“And the tracker.”
“I’ll remove it,” she said and promptly exited the room.
I peered out the door and watched as my mother walked out of my life—hopefully, for good. I knew her about as well as I recognized her in the disguise. She wasn’t the woman who’d raised me, of whom I had such fond childhood memories—the person who would stand by me when the world ended. Not only would she not be standing by me at the end of the world, she’d be igniting the fire that would consume us all.
9
Fiona
When I closed the door to our motel room, Sean looked as white as a ghost. It probably wasn’t the best time to bring up ghosts too.
“I really don’t know if I can handle it, but… but I have to know. What’s going on? Tell me everything,” Sean said. He was now pacing by the bathroom. “You were both talking like vampires and angels were real. Well, I believe in angels—I think—at least that’s what I was taught to believe with Heaven and Hell and everything. But I guess it’s a little different if they’re walking around on Earth with us. And your arm—how did you do that? Can I see it again?”
I made a fist and gripped my wrist to make the compass tattoo reappear, then walked over to him so he could get a good look. He took my arm in his hands and ran his fingers over the design much like I’d done the first time I’d really examined Matthew’s. It felt almost normal letting him touch me like that again, allowing his hands to glide across my skin like it was completely natural, which it had been for so long.
“Did it hurt when you got it?” Sean asked.
“Not really, but it wasn’t like getting a regular tattoo, which is where the magic comes in,” I said, then paused to judge his reaction. He didn’t flinch or remove his hands from my arm, so I continued. “It wasn’t drawn on, but somehow burned onto my skin with a flaming sword.”
“And that’s where the magic comes in?”
“Yeah. That and what this tattoo can do.”
“Like disappear and reappear at will?”
“Look more closely,” I said and moved the angle of my arm.
“Holy crap, it moves!” he exclaimed, his hands now recoiling from me as if he’d been burned. “It’s a functioning compass?”
“Sort of,” I said with a chuckle. “It doesn’t point north. It points to the nearest vampire.”
“Okay; so now we’re moving onto vampires…” Sean backed up a few steps and dropped into the rickety desk chair. “So, you’re telling me vampires are real? The people holding me were vampires? Now that I think of it, I ran into that Frederick guy once and it was like hitting a brick wall. He’s one of them?”
“He’s a vampire. Actually, he’s the vampire.” I gazed down at my compass, which currently pointed past Sean. A vampire could be in the next room or ten miles away in that general direction. With what I knew now, we were never really far from one. I lifted my gaze to meet his. “I don’t know how much you really want to know because there is some pretty scary stuff coming.”
“Is it stuff I’m going to find out about anyway?” His color still hadn’t returned. His hands were shaking, though he was trying hard to conceal it.
“I think so.”
“Then we might as well get this over with. Give me all the gory details,” Sean said, obvious in his physical preparation for the worst—though the worst was probably worse than he was even imagining.
“I don’t know the best way to tell you all this, so I’m just going to tell you. The one silver lining to this story that hopefully you’ll be able to appreciate since you helped me so much is that with this crazy adventure, I found my father.”
“When you disappeared for that few weeks? You actually found him?” His eyes lit up with this revelation.
“No; not then. But I’ll get into that time too. He’s the catalyst for me being thrust into this underground world. Have you heard of the True North Society?”
“I’ve heard the name, but couldn’t tell you anything about them.”
“That’s okay. Whatever information you would have found wouldn’t be accurate anyway,” I said. “How about Vampire Nation?”
“I heard it mentioned at Fangloria,” Sean said.
I started at the beginning and told him about my introduction to the True North Society, Matthew, and my father. Then I moved on to Sisters of Mercy and Vampire Nation, which then naturally led to Damien Galt and Clementine Biel—whom I also related to Frederick and my mother.
I knew I shouldn’t be sharing any information about the Society, but with the security breach at the portal, it was obvious everything would soon change. Most of the secrets would come out. However, I left out any mention of the time portal and the coming apocalypse. I limited the reveal to Vampire Nation’s plan to emerge into the mainstream. That was ample information to elicit a string of nightmares.
“So, these creatures have been hiding in the darkness for millennia and they all of a sudden are ready to announce themselves to the world?”
“That’s what’s happening behind the scenes as we speak,” I said.
“And your mother’s right in the middle of it?”
“It seems that way.”
“But she’s not a vampire.”
“But she obviously wants to be turned,” I said. “She showed me her Vampire Nation tattoo.” I shook my head at the thought of where she’d had it placed on her hip—but then Taylor’s had been worse. “I guess the plan is to turn a bunch of the members right before coming out.”
“Where did they even come from?”
“Vampire Nation was started by Frederick in the 1950s, or so I was told.”
“No. Vampires. Angels. Whatever supernatural beings are out there that you haven’t even mentioned. Where did they all come from?”
I thought about it, only to realize I hadn’t been told origin stories on either species. “Maybe they were always here,” I said. “Maybe they were here before us? I guess I was so preoccupied with all the other information I’d been bombarded with since getting involved with the Society that I never thought to ask.”
“The Society?”
“Shorthand for the True North Society,” I said with a grin. “It’s what us insiders call it.”
We were both quiet for a few minutes. I wanted to give him time to process; he obviously needed it. I remembered needing it myself and some of this was still hard to process. But I couldn’t take the silence for long.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, taking a seat at the foot of the bed he’d been lying on earlier.
“I—I’m glad you found your father,” Sean finally said. “What’s he like?”
He was obviously deflecting from the vampire conversation to something that seemed a little bit more normal. I didn’t blame him and didn’t want to push him too hard. “He has some kind of dementia,” I said. “He doesn’t know who I really am—but it’s okay. He’s not the villain my mother always made him out to be.”
“You don’t look like it’s okay.”
“It’s hard. Is that what you want me to say? Well, it is. I know it doesn’t make up for lost time, but at least I get to spend a little time with him now. And he led me to a half-sister I never knew I had.”
“Half-sister?” His color was slowly returning as the conversation was steered toward more natural things. “How is it that so much has happened since we broke up?”
“You broke up with me,” I clarified, then instantly felt bad for emotionally backhanding him across the face at a time like this. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“I still deserve it,” he said. “I should have never let you go. But now you’re with that… Matthew. I still can’t believe he’s a… vampire. Are you sure you’re good with that?”
“He’s a good guy. You’ll see as you get to know him.”
“So that girl Harrison’s with—for the life of me, I can’t remember her name right now—you think she’s a vampire too?”
“How else do you think she got you into
the club?” I asked.
“I was hoping she just had connections.”
“Connections to the vampire community because she’s a vampire. What was she drinking?”
Sean thought for a moment. “Red wine—oh God, that wasn’t red wine, was it?”
I shook my head, laughing again at his innocence.
“I need to tell Harrison.”
“I don’t know if you’re ready for that conversation just yet,” I said. “If he’s still fine, then she’s probably one of the good ones—just a girl who likes a boy.”
“A dead girl,” Sean remarked.
“Gross. Don’t say it like that.”
“Is it not true?” He folded his arms as a stark challenge.
“It’s not,” I said. “Their hearts beat the same as ours.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes; I’m sure,” I said, rolling my eyes. I’d had my head to Matthew’s chest more times than I could count—though that wasn’t something I voluntarily wanted to share with Sean. And as I thought of Matthew, I was plagued with fear and doubt as to why he wasn’t calling me. Had something happened to him? Did he feel betrayed because I was part of the plot with Frederick, even though I’d been played for a fool in the end? Was I yearning for a call that would never come?
“What are we going to do now?” Sean asked, retreating to the bed and lying down. “We can’t stay here forever.”
“Why don’t you go home?” I asked.
“And tell my parents what? Everything you just told me?”
“No; but they’ve got to be worried sick about you.”
“Probably, but I can’t face them yet. And I don’t want to leave you.”
“I like having you around too,” I said, crawling onto my bed and positioning myself to face him. “You still need to get some sleep. You’ve been up like forever.”
“How can I sleep now? I’m just gonna dream of vampires attacking me.”
“It passes,” I said, offering a small smile. I was reminded of the nights Mom ran into my room from me waking up screaming in the middle of the night. It wasn’t an easy adjustment.
“You had them too?”
“I didn’t get a good night sleep for weeks.”
“How did you get past it?”
“Accepting this was life now,” I said. “That I’m not in a nightmare; it’s just life.”
“I don’t know,” he said, then yawned.
“Don’t fight it.”
“Fight what?”
He was still delirious. I knew how much he needed sleep, then it would be at least a little easier to cope. I pretended to be falling asleep too, which would hopefully coax him into slumber as well.
I opened my eyes after a few minutes and found Sean fast asleep. I quietly got up and checked my phone again. Still no messages. Dropping the phone beside me on the bed, I sat on the edge and watched Sean as he slept, wondering what the future held for him—for us, as friends.
It would have been so much easier if he’d just stayed away and never gotten pulled into this crazy situation. He didn’t know what he was going to do now, and frankly, I didn’t have any good answers for him. I knew how much life before didn’t seem to matter anymore. What was the sense of going to school and getting a normal job now? Of course, Sean didn’t know the world as we knew it was coming to an end in a few years.
I started to feel creepy watching him as my mind ran a mile a minute, so I got up and wrote a short note. On a piece of motel stationary, I told Sean to stay put and I’d be back soon. Then I slipped out of the room in search of some essentials. At least Sean had clothes and personal items in his U-Haul, which we still had to return at some point. But that was still low on my priority list.
When I returned to the room with four full Target bags, Sean was back to sitting impatiently in the chair like a parent waiting for their child already late for curfew.
“You’re supposed to still be sleeping,” I said, dropping the bags on my bed.
“I woke up and you were gone. I couldn’t sleep after that,” he said sourly.
“You obviously read the note. I got us some snacks, if that makes you feel any better.” As well as clothes, makeup, and toiletries for myself.
“Is there a pack of Oreos in one of those bags?” he asked, cracking a smile.
“Maybe… There might be two,” I said sheepishly.
“I could have pitched in for some of this stuff,” he said, joining me by the bags to see what else I’d purchased.
“It’s mostly mine, thank you very much. You have all your stuff in the trailer. I needed some clean clothes.”
“Yeah; I should get some of my stuff. Are we staying here the night?”
“Unless you have a better idea,” I said, reorganizing the bags, so all my personal items were together.
“That sounds like a great idea,” he said, breaking open the first bag of Oreos. He split the first cookie and handed me the side with the filling, then tossing the naked side into his mouth.
“You know me too well,” I said, taking my usual half of the cookie.
“I thought I did,” he said and went for a second cookie.
That evening, we went out to dinner—another thing that felt terribly familiar—and awkward. We’d spent so much of our lives together, but things were obviously different now. Sean wasn’t still actively trying to win me back, especially now he knew he was competing with a vampire. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about. I wanted him to be okay with it, but that was probably asking for too much at this point.
When we got back to the motel, I helped him bring in a few things from his trailer. Now it looked like we were on vacation. While he watched television, I changed in the bathroom into a new pair of pajamas—long pants and long sleeves to help make sure he didn’t get any ideas—brushed my teeth and washed my face.
I climbed onto my bed, adjusting the pillows to comfortably sit against the wall, then pulled the covers up over my legs. I checked my phone for like the millionth time today and there were still no messages from Matthew or Vladimir. I felt so disconnected from everything. And I was back to feeling helpless, at the mercy of others to contact me. Not being able to do anything but wait was the worst.
“Are you gonna go to sleep now?” Sean asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Will it bother you if I still watch TV?”
“No; that’s fine,” I said, scooting down on the bed to lie down and bringing the covers up to my chin. I didn’t know if I’d be able to sleep, but I’d do whatever I could to speed up time. “G’nite, Sean.”
“Good night, Fee,” he said, already getting up to turn off the light in the room, so all that would be left was the flickering television screen.
When I awoke, I still heard the television and figured I’d only drifted off to sleep for a few minutes or more. But when I opened my eyes, I noticed the room was brighter and now Sean was fast asleep. It was just past 6 a.m. The whole night had passed in the blink of an eye, which was exactly what I’d wished for.
I was sweating under three layers of blankets, so threw them back to let my body breathe. Then I grabbed my phone expecting more of the same silence, but there was a new voicemail. When I checked the number, it was from an unfamiliar area code. Leave it to a robo-call to get my hopes up. But I had to check it anyway.
My heart leaped at the sound of Matthew’s voice in the message. He didn’t sound at all upset with me but concerned for my safety. He provided a phone number and the name of the motel he was staying at in… Barstow? What on earth was he doing in Barstow?
I checked to see if Sean was still asleep, then tiptoed into the bathroom and closed the door. My hands were covered in goosebumps as I dialed the number Matthew had given me. He picked up on the first ring like he was sitting next to the phone.
“Hey, you,” I said, a shiver running through me just from getting to hear his voice again.
10
Matthew
&nbs
p; It was a delirium I remembered feeling as a human locked within Sisters of Mercy. It was often hard to determine if you were awake or asleep. You never felt like you actually went to sleep, but you’d suddenly discover large chunks of time miraculously passing in an instant.
That was how it felt to be buried alive as a vampire. It wasn’t exactly conducive to peaceful slumber. I couldn’t breathe, yet didn’t have to breathe to survive. It was more of an irritation than anything.
The dirt had become relatively cooler, which told me the sun was no longer mercilessly beating down upon the ground. So, I pushed my hand up through the dirt, hoping sunlight wouldn’t suddenly come pouring in. In fact, there seemed to be very little light coming in, so I continued to dig upward. When my entire upper half was uncovered, I sat up in my shallow grave and surveyed my immediate surroundings.
The stars were so bright out here, but they didn’t shed much light upon the ground. The moon seemed to be nowhere in the sky. Since there was nothing else around, the night air was quite dark. Luckily for me, with my vampire vision, the consuming darkness was no issue at all.
There wasn’t time to waste, so I rushed to dig out my legs, then climbed out of the hole. The shovel was still lying nearby, so I took it for good measure.
I’d already lost an entire day and had no idea what time it was—or how soon the sun would again begin climbing over the horizon. I needed to first get to a safe place, then work on getting home. I needed to find out what was happening with Frederick, Fiona, and the Society. As much as the situation with Syrithia irked me, she wasn’t a concern right now.
The ever-present burning in my arm reminded me I had a nonfunctioning compass—one that only pointed in my direction. What I would have given for one that worked. Maybe if I knew how to navigate through the stars, then they’d help get me home? But I didn’t know how to do that. I wasn’t a 15th century explorer. I’d grown up with technology that made those skills obsolete and now realized those skills were still valuable because of times like these, when you didn’t have that technology at your disposal.
Angeles Covenant Page 5