“There are several African tribes that mix cow’s milk with blood as the main staple of their diet,” Elektra said. “No one calls them monsters.”
“They don’t kill the cows for fun,” Maddy said.
Elektra stared down at her hands. “There are rogue vampires that kill freely to feed, but the great Vampire Houses police their own.”
“Not too well,” Fran said. “That’s why slayers are necessary.”
My eyes were drawn to the approaching waitress. Now that I was out of the ghost realm, I could tell she had red hair—the bright orangey kind—pulled back from her pale face, tied in back. Her eyes were made up in smoky eyeliner, a stab at mystery, and her slash of a mouth was given substance by tangerine lipstick. She stopped beside Elektra, as if lending immoral support. “Can I get you something?”
“Some privacy. They’ve seen through all of you,” Elektra said, “and no one has staked me. I told you I didn’t need an escort.”
The waitress looked over the table, frowning at the untouched drinks. That heightened my suspicion they’d been drugged. I pushed Maddy’s drink over to Elektra. “Here, have this. It hasn’t been touched.”
Maddy looked at me, then her mother. “Yes, you must be thirsty. Take my drink.”
Elektra reached out and claimed the cold, sweaty glass. She lifted it to her lips.
The waitress stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Don’t drink that. It’s probably been spiked. They doubtless mean to knock you out so they can run off with you and have you forcibly deprogrammed.”
“My daughter wouldn’t do that to me.”
I stared at the waitress. “You’re the one who brought the drink. If something’s funny with it, it’s your fault.”
The waitress ignored me. She told Elektra, “This was a bad idea. We need to go.”
“I’m not above kidnapping and torture in a good cause,” Maddy said, “but not to save you. People can only save themselves. I’ve had to accept that if you want to walk to Hell, I have to let you. But if Conrad turns you into what he is, I’ll consider it murder since he’s rolled your mind with his vamp hypnotism, leaving you in no condition to consent.”
“Maddy!” Elektra had a shocked-numb expression on her face. “It’s not like that. We love each other—enough to want to spend forever together.”
“You’d say that, being his thrall.” Her voice hard and cold, Maddy made the word sound like an obscene curse. “The day he turns you, he signs his death warrant. I will be judge, jury, and executioner.” Her eyes had a dangerous glitter. I felt her aura rolling out, thickened with the will to kill. She crossed her arms under her breasts in absolute finality. “If I can’t save you, I will at least avenge you.”
“Whether I want you to or not?” Elektra’s face shut down, locking her feelings away from us—they were her burden to bear. Mother and daughter had that attitude in common. Elektra stood, kicking her chair back with her legs. She nodded at some thought of her own. “This was a mistake. I thought you could be happy for me, or at least understand.”
Maddy stood as well, facing her mom across the table. The candle on the table gave their features a spooky, theatrical lighting.
“I do understand. I know what a vampire really is.” Her voice heated. “I was ten when you moved Conrad in to our home. Do you want to know what he used to do to me when you weren’t around? You want to see the fang scars on my inner thighs? You’re my mom. It was your job to protect me. Would it have even made a difference if you’d known?”
“Y-you’re lying.”
I saw the thralls approaching, falling in behind the waitress and Elektra. Fran and I stood up slowly, getting ready in case a throw-down erupted.
Maddy’s voice got even colder, as if her heart were icing over. “Am I? You know better, somewhere deep inside.”
Without a word, Elektra turned and pushed through her entourage. She headed for the door—the other thralls packed in tight with her—shoving away those that blocked their path. The bouncer saw the commotion and slid off his stool, but seeing the trouble element was already heading for the door, he just let them.
Maddy caught the eye of the bartender, waving a few bills which she dropped on the table between the drinks. She headed for the door with me and Fran right behind her. As we passed the bouncer, he looked at me, puzzled, no doubt wondering how I got inside without him seeing me.
Sorry, trade secret.
We went through the double doors, down the steps, and crunched the gravel of the parking lot under our feet. More cars were pulling into the parking lot. Low-slung and cobalt blue, a Corvette shot in front of us, raising a plume of dust. It was Elektra, taking off like a bat out of hell. I had to wonder if she was running from Maddy’s words, or running to confront Conrad with what she’d learned. Right behind the coupe, a black Nissan NV Passenger van followed. The thing was long, almost a minibus, well able to hold twelve people. The waitress was at the wheel. She flipped us off as she went by, raising more dust.
“See,” I said, “that’s why you never get any tips.”
After the vehicles cleared out of our way, we continued on to the white van.
White van—good guys. Black van—bad guys. The whole world really is black and white. I’d always suspected that those who talked about “shades of gray” just weren’t close enough to see the separation; like pointillism in comic artwork, shading is gray from a distance, but up close, it resolves into black dots on white paper.
“Where’s Faith?” Fran said.
Her question snapped Maddy and me out of our thoughts. We hurried closer to the van, peering inside. Faith was gone. We tried the doors. They were locked. The vehicle hadn’t been broken into. The windows were intact.
“The thralls,” I said, “could they have somehow—”
Maddy whipped her phone out of her pocket. “Good thing I had her give me her number on the way here.” She speed-dialed Faith’s number. We waited. And heard a ringtone—Monster Mash—from within the black, exterminator’s van with the dead plastic rat on top. A moment later, the van’s side door slid open. There was Faith, a few of the slayers from her school, and Van Helsing, holding some sort of long-range listening device like a foam-headed microphone that had been turned into a gun. A cord connected the device to a box with an old-style cassette recorder built in. The same box had headphones plugged into it, the headset worn around Van Helsing’s neck.
“Hey, guys,” Faith was exuberant, all but bouncing in place.
Maddy ended her call, putting her phone away. “Yeah? What?”
“Your mom’s on her way to see Conrad.”
“We know that,” I said.
Faith came closer. “Yeah, but we overheard that driver in the van saying that Elektra has outlived her usefulness and is getting too hard to handle. Conrad’s not going to convert her tonight like she thinks. He’s planning on just plain killing her. The red-headed bimbo is moving up from back-ground vocals to center stage.”
“One star falls,” Van Helsing said, “and another rises. I’ll text you directions to the meet.”
Maddy said a bad word, wheeled about, and lunged to the door of the white van. Fran and I hurried to get in so Maddy wouldn’t race off and leave us behind. Faith managed to climb into the back of the van and slam the door shut as we peeled out, slinging gravel.
She asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Kick ass,” Maddy said.
“Kick vamp ass,” Fran added.
“Keep Elektra alive—if possible,” I said.
“Sounds like fun,” Faith said.
I looked behind us and noticed that Van Helsing and the other slayers were right on our tail. We may have left the bar, but we were headed straight for a Barroom Blitz. The song ran through my head, and in the back shadows of my mind, Taliesina pranced, yapping out a foxy version of the lyrics. Hurtling through the sunset, I rocked my head in time to the beat.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“I’ll take no names. I�
�ll take no prisoners.
I’ll take no crap in ribbons and bows.
I need what I want and I want what you’ve got.
So take the last piece of my soul.”
—Take the Last Piece
Elektra Blue
So much for Maddy’s stoic indifference to her mom’s fate.
The slayer had spent a great deal of energy telling her mom to go get screwed by the bat she rode in on. Now we were racing after Elektra, saving her after all. Maddy had been wounded deep by her mom, and couldn’t forgive her—but couldn’t stop loving her. Easier for Maddy if she could. If her mom dies now, I just know Maddy will blame herself for the rest of her life. Logic has little to do with the heart.
My thoughts turned to Shaun and me—and that skank sorceress making time with him. I mean, Fenn’s cool, not hard on the eyes at all, and he, too, has that bad-boy danger vibe about him. If I’d any sense at all, I’d give Fenn a shot—or Onyx, once he got back from the shadow realm, visiting his dad.
Thinking of Fenn reminded me of a promise I’d made him about the next time I went into action, putting my neck on the line. “Faith, can I borrow your phone?”
“Sure.” She handed it over.
I called Fenn’s number. He picked up on two chimes. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me, Grace.”
“Grace!” he screamed into the phone.
I winced, pulled the phone from my ear, then put it back so I could speak. “Hey, tone it down.”
“Where are you? What happened to you? You were supposed to follow us out of camp and rendezvous.”
Next to me, Faith said, “Oooooo, your boyfriend speaks French. How sexy!”
“Hey, this is a private call.”
She pointed to one ear. “Sorry, superhuman hearing remember? Shall I hum quietly to myself?”
I scowled. “Oh, never mind.” I picked up my conversation with Fenn. “Hey, you remember that promise I made to you about asking for your help?”
“Yeah?” he put a lot of edge on that one syllable.
“Well, I’m headed into some trouble with my slayer friends. Want to rendezvous with me, save a life, and stomp a vamp?”
“Where?” he asked.
Fran looked back at me, a tablet glowing in her lap. The screen above the tiny keyboard displayed a street map as well as GPS coordinates. Fran rattled off the street address and other particulars. I was about to repeat it all when he said, “Got it. Don’t start the fight without me.”
It starts when it starts.
He hung up. I handed the phone back to Faith. She said. “Hey, he hears as good as me.”
“Probably better,” I said. “He’s a shape-shifter. Coyote.”
“If you don’t want him,” Fran said, “I’d throw myself on that grenade anytime—just to help you out.”
For some reason her offer pissed me off, but I smiled sweetly. “I’ll let you know.” On a rainy day in Hell...
“I’m not going to wait for him,” Maddy said. “I can’t take a chance with mom’s life—I’ve got about a hundred thousand ‘I-told-you-sos’ saved up and she’s getting every one.”
“We need some kind of plan,” I said. “It would be nice to know how many more thralls will be inside, and if there’s more than one vamp.”
“It will be sundown by the time we get there,” Fran said. “I say we go and kill anyone coming at us. Treat this like a battlefield situation. Pulling punches can get us killed.”
“Sure,” Faith said. “How about we park a block away, sneak around back, and go in covertly while Van Helsing stirs things up by kicking in the front door?”
Maddy nodded curt confirmation. “I like it. Faith, give him a call. Tell him not to start the action until we’re in place.”
Faith made the call, laid out our strategy, and listened for a while before hanging up. “He says it would be his pleasure, he’s proud of us, and he wants us to use the buddy system so no one faces danger alone. Vamps move too fast to take chances.”
“’Kay,” Maddy said. “Fran and I will be team one. You guys are team two. Faith, try not to accidentally stab Grace or my mom.”
“You know I’m head of my class, right?” Faith sounded offended.
Stab?
I studied Faith’s cane. It was golden bamboo, flattened, with a rubber tip on the oval bottom. She hadn’t been using a cane before, but had one now. Looking closer, I saw there was a hairline seam nine inches down from the top.
As if feeling my stare, Faith turned her face to me. “What?”
“That cane, would it happen to be—”
“My preferred weapon.” She pulled on the top piece and the bamboo parted, revealing several inches of sword—a straight katana—with the wavy, frosted edge that folded metal gets in forging. She slammed the hilt against the sheath, hiding the blade once more.
“Isn’t it dangerous using a sword with no handguard?” I asked.
Her blind eyes stared at me. “What’s your point?”
“Never mind.” I was quickly forming the opinion that all slayers were as crazy as me.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Maddy asked Fran.
“Positive.”
We cruised past the structure. I saw a two-story, white-walled church with steeple, and darkened stained-glass windows front and sides. The sign on the building said: Cypress Avenue Community Church. Italian cypresses lined the edges of the property. Beside the small, country church there was a long structure, probably a fellowship hall for special events and potlucks. It was dark as well. Turning the corner, heading for the back of the property, we passed a realty sign that said the church was for sale.
I wondered if the vamp and his thrall entourage were renting the empty church, or if they’d simply moved in without telling anyone.
The black exterminator van stopped in front of the church. We only had so long to get in place before all Van Helsing broke loose. Feeling the pressure, Madison surged ahead. There was a side road to a small back parking lot. The black van and sports car used by the thralls were there in plain sight.
“I’m just going to drive in there,” Maddy said. “Got a hunch time is bleeding out.”
Our way to the back of the church was closed by a two-sided gate made of steel poles. The gate was secured by a chain and padlock. Maddy braked, killed the headlights, and eyed the obstruction as our vehicle throbbed at idle.
“We could ram it,” Fran suggested brightly.
“And lose all possibility of surprise?” Maddy said. “Assuming they haven’t posted sentries to watch all approaches, we might already be discovered.”
“In case they’re too busy with internal problems,” I said, “we should stay with stealth a little longer. Tell you what: I’ll take care of this quietly so you guys can drive in.”
“What are you going to do?” Faith asked.
I took off the ski cap I’d swiped, and my quilted coat. Unwrapping my wings from my sides, I fluttered some circulation back into them, and deepened my voice to sound mysterious, “I’m going to unleash the power of my shadow force, or something.”
Crouching, I stood on the back seat, my head and shoulders bent just under the roof. I pulled on the weave of space and a tingle raced along my limbs. Being nighttime, the world already looked gray except near the occasional light, but as I crossed over, everyone’s auras ignited around them in bright blues, gold, and purples mostly. With gravity grown weak and my materiality in flux, I jumped and ghosted through the van’s roof. To those inside, it would have look like I’d vanished into thin air.
Once my feet cleared the roof, I let my orange haze of aura leak out my feet. The top of the van was solid under me, just like I wanted, as long as I wanted—or at least as long as my aura stayed strong. I leaped off the roof, soaring toward the locked gate, and found that my revived moth wings gave me a little extra lift.
I touched down, landing by the chain and padlock, and grabbed it to stop myself. As I did, I concentrated on my l
eft hand, pulling out of myself some of that mysterious darkness that lived in the back of my mind with Taliesina. Her golden orb eyes were watching to see what I would do.
Inner darkness filled my left palm, obsidian plasma that leaped up, shaping itself into a shadow sword edged with orange haze—a weapon born of both of my natures. I slid the sword tip gently against the chain, scraping it, and the metal frosted and severed, falling in broken pieces. I’d used this sword on an enemy ninja once, before I knew what it could do. She’d shattered pretty much the same way. I still carried that weight on my soul, though my mind had insisted I’d had no choice back then. It had been kill or be killed. I’d do what was necessary here, but I hoped we could get to Elektra and bail with her without things getting too out of control.
Wishful thinking, Taliesina said.
“Yeah,” I answered, “but it’s the only kind I got right now.”
I extracted the broken chain and crouched down. I let the links drop a small distance from my hand. Once out of my aura the chain fell under full gravity. I was counting on the shortness of the fall to keep the sound down for those on the human side of the veil. That chore done, I eased the right-hand side of the gate out of the way, creating enough room for our van.
As it crept past me, I ghosted through the side of the vehicle and crossed back, becoming visible once more to Fran and Maddy. Though she couldn’t see me, Faith’s face turned toward me as my weight settled into the seat. “You want to tell me what you just did?” she asked.
“Bent the dimensional walls, summoned a bi-polar sword, and sliced open the chain on the gate. We can drive through now.”
“Fascinating,” Faith said.
“Awe and wonder later,” Maddy said. “We’re here to save my mom or avenge her.”
“And kill the vamp if he gets in the way,” Fran added. “That will so help my mid term grades.”
Maddy let the vehicle creep closer, but not too close, not wanting the engine to be heard. Forty feet from the building, she killed the ignition and turned in the driver’s seat to address Faith and me. “Fran and I will go in first through the church’s back door. You guys take out the tires on those vehicles so no one gets away, or can chase us if we want to make a fast getaway.”
Destiny's Child (Kitsune series Book 3) Page 20
