by Mari Mancusi
“We need more blood over here!” cries a blond vamp nearby.
“This is the last bag!’ calls another from across the camp.
I want to puke all over again. It’s hard enough to believe these vampires have survived as long as they have drinking mostly rodent blood. And they’re going to need a serious surplus of the human stuff if they expect to heal these types of wounds. All around me I see torn limbs, slashed-open stomachs, and massive head wounds. The kind of injuries that, without human blood transfusions, may take decades to heal on their own. The wolves came in and did their worst. It would have almost been kinder of the Consortium to send in a hundred slayers armed with stakes. At least that way death would have come quickly and painlessly.
But Pyrus, I realize, has never been one for kindness.
My eyes search the camp, frantically looking for a familiar face. At last I see Cinder carrying two buckets of blood over to a large group of wounded. She’s scraped up pretty bad but looks damn healthy compared to the rest of them. That human blood I let her drink before the attack probably saved her immortal life.
“Where’s Magnus? Where’s Jareth?” I ask, rushing over to her and grabbing her by the arm, not one hundred percent sure I want to know the answer to either question. Please don’t let them be dead. Please don’t let them be dead.
Cinder turns to me, a solemn look on her face. “Lord Magnus surrendered to the wolves,” she says. “He let them take him away.”
“What?” I cry. They took Magnus? So everything we tried to do was for nothing? “Why would he do something like that?”
She gives me a hard look. The look of someone who has seen far too much pain in her life. “To save the rest of the camp,” she says flatly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get this blood distributed.” She tries to push past me, but I stand my ground.
“What about… what about… Jareth,” I manage to finally spit out, though I have no idea how I’m going to take the news that something happened to him.
“He’s over in one of the remaining tents,” she says, giving me wan smile. “Some of the vampires… well, they believe he brought the wolves upon us. I felt that it was best he remain out of plain sight.”
“So he’s… alive.” My heart surges with hope.
She nods. “He’s doing much better than most. But then, he started out healthier to begin with.” She looks around the camp, dismay in her eyes. I rest a hand on her arm.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“No more than I am,” she replies, then rushes away to deliver the blood to those who need it.
I draw in a long breath, then start toward the tent where Jareth hides, my stomach feeling as if it’s going to flip inside out as I step over dismembered limbs and bloody entrails. How could Pyrus get away with something like this? Was it simply because the other Consortium members have no idea what’s really going on? I force myself to pull my iPhone from my pocket, wincing as I click it on and see the wallpaper photo of Sunny and me making funny faces at the camera. Somehow I manage to find the photo app and start taking pictures. The others must know what went on here today.
“Get out of here!” cries a redheaded vampire in a ratty woolen dress, kneeling over a bloody child. “Don’t you have any respect for the dead?”
Guiltily, I stuff my camera back in my pocket. “I’m sorry,” I reply. “I didn’t mean… I mean, my sister died, too,” I tell her, my voice cracking as I relive the scene all over again.
Her face softens, and she rises to her feet, placing a comforting hand on my arm. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “It’s all so terrible. I thought when I came here I left all the atrocities from home behind. That I finally had a chance to make a fresh start. But even here, deep in this pit, it seems we are still not able to shrink from the Consortium’s grip.”
I don’t know what to tell her. Words seem so meaningless. I mean, sure they can try to rebuild. But now their secret world has been breached. They’ll probably have to abandon their home and find somewhere else to hide. To try to make a new life for themselves, somewhere.
“I promise you,” I vow, anger rising within me, “someday, somehow, I will make this right. Pyrus will pay for what he’s done to you.”
She gives me a sad smile. I know she doesn’t believe what I say. But it doesn’t matter. I believe it. And I’m not going to rest until justice has been served. Until my sister—and all of these innocent vampires—have been avenged.
I say my good-byes and continue to the tent, pretty sure the only thing keeping my legs from collapsing out from under me is the knowledge that Jareth is inside, alive and well and waiting for me. That in a moment I can throw myself into his arms and stop being brave. That I can scream and cry and mourn and he’ll be there to pull me close and kiss away my tears.
“Jareth!” I cry, stumbling into the tent.
At first glance I think I have the wrong place—I don’t see him anywhere. Then my eyes fall upon a crumpled, trembling heap in the far corner. I rush to his side, hurling my arms around him. “Oh, Jareth,” I cry. “Thank God you’re okay!”
I wait for him to lift his head. To pull me into a strong embrace. Instead, he cringes at my touch, burrowing farther into the canvas wall of the tent.
“Go away,” he growls in a low, menacing voice.
I back away, staring down at him in shock. “What?” I whisper. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. Go away.”
Okay, obviously he’s suffering from some kind of post-traumatic shock. “Jareth, it’s me! Rayne! I’m back. I’m okay.” I decide not to mention Sunny just yet. I don’t want to make things worse. I try to put my arm around him again, but he shrugs it away.
“Please, just leave me alone,” he begs.
“Absolutely not!” I cry. “Jareth, look at me.” My voice cracks as I try desperately to reach him. But it’s as if he’s built a tall stone wall around himself and refuses to let anyone through.
“Go home, Rayne,” he whispers.
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“Well, I’m not going back.”
“What? What are you talking about? You have to go back!”
Suddenly, Jareth turns, his bloodshot eyes drilling into me like knives. “And why is that?” he demands in a raw, angry voice. “What is there to go back to? Because of me, the Blood Coven will be kicked out of the Consortium. Magnus will be staked through the heart. Your sister—”
I burst into tears. He gives me a grim look.
“She’s already dead, isn’t she?” he asks flatly. Somehow I manage a nod. He shakes his head slowly. “Once again my actions—my bad decisions—have doomed all those around me. Just like long ago with my own family. Magnus, your sister, the Blood Coven. All these vampires here at the camp. It would have been better if I’d never been born.”
“Jareth, please!” I beg, my heart breaking in agony. “This isn’t your fault! You can’t blame yourself for what Pyrus has done!”
“Not my fault?” he cries, his voice filled with disbelief and scorn. “I’m the Master. The Blood Coven general. The one vampires count on to make the right decisions and keep them safe no matter what. But what I do instead? I let my emotions—my personal connections—color my decisions. I let them cloud my judgment and allow me to make foolish choices.” He scowls. “Magnus told me that he would rather die than see his people harmed. And yet I willfully put them in danger, in order to save his life. Because he was my… my friend.” He shakes his head. “What is the saying? ‘With friends like these’…”
“Jareth, please,” I beg. “I know you’re upset. But you must come with me. We have to stick together. I can’t make it without you!”
He looks up at me with bitter eyes filled with resolve. I shiver under his gaze. “Well, you’re going to have to try,” he whispers hoarsely. “Because after today, you’ll never see me again.”
14
Don’t ask me how I made it back up to the streets of New York Cit
y. I wouldn’t be able to tell you. And don’t ask how many days and nights I wandered those streets—without sleep, without blood—with only my grief and anger to keep me company. Those hours are lost forever in a nauseous haze as my mind worked overtime to replay all the could-have-beens. The ones that might have given us all a chance at a happily ever after.
But unlike in video games, real life has no do-overs. You can’t restart from your last save point; you can’t begin all over again. In real life, my sister—my other half, my best friend in the world—is gone forever. And nothing I can do will bring her back.
I try to remember the good times, but truth be told, it’s much easier to remember the bad: the ones where I let her down or messed up her life. Or wasn’t there when she needed me. That first night at Club Fang plays over and over again on a nonstop loop. What if I hadn’t dragged her there? What if I didn’t make her wear the bite me shirt? What if Magnus hadn’t mistaken her for me?
Would she still be alive right now, living the happy-go-lucky normal life she so deserved?
How am I going to tell Mom? Heather? Stormy? How am I going to go back to Vegas and face Slayer Inc. and Vice President Teifert? Will they know somehow that I murdered Bertha? Will they be forced, under Pyrus’s directive, to nano me? And, more important, do I really even care if they do? After all, what is there to live for now? Sunny’s gone. Jareth’s left me forever.
My stomach twists and turns, as if knotted up by rusty barbed wire. I dimly realize I haven’t eaten for days. The hunger inside me blurs my vision as I wander down the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Only a few people are still out at this hour—the kind of people, I note, whom most wouldn’t miss if an empty shell of a vampire made them her dinner.
I shake my head. No. I can’t go there. These people may seem pathetic and lost, but hell, am I really so different? They may be down on their luck, but they still have brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. Who am I to steal them away from their loved ones simply to satisfy my vile emptiness?
Then again, a little voice inside chimes in, why should they be spared when my sister was not? They’re untouchables—drug dealers, murderers, alcoholics, abusers, child molesters—the lowest of the low. Why should they walk the streets, thumbing their noses at the law and hurting innocent people? Why should they be allowed to live, when my innocent sister had to die?
I watch in the dark shadows as a scantily dressed woman stumbles into the alleyway, her fingers grasping a bottle wrapped in brown paper. Hunger surges at the sight of her. If I could just take one sip… I know it would soothe me. Take the edge off the unbearable pain that smothers me like a heavy blanket. Just one sip—she wouldn’t even miss it. She wouldn’t even remember the next morning that I’d come to her, in the dead of night, seducing her with my vampire scent before indulging in her essence.
After all, why should I be so empty, when she is so full?
I take a step forward and my nose catches a whiff of her scent. Sweat mixed with alcohol and spicy perfume. But it doesn’t matter. Her blood will be sweet. Sweet and soothing.
“Hello,” I say, stepping into the glow of a nearby streetlight after wiping away my blood tears. My voice sounds strange, after having not spoken for so long and I know I must look a mess. But it doesn’t matter. I could be the Crypt Keeper himself and she’d still only see a beautiful, immortal she can’t help fall in love with.
Sure enough, her eyes widen and she clumsily falls to her knees, looking up at me with a hollow face full of rapture. “Are you an angel?” she whispers. “Have you come to save me?”
Guilt knots in my stomach at her questions. An angel. Sunny was the angel. A perfect creature of light with feathery wings and a beautiful soul. I’m more like a dark demon, set upon the world to cause pain and suffering to those who dare try to love me.
“Sure, yeah, an angel. You should have seen my wings,” I mutter, forcing the guilt back down inside. After all, there’s plenty of time to worry about regret later—after my meal. I lower myself to the ground, pulling her close to me and cradling her in my arms, stroking her hair. As she closes her eyes, my fangs slide easily from my mouth and I lower my head to take that first juicy bite of her.
But before I can make the puncture, my eyes fall upon the tattoo seared into her shoulder. More precisely, a tattoo of Race Jameson, vampire rock star.
My cohort in rehab.
I shove her away and she goes flying across the alleyway, her bony body taking the brunt of my horror. What am I doing? I’m not this person anymore. I went through the twelve steps—I’m clean. I’m sober. I can’t go back to what I used to be: a blood-hungry monster who stole Corbin’s mortal life and forced him to live a nightmare, so I could have a mid-afternoon snack.
It takes three attempts to wrestle my phone from my pocket, my hands are shaking so badly. But somehow, eventually, I manage to do it. To call the number I was given on the day I left rehab. The number they promised would give me help if and when I needed it.
And, oh boy do I need it now!
“Please!” the woman begs, crawling back toward me, blood dripping from a cut on her forehead. “I beg of you. Don’t leave me.”
My stomach roils at her pleas even as it growls at the sight of her thick, syrupy blood. I force myself to avert my eyes, disgusted at my weakness. “Please, just go away,” I beg her, reaching into my pocket and thrusting a wad of bills in her direction. “Go find yourself something to eat or something. Leave me alone.”
But she doesn’t. She’s too sucked in to my vampire scent. She just sits there, quavering before me, crying her eyes out, begging me to take her, to give her my eternal kiss.
I’ve never felt so low in all my life.
“Hello?” the English-accented voice chimes from the other end of the phone.
Thank God. I let out a sigh of relief. “Race? It’s Rayne McDonald. I need your help.”
15
It’s very lucky for me that Race is currently in town for a concert at Madison Square Garden and not halfway around the world. But even so, it seems like an eternity waiting for him to show up in his limo. In the meantime, it’s not easy fending off the advances of the woman in the alley, who’s begging and sobbing without relent. I do my best to keep my distance, to act like an upstanding member of Blood Coven society, but I feel like a drunk in a bar with a fistful of hundred dollar bills. I could sate my hunger in an instant, but could I live with myself in the morning?
“One day at a time,” I whisper, over and over again until a shadow looms in the alleyway and the woman looks away from me for the first time since I vampire scented her.
“Race? Race Jameson?” she cries, her eyes widening. “Oh my God. You’re really here. I’ve got all your albums! Well, I mean, I did. Once upon a time, before my mom kicked me out of the house.”
I cringe. In the haze of my bloodlust she looked old and wrecked, but now, as the limo’s light shines into the alleyway, I see she’s probably not even seventeen. What did I almost do?
Race smiles his rock star smile, leaning down to kiss her softly on the forehead. “Thanks for the support, luv,” he says, taking her hand in his own. His bodyguard hands him a Sharpie and he scribbles his name up her dirt-caked arm.
“Oh my God!” she cries, looking down at her arm, then up at her idol. “I’ll never wash this arm again.”
As if she would have anyway…
Race gives her another charming, devil-may-care grin then drops her hand. “I hope not,” he replies, his hot purple eyes burning into her. “Now why don’t you run along, luv, and let me have a little chat with Rayne here?”
The girl nods, bowing before him before scrambling to her feet and running down the alleyway, fast as her skinny legs can carry her. Race shakes his head, watching her go. Then he turns to me.
“Lunching on my fans,” he says, giving me a scolding tsk, tsk. “For shame. After all, you know as well as I do, most people don’t tend to buy records—or download iTunes for
that matter—once they’re dead. And I really need Blood on the Wind to go platinum so I can beat out that Justin Bieber bastard. That freaking mortal thinks he’s God’s gift to music. And everyone who’s anyone knows that title should always belong to me.”
I try to pull myself to my feet but my legs refuse to work properly. Race catches me as I start to tumble back to the ground, holding me with strong, steady hands.
“You okay?” he asks, dropping his teasing tone.
“I didn’t bite her,” I manage to spit out.
He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter if you did—I was only joking. Hell, if I had a dime for every Race Jameson fan I drained dry, I wouldn’t need platinum records to become a billionaire.” He chuckles. “Of course, that was in the good old days. Now I’m painfully reformed, like you, taking it one day at a time.”
I attempt to nod, but it takes a lot of effort. I still feel like I’m this close to passing out. Race gives me a critical once-over.
“So, I don’t want to be rude or anything,” he starts, “but, darling, your perfume is saying eau de raw sewage right about now. So how about you come back with me to the tour bus and we’ll get you all cleaned up? I’ve got a nice, pleasantly plump groupie who’s signed all the blood donor consent forms and I’d be happy to share her if you’re so inclined.”
My mouth waters involuntarily at the suggestion and I find myself following him out of the alleyway and into the limo. Ten minutes later we’re boarding the tour bus, and I’m standing in the shower, letting the hot water stream over me, ridding me of blood and filth.
“There she is!” Race cries as I emerge about twenty minutes later. He’s sitting on a plush purple velvet couch and has changed into an orange silk bathrobe. He hands me a large wine goblet, filled to the brim with red liquid. “O-positive,” he pronounces. “From what I remember in rehab, that’s your favorite.”
I take the glass from him with shaky hands, trying not to spill any as I bring it to my lips. I start to gulp it down, but Race holds up a hand to stop me.
