“Nngh! Fuck you!” Leo was wide awake now, blood smeared back to his ear which he tried to wipe away with the heel of a palm. He was already moving to round on Rado when the first of the cramps hit him. His body tried to double, and he rolled onto a hip, back hunching as he heaved.
November had never been present at a turning. Never seen conversion sickness in person. Even as a bloodline vampire, to go through the marrowing—that time like a second puberty in their late teens or early twenties, where they began growing fangs and every other damn thing began to change—was a process that happened over months, if not more than a year. There was plenty of time to adjust while the body moved through its throes. But not for converts. Not for Leo.
Everything but the teeth he’d get nearly all at once, and the system did not like it. The way he was groaning and retching at the moment made her a hair more grateful to have been born V-positive.
“Just breathe,” Rado was saying as he scrubbed a palm in rough circles over Leo’s rounded back. “Breathe, man. It’s no good. Nothing’s going to come up.”
She’d heard of this. The urge to vomit, but the body’s refusal to let any of it go.
“Leo, you made it,” she said. Her partner was trying to control his breathing, as Rado coached him. She reached to trace fingers down his nearest supporting forearm. “You’re alive.”
Her last word did something to him. His hacking subsided to a degree, and he twisted his head to look up at her. November wanted to apologize, even though he’d agreed. He’d asked her to bite him.
Leo sat back on his ass again and raked his eyes down the damp, dark front of his shirt. He brought a hand up to the hole in the fabric where the bullet had passed. There was no longer a matching wound in his chest or back.
“Alive,” he repeated, voice a breath. The one word teemed with consequences.
“That’s right,” said Rado, standing up. “You’d be dead if it wasn’t for Kitamura. You can have your first existential crisis underground, but I guarantee a second team is on the way. We need to move.”
She had no idea what her partner could be going through, to pass out after nearly dying and wake up a vampire, but Rado was right. November held out a hand to Leo. He eyed it for a moment before taking his grip, and she helped him get to his feet.
“Can you walk?” she said.
He took a tentative step and his knee buckled. November and Rado swooped in to keep him upright, and she pulled his arm over her shoulder, bolstering at his side.
“So a ‘not really,’ then,” she said as Rado backed away. “Come on. Just lean on me if you have to.”
“How long”—Leo coughed—“how long is this going to last?”
“A few hours,” said Rado, ducking his head out of the mouth of the alley again. “Maybe a day. Let’s go.”
He slipped out into the street, leaving November no choice but to follow, Leo lumbering along at her side, all his efforts on staying vertical and in motion.
Rado hadn’t gone twenty steps before he stopped at a rectangular metal cover set into the sidewalk. He went to a knee near a corner of the thing and began feeling along its edge with his fingertips. Whatever he was searching for, he found, because his hand twisted, and then he was lifting and sliding the metal panel out of the way. There was an opening below. Concrete stairs descending to blackness. He looked back at her and Leo.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll close it after us.”
She gave him a hard look.
You better be on our side.
“Alright, Leo,” she said. “One step at a time. Be careful. Just because you’ll heal doesn’t mean it won’t still hurt if you fall and break your ass.” November risked a moment to let go Leo’s arm where it draped over her shoulder, to turn on the light on her ID bracelet. The cool white glow would be all they had going down into that mess. She grabbed his wrist again.
They took the first stair.
The way down was barely wide enough for them both to go side by side. They had to cram all four of their feet onto each step, Leo groaning and swearing the whole way over his aches and unsteady legs. Metal slid on concrete above, and even the dim light from the street winked away overhead. More footsteps were behind them, Rado following, until they all made it past the end of the ancient stair and onto a narrow walkway.
The light from her bracelet didn’t go far, but there were glimpses of a surrounding structure here. A hint of brick at the edge of the light’s reach. A wooden support beam. The smell of wet stone and not a lick of human use in centuries surrounded them. When the shuffling of their bootsoles went quiet, she could hear an occasional drop of water somewhere in the dark.
“Is this the gate?” she whispered. It might have been paranoia, but she imagined walls crumbling around them if she used her normal voice.
“No,” Rado replied with more than her whisper, but less than his usual gruff volume. “It’s further back. There’s a walkway. Watch your feet.”
He’d lit up his own bracelet and was squeezing past them. Stepping further into the dank space to where he now illuminated another doorway at the opposite end of … of …
“What is this place?” said Leo, echoing her thoughts.
“It’s part of the original underground,” Rado told them over his shoulder. “Almost four hundred years old.”
She and Leo followed him, picking their way over dislodged stones in the floor and the broken remnants of what might once have been an entirely wooden walkway surface.
“Why is it just sitting here like this?” she asked. “No guards?”
“It’s condemned,” he said, waiting for her at the stone doorway. “Since before we even migrated underground.” And by ‘we,’ he meant everyone in the room. Leo was a vampire now.
They made it to where Rado stood and filed behind him through an archway so ancient it felt like the stones exhaled damp breath on the backs of their necks. Leo grunted when he checked his shoulder on the way past.
The space beyond felt less narrow than the first room and, within the radius of light, November could see more ruined wood at odd angles to the walls and floor. Stringy roots from plants dangled in from the ceiling.
From the way they’d come, a metallic sound rasped in her ears, and November’s head whipped around.
“Rado,” she hissed.
“Just go,” he said. “Go.” His pace increased, and she hustled Leo along after, senses jarring at the portent of dull thuds at their backs.
Too far. We’re too far to fuck this up now!
“Mister Niculescu.”
A voice rolled out of the darkness ahead of them, and November almost choked on her heartbeat. She felt Leo’s head snap up from watching his feet, and Rado held out a hand to his side to stop them all in the walkway.
“Reverend,” said Rado.
Hairs stood up on the back of November’s neck. She knew that voice. Had heard it only one time.
Reverend …
Out of the black, a figure emerged, uncanny in movement and appearance to make her insides scream. His suit was immaculate white. His skin a deep brown.
Leonide Croix. Just like …
In his hand, he carried a cane.
No.
The bald man from her Vision had turned his gaze over Rado’s shoulder to rest it on Leo, who was trying to untangle himself from November and stand upright on his own two feet.
“Reverend, I am so sorry,” said Rado, turning his head to take in the new vampire in his torn and bloody guard uniform. “We didn’t have time. There was no other wa—”
“Down here! They’re down here!”
November whirled on the sound of trooping boots. Aged wood splintering and the brightest of lights bouncing through the archway toward them. There was too much noise in the silent, damp space, and her first instinct was to duck, and to drag Leo with her. Too many voices shouting, but she never got the chance.
“Stop.”
Two men in GateSec surface uniforms who’d come through
the doorway with guns halted in place like someone had paused a recording. The command had come from behind her, and November turned her face, some horror banding her chest, to watch the man in white cock his head, eyes narrowing at the two armed men. His stance had not changed. He stood there, casual as a speaker who’d had his presentation interrupted.
The uniformed pair turned, as if on hinges, to face each other. Discharged their weapons in the small space with such a sudden, violent bang that November yelped, and she heard Leo swear. The two men collapsed to the ground, and two more came behind them, guns still strapped to their backs, eyes trained on the bald man at the back of the room. The man who had them all in the clutch of hypnotics the likes of which November had never seen.
“Your friends have been injured,” said the man in white with an accent she couldn’t quite place. “You should get them to a hospital.”
His tone was somewhere between command and suggestion, and November could see a hint of fang as he spoke. The second pair didn’t hesitate. They shouldered their way forward and, one at a time, hefted one of the injured—possibly dying—guards under the arms and began dragging them backward out through the first room. Up the concrete stairs, from the sound of things, until November heard the metal plate sliding back into place in the distance.
Four negs at once. At once!
She had never seen a vampire maintain hypnotics on that many at one time. And without words! Those two guards had just turned and murdered each other. The man in white hadn’t even blinked. Hadn’t looked worried that his suggestion might fail. How old did a vampire have to be …
Leo was staring at the older man, brow knotted, jaw slack. November’s guts were curling in on themselves.
“You were right, Mister Niculescu,” the man said to Rado as if there had been no disruption. “There was no other way. It is as I expected.” He turned dark eyes on November, and they caught the blue-white light from the ID bracelets lit in the room. “And you, Miss Kitamura. I thank you for saving my son.”
“Your what?”
It was Leo who erupted, while November stood agape and Rado looked grim. Radoslav Niculescu, apparently. That name was old blood. Very old, but there were bigger questions looming now.
“Leonide, I have been waiting a long time,” said the man in spotless white. “I am sorry it had to happen like this.”
The elder vampire merged so completely with the man from her Vision that November couldn’t stand it. “Who are you?” Rude words spiraled out of her mouth, unstoppable.
Patient eyes moved to her. Nothing appeared to upset him.
“My name is Zenith Croix,” he said. “Leonide is my son.”
Zenith …
November stared. Leo had to be doing the same, because she heard nothing from over her shoulder.
The Reverend Zenith Croix?
The Reverend was a vampire myth. An old one. The man in white with his snake and his cane. Seek him by moonlight, children, and he will hide you in shadows from the day. Her mother had repeated the tales from her grandmother and back. The man standing in front of them, pale suit nearly glowing in the surrounding black, would have to be older than the ruins they stood in now, if the name he claimed was not just a conceit.
But to hypnotize all those people …
“This is bullshit, Rado.” Leo turned on his roommate, hands balling into fists. “Bullshit! Who is this guy?”
Radoslav lowered his eyes. Made his mouth into a flat line, the first sign of contrition November had ever seen in the man. “He is who he says, Croix.”
It was enough for the bald vampire to expect her to believe he was the actual Zenith Croix. The Reverend in real life. She had no idea how much Leo had to be breaking down on the further assertion that this man might be the father he’d never known. But there were certain things about the way his mouth moved when he spoke. The shape of his eyes that nagged at November in a familiar way.
Her thoughts flitted to her parents in Tokyo. Her American mother, immortal, forever engaged in her research. Her Japanese father, aging and content to live out his days as a neg. Who would she be if either one of them had been just … missing from her life? Where would she be?
But you’re here. Now. And you’ve seen the Moon and stars. You’ve turned a man, and there is no going back.
“I was not the father I should have been,” the senior Croix said, “but I am proud of the man your mother raised. You risked your life to save Miss Kitamura, for no other reason than it was right, and you were able.” There was an edge of warmth to the man’s speech now, as though he worked to conceal some level of emotion.
“This is who sent you to keep an eye on Leo?” she asked Rado.
The dark-haired vampire nodded.
“Why?” Leo said. “If any of this is true, why weren’t you there?”
“We will have time for all of that,” said the Reverend, hefting his cane, “but not here. I have work for you both, and this is no place for Leonide to recover.”
“What work?” November couldn’t decide if she regretted her snappish tone. Here she was talking to an ostensible figure of legend, but how many more shocks could he expect her to accept in such a short time?
“I’ve had a Vision,” he said.
Because of course. Of course the fucking Reverend Zenith Croix had had a Vision. What else could there possibly be?
“The descendants of the Tenacity crew are returning,” he went on, and the statement hit her like a corridor collapse. Even Rado had looked up, his features open in surprise.
“The last messages from Tenacity were over two hundred years ago,” said Leo, stubborn. She couldn’t blame him. But after seeing the sky herself? After tasting the first hint of how many lies had built her world?
“That is correct,” said the Reverend. “But within two years, a crew will return. I have seen it.” He moved his focus from one younger vampire to the next, standing before him in the ruins of old Seattle. “They will see this atrocity for what it is.”
His eyes traveled upward, and November knew the ‘atrocity’ was everything she thought she’d known. GateSec. The UV at night. The entire reason the Goodnighters had come with their violence and their sunshine.
“It is worse than even that, young one.”
Her attention whipped back to the Reverend, who’d spoken as though he’d been in her thoughts. She was sure she could make out a snake head shape to the end of the cane in his hand. Something cold prickled down the back of her neck.
Real. All real.
“Worse?” She looked from him to Rado, whose mouth twisted into a scowl once again.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “You will learn, and you will wish you had not.”
From the corner of her eye, the look on Leo’s face told her he was not sure he hadn’t made a mistake. Maybe he would have been better off bleeding out on the floor of the van than to accept all this.
“And when they come back, Reverend, what then?” Rado, at least, seemed prepared to believe whatever the elder Croix had to say.
“They will help us, Mister Niculescu.” Dark eyes glinted with something older than all of them in the cool, artificial light. “But we must be ready when they arrive. Tenacity left before the lies began. Do you think the powers in place will be eager to welcome them home and explain what they’ve done? And why they’ve done it?”
The Reverend looked at each of them in turn, inscrutable.
“You know more than most,” he said to her and Leo. “I won’t make your choices for you. Follow me now and help us prepare for what comes. Or do not. Either way will be difficult.”
Silence hung, damp and heavy in the air. A tint of the surreal shaded everything. The people November stood with. The ancient walls around them. The truths that had fractured her understanding of the world and promises of more to come. She turned to Leo. Swallowed.
“What do you want to do?” she said. Neither one of them was the sort to stand around. To shove their heads back in the sand.
Leo glanced at the man who claimed to be his father and frowned. Moved his focus back to November. There was little space between them to begin with on the narrow walkway, but he closed it without touching her, hazel eyes on dark brown.
“I’m going with you,” he said. “Wherever that is.”
Fingers brushed her palm. His hand locked with hers. A ridiculous rush of sentiment made her want to kiss him, but two more pairs of eyes waited in the tomb-quiet space.
November turned her face to Rado, who took a step toward the man in white, reaffirming his obvious allegiance. She let out a long breath. Nodded at the Reverend.
“We’ll go.”
The man raised his chin. “And I am glad of it.” He lifted the snake-headed cane. “Our time below ground is coming to an end. This way.”
Zenith Croix turned and began to walk back the way he’d come, not a single light to lead him. November shivered and squeezed Leo’s hand.
Radoslav quirked the two of them something of a smile, and then fell in behind the Reverend, the soft light from his bracelet making the older vampire hover away in the darkness beyond him like a ghost.
The youngest pair shared a look. She’d been so worried about felonies. This was either a revolution about to happen or a fucking cult, and they were going to walk right into it.
She did kiss him, now. Stood on her toes and stole it from his mouth before he could speak. He managed to push back, fierce before she stood back down.
“This will probably also be a dumbass move,” he said, in echoing her jab from that first night in his apartment.
She smiled. Rado’s light was getting fainter, along with the sound of retreating footsteps. “Well, come on, ‘Leo the Hero,’ ” she said. “Let’s go find out.”
They moved together, following the receding light further and deeper into the underground. A pair of Moonrise Children. A pair of vampires, awake.
November, Leo and Rado will return in the first book of the Blood Accord series, Six of One.
Bite Me: A Vampire Anthology Page 25