Death Mask (Wraith's Rebellion Book 3)

by Aya DeAniege

  “With obituaries, you at least know you have a job,” Quin said. “Life, death, and shit, are all fantastic investments for vampires. No matter the civilization, if it’s growing or dying, they have to deal with life, death, and shit.”

  “When you say shit, you mean like plumbing, right?”

  “Sure, once plumbing was invented.”

  “Ew,” I groaned out.

  “There’s good money in shit,” he said, settling in the swing beside me. “When you found out that not all journalists were adventurers, why didn’t you quit?”

  “You never win if you just give in or give up,” I said, looking over at him. “I could be like so many others, even people I knew in high school, who looked at the odds and settled for mediocrity. They have made that theirs and made themselves very happy, but talking to them you can already hear that thread of bitterness starting.

  “I just, I didn’t want to end up like that. Giving up before I had even tried because I didn’t believe I was good enough. Because if I did that, I’d never get out of bed.

  “I lived separately from my family. I had no friends to speak of, couldn’t find a nice guy, or even one that was half-decent. I had nothing and no one. If I didn’t push myself to do something, I’d just end up stopping everything. I’d much rather push myself, because giving up just seemed like it just… I don’t know. It’s just never been an option not to try.”

  “Giving up on yourself is not something anyone should do, so we always try and try.”

  “No,” I shook my head. “I gave up on myself a long time ago. I’m nothing. I will never be anything, not even a name in a government database now. Nothing more than a ghost of a person, drifting through the motions.”

  “Then why try?”

  “Because those fuckers expect me to fail, and they aren’t allowed to be right.”

  I looked at Quin as he wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. In the dim lamplight, I may have been mistaken, but I think he was wiping a smile from his lips.

  “You’re a stubborn one, aren’t you?”

  “I’m so bullheaded, I’m told, that I could win against my father. First time I see him almost a decade, and he snaps at me. No ‘how have you been,’ or even a, ‘you look good,’ no. He just snaps at me and is judgmental.”

  “Have you heard, and I could be using the wrong terms here, the saying about how living well is the best revenge?”

  “No, don’t vampires believe the best revenge is to eat the stupid mortal?” I asked.

  “That’s a satisfying method,” he said with a small nod. “But mortals aren’t allowed to eat others. It seems that those who wish you poorly would be upset by you living a happy life without them.”

  “Except the ones who cared so little for you to start with, that they just don’t think about you anymore. Because despite all you did for them, it meant nothing to them.”

  “Shouldn’t we go hunting for your exes?” he asked.

  “Why? So they can look at me and ask me who I am?”

  “You’re so cranky,” he said.

  “Bitter at the moment,” I sighed. “I don’t want to talk about me. I am not interesting.”

  “Why you do what you do is interesting,” he said.

  “Yeah, what’s it tell you about me that you didn’t know before?” I asked.

  “That you have trust and abandonment issues, you’ve never called anywhere home, and you’re searching for something in this world to cling to because you need help, but you aren’t going to give in a single step until you see safe ground.

  “To most, you will come off as overly needy. They won’t realize that your behaviour isn’t needy so much as a dehydrated man who just spotted water.”

  “Did you just explain to me why I keep screwing up relationships?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Your distrust in the world is likely founded in your childhood. I’d venture if you told me about that I’d be headed back to that house tonight.”

  “And that doesn’t scare you off at all?”

  “Why would it scare me off?” he asked. “I hardly expected a sane, normal person to apply to be an interviewer. Let alone a happy go lucky type to pass for my interviewer.”

  “I suppose,” I sighed.

  “Do you read?” he asked.

  “I do, I read and draw some. Terrible artist though. I tried writing once. I was told that I should leave it to the more adept. So I did until I took up journalism and they insist on it. At least they didn’t think I was as bad as my grade school teachers.”

  “Jobs?” he asked.

  “Not since the professor. I had a sweet job lined up in the office of the school too, but that went out the window when the whole mess happened. I didn’t have my first job until I was eighteen.”

  “Good to just be a teenager.”

  “I was forbidden from getting a job.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my mother wouldn’t drive me, but also didn’t trust me to walk three blocks down the road to go to the job. She was paranoid that I’d get kidnapped. Or maybe she thought I’d use the money for drugs.”

  “That is so strange. Stock children start working alongside their parents at a young age, but in a helper sort of role. They get paid in an allowance depending on behaviour and slowly growing over time to teach them how to handle money. So they learn the responsibilities of being an adult and how to budget.”

  “It’s an important skill that isn’t taught in schools.”

  “Which always baffled me.”

  “Some parents just want to keep their children chained to their level, to tack blinders on them to keep them from striving for a higher position in life because they’re either afraid they’ll succeed, or afraid they’ll be lost in the process.”

  “You should talk about yourself more. To me and others. You’re not invisible. You have a voice. You should use it.”

  “I do use it on occasion,” I said.

  “When you get uppity is not the same thing as voicing your opinion,” he said. “That’s snapping and snarling.”

  “Fine, I’ll try harder.”

  “That’s all I ask,” he said. “Now, why don’t we head back to the car and the city? We might as well get to the hiding place and relax for the rest of the evening.”

  “You’re going to take that car to the hiding place?” I asked.

  “No, I have a plan,” he said. “Come on.”

  We walked back to the car hand in hand as Helen tried to convince me that the evening was going to be boring unless we started having sex. While it was tempting to toss her down and have my way with her in the park, it was more pressing for us to find safe haven first.

  Because, yes, I desperately wanted to do that all the time. That urge to turn had been likened to attraction for a reason. Like a young man who had just discovered his cock, I was thinking of Helen.

  Bad way to describe that. Women want flowers and romance.

  Whatever. I didn’t want to be romantic about it. I wanted to dominate her body, to have my way with her until we were both too sore to continue. I wanted my tongue and teeth on her until she shuddered to completion under me, wet but as of yet untouched. As she writhed under me, that was when I would take her, thrusting and riding the waves of her pleasure until she could take no more.

  The idea of sex kept my mind off of other things. Mainly, they kept my mind on Helen’s shapely ass, swinging as she walked. She might have claimed to be nothing and no one, but she walked like a woman who knew the world was watching and didn’t care. That thought definitely helped settle my mind and calm my nerves.

  I put on an air of being calm because if we both started panicking, we’d make mistakes. Just knowing that I knew that I had to keep calm wasn’t enough to keep my mood level. I leaned back and looked down, almost smiling as I watched her hips move with each step.

  “That’s a nice bum you got,” I said.

  “Got it in the discount bin,” she chimed in without missing a
beat, smiling up at me as I laughed quietly.

  She had no idea what might await us, or what I was caught up thinking about. The war that raged inside of me as I tried not to panic, then swung to the sexual and back again.

  No vampire had actively tried to hide in the modern world. I pretended that I was confident, but I had my doubts.

  If one of us was caught, however, it was going to be me, not Helen. She would be set for quite some time with the juice boxes I had created. That would give the Council the time they needed to get me out of prison, or the testing facility as it may be.

  We stopped just within sight of the car. I pulled her into one last lingering kiss, just in case.

  Just in case it was the last time I could kiss her.

  Hear that?

  A whistling in the air, but above us. I broke off the kiss and looked up, wondering what that sound was. The country wasn’t one to bomb their own land, and we had been clear that nothing short of a nuclear weapon would stop us.

  So why did it sound like something was travelling at a high velocity?

  I turned to my car as it crunched toward the ground. It was such a strange thing for me. I saw it happen, saw the car crunch downward because that was the first thing my mind recognized. The car moved downward and, because I had seen cars be smashed before, I understood that.

  What I didn’t understand was how it had happened, or what had caused it. If it had been a bomb, then everything would have lit on fire, exploded as reality seemed to shred and then the darkness encroached quickly.

  The force of the impact blew a wind outward as I pushed Helen behind me. Didn’t matter that I couldn’t tell what the threat was, it was an instinctive reaction. I threw my arm up to protect my face from flying debris, looking over it as a figure straightened in the ruins of my car.

  “Balor calling,” the car chirped as I made eye contact with the creature.

  “She just superhero landed on your car!” Helen squeaked out.

  “Run!” we shouted at each other.

  When I turned to grab Helen, she was already several yards away, hair flying in the wind. Being so new, her survival instincts were still working quite well. She had probably been in the midst of turning to run as she had shouted at me.

  I chased after her, running as fast as her little legs would take her.

  “Breathing is optional!” I snapped when she tried to slow down.

  I grabbed hold of her and shoved her ahead of me. Because her survival instinct was so strong, in the spur of the moment, she would continue running if pushed.

  “Keep running!” I bellowed.

  Her body would follow the command, and Helen would learn how to stop breathing in a sink or swim sort of way, but we’d live.

  Maybe.

  I looked ahead to make certain that there were no obstacles, then I looked behind. The person who had landed on my car was not following.

  Perhaps such a landing took time to recover from. It was possible that she thought we were in the car when she landed on it, which may have been why she attempted such a dangerous move.

  When hunting, one had to carefully weigh the damage one’s body would take compared to the damage caused to the prey. The kinds of prey that vampires went hunting were more dangerous than mere humans, which meant not doing anything that would put one in harm’s way unless it meant ending a fight before it began.

  The kinds of things we hunted in the dark of the night were the sorts that would rip us to shreds if they survived the initial attack. We had to have our wits about us and the capability to run.

  The end of the park came up, and I grabbed Helen, looking around for a car. She started huffing and puffing, bent over as she staggered down the road.

  “A guy I know lives down here,” she said. “He has one of those cars.”

  “One of which?” I asked, striding quickly after her.

  “Old,” she said. “No tracking in them. There.”

  I walked up to the car and set my hand on the handle. With a belly almost full of real food, my powers were sluggish. I wasn’t certain that I could slide the mechanism to the right slots in order to open the door without the key.

  Helen gave me a look over the car and opened the passenger side door. Rolling my eyes, I climbed in the driver’s side door and eased the door closed. She did the same closing it ever so quietly before she reached up and flicked the sun visor down.

  “He’s a good guy,” she said.

  “Return or pay for the car, got it,” I said, putting the key in the ignition. “Buckle up.”

  I put the car in reverse, allowing the sloped driveway to do the work as I slipped onto the road. Then I put it into drive and pulled away casually while looking in the rearview mirror. No one came out of the park, which I had to say was a relief.

  “Why are we running?” she asked. “You can kill people with your mind.”

  “Apparently not with mortal food in me,” I said. “I need a blood bank or to drain you dry, but you’re the backup plan, so that won’t work.”

  “Okay, what did you see?” she asked. “What are we dealing with?”

  “Hard to tell with the lighting, but there was a wild mass of hair. Tight tank top and pants without a bra.”

  “At that speed, I’d think a landing like that would hurt.”

  “She may have thought we were in the vehicle,” I said.

  “Why?” Helen asked. “We were clearly standing right there.”

  “We can’t fly, she jumped from somewhere else and controlled her decent. We were under tree cover as she fell. During which time, I may have been thinking sex in the park would be fun, but get us caught so: car.”

  “She can read minds you mean?” Helen asked. “Or at least yours. Can you like, I don’t know.”

  “Jumble the information she receives?” I asked, pulling out my phone. “Dial Anna.”

  The phone rang once, then went straight to voice mail.

  I swore. “Call me back, bitch, I want to go to Vegas.”

  Helen’s eyebrows rose as Wraith chuckled at the back of my mind.

  Two minds, one head. We’ve played this game before, haven’t we?

  “Scatter your thoughts as much as possible,” I told Helen as I rolled the window down. “We are a couple, newly engaged on the way to the city to shop for your wedding dress. That is all you are allowed to think about.”

  “How far do we have to go, do you think?”

  She’s quick on her feet for a fledgling not fed in two hours.

  “Not far,” I said. “It’ll take time to get there because I don’t want to get a ticket speeding. We’ll be downtown in a couple of hours and back at the hotel shortly after that.”

  I can usually feel it.

  But not this time. I could feel Wraith going over the sensations leading up to the incident. Every tingle along my nerves, ever twitch of my fingers, even the hairs that may have risen on the back of my neck. He was searching for the point when the woman had first entered my mind.

  Everything seemed normal.

  Peter. That look Helen gave Peter means something.

  Which was not the information I was looking for. I glanced at Helen.

  “You’re talking out loud,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “I’d say you’re thoroughly confused.”

  “Obviously,” I said, feeling a heat come to my face as I pulled onto the highway. “What was that about anyhow?”

  “Peter doesn’t apologize to you. He counts saying he wants to apologize as the apology. And he doesn’t wait to see if you forgive him, he just moves on as if nothing happened. But it’s been a while since I saw him, maybe he changed.”

  People like that don’t change.

  I had another moment of embarrassment, wondering if I had said those words out loud. Helen continued watching the road as if searching for something.

  There was a prickling at the back of my mind.

  There!

  Off it went, and suddenly I was free of the haze that I
hadn’t realized had come over me. It wasn’t until it was gone that I had even realized it had been there. Giving a relieved sigh, I picked up my phone again.

  “Speaker, call Balor,” then I handed the phone to Helen who held it for me.

  “A vampire got off at Pearson at six this evening. Per law, she declared she was a vampire and said she was visiting the Council. Said her name couldn’t be translated but agreed to be registered as Bea.”

  “Bau, you mean,” I said.

  “They sent her picture over, but no one will know if it’s her,” Balor said. “None of us has seen the woman, how could we know?”

  “Send the image to Helen’s phone.”

  “Lucrecia would know, but that might break her,” Helen said.

  I may have seen Bau through Lu, when we had shared blood during all those years. There had certainly been a woman in his memories. I just couldn’t be certain that she had been that woman, because I hadn’t gotten a good look at her in the wreckage of my car.

  “Should I have listened to your interview with Sasha?” I asked.

  “It was your choice not to,” Helen responded. “But this is the kind of break that might have upset Sasha.”

  She pulled out her phone and sighed.

  “Why aren’t you answering, have you seen Peter, did you eat Peter?” she shook her head and texted something back. Then she sighed again. “Oh, here it’s—damn, the image is stuck on the download. Come on. Stupid freaking network. Free image messages my ass! How is it free if you can’t even get it to load?”

  She shook her phone which, in the process of doing so, also sent mine tumbling to the floor. She picked it up and held it out to me.

  “Sorry Balor,” she said.

  “That’s fine. I’ll send one to Quin’s phone as well. Did you have another incident?”

  “We did,” I said.

  “Someone superhero landed on his car.”

  “What’s that? Never mind I’ll look it up. Super… hero… landing…” I could hear him picking away at the keys on a computer. Then there was the distinct crunch of metal and a small sound of appreciation. “That looks fun.”

  “It’d shatter bone, though, right?” I asked.