Find one in the first town? What did that mean? “Maximus?” I said uncertainly. “What is she talking about?”
“Oooo,” Angelique cooed breathlessly. “You haven’t told her? Naughty, naughty boy.”
Maximus jerked his head to the side, but not before I saw the flicker of guilt pass over his face. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s not important. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Tell me,” I insisted. “What did she mean, first town?”
“She meant,” Angelique purred when Maximus remained silent, “that your little pathetic town is the Origin, darling. The first. A beta test, if you will. To see if we could do it. To see how fast ten thousand people could be slaughtered.” Her head tipped to the side and she frowned. “Much faster than we ever anticipated. Not much fun at all, actually. You didn’t exactly put up a fight.”
My head spun. “You mean – the rest of the world – they aren’t – you didn’t…”
“Slice them open, drink their blood, and destroy their homes? No,” she said sweetly. “I’m afraid not. Oh, don’t look so crestfallen, darling. We will do it. Tonight, in fact. If ten of us can do this in one night, just imagine what ten million can do in a week.”
Ten? All those people dead, an entire town wiped out, and there had only been ten of them? I staggered back, floundering under the weight of all of this new knowledge. Everywhere else… the rest of the world… Safe. Not destroyed, not dead, not yet, at least. Just one town. My town.
My mom. My sister. Still alive. Relief flowed through me, followed immediately by an anger so powerful I trembled.
“You knew,” I accused Maximus, stabbing my finger at him. “You knew it was just happening here. We could have… we could have gotten away! We could have escaped but you told us to stay.” I spat out the words like poisoned darts. Maximus flinched and stepped towards me, one armed stretched out.
“Lola, you don’t understand, it would not have made a -”
“No. NO! I’m getting Travis and we’re leaving. We’re going to go tell everyone what happened here and you,” I spat, cutting my eyes to Angelique, “are going to pay for what you’ve done.”
She ran a fingernail across her lower lip, drawing it down as she considered my words. “Is that so?” she said thoughtfully.
“That is exactly so,” I said.
“Oh, little pet.” She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shook her head. “I am so terribly sorry, but I simply cannot let you do that. Warning the rest of the world would be bad for business, you see. Ruin the element of surprise and all that. And we’ve been working so hard on this surprise.”
I ripped out the gun from my back pocket and pointed it right at the middle of her forehead. “The way I see it, you don’t have much of a choice. Now put your hands behind your head and stand against the lockers or I’ll shoot you dead, I swear I will.” Please don’t let her see my hands are shaking.
“I am not very fond of threats,” she said before she lunged for my throat.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Only Good Drinker is a Dead Drinker
The gun went off. Angelique struck me as my finger curled around the trigger, sending the bullet into the ceiling. Plaster rained down on us and lights flickered crazily as we rolled across the floor.
Her teeth snapped half an inch from my face. I swung the gun up and brought the handle crashing down against the side of her head. She shook off the blow with ease and caught my chest with her knee, driving all the air from my lungs. Wheezing I grabbed her hair and yanked it back. She howled and flipped to the side, wrenching free. Her nails raked down across my cheek and came away dripping blood.
“You fight,” I gasped as I jabbed my elbow into her throat, “like a girl.”
Her answer was to pick me up by the back of my neck and throw me head first into the lockers. I hit them with a crash and crumpled to the carpet, temporarily stunned.
Breathing heavily, her hair askew and her eyes like blue fire, Angelique towered over me. “Stupid mortal,” she spat. “I should have ripped out your insides and made you wear them as a necklace.” One hand drew back, vicious claws extended as she prepared to deliver a death blow that would cleave my head from my body.
For the third time a gunshot rang out. For the first time it hit its intended target. In slow motion I saw Angelique’s mouth fall open in shock. Her body jerked as if she were a marionette and someone else was pulling the strings, drawing her arms out and sending her falling forward in a graceful swan dive. Blood spewed from her lips, showering me in a sticky red spray.
The gun went off again. Her stomach exploded outwards as the bullet tore through her spine and came out her front, tearing a fist sized hole in her beautiful gown.
Angelique fell beside me and for an instant our eyes met. Her mouth opened and closed, trying to force out words that would not come. I said nothing. Did nothing. I was frozen in place, forced to watch in horrified silence as the life ebbed from her body.
Then Maximus was between us, his hands clutching Angelique’s shoulders and shaking her. “Where is the boy?” he shouted. “What have you done with him?”
Her head lolled to the side. With blood running down the corners of her mouth she smiled. “Hotel… But… Too late… Was always… too late.”
Travis was at the hotel? I pushed myself up on one arm and leaned weakly against the lockers. Maximus released Angelique. She slumped to the blood stained carpet. Her eyes closed, her long lashes spreading across her white cheeks like silk fans. One last, shuddering breath lifted her chest and flowed silently from her mouth before she simply… faded.
“She’s dead.” The words sounded hollow. I staggered to my feet, then sagged sideways, unable to support my own weight. I was pretty sure some ribs were broken. My ankle too. Courtesy of Angelique’s bite marks on my hand the pain I should have been feeling was nothing more than a dull throb. Ignoring it, I focused on Maximus.
He stood before me, his head bent, staring down at the spot where Angelique had fallen. “Lola, I -”
“Save it. There is nothing you could say. I’m tired of your secrets and your lies,” I said bitterly. “You said you would protect me, and instead you haven’t done anything but hurt me. I’m going to get Travis and my dad and we’re leaving. I don’t want to see you ever again, Maximus.” The words burned in my throat like acid. Tears threatened to spill, but I blinked them back. I couldn’t believe I had actually liked this guy. And the entire time he had been lying about… well, everything.
“Did you know they were going to come here? Did you know they were going to do this?” They weren’t questions I wanted to ask. They were questions I needed to ask, even if I was terrified to hear the answers.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
A mewling sound escaped my lips.
“Lola, there was nothing I could have done. I -”
“GO AWAY!” I shrieked, striking out at him with my fists. They bounced harmlessly off his chest, which only served to increase my fury tenfold. Even when I wanted to I couldn’t hurt him. The bastard.
He captured my wrists with ease. “Stop it,” he ordered, blue eyes flashing. “You don’t understand. There was nothing I could have -”
“If you say there was nothing you could have done one more time I will kill you. Do you hear me, Maximus? I’ll kill you!” And at that moment I really would have. He was lucky Angelique had knocked my one remaining gun out of my hand. “How could you let this happen?” I stared hard into his eyes, trying to see what I had missed. Trying desperately to figure out where I had gone wrong. “All those people… You could have done s-something.” My voice broke. I sagged against the lockers, defeated. “Just go,” I mumbled, twisting my head to the side. “Just leave me alone. I never want to see you again.”
He released my wrists. “You have to stay here tonight. It’s too dangerous to go outside.”
“What do you care?” I shook my head, no longer able to believe anything he said. �
��You could care less if I lived or died.”
His laugh was oh so bitter. “I care too much. You’ve made me forget things, Lola. Things I have no right to forget. Since the first moment I met you you’ve been under my skin like some disease I can’t purge, crawling inside, infecting me bit by bit.”
“You’ve been watching Lifetime, haven’t you?” I said dryly.
Maximus smiled, fast and fleeting. “I’ll go, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
His lips parted, as if he wanted to say something else, but with a small shrug he turned and walked away, leaving me alone with my thoughts and one carpet badly in need of stain cleaner.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
The End of Everything
I woke at dawn. My muscles were cramped from sleeping curled in a ball inside the janitor’s closet and I stretched my arms high above my head as I race walked out of the school, pausing only to retrieve the gun Angelique had knocked out of my hands. During the melee it had skittered across the hallway and slid under the drinking fountain. It was a little dusty, but otherwise no worse for wear.
The other gun, the one I had fired first and dropped, was no where to be seen. I assumed Maximus had taken it with him when he left.
Maximus. I shied away from even the thought of his name, and banished him to the far corners of my mind. I couldn’t afford to think about him. Not now. Perhaps not ever again.
Did you know they were going to come here?
Yes.
I started to run. Despite being exhausted both physically and mentally, I didn’t slow down as I sprinted headlong through the town, retracing my steps from last night. The need to find Travis, to make sure he was all right, was like a drug pumping through my veins, filling me with a sort of frantic energy. I didn’t stop until I was through the hotel’s spinning doors.
The smell of blood hit me immediately. It tasted metallic on my tongue and I closed my mouth tight, clamping my teeth together until my jaw ached. Still the scent of it invaded my nostrils, sweet and ripe as an apple left out to rot in the sun. My stomach cramped, a knee jerk reaction to what the scent of blood had come to signify: death.
A Drinker had been in the hotel. I could see its claw marks running down across the woodwork of the main desk. Our stockpile of supplies had been shredded. What little furniture remained in the lobby had been completely wrecked, as if the Drinker had gone into some kind of mindless rage, destroying everything in sight. With my heart in my throat I sprinted across the lobby and flew up the stairs, screaming for my Dad and Travis with every step.
The green and gold carpet muffled my footsteps as I raced down the hall, bypassing door after door until I got to the one Travis and I had shared. I threw it open and catapulted inside, nearly falling face first onto the bed. The scent of blood was stronger here. There was no mistaking it. Not point in convincing myself I was imagining things.
The shades were still drawn tight. My pounding heart counted off the seconds as I searched the pitch black room, just like I had less than twenty four hours ago, except this time I was filled with an even deeper sense of dread.
The room was empty. I went through Dad’s the same way, looking under the bed, throwing open the closet door, screaming into the bathroom. It, too, was empty. But I know they had to be here. Somewhere. The blood was too fresh for them not to be. I didn’t let myself think about what so much blood could signify.
Cursing, crying, pleading I stumbled down the hall and searched room after room after room, screaming until my voice was hoarse.
The further I went into the hotel the darker it got, until I was running blind, using the walls to support me. When I saw the light blossoming from the edges of a door at the end of the last hallway my knees almost buckled in relief.
I had found them and they were hiding away, just like they should have been. Safe and sound. A breathless laugh forced its way past my lips. I had worried myself to death for nothing. Except the scent of blood was stronger than ever, and I couldn’t shake the terrible feeling of dread that threatened to choke me with every gasping breath.
“Dad, Travis, I’m here! It’s me. I’m back.” I pushed open the door and instantly covered my eyes, blinded by the light after running around so long in the darkness.
Gradually my vision returned, refocusing like a camera lens, sharpening slowly around the edges before spiraling in towards the middle until everything was clear. Clear as crystal, because I saw who was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. And I saw who was standing over him. And I saw, I finally saw, what I had chosen to overlook for too long.
“Is he dead?” My words came out flat. Emotionless. My question was a rhetorical one. I knew Travis was dead. No one could lose that much blood and survive. It seeped across the tile floor, reaching all the way to the door and I was forced to step in it as I walked towards the body of my best friend.
Maximus looked up and my breath whooshed out to stain the air with shock and betrayal. Even now, faced with Travis lying bloodied and broken on the floor, even after everything I had learned last night, I had not allowed myself to imagine… I had never truly thought… But the blood couldn’t lie and Maximus’s face was covered with it.
“You,” I whispered in agony. “How could it be you?”
His mouth opened and closed. He was quick, so quick, but I saw the flash of tell tale silver before he could conceal it. He reached out his hand to me in a silent plea. Blood dripped from his fingertips. “This is not what it looks like,” he said quickly as his eyes darted from my face to Travis and back again. “Lola, you don’t understand. Let me explain.”
“Isn’t what it looks like?” I repeated dully. I waited for the pain to start, for even though I had denounced Maximus last night, some small part of me had still trusted him. Still believed in him. Still wanted to stand beside him.
Yet I felt… numb. Cold. Distant, as if this was happening to someone else. As if someone else’s best friend was dead on the floor in a pool of their own blood. “You’re one of Them, Maximus. You’re a… a… Drinker. You’re a monster.” My voice trembled with emotion. “And you killed Travis. You killed him.”
Maximus’s gaze dropped to my left hand.
The gun. I had drawn it when I entered the hotel and forgotten I was even holding it. Taking a deep, shuddering breath I raised it up and pointed the muzzle true. For the first time my hands did not waver.
Maximus took a step back, then stopped. Went still. “Do it then. I showed you how. One shot to the head, one to the heart. Just do it, Lola. If you think I could have done this I am dead already.”
“No.” I looked at Travis. Poor, sweet, gentle Travis. His eyes were still open, staring up at the ceiling. “He’s the one who is dead.” I aimed the gun dead center of Maximus’s chest. Aimed it right at his black, lying heart. This time I wouldn’t miss. This time I would hurt him, as much as he had hurt me.
“Lola, I love -”
I pulled the trigger.
Jillian Eaton
***
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