A Fall of Silver (20 page)

“Yes.”
She struggled with the stiff door handle before finally forcing the door open with her shoulder. She flinched at the metallic shriek. “No problem.”

Hesitating by the car,
Quicksilver gave her eyes time to adjust to the shifting gloom. Feeling uncomfortable without the weight of the whips at her waist, she glanced around. The immediate vicinity was bare of sticks and stakes, however, and she grew colder as she looked at the clean expanse of the parking lot and surrounding grassy verge. A low, flowing, gray mist ran along the surface of the river. It absorbed whatever starlight might have been reflected by the water and obscured the far bank. As she watched, the fog began eating away at the fragments of lawn, hiding trees, bushes, and anything lurking in the shadows.

“
Father Donatello? Joe?” Kethan walked toward the river.

“Over here.”
Father Donatello came to the edge of the lot and waved. The gesture looked tired, dispirited. “I’m sorry.”

Kethan
halted a few feet away from him, and although she couldn’t distinguish the words, Kethan’s voice lilted upward with the sound of a question. Father Donatello responded, shaking his head.

Suddenly,
she remembered what Father Donatello had said when he saw them.
Sorry
. Her heart pounding, she ran toward them. Her damp hands stiffened as if glazed with ice.

When she reached them, s
he grasped Kethan’s sleeve and shook it. “Come on. Let’s go back. We should stay near the car.” She couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder. The path to the car remained unobstructed.

Kethan
patted her fingers before removing them from his arm. Neither of the men paid attention to her suggestion. They walked in front of her with stiff backs, heading toward the far end of the lot. It struck her that they were nervous, perhaps just as nervous as she was. So why didn’t they listen to reason and stay near the cars where they had a chance of escape? She jogged a few steps to catch up, her gaze bouncing from one dim, forest shape to the next before glancing with increasing desperation over her shoulder at the staid safety of the cars.

This
is a trap, it has to be. Why doesn’t Kethan realize the danger?

Heart thumping, she looked around again.
On the grass beneath a huge, spreading oak tree, she glimpsed several broken branches. Her eyes lingered on the stoutest stick, and she nearly tripped. Her cold fingers rubbed the thick seams of her jeans as she eyed the potential weapon.

She glanced at the men
. They’d forgotten her.

If she picked the stick
up now, it would be obvious. But could she get back to it if she needed to? Her muscles tightened as she weighed her alternatives.

She was fast, but was she faster than a vampire?

“Quicksilver!” Kethan called as he turned a few yards ahead of her.

With
a last, lingering glance at the stick, she joined him and nearly ran into Father Donatello as a deep inky pool in the mist resolved itself into a group of five short, bulky men. They stood in the shadows of a maple growing near a picnic table. One of them had pale, fine hair that gleamed despite the shadowy mist.
Jason
. Fighting to control the sizzle of fury heating her blood, she dragged her gaze away.

Then she noticed
the slim figure seated at the table. A woman with long hair sat slumped over and resting her head on her folded arms. She didn’t move as they neared, however something about the slender shoulders seemed familiar.

“Kathy!”
Quicksilver ran to the picnic table, her throat tight. The damp air seemed to thicken, and her chest constricted as she worked to force a painful breath. “Kathy!”

When t
he teenager didn’t lift her head, Quicksilver touched her shoulder. Her head lolled off her crossed arms and her body sagged, swaying toward the ground. Quicksilver caught her and braced Kathy’s limp back against her thighs. Hands shaking, she lifted the girl’s shoulders to prop her back up on the table and in doing so, she noticed a dark stain on her shoulder. She moved Kathy’s head. The side of the teenager’s throat was black with dried blood.

“You
killed her!” She rounded on the cluster of vampires, her body shaking.

They faced her silently, watching her with crimsoned eyes.
Her mind splintered, fracturing into jagged pieces as voices, some shrill with fear, others grinding in anger, echoed inside her.

Kill them! Kill them before they kill you!

Caught within the maelstrom, Allison’s faded ghost stirred, uneasy, crying, her heart too soft to survive, but then her voice rose, higher than the rest, quivering with pain.

This is your fault. If you hadn’t
killed Tyler, Kathy might be alive, Allison whimpered. Death begets death. You’re drenched in blood, swimming in it. You’re the real evil, here.

Another wave of nausea
arose, choking her. Her throat burned as she ran to a the maple shadowing the table and leaned against its trunk to void the contents of her stomach.

Allison’s quiet tears lashed
her, laying her back bare.

No.
She rubbed her face.
This is not my fault. I tried to prevent it.
She hadn’t killed Kathy, she’d wanted to save her. She’d done her best.

Your best isn’t good enough. It never was. Re
member? Isn’t that why Mom and Dad left you with Granny?

With an effort, s
he straightened. She was Quicksilver, now, and the past was done.
Over
.

Quicksilver
existed to protect others from the endless torment of the damned, the undead. And Kathy’s life wouldn’t be lost without a price. Vengeance would redress the wrongs done to her, and Quicksilver would ensure none escaped.

Hands
clenched, she turned away from the dead girl sprawled behind her. Her mind exploded with rage, and she gazed up at the trees, seeing hundreds of stakes for the taking. Hundreds of weapons to kill them with.

This would all stop now
.

She stretched upward, her fingers brushing the rough bark of a branch.
Before she gripped it, Kethan stepped close. He flung an arm over her shoulder and forced her against his side in a lover-like embrace that was anything but loving.

“Mr. Hilliard.
” Martyn Sutton pushed Jason forward, leaving the rest of the vampires to gather in a half-circle behind him. “This one disobeyed.
He
broke the truce.”

“She met me
here!” Jason’s voice rose as he gestured toward the body.
It’s not my fault
.
She asked for it!
He didn’t say the words, but they hung in the air nonetheless like a poisonous gas.

The
blatant attempt to shift the blame onto the unresisting shoulders of Kathy Sherman fed Quicksilver’s anger. Sickened, she elbowed Kethan in the stomach, unable to bear the earnest expression on Jason’s face. He didn’t release her, however. His grasp tightened.

“Liar!
” she yelled at Jason as she twisted within the prison of Kethan’s grip. “You lie!”

Martyn ignored her
, his gaze resting upon Kethan’s face. “I’ve given my word and kept it. I’ve not touched your woman.”

Only because
I didn’t go home alone.

Jason smiled,
looking angelic and pure with his aesthete’s face and silvery hair. His master would find an excuse for him, claim the young vampire had been forced into it by Quicksilver’s harassment. Or he’d get away with the murder because he claimed the girl had asked for it.

“I’ll take her with me
,” Jason said. “In three days, she’ll join our clan.”

“She was a child
, too young to understand or make this kind of decision.” Kethan bit off the words, clearly struggling to keep control over his emotions. She could feel the tension in his body. His stomach was taut and hard against her arm.

Martyn lifted his hand
, palm toward Kethan. Then he glanced to his left at the vampire standing behind Jason. A glint of metal caught Quicksilver’s eyes, but the hazy mist rolling up from the river obscured the details.

Death begets death…
.
A small, hopeless voice wailed in her head as her muscles tightened. She clutched the sleeve of Kethan’s jacket as a curl of fog shrouded them, filling the air with gray moisture. The dampness clung to her hair and face and left her skin slick and chilled.

Foreboding
filled the air as a brighter glint wavered in the darkness behind Jason. The mist parted briefly, tearing open the opaque silver veil to reveal a black silhouette pirouetting in a ghostly motion. The confident expression on Jason’s face faltered and then crumbled like a wailing baby’s. His jutting lips opened to scream, but no sound issued forth. He blinked. Then his head toppled off his shoulders. A second later, his body slumped to the ground.

A bright flash of fiery
light played over his dark form, consuming it from the inside and glowing fitfully as reddish-gold streaks broke free of the skin only to submerge and reappear in another vulnerable location. She could smell the terrible, chalky odor of burning bone as the body gradually disintegrated into a pale mound of ash in the shape of a headless man.

“I kept my word,
” Martyn repeated.

“Your word did not protect Kathy Sherman.”
She stared at him as droplets of mist collected in her lashes and rolled over the curve of her cold cheek. “And they won’t bring her back. Nothing will.”

“
Perhaps it is as you say, or perhaps not. But we offer this: we’ll take her with us, accept her into our clan.” Martyn’s brows rose in an open, questioning expressions as he gestured toward the girl. “We don’t exclude women like our previous master.”

“No.”
Quicksilver took a step back in revulsion and wiped the dampness from her brow to clear her eyes. Her thundering pulse made her hand shake.

“She
’ll rise in three days,” Martyn continued. “She must belong to a clan. We’re offering the girl a chance.”

“No.
She’s not going to be a vampire,” Quicksilver said.
Why doesn’t Kethan back me up? Say something!

Martyn
eyed her, brows jutting in a frown as if he thought she were too obtuse to understand his offer. “She were young, too young to end her life.”

“Yes, she is
—was, but her life
has
ended. Your people ended it. Despite Jason’s excuses, I doubt she had a choice and I doubt she wanted this. Now that she’s dead, she deserves to stay that way and find peace.” She jerked away from Kethan to stand alone. “I’ll see to it, if you can’t.”

Martyn shrugged
and turned partially away, his round face showing disdain and profound disinterest in Kathy’s fate. He lost interest so fast it made Quicksilver wonder just how sincere his offer had been. Kathy meant nothing to him as a person who had value, an individual who had had dreams and a life ahead of her.

He
’d made his offer to cement his bargain with Kethan, not because he felt any remorse over the girl’s fate or wish to bring some life back to her, no matter how limited. He stood before them, absolved of all responsibility.

The pulse throbbed in Quicksilver’s temple
, stabbing in fast jolts through her eyes, traveling in light-speed through her optic nerve to the back of her neck. However, before her mind dissolved into fury, Father Donatello stepped forward. He halted in front of her and eyed Martyn, the lines on his face deeper and more haggard than ever. He appeared old, ancient. She gripped his arm. He needed to move, or he’d get hurt.

H
e shook his head and stayed where he was.

He
r breath caught in her throat. The old priest wanted to protect her, thought he could prevent any violence. She understood that, but his gesture still unnerved her.

No one should die for her
, no one, particularly not Father Donatello.

Martyn
focused on her, his eyes glinting gold and then red within the black hollows formed by his creased brows. Tension tightened like ropes drawing them together as each of them hunched forward with muscles knotted in preparation to face the enemy.

“
May we start again?” Father Donatello lifted both hands, palms up in a gesture of appeal. “We’ve all made mistakes and perhaps this is an opportunity to practice forgiveness….”

“
Before we talk of forgiveness, there be the small matter of Tyler.” Martyn crossed his short, thick arms over his chest. “We took care of our mistake.”

“Quicksilver acted to protect Kathy Sherman from two vampires
. Both vampires acted against your orders. She took care of one, you the other. Therefore it seems the matter is concluded, and we may move forward,” Kethan said, his voice firm.

“We have two dead.”
Martyn’s gaze drifted in the direction of the picnic table.