by eden Hudson
Harper skidded on her knees in the brown grass next to the porch.
“Tough, what did you do?” She pulled him into her lap. “Call an ambulance! Get his phone and call 911!”
Scout was turning toward the house, but stress kicked in my vamp speed like crazy. Before she could take a step I was back outside with the phone, dialing.
“Rural Emergency Services. Which county are you in?”
I just killed my best friend. I stared down at his body. Sweat dried on his face, sticking his hair to his forehead in brownish-blonde spikes. Back when we were fighting with each other over Harper, I had thought I was dying from being alone. I’d tried to chalk it all up to wanting her, but most of it had been missing hanging out with Jax.
“Hello? Can you hear me? This is Rural Emergency—”
I shoved the phone at Scout.
“Hello—hi,” she said. She had to back up and cover the mouthpiece to block out Harper’s screaming. “We’re in Halo. Six-twelve Lone Jack Street. We need an ambulance—”
It wouldn’t help. Jax was dead, cooling off. Harper kissed his eyes and mouth and begged him not to leave her, but it was too late.
Shivers started rolling through my body like crazy. Jax was dead. I’d killed Jax. I hunched over and gagged until a little bit of vamp venom came up.
“The ambulance’s on the way,” Scout told Harper.
“Wait for it in the street,” Harper said.
“But—”
“Just fucking do it!”
I heard Scout go and Harper kick the old porch swing. Wood snapped. I stood up. Turned around. She had one of the broken one-bys from the swing in her fist. My vamp speed was still on, but I didn’t move, just watched Harper coming after me like a slow-motion vamp hunter.
I laced my hands together on the back of my neck, thinking about the way Jax called me a truck-fuck redneck retard when he was really wound up and how I gave him crap for being a creep gamer with flames and kanji on his shirts and a wristband so sweat wouldn’t mess up his grip on the controller.
Harper tried to stake me, but the one-by was too dull. It hit the bone over my heart and scraped off, ripped down my chest and stomach, leaving behind splinters. I saw it, but I couldn’t feel it. When Harper dropped the stake and started hitting me, I couldn’t feel that, either. There should’ve been pain, but there was nothing.
Scout stood out in the road, this sad look on her face like she knew Harper couldn’t hurt me enough. Harper screamed and hit me and kicked me and prayed and cussed and screamed some more. I don’t know how long it went on. I just held onto my neck and watched her try to tear me apart because I killed him. I killed Jax.
When the ambulance got there, Scout and the paramedics helped Harper into the back with Jax’s body. Before they closed the doors, I saw Harper lay her head on his chest. Then they left.
I was shivering again.
“Come on,” Scout said. She took my arm and led me inside the house. “Here.” She turned her head and pulled my face down to her throat. “I know you need something stronger, but this’ll help for now. Tonight I’ll make it stronger.”
I drank. The liquor buzz spread out through my head. I felt Scout slip her hand into my jeans, but I couldn’t get up. I grabbed her wrists and held them behind her back until she went dead weight on me. My vamp mind tried to react to the fake collapse, but I shut it off.
Scout got her feet under her.
“I need to get to the hospital, baby. Harper’s going to need a ride home and—”
I pushed her back and fell onto the couch. It was still warm where Jax had been sitting. His game was waiting for him to come back and beat level ten or whatever.
“Okay,” Scout said. “I’ll be back.”
Her footsteps crossed the porch and Jax’s car started. She pulled out of the driveway. Idled in the street for a few seconds. Girls’ voices were talking, but I didn’t try to make any sense out of what they were saying. Then Scout drove off.
Footsteps on the porch. The foamy citrus beer smell beat Desty inside.
“Tough?”
There was a can of that candy-piss Red Hot energy drink Jax was always drinking sweating on the coffee table next to his new controller. His new wireless controller. Jax had gotten a wireless controller and I was too stupid to realize that meant he had a spell to make it work with all the NP-energies in this town. But he’d been too in love with his games not to get a wireless controller.
“Scout told me what happened.” Desty crouched down between my knees and looked into my eyes. “Tough? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
Desty’d been crying, she was bleeding from a dirty scrape on her shin, and Scout had just told her that I killed my best friend, but she wanted to know if I was okay.
I grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back against the wall. Tried to rip her shorts and underwear off, but my hands were shaking too bad. She shoved my hands out of the way and pulled them off for me while I got my jeans down. I couldn’t think, I just knew Desty would take some of it away from me.
It couldn’t have felt good for her—she wasn’t ready, and I didn’t even think of getting a condom to make it warmer for her—but she didn’t try to stop me. She just kept whispering in my ear and touching my face.
After I came, I was crying. Desty didn’t tell me to man the hell up or to stop bawling. Half of what she said didn’t even make any sense. Stuff like how it was okay, everything would be okay. Feeling the heat of her skin against me, hearing her tell me the stupidest, most obvious lies anybody had ever made up…I don’t know what you would call that feeling. Good? Seems like a shitty thing to get to feel after you just killed your best friend. But that was me, right? Vamp-Whore Drunk-Ass Murderer Tough Whitney—kill your best friend, fuck the girlfriend you cheated on last night, and call it a day.
Thank God Mom and Dad are dead. Thinking that tore something way down deep in my soul that I had figured was already long gone.
Somehow, Desty got me up to the bedroom and held me some more. I didn’t fall asleep, but I felt every part of me shut off at the same time.
Desty
I combed my fingers through Tough’s hair again. He hadn’t moved in more than an hour except to blink. His body was there, but he wasn’t. Even as hot as it was in the room, I was starting to shiver from prolonged exposure to his cool skin. I needed to move, but I didn’t want to. I just wanted to feel him next to me and never, ever tell him that I’d come here to break up with him.
God, he was like a drug. As soon as I got close to him, all I wanted was to stay. I pushed my face against his. Felt my tears turn icy-cold when they hit his cheek.
“I can’t do this, Tough. You got the wrong twin.”
It felt like something started bleeding in my chest. I couldn’t believe that this was just now becoming obvious to me. Tough and I were like a bad joke somebody had thought up while they were drunk. The coward and the badass. The doormat and the rebel. Ha, ha, ha.
“This isn’t about what happened to Jax,” I said because I thought he might need to hear it, even though Jax’s death was just one more thing on the laundry list of crap I couldn’t handle. When I closed my eyes, I could see Colt’s face with the gun pressed to his temple, begging me to understand that he’d never wanted to be a murderer. “I know you’re not a killer, Tough, not really. I know that—that—”
That what? That sometimes, some places there’s just nothing that can happen but violence and death?
The screen door downstairs opened.
“Tough Whitney?” It was a man’s voice. “You here?”
“Check the kitchen, I’ll check upstairs.” I knew that voice—Bailey, from the Witches’ Council.
The footsteps on the stairs shocked me into action. I didn’t have any pants or underwear on. I pushed Tough off of my chest and found a pair of boxer briefs on the floor. The butt didn’t fit right because they were for a guy and the empty front hung loose, but they were better than being naked.
/> “Anybody up here?” Bailey called down the hall.
Tough didn’t help me when I rolled him onto his back, then pulled up and buttoned his jeans. I’d just gotten them zipped when Bailey stepped into the doorway. She had a professional vamp-hunting stake in one hand and a little cheesecloth bag in the other.
“In here,” I said, a little breathless and a lot late.
“Yeah, I see that,” Bailey said. She turned back and called down the hall, “Up here, Brandt.”
Brandt—the man who worked at the Council with Bailey and Raelyn. The three of them were Jax’s protectors. Had been Jax’s protectors.
“You’re here because of Jax,” I said.
Bailey nodded.
“I’m not going to let you stake him,” I said, backing closer to Tough. But I could hear Brandt jogging up the stairs. I probably couldn’t take them both and I didn’t have any sea salt or know any other ways to disarm a witch. I probably shouldn’t have tried to bluff, but “So don’t try” came out before I could stop it.
Bailey held up the bag. “Garlic. The stake is just in case he doesn’t go peacefully.”
Garlic? Instant vamp-paralytic. All you had to do was put it in the vamp’s mouth.
Brandt made it to the room and I was officially outnumbered. I raised my fists and tried to stand like Coach C had showed us in PE/Self-Defense.
Brandt put up his hands to show he wasn’t a threat.
“Tough has to appear before Kathan,” he said. His voice was soft, sure, and safe. I wanted to hear more. “Legally, we can’t exact revenge for Jax, but we can petition Kathan to put down a problem vamp. You’ve got to let us take him to the Dark Mansion to stand trial.”
Brandt took a step closer, but he wasn’t going to hurt Tough, so I didn’t move. By the time I realized he was using a pacification spell on me, it was too late.
“Good job, sweetheart,” Brandt said, his voice still warm and comforting. “Now put your fists down. You’re safe.”
If it had been Tempie, she would’ve kicked Brandt in the balls for trying to pacify her, roused Tough somehow, disarmed Bailey, and walked out, throwing some smart remark over her shoulder.
All I did was let Brandt zip-tie-cuff my hands behind me and hate myself.
Bailey stepped around me, but I couldn’t turn to see what she was doing.
“Tough, wake up,” I said. I couldn’t raise my voice or even make it sound urgent. “Please, Tough, help me.”
It sounded like the world’s shortest struggle—sudden onset, suddenly over.
Bailey stood back and nodded at Brandt. He took a cell phone out of his pocket and pushed the call button. “The Whitney kid’s immobilized. Bring in the coffin.”
I let Bailey lead me down to the front room. I watched Raelyn bring in a pine box on a dolly. The pacification was fading. I wanted to start screaming—especially when Bailey and Brandt carried Tough’s paralyzed body downstairs. Except for his open eyes, Tough looked like a corpse who had choked to death on that little bag of garlic. His arms and legs hung limp and his head lolled on his shoulders as they loaded him into the coffin.
Bailey shut the lid and latched it.
“You’re taking him to the Dark Mansion?” I asked. Holy crap, the pacification had worn off and I still sounded calm—almost disinterested. They were loading Tough up like a dead guy on his way to the graveyard and I was just talking. Not screaming or freaking out or anything. “Do I have to go, too? I wasn’t here when he killed Jax, so I wouldn’t be much good as a witness.”
They looked back and forth at each other for a few seconds.
“Guess you’ve got a little self-preservation in you after all,” Bailey said. Raelyn handed her a Swiss army knife and Bailey cut the zip-tie cuffs off my wrists in two sharp yanks. “You’re smarter than Jax was. Go.”
As I left, I grabbed Tough’s John Deere hat and my shorts off the floor. I skirted the white contractor van backed up to the porch and ran for Tough’s truck.
Tiffani
The lull before the lunch rush. I leaned on the counter, looking at the third empty booth from the door and planned for tomorrow. Maybe I would make cinnamon rolls.
Yeah, and then maybe I should watch some of Colt’s favorite X-Files episodes, and later go hang out near Lonely’s Tattoo Parlor where I could smell the ink. I shook my head and went back to wash some dishes while there weren’t any customers. What I needed to do was wait out the sun and go eat someone.
Mitzi’s connection opened and I looked at the clock.
What’re you doing up? I asked. It’s not even noon yet.
All this traveling is playing hell with my circadian rhythm, she said.
You’ve been in Nashville for almost two months.
Well, now we’re headed back to Halo. She sounded pissed. Your stupid little experiment’s running amok and Jason wants to get to him before he gets us.
I put my hands under the hot water. Experiment?
Tough Whitney, Loaded Gun, she said. He found out that Carpenter kid helped Jason steal his voice and then he killed him. Snapped his neck, Jason said.
Damn it. This was exactly the sort of thing I should’ve seen coming before I made Tough, but I’d been so caught up in the idea that he could get Colt away from Mikal.
Yeah, great job, Mitzi said. Now Jason’s got it in his head that he needs to get up there and stake Tough before Tough kills him. Naturally, I couldn’t stay in the ‘Ville and get some sleep, I have to come do Jason’s heavy lifting because Tiffani the Genius—who, if you’ll remember, swore she was never going to make anybody, ever—picked the one kid who’d been kicked around the playground for too long and sent him to school with a machinegun.
I had to work not to grind my teeth. If we’re throwing blame around, how about the vamp who couldn’t just say, “I don’t love you, Tough?” You had to be a bitch about it.
I told him the truth, she said. If Tough couldn’t handle just being a sex toy, he never acted like it.
Don’t bullshit me, Mitzi, I watched. It still pissed me off to think of Tough sitting there on her bed, his cheekbones flushing dark red while he tried not to cry and Mitzi told him he could get over it and do his job or he could get out and she and Jason could find another desperate piece of trash who needed their protection.
I’m surprised you can even hear me from way up there on your high horse, Mitzi said. Saint Lover-boy would’ve jumped you in a heartbeat, but you kept stringing him along, sucking off of vamp-groupies and dreaming about Bible-thumper tattoos.
A plate snapped in my fingers. Mitzi thought that was hilarious.
Maybe you should look him up now, Tiff. After a month with Mikal, he probably knows more kinky shit than I do.
I stopped myself from yelling at her over the connection. Remembered that Mitzi looked half my age, but she was at least twice as old a vamp as me. She had enough control over her speed and strength to make me look like a newborn. Taking me out would be nothing to her and I wasn’t ready to rot in Hell yet. Not when I’d just gotten a second chance with Colt.
I fished the broken pieces of the plate out of the sink and threw them in the trash. Shutting off emotion was something I had perfected long before I got made. Over the years, only two people had gotten close enough to trip me up and Mitzi wasn’t either of them.
I could feel Mitzi rolling her eyes at me.
You’re no fun anymore, Tiffani.
I never was. I turned the water off and hung the washrag over the edge of the sink.
Damn Tough and Jax. This was what happened when kids played around with powers they didn’t understand—they stirred up crap kids shouldn’t be messing with. I dried my hands.
What time do you think you guys will get in? I asked Mitzi.
We left Nashville an hour ago. She let me look through her eyes, but all I could see was the velvet-cushioned custom interior of the trunk of Mitzi’s car. Sundown. Maybe a little later.
Let me know when you get to town, I said.
<
br /> Are you going to warn my prey, Tiffani?
Probably.
Good, Mitzi said. I like a challenge.
Colt
Solid blackness. I couldn’t move or breathe. Screaming was coming from everywhere, a lost, raw sound. In the darkness, at the edge of the screaming, something was waiting. I felt myself start to panic. I needed Mikal. If I did or said the right thing, she would stop this. She would let me out of here.
“Really?” Ryder. “Wake your lazy ass up, Colt.”
My eyes came open and my lungs started working again. The screaming faded to a tolerable level and I realized it had been coming from the holes Mikal’s essence left in my brain.
I was laying on the floor with the .45 by my hand. No magazine.
Ryder was sitting on the coffee table, twirling the bottle of Southern Comfort around by its neck the way he always used to when he was drinking.
“Did I pass out?” I asked.
He blew out a disgusted breath.
“Figures,” he said. “I get stuck being the external hard drive for a computer that won’t even stay on.”
I pushed myself up. I wasn’t hung over. Didn’t feel like I’d been knocked out. There was a towel on the floor, so I’d taken a shower and then…then what?
“Dammit!” Ryder yelled. “We’re getting nowhere like this. You can’t even remember the last six hours? How the fuck am I supposed to work with that?”
“Bitch about it some more,” I said, standing up. “That should help.”
He snorted. “Dickwad.”
I went to the bathroom, grabbed my jeans off the back of the toilet, pulled them on, and came back. I nodded at the SoCo bottle. “So, you going to drink that whole thing yourself?”
Ryder picked it up and stared at the label for almost a full minute.
“Fuck it,” he said.
Then he tossed me the bottle.
Suddenly I was at the head of our army with Tough and Sissy, leaning on Ryder for support. Not twenty feet away the farmhouse was burning. I could hear the fire, smell wood smoke and burning plastic. Sweat soaked through my shirt, but I couldn’t feel the heat. Blood rolled down my leg from the bullet hole above the knee—the reason I had to lean on Ryder—but I didn’t feel the pain. The whole day had been too surreal to feel anything. Four years of fighting over with in less than an hour. The angels had just come in and ended it. How the hell did you even get your brain around something like that?