“That’s kind of nauseating,” remarks Tommy. “Okay, okay. When Bette gets back, I’ll give you her phone and you can put Timothy’s number in. She’ll help us find a way to get Rose to call it.”
“See, you’re practically a girl too. It’s not just me.”
Bette comes back and the plan is carried out, Timothy’s number added into the address book. Jay will explain the plan later. For now, there’s music to listen to.
“Maybe it’ll be us up there one day,” Bette muses, nodding at the stage as the band’s short set comes to an end.
“Do you have any songs yet?” Michelle asks. “Once you’re really a band, I’m so going to be your manager. That would be cool.”
Tommy whispers something in her ear, and she smacks him. “No, I’m not going to be your groupie, loser. God.”
“We’ve got one song. Sort of,” Rose confirms, hunting around in her purse before drawing out a folded-up sheet of paper, which she hands over to Jay. “These are the lyrics.”
Timothy and Michelle both lean in to read the paper, and Jay, sitting between them, scans the words he already knows.
In a distant country
There’s a statue of an egg
And the shark dies in the final reel
But that just means we don’t have a name and face
To put to fear anymore
She scented my blood in the water
But I never wanted her to die
(And even if I did, I didn’t kill her)
In a distant country
The wolves are coming back
And even so, I’m still unformed,
And even so I’m out of focus
And in a distant country your baby’s going barefoot
But she’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine
Death is not your friend
Death is not a confidant
But in the dark Death holds you
When you cry beside the beds he emptied
In a distant country
That’s how stories end
And the way some childhoods will
The haze distorts and throws mirages
When I grow up I will be more than you can dream
And in a distant country
There’s a statue of an egg
And a sign that says
Something beautiful is coming
Timothy finishes first, and gives them all a wide and blinding grin, fangs flashing. “That is so cool. I’d love to hear it, as soon as you have a demo.”
Suddenly half the band isn’t over by their stage, packing their stuff up. Anna and Lily are both crowded in near Timothy, looming over the still-sitting group.
BETTE
The point of Anna’s long, thin knife is over Timothy’s breastbone, a fraction of an inch from slicing through the crisp cloth of his shirt, and Lily’s got her menacing little gun held to Timothy’s temple. He is completely still, still as stone, but his eyes are wide and afraid.
Michelle and Tommy look confused. Rose and Jay both look terrified, like Timothy. Bette doesn’t feel scared, though. She’s just so angry and worked up and they wouldn’t let her fight with them and now they’re threatening someone she has laughed with, with a blade and a gun. Bette is tired of this. She’s had enough.
“Put the fucking gun down,” she snaps at Lily. “And the sword.” This to Anna. They don’t move.
“There are no good vampires,” Lily says quietly. “Whatever he’s told you…”
“Fuck you. If you hurt him, you will regret it. I will make you regret it,” Bette says evenly, standing up and beckoning for the others to follow her. “Come on, we’re going.”
“I can’t let you do that,” Anna warns.
“You can’t stop me,” Bette retorts.
Lily fires.
JAY
The gunshot is loud. World-ending loud. It’s an eternal, horrifying split second before Jay realizes that the wet splatter of gore on the side of his face isn’t Timothy’s brain. It’s just blood and bone fragments. Timothy is still alive, his palm a mess where it was pressed over the muzzle of Lily’s gun. There’s a dark stain spreading over his pale jacket from a wound on his shoulder, too, where the diverted bullet ended up entering. Timothy must have moved at the very last possible moment.
“Run!” Bette orders, and the six of them are already moving before the first commotion of people looking around for the source of the noise has stopped. All four members of Remember the Stars are following them as they push through the back door of the club and out into the evening air.
“Split up!” Jay says. “Scatter!”
Tommy and Michelle, still looking bewildered, dart off in one direction. Bette and Rose head in another. Timothy, despite his injuries, hoists Jay onto his back and runs, faster than any human following them could keep up with.
When they’re miles from the club, Timothy slows and lets Jay down again. Then he doubles over and vomits into the gutter, the blood leaving a viscous, dark splash on the ground.
“I ruined his music,” Timothy says, voice cracking on the final consonant. “We had another—I tried to have another fight with him, but he never gets angry. I grabbed his records in their sleeves and I snapped them in half. All of them. Because I’m not who he needs to be and he’s still pretending I am. That’s what I said to him. Just before you woke up. That’s why I was so keen to go out when you suggested it.”
Jay is already scrolling through his phonebook to find Alexander’s number. “It’s okay. You’re okay. That’ll heal up fine,” he says as he dials and waits for Alexander to answer. “Shame about the jacket, though.”
He’s trying to keep things light, but Timothy’s face is pale and shocked and pained, so instead Jay just hugs him close until the car arrives to take them home.
BETTE
Jay calls her just before dawn.
“Blake’s on the warpath. So’s Alexander. Stay far, far away from Remember the Stars, okay? In fact, stay inside completely for a couple of nights. Days, too, if you can. I’m going to skive off school a bit. Be a good idea if you all did, too.”
It’s cool for the first day. Bette fakes a stomach ache and watches a whole heap of bad daytime television, keeping in touch with the others through email. Rose keeps sending her bits of really awful fan-fiction based on Tim Burton movies, but Bette’s not sure if this is stuff Rose is finding online or stuff Rose is writing herself, so she tries to keep her replies neutral.
On the second day, it’s boring, boring, boring. Bette’s going crazy. By the time night falls she’s ready to climb out of her own skin just to get some freedom. For someone whose best friend is basically a hermit, Bette really doesn’t deal well with being an enforced homebody, however temporarily.
She’ll just got for one quick jog around the block. It’s barely even dark out. No way any vampires would be this close to so many houses, especially not while the light of the sun is still painting gold and pink shades on the undersides of the clouds.
She’s gone two blocks, reveling in the freedom and the air around her, when she hears a noise from behind her.
Bette turns. It’s Lily, her face pinched and pale, her clothes rumpled and stained with dark splotches of blood. As she stares at Bette she tilts her head to the side in a graceless jerk, the movement uncanny and strange and completely inhuman.
“Hey, Bette. I’m kind of pissed at you,” Lily says. Her teeth gleam in the low light, especially her fangs.
Bette runs.
No, no, no, it can’t end like this, not when she’s still got so much to do and not when she doesn’t even know the story, how Lily got away from Jay’s friends and how she woke up as a vampire at all and no, this isn’t how it ends, oh god.
Bette runs, and runs, and then Lily catches her arm and Bette stumbles to a halt, sobbing in fear.
“Great tattoo,” Lily says. Her hands are holding Bette’s arm too tightly, squeezing to bruise, and then she pulls so fast that Bette cries out in surpris
e at the same second that Lily sinks her teeth in.
Bette wants to scream properly but her throat’s not working, the same way it doesn’t when she needs to cry out in her nightmares. She just makes a gurgling, choking sound, and that makes Lily bite even deeper.
Bette has never felt so sad. She thought she’d be scared, or angry, or—best case scenario—sensible and clever, in the face of a life-threatening situation. She’d keep her cool about her and find a way out and survive. But now she’s here and Lily is gnawing and slurping at her arm, ripping the skin open wider, and Bette just feels sick and tired and sad and wishes she could tell her mom that she loves her and see Rose and Tommy again and kiss Jay and Gretchen, oh she’s so sad about Gretchen, and she never even got to be a rock star or see the school musical or anything and it’s not fair and she’s so tired and sad and her tattoo must be ruined now and
“Poor bird,” Bette murmurs, and then everything’s gone.
~
She wakes up aching on cold-damp cement, with a serious case of cotton-mouth. All preliminary evidence suggests that she’s at Rose’s place and fell asleep on the floor during a movie. When Bette opens her eyes, though, she’s in the docking bay next to the grocery store. Groaning, she sits up slowly. There’s something in her mouth, and she spits into her palm as she shuffles over to lean her back against the bare bricks of the wall. The little pale shapes look like teeth, the roots whiter than the lightly nicotine-stained tips, but Bette’s mouth doesn’t hurt any more than the rest of her and when she runs her tongue along the top row of her own teeth inside her mouth they’re all there where they should be. Her incisors feel a little weird, more tender than the rest, a little longer and sharper than she re —
Fuck.
Bette stares at the teeth in her palm for a while, not thinking anything, her mind blank. Then she throws them down in disgust and skitters away a bit, shifting down the wall like she’s just discovered that she’s been holding a piece of human remains at a murder scene or something. Exactly like that, actually.
Bette chokes on another groan, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply so she doesn’t start freaking out. She feels sick and scared but her heart rate and breath are still slow and steady, so she’s not about to have a panic attack or anything. She feels strangely grateful and surprised at how reassuring the feel of her heartbeat against her palm is. If she’s still got a heartbeat, maybe being a vampire’s not the end of the world.
Bette’s next groan is mostly a sob.
Okay. Not time for a freak out. She needs to call somebody to come help her. Her legs won’t hold her steady, she knows that without trying. She’s got no energy at all. Rose. She’ll call Rose.
The thought of Rose makes something greedy and ravenous flare up inside Bette, some new part of her brain that was lying dormant as she woke. She thinks of Rose’s basement-pale skin and the coarse tangle of Rose’s hair, imagines pushing that hair away from Rose’s throat and leaning into the soft warm human smell and then biting and then drinking and drinking, and how Rose would try to fight and how Bette could hold Rose’s arms down at her sides so easily and stop her struggling while Bette drank and drank and drank until there was nothing left.
Now Bette’s heart rate has perked up a little.
Okay, so calling Rose is a really bad idea. Even if she really, really wants to, the new and snarling bit of her brain waiting eagerly for the rest of her to stop resisting.
Bette pulls her phone out of her jeans and stares down at the numbers. Rose wouldn’t even demand to know what was wrong, she’d just come as quick as she could if Bette said she needed her. Maybe she’d bring Tommy, too. Bette wonders how similar the blood of fraternal twins tastes.
Rose’s phone is turned off when Bette tries to call. For a second she’s thankful, but then the predator-part of her takes over again and she knows that there’s no way Tommy’s phone will be off; he’ll answer for sure.
She scrolls down to T. Above Tommy’s number is one Bette can’t remember adding: Timothy. Timothy was the name of Jay’s friend. The vampire. She hits ‘call’ before she lets herself reconsider.
It takes four rings for Timothy to answer. “Elizabeth?”
“Bette,” she answers out of pure habit. Thank god she hasn’t developed that weirdo love of full names vampires have. “I’m next to a grocery store near that mall we went to. Do you remember?”
“Yes, I remember. What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
Bette takes a deep, shuddering breath. He sounds so kind. She didn’t realize how alone she felt until she heard someone kind. Maybe, if she asks, he’ll bring Jay with him. Bette remembers Jay’s blood, the warm slick of it against her lip, the feel of his body against her in her bed. She ends the call before she can let herself beg Timothy for Jay.
She throws the phone away from her, as far as she can, and curls her face down against her knees. She’s shuddering, but she doesn’t cry. She’s too tired to cry, and the night is loud around her.
JAY
The concrete ground around the grocery store is already stained with the drips and splotches and marks any outdoor ground like that gets—gum, fuel drops, grease. In the late-night puddles of streetlight yellow the blood doesn’t look all that different to the other marks, just another dark smear of something soaked into the parking lot.
Bette is curled up against the wall, rocking back and forth and making choked, whimpery noises, like a baby animal in pain. Her arms are crossed over her knees and Jay can see her tattoo on the bare, blood-smeared skin. There’s a long, ragged scar slicing through the ink, already healed and white and flat. It makes one wing skew badly, like the hollow bone of it’s been broken, and that throws the whole tattoo off-balance and makes it strange.
“Bette?” Timothy asks, touching her shoulder. Her head snaps up, expression wary. Her eyes are wide and catch the light like a cat’s. She looks at Timothy for a second before shifting her focus to Jay. Jay’s seen that look on her face before, that wild-with-wanting expression, but never so bare and uncomplicated.
“You should run,” she tells him in a bleak voice, dropping her head down against her knees again. “I’ll kill you if you don’t run.”
“No you won’t.” Jay steps away from Blake and Alexander, who are watching everything with their careful sharp eyes, and over to where Timothy and Bette are against the wall. “You’re my friend.”
“Am I?” Bette asks her knees. Jay doesn’t know if she means that she didn’t know that they’ve been friends for ages, that Jay doesn’t go around joining bands and sharing secrets with just anyone, or if she means that she doesn’t know if their old friendship still counts now that she wants to tear him apart and gulp at the wounds. Either way, Jay’s answer is the same.
“Yes,” he says, and crouches beside her. Jay gives Timothy a look, hoping it conveys ‘seriously, you’d better not let her kill me, okay?’ clearly enough, and holds his wrist out. “You are.”
There’s nothing human about the hungry, desperate noise Bette makes as she bites through the vein. Jay’s used to the feeling it causes, and can push the promise of oblivion away with only a bit of effort. He squeezes Bette’s knee with his free hand, but doubts she notices.
Jay expects the others to react badly, instinct telling them to fight anyone outside the pack showing interest in his blood, but when he looks over at Timothy there’s a strange calm look on Timothy’s face, almost serene but more like awe. It makes Jay think of Linda’s face when she had the baby in her arms. Timothy reaches out to stroke Bette’s hair and she leans instinctively into the touch, making a wordless contented sound against Jay’s skin.
“It must have been that hunter of yours,” Jay hears Alexander say to Blake.
“Lillian,” Blake confirms.
Alexander’s tone is dry. “I’m too old to share a home with this many teenagers. They’ll want to watch their rock music videos at all hours and play those computer games that encourage sex and violence.”
&nb
sp; “Heavens. We’ll have to start setting a good example for them,” Blake replies, equally deadpan. Jay takes his hand off Bette’s knee long enough to flip them off, then leans in close to Bette’s bent head.
“You’re part of their family now. They’ll take care of you,” he promises her, even though he’s absolutely sure that this is by far the most fucked up clusterfuck in the history of clusterfucks and is probably going to lead to deep, deep shit for everyone involved. God, vampires are all such fucking idiots.
“All right, stop now,” Timothy orders Bette, prying her off Jay’s arm and helping her to stand up. She looks completely wrecked. Jay can sympathize. Alexander guides Jay to his feet and lets him lean his weight against him.
“Come on,” Blake says, leading the way back to where the car is parked. “Let’s get home before first light.”
ROADS AND CROSSES
BOOK TWO
OF THE
WOLF HOUSE SERIES
To Beckah Widen, Samantha Baker,
and Samantha Fox.
WILL
The day Lily dies is peerlessly pretty. After that the season turns in one hurried rush, the leaves tumbling gold and the clouds rolling in under the blue. Autumn makes up for lost time. But that comes after. Lily dies when the weather is warm.
Will’s the only one in the warehouse when she returns. It’s after dusk already, the sunset a fraction earlier in the evening than it has been on other nights, a quiet warning that the bright summer is almost over. Will’s been working on their equipment stores; tinkering with electronics relaxes him. He likes the repetition. After what happened at the club the other night Will is determined to make their arsenal better, safer, more efficient. Lily tried to shoot a vampire with an ordinary everyday pistol, right in the middle of a crowded club.
Will’s always refused to use holy water in his designs, and tonight that had meant another argument with Anna. She’d left for patrol in a huff, taking Russ along with her. Lily left soon after, the late afternoon sun slanting long, to do a quick check on the kids from the club.
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 18
