Again.
Ádísa went on. “I knew you had a soft spot for her. I saw you watching, listening, waiting for the right moment to turn on me, and I arranged for that moment to be tonight.” She whispered the last part, but all the nonhumans in the room must have heard her loud and clear. A sense of peace washed over me, at odds with the situation we were in. Constantine hadn’t betrayed me. She’d used his feelings for me against me, but that wasn’t his fault.
I didn’t get to relish my relief.
Ádísa made a show of pulling a sharpened stake out of a hip holster and dragging it along his cheek. “What is it with the women in your family, Cherry?”
It took a couple of seconds for me to grasp that she was talking to me.
The women in my family
? I didn’t have the faintest idea what her words meant.
“No matter. Your allure worked against you this time. It got you right where I wanted you. It’s such a pity Constantine will share your fate, but maybe I’ll get to keep your new friend.” She meant Alex.
I growled. “You will leave all of us alone.”
“Or else?” Her smile was too sweet and innocent to possibly be sincere.
Constantine spoke up. “How could you think I would betray you? After all we’ve been through? Don’t you know I love only you?”
I opened my mouth to say I was sorry, I should have known better, when it dawned on me that he was talking to Ádísa. And then he did more than just talk to her. He cupped her face, pulled her to him, and shoved his tongue down her throat.
Soon, she lowered the stake and plastered her body against his, all but dry humping him.
It was like I stood on the set of a supernatural soap opera, the leading characters of which changed allegiances and lovers before every commercial break. “Now
that’s
been cleared up, will you tell me why it had to be me from the start? I mean, I know you needed someone recognizable for the whole council-overturning scheme to work, but why me? I was a minor celebrity at best. Why not go with a big name?” Oh, for the love of God, couldn’t she just answer me and stop sucking face with my ex?
Nobody paid me any attention except for Johnny Boy, who was leveling his crossbow in my general vicinity. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Alex had moved so he stood slightly behind me. I knew he wasn’t a coward, so I hoped he had some sort of plan in mind.
“Hey! I’m talking to you, you harpy. And what do you know about my family?” I yelled the question, both in hopes the other vampires would turn their attention solely to me and on the off chance I actually got a reply.
It worked. Ádísa pulled back from the lip-lock and was clearly about to say something. Only she didn’t get to.
Constantine, still cupping her face, twisted.
Her spinal cord snapped, and it
did
seem as easy as snapping a twig. He kept twisting and pulled upward and tore her head from her neck with a squelching, ripping sound.
He
twisted
her head
off
.
Despite knowing better, I expected blood to spurt. There was none. In the blink of an eye, Ádísa’s body formed a pile, her stake landing beside it with a dull
thud
. Constantine was left holding thin air, his palms covered in her dust. His face contorted, lines marring his beautiful features. His eyes filled with tears. The pain he felt seemed physical. I wondered if it really was, if there was some sort of metaphysical bond between maker and childe that hurt when severed. Would I have felt what Constantine did now if Willoughby had really been executed? I didn’t know. They don’t cover “maker extermination” in the handbook. I’d find out firsthand, if Willoughby did us all a favor and died tonight. Or I could ask Constantine later.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to. He appeared devastated, lost. Then our gazes met.
Suddenly grinning maniacally, he spun and caught Willoughby’s wrist, taking advantage of the other man’s shock to move the stake away from his own chest.
“You killed her!” Willoughby’s face was a mask of fury, but his eyes held the same devastation I’d seen in Constantine’s for that split second after he’d killed Ádísa.
Constantine didn’t say a thing. Instead he used both hands to bend Willoughby’s wrist backward and pushed. The stake was shoved into Willoughby’s chest. He took a couple of steps back but didn’t dust. The stake had to have missed his heart. I looked at Johnny just as he was about to shoot me. I saw it in the tensing of his eyes, the tightening of his finger on the crossbow’s trigger. I ducked to the side at the same moment Constantine kicked the armchair into Johnny and rattled his aim.
An arrow buzzed by, not close enough for either Alex or me to be at risk. Had Constantine not jarred him off balance, I’d have been history. Before relief could settle in, Alex pulled me behind him and brought his gun up. That was why he’d hidden part of his body from view: so the others wouldn’t see him reach for his weapon. Well, there was no reason for him to hide anymore. The fight was on.
I tuned down my hearing just in time. Alex’s gun went off, and the sound must have been deafening to the other vampires in the room. Johnny looked pained even before Alex started planting bullet after bullet in his chest. Johnny Boy’s inability to take aim again gave me time enough to approach Willoughby and Constantine, who were wrestling on the floor.
I grabbed Ádísa’s stake from where it lay beside them and crawled toward Johnny. The armchair acted as a shield against stray bullets. Alex was still shooting Johnny when I stood behind the vampire and plunged the stake under his ribs and through his heart.
Something whizzed past my head. My cheek burned from its passing. He’d almost shot me! “Hey! Watch it.”
“Are you all right?” Alex was already crossing the room toward me. He held his gun up.
“Not thanks to you.” I rubbed my cheek and checked my hand. No blood, not that it’d leave a scar even if there were an open wound. Dust clung to my lips and eyelashes.
He stopped a couple of feet away from me and took me in. “You seem fine from where I’m standing.”
“I’m lucky you ran out of bullets, I think.” I tilted my head toward the other two vampires and held a hand up for Alex to stay where he was. He nodded, and I moved to help Constantine. I was looking for an opening when Willoughby brought up his knee and crashed it squarely into my ex’s crotch. Constantine folded over with a groan, and Willoughby rolled him off and took flight.
Constantine was already on his feet before I could decide whether to chase Willoughby or look for the missing women. “Go find the fledglings,” he said. “I’m going after him.”
Dilemma solved, I kicked at Ádísa’s ashes, watching as my boot scattered them. I had really wanted her to tell me why she hadn’t picked someone better known and what her comment about women of my family had meant, damn it. And I’d wanted to be the one to rip her head off—or something less brutal but equally final.
Resigned to knowing I couldn’t have everything, I stole a kiss from Alex. “Let’s get the girls and get out of here.”
* * * *
I stared down the iron door barring our way to the first room in the basement. Anything could be behind it, but I was ready for anything, so that worked out fine for me. “I’m going in first. We can’t be sure what shape the newly turned vampires will be in. For all we know, Ádísa, Willoughby, and Johnny have been starving them into obedience. If they’re in the room, half-crazed with hunger, you’ll be the perfect snack for them.”
Alex wisely didn’t put up an argument.
I put my ear against the door for the third time. I couldn’t hear a heart beating on the other side, but that didn’t mean Dotty wasn’t in there. Even if the door hadn’t been thick enough to conceal the existence of a heartbeat, Alex’s heart pounding would have definitely covered it.
I tried the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge. That wasn’t exactly a surprise. I hadn’t expected the thing to be unlocked anyway. “Hello?” I jumped when two distinct voices returned my greeting.
“Hold on, we’re here to get you out.” My mind reeled at the possibilities of what would greet me when I entered the room. Would the women be chained up? Tortured? The mental picture of naked, bleeding bodies lying on the cold floor made me flinch.
Oh God
. With a curse, I grabbed the knob again and rattled it. Nothing. Alex was out of bullets, so I’d have to break the door down, damn it.
“Hold on,” I yelled again, swearing to myself that I’d make sure they were properly taken care of from that day onward. I’d make it the point of my unlife to make sure they managed to forget whatever pain had been inflicted on them for the first weeks of their existence as vampires. I took a step back, steeled myself, and shoved at the door with my shoulder, putting all my weight into it. I accomplished jack shit on my first effort, but the second time was the charm. Just as my body made contact with the iron surface, the door gave way, emptying me into the room. I hadn’t busted in; it had been opened. From the inside.
I landed face-first on a sheepskin rug, right in front of a pair of feet with perfectly painted orange toenails. The legs connected to those feet seemed to go up for miles, and from my position I could see more of their owner than I wanted to. I raised my gaze to the face. It looked familiar.
“Oh look. They brought us a chick,” the tall girl standing above me in a forest-green silk robe said.
I’d seen those hazel eyes before, in one of those pictures Alex had shown Sheena’s assistant. Intense eyebrows, short, black hair…
Liza. Liza Mills.
She looked a lot more interested when she took in Alex helping me up. “And who are you?”
“He is off limits.” I bounced back to my feet, confusion forgotten at the thought of Alex being in danger. “Nobody bites him.”
“I’d say,” Alex murmured.
“I wasn’t going to,” Liza said. “Like I’d feed on a human!”
Huh
? Humans
are
our food source.
I looked around and saw two more girls watching us. They were dressed the same way Liza was, only in different colors, and looked the exact opposite of the prisoners I’d expected to find. The room wasn’t what I’d pictured, either. It wasn’t big, but it was every girlie girl’s fantasy, with cosmetics and hair products lining all surfaces except for the two sets of bunk beds. I had been prepared for a medieval torture chamber and had found myself in a sorority house.
“We’re here to save you,” I said, trying to figure out how to convince them they needed saving.
“Are you a missionary?” the blonde sitting cross-legged on one of the beds asked. “I’ve dealt with your kind before. I have to tell you Willoughby says our souls are in no danger from our turning.” She was clutching at the lapels of her robe, keeping them closed over her breasts and paying no mind to how much of the rest of her body was on display.
“Where is Willoughby?” The third girl sat at a vanity, braiding her dark chocolate brown hair in a fashion similar to the one in which Ádísa had often worn hers. “He was supposed to feed us today.” Done with her hair, she tossed her braid back and turned toward me.
“Yeah,” said the blonde. “Did he send you instead?” I had no clue why she’d think I was there to feed her, but I was thankful she was referring only to me. That and what Liza had said about not feeding from a human indicated Willoughby had been keeping the girls on vampire blood. Mostly his. It sort of made sense, since vampire blood was more nutritional, but I didn’t get why he hadn’t even told them humans equaled food.
Willoughby had obviously been trying to gain their loyalty, cultivate some sort of actual maker-childe bond. I wouldn’t be resentful just because he had obviously been taking far better care of them than of me. I wouldn’t.
Then again,
anything
would be better care than dumping someone in an alley after their turning.
Now all three of them were looking at me like baby birds looking at their momma. A momma about to tap a vein for them. This so wasn’t happening.
I had to tell them the truth, and I doubted they’d like it.
“Willoughby is gone,” I said. “And Ádísa is dead.”
“Oh my God, what happened to her?” Liza seemed about to cry. “Where did Willoughby go? Is Johnny okay?”
I wanted to bang my head on a wall. Instead I shook it. “Dead too,” I whispered.
“We’ll tell you all about it,” Alex said before I could say anything else—like how I’d been the one responsible for Johnny’s new status. “But first we have to get you somewhere safe.”
“Are we in danger?” Liza was the most vocal one. The other two girls approached us, and I didn’t like how they seemed to be measuring Alex. Whether they meant to bite him or not, they most definitely seemed to be hungry for him.
Constantine appeared at the doorway just as I took Alex’s hand in mine. “He got away,” he said, his gaze roaming the fledglings. “Are they all you found?”
“Just told these girls their maker disappeared and the other two who were…taking care of them are dead.” I spared him a glance that I hoped said he shouldn’t disagree with me. He seemed to have gotten my meaning, because he just nodded. “Can you fly them to your place?” I asked. “We’ll look for the rest and Dotty and then come find you.”
“To my place?” He scrunched his nose in dismay. “Cherry—”
The young vampires hissed in unison. The blonde took a step back. “You’re Cherry?” Her fangs were out, but she didn’t sound very menacing. “We’ve heard about you.”
Well, that was odd.
“You want to stake us, don’t you?” The brunette stood in front of the blonde. “Don’t worry, Sally. I won’t let her get to you.”
I turned to Liza, whom I’d deemed the brainiest of the three. “Listen, I don’t know what Willoughby and the others have told you, but I have nothing against you.
They
were the ones who took your lives from you. They did the same to me. I’m on your side. I’m here to rescue you.”
“From what? Luxury?” The blonde one, Sally, wrapped her fingers around the brunette’s bicep, stopping her from nearing me. “Don’t, Carrie. She’s dangerous.”
I was about to throw a fit. “I’m
not
dangerous,” I said. “I’m not the one who turned you so you could fuck and kill men for their estates!”