Bring On the Night (33 page)

Family connections, of course, though they hadn’t helped her achieve her dream of the Immanence Corps.

Thinking of Tina reminded me to check on Lori. She and the rest of the civilian population had less than two hours of freedom before the indefinite quarantine took effect.

Using the common room’s landline, I dialed Lori’s cell. She answered right away. “Hey! How are you?”

“Getting better.” I heard traffic in the background. “Are
you still fighting the crowds for bread and toilet paper?”

“No, we’re looking for Tina. I called her this morning to tell her about you, but there was no answer. Her mom hasn’t heard from her, and now with the curfew, today is our last chance to find her.”

I twisted the phone cord around my finger. My secret was out there, unsecured. After all we’d done to ensure Ken’s loyalty, my cover could still be blown.

“For my sake, you’d better track her down.”

“It’s not just that.” Lori’s voice tightened. “I think she raised the zombies.”

I almost dropped the phone. “Tina couldn’t raise a lump of pizza dough. She bragged about every talent she thought she had. If she could raise the dead, she would’ve taken out a full-page ad in the
New York Times
.”

Noah looked up from his book. “Who raised the dead?”

I couldn’t answer him, because Lori’s words were pouring into my ear. “You won’t believe what we just found in her apartment. Books and papers on how to call the spirits, and all this ritual equipment. Her mom recognized one of her own texts, one that’s forbidden to all but the top necromancers. Tina had stolen it from her.”

“She was wearing a bandage on her arm the night of your bachelorette party. It was hidden by her sleeve, but I saw it when she took her coat off.”

“It could have been from the blood ritual. Good eye, Ciara.”

I paced as far as the phone cord would let me. “Tina doesn’t live in Sherwood. How did you get past the National Guard to go to her apartment?”

“We got a Control escort. Tina’s mom is pretty high up in the agency, and she convinced them there was cause, since
her necromancy texts were gone.”

I looked at the clock. Still daytime. I hadn’t realized Colonel Petrea’s wife was human. “What does Tina’s dad say about this?”

Lori hesitated. “He’s not with us.” Her voice sloped up at the end of the sentence, which told me she was nervous, maybe purposely cryptic.

“Is Mrs. Petrea there with you?”

“Yeah.”

“And that’s why you can’t talk about Colonel Petrea?”

“Pretty much,” she said in a forced casual tone.

“So when you say he’s not with you, you don’t mean just because he’s a vampire and can’t go out during the day.”

“Right.”

Why didn’t Petrea’s wife want him to know their daughter was missing? Didn’t she trust him? Or was she hiding something herself?

Lori continued. “You knew Tina in a different way than I did. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

I tried to think, but my brain was murky as usual. “Sorry. I’ll call you if I think of anything. Good luck.”

We hung up. I sat on the sofa and explained the situation to Noah. Then I asked him, “If you were on the run because you’d done something wrong, where would you go?”

“I would stay here.” He lifted his hands to encompass the station. “I trust no one more than these friends.”

“What if they couldn’t protect you?”

“I’d be worse on my own. Vampires need community.”

I hoped my chagrin didn’t show. Before I met this odd little family, I’d only trusted myself. In Tina’s situation, I would go far away from anyone I’d ever known.

But to get inside her head, I couldn’t think like a con
artist. Tina wasn’t a vampire, but like most humans, she needed community. Her community, her coven, was the Control, and even they couldn’t help her now.

Who did that leave? Her parents. Maybe they were protecting her, either because she really had raised the dead—or because they had done it themselves. They were necromancers, after all. But then why would Mrs. Petrea tell Lori about the missing books?

“I’ll be right back,” I told Noah, then went into Shane’s room to fetch my research books on Romania. If I could understand the Petreas’ people better, maybe I could figure out how this all fit together. Or at least I’d fill the time until our next zombie-shoveling party.

I lounged on the couch with a fresh mug of, well, breakfast and turned to the last chapter I’d been reading before I died. Before Aaron died. Before the whole world fell apart.

Under the chapter title appeared this pithy quote from Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
:

“Every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool…”

I let out a sigh. No wonder Petrea had hated my human self. I questioned everything, believed in nothing. My blood or my mind—my soul?—drained the potency of superstition, the very thing that had once made his class of people so powerful. In his mind, I was everything wrong with the modern world.

Further reading confirmed my suspicions—the Transylvanian and Moldavian noblemen had used the threat of vampires, ghouls, and other “fictional” creatures to keep
the peasants in line. What was a little physical hardship, or a starving child, compared to the eternal damnation of the vampire’s clutches?

“This is interesting,” I told Noah. “A group of seventeenth century Carpathian noblemen claimed they had vampires in their thrall, that they could control their actions. So if you crossed these guys, they’d sic the vamps on you.” I flipped the page. “Of course, this book has to claim vampires aren’t real, or it would never get published.”

“Do you think they truly had vampires in their thrall?” Noah asked.

“They were probably bribing or blackmailing them. We can’t actually be controlled, right? Like those zombies?”

Noah took off his glasses and squinted at the ceiling. “There is a Haitian voodoo practice where a person is given a potion that make them seem dead. The witch doctor then brings them out of their grave. The zombies, if you want to call them that, have so much brain damage from the potion, they do anything their master says.”

“But vampires’ brains aren’t damaged when we die, right?”

“Such is my point. If the resurrection is proper, we are not even dead a minute. Humans have drowned for longer than that without destroying their minds.”

My chest grew cold. “I was dead longer than a minute. You said you thought you lost me.” I put a hand to my head. “My mind’s felt sticky off and on ever since. I thought it was because I was sick, or because Monroe had left me.” I shot Noah a pleading look. “Do I have brain damage?”

He shrugged. “If you do, it will get better eventually. We can recover from almost anything.”

I stared at the page in front of me, checking for blurred
vision or sudden lack of literacy. I could handle losing a limb, but not my mind. My wits had gotten me out of more jams than I could count. The loss of even half of them would be the End of the Ciara as We Know It.

I recalled how foggy I’d felt while the CAs were doing their cheerleading routine.
Shit.
What if the zombie spell had a hold on me? Was I half zombie?

The book’s spine snapped in my hand.

“Watch your strength,” Noah warned, “especially when you’re upset.” He turned back to his own book and continued reading aloud.

I couldn’t hear his words over the roar of panic in my head. I knew I should tell someone my theory, but revealing my weakness could land me in a laboratory, away from the people who’d nursed me back to life. The thought of leaving the station turned me cold and empty inside.

Plus, it was impossible, right? Elijah said the zombie spell worked through blood magic, and it wasn’t as if the necromancer had bled on my dead body or—

Wait.
My thoughts lurched back to another problem, one that I might be able to solve.

I picked up the receiver and punched in Lori’s number. When she answered, I said, “I know where to look for Tina.”

Help Me

A grim-faced Elijah opened the door of his basement apartment and ushered me and Shane inside.

“Tina’s in the bedroom.” He joined me as I passed him. “How are you feeling, Griffin?”

“Fine,” I lied. “Which is more than I can say for Tina. At least I had friends who would save me.”

He held up his hands. “I don’t make vampires. Period. I told Tina that, and I offered to call an ambulance. It was daytime, so I couldn’t carry her to the hospital myself.”

“
But if she was dying—”

“That’s the thing. She’s sick, but she ain’t dying. Check this out.” He led us down the hall to a closed door.

I opened the door slowly, trying not to let the hinges creak, and took a step toward the queen-size bed.

Beneath a sweaty layer of sheets, Tina’s form breathed deep and even. I could feel the heat of fever coming off her, and my predator’s sixth sense (or seventh or eighth sense) told me she was weak and sick.

But Elijah was right—she was nowhere near death. I looked at Shane, and he shook his head to confirm my diagnosis.

This part I hadn’t guessed. All I’d guessed was that if Tina had raised the zombies—or thought she had—she might turn to Elijah for protection. Believing their affair to be secret, she’d figure no one would look for her at his apartment.

Bingo for me on that deduction, which we’d verified with a phone call to Elijah an hour ago. But I’d never suspected she’d be looking for something much bigger than a hiding place.

A loud knock came from the apartment’s front entrance. I stepped quietly out into the hall and shut the bedroom door.

By the time we got back to the living room, Lori and David had entered, escorted by Colonel Lanham, who’d had to drive them due to the curfew.

“Ciara…”

My best friend stared at me. I met Lori’s gaze for only an instant, but it was long enough. I held back a whimper of pain as my fangs jabbed my gums from within.

Lori took a step closer, and Shane did the same on the other side, ready to tackle me in the event of a need to feed.

“You look…” Her breath blew out, then sucked in. “You look so beautiful.”

“Thanks.” I stared at her feet, at the clumps of mud on Elijah’s beige carpet, tracked in by our shoes. I tried not to breathe. Every muscle trembled with the urge to pounce.

Once a donor, always a donor.

Lori stepped closer, heart pounding, blood rising to the surface of her skin, her face and arms no doubt flushed pink.

I backed away into Elijah’s kitchen. “Tina’s sick but very alive. David, you should probably check her vitals before we question her.”

They moved down the hall, everyone but Shane.

“You look like you could use one of these.” He withdrew
a meal from my thermos bag, popping the straw to a vertical position.

I took it and sank onto one of Elijah’s dining room chairs. “No more double dates with Lori and David.”

“Things’ll go back to normal. You had nice control there, which is encouraging.” He rubbed my shoulders as I stared at the carpet. Suddenly his hands froze. “No way.”

I looked up to see him gaping at a framed print of a football team on the opposite wall, above the black leather reclining couch. “What’s wrong?”

“That’s Elijah
Washington
? Inside linebacker for the ’76 Browns?”

“It used to be.” I took a long slurp, clearing my head of Lori-chomping thoughts. “Now his last name is Fox.”

“I have to get his autograph. My nephews are huge Cleveland fans.”

“Just don’t tell them how you got it.”

“They don’t even know I’m a vampire, so they won’t suspect. This would mean a lot coming from me, since I hate the Browns.”

“I’m glad your love for your family exceeds your love for the Steelers.”

Except for the poster, the decor in Elijah’s apartment was solidly modern. The Contemporary Awareness Division was doing a thorough job with Captain Fox.

Shane tore his gaze from the poster to focus on me again. “Feeling better?”

“Physically.” I set the empty cup on the table and ran my tongue over my now-fangless gums. “I’m dreading every moment with my two other best friends.”

“Lori and David will adjust to the new you.”

“In time for the wedding? I’m pretty sure chowing down
on the bride and groom is a breach of maid of honor etiquette.”

“One day at a time, okay?”

I nodded. “First, avoid zombie rampage. Second, redo bridal party seating arrangement.”

He offered his hand. “Ready to work on number one?”

When we entered the bedroom, Tina was lying on her back with a thermometer in her mouth, her eyes half open. David held a stethoscope to her chest, so the room was quiet except for her wheezing breath.

Tina’s eyelashes fluttered apart. “Ciara, I thought you’d be dead,” she mumbled around the thermometer.

“I was. Am. Undead.” I fought to keep from screaming at the sound of the word. At least my bitterness distracted me from wanting to eat her.

Tina’s lids lowered halfway. “Wish I had that option.”

“Shh,” David said, still listening to her heart.

The thermometer beeped. Colonel Lanham cleared his throat. David frowned, then took the thermometer out of Tina’s mouth and showed it to Lanham. Even in the low light from several feet away I could see the digital numbers:
99.8
.

Practically normal compared to the fever that had boiled my brain. Why did she get to survive this disease when I didn’t?

Lanham nodded to Lori, who sat beside Tina on the bed and patted her knee. “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked her.

Tina drew a melodramatic hand across her forehead, like she was Greta Garbo in
Cámille
. “It’s all my fault.”

Lanham reached inside his jacket, and I heard the small click and hum of a recording device.

So he’d decided to let Tina think she was dying, the
better to get her confession. Cold but efficient.

“What’s your fault, hon?” Lori asked her.

“I wanted to show everyone I could do it.” Tina wiped her nose with the tissue Lori offered. “But I didn’t even know zombies existed.” She clutched Lori’s wrist. “I wanted to raise a ghost. Not just for me—for SPIT, too. If we could prove Sherwood was haunted, think what it would do for us.”