Chapter 20
I glanced at Phil, who shrugged. Carl looked bored. Somewhere along the line, we’d lost both of them – they didn’t understand what was going on.
I took a deep breath. Connor was right. This was all I had left, and I hated it.
“Are we going to get a move on?” Carl asked, sounding a lot less bored than he looked.
“We just need to find her,” Connor said in a calm voice, not taking his eyes off me.
“How?” Phil asked.
Connor just shook his head, his eyes glued to mine. Carl finally seemed to understand. For someone who’d been hunting vampires for so long, it had taken him a long time to catch up.
“I think Adele can trace her sister’s blood,” he explained.
“Like a tracker?”
“Something like that.”
Phil looked horrified. Maybe he’d put two and two together after all. I ignored him; ignored both of them. Phil had wanted to come along. He’d agreed. But this was the night world. This was what I was, somewhere deep down inside. If he didn’t like it, no one was forcing him to stay.
But he didn’t leave.
I took a deep breath and blew it out with a shudder. I hadn’t done this, ever. I had rejected this side of me since the days I’d attended therapy. After I was placed with a foster family who were human.
I closed my eyes and calmed myself again. I imagined this was what it was like to dematerialize. I focused on myself, my body. The beat of my heart, pumping blood through my veins. The movement of the platelets that carried oxygen. The rise and fall of my chest as I breathed in and out. Eventually I found Aspen’s pulse, dimly fluttering next to my own. It was weak because of how little blood I had in me that belonged to her. Not because she was fighting for her life; I realized that now.
Maybe, if I were a vampire, I would have dematerialized. I felt like I was made of stone, the same way vampires looked when they had time to think about disappearing.
And there it was again: that metal wall that slammed into place, blocking me from finding Aspen. I knew she was alive. I still felt the echo of her heartbeat in my veins. But I couldn’t find her. It was like a GPS searching for a signal.
I willed it away with my mind, with everything I had inside me. I reached deep down, to the person I’d pushed away for so long I almost didn’t know who she was. The person who could feel farther and deeper than a human, or even a half-breed. The person that was stronger, and faster, and more elegant. A creature of the night.
I dug deep down and found the vampire.
I pushed back against the metal wall, forcing my whole will against it. It wouldn’t budge at first. But then, slowly, it started to move, almost like I was physically pushing it. I threw everything I had into it, and finally it gave way faster and faster, until I could feel my sister again. I could almost see her in my mind’s eye. Just a silhouette, but her wavy hair was moving in a breeze, and her fingers were curled around the arms of her wheelchair. I could feel her despair, her fear, her panic.
It felt like I was peeling away from the world I knew. My head started pounding, and I felt dizzy. And suddenly, I knew where she was.
When I opened my eyes, all three men were staring at me. Carl looked amused. Phil looked shocked. And Connor was looking at me with so much emotion in his eyes, I was scared he would choke on it.
“Caldwell Street,” I said, and my voice sounded different. “The house on Caldwell Street. That’s where she is.”
Something nicked my lip, and a sharp pain shot through it.
“Ow,” I said, and when I licked my lip I tasted blood. I frowned, bringing a finger to my lip, and then to my teeth. I had vampire teeth. Fangs. When I pulled my finger away, it was red with blood, and the blood tasted metallic in my mouth.
“Well,” Connor said, and that word spoke volumes.
“Well,” I answered, because I’d finally found myself. I’d finally come home.
Connor frowned, the words I’d spoken finally dawning on him. “Caldwell Street?” he asked. “But I got rid of that property.”
“You owned it?” Carl asked.
“I lived there until the change. I sold it so that I could disappear.”
“Who did you sell it to?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I do,” I said.
We drove up the hill in silence. There wasn’t a lot to be said. We were heading to the vampires’ lair, the center of everything.
This new truth, this new person, the one I really was, was all a bit new for me, and I felt foreign in my own skin.
“What will we do when we get there?” Phil asked.
That was a fair question. “I think you should stay in the car,” I told him. He wasn’t trained in any of the vampire-killing arts, and even Carl and I, who’d been doing this for a long time, were outmatched. These vampires were a lot stronger.
“I agree with Adele,” Connor said, but when I looked at Phil, he didn’t look like he was upset with the arrangement. He’d been noble, and in any other fight I’d want him at my back. But this time he was in over his head. It had been a mistake to bring him.
The three of us climbed out of the car and walked the last couple of yards to the gate. We stopped in front of it. The rustic metal gate reached far above our heads.
“How do we get in?” Carl asked. He was already pacing along the wall, trying to see if there was a way.
“We can go in through the servants’ entrance,” Connor said. “I doubt they kept the codes the same for the main gate, but the servants have their own gate and their own code.”
“And if that’s changed?” I asked.
“Well, then, we’ll think of a plan B.”
Connor turned and followed the wall that reached far up above us. Carl and I followed. Connor made it to the end of the wall where I thought the neighboring property began, but I realized that the wall dipped in and a narrow passage led between the two properties. I felt claustrophobic with tall walls on both sides and very little space to move other than forward or back. Connor was in front of me, Carl behind me, and somehow that didn’t make me feel much better. The whole place had a foreboding feeling to it, like something was waiting to go wrong at any second.
Connor finally reached a door made of the same rustic metal as the main gate. It was arched and narrow, like the rest of the passage. Connor took out a key and turned it. He might have been able to materialize inside, but neither Carl nor I could.
“What if they have cameras?” Carl asked.
“Then they’ll see us,” Connor answered. “We’re going to have to face them sooner or later.”
Carl nodded, but he looked like he’d rather turn back and wait for Phil. He swallowed hard, and Connor pushed open the door. It was like magic. We followed him through into the garden, then he closed the door behind us. I didn’t want it closed, but keeping it open would show whoever found it that something was wrong.
The garden was huge, with big trees scattered across a perfectly manicured lawn. The moon cast a silver light on everything, making it all look like it belonged in a fairy tale. We followed the shadows, sticking to them as much as we could. A long, winding driveway ran through the garden, paved with cobbles that had an Italian feel to them, and a big fountain formed the center of a circle at the front door where cars could drive around to head back to the gate. Garages were lined up on the other side of the property.
Connor beckoned us in the opposite direction. We crept silently up the stairs that led to the balcony on the first floor, and it was only by some miracle that we hadn’t been seen yet. Either they were waiting for us because they knew we were coming, or we were managing to slip through. I hoped it was the latter.
The house was incredible. Under any other circumstances I would have admired it, envied it. Wanted it. I wasn’t one for living in the lap of luxury, but this wasn’t just money. It was art. I was impressed with Connor’s taste.
He led us through a maze of passages and rooms until we finally reached a room where he stopped.
“There’s metal in these walls,” he said in a whisper.
I tried to access the new part of me that I’d only found a short time ago, and after struggling for a few seconds I could feel it too. It felt the same way it had felt when my mind was foggy and I couldn’t quite remember what I wanted to say. If the vampires were anywhere, it would be in there.
Suddenly a scream echoed through the house, so loud it vibrated in my bones long after it had stopped.
“What was that?” Carl asked with a frown.
“Celia,” I answered.
This was it. I turned, and she appeared as if out of nowhere in front of me.
“Adele,” Connor started, but I waved him off.
“Let me deal with this. Keep Carl safe. She’s mine.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when she attacked with a hiss. I hissed too, and launched myself at her. When we collided, it was like an explosion. She had her claws out and scratched at me. I was faster now, stronger. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t made an effort to accept myself earlier. She noticed the change, and her movements became careful.
I managed to out-maneuver her, and I sank my teeth into her arm. She screamed, and a shudder rippled through her body. When I let go, her arm bled onto the floor. I could smell her blood: warm and sweet, different, supernatural. That scent of flowers hung in the air.
“You’ve acquired some skills,” she said, clutching her bleeding arm against her body.
“Never show your enemy everything you can do right away,” I said.
Of course that wasn’t true. If I’d been able to do this before, I would have taken her out the first time. But it sounded great when I said it, and the scowl on her face was a terrific reward.
She jumped at me again. I ducked, but she upped her game too, now that she knew what I was capable of, and her nails scraped down my cheek and neck. I hissed at her and felt my skin. It was ripped and sticky with blood. I curled my lips back in a snarl, but the feeling in my neck and my face stopped me in my tracks. I was healing fast. I could feel the wound closing up. Celia couldn’t do that. I grinned smugly.
She knew it too: this was it. This was the fight. She wasn’t going to toy with me like a cat with a mouse anymore. If she didn’t give it everything she had, she wouldn’t make it.
I wasn’t planning to let that to happen anyway.
I jumped at her first. She’d been stunned, watching the wound on my face heal in front of her, and I caught her off guard. I grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked. She moaned and rolled me over, getting in a hit that would have been a problem if I’d still had the concussion she’d left me with.
But I was fine, and besides stunning me for just a second, the blow did nothing.
I braced myself and threw everything I had into my attack, throwing her off me. I landed on top of her, pushing her elbows down with my knees.
Her eyes were pools of black surrounded by green. I could feel her tentacles reaching into my mind, but I closed it and pushed her out.
Her eyes widened. “Please don’t—” she started, but I cut her off.
I pushed my silver stake in under her ribs and angled it upward. I pushed in deeper, finding her heart, and her pulse throbbed and then stopped. Her eyes were wide, her mouth frozen in a silent ‘o’ before her features went slack and she collapsed.
“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Carl said from behind me. When I got off Celia and turned, he was looking at me like I was a goddess and he hadn’t realized that before.
“We had a history,” I said.
“I can see that.”
When I looked at Connor, he smiled. I didn’t think it was because of my lack of feeling when I had murdered Celia. I thought maybe it was because of who I’d become. I smiled, and I felt the points of my fangs touching my lips. It was a strange sensation, but not altogether unfamiliar. I wondered at which point I’d forgotten I’d always had them as a child.
“We have to get in there,” Connor said, nodding towards the door.
I took a deep breath. It didn’t matter how in touch I was with myself. These guys were still the master vampires who had killed Zelda and Ruben. Carl swallowed hard enough for me to hear him, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.
“Together,” I said to him, and he understood. A part of this would be for Ruben after all.
Connor tested the door, but it was locked. That was no surprise; I hadn’t thought it would be open. There was no way to get in – I could feel the metal all the way around. So Connor knocked on the door, as if we had an appointment.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the door clicked like a lock was being turned, and it opened.
The leader had opened the door.
“Well,” he said, looking at Connor and then at me. “We knew she’d eventually arrive, but we didn’t expect you.”
“Vladimir,” Connor said as a greeting.
If there was ever a scary vampire with a scary name, this was it. He smiled with teeth that still seemed horrible to me, even though I had a set of my own now, and his eyes flashed red. He didn’t look friendly at all.
“Come, come in,” he said. “We have everything ready for you.”
He stepped aside, and we walked into the room. I was last to go in, and as soon I was through the door I found a wall and put my back to it so I was facing the entire room. I had guns and knives on me, but somehow it didn’t feel like that was enough. These vampires weren’t here to play games.
To my surprise, the room, other than the menacing vampires in it, was very normal. Rich, but normal. The floor was covered from wall to wall with a thick white carpet that my feet sank into. The walls were painted wine red, and the furniture was all black. Leather couches formed a cozy half-circle around an unlit fireplace, a lacquered desk stood in a corner covered with stacks of papers and files, and the back wall was covered with ceiling-height bookshelves holding leather-bound books. The other vampire – Number Two, I decided – was lounging on a leather sofa.
I noticed there were two big windows across from me, covered with thick black curtains. The fabric looked like it was lined with lead, the same as the covers they put over people in x-ray machines. They could keep light out all by themselves.
There were no other vampires in the room. I had thought maybe there would be hostages. But there was no one.
Vladimir walked to the wall and pushed a button, and a bar rolled out. Fancy.
“Can I offer you anything to drink?” he asked. We all shook our heads. He shrugged and picked up a wine glass, then took a sip. The wine was a dark red and thick. I frowned, and then the smell reached me. It wasn’t wine at all; it was blood.
I gasped at the same time Connor did.
Vladimir laughed. “Not so tough after all, the two of you,” he said in a voice that suddenly sounded deeper, harder. He pointed a long finger at Carl. “Only he seems to have the stomach for this. But he’s just a human. I doubt he knows what this is.”
I felt suddenly nauseated. “Where’s Aspen?” I asked, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. “I’m here for my sister.”
“Yes, I thought so. Of course, killing him would have been fine. But I see you brought him here. Did you hope we would do it for you?”
He was talking about Connor. Carl stepped in front of Connor, and Vlad and his Number Two laughed.
“There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity,” Vladimir said. He’d moved so fast I hadn’t even seen him move. Not even a blur. One moment he’d been by the bar, and the next he had Carl pinned against the wall, the blood in his glass still dancing from side to side.
“Don’t!” I cried out.
Vladimir gave me a terrible smile, one that promised bloodshed.
“He’s done nothing to deserve dying,” I said.
“And still, you brought him.”
&nb
sp; “I volunteered,” Carl said, but his throat was squeezed shut, so the words came out as a wheeze.
“Are you going to beg for mercy, like your boss?” Vladimir asked Carl, squeezing tighter. Carl squirmed in his grip, kicking, groping at the fingers around his neck. His face went red.
I pulled out a gun and aimed it at Vladimir’s head. The Smith & Wesson would take his head off. “I’ll shoot,” I said. “Let him go.”
Vladimir’s expression turned from amused to menacing. “You threaten me? You’re an abomination, and you have the arrogance to stand there and point a gun at me? For that, you’ll—”
Carl kicked him in the crotch.
It didn’t matter who you were, vampire or not; a kick to the balls hurt like hell. He didn’t double over or gasp for breath or drop to the ground like a human – but he did drop Carl, and it bought me some time. Carl gasped for air and scrambled across the floor toward me. If he could get under my gun, I could cover him.
Vladimir growled like an animal and grabbed Carl’s ankle, yanked him up and flung him across the room. I heard bones snap, and Carl cried out. He hit the far wall, and then he sank to the floor, unconscious. He was out of the way, badly hurt, but not dead. Not yet.
Vladimir turned to me.
“The girl!” he barked, and Number Two moved.
Another door opened, and they wheeled Aspen out. She looked frail and vulnerable, drooped in her chair. Her arms were strapped to the chair so she couldn’t wheel herself around, and her head was bowed, her blonde hair a curtain that covered most of her face.
When I gasped she looked up, and when she saw me, she stilled. “Adele?” she said in a small voice. But she looked okay, unharmed.
“We’re going to get you out of here, angel,” I said, and she smiled and nodded. She believed me.
“You can let us go now,” I said to the vampires. “We’ll be taking my sister and leaving.”
The two vampires looked at each other, smiled, and then burst out laughing, like I’d made a joke.
“Really, Adele,” Vladimir said. He looked into my eyes, and suddenly the world went black.
When I opened my eyes again, hours had passed. I could feel it. I was lying on the floor, unable to move. Connor lay near the window with his eyes closed. Carl was bent at a bad angle, still unconscious. Aspen was sitting across from me, looking exhausted and worried. When she saw that I was awake, her expression changed to relief, but she didn’t make a sound.
My smart sister.
The vampires were talking in hushed tones, and I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Then Vladimir turned to me, suddenly aware that I was awake. “You’re not as strong as we thought you were, after killing Celia.”
She couldn’t have been very important to them if they didn’t care that she was dead.
“Didn’t you at least like her?” I asked. My mouth worked fine, even though I couldn’t move anything else.
Vladimir shrugged. “She didn’t do her job well enough. Death is a fair payment for that. She lost.”
I tried to move again, but I couldn’t. “What are you going to do?” I asked.
“We’re going to wait for sunrise,” Vlad said, looking at his watch. “And then we’re going to leave, and those curtains are going to open. You’re going to watch Connor die in the first rays of dawn.”
That was cruel. Inhumane. “You can’t do that,” I said.
Vladimir walked over to me, knelt in front of me and grabbed my chin. It hurt. He tipped my head and looked at my fangs, frowning. He was probably trying to remember if they’d been there before. Then he yanked my head to the side, sending a bolt of pain down my neck.
“Oh, but we can,” he said.
“Master,” Number Two called. He’d sat down at a laptop, and he pointed to the screen.
Vladimir walked toward the desk, looked at the screen, and swore. “Fix it,” he snapped.
Number Two typed furiously, but he looked panicked. Maybe his punishment for failure would be death too.
“Business deal gone wrong?” I asked innocently. Both vampires scowled, and I knew I’d hit a nerve.
The time was ticking on, and I realized it was sunrise. They could still kill Connor, but they wouldn’t have the dramatic death they’d wanted. They were still fighting about whatever was happening on the screen.
I managed to slide my gaze to Aspen. She sat quietly, looking at me, and I wondered what she was thinking. I knew she was scared; it was hanging in the air, coming off her skin, but the feeling was old, like it had been going on for too long for it to be full strength. Her arms were taped to the wheelchair, and with how frail she was I knew she couldn’t break free. If only someone could open those damn curtains.
I fought against whatever spell was holding me down, but no matter how hard I struggled, I couldn’t move. I closed my eyes and focused, but even the vampire abilities I’d only come in contact with recently weren’t good enough. The fact was, these vampires were older and stronger than I was.
I groaned. When I looked at Connor, his eyes were finally open, big and blue, full of resignation. He knew they were going to kill him. And he wasn’t scared. He was angry.
All this, and this was how it ended?
The door was flung open, and something shot past me. It was Phil.
The vampires both hissed and moved toward him, but he’d caught them by surprise. Before they could stop him, he yanked the curtains away from the window, letting sunlight flood into the room. Vladimir froze halfway to Phil and screamed. Then he burst into ash, which fell to the floor in a cloud of dust.
Number Two hissed and drew toward the far corner. He was sizzling and smoking, but it wasn’t direct light.
With Vladimir dead, I could suddenly move again. I rolled over and drew my Smith & Wesson. I didn’t take the time to aim properly. I just fired.
Number Two looked down at his chest. Blood oozed out of it from a hole as big as an eye. I’d hit his heart with silver. It didn’t matter how well he could normally heal; it was over for him. He looked at me blankly, and then he fell to the floor.
My arm was numb from the recoil. I lowered my hand to the floor and lay there for a second. Then I pushed myself up.
Connor, also able to move again, was curled against another wall, moaning and smoking as well. I jumped up and yanked the curtain closed, and Connor’s complaints stopped.
Phil sat huddled in a ball at my feet. “They’re dead,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder.
“Thank God,” he said, and stood up.
“No, thank you,” I said, and gave him a hug. “If it weren’t for you, we’d be lost.”
Then I turned to Aspen and cut the tape that bound her with my knife. Her eyes were squeezed shut.
“It’s okay, Aspen,” I said, kneeling in front of her. “It’s over.”
“I knew you’d come for me,” she whispered.
“Of course.”
She took a deep breath and looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. “You look different.”
I looked at my leathers and shrugged. “I didn’t really want you to see me like this.”
But she shook her head. “I don’t mean your clothes and your guns. I mean you. Your teeth. And… well, just you.”
I smiled, and she smiled back.
“I’m going to have nightmares about this for weeks,” she said, nodding toward Number Two on the floor, lying in a pool of blood that colored the carpet a dark red.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I hugged her.
When I got up, Phil was bent over Carl.
“I think he needs help,” he said. He pulled out his phone and called 911.
Connor walked over to me, looking like he had a bad sunburn.
“You look like shit,” I said.
He grinned. “You look amazing,” he said, and I felt myself blush. And then I realized that for the first time in a very long time, I felt amazing.
Vampire's Shade 1 (Vampire's Shade Collection) Page 20