by Ben Zackheim
Thankfully, Cassidy hopped into Rebel’s Ferrari and used it to block Skyler’s driveway. At least one of them was paying attention.
“You have no idea what went down back there,” Fox said. He took a couple of angry strides toward her. “We’re lucky to be alive!”
“You’re not alive, vampire.”
“You know what I mean.”
Cassidy ran to Fox’s truck and drove it up to the bickering idiots. He pushed open the passenger’s door.
“Get in,” he said to both of them.
Now I was getting worried. “Hey!” I croaked.
Fox yanked my door off the hinges with one swift move, and Rebel gave him the middle finger. Then she used the same finger to slice my seatbelt in two. I pushed between them and hopped into the truck.
“Good work,” I told him as I slipped into the seat.
“Yeah? Thanks!” He looked like a kid at Christmas. Rebel sat next to me and Fox hopped in the truck’s bed just as a new set of black trucks screeched around the bend in Skyler’s driveway.
The lead truck slammed into the Ferrari barrier. Poor Ferrari.
Cassidy peeled off in a cloud of black smoke. We heard gunshots from behind us. We even heard a missile launcher fire with that distinctive whoosh that only flame can make. A nearby Porsche exploded. I hoped it had missile insurance.
Eventually, the shots stopped and I took a deep breath. A deep breath that hurt like crazy.
“Nice of you to help me,” I said.
“Stop whining,” Rebel muttered.
“Seriously. I know it would have been much more fun to argue with your new boyfriend than pull me out of that tomb. I’m just saying…”
“What do we do now, Kane?” Rebel didn’t have time for chatter. Her head and heart were 100% on Rose. I was worried too. I just had a different way of showing it.
I sighed. She wasn’t going to like the answer. “Now, we get to the pier.”
“And leave Rose to fend for herself?” Rebel asked, disgusted with the idea.
“Yeah,” I said. “They won’t harm her. We have the sword. They’ll use her as bait to draw us out when we get to Hong Kong.”
“How will they know we’re in Hong Kong?” Rebel asked.
“It’s an educated guess,” I said. “They’ve been a step ahead of us since we arrived in L.A.” I glanced back at the brooding vampire in the back of the truck. His plan had already fallen to pieces.
I wondered if that had been his plan all along.
Chapter 23
Rebel hid in the shadows of the pier.
I could tell she was pondering a way to slip away from us and find Rose. But there was nothing for us to do and she knew it. The Lins could have taken the kid anywhere.
As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, Cassidy threw a fit fit for the gods. He was not happy with my plan.
“What do you mean I’m staying behind?” he said. “I’m not staying anywhere!”
I wasn’t going to cave. We didn’t need him for this part of the mission. In fact, he’d probably slow us down. I couldn’t tell him that, though.
But, apparently, Fox could. “You’ll just slow us down,” he said from the shadows.
“That’s bull!” Cassidy yelled. “You don’t think you’ll need an explosives expert over there?”
Fox and I shook our heads.
“You don’t think you’ll need a munitions guys? Or someone who can make your weapons better?”
I shrugged. Fox was thinking about it.
“Oh, come on!” Cassidy threw his hands in the air. To him, tech was everything. To me, I liked to take care of things with the basics. Twin Glocks and five rounds of explosive bullets. Rebel liked L’Oreal Chip-Free #9 or somesuch crap. And anything sharp.
“We need someone to find your sister, kid,” Rebel said, making the most sense she’d made all night.
“You stay in L.A. then, Rebel,” he shot back. “What chance do I have of helping her — even if I do find her?”
I handed him a business card.
“Call this number if you do,” I said. “He’ll help you and he’ll know how to reach me to give updates.”
He looked at the name on the card and frowned at me. “You were going to leave both of us here anyway, weren’t you, Kane?”
Smart kid.
I tried to put a hand on his shoulder, but he stepped out of reach. “Spirit HQ wants you both in L.A. to help monitor local vamp activity. Once you find your sister, you’ll get debriefed and you can work your magic.”
Cassidy stared at the card like he wanted it to burn.
“Just call him, okay?” I pleaded. “Build some kind of a gadget to… I don’t know…”
“What? Build what gadget?” He was tearing up now. Which meant he was getting dangerous.
Suddenly, just over the black line of the horizon, bright lights emerged. Our ship was here.
“I don’t know, Cassidy. Build something to find her.”
“Oh, you mean a Rose Finder?” He was raising his voice. It wasn’t like him. Rebel emerged from the shadows. She put her hand on his shoulder gently. He let her.
“She needs you, Cassidy,” she said softly.
“She needs all of us,” Cassidy managed to say. There was a part of him that wanted to run from this mission. The responsibility of taking care of his sister was weighing on him, testing him in ways he’d never handled before. I realized that he didn’t think he could do it.
Rebel made eye contact with me and jerked her head as if to say, “Talk to him, asshole.” It wasn’t like I could get pissed at her. My rough history with Cassidy was probably a big part of his crisis of confidence.
I cleared my throat. “You can do this, Cassidy. We trust you.”
“Do you?” His angry eyes met mine.
“Yeah, we do,” Rebel added, trying to break his slide into a really dark place. He had a tendency to lash out physically when he lost his temper. I didn’t play that game. Rebel knew I’d defend myself from him. Just like I did last time.
I wasn’t sure Cassidy would be able to control himself much longer. He wanted so bad to take it out on me, I could practically hear his plans of attack dropping out of his head. None of the plans would work, and he knew it. If he wanted to be punished for losing his sister, or if he wanted to suffer for feeling scared, then there was no better guy to get pain from than me.
The last time we’d argued, it had also been about Rose. She wanted to go out into the real world and travel. Apparently, the two of them had been dreaming about it for years and got the courage to bring it up one night. Cassidy would stay behind at first, while Rose would blaze a trail into living a normal life. She was better equipped for it. Their plan was that she’d find ways to get by on her own and then she’d come get Cassidy. Then they’d work out what happened next together. Like adults. Like the humans they wanted to be. They’d even still work for us, just remotely, from wherever they ended up.
Rebel and I both said no at the same time, on the spot.
It’s not like they were our kids, but the twins were our responsibility and they were not ready to be on their own. They may have been in their twenties by human years but their maturity rate was about ten. And it would probably always be that way. I made the mistake of mentioning that possibility to them that night.
Right after I said it, Rebel sucked in some air like I’d just cut her. She knew I’d made a mistake before I did.
Cassidy lunged at me.
I’d defended myself without thinking and busted his arm in two. Clean break. The bone poked out at the elbow and stabbed him in the side as he fell, puncturing a lung.
I’d never been more horrified in my life. For all the shit I gave the twins, and no matter how much I wished they’d never come into my life, I loved them. It wasn’t my blood that poured out of Cassidy that night, but they were my tears. I apologized a thousand times before he’d talk to me again.
Being left behind in L.A. was the closest he’d ev
er been to independence. If his sister had been there to support him, he would have embraced the idea. The fact was, he was right to be scared. He wasn’t ready to be alone. But I’d contacted a few Spirit agents and asked them to watch him like a hawk while we were overseas.
“This is a chance to do something on your own, Cassidy,” I said. “You’ll thank us one day.” I hated it when I sounded like a dad. Cassidy kicked a trash can over and stormed off.
Rebel got close enough to whisper. “I don’t like leaving him behind like this. You sure your friends can handle him?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer. We had to complete this mission. That was our first priority.
The yacht was ready for us. A 50-footer. Impressive. I’d expect no less from vampire money.
Fox, Rebel and I walked up the steps, one bag each over our shoulders. We were ready to go. I glanced over my shoulder and spotted Cassidy. I couldn’t see his face. It hid in shadows.
I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling.
“Call him,” I yelled out as we set off.
“Fuck you,” Cassidy yelled back.
Chapter 24
The yacht was ridiculous.
In a good way.
That thing was classy. And by “classy”, I mean over-the-top decadent.
Its multiple levels were slap-dashed with mahogany detailing and I swear the gold trim was real gold. The hot tubs on every floor alternated bow to stern for a total of five, just in case you wanted to douse one limb per tub, and top it off with your head. One level was adorned with carved stone walls and fake torches that gave the whole thing a castle feel. The ornate throne at the end of the room slid on rails to make way for the movie screen.
Decadent. Decadent’s decadence, even. It was out of control. Too much. A mortal acknowledgment of the ridiculous crap we do to feel important.
I loved it.
“This is going to get us all the way to Hong Kong?” I asked, admiring the craftsmanship on bar stools that probably cost as much as my entire library.
“No, Hawaii,” Fox said. “I have an errand to do there. We’ll catch a plane when I’m done.”
“Too bad,” Rebel said. “I could get used to this place.”
It was hard to relax when there was so much chaos behind us, but I tried. That’s the thing about luxury. It can consume you in a second. It can take you away from your worries. When you’re surrounded by shiny gold things it’s easier to just give in and enjoy.
I sat on a deck chair and craved whiskey. Jameson Black, man. Nothing like it when you need to kill all kinds of pain or germs or brain cells. And, like magic, a glass of liquid appeared in front of my face, three ice cubes tinkling inside and five long fingernails threatening to scratch the glass.
“Thanks,” I said.
Rebel sat down in the lounge chair across from me. She was in a bikini. At night. She smiled at my stare. I frowned at my stare but it kept staring anyway. Her body was tanned brown so her white teeth and bright eyes popped. Like I was.
“I found it in my room,” she said.
“Vampire cooties.”
“Vampires don’t swim.”
“Then I wonder what dead woman left it here?”
She shrugged. “Someone with taste. Fits nice, huh?”
“Yeah, it fits nice.” She was in a flirty mood. I had to think about how much I wanted to participate in the game. Maybe after a few sips. Or bottles. We’d made it twenty years without giving in. But this was the 1000th night where I wondered if I could resist temptation.
“They have a crate of your favorite whiskey in the booze room,” she said, taking a sip from her own glass. Whiskey was one of the few things we had in common. She added water to her whiskey. I added ice.
“The twins will be okay,” she said, reading my mind.
“Good. Then I don’t need to feel so bad.” I finished the glass in one big gulp. A sure sign that I’d left no guilt behind.
I took a moment to refill with the bottle she'd brought, and took a deep breath.
“Jesus Christ, Kane. You broadcast your feelings like a goddamn satellite.“
“Only to you,” I said, warming up to the flirt thing.
“Nuh-uh. That moment's passed,” she said. She gulped down the rest of her drink.
“How is it women always get to decide when the moment passes? Maybe I decided that the moment passed when you dropped down on that chair.”
“Maybe you did. The difference is that I don't give a damn and you do.”
“Fine.”
Rebel slapped her glass on the side table. “Now I'm turned on again.”
Fox decided that would be a great time for him to walk through the sliding glass doors. He had a skin sack of blood. I’d seen them before. The skin sack was like a human flesh-colored baseball. He'd squeeze it and it would spit the liquid into his red-stained mouth.
“Why can't you guys just use a glass like everyone else?” I asked.
“Glass ruins the taste,” he answered. “Keeping the blood in contact with flesh preserves it, plus it enhances...”
I held up a hand. “Okay, fine. I get it. Just, I don't know, hide it away or something. Grosses me out.”
He took another sip. It made a squishy sound that curdled the whiskey in my stomach.
“It will take three days to get to Hawaii,” he said. “When we get there we need to visit a bank.”
“For what?” Rebel asked.
“To make a deposit,” he said.
“We're not leaving the sword there if that's what you're thinking,” I said. I knew Fox was playing a few angles on this little trip of ours, and I wasn't going to give an inch.
“It’s a vampire bank so no chance of that. It won't take long.”
“What’s a vampire bank?” Rebel asked.
“A bank for vampires,” Fox said, condescendingly.
“Yeah, I got that part, you jacka…”
“What does Skyler have to do with the Lins?” I asked, hoping to catch Fox off guard. “Why were they at his house?” We’d never discussed Skyler before.
“The Blues? I have no idea. Like I said before. I work for someone who wants the sword safely out of vampire hands. I'm not privy to the ins-and-outs of vampire/human intrigue.”
“So you know Skyler,” Rebel said.
Fox shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“Has he gone rogue?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It's a pretty common thing to get tempted by the other side once or twice when you play this game. Sometimes the temptations are too great and the rewards are too close to your nose to ignore. Willpower will only take you so far, in my experience.”
“Skyler is one of the strong ones,” Rebel said.
“You could have said the same about Kane's father, though, couldn't you?”
My heart jumped. Fox took a sip from his disgusting-skin and looked out on the ocean as if he'd just made a comment about the weather. I did notice that he wouldn't look at me.
Rebel was as wide-eyed as I felt.
I didn't know what to say for a second. A very rare thing, indeed. But I didn't want to let him know that I knew almost nothing about my parents. Was he saying my dad was a turncoat? But he and my mother never showed any sign of magic or the supernatural.
If Fox could fill in some blanks then maybe he'd be worth the hassle after all.
“How do you mean?” I said in my steadiest voice. It was the most non-committal tone I could muster, and I said it in the most casual way. Not a bad job if I do say so myself.
“Excuse me?” Fox said.
“I don't get your meaning about my father.”
He glanced at me with a quizzical look. He took another sip. I tried to keep up with his stare. It felt like he was probing my brain. I feared he actually was, so I thought about a kitten video on YouTube. That one where they're doing cute things. Kittens flew through my thoughts as he kept silent. Gray kittens with bows. Jumping kittens who just couldn't jump tha
t far. Kittens attacking children. I loved those videos.
“Well?” I said, trying to put him on the spot.
“You don't know,” Fox said, flatly. There would be no talking to him now. He had on his vamp attitude. The one that always seemed to step in when mere mortals feel defenseless in their presence. They smell doubt like they smell blood. It feeds some part of them that I hope I never understand.
“No. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I tried the honest approach. He didn’t bite. It was my lame attempt at grabbing some power back in the moment. But I was powerless.
He knew something about my past.
Something I needed to know, too.
Chapter 25
Fox slinked back into the yacht.
“What the hell was that all about?” Rebel whispered.
“I think he knows why I have a Solo power.”
“Ah, that.”
Rebel didn’t understand why I had to tear myself up over the origin of my portal. She thought it was a waste of time to look for answers. I had the Vault Portal at my disposal. That’s all I needed to know, as far as she was concerned.
“I’ll work on him for you, if you want,” she said.
“I’m sure you will.”
“Is that all you think about?”
I smiled. She smiled back. But then Skyler dropped into my head like a turd.
“What?” she asked. I guess it looked like a turd had dropped into my head.
“Skyler. It doesn’t make any sense. Why would our own teacher turn on us?”
“I don’t think he has. So there.”
“I found this.” I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the Wad.
“Where?” Her eyes were wide. She grabbed the coin and inspected it.
“The Lin in my car dropped it.”
“One of the blue guys? Skyler only gives them to new members of his team.” She thought for a second, gulping down a fresh glass like a pro. “Maybe the blue grabbed it off someone.”
“Maybe.” I noticed she put the coin on her side of the table between us. Nice move, Rebel, I thought. She was trying to steal it. I couldn’t blame her. I’d do the same thing.