Fang Girl

by Helen Keeble

  A long silence.

  “You’re supposed to say something.” Ebon’s voice was fainter, as if he was some distance from the handset.

  I blinked. “Huh?”

  “Not you!” Ebon snapped. Then, evidently not to me, “Please, I haven’t got time. Say something. Anything.”

  “No way,” said a boy’s voice, shaking but determined. “You’re trying to use us to lure her here!” He paused. “Oops.”

  It was Zack.

  There was no way that could be a vampire imitating him. The iPhone glass cracked beneath my crushing fingers. “Ebon! If you’ve hurt him, if you’ve so much as touched him—”

  “We’re fine, we’re all fine here.” This time it was my dad’s voice, filled with forced calm. It was exactly the same way he’d sounded when he’d had to tell us that Mum had collapsed with acute appendicitis; it had taken weeks before he’d admitted that she’d nearly died. Hearing that tone now made my throat tighten in dread. “Stay away from here.”

  “It’s all under control,” added my mum’s voice.

  “You are handcuffed to chairs and surrounded by hostile vampires!” Ebon practically wailed. “Will you all please be sensible?”

  As usual, it seemed that fell to me. “I get it. Hostages. What do you want, Ebon?”

  “It’s not what I want, it’s what Hakon wants.” Ebon took a deep breath. “You. All of you. The dhampir, the girl, yourself … and Lily.”

  “No!” Sarah exclaimed. She reached for the phone, but I swung it out of her reach. I’ll handle it, I mouthed, and she subsided, though her face was pale and set.

  “If you all turn yourselves in, Hakon will release your family,” Ebon said. “If you don’t—”

  “Don’t do it, Xanthe,” Mum interrupted. “Three for four is a bad deal. Stay away, and send help to—” Her words degenerated into a muffled mumble.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t—ow—let you tell her—ow—where we are,” Ebon said, evidently to Mum. “Would you please stop biting—ow!—me! I’m trying to help you all here!”

  “It would have been a lot more helpful if maybe you hadn’t kidnapped them in the first place,” I snarled.

  “I didn’t! I swear I didn’t, Jane.”

  “That’s actually true, to be fair,” Zack said. “A couple of big guys grabbed us not long after you went into the hospital. Ebon’s been pretty cool.” There was a momentary thoughtful pause. “Apart from the whole tying-us-up thing, of course. But he was very apologetic about it.”

  “Zack, stop telling your sister how nice the evil vampires are,” Dad said firmly. “Don’t you believe a word Ebenezer says, Jane.” Seemed that Ebon had come clean with them about his real name and origin. “Not unless he offers you a show of good faith. Like releasing your brother.”

  “I told you, I can’t do that,” Ebon said wearily. “Jane, I promise I’ll get your family out of this. Please trust me.”

  “Yeah, right.” But I had to admit, there was something raw about Ebon’s voice that made me wonder. It was a stark contrast to Lily’s polished self-composure. “Ebon, let’s say I do what you want.” Sarah glanced sharply at me; I shook my head at her. “What happens then?”

  “They’ll kill Lily!” Sarah burst out. “They’ll kill you, Jane, it’s suicide!”

  “No, Hakon’s planning to imprison Lily, not stake her,” Ebon said. “He wants you to work for him, Jane. He always has, that’s been the whole point of all this.”

  “You don’t want to do that, Xanthe,” said Mum. “This Hakon is not an ethical employer.”

  Sarah grabbed my sleeve. “Listen to her, Jane. Lily’s told me all about Hakon. He’s pure evil.”

  And that was Sarah saying it. I rubbed at my face, trying to fight the sleepiness that clouded my thoughts. “I have to say, this really doesn’t sound like a good deal, Ebon. I don’t want to work for anyone.”

  “That’s my girl,” Dad said. “You stay safe.”

  “You all really aren’t helping here, you know,” Ebon said with a resigned sigh. I heard footsteps, and guessed that he was moving out of earshot from my family. “Jane, we’re vampires. We can’t help but be under the thumb of those older than us. You can accept that, or you can die.”

  “Lily escaped,” Sarah said, lifting her chin proudly.

  “For less than a hundred years,” Ebon snapped. “That’s nothing. Even I’m almost twice as old as that, and most of the other vampires regard me as an infant. My own grandsire? She is eight thousand years old. To Hakon, Lily might as well have run away last afternoon. If it wasn’t for this experiment of hers, he might have been content to let her run for another couple of centuries before getting around to disposing of her. Until now, he hasn’t even made any real effort to find her.”

  “Apart from sending you after her,” I pointed out.

  Ebon laughed: a bitter, painful sound. “Me?” His farm boy accent thickened. “I’m a joke.”

  “You’re from a different Bloodline. So you’ve escaped from your own sire.”

  “No, my Elder simply doesn’t care where I am or whether I’m alive or dead. Why do you think I’ve been trying for over a century to get accepted by another Bloodline? It’s hard, impossibly hard, to be a lone vampire. You’re constantly dodging hunters sent by other lineages. The Bloodlines hate rogues. And on top of all that you still have to find food, shelter, money, all without officially existing. And everyone you ever knew is dead and everything keeps changing, utterly—” He broke off. When he spoke again, his voice was more composed, but quiet. “It’s … very lonely.”

  “Oh, my heart just bleeds for you, guy who has my little brother tied to a chair.” Despite my brave words, my unease was ballooning into full-scale panic. Ebon may have deceived me before, but I couldn’t persuade myself that he was lying this time; the self-hatred and hopelessness in his voice were all too real.

  “You have to turn yourself in, Jane.” Ebon’s words were starting to slur together, as if he was badly drunk. “By the deadline. Otherwise … otherwise, Hakon’ll—”

  “Ebon!” I was finding it hard to speak now myself. “Talk to me! What deadline?”

  “Tomorrow night. Midnight,” Ebon mumbled, barely audible. “Hakon’s deadline. Surrender yourself and them, or he’ll kill one of … one of your family. Jane, I’m sorry, so sorry … won’t let him … I won’t.”

  I stared at the dead phone, my mind struggling as if my thoughts had to swim uphill through syrup. Capture Lily. Turn her and Van and Sarah and myself in. Tomorrow, midnight. I couldn’t think. There was no way I’d ever be able to take her down on my own, not when she could practically put me on my knees just with her smile. Think.

  “Jane.” Sarah grabbed my lax hands, squeezing them fiercely between her own. I could barely feel the pressure through my numb skin. “It’s okay. I’ll think of something, I’ll make a plan while you’re resting.”

  “Help me,” I croaked, forcing myself upright. My feet were dead lumps of flesh; I lurched across the room like a zombie. “Living room—help me!”

  I could feel the rising sun like the muzzle of a gun pressed to the back of my neck. By the time Sarah had supported me to the living room, my legs were dead from the hips down. A faint gray light filtered through the gap in the curtains; my vision blurred. Everything was too bright, like an overexposed photo.

  “You.” Van glared at me. His wrists were rubbed raw where he’d been trying to free himself. “By my mother’s blood, I will stake you if it’s the last thing I do.”

  I’d never been so glad to see anyone before in my life. I tripped and sprawled, having to crawl the last few feet. Van twisted in his chains, as if he thought I was trying to attack him—but I reached past him.

  “Jane, what are you doing?” Sarah yelled, swaying as I pulled strength from her in order to snap the chains binding Van to the radiator.

  “No time.” I grabbed Van’s leather-clad shoulder, unable to stop myself from collapsing against him. “I need you
,” I said, up into his puzzled but still suspicious face. “Hakon’s got my family. Get Lily. Help me!”

  “What?”

  I could throttle him for being so slow. “I’m hiring you, hunter!”

  “What? No!” Sarah lunged for me. With a silent apology, I opened the blood-bond between us, deliberately drawing as much power as I could.

  Sarah had just enough time to gasp, “Oh, you total cow,” before she keeled over. Fresh energy roared through my veins as she toppled into a limp heap.

  I shook my head, clawing for a few more minutes of consciousness. “Ebon called,” I said to Van, my voice steadier. “He’s got my family. Hakon’s going to kill them unless I give myself up by tomorrow midnight.”

  Enlightenment dawned across Van’s face. “And it’s not only you he wants.”

  “Right. He wants Lily and Sarah and—” I stopped dead.

  I was too late; Van had already worked it out. “And me,” he finished neutrally.

  I hesitated, then nodded.

  “And you want me to secure your sire for you.”

  I nodded again, mute. We stared at each other, barely inches apart. His eyes were so green in the daylight. They studied me, reading my desperation, and his own expression softened. I felt the rough calluses on his palm as he cupped my face in his hand, supporting my drooping head.

  “I am a hunter,” he said, his deep voice very quiet. “And I protect the innocent with my blood. You can trust me.”

  I closed my eyes for a second in relief, and then wished I hadn’t, as I couldn’t pry them open again. The dawn was beating on my skull like a hammer. Van’s hand holding me up was so warm, so nice. I could float away.

  “Jane.” Van’s voice drifted down from somewhere very far away. I forced my eyelids up for a fraction of a second. His intent face swam before me, his hair blazing like fire. “Just in case … don’t surrender Sarah, but anything else you have to do to save your family … do it. Just do it.”

  I was falling back into my grave. Earth closed over my head.

  His words followed me into the darkness. “If you have to, give me to the vampires.”

  Chapter 21

  We,” said a cold, curt voice, jolting me awake, “have got to talk.”

  “Bzuh?” My eyes were blurry with sleep, and my neck was killing me. I seemed to be lying full length and facedown on the carpet. I managed to lift my head a few inches and saw a row of tan blurs laid out inches from my nose. I blinked them into focus.

  Scrabble tiles. Y, O, U, A, R, E, A, N, I, D, I, O, and T.

  An instant migraine lit up my skull. Wincing, I reached for the tiles, intending to rearrange them into a logical order—and hesitated. Either they could go in alphabetical order, or numerical sequence, but not both at the same time....

  “Argh!” I clutched at my head. Any vampire couldn’t help but be paralyzed with indecision over the impossible choice. This was far worse than mere paper clips. Glaring at the unholy things, I came to the obvious conclusion.

  “VAN HELSING, I AM GOING TO MURDER YOU.” My hands hovered helplessly over the tiles. “You jerk, we had a deal!”

  “Not with me,” someone said from somewhere above me. I looked up, squinting against the searing glare of the light. Sarah was sitting on the sofa, with Lily’s gun in one hand and a seriously pissed-off expression on her face. Van was sprawled on the floor in front of her, limp as a dead fish.

  “Things,” Van said, his syllables slurring together drunkenly, “didn’t go ’xactly as planned.”

  “No kidding,” I said. Sarah was using him as an impromptu footstool. I tried pulling strength from her down the Bloodline, but it felt like trying to suck a thick milk shake through a thin straw—the pulse of power between us beat slow and sluggish. Looked like I wasn’t going to be able to lay her out that easily. I tried to think of ignoring the Scrabble tiles and making a lunge for her, and had to squeeze my eyes shut against the bolt of pain. Opening them again, I nodded at Sarah’s gun. “You know you can’t actually kill me with that, right?”

  “Yes.” Sarah had the gun pointed rock-steady at my forehead. “But think how much fun I could have shooting you.”

  “Don’t shoot her,” Van mumbled. “’S a pretty nice vampire. Nice pretty vampire. Something.” He hiccuped.

  I stared at him, at least as best as I could while wrestling with the siren call of the Scrabble tiles. “What’s up with him?”

  “Drugged to the eyeballs.” Sarah twitched the gun down to point at the back of Van’s head. “And I’m pretty sure bullets would ruin his whole day. Now, do I have your attention?”

  “Absolutely.” I had no doubt that she’d do it too. She looked healthier, stronger, in the bright sunlight streaming through the window; it picked out the warm tones of her skin and turned her brown eyes to topaz—

  Hang on. Sun?

  “Wait a sec. It’s day. And I’m awake.” This was a bit of an overstatement—my dry eyes burned, and I felt as though someone was lightly and repeatedly bouncing bricks off my skull. “How?”

  “I reckoned that if Ebenezer Lee could use drugs to stay awake, I could do the same to get you to wake up.” Sarah waved an empty jar in one hand. “You have to be tapping my blood a little bit, all the time. So I loaded up with caffeine, in the hope that it would trickle down to you.”

  I squinted at her. The way that she seemed to be vibrating was not, in fact, just a trick of the light. “My God, how much did you drink?”

  She brandished the empty jar again, her eyes bright and slightly crazed. “I don’t know. I poured hot water straight into a full jar of instant. I had to eat it with a spoon.”

  Great. Not only was I being held at gunpoint—or rather, Scrabble tile–point—by a juvenile sociopath, she was a juvenile sociopath hopped up on enough caffeine to fuel an entire class of students through end-of-year exams. No wonder I was awake. I was amazed that Sarah wasn’t dead. I looked down at my hands, which were shuffling tiles around of their own volition. Nope, alphabetical order wasn’t any better. “Did you go through all this trouble to wake me up in order to yell at me?”

  “No.” Sarah leaned forward, shifting the gun so that she could rest her elbows on her knees. “This is the only way to be certain that no one is listening in. You can’t give in to Hakon’s demands. It’s madness. Worse, it’s stupid.”

  “They’ve got my family.” My voice cracked on the word. “My family, Sarah!”

  She held my gaze, unfaltering. “Lily is my family.”

  I pressed my lips together on the words That’s different. It couldn’t help.

  “That’s diff’rent,” Van supplied helpfully. I winced as Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “’S a vampire. Should be dead.” He frowned as though wrestling with a deep conundrum. “Deader. More dead. Whatever.”

  “Um, ignore Van, he’s got issues,” I said hurriedly as Sarah looked like she might be contemplating taking out a kneecap or two. “He doesn’t mean it personally. I mean, he’d kill me without a second thought.”

  “Not true,” Van said, sounding hurt. “Feel sad abou’ it after.”

  “Lily’s all I have, Jane. I won’t let you harm her.” Sarah’s face was fierce, uncompromising. “Anyway, Hakon’s deal stinks. There’s no way he’s going to release your family, no matter what. You really believe he’d let go of such a good bargaining chip? He’s going to keep your family locked up for the rest of their lives, so you’ll be forced to do what he wants.”

  I bit my lip. I hated to admit it, but what she said made sense. “How can you be so sure?”

  Sarah shrugged. “It’s what I’d do, if I was him.”

  And Sarah was, let’s face it, evil. I rubbed my forehead, fighting back both a Scrabble-induced migraine and a growing sense of despair. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, dropping my hand again. “Whether or not Hakon means to keep his word, I have to try. I can’t leave my family.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Sarah said, sounding annoyed, as if I was insisting
on stating the blatantly obvious. “They’re your family. We have to rescue them.”

  “We?” I indicated the Scrabble tiles. “I thought you were trying to save Lily. Keep me here until past the deadline.”

  “Yeah, what a good idea.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’ll just royally piss off the unstoppable supervampire I’m psychically linked to, by causing the horrific deaths of her nearest and dearest. Now why didn’t I think of that? Oh, yeah, because I’m not a drooling idiot.” She gestured impatiently with the gun, making me flinch. “We’re bound together now, for better or worse, and that means that our problems are shared. Now, are you going to stop flailing around like a noob and let me help? God knows you need someone to do your thinking for you. Truce?”

  “Truce.” I hesitated. “But what if the only way to save my family is to sell out Lily?”

  “Let’s put it this way.” Sarah stuck the gun in her waistband and hopped off the sofa. “Don’t. I won’t be so nice to you next time.” She swept up the Scrabble tiles, much to my relief. “Anyway, I came up with a plan. We know Ebenezer called from Hakon’s office, so all we have to do is use the dhampir here,” she kicked Van, “to locate Hakon using your blood. As long as we get there in daylight, we can walk in there and bust your family out while Hakon’s goons are still sleeping.”

  I thought it over, searching for weaknesses. “You know, that actually sounds like a good plan.”

  “Yep,” Van said. “Good plan. Very good plan.” His tone turned tragic. “Won’t work, o’ course. Apart from that, ’s perfect.”

  I looked at Sarah. “How long is he going to be like this?”

  “Should wear off in an hour or two.” She frowned down at him. “I hope. His over-sharing has been kind of tedious. I really didn’t need to learn so much about his mommy issues.”

  I struggled to prop Van up against the sofa. He kept sliding down again, with a glazed look on his face. “Why won’t the plan work, Van? I thought you could track anyone.”

  “Can. Anyone. Jus’ need blood, can find ev’ry vampire of that Bloodline in abou’ five hundred miles.” Van seemed to mull this over for a moment. “Huh,” he said, sounding surprised. “I’m awesome.” Sarah snorted.