Hopeless: A Vision of Vampires 2

by Laura Legend

“What is it?” Zach asked.

  “Luke 15:24,” Cass said, closing her eyes, searching her memory. “It’s from Luke’s version of the parable of the prodigal son: ‘For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’”

  “Huh. What about this?” Zach asked again, pointing to an older carving on the margins of the desk. “What’s the secret message here?”

  In crude letters, it said: FOR A GOOD TIME CALL . . .

  Cass shook her head sternly, caught off guard, trying not to laugh.

  “I think that might be my old number,” Zach added, a hopeful edge to his voice.

  He slipped his arms around Cass’s waist. She leaned back into him and couldn’t stop from laughing now. This time, he didn’t try to stop himself from kissing the nape of her neck. Cass surrendered to the distraction, stretched her arms high over her head, and inclined her neck to one side, inviting him to continue. Zach nibbled on her ear, his hands sliding higher on her ribs.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Amare said from the doorway, his French inflection more obvious this time. “But a little bird told me that you had returned. I had begun to despair of your success. I fear Miranda may feel the same way.”

  Cass’s arms dropped to her side, one hand itching for her sword.

  “The relic is in the bag?” Amare asked. “Hand it over.”

  “What about the deal?” Zach countered. “You promised us information in return.”

  “Relic first, information second,” Amare said, his hand outstretched.

  Zach was reluctant to trust him, especially after what had just happened with Maya. But Cass was tired of delays. She tossed the bag to Amare. He glanced inside and zipped it back up.

  “Thank you, Miss Jones,” Amare said. “Now, to make good on my end of the bargain, I need to tell you two things.”

  He held up one finger.

  “First, Miranda was, in fact, abducted and is currently being held at a remote location. However, she is not being held by the Lost—though her abductors certainly went out of their way to give that impression.”

  Cass was out from behind the desk now. Amare had her full attention.

  “Miranda is, instead, being held by ‘the Shield,’ a secret society of magicians who practice the ancient Japanese art of kotodama to manipulate reality with words and symbols. They think of themselves as the good guys. They are self-styled defenders of the status quo, and—speaking from personal experience—I assure you that they can be quite ruthless when it comes to dealing with anyone, friend or enemy, who gets in their way.”

  He extended his free hand with a folded piece of paper between two fingers. Cass took it.

  “Miranda is being held at their base in the mountains of Japan. It was originally an ancient monastery. This map will get you there.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me who they are,” Cass said as she started for the door, her jaw set and her face grim. “I’ll tear them apart.”

  “Oh, I believe you,” Amare said, stepping aside but gently grazing her arm with his hand as she passed by.

  Cass stopped in the doorway to see what else he wanted. Zach was still on the far side of the desk. Amare was positioned between them.

  “But that was only the first thing you needed to know. The second thing may be equally important.”

  Cass was confident she didn’t want to hear whatever was going to come next.

  “You should also know that your boyfriend, Zach Riviera, is one of the Shield’s top agents.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Miranda was chained to a wall in what could fairly be described as a “dungeon.” The room was cold, the stone walls and stone floor had chilled her to the bone. Her wrists were red and raw. Her arms ached from being suspended from the wall above her head. Her emotions bounced between anger, pity, and despair. But regardless of how she felt, the focal point of her emotions was the same: Kumiko.

  Keys turned and the bolt in the heavy lock on her cell door clunked free. A moment later, the door to her cell banged open. Pushed too hard, it rebounded off the wall. An enormous figure ducked his head and, leading with his shoulder, squeezed his bulk through the door. His ridiculously large hands stilled the door. The fading evening light cast stark shadows across his face, highlighting the fact that his cheeks were pitted with deep acne scars.

  “Hello, Dogen,” Miranda said weakly. She rolled her eyes upward, taking him in without lifting her head. He looked identical to how he’d looked when she’d met him thirty years ago: looming and gentle and ponytailed. “I think it’s time to consider a haircut. Even in the mountains of Japan, the ’90s are long gone.”

  Dogen stopped short, his hand smoothing his hair, seriously considering her advice.

  Kumiko stepped out of the shadows behind him. She looked like a child next to Dogen. “There’s no reason to be cruel,” she said. “We’re all just doing whatever must be done.” Her hands were clasped in front of her, hidden in the sleeves of her kimono. Her white hair was gathered in a tight bun.

  Kumiko continued. “Clearly you were just doing what you felt must be done. Even if that meant betraying the Shield. Even if that meant betraying me.”

  Miranda let her head hang, eyes down, her weight suspended from the chains that bound her wrists.

  “You’re wrong,” Miranda whispered.

  “I wish that were true,” Kumiko replied, her voice cold and reserved. She paused, and softened slightly. “I do wish it were true. But you’ve always put your own family first. Your loyalties have never really been to us.”

  Kumiko gestured to Dogen. He dragged an old stool from the corner of the room and set it closer to Miranda. Kumiko sat down, her feet barely touching the floor. Dogen then brought a bucket of water with a metal ladle in from the hall and set it where Miranda could see it. It looked like ordinary water but, trained in kotodama, Miranda knew that the glimmering water’s green tint indicated something more: “interrogation water.” Infused with a spell, the water would wear away her mental defenses, making her cooperative and her responses truthful.

  Dogen ladled a scoop of the water over her head. The water was freezing cold and Miranda winced and wilted in response, shrinking back into herself. The tiny ladle, though, was unwieldy in Dogen’s massive hands and, returning it to the bucket, he splashed some water on himself.

  Kumiko shot him a disapproving look. Dogen looked away, abashed. Miranda couldn’t say for sure, but she thought that he now looked even more cooperative and compliant than normal. He looked like he was ready to spill all his secrets.

  “You have recklessly endangered us all,” Kumiko said, returning to both her monologue and her icy demeanor. “Without authorization or consultation you revealed yourself to Cassandra and involved yourself in a maverick, globe-trotting adventure that resulted in the death of Judas and the catastrophic destabilization of the fragile balance between the Lost, the Turned, and the ordinary world—a balance that we had worked so hard, for so long, to ensure.”

  Kumiko rose to her feet and, despite her height, she towered over Miranda.

  “You were a faithful disciple for so many years. You had such promise, even after what happened with your sister. But I should have seen what was coming. In the end, like your sister, you were incapable of patience. You leap into action and gamble everything without weighing the consequences of your actions or foreseeing their ramifications.”

  Miranda felt a flicker of anger when Kumiko mentioned Rose but, soaked in interrogation water, she had no fuel to burn.

  “I know that you were looking for the new leader of the Lost, the one they call the Heretic, and that you had reached out to them without authorization and were pursuing sources outside Shield protocol. And I know, too, that in a foolish effort to save you from your own people”—Miranda looked up at this, an honestly skeptical look in her eyes at the mention of the Shield being “her own people”—“Cassandra has, once again, enlisted help from the Turned, secured a valuable relic, and then willingly h
anded that relic over to the Lost themselves.”

  This last revelation hit Miranda hard. “Oh, Cass,” she said softly to herself, shaking her head. “Not for me.”

  “Your girl is a one-man wrecking crew,” Kumiko said, raising her voice. “If her emotions break loose, she may single handedly destroy the world itself before the week is out!”

  Kumiko almost shouted this last bit, her frustration wearing through. Pacing the length of the cell, she smoothed her kimono, calming herself.

  “You have failed Miranda. Your whole family has failed. And Cassandra won’t be able to help you now. She may find her way here, but when she does, she’ll just be stepping into a trap. And once we also have her in hand, we may finally be able to start cleaning up this mess you have made.”

  Dogen was getting a little antsy, shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, primed as he was by the water to be extra cooperative and compliant. He looked like he might jump in and start helpfully answering questions for Miranda.

  “I need to know the truth,” Kumiko continued, lifting Miranda’s chin to look her in the eye. “I need to know what you know. I need to know: who is the new leader of the Lost?”

  Miranda looked right back as her mixed emotional response to Kumiko finally resolved itself, moving from the spark of anger to an abiding sense of pity.

  Miranda pitied her.

  Kumiko would never be able to see the truth—she was too frozen to thaw to its warmth. And whatever bond of trust and friendship had once existed between them was gone now, irreparably broken.

  Miranda gathered herself together, drawing herself up to her full height.

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” Miranda said. “I’ll tell you the thing you’ve been hiding from yourself for centuries. I’ll tell you the thing that you’re most afraid to hear.”

  Kumiko took a step back. Dogen moved to her side.

  “I’ll tell you the truth,” Miranda finished, “about the Lost.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Silence. The whole trip back to Cass’s apartment, neither of them spoke. Cass might have left Zach behind if she had been sure she could get back by herself. But she wasn’t. So she stuck with him, staying a few steps behind, the sense of hopelessness that had dogged her for months—always two frustrating steps removed, never quite felt in the first person—souring now into a sense of betrayal. With every step, this sense of betrayal gathered steam until, back in the apartment, Cass couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  Cass dropped her gear in the corner and wheeled on Zach, her finger already pointed at him, her weak eye wandering. The sun was down and the apartment windows were black.

  Zach took a couple of steps back, his hands raised defensively.

  “I know it’s true,” Cass said. “I know Amare was telling the truth—about the Shield and about you.” She felt in her pocket for the reassuring square of paper that contained the map leading to Miranda’s location. It was still there.

  Zach didn’t try to deny it.

  Cass kept advancing and Zach kept retreating. Without quite meaning to, Zach ended up circling behind the Wing Chun practice dummy, positioning it between the two of them.

  Cass’s hand closed into a fist. She unleashed her frustration on the practice dummy, delivering a couple of blows that rattled the worn wooden arms in their sockets.

  “You work for the Shield?” Cass asked again, giving him a chance to confess.

  “Yes,” Zach admitted. “I have for a long time. They recruited me when I was barely a teen and they trained me for years. They keep an eye out for kids that show some sensitivity to magic. It’s how I got involved in all this in the first place.”

  “And Miranda?” Cass asked.

  “Yes, Miranda worked with the Shield, too,” Zach confirmed. “I knew about her by reputation, but our paths never crossed until after I met you.”

  “Why would they kidnap one of their own people? It doesn’t make any sense,” Cass pressed, rocking the dummy in its stand with a kick.

  Zach looked at the dummy, still rocking, and back at Cass.

  “Miranda had . . . a reputation. She was a bit of a wild card and her relationship with her bosses at the Shield had been strained for a long time. The details aren’t clear to me. But when, last year, she got sucked into that confrontation with Judas, everything went to hell. Nobody trusted her anymore and they ordered me to keep an eye on her and what she was doing. When she went looking for the new leader of the Lost on her own, they must have decided that they had to intervene and bring her back in—whether she wanted to come in or not.”

  Cass chewed on her lip, trying to process this. She circled around the dummy toward Zach, but he kept circling, too, keeping some space between them.

  He guessed what her next question was going to be and tried to beat her to it.

  “I didn’t know, Cass,” he said. “I didn’t know why they wanted me to keep an eye on her. And I didn’t know until Amare said it that the Shield, not the Lost, really did have her.”

  He looked at his shoes and then back up at her.

  “You’ve got to believe me.”

  Cass believed him. But now that gears had been set in motion, all of the wheels in her mind were turning. Everything that had happened in the past year took on a different shape. In fact, everything in the past twenty years started to take on a different shape. And all of these wheels within wheels seemed to turn in connection with the mystery she understood least: what had happened to her mother. In one way or another, her mother had been entangled in all of this.

  Cass felt the fight drain out of her at the thought of how little she understood. She wandered toward a stool and was about to sit down when an additional thought struck her with the force of revelation: her friendship with Zach was no coincidence.

  Her blood flushed hot again and she was back on our feet, fists balled.

  “They asked you to watch Miranda,” Cass asked, “because you were already here.”

  “Yeah,” Zach said, “but I didn’t like the idea.”

  “Fine. But why were you already here?”

  Zach looked like Cass had just punched him in the gut, his face a shade of green.

  “Why, Zach? Why were you already here? We didn’t meet by accident did we? Our friendship is no coincidence, is it? They assigned you to ‘watch’ me, too, didn’t they? They assigned you to be my ‘friend’?”

  Zach didn’t even have to answer. She knew it was true.

  Zach started to offer some kind of explanation. Cass cut him off.

  Everything that came next landed with a dull thud of inevitability. Everything that came next couldn’t not be said.

  “Was it part of your job to get me to fall in love with you, too? Friendship wasn’t enough?”

  Zach stopped retreating. Cass caught up to him and punched him in the shoulder.

  “Did your bosses order you to get into my pants, too? Did they train you, like some fucking super-spy, to seduce me? Or did you improvise that part of the plan on your own?”

  She punched him again, hard, in the same shoulder, then kicked the couch and sent it sliding across the floor.

  He stayed silent, head bowed, holding his ground, and took it.

  “Asshole,” Cass spat. “Fuck you. It’s time to pick a side. It’s time to decide if you’re on my side or theirs.”

  Zach swallowed hard.