Third Strike

by Heather Brewer

  “Yes, but I thought . . .” The light in Sirus’s eyes changed then, as if something had just been answered for him. He seemed sad, but at the same time, strangely at peace. Joss wondered what he was thinking. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I never did anything purposefully to hurt you, Joss. I need you to trust me on that.”

  “Why? Why should I trust a monster like you?”

  “Because you’re the only one who knows that I’m alive who still has the ability to see past the fangs to the man beneath this vampire exterior.” Sirus shook his head and stepped closer, placing a caring hand on Joss’s shoulder. As he squeezed it, he said, “I’m not just a vampire, Joss, and I think you know that. I’m Sirus. And I never stopped caring about you.”

  It might have been a mistake to believe Sirus. But Joss couldn’t help it. He believed every word, and at the moment, he didn’t give a crap if he only believed because of vampire mind control or some other supernatural thought manipulation. He believed Sirus. And Joss was relieved to have Sirus back in his life. He could only imagine how Sirus’s daughter would feel in the same situation. “Does Kat know that you’re still alive?”

  “No.” Sirus released a breath and seemed to relax some.

  “Why haven’t you told her yet?”

  “I’m worried about her reaction. Kat wants me to go through with our plans to turn her into a vampire, and I cannot bear the thought of that sweet girl becoming what I have become. I just can’t take the idea of her doing all that I have done, simply in the name of survival. Not to mention the politics.”

  “If that’s the issue—and trust me, I’m not saying it’s a good idea to turn your daughter into a bloodsucking creature of the night—then why not just find some other vampire to turn her?” It seemed simple enough. But then, if it were really that simple, why hadn’t Kat just found a vampire to turn her already? Especially since she was under the impression that her dad was dead?

  “I know Kat.” Sirus sighed. “She’d only ever turn if it was by her father’s doing.”

  “She’d understand, you know. If you took the time to explain it to her. She’d probably be so relieved that you’re still alive that she’d forget all about becoming a vampire herself.” That’s what Joss was hoping, anyway. Kat could be pretty scary as a human. As a vampire? She’d be unstoppable.

  “You think so?” Joss nodded in response, and Sirus took a moment to consider this. Then he shook his head, his shoulders weighed down by guilt. “Losing me has probably affected her in the worst ways . . .”

  “Well, she’s kinda been stalking me. I think she intends to kill me. Or take my cousin away. Or something. I’m not sure.” He shrugged, hoping that Sirus would help him somehow. If anyone could talk some sense into Kat, it was Sirus.

  Sirus nodded and patted Joss on the back. “Maybe I can talk some sense into her. Will you come with me, so I can reveal myself to her and explain everything?”

  “Of course, Sirus.” A smile found its way to Joss’s lips at last. Maybe everything really was going to be okay, after all. As they moved toward the edge of the forest, Joss cast Sirus a sidelong glance and said, “Hey, what did you mean when you said to trust my dreams?”

  But Sirus didn’t have a chance to answer. Something unseen whipped between them, brushing Joss’s hair back from his forehead for a second, and the next thing Joss knew, Sirus was lying on the forest floor, coughing. Blood lined his lips. Fear filled his eyes. And the last thing that Joss noticed before the light left his mentor’s eyes was Joss’s own stake sticking out of Sirus’s chest. His body fell still, and Joss felt a black cloud of sorrow envelope his soul.

  Sirus was gone. For real this time. And it had been at Joss’s hand, in a way. If Joss hadn’t brought a weapon of vampire destruction into this scenario, maybe Sirus would still be alive. If Joss hadn’t . . .

  It was his fault. It was all his fault.

  Joss moved to Sirus and dropped to his knees. There was a brief moment, as he stretched his hand forward to check for a pulse, when Joss thought that maybe it had all been a dream—a horrific nightmare and soon he’d awaken in his bed. But the second his fingers touched the part of Sirus’s neck where his carotid artery should have been pulsing, all of Joss’s hopes flew away, like a puff of smoke. Sirus was dead.

  His chest seized. His vision blurred. He whipped his head around, trying to get a look at Sirus’s killer, but he was alone in the woods, alone in life, alone in his grief. And he had lost his father figure for the second time.

  14

  THE ONSET OF UNDERSTANDING

  The morning sun poured in through Joss’s window the following day, but he didn’t get out of bed, and only barely moved, just enough to lift his head and gaze at his window, guessing that it was at least nine, and maybe something closer to ten o’clock. He’d spent much of the night searching the woods for Sirus’s killer, and when the sun had hinted that it might soon come up, he’d begrudgingly made his way home. The moment his head had hit the pillow, he was out. Insomnia usually occupied his nights, but strangely, in his grief, Joss had found the ability to sleep deeply. Maybe it was his subconscious’s way of protecting him from the pain that he felt while he was awake. Or maybe it was his body’s way of just shutting down until Joss figured out exactly how to deal with how much he was hurting over the death of Sirus.

  It really made him think about his mom and dad, and how they were dealing with the death of Cecile by not dealing with it at all.

  He watched those curtains for a while, blocking out all thought, and finally, Joss sat up in bed. It was time to begin his day, grief or no grief. After a quick, hot shower, he dressed and made his way silently down the stairs.

  His mom was sitting at the dining room table, a steaming mug of coffee clutched in her hand. There was no sign of his dad or Henry, for which he was extremely grateful. He sat down in the chair across from his mother and folded his fingers together, silently musing precisely how he should begin.

  As if waking from a deep daydream, his mother blinked and finally took notice of him. “Oh. Good morning, Joss. Sleep okay?”

  It was a brief moment of clarity in her medication-induced fog. Joss knew that he’d better seize the moment, before she was lost to him again. “Not really. I don’t usually sleep very well.”

  “Nightmares?” The question rolled off her tongue as if she were well aware of his nocturnal issues. But she wasn’t. Of that he was almost certain.

  “No. Not last night.”

  “That’s good.” She put the mug to her lips and sipped. When she spoke again, her voice was hushed in concern. “Sometimes I hear you cry out at night. I worry . . .”

  A lump appeared in Joss’s throat. She worried about him. He honestly hadn’t thought that she was capable of that anymore. He’d thought that she was lost to him forever, the way that Cecile was. The way that Sirus was.

  He stretched his right hand out slowly and took his mom’s hand in his. It took a second, but she finally met his eyes. They sat there in silence, holding hands. Joss spent those moments searching for the right words. Finally, when he thought that maybe he’d found them, he began. “I dream about Cecile sometimes. About what happened. I blame myself for her dying. And I blame her death for our family being so broken. Sometimes I wonder if a person can ever really heal after losing someone to death. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get over that feeling of loss. Do you . . . ever think about things like that?”

  Her eyes shimmered as she squeezed Joss’s hand. She pulled her hand away and picked up her coffee mug once again, sipping its contents quietly.

  Joss wanted an answer. More than that, he needed an answer. He needed to know that he wasn’t the only one who felt so alone, so broken after death had infected his life. He needed to be understood.

  As he opened his mouth again, to tell her precisely that, he noticed that the haze had returned to her eyes. His mother was gon
e again, her mind hiding in whatever place it hid when pain breached her perimeter. The sight of that haze in her eyes angered him. But more than that, it hurt him. Especially when he looked at the prescription bottles on the table. “Mom . . . I wish you wouldn’t take so many pills.”

  “I have to. The doctor says the medication helps me, Joss.” Her voice was even, almost robotic.

  Fury welled up inside of Joss then, and before he knew what he was doing, he picked up the bottles from the table and whipped them across the room, smashing them against the wall. The lids popped surprisingly easily from the plastic containers and pills flew everywhere. Joss shouted, “They don’t help anything!”

  His mom’s robotic stare turned to him for the moment, and Joss knew that he had to get out of that room before he tried to shake the sanity back into her.

  “It doesn’t help you, Mom. The stupid medication doesn’t help you at all. It makes you different.” He stood, but just as he’d begun to turn away, he turned back to face his mother. He leaned down, meeting her eyes so that he could be sure that she heard him. “I miss the way you used to be. Before Cecile died.”

  As he stepped outside, he inhaled the fresh air and focused on how it made him physically feel. He could focus on the physical. Just not the emotional. Not now. Even though that was all his suffering mind seemed to want to notice.

  His walk to Paty’s cottage was brief, but blissfully uneventful. He was relieved not to encounter anyone along the way. Joss didn’t feel much like talking. Even inane chitchat didn’t appeal to him as he moved from his house to his fellow Slayer’s temporary quarters. All he wanted was silence, and the ability to forget.

  Silence was all he was given by whatever force makes the Universe operate. It was enough, for the moment.

  Before he could knock on Paty’s door, she opened it, as if she’d been awaiting his arrival. She met Joss’s surprised expression with a smile. “I’m so glad you’re here, Joss. I’m bored out of my skull. Come on in. You hungry? I was just getting ready to make a sandwich. Want one?”

  She led him inside and started gathering items from the refrigerator without waiting for his response. Joss followed her, taking his seat at the counter. As she moved about the kitchen, creating a lunchtime masterpiece, Paty hummed, happy to have something to do and someone to take care of. Joss didn’t have the heart to tell her that the last thing he wanted to do was eat anything. Sorrow had a funny way of erasing even the healthiest teenage boy’s appetite. But Paty treated him like a son, and when a mother’s son needed to eat but didn’t feel like it, she fed him.

  The plate that Paty set in front of him moments later was small and white, with a thin silver line along its rim. Sitting on it was the thickest turkey sandwich that Joss had ever seen. A pile of thinly sliced turkey breast, fresh lettuce, sliced green peppers, and yellow mustard all between two slices of Italian bread. Beside the sandwich was a pickle, and beside that was a handful of potato chips. Joss bet that it would be delicious. He just wasn’t hungry enough to find out. Still, he nodded his gratitude to Paty, who was chomping into her sandwich, identical to his, while standing across the counter from him. “Thanks, Paty. Looks good.”

  She nodded and chewed, and after a moment, cocked an eyebrow. She set her sandwich on a plate just like Joss’s and leaned over the counter, eyeballing him. “Something’s wrong. What’s happened, Joss? You look like you just lost your best friend.”

  The lump in Joss’s throat grew, choking him, but he managed to subdue it. But when he spoke, his voice cracked, hinting at the sadness that was going to break him into pieces at any moment. “I met with Sirus yesterday.”

  “Oh? How’d it go?”

  “He’s dead.”

  She paused, but only briefly. “Congratulations.”

  “Not by me. Someone—something—else killed him. They used my stake.”

  “I’ll report his demise to the Society this afternoon.” She seemed so casual, so flippant, as if they were discussing the death of a housefly. The crack in Joss’s heart widened into a chasm. He didn’t know why he’d expected Paty to be sympathetic, to hug him and tell him that it was okay to miss Sirus and that everything would be okay somehow. She was a Slayer. Of course she didn’t care about the death of yet another vampire. “So did you find what killed him and take care of it? Because whatever killed him likely killed those other people.”

  “I’m aware of that. And no. I looked for it, but couldn’t find anything.” He bent forward, resting his cheek on counter and fighting off the tears that threatened to pour down his cheeks. In his mind, all he could see was his stake sticking out of Sirus’s chest, out of Vlad’s back. Maybe Henry was right. Maybe he was the monster, after all. Maybe all Slayers were really just monsters.

  Paty lifted the lid off the cookie jar and retrieved a chocolate chip cookie. As she set it in front of the still-not-hungry Joss, she asked, “How’s the rest of your summer going?”

  After a long moment, Joss sat up again, breaking the cookie in half. He didn’t eat any of it, but instead took his time reducing it to tiny bits of cookie on his plate. The act of destruction was strangely comforting to him. He wondered what that said about him as a person. “My summer. Let’s see. My cousin Henry’s been a pain. I mean, I really like him, but he’s pretty convinced that I’m evil to the core for being a Slayer.”

  Echoing his words in his mind was the afterthought, “And I’m worried he might be right.”

  Paty took the sliced pickle from Joss’s plate and bit into it, nodding. “People get some messed up convictions once they’re exposed to the existence of vampires.”

  Joss watched her for a little while, and finally, in a burst of quiet courage, he whispered, “I think the Society is right to be concerned about me and my loyalty to the cause, Paty.”

  She looked at him then, and it was as if she’d finally really, truly looked at him for the first time. He saw empathy in her eyes, and the mothering concern that he’d been hoping to find. She reached across the counter and gave his arm a light squeeze. “Don’t worry about that right now, Joss. You’re still in shock over the whole Sirus thing. But you’ve got a job to do—an important job. Just let it go and focus on finding out whomever or whatever is killing people in Santa Carla. You’ve got more information now, more clues. You’re a Slayer. Do your job and stop mourning a dead vampire.”

  Her words struck him painfully, solidly in the chest. Let it never be said that Paty was shy or demure about her opinions.

  She was right, of course. And Joss had never been one to lose himself in grief, but instead to fight his way out of it, so the advice that she’d given him was solid. That didn’t mean that his heart wasn’t cracked or that he was going to leap from his chair and break into song, but it did help in some strange way. He nodded the gratitude to Paty that he could not form on his tongue and popped the last uncrushed bit of cookie into his mouth. He wasn’t hungry yet, but he was getting there.

  From the other end of the house, the dryer buzzer went off. Paty sighed and looked at him. “I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t go anywhere just yet.”

  He nodded that he wouldn’t leave, and after she stepped out of the room, Joss noticed her cell phone sitting on the counter. He knew that he shouldn’t do what he was thinking of doing, but feeling like a monster was weighing on him. Chastising himself for what he was about to do, he picked up the phone and scrolled through Paty’s contacts until he came to Morgan’s number. With a deep breath, he pressed the Call button and put the phone to his ear.

  Two rings. Three. Maybe Morgan wasn’t home. Maybe Morgan was too busy being a good Slayer to answer.

  A gruff voice cut on the line. “Paty? What’s up?”

  At first, Joss didn’t answer. Of course Morgan would think that it would be Paty calling. It was her phone, after all. He thought about hanging up then—maybe Paty and Morgan would blame the call on a butt dial
or something—but then Morgan said, “Is Joss okay?”

  No. Joss wasn’t okay. He needed to talk to a friend, because he was having some serious doubts about what it was to be a Slayer, in service to the Society. On the other end, Morgan was growing impatient. “Hello?”

  Joss gripped the cell phone in his hand, not knowing when Paty might walk back into the room. “Hey, Morgan. It’s . . . it’s me. Joss.”

  “Joss?” Morgan grew quiet then, and Joss wasn’t sure if he’d done the right thing by calling him. Then Morgan said, “Paty okay?”

  “Yeah. I just needed to talk. And my phone is . . . unavailable.” His chest felt tight. It felt like he was lying, but he wasn’t. And he didn’t plan to. He just had to be very careful what he said over the phone. In case the Society was listening.

  Morgan paused. “I see. Well . . . what can I help you with?”

  Joss pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand. After a moment, he whispered, “Do you ever wonder if we’re on the right side?”

  Morgan grew quiet. Joss was putting him on the spot, and in a potentially difficult situation. Joss didn’t blame him for not answering right away. He wouldn’t blame Morgan if he didn’t answer at all, if he simply hung up the phone and reported Joss’s doubts to the Society elders. But then Morgan said, “Wondering that would be considered blasphemy in the eyes of the Slayer Society, little brother.”

  Reading between the lines, Joss saw that Morgan was saying that yes, he’d wondered that, too, at times. He was telling Joss that he understood without actually saying it. Smart guy. “It certainly would.”

  “Wanna know what I think?” There was a rustling as Morgan adjusted his phone, followed by determined words. “I think there are no good sides to be on. I think a real man makes his own choices. I think you know what path is right for you, and you don’t have to follow one that’s been handed to you. You got it?”