A Secret to Die For (Secret McQueen) (7 page)

“That was good, you did the smart thing.”

“I was going to go ask my neighbor if their TV was working, but I thought you’d get mad.”

I really was the adult here.

“I would have. You were right to stay here.”

“Where are we going?”

“Some friends and I are looking for someone, and we think you might be able to help.”

Holden snorted, not even trying to suppress the noise.

Whatever else he might think about my father, Sutherland
was
a vampire. If we could use Clementine and Reggie for help, we could certainly use Sutherland. One willing vampire was as good as the next.

“I can help?” Sutherland seemed eager to lend a hand. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but when he was with the western council he was an active warden. They would send him on runs and make him do menial tasks for them. Since coming to New York, he’d been forced to sit in an apartment and watch dated DVD box sets. I hadn’t considered he might want to be useful, because I’d spent so much of my time trying to protect him.

“Yes, you’ll be very helpful.”

As we locked up the apartment on our way out, Holden’s hand went to my arm, gripping it tight enough to hurt.

“What?”

“Something’s happening downstairs.”

“People are arguing,” Sutherland explained, nodding helpfully.

“Who—”

Pop.

My blood ran cold at the distinctive sound of a gunshot. We’d barely been gone for ten minutes. How could trouble have found us this fast?

I didn’t bother waiting to see if Holden and Sutherland were following me. My heart was racing as I ran down the stairs and skidded across the slick linoleum. When I burst out the front door, the scene on the street was frozen in an incomprehensible tableau.

Keaty was lying on the sidewalk, which I couldn’t understand, and a few feet away Jock was holding a gun. He still had a handcuff shackled to one wrist, but clearly it was no longer keeping him bound to a park bench. Seven armed men flanked him on both sides.

I looked from him to Keaty, and my pulse pounded so loudly in my ears I almost missed what Jock said.

He smirked. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

Chapter Nine

My whole body trembled, both from shock and rage.

Keaty was facedown on the sidewalk with a puddle of blood spilling out around him. Was he breathing? Was he alive?

He was still wearing his bulletproof vest, and I wanted to believe he was just stunned, but all the blood told me otherwise. What good was the vest if it couldn’t keep him safe?

I choked back a shuddering sob and tried to keep myself focused on Jock and his men for the time being. I couldn’t go to Keaty with eight armed men with itchy trigger fingers staring me down.

“What
happened
?” I growled.

In true Mexican-standoff fashion, my entire group had their own weapons pointed at the new arrivals. Now we were eleven against eight, but the second a gun went off, people were going to die on both sides. We had humans with us this time, and my sister. I didn’t want to take unnecessary risks.

But Keaty…

My finger flirted with pulling the trigger. I wanted to blow Jock away then and there and turn his blood into war paint. I wanted… The things I wanted were beyond human comprehension. Given half a chance I would tear these men limb from limb with my bare hands.

I shook.

It took everything in me not to fall apart and go on a killing spree. I needed facts and I needed them now.

“They caught us unaware,” Desmond admitted. “We were talking one minute, and the next Keaty was on the ground.”

I looked back at the men and noticed one of them had a sniper rifle slung across his back, in addition to the gun in his hand. Jock had known he couldn’t get close. I don’t know if he knew what we were, but he’d learned his lesson about close combat the first time around. So he’d followed us and attacked from a distance.

Anger was my only available response, and I didn’t know who to aim it at. I was mad at my friends for letting their guard down, even for a second. I was mad beyond measure at Jock and his men. I was mad at myself for taking the risk to come here for my father and even more for letting Jock live in the first place. And I was mad at Keaty for being mortal enough to let a bullet take him down.

Keaty was beyond human to me. He was a creature of mythic proportions, and though I’d long suspected a day would come when he would die, I’d assumed it would be when he was old and gray.

Lifting one hand in a sign of surrender, I slipped my gun into its holster with the other.

“I’m checking my man,” I announced.

The rest of my group had stepped back, pressing themselves flush with the apartment building, leaving Keaty exposed in the middle of the sidewalk. Why had none of them grabbed him? I couldn’t fault their instincts for going on the defensive so quickly, but they’d just
left
him.

“Go ahead. But my guy, he doesn’t miss. You say your tender farewells, then me and you are going to dance.”

“Promise?” I glared at him with such menace I could feel the heat of anger on my face. I hoped he understood what he’d done. I’d given him a second chance at life, and he’d spit in my face.

I was
done
showing mercy.

Once I knew I wasn’t about to take a shot to the head, I ran out to Keaty, falling on my hands and knees beside him. I rolled him onto his back and almost cried from relief when he let out a pained groan.

He was alive.

“
Keaty.
” I cupped his face, doing my best to wipe the blood from his cheeks. He’d been lying in it long enough his whole front was soaked, turning the navy-blue vest almost black. I didn’t know if it was possible for someone to lose that much blood and still be okay.

Desmond had taken a bullet for me once, and he’d lived. But Brigit had been shot, and even her vampiric healing ability couldn’t save her.

But this was
Keaty
.

Keaty had to be made of stronger stuff.

My fingers hovered over the hole in the side of his neck where blood spilled freely every time he tried to take a breath. I wasn’t sure what to do. Logical suggestions were screaming through my head,
Put pressure on it, you idiot.
But a chill stole over me, freezing me in place. Hot on the heels of logic came dismal, merciless pessimism.
He’s done for.

“Does it hurt?” I asked stupidly.

“No. But I can’t feel my legs. That’s probably bad.” He coughed, and blood bubbled out of his mouth, smearing the part of his face I’d just cleaned.

I gave Desmond a helpless, pleading look. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t call an ambulance. Could we carry him to a hospital? Were the hospitals still open? I tried to picture what must have become of them once the dead rose up in the morgues and came crawling through the halls.

Fuck.

I pressed my hands against the wound on his neck, but the blood—such a deep red it looked black—oozed between my fingers without regard for what I was trying to do.

Crying hadn’t been an option a moment ago, but now it was impossible to avoid. I swallowed another sob, and it stuck in my throat. When I spoke again, my voice croaked. “I need to help you.”

“You can’t,” Keaty whispered.

“No. Don’t be stupid. You’re not going to die here. You’re Francis fucking Keats. And Francis Keats doesn’t die on a fucking sidewalk.” I pushed harder on the wound, and it had to be causing him pain, but he didn’t even flinch. “Keaty?” His eyes had closed, and now my pulse was hammering harder.

“Did you…did you get what you came for?” He opened his eyes halfway.

“Yes.”

I expected him to make a jab at my expense, asking me if it was worth it. If he’d only give me attitude about something, I could make believe things were going to be okay. But if he just kept bleeding and being so calm about it, I didn’t know how to react.

All the blood was making my PTSD fire up in serious ways. This wasn’t the blood of an enemy, this was from someone I loved. I could see Holden wasting away, and his vampire-brother Maxime strung up and gutted like a deer. And I saw my own blood when I looked down at my hands. My own life slipping away.

Get a grip,
I scolded. I’d learned to do counting exercises, where I stilled my mind to ease the panic. But I didn’t think I’d be able to concentrate enough to count from ten to one. I needed to focus on the man in front of me.

“Des,” I whimpered. “I don’t know what to do.” I pulled Keaty’s head into my lap, keeping one hand firmly on his wound. He barely blinked. Desmond came forward, not even acknowledging the threat of the men across the street, and kneeled on the opposite side of Keaty, taking over the task of holding the bullet hole.

Everyone was on edge, and the air hummed with tension, but I couldn’t spare a thought for the men who’d come here to kill us.

All I could think about was the one person they’d succeeded with.

I kissed Keaty’s forehead, squeezing my eyes shut to keep from crying on him, but the heat of tears trailed down my cheeks anyway. “It’s not going to end like this.”

“You think…the Oracle…saw this one coming?”

I sobbed. There was no stopping the abrupt, harsh sound from escaping.

“No, because you’re not going to die. This is nothing. It’s a flesh wound.” Maybe trying to make him laugh wasn’t the best idea with a hole in his neck, but I didn’t do so well under pressure.

“He
will
die,” Jock shouted. “He’ll die, and we’ll bring him right back up again. Make him do a dance number for you. Make him do whatever the fuck I want him to do. He’ll be my puppet.” He waved his fingers.

This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not after everything.

Five minutes earlier Keaty had been alive, robust and annoyed with me as usual. Now he was bleeding out in my arms, and nothing I could do was going to stop it from happening.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

A man like Keaty was meant to go down in a blaze of glory. But this? This was meaningless. Dying here had no value. It did nothing but prove a cruel point, a lesson on kindness I didn’t need to be taught again.

“Keaty…” I wiped my tears away with the back of my wrist.

“I hope…you know…I’m proud of you.”

Oh God. “Don’t talk like that. You never talk like that.”

“When…will I…get another…chance?” He coughed up another bubble of blood, and I tried my best to clean it off his face. I wasn’t sure how much dignity mattered at a time like this, but if it was the only thing I could offer him, I would provide it without question.

“You’re going to be okay.” But I was lying. I knew now this situation was far from okay.

Inside me, shock and the sadness it brought along with it were transforming into something new. The spiraling agony of my own fear was twisting itself into a pure, red-hot anger. The intensity of my hatred was so great I could hear my pulse hammering in my ears, and everything else became white noise.

This was precisely what I felt when I was healing, only instead of rebuilding myself, I was unraveling. I was losing control, and if I didn’t maintain a grip on my humanity, it would evaporate. I could feel it tugging free like a rope slipping through my fingers.

I needed to stay focused.

If I let myself become someone else, I wouldn’t be in a mindset to keep the others safe. I would do whatever the monsters inside me wanted, and there was only one thing they both wanted right then.

Jock’s blood.

I kissed Keaty’s head again, my tears running free now.

“It’s all okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“I never told you…” He wheezed once and began to cough violently, his face contorting with pain as he struggled to finish his thought. Desmond held him in place, and the werewolf’s expression wasn’t a hopeful one. He knew what was coming.

“You can tell me later,” I said.

“Secret. Let him say it.” Desmond’s eyes were wet, and though his tears didn’t fall, the anguish he felt was apparent enough. Des didn’t even know Keaty that well.

His sadness was all for me.

“What didn’t you tell me?” I whispered, lowering my head so Keaty wouldn’t have to struggle for breath.

“I love…”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence.

I kept my ear to his mouth, waiting and hoping his final word would come. Instead his last breath rattled against my skin, and the temperature of his lips changed within an instant.

Keaty was gone.

Chapter Ten

My world stopped turning.

Time stood still.

In that moment, there was nothing but me and my grief. I was engulfed by a sadness so complete it overwhelmed even my PTSD and swallowed up any self-pity I was carrying.

I felt only the aching black pit of loss.

And from deep within that pit, my anger came at me anew, burning brighter than any fury I had ever known.

I set Keaty’s head gently on the sidewalk, and my hands trembled with the effort to restrain myself. Though I did not shake on the outside, great tremors rumbled through me, threatening to rattle me apart from the inside out.

Desmond, hands red with Keaty’s blood, got to his feet and came to me. He appeared uneasy about the prospect of hugging me or offering me physical comfort. It had been quite some time since I was able to enjoy anyone’s touch, but I stepped into his arms, and he wrapped me up in a tight hug.

His natural scent was tainted by the overwhelming copper tang of blood.

“I’m going to do something stupid now,” I whispered into his chest, balling my fingers in the soft material of his shirt.

If I could have stayed with him for the rest of the night and let out my misery in a natural, healthy way, I would have done it. But my anger wouldn’t allow it.

“What? Secret, no.” He’d known me long enough to understand that when I said
stupid
, I didn’t mean foolish. I meant suicidal.

“This is a very touching moment and all,” Jock crowed. “But I believe it’s time to make the dead piggy dance.”

Genie and Desmond had both claimed Jock didn’t smell of magic. I, too, had believed he was merely a pawn in the necromancers’ game. But death magic must be something unto itself, because Jock was clearly in command here, and he was threatening to raise Keaty back from the dead.

Back from the dead.

I gave a shudder, because part of me wanted to let him. I wanted Keaty to come back and be himself again, even if it was a dead version of the man I’d known. But I knew, deep down, the risen version of Keaty wouldn’t really be him.

I
ached
to reclaim what I’d lost. Not since Brigit had someone I loved so dearly been stolen away in such a vicious manner. Holden’s vampire brother, Maxime, had been tortured to death and his mutilated body displayed in front of me, but I had only known him a few days. I’d liked him, but we hadn’t been close. Keaty had
raised
me. He’d taken me in as a sixteen-year-old girl who was too big for her britches, and he’d saved me. Without Keaty, it would be me lying dead in the street.

When it had mattered most, I hadn’t been able to save him.

Jock stepped forward, and his men moved back, lowering their weapons. Jock lifted his hands to the sky and closed his eyes. He muttered, “
Veniat mihi manes. Invoco te in mundo vivit. Audite vocem meam.
”

The temperature around us dropped ten degrees, bringing our breath out in filmy white clouds like smoke. Jock’s men shifted and swayed, as if they too were compelled by his power. And perhaps they were. Maybe he was so good he could command an army of undead soldiers. He had, after all, helped raise the dead of an entire city.

White, electric light sparked over his skin and danced its way up to his fingers, and the expression on his face changed from concentration to euphoria. Whatever he was doing, he was enjoying it.

Lightning sparked, and whether it arced down from the clouds or up from Jock, I couldn’t tell, but for a moment the block around us was as bright as day. My determination faltered.

This fucker had real power.

I was strong, physically. And I had titular power in the vampire world. But nothing like this.

Keaty twitched, and I felt as though I’d been punched in the stomach a thousand times. When he sat bolt upright and opened his eyes, Desmond’s arms tightened around me protectively, pulling me away from my former mentor.

Where in life Keaty’s eyes had been vibrant and full of scorn at all times, now they were clouded over and unaware.

“Youuuu,” he breathed out in a raspy rattle.

I thought he was calling out, until I realized it was the last word he never got to say to me.
I love you.

It had still been on his lips even in death.

If the air around us was cold, I now felt ten times colder.

I withdrew my gun from its holster, and without a pause for thought I raised it and fired.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

I kept going until I heard
click
, then continued trying to fire until Desmond stopped me, grasping my wrist and lowering my hand to my side.

When I came back to myself after the red haze faded, I saw what I’d done.

Jock lay on his back in the middle of the street, and the entire left side of his face from nose to ear had been obliterated. Chunks of skull and hair clung together, but his brain was splattered all over the car behind him, and a puddle of red haloed his final resting place.

Someone let out a groan, and four of his men crumpled to the sidewalk like they had turned into marionettes and now their strings were cut. Jock had been so powerful he’d had the risen among his own troops, and I hadn’t even realized it. Keaty, too, slumped down, his eyes closing and the new spark of life flickering out.

The remaining three men were now facing grossly uneven odds, and they knew it. I removed a spare clip from my jacket pocket and replaced the one in my gun, leveling the weapon at them.

“Tell me where the others are.”

“Fuck y—”

Bang.

“I’ve got plenty of bullets, and I only need one of you. Now tell me where the others are.”

The other men stared at the fallen bodies of their former colleagues, risen and human side by side, motionless. They glanced at one another and in a silent form of agreement, gave a mutual nod.

One of them lifted his weapon and shot himself in the head.

Jesus.

And then there was one. He raised his gun, intent on going out the same way, but I was faster. I shot him in the wrist, and he howled in pain, dropping the weapon.

“Tell. Me. Where. They. Are,” I snarled. He was young, much younger than the others, and he shook with fear after realizing I wasn’t going to let him take the easy way out.

“I-I-I…” He seemed to contemplate diving for his weapon, like the suicide path was still preferable to talking. I suspected they’d been told it was their only course of action if they were captured. What, no cyanide caplet in their back tooth?

“They won’t bring you back, you know,” Holden said, suddenly beside me. He placed his hand at the base of my neck, and his touch soothed me. Between him and Desmond, I became myself again, and the former rage that had ruled me calmed to a dull roar. I would still have blood for vengeance, but at least now I might be able to function.

“What?” the kid asked.

“They told you if you kill yourself, they’d bring you back, didn’t they? That was the promise, and why the others were willing to take their own lives. But they won’t bring you back. You don’t matter to them. And if they do resurrect you, you won’t know. You’ll be long dead by then, and your body will be nothing more than a hand puppet with an automatic weapon.”

“No, that’s not true. They said—”

“They lied,” Holden concluded coolly. “Just tell the lady what she wants to know, and you can go on wasting your life, but I’d recommend wasting it outside the city.”

“There’s…” He paused, uncertain whether he ought to go on or if it was better to eat one of his own bullets. “There’s a bar. In Hell’s Kitchen. It’s called The Dirt Hog. I don’t know how many of them are still there, but that’s where they set up shop.”

“How many were there to start with?” I asked.

“Twenty-two.”

Twenty-fucking-two?

I didn’t know there were that many active necros alive in the world, let alone clustered together in one group. No wonder they’d been able to raise so many dead. I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to collect my thoughts.

“Guess there are only twenty-one now.” I sneered at Jock’s body, wanting to empty a few more clips into him. “Like to see him raise the dead now.” I spit on the concrete near his feet.

“All right, kid. Thanks.” Holden glanced at me, about to say something, and then—

Bang.

The young man fell next to the others.

I faced the rest of the group and lowered my weapon, the muzzle still smoking.

“From here on out, there’s no fucking mercy.”