“I’m too young for this place.” He lowers his voice. “It’s full of squares.”
I glance at David beside me to see if we should worry about turning into livestock. He looks pissed rather than frightened, so maybe these people are volunteers. Food and shelter in exchange for blood might be a good tradeoff if a person came from rough circumstances. But it feels like prison, a reverse image of the Control’s vampire retirement homes. I have a strong desire to be somewhere altogether else.
Behind us, Travis mumbles to himself like a toddler. “Ice train. Slowly and carefully. No, I don’t want chicken.” At least I think that’s what he says.
At the bottom of this longest staircase, our guide leads us to the right. This looks like the bottom floor—not that I can see much in the nearly nonexistent light.
We head down a narrow stone corridor, past open bedrooms containing writhing, moaning figures in candlelit shadows. Even my limited human nose smells blood. My pace slows until Travis bumps into me from behind. He gasps and leaps back.
Someone takes my hand. David. I sigh in relief and squeeze hard. His skin is warm with life that comes from eating hamburgers and salads and Nutty Buddys, and that’s all that matters.
Ahead to the right, near the end of the corridor, firelight dances against the wall. Our guide ushers us through a door on the left, which is flanked by two beefy guards who look like sewer rats on steroids.
A massive man sits cross-legged in the corner behind a campfire, his back to the wall. His face is hidden under the rim of a battered light gray fedora. The flames illuminate what must have once been a high-fashion morning suit and waistcoat. His posture is slumped but so perfectly motionless it gives the impression of rigidity and control.
Lawrence shuts the door behind us, blotting out all sound but the crackling logs and Travis’s shaky wheezing.
The man raises his head. David and I step back. The chills skipping among my vertebrae make my first reaction to Monroe seem like one long yawn.
His wide, ink-black eyes wield a movie-star magnetism beneath low, brooding brows. The look reminds me of Orson Welles in Macbeth, with just as much sanity. His dark hair, slicked back, sets off the flawless ivory of his skin, the color of piano keys in candlelight.
“Welcome,” he says, without a trace of it in his voice.
At the sound, Travis flings himself on the dirt next to the man who must be Gideon. Oblivious to the fire a few inches away, the detective presses his forehead to the ground next to his maker’s knee and utters a rapid, incoherent plea.
In response, Gideon pats him on the head, causing Travis to shudder and moan. Then the older vampire gives what seems to be, from his end, a light shove. This small effort sends Travis tumbling across the room to crash into the opposite wall. The other vamps gasp and hiss.
“Bastard,” Elizabeth snarls to Gideon. So much for detente. “First you turn him and leave him without food, then you reject him? What kind of vampire are you?”
“If I don’t conform to your code,” Gideon says evenly, “it’s for a good reason.”
“And what might that be?”
“He’s an example, a demonstration, if you will.” Gideon extends his arm toward Travis and crooks his finger once. Travis scuttles to him like a broken-legged crab. When he gets close, Gideon flattens his palm in a stop gesture. Travis freezes, staring at his maker with pleading eyes. I want to look away, for fear that Gideon will order Travis to stick his head in the fire. The detective would do it, happily—their connection is that palpable.
“Very nice,” Elizabeth says. “A demonstration of your sadism, like we needed further proof.”
“A demonstration of my power.” Gideon keeps his unblinking gaze locked with Travis’s. “And of what will happen again if the chicanery doesn’t stop.”
A corner of my stomach begins a cold burn.
“This WVMP foolishness,” he continues, “telling the truth disguised as a lie. Duping people with their own skepticism. The slickest grift is no grift at all.” He shifts his eyes to me. “Isn’t that right, Ciara?”
I stammer, my throat pinned shut. It feels like he’s inhaling me with every breath.
“It must end before someone gets hurt,” he says.
“With all respect, sir,” Spencer says as he kneels beside the trembling Travis, “somebody already got hurt.”
“Then help him if you feel charitable.” Gideon waves them away. “The life of any one vampire is not my concern. My duty lies with us all.” He regards David, Elizabeth, and me. “Some humans won’t be fooled by your gimmick. They’ll come to understand that vampires truly exist. Then we’ll have a war.” He spreads his hands. “Or a curious person might want to see what happens if one of your friends meets the rising sun, or gets a taste of fire.” He lifts a log out of the flames and waves the burning end at the vampires, who jump back. “Just to jazz up a Saturday night.”
Maybe he has a point. Maybe this campaign has put them in mortal danger. Maybe things were better before. Safer.
Then I think of Shane’s transformation over the last month, the way he’s learned to love new music, learned to drive a stick shift—the way he’s learned to learn again. How he looks happy to exist in this crazy, wide-open, scary-as-shit world of Today. The Today that makes him look forward to Tomorrow.
“You’re right,” I say.
Gideon’s eyebrows pop up, then scrunch together, as if he’s surprised and confused to be addressed by a mere human.
“All of that could happen,” I continue, “despite our precautions. They could all go poof, either by accident or design. But a vampire’s life—a human’s life, for that matter— is always a precarious thing.” I look at the walls of his cave. “Better to hide in the light than hide in the dark.”
“This is not a hideout,” Gideon says. “This is a fortress.”
I keep my voice soft. “And what’s a fortress for? Keeping out the things that scare you.”
“The things that threaten us.” His eyes narrow on Elizabeth’s face. “I’ve seen what they do”—his voice shakes with rage—”those Control humans and their vampire whores.”
Elizabeth maintains a stony demeanor. “The Control protects vampires.”
“By keeping us in line,” he says with a snarl, “by serving the goals of humans. We have a right to live in peace.”
“You call this peace?” She points at the ceiling. “Holding humans captive?”
“Our guests choose to be here,” he says.
“Because you’ve turned yourself into a cult leader, like Jim Jones or David Koresh.” She stops and shakes her head. “You have no idea who those men are. You have no idea how backward this all is, because you’re still stuck in World War One. Which is why you and every other vampire need the Control.”
This undead Crossfire episode is getting us nowhere. I step forward, closer to the flames than any of the vampires will dare, and speak to Gideon again. “If you’ve been spying on us, you know how happy the DJs have been this summer. They’re truly in the world. They’re living.”
“Perhaps living at the price of survival,” he says.
“Isn’t that their choice to make? You talk about freedom from the Control, but you’ll never be free if you let fear make all your choices.” I can hear my mom and dad speak through me, and in my mind the tiny room turns into a crowded tent full of lights and music and hallelujahs. “I saw people who couldn’t walk because they were afraid to fall. I saw them rise out of their wheelchairs, throw away their crutches, and dance a jig, the moment they let go of that fear.”
“Your mind tricks may work on weak humans,” Gideon rumbles, “but vampires are not human.”
“You’re wrong.” I point at the three DJs. “Humans still live inside them, whether they admit it or not.”
Gideon looks amused. “And how long have you known them?”
“Long enough to know they believe in things. They believe in the music with every scrap of their souls. They believe
in finding a balance between today and yesterday. Hell, they even believe I’m a crappy poker player.”
“Why should that impress me?”
“Because believing is what being alive is all about.” Daddy would’ve liked that one. I move in for the close. “Gideon, just let go of that fear, tell it to pull its poisonous claws out of you.” I gesture to the fire. “It’s fear keeping you crammed into that corner because you don’t trust anyone with your back. Fear made your neighbors in Camp David build bombs so that they have to hide underground like moles from a hawk. And it’s fear, in the end, that’ll kill us all.”
Imaginary amens reverberate in my mind as I turn to Elizabeth. She nods slowly and smiles. I step to her side to create a united front. Yeah, sistah.
After a long moment, Gideon speaks. “You think you know all about fear, little girl?”
He holds out his hand to Lawrence, who slaps a stake into his palm. Gideon keeps his focus on me as his arm flicks back, then forward. The stake blurs through the air.
I look down to see my shirt dripping with blood. Holy shit, did he just stake me? I wish I’d answered my mom’s e-mail.
My knees turn to gelatin as cries of dismay echo from a distance. Someone sobs the word “no” again and again.
My hands grab at my chest to pull out the stake, which, I realize, isn’t there. The drops of blood all point from the same direction.
Elizabeth.
22
Darkness on the Edge of Town
I turn to see her crumpled on the floor, head and shoulders in David’s lap, legs skewed to the side. The bottom half of the stake protrudes from her chest, which is blanketed in blood. She clutches David’s shirt.
“P-pull it out. Please.” She coughs a spurt of blood over her chin. “It hurts, it hurts so bad.”
David’s face is soaked in tears. “I can’t.”
“Please.” Her voice pitches up to a spine-grating octave. “Pull it out, oh God, make it stop, David.”
He leans over her and grips the stake. The muscles of his arm tighten, then release. “I can’t do that.” He lowers his head. “Not to you.”
I kneel next to them and wrap my hands around the stake, covering his.
His grip tightens as he stares at me. “You don’t understand.”
“David!” Elizabeth lets loose a gurgling scream. She tries to cough again, but only pulls more blood into her lungs. Her eyes roll up to show pure white, and her hands flail at us, nails scratching my bare arms.
“David, she’s in pain. We can stop it.” I plant my feet under myself for better leverage. “On three, okay?”
His gaze meets mine with agony, then returns to her face.
“One,” I whisper. She’s looking at me instead of him. “Two.” Come on, Elizabeth, give him one last look. Don’t waste your final sight on my silly mug.
Her eyes close, and when they open again, they focus on David.
“I love you,” he whispers.
“Three!”
I fall backward, the stake clutched in my fists. One of Gideon’s door guards snatches the weapon from me. I sit up to see David cradling Elizabeth in his lap, stroking her hair. Blood gushes from the wound, but nothing else happens. Maybe Gideon missed her heart, or maybe she never was a vampire. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen her fangs.
Suddenly she begins to tremble, but it’s not like any spasm I’ve ever seen. It’s like every atom is vibrating, ready to trade places with another one at the opposite edge of her body. David lays her gently on the floor and backs away. He puts an arm around my shoulders and covers my eyes with the other palm. “Ciara, don’t look.”
I swipe his hand from my face but don’t push him away. The others, except for Travis and Gideon, have already turned their heads. I clutch David’s arm with both hands and watch.
The blood runs back into the hole, trickling like rain down a windshield. Maybe the wound is healing itself, the way the scratches on Shane’s back disappeared.
But now her flesh is being drawn toward the hole, flesh from her chest, her stomach—oh God, from everywhere, muscles stretching, bones creaking and snapping, all moving toward that single two-inch circle in her heart. The speed of the disintegration builds, but not fast enough to keep me from seeing her face stretch and tear, pulled downward as if it’s melting off her skull.
I don’t know if Elizabeth’s collapse makes a noise, because I can’t hear anything over the siren of my own shrieks. David clamps my mouth shut, and only then do I remember not to scream around vampires.
Elizabeth’s not screaming, because her throat is slipping into the void, followed by her teeth, then her nose, then her eyes, staring into nothingness with what I hope is relief. Her hair rasps as it slides against her blouse and into the hole. Finally, limbs flop and flail against the dirt floor, fingers scraping trails in the dust as they’re dragged toward the vacuum.
When it’s over, a soft pop, then silence. David lets me go, and I crawl to the other corner, stomach heaving.
Someone far stronger than David grabs me and closes my mouth. “There’ll be no vomiting on Gideon’s floor, understand? Swallow it or choke on it. Your choice.”
Tears squeeze from my eyes as I nod. One of the rat-faced guards lets me go, and I gulp the smoky air, hacking and belching.
“That,” Gideon points to the place Elizabeth died, “never happens to a human. Plane-crash victims might be pulverized to almost nothing, but if you look hard enough, you can always find a tooth, a smear of entrails. Their bodies exist somewhere, even if they’re fused with a hundred other bodies, or with concrete and steel. But Elizabeth is nowhere. She’s nothing.”
I stare at the pile of clothing and jewelry left behind, and suddenly notice they bear no stains. I examine my own clothes—clean. A minute ago they were spattered in blood. Even my hands bear no trace of Elizabeth’s fluids.
“Nothing,” Gideon repeats. He leans forward. “Now do you understand fear, Ciara?”
I clutch my knees, feeling a cold sweat trickle down my back. Shane’s fangs, Regina’s glare, even Travis’s re-animation were one thing, but this—this is a whole other realm of wrongness.
Something can’t just turn into nothing. Can’t. Happen. But it just did. What else could happen? There are no rules, no boundaries, nothing for me to cling to. For a moment I feel like the panic will shatter me, and what’s left of my body will soak into the soil a hundred feet below the ground.
“You may all go now,” Gideon says to David, then turns to me. “Except you.”
My heart goes cold. I whimper a wordless protest. I don’t want to be livestock.
“No,” David says in a hoarse voice. “We won’t leave her behind for you to drink.”
“I won’t drink her.” He keeps his gaze on my neck as he says, “Not if you bring me proof that the campaign is over. At sunset tomorrow.” He regards Travis like an artist with a finished canvas. “Or I’ll do more than drink her.”
I start to tremble all over. As much as I don’t want to be livestock, I want even less to be a vampire.
“Absolutely not.” David crosses his arms over his chest, looking a lot less pathetic than he did a minute ago. “I’ll stay instead.”
“You have important work to do back at the station,” Gideon says. “Besides, in your state, you’d be inclined to foolishness toward me. Just the girl.”
Jim pushes past David to stand next to me. “I’ll stay with her.” He reaches down, takes my elbow, and helps me to my feet. I look at him, amazed and a little confused.
A smile slides over Gideon’s face. “Yes, I think you could be useful.”
Lawrence jerks his chin toward the door. “Upstairs.”
I follow him and Jim into the hallway, then take a last look back at David’s tearstained face. “Have Spencer drive you home,” I tell him. “You don’t look so good.”
“Ciara—”
“I won’t do anything stupid.” I consider the events of the last ten minutes. “An
ything else stupid.”
Jim and I are being held in an empty “guest” room, the furnishings of which consist of a full-size bed with yellow-white posts and a matching nightstand. One wall is paneled with laminated wood and the rest painted a dusty pink.
Jim is sprawled across the bed, staring at the ceiling and tapping his fingers in a slow rhythm against his chest. I’m huddled on the floor in the far corner, every muscle taut. It’s been ten minutes since Lawrence locked us in here, and we have yet to speak.
Jim starts humming a familiar tune. After a few bars, I realize it’s “Norwegian Wood” by The Beatles.
“Get it?” he says finally. “There are no chairs in this room, like in the song.”
“Ha.” I stare at the white wooden door, as if I can hold it shut with my eyes.
“I wouldn’t have let that chick laugh at me.”
“Who?”
“In the song. She leads him on and laughs at him.”
“Oh.” I blink for what feels like the first time in minutes. “I thought she was throwing herself at him and he turned her down.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because he sits on the rug instead of on the bed with her.”
“She’s not on the bed, she’s on the rug.”
“But she doesn’t have any chairs because she wants him on the bed.”
“She doesn’t have chairs because she lives in a cruddy flat with cheap pine board.” His voice drips with scorn. “That’s what Norwegian wood is.”
“Oh.” I can’t believe I’m having this conversation right now. “So it’s just a song about a guy who didn’t get laid? My version’s more interesting.”
He scoffs. “Tell that to John Lennon.”
“John Lennon’s dead,” I state, with emphasis. “You know that, right?”
Jim lets out a long sigh through his nose. “Yes. I know that.” He sits up suddenly. “You know what’s interesting? What’s interesting is why you interpreted the song that way, what it says about you.” He tilts his head. “Have you scared a lot of men with your sexuality, Ciara?”
“No.” I look away and rub my cold hands together. “Define ‘a lot.’”
Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires Page 85