The Wolf House: The Complete Series

by Mary Borsellino

  “That’s different,” Anna snaps, voice cold and hard.

  “So you’ll work with the vampires you deem worthy of continued life, and kill the rest? How unimaginatively fascist of you,” Blake says, feigning a yawn. “I have something approaching respect for vampire hunters, much as I dislike them. They remind me of the mongoose, the only animal cunning enough to fight the King Cobra.”

  “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a great name,” Ash offers, thinking of the mongoose in the Rudyard Kipling stories she used to read as a kid. “I had a hamster called that. Jenna’s was called Milly-Molly-Mandy. I was little enough that I didn’t think there was much difference between a hamster and a mongoose.”

  “Ashley, please try not to go off on tangents while I’m trying to go off on a tangent,” Blake scolds her, but he’s got a fond, slightly worried smile on his face, like he always does when she goes a little too crazy. Lily’s smiling too, but trying to hide that she’s doing it, which makes Ash feel a bit better. Smiling’s better than the scowls the other hunters are all aiming at. Will, Anna and Russ, three expressions of stony hatred all in a row.

  The three scowls aren’t exactly the same, though. Will glares at Blake like he’d like to kill him slowly, but at least it’s the finely-tuned hatred of someone with a very close vendetta against their enemy. Anna and Russ’s are chillingly impersonal, like they don’t even see Blake and Ash and Alex as people at all, just… just things.

  “Yes, as I said, they’re rather unimaginatively fascist,” remarks Blake, and a split-second later Ash realises he’s replying to her train of thought. She’s never going to get the hang of telepathy.

  “As I was saying,” Blake goes on, as everyone else attempts to catch up with his tangent upon half-heard tangent. “Traditional vampire hunters I concede a degree of professional appreciation for. I kill them, naturally, but do not despise them as I despise you two. Hypocrisy is never attractive.”

  “There are four of us, genius,” growls Lily, adjusting her stance, the brief smile which had lightened Ash’s heart now vanished.

  Blake chuckles lightly, waving one hand dismissively. “Oh, I don’t include you and Will in any of this, dear. Vampires who are uncomfortable with their nature have been around longer than any of us. But human hunters who would stand with such vampires, well, that is a wholly new and wholly vile development.”

  “Fuck you, asshole,” says Will, and Ash starts to wonder if anybody ever actually does any fighting in these fights, or if they all just say mean things to each other until they get tired and go home.

  “Again, you’re taking personally what was not directed at you, William,” Blake says in a calm voice, like he’s speaking to a child. “I understand completely why you stayed with her. She’s your great love, and you are hers. Everybody who’s ever read a storybook knows that death’s no match for that. But these two -“ With a sneer, he gestures to Russ and Anna. “- They know nothing of love or true loyalty.”

  Anna chooses that moment to take a swing at Alexander, a stiletto knife suddenly in one of her perfectly manicured hands. She catches him across the arm, tearing the sleeve of his coat and the skin beneath in one quick stab before he backhands her, hard, and knocks her to the ground.

  “Don’t.” Will orders Russ, as Russ moves to strike as well. “The three of them together are too much. If they’re going to let us walk away, we’ll walk away.”

  Anna is glaring up at Alexander and Ash, her red lips and black-lashed eyes and blonde rockabilly hairstyle an impeccable picture of beautiful, furious hatred. She stands, spitting out a mouthful of blood from the knock, a bruise already rising under the pale powder of her makeup.

  “You haven’t seen the last of me,” she tells them as they walk away. Ash and Blake ignore her, but Alexander calls out over his shoulder as they round the corner of the block.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, loudly enough for Anna to hear. “The last I see of you will be much more final than this. And if you’re intent on keeping score, please mark down that the first blood went to me.”

  “Pride goeth before a fall, Alex,” Blake teases.

  “It never seems to do you any harm,” Alexander replies.

  ~

  “Okay, let’s see. Lilo and Stitch, The Neverending Story, Up, Ponyo, Calamity Jane… Deadwood? Seriously?” Jenny holds up and DVD and gives Mikhail a vastly unimpressed look.

  “The television is a better babysitter than any residents of this home would be, I assure you,” Mikhail answers. “And look, her eyes aren’t even the least bit square from it.”

  “It’s not the amount of TV I’m objecting to. It’s the fact you showed a preschooler Deadwood.”

  “What? She liked Calamity Jane. They’re basically the same thing.”

  Min’s room on the ground floor of the townhouse still has the impersonal air of a spare bedroom, but there’s a little more life to it now than when the little girl first moved in. Her toy rabbit lies on the pillow of the neatly made bed, and the innards of a simple clock mechanism are spread out across a felt square on the writing desk. The flat-screen TV on one wall is a new addition to the decor, as is the DVD player that Jenny and Min are sitting on the floor in front of now. The walls are lined with more books than Ash has ever seen in one place, outside of a library.

  Mikhail and Alexander are on the window seat, so the only place left for Ash and Sofie to perch is on the edge of the mattress. Sofie seems tense, ill-at-ease, but Ash probably would too if she’d spent her childhood as a captive of a household of vampires and was now paying a visit to a household of vampires. Min, on the other hand, is starting to lose the dull terror which clouded her face at first.

  “I liked it,” Min tells Jenny, agreeing with Mikhail. “Everyone fights and says funny words.”

  Sofie laughs behind her hand, which earns her a stern glare from Jenny.

  “Alexander, our faces are Chinese,” says Min thoughtfully. “Would our job be feeding bodies to pigs, like on the show?”

  “I never did,” Alexander answers her. “I mostly robbed people, or did odd jobs. The real Wild West wasn’t nearly so romantic as those shows and films make it seem. But pig farming would have been a very enterprising choice, I suppose.”

  Jenny doesn’t look lost for words, exactly. She looks like she can’t decide what words are appropriate to say in front of Min.

  “I’m going for a walk,” Sofie declares suddenly, standing up. “Ash, come with me?”

  “Um, sure,” Ash says, too surprised by the invitation to think of a reason to decline it.

  When they’re outside in the bite of the wind, Sofie lets out a deep sigh. “Sorry. I’m just people-weary. I needed some air.”

  Ash points at her own face. “I’m a people too, you know. Not an air-breathing one, but still.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t talk-talk-talk all the time and have stupid opinions

  and, ugh.” Sofie makes an inarticulate flailing gesture with her hands. “I’m losing my mind staying with Lily and Will. I could deal with Will all right when it was the two of us on the road together, and even when it was the two of us with Jenny. But with Lily he’s. They’re both. It’s just…” She pushes errant strands of white-blond hair away from her face, frowning against the wind. “They’re idiots. Well-intentioned idiots, but good intentions mean shit. And Jenny and Jay and Rose are all so trusting

  of all these fucking vampires.”

  “Uh, still standing right here,” Ash says again, repeating the gesture of pointing at her own face.

  Sofie doesn’t seem to hear her, rant going on uninterrupted. “Blake isn’t any different to Cora, not really. He acts like he is, but he’s not. I think he’s even worse, in a way, because he’s made Jay complicit in his own captivity. At least Cora’s honest about being a fucking monster.”

  That makes Ash’s face harden a little, her smirk curling down into a frown. “You don’t mean that, so don’t act like you do. You hate Cora. You were there when she nearly
killed Will.”

  “I don’t know.” Sofie shrugs helplessly, looking uncertain. “I don’t know if that’s what she was hoping would happen, or if she was intending for it to turn out exactly the way it did. Vampires almost never kill each other. Not for real. Not forever. Why else do you think Blake and Lily are both still alive, even though they’ve clashed one-on-one a few times? Cora put Will out in the sun, but you’d know better than most vampires that the sun isn’t automatically fatal. Beheading is a sure way to kill a vampire. Basically the only sure way. If she’d really wanted Will dead, that’s how she’d’ve done it.”

  “Tearing the heart out is one, too,” Ash offers in a quiet voice. “If you burn the body up before it grows back. That’s… there was another vampire, probably made by Cora, just a little while before she killed me. He was crazier than I am. No reason or rationality left, Timothy says. Timothy’s the one who found him. When they meet vampires like that, Blake’s gang always tears the heart out and destroys the body. They say it’s kinder that way. Blake was going to do it to me, but Bette stopped him. So I guess I’m supposed to be dead, too.”

  “Of course you are,” Sofie smirks, elbowing Ash in the side. “You’re a vampire.”

  Ash just looks at her, feeling a little too lost to think up a quip in reply. She’s so tired.

  Sofie sighs, and pats Ash awkwardly on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go to that club that Bette runs. I’ll buy you a cup of tea.”

  ~

  It’s a quiet night at Scrimshaw, not too many people around. Ash catches sight of Blake as they enter, and waves hello, and then she and Sofie wander together to the other side of the room.

  Ash doesn’t know if anybody in the world, except maybe Jenny and Will, can really call Sofie their friend. But whatever she and Sofie are to each other, she’s grateful for it. Sofie is the closest thing to a friend Ash has been able to make since her death.

  They’re standing together, laughing again over Jenny’s face at the sight of the Deadwood DVD, when Sofie’s posture changes. That’s the thing that tips Ash off that there’s a threat. It isn’t that Sofie stiffens or goes wide-eyed or even shifts her weight, nothing that anybody would be able to read as a fighting stance— anybody but a very adept predator who was standing right beside her, anyway.

  It’s just that suddenly something is… different.

  “What?” Ash asks sharply, her instincts racing ahead to consider all the elements of the environment around her.

  “Cora,” Sofie answers, inclining her head in the direction of behind where Ash is standing.

  Ash feels her whole body go cold, even colder than it always feels, and something sick and brittle clogs her throat and chest. The irrational part of her, even deeper and older and less coherent than the crazy parts of her, thinks ‘Jenna, Jenna, I’m scared’, just like she used to yell out when she had a nightmare at night when she was young. And then Jenna would come into her room and climb into the bed with her and hug her close and Ash would know she was safe from everything.

  And then Ash thinks ‘Jenna, if you’re haunting me, if my dream was real and not just me being crazy, please, I need you now.’ But Jenna’s dead, and Ash is alone, and somewhere behind the crawling gooseflesh of her back is Cora, and…

  And then.

  And then the fear breaks, like a wave, like when she and Jenna would go to the coast in the summer and they’d let the crashing surf roll them. They’d yell and scream as them were tossed and submerged, but it was always fun-yells, happy-screams, because they were never really afraid, not there in their perfect element. Girls like Jenna and Ashley were made for the beach, for the golden sand and the silvery ocean, for beach towels and sunshine. They’d never be afraid in the place where they fit.

  Now, this is where Ash fits. On the dark edge of the lake in the night, in clubs among noise and conversation and shadows, in the places that the sun has never been, or been so long ago that it’s forgotten. But Ashley remembers the sun. Even when she’s forgotten other things, she remembers that.

  Quickly, knowing she has mere seconds at most, Ash unbuttons her soft cashmere cardigan and shoves it into Sofie’s hands. “Hold this.”

  Then she turns and strides towards where Blake and Cora stand. Cora’s not as tall as Blake, though only by a few inches. Cora is what some people might call ‘breathtakingly beautiful.’ Cora radiates power like a subtle and elegant perfume.

  Ash’s shoulders are sure, her back straight, as she walks up to them. Her dress has only the thinnest of straps, slim black ribbons, and the neckline is a low swoop down from her collarbones. Her scars are on display, livid and bare and stark.

  Because they have to be. Ashley isn’t going to let herself be ashamed of them. Not now, not in front of Cora. She’s not going to give Cora the satisfaction of thinking that Ash hates any part of what Cora’s cruelty has made her into.

  And another wave breaks inside her, another release, and Ash realizes that she doesn’t hate it. What happened was shitty, and she will hate Cora forever for all the things Cora stole from her, all the sunshine which was Ash’s right. But Ash is here, Ash is loved, and the night is beautiful too. Ash doesn’t hate herself anymore.

  The revelation is almost frightening, because Ash isn’t sure if she remembers how to exist without that ever-present context of self-loathing. There isn’t time to pause and be afraid, though, because now she’s reached Blake’s side, and is smiling a wide lethal snake-smile at Cora.

  “Most people wouldn’t have the guts to wear shoes like that with your calves. Good for you,” Ash says, insincere encouragement sparkling every syllable. Her words are a borrowed line, one that Jenna said to Britney Spears two years ago when their dad got all-access passes to a concert from someone he worked with. Ashley had been pretty interested in the busy backstage world around them, all the glitter and flash and rushing around everyone seemed to be doing, but Jenna hadn’t seemed especially impressed by any of it.

  Britney’s pasted-on meet-the-fans smile had faltered, just for a second, and then she’d gone back to being bubbly and friendly for the gaggle of teenage girls next in line after Jenna and Ashley.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Ash said later, in the cab on the way home.

  “Whatever,” Jenna answered, combing tangles out of her long sleek hair with her fingers. “You saw that look in her eyes when she said hello to us. I see it from other girls at shoots all the time, especially if they think they’re the hot-shit star and the rest of us are backup models. The look says ‘I’m better than you’ and no, fuck that. Not even Britney fucking Spears gets to look at me like that. None of them are better than me, and I’m not going to let them think they are.”

  There’d been a viciousness in Jenna’s voice, and she hadn’t looked at Ash, directing her reply to the streetlight-sparkled window of the taxi. It had made Ash wonder why exactly it was that Jenna had never been keen on the idea of Ash doing modelling along with her. Ashley hadn’t been all that interested anyway, so she’d never pursued it, and Jenna had seemed relieved. Now, that’s just one more thing Ash will never have the chance to ask her about.

  The lesson stuck, though, and now Ash bats her eyelashes and lets the sting of her words sink in. Cora isn’t better than her, and Ash isn’t going to let Cora think she is.

  Her words are a borrowed line, but Cora looks taken aback at them, her eyes going wide in surprise for a split-second before narrowing down into a heavy-lashed glare.

  First blood goes to me, Ash thinks, and her smile at Cora grows even wider.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought I should come over and say hello,” Ashley goes on, touching Cora’s arm briefly in an impersonal gesture, as if they were two socialites obligated to greet one another at a function. “We’ve met, haven’t we? You’ll have to forgive me for not remembering your name; I meet so many people.”

  Her own wits rallied, Cora gives Ash a cruel smirk. “I imagine they must be lining up the block, for a chance to
see someone so disfigured.”

  The barb stings, but Ash’s smile doesn’t falter. She laughs brightly, as if Cora has said something especially witty. “I know! Isn’t it funny how some vampires get stuck in the past, and can’t appreciate shifting standards of beauty? My friend Bette has a tattoo and a nose ring, and you should see some of the looks she gets! I’m so glad you’re someone who understands that. When I saw you I thought you might be one of those awful ones who get stuck in a rut.” Ash lowers her voice. “You might want to update your wardrobe; you look a little behind the times.” She turns to Blake. “I have to tell you a completely excellent idea I had. You’re not busy right now, are you?”

  Blake, apparently momentarily stupefied by the conversation before him, blinks several times before speaking. “Cora and I just ran into each other moments ago. It’s been some years since we saw one another.”

  Ash can’t read the tone of his voice, but it doesn’t really matter. She’s in charge, and everything’s going to happen the way she wants it, whether Blake likes it or not. “Oh, good, then you’re not busy,” she says, angling her body so that Cora is effectively cut out of the discussion. The skin on Ash’s back crawls with goosebumps, every predatory nerve and synapse in her screaming in alarm at an action as dangerous as turning her back to Cora. Ash hopes they can’t hear how fast her heart is beating.

  “I was thinking that we should have a party for Jay’s birthday. A late one, since he didn’t tell us about it in time to have it on the date,” Ash says to Blake. “There’s a lovely restaurant my father likes to take clients to that would be absolutely perfect. Not too showy, but stylish enough that Jay’ll be happy with it.” She turns her head a little, speaking to Cora over one shoulder like an afterthought. “I’d offer an invite, but it’s rather cosy. There’ll only be room for important people.”

  “I’m not sure what makes you think a restaurant would be suitable for a party largely attended by vampires,” Blake tells Ash, his voice dry.