“I had a wife and a boy. They died while … while I was otherwise occupied. I looked them up, as best I could. The Internet’s made it easier now, even though a lot of old records were lost. But I am sure they are in heaven. And if I do enough good here on earth, I’ll get to someday join them. Whenever it is that I manage to cleanly die.”
I blinked. “You believe in heaven? For real?”
“It exists. It has to. And I’m going to get into it.” He put a hand to his own chest. “When I do the right thing, I think sometimes I can feel my soul start to grow.”
Stating things you desired to be true did not make them be so. An old quote about wishes, fishes, and nets that I’d read once burbled up from my subconscious. Ti took my silence for the negation that it was, and turned to look over his shoulder at me again. “Your own soul’s on the line, and you don’t believe?”
I pushed away from his back. “If I believe that I have a soul—which even at this late stage in the game, maybe I don’t—that might make sense. There’s a spirit that people have when they’re alive that they don’t when they’re dead. I’ve watched people die before. I know.” Ti nodded. I knew Ti had watched people die before. Maybe even killed them himself, when he was someone else’s servant. Who was I to judge—I’d killed someone too. “But if you believe in a heaven,” I went on, pushing myself even farther away from him, “then you have to believe that someone’s keeping score. And if someone’s keeping score, if what we do really matters, then life ought to be fair. And I’m sorry, it isn’t. Shitty things happen to good people all the time, and bad people never get what’s coming to them. Don’t tell me that there’s a heaven as some sort of perverse reward for being good. That is bullshit of the highest caliber, bullshit through and though.”
“Then why do you try? Why do you care?”
I inhaled and exhaled a few times, with the effort of trying to put how I felt into words. “Because someone has to. Someone who really exists.” I crossed my arms on top of my breasts. “And also they pay me.”
Ti laughed. He reached out to grab me, and I let him. He pulled me near and held me close. “Not enough,” he said softly, after a time.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Definitely not enough.”
We lay there, thoughtful and quiet, the outside world forgotten, for a full thirty seconds. And then his phone rang. Neither of us moved for a second, because the sound felt so foreign and unfamiliar—it had no meaning in the new space we’d created. Then he sat up beside me and reached for his cast-off jeans.
“Hello? Yes. The address. Yes. Yes. I’ll bring cash.” He flipped the phone closed.
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
Ti looked at me, at all of me, naked atop the comforter on my bed, his expression bittersweet. “Get dressed.”
Chapter Forty-Three
As an afterthought, I grabbed Grandfather on my way out of the house, and shoved him inside my coat. Ti drove us to a bank first. I asked why we couldn’t use the ATM, but ATMs had limits, and the amount of cash Ti was drawing out required a teller. I was going to fight him on this, but he pointed out he’d saved a lot of money because he didn’t need to eat.
And then we drove. Fear and adrenaline and the magic of good sex could only last so long. I found myself drowsing against the door of his car. We were going to buy information, and then we’d see what came next. I hoped that some plan eventually included me sleeping in it, or me getting a prescription for modafinil.
We parked in a warehouse district that didn’t look so bad. There was no trash on the sidewalks, and the streets had been recently swept clean of snow. He reached under the passenger seat between my legs and pulled out a thin case. Opening this revealed a Glock 23 with a clip of .40 S&W rounds—I’d shot both of them before at the range.
“You didn’t say there’d be guns.”
Ti gave me a half smile. “I’m undead, not stupid.” He leaned forward and tucked it into the rear waistband of his pants, then hid it with his coat. I reached for the door.
“You’re not coming, Edie.” He clicked the button on his door, locking mine. “Just stay here.”
“You think it’s a trap?” I peered out of my window and scanned the surrounding area with one eye. What distance was my crazy vision good for? All I could see glowing nearby was my own hand, and when I looked normally, just my breath fogging the glass.
“It could be. But I’m a zombie, remember?” He leaned over and kissed me on my lips. I remembered the heat we’d just had, and parts of me flared again, hungry. He unlocked his own door before I could protest, got out, and then clicked the door lock button again behind himself, trapping me in. Grandfather muttered something I was sure was unkind.
“Shush, you,” I said, putting one hand over my eye and watching Ti go into the front of the building. The side of it looked like a garage. His nimbus went through the glass door and faded—there was an aftervision of it, a ghost in my eyeball, perhaps—but not even odd shadow-vision could help me see through distant walls.
“Be safe,” I whispered. I concentrated harder and harder. Time passed—long enough for any true arrangement to have been made. I heard the sharp report of a gun—and then two more shots.
“Shit.” I tried for the door, and found it locked. This was a nineteen-seventies El Camino, for crying out loud—but when I looked closer, none of it was actually stock. The door-lock tabs were receded completely into the door—all the better to eat you with, my dear. Ti’s door wouldn’t open either.
Creepy-ass serial-killer-style fucking car. I pulled Grandfather out of my coat. “Can you—” I said, waving him at the door. More gunshots, and Grandfather growled something I couldn’t understand. Dropping the CD player, I scooted back to sit in the middle of the car and kicked the passenger side window with both my feet as hard as I could. No good—I only hurt both my heels. I cussed at myself and the door before opening up his glove box. Under years of registration papers, I found paydirt. A black metal flashlight.
I didn’t know what adrenaline I had left to dredge up at that point, or if my feelings for Ti had blossomed into a manic kind of love. But I scrunched my eyes closed and hit the window as hard as I could, and it shattered on my third try. I ran the flashlight against the window’s rim, knocking any loose pieces down, before carefully shimmying myself out. Then, clutching Grandfather, as he was the closest thing to a weapon that I had, I ran to the front door in the open, me and my winter coat bright against the snow, not thinking a second thought about how stupid I was being until I was nearly inside.
“Ti!” I shouted as I went in. There was a reception area here, with cheap desks and thinly upholstered chairs. “Ti!”
“Edie, stay back!” I heard from the inside. My heart soared. He was still alive.
“Ducken!” Grandfather commanded, and finally I knew what he meant. I dropped to my knees as gunshots from the other room whizzed over my head. Of course Ti was still alive—I needed to concentrate on keeping me that way too. I crawled toward a desk and heard a sound I recognized from the range, but more clearly knew from horror movies and violent video games—a shotgun, being primed.
I pushed the nearest desk over and cowered inside of it. But to my left, if I winked just right, I found I could spot a nearby brightness, with a farther one nearing quickly. I could see through walls after all. They just had to be close ones.
“Ti, to your left!”
“Mädchen! Lauf weg!” Grandfather commanded.
Too late. There was a spattering volley of pellet shots from the next room. But Ti’s gun answered, or at least I thought it did, and the second aura dropped and faded.
“Ti?” I asked. I peered as best I could. I didn’t get an answer, but the level of visible brightness didn’t change. Another glow came into focus, on the far right-hand side.
“Ti, to your right! Far back corner!” I had no idea what the room he was in was like—but the second aura paused, and Ti’s gun went off once more. The other a
ura stumbled and then fell.
I wanted to crawl around the edge of the desk I was hiding behind. It was only particle board, almost worthless for protection. But the walls were even cheaper drywall; they wouldn’t be any better. “Ti?” He would answer, if he could. Reasons that he couldn’t, I tried not to think on.
I patted my coat down and found my phone. I flipped into my history and redialed Sike. It rang two times, three times—maybe I’d blown all my chances at getting her to answer—then she picked up, and I didn’t give her a chance to say hello. “Remember how you told me to call if you said I needed you? I need you!” I shouted over gunshots from the other room.
“Where are you?”
“Mädchen, raus aus diesem Zimmer! Ram!”
I gave her the address over Grandfather’s rising orders, and she hung up. How far away was she? Would she really come? I added to my desk fort by putting the chair and Grandfather’s CD player between the particle board and myself, then checked to make sure I could still see any action.
A swarm of dim clouds, converging on my brighter near one. How much ammunition did Ti have? I thought about running out for more—but how would I get it to him? Shots rang through the small room, leaving holes behind, and dear God, it was only a matter of time till one of them hit me and put me out of my misery. I curled into a tighter ball, no longer able to tell the difference between Ti’s light and those of the oncoming people, the room beyond him becoming a growing, glowing blur.
Then the door behind me burst open, literally. Shards of glass rained down, skittering off the desk I hid behind.
“Edie?” a voice I recognized asked aloud. Sike—and she sounded pissed.
“Help Ti! Please!” I rose up just far enough to see her run into the other room, her red hair streaking behind her like arterial spray.
With my other sight I could see the other lights pull back. I heard the sounds of fighting—but her light matched theirs, and so as long as the fighting continued, I couldn’t tell who was winning what. There was great speed—I assumed it was hers, and the sound of impact after impact. I imagined daytimer flesh hitting walls, tables, floors. The crunching of bone, an endless whirlwind of violence—but no guns. I crept forward, pushing Grandfather ahead of me.
Suddenly there were two smells that I could recognize. Vampire dust and rot.
I crawled faster, tucking Grandfather inside my coat. Ti was slumped in a corner down the hallway, missing his left arm. I could see the ragged stump where it had been, white bone jutting out from gobbets of pink flesh. His face was hidden in shadow.
“Oh, no,” I said, coming nearer. Looking over my shoulder I could see Sike wiping the factory floor with the last of the daytimers. Literally. She spun one around, his black coat fluttering in the brief moment before his head cracked open on a vise-gripped car frame. His skull cracked and dust poured out like piñata candy.
“Ti?” I came nearer, reaching for him. “Ti, are you all right?”
He turned his head farther away from me.
“Stop that, let me see.”
Ti pushed me back with his remaining good hand. And then he slowly bent forward, into the light.
I’d taken a few shifts at the burn ward, back at my prior job. I’d been given low-acuity patients; it was all I could be trusted with, without specialized training. But that didn’t mean you couldn’t walk by a burn victim’s room and look in, or see a burn victim’s family, crying by the nursing station. I’d kept the straightest of straight faces there, under any adversity. Under sheets of skin sloughing off, under charred clothing and hair, under people who smelled like homelessness and bacon. I tried to act like that again now.
I couldn’t.
His face was destroyed. I knew that it would grow back, but the knowledge of that did me no good—I recoiled at the sight of him, missing half his face, white-pink jawbone exposed, a hole blown through one cheek and out the other side. I knew now why he couldn’t call back to me—because he’d had no lips to do it with.
I braced myself with both hands on the cold floor and tried to swallow air, to push my bile and horror back down.
“The majority of him is whole,” Sike said. There was a literal cloud of dust around her, like she’d just been shot out of a cannon. “It isn’t like he’ll exsangiunate.”
“I know that,” I muttered. But hours ago I’d been kissing those lips—getting kisses from those lips, and more. And now? I wept, and Ti made a motion to come near me, then held himself back. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay,” I said, telling myself that as much as I was telling him. I closed my eyes and leaned into his waiting whole arm. “It’ll be fine.”
He squeezed me to him with his crushing strength, and then maybe remembered I was made of less stern stuff. I kept my head down, against his chest, ignoring the wet things I felt there, willing myself to be strong.
“Come on.” Sike reached her hand down to me, but I got up on my own. As I stood, Ti rising behind me, Sike went feral again—the whites of her eyes went wide. She raced off, spike heels clattering across the cement floor.
“Are we supposed to follow her?” I asked. Ti shrugged and handed me his gun. He pulled out another clip of ammunition from his waistband and handed this over as well. I loaded it in for him before handing him the gun back.
Chapter Forty-Four
We crossed the garage. Clouds of dust floated in midair, descending to fill in ancient oil stains like so much cat litter, leaving sheets of ash on half-fixed cars. How had Sike become so powerful in such a short time? I’d have to ask her, when I stopped being afraid of her.
She’d gone down a hallway, in the direction of an office—I could see the puddle from a water cooler that the previous violence had tipped on its side.
“Wait.” I pulled at Ti’s shirt with one hand, and covered one eye with the other. I scanned around the garage, through the flimsy office walls—and saw two yellow forms behind the office’s door. One of them was twenty times brighter than the other, so bright it burned.
“She’s not alone.”
Ti looked down at me, his golden eyes still the same—if only I could stare up at them and not see anything else. He jerked his head to the side, and pointed the gun to gesture me behind him.
I shook my head. “No.” I turned and went forward. If there was something awful there, Sike could protect me. If there was one vampire or daytimer left alive, I wanted answers.
And maybe I was running away from him a bit, that too. I pushed the door open with one hand.
“I bring you the gift of the Rose Throne. Do you accept?”
I stopped in the doorway. Sike was talking to someone I couldn’t see, someone that her frame and her coat entirely blocked. She knelt down, and I saw a face I recognized beneath the glowing light my strange sight added, rising over Sike’s shoulder like a second sun.
I had only a moment to whisper “Anna,” before she pulled back her lips like someone was zipping them off on both sides. Violently jagged teeth emerged, and she planted them in Sike’s willingly exposed neck. Sike fell forward, with a gasping sigh.
A strangled noise came from Ti—a hissing exhalation forced over the top of his tongue. He raised his gun, but I pushed his arm up and his aim off. The bullet flew out a papered-off window, shattering it, leaving a puncture mark in the paper for sunlight to pierce through.
“It’s Anna! The girl I’ve been looking for!” I explained. At the addition of natural light into the room Anna released Sike’s neck, backing hurriedly away.
“Anna,” I said, although the girl was in full vampire form. I remembered how those teeth felt, latching into me. My left hand ached in fear. Sike reached an arm straight out behind herself, not in a spasm of pain, but a firm gesture to stay away, one I was all too happy to follow. Anna slunk nearer, and set to finishing what she’d started.
I thought I had already crossed the threshold of being sick to my stomach with Ti, but watching Anna feed took my nausea to a whole new level. More blood was flowing
out from Sike’s neck than Anna could dispose of. I could see the dark wool of her trench coat stain even darker, and the office was heavy with the smell.
I wanted to rescue Sike, but I couldn’t think of how. She was here, she’d chosen to do this, whatever it was—we’d heard the fragments of some ritual as we’d come in. She was a daytimer. It was … her job.
But there was just so much blood.
I would have turned into Ti to hide from it, only looking at him right now could only make things worse.
At last, Anna was done. Her teeth retracted, and she became the girl that I recognized. Her tongue lashed around her lips, licking up the last of it.
“Are you okay?” I asked both of them from the far side of the room. Sike sagged to her hands and knees for a moment, and it was strange to see what had been such a powerful creature powerless and winded. Like how you felt bad for the old tiger in the tiger cage, even as you knew it could still bite off your hand.
“I’ll be fine.” Sike moved to stand in one fluid movement, and flipped up her coat’s hood so that I couldn’t see the marks Anna had left on her neck.
“And—Anna?”
“Hello again, human,” Anna said, sounding pleased with herself.
“Do you two know each other?” I asked, gesturing between them.
“We do and we do not. We may discuss it in the car.” Sike pushed past me and started walking out the door. Anna smiled, and liberated a lighter from one of the clothed ash piles in the room. She flicked it on once or twice and grinned. Even without vampire teeth straining out, it was horrible.
* * *
Sike had a long black car parked out front, windows as tinted as its color. The doors chirped audibly as she approached, and she opened up the passenger side rear door.
“Get in.”
I did so, sliding all the way across the leather. Her backseat was full of yellow legal pads and pencils.
“Look under your seat. There’s a sheet there—pull it out.”
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