“Yes, pretend you don’t know,” the vampyre jeered. “We all know it’s really because you’re too cowardly to answer the invitation.”
“And our Queen shouldn’t waste her time with cowards. She has so little of it as it is.” Their mouths drew back in identical fanged grins.
I resisted the urge to drop into Wolf, all matted black fur and snarls. I didn’t have time for their lies. Someone could appear in the hall any moment. My family could come back at any moment. And walk straight into a trap.
“Ignore them,” I told Thaksin. “They can’t get in here. Save his life. I’ll be back.”
Then I was off texting Mami and Daniella at the speed of light, telling them we’d been ordered to stay clear of the apartment because of a reported gas leak. I sent Miguel and Una a more detailed version of events. Then, with my heart leaping in my throat, I called Rafael.
“Please pick up. Please. I need you now! They’re here! They’re outside my apartment door, and if you don’t get here soon, they’re going to start killing.” A loud beep, and then the machine informed me the inbox was full.
I hesitated over Yu Li’s name. Then I sent her a HELP ME! message, and immediately jumped up the list to call Jaehoon. The yelp made the phone slip through my sweaty fingers. I heard Thakshin shouting.
I rounded the corner to see that Saja, true to his lion namesake, had bravely tried to attack the vampyres. They’d grabbed him by the throat and hurled him into a corner. His head smacked the wall, and then he fell limp.
“Time’s running out, missy!” the vampyre called. “Let us in, and we won’t go on a killing spree of your neighbors. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
ATTACK THEM! Wolf roared, singeing me like an unexpected wildfire. For a moment, the adrenaline built up in my chest threatened to overwhelm me. Furious, I swallowed Wolf back down. My fingers twitched around the hidden blade of the kitchen knife I’d grabbed. I’d only get one shot at this.
The elevator red light blinked. For a second, we were all still, watching it. Floor 7…8…9…
“Who could that be?” the first vampyre asked. He seemed content to mock me; the other paced back and forth like a caged animal.
“Friend of yours? Mommy?”
Floor 10…11…
The vampyre’s eyes began to bleed with excitement. I didn’t glance toward the elevator door as it dinged! open. I hurled the knife at his chest.
I didn’t stake him with as much force as I’d intended; the bloody thing moved too fast.
“Ouch!” he cried. “You stupid bitch!” He raised the knife over Saja’s head, but then a blur of white smashed into him.
Yu Li. My knees shook with relief, and I collapsed into Wolf. The second vampyre scared me, but time was wasting, so I knocked him into the closing elevator door. The sliding doors clobbered his head, and then broke apart with a startled ding!
I didn’t let him get up. I leaped on his chest and slid my canines into his throat. He angrily tore his flaps of skin free and kicked me in the pelvis. I dodged his lunge and jumped on his back. A mouthful of greasy black hair came away in my mouth.
The frightfully strong arms wrapped around my legs and flipped me over. The vampyre stabbed for my defenseless belly, but then a golden coil looped around his throat.
Thaksin, in glorious werenaga form, jerked the vampyre into my apartment doorway. The vampyre’s legs began to kick and writhe. He couldn’t enter inside. Thaksin pulled him closer, tongue flicking at his face.
I wearily approached, and with a sudden explosion of violence, tore off the vamp’s dangling head.
Both of us were bowled over by the sudden appearance of the werebear. He barely squeezed through my doorway, before he was off and lumbering toward the vampyre who’d wounded him. Bellowing at Yu Li to move out of the way, he mauled the other vampyre’s head off with one blunt paw. Bellowing again, this time in pain from his deep wounds, he collapsed in the middle of the hall.
A sudden scrabbling of footsteps echoed at the end of the hallway. I wouldn’t have picked it up if I hadn’t been Wolf.
Someone was watching us!
A vampyre scout. Assigned to sit back and watch the outcome of the battle. Yu Li’s blue eyes flickered over me, not unsympathetically. Maya will know this is one of our safe houses now.
She already knew. I tried to reassure myself that nothing important had been lost, but I still felt sick to my stomach. I’d rescinded Khyber’s invitation to enter my home, true, but just the thought that more of these bloodsuckers could be lurking outside, posing as the pizza boy, or the postal woman…
A low whimper in the corner. Thaksin swept past me, human once more. “He live. Good dog!”
I blinked in amazement. Saja was already up and sniffing Thaksin’s blood-soaked hand. Yu Li and I locked gazes.
Careful, she said. That dog should be dead.
I know.
“Hiroshi no live.” Thaksin’s lidless eyes blinked rapidly. For a moment, we all stared in silence at the man with the shadow of a bear.
My neighbor’s door clicked. Yu Li stepped up neatly to press against it, while Thakshin and I carried the remains inside. She bolted in after us, and we all sat with hearts pounding, backs against the door, hardly daring to believe that we’d gotten away with it. The commotion outside swelled; now that there was no danger, my neighbors felt brave enough to shed their fear in favor of anger.
Later, Thakshin left to go bring Hiroshi’s body back to his clan. Yu Li helped me clean up.
“I can’t believe you found me so fast,” I choked out.
“This is my district,” she replied. “I lost contact with Thaksin and Hiroshi. Then I received your message and knew where to find them.” She scrubbed at the bloodstains on the floor. “You didn’t expect me, did you?”
My cheeks burned. “I thought Rafael would have come—”
“The juin-nim is reevaluating Rafael’s relationship with you. You were in his charge, and he let harm come to you.” Her eyes flickered for the briefest of seconds to my missing finger. “You are easily swayed by his ideals. Rafael should have known better.”
“He didn’t sway me. I wanted to go to Eve, too.”
“You would be stupid to broadcast that.”
“You’re helping me over your boyfriend?”
Yu Li tossed the blood-soaked cloth in the trash bag. “My boyfriend. I love Rafael. More than love, I admire him. I want to strangle him sometimes, but there is no man I admire more. But I can’t control him. Now, he got himself into a big mess. He must get himself out. That will prove to me…if I can still be with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Foolish girl. Look at you. You thought he cared for you, and look at the danger he put you in.” Yu Li’s eyes challenged me to contradict her. The way she said it made me know she more than suspected my crush. “How do I know he won’t do that to me? To my son?”
“We’re fighting a war!” I heard myself echoing Rafael’s words. “He didn’t ask anything of me that I didn’t sign up for! I can’t be locked up in a cabinet like the newest china!”
“Does Rafael know how to live outside the war?”
Her question followed me around the room as we finished cleaning in silence.
“There.” I shifted the couch over one irritating blood spot that refused to come out. “They’ll never be able to tell the difference.”
Yu Li hoisted up two trash bags full of unpleasant contents: dead vampyre. She still managed to make them look as fashionable as purses. “This time. You should leave them.”
“Who?”
“Your family. If you really love them, you’ll leave and go far, far away.”
I stayed silent, stroking the head of a mournful Saja curled up in his dog bed. For once, he actually stayed still. I was fast losing my courage as Yu Li approached the door, but at the last second, I blurted out the question: “The vampyres said something about me not accepting an invitation. Do you know what that’s about
?”
She looked at me calmly. “Of course not. Do not listen to the vampyres entreating you with false promises of peace. You’re their enemy. Expect only lies.”
I gave a shaky sigh after she left. I hadn’t said anything about peace promises.
Chapter 6: A Most Surprising Invitation
My sneakers thudded on concrete as I made my way down the stairs to the pack’s usual hang-out: Jaehoon’s home school. Saja scampered ahead of me. The dog did earn his keep after all: I’d been able to slip out of the house by telling Mami we were going on a walk. A long walk. One I wasn’t sure I’d return from, if the pack knew what I thought they did.
Wolf didn’t warm up to Saja. It pined away unhappily in the back of my mind, whining over the unnatural smell. I ignored It.
Deserted. Tables were folded up neatly against the wall; an overflowing box of Maxim coffee packets sat in the corner. No rice cake crumbs or any other sign that anyone had been here for weeks. Something…didn’t smell right. I hugged myself in the center of the room.
Saja’s low growl made me jump. I dug my fingers into his fur just as the lights went out, drowning the room in pitch-blackness. My eyes snapped into focus, peeling back the shadows to reveal a world of whites and grays. I didn’t like this. Whistling sharply to Saja, we left.
I knew we were in trouble when we stepped out into the street, and the sun was a red sliver between buildings. The light fled before the impending march of winter, so quick and fleeting that it was hard to remember its warmth. I bundled my scarf around my face, and then I saw it—the vampyre watching me from the mouth of the building.
How was it awake? There was still an hour left until sunset. At least it seemed unwilling to venture from its lair. It simply watched me, head cocked.
I gave Saja a stern jerk on his leash. Yes, Yu Li had warned me to keep an eye on him after his miraculous recovery, a feat both strange and unsettling, but anyone who hated vampyres was a friend in my book.
The vampyre beckoned. It was the first time I’d seen one of those things do something non-violent. I stayed resolutely in my shrinking circle of light.
“What do you want?”
“Wolf-girl, why don’t you answer the Queen’s invitation?”
Wolf was going crazy, picking up other vampyre presences from the surrounding buildings. A cold frost stole over my heart. The Weres’ headquarters had been transformed into a sleeping vampyre nest. When had this happened? How could Jaehoon have let this happen? Where did the Weres stand in the war? Were we…losing?
“I never received any invitation.”
“You did. We delivered it to your pack. We heard no word back.”
As twilight’s shadow soldiers advanced, another vampyre appeared in the alley behind me. Then another in the apartment next door—its face pressed against the glass. Saja squirmed around my legs, frantically trying to determine how best to protect me.
“Trust me. I never got your invitation. I would have remembered balling it up and throwing it at your feet.”
The vampyre paused. “Then shall I relay to my Queen that you have no intention of meeting with her at the palace to discuss a peace treaty?”
I gaped. So much for concealing my emotions. “I can…meet your queen on the home turf? You’ll take me there?”
“Yesssss.” The vampyre was losing patience. “This is an honor, you mutt. No other Were has stepped foot in the Vampyre Court for a century. You are the least of the worthy, but your rash clan leaders have started a war out of misunderstanding. You will visit the court of vampyres in Eve for Lunar New Year, the second new moon after the winter solstice. Queen Maya hopes the new year can mark a new night in the history of Weres and vampyres, one in which we both will have a place in her twilight kingdom.”
“She wants to talk to me about this?”
“You have a family member who is part of the vampyre coven: your sister, Marisol. And you are young and untainted by the clans’ views. You are a good representative.”
My heart quickened. “Your sister,” not “sisters.” That was good news about Raina, wasn’t it? And an invitation to bypass all the fruitless searching and skip right to the elusive Vampyre Court? My body would be—somewhat—safe if the meeting took place in Eve. This was my ticket to saving Raina. Why the hell hadn’t the pack told me about it? Why had Rafael kept it from me?
“I’ll think about it.” The tremor in my voice gave me away.
The vampyre thrust a sealed envelope at me. A white tiger stamp circled the seal. “This is your last invitation. After this, there will be no others. You must present this to your vampyres retainers in Eve, and they will bring you safely to the Court. It’s a right of passage, if you will. We await your answer within a fortnight.”
I accepted the envelope. Suddenly, the vampyre’s hand lashed out to grab my arm. It must have been pretty freakin’ hungry to go after a Were. It gazed at my skin with undisguised longing, seriously considering whether or not to pull me back into the shadows.
I bared my teeth and looked it dead in the eye. “No.”
The vampyre stared up at me insolently and slowly, ever so slowly, lowered its long, gray tongue down to lick my arm.
I grabbed its tongue and jerked it into the circle of dim sunlight. The creature wailed, steam hissing from its motley skin. I held it there for a full minute so it would get the idea.
“Clean the maggots from your ears so you can hear properly this time,” I told it. “Don’t fuckin’ mess with me.”
I heard the vampyre rise up like an enraged tidal wave after I turned my back, but Saja bolted forward. I spun around to see the leech cringing and Saja staring it down with canines fully exposed. I shook my head. Una knew what she was doing when she selected this jindo. Ancient protectors of the people, she’d called them?
“Let’s go, boy.” My eyes hardened as we raced the setting sun back to the subway. “We’re not done hunting yet.”
Chapter 7: Deaf and Blind
I woke to the seventh successive day of blindness.
My world was as dark upon waking as it was when sleeping. If I squinted, I could see shadows sitting on ledges, bending over on chairs, stretched out on beds. Then the pain built up around my temples, and I sank back into inky blackness again.
Maya had not only blinded me, but she’d deafened me as well. Normal conversation bubbled like the low murmur of a creek; high-pitched laughter was the twittering of birds glittering somewhere above me, echoing in and out, always unseen.
Mute, I spent long hours by the open window, where I could feel the wind play against my face and sense the rumble of clouds passing by. One day, I felt a number of human hands caress my shoulders, and then heard an excited rush of whispers:
–Should we do it?–
The fingers pinched my skin with sudden violence; I could feel one pair of hands shaking. Then they pushed me.
No! I pressed against the bottomless drop of air as if I could fashion it into a wall, and it turned into a solid barrier of wind. Rain slapped the faces of my attackers, buffeting them back. They were astonished.
–What’s happening?–
–Some freak event of Eve–
–You don’t think it’s the princes, trying to protect her?–
–Ridiculous! You don’t think, it’s…Raina?–
My fingers squeezed the wall of wind harder. I knew it would respond to me, even if I didn’t know why. It felt like an old friend. And if I just—concentrated harder—those soft drops of rain could become ice bullets—
I pushed too hard and my fingers broke through the wind wall. The girls rejoiced.
–Push her now!–
“Get away from her!”
Colleen. Hers was the first voice I’d heard clearly in days. The fourteen-year-old Irish girl with flame-red hair was perhaps my only true friend in this hellhole. Even over, I thought grimly, Marisol, my eldest sister. I couldn’t forget how cruelly Marisol had treated Colleen when she’d found out her husband, Du
ck Young, had selected Colleen to be his next bride.
A tempest of words blew through the room, but the next hands I felt were Colleen’s, pink with warmth.
“Don’t sit near the window, Raina,” I heard her say. “Don’t you know the other brides-to-be want to get rid of the girl Khyber and Donovan are fighting over?”
I said something. My throat told me I was saying “thank you,” but all I heard were the grunts of an animal.
“I’ve had a lot of time to explore the palace. No one will think to look for you up here.”
We were climbing stairs. Colleen was amazingly patient, helping me determine the distance between one step and the next. I stumbled against her like a newborn colt.
“God, who did you piss off?” She helped me down onto a hard cot. I had the impression of magpies peering at me through rosy-tinted glass.
“No way you’re dying and leaving me here all alone. I need you to keep your sister Marisol in line. She really doesn’t like competition for Duck Young, if you couldn’t tell,” Colleen muttered, propping small pillows behind me.
I said, “Thank you.” I heard myself this time.
***
My greatest fear, of course, was that Donovan would find me. Colleen had her hands full with defending me. She spoke with great assurance now, chasing off the other girls with a mixture of sarcasm and intimidation. Only I, who held her hand, knew of the cold sweat that broke out over her fingers whenever she faced them. She was frightened that one day they would call her bluff. Then what would we do? I hadn’t heard so much as a peep from Khyber since the night his mother had blinded and deafened me, although I often thought I saw a shadow that stood stiller and darker than any of the others.
Fuck him, I thought, standing by helplessly as Colleen shooed off another group of naysayers. This is real friendship. Standing next to someone when they’re at their worst.
“Why arethey scaredofyou?” My new voice ran low and guttural.
She took my hand and wrapped it around two metal pommels that clicked together. I followed the groves down, and then she pushed my hand away, laughing.
Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters) Page 4