Page 80

Chapter Seventy-Two

LUNA

How did Laro get here? He can’t cross water in the liminal. That’s the rule.

But it’s definitely him. His emotions are still scrambled, but they’ve settled into patterns. The initial shock has worn off.

He sees Mom and his mouth drops open. “The little shit is here!” He pulls her hair to expose her face. “Giulia. Wow. You got out.” He lets her go, then points down at me, looking at the ceiling. “This is the one! It’s her. ”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Mom mutters at the sight of him, pulling the last bit of rope from the last bit of knot.

“That’s enough of that ,” Laro howls.

This child is confused and broken in places I never touched. His life was flipped from heads to tails and pressed into his eyes without a whisper of consent.

I grab my mother’s hand. Yes, she got the knot, but I don’t want Laro to be aware. Not until there’s something she can do with free hands.

The squeaking increases. The dogshit bag on the ceiling changes shape, gaining wings. A bat.

Laro crouches next to Mom, one eye tightened into a squint. “You look the same.”

“Don’t try to be nice,” she spits back.

“I was never nice,” he hisses. “Even before I was cast out.”

The bat resolves into Charles. His bleach-white T-shirt and jeans are dulled here. Two more men enter the way Laro came in. One is very small. The other is made of muscles.

“Laro and I share ancestral blood,” Charles says.

Even his emotions—dominance, aggression, ennui—seem framed in the bright confidence of white.

The strongest feeling is disgust, though it’s hard to discern what exactly repels him.

“His mother was my sister. He will never be refused over some silly norms .” He meets Laro’s eyes from above. “Boy, you’re crowding her.”

Laro scuttles back.

“What do you want?” I ask.

Laro turns back to me, still crouched, and smiles. “My uncle wants what he takes and takes what he wants. He is the law.”

He’s saying Carmine, his father, couldn’t take what he wanted.

He’s talking about my blood.

“Look at this pair of seven-in-the-morning housepainters,” Mom says over her shoulder. “What’s with the white?”

Charles grabs the back of Mom’s collar and yanks her up. Her hands rip away from mine, and she’s standing, barely, with her ankles tied together.

“Doesn’t blood look so beautiful on white?” He tugs her braid, so she has to look him in the eye. “It’s like a work of art.”

My mother was fearless in the face of government conspiracies, the Deep State, lizard people, and the RFID chips in her teeth. Now she’s fearless in the face of a literal vampire.

“Ever seen the pretty blue of a vampire in flames, you worthless cuck?”

Laro stands and crowds Mom. “You can’t talk to him like that!”

The shape of my mother’s emotions are simple and solid. There’s no hesitation. No panic. Just a wall of hard, organized anger. My admiration for her is eclipsed only by my fear for her.

“It’s fine.” Charles puts his hand on his nephew’s shoulder, and the boy mashes his reaction down below his joy. “There’s no fire here, Strega.”

“Not yet.”

“Not ever.” He turns to one of the bat-men lounging on the couches. “Scout, pick up the other Strega so I can explain what we’re doing here.”

The shorter, slimmer vampire hoists me to my feet. Holding the loose loop of knots around my wrists, I look out the windows. The charcoal sky is bound by the darker Lego set of the skyline.

The water is utterly still, like glass. Not frozen. Not tranquil or stagnant. Just not moving, rippling, or flowing. It reflects the stars and moon like polished pewter.

“You can’t cross water in the liminal,” I say with a knowing shrug, as if I can tell asses from elbows in the liminal.

“Correct.” Charles stands over me, and I’m forced to look up at him. He is very pleased with himself, twisting one black ring, then the other. He leans into me and takes a deep breath, sniffing me. Flinching, I turn away as much as the collar allows. “The water has no buoyancy.”

Charles straightens. He is proud of himself. He wants me to know how much more clever he is than Carmine.

He leans into Mom and takes the same long sniff. She smiles, welcoming him closer.

“Ever heard of aerated water?” she asks seductively. “Sounds the same.”

Is she going to explain the difference in water density with the suspense of a horror story? The way she told it to me? How a person will sink like a stone no matter what, so he’d better not go fucking around the treatment plant with Diego and his buddies?

“What is that?” Charles murmurs, getting closer to hear her.

She spits in his face… or in the direction of his face. Vampire kings can catch bullets. Spit is slower. He dodges and the glob lands on the floor.

Charles stands straight, puts his hands behind his back and paces before us, like a military leader.

“This is where you are. This is your situation. You belong to us now. He cannot get to you. But don’t worry.

We won’t kill the geese. We have bought ourselves some time to get acquainted.

And by that, I don’t mean I’ve spent my energy isolating you so that we can have exhausting conversations.

What I mean is, we”—he quickly points at himself and makes an arc for the rest of the team—“have time to get acquainted with how you taste and how much power you have to offer.”

The biggest of them has arm muscles as big as bowling balls and a head with the same shine. The big one licks his lips.

Charles takes the smallest by the back of the neck and gives him a shake. “Even little Scout can get to know you.”

Scout looks at the floor.

Charles steps close to me again, scanning my face.

I shut my eyes, but I can feel his breath on my lips.

“It’s been so long since my tongue tasted sweetness.

He took it all for himself for so long. He left us with the rest of humanity and it wasn’t enough.

But now…” He leans into my neck and breathes deeply from my silver-crescent scar.

My ribs tighten over my lungs. I can’t breathe.

My blood isn’t going to be poured into a cup and sipped like wine.

It’s going to be sucked out of me by each of them, one by one.

They’re going to tear through my jeans and penetrate me, and if their venom has even a fraction of the effect that Carmine’s has, I’m going to be aroused while they do it.

I can read vampire emotions here, which means I can get inside them.

I reach out to rewrite Charles the way I rewrote Laro and my mother, but I’m blocked. It’s as if that part of my power is on the other side of a transparent, bulletproof shield.

“You’re in thrall, poor little witch.” Charles laughs. “You can’t get inside us, even here.”

He pushes me back and puts his face to my exposed throat.

“No,” I choke out. “I do not consent.”

My ankles are tied, but my hands are free. I jab him in the face. His neck snaps back. When I sit up, he’s still in reach, so I punch him, and the second blow sends him back two steps.

Got the jump on him twice .

Fuck. I really am a warrior.