Diabolical (19 page)

“Lawyer’s daughter, poor thing,” Harrison says. “What about her?”

On her first night at the school, something that looked like an old woman appeared to Bridget in her room. It scolded the girl and called her a murderer. It railed against her for disappointing her parents and God. It terrified her.

“She’s lost interest in Kieren, now that she knows he’s a werewolf. He’s already taken, of course, but it’s her reasoning —”

“Kieren of the pouting lips and bulging muscles? Too young for me, though kudos on that animal magnetism. His muscles aren’t all that bulge.”

“Harrison!” I scold, but he only laughs. “She’s not being obvious about it,” I add, “but Bridget isn’t bringing him meals or asking about him or even stopping in his room to say hi.” When Harrison fails to react, I clarify. “She’s afraid of werepeople. Prejudiced. So is Vesper. I heard the two of them whispering about it in Vesper’s room.”

“Most humans have issues with shape-shifters.” He brushes his lapel. “A few hunt them for sport and sell their heads and skins to the highest bidder. So what?”

“I was, too.” Still nothing. “Prejudiced. Before I started to become evil, or at least before I was infected with vampirism.”

“The Penultimate is full of imperfect people,” Harrison replies with a sweeping gesture at the lobby and surrounding promenade. “We’ve been forgiven. ‘To err is human, to forgive, divine.’ Once we forgive ourselves and each other, we can enter —”

“Do you think souls make love in heaven?” I ask, taking the monitor-com from him to focus more fully on David’s . . . endowments or lack thereof.

I’ve never seen Zachary in the nude. Not in person, anyway.

“Well.” Harrison leans back in his chair. “Far be it for me to underestimate the complexity of the formerly undead adolescent female mind.”

“It’s like bacon-fried rice,” I reply. “Grandpa Shen makes the world’s best bacon-fried rice, and he knows I love it.” At Harrison’s puzzled look, I add, “In heaven, will Grandpa be able to stir-fry me a steaming plate of bacon-fried rice? Or because it’s an earthly pleasure, have I lost my chance at bacon-fried rice forever?”

“You’ve eaten fried rice in the past —”

“Harrison,” I say. “Metaphor.”

“Oh, right!” He smirks. “Can we agree that sex with Zachary equals bacon-fried rice?”

“Forget the rice!” Come to think of it, the image of Grandpa in this particular conversation isn’t helping either. “Why don’t we simply say —”

“Earthly pleasures,” Harrison declares as a black-and-blue butterfly lights on his perched finger. His smile is wistful. “I wish I knew, Your Highness. Between you and me, I find it hard to imagine heaven without stir-fry. Or, for that matter, bacon. However, it’s not as though we’re without sensation here in the Penultimate. I can feel this chair.” The butterfly launches into the air. “I can see that gorgeous insect.”

“We can see and hear,” I say. “We can touch.”

“Not to get too personal, princess, but from a technical perspective —”

“What about smell, taste?” I cut in. “It hit me after I visited Joshua in the stables. The experience felt incomplete, muffled. When my angel and I are reunited . . .” I would swallow hard if I were corporeal. “
If
my angel and I are reunited, I want . . .”

“Of course,” Harrison agrees. “Well, yes. Valid point.” Lowering his voice, he mutters, “You’d think I was the virgin.”

I return his monitor-com. “Recent apocalyptic portents aside, I may be a virgin for eons. Perhaps forever. As a wholly souled eternal, Quincie could remain on earth, under Zachary’s guard, for centuries. Even when he finally returns to the Penultimate, Michael could redispatch him within a blink.” I feel guilty saying it, admitting to my selfishness. “I don’t want to root for the End Days. That’s not a very ascended-soul thing to do.”

“Ah, Miranda, you’re too hard on yourself.” Harrison laughs again. “Think about bacon-fried rice instead! Call me an optimist, but I say that heavenly pleasures sound even more tantalizing than earthly ones.”

He seems bemused by the concept. “In any case, we’ll find out soon enough, Your Highness, what blessings eternity holds. I’m itching for a cigar myself.”

THE SCREAM AT MIDNIGHT
seeps into my nightmare. The shouts that follow wake me up. By the time I make my way down the hall, Bridget is already in Lucy’s arms. Her neck is bleeding from two fang marks. She’s babbling something about Mr. Bilovski’s saving her life. I notice Andrew’s head on the hallway floor. His body lies not far away.

Mr. Bilovski is standing outside Bridget’s open doorway. He’s holding my battle-axe. There’s blood on the blade. I wrench it away from him. “I’ll take that back now.”

“No weapons allowed,” he insists.

He smells like piss. “Come and take it,” I reply.

Mr. Bilovski might be a friend. He might be an enemy. I’ll feel better thinking it over with a weapon in my hand.

The handyman gestures to Andrew’s remains. “It
was
a vampire, wasn’t it? I wasn’t wrong this time, was I?”

Zach grabs Andrew’s head by the hair and lifts it. We can all clearly ID fangs.

“Bridget could use some room to breathe,” Lucy says, guiding her into the kitchenette. Away from the corpse. The other students follow, except Nigel. He’s nowhere in sight.

What if someone bit him, too? I backtrack to knock on his door.

It takes a couple of minutes. Then he answers in his robe. His eyes widen at the sight of my axe. “What the hell, man?”

It’s past time to stop coddling him. “The ‘what’ is this: Bridget was attacked by Andrew, who was a vampire. Bilovski beheaded him. She’ll be fine. But she screamed her head off. Everybody started hollering. Did you hear
any
of it?”

He belches. “I was out cold.”

I tossed back a couple of beers after I was mauled by the hellhounds. But that’s not the point. “None of us can afford to be less than one hundred percent alert. I’m sorry about Willa. I am. But your drinking is not only endangering you. It’s also putting at risk whoever you might be able to save if your reflexes were sharper. Or if you were, you know, conscious.”

Nigel rubs his eyelids. “Where’s Bridget?”

“Kitchenette.”

“Be there in two minutes,” he replies, shutting the door.

I limp back down the hall. I’ve already investigated the kitchenette. The glass-fronted cabinets are fully stocked with tea, coffee, and cocoa. Instant noodle soups, microwavable miniature pasta dishes, and an array of snack food. Granola bars, yogurt-covered pretzels, raisins, crackers, chips. A number of processed pastries that could survive the total destruction of the sentient population. Inside the full-size refrigerator: a couple cartons of 2 percent milk; various sodas; an assortment of deli meats, cheeses, and bagels; a head of iceberg lettuce, some fruit, and several jellies and jams.

“Can we agree that vampires are bad?” Vesper asks as I stroll into the room. “Oh, wait. Never mind, the werewolf is dating one.”

“Shut up, Vesper,” Zach says. He’s a forthright guy. But I’ve never heard him take that tone with anyone before. Then again, he’s almost as attached to Quince as I am. And in a mission-from-God kind of way.

Bridget is seated with Evie and Lucy at the table. She’s pressing a wet paper towel to her fang wounds.

“Andrew didn’t commit suicide,” Evelyn says.

“He didn’t hang himself?” Nigel asks from the entry.

“He hanged himself.” Zach reaches into the refrigerator for a pear. “But it didn’t matter because he was already undead.”

“He probably fixated on Bridget on the drive from New York,” I add. “Vamps do that. Prey are fairly disposable to them. They tend to obsess over those they intend to curse. You didn’t drink any of his blood, did you?” I ask Bridget.

She wrinkles her nose. “No, and ick.”

“Who knows what will happen next?” Vesper says, toying with her nail file.

I pitch the idea that we all bunk together. Sleep in shifts.

At first, nobody argues. They’re scared. The fact that I’m the werewolf with the axe makes me more convincing.

Then Vesper glares up at me. “How do we know that you’re not in on it? You’re the one with knowledge of the demonic. You’re the one with the vampire girlfriend. And you’re the one with a massive double-fang scar on your neck. How many people — excuse me,
werepeopl
e — walk away from something like that?”

The scar came from Quince’s bite. Brad, the vampire who cursed her, wagered that she couldn’t drink from me without taking my life. He lost. He retreated. At least for a time. But I don’t owe these people an explanation.

“You’re accusing me?” I shoot back. “You’re the one who was raised by alumni.”

“Not a secret,” Vesper clarifies. “What about you and Zachary, though? Dr. Ulman did that kill gesture at him, and nothing happened.”

“If he were a bad guy, why would Dr. Ulman try to kill him?” Lucy asks.

“Maybe she wasn’t really trying,” Vesper suggests.

“I know why the administration did it.” Nigel steps more fully into the kitchenette. “Why they’re doing all of it. To turn us against each other. To make us doubt each other. So we’ll be weaker. Willa’s parents did the same thing to the two of us. We have to be stronger and smarter than that.”

The kid’s not half bad when he’s sober.

Zachary nods and hands me a cup of hot cocoa. “Easier prey.”

“OOMPH!”
NIGEL EXCLAIMS
, helping Evelyn wrestle the last mattress into position in the first-floor casual lounge. We’ve roughly divided the space by gender. Kieren and I are closest to the entryway.

“I’ll keep watch tonight.” Kieren props his axe against the wall. “In fact, I can keep watch half of every night. As a Wolf, I can get by on four hours of sleep.”

“You’re still healing up,” Lucy says from a mattress across the room.

The Wolf narrows his eyes at her. “The axe makes you uncomfortable.”

I missed that completely. Must be one of those shifter-instinct things.

“Guns make me uncomfortable,” Lucy replies. “Knives. Things designed for killing people. But we’re defending ourselves against homicidal demonic monsters, so I say, rock on with your bad axe. Really, I’m good with it.”

Vesper unfurls what she’s referred to as a Persian-plum sheet. “Still, why does Kieren have exclusive control over our only weapon?”

“It’s my axe,” he replies. “I’ve taken out a vampire with it before. And I’m strong enough to hold on to it.”

Besides, as a werewolf, he
is
a weapon. He’s learned how to handle that.

Evelyn brought a container of raisins from the kitchenette. She passes it around.

Vesper dabs her forehead with a cold washcloth. The temperature has settled in the mideighties. It’s less bothersome to the southwestern students than to those from up north.

“At least for tonight,” I say, “the question of watch is pointless. I doubt anyone is going to be getting much sleep.”

Nigel, stretched out in front of the fire, begins snoring.

“I stand corrected.”

“About the axe,” Vesper begins again.

Kieren holds the weapon out to her. “Try it.”

She grips with both hands. When he lets go, her knees buckle. “Uh, never mind,” she says.

He takes it back and gives her his flashlight instead. “This axe was forged for a vampire, the vice principal at my high school. I beheaded him with it.”

Nobody mentions that Bilovski was able to wield the weapon. The old coot is stronger than he looks. Or maybe it was like Evelyn said about Kieren: adrenaline.

Bridget hugs her knees. Her voice is tentative. “Kieren, I’m glad that you have vampire-hunting experience, but given that your girlfriend is undead —”

“You want to hear the story?” he asks, grabbing a fistful of raisins.

Everyone does. Kieren doesn’t start by explaining that neophytes are still redeemable. Or by noting that Quincie is an exception to all the rules. Instead, he passes around her junior-year photo.

He lounges, one hand propping up his chin. “It was my ninth birthday. Dad set up a treasure-chest piñata in my backyard. Quince’s swing tore it open. She ignored the candy. The confetti horns. The plastic doubloons.