And there it is. Cooper Flanders is severing all emotional ties with me. He speared my heart out with his tongue and held it up to the night sky like some morbid offering. If Cooper Flanders set out to break my heart tonight, he met his goal.
I was wrong. The Counts didn’t kill me on the inside.
Cooper did.
Cooper
The small army of pines stamp around Sleepy Hollow like overgrown swords spiked into the soil. Like some phallic claiming of this piece of land by extraterrestrial beings, a wicked band of creatures hell bent on destroying everything that is good on this planet beginning with the love I feel for Laken.
I hold my thoughts back like an iron fortress. There’s no way I’m going to let on that I’m head over heels, too far gone to ever stop loving her. I need Wes to know what Laken feels is one hundred percent undiluted, and I know deep down it is. I’m nothing more than a distraction. It doesn’t change the fact that once we free our families, I’m still in it to win it. I want Laken’s heart more than I want my next breath. I want every last part of her in the worst way. My swollen palm can attest to that each time I take a shower.
“Just friends? Say it’s not true.” She slides down my body like a pole, her shoulders sagging once her feet hit the ground. “I can handle what you’re trying to do, I swear it.” Laken pleads with those prism-cut eyes. Her lips tremble, desperate to hear the words she longs for me to say. “Do you want to see other people?” Her mouth opens as if she’s just had a revelation.
My gut pinches because, holy hell, I swear I never thought she’d go in that direction. I should correct her. Tell her we’re right at the door of the tunnels, that Wes can hear our hearts beating in tune, he’s nobody’s fool, but don’t. Maybe if she thinks I’m into someone else, that will cool the fever between us. A part of me wonders if that’s what Wes needs, some concrete reassurance. He’s skittish. He hasn’t come out and denounced the Counts to Laken or me, and more than anything that has me rattled. Why cave to your captors? Why cling to and adore the ones that chose to play God with your life? The only thing it could mean is that he’s in too deep. He’s tasted the power, he’s addicted, drunk off it, and now there’s no turning back.
“Oh my, God.” Laken lets out a breath of frustration. “Is it Grayson?” Her brows pinch together at the top. “I thought we had something special.” Her voice cracks. “You said you loved me. Was that just to get into my pants? Because if you say yes, I won’t believe it.”
“You and Wes have a history.” That’s it. That’s where I draw the line. I’m not feeding into any kind of argument Laken is brewing because I’m all too ready to cave. I want to give in, and tell her I just need her to forget about me for a while and play the game the Counts thrust us in unwillingly. If Edinger wants me to keep Laken away from Wes then the opposite must be the key. It’s too insane to think Edinger—the King of Evil—was giving me any kind of good advice, and, furthermore, I’d be a fool to take it, even though I have. I fell for Laken long before he suggested I do.
An owl cries in the distance. A lone wolf howls and sets the hair on the back of my neck prickling. But my body and soul are numb from this conversation—a Mack truck could run over me, I wouldn’t feel it. This is killing me—this special brand of love I have for Laken. Sometimes we protect people the way we know best. With Wes it’s keeping certain inconsequential facts away from Laken, and with me it’s pretending my heart just did a vanishing act when nothing could be further from the truth. If Laken were to ever do a little juxtaposition between the two of us, it would be me who hurt her the most. At least Wes still has the privilege of telling her he loves her. I never thought I’d see the day I envy water polo playing, collar popping Wesley, but here it is. That day has arrived in spades.
“Say it.” Laken slams her fists over my chest. “Tell me that you think we’re not right for each other.” She takes a step back, panting, while the look of hurt takes over her features. “Oh my, God,” she whispers, her voice hoarse from the verbal assault. “It’s true.” Tears moisten her eyes, and I can’t stand to watch another minute. “For whatever reason, you’re pushing me toward Wes, aren’t you? It looks like the Tobias sisters were right—you are shaping up to be an enemy. Ironically, the very thing you’re against is you and me.” She shakes her head just barely, never taking her eyes off mine. “You bastard.”
Laken pushes into my chest with a violent force before bolting out of the woods and straight toward Austen House. I step out and lean against the fat trunk of a eucalyptus and watch as a large framed body collides with hers—Wes.
As much as I hate to admit it, this is Wesley’s time to shine. But as soon as we get our loved ones out of those tunnels, Wes had better watch his back because it’s game on.
A crackle ignites from behind. The snap of a branch lights up the night like the breaking of a bone, and I take a few steps into the forest just waiting for one of those undead bastards to try something. My hand glides into the back of my jeans. I pluck out my pocketknife and jolt it to life with a flick of my wrist.
A low-level grunt comes from behind, followed by a moan then a hiss.
A pair of eyes glint from the heart of the forest. The moon rains down through the pine needles affording me the view of a partially balding Spectator. It treads forward with a pronounced limp. A hump lies over its back making it look like some mutated grizzly. It launches at me at an accelerated rate, and I jump out of its way only to trip over a root and land flat on my ass—the knife slipping from my grasp.
The gnarly scent of three-day-old fish clots up the air, and I dry heave as it lunges its mouth toward mine. I hike my knees up in an effort to launch it off my body, but it’s strong as an ox and hungry as one too. I know what its after, and the last thing I’m going to do is offer up my grey matter like some good old fashioned cure to the constant state of rigor that plagues them.
It lets out a wild shriek directly into my ear, and I twist enough to thump my hand over the ground until I slap against the serrated metal I’m looking for. I pick the blade up by the wrong end and feel a sting as the razor-sharp edge eats through my flesh.
The Spectator launches onto my throat, and I jerk, losing my grasp on the knife. I can feel its toothless mouth trying to get a bite out of my flesh and employ all of my Celestra strength to launch the bastard off, but it’s impossible, like moving a building off its base.
The Spectator lurches. A tremor moves from its body to mine before it goes limp. A cool liquid runs over my chest and neck.
“Shit!” I bark kicking it the hell away from me only to find a trio of them hovering above. I scoot the hell back and spot my knife spiking out of the corpse, and I’m quick to pluck it out. “Get back!” I slip in the dirt as I try to stand.
“Coo…” The sturdy one in the middle moans it out.
I jump to my feet and back away when I note the dirty-as-hell Ephemeral practice jersey on the bastard.
“Flynn?”
He grunts out a series of howls that normally I’d mistake for aggression, but in this case I’m pretty sure it’s something just this side of elation.
I hold my hand out, and he latches on.
Dude! It’s me! Flynn’s voice comes in loud and clear.
“Who are the chicks?” I nod over at the two Spectator sweethearts standing shyly off to the side.
Hattie and some chick named Pepper. We’ve been kind of hanging out. Too bad for Ester. I’ll probably get shit for killing her, but she was going for the jugular, and I have to keep you in fighting shape, man. I need my body back. I don’t know how much more of this shit I can handle. I was boning some chick last week, and my dick nearly cracked off.
“Nice.” I flat line while inspecting the girl to the left who slightly resembles Hattie Tobias. “If the Tobias sisters weren’t pissed before they will be now. What the hell did you take a bite out of her for?”
She begged me. She said she didn’t fit in and that she wanted to be with me. Trust me, dud
e, if I didn’t do it there were at least a half dozen guys lined up, ready and willing. She wanted in. She wanted to feel like she belongs. Any news on the antidote?
“Funny you should ask, that was my very next stop tonight.”
Take me with you.
“Not yet. Let me see what the sea hag has to say, and if she’s ready and willing, I’ll come find you. Stay close. I don’t want to have to globe trot to find your ass.”
Will do.
I try to pull away, and he yanks me in with the strength of a lion.
Any news on Casper?
I look into his rotting eyes, the look of grief still clear in this dim light.
“No, man. Edinger says that if we bring back his son, our loved ones can walk. And I can’t find a thing out about this mystery child. For all I know he’s long since been six feet under.” I huff an incredulous laugh. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe he knows for a fact we’ll never bring him back because he’s already sitting on a cloud, strumming a harp.”
I’ll ask around. There’re a lot of old timers here that know a lot about the Counts. They remember Ezrina. They refer to their quasi-massacre as the dark days.
“I don’t blame them.” I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate, and now those dark days hover over my own like a tornado waiting to touch down, blow my realty to ruins. A life without Laken would leave me dead on the inside. But I wouldn’t survive for long—I couldn’t, Laken has my heart.
I step over to Hattie and hold out my hand until she wraps her bony, cold fingers over mine.
“You realize your grandmother is going to kill me.”
Hattie’s sparse hair is sprayed out like a haystack, her skeletal face already deteriorating with long slivers of flesh missing. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for love. I need Flynn. He’s my only friend. It feels good to be near him.
I place my other hand over hers and nod. “I get it.” Hattie grew up in the tunnels, in the infamous tower as a Celestra prisoner and knew no love until she came here. Unfortunately for her, she latched onto Ephemeral’s biggest player. But it’s too late to explain that to her now.
I can hear you. She gives a gruesome attempt at a laugh. I’m a Celestra. I have the same powers as you.
Stay out of trouble, will you? I pat her on the back as I turn to go.
I will. She steps in. Are Kara and Richard okay?
They’re fine. I’m headed to see them now. The original Hattie put me in charge of renewing her little brother and sister to their former undead glory. Ezrina agreed to watch over them in the Transfer until she got the antidote to resurrect the Spectators. But it’s Flynn who’s our test subject. So she’d better nail it the first time. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m not in a hurry to see him go.
Hattie pulls me back. And Cooper?
Yes?
He loves me.
Good. I look over at Flynn with his crooked shoulder and broken dick although I’ll have to take his word for that last part. I hope so. Everyone deserves to have someone that loves them.
I take off for the boulders up on the ridge, and once I see those overgrown rocks, I sprint twice as fast, straight into the wall of blue granite—straight into the Transfer.
A shock of white light bleaches out my visual field as I fall to the floor with an unceremonious thud. My body lurches and bucks, as I fight the nausea that sometimes comes with the ride to the flip side.
My eyes adjust to the over-bright light as I stumble to my feet in this whitewashed universe. I jog down the glossy corridor of this underworld that’s technically not under anything. It’s in another dimension all together, suspended from time like some lone forgotten planet floating through space. Outside these walls sits a dark-sooted world filled with a scarier-than-hell dilapidated mansion, the burnt out streets are populated with the dead from some long forgotten century.
I stick my head in door after door, but there’s no sign of the haggard witch. Her lab is empty, so I head down a carpeted corridor to a cavernous room loaded with glass caskets—each one of them filled with a body suspended in blue fluid. It’s the Count resurrection facility, but, of course, I hadn’t always known that. I didn’t know for sure until Laken came along. It’s hard to believe she was here once. Floating in one of these tubes, wearing her Ezrina-issued wetsuit.
“Ezrina!” I roar her name out like a battle cry. This place is so large you could easily squeeze in a couple dozen airplane hangars and still have room to park a cruise ship.
“Here,” she says it low, calm as hell, and nothing grates on my nerves more. The longer the Counts hold my mother and Laken’s family hostage—Casper—the longer Wes has to bond himself over Laken’s heart like some psychotic epoxy.
I walk to where she’s seated. Her disfigured frame sits hunched over a long, metal bathtub while her hands busy themselves with the project at hand.
A bevy of prehistoric tools sit by her side on a metal tray, laid out with meticulous precision. If she’s anything, she’s neat about how she runs this slaughterhouse.
“What’s cooking, good lookin?” I peer over her shoulder. “Shit!” I jump back, knocking over the tray of torture mechanisms and two jugs of purple liquid sitting beside them.
A pair of familiar looking corpses lie prone in the tub. The eye from one is missing. The lip on the other is torn up the side as if a fishhook ripped right through it. Their fingers are reduced to nubs, both their throats are shredded open with the skin hanging loose in strips, the muscles protruding as if they had been through a cheese grater, and then it all comes together. They were clawing at their throats, their eyes, their mouths.
“What the hell happened?” I whisper.
“Didn’t work.”
“What didn’t work?”
Ezrina’s been bottling up Counts for the better part of a century. I would have sworn she had this down to a morbid science.
“Antidote.” She shakes her head as if she has somehow harnessed the ability to care about these poor souls.
“Crap.” I pat her gently on the back. “I suggest you stick with the original recipe. You know what they say—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I look around at the facility of long dead, forgotten Counts and wonder how many of these souls are just as sweet and innocent as Laken. “I think I’m going to step out and say hi to Richard and Kara for a minute. When I come back I want you to fill me in on the progress you’re making with the—” I freeze. Everything in me turns brittle as glass. “Antidote…” I lock onto her bloodshot, swollen eyes that look as if she hasn’t slept in ten thousand years. “Ezrina, no.” I shake my head.
“Yes,” she says it low. Her voice carries like a funeral hymn throughout the facility. She looks down at the two sleeping babes, drowning in lavender solution. “Say hello to Richard and Kara.”
Fuck.
Wesley
On Sunday, Laken rides shotgun as Jen, Blaine, and Fletch ride out with us to her mother’s birthday party. The Anderson estate is an architectural marvel. A limestone structure of the highest quality with its ornate, dual wrought iron stairwells, enough marble and granite to make any mausoleum proud. Of course, the only corpse taking up residency in this place is Jones, and I’ve got one serious fucking bone to pick with him.
Laken gets settled in the family room with Jen and Fletch while Joy, the housekeeper slash chef, finishes up with a big Sunday brunch.
“I think I’m going to see what’s holding Jones up.” I give a gentle kiss to Laken’s cheek as I head out of the room.
It’s her mother’s forty-fifth birthday, and we’ve descended like flies to help her celebrate when I’m pretty sure Jones is well aware of the fact she isn’t the real deal as far human incubators are concerned, not in any way, shape, or form.
I listen to the thump of my own footsteps as I head over to his office and, just as I figured, he’s staring at his laptop, deep in thought, as a voice emanates from the speakers.
Jones looks over in my direction and raises a brow.
“I’d better go,” he says, shutting his laptop in haste.
“I wish I could say I was sorry to interrupt your meeting.” I let myself in and shut the door. For a moment I contemplate beating the shit out of him just for the hell of it, but the truth is, I’m exhausted after the drive, so I slump into the cold leather chair and glare at him while channeling all of the hatred I can muster. “Why’d you do it?” I rub my palm into my eye until it feels as if I’m about to launch it into my skull.
He rocks back in his seat with his hard-boiled stare, his thick lips pursed with disapproval. “Traditionally, family members come together to commemorate the day of their birth. It’s called a birthday. Most people are just happy to be invited—eat some cake and share some laughs. But I suppose that’s a little too much to ask from you—isn’t it?” He scowls into me as if this must be true.
“Where’s my mother?” It comes out flat as if I were asking about an old jacket I left behind.
“She’s on her way with that annoying Fem she likes to lug around.”
“The other one—the real one.”
His milky blue eyes widen. His face elongates like that painting from Munch. I should do one myself and put Jones’s likeness in it. Maybe stick a sickle in his neck just for fun. God knows I’d love to make him scream.
He shakes his head, stunned by the horror. Jones was never one to hide the way he feels. If anything, he’s the opposite of Edinger.
“You know?” He tilts into me as if this were an impossibility.
“I know. And what should be more staggering to you is the fact that Laken knows, too.” I shoot daggers into him with my hardened gaze. “But you already knew that didn’t you? She never once believed that bullshit about falling from the tree house.” A dull laugh pumps from my chest. “You thought you had it in the bag. You were so close to pulling it off.” I lean forward, elbows to the knees. “You know what I can’t figure out? Why? Why pull two kids from the country and gift them with the riches of the world? What makes Laken and me so damn special?” I don’t bother including Fletch in that equation. Something tells me he’s here on someone’s coattails, and I’m guessing that would be mine since we drowned in the lake together. “And how the fuck did you get me to play along for so long?”
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