The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four)

by Spencer Baum

  Jill’s phone buzzed with the incoming text message as she parked her car on the south side of the Thorndike campus. She pulled to a stop directly behind Ryan’s Lamborghini, then grabbed her phone to read the text.

  It was from Alvin.

  We’re in.

  She typed a response.

  I will let you know when I’ve got the phone and you can proceed.

  As Jill stepped out of her car, Ryan stepped out of his. The plan required them to arrive in separate vehicles, but to walk into prom together.

  “How is she?” Jill asked.

  “She seems calm about the whole thing,” Ryan said. “And confident.”

  Jill looked down the street, towards the Purgatory House.

  “Good,” she said. “Shall we?”

  She held out her arm for Ryan, who escorted her to the front door of the gym. They entered together.

  A servant greeted them in the lobby and asked them to please check their cell phones, hand bags, and coats.

  They each gave the servant a cell phone. An old cell phone. Earlier in the afternoon, they had pondered telling the servant they had no phones to check, but realized that would be suspicious. Quite literally no one in their class went anywhere without a phone.

  Fortunately, Jill had a collection of old phones in the parts drawer of her computer desk at home. The phones she and Ryan now presented were from that collection. Their actual, current phones were hidden away in their outfits to be used later.

  Purple and gold prom decorations covered the lobby. Arabian Nights was the theme this year, and the decorations were meant to evoke a trip to Persia, with carpets hanging on the walls and tapestries from the ceiling.

  They mingled in the lobby for a few moments, speaking with their classmates about the decorations, the dinners they had before they came, and the parties they would attend when they left. They migrated from the lobby into the gym, still making small talk with their friends. Jill pretended to listen to the blather that came out of Jenny, Mattie, and Karmela’s mouths, but her focus was on the party all around them. She couldn’t make her move until all her classmates had arrived.

  Until every coat, purse, and phone was checked.

  She kept a rolling headcount as the night went on, and found it surprisingly easy to keep track of her classmates. After spending an entire semester immersed in a spreadsheet with the names of everyone in her class, she had no trouble discerning who was already here, and who was yet to arrive.

  Pauline Wabash and Jacob Haltham were the last students to arrive, entering through the lobby at nine-fifteen. Jill used a lull in her conversation with Karmela to excuse herself. Then she went back to the lobby and out the front door, as if she had forgotten something in her car.

  She walked around the north side of the gym, back to where she had parked the black Corolla earlier in the day. As she walked, she retrieved her phone from a pouch sewn into the side of her dress. She typed a text message to her helper who was down the street, about to come around the corner.

  Approaching the back door now. Count to twenty, then run interference.

  Jill began counting as she walked. 1…2…3…

  She was nonchalant as she moved. Hello guards at Purgatory House, she thought. I’m just a girl who stepped outside to use her phone.

  9…10…11…

  She stayed on the sidewalk, slowing her pace just a little to properly time her arrival.

  12…13…14…

  A block down, Zack rounded the corner and entered her line of sight. He wore a black T-shirt that hugged his chest and showed off the beautiful V-shape of his back. Jill couldn’t see the red Corvair, but she could hear the engine. He had left it running where he parked it, just as Jill suggested.

  He moved in a deliberate motion towards the Purgatory House, carrying a tire iron in his right hand, and allowing it to drag on the sidewalk. It made a horrible, nails-on-a-chalkboard kind of sound. If any of the guards at the house had been looking at Jill, they weren’t looking at her anymore.

  15…16…17…

  Of the many cars parked on the street, the one closest to Zack was a shiny black Audi. Art’s car.

  What perfect luck, Jill thought. If anyone deserves this, it’s Art.

  18…19…20.

  Zack lifted the tire iron over his head with both hands like it was a sledgehammer, and with impressive force, he slammed it down into the windshield of Art’s car.

  Here we go, Jill thought.

  While Zack screamed like a crazy person, demolishing Art’s car with blow after blow from the tire iron, Jill pulled open the back door of the gym and snuck inside, confident that not a single guard was looking at her as she entered.

  A stairwell in front of her, and a door to her right, just like she told Nicky to expect. Jill jiggled the handle on the door. It was locked. No surprise there. She lifted her skirt and removed a small leather pouch that was tied around her thigh. Inside the pouch was a professional locksmith’s set of picks. The locksmith, a sweet little man named Ebin, had given Jill a lesson on their use earlier in the day. One at a time, just as Ebin showed her, Jill pressed the picks into the lock until one of them found its way all the way to the back and the door clicked open.

  Jill was in the corridor now, the same one she had seen on the blueprint. She walked halfway down the corridor, stopping at the first door on her right. She picked the lock and pushed open the door just enough to peek outside.

  She saw the black Corolla, waiting there for Nicky to take it away later in the night.

  She pulled the door closed and tested it, making sure it was still unlocked. Then she continued down the corridor, finding another door at the end. When she picked the lock on this door, she was careful to be quiet about it. She didn’t know who might be listening on the other side.

  She opened the door slowly, peering through the crack to make sure the room was clear. She saw a rack of coats, a shelf of purses, a table covered with phones and car keys, but no people.

  The slave working the coat check room was standing guard outside the front door, leaving Jill easy access from the back.

  Everything in the room was tagged with a number. The phones were inside individually numbered plastic bags.

  Before stepping all the way inside, Jill dialed a number on her phone, a number she had stolen from her father’s records.

  One of the phones on the table began to buzz. Jill snatched it, plastic bag and all, then disappeared back into the corridor. As she moved, she removed the phone from the plastic bag and slipped it into the pouch on her dress. She tossed the plastic bag aside and left it on the floor.

  She emerged through the north exit, right in front of the black Corolla. Then she typed a new text on her phone, and sent it to Alvin.

  He was sitting in a delivery van that was parked on the edge of Daciana’s neighborhood when he read the message.

  Got the phone. Get started.

  Alvin, in turn, sent a text to Phillip Fischer, who was hiding inside a wooden shipping crate in the storage room of Daciana’s house.

  We’re all set. Come out when you’re ready.

  Phillip pulled on a latch built inside the crate, and a panel swung open for him. He emerged in the storage room of Daciana’s mansion. Reaching back into the crate, he grabbed a gas mask and a steel canister. He slipped the gas mask over his head, then took the canister to the center of the room.

  Daciana’s air conditioning unit was right where the blueprint said it would be. Phillip removed a side panel from the unit, exposing the motor, the fan, and the vent. He popped the latch on the steel canister and white gas began hissing out. He dropped the canister into the vent and listened to it roll underneath the house. Then he flipped a switch on the motor, manually turning the air conditioner on full blast.

  Addonox began pouring out of the air conditioner vents in every room of Daciana’s house.

  Chapter 45

  Nicky watched from behind the window of the Purgatory House as the tal
l guy with tattoos demolished Art’s car, providing cover for Jill to sneak into the gym. The guards made no effort to stop the guy, but they couldn’t help but look on at the spectacle as he screamed like a banshee while he took swing after swing at the black Audi.

  Once Jill was inside the gym, the assault on Art’s Audi ended. The guy ran down the street and drove away in a red Corvair.

  A minute later, Jill emerged from the gym through the door on the north side. She had a harried look in her eyes, like she’d just done something dangerous. Whatever it was, Nicky was glad to see Jill get into her silver Mercedes and drive away. Hopefully Ryan wasn’t far behind her.

  Nicky went on a little tour of the house and closed the doors to every room, reducing the line of sight for each hidden camera, and limiting what the microphones would hear.

  It was almost time.

  She walked into the parlor, where there was a single camera built into the wall, but no microphones of any kind. This was the room where it would happen.

  This was the room where Sergio would find her.

  He was coming. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she knew it. He was coming for her tonight, and would be here soon.

  She went to one end of the room, and stood before the portrait of Sandra Rennselar. Grabbing the portrait by the frame, she slid it to the right, until it was touching the portrait next to it, completely covering the camera built into the wall.

  Then she went to the middle of the room, sat down in a high-backed chair, and waited.

  *****

  The music blared, the disco lights spun, and the students danced.

  Daciana loved prom.

  It was a distinctly American tradition, a rite of passage for children on the cusp of adulthood. When Daciana first arrived in America, she was surprised at the stature the prom ritual held among the middle class. For many young women in those days, prom was their first date without a formal chaperone. For many young men, prom was the first time they were allowed to drive the family car.

  Corsages for the women, boutonnières for the men, formal dress, a fancy dinner beforehand, a wild party afterwards—over the decades, the prom ritual evolved, but it never strayed from its rite-of-passage roots. That’s what she loved most about it. In a world so disrespectful of ritual and tradition, prom held strong onto the American imagination, allowing teens brimming with sexual energy a chance to express themselves in a ritual passed down through the generations.

  As Daciana watched the kids dance, she saw their parents dancing in the same gym thirty years back, and their children dancing thirty years hence. That was the power of tradition. Time marched ahead, relentlessly. The world changed. Technology and culture and language evolved, dragging society headlong into an uncertain future.

  Tradition was the only way to make sense of it all. Ritual was the only piece of the past that could be carried forward.

  Tonight, Thorndike would complete its most sacred ritual. The immortal was chosen. The cage was ready. Sergio was on his way to Mary’s house.

  And Nicky Bloom was in place, ready to take a walk in the moonlight. She would start her walk at the Purgatory House and end it in the steel cage at the back of the dance floor.

  “You were looking for me, Daciana?”

  She turned to see a short boy with broad shoulders and thick black hair. Jake Castillo. One of the names she got from Mary Torrance the night before.

  “Mr. Castillo. Yes, I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Okay. What about?”

  “You live in the Huntington Heights neighborhood, correct?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Has Annika Fleming ever been to your house?”

  He hesitated. Daciana grabbed the back of his head and stared into his eyes.

  “Has Annika Fleming ever been to your house?”

  His mind blubbered around back there like jello—this kid wasn’t the brightest boy at school—but the truth was easy enough to find.

  “I had a party last fall,” he said. “She came for a few hours.”

  “I don’t care about last fall,” said Daciana. “What about last month? Annika Fleming returned to Washington a few weeks ago. She visited someone in Huntington Heights. Was it you?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Who was it then? Who did she go see?”

  “Probably Jill.”

  “Jill Wentworth?”

  “Yes ma’am. She and Annika were tight, that is, after Shannon died.”

  “Find her for me,” Daciana said. “Tell her to come see me at once.”

  *****

  For the second time that night, Alvin took the delivery truck to the front gate of Daciana’s mansion. The same servant came out of the booth to greet him.

  Alvin shot the servant with a tranquilizer dart. He collapsed to the ground.

  Through the front gate, around the house, then all the way to the back, where a line of cars, vans, and trucks was waiting for him. Alvin went to the keypad and punched in a six-digit code.

  A code the Network got thanks to a set of cameras that were in Nicky’s earrings one night.

  The whole convoy entered the estate—everyone the Network could scrounge together for a last-second operation like this. Alvin led them across the back side of the grounds, stopping in front of the loading dock where, earlier in the day, he had dropped off a wooden crate.

  The bay doors were wide open. Phillip Fischer was standing there to meet him.

  “We’re all clear inside,” he said. “I count forty-two sleeping beauties in the house. The gas is mostly dissipated, but let’s have everyone wear masks just in case.”

  Alvin went around to the back of the truck and opened the doors. He pulled out three cardboard boxes full of gas masks.

  “Alright everyone,” he said. “You know what to do.”

  *****

  There was a boy waiting on the porch with a gun in his arms and a vacant stare in his eyes.

  Sergio commanded him to stand aside.

  The boy stepped out of the way, and Sergio opened the door. He found her in the parlor, sitting in one of the chairs.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

  Her back was to him, but he saw her face reflected in the glass in front of the fireplace.

  “I’m supposed to be gone already,” she said.

  “Gone where?”

  She stood up and turned to face him. Never before had he seen her look so beautiful.

  Had he seen anything look so beautiful.

  “My friends are leaving tonight,” Nicky said. “I’m supposed to go with them.”

  Sergio went into the parlor, stopping when he was right in front of her.

  “But you didn’t,” he said.

  “I knew you would come.”

  He reached out and grabbed onto the ruby pendant hanging from her neck.

  “I had to wear an item to honor the clan,” Nicky said. “But really, I wore it to honor you. I never thanked you for giving it to me.”

  “It looks good when you wear it,” Sergio said. “You make it beautiful.”

  He let the ruby slip through his fingers, and his hand slide onto her waist. Gently, she raised her hand and put it on his shoulder.

  “I recognize that bracelet,” he said.

  “I wore it the first time we met,” said Nicky. “When we danced at the Masquerade.”

  Outside, music from the prom radiated away from the gym, gently vibrating the walls and the floor of the Purgatory House. It was a slow song, with a deep, hypnotic beat. Lightly, Nicky shuffled her feet back and forth, and then they were dancing. In small, swaying movements, they danced, just like they did the first time they met.

  “You didn’t win the contest,” he said. “Our bonding ritual isn’t complete.”

  “Then why are you here, Sergio?”

  He danced with her for a moment before answering, their bodies inching closer as they moved.

  “I felt drawn to you,” he said. “I’ve alwa
ys felt drawn to you.”

  “What about Mary? Aren’t you supposed to be at her house right now?”

  “I can’t do it, Nicky. I’m different than I was. You’ve changed me. For centuries, I’ve been able to draw forth my venom at will. It’s what made me unique. But I can’t do it anymore. I’m the same as all the others. I can only make a new immortal when I bond, as I have with you.”

  “You said we have to complete the ritual. You said the ritual makes the bond.”

  “It does,” Sergio said. “And tonight I feel more strongly bonded with you than ever.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That you weren’t meant to win Coronation after all. Our ritual was different than I thought it was. You were meant to disappoint me, Nicky. Only then could I realize how deep my love is for you. You failed to complete the ritual I laid out for you, and still I’m here. Still I’m ready to make you immortal, to join with you as one.”

  He pulled her closer. Their chests made contact. He felt her heart beating. He closed his eyes and they danced. Just as they did at the Masquerade, they became one with the music, their bodies intertwined, losing themselves to the rhythm.

  And then she kissed him, and his body sang in ecstasy. The touch of her lips on his, it was everything he had ever wanted in the world. For five hundred years he had waited for this moment. It was better than he imagined it could be. It was joy, beauty, harmony, life itself—Sergio felt like he hadn’t truly lived until now! The feel of her lips, of her hand on the back of his head, of her body pressed against his.

  His fangs came out. The venom coursed through his veins. He would burst if he didn’t release it soon. An explosion of ecstasy. Every nerve in his body screaming in anticipation. He was going to bond! Finally, after so, so long, he had found the one, and he was going to bond with her!