by eden Hudson
She didn’t answer.
“Mikal?” Nothing. Not even the whisper and burn of her tar-covered wings or that wrecked laughing. Maybe I’d already been in here too long. Maybe there wasn’t enough of me left inside my head to punish. “Mikal, please!”
What the hell? Tough’s voice again. I tried to shake it out of my brain.
“Don’t engage. Not real. He’s not talking to me. He’s not real.”
Colt, did you just hear me? Can you hear me right now?
I dug my fingers into my sides and pulled my knees up. It wasn’t real. None of this was real, but the sounds kept battering their way into my head—a radio, a dog barking, a fan, a car driving by—and I couldn’t try to cover my ears or the straightjacket would jerk tight on my arms and I’d start panicking and not be able to stop.
Something touched my shoulder and I lost it. Fought and kicked and hit a solid body. Freezing hands clamped down on my wrists.
Stop it, man, stop! It’s me. It’s Tough. Ouch—ow! If you can hear me, stop kicking me!
“Tough—he’s not—Mikal, don’t—”
She’s gone, Colt. I got you away from her.
The laugh came up slow and sick like vomit. Tough had taken me away from Mikal. Sure, why not? And Ryder was back from the dead. Tough put all Ryder’s pieces back together again, like that egg guy. Maybe later we could go rehydrate Sissy’s charbroiled skeleton.
“So that’s what a mental breakdown looks like,” Ryder said. I heard him spit into his soda bottle. “Quit being such a prissy little Sunshine daisy and get your shit together.”
“Fuck you,” I told him.
Fuck yourself, Tough said.
“Nice comeback, Baby Boy,” Ryder said.
Don’t call me that!
I rubbed my temples, trying to get the pain in my head to ease up, but they kept bitching at each other.
“—see you try to stop me, Baby Boy—”
—ain’t changed at all. You’re still the biggest dickhole—
“Are you guys serious right now?” I said.
Fighting while I was losing it—big surprise. Except Ryder and Tough shouldn’t be able to fight with each other anymore. I knew there was a reason they shouldn’t…
“Dammit, it’s gone,” I said.
What is? Tough asked.
I opened my eyes. I was on the floor in a bedroom I didn’t recognize. Tough was in front of me, sitting back on his heels.
“You have fangs,” I said. “Did Mitzi make you?”
Nah, Mitzi’s long gone, he said. Her and Jason took off for Nashville with my voice.
I knew that. I think. They stole his voice because Jason was a greedy asshole and Mitzi was a bitch queen. Tough had probably said something about her hair that pissed her off.
“How’re you talking to me?” I asked him.
What’s the last thing you remember?
Now there was a question. I just shook my head.
Well, I killed you, Tough said. I wanted to get you away from Mikal. Aching holes screamed in my brain where she used to be, but I guess Tough couldn’t hear them. He kept on talking. I tried to make you, but I didn’t have enough time.
“You killed me?” I asked.
I did what I had to, Tough said. I’m not sorry.
Ryder laughed. “You wouldn’t be.”
Tough smiled, flashing those teardrop-shaped fangs again. Other than those, him and Ryder could’ve almost been twins, down to the splits across their left eyebrows and the three-day growth of stubble. I touched my jaw. Clean-shaven, just like Mikal liked it.
Except Tough had taken me away from her. That hollow shrieking inside my head got louder. Mikal was gone. My burning angel was gone.
Anyway, I guess some of the venom must’ve worked, Tough said. Since you can hear me.
Just barely.
“Hold on,” I said. “Didn’t you say you killed me? Shouldn’t I be—”
Miracle. Tough tried to hold the smile, but it turned into more of a snarl, especially with the fangs. You got brought back from the dead.
“You’d think a man would remember something like that,” Ryder drawled.
“No kidding,” I said.
Tough laughed. Or he made the facial expression of a person laughing, but there wasn’t any sound besides the air in his lungs.
Oh, right—Jason and Mitzi.
That dumbass sorry excuse for a receiver. How low could you get—stealing from somebody you were supposed to be protecting? Mom used to say Tough’s voice sounded like Hank Sr. had had a baby with a fallen angel.
No, that couldn’t have been right. Tough’s voice hadn’t even changed before Mom died. And Sissy hated country music. I knew a woman said it, but Mom and Sissy were the only women I’d ever really talked to besides Mikal.
But I was sure a woman said it to me. While we were having coffee.
That was definitely wrong. No one from Halo would have coffee with me—especially not date coffee—not even girls from my class. People tend to shy away from religious terrorists who live alone in the woods.
Could I have made it up?
What’s the matter? Tough asked.
“Nothing,” I said. Just that Mikal was gone and it felt like she’d poured battery acid on my brain on the way out.
Ryder looked at me like he knew, but he just spit into his soda bottle.
Fuck him. Wasn’t he dead, anyway?
Tough
After a while I was able to get Colt to the shower, but it didn’t feel like I should leave him alone, so I sat on the toilet lid and waited for him to get done.
“This would’ve ended by now if it wasn’t real. Or at least gotten…bad. Well, if I’m going to believe anything, might as well be—”
So far, waiting on Colt to get done had mostly consisted of listening to him talk to himself.
If I tried, I could make myself hear past Colt to my bedroom. I found Desty’s heartbeat and focused in. Still too slow, still unconscious.
I knew she would wake up when it went back to normal, but it felt like that was taking forever. Had I really used that much bite sedative on her? Mitzi had never sedated me when she bit. Now that I was thinking about it, though, I’d always felt a little high afterward. Maybe it was something vamps could learn to control. Maybe I could figure out how to keep from using so much so this wouldn’t happen next time.
Yeah, and maybe Desty wouldn’t care that I’d almost killed her and had sex with her mutilated corpse in a pool of her own blood.
“What the hell?” Colt said. I could hear him shaking his head, hard, like he was trying to get something out.
Oh. I forgot you could still hear me and, uh, see stuff, I said. This is my first day with a connection, too. Sorry about the vamp porn. Apparently we’re some sick fucks.
Unless it was just me.
“It’s the crow magic,” Colt said. “Primal stuff like blood and sex feed it. That’s why vamps get off on mutilation and killing and freak out when they catch on fire.”
You try to stay calm while you’re burning like a grease rag, I said. I kicked the pile of Colt’s clothes on the floor with the toe of my boot. His shirt was stiff from the dried venom and blood. I think your Lucky shirt’s done for.
“What’s that piece of shit, anyhow, like, twelve years old? Good fucking riddance to old fucking rubbish,” Colt said. Then he said, “Can’t we wash it or something? I think the Lucky logo was just starting to kick in.”
I took a long breath so I could blow it back out. I know I didn’t need to breathe anymore, but it helped.
So Colt was nuts. But the joke about the shirt was one he would’ve made. And really, it could’ve been a whole lot worse, considering how long he’d had Mikal messing with his head. He hadn’t tried to kill himself or anybody else yet and he wasn’t begging me to tell him what to do, so he had a leg up on the other familiars Mikal had cast off. He was crazy, but he was still Colt.
Maybe he would’ve made some sense if I coul
d’ve heard him through the vamp connection, but either God had fixed it so the connection only went one way for us or something had gone wrong when I tried to make Colt. Hell, maybe the crazy was keeping me from being able to hear his thoughts, I don’t know.
I’ll ask Harper about the shirt, I told him. She was able to get the blood out of my hat.
“Thanks.”
Yeah. You done in there yet?
“It’s hard to get this off.”
That’s what she said, I thought it at the same time as Colt said, “That’s what she said.”
“See? I’m not all gone,” he said. Then he said, “Yeah, well, I’m saving my impressed face for when you remember where you live.”
I pushed in hard on my eyes. I needed a drink. Why hadn’t anyone come up with blood beer yet? Vamps had been around forever, it wasn’t like they hadn’t had plenty of time.
“Hey, Tough?”
What?
“We didn’t talk after you left.” Colt said it like he was asking me.
Nope, never.
“Then how do I know what Mitzi did to you?”
Probably because everybody knows about her and Jason’s bright idea by now.
“Not that. I mean, after you first started sleeping with her. When you told her you were falling in love with her.”
For a second, I couldn’t say anything. I shook my head and stood up.
We’re not talking about this, I said.
“How do I know what Mitzi said to you?” Colt asked.
I don’t know and I don’t care. Get cleaned up. You’re going to run out of hot water.
“It gets hard for vampires to feel after they’ve been dead for a long time. She wanted to hurt you because you could still feel it.”
What are you, an expert on vamps now?
Colt thought about it for a minute.
“Somebody told me that,” he said. “I hung around the tattoo shop a lot, didn’t I?” Then he said, “No shit? You figure that out all by yourself, Inktastic? Fuck you, Born Country. I was just saying I must’ve picked up some crow stuff from Lonely and his gang.”
I squeezed my broken rib and looked up at the ceiling. The top parts of my cheeks were hot, but not as hot as when I was alive and embarrassed. The heat felt good, but fake, like listening to your favorite song when you know you’re screwed in real life. At least Colt’s crazy had distracted him from the whole me and Mitzi thing.
Then I smiled. Yesterday afternoon while we were taking a break and listening to some music, Desty had said that she thought it was cute when I blushed. Then she’d laughed when she realized “cute” was just about as offensive as “short” is to guys, but she said she wasn’t taking it back. That was what started up Round Two—me wrestling her, trying to make her take it back. I had ended up on bottom. Darn the luck.
That really was the best afternoon of my life. And I guess it got to keep the record since I left her asleep in bed and went off to kill myself not long afterwards.
A lot could change in twenty-four hours. I went from too freaking hot all the time to too freaking cold. This kind of cold didn’t feel right. I wanted to go curl up in bed with Desty. She’d be hot, all the way down to her bones. That would feel right. And since we’d already be in bed…
No wonder Mitzi had called me in at all hours of the night. Even just the inside of my jeans against my dick was turning me on. With Mitzi, the vamp hypersensitivity had paid off in half a dozen orgasms every time we did it. Just guessing, but probably for guy vamps—and their girlfriends—it was more of a hindrance than a help.
In the shower, Colt stopped moving like he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to be doing.
Could you hurry it up some? I said. It’d been almost ten hours since Mikal left the house. Every minute she didn’t bust back in the door and kill everybody ratcheted up the tension in the back of my neck by another hundred notches. We need to get the hell out of here before somebody lets it slip to Mikal that you’re not dead.
The vamp senses told me someone was coming down the hallway.
“Hey, Tough?” Harper knocked. “Come out here for a second.”
Colt would probably be fine. There wasn’t anything dangerous in the shower, anyway. I went out into the hall, but I kept the door open just in case.
Harper was opening a little brown paper bag. She held up the bellybutton stud that had been inside. A blood charm.
“Scout picked it up from Lonely’s,” she said. “If Desty wants to stay, I’ll give it to her, but…”
But only a suicidal retard would want to stay with a serial killer. And even if Desty did want to stay with me, what about sex? We couldn’t use warming gel and I couldn’t imagine a girl would like having something cold inside of her. Other than sex, there wasn’t really anything else I had to offer a girl like Desty.
“You know how it works?” Harper asked.
I nodded. Mitzi used to keep one around in case things got out of hand.
“Give me your finger, then.”
I held my middle finger out. Harper stabbed it with the stud.
“You know it’d be better for everybody if she just left,” Harper said, watching the little grenade-shaped decoration on the end turn the same brownish color as vamp venom.
I shook my head hard so Harper would know how wrong she was. Desty was as close to good—like innocent-good—as a piece of shit like me could ever get. I couldn’t just let her go. I had to find a way to convince her to stay with me.
Desty
I kicked and fought my way through the blood, almost at the surface when something grabbed my leg and pulled me back down. I tried to scream, but hot, thick blood filled my mouth and pooled in my lungs. I could feel the bubbles popping in my throat as I choked. Then someone was running. A hiss like a demon cat from Hell. That wasn’t how the blood dream usually went.
What if this wasn’t a dream?
Oh, God, please don’t let me die like this! I fought harder but nothing happened. I don’t know if you can cry underwater—or underblood—but I think I managed.
“Back the hell up, Tough, or I swear I’ll start praying!” That was Harper yelling.
Another hiss.
“God Almighty, Creator of everything, Lord of the Heavens and Earth, Father of Christ in Whom all may find salvation—”
Something hit the floor in the hallway.
I opened my eyes. Tough’s room, the window-sheet pulled aside and the late afternoon sun shining in stripes through the beer-can-props. Someone had covered me up with the top sheet. The fan wasn’t on, but I wasn’t sweating. Dehydrated again.
My thighs felt sticky. It took so much effort to push up onto my elbow that I almost passed out. My arms shook but I kept pushing through it until I was sitting up, then let my head hang down and breathed until the blackout was just a dizzy spell. After a few seconds, I could see clearly. The sheet between my legs looked like the day I woke up with my very first period, which had just happened to fall on December 25th. Mom had thought that was hilarious—Mother Nature’s Gift on Christmas morning. Except today there was a set of fang marks in my femoral artery.
Tough’s fang marks. Merry freaking Christmas.
Hot needles prickled along the back of my eyes and throat, but I made myself breathe until they passed. I couldn’t break down now, not after all this.
“I’ll check on her,” Harper said. “You stay here.”
I had just enough energy to grab one of Tough’s shirts off the floor and pull it on before Harper walked in the door and shut it behind her.
She took two seconds to see that I was alive and awake, then planted her hand on her hip and asked me, “Will you leave now?”
“I want to talk to Jax,” I said.
“He’s not here,” she said. “He had to talk to Bailey at the Witches’ Council. To ask about the prophecy thing and see whether they would consider it fulfilled now.”
Everything faded into red and I felt myself falling forward. I rested my fo
rehead on the bed until the redness disappeared.
“Did someone do it to Tough or…or what?” I asked.
“He got someone to make him,” Harper said.
I picked my head up and tried to think. “If it wasn’t Colt who killed him…the prophecy said it had to be his brother…and there’s that whole thing about a holy champion—”
“Yeah, well, you missed a lot while you were out,” Harper said. “Which reminds me—you never, ever let a vamp suck off of you while you’re laying down. They have to feel like they killed something, and if you can’t collapse, they’ll keep drinking until your heart stops.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” I said.
Harper pointed to her neck. “And only ever from the jugular.”
“Okay.”
“And another thing—”
“Please, Harper, I can’t do this right now. I feel like the community crack pipe. I’ve been hit off of three times this week.”
“Don’t even get me started on that,” Harper said.
“I’m not trying to,” I snapped. “I’ve got all I can handle right now. My mother’s depressed and, like, one step away from catatonic and unless I drag my sister back home, she’ll probably never come out of it. My sister’s an alpha’s familiar and unless I become her joint-familiar, her brain will corrode until she’s vegetative. Now the guy I thought I— Now Tough—”
Anger wouldn’t carry me through the whole list. Tough had gotten someone to make him into a vamp. The people I loved kept getting more and more creative with the ways they left me behind.
When I could, I cleared my throat. “So if you wouldn’t mind saving the lecture for a little later on…”
Harper sighed.
“He did it to save Colt,” she said.
The room went wavy. I had to close my eyes, but Harper kept talking.
“I think Tough was trying to make Colt a vampire, too,” she said. “But that takes time and the person getting made really has to want it. Logan says it’s hard to do even then. But I think Tough was okay with just killing Colt. Anything to get him away from Mikal.”
