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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Theo felt it as they hit Aaron’s driveway: a yank . Right in the center of his dead chest, hard and urgent.

A startled noise tore out of his chest, not unlike a dog’s whine.

Kade looked over. He was clutching the grab handle above the door, his eyes wide. “What is it?”

Theo stomped on the brake. The Lexus skidded to a stop, Kade yelping and almost falling into the windshield despite his death grip on the grab handle.

“Guard dog incoming,” Theo said.

Kade frowned. Before he could say anything, Sparky burst out from the trees and raced past them, barking wildly.

Theo pointed. “Look.”

Kade swore as he spotted the plume of smoke drifting up from behind the Fletcher house.

Kade snapped his seatbelt off. “Is Victor there?”

Theo concentrated. It was hard to hear anything with Kade so close, his familiar metallic scent and his thundering heartbeat blocking everything else out. Then Kade flung open the car door and the world bled through: Sparky barking. Plastic burning. Blood and ash and dirt. Mrs. Fletcher screaming, Aaron yelling something about gasoline, about crossbows, about Russel’s text.

“I’m gonna go with yes ,” Theo said, and raced into the backyard with Kade on his heels.

The greenhouse was on fire. Plastic melted down the blackened wooden struts, dripping onto the burning floor of flowers. They were ash, barely a shred of pink to be seen.

Except for the ones in Victor’s hand. Those were bright and vibrant, no matter how many flames Mrs. Fletcher aimed at them with her rapidly weakening flamethrower.

Victor laughed, the noise cracked and raspy as he flew up into a tree.

“Perhaps I’ll turn your son,” he goaded. “Would you like that, Jan? Would you be a good little hunter and cut off his head?”

Mrs. Fletcher screamed and yanked on the trigger. The flames sputtered and died. She threw the flamethrower at him. He jumped to another branch, the metal crashing harmlessly where he’d been seconds before.

Mrs. Fletcher turned toward the trees, her face blotchy with tears and burns.

“AARON,” she yelled.

Aaron stumbled out of the burning greenhouse, his hair singed and his clothes stinking of gasoline, a crossbow in his hand.

Theo squinted. The crossbow wasn’t in his hand—it was attached to his hand. He had a crossbow harnessed to his stump.

“Crossbow hand,” Kade blurted excitedly.

“Later,” Theo told him.

Aaron’s eyes watered from the smoke as he aimed. A bolt flew from his crossbow. Victor caught it with his free hand, which smoked around the silver before he snapped it in half.

Sparky burst into view, teeth bared as she ran for Victor.

Victor whistled. The noise was sharp and inhuman, making everybody flinch.

“Don’t,” Theo yelled, heart plummeting.

Sparky’s gait stiffened. Her paws twisted over each other as she came to a lurching stop in the smoldering remains of the greenhouse. There was a moment where she went completely still, and Theo thought they might be in the clear. Then she righted herself and kept running. Straight at Mrs. Fletcher.

Theo yelled her name. Sparky ignored him, collided with Mrs. Fletcher, and knocked her into the burning flowers. Mrs. Fletcher let out a frenzied yell, pummeling Sparky’s torso with her scabbed fists.

Theo sprinted over and locked his arms around Sparky’s torso.

“Quit it,” he growled as she struggled. “This isn’t you! Come back!”

“Getting away,” Kade yelled.

Theo looked over his shoulder, watching helplessly as Victor took off. The flowers glinted in his hand, a bouquet of doom dressed in pretty pink.

Aaron aimed. An arrow streaked through Victor’s wing, earning a pained yell but no lost momentum. By the time Aaron reloaded his crossbow hand, Victor had vanished above the trees.

“Shit,” Theo spat.

Mrs. Fletcher screamed, reaching up like she was going to dig her thumbs into Sparky’s eyes.

Theo yanked Sparky off. She barked, but she was getting quieter by the second. The further Victor got, the less hold he had over her.

“ No ,” Mrs. Fletcher yelled. She sat up, paying no attention to the smoldering flowers sticking to her shirt or the sparks climbing her hair. “Goddammit! Useless, you’re useless !”

She stormed toward them. No crossbow, no flamethrower, just pure rage and burning hair that made Theo think about those pirate stories Kade told him during detention last month about Blackbeard tying smoking fuses into his beard. It did make for a terrifying sight, and Theo dragged Sparky back without thinking.

Mrs. Fletcher had been different since her husband died. No more lipstick, no more PTA meetings. No more stopping in the grocery store to chat to her friends. She got her groceries delivered and talked to no one. The last direct communication Theo had with her was the text barring him from her husband’s funeral, and another text a day after he offered to heal Aaron’s hand, saying that he wasn’t to talk to her son ever again.

Theo tried not to push. He understood her anger. He just didn’t want her to point it at him, dark and dripping like the cut on her face.

Kade ran between them, his hands raised. “ We’re useless? We just got here, lady. You let him get the flowers, why did you even have them? Just burn them and get them over with!”

Mrs. Fletcher glared at him. “They wouldn’t?—”

“ Mom ,” Aaron said, appalled. He rushed over and patted her hair until it stopped smoking. She shoved him off, holding his crossbow hand so tight Theo wondered if Aaron could feel it. She used to do that when he was a kid, holding Aaron’s hand so hard it hurt and snapping at him if he squirmed.

“They wouldn’t,” Kade repeated. He kicked at a burning clump of flowers, the petals crumbling under the lightest touch of his boot. “What, wouldn’t burn? Because these looked pretty burned to me.”

“Russel texted them,” Theo said. He lowered Sparky to the ground, keeping a hand on her collar just in case.

Kade paused. Then he laughed, the noise strangely eerie over the sound of dying flames and Mrs. Fletcher’s ragged breathing.

“You didn’t know , huh? Didn’t know it would be Theo. Didn’t know it would be me. Didn’t know what he needs for the ritual. You were really in the dark, huh? Generations of trickle-down whispers.” Kade’s smile twisted, the desperation creeping in as he stepped closer to Mrs. Fletcher. She didn’t move back, and the hairs on Theo’s neck prickled when he noticed how dark her eyes were. He’d seen Kade get up in people’s faces before, but not when they were this angry. Not when they had murder in their blood.

“He has everything he needs but the dress,” Kade said in a low voice. “Hell, maybe he already has it! We don’t know! What we do know is that you had one secret ingredient at the back of your house the whole time, and you only burned it when Victor already had them in his goddamn hand! So don’t get mad at us when you’re the one who screwed the town over.”

Mrs. Fletcher jerked forward. Theo almost did the same, only stopping when Aaron held his crossbow hand out and blocked her from going after Kade.

“Mom,” Aaron said, ignoring Kade’s surprised look. “Let’s go.”

“This is my house,” Mrs. Fletcher replied, shaking with rage. Her mouth worked silently, her wet eyes never leaving Kade as she struggled against all the words that wanted to leave her mouth. She couldn’t say any of them. None of them except:

“Get the hell out.”

Kade groaned. “Stop treating us like we’re these big bad monsters you have to defeat! I’m just some teenager trying to make it to twenty, and your husband tried to KILL me because he couldn’t be bothered trying other options!”

“Shut your mouth,” Mrs. Fletcher whispered.

Kade shoved a middle finger in her face. “You shut yours !”

“Kade,” Theo tried.

Kade spun on him, burned flowers crumbling to ash under his boots. They smelled so horribly familiar it made Theo’s eyes water.

“No, man! Screw your whole ‘we need to be nice to her because her husband died.’ I’m glad he died!”

“Renfield,” Aaron said. It wasn’t a threat. It was a warning. He still had his arm in front of his mother, stopping her from going after Kade. He was pale and shaky and looked like he would rather be anywhere else but standing between his mom and his ex-situationship, trying to talk them down.

It was getting harder by the second. Mrs. Fletcher was trying to wrestle Aaron’s arm away, and Kade wore the same expression as when he was cracking his fists into Finn in the cafeteria: attack-dog face, Kade had called it once. When nothing matters but going for the throat.

“Your whole family is awful ,” Kade continued, his blunt teeth bared. “You think you’re these great big protectors! Newsflash, you’re not protecting shit . Your husband died choking on his own blood, and you know what, Jan? He deserved every second of it.”

Mrs. Fletcher let out an anguished cry. At first Theo thought she was still trying to wrench Aaron’s arm away so she could launch herself at Kade with her bare hands. But then she shoved the crossbow arm around. The tip grazed Kade’s chest?—

“NO,” Theo yelled. He dropped Sparky and rushed at Mrs. Fletcher, knocking her into the smoldering flowers. He ripped Aaron’s arm harness off and was about to throw it into the trees when he noticed Aaron’s horrified expression. He was staring at the crossbow harness in Theo’s hand.

The empty crossbow.

Theo stared at it numbly. Then he turned, hoping with everything in him that he was somehow wrong about the sudden burst of blood in the air.

Kade stood perfectly still, his gray eyes fixed on Theo. A single drop of blood tracked down those chapped lips Theo had spent so long watching as he slept.

Slowly, as if in a dream, Kade reached up and touched the silver bolt sticking out of his chest.

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Okay. That’s…what I get, I guess.”

He sagged forward.

Theo rushed to catch him. Kade’s forehead scraped his cheek, the scent of burned skin joining the stench of burned flowers.

“Sorry,” Theo blurted. He needed to get Kade somewhere safe. Needed to get him away from Mrs. Fletcher. The burns could wait, the soft skin of Kade’s cheek sizzling as Theo hauled him into his arms.

Aaron was yelling, shoving himself in front of his mother. Trying to stop her from another attempt, trying to stop Sparky from lunging at her.

“Call him off,” Aaron begged. “Theo! Call him off!”

“Sparky,” Theo said. “Stop.”

Sparky growled and took a hesitant step back, hackles still up. Then she ran to Kade’s side, butting her head anxiously against his leg.

“It’s better this way,” Mrs. Fletcher argued, eyes wet as she tried to get out from behind her son. “Your father would’ve?—”

“You said not YET,” Aaron screamed. He grabbed her arm and started yanking, shooting Theo a disturbed look over his shoulder. For a second Theo thought he was scared of him.

Then Aaron pulled harder at his mom, telling her, “Go, for god’s sake!” and Theo realized: Aaron was scared for Theo. For him and Kade. Whatever their disagreements, Aaron didn’t want to see them butchered in the woods.

Theo lowered Kade into the ashy flowers and lifted his head gently into his lap. The Fletchers’ clumsy footsteps were fading, Kade’s stuttering heartbeat growing louder with each wet pulse. The arrow had grazed his heart. Theo could hear the blood gushing inside him, filling all the wrong places.

Kade dragged in a wet breath. “Th-think I might’ve deserved that.”

“Shut up,” Theo told him. “Just…just keep quiet, I’ll handle this.”

Kade spasmed with wet coughs. Blood oozed down his chin. “D-did you see his crossbow hand? So cool. I bet he’s gonna be so weird about it. I’d love a crossbow hand?—”

Theo ripped the arrow out of Kade’s chest.

Kade let out an agonized cry. Sparky licked his forehead forlornly.

“I know,” Theo said, tearing Kade’s shirt open. “I know, I’m sorry.”

He pressed his hand over the hole. It was the first time he’d touched Kade’s bare chest. A burning handprint bloomed against the pale skin. Kade writhed in pain as Theo sealed up the entrance wound.

Sparky whined, dropping her head against Kade’s shoulder.

Kade lifted a trembling hand to stroke her head. “G-good dog.”

“I’m gonna do your back now,” Theo blurted.

Kade caught his sleeve.

“Can’t cauterize the inside.” Kade smiled shakily, teeth stained red. “Think it might be time, blood boy.”

Theo shook his head.

“Come on,” Kade croaked. He tweaked Theo’s curls, wrapping the biggest one around his finger. “Kill me, sunshine. Then bring me back to you.”

“Not yet,” Theo whispered.

“Running out of…” Kade started. Then he stopped, choking. Theo didn’t know if he was going to say time or blood .

This wasn’t the plan. If Theo turned him now, Kade’s last meal would be that cheese sandwich he’d eaten in the Lexus. Kade was supposed to get a last meal with all those disgusting British foods. Theo had been looking up how to make them. Kade was supposed to hug Sundance before it happened, and have a good long sleep, and?—

“Burned her paws,” Kade mumbled.

“What?”

“Sparky…paw pads…” Kade trailed off with a gurgle. His gray eyes went hazy and unfocused, then dropped shut.

Theo wrenched Kade’s head to the side and dug his fangs into Kade’s limp neck. Blood filled his mouth, and for the first time Theo didn’t lose himself to it. He took a desperate drag and then pulled back. He gnawed his wrist open and brought his wet skin to Kade’s mouth. Black blood dripped past Kade’s slack lips.

“Come on,” Theo whispered. “Come on, baby. You can do this.”

A burned petal landed in Kade’s hair. Theo brushed it off, careful not to touch his scalp. Kade wasn’t swallowing. Why wasn’t he swallowing the blood?

“Always,” Kade said again, his beautiful heartbeat thudding slower and slower. “Always knew I was gonna die in these woods. I ever tell you that? First day…I moved here. Went for a walk. ’N I knew, I knew it. In my bones…”

He trailed off. His hand slackened on Theo’s sleeve, falling into the ashen flowers. Sparky nosed his fingers, whining.

“Kade,” Theo whispered. “ Kade !”

He shook him. It was no use: Kade’s gray eyes were blank and unseeing. The black blood rested uselessly on his lips. Theo still couldn’t tell if any of it had made it down his throat. His heartbeat was silent.

Kade Renfield was dead.