Time Will Tell

by Chloe Garner

  “Reggie,” the woman spat. “Don’t know why he insists on hanging out with him.”

  “I’m not with the police, ma’am,” Tina said. “I just want to get the woman back. If something happens to her, though…” Tina shook her head.

  “He isn’t here,” the woman said. “I already told you.”

  “I need you to tell me where he would go,” Tina said. “The Order owns your house, it owns your husband, but he comes home to you every night. He must talk about it, some. Where would he take a woman that he needed to hide away where no one would find them?”

  “Reggie’s house,” the woman said without pause, the same disdain as before. “That man…”

  She shook her head.

  “Can you give me the address?” Tina asked.

  “Are you carrying a gun?” the woman asked, and Tina nodded.

  “I am.”

  “Shoot Reggie, and we’ll call it even,” the woman said. “Let me get my phone.”

  Reggie was another ten minutes out of town, but when Tina pulled up to the curb, she could see the little red diesel parked in the driveway, and when she rolled down the window, she caught the faintest hint of Colette’s scent.

  Bingo.

  She texted Hunter to tell him that she thought she’d found Colette, and that from here she might not be accessible anymore.

  Be careful.

  If Tell can’t find me, tell him to go get Kyle and meet me at the building where the Rooks holed up in three days.

  You aren’t going there, are you? Hunter asked.

  No. I don’t know where I’m going, but that’s where I’ll be, then.

  There was another pause.

  Be careful, he finally said again.

  She nodded.

  You, too.

  Putting her laptop under the seat and scavenging her purse for anything useful to add to her backpack, she slung her backpack over her shoulder, pulled her hood up in front of her face, and got out of the car.

  She followed Colette’s scent around the side of the house, where the shadows were deep enough that she wouldn’t have been able to see, as a human. There was a small storm door in front of a white door with peeling paint, but they’d taken Colette around that, to a pair of cellar doors that lay on the ground where their frame had rotted through some time before. Tina didn’t like it, but that was the way forward. She pulled up one of the doors, grateful that it wouldn’t let a beam of light down into whatever room there was below, then she slipped around the door and started down the stairs on silent feet.

  “Gin.”

  She heard the sound of cards flicking down onto a table, one by one, and a voice groaned.

  “No fair,” the second voice said.

  “Not my fault you suck at this,” the first one said.

  Tina paused with her back against a low wall, watching the shadows cast by a small electric lantern somewhere out of sight.

  There against the wall, Tina could see Colette’s shadow, the woman tied to a chair also just out of sight. She got an impression of a body, much too close to the light to be anything other than a shoulder, but it told Tina where they were and that she would be looking at his back, most likely.

  It was a good guess that the other man would be facing directly toward her.

  Tina took the knife out of her boot and checked the gun in the pocket on the back of her backpack, considering for a moment before taking it out and holding it under the knife, one in each hand.

  It had an effect.

  She kind of liked it.

  She stepped around the corner.

  The man on the far side of the table saw her immediately. She’d expected that, though she made no noise.

  “Vamp,” he said, picking up the edge of the table and tossing it. The closer man threw himself onto the floor on his stomach, covering his head with his hands as the table landed almost top-down on top of him.

  Tina took several steps forward to put her foot on the table, just to know what he was doing as she followed the other man.

  “Don’t move,” she said. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

  She did.

  Just not like this.

  He had a gun pointed at her, and he pulled the trigger twice as he moved, diving into a far corner to wrestle with a box the size that might fit a classroom globe.

  Tina fired back, ignoring that one of the bullets hit her, stepping on the table and walking toward the man with the box. The man under the table grunted, scrambling without much luck. He probably had a gun down there, too.

  “I said don’t move,” she said. “Lucas?”

  He looked over at her, getting out a much, much larger gun, and she pointed her own weapon at his face, ignoring the man on the ground for now.

  “Your wife would be very disappointed to raise those kids all on her own,” Tina said. “You aren’t going to kill me fast enough, whatever that does. Put it down.”

  He looked at the point where the bullet would have gone into his own forehead, then put down the box and the gun.

  “Do her,” the man under the table said. “Do her do her. Paint the wall.”

  “Reggie, I presume,” Tina said without looking back. She spotted something on the ground off to her left and shook her head. “You left your gun out on the table didn’t you? You don’t have anything…”

  A knife plugged into her back, thumping when the hilt hit, and Tina shook her head, annoyed.

  It did hurt.

  Tell hadn’t been wrong about that.

  But it somehow didn’t much matter that it hurt, either the bullet or the knife, because neither of the injuries mattered.

  Tina grabbed Lucas by the collar and pitched him over at Reggie, turning so that she could see both of them.

  “Tempting to just shoot you, like she said, for that,” Tina muttered, realizing without trying that she wasn’t going to be able to reach the knife without some awkward acrobatics.

  “Can’t you for once control your damned wife?” Reggie demanded, still under the table where Tina had landed Lucas.

  “Don’t talk about Lola like that,” Lucas answered. “And you. You animal. If you’ve touched her…”

  “She sent me here,” Tina said. “Locked the door and went back to bed. Stronger woman than you deserve.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Lucas muttered.

  “Deserves a hole in the head,” Reggie hissed. “She betrayed us, Lucas? The Order is going to execute her.”

  That.

  That was fully enough.

  Tina shot him.

  Put the gun away and looked at Lucas.

  “I don’t care what happens to you,” she said. “You can tell them whatever you like about what happened here. But I can see in the dark and you can’t. You come up out of this cellar before I drive away, I’m going to put a hole in your head. Got it?”

  Lucas looked down at his friend for a moment, then back up at Tina.

  “You’re dead,” he said.

  “Yup,” she answered. “Happened a while ago.”

  “I know,” he said, his voice different than she’d anticipated. “That’s what I mean. You’re dead.”

  “You’re one of the worships-vampires ones, then,” Tina said. “Cool. All the same, you’re going to try to kill me if I give you a chance.”

  “Orders,” the man said. Tina nodded.

  “I don’t respect it, but… Well, I just flat out don’t respect it. Sit still.”

  She went and cut Colette loose, evaluating the woman quickly for health and mental status, then jerked her head to indicate the box in the corner.

  “Pack that back up. We’re taking it with us.”

  “Who are you?” Colette asked, not budging.

  “Seriously?” Tina asked. “You want me to just leave you with these guys?”

  “Devil I know,” Colette said, her words short.

  “All right,” Tina said, putting away her gun. She cast a warning look at Lucas, who stayed still. “You can jus
t hang here. I’ll tell Tell you weren’t interested in a rescue.”

  At the word, Colette was moving, going to toss the gun into the leather-covered box and hefting it off of the floor. Tina could have carried it easily, but she liked watching Colette struggle under it.

  She reflected for a moment that she was trusting Hunter’s word more than Tell’s, about this woman, and maybe she should have started out with more empathy, but there it was.

  She was a vampire.

  Either Colette would understand that or she wouldn’t.

  Tina jerked her head at Lucas as Colette started up the stairs.

  “Unsolicited advice?” she said. “Move. Pick up and take all your stuff and pick a new city. You don’t want any part of what comes next, and if you love your family more than your cult, there’s still hope for you.”

  She looked around the cellar once more, eyes skimming the various bits and pieces of tools and food down there. He could probably build a bomb big enough to take down Viella with what was there; the question was whether he knew it.

  She followed Colette up the stairs and into the frigid night air.

  “Keep moving,” Tina said.

  “You could help me if you wanted to,” Colette answered. “Where is Tell?”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Tina said. “He sent you a message to tell you that, but you were already risking your life.”

  “Not what I asked,” Colette said. “And if you want to go faster, you can carry this.”

  “I’m making sure that man doesn’t come up with an automatic weapon and turn you into swiss cheese,” Tina said. “I think I’ve got my priorities straight.”

  “Where is he?” Colette asked, stopping.

  Tina paused to look at her.

  Realized it.

  “You were in love with him,” she said. “All this time, that’s what you remember.”

  “Who wouldn’t be?” Colette answered. “Tell me where he is.”

  “He’s at home, sick,” Tina said. “And that’s the truth. He sent me to come get you out of here and get you somewhere safe while he recovers.”

  “They shot you,” Colette said.

  “One good one,” Tina said, feeling the wet seep down her chest. “I’ll worry about it later.”

  They got to the street and Tina unlocked the car, watching behind them as Colette put the box into the trunk and got in the passenger’s seat.

  Tina got in and tossed the gun into the backseat, putting away her knife as she started the car. She turned her back toward Colette.

  “You mind?”

  The woman pulled the knife out of Tina’s back and looked at it.

  “Where is Kyle?” Colette asked.

  “You’ve been in town for, what, four-five days now, and you haven’t figured that out?” Tina asked. “How about you start with what you do know.”

  “Tell me who you are,” Colette said.

  “I’m Tell’s friend,” Tina said. “I work for him and I live with him.”

  “They said you’re a vampire,” Colette said.

  “I survived a gunshot like one,” Tina answered.

  “He doesn’t like vampires,” Colette said. “Except that awful one. You’re almost as bad as he is.”

  “Hey,” Tina said. “First of all, I’m dating that awful vampire, and second of all, I’m nowhere near as bad as he is.”

  “You do know Hunter,” Colette said, her tone easing slightly. “Are you actually dating him? I would have called him undateable.”

  “Yeah, you’d probably be right,” Tina said. “It’s not been a home run.”

  “I forgot how much I enjoyed this,” Colette said, looking over her shoulder. “Albert is boring.”

  “Who’s Albert?” Tina asked.

  “That’s the little town where Tell dumped me,” Colette said. “It’s a lovely place with lovely people, yada yada, but… This. This is so much more fun.”

  Tina looked over at her.

  “You know that they were going to human-sacrifice you, probably in front of your brother in order to increase his odds or whatever,” she said.

  Colette looked forward again.

  “They’re doing it, are they?” she asked.

  “You don’t seem as surprised as I would have expected,” Tina said.

  “Why? That I’m shocked they’re going to try to kill my brother, and as long as they’re doing it, they may as well see if they can work their necromancy on him, too?”

  Tina considered this, then nodded.

  “Waste not,” she said, and Colette snorted.

  “Especially if the idiot is just going to go along with it.”

  “Tell me about your brother,” Tina said. Colette sighed.

  “What is there to tell? I mean, it’s not like I even know him anymore… Wow. I come home and everything just goes back, doesn’t it?”

  Tina glanced at her again.

  “What do you mean?”

  Colette laughed.

  “In Albert, I’m sweet and quiet and I bake things for potlucks. Get me back home and I’m… Well, I don’t keep my thoughts to myself, that’s for sure.”

  “Why would he go in with necromancers, though?” Tina asked. “I mean, of all of the magics to be interested in…”

  “It’s the one that’s always recruiting,” Colette said.

  “Is it?” Tina asked.

  Colette leaned her head against the window.

  “When you kill off everyone, you kind of have to,” the woman said.

  Tina didn’t have an answer to that, so she didn’t say anything. She wondered if perhaps Colette didn’t know that Tell had killed them all.

  “You going to tell me what you were doing out in front of the building?” Tina asked.

  Colette looked at the front window with her lips puckered, obstinate.

  “Nope,” she said. “I don’t see any profit in that.”

  “They were going to kill you,” Tina said.

  “If they were going to kill me, they would have taken me inside and done it,” Colette answered. “They still want something from me.”

  Tina shook her head, pulling the car to the side of the road and turning off the lights.

  “You’re endangering everyone, doing this,” she said. “Can’t you see that? Do you not care?”

  Colette crossed her arms.

  “I think that’s another one I don’t want to talk about, with you.”

  “Look, lady, I’m the only thing between you and whatever the Order had planned for you, and honestly I’m not really feeling it. I’m supposed to go hide you away until tomorrow night, so that Tell can keep you safe, and right now, I’m concerned that you’re going to walk out the door the moment the sun comes up, and I’m going to have wasted my effort. I’ve got a freaking bullet hole, getting you out.”

  “You need to feed, don’t you?” Colette asked quietly.

  Tina looked down at the purple blood seeping through her coat.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, concerned that it wasn’t actually true.

  “We can stop somewhere, if you want,” Colette said. “I know how it works. I remember.”

  Tina snorted.

  “You really don’t get it, do you?” There was a tirade that went along after that, but she paused long enough to get her thoughts in order, and she saw it.

  She needed someone she trusted.

  Someone who wasn’t a vampire.

  Someone that the Order was not going to want to deal with.

  Might not be able to deal with.

  “Fine,” she said, as the plan came together in her head. “Fine. I’m going to go feed, and then we’re going to go hide for the day. How do I trust that you aren’t going to leave and go get yourself snatched again, if you won’t tell me why you did it in the first place?”

  Colette sighed.

  “All right, that makes sense. I tracked his phone there. I have access to all of his accounts because guessing his passwords is hideously easy, and
I routed the notifications that I pinged his phone back to my account. So. I knew he was inside.”

  “Why didn’t you go find him when he was at home?” Tina asked. “Or at work?”

  “I did that, too,” Colette said. “I wanted to see what this place was, because he kept going there.”

  Tina boggled.

  “You don’t even know that you were standing out front of the Order’s headquarters?”

  “I had a suspicion,” Colette admitted. “I didn’t go in.”

  Tina turned her headlights back on again, shaking her head.

  “They would have killed you,” she said. “They’re taking him in, because they think that he can help them find you. And then you just turn up? No reason for them to even keep him alive, after that.”

  “How far along is he?” Colette asked, and Tina frowned.

  “How far along what?” she asked. Colette sighed.

  “For someone who hangs out with Tell, I’d hoped you would be smarter. Through the process to resurrect him after he dies?”

  “He’s not dead,” Tina said. Colette sighed harder, making a point this time.

  “I’ve been in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere for almost twenty years,” the woman said. “Why do I know more about this than you do?”

  “You’ve gotta be more specific,” Tina said.

  “There’s a process to getting someone ready to be killed,” Colette said. “How much of it have they completed?”

  Tina shook her head. She’d had an idea that that was what Colette was talking about, but she wanted to know how much Colette knew about it.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “How much of it can they do while he’s still working?”

  “Good point,” Colette said. “He skipped work yesterday, so they’re transitioning into the last phase.”

  Tina licked her lips, wanting to keep the woman talking without suggesting how much specific interest she had in it.

  “How long does it take, start to finish?” Tina asked.

  “Twenty years ago?” Colette asked. “Six months. They would have started on him basically when he first got involved with them. I expect they figured out who he was and actively recruited him. I would have expected Tell to be keeping a closer eye on them than that. I thought he would take care of Kyle.”

  “Twenty years is a long time,” Tina said. “Maybe they’ve got it shorter, at this point.”