“You can master it better if you try, but you’ll really only feel it if they feel threatened,” he said. “Like if they’re hurt or in danger. But if you’re with Jack and you see him get hurt, you probably wouldn’t notice the tracking, because you’re already witnessing it and feeling it. You understand what I mean?”
“I think so, but…” I trailed off, trying to think if Jack or Bobby had been in danger when I hadn’t been around. Somewhat disturbingly, I realized that they hadn’t, and Bobby had been in a lot of trouble lately. I was really, really bad luck for Bobby.
“That’s how I found you,” Peter said.
“What?” I pulled myself from my thoughts and looked up at him.
“That night that those vampires were following you, back when you were still mortal,” Peter said.
I had walked downtown by myself to talk to Jane, and on the way back to my apartment, Lucian and Violet had jumped me. Peter had come out of nowhere and killed Lucian, thus saving my life.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“I had been around town. I came back for you, and I bit you.” He lowered his eyes, and though he tried to hide it, I heard a tightness in his voice. “But I tasted Jack on you, so I… I left, but I stayed around town, deciding what to do.
“That night, when the vampires were after you, I felt it,” Peter went on. “It’s like a panic. The fear and adrenaline you feel, I feel. I can’t see anything, but it’s like phantom limb syndrome, except I can’t feel a missing leg – I feel what you feel.”
“Can you still?” I asked.
“Not so much,” he shook his head. “Maybe if the fear was really strong, but that was a long time ago, and your blood has changed. It usually only lasts a few months, even when you care about someone a lot.”
“So you just-”
I stopped cold and realized I knew exactly what Peter was talking about. I’d been thinking that I hadn’t felt anything with Jack or Bobby, but they weren’t the only two people I’d bitten.
I’d bitten Jane too.
“Oh my god.” The color drained from my face, and my stomach knotted up. My heart stopped beating for a minute, and I could barely breathe.
“Alice?” Peter put his hand on my back and leaned in toward me. “Alice? Are you alright?”
“I felt Jane die.”
“What?” Peter put his other hand on my knee and moved closer to me. “What are you talking about?”
“Jane, I bit her, when I saw her, and I knew I shouldn’t have, but then she went to rehab, and I thought everything was okay, I thought everything was better.” My words came out rushed, and tears tumbled down my cheeks more rapidly.
“You bit Jane?” He’d started rubbing my back, but I don’t think it helped any.
“Yeah, I bit her and-and then in Australia-” My breath caught in my throat.
I remembered the terror I had felt when I woke up. The panic and fear surging through my veins. It’d scrambled my thoughts, and my heart wanted to hammer out of my chest. I had never felt that kind of intense fear before, and that’s how Jane felt. That was Jane dying.
“Remember?” I looked at Peter, his worried expression blurred through my tears. “You came into the room, and I was freaked out, and I didn’t know why, and I couldn’t shake it. And I was mad that I felt that way! I was mad, and that was Jane!”
“No, Alice, you don’t know that was Jane.” He tried to reassure me, but I’m not sure that he believed what he was saying.
“No, it was! Jack called me later that night, and he told me she was dead, and I-” I cried harder, and I wiped at the tears with the palm of my hand. “I felt her die, Peter! I felt what she felt, and she was so afraid! She was terrified, and I didn’t do anything!”
“You couldn’t do anything.” He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close to him. I buried my head in his shoulder and sobbed. “You didn’t know, and you couldn’t do anything.”
Peter stroked my hair and tried to tell me it was alright, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t just that I’d felt Jane die, and I hadn’t done anything about it, although that weight of the guilt threatened to crush me. It was that I knew how scared and how horrible it had been for her to die.
Even though I’d known she’d been murdered, part of me had been able to hold out that it had been painless. If she’d been bitten before she died, she would’ve been unconscious, and she wouldn’t have known what happened.
But now I knew. She had felt everything. She’d known she was dying, and it had been more horrifying than anything I had ever felt before.
Even after I stopped crying, I let Peter hold me in his arms. I should’ve pushed him away for a lot of different reasons, but I didn’t have the strength for it. His arms were strong and safe, and I was afraid if he let go, I’d fall into a million pieces.
“What happened to Jane isn’t your fault.” He spoke into my hair, so his words came out muffled. He kissed the top of my head and stroked my hair back from my tear stained cheeks.
“It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head and pulled away from him. He left a hand lingering on my arm, and I let him. “She’s dead, and I have to make it right.”
“How?”
“I’ll find a way.” I swallowed hard and didn’t look at him. I couldn’t tell him my plans to destroy the bastard that had killed Jane. Peter would freak out as bad as Jack would, if not worse.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Alice,” he warned me.
“What me?” I laughed, and the flat sound echoed off the cavern walls. Suddenly, I felt ashamed of the scene I had made, and I wiped at my drying face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. It just… hit me.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” Peter assured me.
“Yeah, I really do.” I wiped my hands on my jeans and stood up. “You’ve got your own stuff, and you don’t need to worry about my shit.”
“It’s alright.” He stood up with me and pushed up the sleeves of his shirt. I started to stumble out another apology, and he held up his hand. “Alice. It’s fine.”
I lifted my head, willing myself to look at him, and for a moment, I thought about Jack’s apologies from earlier tonight. He felt guilty for forcing me into life because he knew the vampire life wasn’t everything I’d hoped it would be.
Looking into Peter’s eyes, I wondered if I’d feel the same way if I chose him instead, if our bond would’ve given my life the meaning I was so desperate for.
“Peter!” Daisy shouted, breaking my thoughts.
She dashed into the room, her skirt flying around her, and ran towards Peter. At first, I thought something had happened, but when she jumped at Peter, she screamed with glee and giggled as he caught her in her arms.
“What are you doing, kiddo?” Peter asked, holding her to his side.
“I finished my picture!” Daisy said.
Rainbow colored chalk smudges covered her pudgy cheeks and arms. One of her hands was balled into a fist. I thought she held a piece of chalk, but she pulled it away from Peter, like she was trying to hide it.
“What have you got there?” Peter asked, and she put her fist behind her back. “Let me see.”
She shook her head fiercely, making her ponytail bounce. Peter reached around and pried open her hand, revealing a rather squashed cockroach. He wrinkled his nose and tossed the bug corpse away.
“Daisy, what did we say about bugs?” Peter reached for one of the towels I’d brought.
“That they’re yucky,” Daisy said, dutifully letting him wipe the bug guts from her hands.
“That’s right,” he said. “We need to leave them alone so you don’t get sick anymore. Right?”
“Right,” Daisy said, adding an overly dramatic sigh. “Do you wanna come see my picture now?”
Peter exchanged a look with me, checking to see if I was alright. I wasn’t, not yet, but I could pass for it.
“I should be going anyway,” I forced a smile.
“You have to look at my pictur
e first!” Daisy shouted.
“Sure, of course,” I nodded.
Peter carried Daisy out into the tunnel with me. Her floor mural had gotten much more extravagant while we’d been talking. The flying purple hippo had some sort of deformed frog companion, and there were random letters and stars and hearts all over.
Next to all that, she’d drawn a stick figure drawing of a guy, a woman with curly hair, and a little girl with curly hair. I assumed it was Peter, Mae, and Daisy, but I couldn’t be completely sure.
“That’s really lovely,” Peter told her.
Daisy immediately launched into a story explaining exactly what happened in the picture, and she had him put her down so she could run all over pointing things out. As she talked, Peter watched her with a smile on his face.
I left as soon as I could, with Daisy waving and yelling goodbye long after I was out of eyesight.
Walking back to the car, it all hit me again. The distance between Jack and me that I couldn’t fix. The way Jane had felt when she died. The fact that I had to live forever with the regrets from the choices I made.
I drove home and all I could look forward to was curling up next to Jack and falling asleep. I didn’t care what problems we might be having, sleeping next to him was the only thing that would make me feel even remotely better right now.
Everyone was asleep when I get home, except for Matilda. She should’ve been in bed, but she was pacing the kitchen, whining. I gave her food, but she wanted nothing to do with it. I went over to the French doors, and as soon as I opened them, she darted outside, growling and barking.
“Matilda!” I yelled and stepped out after her. She ran around the lawn, sniffing in the snow with the fur on her back standing up. “Matilda, what’s going on?”
But I heard it before she did. In the house behind me, something crashed, and Milo began to scream.
19
I ran so fast, my feet barely touched the ground, but I only made it as far as the bottom of the steps. Samantha stood in front of me, her hair smoothed back in a painful looking bun. Her eyes still looked deceptively innocent, but she’d traded in her pencil skirt for a black leather outfit that looked as if it’d been stolen from Olivia’s closet.
Milo had stopped screaming, but he yelled at someone to get off him. I looked past Samantha at the top of the stairs, and I couldn’t see Milo. I could only hear him struggling and the sound of his heart pounding, and worst of all, I could smell blood – heady and sweet.
“Hey!” Jack shouted. He’d just come out of his room, dressed only in his boxers, and his hair was messy from sleep.
“Take another step closer and we’ll kill your human,” Dane said, and Bobby whimpered. Jack didn’t move, but I heard Milo grunting and fighting more. “Do you want me to kill him?”
“Just let him go!” Milo yelled, but I think he’d finally relented.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked Samantha.
I wanted to push past her, but I didn’t think I’d help the situation any. Milo was strong, probably stronger than me, and they had him. So far, Jack had been left out of the mess, and I didn’t want to antagonize them into going after him. After Bobby, Jack was the weakest here.
“Looking for you.” Samantha smiled, her lips a thin line of red. She stepped forward, off the bottom step, and I had to back up so she wouldn’t run into me. “We’ve been following you. It’s not that hard to track down a cherry red Lamborghini.”
“You know them?” Jack asked, looking warily down at me.
“And you took the Lamborghini?” Ezra asked, his voice resonating behind me. I glanced back to see him standing in the dining room, holding back Matilda. She growled and gnashed her teeth, and if he let her go, she’d get herself killed up against Samantha.
“Why are you following me?” I asked, ignoring Ezra and Jack.
“If I let go of you, do you promise to be good?” Thomas asked Milo. Milo mumbled something in response, and I heard the sound of cracking bone, making Milo yell out in pain. “Answer me, or I’ll do that to the human.”
“Whatever you want, you guys can have it,” Jack said. He took a step towards them, and Milo cried out again. “Stop it! Leave him alone!”
“What do you want?!”I yelled.
My mouth tasted like battery acid, and my veins surged with hot adrenaline. Every time Milo cried out, I felt a jolt through me so intense, it reminded me of bloodlust. Like an animal instinct, and I had to clench my fists to keep from ripping off Samantha’s head.
“There’s no need to yell.” Thomas walked past Jack and descended the steps with a casual grace. He pushed the black hair from his forehead and noticed a bit of my brother’s blood on his hands. With some disdain, he licked it from his hand, and I gritted my teeth to stop from tearing out his throat.
Dane followed a few steps behind Thomas, dragging Bobby with him. Dane held him by his throat, and he had him so far off the ground, Bobby’s feet couldn’t reach the steps. Bobby clawed and struggled to release his grip, but he couldn’t.
Jack looked down at me, then turned back to tend to Milo. I could hear Milo’s bones cracking as Jack tried to set them, and he let out a few more painful groans.
Ezra shoved Matilda in a nearby room, and she instantly began scratching and barking at the door. He walked towards me until Samantha cast him a glare, and he stopped a few feet back from us.
“What is this all about?” Ezra asked.
“We need to know what you’re involvement is,” Thomas said, resting his black eyes on me. “And why you have a human helping you.”
“He’s my brother’s boyfriend!” I gestured to Bobby. Dane had lowered him enough where Bobby’s feet could touch the ground and he gasped for air. “He doesn’t know anything about anything! He’s a moron!”
“She’s right,” Bobby croaked, and Dane tightened his grip around his throat, making Bobby’s face turn purple.
“I will tell you anything you want! Just let him go!” I reached my arm out for him, but I didn’t dare move forward. Dane was far enough away where he could snap Bobby’s neck before I got to him.
“We will kill you if you lie to us,” Thomas said. “You know that, right?”
“Yes!” I shouted, watching Bobby struggle to stay alive.
“Fine.” Thomas shrugged, and Dane released Bobby. He collapsed onto the floor, breathing hard.
Even though they hadn’t given me permission, I ran towards Bobby. I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him a few steps back from them. I couldn’t really check on him because I didn’t want to let my guard down, but I stood in front of him.
“Are you a part of a movement?” Thomas asked.
“A movement?” I shook my head. “Like a dance movement? What?”
“Don’t get smart with us,” Samantha narrowed her eyes. “We have no problem killing any of you. It’s all part of our job.”
“Look, I want to answer your questions. I just have no idea what you’re talking about!” I told them as emphatically as I could. “You only speak in riddles. I don’t know what you want from me!”
“We know you and the human are involved with the serial killer, and we have reason to believe that you have a child vampire as well,” Samantha said. “Are you part of the movement to expose vampires?”
“What?” I raised my eyebrow and looked over to Ezra. His expression remained blank, not wanting to give anything away to them, but he had to know something. “I already told you. I’m not involved with the serial killer. I’m looking for him, but I’m starting to think you guys are the killers.”
“Don’t be absurd.” Samantha rolled her eyes.
“We’re here to catch him. It’s what we do,” Thomas gestured to Samantha and Dane. “We keep order in an order-less society.”
Bobby coughed and got to his feet. He stood next to me. I glared at him, hoping he would take the hint and fall back, but he didn’t.
“You guys are vampire hunters, right?” Bobby asked, rubbing
his throat. In one synchronized movement, Samantha, Thomas, and Dane looked at him, and I stepped in front of him a bit more so my shoulder shielded part of him.
“They’re more bounty hunters, actually,” Ezra said.
“Bounty hunter is such a loaded term,” Thomas said with exaggerated disdain. “Besides, we hardly ever work on commission anymore.”
“So no one’s paying you to be here?” Ezra took a step closer to us, his arms crossed over his chest.
“We’re doing a service for the community,” Samantha smiled thinly.
“Who called you?” Ezra asked.
“We’re not at liberty to divulge that,” Samantha replied, her tone getting icier.
“But you know several people that have our number,” Thomas grinned. “The Commissioner has always been a big fan of our work.”
“Oh!” Bobby gasped, and then lowered his voice to a whisper. “I told you the police were in on this.”
“Bobby,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Can we just get this over with?” Dane sounded exasperated, and he checked the neon green and pink watch on his wrist.
“Oh my god!” Bobby pointed at him. “That dude is supposed to be a vampire hunter, and he’s got on a fricking swatch! There is no way these guys are for real!”
“Bobby!” I snapped.
“Whatever. I’m just saying this whole thing is messed up,” Bobby insisted.
“If you don’t shut up, I will kill you,” I glared back at him, and he rolled his eyes, but he fell silent. I turned back to the supposed-vampire hunters. “I’ve already told you everything I know.”
“What about the child vampire?” Thomas asked, and I fought to keep my expression neutral.
Wisdom (My Blood Approves series) Page 21