A slender, almost gaunt figure, barely recognizable as female, ducked under the low archway into what could only be described as a makeshift torture chamber. Hanging in the center of the room, suspended by a coarse rope binding her hands above her head, was a smaller female, her skin blackened by fire or decay. The slender woman stood before the smaller woman, reached up to the latter's face, and tilted her drooping head back slightly. With a bowl in her other hand, she poured a small quantity of a thick liquid into the hanging woman's mouth. Quickly, she stepped backwards, breaking off contact with the lifeless body as it spun in a lazy circle.
"I know you can't hear me right now. Perhaps it's better this way. There will be time enough when you're conscious to explain to you all the important things. Right now, I just want to tell you why I finally gave you the choice and brought you over.
"I've known you for some time now--what is it, five, six years? Ever since the fire at the pharmaceutical plant, I've been watching you. It hasn't been easy. My responsibilities have kept me busy, and I couldn't always be in Chicago. There were others there that I begrudgingly entrusted with watching you, but I always went back to check up on you myself. It was too hard to stay away.
"Do you think it was purely a coincidence that you came to Detroit for college? Who, in their right mind, would come to the murder capital of the United States to further their education? No, I can't claim full responsibility for bringing you here, but at least part of it was my idea. In the end, it really wouldn't have mattered where you went. I would have followed you there, kept watching you, and this day would have happened eventually. I decided that years ago.
"I always knew that your answer would be yes. If I had been given the same choice, I might have said no. But you never had any need for the other cattle when you were one of them. Even uninitiated, you are above them. They will exist only for your use, as useful to you as the food you ate when you were still alive.
"Really, it was only a matter of waiting until you were old enough. I've seen what the Embrace can do to children. You were always more mature than other children your age, but I thought it would be only fair to let you be mature mentally and physically. Nathalie and Dori would call me soft, but I knew you'd be coming into this with one disadvantage already. I didn't want to give you another one on top of that.
"I didn't want Sean to have to get involved. But he always was headstrong. I watched him all these years also. That little bit of me that was still human wanted to see him move on and find happiness without me, but he never did. I suppose I should be flattered, but I'm really not. Just disappointed.
"Did you know that he tried to talk to you after the fire? Nathalie changed his mind; she's good at doing things like that. Until a few months ago, he had forgotten that you ever existed. But then, something snapped. He must have seen you when you went to Chicago for Christmas. I can't explain it, and Nathalie is still trying to explain it. If he hadn't gotten involved, things would have been much better for him.
"We knew he was here, and I suppose I knew it was only a matter of time before he tracked you down. I suppose we could have stopped him from finding you, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to do that. It just seemed so much better to have that one last happy reunion before the end.
"I suppose in a perfect world, he would have been brought over as well. I can assure you, this isn't a perfect world. Far from it, in fact. And in the end, I don't think he could have dealt with what he would have become. He would miss the day, far more than I ever do, and far more than you ever will. He always was a hopeless romantic. Well, I was too, when I was alive. That part of me died the moment I died. You never were that way.
"What made you so cold, little princess? For a while I thought it was my death, but I knew that couldn't be true. You were like this before Sean and I ever met you. Maybe you were always this way. You were just so quiet, so cold, so distant. It was almost as though you were never really with us. Maybe that's why Sean called you the little princess. Maybe he thought you were away in your ivory tower. That's the way he liked to think. So romantic.
"Well, you'll be awake soon, and I'd rather not be here when that happens. The pain will end soon enough. Be strong, little princess. We'll see you through this somehow.
The slender woman ducked under the low archway again, and left the torture chamber of sorts. A moment later, the hanging woman opened her eyes, blinking back the blood tears that threatened to pour down her face. "Pain no longer hurts me," she whispered through her dry and cracked lips. "Nothing can hurt me the way you have."
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