A Shade of Vampire 28: A Touch of Truth (9 page)

I nodded, unsure of what to say, or whether he expected me to say anything at all. Somehow, I doubted it.

“Hey, you guys going to come back here?” Maura called, apparently rousing from her half-slumber and interrupting her brother’s and my awkward pause.

“Yes,” Orlando muttered, barely loud enough for her to hear.

The two of us returned to her. She was already replacing her backpack over her shoulders. “We should probably keep moving,” she said.

“Yeah,” Orlando agreed again thickly, before donning his own backpack.

The sudden slamming of a door made us all jump. Our first instinct was to look behind us—to the main entrance—but there was nobody there.

“Who are you?” A man’s voice echoed through the chapel. It came from behind us, but above us. Our eyes shot to one of the balconies. A couple was gazing down at us, a man and a woman. They had short-cropped hair, the two of them, and they were pale, just like Maura and Orlando.

Orlando grabbed Maura’s and my hands and backed away with us toward the exit. I caught a glimpse of Maura’s hand sliding over the gun in her belt.

“Who are
you
?” Orlando shot back.

The man grabbed the woman and disappeared. Orlando and Maura exchanged glances. We were about to leave when footsteps sounded on a staircase and the couple emerged on our level. They walked toward us cautiously. I realized now how terribly thin they were—even thinner than Maura and Orlando. They had black shadows beneath their eyes, and looked on the verge of starvation.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, eyeing Maura’s gun and Orlando’s wheel of death. “This church is our shelter.”

“And it has been ours for the past half hour,” Orlando replied. “But we’re leaving now.”

“Do you know why we’re here?” the man asked, desperation in his tone.

“No,” Orlando replied, drawing us closer to the door. “I don’t know why we’re here.” He gripped the handle and pulled.

“Wait!” the woman pleaded, rushing forward and pushing the door shut. She clutched Orlando’s arm. “Please, help us. We just woke up a couple of days ago. Found ourselves in this hellhole! Our heads shaven. No food. Nothing to defend ourselves with. Please!”

He withdrew from her, shaking her aside. “It’s every man for himself around here,” he said coldly. “You’re going to have to make your own way. Find your own food, your own weapons, just like my sister and I did. Consider yourself lucky you have each other.”

“We can’t go out there!” the man exclaimed.

“We’ve tried already,” the woman gasped. She looked on the verge of tears.

I couldn’t help but feel moved by the state of these two people, even though they were total strangers. I thought about the canned food that I had in my backpack. Did I really need all that? I had felt full after just half a can of lentils. I’d had to force myself to finish the rest. I was sure that I could spare at least one tin. That would be better than nothing for them…

I slipped my backpack off my shoulders and planted it on the floor. But as I unzipped my food compartment and dipped a hand inside, Maura and Orlando turned on me.

“What the hell are you doing?” Maura hissed.

Orlando stooped down to me and gripped my arm, stalling it in place. His deep, dark eyes dug into mine as he uttered a single word. “Don’t.”

I did realize that this wasn’t exactly my food to give. So it was a bit presumptuous of me to offer some to these people without asking for permission. I glanced apologetically toward the couple… in time to see the man stoop for a broken bench leg and bring it hurtling forward to strike Orlando in the back.

“Orlando!” I screamed, instinctively lurching for him. I careened into him in time to send him flying out of the way. The two of us went crashing to the ground, myself on top of him.

A gunshot sounded.

“No, Maura!” Orlando bellowed, deafeningly loud in my ear. He shoved me off of him and leapt to his feet. But by the time he did, it was too late. Maura had already shot a bullet into the shoulder of the man, and as she tightened her grip on the gun, she was clearly about to end him.

Orlando threw himself at her and gripped her wrist, forcing the gun from her hands before she could fire the final shot.

She struggled to grab the gun back. “He would have killed you if he’d gotten the chance!” Maura yelled. “All of us, for our supplies!”

Orlando, breathing heavily, turned to face the man who was lying on the ground. He was groaning in agony, clutching one shoulder, with his partner bending over him and sobbing.

Orlando’s eyes returned to Maura and he replied through gritted teeth, “Not. In. Here.”

She looked like she was going to continue arguing, but he didn’t give her the chance. He stooped to pick up his wheel and backpack again, and handed me my bag. I glanced worriedly at the injured man. Their chances of survival had looked practically nil to begin with… now, with him injured, I wondered if they’d survive the next few hours.

But it seemed that this was life in Bloodless Chicago.

Every man for himself.

“Let’s go,” Orlando grunted, herding his sister and me through the door. “We’ve dishonored this place enough.”

“
T
ake
that as a lesson not to feed people around here,” Maura said to me as we marched on through the rain, away from the church.

“When people get this desperate, they’re like wild animals,” Orlando explained in a low tone.

Still feeling shaken by the ordeal, I tried to turn my thoughts to other matters.
Lake Michigan. A phone.
I’d had enough of all of this. I just wanted out of this nightmare. Oh, how I wished that it really was all a bad dream. My chest ached as I thought of home. The Shade. My beautiful, safe island. My family. My friends. I felt like an idiot for ever leaving… and yet I hadn’t been able to fight the urge. Once I had gotten a whiff of Lawrence and Georgina’s mystery, I’d just had to follow the trail.

They don’t say curiosity killed the cat for no reason,
I thought to myself, grinding my teeth.
What a stupid, stupid cat I am.

All of us fell silent for the next hour as we continued through the city. We passed a few more small groups of Bloodless—about three or four at a time—which weren’t too strenuous to get rid of, thanks to Orlando’s trusty wheel. I could still hear helicopters overhead, but this part of the city had more trees, and I was less concerned about being spotted from the air. Orlando kept stopping every now and then to consult the map to verify we weren’t traveling off course.

When he estimated we had about thirty minutes left before approaching the IBSI’s fences that bordered the shore, we all stopped short. My worst fears came to pass at the end of a long boulevard.

Tanks. IBSI tanks.

They were positioned at the cross section of our road and the next. And there were hunters out of the vehicles—covered in armor and carrying heavy weapons. My heart was in my throat as we leapt behind a tree to hide. I prayed that none of them had spotted us… or detected us.

Oh, no
. Orlando had warned me already of the dangers.

So far we’d had to deal with our fair share of Bloodless, but had been lucky enough to not be targeted by any gangs. But now… these guys. I would take the gangs any day over these men.

“What do you think they are doing?” Maura breathed so quietly, I could barely hear her.

Orlando shrugged. “This area by the shore is always more populated with IBSI members. Should hardly be a surprise to come across them now.”

We peered out cautiously through the leaves of the low-hanging branches. We could see more from this angle, low to the ground, than when we had been standing on the sidewalk. I spotted about ten hunters gathered in the middle of the road—they were easy to recognize, because they all wore the same thing… but now I spotted one other man, too, who wasn’t dressed in uniform. He was dressed in worn, mismatched clothing, the type that Maura and Orlando sported.

“Oh.” Orlando let out a breath. “Th-That’s Paul. Paul Stokes.”

“Who’s Paul Stokes?” I asked in a strained whisper.

“Are you sure?” Maura asked Orlando fearfully, bulldozing over my question.

“Yes,” Orlando hissed. “Can’t you see?”

Maura’s eyes narrowed, then her jaw dropped. “Oh, my God. Yes. That’s him.”

“Who is Paul Stokes?” I urged.

“He’s a gang leader,” Orlando whispered. “One of the worst.”

“
The
worst,” Maura breathed. “His gang is the largest and most brutal of all of them.”

“What’s he doing talking to the IBSI?” I wondered.

“Your guess is as good as ours,” Orlando replied.

“Whatever they’re doing,” Maura said, “we need to take a different route. I don’t feel like sitting around here much longer. Ugh.” She gestured to our backsides, now covered in muck and rainwater from dropping down on the damp soil that lined the sidewalk.

Orlando pointed to our right, to a crack between two buildings—an alleyway, only wide enough for one person to enter at a time. Orlando, positioning his wheel sideways, went first. Then Maura and I darted after him.

“How are we ever going to get around them?” Maura whispered. “We don’t have a clue what we’re doing, do we? We don’t know how to even reach the fence, let alone the shore.”

Orlando didn’t respond and neither did I, though I was sure that we were both sharing Maura’s thoughts. Reaching the end of the alleyway, Orlando looked left and right and then nodded to us, indicating that it was safe to step out.

“I think what we need to do now is figure out where the IBSI’s posts are along the fence,” Orlando said. “Obviously, those are going to be the hardest to penetrate.” He gazed around at the buildings on this road. “We need to climb to the top of one of these buildings and get high up again. I reckon from there we’ll be able to make out the fence. I’m sure we’re close enough—”

Orlando stopped short, his eyes falling on his sister. She had moved a few feet away from us, toward a lamp post, and was staring at it, open-mouthed. She was looking at a sign. A sign that made my skin erupt in goosebumps.

I staggered closer to it with Orlando, gaping. Barely believing my eyes. Praying and wishing that somehow this wasn’t real. But it was.

I was standing face-to-face with a photograph of myself, or rather, a screen capture. I was in a familiar place—in one of the hallways of the IBSI’s Chicago base—and I was frozen in a running stance, my right foot forward, my hands chained in front of me. My sweaty, panic-stricken face had been zoomed in on, my every feature clearly visible.

Above the photograph read the bold red words:

“WANTED.

Contact your nearest IBSI scout with any information.

REWARD: Treatment and release.”

All the blood drained from my face. I forgot how to breathe.

The three of us stood in stunned silence.

Then Maura backed away from the sign. Turning on me, she looked me over with an expression that chilled me to the core.

Her eyes shot to her brother.

“Treatment and release,” she said breathlessly. “
Treatment
and release!”

As suddenly as everything had just occurred, somehow, I was already prepared for what was about to happen. It was every man for himself out here, after all, wasn’t it? Orlando had said it himself.

Maura cast another fleeting glance at me, and the next thing I knew, she had bolted into the narrow alleyway… back in the direction of the hunters.

A
s much as
every instinct I had within me urged me to go racing after Maura, attempt to somehow stop her, my feet remained rooted to the spot. My mind was frozen in shock. In fear. In panic.

Orlando was a blur as he zoomed after her without even a backward glance at me.

They’re going to turn me in.

They would be fools not to.

They will get treatment and release!

What person wouldn’t leap at this?

Move, Grace!
You have to move! In a few minutes from now, this road is going to be teeming with hunters.
I had to make it on my own from now on. I had to find somewhere to hide.

As I raced away from the alleyway entrance and loped across the road toward the opposite sidewalk, I tried to bring some sanity to my frenzied thoughts and focus on the things that I still had to my advantage.

I still have my backpack. I still have lighters and matches. I have fire.
Somehow, I just needed to wait around this area and stay undetected, and find a way to slip through to the other side of the fence. At least I had been able to travel this far with Maura and Orlando through the city. I should be grateful I hadn’t had to do that all alone. I wasn’t far from the shore now.
There has to be a way to get out! There has to—

My desperate ramblings were interrupted by a hiss behind me, coming from the other side of the road.

“Grace!”

I dared shoot a glance back to see that it was Orlando. He had returned to the sidewalk, and he was standing with a struggling Maura in his grip.

He furrowed his heavy brows at me, mirroring my own confusion.

“Where are you going?” he mouthed.

Where am I going?

Where
AM
I going?

Shock and confusion rolled over me before a swell of relief rose in my chest. Orlando hadn’t left to join his sister in ratting me out. He had gone to bring her back!

But why?

What kind of crazy person was he?

Even as he continued to fight with his sister, he beckoned me over to them. I approached cautiously, watching as he clamped a hand over Maura’s mouth as she tried to call out.

“Maura!” he seethed. “Don’t. Do. This.”

Fury flashed in Maura’s eyes as she glared at her brother. “Have you lost your damn mind?” she managed beneath Orlando’s hand. “Get off me!”

Orlando kept her mouth smothered. His eyes dug into hers just as severely. “Do you honestly believe those people?” he whispered. “Do you honestly believe that they’ll give you treatment—the same people who put us in this hellhole to begin with?”

“What is the risk?” she panted. “There is none! Even if they’re lying, it can only help us to get in their good graces.”

“You’re an idiot, Maura!” Orlando snarled. “Good graces? You think these people even have good graces? Look at what they’re doing to people here!”

“But—”

“And even if they gave us treatment,” Orlando bulldozed on, “and cured us of whatever the hell they have infected us with in the first place… they would release us where? Into what?”

At this, Maura faltered. She stopped struggling so much. Orlando removed his hand from her mouth slowly. “You don’t think things through, do you?” he went on. “They would release us back out into the world where we are convicted criminals—sentenced to death.”

“But… they could waive that punishment for us,” Maura croaked. Although she had started arguing her case again, at least now she was being quieter about it. “They obviously have a lot of sway with the government. They could grant us immunity from our crimes.”

My stomach tensed as Orlando paused. Terror gripped me as I thought that perhaps his sister had managed to turn him over to her line of thinking. His expression became stony, unreadable. He gulped. But then he shook his head.

“They didn’t state that on the sign—I’m sure they would have, considering all of us here have come from Death Row. But even if they offered immunity, making a deal with them like this… It just doesn’t feel right.”

“What? Doesn’t feel right?” Maura wheezed, and I realized that she had tears in her eyes now. She was so desperate she was begging her brother. When he didn’t respond, she shook him. “Nothing feels right about our situation, dammit! This is the only thing that could make us right!”

Orlando exhaled sharply, clutching her hands and shoving them down from his chest. “The outside world would never welcome back murderers,” he replied.

“Uncle would take us in,” Maura pleaded.

“But would he? We don’t even know if he’s still alive. He was in a hospital with stage-four liver cancer, Maura. We don’t even know how much time has passed since we got taken from jail. We can’t rely on his open arms. And without him, we would never find a home outside—and who would employ us? How would we survive? What would be there to stop us from sinking back into our old habits? Would you be able to resist?” He glared daggers at her.

Her lips quivered, moving to say, “Yes,” but not quite managing it.

Orlando’s burning eyes flickered to me momentarily, before returning to his sister. “Grace has offered us a place in The Shade. A place where we don’t have to worry about food, shelter, or safety. We might not get the IBSI’s treatment, but I for one would rather spend the last days, or months, or years—neither you nor I can say how much longer we have—in a place of beauty and peace, than pass a longer life in hell.”

Maura scoffed scornfully. “Oh, The Shade. It sounds like heaven. A land of rainbows and roses. I, too, would rather spend the last of my life there than go back to our old life. And yes, maybe Grace would allow us to reside on the island, but—” Here, she broke down, tears spilling from her eyes—tears of desperation, tears of sheer exhaustion. She sank to her knees. “Let’s face it, Orlando. We’re never going to get past the fence. We’re never going to make it to the shore!”

Deep voices sounded on the other side of the alleyway.

Orlando stooped to his sister and scooped her up before meeting my eyes. He nodded toward a derelict hotel on the opposite side of the road. I picked up his blade wheel and carried it for him while we dashed across the street and hurried inside the hotel.

Orlando and I were silent, Maura still sobbing quietly against her brother’s shoulder, as we hurried up a dusty staircase. We wound our way upward—thankfully meeting no Bloodless on the stairs—until we could climb no further. We found ourselves emerging in a long hallway lined with doors that led to what I guessed would be luxury suites.

Orlando barged into one toward the end of the corridor, one whose lock had been broken. Indeed, this was a suite, a two-bedroom suite by the looks of it. I closed the door behind us, and we moved to the furthest room in the apartment, locking ourselves inside. Orlando laid his sister down on the bed. Her sobbing subsided, and her wet, pale face took on a glazed, dead expression. She curled up into a fetal position, then shut her eyes tight, as though the world around her was just too much to cope with right now.

Orlando sank down on the edge of the double bed, heaving a sigh and dropping his face into his hands.

I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Although half of me was still swimming in relief that the siblings had not turned me over to the IBSI, the other half of me felt guilty. Painfully so. These people were placing all their hopes on me. Me, when I didn’t have the foggiest clue what I was doing or how I was going to lead them to my so-called promised land.

And now I really was in deep crap. Not only did I know for certain that the IBSI was fully committed to hunting me down, but they were also recruiting a selection of the worst, most dangerous criminals in the whole United States to help them do it.

Great. They really, really care about this FOEBA thing…

Still, more than ever, fire burned within me—I had not just myself to think about. I held these two fragile lives in the palms of my hands—people I owed my own life to several times over.

I planted the blade-wheel down on the floor and moved to the dirt-smeared window. I brushed against the glass with my sleeve, attempting to clear it. Gazing through, I was met with the most welcome sight I had beheld since arriving in this black, hopeless city.

Water. Lake Michigan. It took my breath away to realize just how close we were to it—only a few streets away. But as my eyes roamed the streets… they were teeming with men and women. They appeared to be predominantly IBSI members, but I also spotted some others who, judging by their attire, were obviously inmates of Bloodless Chicago like Maura and Orlando. And there was a fence. A high, electric fence with nasty barbs lining its top. It stretched for as far as I could see along the shore.

We were so close… yet so, so far.

Now more than ever in my life, how I wished that I had inherited my father’s powers of flight. The ability to thin myself, soar wherever I wished. If only I had more of his genes in me, I never would have found myself in this place to start with. I would…

A thought struck me like a bludgeon, stalling my pointless regrets.

I spun around and looked at Orlando’s blade wheel. That thing could fly. It was sturdy, too. Sturdy enough to slice through packs of Bloodless and leave them in nothing but mangled pieces.

My breath hitched as I fought to keep my hopes down. If I let them rise, the disappointment would crush me to dust.

“Orlando,” I croaked, moving to the wheel and picking it up. It had a grip in the center of it, in between all of the outward-pointing blades, which allowed a person to hold it safely. The grip was also wide enough for two hands to clamp comfortably over it.

Orlando’s eyes rose to me, his eyelids heavy. “What?” he asked.

“Th-This wheel can fly,” I began to stammer. “Could it—”

Orlando had already guessed where I was going with this. To my dismay, he shook his head immediately. “That thing couldn’t carry you.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“I know what I built, Grace,” he said, irritated now. “And I don’t suggest that you try it. It would be dangerous. It’s not made to take that kind of pressure. One of the blades could come loose and go driving into you.”

I hesitated. “Really?”

“Really.”

“It’s just that,” I dared to go on, “they look pretty secure in their places to me.”

“So you’re saying you want to try it?” he asked, raising his brows.

Is that what I’m saying?
I glanced at the razor-sharp knives and gulped. “Yes,” I replied.
Can one achieve anything in life without risk?

Orlando stared at me, then raised his hands in the air. “Okay. Okay. Try it if you really dare. Just don’t blame me if you get a limb sliced off.”

Yeah…

I moved to the center of the room with the blade, a safe distance away from the siblings, and raised it above my head. Orlando picked up the remote, still eyeing me doubtfully as if half hoping I would have second thoughts at the last minute. I pursed my lips, indicating that I was about to do no such thing, even though inside of me I was wincing.

“You ready?” he murmured.

“Yup,” I said, clipped.
As ready as I’ll ever be to have a dozen freaking samurai blades spinning less than a foot from my skull.

“Okay…” Orlando moved a dial, and the rotor began to spin. The blades picked up speed, flying terrifyingly close to my ears. They sent air beating down my neck. My pulse raced at twice its speed. My hands began to sweat so much I feared I’d lose grip and then… I felt a sudden lift. A tiny one—enough to raise me a fraction of a centimeter above the ground before my soles flattened again—but a lift nonetheless.

Orlando switched off the wheel. The blades slowed.

“Wait!” I said. “Didn’t you see that? It lifted me a bit! Try again!”

Orlando rolled his eyes. “I put it at full speed already. Whatever small lift you felt is the maximum it’s capable of. I told you. It’s not strong enough.”

“But… Maybe I’m just too heavy.”

“Uh, yeah,” Orlando said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “That’s one explanation.”

“I mean, maybe it could lift someone lighter.” My eyes immediately moved to Maura. I felt guilty and out of place to dare suggest that she try such a dangerous stunt but… I couldn’t help myself. “What if Maura tried it? She’s a lot shorter than me, and she’s way slimmer, too.”

Maura stirred at her name. She sat up on the bed and looked at me. Her eyes were still glazed, distant, as though a part of her was still locked away in her shell.

To my surprise, she murmured, “I’ll try it.”

Orlando cast me an annoyed look. “You know it’s dangerous, Maura. You seriously want to try it, too?”

She was already sliding off the bed. “I’ll try it,” she repeated.

I placed the wheel down on the floor, allowing her to pick it up. She moved to the center of the room where I’d stood and held up the wheel.

Orlando reluctantly picked up the remote once again. “You ready?” he muttered.

Maura nodded, her neck stiff with nerves.

Orlando moved a dial and the rotor returned to life. I chewed hard on the inside of my cheek as the rotor sped up.
Please let it work.
The pessimistic side of me—or rather, the realistic one—told me that it wasn’t going to work. That it would be another failed attempt. That Orlando obviously knew his contraption better than my stupid self and…

But then the impossible happened.

As it looked like the blades had reached their maximum speed, Maura’s small feet lifted from the floor—not just a fraction of an inch or so, like mine had, but a full three inches. And then the gap widened even more. She was… soaring up to the ceiling!

Orlando looked so utterly shocked by it, he seemed to forget for a moment that he was supposed to be navigating the wheel. As Maura continued gliding upward, he stopped the machine just in time before the blades hit the ceiling. He slowed and lowered them, returning Maura to the floor. He switched off the rotor. And the three of us gaped at each other, hardly daring to believe what had just happened.

“That’s…” Orlando stammered. He leapt up from the bed and took the wheel from his sister, examining it with a dumbstruck expression on his face. “I-I can’t believe it. I didn’t make it for this. I didn’t think it would be strong enough—”