Chapter 5
Sydney was in the alley. She was arguing with a male vampire, and she didn’t sound happy. In fact, she sounded scary. Her stance was threatening and her voice was low. The fear on the vampire’s face was very clear. I made to round the corner, but then Sydney pulled out a gun, and my body when cold. Connor’s voice was loud over the speakers, so I switched it off. The vampire’s eyes stretched and his wailing got louder.
“Tell me what you know,” Sydney said.
“I swear, I don’t know anything. I only started coming here after it opened. I don’t know anything before that. It was some business, but that’s all. I swear.”
Sydney looked from side to side, making sure they were alone, and I was scared she would see me, but she didn’t. She raised the gun to the vampire’s chest. Why wasn’t it running? Or dematerializing? Or even fighting back? Sydney was just a human.
I heard the bullet click into the chamber, and I jumped forward. But no matter how fast or how strong I was, when I reached her the shot had already gone off, and the vampire slumped to the ground. I dropped to my knees, hands reaching for him, but he was gone. His eyes were glazed over, staring through me, half-open in a silent scream. And its teeth glistened in the moonlight.
“What the hell, Sydney!” I screamed. And only then I saw the thick iron cuffs around his wrists. She’d managed to stop him from materializing. It was even more potent than my chain had been. In a past life I might have been impressed, now I was horrified.
Sydney turned a face on me that scared me. Her eyes were empty, the kind of eyes that I used to look at in the mirror, and her face was void of any expression.
“What are you doing here?” she asked me. Her cheeks were staring to flush.
“What the fuck are you doing? I’m teaching you to protect yourself, not to kill!”
She shook her head and took a step back. Apparently I was the only that cared that a life had just been taken.
“I had to do it,” she said. I looked up at her, and in her face I saw that she believed what she was saying.
“Why? Was he hurting you?” Somehow I doubted it.
She shook her head. “No, but he’s a vampire.”
“And?” I asked. I wanted to shout at her, grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Sydney sighed. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” she finally said. “I didn’t want to tell you because I was scared you would react like this. But now you might as well know – it might change what you think of me now.”
Somehow I doubt it, I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Instead I leaned against the wall. I knew I looked like I was demanding answers, but in reality my legs were wobbly and I didn’t want to look like I was stumbling around like an idiot.
She took a deep breath that made me believe she was going to lay a lot on me. And then she did.
“Vampires killed my father,” she said. “I wanted to find them, so that I can avenge his death.”
I sighed. “There are a lot of people that have stories like that. But there are cops out there that can take care of cases like these. You shouldn’t do this. It’s not going to help you, trust me, I know.”
And I really did know. But she shook her head and suddenly she looked like she wanted to cry.
“The police didn’t know, because he did a lot of illegal stuff. They won’t go into the case, because he made sure to cover all his tracks. No one’s going to make sure that justice is served. No one’s going to make sure that he’s remembered. He might have been in the papers, but it’s not the same thing. He died without dignity and he deserves someone to care.”
“When did it happen?” I asked. Tears were streaming down her cheeks now and I felt sorry for her. If anyone understood, it was me.
“About a year ago,” she said. “It took me this long to find anything. Someone had gone afterward and made sure that all the paperwork had been sorted out so that the police wouldn’t find anything that could blacken my father’s name, the names of those that worked for him. It was great, except that the murderers couldn’t be found either.”
She looked so sad I wanted to hug her. She wiped her cheeks and pulled herself together, as if she suddenly realized she’d been breaking down. Slowly I watched her rebuild herself until she was the calm and collected Sydney I knew.
“I hate this place,” she suddenly said. “None of them know.”
“Know what?” I asked, and I got the feeling that the next words were going to be something I didn’t want to hear. But we were barreling forward, and the next words came before I could save myself.
“He died here. This was his building.”
Blood drained from my face and I felt like I was going to vomit, or faint, or something. I looked at Sydney’s hand, hanging next to her thigh, her fingers still wrapped around the gun.
“Ruben was your father?” I asked, my voice hoarse and I didn’t sound like myself. Sydney nodded and closed her eyes.
I slid down the wall to the floor. The dead vampire was too close to me so I shuffled away a bit.
“This is not okay. This really isn’t okay. You can’t go around killing innocent vampires for what happened. That was a life. You just killed someone, Sydney.”
She rolled her eyes at me and looked away. Her attitude would have been nonchalant if it wasn’t for the drumming on her fingers on her thigh, her foot tapping on the floor, her constant fiddling. It was good to know that this wasn’t a walk in the park for her, at least.
“He was a vampire. One of them. He deserved to die.” She looked at me and her black eyes were fierce, and suddenly I knew where I’d seen them before. Because all the pieces had fallen into place. Those were Ruben’s eyes, staring back at me. Maybe they didn’t look like his had, but they had the same thing behind them, the same drive.
“There are a lot of vampires in the world, good people like you and me. You can’t just kill them. That’s discrimination in its worst form.”
Sydney opened her mouth to answer me, but then someone appeared at the edge of the building. A tall, dark shadow. Sydney lifted her gun and pointed it at his chest. It was exactly what I would have done a while ago. She was really getting the hang of it. My training was going too well.
The shadow moved closer, light caught blond hair, the high cheek bones, the straight nose.
“Wait!” I shouted. “Don’t shoot him.”
Sydney glanced at me and it was enough for Connor to step into the light completely.
“It’s my boyfriend.”
It didn’t take long for Connor to take in the scenario. His face went from worried to angry to blank, and I couldn’t read what he was thinking anymore. All I could feel radiating from him was emptiness. He was doing what I’d always done. He was distancing himself so that he could walk away.
“Well, looks like you’re not in trouble after all,” he said to me. I suddenly remembered the phone. I’d hung up on him.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” I said, getting up.
“Really? Because you’re in your vampire busting kit again. And there’s a dead body on the floor.”
He touched the body with the tip of his shoe, and his face crumpled into a mask of sorrow.
“This only difference is you’re not holding the gun this time.” He turned his face to Sydney. “You’ve hired an assistant.”
“No, Connor,” I said, taking a step toward him. But he closed his eyes and sighed like the weight of the world was suddenly pressing down on him. Another step and I would reach him, but he dematerialized, and we were left in the alley alone.
“Dammit!” I shouted. Sydney turned big eyes to me.
“Your boyfriend is a vampire?” she asked. Right, well you couldn’t miss someone dematerializing, no matter how good you were at hiding yourself. I shrugged.
“You’re sleeping with the enemy,” she said and her voice was low and dangerous. It was the kind of tone that brought out just the right side of me. The person that pushed all thought away and acted on instinct an
d years of practice.
“And what are you going to do about it? Shoot me too?” I asked. Sydney opened her mouth to speak, but there was no time to answer. I turned all my focus inward. I felt like I was falling apart, breaking. I felt like I was going to scream, or laugh hysterically, or break down and cry. I channeled all that energy, and wished like hell I was somewhere else.
And suddenly I was. My body felt like a million bubbles surged through my blood. I gasped for breath. It felt like my lungs were going to collapse and my head spun. I crashed to the ground, and it felt spongy underneath my hands and my cheek.
I tried to pull myself back together, tried to get a grip. I needed to be able to protect myself. The one rule of being on the bad side of anything was being ready to defend yourself. But as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realized I was in the MMA Academy, on the mat where I spent half of every day.
Three things crashed down on me like waves, the one after the other. One, Connor thought I was back into killing and I was terrified that I might have lost him. It was worse than ever before. When I’d wanted to kill him it was torture to think that I would have to get rid of someone I loved, but then it was because I’d had something to lose. Aspen’s life had hung in the balance. Now there was nothing. Connor was the only thing that I could lose.
Two, Sydney was Ruben’s daughter, and she was killing vampires in a crazy act of vengeance that sounded really familiar. She’d killed a vampire tonight, cold blooded murder – I ignored that it was hypocritical thought – and she was going to keep going until she found the killers. But she wouldn’t find them, because I’d already killed them. The only person still alive and responsible for Ruben’s death, was me.
And three, I had just dematerialized. I hadn’t even known I could do that. I knew after I’d accepted the vampire in me that I’d found a lot of power that I didn’t know I had. I was more vampire than human some days, and even though it scared me, I’d been learning to accept it. But dematerializing? It was something I’d only thought purebreds could do. That in itself was scary.
But not as scary as the fact that the person killing vampires had just found out that I was one. A real one, for all she knew. And she knew everything about me.
The tables had turned – I’d gone from the hunter to the hunted. A vague part of me wondered if it wasn’t just really, really bad karma.
I didn’t go home. I stayed at the academy until the sun came up and I knew Connor would be asleep. Coward? Yes, but I didn’t know how to confront him. I had to be sure about myself to do that – Connor could be a force of nature in his own way – and I wasn’t sure about myself at all. I was confused and I felt betrayed. So much new information had been dumped on me I felt like I was drowning.
The fact that I’d dematerialized and ended up inside the MMA Academy also meant that I didn’t have any keys. I didn’t know how to dematerialize again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how. It scared me.
The lights clicked on and I closed my eyes, shielding them with my arm.
“Adele?” Phil asked. “I didn’t know you were here. It was locked.”
“I know,” I answered. “My life went from perfect to a new kind of hell.”
Phil nodded slowly and walked to me.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
I looked up at him and sighed. Tears burned behind my eyes and I swallowed hard to get rid of them. It was like now that it was day, the night was over and the light was here, everything suddenly seemed very real.
Phil had been there for me before, when everything in my life had gone haywire. He always worried about me as more than just a student or a co-worker. He treated me like a friend.
Sometimes he was the only one I had. So I told him. I told him because he asked, because on some crazy level, where the monster world and the human world overlapped, he would understand.
He whistled through is teeth after I finished.
“You always seem to get yourself in trouble, don’t you?” he said.
“You know, strangely that doesn’t make me feel any better.” I took a deep breath. I knew I’d sounded snappy. “I just don’t know what to do. She can’t keep killing vampires.”
“So give her up to the police. Make it their problem. It’s not your job to babysit your students, you couldn’t have known she was going to turn into a psychopathic killer.”
I took a deep breath and tried not to be offended. Because the point was that she was just doing what I’d been doing. She was taking matters into her own hands because the police couldn’t do anymore. I understood that.
“I might not be able to control her actions now, but I gave her the tools to do all of this,” I said. Because I’d trained her, and she was as good as she was because of me.
Phil shook his head. “You can’t blame yourself for that. She could have gone to any shooting and fighting lessons and done the same thing.”
“You don’t get it, Phil,” I said and I was aware that my voice was rising. “It’s not about the fighting and the shooting and the fact that I trained her. It’s about the fact that I was the one that killed Ruben. I might not have been the one that ripped his throat out, but it was all my fault. And now she’s doing this, and it’s because of me.”
My voice cracked at the end of my sentence and I swallowed the rest of what I wanted to say because I was getting emotional. Sure, we’d been to the edge of death and back together, but damned if I was going to cry in front of Phil. I got up and shook it off. I got rid of the emotion, pushed it back down and locked it up.
I got a taxi and drove downtown to pick up my bike. The parking lot where I’d left it was filled with cars now, and in the daylight everything looked very normal. It felt like everything that had happened the night before belonged in one of my stupid nightmares. The roads were open and clear and the sun beat down on the world. It seemed like I was the only one that walked around with a dark cloud over my head.
I drove the short distance home and pulled into the garage. I waited until it was shut tight before I opened the door that led into the house. I took the gun out of the compartment and shoved it in the back of my pants. I was the only one that could override the shutters and lockdown system so I could get in and out. I tried to avoid that, I tried to leave before it closed and come back after it had opened, but for once I was glad about it.
Connor would be sleeping. If this was the end of our relationship, I wanted to be ready for it. I couldn’t do a break up now on top of everything.
“It took you forever to get home,” a voice spoke behind me and I froze. It wasn't Connor’s voice, and that was what scared me. It was a woman’s voice, soft and feminine. I breathed in, and recognized the smell. When I turned, Sonya was sitting on one of the couches. She looked tired. It was late for her to be up.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Connor let me in. He said you would come back sooner or later, so I offered to wait. It’s safe with the shutters.”
I nodded, because it was. But she still hadn’t given me an answer.
“I don’t remember us making an appointment,” I said and my voice sounded cold, a lot like the old Adele I’d been trying so hard to leave behind.
“No, I’m here on a personal call,” she said and there was a hint of sarcasm in her voice. The friendliness of the other day was gone. Sonya and I were back to our usual dance. I sighed and turned around, facing her. I didn’t come closer or sit down. We weren’t friends – she was making that clear. I stayed in the kitchen, looking at her over the counters.
“You look a lot more like yourself,” she said, looking me up and down. “I didn’t recognize you the other day without your leathers.” I looked down at myself, tried to find some snarky remark to throw back at her and found nothing. So I just shrugged.
“I’m here to warn you,” she said and her voice was softer this time. I pulled up my eyebrows.
“Again?”
She nodded slowly, keeping her eyes on me l
ike she wanted to know when I was going to make a move. Didn’t she know that I wasn’t the enemy? Scratch that. After what had happened to Ruben – her boss – maybe I really was the enemy and I’d just been denying it.
“His daughter is set on finding you,” she said. I steeled myself against the emotion that welled up inside of me. She hadn’t said his name, at least that helped.
“Too late, she already found me,” I said and turned to put the kettle on.
“You came home, armed?” she asked, seeing the gun at my back.
“I left home armed. I had to bring the weapon in. Dangerous to let it sit out where someone could get to it.”
She kept quiet. I didn’t know if she believed me. I didn’t care if she didn’t.
“What did she do?”
I turned and frowned at her. Then I shook my head. Sydney was looking for me, I’d mentioned that she’d found me, and I was walking around armed. Sonya was doing the math.
“I trained her,” I said bluntly. “She was my new student, and I didn’t know until she took me to the damn building, and then killed someone.”
Sonya’s face showed how shocked she was. Nice to know that she felt something about. I wasn’t always sure about her, she worked as the vampire secretary of a man that ordered them killed.
“Have you seen her lately?” she asked.
“Not since last night in the alley where she’d done it. I’d…” I took a deep breath and tried to push the sensation of dematerializing away. I didn’t want to remember. “…got away.” I finished my sentence.
“Does she know you’re a vampire?”
I steeled myself. “I’m not a vampire.”
Sonya rolled her eyes. She followed that expression with a scowl. “Don’t be full of shit, Adele. I’m not the enemy here. I never really was. I’m here to warn you every time and you’re treating me like I’m wasting your time. You know what I meant.”
I’d never seen her angry. I’d never really seen her anything other than annoyed or dull. Except the time in the cabinet where she’d been annoyed and scared. Nice to know she had variation.
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