by eden Hudson
Grace nodded. She looked so tired.
“Maybe you should get some sleep,” I said.
“You’re the one who stayed up all night,” she said, giving me a fake smile.
“Yeah.” I scratched some more of the sweat-grit off my arm. “I need to get a shower.”
This time Grace’s smile was real and it made her look like someone’s little sister.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but—” She shrugged. “—you kind of do.”
Desty
Once I could hear the water running in the bathroom, I started searching for something to write a note on and tried to ignore the voice in my head that kept telling me what a jerk I was. I liked Colt. Even crazy, he was like the big brother I’d always wanted—sweet and smart and with that dry sense of humor. It didn’t feel right leaving him out here alone, but I needed to go find Tough and end this joke of a relationship.
I wasn’t proud of it, but I’d spent the night before crying until I made myself sick. Part of me didn’t want to break up with Tough, but all of me knew I couldn’t stay. One fight and I crashed and burned? That was unacceptable. Tempie needed me and I was not going to let some guy send me into self-destruct mode like Mom had. This had to end now, before I was locking myself in my room, trying to down a handful of pills and a bottle of wine.
The plan was pretty simple—go take Kathan and Tempie up on the joint-familiar offer. Sure, Kathan was probably evil and he had definitely destroyed Tough’s family, but if he was hurting Tempie, I couldn’t just leave her alone. Maybe as her joint-familiar I could help her fight back. Or if Tempie had been telling the truth about Kathan treating her well, maybe we could get this last battle thing over with and I could cut some sort of deal with him to release us after he took over. I hated to make a decision based on maybes, but right now maybes were all I had.
So I needed some paper. Colt was having enough trouble keeping straight what was real and what wasn’t. When he got out of the shower, I didn’t want him worrying about where I’d gone or if I’d ever really been there.
There were a few notebooks on the coffee table. I picked up one with a pen hooked in its metal rings and flipped it open. Each page was divided into obsessively neat columns. Epithets or maybe code names in the first column, then a date, another date, the number of days between the two, and the last column looked like cause of death. An entry near the end—Southern Guy—was dated a little less than two months ago. It and the next four entries all ended with GSW.
GSW. Crime procedurals and mysteries weren’t high on my list of favorite books, but I’d read a few. GSW was the acronym coroners used for a gunshot wound.
I flipped through a few pages. If this was a Cause of Death Contest, suicide had been winning until the GSWs started. And not nice, tame razor-to-the-wrists suicides. Chewing through arteries, smothering in a laundromat dryer, and drinking gasoline were a few of the ways these people had chosen to go.
These people. The words from the castoff family support message boards came back to me—U gotta think creatively. NEthing can b a weapon in there hands.
I looked through the columns again. Castoffs did make the most sense. Except why Colt would keep a record of cast-off familiars? To measure how long they had been enthralled before—presumably, because of the short time periods—Mikal had cast them off? So he could estimate how long he would have?
That was a pretty big leap to make and it relied on the assumption that Colt had known he was going to be enthralled, which couldn’t be possible unless he had asked to be. Willow had said Kathan gave Colt to Mikal as a punishment for killing her familiars, a sort of poetic justice thing. Of course, if Colt had known the fallen angels were going to react like that…
I picked up another notebook, hoping it would shed some light on the first. More columns—names, monetary amounts, shopping list quantities of guns, swords, axes, and ammo.
I know Colt had told me they’d sold some of their arsenal, but I’d been thinking too small-scale for the Whitneys. “Growing boys need to eat,” not “growing boys can run their own black-market weapons trade.” Their own really successful black-market weapons trade, according to this notebook.
In the bathroom, the faucet creaked and the shower shut off.
I threw the notebook down. Then hoped Colt hadn’t heard its pages flutter and smack on the coffee table.
“Somebody out there?” Colt yelled from the bathroom.
I lunged for the coffee table to flip shut the notebook’s cover.
Behind me, the bathroom door opened. Hoping I didn’t look as guilty as I felt, I stood up and spun around.
Colt was pointing a gun at me.
I slapped both hands over my mouth just in time to cut off the shriek.
“Dammit, Grace,” Colt barked, lowering the weapon. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was—I was—” I took a breath. Tried to stop shaking and make myself look away from the black metal almost glowing against Colt’s faded blue towel. Another breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. This was not as big a deal as I was making it. In fact, I should’ve seen the gun coming. Colt sold weapons—and he was essentially a rebel soldier living inside enemy lines—of course he’d keep a gun close by, just in case. But I’d almost ended up another GSW, like the familiars in Colt’s notebook.
My hand went back to my mouth. I scrubbed my fingers across my lips and tried to swallow the sudden urge to vomit. I’d just about gotten shot like the familiars in Colt’s notebook. Kathan had let Mikal enthrall Colt because he’d been killing her familiars. Carefully, clinically observing and then shooting her familiars. I’d almost gotten shot by a man who’d already shot five people in cold blood.
Colt ran his non-gun-hand through his wet hair.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Grace,” he said. He didn’t sound like a serial killer. He sounded like a big brother trying not to be mad at his slow younger sister. “But you can’t just not answer if I—”
“You shot Mikal’s familiars,” I said.
“Tac-Ops Tango-51, no suppressor, no cover,” he said, nodding as if it was just now coming back to him. “Clear shot six hundred fifty yards from the fence to the parlor Hell Window. She always enthralls them in the parlor.”
“People, Colt. You killed five people.”
“Almost six,” he said. “But Mikal was waiting for me when I went for the last one.”
“You stalked them and shot them. You wrote it down.” My voice was high-pitched and bordering on hysteric, but he was acting so calm. Like it was no big deal. “You’re psychotic.”
Colt was across the floor before I could move. I tried to back over the coffee table, but he grabbed my throat with one hand and pinned me to the tabletop like a bug. Droplets of water shook out of his hair and fell on my face.
“You want me to be sorry?” he growled. “She takes away everything but the worst things you’ve ever done and the sickest things you’ve ever thought. There’s nothing good left. And she’s creative enough that the pain never stops—you get desensitized to one kind of torture and she already has another one ready to go. You can actually feel your mind breaking down. After a while, you start to think you’d give anything to make her stop—anything but that. Now guess what she wants.”
I choked. All that would come out of my mouth was a whimpering sound.
“But you can’t just give it to her. She won’t take it. You have to beg her to make it go away.” Colt jammed the gun into my cheek. “Beg, Grace!”
Time stopped. Part of my brain stepped back and logged the throbbing cheek. Stinging eyes. Screaming lungs. It noted the weakness in the pit of my stomach and made me squeeze my legs together before I wet my pants. Coward, it said.
“Beg,” Colt yelled.
“P-please, Colt—”
“Beg her. She’s the only one who will save you.”
“Colt—” My voice broke. “Mikal, please!”
He shook his head and dug the gu
n harder into my cheek.
“After the first familiar, I threw up. Another time I was shaking so bad I screwed up the shot, got him in the throat. I was glad she stopped me before I killed the sixth guy. She locked me in the lunatic’s cell with nothing but pitch blackness and the guilt while she wore out that last familiar. I thought it was going to suffocate me.” Colt laughed and the sound raked down the back of my neck. “I was sorry. Now? If I’d known a year ago who she was going to enthrall, I would’ve shot them in their houses, in front of their families, while they rocked newborn babies—anything to keep them from going through that.”
Colt pulled the gun away from the burning, throbbing spot in my cheek.
“There’s only one way to get away from her, Grace.” It was like a switch had flipped. He was that big brother again, pleading with me to understand. “Once she’s in, there’s no other way to be free.”
That’s when I started crying—when Colt put the gun to his head.
“I have to get away,” he said. “I can’t do this anymore.”
His finger tightened on the trigger.
I flinched and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself for the shot and spray of blood, the sudden weight of a dead body falling on me.
“What the fuck, Sunshine? What’re you doing?”
My eyes snapped open.
Colt stumbled backward off the coffee table and away from me.
“Shit!” His hands were shaking so hard that I had trouble telling what he was doing. There was a click followed by a ratcheting sound. He threw the gun and the magazine down in opposite directions. “Grace—”
Colt started to take a step toward me, then dropped to his knees and grabbed his head.
“Run, Gracie,” he yelled at the floor. “I got him.”
I stood up. Hesitated.
Colt started to get up, but he fell forward onto his hands and knees.
“Haul ass,” he yelled. “Get out! Go!”
That time I did. The world slanted under my feet and I couldn’t stop crying, but I tripped out the door and off the porch, into the dirt and scorched grass outside the cabin. Before the scrape on my shin even started to bleed, I jumped up and took off again.
Tough
Sometimes during the winter, Harper would turn down the heat to save money. Way down, like to the point it wouldn’t click on until the inside temp dropped to the low fifties. It’s actually pretty good for a hangover, but not for staying warm unless you’ve got someone else in bed with you. That’s what I thought was going on when I started to wake up—Harper had turned down the heat, her and Jax were keeping each other warm and I was freezing my balls off.
Then I rubbed my hands across my face and cut my lip open on my shiny new fangs. All of last night came back, including a high-def replay of the statutory feeding.
I silent-groaned. Someone needed to shoot Jason Gudehaus in his temperature-sensitive cock for stealing my voice when I really needed it to yell “shit.” But if I did yell, Harper might come ask me what was wrong and I couldn’t imagine “I got some from your little sister last night” going over too well whether I meant blood or sex or both.
Someone had thought to pull my window-sheet down so I didn’t catch on fire. Too bad. That would’ve solved a whole load of problems.
I pushed up onto my elbows and checked the clock. Almost eleven. Sounded like no one else was in the house. Jax was probably across town doing stuff for the council and Harper would be out at the lake, lifeguarding. Scout would be in school, wouldn’t she? That was where jailbait usually hung out on a Thursday morning.
I got up and grabbed a towel off the floor. It smelled like Desty. I put it up to my face and took a deep breath. Thinking there was a good chance I’d lose Desty kind of made me sick. I had to convince her to stay somehow. I had to protect her from Kathan, right? That would make a good excuse if I couldn’t come up with anything else.
Maybe when Jax got home I could ask him the rules about becoming someone’s protector. He would help me figure out a way to keep Desty safe.
I went down the hall to the bathroom, turned the shower on all the way hot and got in. If I was still a human, I probably would’ve ended up with third-degree burns the way our water heater runs. As a vamp, though, it felt like getting microwaved. Heat soaked down through my skin and muscle, not quite to my bones. I stayed in for a long time, but the hot water ran out before I cooked all the way through.
When I got out, I could hear Jax’s game music playing in the living room. I got dressed and went back to my room for some paper and a pen. That shower heat faded way too fast.
Jax was on the couch when I got downstairs—shooting werewolves, it sounded like.
“Hey.” He sounded surprised to see me, but he didn’t pause his game or anything, just looked down at his Council cell phone on the coffee table. “I figured you’d sleep through. Harper said most new vamps sleep all day.”
I shrugged.
“Maybe it has something to do with Tiffani making you,” he said, going back to his game. “She’s a total insomniac. Thus the bakery’s hours.”
That hadn’t occurred to me before. I sat on the couch beside Jax, trying not to think about how I wanted to move closer to his body heat. Being undead really screws with your masculinity.
“Want to play?” Jax asked. “I’ll switch it to Pack Mode.”
I shook my head.
“Cool.” He nodded. Switched guns to an M4 and cleared out a basement full of werewolves. “So… You’re a vamp.”
I found an empty page in my notebook and wrote, Someone was going to kill me anyway, might as well be me. You got magic?
His heart sped up and I swear I heard him start sweating harder.
“Yeah,” he said. He swallowed, but he didn’t look at me. “Yeah. I wanted to make it so Harper wouldn’t have to work for Logan. I mean, so I could protect her myself. You know?”
Jax never stuttered. We’d been best friends since kindergarten, and even then he always knew just what he was going to say before he said it. He was smart—and not awkward-smart like Desty. Smooth. I always figured that was one of the reasons Harper liked him so much.
Then he missed the target on his game and a werewolf mauled his guy.
Where did
Jax didn’t even let me finish writing before he paused his game and started talking. He should’ve waited. I was just going to give him a hard time, ask him where all his badass gaming skills went.
“You got to understand, man,” Jax said. “When you trade somebody for their magic—not that backwoods witchcraft the council uses, real magic—you have to give them what they want. And it’s never something small or easy, it’s always hard. It always hurts somebody.”
His heart was breaking land speed records now. He reached up and wiped sweat off of his forehead with his wristband.
“I know you understand,” he said. “You’re pissed, but you get it. You would’ve done the same thing if Harper was your girlfriend. She shouldn’t have to be bleeding for a vamp just so she’s safe. You’d do the same thing for Desty, wouldn’t you?”
What did you do, Jax? started running through my head in a loop.
He stood up and so did I.
Then his phone started ringing. Jax lunged for it, but I was closer and faster. The screen said “Fucktard Calling.” I hit the answer icon.
“I was in the middle of a goddamn recording session, Carpenter—”
Jason. Jason Fucking Gudehaus. The phone dropped.
Inside of me, death metal screamed so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else. Jax had traded Jason Gudehaus—my voice for his magic. That explained why Jason didn’t use magic to kick my ass when I tracked him down.
Dammit, Jax, you’re supposed to be my best friend.
I took a step toward Jax. He stumbled backwards.
“I knew once I got everything together so Harper and I could leave, I could get your voice back. I was going to get it back.”
He smacked into
the door and the screen popped out of its frame.
“But then you went and killed yourself and there’s no way to change a corpse—not even with magic— I tried, man, I asked everyone at the Council, but you can’t change a corpse! I did it for Harper. You loved her, too, you know what it’s like to not be able to protect the girl you love.”
Harper was right to tell Desty you can’t be weak in this town. If you do, they’ll fuck you over—and not just “they” the people who hate you and should want to fuck you over, “they” the people you trust. The people you fucking love.
Jax put both hands up and shoved them at me, but whatever the spell was, he messed it up. It just grazed my shoulder. He ripped the door open and backpedaled.
I think Jax was trying to get out in the sun so that I couldn’t get to him. Maybe he thought he could talk me down if he had more time. But all those years he’d been getting babysat by video games, I was fighting a fucking war. Then when the war ended, Ryder and Colt were still training me to be a good little holy soldier. Even over the last five years when the only exercise I got was sex, I was banging a nympho vamp six ways from Sunday two- and three-plus times a day. With a five minute head start and zero vamp speed, he still wouldn’t have beat me to the edge of the porch.
I grabbed his shoulder and chin and wrenched them in opposite directions. Not the way I’d been taught to break a neck, but the crunch and tear sounded just the same. Jax dropped, half on the porch, half hanging off in the sunlight. My head rang like a power chord and a screaming-crowd rush shot through my veins.
“Jax?” Harper’s voice cut through the kill-high. She was coming down the sidewalk, running now. Scout was behind her. “Tough, what did you do? Jax, baby?”
His heart beat one more time, then stopped.