Ziggy wished the chill up his spine was from actual cold. But no. There was nothing he would rather not do than go into that filthy, stinking barn tonight. “Fine. Give Jacob my regrets, will ya?”
Of course she would. The bitch. Feeding them would keep him tied up long enough for her to climb onto Jacob’s lap and beg and plead and promise all sorts of perverted things in order to wheedle her way into “helping” retrieve Nathan.
The barn sat a comfortable distance from the house, not too far for the old owners to walk to it in the winter, not too close for the smell of the animals that used to inhabit it to reach the house. But these were an entirely different kind of animal, and their stink did reach the house on some days. He could smell it now, the ripe, unwashed stench of them and the stale piss odor of their waste. They were awake and restless behind the big sliding door. He strained to move it, but the wood had swelled in the humidity. Sometimes you could get it open without them hearing. Not tonight. Tonight they stood in an uneven semicircle around the door, eyes shining in their unwashed faces, their clothes filthy.
They flinched when he took his knife from his pocket, then relaxed when he rolled up his sleeves. He drew the blade across his wrists and held out his arms. They came at him from all sides, swarming, fighting for his blood.
Bracing himself, he muttered, “Come and get it.”
Chapter Four: Double Cross
We pulled up next to the curb in front of the apartment, and I launched myself from Bill’s car. For the entire ride from Chicago, I’d imagined countless horrible scenarios. Now, standing on the sidewalk in front of our home, just footsteps from either terror or relief, I almost didn’t want to go up.
“Jesus, I hope there’s a bathroom up there,” Bill groaned as he climbed out. “We couldn’t have stopped even, you know, along the highway?”
“Next time, bring an empty coffee can,” I sniped, my hands shaking as I fumbled for the keys to the front door.
“You could be a little nicer to the complete stranger who drove you all the way here from Chicago. I was just trying to get my cooler back, lady.”
“You’re the complete stranger who shot the man we’re coming to save. You owed him.” I scanned the street. The van wasn’t there, but Nathan might have parked somewhere else, to remain inconspicuous. I prayed I would find him in time. I flipped through my keys again, to unlock the door at the top of the stairs. “Back me up.”
“Whoa, whoa. You’re not going to just charge up there, right?” Bill put a hand on my arm as I stepped through the front door. “I mean, you said he was walking into a trap. Call me crazy, but if someone’s walking off the edge of a cliff, you don’t go running blindly after them.”
“What do you suggest I should do?” Normally, I wouldn’t mind advice from someone, but something about Bill’s tone rankled me.
I figured out what it was when he moved ahead of me, protectively, as if he were on some kind of macho, soldier-guy autopilot. “Let me go up and check it out first.”
“How about no?” I followed him halfway up the steps and grabbed the back of his shirt to stop him. “You’re human. I’m not putting you between me and whatever might be up there.”
“Yeah, but you’re a—” He stopped, wetted his lips, his gaze darting around above my head as he searched for a different word than the one he’d been about to say.
I stepped close to him, getting as in-his-face as I possibly could, with my height disadvantage and the two steps lower than him that I stood. “I’m a what?”
“You’re a dead vampire.” The voice came from the top of the stairs, and my heart—the only one I had left—stopped beating.
Dahlia stood at the top of the stairs, juggling a bright, blue sphere of light between her hands.
“Holy shit,” Bill breathed beside me.
I spoke through clenched teeth. “Run.”
“I don’t think he’s going anywhere,” Dahlia said with a laugh, hurling the sphere toward us. Bill turned and tried to follow my directive, but the crackling light hit him square between the shoulder blades. He fell forward, his face bouncing off a step as he landed.
There was no time to worry about helping him. He was likely already dead. But I had myself—and Nathan—to worry about. “Where is he?”
“Where’s who?” Dahlia lowered her hands, shaking them as though she were flicking water from them. “You might want to rearrange that. Before it wakes up.”
“He’s going to wake up?” I shook my head, willing my face to change shape and become a monster’s mask.
Dahlia laughed and mimicked me, her face becoming a strange, almost dragonlike countenance with bony ridges where her nose should have been. “Doesn’t scare me anymore. Oh, wait…it never did.”
“Where is he?” I repeated, advancing up the stairs. She didn’t try to stop me, and didn’t try another spell. I didn’t know if it was because she truly wasn’t afraid of me or if she couldn’t do more magic again so soon.
“Where is who? Jesus, you think the world revolves around you and your little boyfriend?” She scoffed and turned from the door, disappearing into the apartment.
I flipped Bill onto his side, so his face wasn’t smashed into the steps and he wouldn’t drown in it if he vomited, since I didn’t know the possible side effects of the spell. Then I followed Dahlia.
The apartment had been ransacked by the Soul Eater’s men after Cyrus’s death. Nathan and I had been hiding beneath the floor of the bookstore in a secret shelter he’d built there. We’d been back in the apartment before fleeing to Chicago, but I’d forgotten how awful it looked. Now, seeing Nathan’s prized books on the floor, covered with dirty footprints where they’d been trampled, and our furniture overturned, made me sick to my stomach.
Dahlia standing in the middle of all of it didn’t help. She flopped onto the couch, one of the few pieces of furniture that hadn’t been tossed around the room, as if I’d invited her to make herself at home. She’d let her feeding face drop. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was too angered by her presence. “If you didn’t know who I was talking about, then why are you here?”
She smiled and kicked up her feet onto a pile of ruined books. “I like it here. I mean, I never did before. You know, when I was here trying to kill your little sweetie pie? But Ziggy brought me by and it kind of grew on me. I mean, there are enough books here to keep me busy for ages. And yeah, the decor is ugly as all hell and someone left behind some really tacky clothes, but I can overlook all that in favor of having a really cool place to hang out all by myself.”
“Get the fuck out of my house.” My hands balled into fists at my side. My rational mind knew I shouldn’t engage her. She was more powerful than I was, even on my best days. “And if I find out you did anything to him, I swear—”
“You swear what?” She snorted, picking up a leather-bound book by its cover, the binding dangling away from the spine. “You’ll get really, really mad at me and I’ll end up kicking your ass?”
“I don’t remember it going down that way in the past,” I reminded her, my voice hoarse and distorted from the shape of my face and the blind fury pushing up in my chest.
She laughed, throwing her head back. There was a scar, fresh, on her neck, and it wasn’t made by fangs. It was the shape of a human mouth, opened wide to make a large bite. Disgusting.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t remember it going down that way,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Cyrus was always there to smack me down for you. And he’s not here now.”
I