Mirror: Book One of the Valkanas Clan (13 page)

Tom, Luis, and Sam were all traveling separately in Tom’s Jeep; they’d left before us so as to have time to visit some bars downtown and hopefully convince any spies Cesar might have set on them that they were going out for a boy’s night. After that, they planned to swing by a storage locker where Sam kept some “unusual weapons”—Sam's grin when he mentioned them had left me both curious and nervous as to what they'd be driving around with.

In the meantime, Damian and Valerie had driven all over town on errands until I was covered in shopping bags and they were certain they had lost any tail they might have had. I’d never spent so much time hiding in the back of a moving car, and even without the carsickness I was glad it was almost over—until I thought about what we’d be doing once we stopped.

I felt the car slow and we turned onto an unlit street. From where I lay, I could see a dense network of branches arching overhead, with only an occasional glimpse of the night sky between them. A few moments later the car angled slightly and I heard the crunch of gravel under our tires. We stopped.

“You and Alyson should climb out here so you don’t have to fight these branches. I’m going to pull the car in deeper once you’re out,” Damian said.

I sat up, sending bags sliding everywhere. A few escaped with me as I clambered out of the car, and I hastily shoved them back in. Valerie, meanwhile, slid gracefully from the Benz, a wry smile quirking the corners of her lips as she watched me. She had on a sleek pair of yoga pants and matching tank top, and I was mildly jealous of how elegant she could manage to look even in exercise gear. As we stood there she pulled her long hair up and twisted it into a bun. Rather than giving her the school-
marm
look buns always gave me, hers emphasized the lines of her face, making her look like a dancer.

“You should pull yours up too,
Aly
. You don’t want it to get in your eyes at an inconvenient moment,” she said, handing me
a spare
hair elastic.

I twisted my wavy auburn hair out of the
way,
glad I didn’t have a mirror handy to confirm what a hot mess I must look like. Damian emerged from the branches, brushing pine needles off his sleeves.

“I guess we beat the boys here,” I said.

Damian nodded, standing beside Valerie as she stretched down to touch the ground, her knees not even bending slightly. I wondered if that flexibility was a byproduct of vampirism or practice, and I bent at the waist to see if I could match her pose. My hands had barely reached my shins when my knees started to bend and I dropped into a crouch, trying to cover my embarrassment by acting like I’d intended to flex this way all along. Valerie briefly lifted her head to smile at me, then stretched smoothly up and back, arching her spine and lifting one leg behind her until she grasped the ankle, curving into an almost perfect circle. I guess she came by those yoga pants honestly.

“Alyson, I just want to reiterate that we are not bringing you along to fight, so please do not join in the fracas,” Damian said.

“What kind of secret weapon can I make if I don’t do anything?”

Damian stepped closer to me, resting his hand on my shoulder.

“We need your talents of perception, not aggression,” he said softly. “Did anything new come to you during our drive, by chance?”

Nothing had, and I’d been relieved not to have my skin crawling with strange sensations. But his question triggered my concern that my skills were too unreliable, that they were counting on me far more than they should

“No,” I said, looking away.

“Don’t worry,
paidi mou
, if we need to know it will come.” He sounded far more confident than I felt, which only made me feel that much guiltier.

“Surely there’s something else I can do to help? I could at least carry a bottle of liquid silver or something, just as backup,” I said.

“We didn't bring any. They're generally too messy for fighting,” Valerie said.

“Okay,” I said, beginning to pace, “something else then. I used to be pretty proficient at rifle practice during summer camp—I could carry a firearm.”

“Did you ever shoot at moving targets who were trying to attack you as part of your practice?” Damian asked.

I reddened.
“Uh, no.”

“Then that would not be our best idea,” he replied.

I sighed. “What am I supposed to do if one of them comes after me rather than you all then?”

“Scream?” Valerie said
,
grinning slightly until Damian gave her a look. “Sorry,” she said, “But as long as there aren't too many of them, they’ll have their hands full with us, believe me.”

Just then we caught the rumble of Tom’s Jeep making the nearby turn, and we all backed to one side of the gravel so he could turn in easily. He edged straight into the trees without pausing to let out Sam or Luis, and they all emerged shortly, brushing twigs and needles from them, duffel sacks slung over their shoulders.

Sam crouched, dropping his bag and gesturing for Tom and Luis’s. He unzipped them all and began pulling out various painful-looking devices. I recognized some of them as fairly standard looking, albeit intimidating, guns; there were also a couple maces, some rather long and sharp knives, and a few
shurikens
. As I watched, Sam twisted together several very heavy looking metal rods into one long staff with cruel curved points on either end, and I found myself hoping I never had reason to become familiar with that particular weapon. Everyone gathered around Sam’s bags, grabbing various guns, knives, and items I was afraid to ask about and tucking them into pockets, sheathes, and holsters I hadn’t previously noticed. In only a few minutes his bags were nearly empty and, seeing everyone was as geared up as they wished to be, he
rezipped
them and carried them to Tom’s Jeep. I simply stood there, feeling more useless than I had in years, and promising myself to enlist Tom’s help once all this was over so I wouldn’t simply be standing around like an idiot next time.

Next time
?
What was I thinking? Once this was over I was hoping the most dangerous thing I'd have to deal with was a crowd of unruly freshmen.

“Are we ready then?” Damian asked when Sam returned. Everyone nodded but me, and Damian gestured to Valerie.

She took over, explaining that it was about five miles through the trees to the back of Cesar’s property, where we'd regroup to assess his actual level of protection. The hope was that Cesar would still expect us to attack near dawn and thus that our night time arrival would catch him off guard.

"We’ll proceed with our plan to split up and enter from opposite sides of the house," she said, "unless
Aly
senses we should do something else when we get there.
Any questions?”

“Um, just one."
I said, hoping the lump in my throat wasn't affecting my speech. "If I sense something once we’ve already split up, how should I let everyone know?”

“You’ll be with Damian and me,” Valerie said, “so you can tell us and we’ll handle it from there.”

I nodded, they moved into the trees, and I followed.

I’d never been a runner, though I’d had friends that swore by it. One even told me she preferred a runner’s high to sex sometimes. Of course, I chalked that declaration up to her having been married for almost a decade.

Part of the reason I’d never been tempted to try running was due to the damage I’d done to my knee in a motorcycle accident when I was eighteen and stupid enough to think riding on the back of something going sixty miles an hour was cool. The vampirism, however, appeared to have healed my knee along with my car sickness, because as I began running to keep up with everyone else, I didn’t feel the slightest twinge.

Instead I felt a heady rush as my feet and legs dodged roots and fallen branches, propelling me between the trunks that loomed, hovered, and then slid by. The sensation was bizarre—everything seemed to move past me slowly, and yet the wind that stung my cheeks made it clear that I was running incredibly fast. I was glad I'd already taken a ride in Tom's car or else the strange combination of sensations would probably have hypnotized me into losing track of everyone else.

In a matter of minutes, we were crouched behind the last dense gathering of trees before the mostly clear stretch of Cesar’s back yard. Adrenaline—or whatever the vampire equivalent was—still shot through me, spun up by the run and pushing me to move. Everything stood out in sharp relief: the pine needles and grass seemed frosted with moonlight, and everyone’s faces glowed faintly. I didn’t realize my eyes had quit their eager leap from sight to sight to settle on Tom until his face turned slightly, and he returned my gaze. For a second, knowledge of where we were and why disappeared, and I felt my knees begin to unbend as I stood to move to him, drawn by my quickly resurfacing memories of last night's kiss.

Valerie’s hand shot out and clamped down on my leg, snapping me out of my fugue state. I noticed Tom shake his head slightly, looking mildly disoriented as he turned his eyes back to Cesar’s house. Whoops. If human “runner’s high” felt anything like this, it was no wonder my friends ran for miles every day. I glanced over at Valerie, mouthing “sorry” before returning my gaze to Cesar’s.

I studied the back of the house intently, hoping to trigger some kind of premonition. The house looked like your fairly standard McMansion, equipped with both a pool and hot tub built into the large back deck patio. The house itself was painted white wood, with dark blue shutters that were currently closed. The shutters on the upper left were shining from an interior light, and I remembered that room was marked as the Master Bedroom in the floor plans Damian had. Either we’d gotten lucky and Cesar was making an early night of it, preparing to go to sleep so as to be ready for our supposed attack in the morning, or his spies were pretty good and he was trying to fake us out. Suddenly a shadow blocked the light coming from the corner window, and we all shrank back instinctively, though even vampire vision wouldn't be able to spot us when looking from a lit room into dark woods thirty yards away. I stared at the shadow, the nasty spider-steps feeling across my shoulders assuring me it was Cesar.

“It’s him. He’s there, in his room,” I whispered.

“Can you tell how many others are in the house with him?” Damian whispered back.

I concentrated, glaring at the house, willing it to reveal its secrets to me, but nothing happened. I sighed, looking away. I had to be more useful,
damnit
. This conflict was only happening because of me, and I would not just sit helplessly by hoping for extra-sensory information while other people fought my battles. I rolled my neck and shut my eyes, pressing the heels of my hands against the closed lids. And then, the second I relaxed just that little bit, I felt them: six icy drops poised between my shoulder blades, perfectly still, barely there. The slight spider-step feeling still hadn’t gone away, and though I wasn’t sure why Cesar felt different than the others, I was relieved to at least know how many there were now.

“Seven, including Cesar.
I’m not sure where the others are though,” I replied.

Damian reached out to touch my hand, and I turned to smile at him. But when my eyes met his a wave of pain crashed over me, and I crumpled to the soft grass, curling into a ball.

Almost instantly, Tom was at my side, crouching over me. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Don’t…go,” I panted, waiting for the pain to ease. Finally it unclenched just enough to allow me enough air to speak. “One of Cesar’s men tried the house, escaped the traps. He’s telling Cesar now that I wasn’t there. Cesar,” I grimaced. We were totally screwed. “He’s figured out that we know Amelia was a plant, and that you won’t be waiting until morning to attack.” The pain was almost gone, but in its place the spidery feeling and cold spots were getting stronger, moving around in agitated bursts across my back. “Everyone's running around now. He’s putting his people on high alert to expect our attack tonight.”

As I finished, I heard the soft swoosh of a door opening and the click of it latching closed. I turned my head towards the house and saw a new shadow moving around the back,
pausing
every few steps to scan the patio, pool, and landscaping. The lights inside the house went off, leaving everything dark.