The Lair (41 page)

“Wow.” I didn’t bother to hide the derision in my voice. “When you say it like that, manipulating and controlling all of humankind to bring about the apocalypse almost sounds like a good thing.”

He looked at me for a second, his expression almost baffled. Then he smiled. “You give me too much credit. I did not end the world.”

“But your master did.”

“Roberto?”

“Yeah, Roberto.” I was tired of him being so damn coy. I wanted to wring this guy’s neck. I didn’t even care if he was Lily’s dad. Except I did care whether or not she got the cure, so instead, I clenched my hands tightly in my lap. I was tired of sugarcoating this crap. “The vampire who created the Tick virus that brought about the end of civilization as we know it. Sound familiar?”

But Jonathan was frowning. “It sounds like Roberto has been getting some very bad press. He is hardly the evil genius you think he is.”

“And what about you? Am I supposed to believe you’re a nice guy?”

“I suppose Lily’s told you all sorts of horrible things about how I abandoned them when they were ten. How I disappeared from their lives without a backward glance.”

Okay, sure. We would start small and work our way up to genocide.

“There are two sides to every story. Sometimes even more. Do I regret leaving them? Of course I do. Do I regret the great things I’ve been able to do since leaving them? No. I am sorrier than I can say that their mother didn’t trust me when I asked her to send the girls to me last summer. I regret that I didn’t go get them myself when the plague broke out. But at the time the vaccine hadn’t been perfected yet and travel was too risky.

“And of course that Dean in Sherman was supposed to be keeping an eye on them, but he screwed that up. We’ve been looking for them ever since. Then a colleague of Roberto’s called and said he’d found them and was sending them our way.” Price’s facade of easygoing charm gave way to anger. It hit me so fast and strong that I wondered how he’d kept it bottled up, but he quickly got it under control. He shook his head. “You can blame me for being too trusting. Too optimistic in my belief that other people would keep them safe, but you can’t say that I never tried. I just didn’t try hard enough.”

Was all of that true? Had he searched for them? The Dean certainly had tried to get them back. We had assumed at the time that it was because he had guessed Lily was an
abductura
, but what if we’d read it wrong? Maybe they’d been safe all along. Maybe I hadn’t saved them at all. Maybe if I’d just left them on that Farm, their father would have come for them and brought them here. To safety. To a vaccine. Maybe if I’d just minded my own damn business, Mel would never have been turned into a vampire and Lily wouldn’t be slowly transforming into a Tick.

Kudos to me for being the worst boyfriend ever.

This sucked. It just effing sucked. Despair washed over me.

How many times was Lily going to be in danger because of me?

Except she wasn’t in danger because of me this time. She was dying. I dropped my head into my hands. And it was my fault. All my own damn fault.

Jesus, if I’d just . . .

Before I could finish the thought, my mind sent up a warning bell. I made myself stop thinking for a moment. I just sucked air into my lungs and pushed it back out again. Slow and easy.

I took a step back, emotionally. I hit the pause button.

And I made myself think.

Yeah. I’d screwed up. A lot. But I’d have plenty of time to beat myself up about that later. When I wasn’t sitting in the same room with an
abductura
powerful enough to short-circuit the emotions of the entire damn state.

I pushed myself to my feet. “Jesus, how can you even live with yourself?”

“Lily and Mel—”

“Forget Lily and Mel. Forget what you’ve done to them. Have you been outside these fences? Have you seen the devastation you’ve caused?”

“I will not be talked to like that by a child.”

“I am not—”

“Whatever you are now, you were a child when this started. The world you grew up in, that’s the world you need to be looking at. Do you really think that world was so great? So perfect? The American government fought wars no one could win to secure global resources to feed the economy. American consumerism was destroying the planet. Mass shootings on the rise. Social media contributing to the highest teenage suicide rates in history. We were doing everything wrong. And it was only getting worse. You think I wanted to raise my girls in that world?

“So, yes, when I had a chance to make a difference, I grabbed it. The greatest leaps in civilization that humanity has ever known have happened when a powerful
abductura
worked under the guidance of a vampire.”

Shock rocked me back in my seat. Holy crap. Price wasn’t just a jerk, he was a certifiable megalomaniac. “And you think that’s what’s happening here? A great leap in civilization? Have you seen the wrecked cities? The vacant towns? The mass graves? Have you seen any of it?”

“Yes! I have. But where you see destruction, I see a blank canvas. I see a world reborn. I see an opportunity for humanity to start afresh.”

“Sure,” I said. “That would be great. If there was enough humanity left. Because right now, there are a hell of a lot of Ticks, and not a hell of a lot of people.”

“But here, in this compound, there are plenty of people. Individually chosen people, highly intelligent, highly educated people. More than enough to reboot humanity.”

Right. I was pretty sure that if these people had been individually selected for anything it was for their susceptibility to Price’s powers. Or maybe their blood type. Price was still talking with that gleam of delight in his eyes. Like this plan of his—the plan to reboot civilization—was exciting and thrilling rather than repugnant. “Surely you can see that this was the only way.”

I could only shake my head. “You wanted to make the world a better place, so you decided to destroy civilization instead of just, oh I don’t know, making a donation to the United Way like a normal person?”

Price leaned forward then until he and I were almost eye to eye. He smiled slowly. “But that’s the point, isn’t it? You and I, we’re not normal people, are we?”

Something like fear skittered across my nerves and I fought the sudden urge to bolt from the room. I had nothing in common with Jonathan Price. The only thing connecting us was Lily.

But before I could ask him what he meant, the air was filled with the high pitched whine that got louder and louder. Then an explosion rent the air. The whole building shook.

Price started for the door. “Wait here,” he barked.

But I was right behind him. “Yeah, right.”

He whirled to face me. “Sit back down and wait right here.”

I stepped toward him. He was about my height, but I had him on sheer muscle. He’d obviously spent the past eight months of the apocalypse hiding out at El Corazon, letting the guards do all the hard work, whereas I’d been out fighting Ticks. I smiled. “You want to make an issue of this now?”

“Fine,” he muttered, turning to stalk down the hall. “But stay where I can see you.”

“I was about to say the same thing to you.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Mel

I should be planning as I wait for the perfect moment to sneak out of the room and start my search for Roberto. But instead of strategizing, all I can do is wonder: Does vampire hair grow? I have no way of knowing. Sebastian’s hair is cut short. I haven’t known him long enough to notice it growing, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t.

If vampire hair doesn’t grow, I’m going to be really annoyed that I just chopped all of mine off. I could have cut off Lily’s. The state she’s in, she wouldn’t have even noticed. So after I knocked out the guard, swapped clothes with him, and stole his weapons, I pulled my own hair into a ponytail and sliced it off close to my head. Now my hair—my one feature that I’ve ever actually liked—is jagged and misshapen. Maybe it will grow out; maybe it will be like this for the rest of my life. However long that might be. I’ve had only a few moments of vanity ever, so I don’t feel too badly about not wanting to look like Fontaine for the rest of eternity. Still, if I do, I guess it was worth it. That one little ponytail gave the illusion that it was me sleeping on that bench. I may have fooled even Carter.

When the hall outside empties, I wait another sixty seconds, then use the passkey to open the door. I have two now: the guard’s and my father’s. I slip them into separate pockets to keep them straight and I stride out like this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. As I walk down the hall, my feet clomp in my oversized combat boots loudly enough to cover the pounding of my heart. I don’t know how long I’ll have. From here, any number of things could go wrong.

My father could realize his key is missing. My father could decide he needs to talk to me now, nap be damned. Someone could come and check on the guard. Those were all possibilities. Remote, but possible. The more likely scenario is that there is a security camera in that room and that someone saw or heard everything I did and is on his way to retrieve me right now. If that’s the case, more troops will be here any minute. My new disguise is the only thing keeping me from being identified. So I keep my glasses firmly in place, even though the mirrored lenses muck with my vampire vision. I wear the outfit like I own it. Like I was born to be a brainless, hired goon.

I move quickly down one hall and then another. I don’t sneak because there are probably security cameras here, too. Still, every springy vampire muscle in my body is twitching to run. I could be anywhere on this compound in under three minutes if I let loose. But that would really blow my cover. Not just my identity, but the whole kit and caboodle. I don’t want anyone knowing what I’m capable of until it’s too late to stop me.

It’s a strain to move like a human, but I manage it. At least, I think I do. When several minutes pass and there are no obvious signs that I’m being followed, I relax a little. I’m still sure there were security cameras in that room, but that doesn’t mean someone was monitoring them.

In my mind, I try to pull up the little map that Sebastian drew for me. I know from my ride through town that it hadn’t been completely accurate. He had underestimated the number of houses. Even the “Main Street” had more buildings than Sebastian’s drawing. I wasn’t sure where he’d gotten his intel. I assumed some sort of satellite from the Before. If the number of new buildings was any indication, El Corazon has done well in the After. Chaos rules outside these fences, but in this little swath of what is left of the United States, order reigns. Roberto’s order. And my father’s. The fact that he’s alive shocks me, but the mystery of their connection is a puzzle box I’m not willing to play with right now. There have to be three hundred people living here. Three hundred people and one vampire. Roberto must eat well.

I step out of the clinic through one of the side doors into the late-afternoon sunlight. The temperatures are starting to drop off and there is a slight chill in the air. Directly across the street is a building that looks like a classic Texas county courthouse: four stories of impressive limestone, late-nineteenth-century architecture sitting on a neat square of trimmed grass. That’s the building from which Roberto rules this little kingdom. But I’m equally sure that he isn’t there now. No, it’s dusk. He is definitely at home, wherever home might be for him.

I don’t know enough about normal vampires—other vampires, that is—to know where he might live. Lore says vampires must sleep in the dirt of their native land, but Sebastian has never done that. So I walk along Main Street looking as I go at the buildings in either direction. I’m surprised, but grateful, that no one has come racing after me yet. To the south, I see the open plain. Longhorn cattle dot the landscape as well as active pump jacks. This doesn’t surprise me. I saw the windmills on the way in. Roberto is the kind of man who would have planned this stuff out far in advance. It wouldn’t even surprise me if this compound of his wasn’t set for the next decade.

I walk farther down the street and don’t see the house until I turn the corner and the land begins to slope gently up a hill. There it is, on the crest of the hill, overlooking the town. Actually, it’s less house and more sprawling Victorian mansion: three stories of ornate, pink granite with glossy, black slate on the roof and more wrought iron than the French Quarter in New Orleans. There is a pair of massive live oaks in the front yard, shading the house from the southern sun, their branches clumped with ball moss and dipping low to the ground. It reminds me of the Haunted Mansion from Disney World.

I walk right up. There is a single guard in front and another patrolling the sides and probably the back of the house, too. I take out the patrol guard first using the tranq rifle I’d stolen with the uniform. The second guy takes a little more planning, but it is still relatively easy. I pretend to be the guard from the side of the house and call him over. I hit him with the tranq rifle. I tie them up with zip ties, like I’d seen Carter do before—then eye the back of the house looking for a window that looks vulnerable.

I return to the front, find a tree branch that’s about an inch or two in diameter. I break off the branch and snap it in two and then use the knife I stole off the guard to whittle points on either end of both sticks. As stakes go, they’re primitive, but they’ll do.

I’m just starting to wonder why I’ve gotten this far without more interference, when I hear the howl of Ticks in the distance. My heart gives a little shudder of fear at the piercing yips. Even after all this time, even after I’ve killed so many of them, that sound still terrifies me. It’s like I’m back in that parking lot, dying all over again.

I push my terror aside. I have nothing to fear. Not from them. Besides, this was what I had planned. I wanted the Ticks here. This was why I cut the tracking chip out of the neck of that girl I’d killed. This was why I’d stashed it in my pocket and carried it with me during the long drive here, despite the annoying buzzing it caused in my head. The radio frequency of those chips irritated me, but it bugged the crap out of the Ticks.