The Lair (37 page)

All the anger and resentment I’ve felt melts away. He is not my enemy. He is my mentor. My friend.

But when I meet his gaze, I don’t see that spark of humanity. I see brutal cruelty.

“No,” he says softly. “Look again. You made yourself see her as a girl. A living human. But look again.”

I do. This time I see both the blood and the girl. I see the fear and the food.

“She is not you,” he murmurs, his words as seductive as they are chilling. “She is not your sister. Not your friend. She is your food. The sooner you acknowledge that, the better.” He jerks her forward until she is right under my nose. I breathe through my mouth to make her less appealing, but I can feel her scent on the roof of my mouth. “She is veal. She is meat. She is the best steak you’ve ever eaten. She is a Kobe burger from the best restaurant. She is the hot dog from that childhood backyard barbecue. Your favorite ice cream melting on your tongue, an icy Popsicle on a scorching day. That last perfect day of summer. The last time your family was all together. She is the last meal you will ever eat. Once you taste her, all of those other flavors will pale in comparison. You will never want anything else again.”

I try to resist. I rub my tongue against the roof of my mouth, trying to scrub away the scent of her blood. I make myself look at her eyes. To see her pain. Her fear. Her anguish. I even remind myself of what Sebastian once said, back when I was still human. That those particular human emotions make the blood bitter. That she will not be as delicious as he has made her sound. She will be bitter with terror.

Despite that, when I look in her eyes, all I see are the tiny blood veins clutching her irises in their grasp. All I see is that ephemeral pulse against the white.

I make myself close my eyes. I blot out the reality of this girl and imagine she is Lily. She is my sister. My mirror image.

Slowly, torturously, I move away. I pull myself from his grasp. He holds tight, but he is holding her and me. I slam my arms down on his hand and he lets go.

“No!” he barks again and I find myself frozen by his words. “You
will
drain her. You will kill her. If not her, then someone else like her. You are trying too hard to think like a human. You are still denying who you are, but someday you will snap and you will kill.”

“I didn’t at Sabrina’s. I was strong enough to resist then. You don’t know that I won’t always be this strong. Just because you weakened and gave in to your baser instincts. That doesn’t mean I will.”

He doesn’t even flinch at the insult. “Back at Sabrina’s you’d fed recently. You weren’t hungry. Besides, you were too frightened of Sabrina. You have to train yourself. You have to learn to keep your instincts in check. You do that by giving in now.”

“I will not do this.”

“You will. The question is, who do you want your first kill to be? This girl? Or some other girl? Lily, maybe? Or even Carter. Which would be worse for her? Dying or losing that whelp of a boy she adores? Which would be worse for you?”

I look at the girl again, trying to make myself see the girl and not the blood.

“Please,” she whimpers, her thrasing still now. “Let me go.”

I back away a step. “No,” I say, shaking my head.

“You will drain her,” Sebastian repeats.

I am sure he is wrong. I am sure I can resist. As delicious as she smells, I am sure I will not devour her. Just as I am sure I would never devour my sister.

But he does the unthinkable. He draws his dagger and slices open her arm from shoulder to elbow. A long, curvy slice down her bicep. Her blood leaps through her skin and she screams in pain.

I lunge for her, managing—just barely—to dart out of the way at the last instant. I follow my body’s momentum. I run. I flee from Sebastian and the girl and all that delicious blood seeping onto the ground. The air is thick with it. I taste her on every breath. I feel her death creeping into my nostrils. Through the pores of my skin.

Even as I run, I fear it will not be far enough or fast enough. It will never be enough. Because I can’t run from my own gut. I will never outrun my hunger. I am not fast enough to outrun him.

And I am right.

He is on me before I even reach the woods. He knocks me to the ground only to pick me up again. He throws me over his shoulder and carries me back to her. She is scrambling away, clutching at her arm. Her movements are slow and jerky, like stop-motion animation.

He thrusts me at her and we both tumble to the ground. I try to use the movement to roll right off her, but her blood covers her body. It’s on my hands. And before I can stop myself, it’s in my mouth. Just a drop. Then a gulp. A pint. A gallon. I can’t stop. I don’t want to. My whole body sings with the delight. Feeding on her is rapturous. Intoxicating.

I drink her fear and it is heady on my tongue. It is bitter, but not unpalatable. Like Granny’s mustard greens and vinegar. Like Swiss cheese drizzled on broccoli. Her blood is soul food.

It nourishes me. Feeding from her with Sebastian, I am more powerful than I have ever been. I am more powerful than a mountain lion. Deadlier than an orca. A predator like no other on earth. And my whole body sings with the joy of it. More than that, my world sings. The music, which I missed so sorely, so achingly, vibrates in the air around me.

Sebastian and I are one in our hunger. It is a frenzy of feeding by immersion, to satiation and completion. To a state of total insentience.

When I am myself again, when the euphoria fades and the endorphins peter out, when the reality returns, I am full as I have never been before, but my soul is empty. What is left of my clothes is bloodied and tattered. I am unclean and impure. The girl is not the only human who died here, for I am gone as surely as she is.

I back away from her corpse. She lays on the ground, her body all awkward angles. Her dead eyes stare at the heavens, unseeing. But I see. I see her body sprinkled with bloody wounds. I am terrified by myself. But the blood that has been spilled tonight is everywhere. Yet, it is not until I see Sebastian unsheathing my own katana and handing it over to me, that I understand the last violation I must commit. I have killed this girl. Now I must guarantee she remains dead.

It is done with one clean slice. Then I clean the blade on the grass and return to the bodies of the Ticks and do the same to them, making sure her blood does not mingle with theirs. I don’t know if this is respect for the dead or protection of the living. My venom is in her blood. Perhaps they could regenerate as vampires. Perhaps I am merely being superstitious.

It is nearly dawn and when I see Sebastian watching me, I take off, bolting for the tree line and running through the woods. I don’t care if he follows me. I don’t even care if he catches me. I don’t know what I’m looking for until I find a stream with icy water. Even that doesn’t wash away all the blood. I scrub with sand and dirt until the last traces of it are gone. And still I am not clean.

Sebastian finds me. He stands on the bank of the stream and watches. If I didn’t know better, I might imagine there is regret on his face. But it is the distance and the play of light that make it seem so. Vampires regret nothing.

Only my ire exceeds my disgust.

“Why?” I scream.

He watches for a moment, stoic and silent. “Why what?”

“Why did you make me do that? Why?”

“I didn’t
make
you do that. You were made to do it.”

But I am in no mood for his irritating sophistries. “Were you trying to prove how weak I am?”

He cocks his head, looking baffled for a moment. “How weak you are? If I thought you were weak, I would have left you with Sabrina. I would not have given you the choice to come with me at all. No, my dear, of course not. I didn’t prove you are weak.” He stalks down the bank until he is standing before me. I shiver in the cold, but have no clothes to hide beneath. “She
was
weak. She was vulnerable and defenseless. Yet you resisted. She was bleeding and you resisted. It was not until her blood was in your mouth that you broke. I didn’t do this to show you how weak you are. I did it to show you how strong you are. You know that you can be around a human without feeding and killing. Even one who is defenseless. Now you know where your breaking point is. Some vampires are hundreds of years old before they know that. Now you know yourself. Knowledge is strength. And you will need every ounce of your strength.”

“So you keep saying. But what exactly am I supposed to use this strength for? To hunt Ticks? To kill other monsters? Because I was doing that before now.”

“The Ticks are not the monsters I’ve been priming you to kill. You’re going to kill Bob.”

“You’re crazy.” I bark with laughter. Or is it hysteria? Or Posttraumatic Eating Disorder?

“No,” he says softly. His normal sneer is completely gone. There is no bitter derision. No barely contained amusement. “I am not joking. I am not crazy. He has to be stopped, and you are the only one who can do it. No one but a vampire is strong enough. You are the only vampire young enough to walk onto his compound unnoticed. It must be you.”

My legs wobble beneath me. My mind races back through the past weeks and I know he is right. I have known all along that he wanted revenge against Roberto. I have even agreed to help him bring down Roberto. And he was cunning enough to let me think that was my own decision.

I know this is the real reason he made me. Not because Carter and Lily asked him to do it, but because it would help him kill Roberto. I was always part of his plan to kill Roberto.

“I will not be your puppet.”

“You will. Because your sister has been infected with the Tick virus.”

Shock roars through me and my knees go out from under me. No! Not Lily!

“You know what this means,” Sebastian says softly. “She is your twin. She, too, has the regenerative gene. She will not merely die from this infection. She will become a Tick.”

Instantly I think of the Ticks I’ve killed. Of their dumb eyes and their flaccid, drooling mouths. Of their rough hands. Hands that break ribs and grab hearts.

This is what Lily will become. Lily, who has always been quick-witted and strong-willed. Lily, who was always my lode stone—before Sebastian, that is. How can this be? How can I let this be? My own death would be preferable. If my own death were even possible.

Sebastian grabs me and pulls me back to my feet. His touch is gentle but firm. “Listen to me. Wailing in grief will not save your sister.”

I blink in surprise, because I realize I have been wailing, making that low keening noise I’ve always made when I’m distressed.

“Roberto has the cure. She and Carter are on their way to his compound right now. Once they are there, I am sure he will not let them leave. As long as Roberto is alive, his
abductura
will guarantee they don’t even want to leave. Which means if you ever want to see your sister again, you have to go there and kill him.”

Hope bursts through me—there is a cure! Lily may yet be saved. And then hot on its heels is another realization. Sebastian is right. Of course I will go to Roberto’s compound. I will do it to save my sister. If I need to, I will kill Roberto. I will probably even enjoy doing it. The bastard who has destroyed civilization as we know it deserves to die. If I’m the only one who can do it, then I will do it.

But the personal cost will be huge.

This is why Sebastian made me feed from this girl. So that I will never forget what I’m capable of. I have taken a life, but it was the by-product of my hunger. It wasn’t deliberate or planned out. It was not something I intended.

Killing Roberto is different. It will be premeditated. Calculated. Roberto will have surrounded himself with his human kine as well. And some of them may die when I go to rescue my sister. To pull this off, I must be smart and strong. I must be as manipulative and cunning as Sebastian has always been. I return to the girl’s body and perform one last violation. This time when I bring the katana to her neck, I don’t even flinch.

Sebastian turned me into a vampire eight weeks ago, but tonight he turned me into a monster.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Carter

Joe left at dawn. He took Josie and the bulk of our supplies and headed back to the Farm at San Angelo. He’d probably be there by noon. I had told him that no one would blame him if he wanted to bail on the Farm and head straight for whatever safety could be found at Base Camp. He had Josie to think of now.

He disagreed. Yes, he had Josie. But there were also nearly a thousand other Greens in San Angelo and they needed help, too. As he pointed out, his return would go a long way to convincing the Greens that there was hope they could actually fight the Ticks and survive. The very fact that he believed it enough to bring a baby into that fight might be the edge they needed. And I let him go, because I understood that he needed to be somewhere he was familiar with and that it would be too painful for him to be where McKenna had been.

I called ahead and talked to Dawn. I wanted her to know Josie was coming so she’d be able to get whatever supplies she needed to keep Josie alive. She sounded exhausted because she’d been up most of the night treating Greens for various injuries that had been ignored too long. Listening to her talk, I sent up a silent thanks that she’d convinced me to bring her and Darren. Competent medical care had gone a long way toward convincing the Greens to trust us. Far more than my reputation had, that was for sure.

Watching Joe drift off, I run through the situation in my head.

I’d been doing the math, thinking about the statistics until my head spun. My father had always been great with manipulating numbers so things benefitted him. When you were the CFO of a multinational corporation, that was just part of the job description.

There is no good and evil,
he used to say.
There are only facts and numbers. It’s all about making the math work for you.

I’d thought a lot about that as Joe was packing up. A thousand kids were waiting to be rescued in San Angelo. Another hundred or so up at Base Camp. Plus the people who lived in Elderton. If I rounded up, that was close to three thousand humans. There was no way—no way—those three thousand lives were worth trading for one life. Lily’s life.