Alliance (22 page)

She quirks a sad little smile. I get in the car, knowing that if I don’t, I’m going to embarrass myself pleading for her to come with us.

As we wind down the driveway an empty feeling settles into my chest. The warmth of Maggie is gone, and I’m not sure anything else will ever fill the void.

31 - Maggie

“And then Lily informs him that she doesn’t care whether he believes her that chocolate helps with her cramps, she needs some, and she picks up this long staff that he and Rachel have been sparring with and waves it at him until he agrees to call Mr. Yu for a delivery.” Hannah’s voice over the cell phone connection is a little fuzzy, but more welcome than I can say.

I laugh, as she expects me to, though it makes my throat ache. Tears fill my eyes and block my view of the ceiling in the training room. I’m lying on my back, revisiting one of the places at the castle where Shane and I shared one of our moments. This has become a new pastime of mine in the few hours I’ve taken off from searching for Alex and sifting through all my parents’ things. Grieving, like I never allowed myself to do before.

“We miss you,” Hannah says softly.

“Me too.” I miss
all
of them, even Rachel and her sarcasm. “Every time I think I’ve found the last paper, last journal, something else catches my eye. Maybe I need a sign that it’s time to end this.”

It’s been a long two weeks. I’m still kicking myself for not telling Shane I loved him before he left. I know he thinks I put distance between us to push him away, but all it’s done is to prove how much I want to be with him.

“Not sure if this helps, but my horoscope today said to expect a homecoming. Yours was something about trusting your inner voice.”

“Do you think a human and a vampire could really make a relationship work?” I ask, unable to raise my voice above a whisper. I’ve been asking myself
how
for several days.

“I think if anyone deserves happiness, it’s you, honey. No matter how long it lasts.”

“Even with a Chaser?”

“Even with a crazy, female-illiterate Chaser who probably won’t ever get that ‘nothing’ means ‘something’ when he asks what’s wrong. With a guy who loves you.”

I blink away the tears and keep staring at that one loose stone. Why would there be a loose stone in the ceiling?

The answer comes to me so fast that I get a head rush when I sit up. Because there’s something hidden behind it.

“I’ll call you back,” I tell Hannah, and hang up on her before she answers.

There’s no way I can reach up to the ceiling with my height limitations, so I grab one of the longer swords from the rack on the wall and start poking at the stone that sticks out slightly more than all its neighbors.

Ten minutes later, I’m covered in dust and little pieces of rock, but the stone falls out and something else with it. I lean down to pick it up.

It’s a small, handwritten journal of… alchemical formulas? The writing is small and very old, with loopy letters and lots of ink blots. I can barely read it. I flip through pages, and stop, because that looks an awful lot like a drawing of a
Cataratoare
. It’s not… it can’t be… an instruction manual on the things?

I go two more pages forward and see a picture of one of the creatures exploding, what looks like a cloud of steam issuing from its midsection.

“Eew.”

If this is really information on how to defeat the
Cataratoares
, and it sure looks like it’s legit, the others need access to it.

Could this be the sign I asked for?

~o~

I’m on a commercial flight, taxiing to the terminal at Logan, less than twenty-four hours later. I made sure to get a daytime arrival, just to be on the safe side in case the vamps in town are watching for me.

I asked Hannah to spread the news—let Shane know—of my arrival, but no one waits for me at baggage check. It takes ages for the two boxes of artifacts and books I’ve drug home to pass through on the little conveyor belt, and then I push the cart outside to hail a cab.

When I catch sight of a familiar tousled head of chestnut hair, it stops me in my tracks. Shane’s there, standing next to a familiar black SUV, dark tint and everything.

I approach, warily examining his face. He’s not smiling, and his eyes are hidden behind dark sunglasses. Is he happy to see me at all?

“Hi,” I say.

“Hey.”

I pull the special book out of my pocket—no way was I trusting it to baggage claim—and hold it in the air. “Found something you might be interested in.”

“Yeah? Me too. I’m looking at it.”

He reaches for me, and I go into his arms, feeling
home
again, even though we’re outside the airport, people bustling past. He doesn’t kiss me, only holds me, and I wonder if I’ve ruined everything.

Or maybe he’s just waiting for me to give him a sign.

“We should get back,” I say into his shoulder. “We’ve got a lot of stuff to do. Training, researching. And we need to figure out how to make contact with your Chaser friends.”

He pushes me away fractionally, enough to see into my face. He doesn’t release his grip on my upper arms. “Did you just say ‘we’?”

I don’t know if I’m ready, but you can’t hold onto fear forever, right? “I did.”

He whoops and picks me up to swing me in a circle. “Really?”

“Yeah, now put me down. People are staring.”

“Let ‘em get a load of this.” He takes my head between his hands and lays a whopper of a kiss on me, so much that my head spins when he lets me come up for air.

“Do you love me?” he asks roughly. “Because I still love you.”

“Yeah. I love you. Enough to give us a shot.”

This time
I
kiss
him
, pulling his head down to meet my lips. His lips are soft but fierce; they claim me.

No matter how long it lasts,
as Hannah would say.

Thanks for reading!

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Unholy Alliance
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1 - Rachel

Shane is so gonna kill me.

Literally.

My hotheaded brother is a Chaser. We are—I was—fifth generation humans given highly specialized training. Tactical, combat, and weapons. Trained from birth to kill vampires.

And now I'm… I can't even think it.

I wake just after sundown, curled in a ball between a dumpster and the back of a building. From comatose to completely alert in one nanosecond.

I remember everything.

The flight from Boston to Heathrow.

Searching for the vampire that had attempted to take my little sister hostage six weeks ago. The others in our little band might be content to sit back and wait—they call it
preparing
—but I'm not. I wasn't.

I ended up in an industrial part of the city.

I remember the ambush.

The turning.

My
turning.

I'm now a…vampire. My own mortal enemy.

And my brother will never forgive me. He's spent the last eighteen years, his entire life, working to erase vamps from the face of the earth.

And Chloe, my sister... She's a Supernatural, though we aren't quite sure
how
that happened. Both our parents, deceased now, were human.

As a vampire, I'm a danger to her. Vampires are uber-attracted to supernatural blood. I don't even know if I'll be able to resist attacking her, assuming I ever see her again. Have I lost my sister forever? I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand being without her—annoyingly—upbeat attitude and our girls-only secrets.

My senses are on high alert. My skin is so sensitive, the air around me seems to vibrate. My throat burns… the
thirst
. Bloodlust.

I have bloodlust now.

I want to cry. But I haven't given in to that impulse in years, not since I was a little girl, and I won't now.

I won't drink, either.

I don't know how long it will take me to die from starvation, but maybe I've got a few days to find the vampire, Stephen, before I starve and have to stake myself.

Chasers don't typically have a long lifespan. We're constantly seeking danger as we fight. But dying at sixteen…? I'm not ready.

Touching my face gives me no answers. It still feels like it always has. I've seen many vamps, and the angular, sharper look of their features. And thanks to my brother, I've been up close and personal with a vamp—his girlfriend, Maggie—and I know there's some way to change from appearing human to becoming all vampire. I've seen her go from a monster with black irises and fangs to a human girl with bright green eyes in a matter of nanoseconds. Of course, Maggie is an anomaly—a vampire who doesn't hunt humans and
seems
to have a conscience. At this point, I can't be sure that I'm still a good guy.

Question: how do you turn the vampire on and off? These are my first moments as the monster, and the newness frightens me. I know I'll be better off keeping the vampire part of me
off
for as long as I can. If I can.

I need to get out of here.

I need to get weaponed-up and find some way of tracking down the vampire that attempted to kidnap my sister.

But I'm alone in a city I don't know.

With bloodlust singing through every vein.

I hate what I've become. I hate myself.

But that's nothing new.

2 - Alex

12 hours earlier

A call from the General is never a good thing.

Especially when your life's mission is staying under the radar, like mine is. I've been meaning to get away, maybe take a vacation. But apparently, I haven't moved fast enough.

When the General asks, you don't say no. Not if you value your life.

So I join him close to dawn, a few blocks over from the apartments we jokingly call barracks, which sit adjacent to his headquarters. This building is unoccupied and we're on a rooftop, about five storeys up.

After his bodyguard escorts me up the stairs, the goon disappears. I wish I could.

I scan the rooftop out of habit as I slowly approach. He stands at the edge of the roof, hands clasped together loosely behind his back, looking out over the nearby buildings, all abandoned that I know of.

I don’t think I’ve made any noise, but he greets me like he’s been expecting me. Creepy.

"Alex."

I wait, shifting my center slightly to my back foot. Just in case.

The scent of blood wafts up to me from several blocks away.

This industrial neighbourhood has been abandoned for years, especially after news got around of some gruesome murders that had taken place. It is as broken down and empty as I am.

Why would a human have wondered into the area?

And could it still be alive?

There's something off about the scent. Something almost supernatural, like that of a witch, but not quite.

And I've not met a
not-quite
witch before. The scent is sweeter than normal human blood and I tense as my instincts fire, ready to go hunt it, take it.

"We've been together a long time, haven't we?" The General's question is rhetorical. We both know the answer—about a century.

I keep quiet, half my mind wandering.

Where have I smelled that blood before?

"Perhaps that isn't the right terminology." He turns to face me, and my shoulders tighten. When you're facing a monster like him, you can't let your guard down, not even for a second.

"We've walked in the same direction, but you've never fully committed to me, have you?"

I do not like where this is going.

"Is that why you allowed your cousin to escape with the young witch weeks ago?"

Pish.

It's been six weeks since the Maggie fiasco. In all that time, the General hasn't confronted me about it once, not even through one of his minions.

My cousin Maggie—younger by two human years and six vampire months—migrated across the pond over a century ago. She's a bit of an anomaly: a vamp that doesn't drink from the source. She uses bagged blood and doesn't kill.

She's a strange bird.

"I didn't 'allow her to escape,'" I say. "I barely got out of there alive. They killed—"

"All except Stephen. I'm aware."

He watches me for a long time with hooded eyes. Empty eyes.

Why bring up the fight now?

I've done my best to keep from remembering my cousin's obvious disappointment and rage about the side I’ve chosen. Don't know how she can blame me for choosing the stronger side.

For one moment, my memories hang up on the thought of one of Maggie's sidekicks. The only real fighter I've seen in a long time. And a girl.

The General abruptly turns away again. He points to something on the ground, which I can’t see from where I’m standing. Warily, I join him.

Down the street, roughly two blocks over, I see five vamps circling someone.

The human—their prey—kicks and spins, barely holding them off.

I catch a glimpse of her profile, and I have to concentrate to keep my expression neutral, every muscle still.

It's her.

The Chaser's sister.

The girl I've been dreaming about fighting for a month and a half.

Rachel Marie Campton.

I only know her name because I heard her idiot brother yell it after her that sunny afternoon when I was hiding in the family mausoleum. I don't think she ever actually spoke to me.

But she fought like a lunatic, as though she had nothing to lose, as though she didn't care if she lived or died.

Like me.

Seeing her again is enough to make this old warrior's heart speed up.