The Bloody City (31 page)

“It looked like there was a struggle in the apartment,” June said. “I found your shoe.”

Trina wiggled her toes in the pair of flip-flops she wore. “Aaron was nice enough to provide me with some new shoes. It sucked running barefoot.”

“Muse—gave you the phone, didn’t she? We went there looking for it.”

Trina nodded. “She knew they were coming, but not soon enough for us to get out. She told me who to call, what to say.” She gestured at Aaron. “I hid out and he picked me up.”

“How did you get out of the apartment, though?” June asked.

“Saw it in a movie.” She smiled sheepishly. “Sheets around the bedpost, climbed out the window. It wasn’t graceful. They came undone and I fell most of the way. Thankfully, the bushes were forgiving. But damn, am I sore.”

Aaron gazed at the house, his expression stony, but consternation shining in his eyes. “Is she inside?”

June nodded.

Aaron walked stoically toward the house. Occam still stood on the porch.

“Welcome to my humble home, Mr. Jenkins.” Occam bowed dramatically. “I’m sorry the butler isn’t here to escort you. It’s his night off.”

Trina touched June’s arm. “What happened? He was talking to someone on the phone, but I didn’t know where any of you were or if you were even still alive.”

June swallowed. “Muse is… Robbie killed her.”

Trina clamped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, God… She saved my life. If she hadn’t done what she did…oh, God.”

“She saved more than one life tonight. But if it’s any consolation, I think that’s exactly how she wanted to go.”

Occam beckoned to them. “Come along girls, it’s not safe out here. Might get attacked by vampires.”

They followed Occam inside. A few candles were lit and one lamp now had a bulb and was turned on, revealing how shabby and broken-down the place was: peeling paint, holes in the walls and ceilings, water damage everywhere, stained floors. The furniture was rotting and tattered, probably full of enough creatures to start a zoo. Everything creaked and smelled, and the whole structure seemed like it might collapse at any minute.

A sun porch sat off the living room, most of the glass walls broken or missing. Light shone out from the living room, pushing back the shadows.

Sam sat slumped on a patio couch. One hand lay limp in his lap, the other propping up his head, his elbow on the bare metal arm of the couch. His expression was blank.

Aaron stood inside the room next to the doorway, staring at the same thing Sam did.

A small white figure lay on a second bigger couch across from Sam. Her utter stillness was profound. The light showed the black drying blood on her white clothes. Her head was turned to the side, toward Sam, a smear of blood stretching from her mouth, up her cheek, and into her hair. One hand rested on her stomach, fingers curled.

Trina, standing next to June, gasped softly. She touched her lips, her eyes sparkling in the dim light.

The night was still, not even the wind blowing, yet it felt so impossibly heavy, hanging over them like a hammer about to fall.

Aaron drew a deep breath. “I always knew this day would come.” His voice seemed muffled by the quiet. “Since Mary Ellen was three, I knew this was how it would end.”

June blinked a few times.

“That’s when her mother and I realized she was reading our minds. When we understood what she was. That was the beginning of the end. For her. For my wife. For everything.”

Who he spoke this eulogy to was unclear—maybe all of them, maybe no one.

“My wife hated my father,” he said. “But somehow she loved me, at least for a time. When we realized we had to keep Mary Ellen away from him, from us, to save her life, my wife had a hard time abiding it. She didn’t love me after that. We sent Mary Ellen off to boarding school at the age of six, and we didn’t see her much after. She spent most of her life ‘away.’” He nodded to Sam. “Until the day I sent her away again, into the only protection I could really provide for her.”

Sam didn’t move or react.

“In her childhood, my wife never saw the practicality of it, though. She wanted her daughter, and she comforted herself the only way she knew how—with the bottle, with pills, with any chemical that would make her forget. She found a final comfort when Mary Ellen was ten. I didn’t bring her home for the funeral, because my father would be there.”

June tried to draw a breath in. The air seemed as thick and stifling as water.

“I don’t know if my wife’s death was intentional or accidental, but it doesn’t matter. I hope she’s at peace. I hope they both are now. Gone from this terrible world that only wanted to destroy them.”

He’d sacrificed as much as any of them, even more. June hadn’t considered his plight in all this. She hadn’t understood it until now.

Aaron spoke to Sam. “I’ll make sure she’s taken care of, that she’s put respectfully to rest in a good place.”

Sam lifted his head a little. His gaze was distant.

“It’s the least I can do for her,” Aaron said. “I have some people waiting to take care of her. I’m sorry we can’t have a proper funeral, but if you want to have some sort of ceremony in her honor later, I will support it.”

The pain was palpable—a bleak thing filling the room, the house, the world.

“Are you taking her now?” Sam’s voice came out thick.

“We unfortunately must hurry things along.”

“Can I have a few more minutes with her?” Sam asked. “I’ll bring her out myself.”

“Of course.” Aaron turned to June. “I must go speak with Occam.”

June stepped aside so he could get past her and out the door. She couldn’t leave, not with Sam sitting there like that, so lost and broken.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Sam,” Aaron said over his shoulder.

June frowned as he stepped around her. “What about your loss?”

His eyes were shining, but otherwise, his face was stoic. “I barely knew her, dear.” He walked out of the room.

She swallowed around the salty sludge in her throat and struggled to breathe, her vision blurring.

Trina touched June’s arm, smiled a watery smile, and then followed Aaron.

Tears streaked down June’s face, and she didn’t wipe them away. She walked over to Sam, steeling her resolve. She reached out and touched his hair. He looked up at her with glittering eyes.

“He was aiming for my heart,” Sam said. “That’s why he got her in the throat. The bullet is lodged in her neck. If it had gone clean through, I wouldn’t be sitting here. That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“I’m sorry,” June whispered, tears continuing to fall. “There’s something I can do for you, if you want it, if it’s not inappropriate.”

He slid a hand over her wrist. Blood crusted his fingers. His grip was weak. “You’ve done enough.”

She dug into her pocket and pulled out a glass tube. “I’ll give you my blood.” Her hand trembled as she held the tube out to him. “I hate this thing, but I’ll give it to you. I know what it was meant for now. And I’m powerful enough, apparently.”

Rose’s voice whispered in her head, from the hallway in the clinic:
It wasn’t meant for you.
Could Rose see the future? Or had Occam already devised to give it to June at that point?

Sam kept his hand on her wrist, his grip weakening more, until he let go and dropped his hand back into his lap.

“If you want it, it’s yours,” she said. “I just—I don’t want to watch.”

Wrinkles creased his forehead, a frown on his lips.

“You gave up your chance,” she said. “You gave it to me. I’m giving it back to you. Find out who the fourth murderer was.”

To wake Muse, to hear her speak, might be too much for him right now, or maybe it would be a gift, to hear her one last time.

He took the tube. “How did you get this?”

“Occam, of course. He loves to give me presents.” She glanced at Muse’s body. “Is it all right if I don’t stay? I don’t want to watch, and I think maybe this is something you should have for yourself.”

Sam’s eyes glittered brighter. She couldn’t stand to see him cry again.

“Three drops, right?” She held out her arm, the one with the cut Occam had reopened. “That’s not much to give.”

“It’s a lot. After everything else you’ve given.”

“Why stop now?”

She dug her fingernails into the cut, gritting her teeth. A trickle of blood started, oozing over her ink.

“If you want this,” she said, “it’s the least I can do. The only thing I can do. But if you don’t, I completely understand.”

The cut burned. The blood wended its way down her forearm.

Sam gripped her arm.

He opened the tube with his other hand, pushing up the cork with his thumb. He turned her arm gently so the blood streaked toward her wrist. As the blood dripped off her skin, he caught it in the tube.

He let go of her arm and she withdrew it, covering the cut with her hand.

He held the tube up. She widened her eyes as the fluid inside glowed for a moment, not brightly, but bright enough to notice in the darkness. A pale blue flash.

“The scientists will never figure out this magic,” Sam said. “Magic is magic, and it’s ours, for better or worse.”

“Occam was right.” Her fascination turned to anguish. “I am that powerful.”

Sam touched her hand. “Go clean that up. Don’t let it get infected.”

She fled the room.

She went into a bathroom on the lower floor, unsurprisingly dirty and disgusting. The tile floor was broken and covered in a thick layer of filth, the toilet and tub stained black. A ripped shower curtain dangled from a rusted rod above the tub, and her mind went back to the night in the tub with Sam. A crooked mirror hung over the sink, beneath a bare bulb, and she stared into her own haunted luminescent eyes as she scrubbed her arm beneath the sputtering tap.

Her hair was limp, barely still in a ponytail. Her roots, a bright contrast to the rest of the dyed black strands, were dark blond, the color of Jason’s hair, the color of a person she hadn’t been since she was young. She looked much older, gray and sagging and gaunt, her glowing eyes rimmed with red, her lips dry and cracked.

How would she look when the thing eating her insides finally took over? She’d turn into a skeleton, a walking corpse. Would she even be able to walk?

She scrubbed harder, clawing at the wound, hating her very blood. She pressed her forehead to the mirror and cried so she wouldn’t hear anything beyond the walls of the bathroom, so she wouldn’t hear Muse’s dead voice.

An interminable time later, in a daze, she walked through the silent sagging house and outside.

Everyone was outside: Occam, Trina, and Micha stood on the concrete walkway that stretched from the porch to the sidewalk. She’d forgotten Micha was in the house. Aaron stood next to the truck at the curb. She walked slowly down the porch steps.

“There’s Little Red,” Occam said. “Will Sam be joining us soon? The hour is late. Especially for some of us.”

She floated through a fog, her brain not connecting to the thoughts it was trying to generate. Micha gazed at her, his face sagging and his eyes tired.

“I don’t…” She stopped in front of them. “I don’t know.”

“Ah”—Occam turned toward the house—“finally. Time to get this show on the road.”

June turned.

Sam stood on the porch. The streetlight turned him into a ghost, washed-out and pale. He held Muse. Her arm dangled from her side, the sleeve of her tunic dark with blood, her hand coated in a black glove of it. Nobody spoke as he descended the stairs, slow and ponderous.

He walked through their midst. Muse’s head was tucked against his chest, her face hidden. They followed him out to the truck like a funeral procession. Aaron opened the gate on the truck cab.

Sam walked to the back of the truck and gently placed her inside. He leaned in and over her, close to her face.

Micha touched her arm and she looked up at him.

“Good-bye,” he said softly.

She frowned. “What?”

Occam cleared his throat. “Your friends are going on a little trip. But don’t despair. I think everything will turn out just fine, if they do what they’re supposed to.”

“What are you talking about?” June asked.

Occam held up a folder. “We found this when we were ransacking Robbie’s vehicles at the apartment building. We’re good at looting. It’s how we get all our nice things.”

Trina took the folder from him. “Thank you.”

“What’s going on?” June asked.

Sam walked over to them, dazed and unsteady. He had a smear of blood on his chin.

“We’re turning ourselves in,” Micha said.

“What?” June gaped at him. “To whom?”

“The FBI,” Aaron said. “I’ll probably spend some time in a cell, but hopefully not long.” He pointed at the folder in Trina’s hands. “That’s the documentation on the serum.”

“And Micha is the proof,” Trina said.

“Robbie said he already gave the information to the FBI,” Sam said. “But we’re not taking any chances. The way he does everything on ‘his terms?’ I’m sure he only gave them a little, or he’s dangling it over them. Or he lied. Better to cover our bases.”

She looked desperately at Sam, breath catching. “Are you going too?”

He shook his head.

“And don’t forget what else is in there,” Occam said to Micha. “The important part.”

Micha tilted his head back. “Of course. The proof of my wife lying about vampires.”

Occam shrugged at June. “Turns out she fabricated all her research. Our scientists uncovered the truth. Lying tramp.”

Micha rolled his eyes.

“There’s a safe place for you and Sam to go,” Aaron told June. “Occam has assured me he will deliver you there safely, on pain of losing the benevolent payments from my lawyers his friends receive every month.”

Occam bowed to him.

“Cindy will continue to be your liaison,” Aaron said. “Hopefully, you won’t have to stay in hiding long.”

“Robbie’s still out there,” Sam said. “I don’t intend to hide anywhere long.”

June turned to Occam. “You’re really letting Micha go? This bullshit is over?”

“This bullshit is far from over,” Occam said. “But he’s free to go fight the Institute. What I want will be taken care of.” He clapped Micha on the shoulder, making him flinch. “I know he’ll do right by me. I make good threats.”