“He hears other creatures scream and fade.
But silence is his.”
. . .
In this wretched place, the concept of time might as well have been nonexistent. There is no crack nor windows to see the rise and set of the sun to mark the eternal cycle of day and night. There is nothing noteworthy or even remotely alive around him to indicate the cycle of life and death.
Before and after he found himself here, he couldn’t even distinguish where the darkness started and ended. It’s only just him, the never-ending black and his maddening thoughts.
His prison felt endless, unchanging.
And he has no way of knowing for how long he’s been in here.
The King of Vampires likes to remind him, of course, likes to tell William that he has been brought here for any number of seconds, or minutes or hours, days, weeks, months, maybe even years…
But if William’s memory proves him right, the number that the King of Vampires insists on telling him remains so dubiously inconsistent. One moment it has only been an hour since he woke up in here, then he was told it becomes a day, until a whole day becomes a week or two, then a month or so has passed.
Wait.
No, that couldn’t be right… it couldn’t have been that long. Winters… his sister wouldn’t let this go for much longer. William refuses to believe that he’s been missing for so long.
He doesn’t want to believe his kidnapper.
And to be fair, he really shouldn’t.
Roman lies as easily as he hurts everything and everyone around him, anyway… so William can only trust the vampire’s too eager answers or his own memories that even he couldn’t be too sure of.
It stings.
William had been so used on relying on his abilities, on his wits, and if he couldn’t lean on any of that, he always has Winters to back him up in a fight.
But his sister is not here.
He’s alone.
And without anything or anyone to trust, not even his own damned mind to fall back to, what was he supposed to hold on to then?
How is he supposed to survive this?
The William Veil of the past wouldn’t have worry too much about things like this, he thinks, that William would have been thinking of possibilities to turn this disadvantage into an advantage.
Because William Veil is a hunter of Proserpina.
He is with the shadows and the shadows are with him. He is with the shadows and the shadows are with him. I am with the shadows and the shadows are with me.
He is a living proof of its goddess’ teachings, after all.
Of training day and night, his very reason of being circling around hunting and tracking down monsters to slay for years because he could never quite live with the fact of knowing that even with having a half-god sister by his side, even that hadn’t been (had never been) enough to protect what mattered most to them once upon a time.
But even that Winters was gone too, wasn’t she?
Proserpina been molded by the path Winters had to choose, and by the people they had loved and lost. Had been hollowed out; until there was nothing left but her shadows and a moving carcass.
Because somewhere along the way, after the fire, after Roman’s brutality and… and especially after the god of the underworld’s cruel judgment, the being his sister has become by the end of it all is mangled, so far removed from her original intentions, her most heartfelt wish—to protect him—that she’d might as well have been the one to betray her own promise herself in the first place.
That is…
If Roman’s words were to be believed.
…if the King of Vampires wasn’t lying for once.
William tries to think of his sister then, tries and remembers the Winters he knows, must have known. The way his sister had looked when they spoke for what felt like was going to be a long… or the final time.
A guitar that looked so much, too much like the one their dad used to own back in the good old days (that it kind of hurt), propped gently on her lap as she strums a familiar song. A song he only hears in passing or dreams.
Hearing her quiet voice singing to him, that same voice he can barely hear even in his own memories… and it was only there and then that it struck him, that William truly understood how much his absence, his death is going to hurt his big sister more than anything Roman or anyone else has ever done to her thus far. That this loss might be one she will never be able to recover from.
And I wouldn’t even be there to help you, William would think in despair as the skin on his throat was suddenly torn off without a warning, his vision mercifully blacking out in sheer pain.
…because that is where this path would surely lead.
His death.
Roman could slip up, could kill him anytime for real.
And all it takes is just a single misstep from the King of vampires for William to be finally, finally rid of this hell.
His weak, human body is already at it’s limit. It can and will fail him anytime real soon before he was even properly healed and that is the only possible best ending for himself that he could even hope for at the second.
(And since when did dying had become something for him to expect?
To actually look forward to, no less?
Since when had he given up trying to escape? When had William even stopped thinking of his sister coming to save him…?)
But by the time William would wake up again, the cycle of pain and violence would only begin anew, the intoxicating scent of blood and viscera clouding most of his thoughts, the only thing he can only focus on was staying up on his feet.
Nothing changed.
Nothing ever changes here…
And it’s enough to drive one mad.
Roman’s crinkled red eyes were looking down at him now and again, taunting him with poison and blood on his smiling lips and William tries not to listen to the lies.
His mind was wandering somewhere far away here, somewhere the pain cannot follow. A place where he cannot be hurt. Where all was right in his world. Think of that old teddy bear he loved and lost as a child, of Alastor Nyx laughing alongside him as they watched another movie or anime in his laptop, of Winters singing softly and the guitar that looked too much like the one his father owned and lost on his sister’s lap, but it wasn’t. It’s not the same…!
It’ll never be the same.
If William could kill Roman here and now, if only he could just hurt him… make the monster suffer for even just a fraction of what he and Winters had to go through at his hands for years… then never again will he or she had to worry or think of this fucking leech bastard going after them ever again.
I won’t leave you. I won’t.
That’s what Winters told him, didn’t she?
I promise…
Or maybe the vampire was not lying about some things, after all. That his sister couldn’t come save him this time around because by the end of it all, Winters Veil is long dead, and Proserpina’s main concern was revenge. Her brother’s safety is an after-thought.
For once, his life wasn’t the priority.
That “…you are just a worthless bag of flesh.”
William blinks, reading the words in Roman’s moving lips than actually hearing it past the distant, ringing noise in his ears.
Roman was right. Roman was right…
But that couldn’t be.
That’s…
In the end, William Veil was nothing more but an arrogant, weak human boy thinking too highly of himself to think that he could do even anything.
It’s easy enough to realize this now, in the very bleak situation he’s found himself in. William has had a lot of time to begin to think about where he is now… back to square one: chained and beaten up so badly that he couldn’t even move to curl in on himself, let alone make another sound without his lungs rattling in agony.
“…your sister has more fire than you, for certain,” the King of Vampires was telling him, the same way one would remark about the weather when the faint ringing in his ears has finally subsided.
And William still has enough energy and clarity left in him to feel an ominous chill running down his spine as a cold hand suddenly grips at his chin, his gaze being forced to look upon the looming eyes of red directly above him.
Is this what Winters sees…?
Before she was devoured–
The vampire leans closer to whisper to his ear then, as if sharing a special secret: “…and all I have to do, in order to rekindle that flame, is speak of you.”
. . .
“In time the gates will open.
In time his heart will open.
Then the shadows will bleed.
And the locks will break.”
—Mark Z. Danielewski