by Helena Maeve
At the top of the stairs, Malachi casually retrieved his foot from under his sister’s hand and wiped the bloodied toe against her sleeve. “Well, perhaps you are both guilty.”
“He’s not,” Halloran growled.
Asher would’ve liked to offer a protest of his own, but his throat had clamped shut. He couldn’t look away from Angelita slowly breathing her last.
“Save it for the trial. The crypt ought to do you just fine until then.” With a wave of the hand, Malachi gestured his men to remove them.
Halloran shook off the first hand that touched him. He broke the second. But he was just a vampire and he’d wasted quite a bit of his blood on Asher. It didn’t take long for Malachi’s acolytes to drive him to his knees.
Asher found himself dragged down, too, the violence unnecessary but indiscriminate. He didn’t have the strength to resist.
He glimpsed of Uncle Howard scrabbling to stand as the vampires closed in, but none had been ordered to attack him. Maud and Blackjack were on their feet, too, but neither said nor did anything to stop Malachi.
Cowards.
Asher spat in their direction. One of Malachi’s brethren whacked him over the ear with the back of a heavy fist. He must’ve thought the phlegm meant for him.
The blow dimmed Asher’s awareness enough that he put up no fight as they hauled him through the square.
A kaleidoscope of colors exploded behind his eyes once inside the church. The empty hall echoed with the scrape of boots. He lost his footing halfway down the stairs and landed in the crypt on hands and knees. Only Halloran’s timely grab stopped him from cracking his skull against the stone.
The door slammed shut behind them, draining what little light there was from the small, dark chamber.
Asher slumped against the bottom step. “They know you can break through that… right?”
Halloran gave a noncommittal grunt.
“Can’t you?”
“Maybe if I had a couple of bloodbags.”
The shadows seemed to muffle his voice. The sting of the retort leached out by the same token.
“You got me.”
“And you’re so clever you couldn’t teach a hen to cluck.”
“You need me clever to be your dinner? Here.” Asher pushed up his sleeve. He couldn’t feel Malachi’s bite anymore, courtesy of Halloran’s generosity, and though the phantom pain of cattle hooves lingered, he knew his broken bones had reset themselves back into alignment. “Have at it and get us out of here.”
“And then what?” Pitch-black darkness concealed Halloran’s approach. Only the jangle of his spurs gave him away. “We shoot our way outta here?”
“Maud and Blackjack—”
“Will be racin’ out of town as we speak, if they got any brains left.”
Although he knew Halloran couldn’t see it, Asher scowled. “I thought you trusted ’em to be loyal.”
“There’s loyal, and there’s plain dumb. Ain’t a bloodsucker in Sargasso who don’t want to rip us to shreds right now.”
“What’re you saying? That Malachi just saved our lives?”
Halloran’s silence could well have been a denial, but without the benefit of seeing his expression, all Asher had to go on was his own gut feeling.
“Why the hell would he do that? He shot his own sister—”
“Girl with her abilities…wouldn’t you?”
No, ’cause I ain’t a psychopath. Asher bit back his first retort. “You knew?”
“Doc’s been getting her medication on the sly. Romero noticed it a couple of weeks ago.”
“And, what, she tells you everything?”
The shadows were too compact to make out Halloran’s nod, but Asher felt it, just like he felt the scrape of a sleeve against his arm as Halloran settled beside him. Whatever he was hoping to accomplish by pacing the crypt, he appeared to have given up the search.
“What happens now? We wait for Malachi to put us on trial?”
“Now we find out how Sargasso copes without its tyrant-in-chief.” Halloran’s voice was a warm, low rumble in his ear. “Ain’t that what you wanted all along?”
Asher thought of the bodies strewn all over Main Street, of Angelita bleeding to death on the town hall steps.
“I didn’t plan for it to work out like this—”
“’Course not.”
“But you did.” Asher took Halloran’s silence to mean that he was right.
Octavian, Redemption and now Ambrose—all of them were parts of a bigger whole. By chance or design, Halloran had managed to bring back Uncle Howard and maneuver so that they all survived the fallout.
Resentment had blinded Asher to his machinations in the past.
It took a little fumbling to find Halloran’s hand in the dark and intertwine their fingers. Ambrose’s dried blood had turned Halloran’s skin even coarser.
“You’re gonna tell me everything,” Asher told him, resting his head on Halloran’s broad shoulder. “And when you’re done, we’ll find a way out of here. Do you understand me? I’ve had enough of Sargasso.”
“We can’t,” said Halloran, his voice a whisper.
“Why?”
“Your uncle’s not the only one who made it out of Redemption alive.” Halloran wound an arm around Asher’s shoulders and pressed his lips to his ear. “They’ve been scouting us since the New Morning blaze. ’Bout a handful, up on the ridges.”
“That’s what you were lookin’ at all those nights…” Not scanning the horizon for cattle rustlers, but keeping an eye on a far greater threat.
Halloran hummed in acquiescence. “If it were me, I’d strike soon, ’fore Sargasso’s had time to get its ducks in order.”
Asher tried to imagine it—Halloran at the head of a vampire outfit hell-bent on destruction. The closest he could come was the night Redemption fell. “How soon is soon?”
“If it were me?” Halloran’s voice rumbled deep in his chest. “Tonight.”
Asher brushed his lips to Halloran’s wrist. “Thank God. I’ve had enough of prisons.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Asher must have drifted off at some point. He was briefly startled to find himself in darkness when he opened his eyes. The dreams he’d enjoyed had distracted him with copper tongues and white blazes. The heat of a thousand fires seeped quickly from his bones as he shifted on the icy stone.
“Sorry.”
Asher’s pillow happened to speak in Halloran’s gravelly baritone.
“What?”
“They’re movin’ around upstairs. Figured you ought to wake up.”
“Were you in my dreams again?”
There was too little space between their bodies for Halloran to feign ignorance. “Only for a moment. Promise.”
“A vampire’s word,” Asher scoffed, pushing himself upright. Though Halloran ran a little colder than most men, he was still preferable to the cold ground. “How long was I out?”
“Five hours or so.”
Long enough for dusk to have fallen over the valley. Asher scrubbed the grit from his eyes. His shoulders clanged when he stretched, the metal bits of him protesting hard use. “Guess your blood can’t fix machines, huh?”
“If it weren’t for my blood, you wouldn’t be like this.”
“Spare me the pity.”
Halloran pulled Asher back by the scruff. “Don’t do nothin’ stupid tonight. If I’m right, they’ll come at us hard, fixin’ to raze Sargasso like we did their town.”
Asher tilted his head back into Halloran’s grip. “You worried about me?”
“You’re still my property.”
“Still nothin’ special too,” Asher pointed out tartly.
He imagined Halloran scowling at him for that but had no way of knowing how accurate the prediction was until the crypt door swung open. A shaft of light blinded him. It was only a gas lamp, held aloft in an elegant hand.
Asher scrambled to his feet. “Uncle Howard?”
He shouldn’t hav
e been surprised. If these last months had revealed anything it was that he didn’t know his own flesh and blood all that well.
“Five minutes,” one of the jailers growled.
“That will be sufficient. Do you mind leaving the door open until—”
Malachi’s man slammed it shut before Howard could finish pleading. Darkness sealed them in.
“Oh-oh, dear.” Uncle Howard pressed a hand to the wall to steady himself and progressed down the narrow stone steps with a slow tread. A long exhale fled his lungs once he reached the bottom. “Now, then—”
“What’re you doing here?” Asher blurted out.
The gas lamp cast a quivering milky glow around the crypt. Plaques and urns dedicated to the town’s founders reflected its light. As tempting as it was for Asher to take in his surroundings for the first time, he was more concerned that his uncle had been locked in with a bloodthirsty vampire.
“Malachi has generously allowed me to check that you haven’t been damaged,” Howard explained.
“That ain’t generosity,” Halloran ground out.
He hadn’t bothered rising, though whether he was too weak to manage it or too lethargic, Asher had no way of knowing.
As he placed the gas lamp on the floor, Howard’s gaze dipped briefly to Asher’s hybrid hand. “I’m well aware, Mr. Halloran. And we can certainly sit around and debate Malachi’s true intentions in the five minutes I have obtained with you or—”
“What happened? Why did you come back?” Asher asked.
Shadows pooled under Howard’s eyebrows. “Train service into the valley has been suspended. We would have killed our horses trying to reach Mesa, my boy… And, truth be told, we weren’t the only ones.”
“The survivors from Redemption,” Halloran guessed.
Howard nodded. “Fortunately they were too disorganized to pose any risk, but they made several attempts to curtail our journey. We judged it safer to turn back.”
He retrieved two vials from the inner pocket of his dusty frock coat and peered at them through his spectacles. “We found refuge in the ruins of Redemption for a while. Survived by scavenging what we could—”
“We?” Asher repeated. “You mean Wesley and Connie…?” So many bodies on Main Street, so many guns being fired left and right with no clear sight of the target. A fist closed around his heart. “Are they…”
Uncle Howard pressed a bony, wrinkled finger to his lips. “Malachi’s spies,” he mouthed and said, “I’m sorry, son. It’s only me.”
I don’t believe you. Asher raked his hands through his hair. That was the long and short of it right there. He didn’t know which way was up anymore.
Was he talking to Howard, the uncle who’d raised him, or Howard, the man who had twisted human beings into creatures that would serve Ambrose without demur?
“You were in the clear, everyone thought you were dead…” Asher shook his head. “Why come back now?”
“For you, of course.”
“You knew I made it out of Redemption?”
“Once you were brought to Willowbranch, I could see you distinctly through the telescope.” Uncle Howard paused. “I had quite a bit of time on my hands, what with being alone in a ghost town. I came up with a number of new instruments. I’ll show you after the trial—”
“Doubt Malachi would approve,” Asher cut him off.
“Ah, yes.” Howard seemed to remember himself then. “Well, do sit down and I’ll have a look at you.” He handed the vials over to Halloran, who frowned at the labels.
It comforted Asher to see a vampire God only knew how much older than he was as perplexed as he felt.
Howard mimed that he should uncap and drink the contents. Apparently this, too, fell outside the narrow bounds of Malachi’s endorsement.
“How are you still in his good graces?” Asher asked, not particularly concerned with being overheard. “You fled—”
“To rescue you from your captors.”
A beat passed before Asher understood that Uncle Howard was referring to Halloran. “But… Ambrose gave me to him.”
“Even great men make mistakes. No offense, Mr. Halloran.”
“None taken.” The corner of Halloran’s mouth twitched as if he found this amusing.
Asher paced away, turning his back on his uncle. He might have been speaking to a stranger. The Howard he knew was oblivious to the point of living in a world of his own imagining. Nothing fazed him because nothing reached him in his dark, cramped office. Once Asher came of age, he all but stopped leaving the house, except when he was summoned to town hall.
“Did you hear about Dorcas?” Asher heard himself ask.
Uncle Howard mimicked Malachi’s confusion when Asher had shared the news with him. “Who?”
“One of Ambrose’s maids.” The brunette with the doe eyes, Asher might’ve said, but now he thought about it, weren’t they all dark-haired? The late mayor must’ve had a preference for young women with dark hair and soft features.
“Ah yes, the one who looked—”
“Like Angelita.”
That was it. Ambrose’s women might have been sisters. Chosen for their resemblance, they had been twisted—the maids into half-living automatons, Angelita into something altogether different. And none of it would have been possible without Howard’s help.
“How could you?”
“Asher, it’s not as simple as you think—I never wanted any of this for you…”
“Isn’t it? You operated on those women. You did things…”Asher shook his head. “I refuse to believe they signed on to be mangled like that, but, please, tell me I’m wrong.” He took a step toward his uncle, then another. “Tell me they knew you’d open their skulls and fiddle with everything that made them human.” Asher’s voice threatened to crack with emotion. “Tell me! Please, tell me—”
Halloran materialized by his side. “Asher, enough.”
“No. I want to hear him say it. I want to know that my uncle isn’t as bad as them.” As the bloodsuckers Asher had despised his whole life.
As the one currently holding him back, a burly arm around his waist, so Asher wouldn’t grab Howard by the lapels and shake him.
“My dear boy…” Howard sighed. “I won’t lie to you.”
Emotion thickened Asher’s voice. “Then leave! I don’t want your help.”
“It is not a matter of what you want—”
“Leave!” Asher shouted. Only the barrier of Halloran’s muscular forearm stopped him shoving Howard back.
The commotion alerted the thugs at the top of the stairs, who wrenched the door open and peered down at them as if looking upon squabbling dogs.
“Five minutes’re up.”
Uncle Howard adjusted his glasses with a trembling hand. “Yes, I…yes. I’ll be right there.”
“Now, Grandpa.”
“Think you should go,” said Halloran, so Asher didn’t have to.
Howard swung his gaze from vampire to nephew and back. His nod was solemn. Regardless of whatever Asher had discovered about him, he was still not man easily given to sentimental outbursts.
Only once Malachi’s men had slammed and locked the door behind him did Asher find it possible to breathe again.
His efforts to disentangle himself from Halloran’s hold met no resistance. The gas lamp cast his shadow over the stone floor. He needed far more space than the length and breadth of the crypt to walk off the rage and betrayal boiling in his gut.
He was aware of Halloran’s gaze following him, the only part of him to set him apart from the caryatids holding up the foundations of the church.
“I know what you’re gonna say,” Asher muttered. “I don’t care that he’s family. I don’t care that he raised me. He ain’t even sorry.”
He might as well have been one of Asher’s jailers, content to follow orders with no regard for whom it hurt.
“I ain’t sorry, neither,” Halloran pointed out.
“You’re supposed to be rotten.”
/>
“’Cause I’m a vampire.”
“’Cause you’re an outlaw.”
Halloran quirked his eyebrows. “So are you. Make it up to the Pearly Gates and St. Peter’s gonna turn you away not once but twice.”
“I ain’t so concerned with the saints right now. Or did you forget where we are?”
“Church?” Halloran guessed.
“Prison,” Asher corrected, though both were accurate. Faith was a tricky thing in Sargasso. The law was even trickier. Both had a way of landing the innocent into trouble while guilty men like Uncle Howard walked free.
“What’s your end-game?”
Asher quit his pacing. “Get out, get away, live free. Same it’s always been.”
“In that case…” Halloran uncorked the vials and feigned a toast. “Bottoms up.”
Before Asher could stop him, he’d poured both down the gullet and swallowed the dark brew Howard had gifted them. The labels read AF and AA.
Halloran, of course, wouldn’t have known that.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Halloran sucked in a breath, as though Asher biting his neck was worth acknowledging. “What was that for?”
“Checking to see if you’re still alive.”
The grip in Asher’s hair tightened in retribution, his scalp prickling with the sting.
“I’m a vampire, bloodbag. Already died once.”
“Not for good, though. Not yet. Keep taking treats from strangers and who knows? Maybe that’ll change.”
The gibe was only half-meant. The hours had crept sluggishly along since Uncle Howard’s visit, with no other guests. The gas lamp’s hazy gleam had begun to wane. Outside, the moon would be bright in the sky by now. Sargasso would have shut its doors and windows for the night.
What were the survivors from Redemption waiting for?
“You humans,” Halloran rumbled, sliding his arm higher up Asher’s chest. “You always think in black and white.”
Between cold stone and a cold body at his back, Asher couldn’t quite suppress a shiver. He’d draped himself over Halloran in a moment of reckless indifference, expecting to be shoved off. Once again, Halloran had bucked his expectations. The proprietary clutch of his fingers in Asher’s hair even gentled now and again, as though he enjoyed petting him.