Chapter 47
CHAPTER
FORTY-SEVEN
For a moment, there was only darkness. Jack scrabbled across the couch for Carla’s hand, squeezed it when he found it, ran his thumb over delicate knuckles.
“Brace yourselves,” hummed the yellow-eyed man. “She will seek her weakest victims first.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Boris hissed.
“If she comes for you, lead her to the circle.”
“And then what?”
“Pray she finds what she’s meant to.”
“Wait a minute,” said Jack, going cold all over. “She’s not automatically going to attack Enzo?”
“Shit,” breathed Carla. “She’s going for Ronnie.”
The shiver beneath Jack’s skin had hooks. Tore its way down his spine like it meant to rend flesh from bone. “D-don’t intervene,” he said, voice catching. “Trust me.”
“I can’t just let him die—” But her words faded, replaced by fog as the temperature continued to drop.
Boris appeared at Jack’s side, tense and shivering.
“Let’s move toward the rug,” Jack began, then reconsidered. If Ronnie was there, unconscious, face smashed in, wouldn’t the creature attack him first, regardless of who else was in the room?
But there was no time to ponder. At the top of the stairs, the shadows darkened. A figure appeared—gaunt, lumbering, drifting slowly toward them, tattered dress swaying in a nonexistent breeze.
Dread spiked in Jack’s chest like a stake through the heart.
“Fuck,” Boris snarled. A strange click followed.
Oh, Jack realized. Boris took the safety off the gun.
“Will that work?”
“Anything’s better than a lamp,” Boris said. Jack reluctantly reached into his pocket, retrieved the gun hidden there.
Anything would be better than a gun, he thought, turning his head from the stairs even though every instinct in his body screamed at him not to look away. But if he looked, he’d fall right back into those cavernous eyes. This time, he wasn’t so sure he’d emerge unscathed.
It didn’t matter. His throat throbbed. The memory of arousal passed through him like a ghost, sharp and frigid, and then it was gone, leaving behind an aftertaste of iron.
At Jack’s side, Boris tensed. The gun in his hand clattered to the floor. Carla made a strangled sound and darted across the room.
“Boris,” said Jack with increasing urgency. “Boris, look at me. Come on, Boris.”
But Boris didn’t move. Jack looked up and found himself face to face with cheekbones sharp as spikes, pale fangs, pale lips, eyes like an abyss… But those hollow eyes weren’t locked on him. Instead, she drifted toward Boris.
Salt. Salt had previously freed them from her terrible embrace.
Jack reached into his pocket, found one of the little paper packets Boris insisted he take earlier that morning.
He ripped the tops free, poured the granules into his hand, prayed that this would work, then lobbed it with all his might.
The vampire hissed, lurched backward. Boris made an odd little noise deep in his throat. Jack kicked him in the shin, hard, hoping the pain might bring him back to himself.
Jack fumbled with the gun, then stopped. In the darkness, it would be irresponsible to shoot. There was enough suffering today without adding any accidental gunshot wounds to the list.
So he grasped the barrel in his hand and clubbed the creature in the head instead, reeling at the shock that ran down his arm when metal connected with flesh and cracking bone.
The creature let out a wounded howl, staggered away. Jack struck again and again, relentless, not daring to stop until Boris bent to retrieve his gun.
“Go to the circle,” Jack shouted, landing another blow. “She’s already after you!”
“Circle!” Carla repeated, pointing with the trembling blade of her hunting knife.
Boris stared at them blearily, but staggered in the direction of the rug, where Ronnie and Enzo lay stacked like logs.
The vampire flitted past them, gaze trained on Boris, hungry and wanting.
Transferring her interest might be more difficult than they’d hoped. Even whaling on her with a pistol, Jack was no more consequential than a pesky wasp.
He sought the yellow-eyed man, glimpsed him standing at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed like this was no more than a minor inconvenience. “Help us!” Jack cried, but he didn’t move.
Squashing down the urge to turn the gun on the yellow-eyed man (stupid, useless fucking asshole—couldn’t he see that they were in danger?), Jack chased after the vampire, eyes locked on her protruding spine, where her skin pulled tight like shrink wrap.
Three long slashes cut across her back, raised and gnarled.
Scars, Jack realized. Lank hair, black as an oil slick, hung over her shoulders.
Patches of scalp were visible beneath—the skin was puckered, slick, rotting away.
He smashed her again with the gun, caught strands of hair in his fingers. They pulled loose as easily as silk from an ear of corn. He discarded them, shaking his hand wildly as if he’d walked through a spiderweb.
Boris tripped over his own feet, bashed against the arm of the couch and only just managed to avoid collapsing altogether.
“Go, go!” Jack urged him, but progress was slow, unsteady. Their only hope was to slow her down. Fumbling in his pocket, he tore open another packet of salt and tossed it. White grains cut into her flesh, scattered down the back of her dress. Tiny pinpricks of blood appeared.
Jack blinked, stunned. Boris claimed that the salt hadn’t done anything but free him from her grasp. Had he underestimated its effect? Or were they finally starting to wear her down?
He plucked the third and final packet from his pocket, tore it open and poured salt directly down the back of her dress.
A shriek, loud and shrill, echoed through the room, piercing Jack’s eardrums, shivering through his jaw, his temples.
And then the vampire whirled, fixed her enormous eyes on him.
“Jack!” shouted Carla and Boris as one.
Jack barely heard them over the pounding of his own heart.
But it was enough. He dragged his gaze away, staggered backwards. He wouldn’t look, couldn’t look. Instead, he broke into a run, made a beeline for the rug where Enzo and Ronnie lay still as corpses.
The vampire followed him. Another shriek rang out, loud enough to shatter bone.
Enzo lifted his head and spotted a frantic Jack, the vampire close behind.
Shit. Jack had hoped he wouldn’t be awake for this. That sleep would grant him an oblivious, merciful death.
“Oh no, no,” Enzo said, shaking his head, sitting bolt upright. The remains of his mouth opened wide, revealed teeth crooked and distorted in his gums. Blood gleamed in the faint moonlight.
“Oh yes,” said the yellow-eyed man, smug as a cat.
Carla’s shadow vanished up the stairs.
Jack bolted across the room until he was only a few feet from the rug and pivoted. He kept his gaze glued to the floor, where pale moonlight crept beneath the curtains, twisting in an impossible breeze.
“Hell no,” said Enzo. “Hell fucking no! You did not just lead that thing to me—”
This wasn’t going to work. There was no way—
But the vampire’s hungry gaze found Ronnie, unmoving. Her feet twisted, bony toes angling toward the circle. Jack closed his eyes, pleaded for his life to any god willing to listen.
For now, he was stronger than Enzo, than Ronnie. Not the easiest target. But he was still surprised when the vampire drifted past him and onto the rug.
“Fuck, no!” Enzo screamed, and it was only then that Jack dared to look up.
The vampire ignored Ronnie entirely, her black eyes locked on Enzo.
Jack winced. Wished that he could say it wouldn’t hurt, that it would be quick. Because it would hurt until it didn’t, and after that? He didn’t want to know.
“I’m sorry,” he said instead, voice cracking.
Then there were hands on his shoulders, turning him away from the sight of the creature descending on Enzo—no longer struggling, just staring in wide-eyed fascination.
Was that what Jack had looked like caught in her grasp?
“We gotta go.” Boris’s voice cut the silence. “We don’t need to watch, let’s just fucking go.”
Enzo whimpered. Fabric shifted, then tore. Jack couldn’t bear to look.
“No!” snarled the yellow-eyed man, whipping to face them. “We aren’t done here.”
“What the fuck do you mean?” Boris’s voice turned pleading, panicked. His hand clenched Jack’s, fingers spasming.
“You agreed. We have to cut off the head.”
“I did not volunteer to do any head-cutting,” said Boris, voice wavering. “Neither did he.”
The yellow-eyed man knelt to rifle through his bag, coming up with a canister of gasoline, a jar of salt, a lighter. “I think you can handle it.”
“Oh shit,” said Jack. Terror flared in his gut.
“Don’t worry,” said the yellow-eyed man. “Your girlfriend already left. Fled the scene like a criminal.”
“I thought we couldn’t leave,” said Jack, staring numbly at the can of gas.
“Wards are down. We don’t need them anymore.”
A terrible slurping sound came from within the circle. Enzo moaned.
The canister was thrust into Jack’s hand. “Pour,” the yellow-eyed man instructed, and Jack once again found he couldn’t resist, dropping Boris’s hand quite against his will as he approached the circle.
No one reacted as gasoline splashed across the rug. The scent of it catapulted him back to his childhood, sitting in the back seat of the family station wagon, staring out the window and mentally tracing the shapes of the gas pumps as his mother filled their tank.
He had no more power now than he did then, when he went where his parents went, ate what they provided, slept when they allowed. Now he was at the mercy of the yellow-eyed man and the gangsters who permeated this town, feeling just as lost as he did back then.
When the canister was empty, and Enzo’s legs were twitching uselessly beneath the vampire’s bony limbs, he turned to face the yellow-eyed man. “Now what?”
“Now we light it,” he said, brandishing the lighter.
“Wait,” said Jack, knees turning to jelly as the yellow-eyed man produced a flame so bright that it burned his eyes. Perhaps it was only a trick of the light, but Jack thought it had an odd greenish tint to it. “Shouldn’t we make sure Carla is safe?”
A gurgle. Jack didn’t know if it came from the vampire or Enzo, and he didn’t want to.
“No need,” said the yellow eyed man. The lighter fell from his hand, dropped to the rug. Verdant flame exploded across its surface, tore its way up the vampire’s knobby back, down Enzo’s twitching legs, over Ronnie’s still form.
The resulting screech would linger in the back of Jack’s mind until he died. A thousand years of woe and agony slapped against him in a tidal wave of icy despair that he felt in his bones, in the very hollows of his heart.
Enzo, too, began to scream. “What the fuck? What the fuck?”
Jack stood rooted to the spot, scream caught in his throat like a fly in a spider’s web.
This time, when Boris grabbed his hand, he didn’t resist. Smoke filled the room, burned his eyes, his lungs. With only a fleeting glance at the yellow-eyed man, he ran, using his free hand to loosen his tie and pull his shirt over his nose.
Already, flames crawled across the carpet, chewed at the edges of the couch, staggered up the walls. Smoke fled down the hallways, like grey and putrid ghosts.