Little Doll (Blackmoth House #1)

Chapter 7 Nova

Chapter 7

Nova

When I finally woke for good, I was calm.

My eyes fluttered open, and I lifted my hands to study them and found that they were now flawless and pale, delicate like a porcelain doll. No trace of the ugly black slashes remained. My body was cool and comfortable. I noted my head resting on a pillow and my long curls softly billowing out around me, brushed and smooth where the last I had awoken, it had been stringy and soaked with feverish sweat.

It was as if all the pain, all the suffering, had been but a nightmare.

I turned my head and found my brother Fane seated across the room. Watching me.

He was in a hard, high-backed chair with black silken cushions. He leaned back with his hips pushed out and legs spread wide and relaxed. His hands rested behind his head and he leaned the chair on its back two legs and his head and hands against the stone wall behind him.

“Did you have a nice slumber, Little Doll?” Fane purred when I looked at him.

“Where am I?” I whispered, surprised at the voice that came out of me. It was breathy and sultry, one I barely recognized.

“You are in the night wing of Blackmoth House.” His eyes twinkled in the dim candlelight as he stared at me as if utterly fascinated.

“Night wing?” I asked. But he did not answer.

The room we were in appeared circular, made of stone for the walls and floor. Nothing was in it except for the bed I was in, Fane’s chair, and a small plain chest of drawers.

I threw back my covers and drifted into a sitting up position, kicking my feet over the edge of the bed. I noted I was wearing a filmy white nightgown that hugged curves I didn’t formerly remember having. There was almost no telling where the material of the gown ended, and my alabaster skin began.

I dropped my feet to the stone floor, expecting a jolt of cold. But the stones were warm when my skin made contact. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Fane watching me still. He had leaned forward and returned the front legs of the chair to the floor. He sat with his elbows propped on his knees and chin tilted down. He peered up at me through the fringe of his dark lashes.

I realized how provocative my night gown was. Shadows of my nipples were visible through the bodice of the gown, and it scooped low between full breasts. I knew I should cover myself.

But I spun to face Fane. I lifted my chin so that I could look down at him through narrow eyes. His handsome, thin face broke into a lurid grin, and he ran his tongue over his teeth. I turned away from him again, losing interest in him, and closed the rest of the distance to the chest of drawers.

On top of the chest were a few strange items. A crucifix and ancient looking black Bible. A crystal bottle of some clear substance. A handkerchief. Out of place miscellaneous things.

I opened the top drawer, and inside there was a hairbrush and a hand mirror. I lifted the mirror carefully, holding it delicately in my hands.

“Nova, no!” Fane cried, leaping to his feet as though snapped awake during a stolen nap.

But I paid him no mind and lifted the mirror and turned it so that I could peer into my reflection.

My eyes were no longer terrifying and black, but somehow larger, with longer lashes and a natural shadow that made them sultry and becoming. I brought the mirror closer and noted they seemed to have changed color as well and were now a light brown with flecks of red and gold that almost made them appear to glow. My lips looked red and held the full luscious look of lips that had just been kissed.

I angled the mirror down a little as Fane came up behind me. Indeed, my body was different. Full round bosoms, a tiny hourglass waist, voluptuous hips and long legs. Where Fane once towered above me, now he only had a few inches on me as he stood with his front pressed to my back.

“You shouldn’t look,” Fane whispered, his breath flitting a lock of my shining black hair out from my face and then giving me a chill when it came back and brushed my tender flesh.

“Why?”

Even as I asked, my attention was pulled deeper into my reflection, as my eyes seemed to darken and change right in front of us. The color left the already pale skin in the reflection and my face became ashen. I gasped as my eyes sunk and my cheeks hollowed drastically. Fane also stared into the mirror. He appeared to search, as if trying to see what I saw.

Violent red veins appeared in the whites of my eyes and then the irises turned into the blackest of pitch, as though they’d burned and turned to charred ashes.

My lips cracked and paled, then pulled into a vicious snarl.

I gasped and touched my fingers to my lips. Although I could physically feel lips at rest in no particular expression; in the mirror, my ghastly reflection sneered evilly. My teeth in the mirror somehow lengthened before my eyes into razor sharp fangs, the fingers of the hand I was holding to my face elongating into nasty claws with cracking skin.

Patches of my reflection’s skin grew blistering pocks and festered, boiled, and peeled.

I began to weep, staring in terror at my reflection.

In the reflection, sparkling red droplets of blood dripped first from my eyes. Then my nose. Then my leering mouth, and finally from my ears, pouring down my slender scabbed neck.

I screamed.

My reflection laughed.

I heard both haunting sounds in tandem.

Fane grasped the mirror and ripped it from my hands. He raised it above his head and brought it down hard onto the corner of the chest of drawers. Its million broken pieces sprinkled down onto the wood floor as I shrieked in utter terror.

Fane pulled me into his arms, stroking my hair and cooing shhhhh in my ear, desperate to sooth me as some sort of devilish strength built inside me and I thrashed against him.

A maid brought me a new gown to dress me in because of my more voluptuous frame. My wraith like body was gone so none of my clothes were going to fit anymore. I had calmed somewhat, and Fane told me I must dress so that he could escort me to the parlor where Mother and Father and Grandmother Cleo were waiting to speak with me.

“I promise, Little Doll,” he said. “We’ll explain it all to you.”

I glowered at him. “Stop calling me that. I hate it,” I hissed.

He startled, peering at me taken aback. But I doubted he would abide by my demand.

When the young maid scurried nervously into my room, I attempted to dispatch Fane. However, he tried to convince me I must allow him to stay for now. That it wasn’t safe for me to be alone.

“I won’t be alone, you dankish clay-brained giglet!” I clamped my hand over my own mouth as soon as the harsh words flew from it. Fane indeed was damn near insufferable, but he was here trying to help me. It was unfair of me to show him cruelty.

He cocked a small sideways smile and chuckled. “Tsk tsk, Little Doll. Grandmother would not appreciate that mouth. And yes, I know she is here. I’m just asking you to trust me. I need to stay this time.”

My attention shifted to the maid. It was a young girl, the one that my brother Draven often followed around like a puppy. But she looked frightened as she brought in a lovely purple dress and laid it on my bed. I tilted my head to the side and gave her a questioning look, but her cheeks reddened, and she dipped her eyes away from mine.

And then it was as though I could hear that blood rushing to her face. It roared like the tide of an entire ocean inside my mind, and I stopped dead, staring at the girl.

My teeth ached.

Fane stepped between me and the girl and smiled down at her cordially. “That will be all, Theodora,” he said. The girl gave him a look that seemed almost… Thankful? Then she scurried out like a little mouse. He escorted her out the door, then turned back and strode to the bed, where he fingered the silks of the dress. “I’ll help you dress, Little Doll.”

Wondering quite frankly, what in the hell was going on, I rolled my eyes and groaned. I no longer cared to battle with him and simply pulled down the straps of the nightgown and let it slide down my body, which was now tight and restless.

It seemed every fiber of my being itched since I thought I heard that girl’s blood.

I felt frustrated and cross.

Fane’s lips parted, and he stared openmouthed at me standing there nude with my chest heaving. This time, his face burned red, a phenomenon I’d never witnessed before.

I couldn’t be sure what happened, but somehow, I was across the room in the blink of an eye with my fingers wrapped around his neck. My fingers seemed longer; my nails sharp. I could feel his blood pumping in his veins beneath my fingertips, which burned in the places where they connected with his skin. I pressed my mouth against his ear, feeling both full of rage and ravenous in a way that bordered on desperation. “What are you looking at?” I seethed into his ear, my voice low and lethal.

His spine stiffened, and he stared down into my eyes. He seemed to be barely breathing. It was as though he was weighing his next move in a chess game. “Nova,” he said softly. “Just let me help you get dressed and we will join the family in the parlor.” Never had he spoken so softly and tenderly to me.

It was almost enough to make me regret imagining ripping out his jugular with my teeth.

Soon I had slid my body into the luxurious fabric of the dress and stood squirming as he pulled the laces of my corset tight. It accentuated my tiny waist and swollen bosoms. I wished I could look in the mirror.

But, although I was ready to murder my brother, I wasn’t ready to face the horror in the mirror again anytime soon.

He led me through the doorway of my stone room. I had been expecting to step into some stone tower stairway I had not even known existed. But as soon as we stepped through the door, I found us standing in the hallway outside the grand foyer of the ground floor of Blackmoth House. I gasped and spun around, only to find the door we’d just come through in fact led into the dining room, not a windowless stone tower.

My head spun and a dark throbbing pain began deep behind my eyes.

“Fane, what just…”

My sentence drifted off as he led me into the parlor. Outside the tall windows, pitch darkness cloaked the world. A starless, moonless night sprawled outside over the misty garden. Father paced in front of a crackling fire in the fireplace. Grandmother Cleo sat on the sofa holding Mother’s hand. And Mother sat with her head bowed, weeping softly.

It was almost as though I had never seen her not crying. It was almost as though she thought she was the one who’d just gone through miserable pain and confronting a terrifying monster in the mirror. Either something was very wrong with my body…

Or something was very wrong with my mind.

It wasn’t about her.

“Alright, enough with the crying!” I snarled. Everyone in the room snapped their attention to me. Mother leaped from her seat and raced to me, throwing her arms around me. A tiny woman, I dwarfed her. My body trembled in the embrace I would’ve a short time ago found comforting and loving. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, but for the life of me, I couldn’t seem to will my body to do it.

I found my teeth hurting once again. “Does someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” I seethed while clenching them so hard they felt as though they might break.

Costel dashed across the room and loomed over me, leaning menacingly into my face. His breath was sick with the smell of the drink. “You will not talk to your mother that way, Nova,” he growled.

A quick image of me removing his head from his shoulders with a roar flashed in my mind and made me smile. I reached past my mother and shoved him. He blasted backward, crashed onto his backside, and slid comically across the glossy parquet floor.

The entire room, including myself, drew an audible gasp as we all stared down at my father. A war waged within me between a shadow part of me that wanted to murder him, and the rest of me who revered and loved this man above no other. After an awkward hesitation, Fane rushed to offer Father a hand and hoisted Costel up. Fane’s strength paired with Costel’s drunken clumsiness made our father seem suddenly old and frail.

“I’m so sorry, Father,” I gasped.

He nodded and shifted his gaze to the ground. “It’s alright,” he mumbled.

Shocking. The last time I spoke with my father, the night that we had quarreled, I was convinced he’d have beaten me to death if I’d shown him even a fraction of this insolence. But now he seemed… Frightened to confront me?

Fane led me by the hand to another sofa opposite Cleo and my mother, who had apparently decided to meet my demand of drying up her tears. He flourished a hand, silently asking me to sit. When I did, he sat down next to me, our bodies connected at our sides. He did not let go of my hand.

“What do you remember?” Cleo asked, watching me with her glittering black eyes.

It was a good question that gave me great pause. My eyes fluttered toward the fire, getting lost inside the flames. I tried to recall that night.

“Father told me… That I was to be married!” I exclaimed, remembering. It felt like more than one day had passed. What had become of the mysterious man I had been poised to marry? “We feuded. And then… And then afterward Fane wanted to cheer me up.”

Fane squeezed my hand. I glanced at him sideways, and he gave me a small encouraging style.

“We… We shared a delightful evening in London and then, there… There was an accident.” I shuddered as memories of the precious little boy came back to me. A flash of Fane shoving the child assaulted me, but I knew I was remembering it wrong. “Oh dear, whatever became of the little boy?” I pleaded, peering around at them all one by one.

Cleo frowned sorrowfully. “He didn’t survive the accident,” she explained. “He’s been buried, and his family has been… Comforted by ours.”

“Little Doll,” Fane whispered.

I turned my face to him. He stared intently at my lips. He reached up ever so gingerly and touched two of his fingers to my lips. “Do you remember… When his blood got in your mouth?”

The memory came thundering back, and I recalled the warm droplets splattering across my cheeks and into my mouth. My mouth went dry, and heat swelled low in my belly. I clamped my eyes closed, recalling the taste. I could feel my own blood racing through my veins. I could feel every nerve ending sizzle beneath my skin. My teeth ached and inexplicably, I ached in my deep center. I grew wet with arousal and squeezed my thighs together.

When I opened my eyes, he was still staring at my mouth, touching my lips.

I nodded weakly. He nodded too. “There is a curse,” Fane said.

I could hear the blood pumping through every chest in the room. I could hear their blood flowing. I licked my tongue along my teeth and discovered two of them toward the front had somehow grown razor sharp.

“In a few days, our cousin Carmilla will arrive from Styria,” Cleo said in her dry, withered voice. “She will help you understand more.”

My mother leaped to her feet. In a flash, she was in Fane’s face, her own face red and rabid. “This is your fault. YOUR FAULT!” she shrieked. Fane closed his eyes but did not move away from her. “She had but one more day. She was safe here at home and she would’ve been free forever. HOW COULD YOU!” Arcane drew back her fist and smashed it into his face, thrusting him back against the cushioned rest of the seat.

Everything inside my body stopped for a split second, only to be activated and awoken once again by a powerful, vicious, unadulterated rage. I lurched to my feet, gripped my mother’s throat, shoved her away from my brother, and lifted her into the air. She clawed at my hand while squirming and kicking her feet. I could see her face take on a panicked blue cast and she gurgled and choked pathetically.

My father and Cleo had also jumped up to join the fray. Costel had his arms around Mother’s waist, attempting to pull her from my grasp. Cleo reached up to stroke my face and whispered soft pleas to let my mother down that didn’t penetrate the black fog that had snaked across my mind.

Her movements weakened and with great delight, I noticed her pretty blue eyes roll back in her head. I dropped her then. She fell into Costel's arms and they crumpled to the floor.

Father cradled her, trying to soothe her as she gasped and choked air and life back into her lungs. A strange shadow had fallen over my vision and the scene I looked upon looked darker as I watched them all scramble to aid my mother. Only Fane remained calm in the seat, watching me and smiling softly.

I returned to my place next to him and my vision returned to normal. The rage retreated like vines dying and rolling back. Soon everyone had returned to their seats, my mother fingering the black bruises that had already appeared on her neck.

“Apologies, Mother dear,” I said. “I don’t know what came over me. Perhaps you shouldn’t strike my brothers.”

But, “brothers” wasn’t the right word, because we all knew she would never ever under any circumstances lift a finger to her darling son, Draven. We all knew her attack on Fane was part of a pattern. Whatever was happening to me was just the most recent reason for her to blame Fane. I had never thought about how cruelly my mother treated Fane, although it had transpired all my life right before my very eyes.

I peered at my brother, seeing him in a new light.

“Where is Draven, anyway? Why wasn’t he invited to this family meeting ?” I spat.

“Nova, your brother Draven does not know,” Cleo said. “And he must never know.”

I groaned. “Know what?” I snapped. “About the curse? What curse? What are you all on about? You say you’ll explain everything, well get on with it. ‘There is a curse,’ hardly explains a thing.”

Arcane, still absentmindedly stroking her own neck, seemed to have composed herself somewhat. “There is a lot to tell you, Nova. Please be patient. This was never supposed to happen.” She gave me a pleading gaze, her sparkling eyes threatening to cry again.

Shadows crossed Cleo’s face, and her eyelids drooped as though she were weary. She shifted in her seat, making herself more comfortable to settle in. Watching her transported me back to my childhood when Cleo would read from big leather-bound books by the fire, telling us stories at night before bed. I felt small again, gazing into my grandmother’s tired eyes. I felt alien. I felt ashamed of my behavior since awaking from my troubled, sick sleep.

“The Westminster bloodline spans back untold generations,” Cleo began. “In fact, our lineage is so old that it began in the days of magic. A time when myths were real and fairy tales were true.”

Fane’s hand slipped around mine and I rested my head upon his shoulder, captivated by our grandmother’s slow and even voice.

“But it was also a time of monsters. Things you only hear of in whispers now. Vampires.”

My body tensed at the mention of the dark word. Fane squeezed my hand and stroked it with his thumb.

“It was also a time of great passions and high, frantic energy. So, people would feud. Humans and dark forces clashed. Little is known about what sparked the curse on the Westminster family. It was so long ago. But as a result of the feud, the Westminsters fell victim to a threat of becoming a vampire. Most of our ancestors were unaffected and remained blissfully unaware. But for a few… The curse was very real.”

“What is the curse?” I whispered, prodding Grandmother softly along.

“Any Westminster who tastes the blood of another before their 18th birthday is through will transform into a vampire. Any who makes it past their 18th birthday and never tastes the blood? They are safe from the curse.”

I straightened and pulled away from Fane, though he clung to my hand.

“Are you telling me that if I’d made it just one more day… No, less than a whole day, this would not have happened to me?”

Now Mother wept again. She lowered her face into her palms and sobbed great shuddering tortured cries.

Fane leaned forward and shifted, reaching to use his finger and tilt my chin, attempting to get me to return my attention to him. I was fixated on my weeping mother, transported back into the terrible feverish nightmare of my transition.

Into a vampire, apparently.

I tore my eyes away from her to meet his stare. “Yes, Little Doll, but if you had made it without falling to the curse, they would have shipped you off to be the slave of a stranger. To be callously tossed from our home. To have God knows what done to you.”

I gasped and peered around at all of them again, reminded of the anguish I’d endured when I discovered Father’s plan for me. “Yes! I remember! What has become of this husband you chose for me?”

Mother jumped up once again, and Fane stiffened next to me. But she flew to me, dropping to her knees, and clutching my hands. “Nova, you must know, we only wanted to protect you! We only wanted to get you away from here, away from the darkness of this place.”

“Darkness? Blackmoth House? The only home I’ve ever known? The place that houses everyone that I know and love?” I cried. “If I would have been safe from the curse after my 18th birthday was over, then why would I have to be protected?”

Mother struggled to draw in a jagged breath. “There is so much here to need protection from,” she claimed darkly.

I stood up and brushed past her, crossing to stand in front of the fireplace and stare into the flames. A tear trickled down my cheek. “If that’s true, why didn’t we all just leave?” I asked, my voice pitiful like a little girl.

Again, my mother crossed the room to take my hands and implore me. She placed her slight frame in front of me and all but forced me to look down into her beautiful blue eyes, which were swollen and red. “Nova, you know I cannot leave this place.”

I smirked. “Why, Mother?”

“You know why, darling! I’ll get very sick if I leave! My allergies!”

“Oh please, Mother. I haven’t believed your excuses since I was a child. Are you under some ancient curse too?”

I noticed Mother’s eyes dart toward my father and then drop. “No, Nova. I am not a Westminster by blood. I am not cursed. It’s my allergies, whether you believe it or not. Leaving Blackmoth House is simply not an option for me.”

“Oh, but it is for me, I see,” I snapped.

Costel chuckled, a low, mean sound. “Well, not anymore, Nova,” he quipped.

He stood and paced, raking his hands through his hair. I could see his mood shifting even darker than it already had been. “To answer some of your questions, without all the purple prose and pleasantries… Your prospective husband is gone. Called off. He didn’t sign on to marry a fucking vampire and allowing him to find out would have resulted in your certain DEATH.”

Mother released me so I could face my father squarely. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and spittle flew as he spat out his words. “And that is the same reason Draven was not invited to this family meeting. He’s not a vampire, and he can never ever know about you.”

“Why not?” I asked. It pained me to think of the chasm that had already opened up between myself and my simple and sweet brother Draven. A chasm he wasn’t even aware of.

“Why not?” Costel snarled. “Because, Nova, if he knows, then other people will find out. And if other people find out, they will kill you. They will probably kill our entire family.” He moved into my face and pointed at me with a trembling finger. “Don’t you understand? They will think you’re a monster.”