The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four)

by Spencer Baum

  How could she just walk away from this mission when it wasn’t finished?

  Yes, Frankie was safe. Yes, Network agents had killed Bernadette and Renata, and Network activity had led to the death of Melissa Mayhew as well.

  Yes, Jill had hacked into the database of Tremblay Property Management and stolen a terabyte of secret files about the vampires, their assets, and their mansions. Yes, through Jill and Nicky’s activities, they had all but assured that Kim Renwick wasn’t going to win Coronation.

  By any measure, the mission was an enormous success. Any measure but one.

  Sergio Alonzo was still alive.

  I could have killed him, but I didn’t. I had the perfect opportunity to finish him and I couldn’t do it.

  If Nicky left now, she knew she was taking a memory with her that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Sergio Alonzo, badly wounded from a fight with Falkon Dillinger, on his back, barely breathing. Nicky standing over him, a broken steel pipe in her hands.

  Why couldn’t I do it? The whole reason I’m here. The reason Gia, Kendall, Patrick, and Dante gave their lives. The reason the Network spent millions to bring me here.

  We did it all to kill Sergio Alonzo. We failed.

  I failed.

  Now they had to go. The decision was made. Renata’s mansion was in ruins and the clan would be on high alert. Samantha had a ninety million dollar lead in the Coronation contest.

  And Sergio knew that Nicky wanted to kill him.

  This mission was over.

  Ryan’s body twitched, then he opened his eyes and spoke a complete sentence.

  “It was worth it.”

  “Shhh…go to sleep,” Nicky said.

  “Nicky, this is what I want you to know.” Ryan was practically in a trance. His eyes were wide open, but he wasn’t really awake.

  Nicky put her hand on his shoulder. “What are you trying to say to me? See if you can get it out so you can sleep.”

  “Everything we went through in Italy and Renata’s mansion,” Ryan said. “I’d do it again to get to where we are now. It was worth it.”

  Nicky looked at him for a few seconds, then Ryan fell back on his pillow and closed his eyes. Nicky watched him sleep for a time, then she whispered, “I think so too.”

  Chapter 6

  Her mother. The mission. The Network. Falkon. Frankie. Ryan. Sergio. The night sagged under the weight of it all, and Nicky found herself seated alone in the dining room, surprised that it was only 3:30. Had she taken a guess before looking at the clock, she might have said a few minutes before five, or even six. To her it felt like the sun should be coming up any minute, that the world had been covered in darkness for long enough.

  3:31 now. A single minute closer to decision time. Only about two hundred more before the sunlight released them to go wherever it was they were supposed to be.

  For Frankie, it would be the Network training grounds in Richmond. A former slave who had the strength to resist his own programming, who had the decisiveness and speed it took to behead Renata Sullivan, who had no family left in the world, other than Nicky—Frankie was perfect Network material. According to Phillip, Headquarters already had someone on the road to come get him. An experienced assassin named Eve Kendrick was scheduled to arrive at the safe house before dawn, and if Frankie had even the slightest interest in continuing what he started at Renata’s mansion, she would take him away to learn more about the fine art of vampire hunting.

  For Phillip and Helena, it was almost certainly a return trip to whatever Rocky Mountain forest hid them between missions. Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana—these were the spaces where people like Phillip and Helena resided when they weren’t in action. A house on a lake somewhere, or a cabin in the woods. The region was full of Network operatives, laying low until it was time for them to rejoin the action.

  But even a remote parcel of mountain wilderness wouldn’t be enough for Nicky, Jill, and Ryan. Their faces were so well known to the clan, so heavily photographed—there would be no place in America that was safe for them. Tomorrow morning they would travel to another safe house, then another, bouncing along one of the Network’s escape routes and ending up in Mexico or Canada. From there, they’d take a plane and land someplace far away.

  Maybe they could meet up with Annika and Shannon in Brazil. Maybe they’d go to Europe, landing in a crowded city where they could disappear until it was time for another job.

  3:35. On the one hand, the night felt like it was stretching into eternity. On the other, it couldn’t last long enough. The darkness held them here, and here was where Nicky wanted to be.

  She wasn’t finished. The work wasn’t finished.

  At 3:36 Gordon emerged from the spare bedroom.

  “How did it go in there?” Nicky asked him.

  “Really, really well,” Gordon said. “Frankie is resting in the bedroom at the moment. He and I had a good talk. I’ve never seen a subject come out so quickly. Usually progress on the first day is slight, but with Frankie, we’re pretty much done. He is a special case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we consider what he did to his own master,” Gordon said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Frankie is unique,” Nicky said quietly. “He always has been.”

  Gordon gestured at a couch in the living room. “Let’s sit down together for a moment.”

  On a grungy couch in the small living room of a dilapidated house in a crumbling neighborhood, Gordon summarized the past ten years of Frankie’s life for Nicky. Total subservience was a phrase Gordon used more than once. A very specific routine for each slave, day in and day out.

  Nicky was tired, both physically and emotionally, and she made no effort to control the anger that built in her as she listened to Gordon describe Frankie’s life since that night he and Nicky were stolen from her father’s RV and taken to the Farm.

  “Every action he took was based on the programming,” Gordon said. “Every word he said was in conformance with the brainwashing routine he received at the Farm. All that he was, his entire being, was quashed and pushed to the deepest recesses of his mind to make room for the new, subservient Frankie the vampires wanted him to be.”

  None of this was a surprise to Nicky. She knew full well how it worked. She even sat through a programming session herself once, and remembered the barrage of endless commands Melissa Mayhew tried to plant in her mind. Had any of those commands took, she would have been an entirely different person.

  She had intimate knowledge of what it meant to be a vampire’s slave, so why was it so disturbing to hear Gordon describe what it meant for Frankie? Why did it make her feel so angry? So guilty?

  The thought of running off to be with Ryan somewhere, the two of them relaxing and enjoying life, when Frankie had spent the past ten years like this, when she had been able to walk away from the Farm and Frankie couldn’t—it was unconscionable.

  She owed him so much more.

  “You’re saying it’s going to be a long time before Frankie is going to be anything close to human,” Nicky said.

  “Normally, that would be the case,” said Gordon. “I was very skeptical when I heard the Network had visions of transforming Frankie into some kind of assassin. In my experience, a slave who has been programmed in childhood isn’t prepared for independent living of any sort for years.”

  “But Frankie is different. That’s what you’re telling me.”

  “Yes! He is so very different, Nicky! Working with him tonight was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. He made tremendous progress in such a short amount of time!”

  “So how is he, really? Is he ready to go away with Eve and start training?”

  “I think so. In fact, I think it would be good for him. The thing that made this all possible, the way he defeated his own programming—from what I can tell, Frankie held on tightly to his true self for all these years.”

  “What do you mean?”

  �
�I mean the real Frankie, the one the vampires tried to erase when he was only seven years old, was right there beneath the surface the entire time. He was struggling to break free, and when he heard Jill say your name the other night, he finally did it! I didn’t have much work to do to set him free. He was already fully in control.”

  Nicky leaned back into the couch. What Gordon was telling her should have made her happy. Frankie was going to be okay. He had a real chance at a human life. After all, he was only eighteen years old.

  But the thought of him trapped beneath the surface, a ten-year jail sentence inside his own body—it made her furious. How many more Frankies were out there? How many innocents were being held captive inside their minds, waiting out their days until some vampire decided to eat them?

  “Can I see him now?”

  “He’s asleep, Nicky, the most important sleep of his life. For the first time since he was seven years old, his brain is free to create new connections of his own choosing. That work happens best while we sleep, the deeper the better. I helped Frankie achieve a state of total relaxation. We need to allow him to sleep until Eve comes to take him away. You should get some sleep too.”

  “I can’t risk missing him when he leaves.”

  “It would be best for him if you did, Nicky.”

  “What the hell does that mean? I’m not letting Frankie go without saying goodbye.”

  “You loomed large in his mind,” Gordon said. “More than once, when I asked him for the first thought that came to his mind, he said, ‘I look out for Nicky and she looks out for me.’”

  “It’s a promise we made to each other when we were little,” Nicky said.

  “In his damaged mind, that childhood promise took on an enormous stature. In order for him to achieve any sort of self-determination, we had to treat that promise as another piece of programming. I spent the last hour of our session helping him put that promise in its place.”

  “You don’t want me to see him at all before he leaves,” Nicky said. “You’re afraid I might break him.”

  “I wouldn’t use those exact words, but yes, he is in a delicate state at the moment and your presence has the potential to undermine some of the progress we made.”

  “Will I ever get to--”

  “Yes, Nicky. Frankie just needs a few months of practice at being his own person. Then you and he may resume your friendship.”

  Yet another reason for the night to stretch on forever. Already wishing she didn’t have to go, now Nicky had to face the prospect of leaving Frankie without even saying goodbye.

  “For as long as I can remember, it’s been about my dad and Frankie,” Nicky said. “Before…all this, I went across the country, Gia was with me, we were looking for them. I couldn’t bring myself to stop looking for them.”

  “It’s time to rest, Nicky. Your work is complete.”

  “No, I don’t think it is,” she said quietly.

  Gordon patted her on the knee. “You’re a hero, Nicky Bloom,” he said. Standing up from the couch, he stretched out his arms and yawned. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been up this late. I feel like I’m a little old to be playing this game with the rest of you.”

  “Thank you for all you’ve done, Gordon.”

  “Believe me. It’s my pleasure. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a long drive tomorrow, and just a few hours before Eve gets here to take Frankie away.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll speak with you later, Gordon.”

  “Good night, Nicky.”

  *****

  Nicky fell asleep an hour later and dreamed about her mother.

  She wanted the dream to be about the human version of her mother, but it wasn’t. In the dream, her mother was gray-faced and misshapen, with long, yellow claws, and a mouth full of crooked fangs.

  An animal. Her mother had given up her human form and become an animal. She did it to save her children.

  “It wasn’t just us you saved Mom,” Nicky said. “Falkon was close to doing something terrible, but thanks to you, we stopped him.”

  They were in Falkon’s lab. It was empty. All the other feral vampires had escaped into the woods.

  “We could have done it all,” Nicky said. “We erased Falkon’s data, we sent him running into the woods, we destroyed his lab, we killed Renata, we emptied her mansion and burned it down. The only thing we didn’t do is kill Sergio.”

  Nicky walked over to the space in the lab where Sergio had been sprawled out on his back. His blood was still on the floor, smeared into the shape of his body.

  “I was right here, Mom. I had a weapon in my hands. He was weak. I guess I was too. Why couldn’t I do it?”

  When her mother spoke, it wasn’t with sounds, but in thoughts that rang in Nicky’s mind.

  “I couldn’t kill Falkon either,” her mother said. “I was weak, just like you.”

  “No, this is different,” Nicky said. “I had a chance to do it. My weakness was in my mind.”

  “Weakness is weakness,” her mother said, “and as humans, we weren’t strong enough to fight these vampires.”

  Behind Nicky’s mother was a bank of computers. Nicky pointed at them.

  “That’s where we did it, Mom,” she said. “I finished what you started.”

  One of the computer screens came to life. The screen went from black to bright white. Brighter still. Blinding now. The computer was glowing with blinding white light.

  She woke up. She was in the safe house. The light wasn’t coming from a computer screen, but from the window of the bedroom where she slept. Headlights were shining in the window. There was a car outside.

  Nicky crawled out of bed and went to the window. Was Frankie’s ride here?

  Staying to one side of the window, Nicky pulled back the blinds and looked outside. If she wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to Frankie, she’d at least watch him go.

  The headlights turned off and someone came out of the car. It took a second for Nicky’s eyes to adjust, but once they did, she saw that this wasn’t Eve Kendrick here to take Frankie away.

  It was Jill.

  Nicky ran to the living room and greeted Jill at the front door.

  “Nicky, hi, how are--”

  Nicky threw her arms around Jill and squeezed her tight. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said.

  “Me too,” said Jill, hugging her back. “Is everything okay? I thought you’d be asleep.”

  Nicky stepped back and allowed Jill to come inside.

  “I haven’t really wanted to sleep tonight,” Nicky said.

  “I can understand that,” Jill said. Something about Jill’s voice, the cool confidence in the way she spoke—in that moment, Nicky sensed just how much things had changed while she was in Italy. When the mission began, Nicky was the confident one, the experienced agent who could lead this mission, and Jill was just an eager kid from Potomac who wanted to fight the vampires as a way to rebel against her parents.

  What a difference a few months had made. Looking in Jill’s eyes, Nicky felt like this was a completely different person than the one she left behind. This Jill solved impossible Ransom clues, hacked into a vampire’s phone, and gave the order to a crowd of volunteers to burn Renata’s mansion to the ground.

  “How is everyone?” Jill asked.

  “They’re fine. Asleep. Everyone’s…what are you doing right now?”

  Jill smiled. “I was hoping to take a shower and go to bed. Why?”

  “I need you to take me somewhere.”

  “Oh, okay. Right now?”

  “It’s just, we’re leaving tomorrow and I’m having a hard time believing the job is actually done.”

  “Believe me, Nicky. It’s done. It may not have gone exactly as planned, but I think anyone would tell you this has been one of the most successful missions in the history of the Network.”

  “That’s what Helena said. Phillip too. And I’m sure it’s all true. But I don’t feel like it’s done, and I think maybe it’s because I�
�ve been away and have only heard about all the things that happened. I want to see it.”

  “See what?”

  “Renata’s mansion. I left with Frankie before you took the place apart.”

  “Nicky, there’s no mansion left to see.”

  “I know. That’s why I want to go. I thought—it’s hard to explain. I thought Ryan and I were going to die there. And Frankie. That’s where he was being held. I don’t know how this all started for you, but for me, everything began with Frankie. Gia and I went all over the country to spy on the clan and look for Frankie, and…God, Jill, it just doesn’t feel like it’s over. I’m hoping that if I see what you did to Renata’s mansion, I can let it go.”

  “I don’t know if it’s a good idea. We left the mansion more than twelve hours ago. There’s bound to be people there--”

  “I know all the places to spy on the mansion without being seen. I’ve done it dozens of times. I’ve staked out the place from every side. Please take me there.”

  “If I say no, you’re just going to get in the car and go by yourself, aren’t you?”

  “I’d rather I was with you. I want you to tell me what you did while I look at it. I want you to convince me this is really over and it’s okay to leave.”

  “You really need this, don’t you?”

  Nicky nodded.

  “Okay. We’ll circle behind and take a look from Trinity Hills. But we’ll be quick about it. And if it seems like anyone’s following us all bets are off.”

  “I know, Jill. Thank you.”

  They left the safe house through the back door, got in Jill’s car, and drove away. As they left the neighborhood, Nicky asked, “Where have you been tonight?”

  Jill breathed deeply and took her time answering the question.

  “Let’s just say I totally get where you’re coming from, Nicky. Like you, I had something I needed to do before I felt like I could leave.”

  Chapter 7

  Sergio landed in DC shortly after dusk on a frigid December night. He had a limo drive him from the airport to Renata’s mansion.