Holidays Are Hell

by Kim Harrison

  I jumped when the girl darted across the room, a white shadow fleeing. She clutched at me, her tear-streaked face pleading up at me. “Get me out,” she whispered, as if afraid he would hear. “Please, get me out!”

  I looked at Pierce, slack in the vampire’s grip. The animal hung over him, sickening me.

  “Help me!” she sobbed, trying to drag me to the door, but I knew what was behind it.

  Jaw clenched, I pried her grip off my arm and shoved her behind me. “Give me a minute,” I muttered. My heart was pounding too fast, and my knees were going weak. Striding to the nearest wall, I lugged a picture from it, staggering at its unexpected weight.

  “Get off him!” I shouted, dropping it on the vampire.

  Glass cracked and it slid off his back. Snarling, the vampire let Pierce fall, turning with a look on his face to send a ribbon of fear-laced adrenaline through me. Slowly I backed up. Maybe I should’ve taken my chances with the vampire behind door number one.

  His mouth red with Pierce’s blood, the vampire started for me, hunched and looking as if he was in pain. “Stupid, foolish witch,” he said, wiping his mouth and then licking the blood from his hand. “Your species will thank me for taking you out before you can breed. The too smart and the too stupid are all culled first. I don’t know which one you are.”

  “Stay back,” I said, hand raised as I almost tripped on the rug.

  From behind me the girl gasped. My gaze darted to Pierce as he moved. Hope surged, and sensing it, the vampire turned around.

  “How many times do I have to kill you?” he snarled when Pierce pulled himself upright, and with a dark grimace, tugged his coat straight. His neck was clean. Not a mark on it.

  I didn’t understand. I had seen blood. But had it been real? He was a freaking ghost!

  “Once was enough, and I expect it will be your undoing, God willing,” the man said raggedly, and my breath came in with a hiss when a ball of green ever-after swirled into existence between his two hands. He flung it at the vampire. The vampire lunged sideways, and the green, red, and black mass smacked into the wall, harmless.

  My short-lived hope vanished, and I looked at Pierce across the living room. I knew it had been everything he had stored in his chi. He had gambled everything on that one throw. There was nothing left. He was helpless unless he could reach me and refill his chi. And there was a vampire between us.

  Christopher seemed to know it, and he started to laugh. “I may not be able to kill a ghost,” he said in perverted glee. “But I can still tear your fucking head off.”

  I backed to the door with the girl. Nothing left. Pierce had nothing left but those stupid ley line charms of my dad. I felt my expression go slack in thought. The ley line charms…

  My hand went up to grip the charm around my neck. It would make a circle only I could break. Sarah and I would be safe, but Pierce…

  Pierce saw my hand, trembling as it gripped the spell. “Use it, Rachel,” he said, falling into a crouch. “Invoke the amulet!”

  I tried to swallow, failing. I pulled the charm from around my neck, the chain catching my hair and tugging free. The vampire lunged to catch Pierce. He cried out in pain.

  “Hey, prissy face!” I shouted, voice trembling. “You’re a pathetic excuse of a bat, you know that? Can’t get your fangs wet without a glass of milk? Come and get me. He doesn’t have any blood in him.”

  The vampire turned and hissed, and my stomach did a flip-flop. Shit.

  “Rachel, no!” Pierce cried, but the vampire tossed him into a wall like a rude book. I winced when he hit and slid down to stare at me in fear.

  “Trust me,” I mouthed, and he scrambled up. But he was too far away, and he knew it.

  Pulse hammering, I fell into a crouch and beckoned the vampire to me. “You’re nothing but a sorry-assed, hide-in-the-ground child molester,” I taunted, and the vampire went almost choleric.

  “I’m going to kill you slow,” he said, advancing slowly.

  “Great,” I said, estimating the distance between us. “But first, catch this!”

  His hands flew up as I pulled the pin and threw the amulet. It thumped into the vampire’s grip, and he sneered at me. I smiled back, and as smooth and pure as water, a wash of gold-tinted ever-after flowed up and around him, trapping him.

  “No!” the vampire screamed, throwing the amulet, but it was too late. My eyes widened and I fell back in shocked awe as the vampire seemed to devolve into a raving lunatic, hammering at the barrier between us, almost spitting in frustration. Howling like a mad thing, he threw himself against it, over and over. And it held.

  Shaking, I leaned against the back of a couch. “Stupid ass,” I muttered.

  “Miss Rachel!” Pierce cried out, and I blinked when he grabbed me, spinning me to face him. His hands heavy on my shoulders, he looked me up and down, his blue eyes searching me. “Are you well?”

  I blinked again at him. The adrenaline was wearing off, and I was feeling woozy. “Sure. Yes. I think so.”

  The girl screamed, and a vampire dropped into the room through the hole in the ceiling. From behind the other door, the thumping of feet said the other was coming, too, drawn by Christopher’s furious shouts.

  Pierce took me in a brief, surprising hug. “You’re grit, Rachel. Pure grit,” he said, rocking me back. “But you should have used it to save yourself and the girl. All they have to do is throw you into the bubble, and it will fall.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, hearing my words slur. “Just pull some more power from me and blast them back to hell.”

  His eyes widened, and he held me upright as the door behind us opened to show the second vampire. The girl was at our feet, sobbing. I might have joined her, but I had a feeling I was going to pass out soon, anyway. Damn it, I hated this. I was just kidding myself that I could do this for a living.

  I pushed from Pierce, unsteady as I put my hands on my hips and looked from one vampire to the other. I felt like I was drunk. Faint through the broken ceiling came the wail of sirens. “You all better go,” I said boldly, sounding like John Wayne to my ears. “Or my friend here will blast you all to hell. He can do it. Can’t you?”

  But Pierce was watching the monitors with the strength of hope in his grip as he held me upright. I wavered as the two vampires exchanged a knowing look. The master vampire trapped in the circle hesitated in his tantrum, going white-faced when his two servants gave him a short, nervous bow.

  “Don’t leave me!” the master vampire shouted, hammering on the invisible barrier. “I will hunt you down and take your last blood, then kill you again!”

  I smirked, muscles going slack. Pierce caught me with a little grunt. On the monitor were several I.S. cruisers, a news van, and, Lord help me, my mother in her Buick. Robbie got out first, having to be restrained from storming the house on his own. “That’s the I.S.,” I said, my words running into each other in a soft, slow drawl. “I left my mother a note. She’s probably got half the force behind her.” Blinking, I struggled to focus on the two vampires. “Don’t mess with my mom. She’ll kick your…ass.”

  The two vampires looked at each other, and as their master howled, they levered themselves back out through the ceiling. There was a faint thump of feet overhead—and they were gone.

  “I think I’m going to pass out,” I said, breathless, and Pierce eased me to the carpet. My head lolled, and the edges of my sight grayed. “I’m sorry,” I started to babble, feeling light and airy. “I shouldn’t have come down here. I’m no good at this.”

  “You are exceptional at this.” Pierce held my hand and fanned me with a magazine. “But please, Miss Rachel, don’t pass out. Stay with me. At least a little longer. If you succumb, your circle might fall.”

  “That’s not good,” I mumbled, struggling to keep my eyes open, but damn it, I had overtaxed my body and it was shutting down. When the adrenaline had flowed, it had been fantastic. I had been alive and strong. I felt normal. Now all that was left was the ash of a s
pent fire. And it was starting to rain.

  “Rachel?”

  It was close, and I pulled my eyes open to find Pierce had cradled my head in his lap. “Okay,” I breathed. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” he said, and I smiled, snuggling in so I could hear his heartbeat. Maybe it was mine. “Stay with me,” he said. “Just a few minutes more. They’re almost here.”

  Distantly I heard the sound of thumping feet overhead and loud voices. The heater clicked on, and the warm breeze made my hair tickle my face. Pierce brushed it off me, and I opened my eyes, smiling up at him blissfully.

  “Holy shit!” a deep voice said. “There’s a hole in the floor.”

  The girl revealed us with a little sob. Standing under the hole she peered up, screaming, “Get me out of here! Someone get me out of here!”

  “My God, it’s the girl!” another man said. “Damn, he was telling the truth.”

  “Just a little longer, Miss Rachel,” Pierce whispered, and I closed my eyes again. But an icing of fear slid through me, almost waking me up when my mom’s voice cut through the babble, high-pitched and determined.

  “Of course Robbie was telling the truth. You smart-assed agents think you’re so clever your crap doesn’t stink, but you couldn’t spell your way out of a paper bag.”

  “That’s my mom,” I whispered, and Pierce’s grip on me tightened.

  “Rachel?” she called, her voice getting louder, then, “Get your sorry ass out of my way. Rachel! Are you down there? My God, she circled a vampire. Look what my daughter did! She got him. She got him for you, you lazy bastards. Ignore my kids when they come to you, huh? I bet the news crew would like that. You either drop the charges on my kids, or I’m going out there and give them what they want.”

  I smiled, but I couldn’t open my eyes. “Hi, Mom,” I whispered, my breath slipping past my lips. And then to Pierce, I added, “Don’t mind my mother. She’s a little nuts.”

  He chuckled, raising my head and rocking me. “I expect a body would have to be to raise you properly.”

  I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t, so I just smiled. There was the brush of wind against me as people moved about us. Someone had finally gotten Sarah out of here, and the sound of two-way radios and excited chatter had replaced her blubbering. “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like I’d failed them. “Someone needs to circle him. I’m passing out.”

  “Rest,” Pierce whispered. “They have him. Let your circle down, Miss Rachel. I’ve got you.”

  I could hear a faint call for an ambulance and oxygen, and I had a fading thought that I was going to spend the last half of my solstice in the hospital, but we had done it.

  And with that, I let go of the line and let oblivion take me, satisfied to the depths of my soul.

  Chapter 8

  They say when you’re ten, you think your parents know everything. At sixteen, you’re convinced they know nothing at all. By thirty, if you haven’t figured out they really did know what they were doing, then you’re still sixteen. After watching my mom work the I.S. like a fish on a line, I was suitably impressed that she knew everything in the freaking world.

  Smiling, I tugged the wool blanket tighter around me and scooted my folding chair closer to the small fire Robbie had started in the backyard. My mom was beside me, pointedly between my brother and me as we toasted marshmallows and waited for sunrise. I hadn’t been outside very long, and my breath steamed in the steadily brightening day. It was a few hours past my normal bedtime, but that’s not why my arms shook and my breath was slow. Damn, I was tired.

  I’d fully expected to wake up in the hospital or ambulance, and was surprised when I had come to in the back of my mom’s car, still at the crime site. Wrapped in an I.S. blanket, I had stumbled out looking for Pierce to find myself in a media circus. Robbie and I had stood in the shadows and watched in awe as my mother worked a system I hadn’t even known existed. Through her deadly serious threats disguised as scatterbrained fussing, she not only managed to get the charges against me for willful destruction of private property dropped, but got them to agree that I didn’t have anything to do with their doors being blown out, much less fleeing their custody with an unknown person. The I.S. personnel were more than happy to give my mom whatever she wanted if she would keep her voice down, seeing as three news crews were within shouting distance.

  Apparently the vampire I’d helped bring in had a history of such kidnappings, but because of his clout, he’d been getting away with it for years. I hated to go along with the shush work, but I didn’t want a record, either. So as long as my mother, Robbie, myself, and the girl kept quiet—her parents being placated with enough money to put Sarah through the university and therapy of her choice—the vampire would be charged with kidnapping, not the stiffer crime of underage enticement.

  It didn’t bother me as much as I’d thought it would. He was still going to jail, and if vampire justice was like any other kind, he’d probably wake up one night with a wooden spoon jammed through his heart. Vampires didn’t like pedophiles any more than the next guy.

  So Robbie’s and my trip to the I.S. had been dulled to an anonymous tip, making the I.S. out to be the heroes. Whatever. Along with the notoriety went any charges they might file against me. Mom had grounded me, though. God, I was nearly nineteen and grounded. What was up with that?

  Of Pierce, there had been no sign. No one remembered seeing him apart from my mom.

  A sigh shifted my shoulders, coming out as a thin mist catching the pink light of the nearing sunrise.

  “Rachel,” my mom said, reaching to tug the blanket closed around my neck, “that’s the third sigh in as many minutes. I’m sure he will be back.”

  I grimaced that she knew where my thoughts were, then searched the sky and the strips of clouds throwing back the sun in bands of pink. I’d known he’d be gone by sunrise, but I wished I’d had the chance to say goodbye. “No,” I said, bobbing my marshmallow in and out of the flame. “He won’t. But that’s okay.”

  My mom gave me a sideways hug. “He looked like he really cared. Who was he?” she asked, and a hint of alarm slipped through me. “I didn’t want to ask in front of the I.S. because he rushed off as if he didn’t want to be noticed.” She huffed, taking my stick with the now-burning marshmallow. “I don’t blame him,” she muttered as she blew the little fire out. “They would have probably tried to pin the entire kidnapping on him. I don’t like vampires. Always shoving their nastiness under a rug or onto someone else’s plate.”

  Fingers gingerly taking the burnt marshmallow off, she smiled, her eyes brilliant in the clear light. In witch years, she wasn’t that much older than me, always dressing down to make herself match the other moms in the neighborhood. But the morning light always showed how young she really was.

  “So was he someone from school?” she prodded, a small smile dying to come out.

  I gestured for her to eat the sticky black mass if she wanted it, and while she was occupied, I glanced nervously at Robbie. He was ignoring me. “Just a guy I met at the square,” I offered.

  My mother huffed again. “And that’s another thing, missy,” she said, but it was Robbie who got the thwack of the back of her hand on his shoulder. “You said you were going to the concert.”

  Robbie shot me a black look. “Aw, Mom, I had to scalp the tickets to get your solstice gift.”

  It was a lie, but she accepted it, making happy-mom sounds and giving him a marshmallowy kiss on his cheek.

  “That’s where we met Pierce,” I said to give some truth to the story. “If we hadn’t helped him, no one would.”

  “You did the right thing,” my mom said firmly. “If I toast you a marshmallow, will you eat it, honey?”

  I shook my head, wondering if she knew exactly how we had made his acquaintance. Probably, seeing as by the time I got into the kitchen, all evidence of my spelling had been boxed up and was back in the attic.

  Robbie took the stick and put a new marshmallow over the
fire. He liked them so light brown it was almost not worth doing. “So, I imagine your little adventure has cured you of wanting to go into the I.S.?” he asked, and my head jerked up.

  Shocked he would bring it up in front of Mom, I stared at him from across her suddenly still figure. “No.”

  Silent, my mom eased back into her chair and out of the way of the coming argument.

  “Look at you,” my brother said after a cautious glance at our mom. “You passed out. You can’t do it.”

  “That’s enough, Robbie,” Mom said, and I flicked my gaze at her, surprised at her support. But Robbie turned in his seat to face her. “Mom, we have to look at it logically. She can’t do it, and you letting her believe she can only makes it worse.”

  I stared at him, feeling like I’d been kicked. Seeing me floundering, Robbie shifted awkwardly. “Rachel is a damn fine witch,” he said, suddenly nervous. “She stirred a level eight hundred earth magic arcane spell. Mom, do you know how hard those are? I couldn’t do it! If she goes into the I.S., it’s going to be a waste. Besides, they won’t take her if she passes out at the end of a run.”

  It had been an arcane spell? He hadn’t told me that. Surprise kept my mouth shut, but it was that damned fatigue that kept me in my seat and not pummeling him into the snow. He’d told her. He never said he wouldn’t, but it was an unwritten rule, and he had just broken it.

  “You put a level eight hundred arcane spell in front of her?” my mom said crisply, and I paled, remembering her equipment used without her knowledge.

  Robbie looked away, and I was glad I wasn’t under her angry expression. “I can get her into a great school,” he said to the ground. “The I.S. won’t accept her, and to keep encouraging her is cruel.”

  Cruel? I thought, tears starting to blur my vision. Cruel is throwing my hopes in the dirt. Cruel is giving me a challenge, and when I meet it, telling me I lose because I fell down after it was done.

  But he was right. It did matter that I had fainted. Worse yet, the I.S. knew it. They would never let me pass the physical now. I was weak and frail. A weak prissy face.