His hand’s not coming with him.
“I’m stuck.” He yanks his arm again. “Holy shit, I’m stuck to this thing.”
Lori covers her mouth. “Oh my God. What’s happening?”
No chains or ties are binding him. His palm is adhered flat to the metal like a kid’s tongue on a frozen flagpole.
David grabs Travis’s wrist and helps him pull. The skin stretches but doesn’t peel away from the cross.
“Ow, stop!” Travis grits his teeth. “You’re gonna break my wrist.”
David turns to me. “Did you touch it?”
I step back. “I didn’t do anything.”
“No, I mean, did you touch it without getting stuck? It might be a vampire trap.”
“They have those things?”
“If by ‘they,’ you mean the Control, then yes.” He takes my shoulders. “Now think. Tonight, or on Halloween, did you touch the cross?”
I chew my lip while I remember. “The other night.” I point at it. “It was really cold. It didn’t match the air.”
“It’s getting colder.” Travis’s breath rasps shallow and quick. “What if I can’t get it loose before sunrise?”
“Don’t worry.” David holds his palms out, fingers spread, in a calm cool boss pose. “Worse comes to worst, we’ll cut off your hand.”
“What?! No way.” He backs away from David, as far as he can. “I need this hand. It’s my favorite.”
“It’ll grow back.” David tilts his head in admission. “Eventually.”
Travis whimpers. Lori steps up to him, wringing her own hands.
“Does it hurt?” she asks him.
He reins in his panic and squares his shoulders. “Naw, not really. I’ll be okay.”
While they share a moment, David takes me aside. “If this is a Control vampire trap, we can’t get his hand off without a neutralizer.”
“I don’t suppose you have one lying around your house with the stakes and samurai sword.”
“Even if I did, I’d need a special code to release him.”
“Can you call the Control and have them come help?”
David frowns. “I could, but if they’ve booby - trapped this cross, that means they’re in league with FAN. Which means we can’t trust them anymore.”
“We don’t have much choice.” I lower my voice further. “If we cut him free, there’ll be evidence.” My stomach tilts at the thought. “His hand would still be attached to the cross, and there’d be blood everywhere.”
“But if the Control gets involved—”
“Wait.” Thinking of blood reminds me of another possibility. “Maybe I could neutralize it myself.” I walk over to the cross, imagining its resentment pulsing against me. “If I’m really the anti - holy—”
Lori pulls me back. “Be careful.”
“I’ve already touched it.”
“But that was before. Maybe it wasn’t activated then.”
She might be right. But my instincts say this thing has no power over me.
I take a deep breath and slap my hand against the cross.
Nothing happens. I keep my palm on the metal for a few moments, then pull it away. Not stuck, at least. I try again, pushing harder against the cold metal.
“Anything?” I ask Travis.
He tugs on his hand. “Nope.”
I place both palms, along with my forehead, against the cross. I focus on skeptical thoughts and try to remember the last episode I saw of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit.
“Hurry up,” Travis whines. I turn to glare at him and notice that his fangs are starting to show. Shane told me that very young vampires tend to “sharpen” under stress.
“Put those things away,” I tell him, “or we’ll leave you—”
I suddenly realize what’s missing, the only thing that can save a vampire from holy water. It sure as hell isn’t the power of positive thinking.
I curse under my breath, then turn to David. “Is your EMT kit handy?”
“At the house. Why?”
“Get me a sterile blade.”
His eyes narrow in confusion, then widen as he realizes what I mean to do. “Are you serious?”
“Just do it before I change my mind.”
David nods. “Be back in a minute.” He trots into the trees toward the road.
“Ciara, what are you planning?” Lori says.
I slowly sink to sit on the ground against the cross. “Something I’m sure I’ll regret.”
“Thanks. Again.” Travis stares at my neck. “You know, my fangs are sterile.”
“Shut up or I’ll cut off your hand myself—with the scalpel, not the sword.”
After a long, uncomfortable silence, Travis says, “I could really use a cigarette right now.”
Lori steps to his side. “Let me light it for you so you won’t catch fire.”
“Well, thanks, hon.” He gives her the lighter and a cigarette, which she puts in her mouth. “Ciara, by the way, I checked out that Rolling Stone reporter. He’s for real. World’s most boring background—not even a parking ticket or a bounced check.”
“Why does he want to know so much about vampires?”
“Cuz it’s his job?” He looks at Lori, who’s burned half his cigarette in her attempt to help. “You have to inhale at the same time as you light the end.”
“Is there any chance Jeremy could be involved with FAN?” I ask Travis. “Or whoever’s funding them?”
“I could do a deeper background check,” he says. “Assuming I survive the night.”
Lori erupts into a violent coughing fit, having finally lit the cigarette. Travis pats her on the back, murmuring an apology. I tune them out and try to gird up my courage for what I’m about to do.
All too soon, David arrives with his red EMT bag. Lori holds the flashlight for him while he puts on a pair of latex gloves, then digs out a scalpel and inserts a clean blade onto the tip.
My hands shake as I tear open a foil package of alcohol wipes. I roll up my sleeve and swab the inside of my left forearm. I never noticed how pale it is.
David comes toward me with the scalpel.
“No way.” I reach for the blade. “I prefer my pain self -inflicted.”
He reluctantly hands me the instrument. “Just a surface slice. Don’t open a vein or we’ll be taking you to the hospital.”
“My best friend in high school used to cut herself all the time. I know how it’s done.” I grip the scalpel handle. “She said it made her feel better.”
I stand up and move closer to the cross. When I lay the blade against my forearm, Lori lets out a whimper, then slaps her hand over her mouth. I can’t look at Travis; he’s probably drooling.
I close my eyes and lower the blade to my skin.
It doesn’t hurt much at all. I hold out my arm toward Travis. “Go ahead. Get it over with.”
“Uh, Ciara?” David says. “You didn’t break the skin.”
“Oh.” I open my eyes to see my arm unblemished.
David takes my hand with a gentle touch. “Let me try.”
For a moment I consider it, but the act seems too intimate.
I take a deep breath and press the blade against my arm, harder this time. The pain shoots out like lightning in every direction. I draw the scalpel along my arm, one inch, then another, hissing. A dark liquid line appears and swells. Blood, black in the night, oozes from the line and drips over my skin. I stare in fascination, the sight reminding me of the opening credits to a cheesy horror movie, where the words dribble down the screen.
Travis clears his throat.
I look up, the spell broken. “Sorry. Here.”
“Wait.” David moves behind Travis, withdrawing a stake from his inside coat pocket. He raises the point behind the vampire’s back, aimed at his heart. “Don’t make me say the ‘one false move’ line.”
Travis rolls his eyes. “I won’t hurt her.”
I move closer to him and raise my arm. “Remember, no sucking.” I turn m
y head away.
Travis takes my elbow. His lips graze my skin an inch below the wound, where I can already feel a stream of blood. At the first swallow, his grip tightens and trembles. I look at Lori, who watches the procedure with horrified absorption. When our eyes meet, she reaches out and squeezes my other hand.
“It might take a couple minutes,” I remind them. “When Shane was burned—”
“Hey, it worked.”
I turn to see Travis staring at his liberated hand like he thought he’d never see it again. I tug my arm out of his grip with as little disgust as I can muster.
“Amazing.” David moves back to his EMT bag and withdraws a packet of gauze, which he gives to Lori. “Open that for her.” He keeps a careful eye on Travis, who seems to be making an effort not to look at my wound.
As am I. “Gotta sit down.” Without waiting for help, I sink onto the dirt and put my head between my knees.
Lori crouches next to me and presses the gauze to my arm. “You’ll be okay.” She rubs my back. “You hardly lost any blood.”
“It’s not that. All this time I was hoping that healing Shane’s holy-water scars was just a fluke, or that maybe he was the special one and not me.” I look up at David. “Why am I like this?”
“I don’t know.” He carefully reinserts the stake in his inside jacket pocket. “In all my days with the Control, I never heard of anyone with this power.”
“I bet lots of people have it, but hardly anyone ever meets a vampire, much less gives them blood right after a holy - water injury, so no one would ever know.” I point to the sparkly night sky. “It’s like what they say about aliens. There’s probably tons of them, but the chances of finding them in this huge galaxy are close to zip.”
“Maybe.” He turns back to the repeater box.
“Are you going to unplug the transmitter?”
“No.” He closes the box and puts on the new lock. “While I was fetching the EMT kit, I thought about what you said. How we shouldn’t tip our hand until we have more information.” He clicks the lock shut and tugs on it to test it. “We can always disable it later, but there’s no turning back once we do.”
I look up at the cross. “Why didn’t it burn Travis up instead of trapping him? It’d be quicker that way.”
David grunts. “If they hate vampires, they wouldn’t want them to have a quick end. Imagine those hours, sitting there, watching the sky get lighter and lighter.”
Lori gives a sympathetic moan and squeezes Travis’s freed hand.
I imagine Shane stuck to the cross, awaiting certain death, then turn my darkest scowl on the repeater box. “And they call us evil.”
6
Basket Case
Late Saturday night, Shane speaks to me just as I’m falling asleep, as he is wont to do. “Ciara, you still awake?”
“Not if you need me to form complete.” I rub my eyes. “Sentences.”
Standing at my bedroom’s stereo, he lowers the volume on a soft, thrumming Morphine tune. “I have the most kickin’ idea.”
I smile at his outdated slang. “What’s that, Sweet Child O’ the Nineties?”
With an electronic chirp, he sets our cell phone alarms for an hour before morning twilight, then slides back under the sheets with me. “Come home with me for Christmas. To Youngstown.”
I shiver, and not just at the touch of his body, which even at its warmest after a full meal is still a degree cooler than mine. I shiver because I’d hoped to avoid this conversation.
“I figured we could spend Christmas Eve night at my mom’s,” he continues, “then tell them we have to leave that night to drive to your parents’.”
I keep my eyes closed, not wanting to see the hope on his face. “Don’t you work on even - numbered days?”
“Then we’ll go December twenty - third. Whatever.” Just as he settles in beside me, his phone rings. “Shit. Hang on, I know what this is about.” He gets up and fetches his phone from my desk. “Hey, Regina.” He sounds like he’s holding back a sigh when he says, “Yep, daylight savings time, I know. I’ll be home an hour early.” Pause. “Okay, two hours early.” His voice is level and patient, considering the nagging he must be enduring. “See you soon.” He hangs up and crawls back in bed. “Where were we?”
“Does Regina know you’re not a little kid? Why is she so overprotective?”
“Because being underprotective didn’t work out so well for her once.”
I open my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain some other time.” He takes my hand. “Now. Christmas. What do you think?”
“Youngstown is five hours from here. Won’t your family wonder why we can’t get there until ten thirty or eleven?”
“We could go up the night before and stay in one of those hotels where the windows face an interior courtyard. No sunlight.” He slips his fingers between mine, a wordless plea for my concession. “Or I could camp out in the bathroom with a towel stuffed under the door. No maid service, obviously.”
“Shane, it’s not the logistics.” I stroke my thumb over his before continuing. “You can’t see your family. Not for Christmas, not ever. The Control won’t allow it.”
His lip curls. “Fuck the Control.”
“No, they’ll fuck you, and your family. David says they’ll do whatever it takes to maintain your cover.”
“They wouldn’t—” He lets out a frustrated gasp and rolls on his back, pulling his hand out of mine. “They would. Those bastards would.” He rubs his face hard, then darts a sharp glance at me. “You told David we saw Mom and Eileen?”
“I was worried about you.”
He turns his glare back to the ceiling. “Goddamn it, Ciara.”
“He won’t tell the Control, but they’ll find out. They have a whole Anonymity Division.”
“I know.”
“One day when you get too old to look this young, they’ll give you a new name and a new identity.”
“I know.”
“They’ve done it for all the other DJs except you and Regina.”
“I know all about the Control.” He clenches a fist into the pillow beside his head. “Why do you think I hate them so much?”
“They’re just doing what’s best for you.”
He turns on me, rising to one elbow. “Breaking my mother’s heart? Turning my back on my family when they need me?”
“You’ve been out of their lives for twelve years.” I swallow hard. “They don’t need you.”
His eyes turn cold, followed by his voice. “Do you enjoy hurting me?”
“Shane . . .’’ My throat constricts. “Of course not. I wish things were different. No one wants you to be normal more than I do.”
That didn’t come out right.
He stares at me for a long moment. “What the fuck does that mean?” he growls. “Normal? You mean human?”
“No, I didn’t—”
“You can’t have normal. Not with me.” He throws back the blankets and starts to get out of bed.
“That’s not what I meant.” I sit up. “I just want you to be happy.”
He stops on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched. “I can’t always be that, either. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Anger wells up inside me, anger at my own helplessness. I can’t save him from the darkness, and I want to beat my fists against his back and scream at him to let me make him happy. Because if he just loved me enough, I could make him anything I want.
But I don’t punch him. I don’t even touch him, because I know it would feel like pity. I just sit here, cold and naked, blankets up to my armpits.
His voice softens. “I’ve become a monster.”
My heart twinges inside my chest. “Why do you say that?”
“I didn’t go to my father when he called for me. When he was dying.” He spits out the last word.
“The Control said no. If you’d tried, they would’ve stopped you.”
“But I didn’t try.�
� He puts his head in his hands, fingers slipping through his tangled hair. “I can’t make that same mistake with Mom and Eileen. I have a nephew I’ve never even met.”
“You can’t meet him, Shane. It’s too dangerous. That’s just reality.”
“Reality.” He scoffs. “Anymore, I don’t even know what that is. I’m ordered to pretend I’m a human pretending to be a vampire.” He turns halfway and speaks to the wall beside me, face silhouetted against the window’s streetlight. “Do you have any idea how fucked up that is, or is that your version of normal?”
My neck prickles at his attack. “How do you think I feel, masquerading as Elizabeth?”
“I think you like it. Living a lie is all you’ve ever known. That’s your normal.” His matter - of - fact tone chills me more than any accusation ever could. “We’re all operating in the world you’ve created for us. If I want to keep my job and my girlfriend, then I have to play this game of wink - wink - I’m -a- vampire.” His hand tugs the blanket as it closes into a fist. “But I hate it. I hate what people see of me.”
I flail for an argument that won’t make me sound like a shallow hack. “How can you hate having thousands of fans who love you?”
“They don’t know me. It’s bullshit for them to love me.”
It feels like we’re spiraling closer to an unbearable truth. “Do you believe that I know you?”
“I think you try.” He finally shifts to face me. “But you’re not there yet. You don’t want to be there yet.”
“I do want to,” I whisper unconvincingly.
“My listeners love some ideal of me as this easygoing, uber-cool dude who couldn’t possibly drink real blood, or if I did, it would be with the utmost irony. You want me to be that, too.” He jabs his fingertips against his chest. “You’re trying to change me until I become that person.”
“But change is good, right? It keeps you from fading.”
His gaze meets mine. “I’d rather fade than become someone I’m not.”
My chest feels like solid lead. My mind can’t slog through the panic to find the right words.
Shane stands and crosses to my desk, where he picks up my phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Shutting off your alarm so you can sleep in.”
Bad to the Bone Page 8