What Kills Me (17 page)

Silence. Then three vampires appeared
on top of the containers. One after the other they stepped off the
edge, and by the time they landed on the gravel they were armed.
Two males wielded an ax and a sword, respectively; a dark-haired
female had what appeared to be a machete. They sized me up and then
looked at each other as if trying to determine if I was
dangerous.

Lucas drew his blades and Samira took
something out of her pocket, which she kept in her closed
fist.

“What can we do for you?” Samira
asked. Her tone was hard.

“The two vampires with you are
fugitives,” the female vampire said. She enunciated every syllable
so that ‘fugitives’ sounded like three words.

“That is none of your concern,” Samira
replied, copying the vampire’s articulation.

“Step aside, Purple,” one of the other
vampires said. “We’re collecting our bounty.”

“That is not a good idea, sugar,”
Samira said. “I’m only going to give this one warning.”

This would probably be a
good time to become that crazy vampire killer.

I took a step back. My heel against
the gravel was like the firing of a starting gun. The vampires
sprang forward. Lucas blocked the two males, striking their blades
away. The female vampire lunged for me. Samira dropped to the
ground and tripped her. The vampire rolled in the dust before
finding her footing. They hissed at each other through their
fangs.

Samira turned and ran, stretching a
string of wire out between her hands. The vampire chased her toward
a wall of containers, the machete swinging inches from Samira’s
back.

Oh no. Dead
end.

I thought she would crash but instead
Samira ran up the wall and did a back flip. In mid air she put her
hands on either side of her attacker’s shoulders, the taut wire
against the vampire’s throat. Instead of landing on the ground
behind the vampire, Samira kicked her in the back. The head came
off and the body struck the wall.

As Samira jogged back toward me, she
licked one of her fangs. She approached Lucas, who was still
fending off the two males.

“Enough games,” she said.

One of the vampires turned and thrust
his sword at her. She leaped and spun, her body twirling parallel
to the ground so that the blade slid underneath her. Kicking her
leg out, she wrapped it around the vampire’s head and pulled him
down. She then wound her wire around his neck and did a front flip
over him, tearing off his head. It went sailing into the yard and I
heard it knock against a container in the distance. At the same
time, with one quick slice, Lucas felled his opponent.

He kicked the head away as he walked
to me. I straightened up because I had been cowering against a
container.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to sound
composed.

Samira’s wire retracted like a tape
measure into a silver cylinder in her hand.

“What a waste of life,” she said,
looking at the bodies.

“You did warn them,” Lucas
said.

“I did,” she said with a
sigh.

“I thought you were amazing,” I told
her.

“You liked my tricks?” she asked,
smoothing her hair and tucking it behind her ear. “Well, you should
see me when I’m actually challenged. Lucas, remember that time we
fought those vampires in that palace in India? There were maybe
twenty of them, and I lost my wire so I had to use Lucas’s belt as
a weapon. And then he couldn’t keep his pants up.”

Samira chuckled and Lucas allowed
himself a fleeting smile. I found myself wishing that I had better
memories with Lucas rather than the horrible ones we had
shared.

“Let’s get going,” Lucas
said.

I tiptoed over splotches of blood as
we walked away from the scene.

“Remember, my friend Kinman will meet
you upon arrival and set you up,” she said. “Please give him my
regards.”

“Where are we going?” I
asked.

Samira shot a look at Lucas. “You
haven’t told her?”

“What difference would it
make?”

“According to my informants, Nuwa was
exiled to an island more than five hundred years ago,” she said.
“You know it as Taiwan. We’re going to fly you there in a cargo
container.”

I’d never been to Asia
before.

“It’ll take more than twelve hours to
get there so try not to kill each other.”

I sat cross-legged on the
floor of the cold box, testing my ability to block out the roar of
the plane’s engine. I was getting good at it. In my mind it sounded
like I was turning the volume up and down. I faded other sounds in,
like the whoosh I heard when Lucas struck the air as he repeated a
pattern of martial arts movements. Or the drone of a fly trapped in
the box with us. Concentrating too much on the insect reminded me
of being at a soccer game, surrounded by vuvuzelas.
Man, those things are annoying.

“Samira is really great for helping
us,” I said.

Lucas had lit the container with a
flashlight pointed at the ceiling. He paused in a squatting
position, his hands pressed together as if in prayer.

“Why didn’t she come with us?” I
asked.

“It’s safer if she stays in
Rome.”

“But what if the arrabbiata track her
down?”

“What?”

“The…sorry, arrabbiata is a pasta
sauce. I mean the army guys.”

“Samira can take care of
herself.”

Unlike me, he means.
I wished that I could be tougher.

“So, how long have you been
friends?”

“A long time.”

“Have you guys ever been
together?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were you ever a couple?”

“Once,” he said. “For a few
decades.”

Oh, just a few
decades.

“Why did you break up?”

“We changed,” he said with a shrug.
“Everything changes.”

“That coming from the guy who stays
the same age forever.”

“At the time, Noel and I were busy
making weapons for the Aramatta and studying with samurai in Japan.
Samira became involved with the rebellion and she eventually saw my
duty to the Monarchy as counter to her beliefs.”

“Right. You said she was an
anarchist.”

“She’s part of a group of insurgents
fighting to overthrow the Monarchy.”

“Did she ever consider you an
enemy?”

“No. But she considers us pawns.
Victims of the Monarchy’s oppression. Her mate, however, thinks
that anyone who isn’t with them is against them.”

“Oh, she’s with someone else now?” I
sounded too happy.

“Yes. He’s an ass. And I don’t trust
him.”

“You don’t trust many people, do
you?”

“I’ve learned not to.”

“But you trust Samira?”

“Yes. We’ll be friends,
always.”

I had to tell Ryka about Lucas and
Samira. She didn’t think exes could be friends.

Then it hit me. I wouldn’t be talking
to Ryka again. It hurt. I wished that I could talk to her one more
time. What would I say? So much had happened in a few days, so much
had changed. Maybe I would just tell her that no one else could
make me laugh until I cried. That our friendship rescued me in high
school. That she always encouraged me to be the person that I
wanted to be.

And now I didn’t know what
I was supposed to be. Or what I would become. “Their abilities,
their impulses, could manifest themselves in you,” Lettie had said.
If that was true, how would I know when I was out of control? I
felt perpetually sick to my stomach from anxiety. And from time to
time the sensory overload made me feel crazy. But at no point did I
feel violent or…
vicious.

“Lucas?”

“What?”

“What were you and Noel like before
you became vampires?”

He stopped mid-punch and looked at me.
He thought a moment, staring into the beam from the
flashlight.

“My father was a legendary
bladesmith,” he said. “He was known all over the world for his
exquisite work.”

“And you?”

“I was…trouble,” he said. “When my
mother died of the plague, my father was left alone to raise me, my
brother and my three sisters. He didn’t know what else to do but
train us every day in combat and in the art of making weapons. I
loathed training but I loved to fight. We argued all the
time.”

He paused and sat on his
haunches.

“One night my father and I fought, I
don’t remember about what, and I left the house in a rage. I went
to a tavern, got drunk, and threatened someone with this dagger
that my father had given me for my nineteenth birthday. I still
remember it. In the gold handle were jewels encrusted in the shape
of a snake.

“The weapon caught the eye of a woman
in the bar. She asked where I had gotten it. I told her where to
find my father and then passed out. The next day I barely
remembered speaking with her, but after sunset she was at our
door.

“She wanted my father to make weapons
for her lover but offered to pay only a fraction of what they were
worth. When he refused, she attacked us. We tried to fight back but
that was futile.”

He winced as if remembering the
pain.

“She left us alive. She said that she
was impressed by our skills and that she would return in a
fortnight with a better offer, once she had consulted with her
masters. Two weeks later she reappeared with her offer. She said
her name was Nuwa and that she was a vampire. She wanted to turn my
father, my brother, and me into vampires, and in return she would
spare the lives of my sisters.”

“You accepted the offer,” I
said.

He nodded. “We didn’t really have a
choice. So she blessed us as gifts to her lover—the
general.”

The general.

“The same one who…” I couldn’t finish
my sentence.

“Yes,” he said.

I pictured the general. His body
filling the doorframe at Noel’s home. His resounding, threatening
voice calling out, “Swordsmith.”

“The Monarchy accepted our blessing
and Nuwa spent years rearing us, preparing us to join the Aramatta.
We made weapons for them and trained with them. But my father
missed my sisters. He would sneak away sometimes to watch them grow
up. One night he was caught. The Monarchy saw it as disloyalty.
They said it was an insult to his gift. They wanted to sever his
link to humanity, so the general had our home set on fire, killing
my sisters.”

I covered my mouth with my hand. “I’m
sorry.”

“My father was ordered to continue
making weapons but he was banished from the castle. I asked to go
with him. My brother, Taren, stayed with the Aramatta.”

“Where’s your brother now?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him
since.”

“What happened to Nuwa?”

“When she heard that my sisters were
to be slain, she tried to intervene because she had promised us
that they would go unharmed. The general must have fallen out of
love with her because he accused her of treason. So the Monarchy
exiled her. They returned her to Asia, where she lived when she was
human.”

“And you’ve had no contact with her
since?”

“No. Noel blamed her for bringing this
upon our family. He also blamed himself for failing to protect my
sisters. But he should have blamed me. I had shown the vampire to
our door.”

I understood his
guilt.
I brought vampires to your door and
Noel and Jerome paid with their lives.

“You’re not responsible for what
happened to your family,” I said, but I knew the words would offer
little comfort.

“My father said that he wanted nothing
to do with Nuwa. That was the least I could do.”

“But you still thought of
her.”

“Vampires form strong bonds with their
sires,” he said. “They act as your parent. She was the closest
thing that I ever had to a mother.” He reached for one of his
swords and rested it in his lap.

“You’re sure she can help
us?”

“She is older and stronger than the
general and she has lived for centuries outside of the Monarchy.
She will know what to do.”

We sat in silence for a period.
Suddenly he unsheathed his blade, swiped the air, and snapped the
weapon back into its scabbard. The fly fell to the floor in two
hairy parts, its legs still twitching.

“That’s disgusting,” I said. “But you
need to teach me how to do that, you know, in case I ever have an
insect problem.”

He smiled and shook his head. I stood,
rubbing my hands together. “Seriously. Show me
something.”

“You want to learn
swordplay?”