Long Dark Night

by Janci Patterson

  Jack sat down close to me, still bending back his fingers, making sickening cracking sounds.

  “Stop that or move farther away,” I said.

  Jack gave me a crooked smile. “Do you know how many magic tricks I can do with this? I could literally be sawed in half. I could chain myself up and then—”

  “If you describe dismembering yourself for entertainment I will punch you in the face.”

  Jack nodded apologetically, then sat on his hands. “Still, breaking a few bones doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t do permanent damage, so—”

  “It hurts my brain,” I said. “Next you’ll be breaking my bones and telling me it’s okay because it doesn’t hurt.”

  Jack looked horrified. “No,” he said. “No way. I just—I used to crack my knuckles all the time when I was nervous. Pick at my cuticles. Chew my nails down to nothing. None of that hurts anymore, and I guess I got carried away. But it’s not like I bit other people’s nails, whether or not that would hurt.”

  I sighed. I probably shouldn’t have cared—he wasn’t hurting himself after all.

  But still.

  “Where’s Zeke?” Drew asked, pulling his chair up across from me.

  “He’s dead,” I said. “Vance killed him.”

  Drew nodded, like he’d expected that. “I’m sorry. He was a good guy.”

  “He thought you got to Paris. Why didn’t you ever call him?”

  “I didn’t know how to get back in touch without putting us all at risk, Zeke included.”

  “So what are you doing here?” I asked, looking over at Thorpe. “With him?”

  “Thorpe has some talents that keep us safe. Baker is just out of Vance’s territory, so we’re better off here than we would be closer to Vegas. It’s not quite Paris, but it’s better than Salt Lake.”

  Thorpe knew we were coming before we got to the door. He’d been prepared for us.

  “He can sense corpses, then?” I asked.

  “I could feel you from the time you got off the freeway,” Thorpe said. “So don’t try sneaking up on me again.”

  “We weren’t sneaking up on you,” Jack said. “We came to the front door.”

  Drew laughed. “He’s got a point.”

  “But how could you feel us?” I asked, twisting around in my seat to face him. “I can’t feel you.”

  Drew looked alarmed. “You have powers like Thorpe?”

  “They both do,” Thorpe said.

  Jack looked over at me. “I don’t think I have any—”

  “You do,” I said. “At least, I think you will. You haven’t gotten used to it, yet. It took me months.” I turned to Thorpe. “I haven’t been able to talk to anyone else who can do this. Can you tell me how it works? Some corpses can sense me, and other can’t. I can detect most, but not everyone.”

  Thorpe put both hands on the end of his rifle, resting the tip on the floor and leaning forward. “I’m not the savior you’re looking for,” he said. “All I want is you out of my house.”

  I had a powerful urge to take Thorpe’s gun and smack him across the face with it, but I stayed in my chair. There was no use getting both Jack and I killed just because Thorpe decided to toy with me instead of help me. I should have expected no less.

  “Well I want to talk to them,” Alicia said. “So unless you’re going to force Drew and me to kick them out, hush your mouth.”

  Thorpe sucked in a breath just before he spoke. I wondered how old he was. Old enough to forget to breathe, except when he needed to. “They’re some of Vance’s science experiments,” he said. “They’ll only bring trouble.”

  Jack looked to me for confirmation of this. I probably should have told him about Lyle. “We aren’t experiments,” I said. Though I wondered. Was that what Vance had made me for? As some strange test subject? Was I made for those cheesecake slices of my brain?

  Drew leaned toward me. “You might be. I saw some of it before I left. Vance was trying to make more corpses with telepathic abilities like he has.”

  I hesitated. I’d already as good as admitted I was part of that. “It’s not telepathic, exactly,” I said. “It’s more like detailed radar.”

  “Right,” Drew said. “And the more corpses he can get working for him who have your abilities, the more territory he can cover at a time.”

  So that’s what Vance wanted from me. He knew about my senses. If he could bring me under his wing, if he could control me, then he could use me. He’d engineered all this death, just so he could get me to submit to him.

  “Bastard,” Jack said.

  No one argued with that.

  I shifted in my chair. “There’s a girl in Vegas—”

  “Delia,” Drew said. “She’s new—just surfaced a few months ago. That’s why Thorpe is so paranoid about Vance coming to get him. As he gathers more corpses like him, he’s pushing out his territory. He hasn’t attacked us here yet, but . . .”

  “It’s only a matter of time,” Thorpe said.

  I turned back to Thorpe again. “If you’re like him, won’t he come after you, too?”

  “Girl,” Thorpe said, “I was Vance. You didn’t think he’d held that territory forever, did you?”

  Jack put a hand on my arm, though whether he wanted to calm me down or protect me from Thorpe, I wasn’t sure.

  I stared at Thorpe. Vance seemed eternal. He handled his power so effortlessly, I’d assumed he’d always had it.

  Drew lowered his voice. “It’s true. Thorpe used to run the intermountain territory before Vance took over.”

  “If you were Vance,” I said, “you’d have shot one or both of us by now.”

  Thorpe’s eyes narrowed. “Touché,” he said. “If I weren’t so soft, I’d never have lost it to him.”

  Jack shrugged. “That doesn’t seem like something to be ashamed of.”

  Thorpe shot him a dirty look.

  “How’d you lose?” I asked.

  He turned his dirty look on me. “I gave him a little space. He took the rest. Why do you think he keeps turning young girls? He’s learning from my mistakes.”

  Like me. Like Delia. That’s why we looked so alike. We were a type to Vance, like his many bodyguard lookalikes.

  A type he thought he could control.

  “Vance staged a coup,” Drew said. “That was back in the thirties, before any of us were born.”

  “Technically,” Alicia said, “I was eight.”

  “And Vance let you live?” I asked Thorpe.

  Thorpe looked at the floor, tightening his grip on his gun. “I ran,” he said. “Like a ninny. I should have seen it coming. I should have killed him when he was young and weak, before he realized how much power he had over others.”

  “Yes, you should have,” I said. “Were things different, when you were in charge?”

  “Some,” Thorpe said. “One thing I know, there’s always going to be a Vance. Over every territory. Everywhere. We’re not altruistic beings. It’s in our nature to rule terribly.”

  Jack didn’t look like he believed Thorpe, and despite all I’d seen, neither did I. If that were true, I should have killed myself long ago. There had to be another way.

  We were all quiet for a minute. “I don’t understand,” I said finally. “You’re so worried about Vance all of a sudden. How have you protected yourself from him this long? With a couple of guns?”

  “We’re out of Vance’s territory,” Drew said. “If he comes after us here, he’ll anger the corpses who control this area.”

  My stomach sank. “So there’s someone here, too,” I said. “Someone else who rules terribly.”

  Alicia shrugged. “I wouldn’t say terribly.”

  “Not as bad as Vance,” Drew said. “But more powerful. So far, that’s kept him away. But with Delia guarding the south end of his territory, he’s been able to expand his control radius. We don’t know how much longer he’ll leave us alone.”

  “That’s why you’re so afraid of me,” I said. “Because you
thought I might be one of Vance’s minions coming to get you.”

  “But you’re not,” Alicia said. She was talking to me, but directing her words at Thorpe. “You’re just two people who need help.”

  “I’m not running a halfway house,” Thorpe said. “And it’s not the underground railroad, either. Not anymore.”

  “So you stopped sending people to Paris because it might provoke Vance,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Drew said. “He used to ship corpses out in coffins, but he sent the last one off a month or so before I arrived.”

  The idea of being trapped in a coffin for hours on end gave me shivers. Still, it was better than returning to Salt Lake.

  “What about you?” I asked Alicia.

  “I wasn’t trying to get to Paris,” she said. “The Old Ones in Los Angeles sent me out here to check on things for them, to make sure that Thorpe wasn’t causing trouble. I arrived a little while after Drew did, and I just kind of stayed.”

  “But it’s not a halfway house, huh?” I said to Thorpe.

  Thorpe pointed the butt of his gun at us. “Not for you.”

  “Enough!” Alicia said. “If you were going to stop us from taking them in, you’d have done it already. So stop being petulant.”

  A hard look came over Thorpe’s face, and for a second I worried he was going to point his rifle at Alicia. But then he shrugged, and stood. “Fine,” Thorpe said. “But if she brings the whole of Vance’s territory down on us, I’m throwing the lot of you to the wolves.”

  Thorpe leaned his rifle over his shoulder and left. Since I couldn’t sense him, I had no idea where he was going, and I wouldn’t be able to identify him coming back.

  Jack’s arm tightened around me, and I realized it had been there the whole time, and I hadn’t been paying close attention. It felt comfortable, sitting next to him like that. Easy.

  “Do you still want to stay?” Jack asked.

  “No,” I said. “But I want to leave even less.”

  Fourteen

  Alicia and Drew disappeared deeper into the mortuary, and Alicia came back with two martini glasses of blood. Jack eyed them like a child waiting for an ice cream cone. When he caught me looking, he turned away, embarrassed.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s blood that came out of a person.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But it’s also food for the rest of forever, so don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  Jack looked surprised. “Do you?”

  I gave him a look, and refused to answer.

  “Ha,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Where do you get it?” I asked Alicia.

  “The Old Ones have distributors,” she said. “We get a delivery once a week.”

  A whole week’s worth of blood at a time. “Vance never let us have so much at once.”

  “We could get more, but it goes bad if it sits too long, even in the fridge.”

  Jack reached for his eagerly, but then sat back in his chair. He drank it slowly and deliberately, so much so that he had to be forcing it.

  I closed my eyes, bringing my glass to my lips. Jack was right. I hated eating in front of others. I hated what I had become.

  The body rush I used to feel while eating was barely present this time, though. Too much hot blood had spoiled me. I wondered if I’d ever get that kind of a rush from cold blood again. If not, I wouldn’t miss it, even if the monster would.

  When I looked up, Alicia was gone. I could sense her just outside the room, but she’d closed the door behind her. I wasn’t sure if she’d given us privacy to eat, or just snuck outside to find Drew again.

  Possibly to decide what they were going to do with us.

  My monster yawned, satiated, and coiled just beneath the surface. I looked over at Jack, who was watching me closely.

  “Can you feel it?” I asked. “The monster?”

  Jack sat back in his chair. “What, one in the house? Are other monsters real?”

  “No,” I said. “At least, not that I know of. I meant the one that lives inside you now.”

  Jack considered that. “I felt a craving,” he said. “For blood. But it’s gone now.”

  “It’ll come back,” I said. “And it’s much worse around living people.”

  Jack bit his teeth clean through his lip, splitting it open.

  I grimaced, even though I’d done that before myself.

  He cringed. “Sorry! I take it you won’t be the lovely assistant who saws me in half.”

  “Anyone in the know would murder you. And no, you can’t be a stage magician. You’re dead.”

  “Who says I can’t?” Jack asked. “I could literally set myself on fire and—”

  I sat up straighter. “No,” I said. “Don’t you get it? You’re dead. I killed you.” Tension built inside me, but I didn’t have the words to explain why. “Aren’t you at least a little bit upset about that?”

  He looked at me, exasperated. “April,” he said. “It wasn’t. your. fault.”

  My living self might have cried, then. Obviously it wasn’t my fault. Everything—from what happened to my parents, to me, to Zeke, to Leo, to Jack—all of it was Vance’s fault. All of it was perpetrated by him.

  But there was still a part of me, deep and raw, that believed that if I’d just done something—anything—to stop it, they would have been spared.

  “I’m glad you didn’t let me die,” Jack said. “I’m sorry about the stupid stunts. I think it’s just my way of looking at the bright side. Yeah, I’m dead, and blood dependent forever, right? But I can also do things that I couldn’t before.” He squeezed my arm. “Doesn’t it ever help you to think about things like that?”

  It didn’t, but it took me a moment to figure out why. “No,” I said. “No, I don’t want there to be anything good about what he did to me.”

  Jack leaned toward me, his nose close to my ear. We’d been close like this before—obviously—but this time, I was struck by the sudden need to escape.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And I got up and left the room.

  Jack didn’t try to follow me.

  I kicked myself as the doors closed behind me. I’d let him put his arm around me. Hold me in the fountain. This morning had been horrific, but not the part where I’d kissed him. That might have been nice, if the circumstances hadn’t been so awful.

  The reason I’d left settled like a weight in my stomach.

  It was because I liked being near him. Because I wanted to trust him. Did trust him even.

  It was exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

  I searched through the house in my mind, looking for Thorpe. He could detect me, and so could Vance, so I should be able to do it, too. But I found only Alicia and Drew talking near the stairs. Even as I scoured the area, I couldn’t find a trace of Thorpe. I knew Jack was in the room I’d just left, but in my mind’s eye, the space was empty. Whatever Thorpe was doing to find me, I couldn’t figure it out just by looking. I’d have to convince him to tell me more, once he got used to the idea of having us around.

  Though I’d probably have to let him warm up to us, first.

  Alicia must have heard me coming, because she turned around and met me in the hallway.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  For some reason that made me want to cry even more. “I don’t even know what that means anymore,” I said.

  “Come on,” Alicia said. “You look like you need some chocolate.”

  I glanced guiltily back toward Jack, but Alicia ushered me down the hall. “It’s okay,” she said. “Drew will take him downstairs. If he’ll play foosball, Drew will pretty much be in heaven.”

  I wasn’t sure that was Jack’s kind of game, but he could handle himself in that regard, anyway.

  Alicia’s room was in the upstairs corner, furnished with a desk, a papasan chair, and a big bed covered in pillows and ruffles, all in black and various shades of magenta. “Doesn’t it bother you that you can’t sleep?” I a
sked. Zeke hated beds. He said they taunted him.

  “Eh,” Alicia said. “It’s comfortable. I lounge.”

  She opened the desk drawer and pulled out a box of truffles. “Hang on,” she said, walking out the door. When she came back, she had two mugs of hot water. “Drink a little before you eat,” she said. “For melting.”

  I took a deep sip of the water and then placed a truffle on my tongue. I’d never lost my love for chocolate, but it tasted even better after my mouth was warmed to body temperature by the water. The chocolate melted over my tongue in ways it hadn’t since I’d been a beater. It was deep and rich, punctuated by a creamy raspberry filling.

  “Isn’t it good?” Alicia asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “You were right. I did need that.”

  Alicia smiled. “I knew it. I’m really sorry about Thorpe. He can be such an ass.”

  He certainly could. “But you guys are like . . . friends?”

  Alicia smiled. “You sound surprised.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “You’re nice and he’s . . .”

  “He grows on you,” Alicia said. “What about you and Jack? Have you known each other long?”

  “No,” I said. “We’d seen each other a couple times before, but the first time we ever really talked was last night.” I shivered. “And then Vance made me turn him.”

  Alicia’s eyes widened, and I thought for a moment she was going to ask me to tell her the story. Instead she offered me another piece of chocolate. “From what I hear about Vance, it’s miraculous he survived.”

  I stood a little straighter. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I guess you’re right.”

  Alicia flopped down on her bed and stretched out. “Sounds like you’ve had a rough couple of days.”

  That was an understatement.

  Alicia had hung black drapes over the window, and behind them I could see the black-out lining that would keep out the light.

  “What about you and Drew?” I asked. “Are you together?”

  Alicia snorted. “Hardly.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”