Fang Girl (20 page)

I ended up perched next to Sarah on a rock-hard, ancient sofa, watching as Lily manacled the still-unconscious Van to an old-fashioned cast-iron radiator with disturbingly practiced efficiency. “There now,” she said, looking down at him with satisfaction. “All secure. Now, my dears, I think we all need a long chin-wag. But first, who would like a nice hot drink?”

For Sarah, this turned out to be tea. My own beverage, served in a martini glass, was lukewarm, thick, and crimson. “Uh,” I said, holding the thin crystal stem as gingerly as I could. “I really don’t think so.”

Lily swirled her own glass. “You need to keep your strength up. It’s lovely and fresh, I assure you.” My gaze shot straight to the door that led to the as-yet-unseen kitchen. “Oh, you funny little thing. Not
that
fresh.”

I set the glass of blood down on the coffee table, where Brains eyed it with interest through his jar. “Um. Look. You aren’t really Lilith, are you?”

“Good Lord, no.” Lily shook her head. “What an interesting story Ebenezer spun for you. No, I was turned in 1926. I’m the youngest of our Bloodline—well, until now, of course.” She raised her glass to me. “Lillian Larkspur—Lily Lark, if you want my theatrical name. I practically grew up on the stage.” She fogged, and for an instant a slim, blue-eyed young man lounged in her place. “Which has paid dividends in unexpected ways, as it turns out.”

“I
told
you so,” Sarah said to me impatiently before switching her attention back to Lily. “Why did you vamp my heart donor?”

“Because I had to, of course.” Lily shivered back into her own form. “This is the closest I could get to making you a vampire, darling.” She sighed, sitting back in her chair and crossing her long legs. “It was your heart, you see. You already had a hole in your heart. Pre-staked, as
it were. If I’d tried to turn you in the normal fashion, you’d have expired on the spot, instantly.”

“You mean this is it? I can’t be a real vampire?” Sarah looked like a kid who’d unwrapped a birthday present and found socks. “You could have turned me after the heart transplant—” She stopped as Lily shook her head. “Oh. My own heart would still have been … gone.”

“Exactly. No heart, no unlife.” Lily pointed at me, making me jump. “And so Xanthe, I’m afraid, became our only option. We were lucky you had a donor that could be turned.”

“So all of this was about Sarah?” I said. I didn’t expect the universe to revolve around me or anything like that, but it wasn’t a good feeling to find out that I was just a convenient body that had happened to be lying around. “You weren’t trying to make some sort of supervamp?”

“I admit, it’s a rather lovely side effect,” Lily said with a rueful smile. “But no, it wasn’t foremost in my mind. I was more concerned with saving my Sarah from a painful mortal existence.” She sighed. “I’m not sure whether it’s worked, mind. All blood-bonds work in both directions—I hoped that Sarah would be able to
draw on your powers the same way you currently draw on her blood. We’ll have to see.”

I’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was nothing about me that was special. I stared down at Brains, feeling oddly hollow. The fish gave me a glance of pure indifference, then went back to trying to unscrew the lid of the jar with its nose.

I’d always wanted to be normal. Now I just felt ordinary.

“Xanthe.” I felt a touch on my hand, like a spark of electricity shooting through my veins. I looked up into Lily’s face. Her eyes were warm with understanding and sympathy. “I
am
glad that it was you. Imagine if I’d had to turn some disgusting old man or a silly ninny. Ugh!” She gave a theatrical shudder. “But it was fate. Fate that of all people it was you, who loves all things vampire, on death’s door after that horrible car crash, at the right place and time to let me save both you and my Sarah. You always wanted to become one of us, deep down, even when you didn’t know we really existed. Secretly you
knew
. It was destiny, my darling, destiny that brought you to me. You’re meant to be one of us.”

My eyes were burning, but I couldn’t blink, or the tears would overspill. My heart felt small and cold in
my chest—no, not my chest, but Sarah’s. The tightness in my throat was an echo of hers. I looked at her. She too was keeping her eyes very wide, unblinking, as if she could reabsorb the tears welling at their edges. There was nothing feigned about her fragility now.

She hadn’t asked for any of this either. “Sucks, doesn’t it,” I said to her.

She made a funny noise, half sniff, half hiccup, and swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Massively.”

“Oh, darling, don’t despair.” Lily leaned forward to pat her knee. “You’re still with me, freed from those dreadful institutions, just as I promised. And we don’t yet know how your link to Xanthe will affect you. You are linked into the Bloodline, even if I can’t feel it.” She hesitated, glancing at me. “You do, though, don’t you, Xanthe?”

“Yeah.” On impulse, I let my attention flow away down the link—and found myself looking at myself, through Sarah’s eyes. Man, did I need a better haircut. I withdrew back to my own senses again. “It’s as if she really was my vampiric childe, only … more so. You really can’t feel it?”

Lily shook her head. “My link to you is a tad odd—as if there’s a faint echo underneath it—but that’s all. I
can find you perfectly well, but Sarah’s invisible to me.” She tilted her head in Van’s direction, with a slightly aggrieved expression. “Annoying that the dhampir
could
feel it, with his greater sensitivity, but at least Hakon’s in the dark. Count our blessings on that, my darlings, because otherwise he would have kidnapped Sarah, or worse, as soon as he felt the link.”

I blinked, the word
kidnapped
hitting me like a bucket of cold water in the face. “Crap!” How could I have forgotten? I scrambled up off the sofa. “My family—”

“Is missing.” Lily tapped her forehead meaningfully, which I took to indicate that she’d been eavesdropping on me earlier. “I know.”

“Great, then I don’t have to explain.” I headed for the door—but Lily got there ahead of me in a blur of superspeed. She leaned against it, blocking my path. “Lily, I mean it, I have to go!”

Her dark eyes regarded me soberly. “Darling, I’m terribly sorry but, to be blunt, your family has either escaped Ebenezer Lee and is perfectly safe, or he’s already slaughtered them like mice.”

It took me a moment to realize who she meant. “
Ebon?
Slaughter anyone? You have got to be joking.”

“He tried to slaughter
you
,” Sarah pointed out.
“He nearly staked Lily, and that’s as good as a murder attempt on you as well.”

“The man is half beast,” Lily said. “Don’t underestimate how dangerous and unpredictable he is—I should know, Hakon’s had him hunting me for years now. Very clever of him and very annoying. You realize that we can sense when someone of our own Bloodline is nearby, even if they aren’t our sire or childe?”

Remembering the weird fuzzy sensation I’d got in my head around Ebon’s so-called “vampire hunters,” I nodded.

“Well, as Ebenezer is completely unconnected to our Bloodline, I have no idea when he’s around. I thought he’d followed me away from your grave, so I nearly died—metaphorically speaking—when I peeked down the Bloodline and saw that he’d doubled back to turn up at your house instead.” She shook her head. “I can only assume that he worked out early on that he couldn’t take you on in a fight, and fortunately you never left your family unguarded. Until … well, look what happened when you did.”

It all sounded scarily plausible. I couldn’t think of any time that Ebon had been alone with my family without me in the house as well. Had he just been waiting
for an opportunity? His harmless geek act could be as much a lie as his French aristocrat persona. Look how he’d nearly killed Van several times over. Lily was right, he
was
savage.

I had the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something … something important, something that had happened in the hospital … but Lily was talking again, her voice washing away my doubts. “The important thing now, darling, is not to go charging off half-cocked. That would be playing right into Ebenezer’s and Hakon’s grubby paws.” She put her hands on my shoulders, steering me back to the sofa. She sank back into her own chair, lounging with perfect ease. “But don’t worry, darling. I’ve got a plan to help you get revenge.”

“Revenge on … Ebon?” I said a bit dubiously. Something was still bothering me about the whole picture Lily had painted—

“Why settle for the servant when you can strike at the master?” Lily said, breaking my train of thought. “Think big, darling.” She looked meaningfully from me to the unconscious Van. “Think … Hakon.”

“Ohhh,” Sarah said in tones of dawning enlightenment. “I get it.”

I didn’t. “I thought he was, like, an Elder or something. Isn’t he going to be insanely powerful? Not to mention the fact that if we
did
manage to kill him, we’d all go poof too.”

“Darling,” Lily said, sounding rather like a kindly kindergarten teacher trying to explain the alphabet to the slowest kid in the class, “
you’re
insanely powerful. And who said anything about killing?”

Uncrossing her long legs, Lily rose and went over to the sideboard. A red Louis Vuitton handbag perched on the cheap pine veneer, spectacularly out of place in the drab decor. Lily picked through the bag, pulling out first a very small and sleek mobile, followed by a very large and ugly gun. I flinched, but she put the gun down on the sideboard, delving again into the bag. “Voilà,” she said, taking out a small metal canister. She tossed it to me. “You can simply pop him in there.”

“Silver?” I said, feeling the way the metal tingled against my palms.

“Over a titanium alloy,” Lily said. “Lightweight, durable, and practically unbreakable. The perfect thing for storing a vampire. Don’t worry,” she added, seeing how gingerly I was holding it. “It’s not some priceless artifact. They’re practically mass-produced.”

I hefted the canister. It nestled neatly in my palm. “Um, I don’t think he’s going to fit.”

“Oh, we don’t need all of him,” Lily said breezily. “Just his heart.”

I stared at her, then back at the canister. “What am I supposed to do with the rest of him?”

Lily waved a hand airily. “Use your imagination, darling.” She smiled in fond reminiscence. “I certainly had a jolly amusing time getting my own sire into one of those things.”

“Vampires don’t die as long as you leave the heart alone,” Sarah said to me. “They can survive forever in one of those, but they can’t regenerate unless someone frees them and gives them some blood.” She had a slightly superior air, like a forum moderator lecturing some hapless newbie. “Most vampires secretly dream of locking up their own ancestors. It’s the only way to be safe. Being an Elder vampire just means that you’ve got control over all your sires, at least as far back as you know.”

“Precisely,” Lily agreed. “I’ve had my own sire tucked away in a nice secure hidey-hole for, oh, about fifty years now. But I’ve never had the chance to take a crack at Hakon, given that I had no idea how to find him, and
less idea how to wade through all his goons to reach him.” She smiled like a cat with a mouthful of canary. “But now, thanks to the dhampir and Xanthe here, both of those problems are no more.”

“I don’t know about all this,” I said slowly, struggling to find the right words. I felt like my brain was having to push my thoughts uphill, battling against Lily’s cheerful certainty. “Even if I can get rid of Hakon, what do we do after that?”

“Why, darling, that’s obvious.” Lily’s bloodred lips curved upward, and her dark eyes gleamed. “Whatever we want.”

“Like take over the world!” Sarah said, bouncing on the edge of her seat with childish and distinctly disturbing enthusiasm.

“It’s certainly a possibility,” Lily said, far too seriously for comfort. “Though,” she added, with a sour glance at Van, “the dhampir is much more intractable than I’d hoped. Honestly, the boy seems to think he’s on some sort of personal crusade. I don’t know what Quinns was thinking.”

“Quinns?” Sarah frowned. “Who’s Quinns?”

“Quincey Helsing, the hunters’ Lord High Grand whatever,” Lily said with a dismissive flick of her long
fingers. “Silly name and title, but I thought he was a sensible enough man, even if not quite as practical as his sister was. I can’t believe dear Quinns raised the boy to be quite so naive.”

I gave up trying to think of objections to Lily’s plan. It was obvious it had no flaws anyway. “I’ve talked to that guy,” I said, remembering my brief phone encounter with the hunter leader. “He’s Van’s uncle. I think he might come looking for him.”

“Oh, we’ll tuck him up somewhere nice and snug with Sarah and me, where neither vampire nor hunter can find us,” Lily said. “While you take care of Hakon.” She yawned, covering her mouth daintily. “Pardon me. Getting close to sunrise.” She rose, motioning us up as well. “Your Elder needs her beauty sleep, my darlings. I’ll show you where you can bunk down.”

I trailed silently after Lily and Sarah as the two of them bustled around happily, laying out sleeping bags and chattering about the relative merits of different exotic destinations. My stomach churned with worry over my family. Even with all of Lily’s perfectly sensible arguments as to why it was a bad idea, I still couldn’t help wanting to rush out and find them right away. But it was far too close to dawn now; I could feel a faint
drowsiness settling over me.