Unbroken
This is taking forever. Myra watched as if in slow-motion as Zack took his knife and spread the canned tuna over flatbread prepared from decades-old flour. The smell of fish and baked rats mingled, heavy and sharp.
“How should we do this?” he said between bites. “Do we send an ambassador to negotiate with the Prince?”
Thomas put down his rat and frowned. “It’s too risky. The vamps could torture and kill our messenger.”
And more back-and-forth talks, leading nowhere. Myra was glad she had fed Tristan during the night; otherwise the wait would have driven her mad. It was driving her mad anyway.
“I’ll go,” she said. “The Prince won’t hurt me; he knows that if he does, Tristan is doomed.”
Sissi looked up and opened her mouth to speak, but Myra threw her a warning glance before she could say a word. Sissi wanted to volunteer, no doubt, but Myra had no time or patience to indulge her fantasies.
“You place too much trust in this bloodsucker,” Thomas said. “He drank his supposed friend and left him to die, and now you expect me to believe he cares if we harm him?”
“I’m only risking my own life,” Myra said. “I know the Prince better than anyone here. I know what to expect from him.”
“Reasonable,” said Zack. “When do you think you should go?”
“As soon as I’m sure the prisoner will recover,” Myra said. “I can’t negotiate with the Prince unless I know we have something to offer him.”
Zack sipped from his boiled water. “Very well. Let’s finish up here and go and feed him.”
Myra picked at her food but had no real appetite. Watching the others take their time made her fidget in her seat, and she breathed a sigh of relief once the majority of the Warriors finished their breakfast and stood up.
They walked to the rat farm, and Myra watched, wide-eyed, as Andre opened a cage, took out the rats one by one, slit their throats, and dropped them into a bucket with quick, expert moves. I wish I could do that. She scanned the Warriors’ faces, looking for a sign that someone noticed a few rats were missing.
Myra swallowed hard. Would they know? Was anyone keeping track? If they noticed something, would Lidia remember their nighttime encounters and make the connection? Would her friend reveal her secret? Would she blame her?
Myra fisted her hands and silently followed the others towards the prison cell. She would help no one by going crazy with paranoia, but it was stronger than her.
Zack took out the keys to unlock the door, and Myra stared at him, her palms sweating. Would Tristan remember her advice and pretend to be weak and unconscious? If he was obviously stronger than when they’d captured him, would her friends think she had lied to them?
Myra bit her lower lip until she tasted blood. Stop it! Nobody knows anything. Get a grip.
They stepped inside, and she squinted, trying to make out Tristan’s form under the meager light of the candle in Zack’s hand. Zack lit up a torch, and Myra stepped closer, her eyes flying to the chained vampire.
Tristan’s head hung down, his long pale hair concealing his face. He made no move or sound when Zack called for him and poked him with the tip of his boot, and Myra wondered if he was truly unconscious or pretending.
“Looks like he won’t wake up on his own,” Zack said and nodded at Thomas. “Tommy, let’s do this.”
Thomas reached inside the bucket and took out a rat, his hand trembling. “What if he wakes up and bites me?”
Myra snatched the rat out of his hand and with a quick move of her knife skinned a part of the rodent’s back. Swiftly, she made a deeper cut and placed the animal right in front of Tristan’s face. All fell silent.
The vampire sniffed and sucked on it. He drank the rat until there wasn’t a drop left, and Myra reached out for another.
“We have to go on at least until he wakes up, perhaps more,” Sissi said. “Otherwise we risk brain damage.”
In the middle of the fourth rat, Tristan’s head started rolling left and right. He spat the blood on the floor, and his eyes flew open.
“Ew, rat blood,” he choked and looked up. “Oh, hello, Myra. You escape the Palace to return to this place? I’ve always found your taste lacking, but this goes beyond my expectations. Who is the leader around here?”
Myra glared at the vampire. What was this halfwit doing? He was supposed to look weak and disoriented.
Everyone was silent for a few seconds until Zack spoke. “That would be me.”
“Good,” Tristan said. “May I please get a toothbrush? I need to get the taste of rat out of my mouth.”
Zack’s eyes widened. “You’re our captive and are in no position to make demands.”
Tristan leaned back against the stone wall and raised a silver-golden eyebrow. “When Myra was our prisoner, we treated her much better. And we most certainly didn’t deny her a toothbrush.”
“I would be more respectful if I were you,” Zack said. “We can’t kill you, but that doesn’t mean we can’t hurt you.”
“You cannot kill me?” Tristan said, grinning. “And why would that be?”
“The Prince has something we want,” Zack said, his voice tense.
Tristan laughed, and Myra wanted to smack him. Was he insane, provoking Zack when his life was on the line? “If you think you can use me against the Prince, you are dead wrong. His Highness will never lower himself to speak to the likes of you.”
Myra gave him a pointed look, but he simply winked in return.
“You should hope that he does,” Zack said.
“And you should hope you have an unbroken bone left in your body when he is done with you,” Tristan said.
“Tristan, don’t be silly,” Myra said, giving him her best shut-up-if-you-want-to-live glare. “You know very well the Prince would do anything for you.”
“Of course he would,” the vampire said, and for a half-second, she hoped he had gotten the hint. “As long as it doesn’t involve talking to filthy humans.”
Thomas stood up and slapped him, sending his head flying backwards and colliding with the stone wall. “Enough,” Zack said. “Let’s leave him to muse over his current position. Hopefully, he’ll be more cooperative when we return.”
“Zack, we need to feed him at least a few more rats,” Sissi said. “He’s barely alive.”
“That’s his problem, not mine,” Zack said, and they walked out of the door. Once they had put enough distance between themselves and the prison door, he stared at Myra, his face pale. “Tristan? Since when are you on first-name terms with vampires?”
“Everyone is on first-name terms in the vampire world,” Myra said. Of course they were. They had no children, and most of their parents had been dead for centuries. What was the meaning of a family name if they had no families? “They find our idea of placing so much importance on a family name ridiculous and outdated. A person is defined by their individuality, they say, not by belonging to a certain clan.”
“Yes, I would expect vampires to have no understanding of what a family is,” Zack said. “I have to admit, seeing you talking to a vamp as if you knew him was a bit disconcerting.”
“But I do know him,” Myra said. “Whether you like it or not, I talked to the vampires and interacted with them. It doesn’t mean I like them. You saw Tristan. If you spent two months in his captivity, would you like him any better?”
“I see your point,” Zack said. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Myra. It’s just that Franka said some things.”
“I’m not surprised,” Myra said. “The Prince was trying to manipulate me, and she feared I’d fall into his trap. She saw what she expected to see.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Zack said. “I had a hard time believing it myself.” He paused to put out a burning torch as they passed it by and no longer needed its light. “I suppose everything is going according to your plan so far. Let’s leave the Prince to wait for a few days, so that he grows worried and uncertain. Then you’ll go to him and bring him a little token from his friend. I suppose we shouldn’t start with fingers on the first visit. A lock of hair, perhaps?”
Myra winced. “That would make him angry, and when he’s angry, he’s unreasonable. I think the cloak and the pin you took from the prisoner should be enough.”
Zack nodded. “Fine, I’ll trust your judgment.” They reached the door to the Headquarters, and he put his hand on the knob. “I’m meeting Lidia now to go over the patrolling schedule. See you later.”
Myra smiled and nodded and walked back to her cellar as if in a daze. Once she was inside, she closed the door and leaned against it. What kind of a mess had she made? Zack seemed all too eager to start cutting off Tristan’s body parts, and if it came to that, Vlad would never forgive her.
I’m being selfish, Myra thought as she sat on the cot. All I can think about is my promise. Would I break my word? What would Vlad think of me? And Tristan is the one actually suffering.
But as she remembered the harebrained way the vampire had acted around Zack, she snorted. Perhaps a bit of suffering would do Tristan some good.
Still, Myra could not get him out of her head. The image of him chained and hurting burned inside her mind. She tried reading but stopped at the second page, realizing she had no memory of what had happened on the page before. She reread it, again and again, but her mind flew in all directions. She tried writing, but all she could do was draw jagged trees on the blank page.
She started pacing back and forth, checking the mechanical watch in her hand every three seconds. She wanted to go to Tristan, to talk to him in private and see if he was feeling better, but she couldn’t go right away. Zack’s suspicions had just been quelled; it would be unwise to rekindle them while they were still fresh.
After she decided enough time had passed and she would not seem too eager if a guard saw her, Myra walked to the prisoner’s cell. She wanted to punch Tristan. She had worked so hard to persuade Zack to keep him alive, and now the vampire was doing everything possible to undo her efforts.
But as she opened the door and stepped inside, all thoughts of smacking the vampire flew away. She froze in her tracks and the candle slid out of her limp fingers and fell to the stone floor. The flame died and pitch-black darkness devoured the room.