by Devon Monk
“Even the god thing?”
“Maybe not the god thing. He’s not really going to start bossing us around about rules is he?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“So where is the man?”
“Bertie has him doing something around here.”
We walked down between tents, keeping one eye on the big screen and the skaters. The trucks had split up and stopped at their first neighborhoods. The split screen showed blues and reds skating up to front doors navigating stairs, grass lawns, dogs, kids, toys, and steep inclines.
The crowd cheered every time a delivery was successfully completed, and laughed when skaters tumbled or managed to miraculously get where they were going without falling down.
I held my breath as Myra worked her way up a rickety three-story stairway at one of the hotels to the crow’s nest apartment at the top. She handed over the bag of goodies then methodically walked down the stairs, one hand tightly gripping the banister.
“Well done,” I whispered as her teammates gave her high fives, then hopped into the truck for the run to the next delivery spot.
I glanced at the red team and they seemed to be making good progress too, most of their bags and boxes already delivered. It wouldn’t be long before they were headed back to the finish line.
We’d made it to the end of the row of tents and turned the corner to walk up the next row.
I stopped short, and Jean let out an “Awww....”
Ryder sat bent forward, painting a little girl’s face. Her back was toward us, but I had a good view of Ryder.
He’d brushed his hair back, and applied some kind of product that kept it out of his face but didn’t look heavy with gel. He was talking with the girl, smiling, his hands steady as he delicately applied paint to her face with a brush that looked like it was something a professional artist would use for oil painting.
His face was caught in a shower of colors. Flowers, butterflies, and a little winged fairy with a sword created a mask across one side of his face. Frogs, superhero shields, and a robot created the other side of the mask. Lightning, storm clouds, and a flying saucer peeked out on the edges of the mask, as did ocean waves, a message in a bottle, and a listing pirate ship.
It was an amazing paint job, and should be overwhelming and cheesy. Instead, it looked like an homage to Ordinary, as if he knew all its secrets and had found the beauty in them.
He straightened, tipped his head slightly to consider the painting on the girl’s face, then grinned and handed her a mirror.
She shrieked in delight. Her parents gave suitable “oohs” and “ahhs” when she turned to reveal the sparkling unicorn with a Supergirl cape painted across her chubby cheek and forehead.
The unicorn was wearing an umbrella hat.
Of course.
The girl and her parents ambled off. Ryder saw us and stood.
“Can I interest you in a new look?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Think I’d make a good superhero?”
“Nope. I already know you would.”
Jean stuck her fingers in her mouth and made gagging sounds. “Get a room you two. I don’t want to watch while you draw her like one of your French girls.”
He smiled, his eyes lit with glee. “Don’t know that it’s appropriate to talk the chief of police out of her uniform before noon.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It’s noon somewhere in the world.”
“Well, then.” His voice dropped into a sexy drawl, and he wiggled the paintbrush between his fingers. “Maybe you and I should go somewhere...”
A tumble of little kids ran toward us laughing and shouting. They washed up like a wave of chattering pebbles, all pointing at the designs sketched on poster board behind Ryder.
“...or maybe we should back burner that idea until later,” he finished with a laugh.
“Later sounds good.”
Jean elbowed me and coughed, though it sounded like “dinner.”
I rolled my eyes. “Want to get dinner tonight?”
“Love to. Jump Off’s?”
“Seven?”
“Seven.”
That was all the time we had because the radio announcers and the crowd all went wild.
I glanced up at the screen.
The split screen was still split, one camera filming the back of a red and blue skater, one camera filming the front.
Myra and Rebecca.
The skaters were neck and neck, speeding down the middle of the highway, orange cones zooming past as they powered toward the bakery. Whoever made it to the bakery first, won.
Rebecca was lean and fast, her smooth strides eating up the distance.
Myra skated in a deeper crouch, arms pumping, legs digging into each stroke. If body language could make a sound, she’d be a snarl.
“Go, go, go,” Jean whispered.
I crossed my fingers, my heart pounding in beat to Jean’s chant.
Do this, I thought. Take that woman down a notch and show her what Reed blood is made of.
They were closing in fast, Myra catching up to Rebecca’s lead inch by inch. The rumble of motorcycle engines was almost drowned out by the cheering crowd.
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.
Myra pulled up beside Rebecca. For a moment that would have been captured in slow motion if this had been a movie instead of real life, they were in perfect rhythm, perfect stride, perfect unity.
They were on the last stretch.
This could be a tie.
Neck and neck. Step and step.
Then Myra winked at the camera.
Winked.
She dug in hard, put on a burst of speed, and left Rebecca in the dust.
If the crowd had been wild before, it went absolutely bonkers now.
Jean screamed, punched the air, and threw herself in my arms. I screamed, and patted Jean’s back. Holding her tight.
“Nothing we can’t do,” she said fiercely.
“Damn straight,” I said.
I looped my arm over her shoulder, and walked with her to gather up our sister for a proper celebration.
Chapter 21
Okay. So everything wasn’t exactly going my way. But Myra winning the Cake and Skate for her team had done a heck of a lot to cheer me up.
There were no updates from the vampires or Wolfes, which worried me. I would have expected there to be enough of a trail to track down Ben, or at least Jake.
The doctor told me Jame was sleeping peacefully and healing well. Well enough Granny Wolfe had joined the hunt, leaving three pack members behind to guard Jame.
The dry morning had turned into a sunny afternoon. Tourists and locals took full advantage of it. Plenty of people walked and played on the beach. Plenty of people wandered into the shops, which were staying open late in hopes of making up some rain-delayed revenue. The town felt the most summer-like it had all year.
There were even kites in the sky.
I still had a few hours before dinner with Ryder at Jump Off Jack, but was too restless to sleep. I went home and changed into my shorts, tank, and running shoes.
A lot had happened in a very short time and I needed to clear my head, think through the details. A quick jog on the beach, alone with my thoughts sounded like heaven.
I stretched at the bottom of my stairs, then took off at a slow, easy pace down the road to the bottom of the hill, past a few houses to the narrow band of green that would take me to the hidden foot trail through bushes and down to the sand.
The late afternoon was warm, the wind just strong enough to cut the humidity. I headed north, into the wind, toward Road’s End. I always ran into the wind so I could have it at my back on my way home.
The steady rhythm of my breath, the thump, thump, thump of my shoes hitting hard-packed wet sand, the shivering hiss of the ocean next to me soothed me, focused my thoughts. The muscles in my shoulders relaxed, my body warming, sweat prickling at my neck, under my breasts, down my back.
I felt like I coul
d run forever.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
Road’s End had that name for a reason. An outcropping of land reached out to cup the beach and cut it off from continuing north. If the tide was low enough, I’d be able to pick my way over water and rocks, and around the bend to a procession of little pockets of stony coves. But the tide was coming in, and I didn’t want to get stranded on the other side.
So I slowed, paced the curve of land, the rise of stone cliff at my back, and then stood just at the water’s edge, staring out to sea.
Clouds gathered fast, moving ashore with an unnatural kind of speed. Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled. The sudden storm was urgent, as if warning of an even greater danger approaching.
“Thor?” I asked. Rain fell in hard, heavy drops. I felt like I should run. Thunder roared again, urging me to turn home.
I turned. I didn’t even see the man before I was aware of his presence behind me.
But with that presence, I felt fear.
I tipped my head down so I could better see him out of the corner of my eyes as he stopped behind and slightly to the side of me.
“You are a sweet surprise.” His voice was low, cultured, carrying an accent I could not place. But my brain wasn’t trying to place his accent, it was screaming: danger, death, predator.
I had not brought my gun and carried no other weapon. My phone tucked into my back pocket wasn’t going to bring anyone here fast enough to save me.
I suddenly knew I was very much in need of saving.
I had a moment to wish I was connected to someone in some sort of magical way that allowed them to see through my eyes or hear my thoughts to know that I was in trouble.
But I was just a Reed and those kinds of abilities were beyond me.
What does a Reed do? My father’s words echoed in my mind. We face the storm.
Thunder crackled. Lightning shattered.
I anchored myself with the roots of my family that reached deep and strong in this land. Then I turned and faced the man.
Not man. Creature. Vampire, to be exact. Here in the daylight of Ordinary that doesn’t make vampires burn. Here inside the boundaries of Ordinary unnoticed, because all the vampires were gone.
Ancient. He was built a lot like Old Rossi, his silver hair cut in a short, executive style. His eyes were black and shockingly devoid of humanity.
There was a nightmarish smoothness to him, as if all his edges were rubbed down to frictionless curves, as if he had been poured into shape instead of tailored by bones. Snake-like. Fluid.
Creepy as hell.
“Yes,” he said as if I’d asked him a question. “I killed Sven. Sent him to my prideful brother. Still he didn’t come to me. So I took his toy. The one he turned. Poor, breakable thing.”
Ben.
“You will not do this,” I said. “You will not hurt my people, my town.” My words came out even, but my heart was pounding. Hard. I knew he could hear it, feel it.
He lifted his upper lip in a snarl. “Since he will not come to me, you will send him a message even he will understand.”
I backed up and threw my hands in a block.
But vampires are fast. I didn’t blink, but my eyes still couldn’t track his movement. He wrapped one hand up in my hair, yanking my head to the side.
I kicked out, punched. He yanked my head harder, and shook me like a rag doll. I heard bones in my neck crack as my feet left the ground.
I yelled, fought, thunder echoing my anger, my fear.
Vampires are inhumanly strong. And even though I was tough, a Reed, I was still human.
He pulled me to him, wrapping me tight against the hard, cold, slippery length of his body, wrenched my neck bare.
I screamed as agony pierced my flesh, two hot, jagged fangs hooking down into my neck, seeking my pulse.
Every muscle in my body went lax as if I’d just been injected with Novocain.
Turns out being bitten by a vampire isn’t as sexy as some of the movies might make one think. Although that might have something to do with the fact that this vampire hated me and would rather see me dead than show me a good time.
This was not good. Not good at all.
“Listen to me, Reed bitch,” he said, teeth still buried in my flesh. “You are alive only because you are my final message to my brother.” He slowly lifted his mouth from my skin. I was numb everywhere except for where his fangs pierced me.
There I only felt endless pain.
“He brings me the Rauðskinna. Or I take everything he has,” his fangs slipped free of my flesh, and I almost blacked out from the agony, “and burn this world to the ground.”
He shook me again. I would have screamed if my body were responding to my mind. But the world had become too heavy, folding down on me in layers and layers and layers. Everything was watery, fading, dark.
I wondered if I was drowning. If the ocean had risen up to swallow me whole.
Cold sand, concrete-hard slapped against my back...
...had he thrown me?
...someone was screaming in the distance.
Sirens.
And not the call-the-sailors-to-their-death kind of sirens.
Police cruiser sirens.
“Tell him,” his whisper echoed in my head. “Or I will tear each of you apart until I find the one who makes him scream.”
~~~
I heard voices. Myra, Ryder, Jean. I knew there wasn’t sand under me anymore, knew I was wrapped in a warm, heavy quilt, a pillow under my cheek. I didn’t know what time it was, didn’t have the strength to open my eyes.
The wash of deep healing spread through me. I wasn’t sure which creature or god they’d gotten to take care of me but it was wonderful. Marvelous.
“Sleep,” Old Rossi said quietly in my mind.
At least I hoped it was Old Rossi. I’d had my fill of strange vampires touching me.
Before I could panic about that, I slipped back into oblivion.
~~~
Morning sunlight streamed in through my window. It was warm on my bare arm, warm on the side of my hip.
It wasn’t burning me to a crisp, so I apparently hadn’t turned into a vampire.
Go, me.
“Your sisters are in the other room, waiting for you to wake up.”
I opened my eyes. Was surprised that I didn’t feel too bad, all things considered.
The memory of healing washed through me again. I wondered who they’d ask to fix me.
Old Rossi sat in the chair at the foot of my bed, his elbows resting on his soft, worn-out blue jeans, his fingers linked, the first two pressed against his lips.
His ice blue eyes watched me. I didn’t know why I’d ever thought they were cold or inhuman before. I’d stared straight into the devil’s eyes, and Rossi was no devil.
Apparently he was related to one though, a brother, if what that devil said was true.
“He looked like you.” I pushed up, so I was sitting. I pulled the blankets close, glad that someone had changed me into a dry T-shirt. “He was slicker, sort of smoother and had short silver hair, but he was old like you.”
“Old?” Offended, he cocked one eyebrow.
“Very.”
The eyebrow fell again. “I know.”
“You can tell from the b-bite who did this right?”
“Yes.”
“He told me to give you a message.”
“Which is?”
“He wants you to give him the Rauðskinna or everyone dies, he burns Ordinary down, yada, yada, psycho-egomaniac, yada.”
“He did not yada.”
“He threatened. Death to all, make you scream, and all that jazz. There was probably some yada I didn’t catch. I didn’t have a chance to write down every word.”
Old Rossi was silent. I waited. When he still hadn’t spoken after a minute or so, I breached the quiet.
“He says he has Ben. Said he was your...toy. That he’s...broken.”
Flash of black in those eyes, g
limmer of red. Still less evil than the vampire on the beach. “Did he?”
“Broken doesn’t mean dead,” I said, holding on to hope, no matter how faint it might seem to be.
“Broken means it would be better if he were.” Old Rossi leaned back, the tension easing away just long enough for me to see he was tired. Very tired. Still, he made no move to leave the room.
“What is the Rauðskinna?”
For a minute, well, more like three, I didn’t think he was going to answer me.
“It is a book. A book of dark magic.”
Dark magic. Just like Odin had said.
“Do you have it?”
“Yes.”
“Why do I have a feeling it’s not the only dangerous thing you have hidden in town? No, don’t answer that. I can’t multi-task before coffee. Are you going to give it to him?”
Rossi didn’t say anything. I changed tactics. “What happens if he gets his hands on it?”
“All the bad things you can imagine and twice as many you can’t.”
“So we don’t give it to him.”
Silence again. I was surprised Myra and Jean weren’t in here by now, but we weren’t really talking all that loudly. I wondered if either of them had gotten any sleep last night.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“That, you do not need to know.”
“Like hell. He bit me. Bit me, Travail. I deserve to know which vampire permanently tagged me for his chew toy.”
Black and red eyes again. Fury, barely contained. “I will break that tie to you. Erase his mark. Make him suffer.”
“Tell me his name.”
“Lavius.”
Great. I’d been holding out hope he was dead, like Rossi had told me before. I didn’t want to have Rossi’s ex-brother-in-arms declaring war on my town by killing people I cared for, people I’d sworn to protect.
“You told me he was dead. You lied to me.”
“I had hoped. Foolishly hoped.”
“He has Ben.”
“Yes. But now we can find him.”
“How?”
“Through the mark he branded into you.”
I wasn’t sure what I thought about that. Good? Maybe I was glad something positive could come out of me getting fanged on the beach.
