by Nazri Noor
Herald clapped a hand over my shoulder. “What’s up? Is everything all right? You’re looking kind of pale.” He followed my line of sight to the counter, and his body went rigid, his fingers digging into me.
“That.” I didn’t need to point. Herald knew exactly what I was referring to. “Where is that from?”
“I thought I put that away,” he said. That wasn’t the answer I was hoping for.
I shrugged his hand off and backed away. “What do you mean? Isn’t this part of the archives? Aren’t you supposed to file it like the others?”
Herald held his hands up, his eyes darting left and right, the way someone’s eyes do when they’re searching for an answer – or making one up.
“They said not to let you see it.” He adjusted his glasses again, his hand faintly trembling as he did. “You weren’t supposed to see it. I put it away.” His voice was trailing off.
“They?” I was aware that my voice was rising to an unreasonable pitch and volume, and I willed myself to calm down. Whoever “they” were, I didn’t want them knowing that I’d discovered the very thing they wanted to keep hidden from me.
“Dustin, I can explain. That’s why we needed to keep it away from you, because they thought you’d react like this.”
“You knew,” I said, grunting when I bumped harshly into another display case, my fingers clutching at the counters like I was trying to claw my way out of there. “You knew this thing was right here and you never told me. You knew what happened.”
“I can explain,” Herald said sternly. “Please. We’re trying to find who did this to you.”
“No. You’re trying to hide. You know, and you’re not telling.”
“Dust. Please. It’s me. You know I wouldn’t do that.” Herald had come close enough, one hand reaching for my wrist, like he was trying to console me. Or maybe restrain me. I dodged his fingers and stepped into the shadow of a bookshelf.
As the darkness swallowed me up I could hear Herald shouting behind me, and Vanitas pulsing in my head. I couldn’t make out their words, not that it mattered anymore. What was going on? It never occurred to me that the Lorica would hide the investigation of my murder from me. Didn’t Thea say that they wanted to help bring my killer to justice? What did they know, and why was Herald involved?
I emerged in one of the pathways radiating out from the Gallery, Herald still speaking to thin air, whirling to find where I had gone. I knew I had scant minutes, maybe seconds to make my move, so I shadowstepped again, far enough as I could see to make my way back to my room.
The Lorica was mercifully empty by then, but moving within the shadows let me bypass most of the corridors anyway. I only hoped there was no one waiting for me in my bedroom. I threw the door open and ran straight for my duffle bag, picking up what essentials I could find. I patted down my jeans, relieved that I had apparently forgotten to give Bastion back his knife, or, alternately, that he’d forgotten to take it from me. I didn’t know how to use the thing, but at least I had an option.
I turned for the door. Herald would know to find me here, but I had a head start on him, and if I hurried I could deactivate the failsafes at the entrance and head the hell out of HQ. And go where? I ran a hand through my hair, gritting my teeth in frustration. Somewhere I could clear my head. Someplace I could think. I began to head for the door, but something on the floor drew my attention. Something glimmering.
I stepped closer, then bent down for a better look, and frowned. It was that spider that Thea had killed, the one she swatted off my shoulder earlier. And I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if it hadn’t been for the gem embedded in its back, a bright green stone the size of a penny.
Arachne. It was one of her children, the ones she trusted with secrets, with harvesting and conveying information. It was perched on my shoulder when Thea had killed it. Was the spider trying to tell me something? Did Thea know?
The door flew open. Herald burst through, hands held up as if to calm me, but it only made him more threatening. The tips of his fingers glowed violet.
“Dustin, please.”
No way out. My friends, hell, my own boss had betrayed me. I’d never done so before, but I knew there was only one option for making my way out of this predicament. I’d have to risk a blind jaunt through the shadows, from inside the building, all the way out to the street.
“Dustin.”
I gave Herald one last look and shook my head. I felt hurt, and confused, but more than that, I felt fear, of him, of the Lorica, and of the fate that awaited me if I failed to correctly move through the shadows.
Herald’s eyes went wide as I sprinted towards him. I leapt into his shadow, and I stepped.
Chapter 16
I gasped for breath as I rushed out of the darkness, my lungs working like bellows. I lost my footing as I came back to reality, stumbling and sprawling face first into the asphalt. The stinging pain in my arms told me I had skinned them. I sputtered out spit and bits of gravel.
Asphalt. Gravel. The street. I forced my eyes open, straining against the light of lampposts. I had made it outside, alive. My heart clenched as I saw a pair of shoes walk towards, then past me.
“Fucking drunk,” the man said. “Pathetic.”
He kept walking. I was no longer so selective about how people were treating me that night, nor did I really have the strength to say or do anything back. My standards and tolerance had plunged. As long as someone wasn’t out to kill me, they were totally okay in my book.
Then I remembered that I still needed to put as much distance as I could between myself and the Lorica. I was still half a block away, as far as I could tell, at the intersection across the street. I pushed myself to my feet, groaning at the heaviness in my limbs. Fuck. I didn’t know that stepping between places I couldn’t see would take so much out of me.
My vision was still blurry, and even making it onto the sidewalk was a struggle. I didn’t relish the idea of stepping through walls again, but neither did I like the idea of being trapped in the Lorica with whatever horrible shenanigans they had planned for me.
I dragged myself across the street, then down one block, then another. My breath was coming back to me in spurts, but it came in shivers. It was far colder in the Dark Room, and that chill hadn’t left my body, haunting my bones with frosted fingers. And in my hurry I’d forgotten to grab a jacket.
No more stepping for a while, that much I knew. I was feeling sick, too, but maybe that was because of the massive dinner I shoveled into my body. But I tried not be so hard on myself. Who knew I was going to be going on the run so soon after anyway?
Yeah, yeah. I know. The entire evening had been a string of terrible decisions, one after the other, but what choice did I really have? I still couldn’t understand why the Lorica would want to hide the dagger’s existence from me. All I could think was that it made them complicit somehow. I didn’t know where else to turn, what else to do, so I made yet another stupid decision for the evening. I went to see my father.
Dad was home. The light in the dining room was on, bright enough for me to see that he was only just picking his way through yet another frozen dinner, far more interested in cracking open the first of the six-pack he’d just pulled out of the fridge.
The tree’s trunk felt cool against my back, and I rubbed my elbows in a desperate bid to find some warmth. It was only just working. It would have been better if I didn’t have my back up against the tree, I suppose, but I just felt a need to hug the shadows. Just in case.
It was comforting, almost, just watching dad from out in the yard. And yeah, maybe Thea tried to tell me that it wasn’t the best thing for me to indulge in, but by that point I wasn’t sure I trusted her to know what was best for me anymore.
The bushes by my feet rustled. I frowned, stamping at the ground. Without even having to check I knew that the rats had reached all the way out here, too. When the hell were they going to stop behaving so erratically? Who even knew there were so many rats in the cit
y?
I gazed back at the window and sighed. Not for the first time I wondered how it might have panned out if I stepped into the living room, or even knocked on the front door. Not for the first time I ran through the many expressions I would see on my father’s face when he saw me. All of them involved some mix of terror and revulsion. The dead don’t just come back.
The bushes rustled much harder this time. I jumped away, startled, my arms still folded across my chest. Out of the foliage stepped evidence that maybe, just maybe, the dead do return.
It was the man from the other night, the one who chased me down. Correction: it was the vampire, and that entire half of his face that had been charred by sunlight was perfect again, healed to be as handsome and pallid as the uninjured half. I stumbled away, deathly afraid of the reality that I didn’t have it in me to escape through the shadows, not so soon after that exertion at the Lorica.
The man raised a hand, almost dismissively, half a greeting, and half reassurance. “Relax. I’m not here to kill you. Not tonight, at least.”
I turned from him to the window, and back. Fuck. Now he knew where dad lived. Great job, Dustin. I’d led the vampire right to him.
“Honestly,” the vampire said. “We couldn’t care less about him. It’s you we want.”
There was a casual tone to his banter that was somehow close enough to convincing me that he was telling the truth. I kept my hands to myself and cautiously leaned back against the tree, but this time I made a mental note of the fact that Bastion’s knife in my pocket could very well be used as a stake, in case of emergency.
I scoffed. “Who is ‘we?’ Don’t tell me you’re working for the Lorica, too.”
As if. The Lorica might have considered itself the authority on the arcane underground and the Valero that lived behind the Veil, but it didn’t seem to have much of an equal opportunity hiring policy when it came to non-humans.
Hell, I didn’t even know they existed until a few days ago. Again I wondered why Thea and the others hadn’t bothered to brief me about something so basic. They didn’t want to overwhelm me with too much information, Prudence said. Hah. A likely story. What else were they hiding from me?
But the vampire scoffed in return. “You and your precious Lorica. No. My boss is different. Better, I’d say, but that’s all subjective. He just wants to have a word with you is all.”
“The Black Hand.”
The vampire cocked an eyebrow. “The black what now? What the hell are you talking about?”
I blinked. It was only natural for him to deny it. “Whoever this is you’re working for. They just want to talk. That’s it?”
“Yup. Says that he needs to meet you for himself. That you’re special.” The vampire said “special” with the kind of sneer reserved for when you discovered a worm in your salad by finding half of it still wriggling on your fork. “Can’t imagine why. Says you have gifts he could find useful.”
I frowned. “I’m not about to work for your kind.”
The man laughed. “My kind? And what kind is that?”
I shrugged. “The bad guys.” The words sounded stupid to me before they even left my mouth. “The ones who move in darkness.”
Again the man chuckled. “Strange sentiments from someone who literally walks in shadows. Fine trick you have there.”
“Yeah, well. I’m glad I have it or else you might have actually nailed me that night.” This felt awkward, yet correct, somehow, conversing with someone who was planning to suck my blood just nights before. “Where’s the other guy, anyway? The hairy one?” Gil. That was his name.
The vampire nodded at the sky. “Full moon.”
Oh. So he was a werewolf after all. Great. Just great.
The man slid a pale hand into the pocket of his leather jacket, then retrieved a pack of cigarettes. I didn’t know vampires smoked. I realized then that I didn’t know a hell of a lot about much of anything. He offered me the pack. I declined by waving a hand.
“Suit yourself,” he said, lighting the cigarette with a clink of his Zippo. I gestured at his lighter, making a face.
“You’re not afraid of that?”
“What, a little bit of fire? Come on, man.” I watched the ember of his cigarette glow as he took a puff. His skin was flawless in the orange light. I couldn’t help myself. I had to know.
“So,” I said, pointing at my own face. “That just grew back?”
The vampire raised an eyebrow, clearly annoyed, but making an effort not to show that he was. “Yeah. I had to feed, stay low for a while, but yeah. ‘It grew back.’ Pssh. Asshole.”
I shrugged. “My boss only wanted to help me.”
“Yeah, about that. Your boss is kind of a huge bitch. You know that?”
I shrugged again. “You were kind of trying to kill me.”
He raised a finger. “Was not. At worst I would have taken, like, a mouthful of blood. But I’m under strict orders not to hurt you.”
He scoffed again, then brought the cigarette back to his lips. He blew the smoke in slender curls out of his nostrils, in the way that a kid in high school might do to try and impress someone.
“I was just playing with you,” he said, with the nerve to sound hurt. “Was just gonna rough you up a little.”
I shook my head. “Not cool.”
“If you say so.”
I stared at the house for a moment, aware of the dead thing beside me, wondering how it could smoke a cigarette down to a stub without functioning lungs, then deciding that I had a better question to ask.
“Is this weird for you? Talking to me like this. We’re supposed to be enemies.” I shrugged. “Sort of feels like we’re just hanging out.”
The man kept his eyes trained on the house. “I’m off the clock. Sue me.” He cocked an eyebrow, ventured a look at my face, then turned right back to the window. “What was your name again? I forget. My boss told me, but it’s been a minute since that monster you worked for torched my face off.”
“What do you need my name for? Gonna use it against me in a spell? I don’t think so.”
“Dumb-ass. Vampire, remember? I don’t do magic. Don’t need to.” He puffed the last of his cigarette and flicked the filter onto the ground, stubbing it out with the heel of one very expensive-looking sneaker. “Just wanna make sure what to put on your gravestone in case I end up killing you.”
I sighed, and in the same exhalation, gave the vampire my name.
“Nice to meet you,” the vampire said, without any warmth in his voice. He didn’t extend a hand, nor did he give me the benefit of a passing glance. “I’m Sterling.”
“Sterling.” I chuckled. “As in silver?”
“Oh,” Sterling said, cocking his head, his face more expressive than I’d seen all night. “And that’s funny why? Because I’m a vampire? Die in a fire. That’s racist.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Well, it’s prejudiced.”
I shrugged.
“It’s my name.” The vampire called Sterling stuck his hands back into his pockets. “So. Why the hell are we standing outside this garbage pile of a house anyway?”
I felt something prickle at my neck. I only grew up in that garbage pile, after all. Had fun times, even. But this wasn’t the time or place to engage the vampire. Sterling, for whatever reason, was being civil, and maybe that was even going to help me somehow. I could put him at ease, wheedle information out of him, or at least wait for him to make a cocky mistake and slip.
“It’s my house. Or at least it used to be. That’s my dad in there.”
“And you’re standing out here, because?”
“I’m supposed to be dead. Long story. Can’t just walk in there.”
Sterling sniffed. “You should go to him, you know.”
“I can’t. I just said so.”
“Look,” Sterling said, eyes turned to cold steel. “Whatever it is that happened between you, it can’t be so bad that he’d be upset to see his son walk into his house. H
e’ll be surprised, sure, but if your father ever loved you, give him a minute and he’ll be happier than you know. That’s how family works.”
“You’re a vampire. What the hell do you know about family?”
“Plenty. Everyone I used to love, everyone I used to know is dead. That’s what I know.” He kicked at the grass. “Go to him.”
The leaves shuffled, and the vampire was gone, but the echo of his voice remained.
“Go to him.”
I couldn’t. I didn’t.
Chapter 17
I could have skipped town. That was always an option. I could have gone somewhere smaller and quieter, or headed upstate to blend in with the weirdoes in San Francisco. Of course, I wouldn’t have been enthusiastic about it, but the clever thing to do would have been to leave California entirely. Not my favorite option, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers, right?
And that was assuming Romira or one of the other Eyes didn’t sell me out. I never bothered asking how far the Eyes could see, but I wanted to think that I could at least count on Romira. But then I remembered. That was how I used to feel about Thea, and Herald, for that matter. I shoved those thoughts away. It all still stung too much.
For now, I needed to focus on packing and grabbing as much of my shit as I needed to make it out on the road. I already had most of my essentials from the duffle bag I brought with me to HQ, but the apartment still had some of my valuables in it, so that’s where I went.
Stop. I know what you’re thinking. But there was no way I was leaving without those last few remnants of my previous life that I managed to salvage, the bundle of letters I stole back from my roommates, the rare pictures of me as a kid. They mattered. They bonded me to who I was, reminded me that I was a person before I died, before someone drove a wedge between the lives I led before and after the knife pierced my heart.
I knew I had no reason to believe him, but there was something almost honorable in how forthright Sterling was with me, how he specifically said that he was ordered not to hurt me – and how he still had an urge to feed on my blood. It creeped me the fuck out, not gonna lie, but I was relieved when he told me that I was safe from his bizarre demon-worshipping, bronze mask-wearing death cult, if only for one night.