Another Kind of Dead

Chapter Eight

Wyatt drove David’s car to our drop-off point, me in the passenger seat with the vinyl cooler tight in my lap. David seemed just as uncomfortable in the rear, fidgeting like a kid on a sugar high. Our destination was a small grocery store parking lot just over a half mile from the river. They had no visual, but it was a more direct route there if Kismet called.

Traffic allowed for an easy trip, and we turned into the lot too soon. I checked the time—fifteen minutes until showdown. Wyatt backed into a space near the entrance. I’d patronized this store a few times, mostly for cold sodas and snacks. It was a hole shoved between newer buildings, a line of glass windows papered over with yellowed advertisements. Three roughhousing teenage boys tumbled out of the store, snapping the tabs on their colas.

“We can be there in three minutes,” Wyatt said.

Fat lot of good that would do me. I smiled anyway. “I know. And I promise to try and curb my sarcastic nature while doing this.”

“Good girl.”

We shared a look that said so many things: good luck, I love you, be careful, watch your back—and more. I grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him toward me. The kiss was brief. Not good-bye, just see you soon. I pushed him away, grabbed my bag, and leapt from the car. Didn’t look back as I walked down Wharton Street, toward the Black River.

Each step forward drove a spike of fear deeper into my gut. I tried to dislodge it with reassurances, but even in my own mind they felt hollow. All I could do was see this through. Get the crystal safely, then worry about capturing Thackery.

The bridge loomed ahead of me, all gray steel and pylons. The last time I’d walked across it was ten days ago, an hour or so after my resurrection. On this side of the river was a train yard, dozens of track lines crisscrossing the sandy ground and butting up to the river’s edge. Abandoned boxcars lined a few of the unused tracks, cracked and dusty with age. I’d hunted a lot of Halfies down there. It had been a favorite feeding ground for years until Jesse, Ash, and I started patrolling it.

I kept a steady pace as the bridge arched up. Faint odors of motor oil mixed with the heavy water scent of the river. A gentle breeze tickled my cheeks, blustering hard each time a car sped past. I continued beyond the train yard, over the rushing slate water below. I reached dead center with a few minutes to spare—according to the clock on the cell phone—and stopped. Looked around in all directions. Car traffic continued at a steady pace, going east and west across the bridge. No other foot traffic, though, in either direction.

What the hell was he going to do, fly in?

The phone rang. I flipped it open, not bothering with speaker. “Running late?” I asked.

“No, you’re pleasantly early. Look down toward the train yards, Evangeline, near that thatch of trees on the water’s edge. Quarter mile down.”

I squinted at the thick, stunted trees that had been left to grow wild on the perimeter of the train yard’s northern border. Something glinted in the sunlight, flashing a signal at me. “I see it.”

“Come to me.”

“What?”

“I wanted to give us a bit of privacy for the exchange. I know you’ll be here in mere moments. Others have seen your Gift, and now I’d like a peek.”

Son of a bitch. I put the phone away, then stared at the location. I couldn’t see anyone, just the trees and brown dirt. I focused on the spot, searched past my anxiety to find a bit of loneliness—my emotional tap into the power of the Break. I caught it and slipped in. The sensation of flying apart and melting back together again was familiar, but new each time I did it. A dull ache settled between my eyes as I teleported, centering me the moment I materialized in the train yard.

The stench of grease and coal was thicker here, almost nauseatingly so, and the roar of the river louder. Ten feet away, a stone wall separated me from a steep drop to its rushing water. The tangled, gnarly trees ahead mocked me with gray, leafless branches, daring me to try to enter them.

He didn’t emerge from the trees as I’d expected. He came around them, as at ease as a man on a Sunday stroll, the living embodiment of his photograph. Tall and lean, he wore a navy-blue suit coat that fell to mid-calf. Dust coated his leather shoes and the hem of his trousers. He smiled pleasantly, more handsome in person than he had any right to be. Boyishly so, with glittering eyes that seemed ready to laugh at anyone’s joke, whether it was funny or not.

Didn’t seem the type to slit a man’s throat, drain his blood, then nail his body to a wall. Then again, no one had ever looked at my previous waiflike build and thought I could snap their neck with very little effort.

“The great Evangeline Stone,” Walter Thackery said, a touch of humor in his voice. “The teleporting trick is quite impressive. Bravo.”

“Show me the crystal,” I said.

He clucked his tongue. “Don’t be unpleasant about this. It’s a simple business transaction. And so far, you’re living up to your end of the bargain.”

“I tend to do what I’m told when dipshits like you threaten innocent people.” Okay, so not antagonizing the bad guy wasn’t an easy skill for me to master.

“We all do what we must to ensure our survival. Now, please, show me my property.”

“You going to show me the crystal?”

He lifted his left shoulder in a half shrug, then reached into his coat with his right. Instead of the crystal, he produced a handgun. No … I stared at it a little harder as he raised it, pointing the barrel at my heart. It was a tranquilizer gun. At least that meant he didn’t want me dead.

I put the bag on the ground and tugged open the zipper. Turned it around so he could see the two glass containers carefully packed into cotton batting. He grinned and did a little two-foot dance that looked ridiculous for a grown man.

“Back away, please,” he said.

I acquiesced, putting five long paces between me and the bag. He whistled. Someone new came around the trees just as Thackery had. Awesome.

He was thin, blond-haired, and looked barely sixteen. Jeans and a T-shirt seemed to dangle on his wiry frame. He kept his head low and wouldn’t look at me directly as he came forward holding what looked like a blue silk scarf. Thackery took the scarf from the boy, then unwrapped it as he approached the bag. I almost wept with relief when he put a pulsing black crystal down in the dirt and picked up the bag. He didn’t back off, just stared at the crystal a moment. It seemed alive, something ominous and evil trapped beneath its hard surface, aching to be released.

“That thing should have been better protected,” he said.

“You almost let the fucking thing loose on the world, asshole.”

“But you came through like a champ and saved us all, didn’t you? I feel I should thank you for that.”

“Yeah? Thank me by telling me what’s so important about those vials.”

He fixed the bag so its strap hung off his right hand, which never dropped its aim with the gun. Odd that his henchman wasn’t armed with anything other than a sullen expression. Thackery’s left hand pulled out the larger of the two containers, full of a gelatinous red substance. “This, Ms. Stone, is my greatest creation to date. Something with which I plan to make a lot of money to further fund my research.”

“Your monster-making research?”

“Hardly. They were simply a means to an end. You see, I have managed to isolate the parasite that infests a vampire’s saliva and keep it suspended in a bloodlike substance for weaponized use.” He wiggled the red jar.

My insides quaked. OhGodohGodohGodohGodohGod.…

“I needed my second sample back,” he continued.

“What happened to your first sample?”

I felt the sting before I heard the shot and looked down. A feather-tipped dart stuck out of my chest, directly above my heart. Boiling water ejected into me. I fell to my knees from the onslaught of pain, gasping, too stunned to think.

“My first sample,” Thackery said, darkness replacing the sunshine in his voice, “I just shot into you. With these healing abilities you possess, think of yourself as my new guinea pig.”

My lungs seized. The raging heat in my chest worked across my abdomen, sending my muscles into spasms of cramps. My arms and legs were shaking, tremors snaking up and down my spine.

The other vial of amber liquid hit the dirt in front of me. “This, on the other hand, is an experimental antibiotic that targets the parasite. Good luck.”

I stared at the vial. The heat scorched the tips of my fingers and blasted down to my knees. Experimental. Up my throat. Antibiotic. It tasted like blood, smelled like bile, ached like a volcano waiting to erupt from the top of my skull.

Fucking hell, is this what Alex felt like when he turned?

I tried to pick it up, but my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. I’d never get it open. My throat felt tight, swollen. Couldn’t swallow it. I had to try something, dammit.

I smashed my hand onto the vial. Glass shattered, cutting skin and muscle. The liquid was briefly cold, ice water on my palm. Then nothing. I ground down and felt only the pain of torn flesh. Manic laughter choked me. I strained toward the knife at my ankle. Had to get it, slice my throat, fall on it, anything.

Can’t turn. Won’t be one of them.

“Wyatt!” The shriek ripped from my lungs, torn from a wave of icy fear. Trembling fingers finally grasped the hilt of the knife. Pulled.

Chalice slit her wrists once, killed herself. I can do it, too. Kill the pain before it kills me. It’s what she did.

My entire body shuddered, and I fell. The knife bounced away. Agony flared through my guts. I curled inward, afraid I’d explode if I didn’t. Splatter my innards all over the dirty train yard. My teeth ached. Eyes burned. Scalp was on fire. I smashed my skull against the ground. The pain was momentary, not nearly enough. I tried again; red lights blinked behind my eyes, but consciousness remained.

I heard voices shouting. Felt footsteps pounding. No, I have to die before I turn on them. Turn and murder them like Jesse murdered Ash. Won’t do it. Can’t do it.

I lifted my head, angled my temple, and brought it down with all my might. Beyond the fading light, encroaching darkness, and brain-splitting pain, I heard Wyatt say, “I’ve got you, Evy.”

I smell blood. Fear. Sweat. Mostly blood. All around. Above, below, inside of me, and inside of them. Heated flesh passes close; I snap my teeth, hoping for a bite. A shout.

Hold her down!

No chains. Don’t you dare chain her!

Everything aches. My toenails, my hair, my eyeballs, even my sex. Especially there. Above the blood, I smell male. Potency. I throb. Can’t move my hands to touch. There’s no relief. I howl for freedom.

If you can’t do it—

No one puts her down, you fucking hear me?

His voice. It’s him I want. I lurch. I cannot move well. Something holds me back, down, away. I jerk my hips, wail, reach for what I can’t have. He’ll stop the throb if I can get to him.

Blobs of black dance in my empty vision. Taking slow shape. Faces. Alex, Jock Guy, Tattoo Guy, even the nameless Halfie who turned Jesse. Dozens more, leering and licking their fangs and welcoming me home. Inviting me into the darkness. The coolness, empty of pain.

Alex takes my hand, so small in his. Squeezes. Tells me it doesn’t have to hurt, baby, we don’t feel that sort of pain. Don’t fight, be with me. It’s time to rest, baby.

I’m not your baby! I think I scream the words, but I can’t be sure. My fist hits flesh. Flesh! I lash again, hoping to grab. Am restrained again. Fuck!

I’ll fuck you, Alex says. If that’s what you want. Stop fighting the darkness. Embrace it, and you’ll be able to join me. We can be together. Love each other. Chalice, please.

I shake my head, try to rub my ears and can’t. I’m not Chalice. He wants Chalice, not me. I don’t want to fuck Alex. I want someone else. And he won’t want to fuck me if I’m in the dark.

Alex weeps. Chalice!

Get out of my fucking head!

The faces melt into black blobs. Blobs that shrink, fall back into one another like drops of mercury. One blob now, dark as midnight, scary as hell. It is Hell, beckoning with a frigid finger. Opening its gaping maw, welcoming me in. Warmth and darkness—so easy.

Pain and light and him. Not so easy. I want him. Need.

Wyatt!

The voices return. I strain to hear, to push toward them, away from the black blob. It blocks my path, mumbling their words. It’s a net, straining, holding, not letting me pass.

… much longer do we wait?

As long as it takes. She’ll come back.

You don’t know that.

Yes I do.

He’s still here. Holding on, holding out, not letting me go. I reach for the black net, curl my fingers around its tempting warmth. Peace floods me. Power energizes me. I scent blood and sweat and sex. I want these things, all of them. The black net promises them, if I let go.

It begins to curl around me like a grandmother’s shawl. So sweet, so loving. Embracing me like a lover.

Not my lover. He won’t want me in the dark, no matter how warm and powerful I am. He just won’t. He’d rather die than live here in the warm dark with me. I don’t want to be here without him.

The shawl closes, cocooning me. I draw in deep, looking for strength. Encouragement. Anything to break this cocoon. Break out of the darkness I’ve let myself slip into.

Look at her hair.

No.

Face facts, Wyatt, she’s gone!

I’m not, I’m here! Get me out of here, please! Too many smells. Too much fear. It hurts.

The dark shawl shudders. It doesn’t like the fear. It destroys fear, covers it, buries it. I fall deeper into myself, looking for fear. Memories. Anything to wrench this from my body.

Down, down into the past. An erect goblin male sinks onto the mattress on which I lie, waiting to die. Wyatt falls in the midst of battle, bleeding to death for half an hour. Living with so much loneliness and rage that I’d rather slit my own wrist than bear another day. Becoming one of the monsters I hate so much.

The black cocoon shudders, trembles, weakens.

Keep him back, dammit!

No, Gina! Stop! Please!

They’re hurting you, Wyatt. Why?

I see it—living without him, the rest of my days alone.

NO! My shout is like a sonic boom. The cocoon shatters. Warmth drops away in shrieking pieces, smoking out of existence as they fall. I race toward the light, toward the chilling cold and pain and throbbing. Toward a body on fire with fever, wracked with chills, wrapped so tightly in sheets and blankets it can barely wiggle. Hands that can’t protect. Legs that can’t kick.

My mouth. I can work my mouth. Through the ache and scorching dryness in my throat, I force words. Stop, please.

Gina, listen to her!

Hands on my face, not his. Someone else’s. Forcing my eyelids open. The light blinds me. I hold still. Let them look. Just don’t kill me. My eyes are released. I close them gladly. Words become a rumble of noise. It hurts too much to listen. Everything fades away.

I fall into the good kind of darkness, and let sleep come.

Awareness stole in on tiny feet, adding increments of consciousness to the cold blanket of blackness I was stuck in. Not a deep, dreamless sleep, but also not restless. Stuck somewhere between awake and asleep, where the sharp odors of blood and desire lingered on the edges of thought. As awareness overtook unconsciousness, I was more alert to my body.

More specifically, to the fact that I could no longer move it. I tested my arms and legs to no avail. They felt squeezed, legs flat together and arms at my sides. Like a mummy. I forced bleary eyes open—an unfamiliar ceiling of dark, rough-cut wood. Unfamiliar smells of pine and earth and burning wood permeated the dark-paneled room with its antique dresser, sunset water-color, and single door. Serenity was in that room, just not in me. Not while my entire body was wrapped up in a damned sheet, some ass-backward method of strait-jacketing me.

What the hell—? Oh, right. I’d almost become a half-Blood.

A choked sob caught in my throat, followed by a high-pitched keen. It wasn’t the time for a mental breakdown, but I was alone and in a strange place and my emotions had other plans. My body trembled and shuddered. The keen upgraded to a wail.

Then Wyatt was there, hands framing my face, looking down at me. His eyes were bloodshot, red-rimmed and puffy, smudged with dark circles. He hadn’t shaved in a while. He was breathing hard through his mouth. I tried to quiet my cries and merely succeeded in changing the wails to silent sobs.

He didn’t hold me, and I wanted him to. Instead, the pressure around my body loosened. The makeshift wrap fell away, releasing arms I could barely work. It didn’t matter. He gathered me up, held me close, and I sobbed into his neck. Sobbed for what I’d almost become, and for the fear Chalice had once felt at the prospect of living when the last thing I wanted to do was die. Wyatt stroked my back and arms, cooed soft words, coaxed it all out.

I cried myself back to sleep, because when I woke next, we were side by side in bed, my back pressed to his chest. I was free of the restricting sheet, carefully spooned beneath a heavy blanket instead. Naked except for a long T-shirt and panties. Safe with Wyatt, and very much still human.

Laughter gurgled in my throat.

“Evy?” The arms around my waist tightened.

“Glad to be alive,” I forced out between loose giggles. My voice was hoarse, throat dry and tight. From one extreme to the other—maybe I had lost it after all.

“Me, too.”

The momentary hysteria subsided after a few minutes. I rolled around to face him, moving easily in the large bed. His onyx eyes seemed to pin me to the bed and never let me go. It wasn’t a horrible idea. Every last muscle ached with exhaustion, like I’d been smashed beneath a steamroller and allowed to slowly reinflate.

“I almost didn’t come back,” I said.

He went stone-faced. “I know.”

“How long?”

“You fought it for six days.”

My mouth fell open. I didn’t believe him. Six days drifting in and out of Hell. Battling to retain control of my body and mind. His expression never changed. Six days. “Where are we?”

“A hunting cabin north of the city. Tybalt knows a guy who comes up here in the fall, and Gina said she stayed here before. We needed someplace safe, away from people. You wouldn’t stop yelling, fighting us.…” His jaw clenched, loosened. “At first, she wanted to chain you.”

I shuddered. “You came up with the sheet trick?”

“Yeah, and it barely kept you down. Every time one of us got too close, you’d try to bite us. You bucked me off a few times. David, too. Phineas was the only one strong enough to hold you down. Your hair changed a little, but it’s gone back. You’d fight and scream the most awful things, then cry and shriek, then go quiet, and then start all over again.”

“For six days.” I could only imagine the things I’d said out loud in that time, especially stoned out of my gourd on vampire saliva. “I remember some voices, I think. You told Gina to stop once.”

Fury lit a fire beneath his stone-faced demeanor; I couldn’t imagine how hard he was battling to keep his temper under control. “There at the end, your eyes changed. It was enough for her. She … She said I could do it, or she would do it.”

I swallowed against nausea. This was the second time she’d tried to kill me. “And?”

“I told her to go fuck herself, that no one was killing you unless they killed me first. We had a bit of a scuffle.”

“You and Kismet got into a fight?”

He touched the corner of his right eye. When I looked closer, the bruising was distinctly darker than the other eye. “Yeah. She came toward you with a knife, then you just up and screamed no like you knew. But it was you, Evy, not the person who’d been screaming at us all week. You.”

“Good timing.”

“You think?” He stroked my cheek, featherlight. “Your eyes had changed back. Gina finally left on my promise not to unroll you until you’d woken up and verified you were normal.”

“Relatively speaking. Wait, you said Phineas?”

“Yeah, he was here for most of the week. When you woke yesterday, I sent him home for a shower and some sleep. He should be coming back later today.”

Knowing that Phineas el Chimal, one of the last surviving Coni shape-shifters in the city, had been here all week surprised me. And in some ways, it didn’t. His loyalty was unwavering, his heart true. “Was Kismet here the whole time?”

“A lot of it. She rotated in and out with her team when they weren’t active, so we were never alone. David and Tybalt were here a lot, too. We kept it quiet. So far, no one outside our group knows about this.”

The effort they’d gone through astounded me. Six days of waiting for me to either change or die, coming to a cabin in the woods like conspirators planning their destructive legacy. Keeping a deadly secret. “How long was I out this time?”

“About a day since you first woke up, so in total it’s been a week.”

“Holy hell.” I brushed the thick stubble on his cheeks. “You need a shave.”

“You don’t like the mountain man look?”

I quirked one eyebrow. “I think it’s going to burn when I kiss you.”

He leaned over and pressed his forehead to mine. Our noses touched. “Don’t tempt me.”

“Why?”

Perfect question. His mouth slanted over mine. It was a chaste kiss, though I longed to deepen it. I was just out of a week-long coma—my breath couldn’t be all that amazing. As expected, his whiskers grazed my cheeks, a delicious friction on my skin.

“Still want me to shave?” he asked as he pulled back.

“Definitely, Mountain Man.” I cleared my throat, desperate for a glass of water. “Have we heard from Thackery since he shot me?”

“No.” He practically growled the word.

That surprised me. “He wasn’t alone. He had some teenager with him. Hard to tell who he was, and, no, Thackery didn’t introduce us. But he did say he had more of what he shot me with, this parasite gel, and that he was going to use it to get what he wanted. I was a test to prove he was serious.”

Wyatt propped up on his elbow, thinking cap on. “He’s made a weapon out of vampire parasites?”

“Yeah, that’s what he said. He also said that the second vial, the one I cut my hand on, was some kind of antivenin.”

“It wasn’t an antivenin or any sort of antidote. We had a sample of it checked by Erickson’s men. It’s a tracking dye similar to what we use, but the range is much smaller. He estimated a distance of maybe five hundred feet for it to be traceable.”

And I’d put my hand down right on top of it. Brilliant. “Could Thackery have used it to track me here?”

“Unlikely. You’d have needed a higher dose than what little might have entered through your cut hand. We were also on the move for a while before we brought you here, and Phineas did a few flyovers of the mountains to make sure no one was watching.”

I felt only a tiny bit better about that. “So Thackery had no reason to think I’d survive being turned, other than my healing ability.”

“He took a big gamble on it, yeah.”

“He was taking a big gamble on every—The crystal!” I jackknifed to a sitting position, nearly cracking my skull off Wyatt’s chin. “Shit, did we get it?”

“We have it, Evy. He didn’t back out of that part of the deal.”

“Where?”

“It’s at Boot Camp, in a lead-lined box, three sublevels down in R&D, locked far away from people.”

Weariness mixed with relief, and I flopped back down against the pillow. Wyatt stayed upright, a looming presence. “Amalie is okay with that?” I asked.

He shifted. “We told her Thackery never gave it up.”

“You what?” I gaped at him in amazement, unsure if he was being smart or suicidal.

“Gina and I made the decision. A few hours after you were shot, Deaem called on Amalie’s behalf to find out our status. We told her what Thackery did to you, and that we never recovered the crystal.”

“But why?”

“Amalie doesn’t know how to destroy it, she won’t keep it at First Break, we still don’t know who Jaron said betrayed who, and the last place Amalie said was perfectly safe was robbed. Do you think I should have given it back?”

“Not when you put it that way. I guess the gnomes didn’t have a magic crystal that heals vampire infection, huh?” It was a tease that came out a serious question.

Wyatt’s expression got impossibly darker. “She never offered to help, and we haven’t heard from her since.”

Nice to know where I rated with the Fair Ones nowadays. “Anything else happening I should know about?”

“Nothing that can’t wait until you’re back on your feet.”

“Okay.” I’d been asleep for a whole damned week, but weariness settled over my limbs like a wet afghan. My body had been through more than just broken bones this time. I’d battled and expelled a parasite intent on changing not only my physical functions but also my brain chemistry. I’d fought for my soul and won.

Yeah, more sleep was allowed. My eyes drooped shut. Wyatt’s weight left the bed, and I snapped awake again.

“I’ll be in the other room for a while,” he said. “I’ve got some things to do, then I’ll be back. Promise.”

“ ’Kay.”

I slept, knowing full well things weren’t settled yet. Thackery had issued a threat in the train yard, one he’d not yet put into motion. Better to rest while I could, because sooner or later—as it always did—the shit was going to hit the fan.