Crusade

by Nancy Holder; Debbie Viguié

  She heard footsteps within, and a moment later the door opened and Brooke stood, blinking at her in shock. Brooke’s big green eyes widened, and she gave a squeal of joy. “Oh, my God! Jenn, is it really you?”

  Jenn threw her arms around Brooke, a choking sob escaping her. Her friend hugged her back before breaking away and pulling her into the white-and-black marbled foyer. The house was almost as familiar to Jenn as the one she had grown up in. She had to turn it into a fortress where she could make a stand. Straight ahead, a wood staircase with a floral runner led up to the bedrooms. To the left was the dining room and the kitchen, with a set of stairs that led down to the garage. Off to the right was the living room, where they had watched hours of movies, played on the piano, had pillow fights, and told each other their deepest secrets. The familiar odor of Brooke’s parents’ cigarette smoke lingered in the air. Once upon a time Jenn’s biggest worry in life had been dying of cancer from secondhand smoke. It seemed forever had passed since then, like her memories were all stories Jenn had heard about somebody else’s life.

  Brooke squeezed her wrists, pulling her toward the living room, but Jenn stood her ground. Oblivious, Brooke kept pulling at her. “What happened to you? All your parents would ever say was that you had gone away to school. I knew that couldn’t be true, though. You wouldn’t have left without telling me or texting, calling, something,” Brooke said, bewilderment and hurt in her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jenn said, looking back over her shoulder in the direction of the foyer. “I don’t have time for explanations. I need your help.”

  “Why? What’s going on?” Brooke’s voice rose, alarmed.

  “There’s no time. It was stupid to come here. I had nowhere else to turn, and you popped into my mind.” Jenn was babbling, but she couldn’t stop herself. The vampires could be just outside the front door now. She had to pull it together.

  “Simon, something’s wrong,” Brooke said, dragging Jenn into the living room.

  A tall, lanky, dark-blond guy around their age, wearing a black button-down shirt and jeans, stood up from the couch. Brooke crossed to him, and he put an arm around her shoulder.

  Whoa, Brooke’s got a boyfriend and he’s a hottie, Jenn thought. It was totally inappropriate, but he’d startled her.

  “This is Simon. Sy, this is my best friend in the entire world.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  Jenn was panting, but she took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m being chased.”

  “Who by?” Brooke asked in alarm.

  “Show me who. I’ll kick their ass,” Simon said.

  Oxygen rushed into her lungs as she leaned forward. She just needed a moment to catch her breath.

  “You can’t,” she said. “They’re vampires. They’ll only be about a minute behind.”

  Brooke chuckled and rolled her emerald eyes. “Well, then, Simon will kick their asses.”

  “No, you can’t,” Jenn began. Then she stopped abruptly as her eyes fell on the necklace Brooke was wearing. It was a bat with a heart clutched in its claws. Girls wore that when they were holding out for vampire boyfriends. But Brooke clearly already had a boyfriend, so what . . . ?

  She locked eyes with Simon, and he smiled.

  “Oh, no,” Jenn whispered, backing furiously away.

  “What’s wrong?” Brooke asked. Then she looked down at her necklace. “It’s cool. Simon’s cool. Jeez, did they totally brainwash you while you were away?”

  Jenn turned, praying she could reach the door first. Something grabbed her ponytail and yanked hard enough to pull her off her feet and send her crashing down onto the floor on her back.

  She gasped as all the wind was knocked out of her. She stared up at Simon and heard him chuckle low in his throat. Maybe he was savoring the irony: She had been running away from vampires, and now she was locked in with one of them.

  Savoring the irony, or anticipating a fresh kill.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Never again will you be alone

  This we pledge with blood and bone

  So lay you down in peace to rest

  Join the ranks of the blessed

  And while you’re dreaming in your bed

  Remember us, the proud undead

  Answer you now the siren call

  Into every life, night must fall

  OAKLAND

  HEATHER

  Heather lay in the darkness and wondered where she was. Her lungs were aching, and she was struggling for every breath. She was afraid to move to get her inhaler until she figured out what was happening.

  A metallic smell like tin foil surrounded her; she could see nothing but blackness. She remembered being thrown over the vampire’s back. Then she must have fainted, because she couldn’t remember anything after that. How long had she been unconscious?

  A door opened; voices drifted toward her. She lay still and tried to make out what they were saying.

  “Who knows why she does anything, dude,” a guy’s voice said. He sounded like a surfer.

  “It’s a mistake, taunting a hunter like that.” Another guy—this one sounded older and grumpier. “And why’d she throw down the gauntlet and tell her where to find little sis?”

  Relief washed over Heather. Jenn is alive. Jenn knew where she was, and she would find her and save her and kill the vampire who had done this to her.

  “She must have some sort of plan.”

  “I think she’s just being a careless, arrogant idiot.”

  “Don’t seem like that type to me. She’s smart, that one. Way smarter than us.”

  “You calling me stupid?”

  “Nah, bro, I’m just saying she’s like some kind of genius.”

  “Listen! Do you hear that?”

  Silence descended, and all Heather could hear was her own wheezing breaths. She wanted her inhaler so badly, but she didn’t dare move to get it.

  “That’s the girl breathing, dude.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Asthma.”

  “Asthma,” the older, grumpier one said sarcastically. “What a crock. That’s just an excuse to get out of doing any real work.”

  “No, asthma’s, like, serious. My sister had it. She used to wake up in the middle of the night, like, strangling. My mom took her to the emergency room a bunch of times. I thought it was going to kill her,” the surfer said earnestly.

  “Did it?”

  “Nah, I killed her instead. You know, after I was converted.”

  “Nice.”

  Heather clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Terror washed over her. Jenn, get me out of here! she begged silently, tears pouring down her cheeks.

  “Let’s get her on the plane and then go hunt some dinner,” the older one said.

  “You’ll have to go without me. She wants me to go with her to New Orleans.”

  “No way. You? Why?”

  “Maybe she thinks I’m hot.”

  “Yeah, right. As if.”

  The ground shifted suddenly beneath her, and she felt like she was being hoisted into the air. Suddenly the platform under her right hand dropped downward and then stopped so abruptly her teeth slammed together with a clacking sound, and pain exploded in her skull.

  “Hey, man, careful!”

  Then there was forward movement, and she realized she must be in some sort of box. They’re going to put me in with the cargo! she thought, panic flooding her. Maybe if I scream for help, someone will hear me and come running. Then what? The vampires will just kill them and I’ll be no better off.

  They carried her up what felt like a ramp and then set the box down roughly. A crack of light appeared near her knee, and by it she saw bars. She wasn’t in a box; she was in a cage like an animal. They had thrown a black tarp over it to keep out the light. She saw beige carpet on the floor outside. So, not the cargo storage, which relieved her a little bit. She heard retreating footsteps and then after a minute nothing else.


  She felt for her inhaler and jerked it out of her pocket. A couple of puffs and the medication began to ease the constriction in her chest and throat.

  As her breathing became easier, other thoughts crowded her mind. Chief among them was wondering what had happened to Jenn. What her captors had said led her to believe her sister was alive. But was she, and if so, what kind of shape was she in?

  Heather had been thrilled when she saw Jenn fight the three vampires. Her sister was amazing, like every superheroine, but even better. She hoped that she was safe, and while she desperately wanted Jenn to find her and rescue her, part of her was terrified that if Jenn tried, then she would be killed. Heather couldn’t live with Jenn’s death on her head.

  From there her thoughts turned to their father, and rage filled her. If Jenn’s death would be on anyone’s head, it would be his. How could he have done that to his own daughter?

  How could he do that to us?

  Shifting in her cage, she shivered as something sick twisted inside her. She strained her ears but could hear nothing. The patch of carpet outside the cage remained unchanged. Still she knew, somehow, that the woman, the vampire who had taken her, approached.

  A door slammed; she heard the sound of an engine, and a moment later the plane lurched forward. They rolled for a few minutes and then stopped again. The engines built up a steady whine, and then the plane shot ahead. One bump, two, and then they were soaring skyward at a steep angle.

  Heather slid to the back of her cage. She could feel the bars pressing into her spine, and she gritted her teeth. After what seemed a lifetime, the plane finally began to level out.

  Suddenly the tarp was ripped off of her cage, and she blinked furiously in the sudden brightness. She was on board some sort of fancy corporate jet. She glanced upward and saw the woman vampire smirking down at her, hands on her hips. Her lips gleamed a brilliant red; Heather prayed that it was lipstick.

  “It’s time for the in-flight meal,” she said, tongue licking her lips. Her eyes were the same color as her mouth and glowed with a ruby light. Smiling wickedly, she gave Heather a little wink that sent chills up her spine. Then she reached for the door of the cage.

  Heather took one look at her fangs and began to scream.

  MADRID

  SKYE, ERIKO, JAMIE, ANTONIO, HOLGAR,

  AND DR. MICHAEL SHERMAN

  Facing the hidden doorway, Skye reared back from the darkness. “I don’t want to go in there,” she muttered. “I can feel . . . something.”

  “You can do it, witchy,” Jamie said, turning on a flashlight and shining it into the dark. “See, no bogeyman, at least none that we didn’t bring with us.”

  Antonio had just about had enough of Jamie’s insults and insinuations. He balled his hands into fists and squeezed until he cut his own palms open with his fingernails. The scent of blood did nothing to calm him down. Next to him Holgar stiffened and threw him a quick glance as he, too, reacted to the smell.

  And that actually made Antonio relax, because, after all, Jamie was right. They were the bogeyman. Maybe it was time to stop running from that truth and embrace it.

  He shook his head. It was the monster part of him that was talking. It wasn’t the seminarian who loved God or the man who loved Jenn. It was the monster who loved blood and death and carnage. He couldn’t let it take control, not now, not ever.

  “I’m the Hunter. I’ll go first,” Eriko whispered.

  Her face was inscrutable, and it was impossible to tell whether she was talking to him, to Jamie, or to the group at large. She stepped forward into the inky darkness, and Jamie trailed right behind her, like a puppy, with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  Skye followed with Holgar. That left Antonio, whose hunting partner was in the States, alone. It fell to him, then, to watch out for Michael Sherman. From the way the scientist was sweating, Antonio could tell that he loved the dark even less than Skye.

  He put a hand on the man’s shoulder and felt the frightened pounding of the blood in his veins. The stench of fear from the conspirators throughout the library was as nothing to the fear coming off the man beside him.

  Antonio winced, wishing there was something he could say or do to calm the geeky scientist. With the smell of his fear—and his illness—so strong, they would come under detection far sooner. Antonio should have asked Skye to put a spell on Dr. Sherman, a sort of magickal muscle relaxer.

  You could mesmerize him. The voice came from somewhere deep inside of him, somewhere he didn’t like to go. He rejected it instantly, but it only came back tenfold. You would be saving his life, and Skye’s and the others. What’s the difference whether Skye puts a spell on him or you do, just so long as he calms down a bit?

  “What’s wrong?” Sherman cried, staring at him in panic.

  Antonio realized he was shaking. Many times—dozens, a hundred—he had caught himself starting to mesmerize Jenn. It was like the vampiric version of coming on to her—enticing her, lowering her defenses. He had sworn he would never, ever do that to her. And so he tried not to do it to anybody, except other vampires. “Nothing,” he said.

  The man didn’t believe him. Sherman turned ash white and began shaking too. Antonio had seen the reaction dozens of times from soldiers on the battlefield and from men faced with monsters.

  He could do something about it. And, he admitted, he should.

  “Nothing is wrong,” Antonio murmured, staring deeply into the man’s eyes.

  Confusion flitted across the man’s face. “Are you sure?”

  Antonio reached out and put a hand on Sherman’s shoulder. Laserlike, he locked his gaze. To give more force to the charm, he let the monster out, just a little bit. He could feel his teeth lengthening, knew his eyes were changing. Sherman stared at him, fascinated, as some stared at snakes that were about to attack them.

  “Listen to me, professor,” Antonio said, his voice a whisper. “There is nothing wrong. You are not afraid of going in there. Only by going in there will you be safe. You must find the virus. You can save the world. You must . . . trust . . . me.”

  “I must . . .,” Sherman said, his face now slightly slack and his eyes unfocused.

  “. . . trust me.”

  “Yes.” Sherman’s breath was rank.

  “Good, then come with me now,” Antonio said, taking a step forward into darkness.

  Sherman followed.

  OAKLAND

  JENN

  “Jenn, oh my God, did you trip?” Brooke cried.

  On her back in Brooke’s living room Jenn stared up into Simon’s evil red eyes and knew that she was dead unless she could get away from him. The very first thing they taught at Salamanca, before they taught street fighting or tactics or anything else, was how to run and how to escape.

  Jenn’s fighting skills might have been only mediocre, but one thing she knew how to do was get away. The vampire leering at her expected her to try and stand up, or roll to the side. She did neither. She pushed off from the ground with her arms and legs and did a backward somersault, nailing him in the face with her knees as she did so.

  Even a centuries-old vampire couldn’t keep himself from reacting when something hit him in the face, even if no pain or damage was inflicted. It was primal, the last vestige of the human he had once been.

  So Simon jerked his head backward and stood up, backing away from her. It was the split second she needed to finish her roll, spring to her feet, and race for the staircase.

  “Jenn, stop!” Brooke yelled, still in the living room. “It’s really okay!”

  Behind her she heard a shout of surprise followed by laughter. Simon had expected her to try for the front door again and assumed she had chosen poorly in making for the stairs. But she knew this house well, hopefully better than he did.

  At the top of the staircase she turned left and flew into Brooke’s father’s home office. With relief she saw that it was the same as when she’d snuck in with Brooke to play hide-and-go-seek when they
were kids. The same old-fashioned wooden kitchen chair sat in front of the desk, its back a square of eighteen-inch long slats. He had always claimed the hard chair was better for his back than the cushy one sitting in the corner piled high with books, his ashtray, and a pack of Marlboros. He used to say the wood chair saved his posture, and his cigarettes saved his sanity. Brooke had begged both her parents to quit, to save their lungs.

  As Jenn laid hands on the chair, she hoped it would save her life.

  She knocked it over and put her booted foot down on it. She grasped the first slat and yanked hard. For a moment she didn’t think she was strong enough. Then the wood groaned and finally gave way with a crack. She ripped it free and then moved on to the next slat. It gave way more easily than the first. She grabbed the third, ripped it free, and heard the front door open and then close.

  She froze, listening for a sound, but heard none. Had the other vampires finally caught up to her? She gathered the three stakes in her hand. She didn’t have time to get more. There were three vampires.

  Three vampires, three stakes. It had to be enough.

  Don’t miss, Jenn.

  She heard the stair third from the top creak once, twice.

  Two vampires upstairs. That left one downstairs. Probably Simon. Would he hurt Brooke?

  Jenn wedged herself into the gap between two bookcases that were to the right of the door, and waited. She heard the door to Brooke’s room open. Next she heard them checking the guest room.

  She held one stake in her right hand and two in her left and tried to still her breathing. The door swung all the way open. The first vampire, Kyle, strode into the room, eyes forward. Dora followed, and Jenn leaped out. She plunged the stake into Dora’s heart and ran out of the room through the resulting cloud of dust. She jumped to the side and dropped to the floor. When Kyle ran out, she tripped him.

  Vampires could move at blinding speed, but gravity treated them the same as any other creature of the same mass. Right before the Curser hit the ground, she was able to angle the stake under his heart.

  She coughed as dust choked her and filled her lungs. She rolled over onto her hands and knees, retching and trying not to think about it. She managed to drag herself to her feet after a few seconds, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. She still clutched the final stake in her hand.