Blood Song: Division 7: The Berkano Vampire Collection

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  He shook his head and wiped his face with his forearm, seemingly unimpressed, and stepped forward to toe the very edge of the building across from mine. Then he jumped. He landed several feet down on one of the boards without barely a thump and vanished into the open window.

  My jaw dropped. I wasn’t even close to that level of talent. Did he expect me to follow him without breaking all my bones? Or was that his intent? Split me open and then leave me for dead?

  He knew I had to follow since he—hopefully—had my supplies. But surely there was an easier place to dump me off and then forget about me.

  I had to follow. Yet there wasn’t any way across the narrow street as far as I could tell. I didn’t think I could make the leap to one of those boards sticking out of the windows, and there wasn’t a ladder connecting the two buildings.

  I strode back to the ladder connecting this building to the last one I’d crossed and dragged it toward me, wincing at the gravelly squeak as metal scraped stone. The magic surrounding it didn’t stop it from being moved, I guessed. On the other side of the roof, I pushed the ladder out toward the nearest board. Since the ladder angled toward a window instead of the roof, the steep slant rolled my stomach just looking at it. This was a ladder. It had rungs spaced far apart instead of a constant place to set my feet, and my hope that this would end well fell right through those gaping holes.

  I stood and hissed out a slow breath while every ounce of reason in my body screamed not to do what I was about to do.

  One.

  I filled in the blanks between the rungs in the ladder with pretend blue beanbags.

  Two.

  Think fast. Just get it over with.

  Three.

  Go time. I lifted my foot and set it on the first rung.

  A low growl sounded from the street below somewhere to my right. My muscles clamped tight. My step faltered. I tried to reel my leg back in, but my momentum already aimed me forward. My foot slipped, so I flashed my other leg out onto the ladder to catch myself, but I didn’t place my step where it needed to go. Instead, I stepped too far on the left, on the edge of the ladder, and the whole thing rocked violently underneath me.

  Dark movement far below my feet. I didn’t dare look. I lunged forward, my steps wild even though I aimed them for the flat edges of the ladder, hoping, praying, wishing the ladder would flatten itself out and stop moving. But it didn’t. It was tipping, too fast, too out of control, and suddenly I was freefalling with nothing but concrete and monsters below. Desperation rocketed through me. I grasped at empty air with a scream tipping my tongue, though I knew that would bring even more Berkano.

  My foot snagged on the ladder, but it was falling, too. The front of it smashed on the end of the board jutting from the second window down on the building across the street. Gravity swung the ladder out from underneath me like a pendulum I couldn’t stop. I leaped off it toward the board, swinging my legs to propel me toward it, and somehow crashed onto the middle of the wood. My forward momentum had to go somewhere, but not off the other side of the beam to the Berkano below. I pivoted my feet toward the window. The broken window with lethal-sharp glass shards that could razor me in half.

  Shit.

  I covered my head and bulldozed through it at full speed. Glass bit at my whole body and hailed down with me as I landed in a pile on stained carpet. I blinked into the sparkling bits of window next to my face, too dazed and too surprised that I was still able to draw breath, to immediately feel any pain. But as soon as I pushed myself to all fours, my body felt like it had been chewed up and spit back out.

  My elbows threatened to give out under my weight. I almost allowed them to, but a man with a thick beard and his jaw dropped open wide enough to invite a curious cat inside locked my joints up again. Underneath his bushy beard, an ugly red scar sliced across his neck. Could this guy speak?

  He ticked his gaze toward the window. It was two stories up, but surely the Berkano had heard the sound of breaking glass. Would they gather below to investigate? Or worse, could they scale buildings? I doubted it, what with the system of ladders and boards in sunny patches, but like most everything about the outside world, I wasn’t sure. Maybe there was another way up that was hidden in shadows.

  I glanced back at the bearded man, whose face shaded redder the longer he stared at his broken window. Even though it had already been broken before my grand entrance, I’d made a sound. A loud one.

  A quick look around indicated that maybe his memory wasn’t what it used to be. The people in the photos plastered above his couch and bookshelves shouldn’t have x’s for eyes or colored-in gashes across their necks. I didn’t know what it meant exactly, but it scraped a shiver across my shoulders.

  The man’s face settled on a crimson color I’d never seen before. His large hands squeezed into fists, and he charged.

  I shoved to my feet, fiercely shaking my head.

  He snatched me by one of the mini-buns on top of my head and dragged me with him across the living room. I flew my hands to his wrists to fight the painful pull, but he was too strong, and the glass buried in my palms and fingertips only dug deeper into my skin.

  Panic swelled through my chest, and I screamed, loud and piercing. I wanted the Berkano to come and end this, end me and this crazy fucking bearded man before he mounted my picture on the wall with crossed-out eyes and a gash across my neck.

  He hauled me into the center of the apartment, where a dark hallway branched farther in. Three doors yawned open. Out of one of them stepped another man, rail thin, his face shadowed, and with what looked like a necklace made of teeth swinging at his neck. He snapped on a pair of blue rubber gloves. Then he lifted a single finger to his lips that did nothing to quiet me.

  Rubber gloves. A scar across Beard’s neck. Had the man cut Beard’s vocal cords to keep to the no-talking rule? Was that the plan for me?

  Horror lit up every cell in my body. I bucked and reared, kicked out at everything. No way would they take my voice. I hooked my foot around the inside of an empty TV stand. Several hairs ripped from my scalp with the force of the man’s yank and my sudden stop.

  He dropped me to the ground. Silver flashed in his hand with 170 carved into the metal before he shackled a thick cuff to my neck. What the hell?

  A large shadow dimmed the sunlight flooding through the window. Beard stared. The gloved man in the hallway cocked his head to the side, though he was too far away to see the shadow.

  Maybe the shadow was the Berkano. At that moment, I didn’t care. I released my foot from the TV stand and whipped around, ready to exchange one terror for another, but it wasn’t the Berkano. Hendry clambered through the open window, the broken glass snapping under his cowboy boots, his large strides eating up the distance between us in a single heartbeat.

  “Forgive her trespasses,” he whispered, “for she knows not what she does.”

  He grabbed my hand and steered me toward the front door. I glanced back at the men. The guy in the hallway slinked back into the room, his gloved hands clasped together as if in prayer. Beard clenched and unclenched his fists while a muscle in his eye spasmed.

  Hendry pulled me from the apartment. As soon as I swept through the doorway, the cuff on my neck clicked. Spikes burst from inside it into my skin. I gasped.

  My hand still tucked in his, we sped down a hallway, through a door, and up a flight of stairs without slowing. Pain stitched through my side, but no stretch of feet was too many from those two men.

  But once we burst through the stairwell door onto the third floor, first my legs, then my stomach gave out. I dry heaved into a corner, my body retching and trembling under the stress of the last hour or so. When I finished, I sat up, panting, while I pressed my tear-soaked cheek to the cool wall.

  “What…was that?” I whispered.

  “The Silence Collectors. Witches who collect vocal cords because they think it will end the Rift Curse. They live all over Tombstone and focus their efforts on the vampires. Usually.�
��

  His voice sounded tight, tinged with apprehension, but I didn’t care enough to look up at his expression to be sure. The Rift Curse was an incurable illness that chose its victims randomly, it seemed, and caused extreme light sensitivity, coughing, and fatigue. The illness was the result of the Rift itself. Many, many years ago, witches wanted to cure vampirism. Bad idea. Somehow, while working on the cure, a witch fell in love with a vampire, and that love literally broke the world with the Rift. Continents fractured and reformed into sixteen Divisions. Australia was lucky number seven.

  “And this?” I pointed to the metal cuff on my neck and winced.

  “They claim they need ten thousand undamaged vocal cords to say the spell that could break something as big as the Rift Curse,” he said.

  Ten thousand vocal cords… I couldn’t even fathom that. I’d never seen the spell in the copy of the witch grimoire we kept in the church library, which didn’t mean it wouldn’t work, but it sounded like a long shot.

  But how could anyone be so cruel? Hendry for leaving me behind, the two men who wanted to silence me for good… I thought I had it bad within the walls of the church dealing with Allison, but out here in the real world proved even more brutal, and I hadn’t even seen the vampires yet. I had to survive out here on my own? No way. Allison was right. I wouldn’t make it a day.

  I ran my hand along the cuff and swallowed the awful acidic taste in my mouth, my throat pushing against the metal. The spikes along the inside of it were embedded in my skin, but I didn’t feel blood or pain. Just strangled and trapped. “They have a long way to go if I’m only number 170.”

  He squatted in front of me, a frown digging into his forehead underneath his curls. “The Silence Collectors’ magic works differently since they can’t speak, like we usually do our spells. The collars draw energy from the number of nearby humans.”

  I pinned him with a dark look. “That’s how all of our magic works.”

  “Not quite. The collar charges for several hours.” His hazel eyes searched my face, and he sighed. “The number 170 is how many hours you have until it triggers, plucks out your vocal cords, and…silences you for good.”

  “As in dead?” I squeaked out.

  He nodded.

  My stomach threatened to heave again. “How do I get it off?”

  “You don’t,” he said, his voice low. “No one I know of has successfully taken theirs off.”

  I shook my head down at the floor, helplessness sinking into my limbs. I was dead already, not even a day outside the Church of Hangmen.

  “I’m sorry, Fin,” he said softly. “About all of this. I’ll do whatever I can to help get that thing off your neck. Please trust that I will.”

  Something in his voice—was that sincerity?—pulled my throat tight because I almost wanted to believe it. Almost. But he was the one who’d put me in that situation in the first place, had disappeared into this building and expected me to follow. He could die a thousand deaths for all I cared, each one slow and excruciating.

  “Get the fuck away from me, Hendry.”

  Something shifted behind his eyes, and his face hardened as he stood. Swinging the black bag off his shoulder, he backed away with slow steps, his gaze a steady weight. He rapped softly on a nearby apartment door before he knelt, untied it, and eased its contents out. It was the girl with matted blonde curls and a dirty lavender church dress.

  The girl I hadn’t hanged.

  My breath caught. I slid forward along the wall, in the same direction as my eyes that bugged out of my head. It was the heat or trauma. If so, this hallucination felt too real, and I never wanted it to end.

  Hendry helped the girl to her feet with a gentle hand and a kind smile. “You did it, Little.”

  She grinned, a nearly toothless one that beamed brighter than the sun, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You bet I did. It was a bravo idea, wasn’t it? I didn’t cough or nothing.”

  He stood with her as the apartment door flew open, and a woman with black hair and luminous dark skin fluttered both hands to her mouth and sobbed into them. A black man with salt-and-pepper hair and an impressive handlebar mustache rushed up behind her, and the little girl launched herself out of Hendry’s arms and into his.

  Tears brimmed and tracked down my cheeks to plink a salty burn into my open cuts, but I hardly noticed. When Hendry glanced my way, his smile froze and then faded. He strode into the apartment after the family, but left the door open.

  I dragged myself to my feet, my terror and exhaustion forgotten for now, because too many questions begged to be answered. He’d taken her from the church and then returned her? Had that been his plan all along? Why? How many other secrets was he hiding?

  Sniffs came from inside the apartment. I leaned against the doorframe, feeling like a creeper who shouldn’t be imposing on a happy family reunion, yet unable to stop myself. They held each other tightly in the middle of a cozy living room while Hendry looked on. His thumbs were hooked through the loops in his jeans, and he gazed at his cowboy boots.

  I slinked into the entryway, still not sure I should be there. Hendry turned to look over his shoulder when my shadow angled past him, then crossed his arms and winged up an eyebrow in a bet-you-didn’t-expect-this kind of way.

  The little girl spied me over her homecoming huddle, and that magical grin lifted her mouth once again. She came running. Despite the blood, sweat, and grime slicking my skin, she threw her arms around my waist and buried her head in my stomach. A hitch formed in my chest, one that bloomed outward with a wave of comfort I didn’t think I deserved. I had hanged her, this gentle yet fierce little girl, if only for a second. In my mind, I didn’t deserve forgiveness since sparing her life had cost Kit’s.

  I held my arms awkwardly at my sides because I didn’t want to taint her, even though she was just as dirty as me. But she was more innocent and had less time to make as many mistakes as I had.

  Her parents—they must have been adoptive parents—looked at the silver cuff around my neck and then quickly at the floor.

  The girl pulled away then tugged at my shirt with her little hand. “I can sing, too.”

  The excitement in which she whispered it connected my heart to hers for a lifetime. We were kindred spirits.

  “I would love to hear you sometime,” I said.

  She nodded, her blue eyes sparkling. “Now?”

  I glanced at Hendry, who frowned. “Someday soon.”

  “I’m Lucy.” She jabbed up her hand for me to shake it.

  I did, and she just about pumped my whole arm off. “Fin.”

  The woman took a small bundle wrapped in brown paper and gave it to Hendry with a meaningful nod. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. I’ll let you know.” He slipped the package into the back pocket of his jeans. “Little? Stay out of trouble.”

  She shook her head hard enough to make her curls bounce. “I need food before I make a decision about staying out of trouble.”

  Her parents chuckled.

  Hendry backed into me, pushing me out the door with his size, but I wormed my arm past him for one last wave.

  Out in the hallway, once their door was closed, I said, “You mind telling me what that was all about?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I blinked after him as he brushed past me toward the door to the stairwell.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “I mind. That’s too much to explain right now, but I will.”

  “You have serious communication issues,” I said through gritted teeth.

  He held the stairwell door open. “Better to have communication issues than be dead.”

  “What did that lady give you?” I asked, brushing past him.

  “Not now. Later.” He climbed down the stairs quickly, the sound of his steps light compared to his bulky form.

  My footsteps seemed to echo through the entire building no matter how carefully I tiptoed. The more steps we descended, the faster he flew. He jumped lightly to
the landing from the last fourth of the stairs, his large hand gripping the banister to spin him around to the next set. It didn’t take long for him to vanish completely. Again. Dickhead.

  By the time I’d run out of stairs to clamber down, my heavy pants heaved my shoulders up and down. I’d had a strict, self-imposed daily schedule of physical activity at the church, but when it came to running for my life, I wasn’t a fan.

  Outside the stairwell, in a sort of commons area, I doubled over to place my hands on my knees while I took in the darkened room. A large, heavy-looking desk had been flipped on its side to block the front doors, and tattered couches and chairs had been shoved against the windows. Hendry walked past a couch that had Gypsy painted in graffiti on its bottom. Other graffiti marked the walls, and in the middle of the dirty and crumbling tile floor, a dried bloodstain swirled in a half circle before trailing out of sight behind a side door.

  I closed my eyes, shutting down the different scenarios of how that had gotten there from flashing through my head in vibrant detail, and breathed. “Is this where you’re leaving me?”

  His footsteps on the tile stalled, and I felt his gaze drill through my head.

  “No.”

  Somewhere else, then, hopefully far away from The Silence Collectors and the Berkano and Allison for my 170 hours left.

  When I opened my eyes again, Hendry peered around the Gypsy couch and out the front window. The black bag hung off his shoulder, much smaller now that there wasn’t a child inside. It looked to be enough supplies to last me a few days, if he was in the giving mood. After that, I’d be screwed, but something was better than nothing. I hated how much power over me he held in that bag, when, before today, he’d had none.

  He turned and scrubbed his hand over his jaw. “We have to go back out there for the ladder. We can take it inside the building across the street and climb to the roof.”

  I stood and marched toward the front door, sporting what I hoped was a brave face, while my entire body broke out in a cold sweat. “Where is the ladder?”