The growling Berkano on the street below—had it found its way up into that tree? The rest of us were in the sun, though. We were safe. Yet the scraping noise grew louder.
A small cry choked from my throat. Behind me, those who waited on the other side had already started crossing over while Hendry observed with his back turned to me. No one seemed to notice that something might be wrong.
Hendry, I mouthed over my shoulder since I didn’t dare make another sound. I backed toward him as the leaves rattled within the shadows, glancing from the tree to him.
The ladder underneath the man who was crossing glowed a bright red. He stopped, all four limbs tensed against the metal, and looked up. His gaze connected to the tree, and all the color leached from his face.
With a dead weight in my stomach, I followed his stare. A woman stood on the roof in shaded safety. Terror ripped down my back because she looked…normal, yet I knew without a doubt she was a Berkano. Blood didn’t splotch her walnut-colored skin or dark clothes. Twin fangs didn’t protrude over her lower lip. But I knew because of the blaze of hunger in her brown eyes.
I had nothing to use against a vampire. Nothing but a spell to make my coming death smell better, and I couldn’t even say it out loud. Not unless I wanted to drive her mad with the sound of my voice. In that case, the sunlight between us might not matter.
I backed into one corner of the ladder, nearly tripping over it in my rush to get to Hendry. His whole being turned lethal as he stood from his crouch next to the glowing ladder. He pulled sharpened wooden stakes from his pocket and stalked toward her, his body rigid as if marching into battle.
The vampire’s gaze darted to the rectangular door in the roof, still open because I hadn’t closed it, where a lot of unsuspecting people could be made into a midday snack below.
Before Hendry reached her, he let his wooden stake fly.
She flung herself into the sunlight toward the door, avoiding the stake completely. Smoke curled off her body with a stomach-churning sizzle.
Hendry lunged after her.
The vampire dived headfirst into the building, but a magical force field spit her back out into the sunlight. Her skin peeled off her face and arms in thin black twists. The smell of charred flesh billowed as she jumped upright again.
She snatched the brown, paper-wrapped package from Hendry’s back pocket in a flash of movement and pushed him toward the door in the roof. He fell half in and half out, the stakes he’d carried rolling across the rooftop. Now almost completely a charred ruin, she slammed the door down onto his leg. He reared back in pain, a silent cry tearing from his mouth.
A burst of rage stormed through my muscles. The man on the ladder had already scrambled off to the other building. I grabbed one end of the ladder and heaved it backward to use as a weapon.
When I looked again, she sped toward me, her skin and hair sliding off to the rooftop with sickening wet splats. With a horrified scream teetering on the edge of my teeth, I shoved the end of the ladder into the vampire’s middle. She doubled over, buying me precious seconds to get a better grip on the metal with my glass-filled hands. I smashed the side into her crisped head.
She pirouetted with the force, then whipped around to face me with a growl, her fangs now bared, and lunged. We crashed to the ground with the glowing red ladder between us. My lungs emptied. So did my head of everything but the need to survive. She snapped at me through the rungs in a riot of teeth between her overcooked, peeled-back lips. I twisted the ladder so the metal blocked her, but she was so much stronger than I was. Her hunger for blood was sapping the little amount of strength I had left.
She pushed her arm through the rungs toward the metal cuff on my neck, gripped it, and yanked.
Panic sliced my breaths in half. It would kill me if I tried to take it off. Had she? For a second, I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t dare release the ladder to check, to feel my vocal cords dangling loose while the rest of my life bled out of my neck.
No, it was still there, a collared death sentence.
I had to risk it. I had to say a spell to get her off me. “Sanguis.”
Orange sparks floated from my lips. The scent of blood rose on the air and trailed off with the breeze. She snarled, then lifted her head to sniff through the nose sliding off her face.
Adrenaline fueled my full-body spin to take advantage of the distraction. I pinned her underneath both me and the ladder. Her eyes and teeth blazed white as her skin and hair sloughed off the bone. My stomach curled in on itself, and I looked away.
Behind me, Tessa placed more sharpened stakes outside the roof door and closed it as she retreated inside, her eyes narrowed at me as if this were all my fault. Hendry scooped up the dropped paper-wrapped package and the stakes and dragged himself toward me, his face contorted in pain. He sank one of the stakes into the vampire’s heart with an awful squelching sound that made me scramble off her, both sickened and horrified.
She howled as the hunger leaked from her eyes at the same rate the red glow faded from the ladder on top of her. With a final shudder, her burnt body melted into the rooftop in a thick puddle of goo.
I retched. Tears filled my eyes, and I retched again. I’d never expected outside to be this much of a nightmare, but it was so much worse than that.
Hendry toppled over next to the ladder and lay there gasping with his eyes closed, his leg stiff out in front of him, while sweat leaked down his face. “Church,” he mouthed. “Please.”
Damn right we were going back to the church. No way would I stay here anyway. Tessa didn’t want me in her brothel. The church didn’t want me, but that was the only home I knew. It was safe, unlike the rest of this deathtrap called Tombstone that Hendry had led me into.
I crossed over, straddled him, and squatted down on top of his hips. The corner of the package poked out from his back pocket, and I swiped it out from underneath him. Then I leaned in close so he would be sure to hear my whispered growl. “Keep up.”
Chapter 4
168 Hours Left
Hendry didn’t keep up, and it was surprisingly easy to forget about him on the long trek back. I let my mind roll over everything that had just happened, unable to make sense of any of it, but soon all thoughts emptied from my head except one—thirst. My tongue felt like I’d eaten a cotton field. Sweat poured from my body in dizzying sheets. I imagined my organs looked a lot like wrinkled prunes, but that visual only ignited my hunger.
The journey back should’ve taken less time in theory since I knew where I headed and how to get there, but it seemed to take hours. By the time I dragged myself onto the wooden porch by the front door of the church, my bones weighed too many pounds. I rang the doorbell that must’ve been used for deliveries a long time ago, then collapsed in the shade of the building. I knew I shouldn’t be in the shade, but I didn’t have the strength to move anywhere but inside.
One of the congregation would hear the bell and come check—they always welcomed strangers—and they would see me through the slats in the boarded-up window. Unless they were blinded toward cast-outs and purposefully left me here to die.
I forced a swallow over my thickened tongue. Without food or water and the lengthening shadows that signaled night was drawing near, death shouldn’t take too long. If starvation or vampires didn’t kill me first, I had less than 168 hours left with the collar. Fin, the end of the end.
The metal slats shielding the window slid open one by one, their gears humming and clicking softly, but I kept my gaze aimed straight ahead at the parking lot. I didn’t want to know who held my fate, especially if it was Dad, who I didn’t want to hate even more than I already did. Even so, my breaths snagged on a sliver of hope.
The steady gaze of whoever stood behind the door lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. Maybe they weren’t the only one watching, but my head felt too heavy to turn. I was sort of at the point of giving up—sort of—unless this person let me in.
The first metal slat sliding home pinched my
chest. The person behind the door sealed up the window along with my fate. They didn’t want me back inside.
A slow burn fizzed under my skin. I’d never thought the people I’d grown up with, some of whom I considered family, would turn their backs on me. Twice.
My eyes stung, but my body couldn’t spare any tears. A dull throb started in my forehead and radiated outward toward my temples. I deserved this, yet knowing that didn’t make it hurt any less.
Honestly, they should’ve banished me a long time ago. I was the one who’d made Mom even sicker with the Rift Curse than she already was when I’d broken my way out of the church. I was twelve or thirteen, but I should’ve known better. I’d risked the lives of the congregation by opening the front door and leaving, just as I’d risked their lives last night. Everyone had told me the dangers of outside, so I’d never gone out. Yet, over the years, I supposed I’d needed to see the reason why for myself. Mom found me, but the sunlight exposure had weakened her even further. The Rift Curse had withered her away, and I lost my best friend when she was quarantined to the nursery. I had so much to atone for, but if I was dead, that would be impossible to do.
Paper crinkled behind my back, and I suddenly remembered the package tucked into my back pocket that I’d stolen from Hendry. I’d hoped it was food, and after unwrapping it, I realized I wasn’t wrong. It was food all right, just not the kind for witches. I turned the vial of blood into the fading sunlight, trapping the sky-blue color inside the glass. Why had Lucy’s mom or guardian or whoever she was given this to Hendry? Whatever the reason, I folded the vial back into the paper since clutching blood in the shade wasn’t the smartest idea ever.
A figure appeared on top of the west wing of the church, tall with wide shoulders and limping. Even with one working leg, he effortlessly hopped down the ladder into the bed of the truck and ate up the rest of the distance with hobbling strides.
Without a glance in my direction, he limped to the stone birdbath in the weed-filled rock garden beside the porch. After a quick check over his shoulders, he tipped it over and retrieved a key. He zipped it into the lock, and the sound of metal slats barring the inside of the door hummed and clicked. The door opened, and a rush of precious, cool air fluttered loose hairs against my face.
I sighed into it and inhaled through parted lips so it would chill my dried-up insides down to my toes. Oh, that felt so good.
All the church’s electricity and running water was fueled by our collective magic, which in turn was fueled by humans. The more of both we invited into our congregation, the more collective magic we had. Of course, if they knew the church was okay with hanging children as part of our ritual, they might not have wanted to join.
“Coming?” a low voice asked.
I snapped my eyes open. Hendry stood inside the door, holding it open, his eyebrows drawn together in a curious expression while he gazed down at me. He knew as well as anyone that I shouldn’t come in. Surely he didn’t feel guilty about what I’d been through since this morning, some of which he himself had put me through. Not Hendry, who’d never spoken a word to me before today and was mixed up in some first-rate trickery against the church by smuggling Lucy out. Trickery was something I could probably get behind, though, especially if it pissed off Allison.
Plus, no way would I pass on the invitation to enter even though I’d already been rejected. I scrambled to my feet and strode toward him, quirking my eyebrow in a dare for him to change his mind and close the door in my face.
The smell of cleaning chemicals and the squish of vacuumed carpet under my feet knotted my throat tighter than a noose. I wanted to be here, but I shouldn’t be. Not if Kit wasn’t. That didn’t seem fair to him at all.
“I’m not wanted here,” I told Hendry after he closed and locked the door. “I rang the bell and wasn’t allowed back in.”
“Follow my lead.” He winced and hobbled to the right toward the kitchen.
Voices drifted through the hallway from behind closed doors. The nearer we drew, the louder they became, but I still couldn’t make out more than a garbled murmur. From their hurried rate of speech, I would bet ten gallons of water that someone was upset. And I would win that bet.
An office door on the right snicked open.
“Put your arms around me,” Hendry muttered.
I blinked, slowly, because every exhausted movement, every thought, felt like wading through syrup. Did he just tell me to—?
He circled his arm around my hip and pulled me flush to his side. Then he tugged my hand so it palmed his chest. His heart slammed into it from behind a stone wall of muscle. Every beat stirred a sense of hyperawareness—at how his body fit against mine, his crisp ocean smell, how fast his heart tapped my fingers.
I looked up into his face to see if he was having some kind of medical emergency, but he stared straight ahead, expression stoic while his rough hand slipped to my ass. I gasped as the force of his touch rocked my hips against his leg. His searching fingertips ignited an unexpected rush of heat between my thighs. He yanked the package out of my pants and into the back of his just as the office door opened all the way.
Allison stepped out and stopped as soon as she saw us. Her perpetually disgusted face elevated to defcon-sneer status when her narrowed eyes found my hand on his chest and my body pressed up against his.
“We had a little run-in with the Berkano and the Silence Collectors,” Hendry said. “Fin helped me get back.”
Apparently, he remembered things differently than I did because none of today could be summed up as “a little run-in.” Still, why did he seem so focused on helping me? He’d started out as a royal dickhead by telling me not to fuck up, and because my name was Fin, I did. Now, he’d brought me back into the church that shunned me and let me feel his wild heartbeat under my palm. There were too many sides to him, and all of them were complete mysteries.
Allison straightened her ugly scarf and plucked a piece of imaginary lint off her shoulder. “You helped him.”
Not a question, but a statement of disbelief. I didn’t buy it either.
“I did,” I said.
She puckered her red lips. “Did she help you get that death collar around your neck to match hers?”
Hendry shifted his weight and winced, in obvious need of sitting down. “She’s proven her loyalty to the church by helping me today, so let her stay. She’ll leave when I’m able to take her.”
Allison flicked her ice-cold gaze to me. “The church voted her out.”
“Then vote her back in.” His muscles coiled as if he might strike. “None of us would be here without me hunting down witches and humans to bring here. Without me, there wouldn’t be a church. Fin saved me, Allison. Me, your stepson.”
She gave him a warning look, then clucked her tongue, considering. “I’ll see what the congregations says. Meanwhile, get cleaned up. You two reek. Then go get your foot looked at.” She retraced her steps to the office she’d come out of minutes before.
It wasn’t Dad’s office, but I wondered if he was in there, if he’d be glad to see me, if he was the one who hadn’t opened the door to me when I rang the bell. My stomach twisted. I’d confront him later when my mind didn’t feel so sluggish.
Alone once again in the hallway, I gazed up at Hendry. “You need me to—”
“I got it.” He tore away from me as if he couldn’t stand to be near me any longer than necessary and limped toward the kitchen doors, inside of which was a large bathroom. It had been converted into an infirmary where a healing witch named Feist had set up shop.
I stood there like an idiot until Hendry disappeared through the doors. We would talk later, too, and if he wasn’t in the mood for divulging everything he knew, then I would demand answers until that mood magically came. If we were going to pretend I’d saved his life, he was going to have to learn to trust me, just like I needed to trust him to save mine, I supposed. Though I would rather do that myself. It was less complicated that way.
Fir
st things first, though—all things water. Even though I needed to get my hands looked at, Feist wasn’t my biggest fan because I liked to dabble in aromatherapy to help all two of my favorite members of the congregation with their ailments. He got pissed because he wasn’t the one doing the healing, I got pissed back, and it was this whole thing. Now I had my own healing items in the baptismal.
I dragged myself through the church, past the dais where I’d stood last night with a noose around a little girl’s neck, through the choir room, and finally up the blue-tiled stairs to the four-foot deep baptismal. Those I went by gaped, but kept quiet.
Without bothering to remove my clothes, I turned the water on full blast and sucked it straight from the faucet. I knew I should drink slowly, but it felt too good splashing down my throat and cooling my body. The drops that missed my mouth splattered my front, soaking through my sweat-stained clothes. I drank until my stomach felt distended and hurt, and then I finally peeled off my clothes for a proper bath and some wound care.
Because I’d been banished to the baptismal for my lack of church tongue, I spent most of my time here and soon preferred it to anywhere else. So, really, the joke was on Allison for banishing me from the kitchen to a place I loved.
My clipboard for scheduling the congregation’s baths hung on a hook inside the door. To conserve water but to still create a pleasant environment for everyone, I scheduled everyone’s bath times for once every two days, more often only if needed. My bath. My rules. Most people accepted that, or used to anyway. For those who seemed to tolerate me, I would offer to sing while they bathed, down the stairs and out of sight from them for privacy. The blue tiles that covered the stairs, the walls, and under my feet created amazing acoustics.
Once scrubbed, refreshed except for the dull pounding still inside my head, and dried, I dressed in black shorts and a black tank top and went on the hunt for food. I wanted to find Dad, or anyone really, to ask about whether the church would let me stay until Hendry healed, but my stomach had its own priorities. No one happened to be bustling about the kitchen since breakfast was long over, so no one saw me snatch a leftover kiwi pavlova, half a loaf of bread, a plate of chocolate biscuits, and a jug of caramel-colored juice called Hangman’s Brew. All of it had been made by the two hearth witches who had complained to Allison about me. Now they’d complain even more since I’d raided their refrigerator.
Blood Song: Division 7: The Berkano Vampire Collection Page 5