Once on the smooth strap of tar leading to the town–the road empty, as he liked it–Trystan stepped down hard on the accelerator and the Hudson responded, her engine growling into a low-throated howl. Rose sang so beautifully on the big roads.
Helen had spoken a lot about the high school she attended, of Etienne, whom he’d seen visiting the Wareing girl whenever the father wasn’t home.
She’d also spoken of the other kids, the ones who looked the other way when another group–a small band of predators–took their turn to harass those they considered weaker.
God knew, it wasn’t different among the undead, either.
Some truths never changed.
Helen proved easy to find. All he had to do was close his eyes and reach, his consciousness sliding across the dormitory chalets that huddled on the slope of the acacia-covered hill.
Most souls slept. Small sputters of static bubbled, giving away those who had fallen into deep dreaming. Trystan paused to consider the dwarf, who possessed a second presence centered over his chest, before the beacon that was Helen drew his attention.
Even in sleep, she shone as bright as, well, almost as bright as her namesake had kept her house in Nieu Bethesda about fifty years ago.
Paused beneath Helen’s window, Trystan allowed the memories of those years to wash over him, with visions of a moonlit yard filled with cement camels and pilgrims forever frozen in their journey to a mythical East.
An incredible buzz had warded that property, of which only flickerings now existed at its core. The memory of how it had been throbbed with a dull ache. No going back.
It would be easy to reach, to tweak at this living Helen’s dreams, to reel her in. Instead, he sat beneath the window ledge, content to listen, while he tugged at the dried grasses that covered the white-baked soil.
He waited, listening and guarding for most of the week, unable to decide whether he should wake her or allow her to sleep.
She distracted him. He was like a kid who’d just been given a beautiful Easter egg, and he couldn’t decide whether he should rip it open and stuff his mouth full of chocolate, or hide it somewhere safe, for all eternity, all the while fearing some kid bigger or stronger than him would snatch it away.
Trystan returned on Wednesday, close to convincing himself that he should wake Helen up to steal her away–for a peculiar foreboding gnawed at him, at the edge of his Essence–when the Wareing girl almost snuck up on him.
The only reason she didn’t succeed was because the crickets’ sudden lull betrayed her passage through the colonnaded walkway leading up to this set of chalets, giving Trystan enough warning to melt away into the night.
Still distracted by his interruption, brooding on his own thoughts, he walked to where he’d parked. A slick black BMW slowed down to keep pace with him, the driver rolling down the window. Recognition prickled and he quickened his pace.
“Fancy that,” a woman purred.
Dismayed, Trystan spun around to look Mantis directly in the eye, all the while cursing himself for not paying attention to incidental noise. She must have been cruising past while he’d been woolgathering. This was too damn close to home.
A low chuckle escaped Mantis’s throat. “Hanging out outside schools now, I see.”
His first impulse was to drag the smug vampire from her seat, but he restrained himself, fisting his hands and keeping them by his sides even though his muscles ached for him to leap.
Mantis smiled, her gaze traveling from his feet, lingering on his crotch before blazing into his own. With a careless hand, she flipped her black hair over her shoulder.
“What. Do. You. Want?”
Mantis’s grin never faltered. “I’m curious, Trystan. Curious. First Aberdeen. Now Graaff-Reinet. The elders in Gauteng are having a cadenza since one of their jagters went missing in Nieu Bethesda. I’m putting two and two together, getting five, and am pretty certain you could respond to a few questions so that I can add up to four rather and get a straight answer.”
Trystan’s low growl sounded bestial to his ears. He should kill her now but that would attract more unwanted attention. Letting her go was not an option, either, unless...
Some birds would feign a broken wing to lure other predators away from their nest.
A shudder coursed through his body. If Mantis discovered Helen...
She grinned, probably thinking she could sense his defeat.
“All right. I’ll go with you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “No funny business?”
“No funny business.” For now. Lying to an older vampire, especially one who knew him as well as Mantis, would not be easy. He could attempt to avoid certain topics, for a while, however.
“Get into the car.” She gestured to the Beemer’s passenger seat.
Trystan acquiesced, allowing his shoulders to slump. The interior smelled like leather, with an underlying hint of something darker–old blood.
Leaving Rose in the street, parked beneath a spreading karee wrenched at his soul. He could only hope he’d somehow find a way to make it back before sunrise. That someone else might paw at her paintwork, or peer into her windows...
Rather, lead Mantis away from Helen. Rose would endure. Helen possessed no certainties.
The BMW’s engine made no comforting roar; only a faint vibration beneath the soles of his feet betrayed the revolutions.
Mantis set her mouth in a smirk. She drove until they reached the center of Graaff-Reinet before tacking the N9 south.
“Where are we going?”
“To see some old friends.”
“I thought you hunt for the elders in Joburg.”
“Sometimes.” She shifted the car into its highest gear, her fingers spidering on the steering wheel as she settled back into her seat.
“You’re not taking me to Jozi, are you?”
“No.”
“Not Cape Town, either.”
“No.” Mantis snorted softly.
A number of thoughts fell into place. “You’re freelancing for the Black Pope on the side while accepting commissions from Joburg.”
“Maybe.”
“I thought the renegades wanted me dead.”
“Not as dead as the elders in Cape Town or Joburg. Perhaps you can answer some questions for me, for a change.”
“I’ll think about it,” he replied, alarmed by how fast Mantis drove. The speedometer crept way over the limit, then kept climbing. If she maintained her velocity, they’d be in Knysna within two hours, or less.
Trystan’s fingernails dug into the leather. Mantis was playing with him. They passed Aberdeen before she asked her first question.
“What do you know about the flare of Essence that spiked on Friday night? Nieu Bethesda or thereabouts.”
“There’s...” What could he say? Her Essence filled the car, enveloping him. Also she was adept at reaching. Still filled with so much stolen Essence from killing that jagter, he could do little to obscure any outright lies.
He cleared his throat, preferring to look out the window at the blur of the flat Karoo plain hurtling past. How easy it was, to pretend that they weren’t really moving, and that instead the world was speeding past. That’s exactly where they were, with all the brief lives passing them by while they remained unchanging.
“Trystan,” Mantis said.
“There’s a girl. Her Essence is awakening.”
Mantis chuckled, a horrible sound. “A girl. Where? I knew something was up. Loud enough for half the magi all the way to the equator to hear, let alone our kind.”
“I don’t think I need to answer that question. You already have all the confirmation you need.”
“Play nicely, Trystan. I’ll ask you another question. Why did you kill Brent East?”
“Why do you think?” Trystan countered. “Would you do the same in my situation?”
She tutted, that infuriating smile not leaving her features. “Drained him dry, of course. No sense in wasting all that lovely Essence, hey Trystan? Ju
nkie.”
His muscles bunched and a searing flame built up in his belly. “Why are you goading me, Mantis? It’s not a good idea.”
“Answer my questions, or are you so far in denial that you don’t want to hear the truth?”
“Curse you!” he hissed. His thumbnail popped through the leather upholstery and buried itself deep in the seat’s foam interior.
“What are you planning to do with the girl? I must admit that I wasn’t expecting this complication. This disturbance would rather be one we’d associate with others.”
He buried his thoughts of the Wareing clan deeper than he thought possible, purposefully thinking of Helen’s face in the moonlight, of how her eyes caught the light.
“But to find a more than suitable human, Trystan, after so many years. Oh, this does sweeten things considerably. And, of course, the fact that I’ve found you.”
Chapter 20
Aftermath
When the masked killer had burst through the back exit, Etienne had at first assumed the disturbance had all been some absurd practical joke, invented to get back at Ms. Engelbrecht for her years of torment, by ruining her precious assembly.
Etienne’s laughter had died on his lips. The manic figure capered, his high-pitched screams muffled by the hideous hessian sack which hid his features. Steel flashed and sliced, and Etienne had watched his fellow students fall in a tangle of limbs.
Then reality had returned to normal speed, the cries of horror attenuating into narrow bands of sound tightening around his head.
None of this was real.
Chairs had crashed over, people had knocked each other aside, trampling those luckless enough to land underfoot in their haste to escape the flashing blade.
His limbs would not move, part of his mind telling him events were only pretend-pretend, like when he played with friends when he was younger and, besides, the death would never reach him. Any minute now those fallen would jump up, laughing at the joke.
Helen screaming at Arwen to move had jolted him out of his inertia but, before he could act, the kids in the row behind them fell in a mess of limbs, frantic in the churning bodies, to escape.
The swordsman had stood, poised, thin arms tense, betraying a slight quiver. Etienne’s gaze had been drawn to the hilt of the sword which had been fashioned into the shape of a fanged, cat-headed demon out of some sort of hard resin. He’d seen swords like that at the Chinese shops only a few weeks ago.
The hand gripping the hilt was gloved and a fine band of pale skin showed before the skin-tight shirt’s sleeve started.
A pressure built in Etienne’s head, as if he waited for a thunderstorm to break. Then a flash and a roar preceded a sudden decompression, and the moment had broken.
The swordsman had flown back, struck by an invisible force.
Etienne got to his haunches, his ears still ringing with screams, and peered down into Arwen’s face. Her eyes were rolled back in their sockets and she shook. White foam ran past her lips.
Helen stood above them, her hand extended in a fist. Had she just punched the swordsman? It certainly appeared so. Yet, everything about her stance and the shock etched on her features, her mouth an elongated O, spoke volumes. She seemed more surprised at the turn of events than he was.
Arwen shook by his feet and Etienne tried to steady her. “She’s having a fit!” Etienne cried out.
Helen’s dazed expression shifted to one of concern as she kneeled so she could also lay hands on Arwen. From the corner of his eye, Etienne watched some of the matric boys–rugby players judging by their bulk–rush to immobilize the dazed swordsman, who’d fallen so far across that hall he’d collapsed against the wall.
“She mustn’t swallow her tongue,” Helen said, her attention riveted on Arwen’s jerking body.
“What do we do?”
“Everybody who’s not hurt, out!” Mr. Bayly’s voice cut through their conversation. “Leave the hall! Go to your homerooms! Eric! Jonathan! Keep that bastard under control! Everybody else, out–if you’re hurt, stay put. We’re calling the ambulance.”
“Sir!” Etienne stood. “It’s Arwen, she’s having a fit.”
For the first time he looked around. So many lay still. Blood spread in pools on the floor. Some youngsters cradled friends. Some clutched at themselves, curled inward, groaning.
“Get out! Etienne! Go to your homeroom.”
“But, sir.”
“Go,” Helen mouthed at him.
He cast the teacher one last desperate look, but the man already strode toward where the feebly twitching figure of the swordsman sprawled, restrained.
Outside, beneath the colonnaded walkway, students stood or sat in small groups, faces ashen, many sobbing. If anyone spoke, they kept their voices low. Damon rushed over to him, crouched and hugged him with so much force he couldn’t draw breath.
“She’s fine, Damon. She’s inside, with Arwen.”
Damon sat back and exhaled loudly. “I’m so glad.” He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, his face flushed.
Etienne’s knees grew weak and he sat, grateful for the reassuring solidity of the cement beneath his butt. The world tilted and he discovered he’d been breathing in shallow gasps.
“What in hell’s name just happened?” Damon asked. “I heard people screaming, saw people fall over, but the prefects yanked us out before...”
“You can be glad–” Etienne started, but words failed him. Falling figures, yes. Bloodstained steel flashing. Blood. So much blood.
His chest constricted, tears stinging at the corners of his eyes. Etienne fumbled for words then hugged Helen’s brother and allowed him to cry. Damon shivered, his flesh hot to the touch.
When Etienne had his breathing under control again, he pushed Damon away with a wry smile. “Okay, I’m done blubbering like a fool. I’d rather they not take us for a pair of moffies.”
Damon chuckled. He, too, knuckled his eyes. “You’re right. What now?”
“We wait.”
Already the distant sound of sirens wailed and Miss Ely, the school counselor, moved between the huddled groups, stopping to speak to each in low tones, getting them to disperse and move away from the hall.
“We’re going to get a helluva lot of dialogue sessions for what happened today,” Etienne said.
“It’s just like what happened at Columbine.”
“You bet. Only here it’s not guns.”
“I hope the girls are all right.”
“They’re fine,” Etienne said. “Arwen must have got knocked over at the same time I was and she must have bumped her head or something. That’s what must have set off the convulsions. I hope she’s going to be okay.”
“And you’re sure my sister is okay?”
“She’s one hundred percent, a bit shaken, maybe. Really. What I don’t understand...” Etienne frowned, struggling to resolve the image of Helen standing, punching at the swordsman.
She’d never made physical contact with the guy. Not even one of the rugby boys could punch someone with that much force. Their attacker had flown back as if a mule kicked him, and not a punch from a sixteen-year-old.
“What?” Damon asked.
“Your sister, did she ever do martial arts?”
Damon laughed. “No. Why?”
“Jesus, you should have seen it. I think Helen somehow knocked the dude for a six before he could slash at us with his sword.”
“How so?”
“A bunch of kids were so busy trying to get out of the way, they fell over the chairs and knocked us over.”
Etienne felt his arms and ribs, only now beginning to register the pain, where bruises must be forming. Nothing broken. Why was it so goddamned difficult to get the chain of events in order?
“And?”
“The crazy guy was suddenly right there by us. Dunno how, he’d seemed so far away only seconds before, whacking away at...it was like he was possessed or something ’cause he just kept hacking at everyone he could r
each and your sister just, just stood there and...punched him.” Etienne flexed his hands.
Damon pulled in a deep breath, his arms folded and his fingers digging into his skin.
Etienne didn’t need to ask whether Damon also wondered the same thing. How many had been hurt? How many were dead? From inside the hall, people sobbed and moaned. Some cried out. The bass rumble of Mr. Bayly’s voice as he gave terse orders was anything but comforting.
Chapter 21
Daddy Dearest
Helen slumped, her body robbed of all strength. Arwen had stopped convulsing as Etienne made his exit. Someone crouched next to Helen, who looked up from Arwen’s prone form long enough for her to recognize Helouise’s concerned features.
“Are you okay? And Arwen?”
“She’s stopped.”
“Good. Keep watching her until the paramedics come. Call if she stops breathing or starts choking. Let’s just put her in recovery position.”
Helen didn’t ask, assuming that the older girl knew what she was about rolling Arwen onto her side. The prefect must have completed a first aid course.
Arwen’s fingers remained limp in Helen’s grasp, her skin cold and clammy. Helen kept her head down, not wanting to look around at the bodies, unwilling to confirm the iron tang of the lost blood she knew must stain the wooden floor.
The confusion around her receded, a dull roar Helen made a supreme effort to block.
She didn’t want to know what had just happened, and viewed the events that followed as if she merely watched a television show. Paramedics in their dark blue jumpsuits arrived. Helen allowed someone, a teacher, to lead her to the staff room where she was handed a cup of too-sweet tea. Tears blurred her vision, yet refused to fall, burning her eyes.
This entire morning was just a bad joke. All of this was just some sick, twisted joke.
Flashes of a jerky, attenuated figure whose wind-milling arms supported the impossible steel of a sword kept replaying. Helen’s limbs refused to co-operate, her muscles leaden.
The unfolding scenes had been like something out of a bad, B-grade movie. Not that there was such a thing as a good B-grade movie.
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