Power.” I must have looked confused. Her voice took on a lecturing tone. “If you give them your power”—she held out her right hand, palm up, as if offering something—“they’ll return it to you in a stronger form.” She put her left hand on top of her right and clenched her fingers together. Then she broke her hands apart and let them drop back to the covers. “That’s their promise, although I know now it’s a lie. Just like their promise of eternal life.”
I blinked, wondering if I’d heard her right. “Why do you need eternal life? You’re undead.”
“Undeath is not the same as life. The Old Ones claim they’ve discovered the secret of how to restore life—and make it last forever. They say they can create gods.” Her eyes shone for a moment, then dimmed as she twisted the comforter in her fingers. “Do you know what the average life span of a vampire is?”
“I didn’t know vampires have a life span. I thought you just keep on going forever.”
“Seven hundred and fifty years.” Her voice shook a little. “I’m approaching seven hundred.”
“But . . . I thought vampires get stronger with age.”
“We do—up to a point. And then we start to decline. It’s not that different from living creatures. Humans gain strength as they grow into adulthood, but eventually they become weak and feeble. Let me ask you a question. Do you know any vampires older than I am?”
“Hadrian?” The vampire member of Deadtown’s Council of Three was the most powerful vampire I could think of. Juliet shook her head, and I named a few others.
“Kids, all of them. Hadrian was turned in the eighteenth century—he’s not yet three hundred.” She twisted the comforter so hard it ripped. Bits of down floated around her. “I can feel it, Vicky. I’ve been at the height of my powers for centuries, and it was glorious. Now, those powers are starting to slip away. I don’t want to die.”
“You’d rather be like the Old Ones?” That hideous face—its yellow skin, its lidless eyes and oversized fangs—flashed through my mind. Juliet would never choose that.
“They’re twice my age. Older, even. But you’re right. I don’t want to become like they are. They promised I’d stay as I am, but better. Alive again, and eternal. Like the gods.” A piece of fluff landed in her dark hair. I plucked it out.
“I’ll have to buy Axel a new comforter,” she said, pulling another piece of down from the tear. “If I survive this.” Her voice turned bitter. “I was a fool. They promised so much, but it was all lies. Instead of giving me power, they fed on mine. They . . . they had me in their thrall. They still do. It’s why I couldn’t react when they attacked me last night.”
“That ritual in our living room—” Before Juliet had disappeared, I’d found her chanting with the Old Ones when she thought I was asleep. The next day she insisted I’d dreamed the whole thing. She’d nearly convinced me, too, even though I’m a lucid dreamer and can control my own dreamscape.
“I believed it would increase my power. Instead, it was intended to weaken me and make me their slave. If you hadn’t interrupted, maybe they would have succeeded. Hades knows I came far too close to that state. But I managed to hold on to some tiny sliver of my own will. Eventually, when I realized what was going on, I called upon that sliver, focused on it, made it grow. It enabled me to escape. In all my centuries, that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“So what is going on?” A few months ago, I’d never heard of the Old Ones. Most vampires would still insist they were a mere legend. They’d kept themselves hidden for centuries. I needed to understand why they were venturing forth now.
“The Old Ones have been recruiting the oldest vampires they can find. Others believed, as I did, that they wanted us to join them. But that wasn’t it at all—they needed us to experiment on. To perfect some formula they’re working on for eternal life. Four ancient vampires died before their time because the Old Ones tested the formula on them, and it failed. I would have been next.”
“How did you learn this?” I couldn’t imagine the Old Ones would say: Oops, we killed four vampires so far testing our formula. You’re up next, but don’t worry—it might work this time.