Boundary Crossed

by Melissa F. Olson

  “Sort of,” Quinn replied. “To kill a vampire, you have to cut off the head or completely destroy the heart. Theoretically you could do that with bullets, if you can get the vampire to hold still, but these”—he held up his wooden stake—“are traditional, which maybe gives them a little bit of magic. More importantly,” he added, grinning, “Itachi had them hexed by a witch in Denver. If you can get one in a vampire’s heart, the stake will do the rest. We call ’em shredders.”

  “I thought magic never works against itself,” I objected.

  “You’re thinking too broadly. I can’t use my magic against someone else’s magic, so I can’t turn you or a werewolf into a vampire. But a witch can hex a stake to shred what it touches, and if that’s a physical heart . . .” He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a vampire’s.”

  At the bottom of the stairs was a door that looked like solid steel. A whole line of keyholes ran up the side, each one representing a dead bolt.

  Quinn leaned his weight back so he could kick in the door. Could vampires break their feet? “Quinn, wait—” I began. To my surprise, though, he struck the side of the door with the hinges. The door burst loose from its frame, although the side with all the locks held. Quinn shook his head. “Typical vampires,” he said dismissively. “They invest in a dozen hard-core deadbolts, but it doesn’t occur to them to reinforce the hinges. Come on.” He pushed on the open side of the door, which caved inward with a screech of metallic protest. Quinn turned and slipped sideways through the twelve-inch crack. I followed. The interior of the room beyond was dark, and I heard the brush of a hand on the wall as Quinn flipped the light switch.

  The basement apartment opened straight onto a relatively large living room, with a kitchenette to the right and a dark hallway in the back left corner. It looked like every college apartment I’d ever seen—which, admittedly, wasn’t very many. The carpet was worn, the furniture looked pre-owned several times over, and no attempt had been made to tidy up the place or even decorate it—unless you counted the curling poster of Van Gogh’s Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, and I would have bet money that it had come with the apartment. The whole place smelled like stale body odor and ancient Chinese takeout, which had probably come with the apartment, too.

  “Wait here,” Quinn told me, and there was a blur of movement toward the back hallway, way too fast for me to follow in the dim light, although I wasn’t sure I could have followed it in the middle of a sunny field, either. Before I could even register his disappearance, he was back in the same spot. It was annoying.

  “Empty,” Quinn said. “As expected.” He wandered forward.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “Search.” Quinn looked around, assessing our surroundings. “There are two bedrooms at the end of the hall. You go left; I’ll go right. Then we’ll work our way back out toward the door. Look for anything that might tell us where she could be: names of friends, receipts from restaurants or hotels, that kind of thing.”

  I nodded. I’d searched houses before. “Do we have gloves?” I asked. Without comment, Quinn reached into the pocket of his leather jacket, pulled out a pair of surgical gloves, and handed them to me. “Thanks.”

  The bedroom on the left was small, with a double bed and a nightstand crammed into a corner, and clothes covering the remaining floor space. There was no other furniture, and the tiny doorless closet was the size of a refrigerator. Judging by the posters of naked women and all the men’s clothes strewn on the floor, Victor and Darcy had kept separate bedrooms, and this one had been his. The musty, unwashed smell was stronger in here.

  Still feeling silly, I pushed my stake through my two front belt loops so I could put on the surgical gloves. Then I used a foot to push around the clothes on the floor, picking up all the pants to search the pockets. After five minutes I had found a few empty packs of cigarettes, some change and crumpled dollar bills, and a handful of receipts for gas stations and seedy bars. I kept the receipts and left the rest.

  Moving to the bedside table, I opened the drawers, and was immediately grateful for the surgical gloves. It was full of dog-eared porn magazines and a couple of cheap-looking . . . uh . . . sex enhancement tools. Apparently Victor had suffered from some issues with size or stamina. Or both. Making a face, I clumsily began picking up the magazines, shaking each one out. A handful of subscription cards fluttered to the floor, but nothing useful. I went through the whole pile anyway, and at the very bottom I found my first potential clue: an old snapshot of four people leaning against a red sports car. I peered at the photo. Victor and Darcy were in there, but I didn’t recognize the other two men. The group’s clothes could have come from any number of eras, but Darcy’s haircut was a perfect copy of “the Rachel,” the style Jennifer Aniston had made popular in the nineties.

  Aside from the glowing good health I’d come to associate with sated vampires, all four of them looked . . . relaxed. Happy. There was a contentedness in their body language that spoke of a long familiarity with each other.

  “Find anything?” came Quinn’s voice.

  I jumped and whirled on him. “Goddammit, Quinn! Stop sneaking up on me!”

  He leaned in the doorway, unapologetic. “I’m a vampire, Lex. It’s what we do.”

  I glared at him, but held up the photo. “I found this and a bunch of receipts.”

  Quinn crossed the room in a flash, taking the photo from me. “This one is Kirby,” he said, pointing at the stranger on Victor’s left, a muscular, young-looking man with an aquiline nose and thinning black hair. Every vampire I had seen, in person or otherwise, was good-looking, but this one was on the ugly end of attractive. “The other guy I don’t know.”

  “Did you find anything?” I asked.

  Quinn made a face. “Well, I now know more about Darcy’s sex life than I wanted to.”

  “Right there with you,” I said wryly, nodding toward the pile of porn magazines.

  “Other than that knowledge, I didn’t find much,” Quinn went on. “I found a lot of receipts for the coffee shops on campus, which probably means those are Darcy’s preferred hunting ground. But I doubt she’d go to one of them if she’s on the run.”

  “You checked the other rooms too?” I asked, eyebrows raised. He nodded. “What about the neighbors?” I asked. “There are what, two floors on top of this one? Do you think any of them were friendly with Victor and Darcy?”

  Quinn hesitated for a second, then said, “I doubt it. We don’t socialize much with the foundings—that would be the semi-polite term for humans who have no knowledge of the Old World—but I suppose it’s worth a shot.”

  “Let’s go.”

  I followed Quinn back through the musty apartment. Starting at the top of the door, he began unlocking the dead bolts on the inside so we could pull the door all the way open instead of squeezing through past the hinges.

  But as the last bolt slid free, there was a tremendous crack and the door rocketed inward, sending Quinn back into the living room wall, which his head struck hard enough to leave a dent two inches deep. Before I could even process what had happened, I heard Darcy’s voice. “Well, if it isn’t the skank with the weird blood, come a-calling,” she drawled. “Hello, skank.”

  Chapter 14

  I glanced at Quinn. He was struggling to get to his hands and knees, knocked for a loop. Darcy must have come back while we were in the bedroom, and then waited until Quinn undid the bolts to kick in the door. I turned my attention back to her.

  Darcy looked terrible. Her once-perfect hair hung in greasy clumps around her face, and her mad, darting eyes reminded me of one of the animals my cousin Jake had brought me, a cat so feral it eventually had to be put down. She was wearing the same black leather jacket I’d seen at the Flatiron Depot and jeans that had once been very expensive. Now the jacket and jeans were splattered with dark stains, and even in the low light I could tell it was blood, p
robably from when I’d fought with her at John’s house. Had she come back for a change of clothes before she blew town? With an effort, I swallowed my fear and straightened my shoulders, slowly tugging the wooden stake—Quinn’s shredder—from my belt loops. “Hey, Darcy. How’s the nose?”

  Her gleeful expression hardened, and she started moving toward Quinn. “I’ll kill you in a second,” she tossed at me, like I was next in line at the DMV. She reached Quinn, who was struggling to his feet with the stake clutched in one hand. He looked a little wobbly, and I started toward the two of them without making a conscious decision to do it.

  But before I could take more than two steps, Darcy bent down and put one hand under his chin, yanking it up before he could bat her away. Quinn’s head snapped back with a crunch that made my stomach roll, and he plummeted to the floor when Darcy released her hold on him.

  I stared at Quinn’s limp body, stunned. “You killed him,” I said stupidly.

  Darcy snorted. “Not yet.” She picked up the stake that had rolled out of Quinn’s hand when he went down and flipped it around in her hand like an Old West gunslinger with a pistol. She straddled Quinn’s limp form, and I realized that she was about to stake him.

  I couldn’t let that happen. I flew forward and tackled her, knocking Darcy off the unconscious vampire.

  I drove into her as hard as I could with my shoulder, but Darcy rolled with the impact, gracefully letting my momentum propel her on top of me. When we stopped moving, she laughed at me and splayed herself across my upper body, casually leaning her forearm against my throat to cut off my air supply.

  “Stupid bitch,” she chortled. My left hand was pinned, so I scrabbled at her with my right, but it was like pushing against a parked semi. I reached for the stake, which had landed a few inches away from my hand, but Darcy just flicked the stake away from my hand, sending it skittering across the floor, looking amused by my efforts. After a moment of watching me struggle, she eased up on my throat by deliberately palming my face, smearing blood-sticky fingers on me as she pushed herself up. When she was sitting on my chest, she reached out and sent a lazy slap across my face.

  Stars exploded on the backs of my eyelids, and my stomach’s contents threatened to make themselves known. “You are so fucked,” she sneered, which more or less echoed my thoughts. “You don’t have the baby to protect you anymore. Which means”—she leaned forward, her cool empty breath on my face—“that in a few minutes she won’t have you to protect her.”

  Think, Lex. Charlie’s life depends on it. Okay, Darcy had inhuman strength and speed, and I couldn’t compete with that. But when I’d put out Victor’s eyes it had blinded him, at least temporarily. If I could blind her, too . . .

  “Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Darcy continued. “Killing you would be fun, but I think it’d be even more fun to press you into killing yourself. Victor would have liked that.” She leaned back and pursed her lips, looking around the apartment. “Let’s see. What’s a really horrible way to die? Screwdriver through the eye? Setting yourself on fire? Maybe a nice solid self-disembowelment; I like that. Kind of a Shakespearean thing.”

  I wasn’t sure about poking her eyes out with just my fingers, but I had car keys in my pocket. My left hand was pinned next to my thigh, so I started working the key ring out of the pocket. To keep her from noticing, I said, “You can’t press me, asshole. Victor couldn’t do it, and you’re . . . what? Maybe half as strong?” I made my voice skeptical.

  Darcy’s eyes returned to me, narrowing with hate. “Stop wiggling. And don’t think you can taunt me into killing you quick. You don’t deserve it.”

  “Oh, I know you can kill me,” I said flatly. “I’m just a human. But there’s no way you have the juice to press me.”

  Gritting her teeth, Darcy leaned forward and stared into my eyes. Maybe because I was expecting it, I felt that slight pressure again, though it wasn’t nearly as strong as when Quinn had done it to me. This didn’t even make my head hurt. “Stop wiggling,” Darcy said again through clenched teeth.

  I played along, relaxing my body as though she’d succeeded. Then something happened that I couldn’t explain. I wasn’t trying to do it, mostly because I hadn’t imagined it was possible, but one moment I was concentrating on Darcy’s gaze, trying to gauge if I had any real impulse to do what she asked (I didn’t), and the next moment something shifted aside, just for a second, and what had been a one-way street suddenly opened up for two-way traffic. “Get off me,” I hissed, and Darcy immediately rose from my chest, standing up and stepping aside.

  Then she blinked, and a confused, annoyed expression crossed her face. I scrambled to my feet, but whatever I’d done—a spell, maybe? Could you do those without knowing it?—was over.

  “Argh!” Darcy screeched in frustration, shoving me backward. I toppled over a chair, landing hard on my back. “Maybe fun is overrated. You die first.” She bared her teeth at me, and I realized she was tensing to leap.

  “By the way, Darcy,” I said hurriedly, and she paused instinctively. I don’t care how many years you’ve spent killing people—human beings have an innate reflex to let each other have a last word before death. Killing someone in the middle of the sentence leaves a disturbing lack of closure. I know this from experience. “You know he’s setting you up to be the patsy, right?”

  It was a shot in the dark, but Darcy’s resolve flickered, the coiled tension in her body momentarily loosening. “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded. “You don’t know anything about him.”

  Him. I snorted derisively, pushing the bluff. “Maven does.”

  She stepped closer, glaring. “What? What does Maven know?”

  We were maybe two feet apart at this point, with Quinn’s motionless body behind her. I had to try to do whatever I’d done before that got her off me. I stared into her eyes again, but nothing happened. Before, Darcy had been the one to open the connection between us; I had no idea how to do it myself.

  A memory flashed through my mind. Sam and I were about six, playing with a long cardboard tube left over from a roll of Christmas wrapping paper. We stood at either end of the tube, each with an eye raised to it like it was a spyglass, giggling as we “spied” each other. I remembered the way Sam’s eye had looked through that tube; like there was nothing else in the world, just Sam centered in a small circle of light at the end of a long tunnel of darkness.

  I pictured two cardboard tubes, put them against my eyes, and looked straight into Darcy’s. Something stirred along the sides of my vision.

  Then nothing happened.

  “You don’t know anything,” Darcy said smugly, her fists uncurling. She bared her teeth again, tensing to strike.

  No, Lex, Sam’s voice said in my head, you couldn’t put the tube right up against your eye, or it’d be too dark. You had to leave a little space to let the light in.

  I visualized the tubes again, now with a little bit of space between us. The space served as a buffer, letting me stay who I was, out of Darcy’s head. The tingling started along the sides of my vision again and I pushed harder, concentrating on the connection.

  Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, Darcy’s face slackened, her lips parting as her jaw dropped open the tiniest bit. Excitement swirled through me so quickly that I almost lost the connection. I had her. Thanks, Sam.

  Wait, now what? What the hell was I doing?

  “Touch your nose,” I said softly. It was the first thing that popped into my head. Darcy’s right index finger came up and rested on the tip of the nose I’d broken a couple of days ago.

  “Good,” I said. Whatever I was doing made her follow directions, but could I use it like a lie detector? “Tell me what you were planning to do with Charlotte Wheaton,” I commanded, feeling sweat break out on my forehead. The connection was difficult to maintain, like holding yourself halfway through a pull-up.

  “Ou
r senior was bringing her to the merchant,” Darcy answered tonelessly. “Then the merchant was supposed to get her to her new . . . parents.”

  The way she said “parents,” as though it was the closest term she knew to describe something awful, made my blood go cold. “Your senior?” I repeated in confusion. “Like your boss?”

  That must not have been the right wording, because Darcy blinked several times, and I felt my control slipping. Gasping with the effort, I blurted, “Tell me who told you to take Charlotte Wheaton!”

  I pushed as hard as I could on the connection, and Darcy began, “Our orders . . .”

  And then the tip of a wooden stake popped out of her chest. The link between us broke, and I felt myself tumbling through the cardboard tubes into darkness.

  Chapter 15

  I woke up in the car, the lights of Boulder flashing intermittently over my face.

  I sat up fast, looking around. I was in the passenger seat of Quinn’s Toyota. My neck was stiff from where it had been leaning awkwardly against the door, and I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Quinn was driving, his face grim.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You fainted.”

  “I did not,” I said crossly. “Fainting is for preteen girls and those really weird goats. I do not faint.”

  For the first time Quinn looked over at me, his eyes rolling. “Okay, then. You abruptly lost consciousness, without any outside force affecting you in any way.”

  “That’s better.” I arched my back, trying to stretch the kinks in my neck. “What happened? Where’s Darcy?”

  Quinn jerked his head to indicate something over his right shoulder. “She’s in the back.”

  I twisted in my seat, seeing a too-small bundle underneath a shabby gray blanket. I leaned over and lifted a corner of the cloth.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Quinn began, but it was too late. I saw the corpse, wrapped in two layers of clear plastic.