Damned if I Don't (The Harker Trilogy Book 2) (3 page)

Edie

“Edie…”

Jude.

Even before I open my eyes, the pain hits me like a solid wall. The handful of codeine tablets I took earlier must have stopped working. I grimace, stir, and open my eyes to see him looking down at me, wearing an expression that makes me wonder if he has always looked at me like that.

I should have been able to tell a long time ago that he feels something for me.

“Hey you,” I whisper through a mouth that feels like it’s filled with dry leaves.

He sighs, relieved, and kisses my forehead, the metal of the piercing in his lip touching my clammy skin. I close my eyes, relishing the contact as my heart flutters. I feel the waves of heat radiating off his chest as he leans into me.

“You were so cold there,” he whispers against my skin.

“I was visiting Meghan.”

As if that explains anything to him.

Self-conscious, I bring myself up to a sitting position, and he helps me up. Purl’s on the floor and gives a plaintive mewl.

“She hasn’t left your side,” Jude says, nodding at my cat. “Neither have I.” His cheeks flush adorably.

I lick my lips, trying to not think about how his comment heats up my insides. After all, I just lost my arm and the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

First things first.

“Thank you.” I glance up the stairs. “How’s Carl?”

“He’s hurting.”

I clench my jaw. “I can only imagine.”

Aunt Tessa’s betrayal no doubt drove a wedge between us, and the effects from that will probably hit me harder at some point. But for now, even though I just woke up from a nap, I’m too tired to face it. One thing at a time.

“What do we do next?” I ask.

We have to get out of here before night falls, but where do we go? The world seems like an infinitely scarier place than before.

“I know someone in Houston,” he says, “who gave me legit information about Anthony. His name is Dean.”

“Dean?” It seems like an unlikely vampire name. Jude’s smirk confirms that he’s thinking the same thing.

“He’s interesting but I figure we can pay him a visit and see where he got that information. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right?”

I’m not sure I want another fire. After burning down my brother-in-law’s house, and then incinerating my aunt, I want nothing to do with fire.

“I guess we should get going,” I say. I try to get to my feet, but the world tilts underneath me and I stumble. Jude appears at my side, putting my right arm around his shoulder.

“You’re probably lightheaded,” he says.

“Thanks.”

His lips press into a grim smile. “Don’t mention it.”

I close my eyes and inhale deeply. His scent fills my lungs and my vampy sense is going haywire being so close to him. But in a good way. It’s making me giddy along with my lightheadedness.

I don’t know how I’d be able to make it without him. Our burgeoning relationship is strange, but then again, I was never going to be a normal, run-of-the-mill Harker. And Jude is certainly not a normal, run-of-the-mill vampire.

Maybe…maybe…

Then my stump of an arm moves and my moment of respite evaporates. Reality crashes back into me. I’m dying. Anthony is still at large. I may have lost my magical sword Glimmer along with my arm. I’m so close to stumbling off the edge of this precipice that I’m on I can almost feel the wind rushing by me on my way to the ground.

“Are you all right?” Jude asks, his voice ragged.

“No.”

He’s silent for a few heartbeats before I hear his sigh. “Don’t give up on me, Edie.” He turns his head and shouts up the stairs, “Carl! We’re leaving. Now!”

The silence that stretches is agonizing. What will Carl say to me? Will he even
want
to come along?

Footsteps creak on the stairs and my cousin appears, carrying a backpack, looking like the high school student he so recently was, down to his innocent face and his messy blond hair. He looks like the Carl I’ve known his whole life, but when he frowns down at me, his eyes are bloodshot and glassy, like he’s been crying.

Our gazes lock. The corners of his mouth turn down even farther, and I’d shrink away if I was steady on my feet. The accusation in his eyes is almost too much for me. I want to apologize, but I don’t know exactly what for. For protecting myself, for killing his mother, for not knowing what else to do? Maybe I didn’t have to use a fire spell, but Aunt Tessa had been trying to suffocate me at that point, and the only spell that came to mind was my pyrokinesis.

“I’m here.”

Jude’s jaw tenses before he finally nods. “All right, let’s get going.”

As if in answer, a lone, mournful howl diverts all of our attention to Purl. My black cat watches us from the mat in front of the door, howling like some sort of feline banshee.

“I guess we’ve gotta take her with us,” I say wearily.

Jude looks at me incredulously. “Take a cat on a vampire hunt?”

“Well, we can’t leave her here. Besides, cats hate vampires.”

“Exactly. She’ll be a guard cat.”

“A guard cat?” he asks suspiciously.

I shudder, thinking about Anthony’s cronies crawling over this place. And if it’s not the vampires, it will be the police when they come to see what’s happening with Aunt Tessa. I have an okay relationship with the police department here, but I’m not pressing my luck. Cremating a human is something that I’m sure my vampire-hunting clemency doesn’t cover.

Taking Purl to Graeme and Amelia’s hotel room crosses my mind, but I don’t know where they’re staying at the moment, and I want to keep it that way. If I get captured, I don’t want Anthony being able to wrestle that information from me. I’m not sure what good Amelia would be to him once he has me, but I don’t want to give him a chance. She’d be the new Harker, and I don’t want to put that burden or danger on her.

Regrettably, I had the chance to have Graeme take Purl with him yesterday, but he left in such a huff that it didn’t occur to me. Also, I didn’t count on my aunt betraying all of us.

Purl’s tawny eyes watch me, as if she knows what I’m going to say next.

“She’s coming.”

Edie

I sleep for most of the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Houston, despite my Purl’s mournful wailing from the backseat. Her crying usually grates on my nerves but I’m so tired it doesn’t keep me from dozing off. Thankfully, Jude and Carl let me sleep, even though I may not deserve it.

I should be awake. Especially when there’s so much happening. I should be awake.

This time, I don’t enter the Void, allowing me to rest blissfully.

Sleep.

But the trip doesn’t last anywhere near long enough.

“Hey.” Jude’s voice brings me back to reality. He sounds reluctant, but there’s an urgency to his voice.

I blink a couple of times as the world around me comes into focus. We’re parked off the road in Houston. I recognize the area as Uptown.

“We’re here already?” I ask, stretching. My whole body screams in protest
.

“Yeah. And you’re not going to like this, but I need you to stay here, while I go check out the Hive.”

I stare at him, aghast. “What?”

“It’s safer if you stay here.” He sounds sincere, but it sets my teeth on edge.

“Not this again,” I groan, doing a literal face palm. “Why the hell are you bringing me with you, if you won’t let me go into these places?”

“I want to keep you safe,” Jude says.

The last time he left me alone like this, I was stuck in an alley while he went into Twin Fangs, putting himself in danger while I had an attack from my virus. I’m
not
going through that shit again. He can kick and scream all he wants, but I don’t want him going in by himself.

Jude spears me with his clear, blue-eyed gaze. “Look, I don’t want to go, but you’ll get yourself killed if you’re with me,” he says evenly. “I will take you if you want, Edie, but I wouldn’t ask this of you if I didn’t think this was for the best.”

For the best.

In the back seat, Carl snickers, which makes my chest ache.

“And what if…?” I manage, although my voice trails off.

Jude puts a hand to my cheek and caresses it. “Everything will be all right,” he whispers. “Do you trust me?”

I bite my lip, not wanting to let him out of my sight, but knowing that he has a point.

“Fifteen minutes,” I tell him finally. “You have fifteen minutes before I go in there with my pyrokinesis lit up like a fucking atom bomb.” We all know what happens when I go nuclear like that. I think I’m feeling adrenaline or I’m high off the pain again, because it feels like I’m floating on a cloud. Lightheaded.

He chuckles. “You’re always ready to blast everything.”

“If it’s to protect the ones I–”
love
“–care about, I’m willing to do anything.”

His lip piercing lifts up in a smile, catching my choice of words.

“I’ll be back. Just stay here, and…” He looks stricken as he looks back at my cat, whose howls have gotten louder since we stopped. “Can you stop your cat from crying like that?”

“She’s unhappy.”

“She’s making me unhappy.”

Vampires and cats. Never getting along since 5,000 B.C.

“Carl,” Jude says, as he opens the door. “You watch after her.”

He gets out of the car and closes the door before my cousin can respond, and we’re left alone in a darkened car. I watch as Jude turns a corner. Then he’s gone. This is the first time that Carl and I have been alone since…

Since I killed his mother
.

“Carl…”

“Don’t,” he mutters. “I don’t want to hear it.”

I let out a breath and look out the window. What do you say to your cousin when you killed his mother less than twenty-four hours ago? I’m actually surprised he hasn’t lunged across the seats at me. I remember the pain of losing my mother. Of losing Meghan.

And now I’m the source of his pain.

I mentally go back through my memories of Aunt Tessa, trying to see if there had been any indication that she was working for Anthony. Meghan may have warned me that I was being betrayed by someone I trusted—even if she didn’t know who it was—but I should have seen the signs.

I should have known when I met Meghan in the Void for the first time and Aunt Tessa followed me. She invaded our privacy.

I should have known when the wards at her house weren’t working against vampires. There never were any wards, because she was working with the enemy.

I should have known when she was all too eager to follow the progression of my sickness. She was keeping tabs on me for Anthony.

I’d been blind to all of these signs. I trusted her. We all did. And she sold us out in return.

“I have to take care of my son,” she’d told me. She’d had reason enough to believe that we weren’t going to win, that I was going to fail, and she’d needed to protect her son.

Tessa had been there all of my life. Growing up, she and Carl lived less than twenty minutes away from our house. She had been a fixture in my life, someone who watched me as I grew up, babysat me, and helped to raise me like she raised her own son. She was of Harker blood, far removed of course, but she was family. She was my aunt, and I trusted her.

Oh fuck.

Fighting my tears, I dig in my purse, trying to locate a pack of cigarettes, except that’s really hard to do with one hand. Unzipping it, fumbling with the insides while my stump of a left arm moves uselessly. I try to shift stuff away, but my purse is one of those big, shapeless bags that fits anything and everything. I use it to carry my stakes, hiding them from prying glances or questions, but it also means that sometimes I can’t find anything in it.

It seems that will be all-times now, since I only have one arm.

I prop it up in my lap and search through it. I keep trying to hold something with my left hand. It’s frustrating as hell, and my tears are now just as much about shame as they are for the memory of my aunt. My hand is shaking, and I’m useless.

Just as useless as my stump of an arm.

“What are you doing?” Carl intones from the back seat. His words make me yelp and I push the bag away like it was a live wire.

“I was looking for a cigarette.”

I think Carl is going to go back to sulking, but after ten long, agonizing seconds, he reaches around the seat and looks in my purse. After only a moment, he tosses the pack and my Zippo towards me and I bodily catch it. If he means to say anything about it, he doesn’t. Instead, he resumes looking out the window, his animosity threatening to choke me.

I manage to retrieve a cigarette and put it between my lips. I fight a little more with the Zippo, but it finally catches, and I inhale deeply.

Cigarettes could very well kill me. I’d do anything to live long enough for that to be a problem.

I wipe away at a tear and glance back at Carl, wanting to talk to him, wanting to make this right.

“What are you looking at?” he snarls.

“You,” I whisper. I take a drag and exhale away from him. It gives me courage. “You and who you’re becoming.”

He gives me a sidelong glance and looks out the window. “How about an orphan? Did you see that?”

“Tessa was going to kill me.”

“I’d rather…” But his voice trails off before he can break my heart any further.

“I tried, Carl,” I tell him. “I tried reasoning with her.”

“Just don’t.” Carl combs his hands through his hair. “I don’t want to talk about this. Not now.”

When?
I want to ask. I know it’s fresh, I know he’s angry at me. I know. But I only have so much time left, and he only has so much family left.

And we need him. I need him to not be angry with me, because it could get both of us killed. If he can’t forgive me, I need for him to at least tolerate me, because he’s my cousin, and I would do anything to stop Tessa instead of killing her.

I sigh, put the cigarette to my lips, undo my seatbelt, and get out of the car. I need fresh air, and I’m unintentionally killing Carl and Purl with my secondhand smoke. It’s all right if I have a death wish. It’s not all right to bring them down with me.

I’m a little dizzy on my feet, probably from blood loss. Most people would be knocked out in a hospital or worse. Yet here I am trying to save the world.

So I stand outside the car, leaning on it while I take a drag. The air is cool and it feels good on my skin.

Wait, it’s May. Why is the air cold?

“Meghan,” I whisper. I throw the cigarette on the ground and stub it out underfoot.

I’m not prepared for what happens next.

“You bitch!”

The whoosh of cold air blasts me, freezing me all the way to the bone despite my dark hoodie. A force hits me full on, pushing me against the car, hard enough for the vehicle to rock underneath the power. Hands come around my throat and try to squeeze the life out of me.

I’m not looking at Meghan’s ghost. It’s Tessa’s ghost. She’s angry, a wraith that looks almost unrecognizable as the aunt I once knew. Apparently, betrayal like hers lands you in an ugly place in hell, because she’s all hell-fire and ashes. But she’s so real against my body.

And she’s trying to kill me.

“You killed me! You killed me! You ruined all hope for Carl! You…!”

I gag, blocking the hateful words from my mind as I beat my hand against the door, trying to alert Carl, trying to get a grasp on my pyrokinesis. Trying, trying….

Even though both of her hands are around my throat—trust me, I can feel all ten of her fingers squeezing, threatening to collapse my windpipe—I feel pressure against my super-tender and probably-still-open wound on my left arm like she has a third arm. The pressure against it intensifies suddenly.

My hoarse scream wrenches out of my throat as my entire body seizes up at the agonizing sensation in my arm. My Doc Martens slide uselessly on the ground below me as I struggle. She’s playing dirty, and she’s winning.

I don’t know why she’s here or what killing me will do now to protect Carl. But it’s working.

Just as I realize that, I feel my body seize up in a different way.
Oh no.

An attack from my virus takes over my senses.
Not now, not now!

My eyes roll into the back of my head. The one benefit of having an attack now is that I don’t feel the pain around my neck or my arm as much. I’m removed from this plane of existence and put into a world of pain that’s solely my own.

Dimly, I hear Latin phrases. Then, somehow, the specter is blasted away from me and I crumple to the ground as I ride the attack, and my mark spreads. So much for hoping that the virus was destroyed with my left arm. So much for hoping that all ghosts are friendly.

“Edie?” Carl asks, breathlessly. The spell came from him. He saved me from his mother. He sounds shocked. Hurt.

But I don’t hear more from him.

The tears fall down my cheeks as I curl up against the door, rocking myself and clutching my stumpy arm.

I want this to be over. I want it all to go away.

And it won’t go away. For the rest of my miserable, short life.