Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

The pain was excruciating, beautiful, even as nothingness stole in.

And I woke in this pit. No doors, no windows, no way in or out. Just a round room of dust and darkness. My shredded clothing from the fight was gone, no pallet was on the floor for my comfort. Empty, naked, cold, utterly alone, I took my punishment without complaint.

Left with nothing but my thoughts, without the luxury to which I was accustomed, without human background noise and social media and farce. A well-fed daywalker with a mind full of ugliness that was chilling to be alone with. What I would have given for Ethan’s stupid jokes or irresponsible smile: any distraction from the mental racket.

Before my father had flung me against the wall and spilled my brains on the Cathedral floor, I’d had a wet-nurse. A human who lived in a state of terror that I assumed was normal because it was all I had ever known. She did care for me, and not just out of a sense of duty… or slavery. Her lap was warm when she’d read me stories. Her voice, when she sang, was sweet. I remember the taste of her milk in my mouth. But I cannot remember her name. Maybe that segment of my brain matter was left back on the stones, and I wondered in those lonely hours what else hadn’t been put back in my skull.

Had I loved ponies once? Was my favorite color purple?

Because of my father’s wrath, there were pieces of me left to be trampled into the floor by careless feet all over the Cathedral. There were pieces of me missing.

“Are you hungry?” Malcom. I couldn’t see him in the dark, I didn’t know if he’d been there all along, or if he moved through the shadows and magicked himself outside of the pit.

“No.” For once I wasn’t responding to be difficult. I really wasn’t hungry, in any way. Not after the amount of blood I’d been coerced to swallow since the feeding schedule had been inflexibly enforced.

Light blazed, a single small candle that was over-bright in such a dark place. Dressed in his impeccably tailored and pressed slacks, a fitted sweater highlighting the physique of a natural predator, his typical expression, Malcom held the flame and looked me over. “Stand up. Come to me and drink.”

It felt like the same conversation we’d had for decades. His demands, my pointless, irritated responses of denial. “Fuck off, Malcom.”

“You could have cast a gate and left this place at any time. Why are you still here?”

“This is where you put me, isn’t it?” After I’d attacked then molested him. After he’d penetrated me to make a solid and twitching point that I really was the world’s greatest fool.

Malcom minutely tilted his head. “Answer the question, Jade.”

Irritated he was going to make me admit it aloud, I snarled, “For the same reason I take taxis everywhere. I don’t know how to cast a gate!”

“I have watched you cast gates since you could walk. You used to laugh and lead me on a chase through the Cathedral that I found quite… frustrating.” But the way he’d shared that memory sounded anything but frustrated.

“And then my brains splattered the floor, and I forgot how to do it.”

“You cast a gate last month, after a feed so that you might leave the Cathedral and return to your apartment before Ethan left for his business trip to Paris.”

Absurd. “I traveled by cab.”

Another fractional tick to his head. “And here I thought you were smarter than to trust every memory in your head. Consider where you are, Jade. Consider why.”

Bare ass to the dirt, back to the wall, I let my head loll back. Lazy in my perusal of him, admittedly forlorn and equally apathetic, I measured all I knew. Like how this man had been responsible for the death of Gerard ages ago, and how I swore I’d never forgive him.

As if my thoughts were bared, he nodded. Squatting down, as if to exist on my level, Malcom waited.

He who spoke first lost. Wasn’t that the common saying?

The perpetual loser, I broke the silence on a sigh. “How much longer are you going to keep me in here?”

He set the candle atop the dirt, red wax dripping, and began to roll up the sleeve of his sweater so his wrist might glow on display. “Forever, perhaps… it seems it’s doing the spoiled princess some good. A quiet time-out until you feel like trying.”

“I’m not in the mood to play with you anymore, Malcom.” And that was it. I was tired, disgusted, empty, and too full of blood to consider the wrist he held out.

Soft as a breeze, his fingers danced over my hair. “Were you playing when you tried to tear off my head?”

I could hardly remember the rage that had set me feral. “Yes, my favorite game.”