by Jenna Black
“What I really want,” Aleric continued, “is your blood, willingly spilled. It’s the ‘willingly’ part that should give you some reason to believe me. I can hardly expect you to give your blood willingly if I haven’t released your boyfriend, now, can I?”
His reasoning made a certain amount of sense, but that didn’t mean I trusted it. Not for a second, especially when I knew how loosely “willingly” could be interpreted. What if I handed myself over and Aleric started torturing Luke? I’d do just about anything “willingly” to stop that from happening. But again, I knew Aleric too well. Once he got what he wanted out of me, there would be nothing to stop him from hurting Luke. No, he would probably torture Luke to death right in front of my eyes just to punish me for being difficult.
Handing myself over to Aleric was not going to save Luke, and I was certain he’d find a way to twist my arm into opening another gate. Probably many other gates. So obviously handing myself over was out of the question.
The only problem? Not turning myself over was just as bad. I couldn’t just abandon Luke.
“I know you don’t trust my word,” Aleric said, “and I don’t blame you. But you can have it anyway. I give you my word that if you come to me and open a single new gate for me, I will release your would-be hero unharmed.”
Aleric’s word meant nothing. We both knew that. But oh how I wanted to believe him, how I wanted to believe it was in my power to save Luke. Just like I’d wanted to believe Aleric when he’d claimed my dad was still alive.
“I guess you’ve abandoned the thing about how my dad isn’t dead and you’ll free him if I just do one little thing for you.”
I could almost hear his shrug. “I didn’t have any real leverage then. This time, I do.”
I closed my eyes, frantically searching for another option, some other way to force Aleric to keep his word. I fingered the gun again, remembering that for whatever reason, Aleric wanted me alive. He said he only wanted me to open a single gate for him, but obviously that was just another one of his lies. He wanted me to keep giving blood until the whole world was covered with gates and condemned to darkness. Maybe if I threatened to shoot myself and could sound like I really meant it …
There was a fundamental flaw in that plan, I realized. Shooting myself would mean voluntarily spilling my own blood, and that was exactly what Aleric wanted from me. Maybe he’d rather have me as a renewable resource, but there was too high a chance he would call my bluff. I could threaten to blow my brains out right here inside this house, where the night magic couldn’t get to me, but I doubted I could convince him I really meant it.
If only I were some kind of superspy, I could probably use an insta-kill suicide pill that would take me out without spilling my blood. That might make a more convincing threat.
The idea came into my head fully formed, and it resonated somewhere deep inside me. The only way I could force Aleric to keep his word was to make him genuinely fear that I would die without spilling my blood. And I knew how to make that happen.
“Give me proof that Luke is alive,” I said, my heart hammering.
The sound became tinny, and I realized Aleric had put me on speaker. “She wants to know that you’re alive,” he said, presumably to Luke.
I waited for the sound of Luke’s voice, but it didn’t come. Aleric sighed dramatically.
“Look, sport,” he said, “I can give her proof of life by making you scream, but I don’t think she would like that very much, and I guarantee you wouldn’t enjoy it. So just talk so we can move this thing along.”
There was another moment of silence, but Luke apparently realized there was no point in suffering just for the hell of it. “I’m alive,” he said resignedly. “But don’t you dare hand yourself over. He’s going to kill me anyway, and—” His voice cut out when Aleric turned the speaker off.
“Don’t listen to your white knight,” Aleric said. “It’s all very tragically heroic of him to tell you not to come, but I guarantee I can make him change his tune if you don’t give me what I want.”
“I’ll give myself up,” I said, shivering as I tried not to think too much about what I was saying. “But I’ll do it on my own terms.”
“And what might those terms be?” he asked, sounding amused.
I sucked in a deep breath to still my shaking. “Meet me tomorrow at five o’clock P.M. on the Market Street Bridge. Bring Luke with you so I can see him and confirm that he’s whole.”
“Tomorrow?” He didn’t sound so amused this time. More annoyed—and puzzled. “You’re going to leave your love to my tender mercies all of tonight and all of the day tomorrow?”
I shuddered, but it couldn’t be helped. If I set foot outside during the night, his creatures would see me and drag me to him in chains if need be. “I’m not stupid enough to go strolling through the city at night. I’ll meet you tomorrow, and I’ll get to the bridge during the daytime. I presume you’ll have Luke in the square during the day and that the two of you can get to the bridge in about fifteen minutes on foot.”
“We can put this off until tomorrow if you want,” Aleric said, “but I can’t promise your hero will be in quite as good shape tomorrow as he is now.”
My hand clenched around the phone. “If you want a willing blood donor, then he’d better be in mint condition. Like I said, we’re doing this on my terms, or we’re not doing it at all.”
“Oh, very well,” Aleric said. “We’ll do it your way. But I have a condition of my own: bring Piper with you. She and I have a score to settle.”
“I don’t know where she is,” I lied, smoothly I thought. “I made her let me out of the car because I didn’t trust her.”
“All I can say is you’d better find her. I’ll concede to your other terms and keep your boy intact until the meeting, but only if I have your word you will deliver Piper to me.”
“Fine. You have my word I will bring Piper to you if it’s at all humanly possible.”
Of course under the circumstances, my word was about as reliable as his.
“Then I’ll look forward to our touching reunion,” Aleric said. “Tomorrow night.”
I could almost see the unsavory gleam is his evil green eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As soon as the dawn Transition hit, I borrowed Piper’s car and drove it out to the bridge to plot out my strategy for tonight’s meeting with Aleric. I parked on Market Street, then proceeded on foot to the bridge. I leaned against the railing in what I hoped looked like a casual pose, looking down to figure out which way the water was flowing, then staring at the banks downriver in search of someplace I could climb out.
It didn’t look super promising. The reinforced banks of the river didn’t look too high from where I was standing, but I imagined they’d look pretty damn high if I were in the water. Too high to have a hope of climbing. The only likely spot downriver was a small pier that jutted into the river and had a couple of boats tethered to it. If I could get to the boats, I might be able to climb out.
Assuming I survived falling off the bridge and swimming in icy water for that long. I’m a pretty good swimmer, but that pier was a long way away, and I had no idea how hard the current was going to be. And of course assuming the pier didn’t turn into something monstrous at night that would kill me instead of affording me a nice, safe exit.
Still, it wasn’t impossible to imagine I could make it there and pull myself out of the water. I would have to park Piper’s car somewhere close by, which would be kind of tricky given the lack of parking lots or public roads in the area, but no one was going to tow a car for a parking violation that close to Transition, so if I made it out of the water, I’d have a getaway vehicle handy.
Whether I had a reasonable chance of making a safe getaway driving a highly conspicuous car through the city streets at night was another question. Wherever I went for shelter, Aleric’s constructs would surely see me and let him know my location. So wherever it was, it would have to be able to withsta
nd an onslaught of Nightstruck and constructs until morning Transition.
After a thorough scouting mission that lasted till almost noon, I picked up some Chinese takeout and brought it back to our borrowed house. Piper was still bound up tightly in the basement, and when I offered to feed her the orange beef I’d bought just for her, Mr. Hyde glared at me so fiercely I felt it like a physical blow and jerked back.
Piper blinked the expression away and replaced it with a pleading look that hurt almost as much. “Please, Becket,” she said. “You can’t just leave me tied up in this basement forever. Either kill me, or set me free.”
I snorted and stabbed at my cashew chicken with my chopsticks. “No freaking way.”
“Then what are you going to do with me?”
That was a good question. Aleric had demanded I bring Piper to our meeting, but even if my conscience could have handled handing over another human being—one who still mattered to me despite everything, and who in her own half-assed way had saved me last night—the logistics were impossible. Piper might want to die, but not by Aleric’s cruel hands. I had to be on the bridge before Transition hit, and there was no way I could get Piper there by force without well-meaning passersby interfering.
“Where did you go all morning?” she asked when she realized I was not about to answer her first question.
I hadn’t yet told her about my talk with Aleric, and I didn’t expect her to be especially helpful, but if nothing else, perhaps talking about my plan out loud would help me spot any glaring flaws I had missed.
The look of incredulity on her face when I told her what I had in mind was … disconcerting. When a person who admitted she probably should have been institutionalized looks at you like you’re the one who’s crazy, it’s hard to maintain an aura of confidence.
“You’re going to get yourself and Luke killed,” was her oh-so-helpful feedback when I’d finished. Just what I needed to hear when my confidence was at an all-time low.
“I’m open to suggestions,” I snapped. “Have you figured out any way I can hurt Aleric short of killing myself?”
“I told you I didn’t mean that,” she snapped back. “I don’t want you to kill yourself, and that’s what it sounds like you’re planning to do.”
I guess I hadn’t managed to make my escape plan sound terribly plausible when I’d explained it to her. But at some point, any plan was better than no plan. And there was no way I was letting Aleric keep Luke.
“If you come up with anything constructive to say,” I told Piper, “give me a holler. Otherwise, keep your opinions to yourself.”
I stormed out of the basement as Piper went into full Mr. Hyde mode and started ranting and screaming at me. Most of what she said made little to no sense, although somewhere in there she did wonder what would happen to her if I left her tied up in the basement while I went out to get myself killed.
My faith in my ability to escape the situation I was about to put myself in wasn’t exactly at an all-time high, but I didn’t think it was as improbable as Piper made it sound. Sure, it would be hard, and there were a lot of things that could go wrong. But there was still a chance it could succeed. If I managed to get back to this house in one piece, I could barricade myself in the basement, call for help, and hope enough police would come to chase off whatever Nightstruck and constructs Aleric sent after me.
My odds might not be all that high, but I figured Luke would stand a much better chance of surviving, and if I got him away from Aleric, that would make tonight’s adventure at least a partial win. No matter what else happened afterward.
For all Piper’s foaming at the mouth, she had raised a legitimate question when she’d asked what would happen to her if I got killed. I hoped like hell that wouldn’t happen, but as the endless—and yet simultaneously way-too-short—afternoon dragged on, I decided the only decent thing to do was to make a contingency plan.
As I walked from my illegal parking place near the pier to the Market Street Bridge, I put the battery back in my phone and composed a text to Sam, letting him know where Piper was and asking him to get her back to her parents—or to an institution, if that was truly where she belonged. I waited until I reached the bridge to send it, then took out the battery again. There was nothing to do now but wait.
* * *
There were only about ten minutes left until sunset when I got to the middle of the bridge, so there was barely anyone in sight. Thirtieth Street Station, which in the old days would have been bustling at this hour, was quiet and deserted on the other side of the river. Those few people I saw were either driving at warp speed or moving at a brisk pace just short of a sprint, hurrying to get indoors before things went to hell. A couple of people gave me worried glances as they raced past, but luckily no one tried to drag me to safety.
I crept to the stone railing on the side of the bridge and peeked over. The water seemed a very long way down, but not far enough down for the fall to kill me. I realized that if it were high enough to kill me, there’d probably be safety fences around the edges to prevent jumpers.
No, if I was going to die here tonight, it was most likely going to be from drowning or hypothermia. Piper’s cheerful red car looked depressingly far away, and I wondered if my heavy winter coat was going to drag me down to a watery grave.
At about five minutes before Transition, the street around me was completely empty, no cars or pedestrians anywhere in sight. It was like I had entered a ghost town or was the star of some bleak post-apocalyptic movie. Shaking a little with cold and fear, I climbed up onto the stone railing, which was easily wide enough to stand on.
A gust of cold wind hit me, and I almost lost my balance and went plunging into the water too early. Adrenaline spiked in my system, my heart leaping into my throat. It was really hard not to climb right back down to safety. I hoped that when the time came, I’d have the courage to do what I had to do.
The sun kept sinking lower and lower on the horizon. I took out my gun, hoping I’d be able to discourage any of Aleric’s entourage of Nightstruck from making an immediate grab for me.
I looked down at the railing beneath my feet and had another burst of adrenaline as I recognized a potential pitfall that I hadn’t even considered: what was this railing going to be after Transition hit? It likely wasn’t going to be just a plain stone railing. But it was far too late to change the plan now, so I had to hope it would remain something I could stand on—and wouldn’t turn into something that would eat me.
Transition began, and I watched the familiar city morph before my eyes into something strange and terrible. A few feet to my right on a raised section of the railing was a large, treelike lamp with several globes that would be lit at night. As I watched, those globes sprouted wicked metal spikes. The sconces they were sitting on changed into rusty chains, and the spiked balls dropped downward with a loud metallic clank that made me jump and almost lose my footing for the second time.
On the sidewalk across from me sat an ordinary metal trash can, which opened like a giant mouth and sprouted teeth. It kept expanding outward until its outside edges hit the pavement, at which point the teeth pressed flat. When full dark hit, it would be barely visible, but I knew those teeth would snap shut like a bear trap if anyone should accidentally set foot on it.
Beneath my feet, the stone railing rippled and shuddered. I held my arms out to both sides to keep my balance as the stone narrowed until it was barely wide enough to stand on. Ridges and curves formed, and the gray stone turned yellowish ivory. When it stopped changing, I saw that I was standing on a pair of impossibly large vertebrae and that the entire railing had turned into a long, curving spine.
I readjusted my stance, trying to find a steady balance on the uneven surface. The wind kicked up again, tugging at the ends of my coat and adding an extra degree of difficulty. It wasn’t exactly a secure and comfortable position, but it could have been a lot worse. I hoped I hadn’t made any other bad assumptions that were going to come back and bite me.<
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The Nightstruck seemed to appear out of thin air, blinking and looking momentarily confused. I remembered what it felt like to be in their shoes. They didn’t remember how they’d gotten there, nor did they necessarily know where they were. Their last memory would be of whatever they’d been doing right before dawn. It was disorienting, but it’s amazing what you get used to.
There were three of them on the bridge, two guys and a girl, all of whom focused on me the moment they got their bearings. I raised my gun, trying not to disturb my balance, and shouted, “None of you come any closer.”
The guys both raised their hands in gestures of surrender, but the girl—woman, actually, now that I got a better look at her and realized that despite her classic teenage Goth gear, she was probably pushing fifty—looked shifty-eyed in a way that made me instantly watchful. I aimed my gun directly at the center of her chest and tried again.
“Aleric is coming for me,” I said, and was proud of myself for not shivering or shuddering at the thought. “He won’t be happy with you if anything happens to me before he gets here.”
The woman considered my words for a moment, then shrugged. Her expression as she watched me wasn’t what I’d call wholesome, but at least she no longer looked like she was contemplating eating me for breakfast.
“Fine. Let’s wait for Al.” She laughed. “This is going to be fun.”
She and her two friends fanned out, presumably blocking off my escape routes in case I decided I’d rather cut and run. I fervently wished running away were one of my options. I lowered the gun, because there was only so long I could hold it up before my arms started getting tired, and because it was easier to balance if I wasn’t trying to aim at someone, but I didn’t put it away.
It would take a few minutes for Aleric and Luke to get to the bridge from the square, and the Nightstruck quickly grew bored with just standing there watching me. The two men decided it would be fun to have an explicit and inventively detailed discussion about what they would do to me when Aleric was through with me. I tried not to listen, I really did, but not listening is not the same as not hearing.