Hunger

by Barbara J. Hancock

  “She must have inherited some resistance, but not as much as you,” Winters said.

  “Do hush your gibberish. I grow tired.”

  The queen did look tired. A hundred years beyond tired.

  Holly wondered if the woman had ever been totally sane and in control or if she’d been like Jayne. Had she deteriorated over time? Or had she started off swept up in the power and loving it? She would never know. If she survived the night, Holly would always wonder if she would lose it little by little over time until she was as crazy as the queen, surrounded by filth and minions.

  “This has gone on long enough. You are welcome in the stables. They can always use an extra boy there to muck out the stalls.” The queen made the decree for Winters’ benefit. He didn’t bow or scrape or click his heels together.

  Again, Holly wondered how this strange, but almost civilized gathering was going to turn into a blood bath. Winters wouldn’t go to the stables—even if there had been a stables to go to. She wouldn’t sit and take history and etiquette lessons from a filthy, crazed monster.

  Her mother was nowhere in sight.

  Neither was Dillon. She couldn’t see him or feel him…considering the whole related revelation…that was probably a good thing.

  Holly was waiting for the other shoe to drop and she felt like it was going to be giant-sized. In the end, it wasn’t a shoe, but a bomb that dropped, blowing her heart to million pieces.

  “Ah, here’s Beth now. She’ll set things right. I can always count on dear Elizabeth to think of family first.”

  The queen was still hosting hell’s own dinner party. She ignored the fact that an experienced vampire hunter was at the table. She ignored the fact that Holly wasn’t wearing petticoats. She acted as if zombie vampires were the crème de la crème of society. She welcomed Holly’s mother as if she was the guest of honor.

  “Mom?” Holly wanted to shout and cry and jump for joy because her mother was alive. Then she saw her mom, and the only urge left was for crying.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  They carried her mother into the room. Two of the zombie vampires with their ruined clothes and dirty hands were holding her mother. Their nasty hands were on her. And Holly knew she had a blood bath in her just waiting to come out.

  She clenched her fists and gritted her teeth and prayed to kill before she cried.

  Her mother hadn’t had showers. She hadn’t had Winters to bring her clothes or strawberry shampoo or something to focus on besides pain and death. Holly moaned or keened or groaned. How could you label a sound of pure despair?

  She hardly recognized her mother. Elizabeth Spinnaker wore the same blood-stained clothes she’d worn the night Dillon had attacked. Her pink silk blouse was stiff with her husband’s blood. Dad’s blood. Her beige trousers were grimy beyond belief with blood and gore and dirt. She had one leather mule on her foot and the other foot peeked through a trouser sock that had been tan. It was caked with dried blood too.

  They placed her mother on a chair and her head flopped to the side. Holly gasped. The strand of pearls her mother always wore had imbedded in the wound Dillon’s teeth had torn into her flesh. The wound had healed around a portion of the necklace and a blackened bloodstain still streaked her neck and the pearls and the raw place where the two met and became one.

  Worst of all, worse than the caked blood and the imbedded pearls, worse than the knowledge that her mother had lived for days in filth with no one to care for her, was the vacant stare in her mother’s eyes. She didn’t right her head. She didn’t sit up and look around. She didn’t even blink. She just started to sway from side to side.

  “No,” Holly said. She said it for herself, but Winters jerked his face in her direction. For a brief second, he looked like a lover empathizing with her tragic pain. His eyes were wide copper pools of pity. His mouth was slightly open as if he tried to speak, to soothe, to comfort.

  She wanted to ask for his help. She wanted to take her mother out of this place. Together, they could do it. Right now. This very second.

  Then his face changed.

  His eyes went from copper to burnt umber with flinty flecks of gray. His mouth closed and pressed into a firm, thin line. His hand tightened until his knuckles were white around the handle of his knife and he turned away.

  “Say hello to your mother, won’t you, Holly? Where are your manners this evening?” the queen admonished. “Away for a few days and they simply fall apart, don’t they, Lizzie? Well, we’ll soon have her up to Raveneaux standards, won’t we?”

  Holly was going to kill the queen. She was going to kill them all. She was going to take her mother, without any help from Winters, and she was going to…fix her.

  She remembered violet bubble bath was her favorite and she liked one certain department store that still sold high-waisted, pleat-fronted polyester trousers with tapered legs. The pearls. God, the pearls. She would fix that too. And then she would have them restrung. She would polish her mom’s fingernails and wash her mom’s hair. She would even blow-dry her bangs into a big, stiff pouf the way her mom liked them.

  Holly planned it all in the amount of time it took Winters to look away.

  He was planning an entirely different scenario and desperation spiked in her veins, flooding her heart until it felt three sizes too big for her chest.

  “Holly?” Her mother’s voice shook from disuse. It whistled out in a gasping sigh and Holly realized the pearls had interfered with the healing of her mother’s throat to such a degree that air escaped around them when she tried to speak.

  Her mother lifted her head and looked around. She blinked and turned until she found her daughter and then she blinked again.

  “Holly?”

  It was a question and a joyous relief all at once. The terror of the last few days must not have penetrated her almost catatonic state, but her mind must remember the worry of losing a daughter. She must rejoice at finding her as only a mother could. Her face glowed beneath the grime. Her back straightened and her swaying stopped.

  Best of all, her eyes were clear and knowing and bright.

  “It’s okay, Mom. Everything is going to be okay.”

  To her horror, her mother lifted her hand to fidget with her pearls, something she’d always done when she was emotional. The familiar gesture must be stopped at all cost. If her fingers touched the mess of her throat, if she tugged on those pearls and they didn’t move or if they did…her mom might go mad.

  Holly jumped. The queen shrieked. Winters shouted.

  And Dillon strolled into the room.

  Her heartbeat changed so subtly now that she almost didn’t notice it. She did notice Dillon didn’t look one little bit like the helpless man she’d helped out of chains the night before. He hadn’t been overreacting when he told her to run. He was vampire through and through, from his elegant, rolling walk to the prowling slant of his shoulders.

  He didn’t look at her. He didn’t have to. Holly knew he was aware of her, of her distress, of her fear, of her anger. In a room full of hundreds of creatures, she felt the spotlight of his full attention focused on her even though he didn’t look in her direction.

  For some reason, Winters did.

  He watched her and not Dillon as her Maker sauntered over to the banquet table. He twirled his knife in his hand, once, twice, never once did his gaze leave her face. Holly didn’t meet his eyes. She watched Dillon. She didn’t have time to worry about Winters or his blade, not when Dillon was approaching her mother.

  She took in a breath when Dillon reached to take her mother’s hand, but she didn’t speak when he lifted it gently to his lips.

  “Mrs. Spinnaker, I think you might want to sleep this one out.”

  Her mother’s lids immediately lowered over her eyes and Dillon helped her lean over to rest her head on the table.

  “Good gracious, do we need the smelling salts?”

  Everyone ignored the queen.

  Dillon looked at Holly while his hand was
still resting gently on the back of her mother’s head. He winked and smoothed his hand over her mother’s hair as if to say, “See here, this is how easy it could be if you would only let it.”

  Holly growled. She wouldn’t be charmed just because Dillon had kept her mother from touching her ruined neck. He had been the one to hurt her in the first place. Their blood was in him and she wanted to spill it, to free every drop of it. She took a step in his direction and she knew no tie between them would be enough to save him from her fury.

  “Easy there, darlin’. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  It was a testament to her state of mind that she looked at Winters. Several days ago she had been so caught up in her growing attraction to him that she’d almost gotten distracted from her true goal. Saving her mother. Now, he distracted her again. He was poised and ready to take somebody down. At the moment, it looked like Dillon was first on his hit list. She had thought he was looking at her, but once Dillon had started to talk to her, Winters had turned in her Maker’s direction and now his full attention was on the powerful vampire with his hand in her mother’s hair.

  He wasn’t looking at her, but he tensed when she looked at him. If already bunched and gathered muscles could be said to tense. The sight of her mother had given her every bit of courage she needed to unleash her full power on the vampires around them. She was going to spill blood this night. A lot of it. Winters hadn’t needed courage, but it looked like the sight of Dillon had given him a focus. The strange and wavering vampires hadn’t triggered the kill in him. The even stranger queen hadn’t.

  Dillon had.

  Winters didn’t just look like he had a blood bath inside of him waiting to come out. He looked capable of slaughter on a massive scale, starting with Dillon.

  That vampire was shaking his head at her. He hadn’t meant Winters when he’d talked of bigger fish to fry.

  The queen.

  Holly slowly turned.

  For several minutes, the queen had been like a nattering old aunt creepy in her filth, but not really threatening. That had changed. She had risen from her chair and every semblance of civility had drained from her features. They were stark and twisted into harsh lines of animalistic fury.

  She was so not a fish. She was more like an alligator. Before she’d been submerged, hiding beneath a cultured veneer as if it were murky water. Now she had risen from the depths with her teeth-lined jaw bared. She looked prepared to clamp down on her prey and drag it into the muck.

  And Holly was her prey.

  She braced in expectation of the attack. She just didn’t expect it to come from all sides when it came.

  The zombie vampires swarmed. One slammed into her from behind, driving her into the vampire mother’s embrace. She wasn’t singing or tucking in bones. Her mouth was open and her black teeth were ready to rip into Holly’s throat.

  In self-defense, Holly couldn’t debate the morality of it. She simply acted. The vampire at her back wrapped its arms around her and held on tight. She used the support to lift her legs and kick. She knocked the vampire mother back with both feet on its stomach in a spine-snapping jerk. The creature went down in a slide and came to rest against a wall of vine. It patted the place where the tiny bone slept before its eyes went wide and its head fell to the side.

  Rest in peace.

  Holly brought her hands up behind her head and found the matted head of the vampire at her back. She grabbed both sides of its skull and brought its whole body up and over and down in a jack hammer move she’d seen one night when making fun of wrestling had been a good way of passing the time with bored friends.

  She heard a wet pop as its neck broke. That never happened on TV. She didn’t have time to stop and freak out because there were so many more to kill.

  She did have time to glance at Winters and his dance of destruction made her borrowed moves seem as amateur as they were. He was using his knife in a constant flow of motion and there was a steady trail of slowly disintegrating vampires behind him to prove it. He spun. He dodged. He stabbed. He spun. His coat swirled around his body, never settling. His arms flexed and extended and flexed again. His legs were a blur of jean-covered muscle.

  There was a terrible beauty to his fight. There was a grace to his movements such as she had never seen. If the battle had been choreographed by Hollywood, Winters would have been captured in slow motion so every perfect step could be seen by an appreciative audience. Holly’s vampire eyes gave her the same effect. She saw each muscle bunch and relax. She watched as a bead of sweat welled up on his brow and then broke to run down his cheek even as his knife thrusts seemed precise and effortless.

  All this she saw in less than sixty seconds. Then she had her own vampires to kill or she could stand there in awe of Winters and be killed herself. She was sure her fight wasn’t beautiful. Her hands ripped and twisted and tore. Her feet kicked and trampled and kicked some more. She wasn’t practiced. She didn’t dance. She panted. She growled. She fought for life. She fought for her mother’s life.

  She didn’t know if fury and desperation would be enough to defeat the queen. She didn’t know if vampire strength and instinct would help her against Winters especially if her heart got in the way.

  And she didn’t know where Dillon was.

  She had lost sight of him as her eyes caked with sweat, blood and ash. A loud boom made her jerk her head in the direction of the sudden sound. She didn’t know if she hoped Winters had found her Maker or not, and she didn’t have time to agonize over her indecision. She was still ripping out hearts and protecting her throat and trying desperately to stay alive. Another boom sounded as fresh air hit her face. She took the opportunity of a sudden lull to wipe her eyes with the crook of her elbow. It was the only spot clean enough to wipe instead of smear. During the fight, she’d made her way out of the house and out of the vine. She was several yards away from the ruined mansion outside of a small cemetery. Was she doomed to spend the rest of her “life” stepping on dead people?

  She blinked and blurry tombstones came into focus. So did the form of the queen. She was dragging her mother away like a rag doll by one arm.

  Holly pounced. There was no other word for what her body did. She bent at the knees, arched her back and sprang after the queen like a panther on two legs. Finally, some grace after all.

  Air cleansed her face as she moved through it, but only for a moment, and then her face was pressed into hair that hadn’t been washed for a hundred years. Holly gagged, but she also wrapped her arm around the queen’s neck and jerked with all her strength. No wet pop resulted, but the creature did shriek and let go of her mother.

  As if she had no bones, her mother melted to the ground with the happy smile of a sleeping child. Dillon. Bless him or curse him, you had to notice him and the effect he had on everyone around him.

  While her mother slept, blissfully unaware, Holly rode the back of the wildly shrieking banshee of a queen. And was slammed into the side of a rock-walled crypt again and again and again. The full force of the queen’s body thrown backward with vampire power hit her once, twice, a third time. Finally, there was a popping sound, but it came from her own chest. A broken rib or worse? The flair of pain wasn’t localized and Holly coughed as blood began to trickle from her nose. She was battered and torn, inside and out, but still she held on.

  Rock crumbled and caved in, but Holly was determined to be stronger than stone. She held on and took the queen with her when the next attempted slam took them through the broken wall of the crypt. They fell on a mound of bones. Apparently, the vampire mother wasn’t the only one with a penchant for disturbing graves. Coffins were broken up all around her and their contents piled on the floor.

  Holly didn’t really look. For someone who didn’t like to walk in a cemetery, actually lying on a pile of bones was a little much. The fall had loosened her grip. The queen staggered up and stood, a gruesome figure among the bones in the darkened tomb.

  “You have ruined everything,�
�� the queen cried and it sounded like trial, judge and execution summed up in one string of words. She stood above Holly with her fingers curled like claws and her alligator teeth biting the air. For one horrible moment, Holly allowed it to be a glimpse of her future. Hopelessness swelled in her bruised and broken chest. But then she got over it.

  “This was a ruin before I was even born,” Holly returned.

  She pulled her feet up under her body and stood. The bones rattled and shifted under her shoes, but she didn’t waver. They were long dead, and in the end they had fared better than the Raveneaux folk who hadn’t been allowed to die a natural death. She would spare no sympathy for silent bones. Outside in the night, dying vampires called and cried and sobbed and fought and, for them, Holly ached. So many lives ruined and wasted. Why?

  The queen had been southern aristocracy and she had carried some of the worst philosophies of those days with her through her monstrous change and into the present day. She had wanted to be belle of the ball forever.

  But it was time for her to retire.

  Holly rose with a shard of broken femur in her hand. In the blackened tomb, it gleamed white, almost as striking as another blade at work out in the night. It wasn’t polished or carved, but it was fitting.

  Holly used every single ounce of her ninety or so pounds to drive the Raveneaux bone into the queen’s heart. It went deep, then deeper still as the queen looked down at her chest in surprise.

  “Montgomery? I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  Black blood bubbled up over her lips and she reached to take the bone, displacing Holly’s fingers. The queen smiled as she pitched forwards to join the pile of bones on the floor. In the end, she was surrounded by Raveneauxs just as she’d always wanted.

  Holly staggered away from the queen and Montgomery and whoever else crunched beneath her feet. She tripped, blinking out into the night where very few shadows still clawed and cried and fought. Winters had held his own.

  Holly looked quickly at the ground and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw her mother sleeping nearby. Her sigh was cut short as Dillon pressed her back against the remaining wall of the tomb.