“Where is he?”
“Dead.”
Lily’s been a vampire for a while now. She’s got a better handle on her rages. She manages to keep her self-control, just.
“Here, catch.” Lily pulls one of the flare-bombs out of her messenger bag and presses the release mechanism, tossing it to the other vampire as it beeps and opens. The light sprays out in all directions, burning the vampire’s hands and face.
“Let me ask you that one again,” Lily says as the other vampire howls in pain. The blade barely trembles as Lily holds the sword to the vampire’s throat. “Where is he?”
“You’re both going to die screaming,” the vampire hisses, and Lily’s heart lightens so fast that she feels almost giddy. ‘Going to die screaming’ means ‘not dead yet’, and that’s good enough for Lily.
“Don’t move or I’ll shoot,” says another new voice, from near the same rooftop edge Lily climbed over. If there’s someone new to interrogate, that means Lily doesn’t need the vampire in front of her anymore, so Lily flicks her wrist and lets the sword slice the vampire’s head off in one smooth motion.
The first bullet rips through her wrist, the second through her hand, before she can dodge away. The sword falls with a clatter. Lily’s almost more surprised than she is injured; who actually shoots when they threaten to, really? Either you shoot straight off, or you threaten. One isn’t supposed to lead to the other.
“Ow, fuck!” Lily says, because no matter how surprised she is, she’s still pretty fucking injured. And where’s the class in using ordinary human bullets, anyway? Man, vampires suck.
“Down the stairs. There’s a van outside,” the vampire orders, gesturing for Lily to walk ahead of him down from the body-strewn roof.
~
Will’s greeting is determinedly chipper, though Lily can hear the fear and relief warring under the words. “Your rescue attempt leaves a little to be desired.”
“I had a sword. I told you I’d be good with a sword,” Lily answers, her own voice equally light, bleeding hand pressed against the front of her torn hoodie. She scrambles over to where Will’s leaning against the side of the van’s small interior, bumping her hip to Will’s as she sits down beside him.
Lily doesn’t have to check Will’s face to know that all the things she’s trying to say and can’t will be conveyed by the gesture. Maybe they do have a little bit of that special psychic-sense thing between them after all.
“Sorry I missed it,” Will says blandly. “So, remember when I said that the vampires were interested in us? How about that.”
“Shut your mouths, both of you,” the vampire who was herding Lily says. “Shut your mouths or I’ll kill you both, screw the price.”
The van begins to move, and Lily tries to keep one corner of her awareness on noticing the turns and stops it makes as they drive. Trouble is, that super-cool action star stuff is way harder than it looks in the movies.
“The price?” Lily asks. The vampire just bares his teeth at them.
“We’re worth a lot, turns out,” Will explains. “As long as we’re alive. The news spread an hour after I was grabbed. Lucky break, really.”
The vampire laughs. “It just means that some big-shot’s determined to kill you himself. Didn’t want anyone else stealing the fun. There’s a number of people who’d pay a fortune for the chance to be the one to end you.”
“I don’t know about you, Lil, but it sounds to me like we’ve got some enemies,” Will says dryly.
“That’s enough talking. You’re a fucking traitor’s disgusting little blood-pet and you can shut up,” the vampire spits out, gun still trained on them both.
“Now, see, that’s just rude,” Lily says, getting a full-force glare. She smiles back, as charmingly as circumstances allow.
Will uses the moment to dart a hand into the pocket on the inside of Lily’s waistband, at the point where their hips bumped, and grabs the throwing dagger she always hides there. Their endless hours of target practice pay off as the dagger flies and lands true, hitting the vampire in the heart, and the wound begins to bleed sluggishly around the metal. Lily takes care of the driver, snapping his neck with the arm that’s not sporting bullet holes, sending the van in a drunken swerve off the road.
The van impacts against something with a metallic crunch, and goes still.
“I’m not a fucking traitor,” Lily says to the carnage that’s left of their captors. Her voice sounds eerily calm to her own ears. She kicks the back doors of the van open, glad of the chill of the pre-dawn air.
“She’s a hunter,” Will finishes, following Lily out onto the sidewalk. The gangs have all gone to ground for the day, and there’s nothing between them and escape.
“When did the weather turn so cold? This sucks,” Will mutters, crossing his arms against the chill. In the better light, Lily can see how pale and drawn his face looks. There are new bruises on his neck, none-too-gentle bite marks.
“God, Will, you must be—. Jesus. Are you okay? I’ll… I can give you some blood. Just this one time. It’ll make you feel better. Seriously, have some.” She offers out her wounded wrist, glad it’s not the one with her Beatles tattoo on it. She’s pretty sure a bullet wound screws up even vampire ink.
Will makes a face and shakes his head.
“No time. You need to get home before sunrise. I’ll have a cup of tea when we get there. Let’s go, Little Miss Action Hero.” He gives Lily a fleeting smile and sets off running. Lily follows.
~
They’re too exhausted and sleepy when they get back to the warehouse to bother with tea. Lily locks and double-locks the doors, then shoves the table against the main one for good measure. They’re pretty much safe during the daylight hours, but there’s no reason not to be careful anyway.
She’s not stupid. She knows who set the price on their heads, and why. Vampires are naturally greedy, even more than they are violent. A reward was a guaranteed way to keep Will alive until Lily could get to him, and Lily’s willing to bet that the offer will be pulled as soon as news leaks that they’re not captured anymore.
Goddamn well-dressed vampires and their goddamn head games and their goddamn continued obsession with Lily and Will. Lily kicks the wall, just because she can, before joining Will on the ragged mattress he sleeps on. She’ll risk the light of the warehouse, just for this once. She can’t bear the idea of putting the cupboard doors between her and Will.
His skin is clammy and cold, and Lily wraps her good arm around him and shifts closer, as if she can lend him some of her meager warmth.
She’s shaking a little, and probably clinging too hard, but she can’t help it. Now that they’re both safe, she can admit how scared she really was, and it’s making her heart twist painfully in her ribcage. Will’s here, he’s all right, and Lily can stroke his hair and touch his face and it’s okay, it’s okay, everything will be okay.
Lily moves back a little and bites into her own wrist, on her uninjured arm, just above the tattoo. All you need is love. “C’mon, it’ll help you sleep.”
“Your hand. You need the blood to heal,” Will protests, already breathing a cool puff of air against the skin of Lily’s arm as they press against each other in the small space.
“My hand’ll be fine,” Lily promises, the last word catching as Will bites down. The songwriter part of her searches for words to describe this, but she can’t find them. “But next time we piss a bunch of vampires off, it’s my turn to be the damsel, okay? I want some of that kinky hostage action.”
Will makes a muffled, protesting noise without pulling away from Lily’s wrist, moving a hand up to swat at Lily’s head instead. Lily catches Will’s hand with her own, lacing their fingers together in the dark.
WILL
Just after dawn, a few mornings later, Will sits and enjoys a quiet moment out the front of the warehouse. He’s sitting with his back against the door frame on the sidewalk step, drinking a bottle of orange juice and squinting up at the icy
blue sky and sharp, bright sunshine. One of the odd little silver linings of recovering from vampire bites is that his senses sharpen, leaving him without the need for his prescription lenses for a few days. He’s wearing the sunglass -tinted pair he’s got anyway. He doesn’t want to end up with a permanent squint from this temporary light sensitivity. He burns easily – always has, with the Irish-fair skin he inherited – but at the moment he doesn’t even freckle.
“Pity,” he mutters to himself. “It’d be nice if I at least came out of this ordeal with a tan.”
A girl in a Catholic school uniform is walking toward the warehouse, and it takes Will a few seconds to recognise her as Rose. Lily had said that the girl looked different now, but Will hadn’t expected the change to be so dramatic.
“Hi.”
“Hey.” He smiles, gesturing to the space on the step beside him. “What brings you here?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. I was hoping someone would still be awake. I told Mom I had early practice at school. I’m in this stupid musical that’s on soon, so she bought it.” Rose sits beside him.
“What musical?”
“Peter Pan. I’m playing Peter.”
“Congratulations. You should talk to Lil. That’s one of her favourite books.”
“Hm.” Rose answers, playing with an unlit cigarette. The edge of a bandage is visible under the sleeve of her school blazer, wrapped neatly around one wrist. “Tommy said that Lily told him Anna and Russ moved out.”
“Yeah,” Will nods. “They’re gone now.”
“Good.” Rose’s voice is hard. “I hope I never see them again. Russ was the one who told Bette she couldn’t be a hunter. Maybe if he’d let her learn more, she wouldn’t have… it’s his fault. It’s all your faults, but especially his. I hate him.”
“I’m so sorry about Bette.”
“Yeah, everyone’s sorry.” Rose lights her cigarette. Her eyes are flinty and bright. She breathes in, dragging the smoke deep. “I think I’m sick of sorry. Angry feels less like dying. Maybe if I stick with angry I’ll stop hacking my wrists up to feel something other than fucking sorry.”
She doesn’t say anything else after that, just inhales again and watches the trickle of foot-traffic pass by. Will spins his bottle of orange juice between his palms, trying very, very hard not to think about that bandage on her arm, the veins below, the pump of her blood. The ache in his mouth feels much too strong to ever fade, nothing like how the light sensitivity is already starting to diminish.
Maybe it’s a problem he’ll have his whole life, like alcoholics who have to speak in the present tense about their addictions even after years of sobriety. Hi, my name’s Will, and I can’t sit beside a friend without wondering what her heart would taste like. It’s been two weeks since I was last bitten by a vampire.
The thought makes him ill and makes him shiver, all at once, so he clears his throat and tries not to think about it at all.
~
It’s another sign of how surreal his definition of normal has become when Will feels relieved that the vampire packs explode the night with another turf skirmish. They do so on a weekend, and the chaos centers around River North, so Will’s got no time at all to get lost in this thoughts; he’s too busy protecting people and helping Lily fight.
The two gangs involved are ones Will isn’t especially familiar with. One seems mostly comprised of solidly-muscled, fair-complected males who shout terse instructions at one another in clear, clipped Swedish. The other gang is a mix of males and females, small, and lithe, and sharp-chinned, their hair and clothing decorated with ribbons and beads in deep jewel colors. They’re a scatter of races, and they speak bubbly, conversational English, laughing in triumph and delight as they fight.
There’s no real need for Lily and Will to engage in the battle at all; the vampires are doing a perfectly good job at reducing their numbers all by themselves. It’s really only important for hunters to come to brawls like this because there are always humans who gets tangled in the fray, wounds to dress and panic to soothe.
Most of the people-herding gets left to Will this time, though, because Lily seems to have forgotten that she’s here for any purpose except diving into the middle of the fight and cutting a swathe through both sides, taking on two teams of about twenty vampires apiece on her own and practically glowing with the joy of it.
Will tells himself that she’s blowing off steam, that she always got excited when the odds were against her, but the truth is that this is where Lily fits now, in a way she never did before. These battles are against creatures that she maybe has more in common with than she does Will.
Will forces himself to look away from her and stop thinking about it, searching for more people he can save. If he has something to do, he can make his brain shut up for just a little while longer.
He sees a girl running further down the block, her form like a flame in the night because of the light yellow cotton of her dress. She’s wearing high heels and they make her stumble, so Will goes to steady her and help her get to somewhere safe. Her hair is short and dark, like Lily’s, but left in its natural wave rather than the flat-ironed torture Lily still subjects her own to.
“Hey,” Will says, touching the girl’s shoulder as he catches up with her, and the world spins and his back slams against the rough brick wall of the locksmith’s store they’re beside. The crash is hard enough that Will feels two of his ribs crack, smashing the breath out of his lungs and leaving him gasping and in pain. He’s momentarily grateful that he doesn’t need his glasses yet, because the force of the knock would have sent them skittering and to be blinded right now would be a terrifying thing.
That gratitude doesn’t last beyond the first moment, though, because as his vision comes back into focus Will can see that the girl is Bette, and her fangs are sharp and white and gleaming. He chokes to draw breath in, to speak or plead, but his lungs are still burning and so he doesn’t manage it before her head snaps forward and her teeth rip open his neck.
The savagery of lovely vampires often surprises Will. In fiction, vampires are usually disgusting or seductive, but the reality is a blend of both. The pretty teenage girl walking in a yellow dress like a flame and too-high shoes can be, at the same time, a vicious predator who tears deep into the vein with her teeth, heel of her palm pressed into his windpipe, bringing the airless dark rushing up to cover him.
~
He’s surprised to wake up at all, and doubly surprised to wake up comfortable.
“Two, one… and you’re back.”
There’s someone inside his head, drawing the cotton-thick remnants of unconsciousness away from him slowly. Will struggles for clarity, imagines himself driving out this visitor to his mind as forcefully as he can. He catches the edge of emotions not his own as the presence leaves: surprise, then intrigue.
Will blinks and sits up, glancing around as he does: a wall of bookshelves, a window with the blur of the city at night beyond it. He’s lying on a wide sofa and he’s still fully dressed. The back of his head aches. His broken ribs ache. The side of his neck, opposite the older bites, aches. The soft joint inside one of his elbows aches. He is very thirsty and very afraid.
There are two vampires, perched on high-backed chair of dark wood beside the sofa. Watching him. One is Bette, the other a boy who looks to be of roughly the same age.
“May I have my glasses?” Will asks as evenly as he can. He’d had a pair in the pocket of his jacket when Bette attacked him, but his jacket is gone now - presumably for access to the veins of his arms.
“Oh! Of course!” the vampire who isn’t Bette says, going over to where Will’s jacket lies in a crumpled heap. His voice is somehow familiar, and after a second Will realises that it matches the intrigued mind-voice he’d felt upon waking.
“Here are your specs, sorry,” He presses Will’s glasses into Will’s palm with a cool hand.
Will doesn’t really need the glasses to see, but with that thin barrier of lens betwe
en him and the world he feels a little less ill at ease.
Both Bette and the other vampire have traces of blood clinging to the corners of their lips, presumably Will’s own. The vampire beside Bette is regarding Will with fascinated and cheerful interest, while Bette herself seems reluctant to meet Will’s eyes.
Will has spent years being revolted and repelled by the way vampires look, but in the last few weeks he has been forcing himself to unlearn that instinctual flinch for Lily’s sake, and so now he can see a little of the eerie beauty in them that has seduced so many unlucky people.
The vampire beside Bette has soft, thick hair that falls in heavy light-brown locks over his forehead and eyes. The eyes themselves are the flat dark red of all vampire eyes, but this pair is bright with sharp intelligence. His lips are full and lush with new blood, which emphasises the sweet youthfulness that his face must have once had, and still has in the spare, cold way that vampirism freezes features. He looks like he was under twenty when he died.
“I’m Timothy,” the vampire offers.
“Will.”
“I know.” Timothy smiles, the tips of his fangs dimpling the pillow of his lower lip. Then, after a moment, his smile broadens. “Do you like cats?”
Bette snorts. “You aren’t supposed to bring her out here,” she says to Timothy, still refusing to look at Will.
Timothy shrugs, standing and walking to one of the doors which lead off the room. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Bette -” Will says as Timothy vanishes into the other room. “It doesn’t have to be… you could—”
“What, be like Lily? Go crazy slowly, instead of all at once?” She looks him straight in the eye, suddenly. “I didn’t—I didn’t want it to go like this for you. But you just can’t resist a damsel in distress, can you?” There’s a wry, almost bitter twist to her tone as she asks the question. Then Timothy opens the door again, and Bette turns her gaze away from Will. There’s a kitten curled in Timothy’s pale palms.
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 23
