Third Strike

by Heather Brewer

Upon hearing Em’s name—a creature well documented to be the oldest living vampire in existence—the tiny hairs on the back of Joss’s neck stood on end. Normally his dreams didn’t contain such details from his waking life. Normally they were filled to the brim with blood and fear and his guilt over having failed to save his sister. This nightmare was a strange one, for sure. He met her eyes and held her gaze. “Oh? What job did Em give you to do?”

  Sunshine was filtering through the treetops, warming Joss’s shoulders some. A light breeze rustled the woods slightly, the scent of something floral and wild carried on its surface. It was a pleasant day . . . for not being a day at all. Not really. Joss couldn’t wrap his head around the direction of his nightmare, but he was trusting that he’d see where it was headed soon. Cecile’s hands would become filthy claws. Her eyes would swirl into evil, black tunnels. And Joss’s heart would break into a million guilty pieces. It happened. Every time he dreamed about Cecile, it happened.

  “I killed Sirus.”

  At her words, Joss’s jaw fell open. Such a cruel reminder of his subconscious that Sirus was dead. Joss shook his head, his response a whisper. “Did you, now?”

  “He’d betrayed her one too many times. She said she couldn’t trust him anymore, that no one in Elysia could. He had to be stopped.” She nodded, her blond curls bouncing on her shoulders, her pretty eyes so large. Light freckles dotted her nose. Everything but the fangs in her mouth and the words escaping her lips suggested that she was still the same, sweet girl that he had known and loved. She whispered, as if someone might overhear and she wanted this moment to be private between the two of them. “Now Em wants me to kill you, too.”

  The ache in the back of his head from hitting the tree trunk throbbed, and Joss reached up to rub it thoughtfully. Everything about this dream told him that he wasn’t dreaming at all. Was that even a possibility? Cecile was dead.

  Wasn’t she?

  If Cecile was somehow crazily still alive, if she’d actually survived that night of terror from so long ago, it all made perfect sense. A vampire had been killing people in Santa Carla, but the murders had been performed in a way that suggested inexperience. Messy—much like the crayon drawings that Cecile used to make for him. She’d been feeding here in Santa Carla and waiting to do a job for Em, waiting for Sirus and her brother. Waiting to kill.

  He looked into her eyes, examined her lovely face, marveled at the features that were so like his own, a perfect blending of their parents. Cecile was alive. She was a vampire, but she was alive. He hadn’t allowed her to die after all. “Cecile . . . do you . . . do you remember me?”

  She knelt in front of him then and stretched her hand forward, caressing his cheek in such a sweet gesture that Joss felt his eyes moisten with tears. “Of course. Of course I remember you, Jossie. I could never forget my big brother.”

  His tears spilled forth at last and he placed a hand over Cecile’s, closing his eyes. She was all right. He hadn’t let her die. She was alive, after all.

  “But that doesn’t change anything. I have a job to do, Jossie. A very important job.” She pulled her hand away and stood, regret and confusion filling her features. Behind it was determination. “I have to do it. I just have to.”

  Joss blinked up at her, only vaguely aware of the building fire in her gaze. A fire he had seen before, from creatures of her kind. “What job, Cecile? What are you talking about?”

  “It’s too late for talking, Jossie. It’s too late for everything now.” Her words, at first, were hushed. But they soon gave way to a tone that sent a shiver down Joss’s spine. “It’s time for you to die, big brother.”

  Terror enveloped him then. But not at the stance that she’d taken, the words that she’d spoken, or the fangs inside her mouth. Terror enveloped him the moment that he became acutely aware of the wooden stake in the holster on his hip, and he realized that he was going to have to use it.

  16

  REASONING WITH CECILE

  Cecile parted her lips, revealing the sharp fangs hidden inside of her mouth. Joss closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, trying to regain his composure and to find his inner strength for what he needed to do. As he took a deep breath, the sweet smell of vanilla filled his nose. Cecile had always loved the smell of vanilla. She used to take the bottle when their mom was baking cookies and dab a drop behind her ear, like she had seen her mother do with perfume.

  When Joss opened his eyes again, the scene hadn’t changed. Cecile was still standing over him. Her dress blew in the breeze and her fangs glinted in the sunlight. Joss moved to sit up but a surging pain in the back of his head prevented that from happening. His hand quickly found its way to the source of the pain, a large swollen lump under his hair. A lump from where his head had hit the tree.

  A sudden realization fell over him. Joss sat up, in spite of the pain. “Cecile, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

  Cecile furrowed her brow and pursed her lips. “What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong with my eyes.”

  She was absolutely right. Her eyes were almost perfect. Deep, bright, and blue. Not the soulless, black chasms that Joss had come to know in his dreams. The only difference in these eyes from when Joss had last seen them in person was that the innocence held within them was gone. Joss finally knew why they hadn’t changed. Because he wasn’t dreaming. One nightmare had finally come to an end. Another, it seemed, was just beginning.

  “I’m sorry, Cecile!” Joss held his hands up in front of him, pleading. Cecile was a vampire, so he had no doubts whatsoever that she would follow through with her attack, that she would take the life of her brother, a Slayer. But this was his last chance to say the words that had been circling his mind ever since the night. “I’m sorry that I didn’t investigate further that night and learn that you hadn’t been killed, but turned into a vampire. I’m sorry I didn’t have strong enough instincts to determine that something was off about you that night, and to do everything that I could to track down the vampire who’d bit you. I’m sorry. Believe me. I’m so sorry.”

  Cecile’s fangs shrank slowly back into her gums. She tilted her head, her eyes shimmering and focused on her brother. “Why, Jossie? Why didn’t you save me that night?”

  Joss shook his head. “I couldn’t, Cecile. I couldn’t. By the time I saw you—”

  “I wasn’t a vampire yet.” She stomped her foot in a way that reminded Joss of the few temper tantrums that Cecile had ever thrown. She was angry, but she was angry like his sister had been and less like the vampire that she had become.

  “I thought you were dead.” His words were a whisper. As he spoke them, images from the night he’d lost her flashed through his mind. Joss creeping down the hall. Cecile lying on her bed, pale, still. The thin line of blood tracing down her cheek to her pink ballerina sheets. The monster looming over her. It felt like yesterday. “Besides, I was just a boy. A frightened boy who could only sit in the corner and cry and be scared. I couldn’t save you then. . . .”

  Tears welled up in Joss’s eyes, blurring his vision. But not so much that he couldn’t see Cecile move toward him. She threw herself into his arms, clinging to him, soaking the shoulder of his shirt with her tears. Joss embraced her, hugging her so tightly to him that it almost erased from his mind what he was about to do. Almost. “. . . but I can save you now.”

  In an action that threatened to shrivel his very soul, Joss reached down to the holster on his hip and gripped his stake tightly. As he pulled it upward, freeing it from its leather constraints, he told himself that he was doing the right thing. He told himself that the creature that was clutching him so closely wasn’t really his sister at all, but a monster. He told himself that Cecile was better off not living than living as a vampire. He didn’t truly believe any of those things, but he told himself those things over and over again, hoping that somehow, someday, he would come to believe them.

  He lifted the stak
e, uselessly fighting his tears as he gauged the best entry point to reach her heart. Gripping his weapon tightly, Joss squeezed his eyes shut and whispered into her sweet smelling hair, “For you, Cecile.”

  17

  AN UNEXPECTED RELATIONSHIP

  Joss brought his stake down hard and fast, promising himself that he wouldn’t miss, swearing to himself that he was doing the right thing by ending the vampire Cecile’s young life. As his weapon whipped through the air, tears spilled down his cheeks in anguish. Cecile was alive, in a way. She’d been alive this entire time. And he was about to cause her death—the thing that had been the catalyst in his becoming a vampire Slayer in the first place. Irony weighed heavily on him. Almost as heavily as the guilt that was overflowing from within him.

  The stake flew toward Cecile’s back, but just before it made contact, something hit Joss hard in the wrist. He lost his grip and the stake went flying several yards to his right, landing in a tall patch of grass. Joss darted his eyes to the left, to locate whoever or whatever had disarmed him, the night air coolly brushing his bangs to the side. It took a moment to recognize the facial features. It took less time for a cloud of confusion to form inside his mind. Blinking, his eyes found the stake again before returning to Paty, who was standing beside him, chest heaving, eyes full of tears. “Paty, what are you—”

  “Leave her alone, Joss.” Paty crouched and took Cecile into her arms, almost snatching her away from her brother. As she stood, she smoothed Cecile’s blond curls back from her surprised face.

  Joss slowly got to his feet, a strange new tension flooding through his body as he looked at his fellow Slayer cradling his younger sister in her arms. “What are you doing?”

  Paty set Cecile on the ground and moved in front of her, her moist eyes furious as she turned them on Joss. “I swear, if you as much as touch Cecile once more, I’ll rip your heart out!”

  Joss glanced down at Cecile, who was now standing behind Paty, looking angrily at him, as if he’d done the unforgivable. He’d never been more confused. “Paty, you don’t know what’s going on here.”

  “The hell I don’t.” Her tone was bitter and sharp. Every word slashed through Joss’s resolve to stay calm.

  He released a deep breath, urging his muscles to relax. This was Paty. He trusted her. So why did he feel so on edge? “How do you know my sister?”

  “I know Cecile better than anyone. I’m sworn to protect her . . .” Paty straightened her shoulders with a sense of dignity, devotion, and pride. “. . . as her drudge.”

  Drudge. Joss knew that word very well. It was a word that had been used to describe his cousin Henry. It was a word that meant that Paty was a vampire’s human slave. His sister’s human slave.

  Absolute fury enveloped him then, like hot flames licking up his form. “How did this happen?”

  “Late last summer, the day we were all packing up to leave New York, the day before we flew out, I’d decided to duck out and pick up a gift for my niece at the last minute. My shopping trip ended up taking a while and by the time I was heading back to headquarters, the sun was going down. On my way back, I saw a girl. She was just sitting on the sidewalk, crying.” Paty looked down at Cecile then, who curled her tiny fingers around Paty’s hand, squeezing it in hers. Paty shook her head, recalling the day they’d met. “She looked so sad. So alone.”

  Joss struggled to wrap his mind around Paty’s betrayal. The irony that the Slayer Society had assigned Paty to assist in keeping a close watch on Joss due to their inability to fully trust him did not escape him.

  “I offered to help her, but she was inconsolable. So I picked her up to carry her to the police station. I couldn’t leave her there, Joss. She was just a little girl, all alone in Manhattan. I had to help her.” The look in her eyes was almost apologetic. Almost, but not quite. “When I picked her up, she nuzzled into my neck. That’s when she bit me. That’s when I became bound to her and duty sworn to protect her at any cost.”

  Paty had not only betrayed the Society, but had also put the people in Santa Carla in immediate danger by allowing his sister to run wild with her appetite unchecked. Furious, he balled his hands into fists, squeezing them into his sides. “You swore to protect . . . Cecile.”

  Paty offered a curt nod, and no apology or further explanation. “Even from her brother, the Slayer.”

  Joss had to fight to keep any semblance of calm in his tone. He held her gaze, doing his best to reason with her. In the way that a Slayer was supposed to in a situation like this. “Paty, she’s a vampire and she’s controlling you.”

  Paty shook her head. There would be no changing her mind at this moment, no reminding her of the oath that she’d taken to the Slayer Society. Not today. Maybe not ever. Her eyes glinted with stubbornness. “You don’t understand, Joss. You never will.”

  He understood better than she ever could under the veil of fog that a vampire’s power draped over their drudge. It was a veil that enforced absolute control, but Paty couldn’t see that just yet. She was lost in the fog, and Joss’s stake was the beacon that would lead her back to reality.

  “Believe me, I do. She’s my sister. No one on Earth could love her more than I do. That’s why I can’t let her exist like this.” His eyes found Cecile once again, but only for a moment. He couldn’t look at her for very long without aching to embrace the sister that he’d lost those years ago. But this creature, no matter how similar looking, wasn’t Cecile. It couldn’t be. It had fangs.

  The same way that Vlad had fangs. The same way that Sirus had had fangs. When he’d seen his stake in each of them, it had broken him. He’d liked Vlad. He’d trusted Sirus. What did that say about him as a Slayer? Was he still a Slayer, or something else now. Was he changing? And if so, into what? And was it such a bad thing? He was so confused.

  Paty’s words came out in a defensive growl. “You won’t get past me, Joss. Don’t make me kill you. You’re too good a friend.”

  “Did you know that she’d planned on killing me, Paty?”

  Paty set her jaw, which Joss could only take to mean yes. It was astounding how drastically a vampire could twist their drudge’s mind. More frightening than anything that Joss could imagine. “You don’t understand. She’d been ordered to take your life, and then ordered me not to stand in her way. I could only do so much. I warned you to protect your cousin—that’s as much as I could do. She’s not a monster, Joss. She’s just a little girl.”

  “When she’s gone, Paty, you’ll realize that what you’re doing is wrong.” Joss picked up his stake, ready to do what had to be done. “I have to do this . . . for both of you. For all of us.”

  Paty snarled. “Like hell you do.”

  Joss couldn’t recall seeing Paty withdraw her stake, but before he realized, it was there in her hands, and she was moving toward him in a cat-like stance. Joss gripped his stake tightly and countered her moves. They circled one another with eyes locked, like two animals about to engage.

  Paty lunged, striking out at Joss with her stake. He jumped back, holding his arms up in a guarded stance. She moved again, but he dodged it. “Paty, don’t do this.”

  “I have no choice, Joss. She means too much to me.” She lunged again, and Joss moved backward, the tip of her stake just barely catching the fabric of his shirt. The look in her eyes said it was ticking her off that a less-experienced Slayer was able to escape her attacks with such easy flair. Finally, her cool control exploded into anger. “Enough of this!”

  Paty jumped, tackling Joss and pulling him down to the ground. She gripped his wrist, just as he did hers, preventing any advance of the other’s stake. It seemed to Joss that they were at a standstill, wrestling uselessly as Cecile looked on. He wondered briefly if the vampire would join in, come to her drudge’s defense, but Cecile never moved. She merely watched, furrowing her brow, and waited for a victor to declare themselves. It was as if she was torn between he
r mother figure and her brother and couldn’t decide who to root for.

  Joss broke free, but before he could roll away, Paty caught him in the jaw with a punch that made his entire skull feel like it was going to implode. His jaw tingled as he rolled away from her and scrambled to his feet. There was no way that he was going to get out of this with a bit of reasoning. Paty was going to have to be dealt with, in a language that a Slayer like her could well understand.

  Moving as fast as he was able to, Joss threw two quick punches as Paty moved to get to her feet, connecting his right hand to her left eye and then his left hand to the right side of her jaw. Paty scrambled to her feet with a grunt and wiped the blood from her lip with the back of her hand. She looked at the blood and then at Joss. “Well, well, well, looks like you were paying attention during your sessions with Abraham. Just don’t forget, he was my teacher, too.”

  Paty jumped toward him, the bottom of her sneaker making contact with the side of Joss’s head, knocking him to the ground. Joss caught himself with his hands. As he rolled and quickly regained his footing, he felt his palms stinging slightly, and knew that he’d scraped them like crazy on the forest floor.

  Before he could make a move, Paty lunged in with her stake again, aiming for his heart. Joss shot out his right hand and grabbed her wrist. As quickly as he was able, he used her momentum against her and pulled. As she moved past him, he placed a hard kick in the small of her back, crashing her into a tree. Paty swore as she made contact, but Cecile still didn’t move.

  Grabbing a handful of Paty’s hair, Joss slammed her face into the tree several times. She would never stop. Not until he made her stop.

  Her stake tumbled to the forest floor. Once Joss had ceased his assault, Paty crumbled to the ground, her nose split and bleeding profusely. As she slowly got to all fours, she picked up her stake once again.