“Now we leave this place and destroy the evidence,” Reece says.
“What evidence?” Wyatt looks down at Abby’s steaming body.
“That,” Reece says, and the way he says it lets me know I’ll always hate him, until the day I die—again.
Or he does.
Whichever comes first.
Chapter 26
“Hold on, hold on, hold on,” I snap from my inglorious seat on the wet bathroom floor. I stand and shove them both away from Abby’s body with a strength I never knew I could possess. “This isn’t evidence; this is my friend. This is my best friend.”
Wyatt says, “Nora, she’s tried to kill you, by my count, like six times today alone. And she literally just tried to break me in half. What do you think she’s going to do tomorrow? And the next day?”
I stand over her, nonplussed. “That was when I was human, Wyatt. And if you’d turned a little earlier, you probably would have done the same thing.”
He shakes his head, his unsightly red skin already healing from the holy water bathtub trip.
I look at Abby lying on the floor, her face a mass of boils, her hair choppy and short where half of it has burned away (oh, she’s gonna kill me—if she lives, that is), her shoulder a red, ghastly thing, her clothes tattered, the skin underneath covered in welts.
“The only reason she’s lying here in the first place is because you pulled her out of that tub, Wyatt. Remember that? You’ve already saved her once today. Now you want to get rid of her like some piece of trash all of a sudden? What’s gotten into you?”
He rubs his head, shakes it, like he can’t believe what I’m suggesting. His eyes are full of wonder, then pain, then shame, then anger, then . . . confusion. (Hey, I know the feeling!)
“I can’t believe you, Wyatt. This was your girlfriend once upon a time! You two were intimate. Remember? Think about it—is this really someone you want to do away with? Forever?”
He clings to the shredded bathroom wall, grout and concrete dust turning to mud on his long fingers. He seems unable, maybe even unwilling, to look at Abby.
Reece says nothing, merely watches our sad little drama unfold as I kneel on the floor to touch Abby’s cheek.
It is hot, no doubt, but alive.
And as I watch, I can see the skin starting to heal, to grow less pink, the boils no longer pulsing now.
I put my finger beneath her bent nose. She’s still breathing. I snap my finger next to her ear, and she flinches, just the tiniest bit—just enough to let me know she’s still in there somewhere.
“We can’t let her die like this,” I insist. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Reece looks at me curiously. Just then sirens wail, and his panicked face takes on an almost feral look. “It’s too late now anyway.” He seems almost disappointed we won’t be disposing of anybody anymore. “Grab her, Wyatt, and both of you follow me. Quickly now. I’m tired of fighting and don’t wish to take on the entire Beverly Hills police force if I can avoid it.”
As Wyatt reluctantly picks up Abby and slings her over his shoulder like a big, red, steaming duffel bag, I reach for one of the water pistols in my pocket.
Reece leads us out of the room, down the stairs, and straight to his car. Even with a trio of half-vampires straggling behind him and sirens blaring just down the street, Reece has the presence of mind to turn to me and slap the gun out of my hand with one effortless, perfectly aimed swipe. “Where we’re going,” he says ominously over his shoulder, “you’ll want me around. Trust me. I know you don’t believe it now, but you will once we get there.”
“Where are we going anyway?” I ask fifteen minutes later, once the coast is clear and we’re barreling down the 101 heading west.
I’m riding shotgun, strapped into the seat so tightly I couldn’t go anywhere even if I wanted to.
My body feels leaden, each muscle sore.
Wyatt is directly behind me, enduring his own hellish transformation, with Abby just behind Reece, beyond pain, beyond consciousness—partway between human and what she is—what we all are—destined to become.
The sleek sports car with the black-tinted windows roars down the freeway, deserted at this time of night, speeds reaching ninety, sometimes one hundred miles per hour as we race toward parts unknown.
“She needs expert help if she’s to heal properly,” he explains as if we’re a nuisance and he’d rather just keep driving. “The kind of help only the Council of Ancients can provide.”
“I know I’m a little out of it,” I croak, barely finding the strength to speak, “but did you just say . . . Council of Ancients? You mean, they really do exist?”
“Of course they do,” he snaps impatiently (I realize this is his default setting, not sure how I ever missed that before), changing lanes to fly past an eighteen-wheeler going too slow in the right-hand lane—at eighty-seven miles per hour. “You didn’t get entirely everything wrong in those silly books of yours.”
“But why are you taking us there?” I ask, ignoring his blatant cut down. (Trust me, I’ve heard worse.)
He sighs, hand steady on the wheel as my eyes flutter open and shut intermittently, completely out of my control.
It’s like I’ve been awake for seventy-two hours straight and am starting to zone out without rhyme or reason. Then I realize it must be the vampire in me, short-circuiting everything I’ve ever known.
“Believe it or not, Nora,” Reece says, not without some obvious discomfort, “you are not the only one at fault in this whole mess. I too have sinned: sinned against my tribe, my kind, and the laws set down by the Ancients themselves.”
“You?” Wyatt says from the backseat, a wary look on his face. “The great and mighty Reece Rothchild screwed up? How so?”
“You, actually,” he says to Wyatt, giving him a vicious case of side-eye in the rearview mirror. “It has been forbidden since the great Overabundance Act of 1990 to turn any new males into vampires. There are simply too many of us as it is. By turning you, I too have sinned. I too must face the wrath of the Ancients.”
“You too?” I sputter. I am fading fast but still managing to grasp the logic of what he’s laying down. “Who else sinned?”
“Why, you, Nora, of course,” he says, as if it gives him great comfort to deliver the news that I’ve been a very bad girl. “You broke the code, you threatened to publish it to the world, and what’s worse, you killed one of your own.”
“Killed? Who’d I kill?” I’m an author, for Pete’s sake; I’ve never hurt another living soul, let alone killed a person, in my entire life.
“Have you already forgotten about poor Bianca and that desk leg you shoved through her heart back in the warehouse?”
“That was before! I was human then. I was a mortal who could die, and she knew that. Plus, your beloved girlfriend was trying to kill me! Have you already forgotten that darling little detail? Poor Bianca, my left foot!”
Reece gives me that famous smile. “That’s not the way I’ll be telling it to the Ancients.”
“You creep!” Wyatt shouts from the backseat, weakly kicking the polished leather Reece is sitting on. “I saw the whole thing. Bianca was trying to kill Nora; Nora was human then, and she was just trying to defend herself.”
“You?” Reece sneers, as if he has something unpleasant on his shoe he can’t get off. “You’re hardly what I’d call a reliable witness, dear boy. You were barely conscious at the time, you blithering fool. It’s bad enough I have to suffer for my sin. I’m not going to suffer alone. The harder they punish Nora, the less likely they’ll be to punish me.”
Wyatt fusses a little longer, I’ll give him that, but by this point I’ve all but given up.
I don’t care what happens to Reece; I can’t believe I ever did.
Heck, right about now I don’t even care what happens to me.
I feel . . . not good.
It’s like an instant flu bug, gone straight to my head, my throat . . . my heart.
> Something is happening inside me—something uncontrollable, wild, and angry.
One second I’m short of breath, gasping for air; the next I’m relaxed and euphoric, absolutely high; then it’s right back to some kind of panic attack for my lungs.
I feel nauseated, sore, lightheaded, and . . . amazing?
I’m smiling even as tears roll down my face, flinching as elation floods my body, quivering from head to toe as I bliss out in the buttery leather of the seat beneath me.
It’s the purest definition of bittersweet, this leaving my old me behind and embracing the new.
“I never did like you,” I murmur, succumbing to the agony, the ecstasy, the pain, and the delight as they consume me all at once.
“The feeling’s more than mutual, Nora, but say no more. We have several hours to travel before we arrive at the Council of Ancients. That should be just enough time for you to turn completely and accept—”
There is more, but the exhaustion has finally overtaken me. Gladly, I succumb to my body’s need for sleep, never regretting for one second that I won’t get to hear the end of another one of Reece’s grand soliloquies . . .
Chapter 27
I awake to the sound of tires crunching on gravel and light so strong it seems to be pouring through the heavy tint of Reece’s Mercedes windows and piercing my very skull. I blink, raising my hands against the sun’s blinding rays, and someone hands me a pair of thick, wraparound sunglasses from the glove box.
“Here,” Reece says with little emotion, “these will help protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“Your new eyesight,” he says impatiently, and I notice we are on a back road now, surrounded by trees.
I slide on the sunglasses and feel instant relief.
“Is it daylight already?” I ask rhetorically.
“No,” he answers quietly, and with my normal vision restored by the sunglasses, I can see we’re on another deserted stretch of open highway. “But vampires can see in the dark, so at night it will be bright like it’s daytime. Welcome to the fold, Nora.”
It’s so amazing to me that the dark could feel so light. I can’t help but wonder what the light will feel like when the sun finally does rise. “Ugh, don’t remind me.”
He smiles, and for the briefest moment I can put behind me the horrible things he’s done—the wretched things he’s made me do—and see the handsome young man who showed up at my book signing that fateful night only a few days ago.
The plunge back into my past makes the hard, blunt edges of my reality all the more difficult to focus on.
If only I could go back and start over. If only I could ignore Reece’s chocolate-brown eyes, his chiseled cheekbones, his graceful style, but then . . . what? He still would have gotten to me and seduced me or at least tricked me into writing the book for him.
I was played, straight up-and-down dirty, and the shame burns more because I leaped so willingly into his little scheme.
“You of all people should be grateful,” he’s saying, his speech only slightly slurred through the ravages of his half-seared face. “Now you can truly write from a vampire’s perspective.”
“That’s rich.” I snort. “Have you even read one of my books? I mean, not just to trick me into thinking you have, but . . . all the way through?”
He shrugs, easing the car up past ninety miles per hour as the grade in the road levels out.
I know California is hilly and wonder exactly where we are.
The night is so dark, the road so barren, the sky so empty, we could be anywhere: north, south, east, west.
We could have been driving around in circles all this time, for all I know, or headed to Canada or Texas!
“God no,” he says in answer to my question. “I could barely get through one chapter before I had enough. Why?”
“Because if you ever bothered to read one of my books, you would know that my main character, Scarlet Stain, isn’t a vampire. She’s a vampire hunter. Duh!”
“Well, maybe now you’ll have a little more sympathy for your villain. What’s his name? Count Fichus? Count Rictus?”
“Count Victus,” I correct, looking out the window to see yet another patch of identical roadside emptiness fly past the heavily tinted windows. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Almost there,” he answers without answering, a specialty of his. “Almost there.”
As he concentrates on the driving, I look behind me to see Wyatt, sleeping, still clutching the cheap bath towel from the motel room. While it is saturated through with deep-red blood, his skin looks mostly healed. In fact, I’d say he looks better than ever. The slight smile on his face, the upturned lips, and healthy glow of his olive skin suggest he’s experiencing that same bittersweet bliss I felt before napping out. I can’t see his back, but as he sleeps, he doesn’t seem to be in any noticeable pain. His color is back, his flesh alive, his breathing regular.
Passed out next to him and looking really uncomfortable strapped into the backseat, Abby is not so lucky. Although her skin looks less red now, her breathing is still shallow, her skin mottled, her clothes tattered and revealing large scars that look like they’ll never go away.
I turn back around in my seat and watch the mountains rise in front of us. Reece is focusing intently on the road ahead, his face a mask of pain and regret tinged with that smirk of confidence he just can’t seem to wipe away, regardless of the dire circumstances we both seem to be in.
“How do you feel?”
Is that the faintest trace of . . . concern I hear in his voice? Probably not, but still. At this point I’ll take whatever I can get.
I should feel awful. I mean, I’m a vampire, right? But I actually feel . . . great. Like I’ve just slept for the entire weekend and gotten up three hours before my alarm goes off on Monday morning, ready to run a 5K before homeroom.
I open my mouth to complain but can’t. “Pretty good,” I admit, the faintest trace of a smile at the corner of my lips.
“See what you’ve been missing all this time?” he asks knowingly, his grip firm on the wheel as we continue to speed across the country toward God knows where to greet God knows what.
“That remains to be seen.” I sigh.
“Oh, I think you’ll be surprised by the world that awaits you. If the Ancients let you live, of course.”
His words echo through the car, sober and severe. “One last step before your transformation is complete.”
Then he lightly taps the leather armrest between us, and it hisses open on state-of-the-art hydraulics.
Attached to the upper panel are several IV bags full of what looks like rich, thick blood.
“I’m a little occupied,” he says. “Help yourself.”
I grab a bag, the metal clip clicking off the hanging rack like a bag of chips in a vending machine. There is a straw affixed to the bag, like a giant vampire juice box, just the thing for those late-night picnics.
“Like this?” I ask, taking off the silver seal of the straw.
He doesn’t bother glancing over.
“I’m not your father,” he says a tad viciously, that nasty streak bubbling to the surface again. “What will you do when I’m not around to protect you?”
I shrug. “Kick up my heels?” I wrap my mouth around the straw and give it a good—
Whoa, this is some grade-A, primo refreshment here!
I suck ravenously, the dense liquid seeming to evaporate in a blissful taste sensation the minute it hits my tongue. I feel a vague pressure in my upper jaw, like the first few minutes at the dentist’s office when he’s probing your teeth with that little pick. Reaching up to my mouth, I feel my fangs protruding.
I can’t believe this is actually happening.
I.
Have.
Frickin’.
Fangs!
The blood doesn’t fill me up so much as . . . satisfy me.
I can’t feel anything in my stomach, but I’m full and my thirst ha
s been quenched.
Completely. Absolutely.
Still I reach for another bag and drain it dry, the life source flowing through me like water down a theme park flume ride, gushing into my dry cells, plumping them up, fleshing them out, making them—making me—feel suddenly complete.
Only when I reach for the third bag does Reece say, “Save some for your friends! God, there’s nothing worse than a greedy vampire. Well, except for a new greedy vampire, I suppose.”
I pull my hand back guiltily, like the party guest caught reaching for the last cupcake. The hydraulic gears maneuver the leather armrest back into place until it looks like, well, just another $3,000 imported car armrest.
“Nifty,” I say. “Even James Bond doesn’t have one of those.”
“I’d kick Bond’s butt,” Reece says, a cocky grin playing against his half fangs.
I chuckle, blood-buzzed and in a forgiving mood. “We’ll just have to see about that—”
Chapter 28
Blinding lights cut me off midsentence, jarring me even through the heavy coating on my new sunglasses. I wince and instinctively shrink back from the lights, scrambling to pull as far away as I can, but my ultrasafety seat belt snags and keeps me in place. I sit there and stare, unblinking, a deer frozen in the headlights.
Reece hits the brakes immediately, plunging all of us forward against our seat belts. The sound of our clattering teeth is almost as loud as his squealing tires on the empty pavement. The car doesn’t stop instantly, like it might in a movie or some pricey sports car commercial, but instead fishtails awkwardly, the heavy back end coming around to meet the front as we slide sideways. The oncoming lights shine straight into my eyes.
Still we slide, the rush of momentum carrying us forward haphazardly until my door panel crashes into the bright lights, shutting them off and sealing me in with a gasping crunch. Metal slams on metal as the door bends inward, the interior of Reece’s car melting like butter.
The Vampire Book of the Month Club Page 14
