The Lair (21 page)

“Hey, those Greens needed them more than I did. There was a girl with a broken arm.” There was so much disapproval in his voice, she automatically argued her case. “My injury was a clean shot. One bullet, in and out. I was stitched up by someone with actual medical training. And she gave me a shot of antibiotics before I left. I’ll be fine. That girl—”

“That girl had an ugly gash and an arm broken in at least two places.”

She sat back, surprised he knew which girl she’d meant. In the day and a half Ely had been at Base Camp, she’d gotten the impression he didn’t mingle much with Greens, but apparently he’d at least checked out the medical ward. “Yeah. If you saw her, then you know she really needed those meds.”

“No.” Ely’s voice was cold and hard. “That girl didn’t need meds. She needed a bullet.”

She flinched away from his words. “You can’t mean—”

“Anyone with injuries like that is a drain on resources we don’t have and is a liability the next time we get hit. Plus, she’s in pain. She probably won’t make it. And if she shows signs of the Tick virus, someone will have to take her out anyway. You should have kept the meds for yourself and gone for the pity kill.”

“The pity—” She choked on her own words. “You don’t really mean that.”

“The hell I don’t. What favors do you think you did for her?”

“I saved her life.”

“You prolonged her death. That’s all.”

“Every life is precious.”

“No,” he cut her off. “Every able-bodied fighter is precious. Anyone else is just in our way.”

“You don’t believe that,” she whispered, horrified. But the truth was, she didn’t know Ely. She didn’t know what he believed. All she knew about him was that Carter trusted him. She trusted Carter with her life. And she knew—she
knew
—that Carter would never suggest a pity kill. Not over something like a broken arm.

Ely didn’t say anything else and she didn’t, either. Instead, they just sat there in silence. She could still hear the noise of the Tick outside in the store. In her mind, she could picture him: his long arms would nearly drag along the ground. His sheer bulk would make him look stocky, no matter how tall or thin he used to be in real life. His jaw would be thick and powerful enough to snap bones. His brain would be small, maybe too small to operate a door handle.

She tried not to imagine him as he moved through the store, snuffling at the ground to follow their scent. Drool pouring from his mouth, which would already be watering. For her. The Tick could just as easily be a female. Male or female, it would be strong enough to kill her with a single blow. And then—

Another howl rent the air. The Tick was closer. So much for the freezer being soundproof. Another Tick joined the first. And then another. At least three then. More than enough to kill the three of them. If Ely was wrong about the door holding, they were dead.

Lily crawled closer to where Ely had laid down. “Hand me the flashlight,” she whispered.

“Afraid of the dark?” he quipped.

“No.” Geesh, couldn’t he try to be less of a jerk, for even a few minutes? “I’m guessing you’re a better shot than I am. If they get the door open—”

“They won’t.”

“If they do, I’ll hold the light. That way you’ll have both hands to fire and reload.”

She expected Ely to argue, but an ominous thud came from the other side of the door, like something had thrown itself against the metal.

The Maglite flicked on, illuminating the cramped space. McKenna had rolled over so her back was facing them. Her chest moved in long inhalations. Somehow, she was sleeping through this. Lily felt like she was ready to squirm right out of her skin, she was so nervous. Ely slapped the Maglite into her outstretched palm. He may have seemed calm, but when he raised the shotgun to brace it against his shoulder, she noticed he already had five new shells lined up on the ground beside him.

“You sure this works?” She breathed out the words, terrified to make more noise than that.

“It has in the past.” A few seconds later he added, “But usually, if there are Ticks in the area, I keep driving.”

There was another screech of claws on metal. “So, you somehow magically know if there are Ticks around.”

“Normally I have my dog with me.”

“Your dog?”

“Yeah, I used to have a dog. Chuy. He’d let me know if there’d been Ticks in the area.”

Terror clutched at her heart. “So basically, you have no idea if this will really work.”

“It’ll work,” he muttered.

It sounded more like a prayer than a statement, but there wasn’t much she could do about it now. Anger wouldn’t help here. It was too late for that. It was too late to do anything except trust that Ely knew what he was doing.

All she could do was sit there, aiming the light at the door and pray. The flashlight shook in her hand, making the bright yellow circle dance across the door. She braced it with her other hand, breathing out slowly to steady her nerves.

Another howl tore through the night, followed by an answering howl, farther away. The scratch of nails against the door made her heart race with panic. Sitting here, opposite the door, was stupid. They should have braced something against it. Even their backs would be better than nothing. She lowered the light, ready to do it even if Ely wouldn’t, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm before she could move. He gave a sharp shake of his head and made a shushing motion.

Her heart seemed to pause in her chest. This was it. Either the Tick would open that door and Ely would get the shot or . . . not.

But a moment later, the sounds from the hall outside the freezer faded. A series of howls echoed in the distance and then silence fell.

She didn’t know how long she sat there in silence, holding her breath and the Maglite, waiting for the Tick to make it through, waiting for death to come. She didn’t lower the Maglite until Ely pulled it from her hand and flipped it off.

Even then, she couldn’t move. Adrenaline pumped through her blood, making her shaky and weak, but she couldn’t move from her spot beside Ely, just opposite the door.

McKenna shifted in her sleep and made a snuffling noise. How the hell had she slept through that?. Ely stretched out beside her, not far from where he’d first sat down. His breathing evened out and Lily wondered if he was asleep.

“Ely?” she whispered.

“Yeah?” he asked, his voice sleepy.

“Did Carter tell you about my sister?” She had tried not to think about Mel and that damn gene, but this was her reality now. She couldn’t hide from it anymore.

“Mel? The autistic one?”

Back in the Before, it had annoyed her when people narrowed their description of Mel to that one adjective. Now, hearing her described as autistic seemed better than what she was now:
a vampire
. “Yes.”

“Yeah, sure.” Ely sounded more alert now. Almost cautious. “He mentioned her.”

“He told you what happened? With Sebastian?”

She heard the nearby rustling of Ely stretching and sitting up again. “Yeah. Sebastian turned her.”

“Right.” She swallowed, because it felt like her heart was going to pound its way up through her throat. And that pounding heart hid something other than fear. Shame, maybe. Dread, certainly. She spoke fast while she had the courage to. “The fact that he exposed her and she turned, it means she has the regenerative gene. She and I are twins. Identical. So I have it, too. That means if—”

“I thought you didn’t believe in the pity kill.”

“This is different,” she said.

“Got it.”

“If I get bit by a—”

“That’s not gonna happen,” he said, but there was no conviction in his voice. Only resignation. He knew as well as she did that he was making groundless reassurances.

“But—”

“If it does, you don’t have to worry.” She heard him sigh. When he spoke, his voice was serious and for the first time, she felt like she could actually trust him. “I’ll do the right thing. I’ll go for the pity kill.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Mel

Things change after the night with abalone sky. Sebastian decided to teach me to hunt Ticks. I don’t fight him anymore. I hardly need to talk—Sebastian talks enough for the both of us. He lets me keep my rhymes. Perhaps he knows how I need them.

However much I don’t want to rely on him, I must. He is the kaleidoscope through which I must see the world. The view is fractured and confusing enough. Without him, I’d have no hope of making sense of it.

There is no cloud cover tonight. The abalone shell has been flipped over to reveal a sky so black it might have been painted in Indian ink, the stars just pricked in afterward like a child’s art project. The icy air nips playfully at my skin. Used to be that I never felt the cold. Now I’m cold all the time.

I long to go back to the house. To curl up on the sofa in front of the TV that doesn’t work. To stare at the blank screen. But he won’t let me. Besides, the gravy train is gone. He won’t feed me again and I must hunt or starve.

“What do you see?” he asks.

Everything.

Of course, I’ve always seen everything. In my Before, I saw so much more than anyone else. Dead screen pixels, freckles on the back of Ian Milan’s neck, a cow’s pores impressed in leather. Every split end in my hair. Every dot in the acoustical tiles in the classroom ceilings. I saw it all. Do I remember them so clearly because I heard them all, or did I hear them all because I saw them?

Now, I see more but hear less. Nothing sings now. Nothing even breathes. Except me and Sebastian. His music is louder every day. I never heard it when I was moping, but now it rings in my ears, almost making up for so much other silence. I had expected something darkly complex, a never-ending Beethoven symphony. The seventh, maybe. With layers and movements and emotional connotations I barely understand. With passion and depth. Instead, he is an ancient tribal beat and I find myself dancing to his rhythm.

Even now. Even when I don’t want to. Even when I resist, I dance.

“What do you see?” he asks again.

I make myself look again. It’s not what I see; it’s what I should be looking at.

We are outside of town now. Which town, I don’t know. The houses are small and thin here. More Baltic Avenue purple than Boardwalk blue.

This house, the door is ripped off and dangling. The frame splintered, not just at the dead bolt, but like a cartoon doorway a monster forced its way through. The weedy green has been trampled—not all over, but from the woods behind the house to the door. Like the path the neighbor’s dog wore in their lawn from food bowl to doghouse.

I look at Sebastian. “Birds of a feather nest together?”

He looks exasperated for only a second before smiling. “Yes. I think so, Melly. They’re out now, but they’ll be back. We can wait here for them or go out and hunt them. You choose.”

Mel the girl would never choose to hunt anything. Mel the girl couldn’t kill a cockroach because she couldn’t stand the crunch or the tinny sound of its death.

But excitement dances along my nerves and I nod. “Hunt.”

Sebastian’s tribal beat picks up and he smiles. “Good girl.”

I am already trotting off into the woods after them when he stops me.

“Not yet. First, how many are there?”

I look at the house. The yard. The dog path. Then the house again. I move toward the house, but he stops me.

“No. Don’t go look in there for clues. Actually finding a nest like this—that was lucky. You won’t be lucky next time. You can’t rely on that. Figure it out on your own.”

I’m supposed to just guess?

“Don’t frown at me like that,” he chides. “I’m not asking you to just pick a number at random. You should be able to tell, to sense it. What did Carter always call it?”

I hum a few bars of “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” to help him out.

He nods. “That’s right. My spidey sense. You have one, too. So use it.”

This I don’t believe at all. I’m not known for my sense. Common sense. Number sense, book sense. Sense of humor, least of all. Spidey sense seems too far-fetched for me to be fetching Ticks.

But I try.

I close my eyes and reach out through the moist, heavy air. Through the scent of honeysuckle and the musty, mold scent of decaying leaves in the underbrush. I wait for a new smell. A musky whiff of pheromones. Of the dogs that wore the path through the grass. It doesn’t come.

I open my eyes growling in frustration.

He only laughs. “Giving up so soon? Poor, Kitten.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Of course you don’t. All your life people have done things for you. Now that something requires you to actually work, you’re baffled.”

His words sting, so I sting back. “You are useless as a teacher. This must be the real reason you don’t turn vampires.”

For an instant, his gaze hardens. Then he smiles, a grating smirk. “Very well, I’ll talk you through it. I’ve told you before that vampires are territorial, yes? We can sense when we are near one another. Indeed, we cannot ignore it. We feel one another’s presence. It’s rather . . . annoying.”

“Like you?” I ask.

He makes a low growling sound in his throat and his voice is suddenly serious. “No, Kitten, not merely like me. Like a berserker rage. Like a force so primal it takes every ounce of energy not to kill everything in sight.”

I am grave silent at this. I have seen Sebastian kill. I have seen him hunt and destroy. I have never seen him lose control. The idea terrifies me.

“The Tick microbe was created from the blood of a vampire. The scientists at Genexome isolated the original vampire virus and worked off of that.”

“Yes.” This part I know. Carter had explained it to Lily and me. Roberto—the vampire who owned Genexome Corporation—created the virus based on his own blood. He wanted to create creatures like vampires, but more biddable. An army he could control to take over the world. Roberto was older even than Sebastian. He had once been worshipped as an Aztec god. Was it any wonder he was a power-hungry megalomaniac? “So the Ticks are related to vampires. That’s why you can sense them.”

“Exactly, but they are merely a faint buzzing.”