Shapeshifted es-3

by Cassie Alexander

  “You’d be better off praying to me!” I hauled Dren away, dragging him down the alleyway like a dead body. Three Crosses men raced out of the building like angry ants, weapons drawn. At a command from someone among their ranks, they held fire and moved aside. I’d never seen so many guns before. My stomach turned to ice.

  “What’s happening here?” I recognized his voice. From the clinic—Maldonado. Somehow he was even more frightening than the weaponry.

  “I’m rescuing my friend.” There wasn’t any point in lying.

  Maldonado smiled. “He was always free to leave. All he had to manage to do was walk out.” Some of his cohorts laughed as Maldonado continued. “He’s the kind of beast we protect ourselves from. Him and la Reina. He deserves what he got.”

  Under other circumstances, before this, I would totally agree. But after what I’d seen tonight? No. The bone room had gone above and beyond.

  “And what about her?” I pointed back up to where the bone room had been. Dren kept crawling away behind me. I could hear his good arm splash into puddles and the rest of him slide.

  “She was with la Reina. As, clearly, are you. Which makes many things of yours forfeit.” Maldonado closed the distance between us. “First your bones, then your life.” He raised his hand, and many of his men put guns away to pull out knives. Somehow the knives seemed worse. I took a step back.

  I was cast in sudden shadow by headlights behind me, and I heard the squealing of tires. Some of the Three Crosses men raised their hands to protect their eyes, and I heard “Get in!” from behind me. I whirled and saw Hector, frantically waving at me from inside his car.

  “Jorgen! Now!” I yelled at the Hound. He ran back through their numbers, clawing and biting, shoving them aside.

  I ran until I caught up with Dren, and hauled him toward the waiting car’s backseat. Shots rang out; I prayed to God that they hadn’t made contact. I hopped in beside Dren, almost on top of him, and slammed the door.

  “Go go go!” I looked behind us, at Jorgen, running away.

  Hector raced backward down the alley, then went flying down the street.

  “How did you know?” I asked his reflection in the rearview mirror.

  “As soon as Catrina got home she called me and told me where you’d been.” Hector looked into the backseat at Dren. “Where are we taking him?”

  Dren seized his chance. He lunged forward and wrapped his good arm around Hector’s neck, the headrest in between them.

  “Dren, no!” I yanked at the vampire. His arm nearest me was too flaccid to get traction on, and his good arm was too strong. I reached out and grabbed hold of his head, hauling it backward by his ears and hair.

  “I need blood to heal—” Dren said, and it was clear that he didn’t care where it came from.

  “He has to drive! Let him go!” Hector wove from side to side in the empty street, reaching for the glove compartment with the hand that wasn’t on the wheel. He teased the latch with his fingers and it slid open. He grabbed whatever was inside, and then bashed Dren in the head with it. The vampire hissed like a rattlesnake and recoiled, sinking down behind the driver’s seat.

  Hector held up what he’d hit Dren with so that it was visible in the rearview mirror. The good old King James. “I was raised Catholic, motherfucker. Stay in the backseat.”

  The rest of our ride passed in silence. I’d done it. I had some help—but we were gonna be okay. No one had gotten hurt. My mom was going to be just fine. To borrow a phrase from Hector, I had saved the motherfucking day. As the streets got nicer and it was clear we were out of Three Crosses’ realm, I began to beam.

  “Why are you so pleased?” Dren asked from beside me.

  “Because.” I inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Just because.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Hector pulled the car into a well-lit place—the parking lot of a Catholic church. As soon as we parked, he got out and slammed his door.

  I hopped out after him, leaving my door open.

  “We’re going to kill that thing.” He popped the trunk of his car, bringing out duct tape and a tire iron.

  I took a step back. “We’re not going to kill him, and I’m not going to ask you why you’re driving a kidnap-mobile.”

  “He tried to kill me,” Hector said, shaking the tire iron for emphasis.

  “I need him! To save my mom! Remember?”

  “Technically, I only wanted some of your blood,” Dren said from his slumped position inside the car, eyes glittering in the night. “I didn’t need all of it.”

  I pointed at him. “Do me a favor, and don’t try to help.” Then I moved to stand between Hector and Dren. Normally, a vampire would have no problem fighting back, but since Dren was missing half of his long bones and starved for blood and Hector was pissed, I gave humanity an even chance. “Let me explain. Some. As much as I can. Hector—that place up there—it was awful. They were torturing him. Taking out his bones and using them to decorate—” My voice failed me at the memory. “Adriana’s up there, Hector. She’s trapped in a cage of bones and rebar. It is literally insane.”

  Then I looked to Dren. “And you swore to help my mother. I need some of your blood. She’s got cancer. I want to heal her.”

  Dren’s eyebrows rose up on his forehead. A smile pulled up the edges of his lips, and then he gave a barking laugh. He laughed again, and again, sounding like an overexcited dog, until he started coughing, and the coughing won out.

  “What’s so funny?” I stood outside the car with my hands on my hips. “You promised—you swore!”

  Dren recovered himself from the coughing. “You need to make your oaths more precise. Trust me, you do not want your own sweet mother to be bound to my blood.”

  “Fuck you, Dren.” I took a step nearer to the car, strength building in me. “You’re doing this.”

  He slunk forward in the car, crawling out of it with his one good leg and arm, and both Hector and I scooted back. “If she were bound to me, I would make you regret giving her my blood until the day you died. She would come to hate you as the person who enslaved her to me.” He paused to arrange himself on the pavement once he was on the ground, straightening out his messed-up leg. Then he appeared to think, and smiled, full of fangs. “Just think of all the things I could order her to do. Oh, my.”

  My fists curled in impotent rage. “But I saved your life!”

  “And I thank you for that. But I also swore an oath not to hurt her, whoever she may be. Trust me that my blood would only do that. I would see to it, in fact.”

  I leaned forward and screamed at him, “I did not come all the way down here just to save you! If I had known, I would have tried harder to save the girl instead!” I whirled on Hector. “Give me the tire iron.”

  He took a step back. “I thought we weren’t supposed to kill him?”

  “That was before,” I said, my hand still out.

  “Edie—he has a point.”

  “Fuck both of you, then.” I walked in a small circle. I ran my hands up through my hair. “We have to go back for her.”

  “Not tonight. We’re not going anywhere tonight.” Hector brought the tire iron down with finality.

  “We may not be—but Luz, I mean Reina, is going to be all over Maldonado when she hears about this. Do you have her phone number? Does she have a phone?”

  “And what do you think she will do to your precious zombie when she finds him there, girl?” Dren said from his position on the ground.

  “You shut up.”

  “Go on. Tell him about the zombie,” Dren crooned. “I’d love to hear you explain him away.”

  I knelt down to be on a level with him. “How is it you were stupid enough to get caught?”

  “What’s it matter to you?” he challenged me.

  “More mouth from you, and we’re going to wait out here for the sun,” Hector threatened, waving the tire iron. I blinked, startled that he knew how to kill a vampire. Then again, it was on every other TV show rig
ht now. At least Hector was still on my side, even though he had to know I was holding out information on him.

  Dren sighed in exaggerated exhaustion. “I came looking for Santa Muerte. The Shadows sent me in. She’s got a high bounty.”

  “Did you find her?”

  “No. Those fools are trying to summon her. The girl in the cage is meant to be some sort of sacrifice.” He shrugged his weak shoulder, which yanked his limp arm up in a grotesque fashion. “Santa Muerte herself is still loose—and they’ve almost got enough magic to draw her there. I’ll give them that. I sorely underestimated the magician inside.”

  “That’s because he’s a bruja,” Hector said. I didn’t know what that meant yet, but somebody was going to be explaining it to me soon.

  “Someone is helping them,” Dren went on. “You don’t get knowledge like they’ve gained through experimenting on your own. You try magic that strong without practice and you’d blow yourself up.” His eyes narrowed. “I suspect House Grey is funding them, or helping them outright. I didn’t meet any of them personally, but my torture did have the feel of poetic justice to it.”

  The last time I’d seen any vampires from House Grey, Dren had been lopping their arms off at Anna’s command. His torture had a grim symmetry to it. Vampires didn’t forgive, and they sure as hell never forgot.

  “What would they want with Santa Muerte?” I asked aloud.

  “She’s hugely powerful. Who wouldn’t want death on their side?”

  “Why didn’t the Shadows send anyone in after you?”

  “And admit defeat? Or that they’d sent me to begin with?” He snorted, pushing himself up against the car’s open door with his good arm. “I sent my Hound out for help—and the stubborn thing spent a month trying to run away before admitting defeat and realizing it couldn’t. I think it was hoping I would die. Little does it know, that wouldn’t free it. Our fates are linked.”

  “Why did it find me?”

  Dren rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t like the weres would help me now, was it? And I’d kept him away from other vampire kind. In the circles of the people he could find, and the people who were likely to be stupid enough to help me, the only overlap was you.”

  “You always know how to make a girl feel special, Dren.” I rocked back up. My calves ached from all the crouching and pulling I’d done tonight. “Look, where can we take you? You need to go somewhere.”

  “I need blood is what I need.” His eyes shone in the car-door shadow, backlit like a cat’s.

  “Neither of us is going to give you any.” I did feel bad for him. He was a shade of his former self here. Still frightening, but also sad.

  Throughout all this, Hector was surprisingly nonplussed. He still held the tire iron at the ready, but he didn’t seem as ready to use it as when he’d first gotten out of his car.

  “Once, I made it halfway down the stairs,” Dren went on. “The sun began to come up. I had to crawl myself back up again before I passed out in the light. And your boyfriend—he’s a piece of work.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, Dren.” Whatever we saw on the stairs tonight … it was not Ti.

  “You should have seen him, rooting around inside my thigh every other night. Like he was gutting a chicken.” Dren played with his damaged leg, rolling it back and forth on the ground. It flopped from side to side like a twisted toy. “What did I ever do to him, other than threaten to kill you?”

  Hector turned to me. “Where are we taking him? We need to take him somewhere, before I beat his head in.”

  “Okay.” I fanned out my hands. As much as I didn’t want to take him back to my place, I inhaled to offer it up. Then Jorgen appeared, racing back down the street, a nightmare in full flight. “Oh, thank God.”

  Hector groaned. “Goddammit, not that thing again.” We moved out of Jorgen’s way as he came to kneel down, offering his neck to Dren.

  “You’d better behave this time, or I’ll skin you, I swear I will,” the vampire warned.

  Jorgen closed his eyes, and Dren bit in. Hector made a repulsed face, and there was no way not to hear the slurping noises while Dren sucked at Jorgen’s neck. Just when I thought the noises alone would make me wretch, Dren pulled back and tottered up to standing. Hector and I jumped even farther back. “How can you—”

  “I’m a vampire. I heal quickly, when fed. Even on blood as disgusting as a Hound’s.” He was still emaciated, but at least his bones were whole. A trail of Jorgen’s blood stained his chin. “That’s why they used the zombie. I couldn’t feed on him.” Jorgen lurched up, and Dren leaned against his side.

  “Where are you going, Dren?”

  “Away. To shun you,” he said, and laughed. “To heal. And sleep. And leave this place for good.”

  “Whatever magic those people are using—it’s powerful, Dren. You know it yourself.” I took a step nearer to him, hands out, pleading.

  “Please don’t try to appeal to the altruist in me. There is none.” Dren started walking away, one arm slung around Jorgen’s neck.

  “Don’t kill anyone tonight, Dren,” I called after him.

  He turned back to smile wickedly. “You’re not the boss of me.” And then waved weakly with his healing arm.

  Dammit. I still wanted him to help me. If only I’d made him promise more precisely—and if only he weren’t a jerk. I didn’t want to admit that maybe he was right, maybe by denying me he was actually helping my mother. And yet I didn’t want all this to be for nothing. I’d almost gotten killed, I’d left an innocent person behind, and I still hadn’t saved my mom. I wanted to run after him, yelling at him until he changed his mind. But I couldn’t. He was running now. Not to avoid me, but because he—a vampire, fearless and occasionally psychotic—was afraid.

  I watched him rush down the street until he was hidden in shadow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Good riddance.” Hector rounded his car, tossed the tire iron back into his trunk, and slammed it shut.

  “What time is it? We’ve got to go tell Luz.” I started pacing. I didn’t want to get back into the car. It felt like maybe three or four. Plenty of time for Luz to go in and rescue Adriana.

  “You can’t tell her, Edie—you’ll start a war.”

  I stopped and stared at him. “Luz wouldn’t be starting anything—she’d be finishing it. You did not see what I saw.”

  “Innocent people would die, Edie—”

  I pointed back the way we’d come. “There’s an innocent person up there being starved to death and tattooed with bones. I don’t really care if some other people die, as long as she gets free.”

  “No,” Hector said, decisively.

  “Why are you protecting them? I thought you hated Maldonado?”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “Because you haven’t told me!” I yelled. After tonight, I had no patience for games.

  “Edie!” He took hold of my shoulders and shook me. And then his face changed. His tan skin lightened, and his dark eyes went blue.

  It took me a moment longer than it should have to place what was happening, it had been so long. Hector wasn’t Hector anymore. His face was changing, into the face of someone else I knew. “Asher? Oh, my God.” I put my hand to my mouth to muffle a scream. “Why—why didn’t you tell me he was you?”

  He let go of me and stepped back. “I was trying to hide.” His face changed, more slowly, toward the Asher I used to know.

  “No. Don’t. Just stay Hector, okay?” I didn’t need any more blasts from my past tonight.

  “Okay,” he said, his voice low.

  I couldn’t believe that Hector had been Asher this entire time. That he’d known me, from before. We’d been friends, and more than friends, and he’d hidden himself from me—why?

  “Have you been him … all along?” I asked. He nodded slowly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Edie.”

  “Oh. Tell me. How was it supposed to be? I wou
ld have wanted to know!” I wanted to lean in and hit him. I couldn’t believe he’d lied to me. “All this time I’ve been trying to do things and get help, and you knew who I was, and you knew what I’d seen—you could have fucking helped me.”

  “No. I couldn’t have.” He stepped back closer to the streetlight and arched his back, running his hands through his dark hair, changing fully back to Hector. “You don’t know what I’ve been through—”

  “Because I didn’t know!” I accused him.

  He turned and I saw him fight to keep his emotions in check, stopping himself from yelling back at me. “You’re not the only one who has problems, Edie.”

  That shut me up. I was still pissed off, but leery. “What’s wrong?”

  His eyes scanned the ground, as if he were looking for where to begin. “Do you remember when that shapeshifter punched you on Y4?”

  “Yeah.” Gina and I had been taking care of him, and he’d gone wild, trying to escape. He’d lost control of his ability to shapeshift, and had wound up going through everyone he’d ever met before. “He was insane.”

  “Funny you should put it like that.” Asher inhaled and exhaled deeply. “What was happening to him happens to all shapeshifters, eventually. If they don’t take steps.”

  I frowned, and thought back to the event. “But you said he’d been tortured by vampires, I remember—”

  “I lied.” Asher cut me off. “That was only half the truth. I didn’t want to explain at the time.” His frown deepened as he stared at the ground. “No one likes to talk about how they’re going to die.”

  I waited for him to go on.

  “You can’t be a shapeshifter forever, Edie. You either touch too many people, or you get too old, and something starts to break inside.” He touched his chest. “You can’t hold yourself together like you used to. The person you know you are fades, and if you’re not careful, you get replaced by all the people you’ve touched—by everyone else you have inside. There’s only two ways out: Either you go crazy, or you pick someone else inside to be.” Asher stretched his hand out and looked at it as if the fingers there were unfamiliar to him. “It happens to all of us eventually.”