The Graves of Saints (4 page)

Just blocks away
, she thought. And she ran.

Fear drove her to abandon any pretense at being ordinary. People shouted in surprise as she sprinted past them so fast that there was no disguising what she was. A woman screamed and dragged her
curly-haired daughter out of the way. On the corner of 49th Street a falafel vendor ducked down behind his cart and crossed himself. She darted between cars, not waiting for a break in traffic. The
driver of a UPS truck had his eyes on her instead of the road and struck a double-parked cab. A Lexus skidded to a halt to avoid crashing into the truck and Charlotte dodged between the
vehicles.

More screams pursued her down the street, but she knew that these were not because of her. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw Annabel and the two males crossing the street. A police car
was among those jammed up by the first collision Charlotte had caused, and as the cop climbed out, gun drawn, one of the males punched a hole in his chest. The gun went off, shattering glass, but
the vampires kept coming as if nothing at all had happened. Annabel vaulted onto the police car’s roof and began leaping from car to car while the males dashed between them. Then they were on
the sidewalk and people were shrieking and jumping aside.

If it had been night, Charlotte knew they would have caught her already. She’d be dead by now. It made her wonder what they’d been thinking, attacking during the day. The only way it
made sense was if they had been watching her place for a while, waiting for her to come back. She’d been gone for nearly a week. Somehow she’d managed to get into her apartment last
night without them noticing, but when she’d gotten up this morning, they had spotted her, maybe through a window, and had come after her in daylight because they were afraid she might leave
town again before they could take her down.

Charlotte raced past the Manchester Pub. A dog started barking and she dodged left to avoid tripping over its leash. There were too many people on the sidewalk ahead and she shouted for them to
move, keeping close to the building, sliding along with that uncanny speed, knocking over a diplomat with a briefcase.

She saw the baby stroller just in time to avoid colliding with it or with the woman pushing it, but as she passed them – the woman recoiling from her as if Charlotte were on fire –
she crashed into an old man exiting the corner market with a sack of groceries. The bag tore as the two of them fell in a tangle of limbs, spilling cans and fresh produce to the ground. The man
cried out as his head struck the sidewalk.

No
! Charlotte thought, reaching for him, anguished over the thought that she might have killed him. But though he must have been eighty at least, the old man groaned and started to prop
himself up, staring at her as if she were insane.

‘What is wrong with –’ he began.

‘Ohmygod I’m so, so sorry!’ she said, extricating herself from him and climbing to her feet. Shaking her head, she backed away from his anger and confusion. ‘I’m
sorry. I’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta –’

The look in the old man’s eyes turned to fear and she knew he wasn’t looking at her anymore. Charlotte spun just as the male caught up to her. He grabbed her by the throat, his
fingers digging into her flesh, cutting off the flow of air she didn’t need. In the shadow of his hat brim, he grinned widely, his fangs extending to demonic proportion, and she knew then
that the time for guns and bullets was over. This leech intended to tear her apart.

Charlotte struck in a blink, plucking out his left eye. The vampire screamed and released her, staggering back a step, and she was on him. She stripped off his hat and his flesh began to smoke
and ignite. Snarling, she tore at his clothes, ripping the long black jacket off of him and then the shirt beneath. In seconds his whole upper body began to char and burn and he ran toward the
front door of the corner grocery to get out of the sun.

‘What the fuck did you think was going to happen?’ she screamed at him. ‘Did Cortez pick the stupidest assholes he could find?’

The other male plowed into her from behind, lifting her off the ground and carrying her into the plate glass front window of the grocery. The glass shattered, raining huge shards onto the floor
as they careened off of a checkout counter and knocked over a candy rack. As Charlotte scrambled to her feet, the vamp grabbed her ankle. His eyes burned red as his claws dug into her, down to the
bone.

She picked up the cash register and brought it down on his skull with all her strength. The wet crunch satisfied a deep gnawing hatred inside her, but already he was turning to mist, so she
leaped over the fallen candy rack and raced for the shattered window. The half-naked, scorched vamp tried to catch her before she reached it, but she hurled herself out onto the sidewalk and he
skidded to a halt, not wanting to burn again.

It had all taken only seconds. Outside the grocery, Annabel strode across 2nd Avenue toward her. Charlotte turned south and began to sprint, but Annabel bolted after her on a course to
intercept. Running, the human world seemed to slow down around her, but even so the taxicab seemed to come out of nowhere. It shot out of 48th Street and struck Annabel, dragging her under even as
it screeched to a halt.

The driver’s door flew open and a handsome, dreadlocked black guy stepped out. ‘Get in, girl. She won’t be down but a second.’

Charlotte’s eyes went wide. The cabbie had hit Annabel on purpose. He must’ve seen it all unfolding, realized that it was vampires who were after her. He thought he’d be her
knight in shining armor, help her make her getaway. The fool.

She didn’t even have time to shout a warning to him before he was dragged screaming under the taxi.

But he’d bought her a few seconds’ head start, and Charlotte wasn’t going to waste it. All she needed was two blocks, and she’d be damned if she’d let them catch up
to her again. She took off running, swerving into the street to get around a cluster of gawkers trying to see who was screaming. Her wool coat flew behind her, bits of broken glass shedding from
it, tinkling as they struck the ground. Even with all the noise of the city around her, the scuff of her boots on the asphalt seemed loud in her ears.

Crossing 47th Street, she wondered how long the toxin lasted. She didn’t like shifting much; it made her feel less human. But frozen in one form by Medusa, it felt like someone had put
shackles on her.

A delivery man came out from behind a parked truck with a loaded dolly, and she barely avoided another collision.
Focus
! she thought. Another fall, and she might not be as lucky as
she’d been the first time. Legs pumping, hair flying, she increased her already impossible speed, and in moments she saw 46th Street ahead.

‘Stop there, bitch!’ Annabel shouted after her. ‘You speak, you die!’

Charlotte wanted to laugh as she turned the corner and spotted the gated entry to the Registry diagonally across 46th. They were already trying to kill her. It was too late for threats.

The wind blew. She could smell the East River not far off. The Registry had a broad façade of thick glass and guards at the heavy double doors. A garage entrance had a guard posted as
well, with a thick metal wall that jutted from the ground, blocking the way in. She’d seen such things once on a class trip to Washington DC, but never since. But she didn’t have a car.
It was the front door for her, or right through the glass wall if that’s what it came to.

Annabel shouted again, and one of the males roared something, still in pursuit and still, no doubt, holding onto their hats and looking foolish. Charlotte couldn’t believe they
hadn’t given up the chase.

The gunshots came from nowhere, echoing off the buildings. Charlotte flinched with each pop and stared at the guards, who were all just now drawing their weapons, ready to defend the Registry
entrance. So where the hell had shooting come from?

She spun, even as more gunfire echoed along 46th Street, and saw bullets punching through Annabel and the male vamp still with her. They both staggered and the male went down on his knees. The
sun didn’t matter to them now; burning in daylight was just another form of shapeshifting. It wouldn’t be able to kill them.

‘Down!’ a voice called from high above, like God himself finally making an appearance. ‘Get on the ground!’

Charlotte obeyed, hands behind her head like she’d seen on so many cop shows on TV. On her knees, she glanced frantically around. Traffic had stopped flowing; some kind of blockade in the
street, a metal barrier like the one in front of the garage. She looked up toward where the voice had come from, and saw that the bullets had come from there as well. Bullets loaded with Medusa.
Windows had slid open in the façade of the building, three stories up, and snipers were leaning out with their weapons trained on Charlotte and her pursuers.

‘Don’t shoot!’ Charlotte called. ‘Please, help me! Peter Octavian –’

With a clatter, metal plates opened in the sidewalk on both sides of the street. Shouting men and women in UN-emblazoned combat gear emerged, some with guns and others with flame-throwers.
Charlotte stared at them, terror racing through her like the deadliest poison.

‘No, please!’ she shouted, but then she saw that they weren’t focused on her.

She twisted around and watched as the male tried to flee, staggering to his feet. He made it half a dozen steps before the flame-throwers burned him down, so that he collapsed in a screaming
ball of fire. Annabel lunged at one of them, trying to murder her way onto a path to freedom, and the flame-throwers roared. When Annabel’s hair went up in a cloud of fire, Charlotte looked
away . . .

Into the barrels of half a dozen guns and two flame-throwers.

A terrible sorrow clutched her heart. She looked into the eyes of the nearest soldier.

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I just wanted to sign the Covenant.’

One of the soldiers, an Asian man with grim features, took a step nearer. ‘On your feet, Miss McManus.’

Charlotte stared at him. He knew her name.

‘Come on,’ he said, lowering his weapon and reaching for her arm to help her rise. ‘Up.’

Confused, she staggered to her feet. ‘How . . . ?’ she asked.

The soldier glanced at one of the others, an African woman she took to be his superior officer. The officer nodded and the soldier looked at Charlotte, dead serious.

‘Mr Octavian told us to expect you.’

The officer laughed softly, then spoke in a heavy accent.

‘He didn’t tell us you would be bringing friends.’

With that, they marched her through the front doors under heavy guard. But they didn’t burn her to death in the street, so Charlotte decided to count that as a win.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Dark thoughts were nesting in Octavian’s brain. He sat in the back of the cab, silently urging it forward and feeling powerless in the face of his frustration. His hands
were fisted in his lap, a warm static energy bristling around them. The turmoil of his emotions had stirred up the magic in him so much that it was all he could do to rein it in. There were things
he could have done to speed the taxi along its route from the Philadelphia International Airport to the hotel where Nikki was staying, hex magic that would have affected the flow of traffic or
spells to compel the driver to ignore the law, common sense, and safety concerns. But Octavian told himself not to be reckless, that he was overreacting.

Nikki’s fine
, he reassured himself, or tried to. It wasn’t working.

This morning he had been only vaguely concerned. It was unlike her not to call him back, but there were so many possible explanations. The fastest way for him to get from Brattleboro to
Philadelphia had been to drive the ninety minutes to Bradley Airport in Hartford, Connecticut and hop a flight from there. During that hour and a half in the car, he had resisted the urge to call
Nikki, telling himself that the messages he had left were enough, that he didn’t want to seem like a mother hen or, worse, a jealous lover. It wasn’t that he was jealous; he
didn’t think Nikki had found someone else. But a tight ball of worry had settled into his gut and would not disperse, so when he had reached the airport, turned in his rental and seen that he
had nearly two hours to wait for the next flight to Philly, he couldn’t help himself.

Her line rang and rang and then went straight to voicemail, but now he couldn’t even leave a message because her mailbox was full. Which meant that other people were leaving her messages
as well – leaving her messages and not getting a reply. Nikki had a sold-out gig tonight at the Union Transfer and there would be no way she would let down the people who had bought tickets
to come and see her.

During the flight, he told himself that by the time he landed she would have sorted out whatever the problem was with her phone. Or perhaps, he thought, she’d been feeling ill and been
trying to rest in order to recover in time for the show. Though he didn’t like the idea of Nikki being sick, he tried to persuade himself it was possible. He ignored as best he could the
little voice that whispered in the back of his head that she would at least have sent him a text.

He realized he should have checked her social media sites to see if she’d posted any messages for her fans. His phone was in the front right pocket of his jeans and he kept touching it
through the denim. Flight regulations required that it be turned off and he wanted to crawl out of his skin, wishing he could check those sites, and thinking that she might even now be calling him
back. The idea quickly began to make him feel a bit better and he promised himself that there would be a message from her when he landed.

There were no messages. Worse, a quick search proved she had not posted any messages to fans. As far as he could tell, the show at the Union Transfer was still on. The moment he’d gotten
into the taxi and told the driver to get him to the Hotel Sofitel, he tried ringing Nikki again with the same results. No answer. Mailbox full.

She’s fine
, he told himself again as the cab slid along 17th Street toward the hotel. All those messages, someone would’ve checked on her. The club promoter. Her agent or
manager, getting no answer, would’ve sent someone, maybe even asked the hotel’s front desk to send someone up.