Chapter Fourteen #2
She crossed the threshold. And there she found herself standing at the mouth of an empty room.
There were a few jackets and bags scattered around, probably dropped here by students at the event.
But as always, she could see very clearly in the dark.
There were no signs of life ahead. Or undeath, for that matter.
She turned back to the atrium. Mila, dropping all pretense, crossed the room to meet her. “He’s not in there,” Lucy said.
Mila exhaled through her teeth. “How would he have gotten in and out? This room is wall-to-wall west-facing windows. Do you feel him here?”
“No more so than usual,” Lucy muttered. The heaviness of his attention was there, but it felt like it had the night before: just close enough to raise the hair on her arms. He was somewhere nearby, but he wasn’t in the room with them. “And I haven’t heard—”
She faltered. She’d almost forgotten that in all the chaos of the day, she hadn’t told anyone about Laurentius yet, about the click-click of the doorknob turning.
“Heard what?” Mila asked.
Lucy shook her head. She did need to tell them. But she needed to tell them later. “Maybe he’s deeper in the building.”
“I’ll check the hall,” Mila said. “Stay here in the light.”
“Neither of you should be leaving the light,” said Athena’s voice in Lucy’s ear.
“You shouldn’t go alone,” Lucy said. “I’ll come with you.”
“What did I just say?” Athena said. “Lucy, I don’t like this. Tell Mila you need to withdraw.”
Athena’s tinny voice was apparently audible to Mila, too. “Tell her we’re not withdrawing yet,” Mila said. “I won’t be gone long. I just want to take a look around.”
Lucy winced. This was rapidly becoming overwhelming. To Athena, she said, “We’re okay. We’re just figuring out what to do.” Then, to Mila, she said, “If you don’t want to take me, take Natalie. Just because I’m the one he’s after doesn’t mean he hasn’t recognized you as a thr—”
Click-click.
The sound of the turning knob came from just over Lucy’s shoulder. She started to rush toward it before she’d fully recognized what it was. And before she could do anything—visualize the door, press the lock, slide the deadbolt—there came another sound. A pop, then a creak. Something opening.
In the pin drop of a moment that followed, Lucy had just enough time to lock eyes with Mila.
What an impossible thing they were all asking of her.
To expect her to juggle both this creature she would have to kill, and this near-stranger she had to try to keep alive.
It was so much to ask of this girl who looked so calm and in control that Lucy kept forgetting she was a regular person, too.
Lucy wished she’d gotten to apologize for that.
But then nothing happened. The sun kept shining through the windows. The red voice didn’t flood her mind. She still felt Vanya’s presence, but at a distance. Nothing had changed. She was still in control.
“What?” Mila said.
“I don’t know.” Lucy turned in one direction, then the other. Where had that come from? It couldn’t have been a normal door. It was too loud. “I thought—”
It wasn’t until Lucy’s gaze landed at the front of the atrium, where they’d entered, that she saw what was missing.
Natalie wasn’t where they’d left her.
“Mila.” The name came out like a punch in the stomach. “Where’s Natalie?”
It was horrible, hearing the blood drain from Mila’s face. “She was just there,” Mila said. “Wasn’t she?”
“Lucy,” said Athena in her ear. “What’s wrong with Natalie?”
“Just a minute,” Lucy said. Then, to Mila, she said, “The hall.” Natalie wasn’t in the crowd, and she wouldn’t have just left. That meant there was only one place she could have gone.
Mila nodded tightly, and reaching down, she took Lucy’s hand. Athena was still in Lucy’s ear, still asking what was happening, but Lucy didn’t have answers for her yet. They passed by the edge of the crowd, heard a snatch of conversation. And then that overrode everything else.
“—had a really weird moment setting up earlier,” someone was saying. “I thought I saw Addison Greene.”
“Well, that’s impossible, right?” another voice said.
“Yeah,” said the first voice. “Probably just someone who looked like her. That was so weird, though. I haven’t thought of her in ages.…”
It wasn’t clear to Lucy who broke into a run first: her or Mila. But Mila, with her long strides, pulled ahead fast. If not for their linked hands, she would have left Lucy far behind her.
They stumbled through the side door together, into a narrow, harshly lit corridor.
Most of the sunlight was safely contained in room number 105: There was one window in the hall, somewhere behind them, but everything else was fluorescents.
They’d left the crowd fully behind. The only person with them in the hall was the figure at the opposite end, facing a pair of double doors.
“Natalie!” Lucy said. But Natalie’s attention remained ahead, leaving only her side profile visible. Her face was calm and slack. The one blue eye Lucy could see was flat and dull, like an old penny.
With a smooth, steady hand, she opened the door. And two sets of hands tugged her into the darkness.
Somehow, Lucy outpaced Mila to the end of the hall.
It wasn’t something she thought she would have been able to do.
But she was the first one to Natalie, the first to throw both arms around her shoulders.
The opposing force from the basement pulled hard, like a wave being sucked back from the shore, and for a terrifying moment, Lucy’s weak grip was the only thing keeping Natalie on her feet.
Then she felt the weight of Mila reaching them.
One arm locked around Lucy’s waist, the other gripped for Natalie.
“Lucy?” Athena’s voice was high-pitched in her ear. “What’s going on?” But even if Lucy had had the breath to answer, she didn’t know. She didn’t know until she found the strength to raise her head.
It was only then, with nowhere to look but forward, that she saw the three sets of eyes gleaming in the dark.
The first was familiar to Lucy, even though she’d had just a handful of days to get used to it: Whitney, wrapped around Natalie’s left forearm.
Natalie’s right arm was in the grip of a taller girl, with pale green eyes and sleek auburn-red hair.
She had a calm, closed-lipped smile on her face, like she was looking out upon a beautiful piece of scenery. It was Addison Greene.
The third girl wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t holding on to Natalie, but she was fully focused on her, as if she didn’t see Mila and Lucy at all.
Sadie Grainger carefully brushed aside Natalie’s hair as she leaned in. “It’s all right, Natalie,” she whispered. “That was just the wind. Let’s keep walking.”
“Lucy!” Athena said. “Answer me!”
Lucy couldn’t. She couldn’t even find enough breath to call Natalie’s name. It was all she could do to hold on, but even then, she knew Mila must have been doing most of the work to hold them both down. But Mila couldn’t hold them down and reach her bow.
Lucy could hear the strain in Mila’s muscles, the tremor of bones as she started to shake. All of the weaknesses, none of the strengths. She could hear Mila’s strength flagging, but she couldn’t do a fucking thing about it.
“It’s all right, Luce,” Natalie said tonelessly. Her body was so relaxed in Lucy’s grip. So completely free of resistance. Without Lucy and Mila’s combined weight, she would have been gone. “They’re going to help you. We just need to go downstairs.”
Addison still had that beatific smile across her face as she regarded the scene. She showed none of the strain Lucy could hear from Mila. She looked serene. Like she was waiting for something wonderful.
Sadie’s expression betrayed nothing. Even as she whispered, nonstop, into Natalie’s ear, her eye was now on Lucy, as if waiting to see how she would react.
And something rose up in Lucy in response. The thrill of absolute familiarity. This is your sister, the red voice told her. Why are you fighting your sister?
Lucy bit down on her tongue. It was the only thing she could think to do, with her hands full. If anyone was her sister here, it was Natalie. She wasn’t letting go.
“Is he there?” Athena sounded ragged. “Is he with you right now?”
Then Lucy heard the tremor of muscles. Someone else was shaking—someone who wasn’t Mila.
And looking at the vampires, it wasn’t hard to guess who.
Whitney was the only one visibly straining.
There were lines of exertion etched into her face.
Now that Lucy was focused on her, she could feel that the pull on Whitney’s side was weaker than the pull on Addison’s.
It was probably the only reason they hadn’t lost their grip on Natalie already.
I’m supposed to save my appetite, Whitney had said, back at the dorm. She said there was going to be a feast when they had Athena. They didn’t have Athena yet.
The weakness in her grip—was it hunger?
Lucy sized up her plan of action fast. Whitney was on Natalie’s left, which meant that Lucy would need to direct her to the right, outside her immediate grip. It would happen quickly. Lucy remembered exactly how fast Whitney could move when she was closing in on a meal.
“Mila,” Lucy managed. “Hold on as hard as you can.”
She didn’t give Mila time to answer. But she didn’t doubt that she’d been heard. If there was one thing she knew Mila could do, it was react with just a second’s notice.
Lucy shifted her grip to free one of her arms. And then she dug her nails into Natalie’s arm until she smelled blood.
The pressure vanished from Whitney’s side. Whitney had let go, had realized her path to Natalie’s blood wasn’t clear—she tried to dart around, behind her sisters.
Addison’s saintlike smile melted off her face, and she grabbed Whitney by the back of the neck like she was a kitten. “Whitney,” she snapped. “Together, or not at al—”
Whitney and Addison’s combined strength was too much.
But Lucy and Mila against one distracted half of Addison’s strength was just enough.
One more wrench with all they had, and they tore Natalie out of Addison’s grip.
Lucy nearly fell back under Natalie’s deadweight before she realized: Mila was no longer helping her.
Mila had ripped the bag off her back, unzipping it in one downward strike.
But however fast Mila was, the vampires were still faster. One look at the curve of the bow, and they scattered like moths into the dark of the basement. Mila started after them.
“No,” Lucy rasped.
Mila barely looked at her. “They’re getting away,” she said.
“They could come back!” Lucy said. She no longer cared what they came here for. Natalie had gone frighteningly limp in her grip. “Mila, please. Help me get her into the light.”
Mila’s attention never fully left the door. But she did return to Lucy, then, did help her drag Natalie to the opposite end of the hall. They didn’t stop until Natalie lay directly under the single pathetic sunbeam within their reach.
“Natalie,” Lucy said as she dropped to her knees again. “Natalie, can you hear me?”
Natalie’s blank stare was fixed on the ceiling. If not for the sleeplike cadence of her breaths, she would have looked dead, lying there. The only thing that moved in response to Lucy’s voice was a single bead of blood that slipped down her arm.
Lucy anxiously rubbed it dry. The nauseating, mouth-watering smell of it crested in the air.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I hurt you, I’m sorry.
” She was supposed to be the bait. She was supposed to be hurt, if anyone.
Natalie wasn’t the sort of person these things were supposed to touch.
Lucy had never really considered that anything would reach her.
Naive, selfish, self-serving—Lucy should have told her from the start not to get involved, she should have screamed it if that’s what it—
“Lucy!” Athena’s voice was loud enough to hurt. “Please answer me!”
Not now was what Lucy had meant to say. Or One minute, or Let me think, or any of the other proto-sentences that had bubbled up as she clutched at her ear in pain.
But what came out of her mouth wasn’t words.
It was something much deeper in her throat than that.
It was a roll of low, guttural thunder. A growl.
Everything froze. Lucy, Mila, and the breaths from the other end of the line.
And then Natalie sat half upright and gasped for air.
“Natalie.” Lucy scrambled to get her hands on Natalie’s shoulders for support. She was staring straight ahead, her eyes focused now, her pupils narrowed to pinpricks. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Something like a laugh escaped Natalie as she nodded. “What was I…”
“Can you stand?” When Lucy looked back to Mila, her face was shuttered. “We need to leave.”
“Hah. Yeah.” She wiped at her face, but not before Lucy saw a tear slip out of each eye. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”
Lucy clambered to her feet to help Mila lift, then ducked under one of Natalie’s arms to support her weight.
Natalie walked with them easily enough, though she was stiff in their grip, as if the last thing she wanted right then was either of them touching her.
Lucy could still hear Athena, breathing on the other end of the line.
But for the time being, she was silent, too.
Lucy had never been so grateful for the spike of pain the sunlight brought. And as she and Mila maneuvered Natalie into it, Lucy turned to shut the door.
For just a moment, as the door’s window caught the late-afternoon glare, it looked like a lone figure was watching them from the stairwell entrance. Where they’d been just moments ago.
But by the time the door closed, there was no one there.