by eden Hudson
For a second, I know I’m going to pee my pants. What if the woman’s voice is Mom? Sometimes on the nights we get to sleep, I hear Dad talking to her, telling her he’s sorry, but I’ve never heard her talk back.
I’m almost twelve years old, so I know ghosts don’t exist. There are malevolent spirits, demons, and illusions that pose as ghosts, but there aren’t any real ghosts. When you die, you go to Heaven or Hell and you stay there forever. That’s how it works.
But my bladder must not know any of that because it’s pretty sure that we’re about to see a ghost.
Sissy puts her hand up. I stop walking and listen. My eyes adjust to the darkness and my hearing seems to sharpen.
“—into soldiers?” the woman’s voice says. “Making them fight a war they can’t win against creatures they can’t kill? Look me in the eyes and tell me that’s what she would want for her children.”
We’re close. I turn as quietly as I can, searching the dark woods for Dad and the woman.
Dad says, “If we don’t stop Kathan—”
“Stopping him isn’t going to bring her back,” the woman says. “You could save the whole damn world and she’s still going to be dead. Nothing you do will ever change that.”
“I’m not trying to bring her back!”
“What, then? Commit suicide by fallen angel? Dammit, Danny, you’ve got a responsibility to your kids. They need—”
“Don’t talk to me about responsibility,” Dad says.
I take a few steps in the direction of his voice. There. The trunk of a huge, rotten tree was in our line of sight, but now I can see them.
At first, I’m relieved that it’s just a person, not Mom’s ghost.
Then I see who it is—Mom’s friend, the vampire who owned the bakery. Ms. Cranston.
It’s like when we’re in the middle of a battle. The blood drains out of my hands and I feel light-headed for a second, then it feels like I’m on fire. I jump over a fallen log and weave through the trees until I get to them.
“What are you doing here, vampire?” I snap.
“Colt?” Dad says.
“You think you got the right to tell Dad what to do?” I’m so mad at her that my voice cracks. “Come here and try to boss him around when you’re too fucking scared to fight yourself?”
“Colter Timothy Whitney!” Dad grabs my sword arm and drags me away from the vampire. It’s the first time he’s gotten after me since Mikal killed Mom, but I’m too wound up to listen. I don’t even care that I just cussed in front of him.
“Coward!” I yell around Dad at the vamp. “Scared ‘cause you’re going to Hell one way or the other? Why start doing the right thing now, right? It’ll just get you thrown in the Lake of Fire that much sooner. Good! You deserve it!”
Someone else grabs my other arm.
Sissy. She’s helping Dad drag me away, but I’m still hollering at that vampire. The same stuff spit out in different ways.
They’re just going to leave her out here, not even say anything to her. Why aren’t they mad? Don’t they get it? That vampire was Mom’s best friend. She was right across the square when Mikal killed Mom. She probably watched from her bakery’s big front window, too scared to step out into the sun, too scared to sacrifice herself, even if it meant saving somebody she loved.
Tiffani
That damned razor wire. I’d never been corporeal in a mind before, but in Colt’s I bled real blood and my skin shredded into bright flags of pain. Fighting tangled the wire around me, hooked it into my face and arms and legs. It tightened around my stomach. The more I fought, the more it constricted. I couldn’t suppress the primal, animal panic at being trapped and wounded.
It can only hurt you, I told myself. The thought echoed back to me, becoming sound. It can’t kill you.
I grabbed the razor wire and pulled. It cut. Deep. Deeper. Until muscles and major organs were aching in the open air. In other places, the wire dragged my skin with it, tearing the flesh from my bones. My hands shook and slipped with blood, slicing the wire deeper into my palms.
My vision started to blur, but I kept pulling.
I had hoped it would cut through cleanly, but the wire snagged on my backbone. I gritted my teeth and yanked. Felt my spine move inside of me. Black lightheadedness swarmed in.
Damn it, Colt, you know it’s me, I said.
No response.
You know me!
Nothing.
I jerked the razor wire again, pulling until the vertebra ripped loose from my spine and the wire sliced through the meat in the column. Brief, blinding pain, followed by a warm, disturbing nothingness below my ribs.
Instead of bleeding to death, the way I had always assumed a person cut in half would, I was able to turn onto my chest and push up to my elbows.
Stretching for what seemed like miles in front of me was a sea of broken glass. Heat waves rose from the surface.
Hell. I put my face down on my arm and laughed.
Then I pushed back up and started crawling.
Colt
I park my Explorer in front of Lonely’s Tattoo Parlor, grab the gray plastic box I brought with me, then hop out and head inside.
Lonely is perched on his chair, smearing petroleum jelly on a blue-haired faerie girl’s new tramp stamp. The sides of his unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt flutter like wings.
“Welcome back, white knight.” That’s what Lonely calls me—what he used to call everyone in my family. Probably a play on the name Whitney, but it’s hard to say. Crows are weird. “Be with you in the fullness of time. While you’re waiting, try not to piss off my clientele.”
He spends a few minutes putting protective wrap over the faerie’s lower back and explaining NP care instructions. She’s supposed to avoid using her glamour for twenty-four hours or risk warping the ink—which explains why she’s not shimmering right now. When he’s done, Lonely stands up and offers his arm. The faerie straightens her shirt and lets him escort her to the door, hissing at me as she passes.
Once she’s gone, Lonely comes back to the counter.
“You saw that.” I point over my shoulder. “I didn’t do anything.”
“It’s the way you look,” he says. Then he bobs his head at me, half-nod, half-peck. “Here to get that right shoulder-cap?”
I put the box on the counter. “Nah, I’m selling today.”
“Shame.” He twists his lip ring with his split tongue and stares at my left shoulder where he inked the cross and prayer last month. I hate being stared at, but I don’t squirm. If you show weakness, NPs will walk all over you. “You need something to balance out your spirit.”
“I kind of doubt a tattoo’s going to do that.” I push the box across the glass counter. “Human Rights Guy from Kirksville was short on cash, so he traded me this for some shotgun shells. How bad did I get screwed?”
Lonely flips open the latches and checks out the tattoo gun. He snorts. “Mass market. My baby cousin can build better.”
“What’s it worth to you?”
“Chew.”
“Come on. It’s shiny.”
“Racist.” He does another one of those head-bobs. “There’s nothing I can do with it. I’d rather go back to inking with sharpened bones.”
“You know how to use a computer, don’t you?” I say. “Sell it online. I’ll take store credit.”
He considers that one. I’m in here a lot. Especially since I threw Tough out over that Mitzi and Jason thing.
Finally Lonely says, “A free piercing.”
I shake my head. Piercings get ripped out. “Fifty bucks toward ink.”
“My feathered tail. It’s worth thirty brand new.”
“I’ll take thirty,” I say. Then I’ll only have lost ten on the shells.
“Mm, nah,” Lonely says. “Twenty-five and a secret.”
Crows love gossip. I understand how it could give you an advantage—knowing everything about everybody—but none of the times I’ve been in the tattoo parlor have I h
eard any gossip worth five bucks.
Lonely sees me getting ready to say no and he smirks. “This secret is about the other white knight. The one who was driven out into the cold.”
***
I shove my fists deeper into my coat pockets. The bank clock on the other side of the square says it’s thirty-four degrees and just after five in the morning. That means I’ve been freezing my ass off outside this bakery for almost an hour now. When is that vamp going to get back from hunting?
It’s not even the cold that’s pissing me off. It’s being out here lined up against the brick wall like I’m waiting for the firing squad. I wish I could’ve waited in the Explorer, but it’s still sitting out in front of the tattoo parlor. Somebody—probably that faerie with the tramp stamp—slashed the tires while I was talking to Lonely the other day and I won’t have the cash to replace them until after my next deal. But it sure as hell beats me how I’m supposed to get two rolls of F-cord, a case of caps, and thirty blocks of PENO over to North Fork without a vehicle.
I hate this fucking town.
Finally, the vamp shows up. She hasn’t changed at all since I was a kid—long, dyed-burgundy hair in a ponytail, irises the color of faded brass. Grass and dirt stain the knees of her khakis and there’s a little bit of blood on her top lip. Probably from some stupid vampire-wannabe, hanging around the cemetery, hoping to get made, sell their soul for a few more years of not dying. As if life is so great that you would want to prolong it.
“What the hell do you want?” the vamp asks.
Even though I’ve been planning this for a couple days, the question catches me off guard. I imagined a few different ways this could go down, but now that it’s happening I don’t know if I can go through with it. Hell, I don’t even know if I can make myself say it.
“Lonely Pershing says Mitzi lets you listen in while she and Tough are—”
Banging, Ryder’s voice interjects in my brain. Bumping uglies, doing the nasty naked hokey-pokey, fucking all dirty like ferrets that just got out of prison. Don’t be shy, Sunshine. Just say “fucking.” While they’re fucking. This vamp watches while Mitzi and Tough are—
“—are together,” I say.
The vamp rolls her eyes. “Piss off, kid. I don’t have time for a sermon today.”
“No, I’m not—I wouldn’t—” Dammit. This was a great plan. “I just wondered whether Tough was okay.”
“Well, he had a rocky start, but Mitzi got him whipped into a Casanova who can go all night and be ready for another round in the morning, so I’d say he’s better than okay. Maybe even—”
“That’s not what I meant.” My face is probably glowing, as hot as it feels. I clench my fists.
“Piss off.” She goes to the bakery door and pulls out her key ring.
Why the hell did I even come here? It wasn’t like hearing that Tough was safe and happy was going to change the fact that, when this was over, I would still be walking back to a cabin that felt like a mausoleum where I would try to drown my OCD and the—and the nothing, I’m not crazy, I don’t see things or hear things—in Southern Comfort so I could stare at the walls until I couldn’t handle it anymore and I had to go clean, oil, and count every piece of steel in the arsenal.
“Tough thinks he’s so damn smart,” I say. “That he’s beating the system. But he doesn’t get that as long as he’s got a protector, Kathan can give the word and the protector will kill him. He’s being a stupid teenager.”
The vampire looks over her shoulder, sizes me up from head to toe and back. “You should see the view from eighty.”
“I’m older than I look.”
“Yeah?” She laughs. “By how much?”
I can feel my teeth grinding. I should’ve known she wouldn’t care. No one in this town cares what happens to any of us Whitneys, especially not some NP bitch.
But she should. Everyone knows she used to love Mom. Love-love, like lesbian, getting-married kind of love. If anybody in Halo should care, it should be her.
“Tough was her favorite,” I say. “You know he was.”
There’s a metallic snap and her hand comes away from the door with the broken key-head still in her fingers.
Son of a bitch. I can’t believe that worked.
I take a step closer. “Look, vamp, I get that you hated Dad and us kids, too, but if you loved Mom—if you ever even liked her—”
I don’t even see the vampire move, just feel the sting of the slap. My head jerks sideways.
Then she’s standing there glaring at me, a snarl on her lips, that disinterested exterior gone. She can pull that stoic bullshit all she wants, but that’s all it is—bullshit. Deep down, she cares.
I turn around and start the walk back to the cabin. On the way, I work out a new plan, one based around her.
Lonely was right. That secret was well worth the five bucks.
***
It’s sleeting when I pull up outside the bakery, has been on and off since midnight. The shitty weather is exactly what I’ve been waiting for.
I shut off the Explorer and sit there, watching for the vamp and bouncing my leg. My knee bumps the keys, so I have to keep doing it until I can get it to resolve right—an even number of bounces per key-swing, which part of me knows is a losing battle. But the rest of me is pretty sure everything this morning is riding on getting the bump-to-swing ratio right. I know that’s not how things work. I know God directs everything and whether some random thing like breaths or heartbeats or leg bumps to key swings divides out evenly has nothing to do with it.
But I can’t stop. I get like this when a plan is on the verge of coming together, more compulsive than usual. Especially when I haven’t had enough to drink. But I can’t go back to the cabin. I have to be here when the vamp gets here.
Every morning for the past two months I’ve been bugging her about Tough, trying to get her to make a deal with me. Also tracking her a little bit, overnight. When Brady, the guy she’s protecting, is out of town working, the vamp goes to the cemetery, finds a groupie and an empty mausoleum. Tonight, though, only a couple of hardcore groupies were out. Finn, that kid from Tough’s class who got made right after high school, and Logan, that older vamp with the Scottish accent, had gotten there first and taken all the available bleeders.
There’s a streak of motion to my right. She’s back. She stops in front of the bakery and shakes some of the icy rain off before digging into her coat pocket for the key.
I get out of the Explorer and jog up under the awning.
Without even looking my way, the vamp sighs. “Take a hint already, kid.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re older than you look.” She unlocks the bakery and heads inside.
I stick my foot in the door before she can slam it.
“What, kid, what do you want?” she snaps. “The answer is no. It’s no today, it was no yesterday, it’s going to be no tomorrow.”
“Hungry?”
A little crease appears between her eyebrows. “What?”
“Are you hungry?” I push back my coat sleeve and hold out my wrist.
She’s staring, not at my wrist, but at the rest of my body. I try not to squirm, but this look is really intense, like she can see through my clothes.
“Let me guess,” she says. “You’ll let me drink if I spy on your brother for you?”
“Tell me one time if you know Tough’s in trouble. You can even pick the situation. It doesn’t even have to be mortal danger.”
She tilts her head.
“I’ve got blood in the fridge,” she says, but it sounds like she’s trying to remind herself.
“Will it warm you up?” I ask.
She doesn’t say anything, but I know the answer. Lonely told me that only blood from a living sacrifice can heat the undead.
I move closer to her. “One drink, one warning.”
“From your wrist?” she says.
I nod. That seemed like the smartest place wh
en I was coming up with this plan. If I let her drink from the jugular or brachial, I’ll lose positional advantages I might need if this turns into a fight. Giving an NP easy access to my balls isn’t going to happen, so the femoral was out. My off-wrist would give me the best position and protect anything vital.
Finally, the vamp steps back and opens the door wider.
I go inside, trying to keep one eye on her and scope out the bakery for potential threats at the same time. Staircase, blind corner up there coming down the hallway, counter—the display case is see-through, so no cover there—another blind corner at the hall to the bathrooms… How did I not notice what a death trap this place was when I was a kid?
“Give me your wrist,” the vamp says.
I turn and face her. “Agree to the deal first.”
I know there’s no way to hold someone to a deal like this. That’s the fundamental flaw in this plan. I should turn around and walk back out the door right now, but I can’t.
At my side, my thumb starts ticking off fingers. The numbers rattle off in the back of my brain—one, two, three, four, three, two, one, two—but they’re doing the opposite of calming me down. The longer the silence drags out, the more I wish I could pace or move around, burn off some of this anxiety.
“Fine,” she says. “If you let me drink off you today, I’ll tell you one time when Tough’s in trouble.”
I hold my arm out to her, take my opposite hand out of my pocket just in case.
The vamp grabs my elbow and forearm. She lifts my wrist to her mouth and bites.
My hand spasms into a fist. It hurts like a bitch, like cold steel pins jammed in between my tendons. But her lips are so soft.
Then she starts sucking. I can feel every taste bud on her tongue sliding over my skin, massaging my veins to keep the blood flowing. Not that she’ll have a problem, the way my heart is pounding.
I can barely breathe anymore. Every part of me feels like it needs to move—run, jump, scream, something. Staying still is driving me crazy, but I know if I move, she’ll use bite sedative and I won’t be able to feel this anymore.
