“What do you mean routed?” he said.
“Slaughtered.” Charlie’s voice sounded from behind him. “She means slaughtered. Huge gooey mess. Wanna see?”
Sebastian turned. Charlie reached out toward his head, thick, almost translucent fingers stretched toward Sebastian’s forehead. He felt freezing cold on his skin, spread across his skull.
Then the yellow parking lights winked out.
Blaring traffic noise flooded his senses but he couldn’t smell anything. Narrow streets. Old brick buildings glistening in a misty rain that blurred the edges of everything. People hunched under umbrellas as they hurried along. Only a few stayed outside in the darkness, in the night.
The image blurred, shifted to an alleyway, like so many he’d been in the last few years. He hated fighting in alleys but it was better to try to minimize the damage, keep the vampires contained.
Shuffling, hurrying footsteps. Worn boots kicking past debris on the cracked pavement. Still no smell, even with the refuse dotting the alley. He spotted several In-Between huddled along the walls, black on black. Only faces exposed as they peered up the alley toward the end. He saw Nigel at the front, gripping a pistol in one hand and a long sword in the other. His thin face set and determined.
He never liked Nigel but if there was one thing he could say for the man, he did always do his part in a fight.
Movement at the end of the alley. It was hard to spot in the shadows. Sebastian caught a glimpse of broken lights up on the wall near the back. Another movement, a shadow stepping out from the shadows, coalescing into a figure.
A woman.
She took several steps toward Nigel’s position. Her flat shoes slid along the pavement as she barely lifted them to step. Her expression was slack, eyes unfocussed. Her mouth moved as if she was trying to speak but no words came out.
Sebastian could almost feel the confusion in the In-Between. Who was this woman? She wasn’t a vampire.
More movement in the shadows. Now a boy stepped out, dragging his feet as well. He stumbled and fell to his knees. He stared at the ground in front of him and then began to crawl. He didn’t even bother to lift his head.
Sebastian heard shuffling behind them. He turned. More people at the mouth of the alley. Again the same shuffling steps, the same unfocussed look. Hands reaching.
Hand signal from Nigel. Sebastian could feel the In-Between tense, get ready. Could almost feel himself tense. Even in their confusion, the In-Between had to be ready for anything.
Blinding light. Snarls coming from in front and behind. Beyond the human shields, other movement. Fast. Shapes, shadows flashing in front of spotlights. Someone cried out. The gooey sound of ripped flesh. Blood sprayed across the alley. Splashed across the brick walls. Dripping down, running down the crevices. Soaking into the mortar. Screams echoed in the air. Gunshots exploded, deafening him, drowning out the screams. Now his vision got used to the light and he could see figures surrounding the In-Between. Ripping, tearing. In-Between struggling, mouths open in silent screams.
Nigel at the front, fired at an advancing vampire. The bullets knocked it back but a hand appeared from the side, slicing down. Claws ripped through Nigel’s forearm. He staggered. The gun dropped to pavement, skittered along to stop against a pile of paper. Nigel dropped to his knees, reached for it.
Claws slashed again. His throat opened. Blood poured out, soaking his top. He tried to swing with the sword but could barely lift his arm. Laughter sounded. The vampire kicked out. The sword went flying, clattered against the brick wall opposite and dropped to disappear behind a dumpster.
Nigel grabbed his throat as if trying to stem the blood flow but it poured over his fingers. His thin face grew even paler. Mouth opened, trying to speak, trying to give orders. Maybe even trying to call for a retreat.
Too late.
Another slash ripped across the back of his neck this time, cutting through his spinal cord.
His head rolled away as his body dropped to the ground.
He didn’t even twitch.
The vision turned to take in the entire alley. Perhaps twenty vampires rampaged through, ripping the In-Between to shreds. While around the perimeter, in a ragged circle, bodies slack, heads lolling on necks, the human shields waited for the vampires to finish their battle.
How could this happen? The clans were broken. Vampires had been living like little more than animals for years, the older ones too chained to the clan heads for complete autonomy, the younger ones too inexperienced to survive well. What had changed?
“They adapted.” Charlie’s voice filled his ears, his head. “The last couple years, you guys took out all the slow ones, the stupid ones. Paved the way for the smarter ones to come in. I think they’ve got a few new tricks up their sleeves.”
Tricks like human shields. Tricks like the bond Bianca had unleashed on Brent. The signs had been there all along. Even without Grellock’s book, the vampires were starting a major offensive.
The In-Between had tried to tell him. Nigel, the others. Would it have made a difference if he’d gone to Rome? Would he have been able to tip the balance? Confuse the vampires enough to stop the slaughter?
But he had to come home. He had to save his family.
And how’s that working out?
Screwed up. He’d screwed up. Worse than screwed up. He was responsible for those deaths. Maybe some of them would have died if he’d been there but maybe not. Maybe he could have made a difference.
But he’d been too concerned with his own agenda to find out.
At least Jessica hadn’t been there.
Had she?
“Not that I could tell, not directly.”
Charlie’s voice again, sounding in his head, as if he were standing just off Sebastian’s right shoulder.
Charlie, what’s going on? How are you doing this?
“You needed to see this, pal. I’m stuck with you but I can take some short trips. Little hops before I boomerang back. Saw this on my travels and thought you needed to see it.”
Charlie, why are you here in the first place?
He almost felt his friend’s shrug. “I don’t know. But I’m not much enjoying the show. Feels like we’re getting farther away from it. I think you should have gone to Rome, Sebastian. Big things are brewing. There are going to be more Romes before it’s done. You need to deal with it.”
Why me? What about my brother?
“Why you? How should I know? You’re the one with the weird shit goin’ on in your head. Have you told your friends about that?”
Sebastian didn’t respond.
“Didn’t think so. They might get more insistent about you getting back to work.”
I will. Once Callum is safe. Can you at least help with that?
Nothing. No response.
The image of the alley before him shimmered and dimmed, like a badly tuned television set. Darkness swallowed him. Silence filled the spaces. He couldn’t even feel his body anymore.
Then the yellow parking lot lights stabbed his eyes.
“Sebastian!” Jessica’s voice. He felt hands on his arms. Something hard on his back. Asphalt.
He blinked, his eyes watering.
He was lying on the ground. Jessica hovered over him, grabbing his arm and shoulder, tugging at him to sit up.
“What happened?” he said. His mouth felt like it was full of cotton. He put his palm on the pavement and pushed himself up.
“You just fell over in a dead faint,” Jessica said.
“Are you okay, Sebastian?” Joan knelt beside him. She put a hand on his forehead. Her skin felt cool and smooth.
She looked at him with concern but when he met her gaze, she looked away.
She knew.
“Charlie came back,” he said. “He showed me what happened in Rome.”
They all froze.
CHAPTER 14
“Were you going to tell me?” he said. He turned to look at Jessica.
Now he really didn�
�t like the lines he saw on her face. They outlined the shape of her frown and made her look far older than she was. She carried too much, too many worries, too many stresses. And too much of it was because of him.
He’d been so selfish.
“There isn’t any point to it now,” she said. “Your brother isn’t going to wait. We can have this discussion after we’ve found him.”
Her grip tightened on his arm. He stood up.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Joan and Brian took Gareth’s car, leaving Gareth, Jessica and Sebastian with the van. By the time they headed out to their search area, full dark had taken over the city. Sebastian stared out the back window of the van, watching the houses blur by as Gareth drove. Was Alexa moving farther away even now? Taking his brother to somewhere unknown?
How could they possibly find them in this city? And if Alexa managed to get out, how would he ever catch her trail again?
If she wanted revenge, retribution for what he’d done to Constantine and the other clan heads she sure had it.
Beside him, Jessica gave him a weak smile and squeezed his hand.
They settled into a routine quick enough. Sebastian would step out from the back of the van, letting the night air surround him as he breathed it in deep. Around him, the neighborhood slumbered, houses in darkness, vague suggestions against the shadows. He could hear the buzz of televisions, the hum of computers and throbbing bass of music. The air brought him tales of its own: exhaust, damp grass, earthy sod of the people who had replaced old lawns, stale garbage hinting at what the families had eaten in the last week.
But no sour smell of a vampire.
No scent of his brother.
No Callum.
Five minutes was all it took for him to tell if there was any trace within a few blocks radius.
The answer was always no.
He turned to Gareth and Jessica and shook his head.
“Next,” Gareth said.
And they piled back in the van.
Every hour on the hour, Joan called. The phone rang shrill and hollow inside the van. Jessica plucked it out of Gareth’s hand, letting him drive. Even without listening hard, Sebastian could hear the negative response from Joan filtered through the tiny speaker.
Nothing so far.
Was it already too late? Should he have skipped the morgue and gone right after Callum? That would have meant leaving his mother as a vampire. He shivered against the thought. She would have woken in that drawer, escaped and killed people.
No, he couldn’t have faced that. He’d never forgive himself for letting that happen to her, for letting her become that.
Oh, Alexa was taking her revenge on so many levels.
The van swung down another street. Sebastian recognized this neighborhood. Friends from elementary school lived here, in that house there. The split level with the grey siding and the black shingles. Twin boys, Brian and Ben. Their mother always made apple pie with so much cinnamon their house would smell of it for days. He used to love visiting them, until they moved away during middle school.
But there was nothing else. Only his memories.
Just a whole lot of nothing.
He kicked at a discarded soda can in frustration. Had they made a big mistake thinking Alexa had stayed in the city? Couldn’t she have done what Constantine and the other clan heads had done, escaped in some private transportation? Wouldn’t it have been smarter to get out?
And miss this? Miss his agony? If there was one thing vampires enjoyed as much as blood it was tormenting their victims, as if somehow they fed on the anguish as much as they did on the blood.
No, Alexa wouldn’t have left. She would have stayed so she could enjoy tormenting him.
And if that was the case, she’d make herself easy for him to find.
He’d been thinking about this all wrong. He’d assumed she was trying to hide from him but what if she wasn’t? What if she just wanted to find the perfect spot to finish him off?
Where would that be?
Not here, he realized. Not in this city. They had no history together here. This was his place, from his time before her. She’d pick a spot where they’d been together.
Where they’d shared a life.
The scrape of Jessica’s heel on the sidewalk behind him caught his attention. He turned, seeing the tension in her face. Her hands were fists in her pockets.
“Anything?” she said.
He nodded. “I know where she’s going,” he said. “We won’t find her here.”
“Where is she going?”
“Home,” he said. “Where it all started. It’s time I went back to college.”
Gareth frowned when Sebastian told him.
They stood in the shadow of the van, parked on a side street across from a convenience store. Sebastian could smell the sticky sweet stench of the syrup from an icy machine under the heavy smell of stale tobacco.
“You can’t know that for sure,” the man said. “We’re just as likely to find her here. I told you how hard it is for vampires to control humans that way.”
“You assume that,” Sebastian said. “That was with the clans and their hierarchy. We don’t know what kind of influence the higher vampires had on the lower ones, what restrictions they imposed to keep order. Maybe it’s easier than we like to think. But I do know we aren’t going to find her here.”
Gareth scratched at his beard, his lips still thin with displeasure.
“Are you sure he’s not thick or something?” Charlie said. He’d followed Sebastian around as he walked the neighborhoods but this was the first time he’d spoken in hours.
Shut up. Sebastian pursed his lips in Charlie’s direction. Attitude from a ghost was the last thing he needed. It sure wasn’t going to help his case.
“Jessie girl, what you think?” Gareth said.
Sebastian blinked. He’d never heard anyone refer to Jessica that way. He’d never consider it himself, not and risk a punch to the face. He glanced over at her quickly. Was she going to let loose on Gareth? She stood just beyond the van’s shadow. Her hair caught a glint of light, casting gold highlights against the dark brown. Her hands hooked into the pockets of her black pants, hips cocked, her head tilted to one side.
The tilt of her head and the shadows crisscrossing her face reminded him of the drive so long ago when she’d told him about Timmy, her own brother lost to the vampires. After a disastrous camping trip, he’d come back but she’d already been contacted by Frank and another In-Between. Wait, he remembered now. Gareth, it must have been Gareth.
Had she been Jessie before the vampire attack? A different name for a different life. A light, fluffy name full of fun and energy maybe reflecting the girl she’d been before the darkness killed her family and swallowed her life whole. Who would she have been as Jessie? He couldn’t picture it. That girl with the carefree name was long gone.
Now she was Jessica. And Jessica got down to business.
She shrugged. “From anybody else I’d say he was nuts, but he knew Alexa.”
“The vampire isn’t the same as the human,” Gareth said. “You know that.”
“Yes, I know that but this is personal to her. Sebastian killed Constantine, her sire, her leader, right in front of her. I don’t think she’s going to hide her revenge from him.”
Gareth gave a slow nod. “Good points. Are you sure you want to stop looking here?”
He addressed the last question to Sebastian.
Was he sure? It was a huge risk leaving to head back to Ridgewater City. If Alexa stayed here... He glanced toward the front of the van. Charlie stood by the front bumper. He was back to wearing his ripped jeans and black t-shirt. In the dim light, he almost looked solid. He cocked his head at Sebastian.
What do you think, Charlie?
Charlie shrugged, his blond hair shifting over his shoulders. “Your call, man. I follow where you lead.”
Why?
“Don’t know. Wish I did. I’d kick your ass t
o do it if I knew.”
Was that right? Did Charlie really not know why he was here or was he just stringing Sebastian along. Looking at the ghost, Sebastian couldn’t tell. Could he even be sure it was Charlie? He’d just accepted it and never really questioned.
But he’d felt Charlie inside when he’d spoken to Stan. That feeling, that aura couldn’t be faked.
Could it?
He just didn’t know and the only person he could think to ask was scouring the industrial district with Brian. But would even Joan know for sure? She was the closest thing he had to an expert.
Even setting aside the question of Charlie’s (or whoever he was) motives, Sebastian still had to decide. Stay and keep searching, or go?
He glanced again at Charlie, at the ghost standing by the front of the car.
One look at that open, near grin on his face... yes, it was Charlie, it had to be. Only Charlie could be so annoying and so amiable at the same time.
Stay or go?
Why was it so hard to decide?
Because he already knew what he had to do and he was afraid of it. Afraid of what it would do to him. Afraid of what he would become in the doing, of what could happen to Callum.
But he’d promised her. He’d promised mom before she died.
He couldn’t back down now, not just because he was scared.
His shoulders hunched as he turned back to Jessica and Gareth.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “We go.”
“Okay.” Gareth pushed away from the back of the van, wiping his hands together. “I’ll call Joan and we’ll go meet them.”
He ducked back into the van. Jessica moved forward until she was right beside Sebastian.
“Are you sure?”
Her voice pitched low although of course Gareth would hear it. He’d been polite enough to slip into the back of the van to give them privacy. Sebastian knew full well the man had his cell phone in his pocket.
“Yeah,” he said to Jessica. “I am. Thank you by the way.”
A trace of a smile turned the corners of her lips up. “I know how it is with brothers.”
Retribution of Soul: Book 3 of the In-Between Page 17