by Noelle Ryan
Damian then explained that the Duchess would prefer we keep our counter-attack as quiet as possible. She agreed Cesar had far overstepped his boundaries in sending servants into Damian and Valerie's home, but she’d also heard rumors that he was putting together a petition to legally claim me as part of his organization since it was his vassal who drained me. If the formal petition was filed it would require a hearing that could drag on for weeks, maybe longer.
“And I think we all have better things to do with our time,” Damian finished, smiling, “yes?”
“Wait,” I interjected, “you’re saying some jerk who’s been trying to kill me might be able to make some kind of formal vampire claim on me that could force me to be part of his organization? What kind of screwed up legal system do you all have?”
“Don’t worry, we won’t let it come to that,” Damian said, reaching over to pat my hand.
I huffed. “That’s not the point. This is the U. S. freakin’ A. here, and people aren’t supposed to be able to be just ordered around like that, like, like, slaves or something!”
“I don’t think anyone is under the mistaken impression that you can be ordered around,” Valerie said, and all of them chuckled.
“Glad I amuse you,” I mumbled, scuffing my foot against the floor and briefly hoping I left an ugly mark on the perfect tile.
“Amelia mentioned that most of Cesar’s vassals spend their mornings at their respective homes," Damian said, ignoring me. "By sunrise he’s generally down to just the three or four that stay with him at all times, and usually two of these are sleeping while the others keep watch.”
“Won’t he be expecting a counter-attack, though, given his failure last night?” Samuel asked.
“Yes, but he should be unfamiliar with my talents,” Damian grinned, “so he won’t realize Amelia is helping us—he’ll simply assume she was captured and given to Temora like the rest,”
“I still think we need to be prepared for him to have more reinforcements than we expect,” Samuel countered.
“And how do you suggest we prepare, Samuel?” Valerie asked. Her tone seemed light, but I noticed Samuel cringed slightly.
“Well, couldn’t the Duchess loan us a few extra teeth? She’s backing us on this one, right?” Luis said.
“Only unofficially,” Damian said. “Officially she knows nothing about any of this, just as officially we are not doing this to keep Alyson from him but as just recompense for his attack last night.”
I slid back a step, uncomfortable with the fact that they were planning this for my sake when I hardly knew, or trusted, any of them. Given Sam and Luis's objections, I was betting it wasn't altruism that motivated them but simple allegiance and perhaps a touch of vengeance. The official reason was right up their alley. Tom, Damian, and Valerie were a bit harder to read, though, and I dropped my eyes when Tom gave me a quizzical glance. Before I could move further away from their meeting, however, Damian reached over and clasped my wrist without looking, tugging me closer to the pictures and maps on the counter.
“I’d like your read on these,” he said.
So much for hoping Tom was wrong about just how I was going to pull my weight around here. I had no clue how to get a “read” on anything on purpose—I was used to knowledge or feelings (and ghosts, I thought wryly, remembering Dorothy’s little visit) dropping in seemingly at random. Stalling, I picked up one of the floor plans, studying the arrows and numbers Damian had penciled in around it. It looked like he had everyone coming in through a forested area in the back, fanning out slightly, and then entering through two separate windows on opposite sides of the house.
Curious, I looked closer, and noticed that he only had five numbers moving around the plan. What were they planning on doing, just leaving me here to hang out with Beckett? I was not wild about that idea. I picked up another floor plan, this one appearing to be of the second floor. Only numbers one and two appeared up here, and I was betting they stood for Damian and Valerie.
The third floor plan appeared to be for the basement, and three, four, and five all appeared down here. I figured they were planning to enter on the first floor already split up, and then filter up- and downstairs simultaneously. I spread all three maps before me, waiting for a feeling or sliver of knowledge to strike me. Nothing. I tried poking around in my mental corners, looking for Dorothy. Heck, I would have settled for Casper the Friendly Ghost. But my mind held only its usual clutter.
Sighing, I moved on to the photos. The first few were taken at night with some kind of special camera that rendered everything in shades of green and black, and depicted the front, back, and side yards with corresponding views of the house. There was an odd shadow in the corner of the shot of the back, and I picked it up to study it more closely. An electric tingle shot up my arm and lodged in my lips, startling me.
“Amelia,” I gasped, “she was a plant.” I took a breath to try to force my words to normalcy. “Cesar found out about you, and he sent her on purpose, knowing what would happen.” I paused and closed my eyes, the electric current zipping through me making it very hard to focus. “He’s expecting us. He’s expecting you’ll leave me behind, making it easier for him to grab me once you’re all gone.”
Then the current left me, replaced with sudden fatigue. I slumped against the kitchen counter, grateful when someone tucked a stool behind me. I pushed the papers and photos away with my clothed elbow, afraid to touch them again, and dropped my head onto my arms. I felt a hand brush lightly against my shoulder, and I murmured “Just give me a second, I’m fine, I’ll be fine” into my sleeve, and then dropped into a hazy half-sleep.
I was aware of all of them moving away, their voices dropped to a low murmur. When I was able, I lifted my head to watch them. They were gathered at the dining room table, the maps and photos relocated with them. Tom and Sam appeared to be arguing over something, and Luis was standing slightly behind Tom with his arms crossed while Damian and Valerie stood at either end of the table, watching.
“It would be idiotic to go down there at this point, knowing he’s expecting us,” Sam said, fists clenched.
“Not if we use that knowledge to our advantage, and take Aly with us. He’ll be splitting up his forces to have at least one trusted servant here to grab her, which could give us the advantage over him,” Tom replied.
“How do we know he’ll even be there at all? They could all just be waiting for us to leave to steal in here for her, while we waste our time going down to attack an empty house,” Sam replied.
Tom paused, appearing to consider this possibility.
“I think he’ll be in Nashville,” I said, and five pairs of eyes swung to meet mine.
“You think, or you know?” Sam asked coolly. I stared at him, and his gaze flickered and held mine.
“I think, but it’s based on what I know. When I held that picture I got a strong sense that he is protecting something there, that he won't leave unless he's forced. That’s probably why he’s only sent his servants after me,” I said, becoming more certain of what I was saying as I spoke it. “Besides, I also got a strong sense of arrogance—I think he’ll want to be able to gloat over tricking you in person, Damian. I think that’s part of the thrill for him.”
Damian nodded. “That would certainly be in keeping with what I've heard about him. He’s relatively young, insanely power hungry, and cocky from the height he’s managed to climb in just a few decades by draining humans with metaphysical abilities.”
“But if he’s expecting us, how can we take him by surprise?” Sam asked.
“Without the element of surprise,” Luis added, “without reliable information—we have no way of knowing what to expect, whereas he has everything he needs to know about us.”
“Not everything,” Damian said. He pointed at me.
Nine
“Are we there yet?” I asked in my best annoyed-eight-year-old imitation.
Valerie laughed. “And here I thought I’d missed out on all the
joys of motherhood.”
Several hours had passed since Damian had decided I was their secret super-weapon, placing far more confidence in my nascent abilities than I felt they deserved. At my insistence, Beckett had been picked up by a pet-sitter so he wouldn’t be alone when Cesar’s people came looking, though Damian and Valerie had both sworn that no-one would be able to get past the traps they had rigged before we left. I, meanwhile, had been lying across the backseat of Damian and Valerie’s Mercedes for the last couple hours so that none of Cesar’s people would know I was with them, and I’d been relieved to discover that vampirism was apparently a cure for the carsickness that had plagued me since childhood.
Tom, Luis, and Sam were all traveling separately in Tom’s Jeep; they’d left before us so as to have time to visit some bars downtown and hopefully convince any spies Cesar might have set on them that they were going out for a boy’s night. After that, they planned to swing by a storage locker where Sam kept some “unusual weapons”—Sam's grin when he mentioned them had left me both curious and nervous as to what they'd be driving around with.
In the meantime, Damian and Valerie had driven all over town on errands until I was covered in shopping bags and they were certain they had lost any tail they might have had. I’d never spent so much time hiding in the back of a moving car, and even without the carsickness I was glad it was almost over—until I thought about what we’d be doing once we stopped.
I felt the car slow and we turned onto an unlit street. From where I lay, I could see a dense network of branches arching overhead, with only an occasional glimpse of the night sky between them. A few moments later the car angled slightly and I heard the crunch of gravel under our tires. We stopped.
“You and Alyson should climb out here so you don’t have to fight these branches. I’m going to pull the car in deeper once you’re out,” Damian said.
I sat up, sending bags sliding everywhere. A few escaped with me as I clambered out of the car, and I hastily shoved them back in. Valerie, meanwhile, slid gracefully from the Benz, a wry smile quirking the corners of her lips as she watched me. She had on a sleek pair of yoga pants and matching tank top, and I was mildly jealous of how elegant she could manage to look even in exercise gear. As we stood there she pulled her long hair up and twisted it into a bun. Rather than giving her the school-marm look buns always gave me, hers emphasized the lines of her face, making her look like a dancer.
“You should pull yours up too, Aly. You don’t want it to get in your eyes at an inconvenient moment,” she said, handing me a spare hair elastic.
I twisted my wavy auburn hair out of the way, glad I didn’t have a mirror handy to confirm what a hot mess I must look like. Damian emerged from the branches, brushing pine needles off his sleeves.
“I guess we beat the boys here,” I said.
Damian nodded, standing beside Valerie as she stretched down to touch the ground, her knees not even bending slightly. I wondered if that flexibility was a byproduct of vampirism or practice, and I bent at the waist to see if I could match her pose. My hands had barely reached my shins when my knees started to bend and I dropped into a crouch, trying to cover my embarrassment by acting like I’d intended to flex this way all along. Valerie briefly lifted her head to smile at me, then stretched smoothly up and back, arching her spine and lifting one leg behind her until she grasped the ankle, curving into an almost perfect circle. I guess she came by those yoga pants honestly.
“Alyson, I just want to reiterate that we are not bringing you along to fight, so please do not join in the fracas,” Damian said.
“What kind of secret weapon can I make if I don’t do anything?”
Damian stepped closer to me, resting his hand on my shoulder.
“We need your talents of perception, not aggression,” he said softly. “Did anything new come to you during our drive, by chance?”
Nothing had, and I’d been relieved not to have my skin crawling with strange sensations. But his question triggered my concern that my skills were too unreliable, that they were counting on me far more than they should
“No,” I said, looking away.
“Don’t worry, paidi mou, if we need to know it will come.” He sounded far more confident than I felt, which only made me feel that much guiltier.
“Surely there’s something else I can do to help? I could at least carry a bottle of liquid silver or something, just as backup,” I said.
“We didn't bring any. They're generally too messy for fighting,” Valerie said.
“Okay,” I said, beginning to pace, “something else then. I used to be pretty proficient at rifle practice during summer camp—I could carry a firearm.”
“Did you ever shoot at moving targets who were trying to attack you as part of your practice?” Damian asked.
I reddened. “Uh, no.”
“Then that would not be our best idea,” he replied.
I sighed. “What am I supposed to do if one of them comes after me rather than you all then?”
“Scream?” Valerie said, grinning slightly until Damian gave her a look. “Sorry,” she said, “But as long as there aren't too many of them, they’ll have their hands full with us, believe me.”
Just then we caught the rumble of Tom’s Jeep making the nearby turn, and we all backed to one side of the gravel so he could turn in easily. He edged straight into the trees without pausing to let out Sam or Luis, and they all emerged shortly, brushing twigs and needles from them, duffel sacks slung over their shoulders.
Sam crouched, dropping his bag and gesturing for Tom and Luis’s. He unzipped them all and began pulling out various painful-looking devices. I recognized some of them as fairly standard looking, albeit intimidating, guns; there were also a couple maces, some rather long and sharp knives, and a few shurikens. As I watched, Sam twisted together several very heavy looking metal rods into one long staff with cruel curved points on either end, and I found myself hoping I never had reason to become familiar with that particular weapon. Everyone gathered around Sam’s bags, grabbing various guns, knives, and items I was afraid to ask about and tucking them into pockets, sheathes, and holsters I hadn’t previously noticed. In only a few minutes his bags were nearly empty and, seeing everyone was as geared up as they wished to be, he rezipped them and carried them to Tom’s Jeep. I simply stood there, feeling more useless than I had in years, and promising myself to enlist Tom’s help once all this was over so I wouldn’t simply be standing around like an idiot next time.
Next time? What was I thinking? Once this was over I was hoping the most dangerous thing I'd have to deal with was a crowd of unruly freshmen.
“Are we ready then?” Damian asked when Sam returned. Everyone nodded but me, and Damian gestured to Valerie.
She took over, explaining that it was about five miles through the trees to the back of Cesar’s property, where we'd regroup to assess his actual level of protection. The hope was that Cesar would still expect us to attack near dawn and thus that our night time arrival would catch him off guard.
"We’ll proceed with our plan to split up and enter from opposite sides of the house," she said, "unless Aly senses we should do something else when we get there. Any questions?”
“Um, just one." I said, hoping the lump in my throat wasn't affecting my speech. "If I sense something once we’ve already split up, how should I let everyone know?”
“You’ll be with Damian and me,” Valerie said, “so you can tell us and we’ll handle it from there.”
I nodded, they moved into the trees, and I followed.
I’d never been a runner, though I’d had friends that swore by it. One even told me she preferred a runner’s high to sex sometimes. Of course, I chalked that declaration up to her having been married for almost a decade.
Part of the reason I’d never been tempted to try running was due to the damage I’d done to my knee in a motorcycle accident when I was eighteen and stupid enough to think riding on the back of something going sixt
y miles an hour was cool. The vampirism, however, appeared to have healed my knee along with my car sickness, because as I began running to keep up with everyone else, I didn’t feel the slightest twinge.
Instead I felt a heady rush as my feet and legs dodged roots and fallen branches, propelling me between the trunks that loomed, hovered, and then slid by. The sensation was bizarre—everything seemed to move past me slowly, and yet the wind that stung my cheeks made it clear that I was running incredibly fast. I was glad I'd already taken a ride in Tom's car or else the strange combination of sensations would probably have hypnotized me into losing track of everyone else.
In a matter of minutes, we were crouched behind the last dense gathering of trees before the mostly clear stretch of Cesar’s back yard. Adrenaline—or whatever the vampire equivalent was—still shot through me, spun up by the run and pushing me to move. Everything stood out in sharp relief: the pine needles and grass seemed frosted with moonlight, and everyone’s faces glowed faintly. I didn’t realize my eyes had quit their eager leap from sight to sight to settle on Tom until his face turned slightly, and he returned my gaze. For a second, knowledge of where we were and why disappeared, and I felt my knees begin to unbend as I stood to move to him, drawn by my quickly resurfacing memories of last night's kiss.
Valerie’s hand shot out and clamped down on my leg, snapping me out of my fugue state. I noticed Tom shake his head slightly, looking mildly disoriented as he turned his eyes back to Cesar’s house. Whoops. If human “runner’s high” felt anything like this, it was no wonder my friends ran for miles every day. I glanced over at Valerie, mouthing “sorry” before returning my gaze to Cesar’s.
I studied the back of the house intently, hoping to trigger some kind of premonition. The house looked like your fairly standard McMansion, equipped with both a pool and hot tub built into the large back deck patio. The house itself was painted white wood, with dark blue shutters that were currently closed. The shutters on the upper left were shining from an interior light, and I remembered that room was marked as the Master Bedroom in the floor plans Damian had. Either we’d gotten lucky and Cesar was making an early night of it, preparing to go to sleep so as to be ready for our supposed attack in the morning, or his spies were pretty good and he was trying to fake us out. Suddenly a shadow blocked the light coming from the corner window, and we all shrank back instinctively, though even vampire vision wouldn't be able to spot us when looking from a lit room into dark woods thirty yards away. I stared at the shadow, the nasty spider-steps feeling across my shoulders assuring me it was Cesar.