It’s D.J.’s fault. He took your chance.
I know it isn’t true, but I have to kill something just to dull the pain.
D.J. is standing frozen on the sand, staring at the monster he made.
I attack, my huge body coiling and uncoiling in an instant, my teeth aimed at his throat. But a second before I hit him, something hits me—hard and low, from the side, throwing me off course. Something black and white and hissing.
Luke. He crouches in the sand, fangs flared. “You don’t want to kill him, Ander,” he says.
And I don’t. But I will anyhow, because that’s the way this works.
I turn on Luke, snarling, ropes of spit dripping from my fangs. He just kept me from killing my brother, and the part of me that’s still me wants to thank him, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I’m going to kill him instead. And he deserves to die, the wolf whispers. He just gave up eternity to help a guy he doesn’t even like and that makes him too stupid to live.
I run at him. My breath is like a steam train. My claws eat sand. It sprays around me. He makes it three strides before my claws catch the back of his coat. There’s a satisfying ripping sound, a look of horror on his pale face as I bring him down like a deer. I breathe the heady smell of vamp.
The smell of vamp… It’s getting stronger, changing. An uneasy feeling uncurls in my stomach. I pull my teeth away from my prey and raise my head.
Something is rising out of the waves. At first, my wolf brain can’t make sense of it: the long blue hair like seaweed, the pale skin shining wet. Then the Ander part of my brain understands.
It’s Cicely.
Run! I want to tell her. Run! The last thing I want is Cicely here where I can hurt her. She’s going to get killed.
Or maybe I am. Because Cicely is not alone. As I watch, more and more vampires rise up, dripping, from the waves. Two, three, four—different size and ages, but all with the same intent expression, all following Cicely.
All focused on me.
“Oh my God,” Luke breathes. “They’re here.”
“Go!” Cicely shouts.
And they are on us, rushing the shore like a wave, crashing over us. I let Luke go—I have to—just to fight them off. I see Luke launch himself at D.J., holding him back, but I’m too busy fighting the vampires to watch. My claws connect with wet dead flesh and I feel it tear, but they don’t stop.
They also don’t bite. They are only trying to drag me down, like they are part of the ocean they came from and I’m drowning in them. My head hits sand. There’s a vampire on top of me, her wet blue hair touching my cheek as her face comes dangerously close to mine.
“It’s going to be okay, Ander,” Cicely says, and then she jams the needle in my arm.
There’s a sharp pain as the cold needle pierces my skin, then a rush of warmth as she sinks the plunger. My head spins as the sedative hits me like a sack of sand.
“Hold him down while it takes affect! Don’t hurt him!”
The beach tips. The potion spreads through me. My arms and legs are so heavy they feel like they’re growing into the rocks. The sound of the waves echoes the sloshing in my mind as my consciousness leaks out of me. There are vampire eyes everywhere. The air is electric with the smell of them, but I don’t care. The wolf is abandoning me. I am left, wadded up and used, but thankful, so, so, thankful.
My voice comes out slurred and slow, but human. “Thank you for coming to… stab me.”
Cicely smiles, fangs and all, but still Cicely. “You’re welcome.”
I try to say something else, but my voice won’t function at all now. But Cicely must see my eyes get wide. She must see the way I look over her shoulder, she must guess that I’m trying to say look out! Because she does turn around.
But it’s a second too late.
D.J.’s stake catches her straight in the heart.
And that’s when it all goes black.
Chapter 21: Luke
“Cicely!” I scramble up to my knees.
Ander lies on his back on the sand, his body caught mid change, more beast than human. He is motionless, the syringe of potion that knocked him out still lodged above his heart.
Cicely is slumped beside him, the stake protruding from her chest. She clutches at it with pale, shaking hands.
I crawl to her side. If only I hadn’t let D.J. get away from me! I can just make him out in the distance now. I’ve never known a werewolf to run, but then, I have never seen enluzantes this angry. They swarm up the beach after him, their eerie silence somehow more frightening than any noise could be. I see the fury on their faces as they flash past us and there is no question in my mind that they intend to tear D.J. to shreds.
And I will be happy to let them. I would help them myself, if it didn’t mean leaving Cicely’s side. I was wrong to save him from Ander. I should have killed him myself.
But Cicely doesn’t agree. She can barely speak, but she manages a whispered “No.” It’s so quiet I can hardly hear it, but the enluzantes freeze in their tracks, as surely as if she had yelled it. Then, as one, they turn and trot back to Cicely like a pack of obedient hunting dogs.
I watch them in awe. How is she doing this? I’ve seen enluzantes act like this before, of course, but only in the presence of a queen, and Cicely certainly doesn’t look like anyone’s leader. She looks small and fragile, curled around the stake in her chest. “It will be okay,” I tell her, but I can see that it isn’t okay. Her eyes are wide with terror. Her fingers claw at the stake, nails scraping on the wood. I look at it closely for the first time.
It isn’t just a stake. It’s a wooden cross, sharpened to a point at one end. D.J. must have made it himself—it’s just two old pieces of wood nailed in the center, but it’s enough. The wound itself may not be enough to send an enluzante to her final death, but the fear could drive her insane.
We have to get it out. I grip the cross and pull, but I’m weak from my injuries and it’s driven in deep. Cicely groans and convulses around me, grabbing both my hands in hers. Her hands are freezing. They shake. Mine shake, too, with the effort of trying to pull the stake free without hurting her more. I could do it if someone else held her steady, but Ander is still out cold and the enluzantes are too afraid of the cross to come near us. They hover nervously on the edges of my vision, unable to breach the invisible boundary of their fear, the way animals stay out of the circle of firelight. With every passing second they become more agitated, resonating with Cicely’s terror. I can feel my own panic clawing its way up my throat. I can’t get the stake out. It’s stuck tight.
Cicely’s frantic eyes meet mine. Her lips are the color of shadows. They tremble as she grips my hand, barely move as she whispers, “Don’t leave me.”
“Never,” I say, and I mean it. But there is a danger of Cicely leaving me. Her eyes roll up into her head. Her body shakes.
I grip the stake tighter and give it a final wrench. Cicely’s body twists with the force of it. I hear something snap, and pray it’s just one of her ribs. That she could survive, but this…
It’s the wood that snapped. Most of the cross jerks free, sending me sprawling backwards on the sand, but the sharpened base is still lodged deep under Cicely’s skin, deep inside her heart.
Still, she gasps with relief. “Throw it,” she croaks at me, and I stand up and throw it as hard as I can. The cross sails far into the ocean. It hits the water with a splash and disappears below the surface of the waves.
Cicely’s body sags. “Thank you.” Her trembling fingers move to her chest, to feel the place where the stake bit through her sweatshirt and sunk deep into her heart. There’s a deceptively small amount of blood—enluzantes don’t bleed much—and the wound is only about two inches long, but it’s deep, and it will never heal.
“There’s still a piece in there,” I say.
She nods. “I can feel it.” Something about the way she says it lets me know she doesn’t just mean physically. Most of her fear is gone with the top of t
he cross, but, in her mind, the sharp tip must still be part of a cross.
The enluzantes have drawn close again. I feel their circle tighten around us protectively. The littlest among them comes to stand beside me, too still and quiet to be a living child. The big enluzante reaches out a hand as heavy and square as a brick, a questioning expression on his face.
“He wants to know if you can get it out,” a young man with red hair asks. He’s familiar to me. He must have served my family.
“No,” Cicely says, “there’s no time to try. We have to get Ander more potion before he wakes up.”
“So you know what happened?” I ask.
“Five told me D.J. was going to turn on us,” Cicely says.
“Where is Five?” I look up and down the beach, but she’s nowhere to be seen. “And if she knew that was going to happen why didn’t she warn us?”
“That’s always the fifty thousand dollar question, isn’t it?” Cicely’s smile is weak, but it still warms me. She’s alive—or, as close to alive as she has been.
But maybe not for long. If D.J. comes back, or if Ander wakes up…
“We have to get out of here,” I smooth the hair away from Cicely’s face. “When Ander wakes up, he won’t be in control of himself. He’ll kill you.”
“You have to go back to the house. Get his potions. Get Naomi.” Her eyes widen. “Naomi! What if D.J. went back to the house and—”
I shake my head. “Naomi was going into town today. Something about helping with things for that girl’s memorial service. I’m sure D.J. planned all this so she wouldn’t be around to charm him and interfere. But—”
The same awful thought strikes both of us at once. “Emmie!”
I am up and on my feet without thinking.
“Go!” Cicely shouts.
But how can I leave Cicely? She’s still in so much pain. I hesitate, torn.
“The enluzantes will take care of me.” She gives me a brave smile. The red haired enluzante moves closer, protectively.
The brown haired girl—I recognize her now as the girl from Cicely’s school, the one I gave to Constanza as a gift—takes Cicely’s elbow gently. “We’ll get her out of here,” she says, “I promise.”
I shoot Cicely a questioning look, but she shakes her head. “I’ll explain later. Just get the potions and make sure Emmie is okay.”
There’s nothing I can do but trust them. I turn and run in the direction of the house, as fast as I can go.
Night has truly fallen. The trees flash past me in a blur of black and horrible images flash through my mind. I try to ignore them, but they haunt me.
Soon I can see Naomi’s house. The lights glow warm, but I feel colder with every step. The humid scent of wolf clings to everything, so there’s no pretending D.J. didn’t come back this way. Now all I can do is pray Emmie escaped.
I skirt the side of the house, keeping in the shadows, and cut around to the front. Naomi’s truck isn’t in the driveway. Ander’s van is gone, too. I can only hope that means Naomi took one vehicle to town and Emmie used the other to escape. Maybe Five came and warned her.
Or, more likely, maybe Five took the car and ran.
Either way, I can’t tell if the wolf is still here. The only way to know is to go inside.
I creep up onto the porch. The front door is hanging open. It slaps against the worn blue boards of the house. I slip inside, and narrowly miss stepping in the pool of red liquid that stains the floor of the hall.
Panic seizes me for a half second before my nose tells me that this isn’t blood. I sink down on my haunches and swipe up a finger-full, thick and cold. There’s no mistaking the smell: spaghetti sauce. The hall is smeared with it. Bits of glass glitter in the half-light. I step around it, flattening myself against the wall as I inch towards the kitchen. I ache to call for Emmie, but if the wolf is still here, I can’t afford to lose the element of surprise.
For better or worse, the house is silent. I’m starting to think the wolf is gone.
But there can be no doubt he was here. The kitchen is ransacked. The door of the refrigerator hangs open, its contents gutted. The floor is slick with sauce, the food spread everywhere like the entrails of a sacrifice, thrown down in divination.
And I doubt they are predicting anything good.
It’s clear what D.J. was after. The shelf where Ander kept the potions has been completely cleared. I look for the potion bottles amongst the wreckage of the kitchen, sniff for the potion’s tell-tale spice, but it isn’t there, so D.J. must have taken the bottles with him. That suggests he wasn’t completely out of control, which is a good thing, but now we have no potions to keep Ander from turning when he wakes. There will be nothing but Naomi’s magic to keep him human.
But I can’t even focus on that now. Right now I have to search for Emmie.
I steal into the darkened living room. A candle gutters on Naomi’s altar, but otherwise the room is black. I freeze in the center of the room and listen.
A faint scrabbling sound comes from the closet. Hope stirs in my chest. “Emmie?” I fly for the closet and open he door.
A little scrap of darkness detaches itself from the deeper dark of the closet and flutters out. My heart sinks. It is only the raven, Grimm. He flies drunkenly about the darkened room and lands on the floor by my feet, his feathers rumpled. I scoop him up and he doesn’t even bother to peck me, just hides his head against my chest, afraid.
“Emmie? Emmie!” I’ve given up on keeping quiet. If D.J. is still in the house then let him hear me and come and get it over with. Let him kill me or take me to the Hunters or whatever he plans to do. I should have gone with him to begin with and kept everyone else out of it. I call her name again and again, Grimm echoing me in his screeching bird voice, the empty house echoing us both.
Quiet footsteps sound in the kitchen. I spin, ready.
“She’s not here.” Five stands in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed over her chest.
The sight of her standing there so casually fills me with rage. I fly at her, pushing her back into the kitchen and up against a counter in a single movement. My voice is a low growl. “Then where the hell is she?”
“D.J. took her with him.” She doesn’t sound afraid, but I want her to. I slam her up against the counter again.
“Why didn’t you warn her? Why didn’t you warn any of us?”
“Because I’m not in it for any of you.” The growl in her voice matches my own. The casual facade drops like a mask and I can see the fierce shine in her eyes.
“You’re only in it for you!” I give her another shake.
She looks away. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
I drop her and stalk a few steps away to keep from ringing her neck. “No, I don’t understand. Why would you let him take her? He’ll kill her!”
“No,” she says calmly, “he won’t. He only wants her as bait, and for that he needs her alive.”
“He thinks we’ll follow him to rescue her. He thinks we’ll walk right into the Hunters’ trap.”
“Well,” Five says. “Won’t you?” Her knowing smile makes me want to kill her even more. “I think D.J. may know you better than you know yourself, Luke Marianez.”
I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. All I know is time is ticking fast. I can only hope Ander is still knocked out, that Naomi returns in time to charm him, and that we find enough potion to keep him from turning. I can only hope the enluzantes really are on our side, that they’ve gotten Cicely to safety, that somehow she will recover.
And I can only hope Five is right and Emmie is still alive. When I step out the front door again, the dark road stretches away from me, empty.
I feel empty, too. Because the truth is, Emmie Gardner has started to grow on me. Grimm flaps unevenly after me. He lands on my shoulder, his head tilted to one side. “Emmie?”
“Yes,” I say. “We’ll find her.”
He whistles absently. It’s a song Emmie
always sings, one of the songs she sang in the car. I’ve got you under my skin…
Yes, I think, there’s a chance I do.
Chapter 22: Luke
“Cicely is staying here and that’s all there is to it.” Ander bangs his fist on the coffee table. It shudders with the force of his blow.
“Cicely is right here and Cicely can speak for herself!” Cicely struggles to sit up on the couch. “Emmie is my friend, too, and if there’s a rescue party going to save her, I’m going to be part of it!” Her dark eyes burn with determination, but her voice is weak. She slumps back against the couch cushions. “Don’t you go all alpha wolf on me, Ander McNair.”
“I’m not alpha wolf to anyone any more.” Ander sits heavily in the armchair, his elbows on his knees, and laces his big hands behind his neck. It has only been a few hours since he lost his alpha status, but it is already taking a toll on him. “From what we saw on the mirror, D.J. is bringing Emmie to my family’s compound. We could be going up against an entire pack of Hunters turned werewolf. Right now, you have a hole in your chest—”
“It barely hurts!” Cicely lies.
“—with a piece of cross stuck in there, sapping your strength. You wouldn’t last a minute against my family.”
“But neither will you,” Cicely says. “Not without my help! You’re going to need the enluzantes on your side or you’ll be outnumbered, and they aren’t going in without me.”
“They’ll go if you command them to, querida,” I say. “They believe you are their queen and they are bound to do what you say.”
“But I won’t tell them to go without me. I can’t ask them to take that risk if I won’t take it myself.”
“But, Cicely,” I say. “That is the whole purpose of the enluzantes: to take the risk so the queen doesn’t have to.”
“Luke, I’m an enluzante. I can’t see them as disposable. You know that. Besides, do you really want the enluzantes in there leaderless? They’d be loose canons.”
Crossfire (Book Two of the Darkride Chronicles) Page 18
