Gothicana

CHAPTER 21

Corvina

 

 

The girl with long, dark hair lay face down in the water, her tresses floating over it ethereally, her skin ghostly pale in the moonlight. Corvina looked around, knowing the place or but not knowing the time, just that she needed to get to the girl. She took a step forward, her ankle dipping in the icy water, disappearing under the blackness.

Heart pounding, she took another step, just as something cold, slimy gripped her ankles, locking her in place. Corvina struggled in place trying to get to her, but the movements caused ripples. Whatever gripped her ankles dragged her down in the black water, taking her under.

‘We know you hear us’, the feminine voice came from around her, bringing that scent of decay underwater.

Corvina looked around frantically, trying to see where the voice came from, trying to see anything in the utter blackness.

Slowly, something started to appear in the line of her vision, something that seemed to be drifting towards her very, very slowly. Corvina squinted, trying to see.

And then she saw.

Bodies.

Suspended in the water.

Floating towards her.

‘Help,’ the voice said again. ‘Find. He will anchor you down.’

Corvina looked down to see Vad gripping her ankles, holding her under the surface. She struggled to get free but he didn’t let her go, the movement causing ripples across the still water.

The girl who had been floating before on top of the surface drowned, her black hair dancing in the ripples, and stopped right in front of Corvina.

It was Corvina.

Corvina blinked, trying to understand what she was seeing.

The floating version of her suddenly opened her eyes, fully black as the raven as had been in the mirror, just as the other bodies surrounded her and began to scream, their slimy limbs enclosing her underwater.

‘Join us. Join us. There is no other way.’

 

“Corvina!”

She woke with a gasp, her eyes flying everywhere around her, her hands trying to get the sensation of the slimy things off her skin.

A body came on top of her, hands pi

“You’re safe. It was a bad dream. Calm down.”

The deep, gravel voice speaking in that heavy tone caught her attention. Corvina blinked up, trying to focus, and saw Vad’s mildly concerned face above hers, his eyes glinting even in the dark of the room.

Corvina gulped in a lungful of air, trying to get her heart to calm down as visions from the dreams still assaulted her mind.

“They’re in the lake.”

He frowned slightly. “Who are?”

“The bodies,” she whispered to him. “That’s what they showed me. How is that even possible? Am I going crazy, Vad?”

He lay down on his side, pulling her in. “Tell me what you saw.”

She did. She told him about the feminine voice she’d heard the first time at the lake, of the voice she heard every time she’d gone near it, and of the dream.

“You don’t really think there’s anything to it, right?” she swallowed, needing the reassurance.

He stroked her back with his fingers mindlessly, quiet for a long minute.

“I think tomorrow you need to make a call to Dr. Detta and I need to make a call to the Board,” he finally stated, distracted. “I’ve seen enough things I ca

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said, but his voice held an edge of something Corvina couldn’t decipher.

She looked at the clock on the wall. It was already five in the morning, the sky still dark outside.

“Can we go to the lake?” she asked him, getting out of bed and finding her clothes on the floor.

“What’s the point of going right now?” he leaned back on his elbows, watching her with those sharp eyes. “We can’t drag the lake by ourselves. The Board will get a team up here by noon.”

Corvina felt jittery, unsettled, the dream still on the forefront of her mind. “I don’t know. I just. I need some air.”

She quickly put on her clothes and tied her hair back with her choker ribbon, wrapping the shawl around herself. Just as she headed to the door, she felt him at her back.

“You’re not going there alone,” he stated, pulling the door open.

Grateful for his company, because she really hadn’t wanted to go there by herself, Corvina followed him silently as he snuck them out, zipping up a jacket and pulling the hood over his head.

They went out into the dark, cold, foggy morning, the wind an assault on their skin. He picked up a lantern from the side of the door and flicked his lighter, turning it on, leading them to their right. Thankfully, the rain had stopped, leaving behind only a trail of moist mist that clung to them. Corvina looked at the stairs she’d taken up the mountain, confused.

“There’s a shorter path that cuts through here,” he told her, taking her into the dark woods on the side.

A chill went down her spine, a frisson of fear as he led them to the black mouth of a tu

He pulled the lantern up and turned to her, extending his hand palm up, his face half-glowing in the light from the flame, half-darkened from the night around them. Corvina looked into the mouth of the tu

‘What if he’s been evil all along, Corvina?’ an insidious voice whispered in her head, one she’d only heard once before in her life. ‘What if he said the things you needed to hear to bring you here? You could disappear and never be found.’

Corvina paused.

She had gone to him of her own volition, so no one in her tower even knew she was missing from her room. Sex was one thing, emotions were one thing, but life was another. She trusted him with sex and trusted herself with emotions but life? Did she trust him with her life? She’d had a dream about finding corpses, bodies that his grandfather had tortured and murdered, a grandfather whose death who she still didn’t know about. Had he killed his grandfather? When he meant he wanted to clean up the mess in Verenmore, had he meant burying the secrets deeper or bringing them to light?

Corvina stared at his hand, at the hand that had touched and caressed and claimed every inch of her, her heart pounding. It was the same hand dream-Vad had pulled her underwater with, the same hand beast-Vad had held her down with, the same hand real Vad had played both her body and that piano with beautiful music.

Did she trust him enough to go into an unknown tu

She glanced up from his hand to his eyes, watching them watch her, his gaze alight with the knowledge of her thoughts.

This was his test.

He had deliberately brought her to this tu

What had he told her?

‘I can’t give the truth to someone I don’t trust not to flee.’ 

Was this a test to see if she fled or did he want it to seem like a test?

She didn’t know why the sight of that tu