by Holly Ryan
And: The dark unknown’s phrase—that phrase—is, I think, what one Senate member said to him in order to distract him when the others stole his power.
I remembered that part in the lake, when Paul’s darkness had been spreading and the Senate had surrounded him. Everything I read in Roseff’s book sounded familiar, like I’d already read the huge tome from start to finish. Maybe I had. I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.
I was a danger to myself, and my vamps, but I couldn’t not patrol. Soon, if this crazy plan of ours worked, if the corpse flowers took my power again and sealed up the lake portal, I may not have to patrol, but I didn’t know how I felt about that. Too many other variables weighed me down to think much on it, and I’d probably just forget anyway.
“All right, key,” I said to the piece of metal gripped in my fist.
Eddie had put it there for me, along with the word KEY inked to my hand. Jacek had buckled me into the Kevlar vest before I’d walked out, and Sawyer had promised me...a warm mug of blood sprinkled with cinnamon when I got back? The three of them had been the epitome of patience and kindness as my brain fell apart in larger and larger chunks.
Anyway, key. Its teeth bit into the palm of my hand, a reminder of its presence and what I needed to do next. I stopped in front of the cemetery gate, Paul’s darkness within writhing and pulsing against the iron bars.
“Ready to get twisty?” I asked, plugging the key into the lock. It helped to talk to inanimate objects to make sure we were all on the same page. That had been the truth long before now.
The gate creaked open, and at the same time, every door of the houses across the street swung open as well, slowly and quietly. I stared at all of them, frozen to the spot, while I worked to sort this in the correct file—real or imaginary. The porchlights outside spotlighted the happy pumpkins and Halloween decorations while the front doors yawned open into darkness. The families inside were completely oblivious to whatever dangers could walk in their doors. Except vampires, of course.
Real or not, I had to make sure. I spun around—and lost the rest of my shit. I jerked away at the sight of Eddie, who stood in the middle of the empty lot next door, his orange-yellow eyes aimed across the street. Beyond him at the edge of their yard stood Sawyer, his body coiled tight as if to spring at the smallest sound. Jacek crept off the curb behind Cleo who sniffed her way across the street. Their house’s front door stood wide open, too, though a warm, comfortable glow came from inside.
Eddie waved me on into the graveyard and said something, but I couldn’t hear him over the static, even though he was only ten feet away.
“Close your door,” I told him, pointing, or at least that was what I tried to say. After a brief moment of confusion, he seemed to get my meaning.
So I hadn’t imagined the opening doors. Or I had and was still imagining it. One of the two.
I headed into the cemetery, intending to keep an eye on things across the street through the bars of the fence while I patrolled. Multi-tasking at its finest.
Paul’s darkness boiled over the ground and the once-white paths winding through the graveyard. It lapped at my ankles and snapped like a rubber band against my bare skin as if tasting his power inside me. It sucked at my boots, hard, so that each step drained my energy. The statues held still and didn’t try to grab me, thankfully, but as I passed them, I could’ve sworn up and down and left and right that their eyes followed me. I sure hoped that was a tricky brain fail though.
Through the bars in the fence to my right, the front doors of the houses across the street were still open, but my vampires had blurred into action to try to close them. Well, some of them, at least. Most of them opened inward, and since no part of a vampire could go over a doorway of a private residence, they couldn’t reach the knobs. We’d have to do some creative thinking to solve that one.
“Don’t go in there,” I whispered. “You can’t go in there.”
As I neared the trapdoor, now also open, near the back of the cemetery, the static noise spiked inside my head. A thick, oily, horrific feeling poured out from inside it.
“Don’t go in there,” I whispered again and swallowed hard.
“Belle Harrison.” A voice twice as tempting as sin wrapped around me, like a balm against this creepy-as-fuck graveyard.
I turned, not surprised at all when I found the devil sitting on the same statue pedestal as the night I’d first come to battle Paul.
“Ugh.” I pointed to my head. “Holes. No good for talking marriage.”
He shook his head, not even a trace of a tempting smile on his full lips. His expression was softer than I’d ever it before, kinder even, but his sapphires sparkled as bright as ever. He crossed his boot-clad leg over the other. “I’m not here for that. I wanted to see how you were holding up.”
For some reason, I could hear him perfectly over the static in my head. I shrugged and decided to skip right to the heart of it. “Everything scares me? I have no idea if I’m really talking to you or not? So, I mean...I’ve been better.”
He glanced at the inked KEY on the back of my hand and then away with a sharp nod. A look of pure torment crossed his face, there and then gone, and I had to wonder if he’d witnessed firsthand the madness that had gripped each slayer at different times and to different degrees, the ones he’d chosen to take on such a shitty task, and if so, how that had affected him all these years.
“Do you have another slayer picked out?” I asked.
He glanced at me, his blond hair glinting like jewels even though the moon had been eaten by clouds. “Yes.”
I nodded, trying not to think about how young the next slayer might be. “And so the slayer shall seek solace with the devil.”
Luc bit back a smile. “Ancient Sumerian?”
“I’m a tad rusty on my best of days,” I joked. “Even when you weren’t choosing the slayer yourself, you offered them help—money, a sword, a marriage proposal. Why?”
He crossed his arms, making his leather-wrapped shoulders seem wider. “I’m not as terrible as everyone says I am.”
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t answer my question.”
He frowned, seeming to consider for a moment. “Being the slayer is a thankless job, which is something I can relate to. Not many people thank me for torturing them for an eternity.”
“Dicks.”
He laughed, a deep, pleasant sound. “Agreed. I also see something of myself in the slayer, I suppose. A life we didn’t want but was forced on us anyway. A punishment or a blessing, depending on how we choose to shape it.”
“Ah, I get what’s happening here. Is this the part where you launch into an uplifting speech where you quote every motivational poster ever made?”
“As fun as that sounds, no. You don’t need a speech.” He fixed me with his jeweled stare. “I have no doubt you’ll kill Paul.”
That was high praise coming from someone so high on the supernatural totem pole. “Then why choose the next slayer?”
He shrugged. “I’m a businessman, and successful businessmen plan ahead. I have the names of good, potential slayers for the next five hundred years.”
“Impressive,” I said, lifting an eyebrow. “Bonus points if they’re alphabetized.”
“Of course.” He gave me a look like I should know better than to question his organizational skills. “But there’s just one problem with my list.”
“Oh?”
“They’re good, not great. None of them are Belle Harrison.”
I smirked, trying to hide my shock. Could devil compliments ever be a good thing, or were they bad by default? “You couldn’t handle another one of me.”
“I could. Quite well, indeed.” His sapphires sparkled. “But I won’t have to because you’ll win, and then you can be slayer for as long as you...are. I was going to say alive, but that doesn’t really apply here, does it?”
“No, you forget I’m giving my slayer power to a corpse flower. Or did you even know that in the first pla
ce?”
He nodded. “I knew and I remember, but to the supernatural community, the slayer can’t be a flower. You can be the slayer in name only while the corpse flower holds your power.” He flicked his hand to me. “If you want.”
“And if I don’t want?”
“Well, I’ve hired a fake Senate before. I can hire a fake slayer too.”
I’d been the slayer for so long, that it had become a part of who I was, mashed potato brain and all. Could I give that up, even if I killed Paul? It might be like giving up a lung, not that I needed lungs, but I kind of liked having them. Like the slayer power, my lungs were mine. Even when I transferred my power to the corpse flower, I could easily continue the role of slayer without even really trying.
“The whole vampire killing vampire thing though...” I started. “It’s weird. I made good use of the woodshed, and then my d—” Oops. Not quite ready to go there. “Detective Appelt has been gathering up newborn vamps and putting them in the old Senate mansion until that initial blood frenzy wears off a bit.”
He shook his head, eyeing me closely. “Are you asking my permission to do that too?”
I snorted. “No.”
“You’ve always made your own rules.” He waved toward my vamps’ house, its door still wide open even though Jacek was trying to shove it closed. “That’s worked out pretty well for you so far, it seems.”
That it had. “Yeah.”
“They love you, you know.” His jaw tightened as he said it, as if he didn’t like it one bit.
“That’s one of the only things I’m sure about these days.”
“And you love them.” Not a question, because he knew as well as anyone that it didn’t need to be one.
“Yes,” I said simply.
He looked away, his face now hidden in shadow. A long silence fell, awkward only because deep down I knew that wasn’t what he wanted to hear. A part of me felt bad for him, wondered what it would be like if I’d said yes to being the Queen of Hell, but that life wasn’t mine. It wasn’t what I’d chosen, and though I’d only been allowed a few choices in life so far, I felt damn good about every single one of them. More importantly, I knew Mom would be proud of me for forging my own path.
“So...” I turned and stared across the street at all the doors that still stood open. “Are the front doors really open?”
Luc followed my gaze and sighed. “Yes.”
“Paul wanted to take one last walk through Podunk City, I guess, a slow, quiet one. That’s way more unnerving than his loud I’m-going-bowling-through-your-door ones.”
“I suppose you could ask him in two days’ time.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll just kill him,” I said, turning back to Luc.
“I like that plan better.” He grinned and stood, his leather and denim ensemble creaking. He moved closer and then closer still, snaring my gaze with his power and heat and beauty. Slowly, as if I were a frightened rabbit, or a damaged slayer, he bent down and pressed his lips to my forehead. “Until we meet again, Belle Harrison.”
And then he was gone.
Maybe that had really happened. Or maybe that had really happened. Either way, my forehead tingled where he’d kissed me. A good tingle, but not the kind that normally drenched my panties when he was purposely shoving my desire levels up. It was a tingle that slopped some of the goop out of my head and then dusted and rearranged my thoughts some. The air seemed a little lighter and didn’t press so tightly against my skin. My muscles felt looser, and the static noise had been turned down to where I could hear a twig snap behind me.
And I meant that literally.
I turned, and there stood my nemesis about six feet away next to the open trapdoor. He listed to the side some, the area underneath his Paul nametag blackened and pinching in on itself.
Had that been where I’d stabbed him with the god bone?
That wound hadn’t been there when I saw him in the guest bedroom or when I saw him standing in the kitchen across the table from me where Detective Appelt had been. Those versions had been all in my head, but this guy... This was all Paul.
“Just the god I wanted to see.” I flexed my fingers, feeling their emptiness, but fought the need to arm myself with the god bone. He could easily use it against me. Of course, he could use it against me two nights from now, too, and let’s be honest—I’d turned into his own personal pincushion lately.
He turned his head toward the open doors across the street, so unconcerned with my presence that he didn’t see any risk in looking away, the fucker. I really hadn’t made much of an impression, had I? Boiling heat swamped through my gut, and my fingernails dug into my palms.
“Hey, asshole.” My voice snapped the air between us like a whip with teeth.
His watery blue eyes remained locked on all those open doors, just waiting for him to walk on through. “Lovely—”
“Oh, cut that shit out already,” I shouted. “Stop brooding over having been duped by generic pleasantries. You’re pissed. We get it. Just shut up about it.”
He cut his gaze back to me, and then followed the movement slowly with his head. His body began to vibrate and blur, shuffling forward and back even though his bowling shoes were planted in the same position. “I think we should take that stroll now.”
We. He’d said we. What did that mean?
In an instant, faster than any vampire, he appeared inches in front of me, grabbed my bun, and threw me. The open trapdoor yawned open underneath me, and then I was falling straight toward it, right into the belly of the beast.
But no. We couldn’t do this now. Not tonight. Not without the full moon and the corpse flowers to drain the power in his lake portal and trap him in his own fucking dimension after I killed him.
The darkness within the trapdoor rose up fast. I flashed out my arms and legs, attempting to make my body as big as possible so I couldn’t fall through. I landed hard on the edge of the open door, my right arm and leg hooking painfully around it. The sudden stop slammed me face-first into the metal door. And then it was closing, closing in on top of me.
“No!” I stiffened my whole body and stretched my free arm and leg to catch the ground and stop the door’s descent.
My fingertips barely touched dirt. My boot scraped gravel. But the door was crushing in on me, heavier than a thousand-pound weight, even with my vampire/slayer strength. And it was growing heavier, the edges grinding against my knuckles and my ankle, currently the only things keeping me from falling down into the trapdoor.
A low, rusty laugh scraped through the night from just above me, and the door grew even heavier. Because Paul was standing on it with his stupid bowling shoes.
Anger simmered underneath my skin until it hissed out between my clenched teeth. He’d thought he’d won. All this time and he still wasn’t afraid I would kill him. Oh, but I would. Like, a lot.
“Fuck. You,” I ground out. And then I used the strength of my crushed fingertips and that in my squashed ankle to support my weight enough to push back against the door, with every bit of rage I had stored up.
The trapdoor popped open, and I scrambled out fast enough to see Paul smash into a tall headstone about ten feet away with the force I’d freed myself with.
“Why aren’t you laughing now, you goddamn piece of shit?” I hurtled myself toward him, just about ripping the pocket with the god bone in it in my haste to get it out. But it wasn’t there. Fuck me, where had I put it? I patted myself down. There, in my other pocket. I yanked it out.
He stood, his chin tucked into his chest, no trace of laughter in the hard, angry lines of his face. “WHY WON’T YOU DIE, CUNT?”
“I could ask you the same.” I lifted the god bone. Felt the cool, natural fit to my palm. Aimed directly at his heart.
The static noise in my head cranked to eleven, pierced through with screeches that drilled all the way down into my soul. My vision blurred until Paul became this vague, watercolor shape that moved much too fast.
He threw me t
o the ground. Part of me flew in the opposite direction. Well, that probably wasn’t good, but I didn’t feel pain. Just my soul trying to escape that horrible noise I could no longer block, and underneath that, an undeniable need to kill a god from another dimension. He strode toward me, and I did a quick check to see what was missing—my Kevlar vest.
But not the god bone. Maybe he couldn’t touch it. Still, now I was armed and dangerous and completely without protection. Which was why I couldn’t fuck up. Hear that, self? No fuck-ups.
Gripping the god bone tight, I surged to my feet and sliced it through the air until it connected. I blinked as a sudden rain dropped from the sky, cold sheets of it slanting down and washing the blood off my stake. Except I’d been holding a god bone. And behind the bloody stake wasn’t Paul.
It wasn’t Paul.
But Tim, the cemetery grounds man, who’d forgotten his thermos, who now pressed his arms to his middle and stared in shock. He stumbled backward into a low bench, and when the backs of his legs hit it, he fell onto it. Everything he’d tried to keep contained underneath his clasped arms spilled out with horrible wet splats into the rain puddles at his feet.
I shook my head. No, this was all wrong. It hadn’t gone down like this. This was a nightmare, but it wasn’t mine. Yet I had no memory of writing the message on the wall through Paul’s trapdoor either. Had I done this? Had I killed Tim due to my faulty slayer brain? But...I wasn’t a murderer. Not of humans. I wasn’t.
Beyond the gravestones and statues, and through the sheets of rain, the Appelt mausoleum still stood, as it would’ve when Tim was murdered. It was as if I’d walked back in time to see this moment exactly how it had played out.
But it hadn’t. Not like this.
I dropped the stake and stumbled backward, shaking my head. Not like this.
Something touched my shoulder from behind. I yelped and whirled.
“Belle!” Sawyer stood there, his ochre eyes wide, his hands up as if he feared I’d gone feral.
“I didn’t kill him.” My words toppled over themselves in their rush to get out, and I wasn’t even sure what I’d tried to just say.