The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (40 page)

She wanted to laugh again, which was ridiculous, because none of this was funny.

Tana perched on the corner of the mattress. When Gavriel looked over at her, she couldn’t quite meet his gaze. She remembered how he’d watched her with the vampire in the basement, seen her stained mouth and her red teeth. What had he thought of her? She’d fallen a long way from the nice girl who offered him a ride in the trunk of her car.

No, not funny in the least.

“So,” said Lucien. “The Spider’s advance guard—his
Corps des Ténèbres
—is coming tonight at dusk. The Spider himself will come later in the evening when everything has been arranged for him. We don’t have much time for preparations and only one chance for this plan to work.”

The casual way he spoke of the Spider’s arrival, as though coming and going from Coldtown for vampires like the Spider or Lucien or Elisabet was as simple as crossing any other border, was alarming. She wondered if the only creatures really stuck inside the city were humans. No, she thought, humans and vampires created after Caspar.

Gavriel ran pale fingers through the mess of his black hair, an oddly human habit. He cut his gaze toward Tana and then back to Lucien. “Just let me get close enough and I’ll kill him. Don’t doubt that.”

“The chains would have to be real,” Lucien said. “He, above all others, knows what will hold you and what won’t—I’ll have to use heavy steel, but we can loosen a few links. Understand? It will all have to seem very, very real.”

“Yes,” Gavriel said, so softly that it was almost an exhalation of breath. “And there must be some sign of struggle. Marks on my body and face, as though we really fought.”

Lucien’s lips pulled back from his teeth in an expression that was half smile and half snarl.

“What is the plan, exactly?” Tana asked. Lucien glanced at her in annoyance, before his face very deliberately smoothed out. Maybe he’d realized that she couldn’t help Gavriel stick to a plan she didn’t understand. Or maybe he’d remembered he was trying to make her like him.

“It’s simple, really,” he said, waving a hand in Gavriel’s direction.
“The Spider is going to come pick up his prize. We’re going to truss up Gavriel, and when the Spider gets close enough—and he will, he won’t be able to resist gloating—Gavriel will pull free from the restraints and kill him.”

Gavriel nodded his agreement. “And then Lucien’s people will fall upon his
Corps
.”

“And thus will the new world triumph over the old,” finished Lucien.

“Nice,” Tana said, feeling as though she ought to say something, but also as though everything she thought of seemed insufficient. That odd feeling of the surreal descended on her again.

Some vampires were going to murder some other vampires.

Lucien and Gavriel, best vampire frenemies, were going to murder some other vampires.

She put her hand in front of her mouth, smothering a smile.

Once upon a time, she and Pauline had had a big falling out over a leather jacket that Tana had borrowed and their mutual friend Ana puked on. There’d been a huge screaming fight and then avoiding each other for a week, eating lunch at different tables and upsetting their mutual friends with their endless snarking. But then Pauline got cast as a lead in a play and turned up at Tana’s house to run lines. The fight was over, just like that.

Could Gavriel feel that way about Lucien, though? Was it possible to forgive someone who caused the death of his sister, whose necklace he’d carried with him for more than a century? Was it possible to forgive someone whose fault it was that he’d been locked in a cell and lost his mind?

Lucien stood up and started toward the door.

Quietly, Gavriel spoke, mouth curling up at one corner. “There is one more thing I would say to you.”

Lucien turned, and something about Gavriel froze him in place.

“You won’t betray me,” Gavriel said. “But can you tell me the reason why?”

“Because I know you can kill him and I want him dead.” Lucien frowned, speaking slowly, as if to a child. “You specialize in killing our own kind. And I want the Spider gone—he hates vampires who display themselves before mortals, vampires like me, who’ve become celebrities—so you’re giving me what I want at a very small cost to myself. Besides which, you are my progeny, of which I am most proud.”

Gavriel smiled. “No, you won’t betray me, because if you do, I will tell the Spider your secret. I know why you gave me over to him so swiftly. I didn’t realize at first, but being in a cage for a decade gives one a long time to think.”

Lucien glanced up at the wall, above a painting, and then back. It was only a moment’s change of gaze, but when Tana followed it, she saw the tiny glare of a camera lens.

Of course he was recording Gavriel. Of course.

It couldn’t be part of the live feed, though, not if Lucien was casually discussing secrets. Unless Lucien was betraying Gavriel in the most obvious way possible—literally broadcasting their plan to the Spider. But even though the footage was likely to be hidden away in Lucien’s vault somewhere, he looked nervous, as though he didn’t want whatever Gavriel was about to say on a recording of any kind.

Gavriel turned toward Tana and directed the next part to her. He sounded chillingly sane. “Long ago, no new vampires could be turned without the approval of a small number of very old vampires. They pretended that they were worried about the spread of vampirism, but what they mostly worried about was one of their own progeny making an army and moving against them. As a Thorn, I hunted any progeny that stepped out of line. But what I mostly hunted were mistakes.

“Some vampires are foolish or sloppy. Some are interrupted in the middle of feeding, surprised by sunlight, or even fought off by the person being attacked. That victim goes Cold, turns, then not knowing any better, feeds without killing. She probably
tries
to feed without killing. But in the process, she makes more vampires and soon, it’s an outbreak.”

Tana couldn’t help imagining Gavriel being interrupted by some frantic vampire, waving around his hands, trying to explain the terrible error he’d just made.

A laugh threatened to bubble up her throat again.

“Caspar Morales was different,” said Gavriel. At his name, Lucien stiffened. “He didn’t remember who turned him, only that he’d had a feeling of being followed and then was surprised, alone in an alley. He woke up in his own house, with the shades drawn. On the wall, in blood, someone had written ‘tell death hello.’

“It was as though someone turned him for a prank.”

Lucien stayed very still. “Who would do that?” he asked finally, his tone flat.

Gavriel turned back to her, and Tana suddenly realized that she was playing the role of the jury.

“I killed five black-haired and dark-eyed vampires in the month before, all of them with something in their features that made them look, from a distance, as though they could have been kin to me. Three women and two men. All of them with an odd story about how they were turned, all with faces that spoke to me of my brother. My sister. And the clothes they wore—oddly antique, as though someone set them out for them. The jewelry, too. It was uncanny. One of the boys even had a useless old dueling pistol.

“Tedium is the worst enemy of those that live forever. We all have ways to amuse ourselves. And Lucien’s are often—how shall I say it—
petty
.”

Tana shivered. The chill of infection was creeping back into her skin, but she could still ignore it.

“All right,” Lucien said. “Enough.”

“It was like murdering ghosts, over and over again,” Gavriel said. “I couldn’t do it that last time.

“I let Caspar go. I let him go, but I was not the one who turned him. You did that, Lucien. You turned all of them, to see what I would do. Because it made you laugh to be cruel. And the reason you won’t betray me, Lucien, is that if you do, I will tell my story to the Spider and you will spend the next decade in a cage by my side.”

Tana looked at them both and for a moment the enormity of what Gavriel had said went washing over her. He was saying that the end of the world wasn’t an accident; it was a joke.

“You have no proof,” Lucien said. “Only a story.”

Gavriel shrugged.

“If you really believed that, why would you have kept this secret
for so long?” Lucien’s body vibrated with manic suppressed energy. His arrogant mouth trembled.

He was afraid, Tana realized. Afraid of what the Spider would do to him if he knew, maybe afraid of all the other ancient vampires, cheated out of their old world, banding together and ripping him apart as they had done to Caspar Morales. Maybe even afraid of humans, or at least human governments finally having one person to blame.

No wonder Lucien had praised Gavriel for changing the world. Every time Lucien praised him, he was really praising himself.

But being afraid made him dangerous. Tana could see the repressed violence in his face, could see the fresh hate glittering in his red eyes. If Gavriel thought that showing Lucien the power he had over him would ensure his loyalty, Gavriel was wrong.

“I kept your secret because I liked the thought of you free,” Gavriel said.

Lucien crossed the room abruptly, as if he could not bear to hear any more. He opened the door to the hall. “After tonight, we’ll both be free. We’ll be free forever, so long as you don’t screw it up.”

He slammed his way out, making the wall shake.

Gavriel flopped down on the settee and put both his hands over his face. Then he looked at her with his strange eyes. “Lord, but you must despise me.”

She slid off the mattress, shaking her head.

“I’m better now,” he said. “Sometimes I am, anyway. Before, it was like being in a dream. I couldn’t put everything straight. It got muddled and messy, and now I—now I see how horrifying it must have been. How horrifying it must all be.”

“What was it you said—
it would take a river of blood to wash away all my wounds
? I saw a video of you the other night. You appeared to be taking all your medicine at once. So I guess that helped. I’m glad.” She remembered him bent over the girl’s throat, balancing his knee on the edge of her chair, covering her body with his. A shudder went through her that wasn’t fear.

“I really said that?” he asked. “It sounds a bit mad.”

Tana laughed, perching on the arm of the settee. He reached out with cold fingers and dragged her down next to him in a surprisingly human gesture. She let herself slip onto the cushion, her head falling against his shoulder.

“How are you?” he asked softly.

“Well,” Tana said. “Every new outfit I get, I manage to ruin within a few hours.”

His grin was immediate, his gaze going to her dress and then away. “Leather wipes down.”

Resting there, smiling, his arm around her, felt a little like being out on a very dangerous date. She thought about the way he’d kissed her, with blood in her mouth and the sun rising behind her, and wondered if he wanted to kiss her again.

“So, you think this plan is going to work,” she said suddenly, desperately needing to fill the silence. “You really trust Lucien?”

“How do you get a cat to bat at a string?” Gavriel whispered against her hair.

“I don’t know,” she said, shivering. “Drag it past really slow.”

“Exactly,” he told her, his cool fingers running over the arc of her cheek. He watched his own hand in fascination, as though he was
surprised by what it was doing. “And if that doesn’t work, drag the string
over
the cat. You don’t show what you can really do with the string. You don’t start with jerking it up into the air or moving incredibly fast. That comes later. First, you let the cat catch it. And once the cat gets it once, the cat wants to get it again.”

“Like you’re going to let the Spider think he’s caught you?” Her voice came out a bit breathless.

He shrugged. “It’s funny to watch them when the string is in the air and they’re hanging on, paws off the ground. It’s funny to watch them dance. They’ll run right into walls to get that string back.”

Tana pulled away from him a moment, regarding him seriously. He was all lush mouth and drowning eyes, all pretty monster reclining on leather cushions, but she’d seen the expression on his face before Lucien left. “He’s been messing with your head a long time. Aren’t you worried that he’s manipulating you, Gavriel?”

She glanced up at the shining spot where the camera was. They were directly beneath it, which might mean that they might not show up on the film, but she was sure her voice would. If Lucien heard it, he’d know she never had any intention of helping him.

“I’m not sure it matters anymore. But will you do this one thing for me—will you lock your door tonight and stay inside until dawn? No matter what you hear?”

Tana took a shaky breath. That was the one thing that she couldn’t promise him, not if she wanted to help Valentina. Not if she wanted Jameson’s help. “Okay,” she lied.

He looked worryingly relieved. “Then let me tell you a story while we wait for dusk to fall. When I was a boy, there was a woman
who looked after my brother and me—she told us tales of firebirds and witches, and about the warrior-princess called Marya Morevna whom Prince Ivan married. Ivan was all alone, since he’d given his blessing for his first sister to marry a falcon, his second sister to marry an eagle, and the third to marry a raven.”

“They married birds?” Tana echoed, not really so much for the answer as to show she was listening—and to make him smile.

“Birds who were sometimes men,” Gavriel told her. “When Ivan saw Marya Morevna’s fierceness in battle and her beauty, he fell instantly in love. They were married soon after. But warrior-princesses are very busy, so soon Marya Morevna had to invade somewhere or battle somebody and left Ivan in charge of her kingdom. He had piles of gold and very good caviar and everything anyone could want, except for one thing—she implored him never to go into a single chamber under the palace.”

Tana thought of her own feet on the dusty steps leading down to her basement and to her mother, waiting in the dark. “He did though, didn’t he?” Leaning in, she rested her head against his chest, closing her eyes.