Page 24
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
It was sunset when Kade arrived home.
Milly was waiting on the porch steps. She was watching a beetle crawl around her shoes, her hair a thick curtain over her face. A large handbag sat next to her, its strap thick and peeling.
She looked up when she heard Kade coming. “Hello.”
“Hey,” Kade cleared his throat. “Come on.”
If Milly noticed his scratchy voice or puffy eyes, she didn’t say anything. She got up, stepping carefully around the beetle she’d been watching.
He led her toward his room, trying not to think about when he’d led Felicity in to gawk at a dead body. Sundance was on the couch in the living room watching MASH reruns. She tightened her dressing gown when she noticed Kade had someone with her.
“This is Milly,” Kade said, barely glancing at her as he rushed past. If he stayed too long she would definitely see that he’d been crying on the walk home. “She runs that bookshop I told you about. She’s gonna teach me how to play Dungeons & Dragons. Don’t wait up.”
“Nice to meet you,” Sundance called down the hall after them.
“You too,” Milly said. She ducked into the bedroom. Kade closed the door behind her. “She seems nice.”
“She’s great,” Kade said distractedly. The sunset shone through his broken window, casting a red glow over the carpet where Mr. Fletcher choked on his last breath.
Kade shuddered and turned to Milly. “You said there was something you wouldn’t recommend. To induce the visions.”
Milly’s shoulders stiffened even more than usual.
“It’s…had a lot of bad results.” Milly’s hand flickered up, as if about to touch her white eye, or maybe the deep scar in her face. Then it clenched, returning to her side. “It would be safer if Theo was here with you.”
Grief swam over Kade in a wave. Stay the hell away from me, Kade. He didn’t know how serious Theo was about that Theo could feed from Felicity. Shit, he could feed from Milly , if she was down. Leave Kade to sweat out the withdrawal, which according to Milly was just like regular withdrawal: three to five days’ worth of pure physical shit, then months of emotional and psychological shit. Kade would still be locked into the ritual, but he’d be free of needing Theo’s teeth in his neck every few days. Theo could stop looking like a kicked puppy every time someone brought up how Kade was a venom junkie.
“Well he’s not,” Kade snapped. “What are we doing? Blood offering? Sacrificing an animal?”
Please don’t let us be sacrificing an animal, he thought. He’d already cried once today.
“Blood offering,” Milly said. “But that’s only part of it.”
She looked around his room, considering. Then she bent down and started shoving his bed.
Kade joined her. The bed scraped over the carpet, revealing dust bunnies that Kade hadn’t reached with the vacuum cleaner in years.
Sundance yelled, “Sounds like a very hands-on Dungeons and Dragons-ing!”
“I’m a kinetic learner,” Kade screamed back. His heart pounded. He hoped that whatever happened, it wouldn’t be loud enough to alert his aunt. He’d kept her out of this mess for this long, and he didn’t want that to stop just because he did some vision-inducing ritual in his bedroom.
Milly heaved her handbag onto the bed. She rummaged through it and pulled out the book she’d been translating. It sat heavily on Kade’s bed, the golden sun gleaming dully on the black cover.
“Hold this,” she instructed.
Kade took it. It was weighed down with something heavier than paper and ink.
Milly took one of Kade’s fabric markers from the jar on his desk and bent down. She drew a giant circle on Kade’s carpet. She kept herself outside of it the whole time, even though it would have been easier to draw from the middle.
She capped the pen and stood. Orange sunset crept over the carpet, edging into the wonky circle she’d drawn. Milly’s head cocked, staring into the circle thoughtfully.
Kade waited, trying not to fiddle with the book’s pages. Every book he’d ever owned was rumpled, every test he’d ever handed in creased from Kade’s unstoppable fidgeting. It was a bad habit he kept wishing he’d grow out of, like smoking and ruining things.
“Huh,” Milly said. She nodded at Kade. “Lie down.”
Kade lay down in the circle. He’d have to scrub the marker out of the carpet later. There was a patch of surprising cleanness near the wall where he’d cleaned the blood out of it. He might as well go all in, scrub the whole carpet after this one.
He placed the book on his chest. “What now?”
Milly handed him a pair of embroidery scissors. They were shaped like a bird with blades for a beak. It used to belong to his mother. Kade opened them, remembering how she used to make the bird tweet. She’d tap him on the nose, gently, so she didn’t cut him.
“Blood sacrifice,” Kade said.
Milly hummed. “Think of it less of a sacrifice and more…opening a door inside you for something to enter.”
Kade lowered the scissors. “Milly. If I get possessed?—”
“You won’t get possessed,” Milly said. But she didn’t sound entirely sure about it.
Kade frowned.
“You won’t ,” she repeated, more solid. “I’ll pull you out if things get too intense.”
Kade stared up at her. Strange, soft Milly, who smiled like she didn’t know how to be warm but she would very much like to be. Who DM’d for her Dungeons & Dragons friends once a week, complete with homemade snacks. Who came from a mysterious place where she made friends she’d kill and die for, friends she might have killed and died for, Kade still didn’t know the full story beyond a few disturbing details.
Kade nodded tightly and raised the scissors. He dragged the bird’s beak over his palm, hissing at the bright line of pain.
“Onto the book,” Milly told him.
Kade shivered and lifted his hand over his chest. Blood dripped down his wrist, splattering down onto the embossed golden sun. The gold vanished fast, swallowed by the red. Sunset bled up Kade’s legs, touching his stomach, almost at the book lying over his heart.
“Good,” Milly said. She sounded worried, and also very far away all of a sudden. “You’re doing very well.”
Kade’s head grew heavy. Something itched at the back of his skull. A barrier. It felt flimsy, like cheesecloth. Like he could put a hand out and push right through.
Kade reached out. The itch in his head intensified?—
“Kade,” Milly snapped.
Kade dragged his heavy head up just in time to watch Aaron Fletcher come barreling through the broken window, his foot catching on the window frame. He righted himself and swore. Then he froze, staring at the two people who had just watched him break into Kade’s bedroom.
A hunting knife glinted in his hand, huge and curved. He was wearing his letterman jacket, which clashed horribly with his leather gloves. His bulk blocked the sunset. Red light streamed around his head like a demented halo.
No one spoke.
A yell drifted in from the hallway. “Everything okay in there?”
Kade swallowed.
Aaron pointed the knife toward him. The threat was clear, even as Aaron’s gloved hands shook around the handle.
“Yeah,” Kade said, proud of how steady his voice sounded. He had a lot of practice at telling Sundance everything was fine in the middle of a dire situation. “Just got excited about a dice…thing. Go back to Hawkeye, auntie.”
Sundance said something else, muffled through the wall and her turning the volume up. He’d never been more thankful for her shitty hearing. She shouldn’t hear what would happen next.
Kade sat up. “Aaron, look?—”
“Don’t move,” Aaron snarled. His usually blank face was twisted, his green eyes shining with unshed tears. Kade hadn’t seen him since his birthday party, Aaron’s face going slack with awful shock in the police car lights as his mother told him what they’d found. Kade wondered how much they told him. How much his mother told him.
“Wait,” Kade blurted as Aaron stepped forward. “We didn’t kill him!”
Aaron shook his head. His hair was limp, ungelled for the first time in years. Kade hadn’t seen it like this even during their short-lived trysts, meeting up in the woods or sneaking into Kade’s room to do hurried hand stuff before slinking away. No telling anyone, and no kissing. Like this was the eighties or some shit.
“Don’t pull that crap,” Aaron hissed. “I know everything . My lips are sealed, but I know now. I know what has to happen to keep the town safe.”
He stopped, jaw working. Like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t dare. His hand tightened around the knife blade. He was holding it with his left hand, the gloved grip clumsy.
His right hand hung near his waist. The black lines on his skin had crept even further up his arm, halfway to his elbow. They were darker than they had been a few days ago. Thicker. And…pulsing? Kade’s lips curled in horror as he watched them bulge in time with Aaron’s fast heartbeat.
“Shit,” Kade whispered, hands sweating around the book on his chest. “What the hell is with your hand?”
“What do you think, jackass?” Aaron spat. “You were there!”
He lifted his bad hand like he was going to cradle it protectively to his chest. Then he stopped, forcing it back down. His gaze flickered to Milly, who had been reaching out slowly toward Kade’s lamp.
“Don’t,” he warned.
Milly’s hand froze in midair. “They didn’t kill him. The spell did.”
“His fingers were broken ,” Aaron croaked.
“Aaron,” Kade tried, forcing his fuzzy mind back on track. He was missing something important. He’d seen their faces in the vision, just for a second, and it made him realize something terrible. He needed to see them again.
Kade continued, “I know you’re going through it, mate, but we need?—”
“Don’t call me mate ,” Aaron said, accent morphing into a terrible mockery of Kade’s own. “Don’t even talk to me. Don’t look at me.”
His face twisted, like he wanted to be angry, then evolved into something deeper, bigger, more unwieldy.
“Did…” he said, and swallowed. “Did Theo…?”
His face crumpled.
Kade saw an in. He held up his hands pleadingly. “Aaron. I swear, none of us meant to hurt him.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Kade knew it as soon as it spilled out of his stupid mouth. Aaron’s face reformed into anger, shiny and bright, a burning fire cleansing everything else in his body. Making space for the wrath needed for the next act.
He lunged forward.
Kade threw the book at him. It made a thick, muted smack as it connected with Aaron’s hip, bouncing off harmlessly.
Shit , Kade thought, scrabbling up. Maybe I should’ve gotten into sports. Turns out I do need to know how to aim sometimes.
His lamp sailed through the air, smashing into Aaron’s chest and shattering. Milly had ripped it off the table. Half the socket still clung to the plug.
It slowed Aaron, his breath whooshing out of him. Still not enough to stop him. He descended on Kade, shoving him back into the carpet.
He pressed the knife to Kade’s throat. It bobbed against the blade, cold fear racing down Kade’s spine. He was lying in the same spot where Mr. Fletcher had held him down. Like father, like son.
Kade flailed at Aaron’s face, looking around wildly. Where did the embroidery scissors go?
Aaron reared back, teeth gritted from Kade’s clumsy defenses. He raised the knife.
Milly ran behind him and locked her arms around his. Aaron grunted, struggling.
A flash of gold next to Kade’s head. He scrabbled for the embroidery scissors. The bird’s beak stabbed his thumb before he closed his hand around it properly. He reared up and jabbed the scissors straight through the glove of Aaron’s bad hand.
Aaron shrieked. His back bowed in agony. He shoved Milly away, sending her stumbling into Kade’s bed.
“Crap,” Aaron panted. He yanked the scissors out of his hand. Black liquid oozed down the glove, oily and disgusting. Both boys gagged.
“Oh god,” Aaron said, wrinkling his nose.
“What the hell?” Kade said, dazed.
Aaron shuddered. Then he raised the knife again.
Kade panicked. He reached out, closing both hands around Aaron’s and squeezing as hard as he could. He expected a pained yell. He didn’t expect the cracking noises: sharp and grinding, the flesh under the glove giving easily under Kade’s touch. It was almost mushy . The stench of rot rolled through the bedroom, overpowering .
The boys gagged again.
Milly struggled up and clutched her arm. Her elbow had struck the bedframe hard.
The door burst open.
Sundance stopped and stared: Milly struggling to her feet, Kade on his back, Aaron on top of him with a mangled hand and tears streaming down his face. The terrible stench of rot emanating from Aaron’s twisted glove. The knife in his good hand, poised and shaking over Kade.
“What the HELL?” she yelled.
“’S what I said,” Kade mumbled.
The haze in his mind intensified. For a moment he thought he might pass out. The world flickered: he was in his bedroom, Aaron on top of him. He was in the woods, falling?—
—to the forest floor.
He is going to die.
Not for another year, of course. But he doesn’t know that. Everything in him wails that he will die here, now , with so many townsfolk dead around him and a hole in the ground. There is a casket in the middle of it, tied with chains and bucking from Cyth’s repeated attempts to free herself.
The boy looks at his vampire, the one who once gave him a forget-me-not. He is tied down several feet away, black tears streaming down his face. He stares at the boy, wide-eyed and pleading .
The lead hunter bellows something in a language long dead and throws in a torch. The coffin erupts into flames.
“This is for my daughter,” the lead hunter snarls.
Cyth’s lover screams. The other hunters have him pinned to the ground, where he struggles through dozens of ropes knotted with thorny flowers.
“Cyth!” the lover cries. “No!”
The lead hunter yells one last word. The boy will die without knowing what it means.
The ground shudders, drowning out Cyth’s shrieking from the burning coffin. Something huge and dark springs up from the hole, and for a moment the boy fears all is lost.
Then the dark thing solidifies. Grows branches. A tree twists over the hole, sealing it closed.
Suddenly the clearing is just a clearing again, the wind dying down. The only vampires left above ground are Cyth's struggling lover and the vampire who once gave the boy a forget-me-not. His vampire.
“What did you do?” Cyth’s lover screams, his skin smoking from the thorny bindings. “What did you DO?”
“I gave her what she deserved,” the lead hunter says. Blood drips from his nostrils onto a sun pendant hanging around his neck. He staggers, catching himself against a tree.
The boy stares across the clearing at his vampire. He isn’t moving. Isn’t trying to escape. He simply lies there, eyes wet. Staring back at the boy.
The boy wets his lips. He should run. Instead, he finds himself crawling toward his vampire, keeping low in the trees so the hunters won’t see him .
Cyth’s lover roars. He rips through another rope.
“I will get her back,” he screams. “Then we will…we will rain HELL down upon you all!”
The lead hunter laughs. Blood flecks the bark. Someone tries to steady him and he pushes them away.
The boy keeps crawling. He’s almost at his vampire now. He has no idea what he will do once he reaches him, but he can’t stop. His vampire’s eyes get wider and wetter as he watches the boy crawl, like he expects him to stop at any moment. Run off into the woods. Leave him to his fate.
The boy knows he should. And yet.
“You can’t let her out,” the lead hunter spits. “There’s no key to that door. There isn’t even a lock.”
“Then I will make one,” the lover bellows.
He bucks against the thorns. Something cracks deep inside his body. He swells, a pair of wings bursting out of his back and severing what was left of his bindings. The hunters around him scramble for more, but there are none.
The boy panics. Reaches out and grabs his vampire’s hand, which is scored with burns.
It is the last time the boy will touch his vampire’s skin for a year.
It happens in a blur: his vampire screams a warning. The boy looks back in time to see a blur of wings and teeth flying at him.
The boy and his vampire are ripped into the air, then shoved down onto the dirt below the new tree. It feels like a wagon pressing down on the boy’s chest. He cries out in pain, twisting his head to look at his vampire pinned down across from him, eyes huge and helpless.
“You think you’re the only one who knows old magics,” Cyth’s lover growls, pale skin still smoking from the vines. “The door is fresh. I can lick the leftovers.”
He trembles with concentration. The dirt below them grows warm, as if the fire below them is seeping through.
The surviving hunters clamor for weapons. Several of them try to help the lead hunter, who is on the ground now, coughing blood.
Too late. The monster’s eyes are closed, dead languages falling off his tongue.
“Master,” the boy’s vampire begs. “Please don’t do this.”
The monster ignores him. His face flickers, veiny and pale and then back to the cruel beauty the town was used to. The dirt below them burns, until the boy is convinced he is being roasted alive.
He screams as the magic takes hold. His vampire yells his name, but the boy can’t hear it. Can’t reach for him. Can’t do anything but scream and feel the terrible ? —
—dread.
Oh god, Kade thought as he struggled back to consciousness, eyes cracking open. Oh god oh god oh god.
He’d seen their faces. There, in the very last second as the spell took hold. He’d seen the boy’s face. He’d seen the boy’s vampire pinned to the dirt next to him. More importantly, he’d seen Cyth’s lover holding them down, his true face flickering through the fanged, pale monstrosity.
He knew that goddamn face.
“Theo’s in danger,” Kade slurred, all the vowels blurring together.
Nobody heard him. A tear dripped from Aaron’s chin onto Kade’s cheek. He
had the knife up again, blade glinting red in the sunset. Sundance jerked forward, arms out like she was going to tackle him.
“THEO’S IN DANGER,” Kade yelled.
The knife paused in midair.
“He’s in danger,” Kade repeated, holding out a hand for his aunt to stop charging. “I swear. I swear on my aunt. He’s in danger, we need to save him. Whatever shit you think you need to do with me, save it for after we rescue Theo. Please .”
Kade watched the doubt flicker through Aaron’s agonized eyes. Watched him look up at Milly, who was holding the good fabric scissors she’d stolen from Kade’s desk, and Sundance, who was ready to leap on his attacker with her useless teeth bared.
Kade gripped Aaron’s letterman jacket.
“Please,” he repeated. “For Theo.”
Aaron stumbled back, breaking Kade’s grip. He glared down at him, his face twisted in loathing as he clutched his ruined hand to his chest.
Sundance jerked toward him. Kade held up a hand. Not yet, he mouthed. He was waiting to see if he was right. He always thought Aaron would stab his best friend in the back. But they needed more people on their side, and Aaron was taking a shockingly long time to reply.
“Shit,” Aaron whispered. He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, his face was smooth, only his tear-filled eyes betraying how much pain he was in.
“Get up, Monster,” he said flatly. “Somebody else has to drive.”