The Longest Night #3

by Heather Knox

  Her packmate’s tone catches her by surprise, lower and softer than she’s grown accustomed to from him, so she nods. The wooden, weather-worn welcome sign on the door ahead knocks in the wind. Though she sees it daily, and has for the better part of a year, she hasn’t noticed it until now—how the dark knots look like bullet holes from this distance, even with her keen vision; how the bark along the edges has flaked where the warp in the wood forces contact with the door on windy nights like this; how many rings in the slice of trunk, each indicating another year of weather, of disappointment, of mistakes, of surviving. Somehow the paint has endured, faded of course, but still legible, in the handwriting of someone likely long since dead.

  “Wait . . . ” She shakes her head, her voice catching in her throat so she clears it. “Why me?”

  “Victor likes you better,” he offers, opening the door for her.

  As she passes him, her arm brushes his chest. He grabs her roughly and pulls her against him in a tight hug. She tenses a moment, then wraps her arms around him. A tear slips down her cheek before being absorbed by his shirt. The hug lasts only a fraction of a minute but it feels as if it could be years before Pierce’s hands move to her shoulders and he pushes her away from him to look at her. He wipes a rogue tear from her skin.

  “Don’t cry in front of them,” he warns as a father might. “Bite it back. I’ll wait up for you in our quarters and you can weep until sunrise, if that is how you choose to mourn.”

  She nods, both surprised by his understanding and not, such illustrating the delicate balance between competitor and caretaker that living as a pack requires.

  “And the Rite of Mourning?”

  “Soon. Neither of us will feel up to hosting the rite until we’ve had a chance to mourn privately—Victor will understand this.”

  “ . . . and the girl?”

  “Well, that’s where you work your magic, Little One,” he says with a sigh, falling back on a nickname he gave her when they first packed. Though it started as condescending and derisive, it fell out of use for a while before becoming a term of endearment he only used with her in private, out of earshot of even Johnny. “He may well choose to bring us to the tanks after we’ve mourned for failing our mission—in which case, tonight might be our last night together.”

  “Got it,” she says with a sharp nod of acceptance.

  She barely makes it completely in the doorway when Victor spots her and waves, giving an expectant smile. She glances behind her but Pierce has slipped back out into the night to avoid him.

  “Lydia! I’m glad you’re back, I was getting worried. Where are the others?” He looks around for emphasis, not asking the question burning in his throat like bile: Where is the girl, the fifth descendant of Ismae the Bloody?

  “Pierce slipped out for a minute,” she starts. And there she stops, unsure of how to continue. “Victor . . . Johnny didn’t . . . ”

  “What is it, Lydia?” His brow furrows as he studies her, arms crossing over his chest.

  “The girl got away,” she starts again, this time focusing on a different narrative.

  “Got away?”

  “There was another woman there, one of the Everlasting—she fought like a Praedari . . . ”

  “What do you mean ‘she fought like a Praedari’?”

  “I mean she wasn’t a Praedari but she fought like one,” she tries to explain, finding it much easier to focus on that woman and the lost girl than on the loss her pack must now endure. So she babbles, unable to stop herself for several minutes as she recounts the night, every detail she can recall in case something they thought inconsequential ignites a spark of recognition in their leader—but his expression remains a non-expression, unreadable.

  “And Johnny?” he asks as she pauses, having reached in her account of the night the very thing she subconsciously sought to avoid mentioning, as if by not mentioning it to an outsider she and Pierce could forget, could resurrect their fallen packmate.

  She shakes her head no, looking down at her bloodstained Converse. Do not cry, she repeats in her head several times, filling the silence between them such that she cannot move nor speak aloud.

  “I’m not angry,” he states.

  “You’re not?” She looks up at him, mouth hanging slightly agape in disbelief.

  “Well, I am . . . ” he admits. “But the girl is unharmed?”

  Lydia nods.

  “And you didn’t go after them?”

  She hesitates only a moment before shaking her head.

  “Good. If the Keepers are on to us they may have led you to an ambush.”

  He reaches out and squeezes her shoulder.

  “You look as though I’m going to turn into a giant snake and swallow you,” he says with an unconvincing tight-lipped smile. While that exact thought hadn’t crossed her mind, now she can’t erase the image. “We learn from failure. In this case, we’ve learned we’re on the Keepers’ radar—probably someone poking around for information about Ezekiel Winter’s involvement, or his death. We don’t know how much they know, but we know they know something.”

  “But the other pack—” but she is silenced by Victor holding up a hand to cut her off.

  “The other pack were idiots and almost killed their intended target. Their entire pack was almost brought down by a little girl and a crazy old farmer. You,” he pauses for emphasis and squeezes her shoulder again before letting his arm fall to his side. “You did nothing wrong. You exercised good judgment and should not be punished for that.”

  “We could go after her again,” she offers, but he shakes his head.

  “If the Keepers are on to us, it’s only a matter of time before they put the pieces together. You’d either be walking into an ambush or forcing their hand—which might compromise the girl’s life. They won’t kill her when they can hold her up for us to drool over. No, this moves up our timeline—but it’s not a crisis.”

  “Do you need her to awaken Ismae?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t think so—the blood of the four should establish a strong enough connection to this plane to bring her out of her Slumber to the waking world.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  He considers this a moment. “First things first: go rest. If it doesn’t work, I might need you and Pierce again. I would join you in mourning, but I promised one of the kids a tour,” he adds with a sigh.

  As she retreats down the hall to the quarters shared by her pack to rejoin Pierce, a familiar tightness wells up in her chest, blooming to her extremities which now tingle. She balls her fists. How dare he send them after some girl he might not even need? How dare he send them to do his errands like hired help, like they’re expendable? Is this what Johnny lost his life over, a maybe? A shaft of wood through his heart because of a misstep by Victor? Victor, whom they follow without question, whose ambition to raise the mother of the Praedari has blinded him to the movements of their enemy. Too distracted, unable to see the forest for the trees. Now Johnny would never again see the forest nor the trees, nor the fruit of their toil here at the ranch, would never see the Praedari take their rightful place as predators, stamping out the Keepers’ antiquated notion of nobility—and for what?

  She wheels around but Victor has gone. A guttural sound builds in her stomach and surges from her throat, turning to a scream that fills the now-empty hallway as the predator within climbs up and threatens to follow the path of her voice out. She turns to the wall and puts her fist through some paneling with a sickening crack of the bones in her hand as they fracture, sending sharp tendrils of pain up her forearm. The tears that stream down her cheek stream not because of the pain, but in an attempt to drown out the rage that summons her Beast within.

  Don’t let them see you cry.

  “AND DON’T LET THEM SEE YOU CRY,” THE GIRL with the curls and too much mismatched concealer caked over bruises warns. She wears a nice skirt, and her red heels—a size too big and scuffed with the black of asphalt—match the red of her flaw
less manicure.

  Lydia nods, wiping away tears with her sleeve. The room smells like bleach and jasmine, the carpet so covered in stains that the coloration—shades of yellow, beige, and brown—would look intentional if it weren’t so disgusting. She hadn’t caught the girl’s name, but she suspected that the omission was intentional. Lydia had heard that the woman who runs this house treated the girls like slaves—sending them out to cook and clean for wealthy families in exchange for a place to stay. They were supposed to dress nicely, though, so they would reflect well upon their mistress.

  “Hush now, don’t scare the girl,” a low, sweet voice from the doorway admonishes. “You’re going to be late for your appointment, and you know we don’t tolerate tardiness.”

  The girl with the curls blushes and looks down, nodding, shuffling from the room.

  “Now that we’re alone, what’s your name, girl?”

  “L—Lydia.”

  The woman frowns. “That won’t do. Lydia is too boring. I like to give the girls more interesting names—call yourself Lolita, Lola if they’re regulars. It’ll make them feel closer to you when you are cleaning their houses, scrubbing their toilets. Help them to trust you. We do it for the money—but secrets are the real currency.”

  We—as if this woman had ever, in any other life, found herself three weeks without food that hadn’t come from a dumpster. Instead, Lydia asks: “Lolita?”

  She narrows her eyes at Lydia, studying her before continuing. “You’re not much of a reader, are you? Tell me, how old are you?”

  “Eighteen, ma’am.”

  “No, you’re not,” she states not accusingly, but knowingly, as she leans against the doorframe, crossing one ankle over the other and her arms over her chest.

  “I—I’m fourteen.”

  “Ah, no wonder you haven’t read it. No matter, really,” she says with a wave. “I have a copy you can borrow.”

  Lydia continues to sit quietly, staring at the woman in the doorway, absorbing every detail about her: the cloud of Chanel No. 5 surrounding her like a far-reaching halo, probably from the same type of crystal-cut glass bottle as the one her foster mother received as a gift that she accidentally broke (and was forced to lap up like a dog, two homes ago); the diamond earrings that dangle halfway down her throat and look remarkably like a pair a foster sister stole (and accused her of stealing—she still has the scar on the back of her hip where the belt tore open her flesh and the earrings weren’t even real); the nakedness of her left ring finger, a “most vulnerable” nakedness Lydia’s last social worker warned her would be her fate if she ended up behind bars (and, likely, even if she didn’t).

  But the way this woman wore that nothing was nothing like the way Lydia’s mousy social worker wore it, as a self-deprecating badge of honor as she constantly frowned and constantly found herself late to their check-ins, scrambling as if she owed the universe a great debt that she’d never quite settle.

  “You’re different,” the woman announces, standing straight. “Follow me.”

  Lydia jolts upright from slouching and follows, scooping up her backpack—mostly empty, save for an empty plastic water bottle, some metro tokens she stole, a few photos, a few dollars, some socks, and a stuffed knit owl in a plastic baggy. She’d never say she had nothing. How long have I been staring?

  The woman leads her down a series of hallways of the condemned hotel, dirty low-pile carpet in dark olive green and orange worn to the floor in well-trafficked areas, littered with twitching and glassy-eyed junkies whom the woman steps carefully over. If the building had been kept up it would be gorgeous; with the revitalization of surrounding neighborhoods, Lydia figures it’s only a matter of time until it is demolished, displacing those that struggle within, herself now among them. She scurries to keep up, tripping on the foot of one and catching herself on the sticky wall. A grumble. She apologizes. The person attached to the foot doesn’t respond, instead staring past her at a chunk of peeling wallpaper, floral and cream.

  The suite the woman steps into requires a keycard and smells of autumn: cinnamon and falling leaves. This scent is so far removed from the putrescence of the rest of the building that Lydia finds it difficult to catch her breath. It’s clear she’s kept this suite as an office: a desk and leather desk chair, a coffee table and settee, a modestly-sized wardrobe of ornate wood. Above the desk, monitors show security camera footage from around the building, entrances of some private rooms—with a few exceptions, including the room they just left—the timestamp indicating the present.

  The woman lets the door click shut behind them, noticing Lydia’s stunned expression. “My office—I own the building, and others like it, just haven’t had the heart to disrupt the lives of those who’ve been here longer than I. Please, sit,” she offers, indicating the settee. “Or perhaps you’d rather shower and change?” She wrinkles her nose at Lydia, the question more a command than a suggestion. “The bathroom is through there, use whatever you need. I’ll find some clothing and leave it by the sink.”

  Lydia shuffles to the windowless bathroom with her backpack and closes the door behind her without a word. She runs the water, drops her clothes into the small trashcan underneath the counter with a swish-thud, and steps into the first shower she’s had in weeks. As the water washes over her, she lets her tears mingle with the droplets but doesn’t sob aloud. You’re different, the woman had said and no part of Lydia wants to find out what this means for her here. She wishes she could melt into the water and be washed down the drain. Maybe she could find the ocean. She can’t swim, but anything would be better than here.

  The door clicking shut startles her. She pokes her head out of the shower curtain to find freshly deposited clothes on the counter, as promised, and a towel spread on the tile in front of the tub. She lets the water hit her face a few moments longer before turning it off and stepping out, wrapping herself in a towel. She takes her time dressing, first slathering herself in lotion from an expensive-looking bottle. She dresses in the clothes left for her: a soft romper boasting a geometric pattern of jeweltone pinks and reds and purples and a similarly hued cardigan. She spots a set of goldtone bangle bracelets and a pair of boho-chic amethyst earrings meant for her next to the pile, but leaves them by the sink. Instead of the nude heels left for her, she pulls a clean pair of socks from her backpack and slips her boots back on. A cream color and not yet dingy, she had stolen them from a charity thrift shop last week. A frequent “customer,” she’s sure the staff there knows she’s stealing but haven’t the heart to bust her for it. In return, she brings donations of things she’s rescued but has no use for. Not really an even trade, but she doesn’t take advantage of their kindness, grabbing things only as she needs them. She hastily pins her hair back in bobby pins before collecting her backpack and rejoining her hostess in the suite.

  “Oh good, it fits,” the woman claps with a smile. “I wasn’t sure your style, but these colors look great on you.”

  Lydia notices her eyes linger first on her bare wrists and then her boots, but the woman says nothing, just continues looking pleased with herself.

  “Come, sit.” Lydia finds herself obeying. “I’m sure you have questions—”

  Lydia shakes her head. “No, ma’am—I’m ready to work.” Despite the confidence of her words, she swallows loudly the lump that’s formed in her throat.

  The woman offers a fake pout. “Call me Temperance, please. Ma’am makes me feel old,” she says, laughing softly.

  “Okay.”

  “Lydia, this place—this life—this isn’t what you were meant for. Now,” she puts her hands up in fake surrender, “I admit that I don’t know what you’ve been through or why you’re here. And I’d never ask. But I know people—”

  “Please,” Lydia starts to implore before realizing the desperation in her voice. She didn’t need to be saved from herself. “Please let me work. You won’t be disappointed. I’m a fast learner—”

  The woman holds up her hand to stop h
er.

  “I’m not telling you no, child—but I am offering you a choice. You can leave here tonight as Lolita, if you wish. You would stay with the other girls who spend their days mopping floors and scrubbing dirty pots till their fingers bleed. Or . . . you can remain Lydia, and be mine.”

  “What do you mean?” She squirms a little in her seat. She doesn’t like the idea of being owned.

  Temperance takes a seat on the settee next to Lydia and leans in. “I’m offering you a chance to leave all of this behind—but everything as you know it will change.”

  Lydia considers whether Temperance means to offer her entry into some sort of pyramid scheme, but she’s also sure that Temperance wouldn’t be so stupid as to think she had any kind of collateral to offer as down payment. Perhaps this woman recruits for a cult? Needs to hire a drug mule? Harvests organs for the black market? None of these seem too dire a proposal to turn down without at least hearing her out, at least as compared to her present situation, so Lydia listens.

  “You’re a . . . a vampire?” the girl in front of Temperance asks, cocking her head to one side. Temperance recognized potential: Lydia would make a great killer. Innocence becomes her.

  “One of the Everlasting, yes. Vampire is such an ugly word.” Temperance has removed her heels and drawn her legs up, leaning on one hip with her long legs stretched out to her side and her arm, bent at the elbow, resting along the top of the settee. She looks as though she stepped out from a painting found in an ancient temple a long time ago, that same wisdom and grace emanating from her form.

  “And I’d be one of them, too?”

  Temperance nods.

  “Will it hurt?”

  “Only for a second.”

  “And then?”

  “Most find it enjoyable beyond measure. Though occasionally that is not the case,” she admits.

  “I mean, then what? I’m a vampire and then what?”

  Temperance smiles at this, amused by the thought the girl puts into the decision, albeit almost certainly a ruse to make her seem less desperate. Still, the move shows calculation, a discerning nature even if for show, something she can appreciate. Especially of a fourteen-year-old girl. Such potential.