“How long before the others get here?” she finally asked.
“Twenty minutes, max.”
Jesse raised an eyebrow.
“Okay. You got me. I confess,” he said. “I
called them earlier, while waiting for you. I only told them I thought I knew where the girl was being held. Nothing about vampires and … things like that.”
“All right,” Jesse said. There was nothing to be done about it now. If she was to face what came down here, and on her own terms, she would have to hurry.
“He was winning,” Stan added. “You have to be one of the bravest people I know, and one of the strongest in spirit, but Jesse, we both know from what came through that microphone that he almost got the better of you in there.”
Jesse stared through the windshield without bothering to argue because Stan was right. Stan, this last bit of confidence revealed, had heard every last thing, maybe even her heavy breathing.
With shaky fingers, Jesse pulled back the neck of her sweater, then the collar of her coat. “This is what they did to me when I was a kid.” She pointed to her neck and the remnants of the old wound on it. “The rest of it—the things they said about me in the precinct about being psychic, along with some other, less favorable names—are because of this. And because of him. The man in that castle saw to it I would live a while longer by sealing this wound with his own kiss of death. He was there when my parents died, Stan, and I … I believed all this time that he was an angel.”
Stan sat like stone. Not one muscle moved when he said, “Vampire, Jesse. He’s a vampire. You said man, insinuating that there’s a human being in that castle.”
“Self-preservation,” she whispered, without missing a beat. “With his blood in my veins, what does that make me?”
“You,” Stan said. “It makes you the you I’m sitting here with right now. It also makes you responsible for my safety.” Though partially fake, his grin radiated plenty of warmth. “So, if you can smell these suckers, and with whatever voodoo you’re known for, boss, tell me where they are, and what we do about it.”
Well, Jesse thought irrationally in a circumstance when rationality stood between life and probable death … this had to be some kind of record. Two males liking her, for reasons beyond her ability to explain the phenomenon. She actually might rest in peace at last, she supposed, knowing she had friends in all the wrong places.
Chapter 17
The helicopter’s twirling blades glinted silver, spinning fast, reflecting the red moonlight.
Shutting the engine down wouldn’t have occurred to Jesse’s pilot, Lance reasoned, since a wingless chopper was a dead end in terms of an exit. Like a grounded dragonfly, the metallic silver beast sat in a field beside the village road pockmarked with crosses, with its doors open. Abandoned.
“Bloody hell!” An oath from his past. “It’s too late.”
He saw her, then, and his heart burst with short-lived relief. Jesse was walking up the lane with her pilot, who waved a flashlight in front of them that would have been insufficient in the best of cases. Both Jesse and Stan held guns, but they may as well have been holding water pistols if they weren’t able to see anything coming at them.
Jesse.
She stopped abruptly. He felt the shudder that racked her thin, wiry frame. He sensed how the fine, silky hairs at the nape of her beautiful neck curled with the latent blast of his wish for her to halt.
He heard her say, “He’s here.”
Her pilot halted. “Is he friendly, or do we have to also watch our backs?”
“Which is it to be, then?” she asked, speaking over her shoulder. “Friend or foe?”
And then he was beside her, standing in the meager beam of Stan’s flashlight. He watched Stan stumble sideways, and wondered if this was the pilot’s first sighting of a vampire, up close or otherwise. Stan smelled of nerves, pumped-up muscle and anxious perspiration. Ringing those things was the oddly familiar odor of animal. A surprise. But Lance couldn’t address that now and turned his attention to Jesse. She stood her ground, her weapon steady in a two-handed grip, her face as wan as his own.
“Elizabeth is nearby,” she said. “I can feel her.”
“She’s in the church.” Lance turned his face to the wind.
“Strange place for a dining room,” she said.
Jesse’s pilot looked back and forth between them, hoping, Lance knew, that Jesse didn’t mean what he thought she’d meant. That a feast was taking place up ahead, in a holy place. The ultimate blasphemy.
“Manners don’t always take precedence in the dark,” Lance remarked.
“She is alive.” Jesse cocked her head the same way he had.
“Barely,” he conceded.
“Why is she alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yet you knew it. You’ve known all along.”
“Yes.”
“What else don’t I know?” Her question was voiced in a calm outward tone that hid as many unspoken horrors as the dark, silent buildings around Jesse. “Is she really there?”
“She is, yes.”
“How many days, hours, meals does it take to change that?”
“It only takes one bite from a scavenger who knows no better and needs above all to feed the thirst. An experienced vampire can spread that out for days.”
“So,” Jesse said, wincing over the image of such a possibility, “we can extrapolate that there are experienced monsters here.”
Lance nodded. “At least one. The one I tried to warn you about.”
“I can’t feel the difference,” she admitted.
“I can.”
“Why don’t they come out?” Stan asked gruffly, his flashlight beam moving into the distance. “How many are there?”
“Six,” Jesse answered. “There are six here.” To Lance, she said, “Who’s the star?”
Lance quieted the riot of emotions that were tied to Jesse’s. No easy task. She had become a large part of his renewed vigor since that first unbelievable sighting. Thoughts of nothing else, other than being near her, had strengthened the bond between them, leaving him a prisoner of sorts. No doubt she felt the same.
Jesse’s precarious hold on her prejudices was slipping, as he watched her. She still hated her monsters. She thought she hated him for what he was, what he had done in the past and what he was doing to her now. Which meant that he was doing something, affecting her. Her soul was in turmoil over this.
“There are monsters in all of us,” he reminded her. “In varying degrees.”
“So, what’s the pronouncement on the one in there?” Stan asked. “The one who found a way to let the others out, and is waiting for us? What degree is that one?”
“Cold,” Lance replied. “Coldhearted and cruel. Not for helping her kind escape, but due to the worst motive of all.”
“What’s that?” Stan asked.
“Her?” The vehemence in Jesse’s voice trumped Stan’s. But Lance said to her pilot, for Jesse’s benefit, “The motives are greed, power and jealousy. The pleasure of draining a living being a few precious drops at a time, just because it can be done. The feeling of absorbing those few drops. Jealousy of a heart able to keep its own rhythm, when a vampire’s no longer follows the deep tracks of time. The power an immortal wields over a mortal’s failing hold on his own life. The taste of a soul as it slides down the biter’s throat.”
“Jeez,” Stan muttered.
Jesse’s heartbeat had picked up with his earnest explanation, as had her pilot’s. Unlike Stan’s, however, which came across as a loud, regular boom, Jesse’s pulse skidded all over the place, searching for a groove.
Jesse tasted the truth in his words, knowing now, and for certain, that she was changed forever. Not because of any physical alteration discernible on the surface, but for knowing what was inside her. Her inner blackness was bubbling up. He had uncorked the bottle.
Hiding what she was would be impossible, she was thinking. Among L.A.’
s huge population, she’d have to keep to the shadows, where other fringe populations existed. Not belonging to any one place. Never be longing. Although no one would know the truth about her, she would distance herself on her own, without really needing to, out of self-loathing.
“I’m sorry,” Lance said to her again, needing to say it, willing her to believe him by pushing his earnestness toward her from the outer reaches of his own soul. “My intent was to help you survive. I was sure, seeing you here, so far from Los Angeles, that you had come for me, whether you knew it or not. I still want to believe this. You see, as it turns out, I’m as greedy as all the rest.”
Jesse’s gun wavered. Observing this, her pilot spoke.
“So, maybe, if we get out of this alive—those of us who actually are alive—you two can have a chat,” Stan said. “Right now may not be the best time. I have no special skills, but I can feel those suckers coming. The hair on my arms is standing straight up!”
They were coming, all right, silent as a pod of stealth submarines. Night was their time, darkness their mode of transportation. The undead flowed through the shadows like tattered, streaming bits of it. The blood moon had opened her arms to the creatures of the night.
“Must … get Elizabeth,” Jesse stuttered, looking up at him suddenly, as if he’d spoken aloud.
Lance felt a streak of electricity zing through her with an intensity that left her breathless.
Yes, we are connected. Bonded. In telling you so, I have sealed your fate.
“If you are sorry, if you care, if you are what you say you are, help us get Elizabeth Jorgensen back,” she said, the defiance in her voice challenging him, pleading with him to take up this task.
“Alive,” Stan added, moving closer to Jesse in a guarded stance, turning his head to search the moonlight-dappled darkness beyond his flashlight.
The night smelled rancid, Jesse thought. Standing on the outskirts of the deserted village with her gun raised and her senses wide open, she was afraid to rely too heavily on those senses, with Lance planted firmly in front of her.
Although the moon, whatever kind it was, shone fiercely enough to lend shape to the buildings closest to her, Stan’s flashlight illuminated Lance Van Baaren’s anxious features as the beam of weaker light made a pass.
Jesse sucked in a stale breath. She heard Stan grunt as his beam quickly lowered to the ground. The vampire’s face had glistened in the light.
The metal of her gun felt foreign in her damp palms, but her fingers were glued to it, one of them resting lightly on the trigger. “I’ll never be like you, even if I’m halfway there,” she said.
Her blood, however much of it she possessed, pounded in her head, as if opposing this bond caused her more pain. She still found Lance a thing of incredible beauty. She wanted to reach out and touch his perfect physique. She wanted him to open his exotic lips and tell her everything—who she’d become, and what would happen if they made it out of here.
Lance Van Baaren glowed in the red-dyed darkness, a being not belonging to either world, wholly. Not dead, not alive, he rode the currents between worlds, creating his own place, his own race. And he was trying to take her there with him.
She could shoot him and be done with it. If she squeezed the trigger, part of this would be over. And if she succeeded in putting him in the ground for good, how would she learn to live like this? There would be no one to light the way. Worse yet, she’d never view his perfection again, or feel his heart next to hers.
The last thought didn’t come as a shock. But the moment was disrupted. One of the freaks was watching her. She felt its eyes on her back.
The horror of where she was again washed over her.
“Get away!” she said, as much a command for herself as for the pair of vampires, one of which, even now, had the power to steal her breath away.
“Jesse?” Stan’s voice drew her. “Something’s over there, by the door.”
Jesse heard growling and more fierce noises. Saw movement too fast to nail down. Stan’s flashlight beam swept to the east, catching a glint of glossy black pelt passing through the light. An animal, on all fours.
Jesse took aim. A pale hand came up to block her. “Wolf,” Lance said, as if that should make any difference in a potential target.
Stan said to him, “Are they with you?”
Lance nodded. “They will warn us.”
“How will they do that?” Jesse snapped. “Open their muzzles and whistle?”
She felt Stan’s eyes on her this time, and heard his unspoken question. Are you losing it, boss?
That’s exactly what she was doing. Losing her mind.
“I’m fine,” she said. “There are wolves now, on our side. God. Where’s that church?”
“Stan,” Lance said without taking his eyes from her. “Take her back to the helicopter before it’s too late.”
“And I’d listen to you, why?” Stan said.
Lance’s voice added to the chill of the night. “Do you want her to find out about you, whether or not she finds the girl?”
Jesse looked to her pilot, confused by that statement, unable to see Stan’s face beneath his hooded parka. Lance stepped closer to her, filling her vision. He pressed a lock of her hair behind her ear, ignoring the gun biting into his chest. “Go,” he said. “Do this for me, Jesse, if not for yourself.”
His voice was an instantaneous lull, a singsong demand that flowed through her head, her body, her obstinacy, transporting her somewhere … else.
Darkness overlapped darkness, and she was again in someone’s arms, limp, weak, numb. The impulse came to argue, to protest and break away from the invisible bonds Lance wove, until that impulse dissipated.
She was in someone’s arms, being carted away from the buildings, and perhaps out of danger. Helpless, unable to move, Jesse gave one last look over the wide shoulder of the vampire carrying her, to see a wolf, black as the night, eyes gleaming darkly, its dangerous mouth open, standing complacently by Stan’s side. As if they were friends.
Chapter 18
She came to her senses slowly. The sharp tang of metal and plastic hit her like an old-fashioned dose of smelling salts, forcing her eyes open … to more darkness.
She was confined in a tight space. Panic set in when she couldn’t move her arms. For a horrifying second, Jesse thought she might be trapped in a coffin, and issued a bloodcurdling scream. Then she saw the light sheering off the windshield, and knew it was a windshield. Her panic ebbed. She was in the chopper.
Where was Stan?
Her eyes adjusted to her surroundings. Jesse lifted her head from the seat back. Her confinement was the harness. She moved her fingers across familiar straps, and found the buckles and the release.
The events leading up to this untimely little blackout came hurtling back to her in a cold head rush. Lance had done this to her. With his voice.
Also, there had been a wolf. And an unusual moon.
She held up her hand. No gun.
Turning her head, she took in the eerie glow of the rows of crosses, which all of a sudden seemed twice as ominous as before.
Swallowing the bitter aftertaste of temporary defeat, Jesse pulled at her restraints.
She ran on legs the consistency of lead, with her spare revolver in her hand. Stan had been left with the vampires, out there. She’d never forgive herself if anything happened to her friend.
As she raced on, the dank village smells morphed into an odor of decay so intense, it acted as its own barrier. Mold and mildew odors joined in. Lance had told her these vamps could smell her from a distance, so how did they stand a place that stank of charred wood, the decomposing bodies of former occupants and spores floating in the silent, stagnant air?
Poor Elizabeth. She might be alive, but would she recover from this? Be locked away for years, in a straitjacket, every time she tried to remember?
Jesse’s uncanny radar stopped her in time to keep her from tripping over a lump in the road. Was it a bo
dy? Oh, please! Not Stan!
Not … Stan.
But she realized without looking that what lay by her feet wasn’t human. The scent drifting up was of damp fur. The body still gave off heat. This had to be the wolf, dead no more than a few minutes, which meant she couldn’t have been blacked out and in that helicopter for long.
Sidestepping the animal corpse, Jesse hurtled on—between the crosses, into the nest of buildings, with only the moon to light her progress. A faraway part of herself noticed how well she moved in the dark, though the thought was fleeting. She opened her mouth to shout for Stan, then thought better of it.
Rounding a cottage that lay in ruins, its roof sagging and its door hinged open, she paused. The back of her neck prickled. Spinning on her heels, she said to no one immediately visible, “I’ve come to take Elizabeth Jorgensen home.”
Did these walking cadavers know the name of the girl they’d been feasting on?
“Have you, now? Come here for that reason?”
someone asked. A female voice, with a noticeable British accent. And another surprise. Jesse hadn’t ever contemplated the possibility of female vampires. A big mistake, she realized, since she also had that kind of blood in her veins.
Jesse aimed her gun at the shadows beside her. “Where is she?”
“You have come to make ridiculous demands? Offer a trade?” the female returned with a calm that reminded Jesse of just how far up the creek she actually was among conscienceless bloodsuckers.
The word soul floated in the air around her. Lance had told her he had a soul, and she desperately wanted to believe him. What were the odds of finding another misplaced soul among these shadows?
“I’ll trade a round of silver bullets,” she said.
“I’d be there before you squeezed the trigger,” the female threatened.
A cold shiver passed through Jesse’s body, in one side and out the other, in an east-to-west pathway. A directional cue. She leveled the gun toward those distasteful eastern shadows and pulled in a breath of fetid air.
“Try,” she warned.
The darkness blurred, warped. A hand grabbed her by the throat, but not before Jesse squeezed off a round. The explosion was deafening. The fingers on her throat fell away. Whoever the hand belonged to issued a shocked, slow wail, and then came the rain of ashes—the dirty remnants of the vampire.
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