Darkness Before Dawn (31 page)

He isn’t the same anymore, and I feel so stupid for ever being tricked. His mannerisms have changed, now reflecting the centuries-old vampire within. He’s shed his teenager image and put on the appearance of someone older, someone wiser, but with his fangs once again hidden from view, no one in the audience knows they’re looking at an Old Family vampire.

I glance around at the Watchmen standing near the doors and at the edge of the room. Will they help or have they been compromised? Are they Sin’s Watchmen?

“Could I have Tegan up onstage, please?” Sin asks, and she quickly hops up to join him. She beams with excitement, and my heart is going a thousand miles a minute.

“We’ve gotta get her off of there,” I say.

“Dawn, this is insane—” Michael begins, and I know he doesn’t believe me. Why should he? Sin’s greatest weapon is his charisma.

“As I’m sure you are all aware, the blood you donated has already been distributed and consumed by the vampires on the outside,” Sin says.

Some in the audience boo and hiss.

“I know, I know,” Sin says. “It’s a losing battle, isn’t it? You give and give and give. And you’ll have to give forever, won’t you?”

Silence sweeps through the room. Sin’s voice has taken a turn for the serious, and people are paying attention to this sudden, and strange, spectacle. I turn to Michael and see that even he’s mesmerized.

“You’re young now. Maybe too young to realize how long a lifetime of blood giving is. But there is a way out. A way I’m willing to offer everyone in this room.”

Sin snaps his fingers. As two Night Watchmen begin walking toward the stage, parting the crowd with ease, my worst fears are realized. He controls them.

I start pushing my way through the crush of bodies. They won’t budge, almost in a trance as Sin speaks. But I fight to get through. Maybe if I can reach the stage myself, I can distract Sin. Maybe … maybe I can destroy him.

“These gentlemen took my offer months ago. They were smart; they understood that a life of giving is no life at all. The age of altruism has passed. The age of greed is upon us. The barren sands that surround this world, created by the falling bombs of your tiny species, can no longer render beautiful flowers.”

The Night Watchmen arrive onstage. They unravel their black masks, and then smile. Their fangs, razor sharp, catch the light, leaving no question as to what they are. I’m so close now, and when I glance at Tegan, her eyes reveal her terror.

The audience gasps, threatens to get out of control, but Sin’s voice brings calm.

“Those who know me have seen me walk in the sun. They have seen me soak up its rays, bathe in its glory. These men, these vampires, these Lessers, enjoy the same fruits. I can give you immortality as a vampire, without asking you to forsake the sun. No one can do that except me.”

Sin opens his mouth, grabs Tegan with one arm, and plunges his immense fangs into her neck. Her scream is high-pitched and brutal, one that I already know will haunt me forever.

I try to rush forward, but the crowd’s panic carries me farther from the stage as I stare in horror.

He drinks from Tegan and there’s nothing I can do. He pulls his fangs out and a line of blood and saliva runs from the open wounds. When he drops her, she falls to the ground like a rag doll.

Wrenching out a knife, he slits his wrist and holds it up to reveal the blood flowing. It’s an offering to everyone here, the nectar of a new god.

“Who’s next?” he asks.

That’s when all hell breaks loose.

Chapter 31

A
round the room, the other Night Watchmen have pulled off their masks and revealed their fangs. More screams sound as they attack.

The mob threatens to crush me in its wake. My immediate fear is of being knocked down; I know that if I hit the ground, they’ll trample me, and I’ll never have a chance to get back to my feet, to fight this monster before us. Valentine’s monster.

Shoulders and elbows batter into me, and I nearly lose my balance, but a familiar hand settles on the small of my back.

“Come on!” Michael yells.

Without any regard for the others around us, he pushes them roughly away, holding on to me as he bulldozes his way through.

People rush to the door, maybe hoping that their combined weight will break the hinges or warp them enough that they can pass through. But not only is the padlock holding the door tight, it’s strong—meant to hold back vampire attacks from the outside. Nobody wagered on their already being inside.

Sin’s devilish laugh rings out across the crowd, louder even than the mob of stomping feet. The evil travels from him straight through my bones.

“I can’t leave Tegan!” I shout, looking back and seeing her petite body still lying on the stage. Whether Sin has fed her his blood yet or not, I don’t know.

“It’s too fucking late for her, Dawn.”

Michael drags me with him, and even though my heart rebels, my mind knows he’s right. We have to get out of here; we have to get help.

We rush around the outskirts of the crowd, Michael’s hand wrapped tightly around mine, until we get to a distant window. While everyone has pushed to the front, we’ve gone to the back of the room. Michael rips the makeshift curtains from the window. He quickly picks up a chair and throws it, the glass exploding onto the sidewalk. We leap through the opening.

We race down the street. I hear shouts. Screams. Sirens. Even sporadic gunfire. Sin’s plan obviously involved more than the Daylight. Maybe the madness erupted there, but it’s spreading like a virus. I check my cell phone again, desperate for a signal. I need to alert the Agency, Jeff, Victor—

Michael suddenly stops short, and I slam into his back.

“Why’d you—” But then I clearly see what’s arrested his attention.

In the middle of the deserted street ahead of us stands Hoodie.

“Don’t fight him,” I plead. “He’s connected with Sin, somehow.”

“You picked the wrong night to mess with us!” Michael shouts, pulling a stake from his belt.

“Michael, please!”

But my words are lost on him as he charges in. Hoodie doesn’t even look at his approaching attacker. His gaze is fixed on me. Though his face is still covered by what seems like a constant shadow, I can feel him staring. And I think that will be his doom. His obsession with me has blinded him to everything else. Especially Michael.

But as Michael lunges with the stake, Hoodie grabs his arm, and I hear Michael’s wrist break, followed by his scream of agony. Hoodie delivers a devastating strike to Michael’s chest, and I hear more bones crack, robbing Michael of his breath. With a backhanded slap, he sends Michael to the ground like a child who’s stepped out of line.

And then he comes for me. Slowly stalking up the street like he has all the time in the world.

I can’t leave Michael. But I can’t get to him either, and even if I could, I can’t lift him up and drag him away. So I pull my own stake from my boot. Hoodie’s gaze has never left mine. And as I prepare to defend myself, out of the corner of my eye I see Michael getting up. Even injured, he’s so fast, so powerful. With his uninjured hand, he brings his stake down on Hoodie, the metal going cleanly into Hoodie’s back. Hoodie releases a pain-filled grunt.

But then he throws his elbow backward, catching Michael squarely in the nose. Michael staggers and drops to one knee.

“Run,” Michael calls to me, as Hoodie turns his attention to him.

I just shake my head, my voice knotted in my throat.

“Run!” he repeats.

“I … I can’t.” Too many people have risked everything to protect me.

Michael lunges at his opponent, trying to distract him, even though he must know he’s outmatched. He’s not hoping to win; that’s impossible. Michael is just hoping to buy me time.

“Dawn, run!”

His desperate command snaps me out of my trance, and I haul ass. Not so much to escape, but to draw Hoodie away from Michael. He wants me. I know he’ll follow me. And I’m right. I turn down the first alley I see, knowing I can’t match his speed, but hoping I can lose him in the brick maze.

But he’s there. Every turn I take, every corridor I run down. Like a nightmare, I can’t escape him. He’s in front of me, then behind, and then I seem to lose him altogether, until he appears in the corner of my eye as a fleeting image. But always there is that constant stare from under the darkened hood.

I’m out of breath. I’m sweating. I slip on pieces of garbage. I keep slamming into walls and shouldering doors, trying to open them, only to find they’re locked.

And my stalker dogs me patiently. He knows time is on his side. This labyrinth is too large, too confusing.

The dead end catches me off guard, and I have nowhere left to run. I rest my back against the wall. I put my head down, pulling in the air. When I look up, he’s there, waiting for me.

“We have unfinished business, Dawn,” he says, his voice like a scratched childhood record, familiar but destroyed.

No matter how fast I ran, no matter which direction I took, it was always going to end here. I feel stupid because he knew that, didn’t he?

“I won’t go down easily,” I say, gripping my stake.

“Don’t fight me.”

He moves toward me with his hands up, signaling that he means no harm. Yeah, right. I pretend to relax, taking a deep breath with each step he takes.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. So close. Almost now.

I’ve been through too much for it to end here.

Once he’s within arm’s reach, I strike with the stake. But he sees it coming. He just throws me over his shoulder and onto the ground. The precious air I’d recovered leaves me again.

“I didn’t want to do it this way,” he says from above me. “This isn’t how I planned our reunion.”

Reunion?

He pulls a syringe out of his pocket and uncaps it. I raise my arm to defend myself, but he simply takes it and twists my palm up. He injects the needle into the muscle of my biceps and presses down the plunger.

As blackness hovers at the edge of my vision, I see something. A flower. On the back of his hand. Made by coal dust trapped deep under the skin. Untouched by the years of aging he should’ve experienced. The little flower I used to stare at while he sat beside me and brought color to the black-and-white images in my coloring book.

I barely get out his name before the darkened abyss swallows me.

“Brady…”

Chapter 32

I
f there’s still chaos in the city, it’s died down. Then again, we’re so far from the center, it’s impossible to tell exactly what’s happened since Sin revealed his true self at the Daylight Grill. Eighteen stories up, we don’t even have the view of the Agency building; we’re on the wrong side of town. They used to call where we are Greene Tower. We used to call it home.

I’m sitting against the living room wall, in the place I watched television with my family, in the place I now burn photos of them. To my right, the gigantic hole, where I perched with Victor a few nights ago, gives me a perfect image of the night sky. The moon is so bright, so many stars are twinkling, that even this place glows. Or maybe that’s just the residue of my childhood memories.

Across from me, leaning against the wall, is the one I used to call my brother, who I used to call Brady.

But he isn’t Brady anymore. His hood is back and I can see his face now. It’s skeletally thin, like he just stepped out of a night shift at the Works. Even after all these years, it seems like the coal dust never washed off his face. It certainly didn’t leave his eyes. They’re pitch-black. Nothing human left in them. Why does he look like that? And why are his teeth so monstrous? It isn’t one pair of fangs; it’s an entire row. More demon than vampire.

In his hands, he’s looking at a piece of paper with creases running along it showing how neatly folded it once was. I did that when I brought it to our new apartment. The drawing of my family I put on the refrigerator all those years ago. The drawing I still had when Brady broke in and attacked Rachel. The only thing he took. The only picture I had with all of us together. Drawn in thick, sketchy crayon.

“Why didn’t you let us know you were alive?” I ask.

“Look at what I am!”

“You’re still my brother.”

“No! Sin changed me.” His head twitches. “I was dying. He dragged me off, drank my blood until my heart was practically dry, each pump—so loud, so hard. It hurt. I was so scared, Dawn. You don’t understand how scared I was of dying. And all he did was slash his wrist, let the blood hit the floor, and then walk away. He knew exactly what I would do. He’s smart like that. So I licked his blood. Off the ground. But vampire blood won’t save us. I died … and then I woke up. Like this. I changed … into this.”

“But, Brady, you don’t look like—”

He lets out a primal scream, then punches the wall behind him, his fist going straight through it into the neighbor’s living room.

“Into this!”

He grabs a patch of his hair and tries to tear it out, but it won’t budge, so he punches the wall again.

“Brady, stop! You’re scaring me.” He is frightening me, but maybe if I sound like the Dawn he knew, the scared little girl, I can reach the part of him that’s still human. I can’t believe he’s the one who’s been stalking me. My own brother was my bogeyman. In some ways, it makes it so much worse. Once he protected me, and now he’s this
thing
that I barely recognize. I don’t know what he’s capable of. If Sin created him, he has to be filled with evil. It hurts seeing him like this.

“I couldn’t do it, Dawn,” he says, suddenly composed again, as if he hadn’t just ripped the wall apart. “I just couldn’t do it. Not after Mom and Dad. They’d be so ashamed of me if I did it. They’d be so ashamed if they saw me.”

“What couldn’t you do?”
Please tell me that you couldn’t kill Victor.

He screams again, and I press my back harder against the wall, as if I can retreat through it, get back inside that closet until this all goes away. He grabs a rotting kitchen chair and throws it out the huge hole in the wall, where it crashes far, far below.