Blood Song: Division 7: The Berkano Vampire Collection

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  Tessa and Lucy sat at the desk, with Lucy in the oversized chair behind it and Tessa sitting across from her. Both their cheeks were stained a healthy pink color, and their hair had fallen around their faces in wild, carefree pieces. Tessa wore her customary dress, but instead of silk, it was soft heather-gray cotton that fell just above her knees. Lucy wore flannel pajamas that looked three sizes too big for her.

  “Solve this next one, and you can spin two times in the chair,” Tessa said with a cheery grin.

  “Okay…” Lucy frowned down at a paper on the desk, scribbling furiously. “Carry the three, minus the one… Bam!”

  Tessa angled the paper so she could see. “Bam is right! Two spins!”

  Lucy threw up her arms and tucked her knees to her chest as Tessa dashed around the desk to give the chair a twirl. Lucy squealed in delight, and Tessa laughed as happy as I’d ever seen her. She seemed natural with Lucy, as though it didn’t bother her in the slightest that they technically weren’t the same. With Lucy’s charm and energy, it was so easy to hone in on just the part that made her…her. She was Lucy first and then a vampire.

  I didn’t want to ruin their moment, so I ducked out.

  “Fin! Don’t go! Guess what I’m doing! Subtraction with borrowing!” Lucy picked up her pencil and waved it at me. “Did you know the secret to math is a sharp pencil?”

  Tessa’s grin faltered a bit when she saw me. “And a sharp brain.”

  “And a good teacher,” I added. “You have the perfect combination, Lucy.”

  Tessa looked away to hide her scowl, but wasn’t fast enough. Apparently, I needed to work on the timing of my compliments. And maybe who I gave them to.

  “Why don’t you go show your parents in the kitchen?” Tessa said to Lucy.

  “Bravo idea.” Lucy gathered up her papers and sharp pencil and skipped out of the room, her curls bouncing behind her.

  Tessa watched her go with a faraway glaze in her blue eyes, so I turned to leave her with her thoughts.

  “I used to teach my daughter,” she said.

  I stopped and glanced behind me, surprised she’d offered up something so personal to me. She’d said used to. I nodded down at the floor while a heaviness pinched my gut. The world was a cruel place when it took children.

  She shrugged, the corners of her eyes hardening. “She was younger than Lucy and not much more than skin and bones before the Curse hit her. A witch doctor I’d never heard of said he could heal her, but all he did was make it worse.”

  “I’m sorry.” I lifted my gaze to her so she could see I meant it.

  “Every morning before I’m fully conscious, I think she’s still with me, about to spring up on the bed or burst into giggles at nothing and everything.” She released a slow breath and blinked at a knothole in the wood on the floor. “Then I wake up and realize she’s gone all over again.”

  “I can’t imagine how hard that would be,” I said.

  “No.” She snapped her gaze up to meet mine. “You can’t.”

  Her distrust for strangers suddenly made a lot of sense, and I couldn’t blame her. One such stranger had hurt her daughter. I gave a sharp nod, trying not to take her jab personally, and turned to leave again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t fair.”

  I shook my head over my shoulder at her. “No need to apologize.”

  “He cares for you, you know.” At my blank look, she said, “Hendry, I mean.”

  A thrill jolted my insides, even though I already knew it to a certain extent. How many times had he risked his life to save mine? But caring and wanting were two different things.

  Still, to have someone else confirm what he might be feeling, someone like Tessa, solidified my feelings into something real and not just my hyperactive imagination for all things Hendry. I’d fallen for him, hard, but I wasn’t sure what to do with that, especially if he only felt a fraction of what I felt for him. Especially if he didn’t want me. Especially if his feelings were exactly what he felt for every other woman here.

  “He cares for a lot of women.” The words sounded bitter and sharp, and I choked their aftertaste down.

  She gave a skeptical frown. “That’s not what I mean. He listens to you. He talks to you differently than anyone else. Not that he doesn’t do those things with others, but with you, it’s…different.”

  We respected each other. We’d even admitted that, though I hadn’t found the courage to tell him all my other feelings for him. I’d wanted to in the closet with a kiss, but that hadn’t gone too well.

  She rose from her chair and adjusted the belt cinching the waist of her gray dress tighter. “He looks at you differently, too. You’re always the first person he searches for when he comes into a room.”

  My heart spasmed. I’d never noticed.

  A sad smile crossed her face. “I think you two could be very happy.”

  My gaze snapped up to meet hers. Since when did I need her approval?

  She chuckled. “I have a good sense for these things, being in this line of work. What you decide to do with that is up to you.”

  What was I supposed to do with that? Go jump his bones? Because what if someone had beat me to it? My eyes stung, my chest aching at the thought, and I hurried out of there so I wouldn’t have to think about it. How could my feelings for Hendry top out at euphoric and then plummet to almost hurling so quickly?

  I stumbled toward the spiral staircase, not sure where I was headed. The second floor where all the women lived? And if a naked whore opened the door with Hendry still in bed with just-fucked hair? It hurt too much to even think about, so I made my way to the kitchen instead.

  Cooks bustled about with no need for my help to create amazing smells. Sara stood off in the corner with Lucy, who showed off her sharpened pencil. They both waved. Ross, minus his cowboy hat, rolled out dough on the center table with a smile.

  “Have you seen Hendry?” I asked him.

  “Not since early this morning.” He wiped his dark, glistening forehead with the back of his hand. “Said he was going on a supply run.”

  Relief lightened my chest a fraction. I touched my finger to a little pile of flour on the corner and rubbed its softness back to the table. “If you see him, will you please tell him to find me?”

  “Of course.”

  I wasn’t exactly sure why I wanted him to find me, or what I would say when he did, so I distracted myself with bathroom duty. Nothing said ‘I might be in love with you’ quite as well as a freshly stocked bathroom.

  In the middle of a supply run to my closet, a fierce shrieking erupted inside my skull. My reflection in the dented can of stainless-steel polish showed I still had thirty hours left. Yet, if anything were to hurt because of the collar, it should be neck, not my whole head.

  Out in the entryway, a few people had slumped onto the loveseats and gripped their foreheads as if staunching brain leaks. Something was happening, but I didn’t know what.

  The door to the office was closed, so I took that as an invitation and barged in. I pulled up short and blinked. Blinked again.

  “Close the door,” Tessa hissed, her face tearstained.

  I did, my gaze stuck to Hendry laid out on the desk, shirtless and pale. Unmoving. I jerked forward, crossing the distance between us, my mouth moving over words that wouldn’t come. The room blurred, warping into what I hoped was just a nightmare, until tears tracked down my face and I saw clearly again.

  Tessa leaned over his head at one end of the desk, drumming her fingers on the wood, her eyes glued to something poking up behind his arm. A sob heaved from her mouth, a tortured sound, and she shook her head. “He made me kill him, Fin.”

  I stopped by the table with maps all over it and swayed on my feet. Dead. Hendry was dead. Tessa had killed him. I ticked my gaze to her, an ocean of fury crashing through my veins. My arms trembled with it until I gathered it in my fists. I tried to swallow, but my mouth tasted like acidic cotton.

  “W-what? H
e made you?” I finally spit out.

  “Yes.” She shifted her gaze to me briefly, the blue in her eyes outlined in sorrow. “For you.”

  She wasn’t making any sense. She’d killed him. Hendry was dead, not because of me, but because of her. She couldn’t have him, so had she killed him so no one else could?

  My teeth bared, my fists ready to fly, I stalked toward her, my thoughts colored with murder.

  A timer went off, sudden and shrill, hesitating my steps. The silver collar around his neck snapped open and freed him. I gasped, unable to understand anything I was seeing.

  Tessa dived into action, one hand reaching for the golden-sun amulet on his chest and the other digging in a black bag by his head. She ripped off his amulet and threw it to the floor. Then, with both hands held high above his chest, she thumbed some sort of plunger that leaked a drop of liquid from a sharp needle. It clung there in the sunlight angling through the boarded-up window behind him, shimmering, growing fatter. She plunged the needle down.

  “No!” I shouted and ran forward to stop her.

  Hendry jerked upright with a loud gasp. He clutched his chest, his shoulders heaving, and flopped over the side of the desk to the floor.

  I reeled back for a second while my mind struggled to catch up with whatever the hell was happening. His muscles twitched as he turned himself over and collapsed on his back, still sucking down air. But…he’d died. Tears welled and my knees buckled, dropping me next to him.

  “Hendry.” I cradled his face in my hands and smoothed the curls away from his closed eyes. “Hendry, please. Talk to me.”

  “I couldn’t,” he said between pants, his voice raspy. “I couldn’t talk to you. If I would’ve shown any interest in you, she would’ve hated you more than she already did.”

  “Allison,” I breathed.

  His amulet had skidded toward one of the bookshelves, and the color had gone out of it. Dead. Just like Hendry had been.

  Tessa rushed up to his side, her hands crushed to her mouth as she stared down at him.

  “He wanted you to kill him so he could take the collar and amulet off?” I asked.

  She nodded and took several deep breaths. “I told him that I just want him to be happy. And I knew the one thing that would make him happy.” She gave me a meaningful look.

  I swallowed down at Hendry. He’d died for me? He’d risked everything to find a way to free himself from the collar and his weird amulet?

  “The pain in your head was Allison when I died,” he said. “Her anguish at not being able to control me anymore.”

  “Why did—? How—?” A burst of questions exploded onto my tongue and tied it up before I could get a complete sentence out.

  Hendry finally opened his eyes, his heaving chest slowing. “I left a note for the Berkano along with Lucy’s and asked for a favor—two doses of insulin and two of adrenaline from the hospital pharmacy that we didn’t have time to raid. Philip delivered. Almost.”

  Tessa turned for the door. “I’ll give you two a little while.” She turned back before she left, and I nodded at her, not sure what to say that would sum up my feelings right now. She offered a faint, watery smile and closed the door behind her.

  “Insulin and adrenaline.” I shook my head at Hendry. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “One to kill me. One to wake me back up. I had to see if it worked to get the collar and amulet off so I could tell you about my stepmom, about her power”—he took my hands away from his face and gripped them tight—“before your time is up.”

  Before my time was up? Did that mean I would have to die, too? I sat back on my heels. “You said you got two doses…”

  “I got another dose of adrenaline to wake you back up. Not insulin to kill you, but Philip said he’s a natural at finding things. It’s only a last resort to get your collar off, but now I know it works.” His voice shook slightly with determination. “Maybe we won’t have to use it, though. Maybe I can make her take it off you. It’s only fair she do something good after lying to the entire division for years, after forcing her own son into silent slavery.”

  She wouldn’t take this collar off me out of the goodness of her heart. She didn’t have a heart. But if, say, a bunch of witches and vampires showed up on her doorstep and backed her up into a corner until she dropped the senseless rules, maybe my church tongue could talk her into a little of her hoarded magic to rid me of my collar.

  “Wait,” I said, gazing at him sharply. “Did you just say slavery?”

  “Aside from her word-tying magic on both of us, there’s the amulet,” he said, waving at it. “It’s fused with poison. If I went against her or the church in any way, or stopped bringing new members into the church, she would skip the dose of the antidote to counter the poison.”

  My jaw dropped to his chest. “Is she poisoning my dad, too?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  This explained so much—why he never went against her, why he didn’t speak out against me being kicked out of the church. It all came down to the poison flower named Allison. Oh, she so deserved a kick to her red lipsticked sneer.

  “That’s why you couldn’t lead the resistance,” I said. “You couldn’t tell anyone what exactly we’re resisting, but if you made it sound like it was the Berkano who were the enemy, that was okay, right?”

  He nodded. “It’s going to take an army to go up against her with all the power she’s stolen over the years, but I don’t know if that fact alone will be enough to inspire everyone to go against her.”

  “Well, I’m not doing much better.” I forced a chuckle. “Some people seem to tolerate me now, but…I’m not sure that’s enough for them to go to battle for me.”

  To die for me. Like Hendry had. I dipped my head, the image of him lying dead stitching itself into my memory for an eternity. My throat knotted, more tears pooled, and a sob hitched my shoulders. So many emotions warred inside me, mostly relief and awe at this man, but also love, so much that it hurt.

  “Hendry, I’m—” I started.

  “You don’t have to.” He squeezed my hand, his touch growing warmer by the second.

  “You died for me,” I whispered.

  “Well, also a little bit for me.” He smiled, and I brought my hands back to his face to touch it, memorize it, soak it into my soul. “But yes, for you, too. Always for you, Fin, since the first day I heard you sing. Since day one. When you left the church this last time, Allison added you to my poisoned amulet. I guess she’d seen the way I looked at you and didn’t want me falling for you. But I already had.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and let those words sink in. But because I was an idiot, I couldn’t stop my doubts from overshadowing everything. “How many women have you slept with here?” As soon as it left my mouth, I regretted it. What more did this man have to do for me, especially since he didn’t owe me anything?

  “One,” he said simply. “One woman who ran off with another man.”

  I nodded down at the floor. I’d never been as jealous of anyone I’d never met than I was then. It didn’t make any sense I should feel that way, though. Of course someone as handsome and good as him would have lovers. Or lover, singular. He had experience when I didn’t, and I didn’t want to doubt myself around him, do the whole contrast and compare thing that seemed to be engrained in every woman I met, including myself.

  “She said I couldn’t love her with everything in my heart,” he said, reaching up to thumb away my tears. “She knew I was in love with someone else.”

  I melted into both his touch and words as shame filled me that I’d taken the word of Tessa as fact. It wasn’t as simple as believing her, though. Or maybe it was. How was I supposed to know since I’d never felt like this before?

  With a sigh, he propped himself into a sitting position. “But I could never talk to the person I loved because I knew my stepmom was always watching.”

  He loved me. He’d said it, so unless I was crazy and imagining things, he meant it. He
loved me. My chest swelled almost to bursting.

  I cupped his whiskered cheek in my hand, his warmth and strength fueling mine. “I’m sure that was even creepier than it sounds.”

  He laughed, an exhausted sound. “But now I’m free, and you can be, too.”

  “I…just don’t know if I have the guts to do what you did. To die and then come back. That’s…” Terrifying, something born of nightmares, risky times a thousand—all of it rolled into one big nope. But the alternative was dying anyway. If the collar didn’t kill me, then Allison could when the resistance—if we could rally one—marched inside her church walls. With the magic she’d stolen, she might be able to kill us all with one of her disdained expressions.

  “It’s not pleasant. Dying, I mean.” He laced his fingers through mine on his cheek and kissed my palm. “You need to know that, but you can trust me to bring you back. I would never let anything happen to you, Fin.”

  I sighed into him and leaned forward, touching my forehead to his so we could share the same air, the same space. My heart beat toward him, pinpointing exactly who it craved the most, and I didn’t intend to ever let him go.

  Hours later, after I’d left Hendry in the office to sleep, a knock sounded at my closet door. Dinner had come and gone, and I’d talked to the rest of the brothel about going to the church, but they were more interested in hearing Lucy and me sing. So we did, of course, but that wasn’t sparking any resistances. Hendry hadn’t been there to say what I still couldn’t. Tessa had nodded during my rallying speech, though, so that was something. I would take a nod over blank stares any day.

  I opened the door, and there he stood, his wide shoulders stretching the distance of the doorway. He wore a black button-up shirt, his usual jeans, and black cowboy boots, and the lack of a silver collar revealed the tendons in his neck and the lickable expanse of skin. I would even go with bitable, never mind the vampiric implications. His hair was wet, and his natural crisp ocean scent rolled off him in enticing waves.