Ziggy wished the chill up his spine was from actual cold. But no. There was nothing he would rather not do than go into that filthy, stinking barn tonight. “Fine. Give Jacob my regrets, will ya?”
Of course she would. The bitch. Feeding them would keep him tied up long enough for her to climb onto Jacob’s lap and beg and plead and promise all sorts of perverted things in order to wheedle her way into “helping” retrieve Nathan.
The barn sat a comfortable distance from the house, not too far for the old owners to walk to it in the winter, not too close for the smell of the animals that used to inhabit it to reach the house. But these were an entirely different kind of animal, and their stink did reach the house on some days. He could smell it now, the ripe, unwashed stench of them and the stale piss odor of their waste. They were awake and restless behind the big sliding door. He strained to move it, but the wood had swelled in the humidity. Sometimes you could get it open without them hearing. Not tonight. Tonight they stood in an uneven semicircle around the door, eyes shining in their unwashed faces, their clothes filthy.
They flinched when he took his knife from his pocket, then relaxed when he rolled up his sleeves. He drew the blade across his wrists and held out his arms. They came at him from all sides, swarming, fighting for his blood.
Bracing himself, he muttered, “Come and get it.”
Four:
Double Cross
W e pulled up next to the curb in front of the apartment, and I launched myself from Bill’s car. For the entire ride from Chicago, I’d imagined countless horrible scenarios. Now, standing on the sidewalk in front of our home, just footsteps from either terror or relief, I almost didn’t want to go up.
“Jesus, I hope there’s a bathroom up there,” Bill groaned as he climbed out. “We couldn’t have stopped even, you know, along the highway?”
“Next time, bring an empty coffee can,” I sniped, my hands shaking as I fumbled for the keys to the front door.
“You could be a little nicer to the complete stranger who drove you all the way here from Chicago. I was just trying to get my cooler back, lady.”
“You’re the complete stranger who shot the man we’re coming to save. You owed him.” I scanned the street. The van wasn’t there, but Nathan might have parked somewhere else, to remain inconspicuous. I prayed I would find him in time. I flipped through my keys again, to unlock the door at the top of the stairs. “Back me up.”
“Whoa, whoa. You’re not going to just charge up there, right?” Bill put a hand on my arm as I stepped through the front door. “I mean, you said he was walking into a trap. Call me crazy, but if someone’s walking off the edge of a cliff, you don’t go running blindly after them.”
“What do you suggest I should do?” Normally, I wouldn’t mind advice from someone, but something about Bill’s tone rankled me.
I figured out what it was when he moved ahead of me, protectively, as if he were on some kind of macho, soldier-guy autopilot. “Let me go up and check it out first.”
“How about no?” I followed him halfway up the steps and grabbed the back of his shirt to stop him. “You’re human. I’m not putting you between me and whatever might be up there.”
“Yeah, but you’re a—” He stopped, wetted his lips, his gaze darting around above my head as he searched for a different word than the one he’d been about to say.
I stepped close to him, getting as in-his-face as I possibly could, with my height disadvantage and the two steps lower than him that I stood. “I’m a what?”
“You’re a dead vampire.” The voice came from the top of the stairs, and my heart—the only one I had left—stopped beating.
Dahlia stood at the top of the stairs, juggling a bright, blue sphere of light between her hands.
“Holy shit,” Bill breathed beside me.
I spoke through clenched teeth. “Run.”
“I don’t think he’s going anywhere,” Dahlia said with a laugh, hurling the sphere toward us. Bill turned and tried to follow my directive, but the crackling light hit him square between the shoulder blades. He fell forward, his face bouncing off a step as he landed.
There was no time to worry about helping him. He was likely already dead. But I had myself—and Nathan—to worry about. “Where is he?”
“Where’s who?” Dahlia lowered her hands, shaking them as though she were flicking water from them. “You might want to rearrange that. Before it wakes up.”
“He’s going to wake up?” I shook my head, willing my face to change shape and become a monster’s mask.
Dahlia laughed and mimicked me, her face becoming a strange, almost dragonlike countenance with bony ridges where her nose should have been. “Doesn’t scare me anymore. Oh, wait…it never did.”
“Where is he?” I repeated, advancing up the stairs. She didn’t try to stop me, and didn’t try another spell. I didn’t know if it was because she truly wasn’t afraid of me or if she couldn’t do more magic again so soon.
“Where is who? Jesus, you think the world revolves around you and your little boyfriend?” She scoffed and turned from the door, disappearing into the apartment.
I flipped Bill onto his side, so his face wasn’t smashed into the steps and he wouldn’t drown in it if he vomited, since I didn’t know the possible side effects of the spell. Then I followed Dahlia.
The apartment had been ransacked by the Soul Eater’s men after Cyrus’s death. Nathan and I had been hiding beneath the floor of the bookstore in a secret shelter he’d built there. We’d been back in the apartment before fleeing to Chicago, but I’d forgotten how awful it looked. Now, seeing Nathan’s prized books on the floor, covered with dirty footprints where they’d been trampled, and our furniture overturned, made me sick to my stomach.
Dahlia standing in the middle of all of it didn’t help. She flopped onto the couch, one of the few pieces of furniture that hadn’t been tossed around the room, as if I’d invited her to make herself at home. She’d let her feeding face drop. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was too angered by her presence. “If you didn’t know who I was talking about, then why are you here?”
She smiled and kicked up her feet onto a pile of ruined books. “I like it here. I mean, I never did before. You know, when I was here trying to kill your little sweetie pie? But Ziggy brought me by and it kind of grew on me. I mean, there are enough books here to keep me busy for ages. And yeah, the decor is ugly as all hell and someone left behind some really tacky clothes, but I can overlook all that in favor of having a really cool place to hang out all by myself.”
“Get the fuck out of my house.” My hands balled into fists at my side. My rational mind knew I shouldn’t engage her. She was more powerful than I was, even on my best days. “And if I find out you did anything to him, I swear—”
“You swear what?” She snorted, picking up a leather-bound book by its cover, the binding dangling away from the spine. “You’ll get really, really mad at me and I’ll end up kicking your ass?”
“I don’t remember it going down that way in the past,” I reminded her, my voice hoarse and distorted from the shape of my face and the blind fury pushing up in my chest.
She laughed, throwing her head back. There was a scar, fresh, on her neck, and it wasn’t made by fangs. It was the shape of a human mouth, opened wide to make a large bite. Disgusting.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t remember it going down that way,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Cyrus was always there to smack me down for you. And he’s not here now.”
I lunged for her, but she was on her feet, putting the couch between us before I could grab her.
“Ooh, don’t like me talking about your little ex-fledgling, do you?” She giggled, the girlish, crazy sound that haunted my nightmares. “You know, the last time I fucked him, it wasn’t your name he shouted into my ear. It was hers. The little mouse girl. He would never talk to me about her. What happened to her to make him hate you so much?”
It was exactly the kind of remark D
ahlia was so good at dispensing. Cruel, cutting.
But she was better at hurting in another kind of way. She could have hurled a spell at me, could have just gone for it and tackled me to the floor, two vamps go down, one comes up. But she did neither of those things.
“What’s your game, Dahlia?” I paced a wide circle around the living room, noting that she moved away, keeping the same amount of space between us. “What are you really doing here?”
“What do you mean?” It wasn’t like her not to have a smart-ass answer. Posing a question to my question was a sign she was delaying physical aggression. Which meant…“Dahlia, what are you trying to keep me from?”
She giggled, but said nothing.
“It’s a trap, isn’t it? Ziggy set up a trap.” I watched her from the corner of my eye as she moved behind me. I tensed, listening to her footsteps. If she hesitated, even for a second, I would turn and take her out in a heartbeat.
But she didn’t try anything at all. She just wandered past me, to the bookshelf, where she pulled out a leather-bound journal and began ripping pages from it, slowly.
“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath, my heart beating hard against my rib cage. She was trying to delay me. And I had to find Nathan.
Where are you? I called out with the blood tie. Dahlia followed me to the top of the stairs, threatening me with words I didn’t bother listening to. I was focused too intently on the blood tie, on what might come back to me.
Bill lay at the bottom of the stairs where I’d left him, his eyes squeezed shut, an indication he was conscious. “Jesus…” he rasped. “My head is killing me.”
“Get up,” I ordered, grasping him under his arms and pulling him to his feet. He could worry about his headache later. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You’ll never find him,” Dahlia called from the top of the stairs, sounding truly angry for the first time since we’d arrived. “He’s probably already dead!”
“No, he’s not,” I retorted calmly, putting myself between her and Bill while he staggered out the door. “If the Soul Eater wanted him dead, he could have done it years ago. He wouldn’t need the help of some second-rate witch to do it.”
I made it out just as another bolt of whatever spell had knocked out Bill hit the door. I slid into the driver’s seat of the car and grabbed the keys from him. “Are you okay?”
“I feel like my skull is going to crack open. I feel like my brain has been in a centrifuge. No, I’m not okay.” He leaned his head against the dashboard as I pulled away from the curb. “Where are we going, and who was that?”
“That was Dahlia,” I said, scanning the road as I drove for any sign of Ziggy’s big, crappy van. “And I don’t know.”
I hope you brought backup, sweetheart. Nathan’s thought shot through my head with an urgency that definitely indicated there was a problem.
I did, but he got a little damaged. Where are you?
You won’t believe me….
It was the location that made him doubt Jacob.
Ziggy paced around the alley, the place where he’d first met the only real parent he’d ever had. He’d been a stupid, stupid kid then, thinking he was some big shit who could hunt down vampires. Only then, a real vampire had shown up, and it had gone from being a cool game where the bigger kids included him to a life-or-death situation. And he’d lucked out. It could have been someone like Cyrus, out to find a kid to feed off, or torture to death. But it had been Nate, out to scare the hell out of stupid kids who thought it would be cool to hunt for vampires. And he’d taken a stupid kid out for pie and coffee, and then home to a normal life.
Now, to repay that, Ziggy was going to return Nate to his sire? Jacob had made it seem like common sense. “Bring my son, my true son, home to me,” he’d said, and he’d looked so pathetic and sad and pained. Something inside Ziggy had ached to comfort his sire, to do the right thing. He’d thought of being separated from Jacob for so long, imagined the immense effort it would require to seal himself off from the blood tie the way Nate had for something like seventy-five years. It would be hell on earth, and Jacob had made it seem that tricking Nate into coming home was something necessary for Nate’s happiness. Now that he was here, though, and Nate was on the way, Ziggy wasn’t so sure.
So why are you still selling him out? Why don’t you get the hell out of here and stay away from him forever? Ziggy forced the voice away. His conscience had never worked before, so why the hell did it think he needed it now? He wasn’t hurting Nate. He was saving him.
On the street outside the alley, he heard the squeaking hubcap from when he’d driven the van over the curb in front of the apartment. The engine sounded a little better—Nate probably changed the oil when he was supposed to—but the driver’s side door still screeched when it opened.
Nate was here. He was here, and Ziggy couldn’t stop panicking. What the hell would happen? Would he be glad to see him? Would he still be ashamed? Jesus, was he just coming to pass judgment again?
And then Nate was in the mouth of the alleyway, and Ziggy saw him, and they both froze.
“Ziggy?” It was a whisper that ended like a shout, and Nate ran at him.
Since he’d run away from home, he’d wondered a thousand times how things would have been different if he’d never left. Now, with his dad’s arms around him—and Jesus, was he crying?—he realized nothing would have been different. Nate would still love him. He still did.
“Hey, come on. Don’t cry.” He stepped back a little, his arms on Nate’s shoulders, worried that if he didn’t hold on he’d crash to the ground. “Come on, Dad. Don’t cry.”
“I can’t believe you’re alive.” Nate staggered back, sniffling, as though he was crazy or drunk. Or standing in front of a person who was supposed to be dead. “I held you. While you died.”
“I know you did.” Now Ziggy’s throat felt tight, like he was going to start blubbering, too. “I remember.”
“I never would have left you. If I had known—”
“I know. I know.” But if he’d taken you with him, you would have died. He didn’t turn you. He wouldn’t. He was going to let you die. Ziggy hated his sire’s voice in his head. And he hated that he was right. Nate could have saved him, but he didn’t.
It helped him overcome some of his guilt at tricking him like this. “Listen, I wanted you to come here for a reason.”
“Of course. But we’ll talk about it on the road. It’s not safe for you here.” Nate grabbed his wrist, but Ziggy stood firm.
“No.” He took a deep breath. Somewhere, he’d heard that the moment a guy really becomes a man is when he first hits his father. No way in hell was he going to hit Nate. But he wasn’t going to let him walk off. Not now. “No, you’re not going anywhere.”
“Ziggy, you can be honest with me. For Christ’s sake, it’s me. What’s going on?”
Stay strong. Ziggy cleared his throat. “You can’t leave. You’re supposed to come back with me.”
“Come back with you?” Nate’s brow crumpled with confusion, but the trust never left his eyes. “Where?”
“You know where. To our sire. You’re supposed to come back with me.” If he kept his fists clenched, the tension could support his whole body, and he wouldn’t crumble.
Even when he realized what Ziggy was talking about, Nate still didn’t look angry or betrayed. It was a low blow. “You’re supposed to take me back so he can kill me? Why would you agree to that?”
“He’s not going to kill you!” Ziggy rushed to clarify. “He just wants you back home.”
“Ziggy, he has to consume the souls of every vampire he’s sired before he can become a god.” Nate did sound angry now. “I don’t know what line he’s been feeding you—”
“No, listen! It was a mistranslation. He doesn’t need you. He needs someone else. He’s got it taken care of, and he’s going to let us live.” He swallowed. Why did it sound so implausible now? “He wants you back because he misses you.”
<
br /> “And you believe that? I raised you better than that.” Nate turned, as if he was going to leave.
Ziggy looked up, signaled to the tops of the buildings on either side. They waited up there, hungry and mindless. “Oh, yeah. You did a good job raising me. Why, exactly, am I a vampire now?”
When Nate turned back, they made their move.
Jacob’s human soldiers were disgusting, filthy, stinking and strong. A steady diet of vamp blood did that to a human. Made them dangerous, addicted and loyal. Twenty of them dropped from the rooftops, landing on their feet, ready to fight rather than howling in pain with broken legs. They formed a circle around the two vampires, blocking off Nate’s escape.
Please don’t let them hurt him, he pleaded to no one in particular. I’d have to kill them and he would know I can’t really force him to go back.
“Ziggy,” Nate began, and there was panic in his voice.
Good. It gave him strength. “I’m not a kid anymore, Nate. And you’re coming with me.”
Turn left off Cherry Street. Do you see it?
I scanned the street frantically for the sight of the van. It was parked in the shadows, across from a building I knew too well. I see it.
“I see it,” Bill said, pointing ahead. “Why are you slowing down? It’s right there!”
“I know it’s right there,” I snapped. I pressed the gas pedal, suddenly aware that I had slowed.
Club Cite was a squat brick building with a peeling coat of black paint. All the goth kids and wannabe vampires hung out there. I knew, because it was the place I’d first met Dahlia. And the place Nathan had first met Ziggy.
“How could he have not known this was going to be a trap?” I whispered, shaking my head in disbelief.
Carrie! I need help!
I pulled the car up to the curb and hurtled out before it was fully in Park. I heard Bill yell out behind me, but I cut him off, barking, “Stay in the car until I call for you!”
I rounded the building, to the alley where Nathan and Ziggy stood, surrounded by…junkies?
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