Draven.
It was padded in red velvet, adorned with gold filigree and intricate, polished woodwork, and massive to match his enormous frame. His face, papery white, looked almost transparent. The same dark veins that covered the face of the fledgling we'd found in Xandra’s house were visible at his temples, his throat, on the backs of his hands. His eyes were so dark they were black, and there were no irises.
The sneer he wore on his face was mocking, confident…disgusting. I'd seen his face too many times in my nightmares the last few months, looking almost exactly like this.
Vampires surrounded Draven like groupies around their rock star. They broke into applause when Jacquelyn shoved me out of the elevator. I stumbled and hit carpet, listening to the laughter and clapping. They were everywhere, around me in every direction. Someone flicked my arm as I rose to my feet. Someone else yanked on my shirt sleeve. A third gave me a shove.
“Go on,” Jacquelyn breathed in my ear. “He's waiting. Take your walk of shame.”
“No, no,” I said, trying to stand tall in spite of the jeering going on around me, “the walk of shame is what you're going to do with him later, as you slink out of—”
She shoved me again, but I caught myself before tumbling over. The message was clear: go. I didn't need any more motivation, so I pushed on toward the throne, toward the people that I cared about most in my life and held my head high. I was not going to let these bloodsuckers see me tremble with fear.
I was going to be strong. I had to be. For them.
Draven tucked his leather boot underneath Mill's belly and shoved him over, sending him sprawling like a big doll. Mill’s eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open.
I kept my face blank, but my heart was beating quickly, and there was a roaring in my ears.
“He is still alive, if you’re wondering,” Draven said, his smile growing as I drew closer. “I had to keep him going for as long as possible. He was no good for you if he was dead, right? Oh, wait. What am I saying? He was dead already.”
That drew a peal of laughter from the vampires in attendance. Someone tossed something at me, and my right arm was suddenly wet. A metallic smell filled my nose, and my stomach churned. Blood. And not fresh. They'd hit me with the vampire equivalent of a rotten tomato.
“A human and a vampire…how unorthodox,” Draven said. He looked down at Mill as if he were nothing more than a rat. “Even if I didn’t care for this one’s betrayal, anyone with our blood is still too good for cattle like you.”
I stayed quiet, taking one step after another. I couldn't decide if he was aiming his words to spur me or rile up his faithful. Probably both, but for my part, I wasn't eager to give him what he wanted, so I kept my expression neutral. Playing to a crowd? That was a kind of lying I was very familiar with.
Draven held out his hands to quiet the room.
“Look here, brothers, sisters. I give you the dreaded, unstoppable vampire slayer that has haunted your days, stealing your rest.” He let out a small laugh. “Look at her! See how small she is. How she quivers.”
I steadied myself. Hell if I'd quiver before him.
There was an awful lot of clapping and cheering going on, some wolf-whistling. Their celebratory mood oddly reminded of a football game. Yay, our team is winning! High fives and chest bumps all around!
“This is the one who killed Theo, one of my greatest servants.” Draven's pale, long face lost its mirth. “He was like a son to me. And he was taken from us by this pig who thought she could walk upright, thought she could act like one of us, could enter my humble home and spit right in my eye.”
His look became dangerous, his eyes as black as pitch.
“She has a long string of insults to our brethren,” he said. “Killed many of us. Many...loyal servants.”
That let some of the celebratory atmosphere out of the room, as a more suitably morose mood settled over them. I guess it was harder to be cocky when he was reminding them I took down the entire squadron of vampires that he sent after me in New York. Same for Roxy's little gang.
“But her lying days are done.” Draven said. “Now... Search her. Make sure she's not carrying any of her little party favors.”
Rough hands grabbed at me and I couldn’t help but wince. I closed my eyes as they jeered and snickered, one of them gnashing their teeth in my ear. It sent shivers down that side of my body. They checked every pocket, as invasive as the TSA but maybe a little more gentle.
“She's got a cell phone,” one of the vamps said, lifting it high to show Draven. It was Xandra’s. I'd grabbed it with the keys to her parents’ car. I hoped they wouldn’t turn the screen on. If they did, they'd see I was in the middle of a call.
“That just proves she's a human teenager,” Draven said. “They don't go anywhere without those these days.”
The vamp put it back into the pocket of my sweatshirt. Well, at least something was going right.
“That's it,” a female vamp said in a low, throaty voice, “she’s clean.”
I felt a little dash of hope. The stake was still in my hair. Maybe—
“Wait,” Draven said, eyes narrowing. He pointed a boney finger at my head. “What is that in her hair?”
Jacquelyn appeared in front of me and yanked the stake out of my bun, not caring that it scraped against the side of my head as she pulled it free. I cringed but didn't yelp. It stung.
She dangled it in front of my eyes as if she had discovered a dirty secret of mine, then tossed it over her shoulder. It clattered on the floor at Draven’s feet, just inches away from Mill’s limp form.
Draven knelt over on his throne, picked up the stake between his thumb and forefinger, and held it up.
And then he grinned. “Were you planning to kill us all…with this?” He twirled it between his fingers, then snapped it in half as if it were a pencil.
“Do you feel powerless now?” Draven asked, resting his chin in his hand. “You should. You, like all humans, are but a meal to us. You mean nothing at all. We are superior to you in every way, and in your heart, your tasty, beating heart,” he smiled so wide, long canines poking out, “you know it to be true. You stand here, a sheep in the midst of wolves. And it is only my word that’s keeping these hungry predators at bay, preventing them from tearing you and your family apart.” He gestured to me like a king condemning one of his subjects. “Do you see the truth of this specter you feared? Look at her, trying to keep from crying. She’s pathetic. She’s so...human.”
Another buzz ran through the crowd, a series of laughs and jeers that rang in my ears like they had during the Great Winter Formal Incident of last year, where all my lies had come crashing down on me. I remembered my cheeks burning, the humiliation stinging like knives in my flesh.
And just like that, I was done listening.
“Yeah, I’m a human,” I said, surprising even myself by how steady my voice was. How was it that I managed to play it so cool in these kinds of situations, when inside my head, I was screaming like a lunatic? “…But you were too stupid to realize that until someone blabbed it, weren't you?”
That shut everyone up after another little ripple of shock ran through the crowd. Apparently, you didn't insult Draven in his own living room. For his part, Draven was glowering at me with an icy hatred that I could almost feel in my bones.
I stared up at him defiantly. “You know what else comes with being a human? And a teenager of 'these days', as you put it?” I waited to deliver the coup de grace and caught a flicker of unease in Draven's eyes. “A Netflix subscription.”
That spurred a nervous laugh from a vamp to my right, and I shot him a cool look that cut his laugh off like I was a substitute teacher that had just pulled a gun on an unruly class. I guess my vampire slayer rep wasn't completely destroyed by Draven's little scene here—yet.
“Do you guys have Netflix? Or something like it? Bloodflix, maybe?” I just kept riffing, waiting to see if anyone bit on any of my ridiculous lines. “No? Anybody?�
�
Xandra raised her head; the vampire who'd been pinning her down was too focused on me, his long fangs bared in confusion. It took all my strength not to look at her. Definitely didn't want to wink.
“Yeah, you guys are probably too busy doing the whole 'YOLO—but eternally' thing,” I said, watching Draven's reaction. A cold fury was emanating from him at being upstaged, but he seemed too riveted to try and shut me up, probably curious about where I was going with this. I doubted many people stood in front of him with as much sheer chutzpah as I was displaying. Especially since he'd marshaled his entire territory here to see me humiliated. “It's funny you guys don't watch movies. Because the thing that you'd know if you watched movies is that when the villain starts spouting off about his plans and how stupid the hero is…it’s called 'monologuing'.”
Draven's eyes narrowed to dark slits, and his jaw was clenched. He was like a cat, all wound up and ready to leap at me.
I met his gaze evenly. No fear here. “You know what happens when you monologue?”
The room had fallen silent. No one was moving. No one said anything. No one even breathed. Not that many of them needed to breathe.
A ding from the elevator behind me came, loud as a bomb going off, and I smirked.
Every head turned to look as a stir ran through the room. Confusion, terror, it all rippled through the crowd. There was a sound of metal sliding loosely across metal, and the elevator door opened—
Chapter 38
—and it was totally empty.
Crickets.
Draven and the whole gang stared past me, and when they realized that the elevator wasn’t filled with a tidal wave of holy water, or a stake-launching machine gun, they all looked around at each other, a little murmur of confusion mingled with relief running through the crowd.
Draven smirked at me, his confidence restored, mirth clear on his face. “You were saying something about my monologue?”
That prompted a round of laughter that turned into hilarity as some of the vamps bent double laughing it out, hanging on to one another as if it were the greatest joke they’d ever heard.
Mom had lifted her head, and I made the mistake of meeting her eye. The look on her face was fear, sorrow and defeat all wrapped up in a smorgasbord of a perfect Mom expression.
Draven’s laugh was low, deep, and maniacal. Between that and the monologuing, he really had committed to the villain thing.
Despite the laughter that was making my skin crawl, I was patient. It felt tense waiting as everyone laughed at me. I just kept standing there, head held high. The seconds were ticking by slowly. I was aware of every single one of them as they passed. Draven seemed to think that whatever I had planned had failed, and therefore, he had won. The triumph was obvious on his long face, his jaw wide as he laughed.
I noticed after a few seconds that there was lack of familiar laughter from behind me. I turned to see Jacquelyn standing there, looking at all the rollicking mirth with her brow knitted tightly together. As soon as I turned, she locked eyes with me, staring me down.
I smiled back at her.
Her eyes widened, lips parting in surprise, and she turned her attention to the rest of the crowd. “No, listen—She’s doing something!” Jacquelyn shouted.
No one was listening to her, though.
I stood there and watched her wave her hands over her head, trying to make herself heard over the endless laughter.
“Listen to me. I know this look. She’s planning something, we can’t lower our—”
Whether anyone heard her or not, it didn’t matter.
Because at that exact moment, a figure dressed all in tight, black clothing, wearing a black motorcycle helmet with the visor shut came barreling out of the “empty” elevator with a fluffy, white blanket draped over her shoulders like a poncho.
It was Iona, and I couldn’t keep in the grin that spread over my face. I wasn’t sure that I had ever been so excited to see her in my life.
Iona had ridden on the top of the elevator car up to the penthouse, sliding down through the hatch once everyone was busy being distracted by me. She had stakes in each hand and launched herself at the vampires who were nearest to the door. She staked three of them before anyone got out a scream.
The laughter died, albeit slowly. The scream was short and sharp, and barely overcame the noise in the cavernous room. When it did start to die down, Iona tore the blanket from around her shoulders and whipped it in a circle over her head like a lasso before tossing it high.
That was my cue.
While the vampires around me started to succumb to the surprise that came with watching your laughter die and horror spring up to replace it, I dove past Jacquelyn, reaching for the blanket as it started to come down.
I managed to snatch it out of the air, the fabric smelling like Xandra’s laundry detergent and perfume as it wafted down and I yanked it over my shoulders, covering me like a cape.
I caught that blanket like my life depended on it…because it kind of did.
I yanked it off in time to see Iona throw herself into a squirming pile of the vampires closest to her. It looked like a riot had broken out near the elevator bank, screams and chaos busting loose as the vamps tried to climb over one another to get as far away from her as possible, not caring if any of their brethren got in their way. It got brutal fast, a veritable war to escape the staking.
So much for unity in the vampire clans.
Pulling the blanket from around me, I tore across the room toward Draven’s throne, where Mill was sprawled on the floor. He hadn’t moved since I got here. He hadn't even stirred when I was speaking.
The vampires that had been holding my friends and family down were gone; apparently too scared of Iona or me to stay where they had been.
I skidded to a halt on my knees beside Mill.
Draven didn’t seem to notice. He was half standing, unfurling his flagpole-like frame, pointing and shouting orders to those nearest him. I couldn’t hear his words over the din.
My hands were trembling as I tossed the blanket over top of Mill, trying to tuck it in all around him. Was I putting a blanket over a dead body? I didn’t know. I couldn’t check for a pulse, and his skin was cold on the best of days.
All I knew was that Draven was still alive, or at least undead. As long as he was still standing, Mill was going to keep suffering.
The vampires were reacting with a herd mentality. I hadn't seen this much shoving and stampeding and climbing over everything—in this case couches, chairs, and the melting, dead bodies of their compatriots—since that time I'd ventured out on Black Friday. It was as if everything that Draven was saying earlier about me, minimizing what I had done, tearing me down as a source of fear, hadn’t taken hold in the collective vampire psyche. From their reaction, it was clear that everything the messenger from Xandra’s house had said about me was true.
They were terrified of me, and my actions had become a nightmare to them.
It was strange, seeing them all scramble away from the elevator, from one single vampire. I wasn’t even trying to help her. She was doing it all on her own, slashing and twirling, taking them out with ease.
No one was fighting back. If they'd tried, they would have been able to overwhelm her, easily. A hundred vampires against one, and she was taking them out in droves because they were running, not fighting. Pained screams filled the air, along with the acrid smell of vampire blood. Puddles of black goo cascaded onto the tile floor as the crowd broke in places, avoiding the twirling black figure at the center of the panic.
“You!”
I looked up, trying desperately to finish covering Mill fully with the blanket, unsure if I was succeeding or not.
Draven was staring down at me, his fangs bared, a nasty grimace on his face. “What is this?”
I smirked at him, my body draped over Mill’s. “There’s something else that you need to know about villains, Draven,” I said. “The good guy always beats the bad guy. No matter
what.”
“You are not going to win,” he said, holding up his long fingers. “You are here in my hands. That little traitor that you brought here to kill my people? She's going to die screaming while you watch. And then I'll start on your friends and family. Then your boyfriend. And finally. you. Did you hear me? You cannot win.”
“Here’s the other thing you missed, Draven,” I said. “A tiny little oversight that anyone could’ve made—if they hadn't read the Evil Overlord checklist of things you shouldn't do. Because right at the top—don't build your evil lair on a volcano.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, standing in front of the thick, dark curtains that ringed the entire room.
I just grinned at him. He was right where I wanted him. “You didn't think I showed up right at dawn because I was running late...did you?”
Draven’s face faltered.
I lifted the cell phone out of my pocket, glancing down one last time. Mill was as covered as I could make him. I touched the screen and it flared to life, my call still ongoing, the time ticking up as I spoke. “Lockwood,” I said, “Now.”
A loud crash of breaking glass echoed through the room, followed by the sound of fabric ripping. In the same moment, blazing sunlight broke through as Lockwood tore through the curtains behind Draven, a shadowed form trailing cloth behind him like streamers as he pulled down every inch of shade from the eastern facing of the room.
Light burst in, finding every corner of Draven's immaculate, penthouse, bringing in the burning dawn.
And then there was chaos. Chaos and screaming.
Draven had tried to reach me and I hadn't seen him, his blurry speed erasing him from my sight until the sunlight caught him. He was inches away, maybe less, his hand outstretched, ready to wrap his long fingers around my throat.
He stopped as the light caught him, though, playing over his pale, delicate, veiny skin like a camera flashbulb. He was frozen for a moment in time as his skin started to brighten, then sizzle...
Then burn.
Draven’s face lit like a match run across a striker, bursting into flame. “Curse you!” he screamed. And his fingers flared to fire inches from my nose.
Her Lying Days Are Done Page 22