Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3)

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  “I’ll play,” I said.

  “Oh goody!” Gripping the microphone in one hand, Nero clapped it against the palm of his opposing hand like a delighted child, the sound amplified into thunderclaps. “This is going to be evew so much fun!”

  Aware of both the clock ticking toward midnight and Abernathy in his frozen stupor, I looked at the coffins, reaching into the ether for some kind of guidance. Some kind of sign.

  “Number four,” I said.

  By the irritated grimace on Nero’s face, I gathered that I had been supposed to wait for some kind of formal invitation to make my first guess.

  As any seasoned game show host would, Nero recovered quickly. “Show us coffin numbew fouw!”

  Dour and dusty, Klaud shuffled over to coffin number four with maddening slowness.

  I held my breath as he open the lid.

  “Fuck!” My heart sank into my guts as a pale, blonde vampire popped up, her gold sequined dress throwing off sparks as she gave us a toothpaste ad grin, fangs and all. She handed an envelope to Klaud, who, somehow managing to move even slower, brought it to Nero.

  Nero opened it and drew out a card.

  “Hannewore Harvey, if you weave right now and agree to mawwy a human, you wiww receive wifetime protection from aww paranormaw cweatures, a house in the Hamptons, a check for a miwwion dowwars, and my personaw cowwection of Van Gogh paintings. Deaw,” Nero said, his eerie gaze catching mine, “or no deaw?”

  Klaud had done his homework. I had to give him that.

  “No deal,” I said without hesitation.

  I felt Morrison stiffen at my side.

  Nero’s small mouth flattened into an angry line. “Aww wight,” Nero said, regaining a measure of his contrived TV show host brightness. “What’s youw next choice?”

  Heart beating in my throat, I scanned the coffins once again, willing my mind, my heart to know which one held Abernathy. “Number ten,” I said.

  Once again, Klaud shuffled over to it, pushing open the lid.

  A stunning redhead in blue sequins sat up, handing over her creamy envelope with a sultry gaze in Morrison’s direction.

  My heart sank from my guts straight through to my shoes.

  Klaud brought the envelope to Nero, who opened it with a smugness that made me want to drive my knuckles into his already sunken mouth.

  “Hannewore Hawvey, if you weave wight now and agwee to mawwy a human,” he said, continuing the obvious theme, “you wiww weceive a wifetime suppwy of cheese from Wa Fromagewie in Pawis, fwee airwine tickets fow anywhewe in the worwd fow the duwation of youw naturaw wife, and entwance into any Awt Histowy PhD program at the univewsity of youw choice. Deaw,” Nero asked dramatically, “or no deaw?”

  I contemplated this for exactly zero seconds.

  “No deaw…er…deal,” I said, drawing a look of consternation from Morrison.

  An orchestral version of the wah waaaaah music when a game show contestant selects the wrong option crackled through the speakers

  Nero’s left eye twitched as he tossed the envelope aside. “Fine,” he said in the exact tone of a wife whose husband has just asked her if she minds if he goes to the strip club with his buddies. “You have one wast choice.”

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, mentally blocking the lights, the music, the pageantry. Sinking down, down, out of my mind and into my body, I forgot trying to figure out which coffin held Mark.

  There, in the nameless, wordless, wild part of myself I’d been fighting. The part of me I had denied, degraded, concealed, and rejected.

  I asked the wolf.

  What returned to me was a rush of gratitude so intense I almost began to cry. Abernathy’s scent flooded my nostrils, his essence firing across my brain like a rain of lights.

  I opened my eyes, meeting Nero’s leering gaze with one of calm certainty. “He’s in number thirteen.”

  Nero’s face crumpled into a mask of pure, murderous rage. “That’s not faiw! You’we not supposed to have any powews untiw aftew you mate with an awpha!”

  “I…I didn’t know I did.” I said, honestly just as surprised as Nero was.

  “Wiar!” he accused, stabbing the microphone in my direction.

  “Like you’re one to talk.” I clapped my hands over my mouth. The voice hadn’t come from me. At least, not the me I had been for the past twenty-eight years. No. This came directly from the quiet, eternal, unafraid part of me that I had apparently woken up just now.

  “You.” Nero exhaled the word like a poisonous fume. “You insowent swut!”

  “But you—” I began.

  “I. Changed. My. Mind.” Nero stomped his sandal-clad foot with every syllable. “Kwaud! Kiww them!”

  “With pleasure.” Klaud moved with the same, shambling, hesitant gait common to horror movie villains as he rejoined Nero on the platform before reaching into his pocket and producing a brass bell.

  One quick flick of Klaud’s wrist, and all the coffins began to creak open.

  “Cover me,” I said, catching the slightest twist of a grin from a cop who had probably never used these words in real life.

  Racing over to coffin thirteen with Morrison close behind, I threw open the latch, and nearly fainted. Abernathy’s pallid face stared up at me, eyes open wide, mouth a gaping “O” of shock. Looking at him, I knew what I was seeing was the precise moment when he realized his father’s betrayal.

  “Hanna.” Morrison’s voice curved upward like a question. “Hurry.”

  “I am!” Fumbling madly inside my shirt, I dug into the leather pouch, my fingers slippery with sweat. They closed over something cool and hard. A small vial with the tiniest of cork stoppers. It nearly squirted through my fingers as I pulled it free, panic slamming into me like a freight train when I fumbled it back into my hands inches before it exploded on the stone floor

  “Hanna.” Morrison was louder this time.

  Thumbing off the cork, I tipped the greenish liquid directly into Abernathy’s open mouth.

  I waited, frantically searching his face for any of the signs the witch had given me that marked the draught taking hold.

  Nothing.

  Cold, creeping fear flooded my heart. It had been too long.

  “Please,” I said, placing my hands on either side of his frozen, pallid face. “Please come back.” Hot tears leaked down my cheeks, washing the taste of salt and crypt dirt into my mouth. “I love you.”

  Hearing myself say these words out loud for the first time only made me cry all the harder.

  “I don’t care if you ever love me. I don’t even care if you like me. Just let me sit outside of your office, and file your papers, and just…just be near you.”

  My tears fell from my cheeks to his, darkening tracks down the chalky surface of his cheekbones and jaw.

  Through the fringe of my wet lashes, I saw the tiniest twinge of rose at the very center of his ashen lips. It stayed only there for a moment before flooding outward, moving from his face down his neck.

  Abernathy’s horrifically guttural, shuddering inhale was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard in my life. The terrible, pained rasping of a man who had just kicked his way to the surface after inhaling a lungful of water.

  And then I was hauling him up by the forearms and slapping his broad back and suppressing a whoop of pure joy.

  “Hanna—” Abernathy’s voice sounded like he’d gargled with broken glass. His fingertips were still cool to the touch as his hand molded itself against the side of my face. “I—”

  The first gunshot boomed in my ears, deafening and sudden. I looked up from Abernathy’s coffin to find Morrison with his back to us, the blond vampire from Coffin Number Four twining herself around him Bride of Dracula style as he tried to get a clear shot at Klaud.

  “Stay here. You’re no good to us until you have your strength back.” I offered him what I hoped was a reassuring smile.

  Unstrapping a stake from the makeshift utility belt Morrison had fashioned for
me, I hauled back and cracked the blond vampire with enough force to send her flying face-first into a concrete wall.

  The gunfire ceased as Morrison stared at me in open-mouthed amazement. “What the fuck was that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I like it.” Attempting to twirl the stake like a baton for affect, I almost clubbed myself in the face.

  And all was once again right with the world.

  “We have to get him out of here,” I said.

  “How?” Morrison asked.

  All around us, coffins continued to creak open, their largely female occupants sequin-clad, licking rubied lips as they languorously stretched long, silky limbs like Barbies escaping their boxes. Worse, the door behind Nero and Klaud had opened, legions more of neophyte vampires spilling down the stairs.

  The nerve-sizzling adrenaline I’d experienced evaporated as quickly as it had come, and I felt the familiar grip of cold, pure dread.

  Abernathy tumbled out of the casket, landing in a heap at my feet.

  I could see the intensity gathering on his face as he tried to transform, tried to become the version of himself both dangerous and deadly. Instead, he only managed to sprout strange patches of fur on the backs of his hands and an exceptionally unfortunate mustache.

  “Give me a weapon,” he growled, dragging himself to a standing position against the coffin.

  To his credit, Morrison reached into his belt and handed over a stake and the deadliest of the wickedly curved hunting knives in his arsenal.

  Abernathy took them, anchoring the knife in his belt and clutching the stake in his palm. The other hand, he offered to Morrison, who blinked at it as the horde began to close in.

  “If we die,” Abernathy said. “We die standing.”

  Morrison closed his hand over Abernathy’s and for a moment, I thought my heart might just swell up and explode in my chest, killing me before any vampire would have time to reach me.

  “We die standing,” Morrison repeated.

  When the deafening pop sounded, I thought for the briefest of seconds that Morrison had punctuated this statement by resuming his shooting.

  “How about we don’t die at all?”

  I spun around to find Crixus leaning against the coffin Abernathy had recently vacated.

  Several of the vampires glanced nervously at each other, as if perplexed by this unexpected development in the program.

  “Cwixus!” Nero screamed in rage. “You are bound to Kwaud by a souw debt. If you betway him, you wiww suffer etewnaw towment!”

  Echoes of Crixus’s gladiator past collided with his present as he squared his shoulders, turning to Nero and Klaud as if seeking the thumbs up or down that would save or damn the life of his opponent.

  “Only if he survives,” Crixus said.

  The same door Morrison and I had so tentatively entered burst open precisely at that moment. In one of the most surreal moments of my life—definitely saying something, given the day I’d had—Wallis the unicorn came thundering in, pausing on the landing to rear up on his hind legs and whinny a screaming war cry that dropped the entire room into silence.

  Which he promptly ruined by opening his mouth.

  “Who’s ready to get shanked, you undead motherfuckers?” he asked, brandishing his horn at the vampires nearest him.

  Crixus gave us a “what you gonna do?” shrug and the action resumed.

  Wallis, mowing his way through the crowd, all rainbow mane and golden hooves and “yeah, you like that bitch?” as he skewered hapless vampires with his golden horn.

  Morrison, unloading clip after clip, aiming for the necks.

  Crixus, broadsword in hand, lopping off head after head.

  Abernathy, still unable to transform but slitting throat after throat and tossing the bodies aside like discarded husks.

  And me, with my handle-stake, cracking skulls the other four had missed.

  I was sweating, panting, more exhausted and exhilarated than I’d been in my life when I saw that someone else had joined Klaud and Nero, bending close to the emperor’s ear. A smile that could peel paint curled across Nero’s face. He nodded to his guest, who disappeared back through the door. Klaud gave his bell a short, sharp ring, then followed.

  The vampires froze in place, fangs bared, hands like claws still reaching for our necks.

  “As entewtaining as this wittle show has been…” Nero trailed a stubby finger along the railing. “I have a new offew to make you, Hanna.”

  Abernathy, Morrison, Wallis and Crixus, gore be-smattered and breathless, all looked at me.

  Wiping a spatter of something off my cheek with the shoulder of my shirt, I pushed a stray clump of matted red hair out of my eyes. “I’m about tired of your games,” I said.

  Nero stepped aside dramatically to reveal Klaud, pushing someone through the door before him. With one hand fisted in his captive’s hair, and the other holding a blade to his throat, he pushed him into the spotlight.

  Time hung frozen, horror collapsing my throat.

  It was Steven Franke.

  Chapter 26

  One of Steve’s eyes was swollen shut, his cheek purple and puffed with a bruise. Crusted blood ran from the corner of his mouth and stained the Ramones t-shirt he had changed into for his and Shayla’s official exit from the reception. His hands were bound behind him, his ankles wrapped in a silvery chain.

  “Steve!” I could scarcely squeeze his name from my throat before it contracted in a sob. I lurched toward the stairs, only to be dragged back by Crixus.

  “Don’t,” he whispered low and gruff in my ear. “This is a game, remember? You want to keep him playing.”

  “Suwwendew,” Nero said, eyes gleaming with insane glee. “Ow he dies.”

  “S’okay, doll. You got bigger trout to tackle.” Steve coughed, sending a fresh gout of blood down the front of his shirt. “No matter what happens, you were the best friend a guy could ever have.”

  “Fweind?” Nero asked, glancing from me to Steve. “Does he not know?”

  “I know your face looks like a foot.” Steve’s split lip gapped as, even now, he smiled.

  Klaud tightened his grip on Steve’s hair. “Now is not the time for levity, I assure you.”

  “In a way, this is vewy poignant.” Nero turned to face Steve, the crown of his head ending a good three inches before Steve’s chin. “Teww him, Kwaud. I want to see the wook on his face. What’s weft of it, anyway.” Nero snickered.

  “Hanna is not your friend, Mr. Franke.” Klaud’s blue eyes bored into mine even as his lips brushed Steve’s ear. “She’s your sister.”

  Despite the swelling, I could see the emotions twisting Steve’s face into a mask of pain. “My…I have a—”

  Steve’s words ceased as the blade of Klaud’s dagger sank into his sternum with sudden, brutal force. One pink tear leaked from the corner of Steve’s blackened eye. Klaud released him, Steve’s long, lanky body crumpling to the ground with a sickening crunch.

  We all stood there, frozen in shock and grief, the room silent until Nero yawned and stretched. “Bowwwing,” he sang.

  I stared at him, my body beginning to shake.

  The pure distillation of every ounce of pain, horror, grief and fear I had never found the strength to give voice to welled up out of me until it was no longer a scream, but a howl, boiling up from the depths of my soul.

  All around me, vampires fell to the ground, clutching their ears as they writhed.

  “The heir!” one of them groaned, contorting in agony.

  “She’s real!” another cried.

  They began peeling off in droves, scampering toward the nearest exit like spiders on their broken, twisted limbs.

  “Get back hewe!” Panic made Nero’s face almost boyish as he watched himself being deserted by the very beings he’d created.

  Still, I couldn’t stop. The howl amplified, bouncing off the soaring ceilings, filling the room. Filling the world.

  Beside me, Abernathy surged lik
e he’d been plugged into an electrical socket. A ripping, primal growl tore free from him, effectively ending my banshee wail as at long last, his body began its violent transformation from man, to wolf.

  “That’s what the fuck I’m talking about!” Wallis galloped through the thinning crowd, donkey-kicking the remaining vampires, spinning like a mechanical bull to repeat the process.

  Moving into the sea of migrating bodies, Morrison continued picking off vampires, his gunshots echoing in the hall we’d come through to access the nursery/crypt in the first place.

  With a sudden pop Crixus was no longer standing next to me, but at the top of the stairs to the landing. Moving faster than I had ever seen him, Klaud broke for the door.

  Nero took one look at Abernathy racing up behind Crixus and followed Klaud, his tattered purple toga flapping in his wake.

  I came unstuck then, aware that I, too, could move. Could act.

  Leaping over vampire carcasses, I launched myself at the stairs and found Steve at the top of them in a crumpled heap.

  “That was pretty badass.” Klaud’s dagger shivered in Steve’s chest with his quick indrawn breath. Smoke coiled up from the place where it met his t-shirt, rising in a thin column toward heaven.

  “Yeah?” I asked, coming to kneel gently at his side.

  “Yeah.” He smiled at me, teeth rubied with blood.

  “I have a sister.”

  “You sure do,” I said, squeezing his clammy palm.

  “I have a family.” He pronounced this word with such awe, such pure wonder that a fresh wave of tears spilled over my cheeks.

  My mind flashed back to a different night. A night when I thought Abernathy might be a murderer, and where a sleek, tawny golden wolf had followed me into the dark. There, he had put himself between me and a thing that wanted me dead, and nearly died himself in the process. That night, I learned that werewolves could heal from horrific wounds.

  On another, I had learned that the presence of silver makes that healing all the harder. On another still, that powerful werewolf blood can assist in that process.