Chapter Forty-Six – Faith

 

“Not much longer, now,” I reminded myself aloud, my voice echoing back from the far wall and the tiles beneath my feet as I sat in the folding chair, one leg crossed over the other as I hugged myself for warmth. The seat was the only piece of furniture in the room, and there was no way I was going to sit on this killing room floor. Not a chance in hell.

Tanchovsky had disappeared a while before. Without my cell phone, and no wrist watch, there was no way for me to tell how much time had passed. It could have been minutes, or it could have been hours. Briefly, I almost understood why solitary confinement was such a cruel punishment. How it stripped you away from time, one of the primary parts of what made us human.

But the vampire who was keeping me here? He was stripped from time in a completely different way. Unhinged from the natural order, he didn’t age like a human anymore. Maybe he hadn’t started out as a monster. But, now, after centuries of being alive, he most definitely was.

“Anytime now, Sam,” I said, my voice echoing again. “Anytime.”

As much as Sam wasn’t human, though, I didn’t care. I loved him, regardless of whether or not he could change into a wolf. The only thing he’d been with me had been caring. And now, as I hung my head back and stared up at the ceiling, my thoughts couldn’t help but drift out towards him. Out to what he was doing.

Was he calling the cavalry? Was he getting the police involved? Or was he going to try and rescue me alone?

Or, was he not even coming? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was still lying in that field as Tanchovsky’s manor house burned in the background. As the old bones of the building crisped and blackened, the heat deep within the wood so it would smolder in a pile of smoking rubble for days and days. Forgotten, left to lie barren and fallow as his Camaro rusted and fell apart.

I closed my eyes and shook my head, silently cursing myself for thinking those kinds of thoughts. Negativity, even in the darkest of situations like this, was the way to giving up. And I wasn’t going to do that.

Instead, I turned my attention to brighter things. Happier things. To what would happen after Sam got me out. To how I’d come up with a way to leave, to take Veronica with me if I had to. I didn’t know how I’d do it, but I knew I would. Because there was a future out there waiting for me. Intellectually, I knew it might not be with Sam. But, on a base and emotional level, I was somehow certain it would be.

Because of the way I felt when we touched. Because of the way his lips seemed perfect for mine. Because of the way I felt safe in his arms. And because of the way I knew he’d always get back up again if he was knocked down, and how he’d pull me right up alongside him.

I sighed, my whole body shaking. My limbs were racked with exhaustion, my finger throbbing where its nail should have been. If I’d been under any other circumstances, I would have been asleep in this chair, blissfully unaware of the events unfolding in the world around me.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, I heard movement behind the door through which I’d first entered this damnable room. It sounded like a lock being messed with, like they were removing the padlock they’d put in place when they sequestered me here.

I got up from the chair and went over to the door. My footfalls were spectral on the beige tiles, barely making a sound as I passed over them. Like I didn’t even exist anymore. As cut off from the world as I was, it almost felt that way.

When I was just a few feet away, the door swung outwards, and I stopped in my tracks.

Tanchovsky stood there in the opening, a strange aura extending from him that seemed to dim the lights in the room. Behind him stood his small army of Renfields, packed into the hallway, shoulder-to-shoulder and extending back like a forest of heads.

“It’s time, Faith,” Tanchovsky said, coming into the room, practically gliding over the floor. He set those burning eyes of his on me, and I took a step back.

My knees wobbled; my gut churned. “Time for what?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat.

“Time for the change,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought an audience. I figured it would be suitable for all of our servants to see their new princess. Besides, I think you’re deserving of one.”

Behind him, the crowd all nodded their heads in somber silence, their eyes as vacant as Dr. Lawrence’s had been at the end.

“See?” Tanchovsky said. “They’re all in agreement.”

And then they began to flood into the room, surrounding me.

I sent a silent prayer up into the heavens, out into the universe. If there was something out there, and it could hear me, I begged for it to send me Sam. To send me help.

Because I was in desperate, desperate need of it.