“Oops, I forgot I killed that one.” Leonard smiled, as warm and friendly as before. “My bad. Now, Nick, which one of these fine vamps is next?” He put his arm around Nick’s shoulders and pulled him close, gesturing toward them with his free hand. A couple of them groaned.
“I thought you said you don’t kill innocents?”
Leonard looked at him with a half confused expression. “I never said that. Besides, we’re past that point. I tried to ask them first who killed Brandon. Told them I’d let everyone else go and you know what? They wouldn’t tell me. That one there got mouthy and started giving me a piece of his mind so I decided to take him literally.”
“Nick,” Pearlanne said, coming up to the bars, “he’s some kind of monster. Don’t listen to him, he’s going to kill you too.”
“Don’t pay her any mind,” Leonard said and then he looked at her. “Nick is one of the good guys now. One of us. Remember?” He bent and pulled Nick’s pant leg up, showing the still-healing skin where he’d been bitten. “That first one takes a while to heal up. Every wound after that will heal faster than you can believe. Just wait until the first time you get shot!”
Leonard walked up to the bars. He flinched at Pearlanne and everybody jumped except her. Someone who looked eighty percent like her might have tried to kill him a few days ago, but Nick felt a certain fealty to her, that if she died now he would be responsible in some way. He felt responsible for whoever that was dead on the floor.
And Dolph. For all he knew, the man was still lying in a hospital bed, totally unaware of what was coming his way. If only he could get to a phone and warn him or maybe call the police and have them protect him. He had an appreciation now for what Phoebe had been upset about and had to figure out a way to fix it.
One impossibility at a time. First, he had to stop the monster standing a couple feet away from him.
“I’m so sorry for what I’m about to do,” Nick said. “It’s the only way I can save any of you. He said he’ll let the rest of you go if I give up the one who killed Brandon. You will suffer. Horribly. The rest of you can go. Right?”
Leonard cocked his head back and rolled his eyes. “Sure.”
Nick stepped past him and touched Pearlanne’s hand. He didn’t know that woman’s story who’d robbed the Big Pig, however Nick was certain that she could tell him about it. There were a thousand conversations he thought the two of them could have together and the thought of never being able to have them angered him.
Her skin didn’t feel like skin. It felt liquid. Nick felt a part of him dive into her and felt her strength. These bars were too strong for her to bend, though she should be able to crush bone in her bare hands. He couldn’t use that quite yet. He had to get Leonard closer first.
Nick put both arms around her as best he could, positioning himself so that Leonard couldn’t see one hand. Nick made a show of looking at them all, though he’d already spotted Kim near the back. He pointed at her, beckoning with his finger for her to come closer. Nick didn’t want to focus his gaze on anyone in particular and give the lieutenant the impression he was indicating anyone. A small hand circled around his. It was warm and soft and showed him how cold he must have been.
“I need you to search my heart and see I did not choose this. That what happened to Brandon was unintentional and I would never want that to happen. I’m just in so much pain right now and I wish someone would take it away.” He shook her hand with each word, hoping she was picking up.
He felt something like fire coursing up his arm and into his chest. Nick did his best not to scream, biting his lip to lock in the high-pitched whinny that almost came out of him. It felt like he had a coil of electrical wires wrapped around his hand, but he refused to let go.
“Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on there?” Leonard asked. He seized him by the shoulder and Nick hoped what was happening couldn’t be felt by touch from a third party. Nick needed to scrub away Leonard’s control so he could actually function in the next few seconds.
He threw Nick off, propelling him halfway across the room.
“You,” Leonard said, pointing a finger into the cell. “All of you. If I wasn’t already going to kill you, I’d…”
“You’d what?” Nick said. He pulled himself off the floor, his whole body still buzzing. What Kim had been able to do in those precious few seconds would have to be enough for what he was about to try.
Leonard turned and cocked his head at Nick. “I can’t hear you,” he said. “Why can’t I hear you?”
Nick didn’t waste any time. He shoved Leonard in the chest, driving him backward. The lieutenant felt like he weighed a ton. Nick only managed to push the man back a step, his forearms burning up to the elbows like he’d been gripping a bat and a baseball had unexpectedly hit it. Leonard’s tongue poured out of his mouth and he hissed, his hands already changed to talons.
“I may not control you,” he said, “but I still can eat you!”
Nick threw his hands under Leonard’s chin and pushed as hard as he could. The lieutenant was caught off guard, his arms windmilling. He stumbled back a few more steps and Nick chanced a look at the cell, hoping Pearlanne was on the same mental wavelength as him.
Thankfully, she was reaching for him with both hands.
White hot pain lanced Nick’s side when Leonard carved through his clothes with taloned hands. As intense as it was, it was also bearable. Nick was able to easily detach from it and redouble his efforts.
“I’ll suck out your eyes!” Leonard said, his mouth half closed. “I’ll split your tongue to the root! I’ll—”
His last threat was cut off with a squeak as Pearlanne’s hands wrapped around his throat. Nick pushed one final time before grabbing his arms. He didn’t want those talons tearing at her hands before she could choke him to death.
It didn’t take long for Leonard’s body to go limp. Pearlanne held him for at least a minute longer, squeezing to make sure she got every bit of life in him out. He fell like an unstringed marionette.
She spat on him and looked at Nick. “Now get us the hell out of here.”
Leonard didn’t have any keys on him. Nick had no clue where to search and nobody had a Skill that would help free them.
Then Nick remembered the doctor. Where had he gotten off to? Maybe he had left or maybe he was somewhere nearby. Nick smelled the air and was surprised to find that the doctor was close. He stepped into the hall and walked down about a dozen feet and found him in a smaller common area that was furnished with two chairs and a small round coffee table. He was sitting in one of the chairs and reading a thick, leather bound Bible.
“Do you have keys to that cell back there?” Nick asked.
Without answering, the old man fished into a pants pocket and pulled out a thick set of keys, holding them out by a black rabbit’s foot.
“He is not dead,” the old man said. “The rabisu is unkillable.”
“The what?” Nick said, already backing out of the room. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving the other vamps trapped in that cell for a second longer even with the dead… whatever he’d called it in the room with them.
He felt a moment of panic before turning into the room, thinking Leonard would be on his feet, fully turned into the monster that hid under the skin of a man. He was there, though, dead as before, and Nick went through a couple of long keys before finding the right one.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” one of the vamps was saying as he dipped the last key in the lock and turned.
They filed out, mostly quiet, the injured ones being helped by the others. Kim cradled her broken wrist to her chest, dark circles beneath her eyes. A male vamp with soft auburn hair pulled into a ponytail and a goatee had an arm around her.
“She needs a hospital,” the man said. “As quickly as we can get her to one.”
Nick nodded. “There may be one more of those super vamps around,” Nick said. “We need to stick together just in case.”
He headed in the direction
of where the old man had been in the small common area and everyone followed. Nick didn’t know how he’d been appointed leader and didn’t want to complain yet. As if on cue, the vamp with the widow’s peak spoke just then.
“Wait a minute!” he whisper-yelled. “Why in the world are we following you! That demon guy said you’re one of them. This could be some kind of trap for all we know.”
“Vince, shut up, already,” Pearlanne said. “He helped us kill Leonard and he’s the reason we’re out now.”
“How do we know this isn’t some sort of trap? I never seen nothing like that guy before. For all we know he peeled the real Nick’s skin off like a banana and someone else is wearing him like a pair of pants!”
Nick had to admit it was a valid concern. Pearlanne turned and opened her mouth. Then closed it. So far as the rest of the world knew, the only monsters had been vampires and they were all extinct. Now that they knew there was another monster that had slipped completely under the radar anything was possible.
“Go by what makes sense,” Nick said. “If I were the big bad, why would I let you out of that cage?”
“I don’t know—maybe if you scare us or something we taste better.”
Nick gave him a look.
“Anybody not already scared?”
“I’ve been scared since I got out of bed two days ago,” someone said.
A couple of them laughed and the tense moment broke. Nick turned and began following the old man’s scent, hoping it would lead to an exit.
In a few minutes they were pushing open a fire door, the sun greeting them. He wasn’t surprised to see this was the same building he and Dolph had come to a few days ago. This place was a long drive away from the city and unless Alex and Cameron were on foot and he could hotwire a car, there was no way to catch up. He had to think of something. If only he had his cell phone.
This building was in the middle of nowhere. He knew there was probably a phone somewhere inside and going back in was the last thing he wanted to do.
“So what’s the plan?” Ray asked him, whipping his blond ponytail off his shoulder. People really were looking for Nick to lead. That was so odd to him.
“I know the city is back that way. I need to get back. Anybody else not interested in risking their lives better not come with me. Two of those uber vamps are on their way to kill a friend of mine and I have to stop them if I can.”
“Why don’t we hotwire a couple of cars and race over there?” a short vamp said. It was the teenager who’d gotten the woman’s blood splashed in his face the other night. He looked none the worse for wear after the trauma even if he still had some of her blood crusted down the front of his clothes.
Nick hadn’t thought of that. All these cars were sitting there, waiting for somebody to take them.
“You know how to do that?” he asked. “Do you have the tools?”
The teen smiled. “Always come prepared,” he said, holding up three fingers in a Boy Scout salute. He fished a jimmy out of his pants and walked up to the nearest car. After a second he had the door open. In about twenty he had the first car started.
* * *
Clip probably could have hotwired every car in the parking lot so that everyone could have driven their own. The group had split in two; those who were coming with and those who were going their own way. The ten coming with Nick all piled into three cars. There were only two who wanted nothing to do with any of them and Clip gave them a black Ford Festiva to drive.
“I have to go to my family,” the yellow-skinned vamp said as apologetically as he could.
Nick didn’t blame the vamp, as he himself was on a mostly similar mission.
As they piled into cars, Nick noticed someone was missing. “Where’s Allen?” he asked. A short redhead gave him a faraway look.
“That was him in the cell,” she said. “That thing bit off his head when we wouldn’t tell it who killed Brandon.”
Nick shuddered. He couldn’t imagine what seeing something like that must have been like. If he could help it, anyone associated with Leonard would not harm anyone else. He didn’t know what that meant as he climbed into the driver’s seat. Maybe he would have to kill. So be it, if it came to that.
He pulled out of the lot and headed east, Pearlanne sitting next to him in the passenger’s seat. The woman was a lot more complex than he knew, and he found himself wanting to know more.
“I need to get to a phone,” Nick said, pulling out onto the street and stomping on the gas. He drove like he was the only one who could save Dolph and he supposed in a way that was true. If Alex and Cameron posed like visitors and walked up to his room, they could kill him even if an armed guard were on his floor. He had the impression that they wouldn’t bother with discretion and would carve through everyone in their way before reaching Dolph and killing him.
Nick realized he didn’t want that to happen for more reasons than because he wanted to stop whatever Leonard’s plan was. He cared about Phoebe and Randy and knew it would hurt them if Pop-Pop was murdered. Caring about them meant, in a way, that he cared about who they cared about. And Dolph wasn’t a bad guy. A little rough around the edges, maybe. Okay, a lot rough around the edges. But he was as straightforward as a person could get. Nick had every reason in the world to stop Alex and Cameron.
The needle on the speedometer crept over eighty.
“I know you want to get to the hospital,” Pearlanne said, “but I’d prefer to get there as a visitor, not a patient.”
“What?” He glanced at the speedometer, saw his speed, and let off the gas some. It wouldn’t do for them to get chased by the police either. Besides, he was leaving the other two cars behind. “Sorry.”
“Why is this man so important?” she asked. “I mean, I accept that whatever the uber vamps are about to do is bad and needs to be stopped, but this seems like something more to you.”
“I’ve been living with his granddaughter and her son,” Nick said. “It’s… complicated. The short story is I was released from the Center and was given the address of my former home. The problem is Phoebe had just bought it at auction. I guess paperwork got crossed and neither of us really knows who legally owns the house, so we made an agreement to share it rather than fight over it. It would take forever for us to get into court anyway.”
“Phoebe,” Pearlanne said pensively.
Was that a note of jealousy in her voice? Nick smirked. He’d gone from being absolutely nowhere on anyone’s radar to being a jealousy-inducing stud. He didn’t know how things would work out between him and Phoebe, although he was reserved enough to not allow himself to believe he could just move in with Pearlanne.
“I’m sorry about your father and your uncle,” he said. “I mean, I don’t know if you think it’s my fault about—”
“No. It wasn’t your fault. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since we were all locked in that cell together. I’ve been so wrong about so many things. I do believe there’s a place for us, but I can’t go around believing that everyone accepts me just like they would any other person. I remember the world before the Conflict. It wasn’t a perfect place despite how people try to romanticize it. We just adopted a whole new set of prejudices.”
“Well, I remember before the Conflict too,” Ray said from the back seat. “I don’t see that much has changed. Yeah, sure, I’m a vamp. So what? I take my meds like they tell me and I keep my routine. I spent a little time at the Center, but that stuff about the Pens—that’s an urban legend. I mean, if they even exist—”
“The Pens are real,” Nick said. “I was there.”
“You?” somebody in the backseat said. “For real?”
“Yes.” Nick felt uncomfortable and wished he hadn’t said anything; it was too late now.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t—it wasn’t like that. It was a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding?” Pearlanne said. Nick chanced a glance at her and saw the look of concern on her face. “W
hat does that mean?”
Nick let several long seconds go by before answering. “Somebody died. It happened at the Center.”
“I remember that in the news,” Ray said. “It was the director or something. How’d he die again?” Ray snapped his fingers until it came to him. “Oh yeah, somebody ate his brain!”
“No.” Nick was getting upset and that was the last thing he needed while driving at high speed. “He was found with a fractured skull.”
“Part of his brain was missing, though.”
“Missing. Not eaten. That rumor got started because the Center for Non-Human Studies is filled with vamps. If they were studying orphans or kittens then nobody would have accused them of eating his brain.”
“I don’t know about kittens, man. Those things are the devil. Anytime some old lady with a bunch of cats dies in her home they always find her with her face chewed off.”
Nobody said anything for several beats. Then Nick began to laugh. The stress of the situation ahead combined with such a ridiculous conversation was more than his sense of humor could take. There was every likelihood he was about to die in less than twenty minutes and something inside him wanted to laugh before he potentially went.
Everyone in the car joined in, which made him laugh even harder to the point where tears filled up his eyes and he swerved over the yellow dividing line and had to correct the car. That gave everybody a second round of fits of laughter that lasted another minute or two.
When they sobered nobody brought up the Center or the Pens again. Nick was thankful for that miniscule miracle. He hoped he could count on a few more. They rode mostly in silence until reaching Dequindre, turning left to head north to the hospital.
“Okay, when we get inside, what’s the game plan?” Garvin asked. They’d gone quickly through introductions so Nick wouldn’t only know them as plain-guy-with-a-scruffy-beard or pale-redhead-with-a-snake-tattoo.
“The way I see it, we’re going to see one of two things,” Nick said. “Either the place will be a wreck and we can follow the carnage—” Nick didn’t want to accept that one as a real possibility, it probably meant Dolph was dead— “or they’re on their way to his room.”
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