Blood Song: Division 7: The Berkano Vampire Collection

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  He dodged left toward the exit. His grip tightened around me, and he plowed through the glass doors.

  “Go,” Bast said. “Go, go, go.”

  Outside, Hendry leaped over benches crowded with tall weeds and raced across the gardens to the white building we’d climbed down earlier. But how to get up again when I wasn’t sure I could walk?

  At the base, he set me on my feet, and I immediately tilted sideways. Pain in my leg erupted red splotches across my vision. Hendry caught me. Propping me against the wall, he placed my hands on the handholds. There was no other way. I had to climb.

  “Blood spell now!” Bast growled.

  I sent another one up and aimed it toward the breeze. Behind us, the doors we’d exited smashed open, hailing glass to the concrete.

  We needed to move. I set my injured leg on the first foothold and settled my weight on it with gritted teeth. Willing myself not to pass out and fall, I hauled my body up the wall. Hendry’s head butted my heels as he climbed after me.

  Footsteps crunched across the garden toward us at super speed.

  My pulse pounded at my ears. I wasn’t that fast even when I wasn’t hurt. We would never make it.

  “Hey!” A shout from far below in the direction of the road. An actual voice, not one inside my head.

  I crested the top of the building, my stomach clenching. How could anyone be so stupid to yell in the middle of the street at night?

  A gun fired, cracking against the sides of every building.

  I scrambled the rest of the way up, mentally taking stock of my body around its violent shudders. It hadn’t been me who’d been shot.

  Hendry.

  With my heart lodged in my throat, I whipped around, but he still clung to the wall, seemingly whole. Relief eased through my chest as I followed his gaze straight down.

  The powerful vampire stood below us, half his body angled away from the road while his gray eyes, silver in the moonlight, zeroed in on something I couldn’t see. Without looking, he plucked something from his shoulder—a bullet, I realized.

  “Now that I have your attention, I have a question for you…” the voice from the street said.

  It was Bast. What the hell was he doing? Trying to get himself killed?

  I gripped the edge of the building and peered out to see what on earth he could be thinking behind his empty eye sockets, but Hendry forced me back when he hoisted himself up.

  “What makes you think you’re worthy of controlling witches?” Bast asked. “A pair of young ones just waltzed into your nest and then right out again. That should tell you something right damn there.”

  Hendry stood and dragged me to my feet toward the ladder on the other side of the roof.

  “I only control the vampires,” the powerful one said, his voice a smooth velvet like the night sky. “Not the witches.”

  Hendry knelt to cross the ladder, but I stood there, bleeding, hurting, listening.

  “Well, that don’t make no sense,” Bast said. “Of course you control us. You made it so we can’t even speak around you. We can’t go outside at night because of you.”

  “I only control the vampires,” the powerful one said again. He must’ve been the leader if he controlled them.

  The ladder rattled just slightly, a signal from Hendry already on the other side.

  “Did you tell the vampires to surround me just now?” Bast asked.

  “No,” the leader said. “They’re just hungry.”

  A flurry of snarls sounded from the street below, followed by Bast’s wails. The sounds tore at the back of my neck as I lunged for the ladder, ripped shivers down my spine, and collected in my soul where they would continue to claw my conscience for an eternity.

  There was nothing we could do. We couldn’t go back. He’d provided a distraction, he’d saved us, and I would never forget that.

  I crossed the ladder as quickly as I could, and then the next one to the brothel roof. Hendry hauled me to my feet. Without letting go of my hand, he raced to the rectangle door, pulling me with him. Once inside, he slammed it back down and locked it, his heavy breaths the only sound in the sudden quiet.

  “Hendry…” I started, but the rest of whatever I was going to say died on my tongue when I looked at him.

  A devastated frown had locked onto his mouth, and a troubled cleft appeared between his eyebrows as he gazed at the steps under our feet. His fists shook at his sides and vibrated through his torso. Bast had obviously meant something to him—he was his uncle, after all—and it broke my heart to see him like this.

  “I should’ve never…” He wiped a hand down his face and lifted sorrow-filled eyes to mine. “I’ll get him first thing tomorrow morning.”

  I nodded, fighting back the tremble in my chin. Hendry slipped his arm around my waist. Together, we picked our way down the stairs. Now that I had time to focus on it, the pain in my leg blared a throbbing alarm, especially when jostled with any kind of movement. There were only two and a half floors of steps left, but I didn’t have the energy reserves left. Of all the things to be defeated by. I sagged against the railing, and the knots in my throat untied into a choked sob.

  I was tired, I hurt in more ways than one, and I didn’t think I’d ever been as scared as I had been tonight. Crying wouldn’t do anything to change that, but once the first tear fell, I couldn’t stop the rest. So I gave in to them while I slid from Hendry’s grip and into a pile on the damned never-ending stairs.

  “I’ve got you, Fin.” The tender way he said it bloomed warmth through my chest. His strong arms wrapped around me and pressed my body to a block of muscle.

  He had me, and I was only beginning to realize how many ways he did. But I’d been bitten. I was now marked for death by both the Berkano and the Silence Collectors, and one of those marks would surely end me before the other. It was said that all it took to become a vampire was a simple bite. Now, the only question was how long did I have? Not enough time to analyze my feelings for Hendry, I bet.

  He guided me down the rest of the stairs. After we hit the last step, his eyes snagged on the tears I hadn’t swiped away. A look of anguish rolled across his features before they turned to stone.

  “I’ll be guarding you right outside your door. If you turn into a vampire…” he said, voice gruff, “then I’ll kill you.”

  Chapter 8

  123 Hours Left

  Hunger rumbled my stomach. Its severe emptiness had gnawed holes into my sleep, and I sat up in the dark with a gasp. Had I turned into a vampire? Would I even know if I had before it was too late?

  But my heart still beat, as strong and true as it always had. Unless that sound was false and some kind of coping mechanism of the brain, I was still me. Still here. And starving.

  I shifted on my mattress, careful of my bandaged leg, and knocked on the door. “Hendry? I think I’m okay. Would I know if I wasn’t?”

  No answer. Maybe the sun had already risen, and he’d gone to collect Bast. A deep sadness welled inside me at the rush of memories from last night. I hoped we would have a memorial for him like we did at the church when someone died outside of the ritual. It seemed the least we could do for him as we celebrated his bravery up until the very last seconds of his life.

  I tried the doorknob, and it turned fine, but something else was blocking the door. A sliver of panic bit into my gut. What if Hendry was still out there, but something was wrong? I slapped my hand against the door so hard it vibrated the hinges.

  “Hendry?” I called.

  Silence.

  I slid down to eye level with the crack underneath the door. Nothing but the brothel entryway with thin stripes of sunlight angling across it. Maybe he was just in a deep sleep, and it was still too early to be awake. I settled back onto my blanket, but the mix of worry and hunger wedged between my eyelids like sticks.

  Minutes—hours?—passed, but I didn’t see a trace of anyone outside the door. The brothel held silent, while I pounded on the door and yelled for Hendry.
Judging from the shifting position of the sunlit stripes, I was sure seven o’clock had come and gone, which meant I was late for bathroom duty. But not even Tessa came by to drag me out by the ear and cast me out on the street for missing it.

  I lay there on the floor, my stomach rioting from hunger, while I tried to work up enough strength to ram the door down. Where had Hendry gone? I walked my feet up the wood and shoved my soles against it in quick thrusts so the entire door shook, more to occupy my brain with something other than food.

  And then the entire door came down with a loud crash. Books lay strewn across the floor, likely from the overturned bookshelf underneath the door. I scrambled backward and squinted into the rays of sunlight shining between the boards at the front of the building. People stood outside the fallen door, their mouths hanging open to their knees.

  I hopped to the doorframe and hugged it, my eyes narrowed enough to cut all their heads off with a sweep of my gaze. “So no one heard me shouting, huh?”

  Hendry rushed down the spiral staircase and moved toward me, his steps cautious and silent in his cowboy boots. He gripped two spurs in his fist—Bast’s spurs, most likely—and he wore a black plaid shirt and jeans.

  Tessa burst out of the crowd toward him and covered his mouth. Her blonde hair fluttered over the shoulders of her lacy nightgown that revealed a lot more than it covered.

  No talking. They thought I was a vampire.

  “I’m fine. Thanks for asking,” I said, my voice like poison. “I can hear my heartbeat, and the only thing I’m hungry for is food, not blood.”

  Hendry shook out of Tessa’s grip, a wooden stake gripped loosely in his hand. “I didn’t put the bookshelf there. I spelled your door open before I left.”

  Gasps erupted across the entryway, likely more because he’d spoken than because someone had blocked me in the closet. They didn’t care about me. They didn’t even know me, and it was laughable that he’d expected me to lead them to bring down the Berkano.

  Hendry leveled Tessa with a glare. “I gave Tessa instructions to check on you at sunrise, but I guess that slipped her mind.”

  She balled her fists at her sides. “You stood guard over her the whole night, said she was bitten, and then left. What was I supposed to think?”

  “I wouldn’t call that thinking at all,” I snapped, and several people jumped at the volume of my voice. It occurred to me then that they still thought I’d turned, so I toed outside the closet, intending to step into the strips of sunlight to prove to them I could, but then stalled. What if they saw something in me I couldn’t? Like bloodlust in my eyes even though I couldn’t feel it? I ran my tongue over my teeth just to be sure they were smooth. Still, doubt stormed through my blood as I kept my gaze on each of their faces, and I stepped forward.

  The sun crept over my foot, painting the bandages at my ankle with warm, buttery light. No black cracks sizzled over my skin like the vampire on the rooftop. No more pain than I already felt. My sigh of relief was louder than the rest of them combined.

  I turned to Tessa. “You could have asked me how I was if you knew I was bit. Could have checked on me. You hate me only based on who brought me here, but is this how you treat all strangers? Listen to them shout when they need help and do nothing about it? No wonder the vampires control our division, because witches turned on each other.” I moved toward her, taking some pleasure when she shrank back, and the volume of my voice rose. “I don’t want to hear a word about being late for bathroom duty this morning. I’ll be there after I eat. Now, where’s your goddamned kitchen, because I am past the point of hangry?”

  After a pause, she pointed toward the saloon doors next to the staircase, her chin lifted and her face empty of expression except a slight twitch in her eye.

  “Thank you,” I said and turned to hobble in that direction.

  Manners. I had them occasionally. Maybe they would rub off on these people and help them remember the definition of decency. Honestly, how could Hendry think that just my voice would make them want to follow me into a revolution against the Berkano? They’d shut down to outsiders and closed off their inner circle to anyone unwilling to settle down under a regime as strict as the one outside.

  It wasn’t just me, either. It was the bird’s nest girl who’d sat all alone at dinner yesterday. Why hadn’t anyone else sat with the new stranger who now lived here to make her feel welcome? It was also evident in the Church of Hangmen. Other than the sick and elderly, newcomers were usually the first to be chosen for our ritual. Witches really had turned on each other.

  As I strode toward the kitchen, Hendry gave them a lecture on pretty much the same thing I’d been thinking. That we were locked in our fears and distrustful of anyone new, no matter the excuses they told themselves.

  “You can all do better,” he said, his voice tight with anger.

  He was right. We all could. Even me.

  The kitchen was through the dining room, and I must’ve left all the cooks behind in the entryway because the space was empty. Several round, freshly baked loaves of damper bread sat in the middle of a table dusted with flour. I floated on the delicious smell, my head spinning with need, and swooped down on the nearest one. Half of it dangled from my mouth when Hendry walked in.

  His lips had pressed into a thin line, and he must’ve scrubbed his hand through his curls a couple of times because some of them had gone wild. He looked dangerous, even more so when he stalked his large frame toward the chair next to me, his hazel eyes like slits.

  “I don’t even know what else to say.” His arm brushed mine as he sat, the simple touch like an electrical spell on my skin.

  I swallowed. “You don’t have to say anything. I’m deepening my relationship with food at the moment, so no talking is fine by me.”

  “Everything you said is right. We’re not unified,” he said and continued into a rant, but I’d stopped listening.

  No talking. My mind flashed to last night when I’d broken that rule. “Hendry. We talked to vampires last night.”

  He propped his elbow on the table and leaned his head against his palm. “I’m well aware. So did Bast.”

  I choked down another bite of bread, my heart pinching at the memory. “Did you…see him?”

  “What was left of him.” He rubbed his hand over his eyes, likely to dig out the horror he’d seen. “He lived outside Tombstone on a farm about a mile from here, but his home was this place. He talked a lot about his horse, Orange, so I buried him in the pasture where Orange still grazes. I’m not sure if that’s what he would have wanted, but…I think he would.”

  “I’m sure he thinks it’s perfect.” The bread I’d eaten seemed to have caught around the knot in my chest. I put the rest back on the table. A jug sat on a nearby countertop, so I crossed toward it and inhaled. It smelled like Hangman’s Brew but sweeter, so I poured some into a cup.

  “He was standing by the road last night, in full view of the vampires, while talking for at least a few minutes before he was attacked. You talked, too, but you were bitten before you said anything. I always thought our voices instantly drove them mad with bloodlust, but…” Hendry lifted his head to look at me. “What if the no-talking rule is a load of BS?”

  “That rule has been around since the Rift happened, right?” I drank down the juice, its sweet, fruity flavor sparking my taste buds. “So who made up the rule if it’s not accurate? Unless it was at one time but not now? Or maybe at one time, people could literally not talk to them much like you and I can’t talk about the ch— Well, you know.”

  Hendry leaned back in his chair and brushed the flour from his elbow. “The stay-out-of-the-shadows and don’t-go-out-at-night rules still apply, though. It’s safer that way. I don’t know where the rules came from, but everyone I’ve encountered knows them, witches and humans. It’s like engrained into their skulls. But where did those who’ve never left their houses hear it from?”

  “An enchantment?”

  “Maybe…” A deep groo
ve formed between his eyebrows as he bit his bottom lip. “Outside your door last night, I got out the microscope we took from the hospital.”

  My eyes widened. “Is that what’s going to get our collars off?”

  “No.” He must’ve read the disappointment surely written on my face because he offered a sad smile. “Sorry, Fin. We didn’t get to the pharmacy last night for the rest of the supplies, but that’s not me giving up. Not by a long shot.”

  “Damn right, you won’t give up.” I nodded at his collar. “I won’t let you.”

  He lifted an eyebrow, an amused twinkle in his eyes. “Fair enough. Anyway, remember the vial of Lucy’s blood? Well, there are these things in our blood called platelets. They move through your veins to deliver oxygen, and even under a microscope, they still move. But Lucy’s move much slower than average. Her heart beats slower, too, but Ross and Sara thought that was just a witch thing since they’re humans.”

  I frowned. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that my platelets moved faster. I took some of my blood to compare.”

  “Was it because yours was fresher?” It felt like years ago when he’d been handed the package with blood inside.

  “No. A blood sample is a blood sample. Ours shouldn’t be that different.” He pinched a bit of flour on the table between his fingers. “The reason I got a blood sample from Lucy in the first place is because her Rift Curse is so much different than anyone else’s I’ve seen. Yes, she has a severe sun allergy, but she’s also hungry, all the time, no matter how much Ross and Sara feed her.”

  I searched his face for a clue where this might be leading, but I feared I already knew. “What do you mean?”

  He pushed away from the table and stood to pace the length of the kitchen. “I don’t think her blood is witch blood. Or human blood.”

  “Vampire,” I breathed, but how could that possibly be right? Hendry had said she had a heartbeat. So, she was a living vampire who didn’t feel the need to bite?

  “The one who bit you last night vomited everything back up, remember?”