The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (8 page)

She waited for Aidan to make some comment, but he turned to watch more images from Coldtown on the tiny television, his lips slightly apart, his cheeks flushed.

If she was a good person, she’d take him there. In case he gave in to the hunger. He might. And if he did, he’d be ageless, eternal. He’d be charming girls with his flipped hair until the Earth crashed into the sun.

If she was a really good person, she’d take herself there, too.

Tana walked around the store, picking up a map with numb fingers. There were notices tacked to a board near the coolers: photos of teenagers with
MISSING
underneath and phone numbers, advertisements for guaranteed homeopathic remedies to ward off vampires, kittens free to a good home, and one notice reading only
CALL MATILDA FOR A BAD TIME
.

Tana grabbed a root beer and then a bottle of water for later. At the deli case, she selected the least scary-looking sandwich—turkey and yellow cheese on white bread—and picked up two of them along with half a dozen packets of brown mustard, an apple, and a bottle of ibuprofen. Then she made herself a jumbo-size coffee, emptying in a packet of hot chocolate for good measure.

Dumping her feast in front of the guy behind the bulletproof glass, she paid for that and the gas. She had about forty dollars left, the remainder of her last paycheck from her part-time job at the movie theater concession stand. Forty dollars and a very sketchy plan.

Tana wasn’t sure how much Aidan knew about what going Cold was actually like, but if he was picturing himself in a hotel room, watching television, and sweating through it as if it were some kind of drug withdrawal, then he was picturing it all wrong. Once he was in the grips of the hunger, he’d break down the door if he could. They’d attack each other. And then they’d attack other people, maybe even kill them. Spread the infection even further.

But if they weren’t going to go to Coldtown and they weren’t going to hole up somewhere, their only choice was to turn around and go home. Drive Aidan back to his house. Talk to his mother, a small, quiet woman in a housedress who had made Tana cups of tea when she came over and never commented on any of the outfits she or Aidan wore. Tana would have to explain that her son had gone Cold. Talk to his father, whom Tana had never even met. Tell them—and then what? Were they really ready to confine Aidan somehow and ignore his screams, knowing that if he got loose, someone would get hurt and they’d get arrested? Or would they ship him off to Coldtown anyway and pretend there were never any other choices?

And what about her? Where could she go to sweat out the infection? Not the basement, where her screams would echo off the walls as her mother’s had. Not the basement, where Pearl could hear her.

“Okay,” Tana told herself, with a sigh, taking a big swig from her mocha. “Time to go.”

Outside, the cool breeze blew back her hair and the bag of food swung from her hand. She was looking forward to sitting down and eating. Then, after she felt a little less light-headed, she would decide on a route.

As she headed across the station to her car, she noticed that the trunk of the Crown Vic was open.

“Aidan,” she said, her voice hushed.

Slowly, dread in her step, she crossed the asphalt.

The locking mechanism had been torn off and one of the hinges seemed loose, as though bent. Chains were coiled in a pile where Gavriel should have been, along with the remains of the blankets and black garbage bags.

“How did he—” Aidan started, then stopped himself.

“He tore them,” Tana said, pointing to a metal link, warped out of shape, stretched and broken on one end. “If he did this, then he could—he could have always gotten free. Back at the house. He played us.”

“Maybe they’re weaker during the day,” Aidan said. “Like, this one time, I found a bat just sitting on the side of the bank in town in the middle of the afternoon. It was tiny and looked really miserable, so I stuck it in my shoe and brought it home. I thought it would be cool to have a pet bat, so I kept it in this old birdcage and it just chilled out. Until night. Then it wasn’t docile anymore. It got out somehow and started flying around like crazy. When it spread its wings, it looked like this giant, massive—”

“
Aidan
,” Tana said. “He’s not a bat.” She stared at the mauled metal of the trunk and the way the chains were torn like tinfoil instead of steel.

He shouldn’t have been able to do that. Vampires were stronger than humans, but not
that
strong.

“There’s a reason people used to say they turned into bats,” said Aidan cryptically.

She sighed. Maybe he was right—in a way. Maybe like the bat in the birdcage, Gavriel had been waiting for dark, waiting to get out of the chains, drink Aidan’s blood, and escape. But when she showed up, he figured he could use them for a ride through daylight, so long as he seemed harmless enough to need saving. A chill crept up her spine.

“Well, he’s gone now. It’s just you and me.” Aidan grinned lazily at her. It was the exact expression he always wore when he was about to talk her into something.

“Yeah,” said Tana. He kept staring and his expression shifted. She didn’t think he was seeing her anymore. He was seeing skin and bone and blood. She took a step back. The tire iron was on the passenger-side seat where she’d left it. She’d never reach it in time. “So let’s get back in the car and keep going. Maybe find a hotel like you said.” She was just talking, trying to say something that would distract him. “Hole up, like you said.”

“Or we could give in to temptation.” He shook his head slowly, coming closer. “Think about it.”

“You don’t mean that,” she told him.

“Why not?” he asked, advancing. “It could be fun. There’s people out there who’d kill for what we have.”

“I don’t want to be a monster,” she said, stumbling away from him. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the gleam of a security
camera mounted on the aluminum siding of the mart above the door. “Let’s get in the car. You can try to convince me. I promise I’ll give it serious consideration.”

“Oh good,” Aidan said, and lunged at her.

She’d been half expecting it, given the way he was talking, but the attack still caught her off guard. He was her friend, and no matter how much she knew he wasn’t safe, all her instincts pushed her to trust him. She threw the mocha she’d been holding, hoping the hot coffee would scald, and ran. His legs were longer, though, and he was faster. He tackled her, his weight bearing her to the asphalt. She felt his cool breath on her neck, and her knees and palms stung where she’d scraped them falling. The bag of food fell next to her, cracked root beer bottle frothing as the tide of liquid spread to soak the skirt of her baby doll dress and mingle with spilled gasoline, washing away the spent stubs of cigarettes.

This is it
, she thought,
this is where I’m going to die
. And it’s going to be on film, watched by the clerk from behind his wall of glass, taped on the camera and maybe broadcast later for her father and sister.

Aidan made a sound like a gurgling scream, and Tana winced, waiting for the inevitable pain. But instead of the blunt burn of teeth, she felt him releasing his grip on her and heard him shout. She rolled onto her back, one hand reaching for the broken bottle, the only weapon available. Her fingers closed on it and she swept it out in a wide arc, hoping to hit skin.

Then she gasped.

Gavriel was standing in front of her, his arms around Aidan’s
chest, his mouth on Aidan’s neck, his eyes shut. There was a terrible peace in his face as he lifted Aidan off the ground, a terrible pleasure as his throat moved, drinking down swallow after swallow of blood. Aidan’s eyes were half open, heavy-lidded, and focused on nothing. He wasn’t struggling anymore, his mouth hung open in sensual bliss, his body shuddering with sensation.

For one long moment, Tana couldn’t move. It was more than the fear of drawing attention to herself, more than the fear of being hurt. She ought to be horrified, but she found herself mesmerized instead.

Aidan moaned, low in his throat. Gavriel’s fingers tightened, pulling Aidan’s body against his.

Slowly, painfully, Tana pushed herself to her feet. Blood and gravel stuck to her knees and palms. Her once-white dress was filthy.

“Gavriel,” she said as firmly as she could manage, and prayed her voice wouldn’t shake. She thought of the way you were supposed to talk to wild animals, the way you couldn’t let them know you were afraid. “Gavriel! Let him go.”

He didn’t move, didn’t even seem to notice.

She grabbed his arm, half expecting him to whirl on her. “Please let Aidan go. He’s going to die!”

The vampire pulled back his head, eyes shut, fangs red, and mouth split in a wide grin. Then his eyes did open, bright as torches, and she stumbled back, terrified. Aidan’s body sagged from his arms to the pavement.

From the way Gavriel was looking at her, she wondered if he was thinking about the blood rising to her cheeks, of the way it pounded along with her speeding heart, the flush of it on her skin and the way it colored her lips.

It came to her, all of a sudden, the words he’d said to her in Lance’s house.

If I’m hurt, you must be very careful. No, Tana, you must listen. You must be careful of me.

He hadn’t been worried he was going to get hurt. He’d been worried that he was going to hurt someone else.

“Don’t,” she said, shrinking back, the jagged bottle stem she still had clenched in her hand seeming hopelessly inadequate, a bright piece of glass and nothing more. “Please.”

Gavriel wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of one hand. “Come, Tana. The night is young and your friend is very tired. We should make him a bed—
a cap of flowers and a kirtle, embroidered all with leaves of myrtle
.” His voice sounded odd, abstracted.

She bent down to where Aidan was lying and touched his chest. It rose and fell as if he was, indeed, only sleeping. “Is he going to—will he live?”

“No,” said Gavriel. “No chance of that. He wants to die, so he will. But not tonight and not because of me.”

“Oh,” Tana said. “So he’s okay?”

Under the floodlights, Gavriel’s skin looked nearly white, his mouth stained red despite his rubbing it. It was the first time she’d seen him standing and again she was struck by the incongruity of him—tall, bare feet, jeans, and a black T-shirt turned inside out, messy black hair, chains gone, looking like the shadow of a regular boy, a boy her age, who wasn’t a boy at all.

And there was a body slumped at his feet.

“Yes,” he said, reaching out a hand. “But you’re hurt.”

She looked down at herself, at the mess of her dress and the mess
of her knees and the mess of everything. “I haven’t had a very good day. I think I might still be hung over and everyone’s dead and my root beer’s gone.” Horrifyingly, she felt her eyes prick with sudden tears.

He bent down and picked up Aidan, slinging him over one shoulder. “We’ll get you another day,” Gavriel said, with such odd sincerity that she had to smile.

CHAPTER 8

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

—George Eliot

S
ometimes there are stories in the news about little kids who do bad things because they don’t know any better. Like playing with loaded guns that go off and kill brothers, or lighting matches that accidentally set fire to a whole house.

It’s not the kid’s fault.

Except that it is, really, only no one wants to say it. Who else is there to blame? The kid is the one who disobeyed, the one who stole the keys and unlocked all the locks and almost let the bad thing out.

What really happened in the basement of Tana’s house wasn’t like any of her happy dreams where she and her mother frolicked together. After she’d gone down the stairs, a monster had attacked her, mad with hunger, teeth gnawing with such ferocity that the vein in her arm was severed, gobbets of flesh sliding down its throat.

She had shrieked and shrieked for her mother, but her mother was already there. Her mother was the monster.