“Older ones don’t,” Devin said. “But the Order also suspects she’s been siring new vampires. There’s something about the grave, about burying new vampires, that helps tame the craving when they’re first turned.”
I nodded. I remembered Mercy telling me something about that. She didn’t say much about it; she’d only mentioned her experience. After she was first turned, she’d returned to her own grave for several nights while she was adjusting to her new existence. It was because of that, because she was returning to her own grave, that the Order was able to dig her up and cut out her heart.
“It’s pretty brilliant, actually,” I said. “I mean, if she arranges funeral services with people she’s recently drained. And if she has a way to heal them and restore them before their bodies start to decompose.”
“She doesn’t even have to wait until they’re buried,” Devin said. “It’s not just a funeral home. She operates a funeral home and mortuary.”
“Fucking genius.” I kept reading. From all the new vampires she’d been turning, since she’d fed on them while they were humans, she’d acquired a number of “unknown abilities.” And we were supposed to pretend to be potential clients. New customers planning for their own funerals. Devin’s funeral.
“So you’re supposed to have cancer or something?” I asked.
Devin flashed his arm. They’d actually put a chemo port in his vein. “The Order doesn’t cut corners when it comes to this sort of thing.”
I nodded. “I’m guessing what they’re hoping is that she’ll offer you something more than a funeral.”
Devin nodded. “They’re hoping she’ll make me an offer I can’t refuse.”
I chuckled. “Was that a Marlon Brando impression?”
“Yeah,” Devin said. “The Godfather. How’d I do?”
I laughed. “That was actually really good. Sounded just like him.”
“We need to keep an eye open, or our ears open, for anything strange. Any abilities she might have. And then use her offer, if she makes it, as an opportunity for our other hunters to take her out. When she’s ready to do it, to feed from me and turn me…”
“The Order is using you as bait,” I said.
“More or less,” Devin said. “I mean, you kind of did that yesterday.”
“That was different,” I said. “I was there, ready to take him out. And he wasn’t anything like this Alice in terms of ability.”
“But if we succeed,” Devin said, “I’ll have a part in it. I’ll finally get my chance to join the inner circle.”
I bit my lip. “Me too?”
Devin shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do. I mean, I could insist that you be allowed to join with me… if that’s really what you want.”
“This plan is reckless.” I set Devin’s phone in one of the cupholders. “You’re really willing to risk your life for this? For an Order that won’t accept you… for you?”
“What am I, Nick?” Devin asked. “What is it exactly they have to accept? Like I said, that stuff before—what I told you—I was just experimenting.”
“You thought you might be experimenting, Devin. But did your experiment confirm anything to you?”
“I don’t know.” Devin shook his head. “Look, if you don’t want to do this, I’ll do it myself. This is the best opportunity I’ve had yet to prove myself to them.”
“To prove yourself to your father?”
“That, too.”
“Pull over,” I said.
“You’re quitting on me? Seriously?”
“I didn’t say that,” I said. “Just pull over.”
Devin sighed and turned on his blinker. There was a rest stop ahead. Not a gas station—one of those off-the-highway rest stops with shitty bathrooms and picnic tables. Enough privacy, I figured, that what I hoped to do might dissuade him. Yes, I was close to getting Alice. But I also knew her location now. If I could give him a little doubt, a reason not to carry out this mission… maybe, just maybe, I could use this information and take out Alice with Wolfgang’s help later.
Devin pulled into one of the parking spaces. “What is it, Nick? Do you have to pee or something?”
“Or something,” I said. “I want to show you something. Follow me.” I unbuckled my seat belt and got out of the car.
Devin followed me toward one of the picnic tables. Thankfully, no one else was there. “What is it, Nick?”
“Just this,” I said, taking Devin by the hand and wrapping my other arm around his back. I pulled him into a deep kiss.
He kissed back… and then he pulled away. “Nick. No… I…”
“You need to finish your experiment,” I said. “You need to know what it is you really want.”
“I don’t…”
I kissed him again.
“Get off of me!” Devin shoved me hard.
I stumbled and fell into one of the tables. The corner of one of the benches caught me in the arm, cutting me open. I put my hand over the wound, but it was too late.
He saw it.
“Nick, what the… You aren’t bleeding. Is that…”
“It’s water,” I said.
“What the fuck are you, Nick?” Devin took two steps back.
“I’m… different.” I stood up and stepped toward Devin again.
“Get the hell away from me, you freak!” Devin screamed.
“Devin,” I said. “Stop. I’ll tell you…”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Devin ran back to his car. He tossed my duffel bag out onto the pavement.
“Devin,” I said. “Please, don’t go after Alice. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
Devin shook his head. “No, Nick. If that’s even your real name. You don’t know what you’ve gotten into. Don’t come back. Don’t ever come back to the Order.”
20
THANKFULLY I HAD my phone tucked away in my duffel bag. Donnie wasn’t particularly happy she’d have to take off work early to pick me up—but she agreed without hesitation.
She’d always been there for me when I needed her.
I pulled out a needle from my kit and yanked a strand of hair from my head. Sewed up my wound. Like magic, it healed immediately.
“Nice one!” a familiar gravelly voice said.
I turned. Brucie was perched on the edge of the picnic table. “You saw all that?”
Brucie nodded. “You probably moved a little too fast with that one.”
“You think?” I was rubbing where my wound had been. Not because it hurt, but because of what the wound meant. I could only imagine what Devin was feeling at the moment.
“He confided in you,” Brucie said. “Then you kissed him.”
I shrugged. “So?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Brucie somehow pulled a cigar out of thin air and lit it with a lighter he also seemed to have drawn from nowhere.
“I still don’t get how you do that,” I said. “And when did you get more cigars?”
“I’m not with you all the time,” Brucie said. “But baby, now that I’ve found you, I won’t let you go.”
I cocked my head. “Isn’t that a song?”
“Alison Krauss.”
“Not sure I know who she is.”
“Hello?” Brucie said. “Bluegrass singer. I thought you were the musical one.”
I shrugged. “Never really gravitated to bluegrass. I mean, who does, really?”
Brucie took a puff on his cigar. “Those who know what’s best for them. But you’re still avoiding the subject, Nyxie.”
“No, you are,” I said. “I don’t understand how you can be lost to me for five years. Then, the moment we meet, you can take off to wherever the hell it is you go to get cigars and then miraculously find me wherever I’m at.”
“We’re connected,” Brucie said. “I mean, we always were. But we had to find ourselves for a while. Get to know who we were apart from each other before we could come back together again. I always knew where you were before. I mean, that’s how I kn
ew I’d find you at the river.”
I snorted. “I don’t even remember you being a part of me before. Before I shifted to be like this, I mean.”
“Hard to remember what things were like before,” Brucie said. “I mean, remember when Donnie first told you what you were?”
“That I’m transgender?”
Brucie nodded and took a long draw on his cigar. “Of course you remember, because I’m reading your mind and I wouldn’t know it if you forgot.”
“I didn’t understand. I resented the fact that what seemed completely normal to me, the way I felt, the way I dressed, was supposed to be some kind of marginalized, strange thing to a large part of human society.”
“And after you became human, more or less, how long did it take before you started thinking of yourself as someone who belongs? As a person no greater or lesser than anyone else?”
I sighed. “That took some time. To get past the fact that eating humans probably wasn’t something I should do if I wanted to belong among them.”
“Devin needs time.”
“He’s been questioning his sexual orientation for a while,” I said. “How much time does it take?”
“When what you are conflicts with everything you’ve ever known, when it’s something that you used to consider less-than—sort of like how you used to think about humans when they were little more to you than food—to begin to think of yourself as one of them…”
“Well, the church Devin grew up in doesn’t eat gay people,” I said. “So your metaphor falls flat.”
“Metaphors don’t have to be exactly the same, numbnuts,” Brucie said. “The point is, when you’ve grown accustomed to thinking of something other than what you are as an inferior being, well… it’s not going to be easy to accept that you have more in common with the other.”
I sighed. “I think I get it. He grew up thinking that the desires he had were going to send him to hell. And then to just embrace that when he still has ties to his church, to the Order, and he’s still trying to impress his father…”
“You can’t force someone out of the closet, Nyxie. You can coax them a little, encourage them. But you can’t push them out of it. And what you did…”
“I suppose it was a bit bold,” I admitted. “But I didn’t want him to go to Alice. And I knew I couldn’t go with him. I’d blow his cover. And if Devin got bitten because of me…”
“Looks like that backfired,” Brucie said. “Because he’s still going there, you know. He’s going to attempt the mission without you.”
I sighed. “What can I do to stop him?”
“We aren’t that far from the church yet,” Brucie said. “And I don’t suspect you want Donnie getting involved. So it’s not like you can ask her to give you a ride to Alice’s funeral home.”
I sighed. “My bike… I guess I do need to pick that up, don’t I?”
“And then you have to make a choice,” Brucie said. “Either hope Devin succeeds with his interrogation, and that you can get back there with Wolfgang in time, or go there straightaway and take Alice out yourself.”
I sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What matters more to you?” Brucie asked. “Technically your chances of defeating Alice are better if you go there with the other vampire at your side.”
“But that also means Alice might do something to Devin before I can kill her.”
Brucie nodded. “It’s all a matter of priorities. I mean, you’ve found Alice twice now. If she gets away…”
“There’s no guarantee I’ll ever find her again.”
“But there’s no guarantee you won’t, either,” Brucie said. “But if Devin gets bitten, if she kills him or turns him… there’s no going back, no second or third chance.”
I shook my head. “If I bust in there to save him, he’ll be pissed. He made it clear he doesn’t want me to see him again.”
“He was angry,” Brucie said. “And maybe he’ll resent you even more for it. But would you rather he die today without any additional resentments against you, or that he live a full life, even if it’s one you’re no longer a part of?”
I shook my head. “The answer is obvious. I mean, it isn’t really a question. It’s better that he lives, even if that means he hates me for the rest of his life.”
I saw Donnie’s blue Prius out of the corner of my eye. She was here—thank whatever god or goddess I wasn’t sure I believed in.
“Good luck!” Brucie said. “That’s my cue to make like a pot and steam.”
I cocked my head. I was about to say something back, but Brucie was gone the second he said it. Strange one, that sprite.
Donnie pulled up next to me and popped her trunk.
I threw my duffel bag in, slammed the trunk shut, and hopped in. “We need to go to that church. My bike is there, and I’m going to need it.”
“Stuff go south with this Devin guy?” Donnie asked as I buckled up.
“You could say that,” I said. “But now he’s walking into what I’m pretty sure is a death trap. Alice will see right through him.”
“Alice?” Donnie asked. “That’s the vampire who…”
“Yes,” I said. “But now my cover is blown with Devin. I don’t think he wants to see me anymore.”
Donnie sighed. “He’s just a boy, Nicky. There are a lot of fish in the sea.”
I snorted. “Not for me. And when it comes to the sea, I know a thing or two.”
“Not really,” Devin said. “You know a few muddy rivers, streams, and ponds. But when it comes to the sea of men, honey… you’ve barely put your worm on the hook.”
“This isn’t about me, anyway,” I said. “I mean, if I went with him, Alice would know us right away. There’s no way that would end well. But if he gets hurt because I’m not there to help… I have no idea what the right thing to do is.”
“What’s your gut telling you?” Donnie asked. “Don’t listen to your heart right now. When you’re swooning over a boy, trust me, your heart can be foolish. But your gut, your instincts, that’s what’s made Nyx a great hunter. It’s why Nicky rocks the stage.”
“My gut is… uncomfortable at the moment.”
“But what’s it telling you?” Donnie asked. “I mean, when I told my parents I was trans, that I’d rather wear a dress to school than pants, my heart said I should shut up. I was nervous. But deep down in my gut, I knew I had to do it. It was the only way to be true to myself. I couldn’t hide my truth anymore.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell Devin,” I said. “Well, what I was trying to show him.”
Donnie shrugged. “He’s conflicted, honey. But if it’s his truth, his gut knows it. Even if he told you to stay away. I mean, if he really doesn’t want to see you again, what’s the harm? You just piss him off more? He’ll get over it. But if he really, truly does want to see you, he’ll be glad—eventually—that you didn’t listen to him.”
I nodded. I pulled down the visor in Devin’s car and looked at myself in the vanity mirror. “If I’m going to do this,” I said as I ran my fingers through my hair, tucking it behind my ears, “I’m not going as Nick.”
“Then you best take advantage of the time you have in the car,” Donnie said. “My makeup bag is behind my seat.”
21
IT WAS THE first time I’d applied makeup in a moving car. I mean, I’d just never had occasion to do it. Not that I didn’t think it couldn’t be done. I’ve seen women applying lipstick, blush, even mascara in their vanity mirrors while driving down the highway in rush hour. And people were worried about the dangers of texting and driving… Hell, that’s dangerous enough.
But farding—a term that the Urban Dictionary says means putting on makeup—while driving… that has the potential to be doubly hazardous. Not just when it comes to the safety of oncoming motorists. But makeup disasters are real, people. And potentially just as traumatic.
But when I’m going on the hunt, it isn’t just makeup. It’s warpaint.
Donnie pulled up to the church.
My motorcycle had been knocked on its side, and something was spray-painted on the side. The f-word. No, not fuck. The other one.
Ignorant.
I looked around, and the three little old ladies, the quilters, were standing on the church steps. Susan was holding a can of spray paint while the other two flipped me off in concert.
I rolled my eyes as I tapped on the back of Donnie’s trunk. She popped it, and I retrieved my duffel, took off my boots, tossed them back into Donnie’s trunk, and retrieved my knee-high Jimmy Choos.
I tossed my duffel bag over my back as I bent over, shaking my tush at the ladies as I picked up my bike. “Lots of love, girls!” I shouted at them as I revved up my engine and followed Donnie out of the parking lot.
I had thought to stop and give them a piece of my mind. I mean, I was almost certain at this point that Mina had sent us on this mission as some kind of judgment. That’s what they did… If they suspected any of their members were caught in sin, they’d give them the most dangerous assignment possible.
If they survived and staked the vamp they were sent after, they were redeemed from their sin. The vampire-blood of sacrifice sprinkled on the altar. Like the sacrifices of lambs or goats in the Old Testament. But if the sinner died, if they got bitten—or worse, turned—the Order considered it a form of divine judgment, a sentence to perdition earned by one’s sin.
Of course, there was a chance that Devin had told the ladies about me.
Maybe that’s how they knew.
I doubted it. Exposing me was risky. I knew things about him that others didn’t. At least, so far as he knew they didn’t know. He’d said the dean of his college had kept it secret.
I had my doubts.
And if the Order had sent Devin and me to Alice as a judgment, well, I was determined to see this through as proof of our redemption. And I was going to do it as the true me. As Nyx.
Taking out Alice without Wolfgang would surely piss him off. He wanted to present her body as a sort of down payment on his indefinite immunity from the Order.
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 106
