Clann 03 - Consume (20 page)

I had almost bitten that cop. I could have drained him dry, and nobody would have been able to stop me.

Mom and Emily followed a few seconds later, still discussing the mixture of spells I’d probably just used on my victim, both of them trying but failing not to feel afraid.

But this time their fear didn’t come from being pulled over by a cop who was in the Clann. This time they were afraid of
me,
and not because of the magic I’d just used.

Tristan. Dad. They would understand what I had almost done, how hard it had been to resist. Especially Tristan. He’d lost control to both the anger and the bloodlust before.

But could he forgive me for almost losing control after I had spent so long telling him not to do the same thing? After I had spent the past two months preaching at him over and over that we weren’t monsters just because we were vampires?

I was such a hypocrite.

I grabbed my phone from my pocket, too fast apparently because both Mom and Emily gasped and flinched. I froze, staring at the phone’s screen, willing myself not to show any emotion. Human-slow this time, I tried to call Dad’s phone again.

It went straight into voice mail.

I pulled up the app menu and tapped the one that had two green circles on it.

“What are you doing?” Emily asked from the backseat.

“It’s a locator app. If Dad’s phone is on, it’ll find him. He set it up for emergencies so we can find each other.”

The screen said: Phone cannot be located.

Emily read the message over my shoulder, though I noticed she did so from a distance. “What does that mean? Are they out of range?”

“No. It means his phone’s turned off.”

Or had been destroyed.

Now I understood why Dad never told me the location of the meeting. He didn’t want us to try to save them if the Clann was waiting for them. He might have even turned off his phone on purpose after they attacked just so I couldn’t try to track him down with the locator app....

No. I couldn’t think like that.

It might not be a Clann ambush, I told myself. It could be plain old car trouble and no cell tower coverage wherever they were at.

“Let’s stick with the plan,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “We’ll wait for them at the car rental place.”

None of us said it out loud, though we were all thinking it...

What will we do next if Dad and Tristan don’t come back?

CHAPTER 21

By the time we pulled into the car rental agency’s parking lot, they had closed for business. Dad and Tristan had planned ahead for this and arranged to leave the car in the parking lot and the keys in the agency’s overnight drop box.

But when we pulled into the parking lot, the guys’ car wasn’t there.

Mom and I shared an uneasy glance.

Emily sighed. “They probably stopped to do some human grocery shopping for us or something. I’m sure they’ll be back any minute now. Until then, my back is killing me, so I’m going to go lie down in the trailer.” She got out of the truck then hesitated. “Anyone need anything while I’m up?”

Mom and I both shook our heads, and I gave her a faint smile of thanks for the gesture. She smiled back tiredly then headed for the trailer.

And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

When they finally showed up, it wasn’t at all as we’d expected.

For one thing, Dad was on foot.

And Tristan was draped over his right shoulder, fireman-lift style.

I leaped out of the truck and ran over to him, asking him what happened, opening the trailer door for him so he could take Tristan inside.

He dropped Tristan on the couch. Tristan was so tall his long legs hung off the side.

“What happened?” Mom asked.

“We were ambushed,” Dad muttered. “Tristan was able to fire off enough spells to take out the Clann nearby and clear the way for us. But he missed seeing one last stray orb that one of them launched, and it hit him hard enough to send him flying into a tree. I grabbed him and ran out of there before the Keepers in the area could catch up.”

I ran a shaking hand over Tristan’s forehead. Then I realized...

“He’s not breathing. He’s not breathing!” I tapped Tristan’s cheek, calling his name repeatedly in a rising shriek I couldn’t seem to stop. His head lolled with the most awful crunchy sound popping from his neck, which made my stomach flip over and bile rise to the back of my throat. “Dad, what’s wrong with his neck?”

“I believe he may have broken it when he hit the tree trunk.”

A broken neck. Just like Dylan, we’d thought. Karma? Or... “Was Dylan there?”

“He may have been. We were in too great a hurry to escape to notice our attackers’ specific features. Mr. Williams himself could have been there for all we were able to ascertain.”

Emily came running out of the bedroom. She saw Tristan and dropped to her knees beside him, grabbing his limp hand and tugging it as she called out her brother’s name.

Dad grabbed my shoulders, pulled me up to my feet and gave me a little shake. “Savannah, listen to me! He is not dead. At least, not permanently.”

I wrenched myself free of Dad’s grip and crouched beside Tristan again, using my every sense to try to pick up any sign of life from him.

But there was nothing. No heartbeat, no thoughts within his mind. Nothing but a cold and utterly lifeless shell of a body.

My father was obviously lying to me.

I stroked the hard planes of Tristan’s face, felt the rasp of whiskers against my palm, traced a fingertip over that full lower lip that had only hours ago kissed me goodbye.

“Dad...” I whispered, unable to look away from Tristan in case his eyelids moved.

“I promise you, he
will
come back. You must give him time for his body to heal first.”

We were vampires. I’d turned him. Other than fire, decapitation or a stake to the heart, he should be indestructible. Nobody had told me our bodies actually took time to heal. “But...when we get cut, it heals immediately.”

“Superficial wounds do. What his body is now doing is actually knitting the broken bones together and cleaning the blood of any marrow released into it from the breaks.”

I took a deep breath then held it as I realized Emily’s and Mom’s fears were releasing pheromones into the air.

“How long has he...” Mom couldn’t finish the question.

“Less than an hour.”

“And how long will it take until...” Mom began.

A thump sounded, so faint even my vampire hearing could barely pick it up. Then a double thump followed.

Afraid to speak, I laid my cheek against his chest.

Another double thump came from within him.

“He is returning to us,” Dad said.

I sat up and froze, staring at Tristan’s face, watching and waiting, scared to even breathe.

The double thump continued, evening out into a solid heartbeat. Then his chest slowly rose and fell as Tristan took his first breath again.

Emily squeaked. “His fingers...they moved!”

And then his eyes fluttered and opened. He saw me and smiled. “Hey. Told you I’d come back.”

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” I whispered, cupping his face so I could lean over and kiss his forehead, his cheeks, then the tip of his nose in gratitude.

“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” Emily joked through her tears. “And thanks for scaring the ever-living crap out of us!”

Sighing, Tristan eased upright, wincing as he tilted his head first to one side then the other with another, more slight crunching noise.

I cringed as my stomach rolled over again. “Could you maybe not do that so much? Dad said you broke your neck, and I really don’t want to barf all over you now that you’re breathing again and all.”

“Mmm, feels like I broke it,” Tristan muttered. He rubbed the back of his neck with a scowl. Then the words truly registered with him. He looked up at Dad with wide eyes. “Wait. I did
what?
”

“You took a direct hit that threw you into a tree,” Dad said. “Then I picked you up and carried you back.”

“Huh.” He blinked a few times. “So you’re saying I died again?”

Dad nodded.

My stomach lurched, and my body felt incredibly tired. I sat back on the floor, holding Tristan’s hand. Now I knew what he must have felt like during our stay in Arkansas. Holding his hand, with its steady pulse in the wrist, was like holding on to my last shred of sanity.

“Wait a minute,” Mom said. “What about the blood?”

Dad scowled at her in silent answer.

Mom rolled her eyes. “Great. No blood. Then what are you guys supposed to live on?”

“I will have to think of an alternate plan.”

“Like what?” Mom pushed, earning an even darker scowl from her ex.

“I do not know yet. I will figure something out after we are safely far away from East Texas. For now, we must focus on that. This rig is far too slow to outrun the Keepers if they find us still sitting here.”

“Fine,” Mom said. “The keys are in the ignition. I’ve had all the excitement I can stand for one day. I’m going to take a nice long nap.” She walked on stiff legs back to her room, eased the door shut, and then the bed springs creaked as she apparently flopped into bed still fully clothed.

“I will have to stop and purchase more disposable phones soon,” Dad said. “When we stop, everyone please stay in the trailer so you will not be seen.”

We all nodded, and he left the trailer. A second later the truck’s engine started and the trailer rocked and swayed as we headed down the road.

I didn’t care where we went, where he stopped for phones or how long it took to get there. We’d figure out a solution to the blood supply issue later, too. For now, as long as Tristan had a pulse and was breathing, that was all that mattered to me.

Emily rubbed her forehead, carefully got to her feet and walked over to ease herself down backward onto the dinette bench. “Oh, man, this day sucks.”

“So now that you heard about my day, how did yours go?” Tristan asked with a wry grin as he tugged me up off the floor and onto the couch beside him.

Ugh. I didn’t even want to remember that whole scene with the Clann cop. Unfortunately, my memory was too rebellious to be stopped and it all played out lightning-fast within my mind.

“Son of a...” Tristan hissed, his hand tightening on mine. “Are you all okay?”

I nodded.

“Yep, thanks to your girlfriend,” Emily said. “She hit him with several spells one right after the other to freeze him, then make him forget he ever saw us, and then she put him to sleep.”

And in the process I also vamped out and nearly bit my mother and your sister,
I confessed silently, because saying the words out loud would have compounded the humiliation to a level I wouldn’t be able to live with.

Tristan stared at me. Finally he blinked again.
But you didn’t lose control obviously.

I shook my head, pressing my lips together to hold back a flood of tears.
But the point is I almost did lose control. I could have killed them, all of them!

But you didn’t.
He stroked my cheek, staring into my eyes.
Everyone got away safely because of you.

I looked away, unable to maintain eye contact with him any longer.

TRISTAN

I stood up then held out a hand to Savannah. She hesitated then took it, letting me tug her to her feet and over to the dinette to join my sister. After we sat down beside each other, I kept a hold on her hand, unwilling to let go of that small contact between us. It had been too long since we’d even held hands, and I was blown away by how much my skin seemed to crave hers.

Maybe we couldn’t get past the whole Mr. Williams issue yet. But at least we still had this.

We sat in silence, each of us sort of savoring the relief and trying not to remember the terror of the past couple of hours.

When her father stopped for burner phones at a Walmart, I looked at Savannah.

“Hey, you okay over there?” I said with a half smile, trying to coax a return smile out of her. Maybe she was just tired.

She sighed. “I’m grateful you’re alive. But I’m so tired of this. All of it. The fighting, the running and hiding, the constant fear and feeling so out of control. And then when I think it can’t get any worse for us, you die on me. And this is just what
we’re
going through. What about everyone else? There are people out there getting caught in the cross fire who are dying, and they’re not lucky enough to be able to come back. They’re losing loved ones. And many of them are innocent humans who don’t even understand what’s going on or why their lives are being destroyed.”

Savannah shook her head and stared out the dinette window. But I knew from her thoughts that she wasn’t seeing the sun setting behind the traffic whizzing by on the interstate.

Strangely, the emotion coming off her in wave after wave wasn’t anger like I expected, or even fear. It was...guilt. Which made zero sense.

I had to say something. “Sav, I know we’ve got it a little easier being on the run than some people who’ve been hit the hardest by the war. But you do know this war isn’t our fault. Right? Mr. Williams started it, not us.”

Those big eyes, now a slate-gray, flashed at me. “If it’s not completely our fault, then we sure as heck at least helped him start it. Think about it. He never would have been in a position to kill your mother, take over the Clann and declare the war if not for Gowin’s killing your dad and then forcing me to turn you.”

Emily’s mouth dropped open as red bloomed in her cheeks.

Savannah held up a hand and turned toward my sister. “I know you didn’t know Gowin would do all of that, and I’m not blaming you. Honest. I’m blaming myself.”

Emily frowned. “How are you at fault for my stupid choice to sneak around with Gowin?”

“Are you always in the habit of breaking the rules and dating vampires behind your parents’ backs?” Savannah asked.

“No, not really.”

“And what made you decide to give in to the temptation to date him in the first place?”

Emily scrunched her nose. “It might have been inspired just a tiny bit by my little brother’s whole Romeo and Juliet thing with you. It just seemed so romantic and tragic and forbidden.”

Savannah nodded. “That’s exactly my point. Tristan and I didn’t realize what we were doing when we started dating. But I see now that it was like knocking over a domino. We started sneaking around, then you started dating Gowin, and one thing led to another and then another. Our choices gave others the opportunities they needed, and now we’re in the middle of a second war that’s killing thousands everywhere...vamps, Clann
and
humans.”

I flopped back against the upholstered bench with a soft thud. I hated to admit it, but I kind of saw Savannah’s point. The three of us hadn’t intended to help Mr. Williams and Gowin play their parts in the start of this war, but ultimately that’s what we’d done.

I looked at Savannah. “I still can’t regret falling for you.”

Her smile was a little wobbly, but it was still a smile. “I know, I can’t, either. But I do regret what it’s caused. And I hate the fact that we’re running and hiding from it all instead of doing something about it. I think...” She took a deep breath. “I think we should figure out a way to take him down. Not kill him, but get him removed from the Clann leadership position and then turn him over to the Clann so they can decide together how to punish him.”

“If they ever come to their senses, you mean,” Emily muttered. “Right now he’s got them so afraid of the big bad vamps that they’ll take any kind of leadership at all as long as it promises to keep them safe.”

“But he’s
not
keeping them safe!” Savannah said, her voice rising a bit. She stopped, regained control over her emotions and added, “Why can’t someone wake the descendants up and make them see how Mr. Williams is actually endangering them all by insisting on this stupid war? There’s got to be some other way to stop him. Couldn’t we find some way to make the Clann see that he’s a horrible leader so they’ll replace him?”

Savannah and I looked at Emily.

She returned our looks with raised eyebrows. “What?”

“Uh, sis, if any of us here know how to play the political game, it’d be you. You and I both know you’re using that whole blonde cheerleader stereotype like a mask to hide that diabolical mastermind genius of yours. Remember all those pranks you came up with when we were little kids, not to mention how you always found a way to talk me into helping you pull them off?”