The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (15 page)

He crouched down, pressing cool fingers just above her knee. Her breath caught in surprise. He pushed up the hem of her skirt slightly,
hands gliding over her skin, making the tiny hairs stand up all along her thigh.

She threaded her fingers together, pressing her hands against the front of her dress, against her stomach, to keep them from trembling, to keep the rest of her from moving. She wanted to laugh, nerves jangling. It was so strange to be touched so gently by a creature like him—a creature who looked just like the kind of boy that you might let touch your thigh for a totally different reason. “So you see, it’s not like I have a death wish or I’m into some kind of adventure tourism or I knocked my head too hard when I hurled myself out that window.” She realized that she’d started babbling again, but she didn’t know how to stop. She thought about how she hadn’t shaved her legs since Saturday night and there was probably stubble. “If the cops catch up with me, they’d dump me in some place for observation. And if it turns out I’m infected, then I get sent to Coldtown anyway. This way, I can get a marker and have a way out—if it turns out I don’t get sick or even if I do and I make it through somehow. And I won’t have to go in alone. So, you see, it all makes sense…”

“There’s a very small puncture,” he said, moving his fingers again. She bit her lip to keep from making a sound. “Just one—and the scratch his tooth made dragging over your skin.”

“Deep?” she asked.

He let the skirt of the dress fall and braced his hands on his knees, looking up at her. His hair was black as crow feathers and falling across one of his eyes. “I can’t tell. There’s a bluish tint to the scab.”

For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Blue meant poison. Blue
meant that like some family curse, she was going to wind up just like her mother—hungry and sick and screaming. Blue meant the worst was likely happening.

“Tana, you might yet be well,” he said, but she didn’t believe him. He was just being nice.

She heard the door of the car open and Aidan laugh. “What are you guys
doing
? I mean, she has nice legs and all, but is this really the time?”

Gavriel stood up slowly. Embarrassed over any possible guesses about what she was doing and sick with the thought of the poison in her blood, Tana started to busily dig through Midnight and Winter’s garbage bags to pull out the chains. She tried to look busy, hiding her face from Aidan. Grabbing the coiled metal, she rubbed her thumb over a link and realized that the steel was wound through with wild rose vine.

Even upset as she was, her brain noted that was one of the things vampires aren’t fond of. Soon, maybe, she’d find out for herself what was true and what was just left over from a thousand scary stories that weren’t ever supposed to happen.

“Hey,” she called back to the car, her voice coming out unintentionally harsh and loud. “Anyone have a lock?”

Midnight slid out. “I think there’s one back there. We brought it in case we needed to secure a squat. Let me look.” She got closer to Tana and then stopped, studying her face. “Everything okay?”

Tana nodded, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. She hadn’t even realized her eyes were wet.

Midnight looked over at Aidan and Gavriel, then back at Tana,
as though trying to read something in their faces. “We can tie him up,” Midnight said, finally. “If you want. You don’t have to do it.”

“No,” Tana said, dragging the chain toward Gavriel. “I’m fine.”

“Fine, fine, everyone’s fine,” said the vampire, a mad gleam in his red eyes, crossing his arms over his chest as Bela Lugosi did in black-and-white films. “Fine as scattered pieces of sand.”

She wondered how much effort it had taken him to talk to her the way he had—to, what was it he’d said?
Keep my thoughts clearly ordered
—and how crazy he was going to be now, as a result of that strain. She thought about him talking to the border guards and shuddered.

She couldn’t imagine herself changed into a being such as he was. He seemed as alien and remote as a distant star in the sky.

Gavriel let Aidan and Tana drape him in chains and let Midnight lock them tightly around him with Winter’s old bicycle lock. Then, he shuffled back to the passenger door and dropped himself heavily into the seat, cocooned in silvery links.

They all got back in, Midnight maneuvering so that she was in the middle of the backseat, meaning Aidan was next to her. Winter gave her an exasperated look, which Tana caught in her rearview mirror.

She felt strange as she pulled back onto the highway, her hands unsteady on the wheel. Somehow
knowing
that the scab was bluish convinced her that she could feel the swelling of the skin of her thigh around the wound, that she could feel the Cold in her, icy sludge moving through her veins.

It was kind of a relief to know that the inevitable had come, though. She didn’t have to be afraid anymore. What was happening inside her didn’t care whether she was scared or not.

The car rounded a curve, and the checkpoint came into view. It was just a few cones and a single police car with lights flashing.

“Tell them I’m like you,” Gavriel said as they began to slow down.

Aidan laughed. “I think they can see you’re not like us anymore.”

“No,” he said. “Tell them you know me. That I’m like you, one of you. From the party. Tell them.”

“Wait,” said Winter. “Wait. Is he saying he
wasn’t
at the party? Did you meet him by the side of the road? Did you pick up a hitchhiker who coincidentally turned out to be a
vampire
?”

Gavriel fixed his gaze on Winter. “You know me,” he said, and a chill went up Tana’s spine. “You’ve known me since outside the rest stop, when I turned and the light hit my face.”

“What does he mean?” Midnight asked.

“I don’t know,” Winter said in an odd voice. “Nothing.”

“We’ll call him Maynard McSmollet and he can be from two towns over,” said Aidan, snickering. “No one really knew him that well, kept to himself, but he was crashing the party because he could never resist a kegger—or how about Roderick Spoon? Roddy. The Rodster. He was in band and played electric keyboards but got kicked out of several schools for setting small fires. Yeah, that’s better. What do you think, Gavriel?”

And then there was no more time for suggestions, because the car was pulling up to the officer. A gloved fist tapped a heavy black Maglite against the window. Tana lowered the glass, heart thudding dully.

The guard was middle-aged, his short military-cut hair peppered with gray and his uniform not the kind that local cops usually wore. He had craggy skin and looked down at her with a lip curl of disgust.

“You kids can’t be out this way. No sightseeing. Go on, turn around and—” The guard shone the light in the car, stopping when it reflected Gavriel’s garnet eyes.

Gavriel grinned, teeth bared.

“See? We’re not tourists,” Winter said from the back.

The guard stepped back. “You kids are crazy. Did you catch that thing?”

“He was—he’s our friend,” Tana said, hoping she sounded convincing. “Just turned. We’re taking him to the gate.”

“You better get on out of the car,” said the guard, reaching for his belt and detaching something from it—a weapon, Tana was pretty sure, until he brought a radio to his mouth. “I’ll take things from here. Jesus, you didn’t even muzzle him.”

“That’s okay. We’ll drive him ourselves.” Tana looked ahead of them at the dark stretch of road. Bad things happened in places like this. She glanced at Gavriel, his gaze fixed on the guard’s throat.

“Come and muzzle me,” the vampire said, his voice like honey.

“Step out of the car,” the guard ordered. “All of you. Move! Now!”

She jumped, startled.

If she slammed her foot on the gas, she’d hit a cone and maybe the side of the guard’s car, but she could get them past the stop. She took a deep breath and got ready. The Crown Vic was a heavy car—not the best acceleration, but once it got going, it stayed that way. And they’d have a head start. Maybe they’d even make it to the gate before they were arrested.

But before she did anything, Winter leaned forward in his seat. “Hey!” he shouted at the guard. “We’ve got rights. According to the
law, we have the right to the bounty on him, so if you think you can scare us into giving it up, try again.”

Tana looked at Winter in surprise.

“Damn,” Aidan said under his breath. “You think he’s going to shoot us now? I’d really rather he didn’t shoot us.”

“Your friends, huh?” the guard said with a sneer, leaning his head through the window and narrowing his eyes at Gavriel. “You know what those friends of yours are planning? They’re gonna sell you. We don’t get a lot of corpses going in willingly.”

Tana saw Gavriel’s fingers moving, subtly shifting chain. He wasn’t tied particularly carefully. In a moment, he’d work his arm free. In a moment, he’d grab the guard, drag him across Tana’s lap and sink his fangs into the man’s throat. She saw the way it would play out, the shock, the screaming, the geysering red running down the inside of the windshield.

Maybe she was closer to going Cold than she’d thought, because picturing it didn’t horrify her. Instead, she wondered what it would feel like if it were her fingers closing on the guard’s neck, her teeth tearing his skin. She imagined she could smell him, his stale cigarette breath, the brine of his sweat, and underneath all of that, welling up through his pores, the unique scent of his blood.

Then the guard leaned back from the window, out of danger, and clicked a button on the radio. He spoke into the static. “Yeah, I’ve got a car of kids here with a corpse. Say they’re going to claim a bounty on it. Yeah, it seems in on the joke. I know, world’s full of crazy.”

Tana blinked herself out of her dazed imaginings to find that they were being waved through the checkpoint.

CHAPTER 14

POST BY: MIDNIGHT

SUBJECT: THE TEN MOST IMPORTANT THINGS

TO BRING TO COLDTOWN

1. Cash and lots of it. You can barter for lots of things inside, but cash is still the most important tool for bribing guards and getting what you want. You’ve been saving up, right? Bring every last penny. It’s not like you’re coming back.

2. Batteries, chargers, and extension cords, small solar generator, phone, video recorder—plus your laptop, of course. You might have to bootleg your energy source to get your feed up and running, but then you’ll be able to share your adventures with the rest of us and hear us pining away to join you. Having an effective way to communicate with the outside world might turn out to be profitable, too. Lots of Coldtown stars were just like you when they started.

3. Clean cannulas (hollow needle and length of tubing) and means of sterilization for venipuncture (rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, bleach, matches, or lighter). Think about putting this in a pretty case that you can bring to clubs or parties and show off. Sure, it would be great if you didn’t have to use any of that, but most Coldtown vampires aren’t going to bite you straight off. They only turn people they really care about.

4. Your stuff. Clothes, shoes, shampoo, perfume, jewelry, makeup—only bring the things you really love, because once you’re through the gates, you’re going to be on foot and traveling light, but also remember that everything’s harder to come by in Coldtown. Dragging a bigger suitcase might be worth it when you’re trying to find that perfect outfit. Think about the person you want to be—and the person you want to impress—and dress for them.

5. Stuff for trade—good booze, good weed, cans of luxury food, fresh produce, clothes, and medicine (antibiotics, aspirin, and other painkillers are especially valuable). All this stuff will help you hold on to your cash reserves a lot longer—and maybe even increase them significantly.

6. Mace and other means of defense. We know how special Coldtown is and we’re such a supportive community online that it’s hard to imagine there are people beyond the gate who aren’t like us, but with no police or anything, we have to be careful. Newcomers are considered prey by bands of unworthy wannabes, so don’t be taken in by the kids near the gate telling you about great squats or secret clubs. Don’t let anyone touch your bags, either, and be ready to defend yourself if necessary.