“Why haven’t you done this before?” Jude had to ask. He was almost hoping to find a hole in their theories, a reason to back out. He’d had reservations about all of this from the beginning and, the more the plan solidified, the more his brain screamed for him to leave, go home, and forget all of this. Except that he’d never be able to forget a single moment.
“Because I’m not a fool,” the Witch said easily. “At least not fool enough to risk it on my own. I’ve met the bastards outside, on my terms, but never theirs. Never on their home territory, and definitely not alone. I don’t like the odds. And I don’t start fights I’m not guaranteed to win.”
“Smart lady.” Pixie grinned. He seemed to have taken a real liking to her mysterious vibes and cool confidence. “But the odds are a lot better now that we’re here, right?”
“And why exactly is that?” Jude asked, still unconvinced but seeing no alternative. This was happening. Hadn’t he always wanted to track down undead evil and drag it to the light? He’d spent years working toward this. Why, then, did he feel so unprepared? “What makes us different from anyone else?”
“He knows his way around the arcane,” the Witch said, nodding to Jasper, then Pixie. “And he’s an actual vampire. And you… I just have a good feeling about you. You’re stubborn, you won’t quit for anything, even if it means bashing your head against a brick wall. I like it.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess,” Jude said with grudging satisfaction.
“Takes one to know one,” she tossed back. “So, there we are. You get me there, I’ll get you in, we’ll get each other out alive—or close enough.”
“Deal?” Jude asked, hoping he wasn’t making a huge mistake. At least if he was, he told himself, he wouldn’t be alone.
The witch gave that same tight-lipped smile that made him shiver and wonder what in the world came next. “Deal.”
“Do you trust her?” Jude asked as he followed Jasper down the length of the loading alley, toward the open street. The Witch did not accompany them. Jude had turned his back for what must have only been a second but, when he looked back, she’d disappeared as if she were never there. He wasn’t actually surprised by this, considering the rest of the past few days—and his life in general—but it was still mildly unsettling.
“As much as I trust anyone who isn’t you or Eva,” Jasper said, casually, as if they were discussing dinner plans with a new acquaintance.
“So then, not much?” Jude couldn’t resist a slight smirk, the kind she had seemed so fond of. It was easier to feel optimistic when they had a plan, or at least less-than-doomed. They may still be lost causes, but Jude was starting to warm to the challenge. However this night turned out, he’d be closer to answers, closure, and sweet resolution than he’d ever come.
“Not as much as I’d like to,” Jasper said a bit more seriously. “But don’t worry. She’ll help us.”
“That’s not all I’m worried about...” Jude felt something move in his pocket. Pixie was in there, again, and Jude unconsciously gave the warm lump a quick, reassuring pet.
Jasper gave a soft chuckle and started to answer, probably to say something ironic-but-comforting in the way only he could accomplish, the way Jude loved—but stopped mid-word. Then he stopped walking and held perfectly still.
“Jasper?” Jude asked, alarmed, and turned around.
But he didn’t reply. His eyes were wide and frightened, staring at—no, past Jude. At something behind and above him. Slowly, hating every moment, Jude turned again. He knew what it would be, but he made himself look anyway. And, as his eyes fell on the monster, he made himself breathe.
The shadowed figure clinging to the sheer brick wall twenty feet in the air was a vampire. Jude didn’t need to see its fangs to know that, but they were bared, flashing white and long as his pinkie finger, sharper than any he’d ever seen. The form was unmistakably inhuman, viscerally alien, and Jude knew the horror and revulsion he felt seeing its elongated limbs and claws was evolutionary, as millennia-ingrained as a fear of heights, fire, or death. This kind of fear kept humans alive. Except for when there was no escape.
The creature dropped silently, seeming to rush forward before it even hit the ground. Jude raised his fists but the action was absurd, pointless. The thing was a blur. He had a better chance of catching the wind itself in his hand than landing a punch, but he had to do something, anything. If they were going down, he was going down swinging.
But mid-dash, the vampire stopped, seeming every bit as frozen as the terrified pair of humans before it. And, for one brief, terrible moment, its outlines became clear, illuminated by one of the few alley street lights.
In a heartbeat that seemed to stretch into years, into a lifetime, Jude saw the creature’s face. Like the others he’d seen, it was twisted into a monstrous grimace. But as he watched, blood freezing in his veins, the horrific snarl faded, and the warped lines and too-sharp angles of the creature’s chillingly morphed features smoothed until they resolved into something else. Something Jude knew. As he stared into the vampire’s partially-transformed face, a pair of very human, very familiar eyes stared back.
He knew that face. Jude was sure he’d know the voice within a single word. He’d know it anywhere: dreaming and devastated, awake and unafraid, asleep or dead.
Everything had changed the day Felix died. Except for his eyes.
But the moment Jude barely began to articulate this, that those were the eyes that he hadn’t seen for five years, except for dreams from which he awoke screaming, crying, he hadn’t expected to see them ever again, even looking at pictures was beyond him, and now here they were, here he was—
He was gone.
In another rush of wind and blurred, too-fast-to-track movement, Felix was gone. Again.
Jude couldn’t move. Beside him, Jasper stood frozen as well, staring into the darkness where the… where Felix had disappeared. Something wiggled in Jude’s pocket, and he automatically reached down to cover the pink, fuzzy head that poked out. Pixie had to be scared, or at the very least curious, but Jude couldn’t make his mouth work. He couldn’t make any part of himself move.
“Jude,” Jasper whispered, breaking the horrified silence. “Did you see—”
The impact to his chest was so fast Jude never saw it coming, and so forceful he staggered backwards until he hit the brick wall. Jude gasped, the wind knocked out of him and head spinning as the impossibly fast-moving creature flashed before him again. Before he could catch his breath, or make a sound, it was directly in front of him, claws reaching for him, grabbing at his jacket. Then, a high-pitched screech and rapid flapping sent a new kind of dread surging through him.
“No!” Jude shouted, forcing his eyes open and hands into fists as talon-like claws tore at his jacket and its inner pocket, then seized the small, pink, frantically flapping bat. “No, don’t touch him! Get—”
Felix’s hands. Gentle, healing, magic hands. Shoving Jude against the wall and crushing Pixie in their grip, in their claws. Jude felt like he was dying, he couldn’t breathe, he wanted to vomit and scream and drag the thing with Felix’s face into the light, look it in the horrifically familiar eyes until he saw the truth, dredge some kind of meaning from this nightmare—
Felix recoiled, springing back and up into the air, Pixie clutched tight in both hands. There was another flapping sound, much louder than Pixie’s desperate flailing, and a pair of huge, dark wings unfurled from his back. They nearly spanned the alley and a gust of wind hit Jude in the face. More flaps, more wind-bursts, and more of Pixie’s terrified squeaks—and Felix leaped into the air, powerful clawed legs and wings propelling them higher and faster than anything should be able to move, almost faster than the human eye could follow.
Then they were gone.
Jude almost collapsed, laid low by terror, panic, and shame. He almost froze, overwhelmed with terror and shock. He almost ran after them, screaming Felix’s name, and Pixie’s. He almost laughed hysterical
ly, weak under the realization that he’d been right, that what he’d barely dared hope for five years was real, that he knew what he’d seen.
“Jasper!” he yelled the second he got his breath back. Instead of any of the above tempting choices, Jude shoved his horror aside, banished the memory of Felix’s face and hands forever burned into his brain, a precious memory now tainted by fangs and claws. If he let himself, Jude knew he’d sink into a well of despair from which he might never emerge, and now that simply was not an option. “Damn it, come on! They’re getting away! Fuck that, they’re already gone! They’re gone, and he took Pixie, and we have to go after them! Now!”
Jasper didn’t move. He hadn’t moved this entire time.
“Come on, move! Say something!” Jude barely resisted reaching out and shaking him. He could feel his own desperation rising. A panic attack was the absolute last thing he needed right now, but it was the absolute most likely thing if this kept getting worse, and especially if Jasper wouldn’t talk to him. “Anything!”
“You saw who that was.” Jasper’s voice was barely audible, but it wasn’t a question. When Jasper turned to face him, he looked almost as grey as any vampire Jude had seen.
“Yes,” he made himself answer, though the words tasted like blood on his tongue. “Felix. He’s…”
“He’s alive.” Jasper finished when Jude couldn’t. His voice did not shake, and grew stronger with every word. There was no hesitation, only certainty, finality. “He’s been alive all this time.”
It wasn’t quite true, Jude thought with a surge of hysteria. But it didn’t have to be completely true to be forever life-changing. Felix wasn’t alive, but he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t gone, he was here. He’d been here. He was just—
Jude sucked in a breath. His chest was tight, the familiar constriction that meant he was right on the panic-edge again. This was real. As he’d said over and over again for years, Jude knew what he saw. And he’d seen Felix.
But that wasn’t the only thought that made his stomach drop. Felix was here. And Pixie wasn’t. Pulling himself together as much as humanly possible when dealing with new, inhuman realities, Jude made himself speak. “So, assuming that was—who we thought it was—”
“It was!” Jasper said immediately, starting to pace quickly back and forth, eyes bright. Even through his dissociative fog, Jude realized Jasper sounded more energetic, more alive than he could remember hearing, even after tonight’s excitement leading until this moment. “It is! I’d know him anywhere! At the end of the world! Fangs be damned, that was him!”
“Okay. Okay,” Jude said, still trying to get his breathing and pounding heart under control, and arrange his chaotic thoughts into anything resembling sense. “So he… flew at us. He attacked us. And he took Pixie.”
“Yes,” Jasper said, stopping his pacing and looking at Jude. The intensity in his eyes was startling, as if he’d been asleep for the past five years and only just now awakened. “Yes, he—but he wasn’t in his right mind. How could he be? I haven’t been in my right mind, none of us have.”
“A thrall,” Jude said, throat feeling thick as he remembered Pixie’s ominous words and the Witch’s confirmation. He started to shake. “He’s under Cruce’s control just like the girls. He has to be. Nothing else makes sense.”
“My God,” Jasper whispered. “My God, all this time, I can’t imagine…”
With that, all the galvanized energy in Jasper’s eyes, voice, and body seemed to dissipate, like a candle blown out by a gust of cold wind. Slowly, he sank down to sit on the curb, burying his face in his hands in a now-familiar position that made Jude’s heart ache.
“If Felix is a vampire and he took Pixie,” Jude started, frantically clinging to logical thought-processes, cause and effect, his best shot at making sense of this nightmare. Where would they be? Where were they headed right now? He had an idea, and didn’t like it one bit. “That means he’s—”
“Jude,” Jasper said, very quietly, without looking up. His shoulders sagged and Jude felt his own knees shake with shock and exhaustion. “Give me a moment to take this in. Please?”
Jude stood in silence for the space of a few long breaths. Then, just as silently, he sat down on the curb beside Jasper and let his own head drop onto his knees. They’d figure out the next step soon. But for right now he just had to sit.
Felix was here. Pixie was gone. And Jude was numb.
“The sub-basement, she said!” Jasper exclaimed with a sudden urgency, raising his head. His revitalized voice shook Jude back to the present before he could sink too far into despair. That, at least, was familiar. “That’s where they will have gone! It all comes back to the same place!”
“That’s what I was thinking.” At least while he was able to think at all. But now Jude shook his head to clear the shock-induced cobwebs. Action. Game plan. They needed one. Jasper was with him, at least. “It makes sense.”
“You have the key, correct?” Jasper prodded. The hope in his voice made Jude’s heart speed up, made his head spin with something aside from overwhelmed confusion.
“No, not me,” Jude said, grounding himself with the feel of the cold concrete on which he sat, digging his fingertips into the curb. “Eva.”
“Shit.” Jasper sighed, sounding much more tired than annoyed. “I tried to tell her too, you know? But she didn’t want to hear it, and some things shouldn’t be forced. But she needs to know, should have known for a long time. How are we going to explain this?”
“Let me worry about that,” Jude reassured him, speaking as if he had a plan and wishing he knew what it was. “Go back and talk to your friend the Witch, get everything ready. I’ll meet you at the entrance with the key.”
“All right,” Jasper nodded quickly, climbing to his feet but not moving away just yet. He extended a hand down to Jude, which was gratefully taken. “This is happening. It’s a nightmare, but it’s real, and we know what to do with that. Save the shock and breakdowns for later. We’ve both gotten quite good at compartmentalizing, haven’t we? So we keep moving for just a little longer and we’ll know the truth. Just a bit more and he’ll be…”
He trailed off, eyes slipping out of focus, and Jude found himself smiling through the pain. Jasper never was the best at taking his own advice.
“I don’t know how this ends,” Jude told him, not letting go of his hand, taking some small solace in the warmth and closeness. They’d been together all through these long, painful years, but the kind of togetherness that reminded him of being in the same empty house, in different rooms. Tonight they were in the same place. “But it’s been a long time coming. Five years too long.”
“Jude, I’m sorry about Pixie,” Jasper said after a short pause. He shut his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again they were clear and resolved. Compartmentalization was a hell of a thing, Jude thought. “We’ll get him back too, I pr—”
“It’s fine,” Jude said before Jasper could finish that wonderful, dangerous word. He knew firsthand how much it hurt to make promises he couldn’t keep. The possibility that this might be one of them made his heart clench all over again.
“None of this is fine,” Jasper said with a sad return smile that Jude knew much more intimately than any of his newly-reclaimed, brave, wild hope. “It hasn’t been fine for a long time. And we’re right on the edge of it, now, aren’t we? It might be all over tonight… or, dare to dream, we might have everything.”
Jude nodded, giving the warm fingers in his hand a squeeze. His eyes stung, like looking into the smoke and flames of an inferno. But at least, just like before, he wouldn’t walk into it alone.
“Thank you,” he said softly, a familiar ache flaring in his chest. He’d felt it before, but never expected to find himself aching for the safety and return of someone who’d come into his life through noise complaints and a broken window. None of it had prepared him at all. “I… Pixie’s just… it wouldn’t be fair not to hold up my end of our deal. Not after all this.”
>
“I know,” Jasper said just as quietly, with just as much certainty. He let go and stepped away, heading back the way they’d come. “And you’re welcome.”
“I need help,” Jude said the moment the door opened.
“I’ve been saying,” was Eva’s deadpan reply. The sun had just gone down and she was in red flannel pajama bottoms and an oversized red T-shirt reading Meet Me In The Pit. Probably just settling in for a relaxing evening of Netflix and alcohol that she so sorely needed and deserved, Jude thought with a pang.
“No, I mean, I need your help,” he clarified, fighting the urge to clench his teeth and hyperventilate. No good would come from breaking down, particularly not now. But it sure was tempting. “I need to get into the maintenance tunnels. The mall’s sub-basement. It’s important.”
“Now?” Eva raised her eyebrows and leaned against the doorframe. At any other time, Jude might have taken the hint.
“Yes. Right now.”
“At night.” She glanced down at her pajama bottoms and bare feet, then back up at him, looking caught between fatigue, annoyance, and concern.
“Yes!” Jude said, as firmly but calmly as he could manage. “Tomorrow will be too late.”
“Because…?”
He knew the apprehensive look on Eva’s face. It meant she was praying to every guardian angel who might be listening that he wasn’t about to spout anything about blood and fangs. Jude had seen that pleading look a lot. Most recently just a few days ago, when he’d stood in her office and tried to fill out an incident report involving undead skaters. Now the situation was so much more important, so much more deadly, and he couldn’t begin to explain why. “I can’t tell you.”
The Secret Ingredient Is Love. No, Really Page 13