Boundary Lines (10 page)

Chapter 16

I didn’t actually attend CU, so my personal knowledge of the downtown bars is limited to the ones I explored right after being discharged from the army. I’d poked my head in at the Walrus only once, took a look around, and made an immediate retreat. The place existed to service those reasonably attractive suburban kids who spent high school being athletic, well-groomed, and popular B students, the same kids who got drunk every weekend and cared more about lettering in volleyball than about a war on the other side of the world. Not that I’m bitter.

Anyway, the place has a reputation for a few things: great DJs, despite a small dance floor; regular reggae nights; and being a welcoming home for douchebaggy behavior. It’s also loud, dark, and below ground—I could instantly understand the attraction for hun
gry vampires.

The Walrus was on the corner of 11
th and Walnut—literally on
t
he
corner; it was one of those businesses where the front door was located
precisely where the building’s edges met, like in Times Square.
I ran
straight up Broadway to 11th Street, ignoring the students and tour
ists who paused to stare at me. As I got closer, I realized the bar was
too quiet: there was no music, no bouncer, no lit neon signs. When I finally
reached the door, beginning to pant a little, I saw that someone had
taped a piece of ordinary printer paper to the front door. The words “Closed for Inventory” were written on it in sloppy black marker.

I’d seen stuff like this at Magic Beans before, and recognized it as one of the vampires’ tactics. This is America; we love obeying signs, even if they look like they were written by middle-school students. I knocked hard on the front door, and when that produced no results, shouted, “It’s Lex!” as loud as I could. A middle-aged dog walker gave me a funny look as he went past. “Supposed to help with inventory,” I explained. He shrugged and moved on.

I heard the sound of a lock being undone, and the door opened just far enough for me to slip into the building. The entryway was dark, and my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted from the glow of the streetlights when a scared-looking girl of about twenty stepped out of the shadows. I jumped.

“Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you. You’re the boundary witch, right?” She raised the back of her hand to her mouth, and I realized she was wiping a smear of blood off her chin. I automatically shifted my weight to fight, wishing I’d brought a shredder stake with me.

Sensing my wariness, the girl raised the other hand, too, and took a step backward. “Easy, there. I’m Opal,” she said, trying to mollify me, “one of Maven’s vampires. I’m supposed to bring you to her.” The girl took a couple of steps deeper into the bar, gesturing for me to follow. I did, slowly.

The dance floor was, as promised, especially tiny. It was also covered in blood, which showed up well against the wood floor. The blood was bright red, still wet, and smeared around in puddles like someone had tried to make a snow angel in finger paint.

There were a number of people in the back of the bar, but my eyes shot straight to Maven, partly because her power drew me in, and partly because everyone else was staring at her too. She looked like the poster for a horror movie, standing on top of the bar in a tight black miniskirt and the remains of a torn tank top. I couldn’t tell what color it had once been, but now it could best be described as bloodred. Her feet were bare, and long ribbons of blood ran down her legs, but I didn’t see anything that looked like an injury.

Some of the blood probably belonged to the two vampires she was restraining. In one hand, Maven was holding a broken pool stick to the heart of a vampire who was splayed on his back on top of the bar, hands held defensively near his shoulders. The wood had already pierced his shirt and drawn blood, but it must not have gone deep enough to reach the heart yet. In the other hand Maven clenched a handful of black curly hair belonging to a second vamp, a man who had to weigh well over two hundred pounds. She held him at a strange angle—on his knees with his face tilted up—and from the expression of agony on his face, I was pretty sure she could snap his neck with a simple twist. I’d seen a vampire do that before.

It was obvious that I’d
just
missed a fight, but something felt wrong to me, too still. Then I realized that no one was breathing hard, because they didn’t have to. I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. “Hello, Lex,” Maven said pleasantly. “Thank you for coming.” She looked up at me, and I almost gasped. Gone were the enormous soda-bottle glasses, and her orange hair was slicked back against her skull, possibly with blood. She was stunning, probably the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Her power was practically pulsing out of her, and I had to resist the urge to fall to my knees.

“Hi, Maven,” I managed to say. “I like the new look.”

In a sublimely human gesture, Maven looked down at herself. “Oh, thanks,” she said, giving me a little
what, this old thing?
shrug. “When in Rome.”

“Uh-huh.” There were bodies on the floor, at least five of them, mostly close to the bar area. Blood was sloshed over the walls and tables, and I heard whispers coming from the far side of the room, behind Maven. I circled slowly into the center of the space, and saw that Quinn was crouched in the corner next to the bar with a dozen or so terrified-looking college kids. Judging by their wide eyes, and a few urine stains on their clothes, they were human. Quinn gave me a quick nod, and turned back to the group, keeping them calm. He was obviously awaiting further instructions.

So was I. “What exactly can I do for you, Maven?” I asked.

“These two,” she said, tilting her head at the two male vampires she was restraining, “broke the peace in my territory. They started a
bar fight
”
—
she spat the words distastefully—“and killed humans, revealing themselves to the human world. Their punishment is death.” Her fingers must have tightened on the bigger vamp’s scalp, because his face twisted into an agonized grimace.

“Oh-kay,” I said cautiously. I had no problem with putting down vampires who’d killed humans, but it kind of seemed like she had all this under control. Why was I here?

“Before they die,” Maven went on, “I want you to press their minds and find out who compelled them to do this.”

Oh. “But . . . they’re vampires. Isn’t this kind of what they do?”

Across the room, I could see Quinn wince. Maven hissed, “
No
. Week-old vampires have better control than this. Someone put them up to it, in an effort to further destabilize my territory. I
will
have that name.”

Her voice chilled me, and I found myself glancing at Opal for some reason. Vampire expressions were usually pretty impassive, but her face flooded with pure fear as she looked at Maven. Oh, good. It wasn’t just me then. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, stepping forward.

As I moved closer, the kneeling vampire gave an anguished cry and twisted out of Maven’s grasp. I heard the sound of his hair ripping out by its roots as he did a neat roll onto the floor and charged straight for me.

Quinn’s voice rang out, screaming my name, but I ignored it and shifted my weight. Vampires were fast, much faster than humans, but I’d had years of combat training, and this guy clearly hadn’t. He just raced straight toward me, intending a simple tackle, so I stepped aside and thrust out my right arm, clotheslining him with my forearm. It nearly dislocated my shoulder, but he crashed to the floor. Curly shook his head hard and popped back up within seconds, faster than I could see.

Luckily I’d already picked up a high-legged bar stool, and before he rushed me again I wielded it toward him like a lion tamer, throwing all my weight against it. Three of the four metal legs drove into Curly’s torso, drawing blood and forcing him back a few steps, but I’d come nowhere near the heart. I clenched the seat and twisted as hard as I could, but with a scream of pain he tugged the stool legs out of his torso and threw
his
weight back against it, sending the seat straight into my chest.

I flew backward, my back hitting the edge of a table as my feet lost
purchase.
Ow.
While I was still struggling to get back up, the vampire spun to my right, apparently deciding to cut his losses and flee.

I may not have had a stake, but that didn’t mean I was unarmed. I dropped to the floor and pulled the Springfield subcompact out of the ankle holster on my right foot. There’s no point in threatening werewolves with silver bullets unless you have the means to back it up.

I’m fast, but by the time I stood Curly was throwing Opal aside—the female vamp had apparently tried to slow him down. As soon as she was out of my line of fire, I raised my weapon and put three shots into his spine.

Curly went tumbling to the floor, and I came after him, sticking the Springfield in my jacket pocket as I walked. “Lex!” Quinn called out from the other end of the room. I turned my head to look at him, and just managed to catch the spelled stake he’d thrown in a soft underhand toss. I nodded my thanks and glanced quickly at Maven, who was watching me with widened eyes. She hadn’t moved from her position on the bar, except to lean a little harder on the pool cue—the prone vampire’s eyes were bulging with pain.

Maven gave me a curt nod—permission—and I stalked over to Curly, who was writhing on the floor, on his stomach. Only his arms seemed to be working at the moment—I’d severed his spine. Good. My back hurt too. I kicked him over and plopped down on his chest, pressing my hands against his face so the tips of my griffin tattoos made contact. “Hi. What’s your name?” I said conversationally.

Glaring and cursing at me, he tried to shove me off with his arms, but his body was so busy trying to heal the bullet wounds, he didn’t have the strength. I fended him off easily and put my hands back. “Name?” I asked again.

“Tony,” he growled.

“Hey, Tony!” I shouted, leaning forward, and for a second the vampire was so startled that he forgot he was fighting me and looked right into my eyes. Which was exactly what I wanted. Keeping the eye contact, I dropped into the mindset that allowed me to create a mental connection between the two of us. It was sort of like opening your eyes inside a tunnel, and focusing on the light at the far end. Then I sort of
willed
myself into that light.

And just like that, I had him.

“Tony,” I said softly. There was no reason to yell at him now. He’d
do anything I wanted. “Who sent you?”

Confusion erupted on his face. I knew the look—he wasn’t refusing to answer; he just didn’t understand my phrasing. Belatedly, I remembered that commands got better results than questions. “Tell me what happened at the Walrus tonight,” I said, pressing the demand into him.

“Darren and I came to hunt. We just wanted to feed.” His voice wasn’t defensive; it was toneless, as if he were talking in his sleep. “Then we couldn’t stop.”

Cold fear sparked in the back of my mind, but I had to stay focused or I would lose control of him. “Tell me who wanted you to come here tonight.”

Confusion again. “No one. We met at Darren’s apartment and decided where to go.”

I risked a quick glance at Maven. From past experience I knew I could look away without breaking the connection, but I didn’t dare do it for long. Maven was giving me nothing, just a slight furrow of her eyebrows that said she was as confused as I was.

Turning my attention back to Tony, I tried, “Explain why you couldn’t stop. Explain why you lost control.”

Tony’s eyes went distant for a moment, but the connection between us hadn’t broken. I could feel it. He just didn’t know how to respond. “I’m not sure what happened,” he said slowly, as though he were watching a video of the events and couldn’t quite interpret it. “Everything was intense tonight, deeper. Like I had a motor, and it’d just been souped-up.”

That sounded unpleasantly familiar. “Hang on for a second, Tony,” I said, though I kept my eyes on him. To Maven, I called out, “I’m not sure it was their fault. Something is driving them. Maybe the same thing that’s been causing . . . other events.”

“Kill him.”

Her voice was so cold and hard, I had to look up again. When I did, she was sitting on the edge of the bar, her bloodied bare legs dangling below her. The pool cue was now jutting up at an odd angle, and I realized it was sticking out of a desiccated corpse dressed in Darren’s clothes. She’d gotten the answer she needed. “They broke my laws. I can’t afford to be soft now,” Maven said coldly. “Kill him, Lex.”

“I can’t just—” I began, but I’d broken eye contact for too long. Tony began to buck and holler underneath me, trying to throw me off. I tried to open another connection, but he wasn’t having it, his eyes rolling wildly as he fought for leverage. Then all of a sudden his fingers shot up and planted themselves around my throat like it was magnetized.

“What did you do?” he whispered, horrified. “Get out of my brain, you stupid bi—”

The rest of the word was lost, as my shredder found his heart.

Chapter 17

When a vampire dies, the body rapidly decays, like time-lapse photography, until it catches up to where it would be if the vampire magic had never infected it. So a two hundred-year-old vampire would become brittle two hundred-year-old bones, and a three-month-old vampire would become a disgusting still-rotting corpse. I knew all that in theory, and I’d even seen it happen—but not while I was sitting on top of the corpse.

Right underneath me, Tony’s body immediately began to desiccate, growing softer and sort of slippery, like his skin was loose underneath his clothes. I scrambled to get off, but I slipped on the bloated skin, catching myself about two inches away from his rotting face. I screeched and leaped to my feet, and for a few seconds I turned into a complete and total girl, shuddering and squirming around while I chanted “Ew, ew, ew!”

Finally the revulsion passed, and I collapsed into a nearby chair, desperately wanting to shower in antibacterial gel. By the time Maven had hopped off the bar and sauntered over, Tony’s body looked like a weathered skeleton. She dropped into the chair next to mine, and we sat there silently for a long moment.

“You didn’t have to kill them,” I said softly. I knew exactly how she’d respond, but I also needed to hear myself say those words out loud.

“Yes, I did.”

Behind us, I could hear Quinn pressing the minds of the human bar patrons one by one and sending them out the back door. He was telling each of them they’d witnessed an ugly bar fight and just wanted to go home now.

“What about the bodies?” I mumbled, gesturing to the dead humans scattered around the bar.

“Oh, we’ll make up a story,” Maven replied. She sounded utterly unconcerned with covering her tracks. “One of them went on a killing spree, or maybe we’ll just start a fire. We’ve done it before.”

I just nodded, too numb to be outraged. “Could you make it an accident?” I implored, feeling like a child. “So none of them have to be remembered as a killer?”

Her face didn’t change. “Sure.”

“Thank you.” We sat quietly for a moment. I looked at my hands. There was blood on them, from when I’d rolled around during the fight. It wasn’t just my hands, though: my leather jacket. My jeans. My sneakers. Nothing was really saturated, but the red stains were all over me, like I’d rolled against a freshly painted wall. There was probably still a little dried blood in my hair from the night before, too. My back hurt where I’d hit the table, and my shoulder from when I’d clotheslined the guy. Mostly, though, I wanted a shower
so bad
.

“You used a gun,” Maven said abruptly.

I raised my eyebrows at her. “Was I not supposed to?”

She shook her head, hesitated, and shrugged. “I’d prefer that you didn’t use firearms in highly populated areas, because of the noise. But it’s more that we—that I—never even really think of using guns. I know Quinn has some, of course, but that’s because he’s such a recent vampire.” She smiled faintly. “For us old ones, it’s considered very . . . tacky.”

I snorted. I’d watched Maven reach into Itachi’s chest cavity and literally yank out his heart. Of course she didn’t need a gun. “Yeah, well, every one of you is faster, stronger, and has better reflexes than I do. I’m happy to be tacky if it means staying alive.” A new thought occurred to me. “Why didn’t you help me? When Tony almost had me, or when he was running away?”

“I wanted to see what you’d do,” she said frankly. “How you’d handle it.”

Ouch. It was the answer I’d expected, but it still kind of stung. Sensing my thoughts, Maven added, not unkindly, “I’m not running a charity, Lex. If you can’t handle one vampire I need you to press, you’re not much good to me.”

I didn’t let myself react to that; I also didn’t give myself any time to question the wisdom of what I was about to say. “Speaking of handling things, I need to borrow some money.”

That surprised her. As quickly as I could, I explained about the Las Vegas witch I needed to consult. “It might not even work, honestly, given that she would be using her magic on mine. But Simon and Hazel think there’s a chance,” I finished.

Maven took in all the information, motionless as she listened to me. “Okay,” she said eventually. “Call Ryan first thing and have him set up her travel. On me. I’ll leave a note so he knows you have my approval.” Before I could thank her, she rose in her seat so she could watch Quinn press a witness. My eyes followed hers. He was talking to the last person. I checked my watch. Almost ten. It felt like about four in the morning.

“Do you need me to help with . . .” I gestured at the bloody bar around us. “Cleanup?”

Maven chuckled. “Go home, Lex. I know you’ve had a busy day, and tomorrow may shape up to be similar. Get some rest while you can.”

I began to stand, but there was something else that needed to be said aloud. “It’s related, isn’t it?” I ventured. “To the werewolves, and maybe even Simon’s pellet thing.”

“That,” Maven said in a strange, hollow voice, “is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

I retrieved my car from the lot and started toward the cabin, but after a moment of thought, I texted John and asked if I could drop by for a minute. I was really asking if he was alone—John had recently indicated that he was seeing someone, although I had no idea if it was serious. But he texted
Yes
back almost immediately.

I drove straight to John’s suburban house off Kings Ridge Boulevard, one of the nicer areas in Boulder.

He was waiting by his front door, so I didn’t even have to ring the bell before he swung it open. John was half Native American, with strong features and lustrous black hair that stood up in tufts whenever he was tired, like he was now. Working all day and being a single parent all night had to be exhausting. “I know this is weird,” I said by way of hello. “But I just kind of wanted to see Charlie.”

A smile broke over his face, and I felt a familiar twinge in my chest. John and I had been in love with each other for about five minutes in high school, back when everyone called me Allie, before I’d decided that I needed to serve my country. That girl had died a long time ago, though, and I’d come home from the war a different person, with a new name. While I was gone, John and Sam had grown toward each other, building something between them that eventually turned into a marriage.

I didn’t think I would ever see John without feeling a tiny sting of what-could-have-been, but he and I had missed our chance, and that was that. Neither of us would ever let our history or any other awkwardness keep me from having a relationship with Sam’s daughter.

“It’s not weird at all,” he assured me, stepping aside so I could come in. Then he frowned down at my clothes. “Were you painting something?”

I glanced down. I’d left the jacket in the car and zipped on a hooded sweatshirt, but you could still see a few dark stains on my jeans. “Uh, yeah, the back room at work.”

He nodded, accepting my explanation without question, and I felt another stab of guilt for lying to one of the few people in the world who trusted me completely. “You know the way,” he said, gesturing for me to go ahead of him.

John’s house was always messy, mostly due to Charlie’s burgeoning sideline in destruction, but we were family, so he didn’t bother apologizing for it. I removed my shoes, picked through the minefield of toys on the staircase, and tiptoed into Charlie’s bedroom, opening the door slowly so it wouldn’t creak. A pink mushroom-shaped nightlight shone above the crib, and I smiled down at my niece. She had kicked off her covers again, but she was dressed warmly in little polar-fleece pajamas with ladybugs on them. I leaned my forearms on the rail of the crib, drinking in the sight of her. I felt a great peace inside myself, which I knew came partly from knowing she was safe, and partly from the fact that my proximity to her was canceling out my connection to death magic. Around Charlie, I actually was the normal human woman I’d always thought myself to be.

John came in and leaned over the other side of the crib, smiling down at his daughter. We’d been quiet, but Charlie stirred suddenly, stretching her limbs out as far as they would go before relaxing back into a starfish shape. “Sam used to sleep just like that,” I whispered, delighted.

“I remember,” John said wryly. Then: “She looks more like Sam every day.”

His expression was so complicated: sad, pleased, longing. I felt a sharp rush of grief. “I miss her,” I said simply.

“Me too.”

We stood there silently for a few minutes, just watching the baby sleep.
She’s perfect, Sam.
I sent the words toward my sister, hoping she’d somehow hear them.
And even more precious than you knew
. I couldn’t help but feel a touch of apprehension with that last thought. When she was alive, Sam hadn’t known that Charlie was a null. John
still
didn’t know, a blissful ignorance that was getting harder and harder for me to maintain. The Old World had an ironclad rule about never letting humans know about the supernatural. It was essential to their survival. Quinn had implied once that occasional exceptions were made, and I’d met one of those exceptions: an ex-Homicide cop in LA.

But although I was hoping Maven would eventually let me explain the truth to John, I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation. Every parent worries about their kid. Telling John that he also needed to worry about vampires or werewolves kidnapping his daughter wasn’t going to be fun for anyone. But he deserved to know.

Even if I got permission, however, I didn’t think I’d tell John how Sam had really died. He didn’t need to know that my sister, his wife, had died after a werewolf ate chunks out of her. I would go to my grave making sure no one else who loved Sam ever had to know.

John sighed suddenly. “I can’t believe it’ll be a year next month. Sometimes it seems like I just talked to her.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” I said honestly. Of course, I
had
talked to Sam recently. I knew for sure that her spirit was alive somewhere, thinking of us. I could take comfort in that.

I wondered if there was any way I could give some of that comfort to John. Surely it couldn’t hurt to tell him a
little
bit of the truth. “I’ve been dreaming about her,” I ventured. “In the dream, she’s okay. She’s watching us, and she’s really proud of how you’re taking care of Charlie.”

John’s eyes welled up, and he turned away so I wouldn’t see. I pushed on, careful to keep the tears out of my own voice. “So, you know, if you believe in twin ESP or whatever, maybe it’s true.
I’m
sure it is.”

John nodded fiercely, and without looking at me, he reached across the crib and clasped my hand. I squeezed it and let go.

I wanted to linger, to pull up a chair and stay there all night watching Charlie sleep contentedly, but Maven was right: I needed sleep. I got up on my tiptoes and leaned way over the crib wall so I could kiss my niece in her fuzzy pajamas. Charlie didn’t stir, her little face lost in whatever babies dream of.

“Goodnight, babe,” I whispered. “Love you.”