The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three) (17 page)

Falkon grinned. “So you’re
abducting two of them now?”

“Why not? I mean—this is the 21
^st
century! Why should it always be just a girl who gets abducted? Why not a
princess and a prince?”

“What about tradition?”

“Screw tradition! Daciana is
gone. This is my clan now! This is my contest! We’re going to have a prince and
a princess this year. Everyone is going to be shocked when I announce it, and
the Jensons are going to fork over a sum of money so huge we won’t know what to
do with ourselves! Oh this is going to be so much fun!”

“I’m glad you’ve found a way to
amuse yourself,” said Falkon. “When do we get the money?”

“December,” said Renata. “The
students get until the end of the semester to try and solve the clues.”

“Can’t you move that deadline up
a bit?” said Falkon.

“No! I can’t move it up! What’s
the fun in that? Falkon, this will probably be my last Rose Ransom ever. It has
to be perfect!”

“It’s just that we could use
some cash now.”

“And I will get you some. There
are other ways to fill the coffers. You worry about that research file in your
hands and leave the money to me.”

*****

While Renata and Falkon chatted
on the porch, Nicky cowered in the corner of her prison cell. Strange as it
was, she enjoyed it when Renata came in to question her. Talking to a vampire
was better than living the nightmare. Now that Nicky was alone in the darkness
again, the vision came back, starting over at the beginning.

She was in the courtyard,
looking at her mother.

Slow it down, Nicky
, she
thought.
Don’t be a slave to your own mind.

In the vision, she took a moment
to look around, to try and gather her bearings. Nothing about this world was a
surprise to her anymore. The position of the moon in the sky. The blanket of
stars overhead. The sounds of crickets and buzzing beetles in the surrounding
forest.

What did it all mean? Why was
she here?

You haven’t forgotten what
happened here. In the end, we never really forget anything.

Those were Sergio’s words,
ringing out in her memory. It was an encounter with Sergio before the Date
Auction that set her on the path to Italy. Sergio told her she had to learn the
truth of this memory, that she had to bring it into her conscious mind where
she could control it, or it would consume her.

The scene of your memory is
in the Italian Alps,
Sergio said
. You are standing in front of a
building I know quite well.

Trapped in the vision, she heard
Sergio’s voice as if it were a whisper on the wind.

Something happened here.
Something so ugly your mind tried to bury it where you would never find it
again.

A horde of snarling sick people
came running out from the building behind her mother.

“Run, Nicky! Run!”

This time, when Nicky turned to
run, she saw someone new. Someone who had never been in the vision before.

It was her father, looking past
Nicky, his eyes open wide with panic.

Now she knew what she had to do.
She ran for her father. She ran as fast as she could, but her legs were
short—she was only five years old—and it took a long time to reach him.

Behind her, she heard something
terrible happening. She turned to see the monsters with the gray faces, the
yellowed teeth, bearing down on her mother.

She wanted to run back. She
wanted to help her mother. From behind her, her father’s strong arm scooped her
up and pulled her away. Together, they ran into the forest. They moved as fast
as they could. Nicky focused on the sounds of her feet crunching in the snow,
allowing everything else to drift away. The scene of her mother, those
gray-faced monsters, the sounds of their snarls…

It was too much for her mind to
handle. Rather than think of what happened behind her, she thought of her feet.
She let the sound of her footsteps wipe everything else away. Who she was,
where she was, what she was doing….it faded into the past with every step.  She
ran away from all of it. The mountain, the monsters, the sculpture, her memory…

That night, Nicky forgot everything
she knew, except that she had to run.

The door to her prison cell flew
open and the vision stopped.

Falkon Dillinger stood on the
other side.

 “Good evening, Nicky,” he said.

He had an accent that Nicky
couldn’t place. Was it Russian? Ukrainian? Czech? Why did she feel like she’d
heard it before? Probably some mix of many accents—vampires lived so long they
sometimes blended accents together, creating a manner of speech entirely their
own.

“Who are you?” Nicky said.

He extended his hand. “Come, we will
talk.”

He was trying to command her,
looking directly at her with his deep, blue eyes. Nicky stood up as quickly as
she could, thinking it probably wasn’t wise to let him know he had no effect on
her. But she was too slow.

“My words do nothing for you, do
they?” he said.

Sweeping into the cell with
startling speed, Falkon wrapped his hand around the back of Nicky’s head and
held her face close to his.

“What is behind those eyes,
Nicky Bloom?” he whispered. “Why couldn’t Renata see beyond them?”

Nicky looked right at him,
letting him stare as deeply as he wished. He had blonde hair and a perfectly
chiseled face. He was pretty, in the way all of them were.

“Closed,” he whispered. “Your
mind is a locked door. I wonder what key we could use to open it.”

“There is no key,” Nicky said.

Still examining her face, he
said, “You speak as if you are experienced in the matter.”

“Melissa Mayhew tried three
times to get in my mind,” Nicky said. “She never could.”

“And if the great Melissa Mayhew
couldn’t see inside, then I shouldn’t even try, right? That is what you are
saying to me.”

“I don’t know who you are or why
I’m here.”

He let go of her hair and walked
back to the doorway.

“You do so know who I am. When
Renata said my name, you glanced in my direction.”

Nicky said nothing.

“You told Melissa Mayhew that
you worked for me, that I enslaved you and sent you to spy on the vampires in
Washington. Why did you do that?”

It was a good question, one that
was fascinating to Nicky. Her lie to Melissa was nothing more than a bit of
improvisation. Locked in the back seat of a limo after the Masquerade, with
Melissa threatening to break her fingers, one at a time, Nicky threw out
Falkon’s Dillinger’s name in a desperate attempt to save her own skin.

Now she was on the other side of
the world, and Falkon Dillinger was standing right in front of her. A big smile
came across his face.

“Come out,” he said. “I want to
show you something.”

Falkon walked away, leaving
Nicky alone in the cell. Slowly, she stepped forward, peeking her head out the
door before she stepped through.

She found herself in a huge
space with high walls and large windows. No, not windows. Cells. Every window
was the front of a prison cell just like hers.

“Do you see anything familiar,
Nicky?” Falkon said. He stood a few feet down the way from her, the walls on
either side making a wide corridor around them both.

Nicky shook her head.

“You know, I have a theory about
why we can’t see in your mind,” Falkon said. His accent was like a word stuck
on the tip of the tongue. It was from a memory, but she didn’t know which one.
“If my theory is correct, you do recognize your surroundings, or you will. You
have the sense that you have been here before.”

Nicky stood silently, looking
through the glass of the cell ahead of her. There was someone back there.
Someone standing in the corner, hunched over, breathing slowly. In the
darkness, the figure in this cell was no more than a shadow.

“There was someone with me on
the airplane,” Nicky said. “Where is he?”

Without warning, the shadow at
the back of the cell leapt at the glass, snarling with a mouth full of sharp,
yellow teeth. Nicky jumped back so quickly she stumbled, and would have fallen
on her back had Falkon not rushed to catch her.

“Don’t be frightened,” Falkon
whispered in her ear. “He can’t get through the cage, and even if he could, I
don’t think he would hurt you.”

The prisoner’s face was right up
against the glass, and even in the darkness, Nicky could tell that the skin on
his face was a pale shade of gray.

It was one of the monsters from
her dream.

“I think he likes you,” Falkon
said. “I think they all do. Just as they liked your mother.”

“My mother? What do you know
about my mother?”

Falkon laughed. “You look just
like her, you know.”

“Tell me where I am,” Nicky said.
“Tell me what this is about.”

“You sound like her too. She was
fearless. I admired that about her. Yes, I think it is certain. You are the
daughter of Celeste Nicole Allen, and after many years away, you have come back
home.”

Falkon took Nicky to his house.
He sat her down at a long table.

“You are going to tell me what
you are really doing here,” he said.

“I’ve already told you. I’m a
student at Thorndike. I’m a girl wearing black. At the Date Auction--”

“Stop. I have no interest in your
games. I knew another human once whose mind was closed to me. I made her behave
and I will do the same with you.”

Falkon held up his hand and
snapped his fingers. A servant came into the room, dragging Ryan Jenson across
the floor.

“What have you done to him?”
Nicky yelled.

Ryan’s eyes were distant. His
face was pale. He was thrashing left and right, trying to escape the servant’s
grip.

Nicky jumped up from her chair
ran for Ryan. Falkon stepped in her way

“You may comfort your friend
after you’ve told me the truth,” he said.

“You’ve tortured him,” said
Nicky. “What did you do?”

“I put him in a prison cell no
different than yours. Sadly, Mr. Jenson doesn’t share your ability to keep
vampires out of his mind, and the two of you were sharing space with sixteen of
the most rabid, crazy vampires I’ve ever known. I can’t imagine what horrors he
saw when he was down there.”

Nicky reached for him, but
Falkon wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her away.

“I would like you to sit,”
Falkon said.

“Ryan!” she yelled. “Ryan, it’s
me, Nicky!”

“I will ask you one more time to
sit down, Nicky Bloom. You and I haven’t finished our conversation.”

“What more do you want me to
tell you!” Nicky snapped. “You drug me. You lock me in a cage! Get out of my
way! Let me see him!”

As Falkon pulled Nicky away he
spoke softly to Ryan.

“Ryan I would like you to
imagine a pain in your skull,” he said.

“What are you doing?” Nicky
begged. “Please stop.”

“It hurts, doesn’t it, Ryan?
Your skull feels like it’s going to explode.”

Behind Falkon, Ryan’s face
contorted in a look of agony. He yanked his hands free of the servant’s grip
and put them on both sides of his head.

“Stop it! What are you doing?”

“The pain is excruciating,”
Falkon said. “Worst you have ever felt.”

Ryan cried out, his whole body
collapsing to the floor.

“I can kill him this way, you
know,” said Falkon. “The mind is that powerful. There isn’t a thing wrong with
him, but his mind is sending pain signals to his nerves that are so strong he
might go into shock.”

“Please stop! I’ll tell you
everything. Just stop doing this to him!”

Falkon raised his hand and
snapped his fingers. Ryan’s moaning stopped. He lay on the floor, breathing
hard, and shivering.

“Here is our arrangement, Nicky.
You tell me the truth, and I make Ryan forget all the misery he’s been through.
You lie to me again, I make him feel pain worse than anything you can imagine.”

“I’ll tell you everything,”
Nicky said. “I promise.”

“Good. Now please sit at the
table so we may have a civilized conversation.”

Nicky went back to the table,
adjusting her chair so she could see Ryan, who was still sprawled on the floor.

“Don’t worry about him,” said
Falkon. “He’s happier right now than he’s been all week. And if I’m pleased
with our conversation, I will say a few words and turn him back into the boy
you brought here.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with why you came
to Italy.”

“I’ve had visions in my sleep,”
Nicky said. “I’ve seen people. Sick people with gray faces.”

“And these visions led you
here?”

“Someone told me I would find
what I was looking for in the Italian Alps.”

“Who?”

Nicky looked at Ryan as she
spoke.

“Sergio Alonzo,” she said.

“Sergio Alonzo!” Falkon said. He
leaned back in his chair and folded his hands. “See? I knew there was something
interesting about you. Sergio Alonzo. That’s a name I never would have guessed
you to speak. Truly fascinating. But how did Sergio come to know of your
visions? It’s been many years since I’ve spoken with him, but what I remember
is that he isn’t the most sociable vampire.”

“We danced at the Homecoming
Masquerade,” Nicky said.

“You spoke with him while you
danced?”

“No. He…did something to me.
Being near him—I never had these visions until we danced.”

“He got in your mind?”

“In a way, yes,” said Nicky.

“But I cannot get in your mind.
Renata cannot get in your mind. Even the great Melissa Mayhew couldn’t get in
your mind!”

“Sergio is different. I can’t
explain it. I’ve been around him twice now. Both times, we’ve made some sort of
connection. He can see in my mind, and…”