Water was dripping from a pipe into a puddle a couple of feet away from me. I was sitting on the floor, my back against the wall and my wrists chained in front of me in handcuffs that connected to an enormous metal ring stuck deep into the concrete floor. The ring was as thick as my ankle, and every link in the chain was thicker than my thumb, but I gave the whole contraption an experimental tug anyway. I could barely get the chain to move, much less the metal ring. I would not be escaping this via strength.
I looked around, squinting into semidarkness. With the concrete floor and windowless walls, I assumed this was a basement, though they’re rare in Southern California. The metal ring I was chained to was in the back of the basement, opposite a set of shoddy-looking wooden stairs that presumably lead up to the next floor. The basement’s only light spilled down the stairs from the room above, though I wasn’t at an angle to see up into it. I squinted toward the darkness, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Fifteen feet away from me, on the left side of the steps, there was a tool bench that looked fully loaded with...something. I squinted even more. I caught a few metal reflections shining here and there, standing out against the gloomy mess. Silver. On the other side of the stairs and a little closer to me stood a gleaming metal cage, like a kennel for the world’s biggest dog. Or, I realized, a werewolf.
He’d built a cage for werewolves.
I shivered against the dank cold. My canvas jacket had been removed, and I didn’t see it anywhere near me, so maybe it was up the stairs. Or by Kirsten’s front door, or anywhere in between, I thought, fear igniting in my stomach. I had no idea where I was, and worse, no one else had any idea, either.
I don’t know how long I just sat there, trying to push away my fear, but after what seemed like hours, I heard a telltale creak and saw a work boot hit the first wooden stair, immediately followed by another boot, a pair of jeans, and a T-shirt. The man flicked a switch at the bottom of the stairs, and light burst into my eyes. When they adjusted, I realized I was looking into the face of Aaron Sanderson, the guy who owned the bait shop.
“You,” I said brilliantly.
He smirked. “Me.” Aaron Sanderson/Jared Hess made his way across the basement floor, stopping a few feet away from me and folding his arms across his chest. Up close, with only the T-shirt, I realized just how muscled his arms and chest were. How had I not put this together?
“Where’s Kirsten?”
He grinned broadly. “On her way to a wedding in Santa Barbara. But damned if she didn’t forget her cell.” He held up a little blue phone, waving it in front of me like a kid teasing his little sister. “And her keys.” He held them up in the other hand.
“What’d you do, steal her purse?”
“Something like that.”
“Bad idea,” I told him. “Kirsten isn’t a great person to mess with.”
He snorted. “Whatever. What’s she going to do, hex me with warts?” He had dropped the slightly dim, down-home act we’d seen at the bait shop.
“What do you want, Jared?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You know who I am.”
“Yes. And I know about Emily.”
“You know nothing about Emily,” he countered, venom in his voice.
I finally pulled my knees to my chest, putting my cuffed arms around them, and hugging my legs. I didn’t want to look weak, but I was freezing. “I know that Joanna killed her and that you killed Joanna, and the vampire who was with her that night, and the vampire who only punished her for a few years instead of ending her. I know that you killed Ronnie, too, although I don’t know why.”
“Oh, that was for you.”
I felt sick. “Just to set me up?”
He rushed toward me then, and I cringed involuntarily, expecting a slap, but he dropped down a few inches from my face and grabbed my ankles, dragging them out so he could sit on my legs. He put one hand around my throat to pin me against the wall. He wasn’t strangling me, but I could feel the strength in his hands, how easy it would be. I tried not to move, not to draw any more attention. He looked down at my trapped legs, my stomach, his eyes lingering on my breasts. Holding me there, he leered. “Not just. What you do, you and that dead bitch, is a goddamned crime. You deserve to be punished for it. I thought it would be great for you to go to prison for murder; it had a nice ring of irony about it. But you were just supposed to be a bonus, a little footnote to the plan, and I got tired of you slipping away. I’ll settle for just killing you myself.”
“Then why don’t you?”
He gave me a wicked smile. “I need you first. One more job.”
“I won’t do it.”
He hit me then, a hard backhand that spurted blood into my mouth. I saw stars for a second, and when my vision cleared, he was smiling. “Not so tough now, are you?”
Oh, come on. Stubborn and sullen are my frickin’ trademarks. So I spat a glob of dark blood into his face. He screamed in outrage, jumping back a few steps and scrubbing at his face with the tail of his T-shirt.
“Feel better, you spineless son of a bitch? Does it make your tiny penis feel all big and hard to smack around girls? You think that would make Emily happy?”
He bellowed with rage, starting to crouch back down to pounce on me, but just as suddenly, he paused, smiled, and straightened up. “Nope,” he said cheerfully, bouncing a little on his toes, “not going to work. I’m not going to kill you just so you don’t have to help me. Besides, you want to help me.” He reached for his back pocket, and I tensed, but he just pulled out an old-fashioned Polaroid picture and flipped it to the ground in front of me.
I reached out my shackled hands and turned it over. It was Corry, with her mom and brother, unloading a suitcase in front of a big Holiday Inn sign. She wore the same jeans and green top I’d seen her in that evening. She was biting her lip, looking worried, but her mom was reaching a reassuring arm toward her daughter’s shoulders.
“Remember, you’re not the only game in town anymore. Little Corry is all safe and cozy—as long as you do what you’re told. If not, I slit your throat and go pick up our girl. I’m not particularly interested in having to kill her whole family to take her, but if you insist on making me kill you...” He grinned, and a shiver of fear passed through me.
It was coming to my attention that he was batshit crazy. I turned my head and spit the rest of the blood on the concrete floor. If Hess killed me, maybe Jesse would find my DNA somehow and catch the fucker.
“How did you find her?” I asked.
“Little Corry? Contacts.” He leaned back and spread out his arms, grinning. “I’ve got contacts all over town, on both sides of the Old World.”
“Both sides?”
He cocked his head, looking closely at me; then he giggled. “You really don’t know? You think there aren’t even a few humans who know what’s going on, who want to put the animals down?”
I stared. “Like...vampire hunters? You’ve gotta be kidding.”
He smirked at me.
I decided it wasn’t important for the moment. “What do you want?”
“I want him,” he hissed. “Dashiell. The one who makes this all possible. He let that vampire whore kill Emily and did nothing to keep her from doing it again. He hires bottom-feeding twats like you to keep everything covered up and makes sure the police find someone else to blame. Like a grieving sixteen-year-old.” He spat out the last few words with an intensity that would have terrified me if I weren’t already so numb.
“You want to kill Dashiell?” I asked dumbly. I have to admit, for an instant, I thought about just helping him do it. I would probably die anyway, but Corry would be safe. And it wasn’t as if I were feeling particularly loyal to Dashiell, who was planning to kill me in a couple of hours, regardless.
But after that instant of consideration, I remembered what Beatrice had said about lesser evils, and I knew she was right. There were other vampires in this town, and not all of them were willing to play nice with the werewolves, or make deals with cops, or
keep their minions from killing without prejudice. Like Ariadne, who gave off more than a whiff of batshit crazy herself. Killing Dashiell wouldn’t solve my problems. It was just create more, and for everyone.
But it didn’t matter; I was wrong about Jared’s intentions.
“No, I’m not going to kill him. Another like him would just take his place—it’s pointless. But I’ve been making silver for the vampires for years and years, getting to know all the ins and outs of his little troupe, and I figure there’s only one thing that he loves, truly loves, in the entire world. So I’m going to kill her.”
My stomach dropped. “Beatrice?” I whispered.
Chapter 30
From the way he’d looked at me, I’d been more than a little afraid that Jared Hess had pre-murder plans for my body, but after his little gloating session, he stomped back upstairs. I twisted my wrist around far enough to peer at my watch. It was midnight. I hoped that Jesse had cooled off enough to worry when he couldn’t get a hold of me, but I had little hope for him storming the basement to save me. Kirsten or one of the more powerful witches could have tracked me with an object that belonged to me, but Kirsten was in Santa Barbara, apparently, and Jesse didn’t know how to get a hold of anyone. I didn’t think he even knew Kirsten’s name.
I thought about Corry for a long time. She’d seemed so full of confusion and pain, and despite the direness of my own current situation, I was overwhelmed with sympathy for her. Being a teenager is hard enough without sexual assault and murder staining your soul. Even if I could successfully keep her out of the rest of this ordeal, I wondered if she’d be able to recover from what she’d done, and what had been done to her. There’s no therapist for the supernaturally inclined, as far as I know. I hoped she wouldn’t lose herself to this.
Then I thought about the two men who had suddenly become so prominent in my life. There was Jesse, of course, who had seemed like he might like me. That moment in the bait shop parking lot came back to me, when he had looked at me as if I were just a girl, a girl that he liked. But I’d also seen the look on his face in the coffee shop. To him, I was tainted. Ethically compromised. And I couldn’t really blame him. I had been right when I’d thought that there was something pure about Jesse. I just hadn’t realized how little purity there was left in me. No, even if I were...well, not so messed up, Jesse wouldn’t be wanting to date me anytime soon.
And Eli. What the hell was I doing with Eli? For starters, I was avoiding letting him get the least bit close to me. I thought about that first night in the bar and the look on his face when I came back for him at Artie’s. I reached a couple of conclusions: First, I couldn’t let go of the idea that he just wanted me for the calm only I could give him. But at the same time, the way he treated me wasn’t the way you treat someone who’s just calming. It’s the way you are to someone you want. Did I want him back? This was a thought I’d never really considered much, which just goes to show you how deeply messed up I am. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might want someone.
Since Olivia died, I had been going through the motions. Clean up crime scenes. Ignore my brother. Watch TV with Molly. Have slightly drunken sex with Eli. Do laundry. Repeat. I might as well have died with Olivia, or with my parents, for all the living I’ve been doing. But since the moment when I’d decided to push for Jesse to live, it felt as if I were waking up—not that I particularly wanted to. It’s so much easier to just think of your life as a giant checklist that has to be worked through. But like it or not, I couldn’t sit on the bench anymore. If I made it through the dawn—and really, I had no idea how—I needed to get in the game. Somehow.
Here endeth the pep talk.
Jared Hess had left the light on when he’d gone upstairs, and I was able to twist my wrist around and check my watch, which I did incessantly. At twelve forty-five, Hess came stomping down the stairs, looking very pleased with himself. He was wearing a long black coat, which did little to conceal the two large guns he had under each arm. A bulletproof vest peeked out over his T-shirt, and I caught a glimpse of a silver knife at his ankle. A wicked-looking dagger was in his hand as he clomped over to me, and he slid it up his coat sleeve, where I assumed there was some kind of a holster.
The big guns. If he was bringing me along, he wouldn’t need the knives—Beatrice would go down with one well-placed shot. But clearly, Jared was planning for contingencies. That was not good for me.
“Ready for the field trip?” he said, grinning at me.
He pulled his coat sleeve over the stake and buttoned up the front of his shirt. Then he crouched down in front of me. For once, he was careless about being near my legs, but after a moment’s consideration, I decided against kicking him in the face. It would be satisfying, but I wasn’t escaping with my hands shackled to the floor, so it’d really only piss him off. And he was stronger than I was; if he hit me again, that would be bad.
“I have to say, you stay in pretty good shape,” he said, looking admiringly at my body again.
I tried not to shrink away. I’ve worked with vampires long enough to know that you don’t shrink away from predators.
“God, this is fun, isn’t it?” he said happily. “I’ve been waiting years for this, and now that the night is finally here, I want to celebrate.” He reached over to twine a hand in my long hair, then yanked it so I had to tilt my face toward him.
Involuntary tears pooled in my eyes.
“What do you say, little girl?” he whispered, flicking my earlobe with his tongue.
It took everything I had not to shudder away, but I had no room to move, anyway.
Without letting go of my hair, he leaned his weight on my legs and pulled out a tiny key ring, reaching for the cuffs. “You want to celebrate with me?” He was like a little kid, hyper and trying to make everyone else get worked up, too. I knew he just wanted to get a rise out of me, so I stared stubbornly at the floor.
I was in the middle of reevaluating my no-face-kicking decision when the sky fell down.
Okay, it wasn’t the actual sky, but it was a damned big piece of the floor above us. With a sudden crash, a six-foot-square chunk of linoleum landed about eight feet to the right of us, with two people riding it down. I squinted past the cloud of dust and made out Kirsten and Eli. Jared yelped and released me, darting to the other side of the room to take cover behind the tool bench. Kirsten, whose powers had vanished the second they dropped through the floor, hopped off the shattered floor section and wisely crouched down behind one of the basement’s wooden support columns, keeping it between herself and Jared.
“Hope you have insurance,” she yelled toward the tool bench. She was wearing a pretty floral shirt over a simple blue cocktail dress and looked like an angel when she smiled my way. “Hey, Scarlett.”
Eli had run straight for me, and I was so glad to see him I choked on my first three attempts at speech. “He’s...you...You came,” I stammered.
He smiled a sweet, joyful smile that I knew I would remember until my death. “Of course I came. Why wouldn’t I come?”
The first bullet hit the wall six inches from my head, and I hissed with surprise. “Keys, keys, keys,” I chanted frantically, pointing to where they’d fallen when Jared had bolted. I ducked down, making myself small, and the second shot hit right where my head had been. Jared wasn’t just shooting wildly; he was taking the time to aim, which did not bode well for Team Scarlett. Eli scrambled for the keys and then crawled back to me. I was trembling with adrenaline, and my shaking slowed down his attempt to get the key in the lock. I fought to keep still.
All the while, he ducked as silver bullets flew past us to drill into the wall. “Got it,” he said breathlessly, and I started to stand, but Eli pushed me back down just in time for the next bullet to bury itself in his back instead of my chest.
“Eli!” I screamed. I looked around frantically for a weapon. I needed to stop Jared Hess and get that bullet out, but if I moved too far from Eli, the silver poisoning would begin. All I had
on my side of the basement was a ring of keys, a giant silver cage, and a bunch of stuff that was bolted into the floor. I had nothing.
And then I realized that wasn’t true.
Eli tried to push me toward Kirsten and the exit, but I shook him off easily. I gauged the distance and tugged him the other way, to the wooden column opposite her. As the two of us half crawled, half stumbled behind it, I felt the quick slide of power as the witch in the corner came free of my radius.
“Kirsten,” I yelled, “you’re up!” Then I tried to breathe calmly. The last thing we needed was for me to get all emotional and have my radius expand.
I’d never seen Kirsten work before, so I stared, awestruck, as her hair began to crackle with power and energy. She chanted in something like Latin, and suddenly, the section of ceiling above the tool bench began to rattle and shake, bits of dust and ceiling tile salting the air around where Jared was hiding. He screamed in alarm and bolted away just as a perfect four-foot square of ceiling came crashing down where he’d been crouched. He raced toward Eli and me, pulling out a new gun, but suddenly, he was cut short, bouncing backward as though he’d been swatted. I looked over at Kirsten, who was still chanting. I tried to swallow my shock. I had known that Kirsten was good, but not this good.
Hess screamed with frustration and spun on his heel, cutting his losses. He ran up the stairs, vanishing onto the first floor. As quickly as it had begun, the fight was over.
I barely noticed. Eli had collapsed on the ground, and blood poured freely from the bullet hole in his upper back. There was so much that I could hardly see the entry wound.
“You stupid man,” I scolded, trying not to cry into the wound.
I was trying to tear a strip of my shirt to put over the bullet hole. In the movies, they always rip bandages like nobody’s business, but with shaking hands, I couldn’t even get a tear started.
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