CHAPTER NINE

Theo was still berating himself when he slowed to a normal pace on Felicity’s driveway, picking twigs out of his hair. They didn’t have time for him to sprint out his feelings. He needed to train. To figure out how to take on Victor. To connect with the monster inside of him and coax it out. Otherwise, he was useless. Victor would take him down just as easily as last time.

He reached for the garage door, trying desperately not to think of Victor shoving him into the ceiling. His gaze turning hard and merciless, so devoid of affection that Theo was sure he’d seen before. Back when Theo was obedient. The affection you’d give a dog, as long as it behaved.

Then the screaming started. Not the usual battle bellows Felicity let out when she was training—these were too desperate, too angry. Felicity was in trouble .

Theo closed his hand too hard around the garage door handle, warping the metal.

“Shit,” Theo barked. He yanked. The handle snapped off. “ Shit !”

There was a sharp slam behind the garage door, followed by a pained yell.

Theo slammed into the door with all his weight. It dented, the sides folding inwards. One more slam and the metal cracked inwards enough for Theo to shove inside.

Felicity was picking herself up off the concrete. She bent to grab two axes from the rack she’d just been thrown into, baring her teeth in a ghoulish grin.

Victor watched her from the other side of the garage with an amused smile. He was in his human form, wearing the same dress shirt and slacks combination that up until recently, Theo had seen every day of his life. He looked at Theo calmly, as if Theo had walked downstairs for breakfast.

“I always liked her,” he said conversationally. “All those sharp edges.”

Felicity screeched, “DIE YOU UNDEAD SON OF SHITSUCKING BITCH!”

She lobbed the axes. Victor batted them away, sending them clattering into the walls.

“See?” Victor said. “It comes so naturally for her.”

The hallway door slammed open. Kade stumbled to a stop, panting. An open bottle of whiskey dangled from his hand, a handkerchief stuffed down its neck. The lighter Theo had given him flickered to life in his other hand.

“Ah,” said Victor.

Kade lit the Molotov cocktail and tossed it. Theo streaked across the garage, shielding Felicity with his body as it exploded and scattered flames and weaponry. He cried out, glass and heat scoring his scalp.

“Shit,” Kade called. “Sorry, sunshine!”

Felicity let out a terrified giggle. She reached for the crossbow that had fallen next to her on the concrete.

Theo whirled. The scent of burning hair made his eyes water but he could see Victor clearly through the flames: he was frowning, patting out a fire on his lapel. His jaw flexed, and Theo felt the all-encompassing fear of a young child knowing their parent was unhappy with them.

“Alright,” Victor said tensely. “That’s enough now. I have to talk to my son.”

He cracked his neck. Then his shoulders. His legs snapped and lengthened. His skin went pale. A pair of wings exploded from his back.

Beverly burst from the hallway door, a sheer white dressing gown swishing around her ankles. There was a millisecond where she gaped in horror at the vampire mid-transformation in the middle of her burning garage. Then she steeled her expression.

“Mom,” Felicity yelled. “Catch!”

She threw a crossbow. Beverly caught it with ease, leveling it at Victor’s spindly chest.

Victor’s wings flared out. They skimmed the ceiling, tall and spiky and horrible, and Theo was overcome with a wave of loathing: this was what he was trying to become. His dad would be so proud. Vicious in every jagged claw and razor fang.

Victor streaked toward Theo, locked his arms around him, and lifted him away from Felicity. Theo struggled, but Victor’s grip was unbreakable as he blurred toward the destroyed garage door.

Kade yelled his name. Theo turned, catching a glimpse of Felicity scrounging for an ax, and Beverly stubbornly aiming her crossbow, and Kade patting out a flame from his jacket, his eyes huge and gray as he watched helplessly.

Theo managed one last thought as he stared at the burning garage: thank god Dad isn’t here for him.

The dented garage door snapped off its hinges.

Victor carried Theo off into the night.

Wind ripped past them, cooling Theo’s sizzling scalp. His curls were probably regrowing as they flew, he thought with a seething hatred. His dad’s curls were gone now, but they’d be there the second he came back to human form.

Victor stole the spell book from Theo’s pocket. “Thank you. I was looking for that.”

Theo kicked viciously and uselessly at his inhumanly long legs.

“Still can’t transform, hmm?” Victor mused as he carried Theo higher. “Disappointing.”

Theo told himself not to react. That this wasn’t the man who taught him how to dribble a ball and change a tire and eviscerate someone with a sharp smile and a cold comment. But the shame flooded in anyway, crowding out everything that tried to remind him of Victor smashing him into the floorboards. He wanted to apologize. To beg for mercy. Prove he was still a good son.

He unsheathed his fangs and dug them into Victor’s bony shoulder.

Victor laughed, joyous. “See? You still have potential.”

They were up so high now, flying over the forest. Toward their old house.

“You know,” Victor continued, voice surprisingly neat around his fangs. “I was like you, a long time ago. Caught between who I was and who I needed to be. My maker helped me shed my old self. Make room for the new.”

Theo blinked back wind-stung tears and tried to think of a retort. Something Kade would say, brutal and biting. One of Felicity’s blunt, snappy comebacks. Aaron’s dry, unaffected insults.

“Screw you,” Theo hissed.

Victor dug his nails into Theo’s arms. “You’ll still have to kill him, you know. If you refuse I’ll just make you.”

“I’d rather die.”

Victor laughed. “Too late for that.”

He was slowing down, the forest becoming clearer below them. Victor squeezed Theo tighter. For a dizzying second Theo remembered being five years old, his dad holding him over the pool and promising he wouldn’t drop him.

Then, of course, he had. You have to learn how to swim somehow , he’d told Theo afterwards, prying his tiny fingers off the edge of the pool . Into the deep you go.

“You were made for this,” Victor continued.

“Then you made me wrong.” Theo bared his teeth, wet with his father’s black blood. “I’m not what you wanted.”

Victor gazed down at him. His mouth curled into a strange, almost proud smile.

He slowed. They weren’t over the house, Theo realized. They were right beside it. The lake waited below them, dark and still. His stomach gave a sickening lurch. Moonlight, pale wings, the lake looming below—they’d done this before.

Victor sunk his claws into Theo’s side, dragging out huge chunks of flesh. Theo cried out, almost missing Victor’s next words, spoken softly into Theo’s ear.

“Give me time,” Victor whispered.

Then he let go.

Theo plummeted. He tried to concentrate, to fly out of danger, but he couldn’t focus on anything but the agony. The water was rushing up at him, inevitable, and for a sickening feeling Theo caught the edges of that doomed feeling Kade kept mentioning, everything has already happened and it is going to happen again ?—

He slammed into the lake. It surrounded him, welcoming him back. Dragging him down and down into the depths, until he looked up and the moon was barely a speck.

He kicked. The movement jarred his eviscerated side so badly he had to stop. He stared up at the blurry moonlight in blind panic. He’d never make it in time. Kade wasn’t here to pull him out. He was going to drown down here again?—

He stopped, blinking through the blackened water.

Dead boys didn’t drown. He could wait as long as he liked.

So he waited until his wound numbed enough for him to swim. Every second was torture, the water pressing tighter and tighter around him, growing weaker as black blood pulsed out of his side.

His sneakers touched the bottom of the lake.

Theo shuddered and started swimming.

The moon was huge and bright when he broke the surface. Theo stared at it, gulping useless air. It was like being in a coffin, down there. He had joked to Kade a few times that he was glad he didn’t sleep, because he’d have nightmares about the lake. The endlessness, the suffocating dark. Knowing he’d never make it back to the surface. That he was going to die down there, cold and alone.

A faint bark made him look up.

Kade stood at the edge of the forest, frozen in shock. Sparky was at his side with her ears pointed up.

They both moved at once, Kade not bothering to pull his good boots off before he stumbled into the water. Sparky bounded after him, still barking.

“Here,” Kade yelled. “He’s here, we got him!”

Theo slumped with relief. For a second he just floated there, watching Kade wade deeper and deeper. Then he got a hold of himself.

“I’m fine,” he croaked, starting up a flimsy breaststroke. “You can go back, I’m fine.”

But Kade kept coming. By the time Theo reached him, he was doggy-paddling with his head barely above the surface. Sparky had already reached him by then, licking Theo’s face and making the swim harder.

“I know,” Theo kept telling her. “You heard me, huh? Thanks for coming.”

Kade pulled at Theo’s wet shirt, eyes widening when he saw the deep wound under the water. “Shit! That’s a lot of blood.”

“He took the spell book,” Theo said.

“Bloody hell.” Kade spat out a mouthful of water. “Worry later. Come on, let’s get you back on dry land.”

He stuck by Theo’s side for the whole stilted, awkward swim. The others had reached the shore by then: Felicity with a dagger in each hand, glancing around the forest like she wanted a rematch. Beverly Sloan watching with a severe expression, her gauzy dressing gown streaked with burns. And Skeeter Bass in a ski mask, pulling it up to chew her nails.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted as Theo and Kade crawled out of the lake with Sparky behind them, shaking her fur out. “I was coming but you said no one should know I’m there and it sounded bad and I don’t know how to fight and I don’t want to get in the way?—”

“It’s fine,” Theo said, trying to muster the energy to get up from his hands and knees. “Everyone okay?”

“We’re good,” Felicity said, still scanning the tree line. “Training arena’s less fine. Holy shit, did he gut you?”

Theo grimaced. The hole in his side was dripping black blood into the dirt. It was getting harder to think, to move, to do anything but sit there in the muddy dirt, keeping his arms underneath him.

Kade pulled at his sodden shirt, dragging him up.

“What is it?” Theo asked hazily as Kade turned him around. “You hurt?”

“Nope, that’s you, genius.” Kade held out his wrist. “Come on, emergency dinner time.”

Theo swayed on the spot. He looked at the others self-consciously.

“Ignore them,” Kade told him. “Just eat.”

He held his wrist to Theo’s lips. They parted instinctually, and Theo sunk his teeth in. Trying to forget about the lake behind him. About his father’s threatening words and the lost spell book. About Sparky whining, Skeeter still apologizing, Felicity cursing, Beverly Sloan saying nothing as usual. Losing himself in Kade, his sweet blood, his gloved hand tracing soothing circles in Theo’s healing scalp.