Or what if it multiplied me exponentially? I think of what Rose said about the psychic connection magnifying her desires. I can barely trust myself as it is. How would it be to resonate with the appetites of a whole group of vampires? Just looking at them, I can see they are damaged. They have already killed more than once. Five seemed to imply having the direction of a central mind would calm them, but what if it worked the other way around and I lost control instead?
I should refuse to do it, try to fight my way out of here and go it on my own.
But as I look around at the expectant faces of the enluzantes, I can’t help but see the hope and longing in their eyes. They really need this.
“You defeated the old queen.” The little girl, Rose, steps out of the shadows, into the light of the living room. I’m struck by her beauty. Her golden hair is tangled and her white dress is streaked with blood, but her eyes are a striking blue and her pale skin makes her look fragile, like a china doll some kid dragged through the dirt. I remember Luke saying that some vampire queens collect people they consider exceptional—the most beautiful, the strongest, the most talented—killing them to preserve them, like butterflies pinned to a board. I am looking at the battered remains of an insane vampire’s collection.
“I didn’t kill Queen Constanza,” I correct her gently. “Luke was the one who killed her in the end.”
“But you were the one who defeated her,” she says. “You were the one who asked to become a vampire so Queen Constanza would fall into torpor. You chose to be like us and it’s your blood that set us free.”
She says it with such reverence, like she’s reciting a legend rather than telling something that just happened only a few weeks ago. I don’t have the heart to tell her I was never thinking about her or any of the rest of them. I was just trying to save Ander and Luke.
Ander and Luke. The ones I should be finding right now.
Five pantomimes checking a watch. “Tick-tock, my friend, tick-tock. Do we keep you here to keep you out of harms way? Or do you accept your role as queen and re-establish the psychic link?”
“You’re the psychic,” I snap. “What do you see me doing?”
“Well,” Five says, “the truth is I can’t see your future because the decision hasn’t been made. But the time to choose is now.”
“Tell me why it matters to you,” I say. “I know you must be in this for yourself, so tell me why you care. What do you get out of me being queen?”
Five flexes her fingers, like a cat extending and retracting its claws. I watch the F-I-V-E tattooed on the back of her knuckles squirm. “You know that thing people say? ‘You and what army?’ ”
I can’t help laughing. There are only four enluzantes. They’re enough to hold me here, true, but how much more could they do? “You call this an army?”
She gives me a sly smile. “Try them.”
Chapter 19: Cicely
“Even if I want to,” I say, “how would I establish a psychic link?”
Five shrugs. “You’re the witch. Trust your instincts. ”
My instincts are screaming, get the hell out of here! Find Ander and Luke! It’s hard to hear anything above that.
And even if I could, is following my instincts safe any more? I flash back to the argument I had with Ander. Can I afford to trust any of these people? Can I trust myself?
But if I want to reach Ander and Luke in time, I have to try.
I shut my eyes and reach out with my mind, trying to touch the other minds around me, but it all feels hokey and forced. Psychic links are for people like Naomi, with her nature-goddess powers, or even for Zoe, with her daily horoscopes and her “Start Seeing Crop Circles” t-shirt. I am not a psychic link kind of gal. I push it as much as I can, but the voices in my head stay quiet, like a radio playing in a distant room, and I can’t make out anything they say.
Fear blooms in my stomach. What will they do if I can’t establish the link? Will they realize I’m not the queen they thought I was? Will they kill me?
I open my eyes to find the undead staring at me, disappointment written on their pale faces. When they were animated with hope, the vampires almost looked alive, but now their sadness slays them. They look like what they are: a bunch of young people who have suffered through dying and come back again whether they wanted to or not.
Like I did.
My fear is replaced by a sudden rush of compassion. It’s enough to make me wish I could be their queen. I look at Rose, so tiny and fragile in her white dress, and yet there’s a certain steely strength in her blue eyes. I can see myself in her, and I imagine she can see herself in me, too. It is the closest any of us will come to seeing ourselves in the mirror.
The mirror… We are from the same line, so we must share the same curses. We can’t cry. We can’t be seen in mirrors. We are all afraid of crosses—
And we have to be invited in.
I shut my eyes again and open my mind. Come in, I think, I invite you to come in. Ian, Rose, Cole… I have to force myself to think Lyla’s name, but I do. Lyla…
Instantly they flood my mind, like a wave crashing over a tide pool, and I am swept away. All their voices are speaking at once, their thoughts a jumble in my mind. Their emotions fill me, too—surprise, relief, joy. But under the swift-moving current of those feelings churns something much darker. Loss. Anger. Fear. Longing for their human lives. A million memories strobe through my brain: Ian jumps onto the back of a moving train, his long coat swinging. Rose opens an ornate cage and laughs when a yellow canary bounces out. Lyla…
Lyla is in the girls’ bathroom at school. She’s human in the memory, of course, and dressed just as perfectly as always, her long chestnut hair swept up in a tortoise-shell clip. But she’s struggling, trying hard to re-do her eye make up, and her eyes are red, like she’s been crying. She fumbles the mascara into her little pink bag, just as someone I can’t see comes into the bathroom. When she looks up at them, there is no sign of tears. Her perfect smile is back in place, her face as pretty and unchanging as a mask. I feel for her, a sudden unexpected pain, and then I feel with her, and with all of them. This isn’t just looking in a mirror, or even in a fun-house worth of mirrors. This is like stepping through the mirror. Like being the mirror. I am fractured into a million glittering shards and I suddenly understand why someone like Queen Constanza could go crazy. I could get lost in this.
But I can’t afford to. I have to find Luke before D.J. kills him.
“Here,” Five takes a syringe from the pocket of her coat and hands it to me. “Sedative potion. You’ll need it.”
I take it and head for the door.
I open my mouth to command them to go with me, but there’s no need. The Remnant know what I’m going to say before I say it—almost before I think it. They are already falling in behind me, flanking me protectively. A minute ago, being surrounded by undead vampires had been… well, not exactly comforting. But now? I understand why these people have dragged themselves half-way across the country to get this feeling back. Lately, I have been feeling like an outsider even among my own friends. Now, here I am feeling intimately connected to a bunch of strangers.
Cole catches my eye as I pass him and gives me a broken smile.
In spite of my fear, I can’t help smiling back. Yeah, I think, me and this army.
Chapter 20: Ander
“Let him go, D.J.” My voice booms out across the beach, the deep command of an alpha. No wolf in his right mind would defy it.
But D.J. may not be in his right mind. His hands—more like claws now—shake with the effort, but he doesn’t let go of Luke’s neck. “No.”
“No? What do you mean no? Damon James, let him go!”
“No!” This time he roars it back at me. “Not until you let me go!”
I fling my arms wide. “I haven’t got you!”
His eyes meet mine. “I mean release me from your pack.”
Fear closes like a noose around my neck. “D.J., you don’t really w
ant that.”
“Why not?” he says. “Because you’ll be a lone wolf?”
“No,” I say, “because you will! Trust me, you don’t know what it’s like to be the only one of your kind. I know it sucks taking orders from someone else, but if you don’t have anyone keeping you in check right now—“
“I won’t be alone, Ander.” His voice is surprisingly calm for someone who is half monster. “I’m going home.”
I try my best to sound like Michael—calm. Firm. Reassuring. “This is home now, D.J.”
“What, this?” He sweeps his free hand to take in the slate gray expanse of ocean, the cold stretch of sand. Luke’s limp body shakes with the force of his motion. “Being chained up in dungeons and treated like a dog? I know what home is, and this isn’t it!”
I put my hands up, like I’m trying to calm a spooked horse. “Listen, little brother, I know how you feel—believe me, I know! I missed home too. But it’s better to just put it out of your mind. It’s closed to us, man. There’s no going back.”
“You mean it’s closed to you.”
I shake my head, sadly. My heart aches for him. He looks like a massive beast, but I can see the kid underneath. I can see the pain in his eyes. “To both of us, D.J.” I keep my voice quiet. “You made your choice when you left Minnesota with us. They aren’t going to take you back.”
“They will if I have this.” He gives Luke a little shake. It sends a rain of dark vampire blood spattering over the sand. “There’s no way they’re going to turn me away if I’m bringing them the vampire prince!”
Luke doesn’t look like some big vampire prince right now. He looks small compared to D.J., and hurt. I keep trying to remember the guy is immortal now, that he’ll heal from the wounds, as long as I can get D.J. to let him go and not just rip him to shreds, but there’s something about the drip-drip-drip of blood on sand that reminds me of a time bomb ticking.
Some part of me says, so what? Let Luke suffer. He’s not exactly the good guy in all of this, right? If D.J. takes him, it’s probably for the better. The prophecy says he’ll betray us in the end to lead the vampires, right? And if he’s gone, I have a chance with Cicely, a chance without competition.
But if D.J. is gone, I have no chance with Cissa because I have no pack to be alpha of. I’m back to changing with the full moon, back to becoming a monster any time I let myself feel too much. A vision of myself chained in the safe room makes me shudder. I can feel all the progress I’ve made crumbing, disintegrating like the sand being chewed by the waves all around us, and it makes me feel desperate and trapped.
And what about the pain of losing D.J.? Me and Cissa and all of it aside, I can’t stand to lose my little brother again, now that I have him back.
“D.J.,” I say quietly, “pack is everything. Without it, we’re… we’re animals. We’re monsters. You’ve got to believe me on this.”
“I’ll have a pack,” he says. “Jason had turned some of our cousins, and there were other families of Hunter wolves, too. I’ll join one of their packs.”
“They aren’t going to trust you. And even if they do, you’ll still have to take orders, and not from someone like me who’ll go easy on you, either. You won’t have me any more. And you won’t have Naomi to—”
“I don’t have her now!” D.J.’s face contorts with pain, and with the effort of not wolfing out completely. “You’re the one who has her, Ander, because you’re the one who can change at will! It’s you she likes, not me!”
So D.J. has a thing for Naomi. How have a missed this? Am I a total idiot? D.J. shifts Luke in his grasp, and Luke’s head bobs like he’s nodding yes, you’re an idiot. Thanks. I feel an irrational anger towards Emmie and Cicely. Aren’t girls supposed to notice this kind of thing? Shouldn’t they have filled me in if D.J. had a crush on Naomi?
But really, I should have figured that one out on my own. I think about the warmth of Naomi’s magic, the calm of her touch. What must that be like for a fourteen-year-old guy who is suffering like D.J. is now? How can he not love her?
“Hey,” I say. “Naomi has done a lot for us. She’s a kind person. But it isn’t like that with
me and her.”
D.J.’s laugh is all bark. “Are you seriously that dense? Naomi has it for you, Ander. She loves you.”
Does she? Is it possible I’ve been dense enough to miss that, too?
It doesn’t matter. “I’m with Cicely.”
The disgust on D.J.’s face is enough to make me want to kick his ass. “I know,” he says. “And that’s why I can’t follow you any more. You have a good woman—a living woman—like Naomi, and you ignore her for that… that…”
I let myself shift into wolf form, my torn clothes falling away like my last scraps of my patience, my front paws coming down hard on the wet sand. “Don’t you say it!”
“Naomi deserves better than to be kicked to the curb for something dead!”
“So, what?” I say. “You care about Naomi, so you’re going to leave her? Because if you leave, you’re never going to see her again.”
“Oh, I’ll see her. I’ll come back for her once it’s safe, once I’m worthy of her. I’ll come back once I’m alpha.”
Luke’s eyelids stutter. He’s waking up. I feel like I’m just waking up, too—just opening my eyes to the fact that my brother has lost touch with reality. A horrible feeling is twisting in my stomach. It’s no shock that going through the crap we’ve gone through could make a guy come unhinged, but the manic glint in D.J.’s eyes is scaring me.
“D.J., if you go home, you won’t be anybody’s alpha. You’ll be at the bottom of the pack.”
“Not when I bring them this.” He tightens his grip on Luke and I see Luke stifle a groan. He’s trying not to let on that he’s waking up. “They’ll have to make me alpha if they want their vampire prince, and then I won’t have to do another full moon.”
I can see the desperation in D.J.’s eyes, smell the fear coming off him in waves. I told D.J. the first full moon was the worst, but that isn’t really true. It’s that second moon that will kill you, because you know what you’re up against. The anticipation is almost worse than the change itself.
I feel for him so bad, I want to take it from him. I want to tell him he can be the alpha of our pack, just so I don’t have to see the desperation in his eyes.
But that isn’t the way the curse works. “They can’t just give you alpha status,” I say. “If you want to lead the pack, you have to kill the alpha first.”
“They’ll rally behind me if I bring them the vamp. I’ll be able to take out whoever they have in charge, if the rest of the pack is with me.”
It makes me feel sick to hear him say it. I don’t have any love for our family, but these are still our relatives we’re talking about. “So, why not just take over our pack?” I say, “Why not just kill me?”
D.J.’s glance drops down to the sand. “I can’t kill you.”
I stand a little straighter. “Because you’re loyal.”
“Because you know me too well. You’ve wrestled with me, you’ve seen me turn. You’d have the advantage.”
“That isn’t why,” I say quietly. “You can’t kill me because we’re pack.”
He looks me in the eye. “I’m not your pack.”
Luke chooses that second to make his move. Grabbing D.J.’s arm in both hands, he tries to twist himself out of his grasp, but he must still be groggy from his injury because he’s not moving fast enough. D. J. roars and throws him to the ground, pinning him down with his front paws, Luke’s face pressed into the sand. D.J.’s teeth are at his throat, his eyes on me. “Let me go or I kill him!”
“They won’t want him dead!” I shout. “The Hunters will want to question him. They’ll want you to bring him alive.”
It’s a desperate ploy, and D.J. knows it. “They’ll take him dead. Let me go!”
What the fuck do I do now? If I refuse, D.J. will kill Luke. There’s no doubt in my mind. But
if I let Deej go, I loose my ability to control myself. There’s no doubt I’ll turn, and then I’m just as likely to kill Luke myself. God knows I’ve wanted to a few times over, but would Cicely forgive me if I did? Would I forgive myself? Luke may be a vampire, but we’re on the same side now, and for all his faults, he has tried to do right by Cicely. In fact, he’s done a better job of it than I have lately. Human is as human does.
Everything’s a gamble.
“Let him go first,” I say, “and then I’ll set you free.”
“And how do I know I can trust you to do that?”
“I’m an honorable guy.”
“I know.” D.J. looks at me with something like pity. “That’s your problem.”
He shoves Luke hard. Luke falls on his knees in the sand and scrambles to his feet.
“Luke,” I whisper, “you’re going to want to run.”
“No.” Luke stands beside me, facing D.J. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Say it!” D.J. yells.
“Damon James,” I say, “I set you free.”
The change is instant. I can feel it: every velvet thread of self control that has held the wolf in check these last few weeks snaps at the same time and it takes me. The pain tears up my spine like fabric ripping on a seam. There’s a horrible noise and it’s coming from me.
Luke leaps, but not at me or away from me—at something on the sand. He pelts it at me, and the part of my brain that isn’t whited out by pain realizes he’s trying to throw me D.J.’s potion bottle. I grab it, fumble to open it, but my hands are stretching to paws around it, my nails curling into claws. I drop it just as it opens and it hits the rocks, splashes, spills like blood, my whole life hemorrhaging through my hands: runs with D.J. and morning chores and moonlight on the beach. Laughing with Naomi and Emmie’s good cooking…
And Cicely. Any chance I’d ever have with Cicely. Because it turns out these few weeks were my one window of opportunity, and I blew it.
Crossfire (Book Two of the Darkride Chronicles) Page 17