by Rye Brewer
Every minute we wasted put us one minute closer to Marcus finding us. My head swiveled one way then the other, glancing back and forth to be sure nobody was following. It seemed as though we were still alone.
“I’m so tired,” Sara whispered.
It wasn’t a complaint. It was a fact. I knew she had to be wiped.
“I know. We’ll find a way to get you to feed, and you can rest.” I just didn’t know where.
That was the problem. I didn’t know where to take her. Why hadn’t I waited and thought it out? Because, had I waited, I would have run up against the league meeting, and it would be clear to Marcus I hadn’t done his bidding. He might have punished my sister for that. He might have punished me, too.
We were almost in the woods. Almost. I could feel Sara trying to help me move her, trying to help me in some small way that would make it possible for us to escape quickly. She was trying, at least. I had to remember that.
“I think there are a few old shacks deeper in,” I said, thinking fast. “Do you remember how we used to explore sometimes? Years ago?” It was easier to think about those days before our parents died and we were left alone. “Do you remember the old shacks? They were our castles, weren’t they?”
She laughed softly. “I remember.”
“We’ll hide there for a little while. Nobody will find us.”
“You’re sure?”
I wasn’t sure about anything, anymore. But I could fake it as well as the next person—vampire.
We made it to the woods, and I could breathe a little easier when I knew we were at least under the cover of trees. We weren’t running in the open any longer, where anybody could see us.
I looked around again. Which way? I recalled as many memories as I could, glanced over my shoulder to see where we were in relation to the mansion to get a sense of our position.
“By the stream,” Sara said, pointing. “This way.”
“Right.”
She seemed to revive somehow, like being out in the air helped her. At least, she ran on her own—a little slower than me, but she ran. That made it easier for me to find the rundown shack which was, at one time, a caretaker’s cottage. It had last been used around the mid-nineteenth century. The mansion no longer needed the help of caretakers after the Carver clan took over.
“There it is,” I proclaimed with a triumph I’d begun to doubt.
There was no door, and the windows were long since broken out, but it was secluded. We could be alone there with a relative degree of safety. Sara sat with her back to one of the wooden walls, closing her eyes with a sigh.
“I can’t believe you did that,” she said, shaking her head. “What could possibly have made you do it?”
“Why do you think?” I stared at her in disbelief. “Because I love you. You’re my sister. I couldn’t bear the thought of you being there a moment longer.”
“You risked much for me,” she whispered.
I turned away. “You have no idea,” I murmured.
She didn’t need to know exactly why Marcus had started treating her better, allowing her to have blood. She must have known something had changed and must have known it was because of me. What other reason could there be? He hadn’t suddenly developed compassion.
“We’ll rest here,” I said, speaking more to myself than to my sister. I needed to convince myself it was a good idea just as much as I needed to convince her. “We’ll rest, and we’ll think of something. I wish I knew how to get in touch with a few rogue vampires. We could use their help.”
“There’s nobody to help us right now,” Sara whispered. She sounded weak.
I hated hearing her sound this weak.
“We have to believe there’s a way,” I insisted. “Otherwise, we’ll never see it when it comes our direction. We have to be open to it.”
“Have you been reading self-help books?”
I was glad to hear her feeling sassy, even if I wasn’t in the mood for criticism. If she could sass me, she was feeling better.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “We have to have hope this will work out. I’m sure it will.” I just didn’t know how. If I rested for a little while, I would come up with something. Just like I’d come up with a way to take care of my sister. I’d done what needed to be done.
Sara opened her mouth to speak, but, before she could, a sound made her turn her head sharply to the left. She stared out the broken window with wide eyes. So did I. I’d heard it, too. The snapping of a twig.
We looked at each other, and, without speaking, we knew we had to leave through the back door. She got up and was just about to take my hand when we heard a noise at the back door, too.
She started trembling, the now dirty and torn dress she wore shaking as she quivered. Her skin was even whiter than the thin cotton. I put my arms around her, hoping to bolster her with my strength.
A large, hulking shape filled the doorway and cast a shadow over the two of us. I didn’t have to look at the creature standing there to know who it was. The shadow told me enough. I’d just dealt with a creature of that size, hadn’t I?
So did the smell.
Sure enough, when I turned to face him, the scar across his chest and arm told me what I needed to know. Werewolves healed faster than other creatures. The hair-thin slices I’d delivered had closed.
“Hello, little white-haired vampire,” he growled. “I’ve been hoping we would find each other again.”
10
Jonah
Something felt wrong. I didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone. She was exposed. Anything could happen to her. Without a clan, a vampire was nothing, even with the general acceptance of the human world on our side. There would be nothing for her. No protection, no guarantee of survival. At least while she lived under the protection of the Carver clan, she’d had a place to live—even if the vampires around her had all but ignored her.
And her sister was weak, too. It would take time for her to get her strength back. It was clear that while imprisoned she’d been granted only enough blood to survive without starvation and torture. At least Marcus had held up his end of the bargain while using Anissa as his slayer.
She was alone except for her sister and had to do the thinking and hunting for the two of them. I hated the thought of it.
When I got home, it was obvious my siblings knew Anissa had escaped. And from the look on Philippa’s face, she knew how.
“What did you do?” she asked, whirling around to face me the moment she heard me enter the penthouse.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what she’s talking about,” Scott muttered. “Don’t use stall tactics. We know how you think.”
“Yes. We know everything about you. We even knew that little white-haired freak was following you when you didn’t. Why is it so impossible for you to admit somebody else might know more than you?” Philippa shook with rage.
I knew Philippa, too, just as she knew me, and I knew she was holding on by a thin thread.
“All right.” Gage rose from his seat, unfolding his large frame, as large as mine, hands on hips. “Enough.”
I glanced at him with gratitude. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m no more a fan of yours than either of them,” he said. “But I don’t see the point in starting a world war over it.”
That was my twin, always having my back. I decided to take what I could get.
“I don’t understand what you’re all so upset about,” I insisted, flopping into a chair by the hearth. “The last time I checked, I’m head of the clan. What I say goes. I wasn’t aware the three of you got to tell me how to make decisions.”
“When it’s a decision in your best interest and you’re wildly blind to it?” Philippa waved her arms in the air. “How can you be so thick-headed?”
“Easy,” Scott said. “He has a thing for her.”
I wanted to say, Anissa. She has a name and it is Anissa. But instead, I went with a warn
ing. “Watch your tone,” I cautioned. I was willing to keep things casual between them and me, but sometimes they forgot themselves. Scott was always the worst at that.
“Come on,” Gage said, backing Scott up. “We all sensed it. You feel something for her.”
“That has nothing to do with this. The fact is she never harmed me. There was no reason to keep her chained up.”
Chained up with silver that didn’t leave a mark on her. It should have burned excruciatingly and sapped her strength, but it did neither. What was so different about her? Why wasn’t she like us? I’d seen the lengthened canines. I knew there was no way she’d be permitted to exist as part of the Carver clan without vampire blood. Yet, she wasn’t like any vampire I’d ever known.
“She might not have gotten the chance to harm you, but that doesn’t mean she won’t stop trying,” Philippa insisted. “Jonah. I’m only worried because I care about you. It’s how we all feel.”
My brothers nodded in agreement with Philippa.
“She won’t come back after me, Pip,” I murmured, staring into the fire, using a nickname for my baby sister that I hadn’t used since we were kids.
Why we bothered with a fire was beyond me. It wasn’t like fire would warm us. It would kill us if left unchecked, but it provided no warmth to those incapable of feeling it.
“How do you know that? Because she’s so in love with you?” Gage scoffed.
“Enough of this.” I hurled the words at him like a whip.
And he jumped as though a whip had cracked against his white skin. His expression changed, hardened. He didn’t like the reminder of who was really in charge. Well, he needed to watch his mouth. Maybe if he did, I wouldn’t need to remind him.
I got up, pacing with hands clasped behind my back. “I don’t have a good feeling about her right now.”
“None of us do,” Gage muttered.
I shot him a dirty look. He averted his gaze.
But now I was second-guessing. “I might have overstepped myself,” I admitted. “I did what I felt needed to be done.”
Philippa was the only one of the three who asked, “What do you mean? What did you do?”
So, I told the story. By the time I’d finished, all three were slack-jawed with surprise.
My sister was the first one to speak once she got control of herself. “You mean to say you put yourself in danger for her? Why? Why would you go against so many years of league canon?”
“You broke the league’s canons. You aren’t allowed on Carver property,” Gage growled. “All for her. And now you’ve put us all in jeopardy, all because you couldn’t think straight in the presence of a girl.”
I stared him down.
This time, he didn’t look away.
“It wasn’t fair, what that bastard Marcus forced her to do. Killing others like us? How is that in line with league canons? If anything, I could take the information to the league and let them have their way with him.”
“That would imply you knew about it,” Philippa reasoned. Sometimes, she truly had a more level head than mine. I could admit it.
“True,” I said, nodding. “What if I report that he tried to have me assassinated?”
“That still implies personal contact with the girl,” Scott replied. “Otherwise, how would you know she was a slayer? You think the league will be happy you were consorting with her after Marcus made it clear at the last League of Vampire meetings he wanted no Carver clan members to interact with any Bourke members? And the league agreed, remember?”
I remembered. “What if I said I killed her?” I asked, glancing around. I needed their help. I needed a way to get Anissa out of danger while taking Marcus down. “None of us are safe as long as he sits in power. He wanted me dead. He still does—and if not the girl, then somebody or something else will cross my path in the hopes of killing me. I can’t take that chance. Something’s got to be done.”
Philippa turned away, arms wrapped around her slim waist. Though Gage was closer in age and Scott was shrewd, my sister was the nearest thing I had to a personal advisor. She possessed the wisdom of a woman, tempered with caution. She’d given me invaluable advice in the past. This time though, even she was speechless, which was why she averted her gaze. She didn’t know what to say. That was answer enough for me.
I left the penthouse with my fists clenched, deciding to go back. To find Anissa and Sara. I wanted to at least make sure they were safe. She didn’t need to know I was spying on her.
Not too long had passed since I left them, and I sped through streets, alleys, underpasses on the way out to the mansion. Rush hour, when so few humans paid attention to the world around them. All they noticed was the car in front, the ones to the side, the one behind, and the time on the clock. Oh, and cardboard cups of that disgusting dreck that passed for coffee in the twenty-first century. Nothing like the coffee of my human days, as memory served me.
I reached the woods from the edge opposite the mansion. I couldn’t cut across their wide swath of emerald-green lawn. No way I’d go unnoticed there as I had while racing down Fifth Avenue and Broadway. Once I reached the trees, I stood very still in the hopes of tracking Anissa’s scent. She had a very definite scent. Just another anomaly, distinctly hers.
It wasn’t Anissa I smelled. It was…
Hell, no.
I took off at a run in the direction the thick, heavy scent of werewolf. They were there. In the woods. And there was only one reason why they would be. They’d been tracking her all along, lying in wait. How I had missed them, I had no idea. It might have been the excitement of the rescue, or my eagerness to get out of there once the mission was complete.
The scent picked up, grew stronger the deeper into the woods I went. I caught sight of a wooden shack in the distance, in the middle of what used to be a clearing but had become overgrown and unkempt in the decades since the shack’s use.
A glimpse of a silver-white head.
Anissa.
My breath caught. If my heart beat as it had in my human days, it would have raced like a train. And there was Sara, trembling, near tears. And the three werewolves, including the leader who looked as though Anissa had given him something to remember her by. I could smell the hatred coming from him, and the glee that he’d captured his prey.
I wanted to rush in. Take them. Kill them. Bare my fangs as I took their lives. Maybe even feed off them, though their blood was disgusting. It tasted the way they smelled.
But I couldn’t do that. Even if Anissa rushed to help, Sara would be at risk. And Sara was too weak to fight. That meant Anissa would try to help her and be at risk herself.
So, yeah. No fighting. Not yet. But heaven—or some other type of entity—help those werewolves once I decided to make my move. I’d destroy them.
I followed at a safe distance, hoping the werewolves were too busy rejoicing over their victory to notice me. I was downwind of them, too, which helped—granted, it didn’t help my nose as the wind carried their nauseating stench.
They surprised me by not leaving the woods. Instead, I trailed them deeper and deeper into the very darkest grove, one which I could tell the girls were terrified to step foot in. I wasn’t familiar with that part of the area, but even I picked up on a strange, uncomfortable energy the farther away from the mansion we went.
Where are they taking them?
A cabin. I was sure it was larger inside than it looked from here, just like the Carver mansion and my own building. We had maybe a thousand Bourkes living there—far fewer than the building would appear to allow. I saw two werewolves step out from inside to stand guard at the door just before the three captors took their captives in.
“Anissa,” I whispered.
What were they going to do to her?
And what could I do about it?
11
Anissa
I can’t believe it. Of all the stupid things to do.
“You’re not much of a slayer, vampire girl.” The lead werewolf squ
eezed my arm until it took all the strength of my will not to cry out.
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Tell that to the wounds I gave you,” I spat as he forced me to walk ahead of him.
Sara was behind me, one werewolf on either arm. Not that she needed the double guard—if I couldn’t get away, she certainly couldn’t. I heard soft whimpers coming from her. To think, I’d worked so hard to get her out of there, only to bring her to new danger. He was right. Some slayer I was. I wasn’t even much of a sister when all was said and done.
“You’d better watch your tone, missy,” he growled. “You’re lucky she thinks you’re so important, or else you would already be dead.
“Who’s she?” I asked, hoping I sounded much braver than I felt—which wasn’t very.
“You’ll find out.”
I gulped then forced my feet to move. I wanted to make things more difficult for him. I wanted to delay arriving wherever we were headed. She. A woman? A vampire like me? Something else entirely? Was she the one responsible for the strange energy emanating from this place?
What did she want with me? Why was I important?
I tried to glance back at my sister, but it was imperative to focus ahead. It didn’t matter to the werewolf holding me that there were bumps and branches and roots in the way. He dragged me over them without a second thought. I had to watch my step. “Don’t hurt my sister,” I warned.
“Or what? You’ll scratch me again?” Again, with the vise-like grip that made me clench my teeth in agony.
I released a laugh after the wave of pain passed. “You sure didn’t sound like I merely scratched you. You howled like you were close to death.”
“That was the silver, not you,” he corrected. “I could have taken you in the blink of an eye.”
“I blinked my eyes many times, but here I am.” I gave him a wink. Bluster and bravado. That’s me.
“Because that was the rule,” he barked. “To keep you alive and unharmed. And she scares me a whole hell of a lot more than you do, white-haired princess.”