The Farm (33 page)

Mel lay faceup on the floor. Her eyes were open, her breathing shallow, like she’d gone into shock. But she was still breathing and when I leaned over her, she turned her head to me and looked me right in the eye.

Her face was pale, her lips cracked and dry. She opened her mouth like she wanted to speak, but no words came out.

Muscles trembling, I clasped her arm briefly before looking down the length of her body at Sebastian. I was weakened, beaten. If he was feeding off her, I wouldn’t be able to stop him. Not when he was so much stronger than I was.

He’d ripped off the entire left leg of her jeans, but he wasn’t feeding. His shirt was off. He was wrapping the flannel around her leg. Only then did I notice that he looked unnaturally pale, even for him. His hands shook as he knotted the fabric.

He sat back on his heels, blowing out a strained breath. “It was just a graze. Went straight through. She didn’t even lose much blood, but she was in shock even before he shot her.” His lips were pressed thin, the skin of his face taut with tension. He hadn’t fed off my sister, but it had cost him. Sebastian looked around the room. “We should leave. The fire’s spreading.”

With an effortless movement, he picked Mel up and stood. He held her as easily as he would a child as he sprinted toward the door.

Carter helped me stand and we stumbled after them. I couldn’t wait to get out of this building. Away from the hell of death and torture.

Sebastian kicked open the door, but stopped on the other side. Carter and I came up behind him. At our back, the flames devoured the building, filling the night with the smell of roasted rotting meat. There was a creaking crash as part of the ceiling fell in. Smoke billowed out into the night air around us.

“Let’s go!” Carter shouted, elbowing us past Sebastian’s form. Then he stopped dead still as we saw why Sebastian had stopped.

Ticks.

A swarm of them had descended while we were in the building. They fanned out around the building maybe fifteen feet away as if held back by an invisible bubble. My eyes scanned the line of Ticks, automatically counting them up as I did. Ten. Fifteen. I stopped counting at twenty.

“Where the hell is McKenna with the van?” Carter shouted the question I had.

“I think we can assume,” Sebastian said, his tone just as crisp as always, “that she felt Lily’s panic and left without us.”

I didn’t point out that if McKenna had been out in the van by herself, surrounded by twenty Ticks, she wouldn’t have needed to feel my panic. Her own would probably be more than enough.

I sympathized, but her desertion had completely screwed us. The van was gone. The building was on fire. We had no sanctuary and no way to escape.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Lily

The horde of Ticks surged forward, but only a step or two. Then they tensed and stopped. Like dogs kept in the yard by an electric fence. They were testing the boundaries.

I’d never seen so many Ticks, certainly not this close. They all seemed about the same age—somewhere in their twenties or thirties. Carter had said that when vampire venom turned someone, it brought certain human characteristics back to the baseline. Perhaps age was one of those characteristics. Or maybe they’d just already killed off the young and the weak among them.

Despite the similarity in apparent age, there seemed to be much variety among them. They only vaguely resembled the humans they had once been. As though an artist had carved humans out of clay with a delicate hand and then a clumsy child had come along afterward and smashed them. Their frames were too bulky and broad, their arms disproportionate, but it was their faces that churned my stomach. The almost human quality to their features. Their eyes darting fervently under hair that was shaggy and unkempt. Their heavy jaws and bulging leonine teeth.

And then the one in the center tipped his head back and howled. It was the howl of a wild dog talking to his pack and the pack answered in a series of yips and yowls, a frenetic cacophony of hunger.

Instinctively, we all stepped closer to one another.

Only the sight of the church burning behind us held them at bay. It might scare the hell out of them, but it wouldn’t be long before hunger overcame fear. They feared fire, as most wild animals did, which would be great if the heat coming off the building in waves wasn’t about to roast us whole.

“Okay,” Carter said, “anybody have any ideas?”

“My bow is right there.” I pointed to the corner beside the door where I’d propped it before entering the building.

Carter turned, looking for it. He grabbed the bow and quiver of arrows and handed them to me. “That’s, what, four arrows? I should have five bullets left in the pistol, which might slow them down if we get close enough. Any other ideas?”

We both looked to Sebastian. Who had vanished.

Mel now stood shakily where he’d been moments before. Behind her, the door to the church stood ajar. I looked back at Carter. “What the hell? He left?”

Carter’s jaw tightened as he checked the clip in the pistol. “Frickin’ vampires. If I make it out of this, I’m going to hunt him down and stake the bastard.”

I gave a snort of derision as I looked out at the teeming mass of Ticks. “Yeah. I’m sure he’s terrified.”

The line of Ticks seemed to surge and wane in turns. They’d creep forward and then fall back again. None of them were brave enough to venture too close to the fire. Of course, they didn’t have to. Behind us, the building was ablaze. The heat at our backs was almost unbearable. I could practically feel the hair on the back of my head singeing. I remembered the feeling from camping trips as a kid, when I’d sit too close to the fire while roasting marshmallows. I always had the sense to retreat before getting truly burned. We stopped going camping when Mom realized Mel didn’t register the heat the same way. It wasn’t a bad memory, though, as memories went. For my last one, I mean.

I skirted around Carter and went to stand by Mel. She hopped closer, standing on her one good leg, bracing a hand on the wall beside the door. She stared out at the Ticks, her head tilted to the side, and with her free hand she tapped her ring finger against her thumb. In some weird way, her stimming soothed me.

I don’t think any of us expected it to end like this, but she was calm and that let me be calm, too. We were together, at least. I reached out a hand and brushed the back of her head, lightly, so maybe she wouldn’t feel it. I didn’t think I could bear to have her flinch away just then.

I felt Carter’s hand on my shoulder. He was right behind me, solid and real. I leaned my head back against him and felt his breath ripple my hair.

“Dawn isn’t far off,” I said hopefully. “Do you think any of them will lose interest and go back to their nest at sunrise?”

“No. Not when there’s fresh food around.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I have the five bullets. I could make our deaths fast.”

But I shook my head. “No. We go down fighting. We take as many as we can with us.” I looked over my shoulder at him and met his eyes. And I knew in that moment exactly what he was thinking. “Agreed?”

His mouth twisted into a grin. “Abso-freakin’-lutely.”

What a fabulous guy. This crazy, brave, fearless guy who would face down Ticks at my side. Who would fight even when there was no hope of winning. How had I ever deserved a guy like this?

“Carter, I—”

Before I could choke out a confession, the door to the church swung open and Sebastian burst out. He held the massive stone altar propped on one shoulder, carrying it like it was a forty-pound bag of dog food. His other arm was full of . . . stuff. A processional cross, the bishop’s crook, an incense burner. All the sacramental trappings I’d seen on my way into the church. He dropped it all at our feet, then swung the stone altar over his shoulder and set it down as well.

“Sorry to interrupt such a tender moment.” He gave one of those ingratiating smirks of his. “I checked the back to see if there was any path through the building. The fire’s spread too fast. You’d never make it out if we went that way. I brought anything we could use as a weapon.”

Only then did I notice the singed smell in the air and smoldering of his clothes. He must have run through the entire building looking for a way through. Even as fast as he could move, the fire had burned him.

“But you could make it,” I said. “You could take Mel. If you carried her, you could make it out the back.”

He gave a snort. “Maybe. But it’s you I’m not going to leave behind.”

I thought then about telling them my theory about Mel being an
abductura
, but knew he wouldn’t believe me. Instead, I nodded out at the Ticks, where they still stood, waiting as patiently as they could for the heat to drive us away from the burning building.

“You could carry us all out away from the Ticks. If you could carry the stone altar, all three of us would be nothing.”

He chucked my chin gently. “You forget, they’re as fast as I am. And they aren’t carrying three humans. If we fight, we fight here.”

As if to make his point, he once again picked up the stone altar and stepped out away from the burning building. He lugged the thing over his head and threw it right at the Ticks. It landed on a pair of Ticks with a thundering crash that literally shook the ground beneath my feet. The Ticks nearby yelped and skittered away. I saw at least one turn and flee into the distance.

Three down. We were still pathetically outnumbered, but with Sebastian at our side, at least we had a shot.

Sebastian didn’t give the Ticks a chance to regroup, but blurred into motion, throwing himself into the line of them. I heard a savage crunch accompanied by movement too fast for me to see. Then a Tick dropped to the ground.

Okay, maybe we weren’t totally and completely screwed. I dropped to the ground and started digging through the collection of sacramental paraphernalia. I wanted Mel to have something, too.

Carter grabbed a large wooden cross and began smashing it to shards.

“This feels wrong,” I muttered, grabbing a vestment.

“I think the church or whatever will forgive us. If religion can’t come down on the side of killing monsters, then what is it good for, right?”

The incense burner hung from a chain at the end of a heavily wrought pole. I wrapped the vestment twice around the incense burner, then knotted it. Standing, I held the burner out to the flames licking up the side of the building until the vestment caught.

Then I went to Mel’s side. She stood staring out at the swarm of Ticks, watching the blur that was Sebastian fighting them. In the half darkness, I couldn’t tell what was happening out there. The field of battle—there was no mistaking it for anything else—seemed to have been divided in half by the great stone altar he’d thrown into the line of Ticks. On one side, they were fighting Sebastian. One smart vampire against at least ten stupid Ticks. The Ticks that weren’t engaged with him were growing restless, moving closer and closer to us.

I pressed the metal pole into Mel’s hand. Alarmed, she thrust it away from herself, the flaming incense burner swinging wildly from the end.

“Mel, look at me.” I hooked a finger and waved it in front of her face. She turned her gaze to me. “You stay close to me,” I told her. “Unless I go down, and then you run. Got it?”

I didn’t give her a chance to answer. I was one “Mary had a little lamb” away from losing it. I picked up my bow and notched an arrow.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Lily

I’d never fought in a battle before. Hell, in the Before, I hadn’t even fought in a girl fight between classes. I wasn’t the type. I didn’t even like to play Call of Duty. Nothing I had done had prepared me for this.

Carter, Mel, and I edged away from the building back to back to back, in a tight triangle formation with Mel bringing up the rear, swinging her incense burner. Carter had his gun and an armful of wooden stakes improvised from the cross and I had my bow and arrows. Arguably, I was the best armed to take out the Ticks. But my bow and arrow skills were rusty and I couldn’t risk shooting from too far away. Girl Scout camp was a distant memory and the bow felt clumsy in my hands. I wished suddenly that I’d taken the time to practice shooting back at Uncle Rodney’s, but I hadn’t wanted to risk damaging an arrow. With only four, I had to make every one of them count.

We were ready for the fight, but the Ticks weren’t ready to rush us.

The Ticks weren’t human. They weren’t there to fight to the death. They were pack animals looking for a meal. We confused them and I could see it in their wild eyes. Any one of them was more than willing to fall back and let his or her fellow Ticks bite the dust if it meant living to eat what was left after the other Ticks had fallen.

So they edged closer to us, but none was willing to attack. Together, Mel, Carter, and I stalked farther away from the church, away from the blazing fire of what had been our last sanctuary. We had nowhere else to go. We, too, were just biding our time. Waiting for one of the Ticks to lose patience and rush us.

Finally it happened.

A Tick threw himself toward us. I saw him leap and I let loose the arrow, praying for accuracy. Another yelp. I must have hit his heart, because he fell to the ground, his body twisting grotesquely. The arrow protruded from his chest and his hands clawed at the shaft. To my left, I saw the red-hot blur of Mel swinging her incense burner. A Tick charged my unprotected flank. This one came in low, keeping his body close to the ground. I pulled another arrow from the quiver but didn’t have time to notch it or let it loose. Instead I slammed it into his back as he reared up to pounce on me.

I reached for another arrow even as his blood spewed out of the wound. My palm was slick with sweat or maybe blood and the shaft slipped through my hand. I heard the thump of Mel beating off another Tick. The smell of burning flesh filled my nose. To my right I heard the sickening squelch of Carter staking one of the Ticks, followed by the thud of a Tick hitting the ground.

We’d gotten three. There were nine still out there, maybe a few less if Mel’s fire had scared them off. Maybe more if any slipped by Sebastian or if they realized the meal was over here.

I didn’t have time to think about it because another Tick was coming at me. I notched the arrow and let it loose. The Tick fell to the ground, but another was right behind it. My last arrow was gone.

Beside me I heard Carter stake another one. A second later, another Tick was flying through the air at me. I parried with the bow. She slammed against the wood, knocking me to the ground. My arms buckled, but I struggled to keep the thing off me. I shouldn’t have been strong enough to support its weight over me, but somehow I found the strength. Even with the bow between us, the thing had longer arms than I did. She reached past the bow, straight for my heart. Then there was a flash of light beside her head, the roar of gunfire as Carter pressed the gun to her skull and fired. Her dead weight landed on me, crushing me. I rolled the body off me.

From all around, I heard yelps and yips, the sounds of Ticks being fought off or retreating. I pushed my elbows under me, struggling to get up. My bow was trapped under the body of the Tick. I was out of arrows. I was defenseless. Flashes of light caught my eye as Mel swung the incense burner. Carter was beside me, arm raised, his last stake in hand.

Straight ahead were three more Ticks. They dropped to all fours and charged us all at once. Their long strides ate up the distance between us and them.

Mel’s incense burner had stopped swinging. Even the sounds of Sebastian’s battle had died out. We’d fought off or killed all but the last three.

Then I heard the roar of an engine. The squealing of tires.

I was sure I must be imagining it. McKenna was gone. We had no vehicle. But then, headlights arced through the darkness. The van was barreling through the parking lot, straight at the Ticks. Would she get there in time?

She mowed down the first two, the force of the van’s impact flinging them up into the air. I heard their distressed yelps, the crunch and thud of breaking bones. She swerved to ram the third as it dodged out of her way. The bumper clipped its shoulder. With a yelp it dashed in the other direction. The van careened to a stop right in front of me.

The driver’s door flew open and McKenna stumbled out. Pale and wide-eyed, she surveyed the scene. Tears streaked her face and her chest rose and fell rapidly, like she was about to start hyperventilating. Her eyes darted around the parking lot, searching for Ticks.

“I’m so sorry,” she gasped. “I don’t know what happened. I was waiting for you. I swear I was. Then I heard the Ticks in the distance and I panicked. I kept thinking about—” She broke off, but it was a sentence she didn’t need to finish. She kept thinking about Joe. “I just took off. I don’t why. I—”

“It’s okay.” I pushed myself up on my elbows. “You came back.”

“Once I got away from here, my mind cleared. I knew I had to come back.” Her voice broke. “Joe wouldn’t have wanted—”

“I know.”

She reached out a hand to help me to my feet. I took it.

My body ached as I stood. My eyes scanned the parking lot. At my side, Carter was helping Mel to her feet. Across the parking lot, I glimpsed Sebastian, slowly rising from the ground. A corpse lay at his feet. His movements were slow and laborious, like it strained his every cell to stand again. I knew how he felt, even though the pile of dead Ticks at my feet was considerably smaller.

Somehow, miraculously, we were all still alive.

In the far distance, I heard the howling of a Tick. Then another. But they were far away. We had time to regroup and get in the van. Besides, the sun was starting to peek over the horizon. It was over.

“Carter, get Mel into the van,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m on it,” he grumbled, but his smile was wry. “Get yourself in the van. I want to get out of here.”

Sebastian hobbled across the parking lot. His supernatural glamour had faded. He looked as exhausted as the rest of us. With barely a glance at us, he rounded the van and climbed into the back.

McKenna stumbled forward to slip an arm under Mel’s shoulder. She and Carter helped Mel around the nose of the van. I was about to follow when I turned back and surveyed the wreckage one last time. Just a few feet away, the body of that last Tick lay, the whole side of her head blown off. My bow lay under her. I could see its tip sticking out. It had served me well and I didn’t know if I’d ever find another one. I could make more arrows if I needed to, but I wouldn’t have a clue how to make a bow.

Cautiously, I walked back over to the dead Tick. She looked really dead. Still, I kicked her first, leaping back out of the way in case she stirred. Her sightless eyes stared up at the sky, looking eerily human in death. Convinced she was dead, I crouched beside her and grabbed the tip of the bow. She was heavier than she looked and I had to sit beside her corpse, pushing against her with my feet, to pry it out from under her. I had just pulled it free when a Tick—maybe the one McKenna had clipped, maybe a different one, I couldn’t tell—came bounding over the body and knocked me to the ground.

Every thump of my heartbeat lasted an eternity. My head snapped back and slammed into the pavement. Her pawlike hand was on my throat, cutting off my air and keeping me from screaming. I gaped in surprise up at the face of my attacker. Another female. Her hair was matted into long dreads; her eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. She opened her mouth, baring her teeth at me. Her jaw opened impossibly wide and it stretched her lips taut over the canines already too big to be held within her mouth. A thread of drool pooled on her bottom lip and began to drip down. Her mouth was easily big enough that she could have taken my neck between her teeth and snapped it like a dog shaking a chew toy. But that wasn’t how Ticks drank their food. I’d known this for months. Ever since the first footage of Ticks showed up on the Internet—the kill shots being too violent for network news or even cable stations. I’d seen the footage. I knew what would happen next, but some part of me had never believed that it would actually happen to me. That this was how I would go.

It seemed so unfair that it would happen now. When I’d fought so hard to survive. When we’d nearly won.

Then the Tick arched her back and drew her arms over her head. Her hands were clasped. She was ready to slam them down onto my chest and crack me open like a clam.

I was as good as dead. Sebastian was the only one who might have been able to reach me in time, but he was already in the van. I couldn’t watch, but turned my head toward the others. I didn’t want the last face I saw to be the face of insentient violence. I wanted it to be a face of love.

I saw McKenna, someone from the Before I would have never considered a friend. Now she had saved my life—almost. I saw Carter. How could anyone have come to mean so much to me in just a few days? He was running toward me, but I knew he wouldn’t make it in time. My gaze sought Mel. For me, hers was the face of love I was looking for. My sister. My other half. For so much of my life, she’d seemed like the less perfect version of me. In this moment, the opposite was true. All of my good qualities, without my petty resentments. Without my angst or anger. Just the love and joy. My father had been right. Having Mel as my sister was the greatest gift of my life. One I had never been worthy of.

Because I was looking at her, I saw the horror in her eyes as the Tick readied the killing blow. I felt Mel’s fear. Her complete devotion to me. I saw the moment of decision. I felt her resolve. A feeling of peace and love spread over me.

Had the Tick been faster than Mel, I would have died suffused with that sense of love and contentment. I would have died in peace.

I don’t know how she did it—how Mel moved faster than a Tick—but she did. Maybe her love was just that strong. Maybe the Tick was tired and weak. Whatever the reason, Mel did what no human should have been able to do. In that instant when the Tick’s hands were arched overhead, ready to deliver the blow that would surely kill me, Mel acted.

She reached down to her leg and ripped off the bandage covering her gunshot wound.

Her fresh blood immediately started flowing. The Tick stilled above me. Her head tipped up to scent the air. She bounded off of me with a triumphant howl. In four loping strides, she was on top of Mel. The Tick’s arms flailed and knocked McKenna and Carter out of the way.

Even though he was right beside her, by the time Carter scrambled to his feet, it was too late. The Tick had slammed her hands onto Mel’s chest.

I leapt up, running; even though I knew there was nothing I could do, I ran anyway. My bow was still in my hand. Carter was there before me, gun in hand. He emptied the clip into the Tick just before I slammed the tip of the bow into her back. The bullets might have been ineffectual on their own. The attack from both of us was enough to kill her, but her clawed hands were already into Mel’s chest. Her death spasm ripped Mel’s sternum apart.

Carter brought one booted foot up and kicked the Tick off Mel. I dropped to her side, my hands hovering ineffectually over the gaping hole in her chest.

My own panic struggled to surface past Mel’s utter peace.

Every instinct I had screamed at me to save her, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to make things worse. Her chest was split clean open. Every one of her ribs was cracked. Her lungs were punctured in at least one place, probably more, judging by the blood pumping out of her chest. Even though the Tick hadn’t yet pulled her heart from her chest, the Tick had killed her. There was no way Mel could survive. My sister was dying and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

And—damn it!—I still felt this eerie, unnatural calm. As if this was exactly what I wanted. As if this act of sacrifice brought me joy.

I fought it. Fought it with every cell in my aching heart, because I knew it was wrong. I did not want this. This was not the way it was supposed to happen.

I pulled my gaze from hers, looking up at the faces around me. McKenna and Carter both wore glazed, placid expressions. They were awash in Mel’s emotions. As adrift in her sacrifice as I was. Just behind them stood Sebastian. The scent of her blood must have drawn him out from the van. Or maybe the noise. I didn’t know because I could hear nothing past the roar of blood in my ears. He was no help, either, and I still couldn’t bring myself to care.

I looked back at Mel, not at her blissful expression, but at her wounds. At the blood gushing from her body. At the slowing of her beating heart. I forced myself to look, because the thinking part of my brain wanted to be horrified by the wrongness of it. Of being able to see her heart.

Tha-dump, tha-dump, tha-dump.

Tha-dump. Tha-dump.

Tha. Dump.

Tha.

Dump.

And then nothing.

Her heart stopped. The strange euphoria softened at the edges as my sister began to drift away. Her heart had stopped. Her brain had only moments left. I forced myself to stand. Forced myself to shake off the effects of Mel’s bliss.

“Save her,” I said.

The others were still trapped in the prison of Mel’s emotions. Carter blinked. Sebastian just looked at me.

“Save her!” I yelled. “You could do it! You could bite her and your venom would turn her. It would still work.”

He just stared at me. Then slowly he shook his head. “It wouldn’t.”

I stalked around her body. I couldn’t look at her again. Now that my mind was clearing, now that my emotions would soon be my own, I couldn’t bear to see her.