Alliance (11 page)

The taller girl looks over her shoulder and looks me up and down, then must decide I’m okay, because she goes back to staring intently at Maggie. Maggie shakes her head slightly.

“What are you?” I ask, not able to believe my eyes. She seems to be… talking to Maggie nonverbally.

Hannah sends me sends me a scathing look over her shoulder.
What are
you?

Whoa. Her voice sounds in my head but her lips don’t move.
Any why is Maggie the only one hurt
? Hannah’s mind-voice asks. Not very politely.

“He’s a Chaser,” Maggie mumbles.

She and Hannah look at each other and seem to exchange quite a bit of information without speaking aloud, and Hannah shrugs. “Cops are three minutes away,” she says.

Sure enough, I hear distant sirens.

“You’d better clear out,” Maggie says, and it’s obvious that from this moment on, we’re not friends anymore.

I back toward the outside doors, the same way I came in.

“Wait!”

I pause at Maggie’s call. She stands straight and her eyes are on my face. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I don’t know.”

It’s the most honest thing I’ve ever said to her.

I’m climbing into my truck two streets over when my cell vibrates in my pocket. It’s a miracle the thing didn’t get smashed in the altercation.

It’s Rachel.

“What?” I snap. I’m in no mood for any crap from her.

“Chloe’s gone.” She sounds panicked.

“Calm down,” I say. It’s all I can do to grit my teeth and keep my temper in check. “Start over.”

“We got separated on our way to the rendezvous point. I don’t know what happened.”

“How could you lose her?”

“It was really busy in the mall and we got in this big crowd…” Rachel’s hysteria is making her blubber and that’s not going to help.

“Rach. Focus. Where are you?” I force a calm tone when I feel anything but.

“I came to the rendezvous point hoping she might be here.”

“Stay there. I’m on my way.”

14 - Maggie

“You’re soaked in blood.” I can tell from Hannah’s voice that her nose is wrinkled in distaste, but I’m having trouble caring.

She pushes me up the last flight of stairs to our floor and then down the hall to our dorm. The floor is eerily silent except for the noise we make. Everyone else is out on the lawn, where the cops have just arrived.

“Change. Fast.” Hannah shoves a clean pair of jeans and a black t-shirt into my hands.

I stare at my fingers curled around the material for a long moment. I killed with these fingers tonight.

“Maggie.”

I respond to Hannah’s reprimand, moving on autopilot.

Everything inside me is numb.

I pull off the ruined dress and throw it in the rubbish bin, then I laugh because it doesn’t really matter if my room is clean now. I pull on the clothes Hannah gives me and lace up my combat boots.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Hannah says softly. “We can sneak into the crowd and no one will know we were involved.”

Hannah’s a good friend. She says ‘we’ when it was just me that killed those people. Vampires. But they used to be people.

My shock starts to fade. I shake my head and Hannah drops her hand from my arm. “I can’t, Han.”

I go to the closet, past the normal emergency backpack, way down to the bottom. To the emergency emergency bag. The one that would never make it through airport security.

I take two knives from the front pocket and stash them in my boots. I add a stake or two at my waist for good measure.

Hannah recognizes the bag and holds up a hand. “Whoa, Maggie—”

I can’t let her stop me. “I’m not worried about the human cops, Han. A couple of those vamps got away.”

She doesn’t seem to grasp the gravity of the situation, because she’s still blocking my way to the door. I try to explain a little slower.

“They. Think I. Am in league. With a Chaser.” My voice breaks on the last word, but I clear my throat and continue anyway. “Worse things than cops are coming after me. And if they get a whiff of you, you’re toast too.”

Thankfully, this seems to work to stifle any more of Hannah’s questions. She grabs her bookbag and dumps its contents on her bed, then moves to her dresser and starts stuffing clothes inside.

“Hurry up,” I mutter.

I scroll through the numbers in my cell until I find the right one. I wish I didn’t have to make this call, but our options are limited.

“Let’s go.” I scan the room one last time, trying to memorize what it looks like. I was happy here.

Hannah grabs the digital camera from her nightstand and joins me in the hallway.

We walk toward the back stairs, our best chance of blending into the crowd, and I make the call. It rings several times, and just when I’m sure he won’t answer, a gruff male voice comes on the line.

“Yeah?”

“Daniel, it’s Maggie. I need your help.”

~o~

“I can’t believe that took so long,” I mumble.

Hannah hums agreement next to me. I can tell she’s freaked out as we hustle down the sidewalk and into a nearby park. My mind wants to go back to the picnic and my time with Shane, but I force myself to pay attention to every shadow. The park isn’t that well-lit to begin with and after everything that’s happened tonight, both Hannah and I are jumpy.

You should’ve let me handle those cops. I could’ve moved things along.

Hannah wanted to use her mind powers to get some of the police officers out of our way as we snuck out of E.W. House, but I’d told her to save her energy and I repeat it now. You never know when we might have to run.

And it would’ve been a lot faster if we didn’t have to have that detour to pick up your food supply.

She eyes the cooler-on-wheels I’m dragging behind me, and I know she hopes no one stops us and wants to look inside.

“Well, you don’t want me to have to take a bite outta you, do ya?” I try to sound light-hearted, as if us having to sneak off in the middle of the night is no big deal. But my heart is breaking to leave my kids. And for other reasons.

But who knows how many teens saw me get stabbed in the middle of the dance, and if I’m suddenly okay? More than a little suspicion will be turned in my direction.

“Besides, it’s not like we didn’t have a little time to kill. We don’t have to be at the airport until six.”

“Don’t remind me. How come it takes so long for Dan to get here anyway? Eight hours seems really long.”

Yeah, no kidding, when vamps are after you.

“The flight time from LAX is five hours and he has to do all that pre-flight stuff before they let him take off. Plus he had to drive to the airport and it didn’t sound like he was close. He’ll get here.”

Yeah, but will we still be here when he does
?

My cell phone chirps and Hannah and I yelp at the unexpected noise. It’s an unknown number, could be my brother, so I answer it.

“Daniel?”

“No, this is Shane.”

There’s a pause and I hear him take a breath like he’s getting ready to keep talking. I quickly press the END CALL button and break the connection.

Hannah looks at me with wide eyes, but doesn’t say anything. What does he
want
? I think we covered it all back in the gym.

“Do you think you should, you know,
eat
,” Hannah motions to the cooler, “So you’ll be at full strength again?”

My phone chirps again. Same number. I reject the call.

“Nah, it’s not that far to the T. I want to get somewhere safe before we stop moving.”

We hadn’t been able to call a cab close to the school thanks to all the cop cars and the perimeter they set up.

A beep from my cell phone signifies a voicemail. If it’s from Shane, I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care about anything he might have to say.

Except I’m a sucker so I punch the voicemail button.

“Chloe’s missing,” comes his voice, tight like he’s angry. Or worried. I’m concerned enough not to care that he didn’t really call to talk to me.

“I thought she might call you—she still has your number—or try to find you. If you see her, please call me.”

That’s it.

I spare a look for Hannah that clearly says “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

Thought you said he was going to take care of her.

I’m distracted from answering by a commotion across the way.

Someone yells, and even using my human ears I can hear them panting and footsteps running.

There’s a bridge blocking our view so Hannah and I run under it, in time to see a terrified Chloe running full speed from three vamps. I can’t just leave her…

So much for not going vamp. I motion for Hannah to stay put and spring towards them. I get an extra burst of speed as soon as I turn.

And I’m instantly distracted by how delicious Chloe smells.

What is that? Even Hannah doesn’t smell that good and she’s a witch. Every instinct in my body begs me to join the hunt and kill Chloe, and savor every drop of her blood.

But then Chloe looks up. When she sees me moving towards her, the trust in her eyes knocks me back to my senses.

I can’t hurt Chloe. Not her. The monster roars inside my head but I’ve got her leashed for now.

Within seconds I reach Chloe, pushing her behind me and taking a stand against the other vamps. She smells too good, and they don’t hesitate before they plow into me.

I have a knife ready, and I stab the first one in the heart. He’s dead before he hits the ground. The other two are stunned, but they’re quick to attack again.

One gets a punch through my guard, hitting my jaw. I take one step back before regaining my balance, and follow up with a roundhouse kick, knocking a vamp to the ground.

He hisses and jumps back to his feet. Before I know what’s happening, he takes off towards Chloe, who is now huddled under the bridge with Hannah. She must’ve seen my best friend and run over there.

I’m thinking the bridge will provide good cover to fend off these vamps if I can get there first, so I move to follow, but something sharp pierces my neck. The second vamp wraps his arms around me, and I realize he’s biting me.

He sinks his teeth down farther, and I can’t move.

Chloe screams, but to my horror Hannah squares her shoulders as if she’s going to take the charging vampire on.

He body slams Hannah, and my heart stops. She doesn’t know how to handle herself in a fight. I’m out of time.

Ignoring the pain in my neck, I stomp on the vamp’s instep, making him loosen his grip on me.

His teeth don’t let up on pressure, so I do the only thing I can which is to pull myself away, losing a chunk of my neck in the process.

I don’t scream, although I want to—being a vampire doesn’t make you immune to pain.

I whip around so fast he doesn’t see it coming and snap his neck. Bye bye vampy.

Hannah yells my name. I start running before I process what I see.

The vamp has Hannah in a death grip and his fangs are buried in her neck. Hannah struggles feebly, but she doesn’t stand a chance—this guy is huge.

The smirk on his face warns me that he’s about to kill her before she’s drained.

My legs won’t move fast enough, and dread fills my entire body as I watch my best friend’s eyes plead with me to help her.

“No!” I scream.

Suddenly the vamp’s eyes bulge. He releases Hannah, who crumbles to the ground, and clutches his throat as if he can’t breathe.

I don’t stop to wonder why before I pull a stake out and drive it into his heart. I spare a moment to watch him fall to the ground before I turn to Hannah.

She pushes me away, pointing behind me. Panic replaces the moment of relief as I watch Chloe thrash around on the pavement.

“Help her,” Hannah says, voice gurgling.

I have no idea how to help because I have no idea what’s wrong with Chloe. I kneel next to her as her head bangs against the sidewalk.

I know enough about seizures to know that you’re not supposed to hold the victim down, but she’s going to do serious damage to herself if she keeps pounding her head against the cement.

I have nothing to protect her with, so finally I use my own hand as a cushion. She hits her head several more times, but this time my hand takes the force of the injury.

After several minutes she’s still, but unconscious. I can hear her heartbeat and steady breathing, but I check her pulse for reassurance. She appears fine. We’ve got to get out of here. Who knows if more vampires were following?

“What was that?” Hannah asks. She’s on her feet, but looks unsteady.

“No idea. Some kind of seizure, I think. We need to go.”

With an unconscious eight-year-old plus an injured witch, I’m not going to be able to get us to that subway station. Not even in monster mode. “We need a vehicle, but none of us are going to be able to drive.”

Even in my vampire form I’m too weak to fully heal. My neck is still bleeding, and my hand looks like ground beef gone bad.

“I can help with that,” a female voice breaks in.

I tense and turn, ready for a fight. Lily stands behind me—wearing a smug smile and waving a set of keys.

15 - Shane

It’s four a.m. Do you know where your sisters are?

Rachel and I scoured the shopping mall a few miles from E.W. House that was supposed to be our meeting place until the security guards kicked us out. That was at eleven-thirty. They claimed there was only so much they could do once all the shops were closed and no one had reported finding a little girl.

After that, Rach and I walked a spiral search pattern through the mall parking lot and looked in every shadowed nook and cranny a mile out. Still, we found no sign of my littlest sister.

Now we are back at the crappy apartment we’ve been renting, mostly because I know the landlord won’t ask me questions about the girls.

I don’t know what to do. And not knowing scares me. Enough to call Maggie earlier, though I’m not surprised she hasn’t called back. It was a last resort call anyway, because Maggie’s really the only person I know in this city. Funny how single-minded dedication to a purpose—like killing vamps—has left some holes in my life that I’m just now noticing.