Allegiance (22 page)

“Careful. Dead bait’s not useful.” I barely heard the man’s gruff warning over the ringing in my ears.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than tires squealed and an engine roared somewhere outside. The van came to a jarring stop, sending me flying forward, slamming into the back of the passenger seat.

“Holy s—!” the driver shouted, but his words were cut off by a smash of glass and a shriek of terror. My head flew up to see that he was gone, replaced by a smear of crimson on the steering wheel. Guns emerged while men shouted orders, preparing for the attack as the van rocked violently. Suddenly, the grating sound of metal on metal filled the air. Daylight and frigid winter air spilled in. Someone had ripped off the back doors! It had to be Amelie! Amelie promised to keep me safe and she would. She kept her promise. She would save me.

I allowed myself a second of relief in my tiny heap on the floor, despite my throbbing jaw and the shouts and screams and blaring car horns from outside.

Gunfire rang out, mixed with screams and shouts. I buried my head within my arms, face down, afraid of stray bullets. Luckily the gunfire stopped as abruptly as it began. Counting to five, I dared peek out from my cocoon.

“Amelie?” I winced with each syllable. I waited. No answer. “Amelie?” I called out a little louder.

“No.” A lone female figure with short black hair appeared within the doorframe.

Lilly.

Her small hand extended toward me, offering a gentle smile. “Come with me now.” In shock, I crawled to the edge of the van. When those fingers curled over mine, she pulled me out with surprising ease. She threw my arm over her shoulder as if expecting that I would need support, which I did. The ground was wobbly. That, or I was wobbly. Either way, I was thankful for the help.

I had left the danger of the van, and stepped into utter chaos on Paris’s city streets. A large crowd of horrified spectators stood at a distance, staring at the carnage laying before them—a mangled van and heaps of broken Sentinel bodies. From the looks of it, a few bystanders had been victims of the hail of bullets. Kait stood over two of the Sentinel bodies, her red leather outfit swapped for a black one. Her hands were covered in blood and she was grinning viciously, her eyes throbbing with crimson lines. A flash caught the corner of my eye. I turned in time to see a young man with a phone camera snapping a picture.

“In here,” Lilly commanded, leading me over to a white BMW Z4. Giving me a firm push into the passenger seat, she closed the door behind me. In the blink of an eye, she was beside me in the driver’s seat, fastening my seatbelt over me. I hadn’t yet uttered a single word. I couldn’t help but stare at her, such a tiny frame sitting in the driver’s seat, scarcely able to see over the steering wheel. She looked like a thirteen-year-old playing grown-up.

Lilly threw the car into gear and sped off past the crowds, sending several onlookers diving for safety. She weaved in and out of traffic, both moving and parked.

“We’ll be out of the city soon,” she explained. A truck suddenly pulled out in front of us. Lilly hit the brakes, sending the back end of the car sliding sideways. She spun the steering wheel to counter the direction. The wheels caught traction and we were back to speeding along the streets.

“I guess that’s why they say not to drive sports cars in the winter,” she kidded. When I didn’t respond, she asked, “Are you going to be okay?”

I paused, unsure of how to answer. I lifted my hand to run a finger along my now-swollen jaw. I wondered if it was broken. No, if it were, I wouldn’t be able to speak. Still, it may as well be for how much it hurt. Either way, that wasn’t my problem anymore. Now I had a new problem. Lilly had me and I still didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Turning to her, I asked pointedly, “Are you going to kill me?”

I caught the surprise flash across her face. “I haven’t decided yet.”

I’m not sure what answer I expected, but that wasn’t it. My lungs constricted, knowing I may have escaped death with the Sentinel to meet death with this diminutive hateful vampire. I considered jumping out of the car but then realized there was no point putting myself through that, given Lilly could catch me on the other side, put me back in, and continue driving without missing a beat.

“Aren’t you worried about what Sofie’s going to do when she finds you?”

“Nope.”

8. Mending Broken Things—Sofie

Bishop lay motionless on his back, one hand over his abdomen, the other splayed beside him, when Mage showed up in my parlor and announced, “We have a problem.”

I don’t know if it was Mage’s voice or just timing, but I caught a twitch in Bishop’s left eye. So minor, so quick, any ordinary person would have missed it.

“Bishop!” I hissed, leaning forward, my hair grazing his cheek. He had been this way—lifeless—for almost an hour, since I’d cast the Causal Enchantment, begging the Fates to mend his broken heart, to erase the pain of Fiona—heck, erase her existence if necessary!—and bring the old Bishop back to us. As soon as the last words touched my tongue, Bishop’s sad gray eyes drifted shut. They hadn’t opened since. I was beginning to worry that the only peace for him would be in death. Maybe the Fates knew that. Maybe they were right.

“Sofie, I think you need to come with me,” Mage’s tone had turned icy in warning. I looked up to see her stern expression, her features struggling to stay composed, setting off a current of dread.

“How important is it?” I skimmed over the heap of Merth in the corner of the room. I had removed the bindings soon after Bishop lost consciousness so I’d know when he came to.

“Important enough to bind Bishop back up and leave him here to deal with later,” Mage confirmed.

I ran my finger along my sleeping patient’s cheek, gazed at his smooth, unfurrowed forehead, at his trouble-free mouth—and disappointment churned. “I don’t know, Mage. If he wakes up better but is bound by Merth … I don’t know how to explain that. Tell me what’s going—”

“Lilly has Evangeline.”

My head snapped up to see Mage’s onyx eyes penetrating my soul. I swallowed, sure I’d misheard that. “What?”

“Lilly has Evangeline,” Mage repeated without any hint of annoyance.

“What? Mage—what do you mean ‘Lilly has Evangeline’? Did she come here and snatch her away? How do you know?” I was ready to grab her and shake the information out of her.

Mage sighed. “It seems Amelie and Evangeline decided to sneak out for some last-minute Christmas shopping. The Sentinel and the witches found out and captured Eve but Lilly stopped the van and pulled her out. She left the mess on the streets of Paris.”

I silently vowed I’d skin Amelie alive when I saw her next. “And how would the Sentinel and witches find out about them?”

“Let’s worry about that later.”

My eyes bounced between the door and Mage. “Are they on their way back here?”

“Well, that’s the problem. Lilly has taken Evangeline to some unknown destination—for what reason, I don’t know. Kait and Galen have shown up with a disheveled Amelie and a stubborn witch who they’re interrogating as we speak.”

Lilly had Evangeline and was going to do God knows what to her. A combination of terror and fury collided inside me, creating the perfect storm. “Oh, I’m going to kill Amelie when I get hold of her,” I warned through gritted teeth. For now, as much as I’d like to be by Bishop’s side, Mage was right. I needed to deal with this.

I hopped onto my feet and leaned over to grab a fistful of Merth strands, wincing with their sting. “I’m sorry, Bishop,” I apologized, looking down at his charming young face. I froze. There! In his left eye, a shift under his lid. And another, in his right eye, stayed my hand. “Bishop?”

Lids popped open suddenly, dazzling charcoal irises wide with shock. They rolled, they skittered, they walked over the surfaces around me until they landed on my face.
Please be fixed.

A giant grin spread across his lips.

9. Strange Allegiances—Evangeline

The city highways traded off for rolling snow-covered hills and quiet country houses. Lilly never slowed once, clearly heading to a specific location, one she didn’t divulge to me. When we turned into a driveway with an arched entranceway and a low stone wall a half hour later, I had chewed off every last one of my nails—even with a throbbing jaw. By the bronzed crosses on stone pillars comprising the entrance gates, I could see we were entering a cemetery. Suddenly, I was sitting stiffer, my eyes wider, my senses keener, thoughts of my pained jaw falling to the background.

“Why are we here?” I hazarded to ask.

A tiny, almost shy smile. “We have something in common, human. Let me show you.”

Something in common. In a cemetery. I inhaled and exhaled slowly.
Repeat: In. Out. In. Out
. I focused on the pretty trees, the blue sky. Anything to keep my imagination from sending me into a frenzy. As long as she had something to show me, she wouldn’t be killing me.

The sports car rebelled as Lilly forced it through the fresh snow, sliding this way and that and spinning its wheels as it struggled to climb a small slope. By the acres of rolling hills and mature trees, I could tell this was both an ancient and large cemetery. Full of thousands of bodies … possibly one more after today.

Lilly continued edging the car along in silence, winding along the narrow path, moving deeper and deeper into the land where the trees became larger and older, and crypts began cropping up like hay bales in a farmer’s field. Then, she stopped and got out. I watched as she circled the car and I briefly toyed with the idea of jumping into the driver’s side of the car and speeding off. No … there was no point. She stopped in front of my door and waved her hand forward, as if inviting me in from the cold.

Warily, I pushed open the door and climbed out. The air seemed chillier here than it had in the city. Perhaps it was the open fields and lack of buildings or anything else for miles. Nothing but the dead. I checked the area for witnesses, someone to call to. I almost expected to see Max tearing down the path, ready to save the day.

But there was no one. Not a soul, supernatural or otherwise. I was here at Lilly’s mercy. There was no point in trying to escape, I realized, remembering the gash she had given me the day before, in a room full of prepared vampires.

“This way,” she prompted, trudging toward a weathered stone crypt set back amongst a grove of oversized spruce trees.

Taking a deep breath and layering on a brave face, I followed Lilly up four steps to a steel door secured with heavy chains and a stately padlock. Lilly fished out an antique-looking key from a chain around her neck and inserted it. With a click, the chain unraveled and clanked to the ground. She pushed open the door and beckoned me in with a wave of her dainty hand.

It was dank and dark inside, exactly as expected. Four small windows around the top of the crypt allowed enough daylight in to display the odd-looking steely gray coffin sitting on a concrete block in the center of the little room.

“Cast iron,” Lilly explained, as if that meant something. “It’s heavy.” Taking hold of two sides of the lid, she braced her feet against the gritty floor and pushed. With a loud scraping sound, the lid slid. I held my breath, half of me wondering what was in there, the other half terrified of what might come out. With a casual movement, Lilly threw her legs over the edge and hopped into the coffin. She disappeared. “Coming?” her voice called out from somewhere below.

I turned back one last time—at the entrance to the crypt, at the car, its keys hanging in the ignition, ready to speed away. Curiosity took over for fear. Gingerly, I stepped closer and peered down to see an opening, leading into darkness far below. Grabbing hold of the sides of the coffin, I hoisted myself up, not nearly as easily as Lilly had. Swinging my legs in, I carefully took one step, and then another.

“I can’t see,” I said.

“Right … humans.” A moment later, a flashlight beam illuminated the narrow, dark staircase for me. Holding onto the sides tightly, I began the descent.

Lilly was waiting for me at the bottom. The stairs led to a tunnel, musty with moisture and cold, reeking of earth and age. I said nothing as we walked along the low-ceilinged path, my arms wrapped around my body, feeling the walls closing in on me. The small space didn’t seem to bother Lilly, though. In fact, she seemed at home here. For all I knew, this was her home.

About a hundred yards in, we reached a gated door. It protested with a loud creak as Lilly pulled it open. Beyond it, the ground sloped downward at an awkward angle. I had to take my time, taking sideway steps and using the dirt walls for support. We rounded a corner. The light from Lilly’s flashlight caught something up ahead. Without a word, she disappeared and I heard the flick of a lighter. In moments, several lanterns were lit, illuminating a chamber of maybe twenty-by-thirty feet and average height. It was empty except for six coffins in a circle around one in the center. Seven coffins, buried in a secret crypt beneath the crypt.

I swallowed hard as I watched Lilly walk past the coffins, her child’s hand running along their surfaces. Whoever was in these coffins was important to Lilly.

“I lied earlier,” Lilly said calmly. “About killing you.”

My heart and stomach raced to see who could make it to the cold, hard ground first.
She’s going to kill me and bury me here in one of these coffins and no one will ever find my body
.