“We use ceremonial weapons when we can, as tribute to our legacy, but they are impractical,” Salt-and-Pepper informs me, attaching a silencer to his gun. “Clearly, it was a mistake to allow Galloway—your Mr. Strauss—the discretion to make that choice. We will not be so careless.” He aims the barrel of his weapon at my forehead, and a choked whine squeezes from my throat. “If you have goodbyes to say, now is the time.”
“Something’s not…” The sweaty guy shifts his weight, glancing nervously around the small room. “I don’t think we’re alone, you guys.”
I don’t even want to allow myself any hope … but as he says it, a familiar whispering sensation passes across my skin.
“What are you talking about?” The woman asks, just as something moves in my peripheral vision: a small, gray mouse emerging from a narrow hole in the wall. It looks right at me, the whisper against my skin becoming a roar, and then it streaks forward. Leaping up, it erupts into a cloud of smoke that expands, unfurls, and reforms almost instantly into a very familiar shape, all before the armed Knights have a chance to react.
“Surprise!” Viviane Duclos announces cheerfully, her eyes a bright gold, her fingers extended into sharp ivory claws. With a blow from the back of her hand, she sends the sweaty guy flying across the tiny room, slamming into one of the shelving units with so much force the metal buckles and the cinder block behind it cracks; in the same fluid motion, she slashes open the woman’s throat, blood geysering into the air. Salt-and-Pepper manages to fire at her once before she’s snapping all the bones in his wrist, spinning him around and bending his head backward so that his neck is bared to her teeth.
Three whole seconds haven’t even passed, and I’m still trying to process what’s just happened as Salt-and-Pepper struggles to speak through his twisted windpipe. “Even if you kill us, you can’t stop the Brotherhood of Perseus. More will come in our place!”
“I certainly hope so, love,” Viviane purrs. “I’m starving.”
“Wait!” I gasp, struggling onto feet that don’t want to support me, shocked my underwear is still dry. “D-don’t kill him!”
“Never show your enemy a mercy they wouldn’t show you, Auggie.” Viviane doesn’t take her eyes off the jumping pulse in the man’s exposed neck. “The first thing this man will do if I let him live is help the Brotherhood organize their next move against you. They’ll know what pressures you respond to—and they’ll know who I am and what I’m capable of.” Salt-and-Pepper tries to say something, but she forces his head back farther, cutting off his air. “I’d like them to underestimate me for as long as possible.”
“Daphne,” I begin, because it’s still the first name that comes to me, but I stop when I realize my mistake, startled out of my own train of thought.
“I promised I’d protect you, and I meant it.” Her gaze meets mine over the writhing man’s jugular, and despite the new angles to her face, I still see someone I know. I still see someone who cares about me—even if she cares more about the Corrupter. “Consider my offer, okay?” Her voice is calm, even as she holds a man pinioned so she can plunge her teeth into his throat. “And watch your back.”
She waits until I’ve shoved my way out into the service corridor to start feeding, and the door clicks shut behind me on the man’s dying screams.
* * *
The rest of the day passes like the unending moment in a car accident just before impact—a taffy pull of time filled with nightmares. I return to the food court, drinking one coffee after another, afraid to leave again before dark. The Brotherhood has already tried to kill me twice, and even if Viviane thinks she’s delayed a third attempt, she could be wrong. For all I know, when Salt-and-Pepper fails to report in, another team will be on its way before sundown—ready to break my door down and slaughter me in my kitchen.
It takes forever for the sun to drop, the sky going gray and then black before I take my first hesitant steps outside. I feel the vampires watching me, my skin alive with whispers, and it’s the strangest sort of comfort.
I don’t even know if I want to go home, if I can face a night alone under my own roof—worrying about my parents, hoping that vampires I’ve never invited inside can protect me from home invaders—but the alternative is bringing my troubles to someone else’s door. Ximena says she can protect herself … but can she protect both of us from the Syndicate, two cults, a group of gun-wielding Knights, and some ancient sorceresses? If either one us of woke up dead in the morning, Adriana would never forgive me.
Of course, figuring out where to go is the absolute least of my troubles. I’m running out of time, and I refuse to spend what I’ve got left just looking for the best hole to crawl into while I wait for the end. Maybe I can’t save myself … but I won’t go without a fight. I won’t go without doing everything I can to at least save the people I love.
My house is fully dark when I pull up on my bike, because I didn’t know to leave any lights on, and it already looks abandoned. I’m jumpy and nauseous as I hurry up the drive, rattled by a day of terrible revelations and missed meals, anxious to stash my bike in the garage and get inside where there are knives and locking doors. The police are useless against vampires, but if Knights broke in, maybe the police could help. If they got here in time.
“Auggie?” The voice comes from the shadows on the porch, and I nearly blast out of my skin. So far I can read minds, sense vampires, and see the future, but the destroying angel inside me doesn’t seem to come with any defensive capabilities.
Before I can start running—or dying—my visitor emerges from the darkness, and I relax just enough to start breathing again. “Gunnar?”
“I hope it’s okay that I’m here?” He descends from the porch and stops, moonlight making art out of his dramatic bone structure, his plush lips. I hate how attractive I find him in spite of his duplicity, how little I regret kissing him—even if I’m going to die having only kissed liars, at least they were good at it. “Because if it isn’t—”
“I guess you’re the one she sent to guard the house tonight,” I remark, punching in the garage code. We’re surrounded by vampires, though, and Gunnar is still the only one I know that doesn’t leave a mark.
“I asked for the assignment,” he says quietly, his eyes on my feet. “She’s not my biggest fan right now, but she figured you were entitled to an explanation—if you want one. If you’d rather not have me around, she can send someone else.”
He says it like the League is doing me a favor—and I guess they are. Whatever their reasons, we all want to keep me alive. And there comes a point at which the number of people lying to you and plotting your demise becomes farcical, and holding a grudge against just one of them in particular is more work than pleasure.
“I guess if I need a babysitter, it’s better to have one whose brain I’ve poked around in.” I try to sound like I don’t really care as I step into the empty garage—but my insides are knotted up so badly I’m not sure I’ll ever get them untangled. I’m overjoyed that I won’t have to be alone, that there’ll be somebody in the house to protect me after all. At the same time, I’m hurt and angry for a host of reasons I can’t even articulate.
I hold open the connecting door, and Gunnar moves past me, his scent on the breeze behind him. In spite of everything, warmth spreads through me, and I grit my teeth before I follow him into the house, full of emotions that won’t make friends with each other.
He still knows things he hasn’t told me, and I’m going to find out what they are.
27
I’ve never been alone like this before, I realize, as I rummage the fridge for something to eat. The whole house is mine—maybe for the rest of my life. I could drink my parents’ wine, walk around naked, and do whatever I want until I’m either killed or expunged from my own body. I’m shoveling some sort of pasta leftovers into my face, eating so fast I can’t even taste them, when I grunt, “You said you had explanations.”
“I didn’t grow up in a time or place wh
ere it was okay to be gay,” he starts, sitting on one of the stools by the front window. “I didn’t even know the word for it then—I just knew that if there was a word, I could never, ever use it, because people got killed for being what I was. So every time I felt something for another guy, I ripped it out and buried it. One chunk at a time, I created this huge void inside of me, and it hurt, and I hated myself.
“And then one day … Jude showed up.” He gives his lucky necklace an instinctive tug. “It was the first time another guy had looked at me the way I looked at other guys. It was like … I’d been living in a house with a locked door, and then one day I found the key and discovered my house was twice as big as I’d thought it was.” Gunnar shakes his head. “That doesn’t even begin to describe it. All the parts I’d torn out of myself? The first time Jude touched me, they slammed back into place and I felt complete for the first time in my life.”
“Very romantic,” I offer around a mouthful of food, because I can’t tell what this has to do with all the lying and dying stuff yet.
“It wasn’t romantic,” Gunnar returns somberly. “It was … scary. I’d only been living half a life for sixteen years, suppressing something that I couldn’t deal with. And when I couldn’t do that anymore, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know who I was. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I think so. Maybe.” I put the pasta down. The truth is, I’m not sure I do understand. I know what it’s like to be lonely, but that’s not the same as being lonely and having to pretend to be something I’m not at the same time. When I figured out I was gay, I didn’t stay in the closet for long, because I knew my parents would accept me.
“Suddenly I had all these feelings, and no practice for how to handle them. And then Jude told me he had to leave, and I just … I broke down, because him leaving meant ripping everything back out again, going back to the way it had been, and I just, I couldn’t.” He looks up at me, twisting his necklace like he intends to strangle himself. “Once I knew what it felt like to feel, how could I stop? How could I go back into hiding and just … waiting to die? So I begged him to Turn me, to let me go with him.”
Much of this story is still caught in my memory as well. “And he said yes.”
“Eventually.” Gunnar smiles at the memory, but his eyes are sad. “I thought I was in love with him. I mean, I did fall in love with him—but later. It took me decades to realize that half of what I felt for Jude was really just … loving myself for the first time.” He looks away from me again, as if embarrassed. “Being in love with loving. It was such a relief to finally not have to be afraid of my feelings anymore, and because he was the first one I was ever with as the real, complete me, all my emotions got tangled together. I’m sorry, I’m not putting this as clearly as I want to.”
He looks abashed, but I’m starting to get it. The thrill and the tension that went through me when the two of them kissed at the rave, that feeling like flying a kite on a stormy day … I’m beginning to understand what it meant. “And then you guys broke up.”
“It was a long time coming, and it wasn’t easy,” he says quietly. “But I needed time to tell my feelings apart. I needed to know what it was like to be me, by myself, without hiding. And no matter how much Jude loved being part of the Syndicate, I never fit in. I was always Jude’s pet to them, and I needed a clean break.”
“Is that when you went to Iceland?” I gesture at the necklace, his memory flashing across my mind, the dark sand of the beach and the cold wind.
“Yes.” He looks down at the stone in his fingers, and finally releases it. “It’s also when I met Viviane. She was after some carving from the Viking days, a fragment of a Corrupter prophecy, and our paths crossed. It was sort of inevitable, because it’s not a big country, and vampires can’t really stay out of each other’s way. All she needed was one look at me, and she knew my whole story.” He shakes his head. “She eventually offered to let me join the League, and I never looked back.”
“But you didn’t even believe in Azazel until you got here.” I’m still mystified by all of this. Viviane did the League’s bidding for a century before she decided Erasmus Kramer wasn’t just some crackpot, and it took Gunnar thirty years to reach the same conclusion about her. What the hell kind of cult are they? “It takes three good episodes to get me to commit to a TV show, but you just … jumped right into a random day-walker cult?”
“It was more complicated than that,” he replies peevishly. “And the League isn’t a cult, okay? Viviane was a believer with a vision for the future, but it didn’t matter to her if I believed or not. She wasn’t collecting disciples—she was building a family. All the legends said that the Dark Star would grant eternal life to his followers, and that’s not a gift you want shared with the kind of vampires who would do anything to get it. Even if I was never convinced, she was okay with that, because she liked me.”
“Oh.” I stuff some more pasta into my face, suddenly not quite sure what to say.
“After my mortal family, and then all those years with the Syndicate, I didn’t even know what it was like to be wanted by more than one person until I became part of the League. Even if I had doubts about Azazel, I still believed in Viviane. She’s the one who taught me to believe in myself.”
“Aren’t you lucky.” There’s something ugly in my tone, but I don’t care. I’m sick of people explaining why they manipulated me, seeking my pity and forgiveness. I’m so sorry your life sucked, I guess it’s okay you decided to help ruin mine. “It must be nice to be surrounded by people who aren’t a bunch of fakes and liars, huh?”
Gunnar flinches. “Yeah. I don’t have a better excuse than what you expect. I came here because I would do anything for Viviane, and I thought the Dark Star was a myth, so what difference did it make? But I asked you out because I got selfish, and that wasn’t fair.”
After a long moment, I admit, “I only said yes because I thought I was dying and wanted to know what being on a date was like. At least you told me you were a vampire before you kissed me.”
“But I didn’t tell you why I was in Fulton Heights, and that was also wrong.” Our eyes meet, and something steals through me. The Corrupter’s powers are definitely getting stronger, because without even trying to, I glimpse Gunnar’s memory of that first kiss. It’s different than mine—just as intense, but less chaotic, his guilt feeding his arousal. The pressure in my groin is sudden and unexpected, and I turn back to the refrigerator while he continues, “I know this is a shitty situation, Auggie. You’ve got no reason to believe me when I tell you that Viviane isn’t an evil mastermind or whatever, but I swear to you she’s not. If you need to, you can … you can check my thoughts to see if I’m lying.”
He resisted me the last time, at the rave, and maybe I should be suspicious of his offer—or maybe he’s hoping I’ll call his bluff. But I turn right back around and follow the thread of that kiss, the memory still lingering in the air, straight into his mind.
It’s even easier than it was last night, with Adriana. His happy moments come up first—a night of shared stories, the girl I thought was my math tutor laughing so hard she fell off her chair; a time Viviane said, “Here, you take the key,” and how it proved she valued him, and how it made his heart swell; a guy he flirted with, the first one after Jude, and how nervous he was.
Viviane pops up again and again, telling jokes, talking about the future, and I realize that he feels about her the way I felt about Daphne Banks—and my heart hurts for the long-lost older sister I recently lost all over again. But I see enough to know that he’s telling me the truth. Many nights spent talking about what the Ascension will mean, how they’ll have to be audacious and smart if they want to change the status quo and maintain peace. Whatever lies I’ve been told, the League of the Dark Star does not wish to exploit the gift of true immortality to subjugate humanity and raise hell on Earth.
More of his memories call to me, his past a deep well filled with treasures I’m curious abou
t … but I resist the urge to snoop. Instead, I turn the other way and push forward; while I have him, while he’s willing, I want to know more about our shared future. I need to know if I’m going to swear an oath to the League, because I have no idea what to do right now, and I’m running out of what it takes to make impartial decisions.
The future is harder to reach than the past, however, the images shifting and unstable. I find that moment with the bowl and candle again, but this time it’s different somehow—a shadow behind him that wasn’t there before. And then I jolt forward again, the light lower, brick walls painted cinnamon by the warm glow. The air is heavy and sweet, and Gunnar’s shirt is gone. His body is amazing, and I’ve got my hands on it, our lips an inch apart as he murmurs, The choice is yours—just say the word.
I jerk back, suddenly released from his memories, from the future we’re going to share, and my heart races. Breathing hard, I adjust myself without thinking, my underwear in a Gordian knot. Gunnar’s eyebrows go up. “What did you see?”
“I saw … a lot of things.” I can’t catch my breath, and I turn back around, embarrassed. The bowl is still there, the oath—if that’s what it really is—but what was the rest of it? It wasn’t the same as before, so does that mean the future has changed? Is that why it was Gunnar with his shirt off this time, instead of Jude?
“Auggie?”
“It’s cool that the League of the Dark Star isn’t a bunch of Batman villains,” I say, fumbling for a glass of water. “I can’t think who else I’d rather have ruling the world once my soul gets evicted—or incinerated, or whatever happens when Azazel takes the wheel.”
“Auggie—”
“Did Daphne tell you that Rasputin has my parents?” I’m so unsteady that I don’t realize I’ve called her Daphne until it’s too late to take it back, until the fact that I still think of her as my friend is on the table between us, where Gunnar can use it against me if he wants to. “He’s given me until the equinox to join Northern Wolf, or…”
The Fell of Dark Page 24