Almost Everything (19 page)

“I don’t know, my lady,” Elias said. “I don’t sense the call, but my ties have been severed for months now. I don’t know if I would feel it anymore.”

“You mean they could be starting now?” My voice was louder than I intended, but my heart leaped. I promised Bea I’d stop this! I started for the door, but Elias caught my shoulder. He spun me around.

Before he
could take hold of my shoulders, Nikolai forcibly stepped between us. He pushed Elias’s hands away. I felt his magical blade begin to rev up, like an electric current. “Hands off, vampire.”

Elias’s jaw twitched, but he allowed his hand to drop. He otherwise ignored Nik’s defensive posture and spoke around him to me. “You mustn’t go without a plan, lady. Coming between vampires and their hunt is dangerous beyond measure. Did the prince offer no aid last night?”

“Oh.” I’d forgotten that Elias hadn’t heard about the narrow escape and blood puking. “No. Dad’s completely lost it. He’s in no shape to help. In fact, he’s kind of a liability.”

We must have been talking in normal voices, because Mom stuck her head into the room and interrupted before I could explain more. “What’s this huddle about?” Then, on seeing Elias, she smiled. “Ah, Elias, you’re awake! How are you feeling?”

Nikolai’s voice dripped with dark amusement. “Not feeling well, vampire?”

“I’m hungry,” he snarled, and I could see the tip of his fangs. “And you, boy, smell of spilled blood.”

The psychic blade in Nik’s fist sizzled and snapped. Even with the electric light of the overhead lamp, I could almost see a pinkish outline of a pointed dagger as he raised his fist to Elias’s throat. The tip touched a spot just below Elias’s jawline but stopped short of penetration.

“Just try it, asshole,” he said, his bandaged hand trembling slightly.

Elias stayed
perfectly still, but his silver gray eyes burned with molten hatred as the pupils slowly shifted to catlike slits.

I heard Mom’s sharp intake of breath. The scent of freshly turned earth alerted me that she was drawing up her power and readying her own attack.

“Stand down, Nikolai,” I shouted, grabbing his arm. I tried to pull it down and away from Elias’s throat, but he was surprisingly strong. His muscles were like rock. “Elias isn’t the enemy! We have to help Bea’s mom. The sun is down! They could be coming for her right now.”

“What?” It was Mom. Her magic faltered in surprise, changing to the smell of roses. “What about Kat?”

I always forgot that Bea’s mom was named Katherine and that all her friends called her Kat. “Bea called,” I explained, since Mom clearly didn’t know. “Her mom’s been taken.”

I was unprepared for the force with which she unleashed her power. She raised her hand, palm out, like one of Thompson’s superheroes, and slam! Elias was thrown back against the kitchen wall, pinioned. He grunted as the air rushed from his lungs. I could see him struggling as if against invisible bonds, but he was held hard against the plaster wall where our family calendar hung.

“If one hair on Kat’s head is harmed, your people will pay,” Mom said, striding forward, her finger jabbing him in the chest accusingly.

“No,” I said. “The vampires didn’t take her. The coven did!”

Beside
me, I felt Nik drop his blade. “It’s true, Dr. Parker. It wasn’t them. It was us.”

“What?” All the color drained from my mother’s face, but she still held Elias against the wall with her outstretched hand. “It was my direct order: no lottery. Who dares disobey the queen?”

She sounded as crazy as my dad, except in an
Alice in Wonderland
Queen of Hearts kind of way. Next she was going to start shouting, “Off with their heads!”

Nikolai folded his arms in front of his chest and turned his head away as if looking out the darkened window at something. “It’s not my father. He’d rather attack outright or let them starve before giving the vampires one of our own.”

“If you’re looking for a traitor, go to the source. The prince would know with whom he negotiates,” Elias managed to croak.

“True,” Mom said, acknowledging Elias briefly, as though he were nothing more than a distraction. “Ramses would happily foment dissention in my ranks. I will deal with him next.”

Before I could ask what she meant by “next,” Mom made her hand into a fist. Elias cried out in pain.

“Mom! No!” I shouted.

“You need to learn your place, vampire. Never threaten anyone under my roof again,” she told him. She opened her hand. He fell to his knees on the kitchen floor, clutching his stomach and gasping for breath. She turned her back on him. Pulling her cell out of her pocket, she started dialing numbers. “I’m going to find out who’s responsible for this.”

I ran over
to where Elias knelt. Dropping down beside him, I gently placed my arms around his shoulders. “Are you okay?”

He gritted his teeth as he answered. “I will be.”

Mom had gotten whomever she’d called on the phone and was demanding to know what was going on. She grabbed her keys from the peg in the hallway as she headed for the front door. I heard her shout, “I’m calling the meeting now, damn it,” as the door slammed behind her. “This is not on.”

Nikolai stood in the middle of the kitchen, not looking at us, his arms still wrapped around his chest.

I started to help Elias to his feet, but he jerked away from my touch and pulled himself up. His eyes were still catlike slits, and they watched Nikolai warily, as if expecting another attack.

This was all messed up, and I struggled to stay focused on the bigger issue. “Where would they take Bea’s mom?” I asked Elias, who was making a show of brushing himself off. “I mean, where would Ramses want the sacrifice to take place?”

“We’d never agree to go all the way to the lair,” Nikolai said. His face was still turned away, as if he were talking to the sink. “We’d want some safe place where we could leave her.”

The muscles of Elias’s jaw flexed as he tucked his shirttails into his jeans. “It sounds as though the hunter knows more than he’s said.”

Nikolai’s head snapped to glare at Elias. “I’m being hypothetical, you know—trying to consider what the coven would want.”

When Elias
straightened his collar, he twinged slightly. Unconsciously, he briefly touched his hand to his stomach. My gut ached suddenly as well, as if I’d strained core muscles at yoga. I tried to catch his eye to see if he knew why we shared this sensation all of a sudden, but he was too busy trying to act unhurt and strong in front of Nikolai. His pupils remained slit, and his fangs showed clearly when he finally spoke. “I find it difficult that your expertise was never tapped, hunter. Did your coven never ask your family for advice on this contingency?”

Nikolai flushed, color darkening his cheeks. I expected him to deny it, but he said, “Of course they did.”

“That’s not very hypothetical then, is it?” Elias drawled sarcastically.

Nikolai shook his head. “Look, a lot of locations got tossed around, okay?”

“OMG,” I said in frustration. “I can’t believe you knew any—just tell us
all
of them.”

Nik’s posture was still closed off, his arms folded in front of his chest. His lips were pressed together, but he didn’t speak.

“He won’t turn traitor,” Elias quietly said to me with sympathy.

Traitor? I didn’t understand what Elias meant at first, but then I gaped at Nikolai. “You can’t be serious! You’ve got to tell us. Screw the Elders and their vows of secrecy. Someone’s life is at stake. Not just anyone—Bea’s mom! You know as well as I do that if your dad weren’t the slayer, your mom could have been taken instead.”

Nikolai took in a long, slow breath. He sounded a bit defeated when he muttered, “Swede Hollow or Hidden Falls would be my best guess.”

They were
both parks in St. Paul that would close at sunset. I could see the appeal of either one, because both parks were sheltered in deep, heavily forested valleys that felt secluded and secret. I started for the door. “Come on,” I told the boys. “Nik, you drive.”

I pulled Nik’s elbow when I passed him, and he turned and followed me reluctantly.

“We can’t stop the hunt if it’s started,” he said.

“I’ve done it before,” I reminded him. “Besides, we can’t just sit here. We have to do something.”

I checked to see that Elias was coming as well, but he was nowhere in sight. I stopped at the door. “Elias?”

At the basement steps, I heard heels clicking on the wooden stairs. In a moment, Elias reappeared with the rucksack he’d brought with him when he moved in. At my expression, he said, “Your mother’s … display has made it quite evident that I must make good on my promise to find somewhere new to stay.”

I leaned in closely and brushed my hand along my stomach, feeling for the phantom pain. “Yeah, I swear I sensed the aftermath of that punch.”

Elias’s eyebrows jumped. “Indeed?”

I whispered, “Is it our blood bond?”

He nodded, though he seemed a little taken aback that I knew about the bond at all. “Perhaps the hunger accentuates the connection.”

The strap of the army green bag over his shoulder caught my eye, and I frowned. “You’re coming with me, right?”

“As you wish, my lady,” he said. I noticed his eyes had finally returned to normal. His fangs, however, had not completely retracted. “Though for once I agree with the hunter, I don’t know what we can do for your friend. Honestly, I may not be able to control myself if the frenzy begins.”

I wondered
if I could.

I didn’t want to think about that right now, so I took his hand and led him to where Nikolai waited awkwardly at the door.

Nikolai stopped outside the driver’s side door, key in his hand. “Bringing the vampire is a bad idea, Ana.”

Pulling at the door handle, I found that Nik hadn’t unlocked it yet. The metal flap sprang back with a clank. “We don’t have time for an argument. What if you’re wrong about where they’ve taken her?”

“I’ve seen them hungry,” he said, unmoving. He stared at where Elias stood behind me on the sidewalk. “I don’t want him at my back when the others attack from the front.”

“Maybe, if we hurry, it won’t come to that.” It was all I could think to say.

Nikolai didn’t look terribly sure he agreed, but he finally opened the door. I slid into the passenger side. I pulled out my phone and found Bea’s number. I texted her to meet us at Hidden Falls. It was the closer of the two parks, and I told Nik so. Then, as an afterthought, I cut and pasted the same message and sent it to Mom. She didn’t want the lottery either; maybe she’d help us stop it.

Elias shuffled
some of Nik’s things around before settling into the backseat. The car was littered with promotional CDs, concert posters, college textbooks, and empty cans of soda. He leaned back into the shadows, the flash of the passing streetlights illuminating a grim expression. “A plan would be helpful, lady.”

But I didn’t have one beyond the pounding desire to find Bea’s mom. We wouldn’t be much of a rescue if we couldn’t stop the hunt, though. I pulled on my bottom lip. “Magic,” I said after a few minutes. “What about magic?”

Nikolai started the engine and pulled out onto the street. “What about it?”

Shyly, I looked at Elias, not wanting to embarrass him. “Well, Mom had no trouble, uh, earlier … with …”

I couldn’t finish without turning to check on Elias. If my comment bothered him, he said nothing. He’d rolled down the window a little, and papers rustled in the backseat.

Nikolai, meanwhile, nodded a bit as if considering. He’d turned on the car’s air conditioner, and musty, moist air blew into my face.

“It would take a lot of witch power, but we could probably push back and keep them at bay. But that’s more of a stalemate than a check, you know?” Nikolai said. “We might be able to keep it up until sunrise, but we’d just have to do it again when the sun set the next day.”

But it would solve the immediate problem. “It’s a start.”

No one mentioned the one serious flaw. There was only one witch in the car. I had my own sort of magic, triggered when I pitted my vampire and witch halves against each other, but I wasn’t sure how effective it would be to hold back the hunt. Last time, I’d had the talisman to boost my strength.

The time
before that, I only had to stop a fight between my parents and their minions—and I’d drunk Elias’s blood to trigger the power. I glanced back at where Elias sat. He seemed absorbed in watching the houses go by.

It wasn’t like him to be so quiet. “Are you okay?” I asked.

He ran his fingers through the short hairs on the side of his head and then let out a long breath. “No,” he said. His voice was weary, but he clenched his hands into fists in his lap. “I don’t understand it, but the hunger is much worse all of a sudden. Like some kind of magical rebound … but that makes no sense.” He shook his head as if trying to keep his mind on track. “What’s important is that I thought I had it under control, but I don’t just feel weak, physically. I don’t know how long I can hold out—mentally.”

“What do you mean?”

He flicked his gaze at the back of Nikolai’s head. Then he leaned forward and cupped his hand in front of his face. He whispered scratchily, “I hate him. I hate magic.” In the strobe of a streetlight that we passed, I could see his eyes beginning to transform again. “I just—I want to—” His entire body clenched with the effort to keep his pupils normal. “I want to kill everything, Ana. Everything.”

Great—now I had a vampire in the backseat ready to go ballistic. Nikolai watched us furtively as he drove. I was sure he’d heard everything and was just waiting for an opportunity to say “I told you so.”

The bandage
on Nik’s hand flashed greenish white as he turned the corner at the stoplight. It gave me an idea. I undid my seat belt so I could turn around more easily in my seat. “Don’t get in an accident,” I told Nik, who watched curiously.

Reaching around the seat, I offered Elias my arm. “I have witch blood,” I said. “Take some.”

Elias flinched back as if my touch were fire. Nikolai hit the brakes so hard, they squealed. I had to grip the seat to keep from banging into the dashboard. “I can’t,” Elias said, though his gaze focused hungrily on the flesh of my arm. “I’d become nosferatu.”