Michelle gets her phone out and picks Rose’s name out of the address book. It rings a few times before being picked up. “Michelle?”
“Hey, Rose. Can I… um, could you give me… someone here wants Gretchen’s number. Can I have it?”
Rose is silent for a long beat. “Is it Bette?”
Michelle sighs. This crap is so stupid. She gets enough dating drama from her own life and her relationship with Tommy. The last thing she needs is to play proxy to Rose and Bette’s whole thing as well. “Can I have the number or not?”
“Fine,” Rose grumbles. “Everyone wants her tonight. Alexander called for it earlier.”
“Well, she didn’t make exactly a quiet entrance into the scene,” Michelle points out. “No wonder everyone wants to yell at her.”
“Don’t let… don’t let them hurt each other. Her and Bette,” Rose says, ending the call before Michelle can think of a reply.
A few seconds later a text with the number comes through to Michelle’s phone. She hands it over to Bette, who promptly presses ‘call’ without asking.
“What if I didn’t have any credit on my phone?” Michelle asks, pursing her lips. Bette’s steely expression vanishes, just for a second, and she looks amused.
“Please. You’ll have credit on your phone when the apocalypse comes and we all live in bunkers. How else will you and Tommy be able to discuss which bands used to be cool and aren’t anymore?”
Michelle would object, but Bette kind of has a point, so she stays quiet.
“Gretchen. It’s Bette,” Bette says in a cool voice. “I think we need to talk… no, I’m not going to yell at you, but dude, you can’t be surprised that… she did, really? That’s… okay, yeah, you come here. I’ll text you the address.”
“No you will not text her the address!” Michelle says, her eyes widening as she tries to grab her phone back off Bette. “I just spent hours getting my ass handed to me by a vampire hunter because I’m scared of this girl and now you want to give her my address? When you died, did your brain get oxygen deprived for longer than it’s meant to or something?”
“Stop being a drama queen,” Bette replies. “I’ll give her the address of a coffee place or something if you’re going to be such a pill about it, Christ.”
“Fucking vampires,” Michelle mutters, crossing her arms. “You guys are all such dickbags, you know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” Bette agrees distractedly, texting Gretchen. “Come on, let’s go meet her.”
“What? I’m not going!”
“Come on. You’ll see, she’s not that scary.”
“Trust me, she fucking well is that scary,” Michelle snipes back. “And I’m not going to meet her!”
Bette gives her a sharp smile. “I can make you come meet her, if I want to.”
Michelle’s about to get afraid again when Bette spoils the effect of her own menace by stamping her foot and whining. “Come on, I totally promise you’re not gonna get hurt, okay? Vampire’s honor.”
The plea is so ridiculous that Michelle sighs and nods her head. “Okay. But you gotta be my bodyguard.”
~
Gretchen looks less fearsome this time, but Michelle’s not fooled. A scrappy ponytail and an old cardigan over a t-shirt and jeans might make someone look normal, but even those things can’t take away from the subtle points of Gretchen’s fangs, or the patch covering one eye, or the deep red iris of the other. A wolf is still a wolf, even in sheep’s clothing.
“I ordered coffee. They don’t do tea,” Gretchen says to them as they approach the booth where she sits.
“What happened to your eye?” Bette asks, not sitting down. Michelle stays standing as well. Gretchen shrugs, pulling at a loose lock of her hair, partially obscuring the patch.
“A quarrel. Nothing to worry about. The socket was cauterized, though, so the eye will take some time to grow back. It’s annoying,” Gretchen answers.
“Gross,” Bette says appreciatively, sitting down opposite Gretchen, sliding along so there’s room for Michelle as well. “Can I see?”
“I really hate you,” Michelle tells Bette. Bette doesn’t look bothered. Gretchen, thankfully, does not lift her eye patch to show Bette.
Their coffee arrives. Michelle adds sugar and cream to hers, just so she’ll have something to do with her hands as she stirs the mixture. Bette and Gretchen both leave theirs black.
“Michelle told me what you said about Rose,” Bette says. Gretchen gives Michelle an unreadable look.
“Yes, it’s amazing how many people have heard about something I expressly threatened those three not to tell anybody about,” she remarks, but she doesn’t say it in a way that’s especially threatening. Which is good, because if she sounded threatening then Michelle would probably wet herself.
“Don’t you touch her,” Bette says, and she does sound threatening. The words are pure venom. “You lay a hand on Rose and I’ll kill you myself.”
“You would be dead before you’d moved an inch if you came after me,” Gretchen says calmly. Michelle holds her coffee cup and tries to remember to breathe.
“Don’t hurt her. Please. She deserves—”
“There’s no such thing as ‘deserves’, Bette.” Gretchen’s voice reminds Michelle of school teachers, when they explain something fundamental about a topic for the first time. Clear and precise, so that everybody will understand. “I’m sure you remember that I left the city in order to give you and Rose a chance to have ordinary human lives. That was clearly not a plan that turned out the way any of us expected. So now I have a new plan.”
Bette presses her lips together in a frown for a long moment before speaking. “You’re the one who… it was your bite. Did you know that?”
Gretchen shakes her head. “No. I didn’t know that.” There’s a soft, happy smile on her mouth, and it changes the whole aspect of her face. Like this, it’s difficult to remember just how dangerous this sweet-looking teenage girl really is.
“Like I said back at your place, it’s not like the movies,” Bette explains to Michelle. “You don’t become a vampire by getting drained and then drinking somebody’s blood. When a vampire bites you, you get infected with, I don’t know, I guess it’s a kind of virus. It makes you want. It makes you itch deep down under your skin. But after a while, if you keep it in check, it fades away and you go back to normal. But if you die while the bite’s still in your system, if the bite’s strong enough, then you come back. When the others killed Lily, I had the bad luck to run into her when she was only just awake again. She attacked me and killed me. But I came back. I came back because I’d let Gretchen bite me.”
These last words, though ostensibly addressed to Michelle, are said quietly by Bette as she looks at Gretchen across the table. Michelle can’t tell if the expression on Bette’s face is more gratitude or resentment. Maybe it’s both. Gretchen just looks pleased.
“I left to protect you, but in the end it was the harm I’d already done that saved you,” she says.
“Please don’t hurt Rose,” Bette begs.
“You say that, but you know it’s not what you really want,” Gretchen counters. “The road to hell’s paved with good intentions, Bette.”
The waiter comes to the table, refilling their coffees. They all sit in silence for several long minutes, an awkward bubble of quiet in the noisy room around them.
Michelle gives Gretchen’s eye patch a glance. “I never thought much before about how… how vulnerable vampires are,” she remarks. “Just because you live forever, and survive things that’d kill an alive person. But vampires get hurt, hurt badly, all the time.”
Gretchen nods. “I actually think we’re more fragile than humans. Because we heal. Think about the human heart—would it seem nearly so vulnerable if the first heartbreaks of life shattered it forever? Of course not. You’d adapt and go on, as a human does when they lose an eye, or a hand, or a lung or a leg or their hearing or any other thing. You lose it once and you le
arn to live without. But the human heart seems more vulnerable than all of these, because it heals. It loves again, and breaks again, over and over. No matter how many time I lose my eye, it will never learn how to be blinded. Humans only have one death to be afraid of; we have so many more than that.”
“So why force Rose into that?” Michelle asks. “It isn’t like she’s not already on Gretchen’s shit list; a little debate can hardly make her chances of survival any worse at this point. What’s so great about what you’ve got, that you need to make her the same as you?”
Gretchen honest-to-hell chuckles at that, a deep sweet laugh that would be utterly endearing if Michelle wasn’t terrified of her.
Before Gretchen says anything, however, her phone rings. The ring-tone is the White Stripes’ cover of Dolly Parton’s Jolene, which makes Michelle understand a little better why everyone seems to think Gretchen is pretty cool. If she hadn’t acted like a total psychopath, Michelle would probably like her too.
“Hey, how’re… no, I haven’t checked my messages. Because I didn’t know I had any… yes, I realise I can’t know if I have any unless I check them, what’s your poi… is he all right? All right, I’ll come to you now. We’ll have to reschedule that other business for another night, can you call… I knew there was a reason I kept you around.” Her voice is teasing and warm. Friendly. Michelle doesn’t but it for a second. “See you soon.”
“That was Quinn,” Gretchen explains to them both, returning the cellphone to her pocket. “Blake’s managed to get himself into trouble with poison. That boy is more trouble than he’s worth.”
“Is he going to be all right?” Bette asks, worry furrowing her brows and making her look, just for a moment, painfully young and human.
“Quinn says yes,” assures Gretchen. “We’ll go there now, though, so you can see for yourself.”
Michelle doesn’t know why she decides to tag along with them. Maybe because it seems stupid to leave now, when she’s come this far. Whatever the reason is, she follows Bette and Gretchen out of the coffee shop, into the night outside.
ALEXANDER
Quinn meets up with them as they return to the townhouse. There’s a flash of recognition in Will’s eyes, which Quinn confirms with a nod.
“We met. Briefly.”
“When I was traveling,” Will explains to Lily, with deliberate dismissiveness in his voice. She doesn’t quite manage to hide her frown. Alexander concentrates very hard on not smacking their heads together, slapstick-style. Timothy smirks, like he knows what Alex is thinking.
“Gretchen will be along as soon as I can raise her on the phone,” Quinn says to Alexander. “She rarely remembers to check our messages. But I’ve dealt with poisoning like this before; don’t worry. Let’s go see how he is.”
Blake is looking much the same as he was when Alexander and Timothy left. Jay’s wrist is wrapped in a dressing, but any blood that Blake’s managed to swallow hasn’t done him any visible good.
“Leading vampire hunters into my sickroom. You’re even worse at caring for invalids than I gave you credit for,” Blake quips to Alexander upon seeing Lily and Will. Blake’s voice sounds thin and ragged, like it hurts him more to speak than he’d ever voluntarily let on.
Will rolls his eyes. “I’ve been here before, you know. But if you don’t want our help, that’s fine. We’re happy to leave right now.”
“Oh, please. You’re never happy,” Blake fires back. “You expend massive and constant effort making sure of it.”
“Okay, let’s get you three somewhere where you can do chemistry stuff!” Timothy says with cartoonishly chipper brightness, pushing Quinn, Will and Lily out of the sick room.
“Try not to antagonize them too much,” Alexander suggests to Blake. “I know it’s impossible to resist, but at least wait until they’ve cured you.”
“All right,” Blake says, raising one hand as if taking an oath. Alexander pretends not to see how it trembles.
~
Because he knows he won’t be able to get any useful work done until this crisis has been resolved, Alexander sits and watches Quinn, Will and Lily at work. The mix has a lot of iron and zinc-rich ingredients, which gives the air the same kind of edge that comes just before violent storms.
Quinn is explaining some of the basic points of vampire physiology to the pair. Which Alexander would object to—however temporarily truced they might be, Lily and Will are still vampire hunters—but is finding too interesting himself to put a stop to it.
“Really, from the long view of it, what happens is a survival trait,” Quinn says. “Almost no hunters know that the brain and the heart can both be regrown, if given the opportunity. They see the apparently dead body of the vampire they’ve maimed and assume that their job is accomplished.”
“So hunters are still as bad as vampires at sharing knowledge, then,” Lily says, crushing garlic with more vigor than the task really deserves. “Even with all the websites and message boards we’ve got going.”
A suspicion begins to grow in Alexander’s mind. He leaves the three to their work, heading to Blake’s office to make use of the computer there.
He has logins at all the major hunter haunts, of course, but rarely bothers to lurk at any of them. There’s always a heated discussion about religion, and one about going public, and numerous threads of male hunters being condescending asses to female hunters, and brags about weaponry or kills. Alexander would rather drive nails through his hands than spend any length of time at most of those boards.
There are other, quieter websites, though. Where the interactions are clipped and to the point, and everything is efficient and serious. It’s at one of those that he finds what he suspected: a short conversation between a username which he knows to be Anna’s, and a recently registered user with the very covert and impossible-to-decipher name of RottenToTheCora.
Alexander wonders if Anna knows that the recipe for poison came from a vampire. He wonders if she cares.
Tim raps his knuckles against the doorframe. “I called Chloe. Told her that we’d have to reschedule our meeting with the stalkers for another night.”
“It’s flattering to have such a high demand for the opportunity to kill us,” Alexander says with a smirk, leaning back in the chair. “I guess they’ll just have to wait their turn.”
“How’re you doing?”
Alexander rakes his hand back through his hair. “Fine. Irritated. Whatever game Cora’s playing, she’s being meticulous about it. I feel like I’m trying to put a watch together and I’ve only been given the smallest cogs.”
~
Blake unconscious looks slighter, thinner, younger than Blake awake. Alexander’s always thought of the Blake as being older than himself, in appearance as well as age, but with the archness smoothed from his features he looks younger, barely beyond boyhood. He was so young when he died.
“I’ve never thought of him as having once been a person,” Will murmurs to himself, as if he too is struck by the different cast to Blake’s features, with the vampire temporarily gone from them.
They’ve refined the antidote down to powder and mixed it with purified water, and now Quinn injects it into one of the delicate blue veins visible on the inside of Blake’s wrist. Blake’s eyelids flutter and his lips part, but after a moment his face relaxes again, as still as a wax doll. Quinn injects another dose, with the same result.
“He’s not metabolising it,” Quinn says, the edge of a French accent in his voice becoming more pronounced as his concern mounts. “Someone else will have to take it, and then we’ll have to feed him their blood. That’ll introduce it into his system and keep it circulating.”
“I’ll do it,” Jay says immediately, stepping forward. Quinn shakes his head.
“No, he’ll need too much of your blood, and the solution may make you ill.”
Alexander’s about to step forward as the natural choice—Tim is still too weak after Cora’s gunshot, Bette and Ash are nowhere to be found
, and the extensive clique of vampires downstairs don’t need to know about this if it can be helped—when Will takes the hypodermic from Quinn’s hand and slips the needle into the vein at the crook of his own arm.
Lily stays quiet, as if she can’t see anything odd in what Will’s doing. Like she expected it. Will hands her the now-emptied syringe and bends his elbow up and down a few times, flexing his fingers.
Alexander sees the small tattoo on Will’s wrist just as Will raises it to his own mouth to tear the skin. Love is all you need.
Will places the wound against Blake’s lips, and they all stand unmoving around the bed, waiting, hushed. As if moving too much, or speaking, might somehow stop him from waking up. Blake’s mouth opens. He begins to swallow.
They remain in their tableau for endless minutes, until finally Will wavers and sways on his feet, visibly paler, and Lily steps forward.
“That’s enough,” she declares in a rare moment of practicality, lifting Will’s arm away from Blake’s flushed mouth and guiding Will one step, then two, then three away from the bed, until the pair of them are positioned by the doorway. As close to being out of the room as is possible, while still being in the room.
Blake smiles, stretches languidly, then opens his eyes. “I knew it was you. Most people’s blood isn’t nearly so sweet,” he says to Will with a winning smile.
Will scowls, and Lily flips Blake off. Jay wears a ghost of the pinched expression of envy that he used to get whenever Blake antagonised the pair. Alexander smirks.
“Twenty minutes ago everyone wanted to save you, and now they’ve all remembered how much they want to slap you instead,” he says to Blake. “You must be on the mend already.”
Lily is feeding Will some of her blood from a cut on her wrist, giving him back a little colour and losing some herself in the process. Alexander can’t fault her reasoning – better to have two slightly unwell vampires than one near-drained one – and as she draws her arm away from Will’s mouth, he can see that she, too, has a tattoo on her wrist.
She holds it beside Will’s now, as the wounds on their wrists each begin to knit closed with glacial slowness.
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 77