Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Cold slips through my damp dress as the blood dries on my skin.
Her red gaze flickers to my stake, just a metre away from me.
I can reach it—my body aches as though I’ve broken a rib, but I can reach it, I have to.
Just as my fingers crawl mere inches from the weapon, Elia kicks it aside, all the way to the other end of the roof.
No. I look up at her, expecting her to kick me next.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you kill him, Rebecca,” she says, and a chill runs through me.
“Thank you,” Trellis says, the silver bullet still burning through his shoulder. “Now get this bloody—”
But then Elia does something bizarre. She crouches, the hem of her black gown brushing against the damp floor. And Trellis gawks at her, confused, while she draws out an old camera and snaps a photograph of him.
I still have my gun. Somehow, the pain in my chest seems to have faded, as though I imagined it.
Whatever Elia is planning, I won’t let her get away with it.
I’ll fucking kill Trellis, just as Penny ordered me to.
I stagger to my feet, and Elia puts her camera away just as I aim my gun at Trellis again.
She tuts and slams me on the ground before I can pull the trigger, knocking the air out of my lungs. My face is pressed against the stone, and I feel her on top of me. She clasps my arms tight behind my back, and I let out a strangled sound as pain shoots through me.
She leans close, lips next to my ear. “Don’t get in my way.” She tightens her grip, and I get a whiff of her rosewater perfume. “You’ve done your job. Now let me do mine.”
My arms feel as though they’re about to break, but I blink, taking in those words.
Her nails dig into my skin, and I can’t move.
I bite my tongue, trying to distract myself from the pain.
“You’ll behave now, won’t you?” she asks as Trellis continues to moan, the stench of burnt flesh rising from his wound. “Hm?”
“Sure,” I hiss.
“They’ll be arriving in a minute,” Elia says, letting go of me. I don’t know where my gun is, but when I turn, I see that Trellis’s expression has changed completely, pain morphing into horror. Who will be arriving in a minute?
“No,” he says, and his wide eyes meet mine. “Kill me!” he shouts, scrambling to his feet, and falling as his wound worsens.
And then it clicks. There’s only one organisation that a vampire like Trellis could fear as much as this.
“You work for the Council?” I ask, and Elia puts her hands on her hips, looking down at Trellis as though he’s no more than a child. If it wasn’t for the silver bullet in his shoulder, he could have transformed into a bat.
“I do some freelance work for them from time to time,” she says. “Sort of like a vampire hunter, but with brain cells.”
She glances at her phone, and I try to marry the image of this woman, a vampire who was able to overpower me completely, to the annoying girl who was sniffing me in class the other night.
“I would leave, if I were you,” she adds.
“The Council is not too fond of Callisto. Your lot never abides by the rules. So, unless you want to join my friend Eugene in his cell, you should go.”
She’s right about the Council not liking Callisto.
Every time they’ve tried to include us in their treaties and set some ground rules for our operations, we’ve said no.
One of Callisto’s most basic rules, which I now know Penny has broken, is to never cooperate with vampires.
There’s a light drizzle, and it’s so cold it might at any moment turn to snow.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?
” I ask, rubbing my bare arms. I have to make sure that the humans got home safely.
“How do I know you’re not helping him escape? ”
“Good point,” she concedes. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to trust me.”
“And why would I do that?”
I hear the choppy rhythm of a helicopter, and then I see it in the distance, a white dot drawing closer to the castle. Trellis moans, trying to get up again. If Elia is helping him escape, he’s certainly a good actor, because I’ve never seen anyone quite so terrified.
“You don’t really have a choice.” She cocks her head. “What would you get out of killing this man? Would it bring any of his victims back to life? Undo the trauma those mortals just went through?”
“I would stop him from organising something like this ever again,” I hiss. She’s right. I need to get out of here.
“Don’t worry. Once the Council have interrogated him, they’ll make him sunbathe.” She puts her hands behind her back, grimacing. “You really should go.”
Despite my instincts telling me to do the opposite, I turn back the way I came.
The pain I felt in my arms, the sensation that they were about to break, has vanished.
How? Dread settles in me as I walk down the staircase, searching for my way back to the main hall.
Red velvet drapes decorate the innards of the castle.
It’s still too quiet. There were at least a hundred vampires in the hall before I ran, and somehow, I can’t wrap my head around all of them vanishing like this.
When I finally reach the hall, with the bandstand and its separate booths, there are bodies everywhere—of vampires.
That scream I heard, which I thought belonged to a human, could have been a vampire instead.
And next to each unconscious vampire lies a broken wineglass.
Did Elia spike their drinks? Though it isn’t something I want to consider, Elia might be on my side.
The thought makes my head ache. The world was so much easier to understand when hunters were good and vampires were evil.
“When I said you should go, I meant it,” a voice says behind me. Elia crouches down next to one of the bodies. How did she get here so quickly? “They’re taking Trellis away, but are coming back for this lot, so get out of here.”
“Why didn’t you kill them?” I ask.
“Because I’ve already killed enough,” she says without looking up at me. “Plus, these bastards might know things. Things we’ll never learn if we kill them now.”
I hate that she’s right.
“What’s that on your neck?” she asks suddenly, her voice changing. Too late, I remember that the makeup hiding the mark must have faded, revealing the Astra crest and its thorny vines. The lines burn. And that’s when I hear it. The sound of a gun being cocked.
I look up, seeing a narrow window and a gun peeking out of it.
“Move!” I shout, and I throw myself on top of Elia just as the first gunshot booms. We tumble until we hit one of the unconscious vampires, and when I meet her blue eyes, they’re wide.
“There’s another hunter,” I say, looking back.
Penny won’t shoot me, will she? “Get out of here.”
“Did you just save my life?” Elia asks, disbelief in her voice.
“Just hurry,” I say. What have I done? I turn just in time to see Penny jumping down from the narrow window.
She lands and aims her gun. Elia has vanished already, with a speed which I can’t quite make sense of, but I’m glad she possesses.
I stand, staring back at Penny, trying to keep my composure.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I scratch my neck, trying to find an answer.
I don’t think there’s anything I can say that would make sense to her.
Handing over a vampire to the Council is not something that’s ever been done before, at least not that I’m aware of.
And as I stare at Penny, without moving, I realise I’m in deep shit.
Deep enough for her to undo all the work I’ve done until now.
“She helped us,” I say, keeping my voice steady.
One of the vampires next to her groans, waking from the effects of Elia’s poison.
Penny responds by shooting him, the sound of her weapon like thunder.
“You’ve become soft,” she says, reloading her weapon. “Weak.”
“I haven’t,” I say, and I barely sound like myself when I add, “But my mission was to put an end to the party. The Council are on their way, so unless we leave—”
“Good. Then you’ll stay here and fight them with me.”
“We don’t fight the Council,” I say. We don’t get on with the Council, but we’re not supposed to attack them, either.
“We don’t kill treaties-abiding vampires, you told me that yourself.
” What if she kills me? What if I survived that fucking chase just to be killed by Penny, of all people?
“But if you want to stay, I won’t stop you. ”
“That was an order,” she says. My fear morphs into something else. “I thought you were stronger than this.” Her disappointment crawls beneath my skin. “I thought I could trust you to be amongst them, and not—”
“Why should I trust you?” I ask. It’s only now that I’ve seen her again that her betrayal—her omission about her days in Tynahine—spreads through my chest. “How many of my missions came from Nocth’s intel?”
When I say his name, Penny—who’s spent the last four years training me and showing me the ropes of this twisted world, who after my parents’ deaths, became the only person I could consider family—raises her gun and fires.
I duck, and I am pretty certain she missed on purpose, because I’m still alive. “How dare you,” she starts, voice cool. “After everything—”
I hear the sound of steps above, announcing the Council’s fast approach, and Penny turns, reloading her weapon. There’s no way we can fight the Council. Not just the two of us. “Penny!” I shout. “Let’s go!”
“I’m disappointed in you.” Her words sting more than a slap in the face.
I almost stay. The last four years of my life have prepped me to stay. But the mark on my neck stings, twisting into me, telling me I must go back to Tynahine—and back to Aliz.
And for some stupid fucking reason, I listen to it. I leave Penny behind.