Fawns blood, p.26
Fawn's Blood, page 26
“Hello, human savior,” he rasped. “I hear you have a plan to make all right with the world. I was experiencing, it must be said, a moment of devastation, but I am ready to help you. Tell me about how you will redeem our hordes from irreparable destruction.”
“It sort of depends,” I said. “How many vampires do you think would still do what you asked them to do?”
Cain’s face grotesquely crumpled. He bent his head and began to softly howl.
“Okay,” I said, watching the unmoving lump of Aurelius. “Does that mean twelve? Does that mean zero?”
Cain shook his head sharply. “Girl,” he said, and then hiccuped. “Once, I could command a legion of thousands from here to Santa Barbara. From here to Monterey. My howls are for those lost in the war against the wretched Moms.”
“Okay,” I said. I leaned in to look him in his face, close. This was the man who people spoke about like he ran things. There had to be power in there. “How many?”
He paused, seeming taken aback, considering. “Many will leave town after last night. I don’t blame them. I think we are likely to be able to get about thirty younglings who will be willing to fight MAVIS. Their elders and I have too much dark history.”
“Let me register,” I said, “that the thing where you don’t have anyone your age who likes you indicates something negative. But thirty. That’s fine. Thirty is more than the slayers. They’ve got like, what, ten?”
Cain shook his head. “They have Shelton and Tacoma and Spokane people too, perhaps. They’ve got at least twenty-five active slayers in the county.”
“Thirty versus twenty-five. Not bad.”
“They love to indiscriminately kill,” Cain said. “We do not. No matter what they say about me, I love blood, not death. We cannot let more die.”
“You could have worked harder to stop the slayers last night, or to have better exits for emergencies” I said. “And you could have made it harder to find.”
Cain began to howl again like a wounded animal, putting his long hands up into his long hair. I was sick of his shit. I continued.
“We’ll try to minimize the casualties. Are you all vulnerable to guns?”
“It’s going to hurt. Unless our body is blown apart, it won’t kill us,” Cain said, snapping out of his howl. “A shotgun would be worse, but I don’t believe MAVIS uses those. They’re too messy and loud. A machine gun would seriously hurt us.”
“So, the biggest problem is stakes and those crossbow things. Has anyone ever tried wearing like, armor against that?”
Cain nodded. He lifted his shirt, showing me that he was wearing a chainmail shirt under his piratelike frock. “Most don’t enjoy it because it’s so heavy,” he said. “And expensive. I had some made years ago. It won’t stop a crossbow, but they can’t tip or weight them with metal, so it’ll often blunt against the armor and won’t penetrate my heart. It’s more ribs broken.”
“There don’t happen to be wholesale suppliers of these who could get us thirty in the next couple hours?” I asked.
“Not a chance, dear,” Cain said. “It’s custom. A bulletproof vest would be better. But motorcycle jackets work okay for non-projectile stakes. And most of us have some kind of motorcycle jacket.” He waved a hand. “I have five chainmail vests,” he said dolorously. “We can distribute them.”
“Here?”
“Down the hall. And sunscreen.”
“Cain,” I said. “I am going to go to get that stuff. Can you work on summoning your Lost Boy army or whatever? Can you contact people to come to Daylight and fight?”
He snuffled through his batlike nose. “You are noble, little Dawn,” he said.
“It’s Fawn,” I said. “Get it right or I’m leaving you here to stake yourself.” I paused. “Can you make sure Angie is there? Or ask her? I feel like she might be useful.”
Millie was waiting against the car when we emerged from the hidden tile again, dragging two duffel bags that barely fit through the hole. Aurelius was still sleeping; it was decided he would stay hidden, with a note next to him to explain where we had gone.
“No way,” Millie said, when she saw Cain. He had de-morphed for the purpose of striding across the graveyard, so in his charred velvet vest, long white hair and rectangular sunglasses he looked, if anything, like the author of a steampunk webcomic about to give a talk at a convention, but he still wore a hooded cowl and had long, long fingers. Again, I wondered how the graveyard staff could possibly miss it—unless they were vampires, too. He was carrying a flowered handbag filled with packs of blood and ice packs.
“He can walk in sunlight, Millie, and he’s got wings,” I said. “If you know anyone else with those qualities, feel free to ask them.”
“I’m not the only one who can walk in sunlight,” Cain sniffed. “Anyone can, if they feed well enough.”
“You’re a terrible influence on kids. You make them act in dangerous ways,” Millie said to Cain, as he climbed into the back seat, checking the skin on his hands. It was fine.
“My dear,” he said. “People have been saying that to me since I was a child myself.”
Millie looked at me sternly. “You did not mention him.”
“I know,” I said. “It would have been counterproductive. Are you out? I can drive.”
“I’m not handing my car off to him,” Millie hissed to me in a whisper. “I drive, but I am not guaranteeing I’m waiting around for him if he’s the last out. Pola doesn’t pay me enough.”
Cain heard. He brushed his hair back from his tall white forehead. “My darling,” he said, “We will fly, if necessary, on the way back.” He sounded a little better than he had before; an antagonistic audience brought something out in him. “I’ve asked the young ones to join us. Human Free Blood youth and vampires. There is a fair bit of risk, as you have acknowledged, Fawn. Not everyone is interested.”
I thought about the mixed crowd at Cain’s bar. People had trusted his space; they’d discovered it wasn’t safe. They’d seen him flee. Only a specific kind of person would come out of that burning theater with a quest for revenge against MAVIS, rather than Cain.
Millie turned the key in the engine. “Okay, so are we picking anyone up?”
“There are three humans who can take a bus. There are six vampires who have sun immunity and can fly. There are four vampires who need transport,” Cain said, counting on his fingers and looking at his phone.
“Flying in daytime?” Millie asked drily, pulling out of the cemetery onto 50th.
“Blood will allow it. We have a couple human donors. We are all interdependent, and the slayers hate our delicate, beautiful, reciprocal network,” Cain said, resting his head against the glass of the window and closing his eyes. There was something mildly sardonic in his voice.
“They want me in jail or something,” I said. Flo would kill me if she could.
“Humans could also just come out themselves. The goal is to stop the operation of the lab, right?” Millie asked. “Does anyone know how to make like, a low-grade explosive? Or something to contaminate the product? Are we trying to destroy product or steal it?”
“Stealing it would be good,” Cain said. “If only we had a truck.”
I had an idea about Wanda. I opened my phone to text Richeza. Then I realized I could just text Wanda—her number on the card was engraved into my memory. I started to type.
“I think a good idea would be to start a fire,” Cain said. “As they did to us. Drive them out, rescue our people. Have an attack team, a rescue team. I shall be on both. I will disarm them. Fawn, do you know where in the building Silver is being kept?”
“I think he was probably moved. We’ll have to search. Do we need to wait until nightfall?”
Cain shook his head. “My young ones who have confirmed are available now. Here are their addresses.”
“But the vampires we’re trying to rescue won’t be able to safely leave the building when it’s light out,” Millie said, squinting at the first address and typing it into her phone for navigation with one hand. “They haven’t been blood-maxing like you two. And Daylight blood takes a while to give protection.”
Cain checked his watch. “The sun will go down in about three hours. But it’s also supposed to rain. I see a heavy cloud. We can get there an hour before sunset.”
Millie put the clicker on as she prepared to turn. “I think we have time to make a few Molotov cocktails. I’m going to stop for some supplies.”
17.
RACHEL
Running down a suburban street while holding a frozen cardboard box of plasma felt too conspicuous. Probably in the next hour, someone was going to notice me and Brid were missing. What could I do?
There had been sunlight pouring down when I left through the doors, nobody turning to stop me.
Now a cloud passed over the sun, and I felt a few drops on my head. It hit me that I was entirely alone in the universe. There was nobody who liked me. There was nothing for me. I was recognizable as the daughter of a woman who had tried to kill vampires, and vampires everywhere would continue to recognize me. Brid knew I was a traitor.
I wanted to live.
It was at that moment a small Subaru with blacked-out windows screeched to a halt on the side of the wide, empty road that led through the neighborhoods to Daylight. A door opened.
“Rachel!”
I turned, holding the box. I saw Fawn’s face. I staggered backward. She was in a car, and the car had other people in it too—I saw multiple sets of glowing red eyes in the shadow of the door.
Fawn got out and came toward me. “Rachel, we’re going to get Silver out. We’re going to free the other vampires. We need you. Are you leaving?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said. Without thinking about it, I set the box down and ran forward. I threw my arms around her. “I’m sorry for not saving Silver. I’m sorry.”
“This isn’t over yet,” Fawn said. She didn’t hug back. Instead, she pushed me back a little, but gently. It hurt my feelings more than I wanted it to. “We have to dismantle Daylight.”
“We have to get out of here,” I said.
“There’s still people inside,” she said. The tone in her voice told me she thought I was totally evil and stupid for ignoring that. Maybe I was evil and stupid. Maybe I’d been raised to be evil and stupid and now I was stuck. But what was I supposed to do? There wasn’t a big red button that opened all the doors.
“Brid tried to kill me,” I said, by way of explanation. “I had to leave.”
“Well, you have to go back in,” one of the red-eyed, shadowy figures in the backseat of the car rasped. “We’ve got to get in there.”
“Little Sorkin,” a familiar voice intoned. I stepped back, a big step. “I am pleased to learn that you are considering assisting your own kind.”
I saw the ruby shoes flash in the bottom of the backseat.
“Him?” I asked Fawn. “Him? He’s the monster who turned me!”
She glanced into the car. “Cain?”
I turned around, crossing my arms, and walked away a few paces like I was thirteen and throwing a tantrum at the mall. I knew I looked ridiculous; I felt so much shame and anger. I realized that every minute I spent standing here was a minute that my mom was probably putting pieces together. I wished I had wings so I could just take off into the sky too. Maybe they’d already released Brid by now. Maybe they were looking at the security camera footage. “I won’t work with him,” I said to Fawn. “The slayers are bad, but he’s bad too.”
“Okay,” Fawn said. “Well, it makes sense that you were attacked if you were a slayer. Work with me, though. If you’re changing your mind about what side you’re on, stick to it. We have to rescue the vampires in there.”
Through the air above us, there came the unexpected flapping of enormous, leathery wings. I looked up, rain getting in my eyes, as four figures caught low tree branches in the Douglas Firs that lined the road, bouncing a little before descending with four thuds in the scrub on the side of the street.
“Rachel,” Angie said. She was the biggest of the winged teen vampires before me, recognizable even though her nose was flat and her face was hairy and distorted. She had a split lip and a bruise on her forehead. “Surprised to see you here.” She glanced at Fawn. “We doing in the slayer vamp first?”
“No,” Fawn said. “She’s a friend. She’s changed sides.”
“She killed that girl Whitney, I know it. Didn’t you?” Angie stepped around me, got up in my face. I looked back into her thick, round, confident one, sharp-toothed and possibly homicidal.
That was my girlfriend, not me was a weak defense. I hadn’t stopped her. Whitney was dead, and I had pretended I was powerless. I could think of hundreds of times where my hand had held the stake, where I’d thought of the person on the other end of the point as an it. The weight of it was like a wave that threatened to sweep me under. Angie’s pug nose and beady, intent eyes didn’t let me sidestep it, the way I’d been doing for so long. “The slayers do kill people,” I stammered. “I killed people. And I hate that. I thought vampires were cursed to be evil, but now I don’t. I don’t want to be one of the slayers anymore.”
“And we’re supposed to trust you,” Angie said. “That’s a stretch.”
The three other vampire teens with her weren’t people I recognized. I didn’t see Jay, and that made me worry, even if Jay had annoyed me. I had seen how vast the fire was.
“Angie,” Fawn said. “You can do something totally unrelated to Rachel. You don’t have to rely on her.”
“So we know she’s not communicating with June?”
Fawn looked at me appraisingly. “I do think the best thing for you to do, Rachel, is go back inside like nothing has happened, talk to your mom to distract her, and wait for the signal, and then help us get in the back after we cause a distraction in the front.”
I didn’t have a chance to say what I thought of that. There was another flap of wings, and another set of recognizable boots landed in front of me. The tall woman who wore them was wearing sunglasses, a hood, and a KN95 mask and gloves, and held herself like she maybe had a pain in her leg, and she staggered a little on landing. I looked up into her face nervously. Her red eyes were keen and bright behind the sunglasses; when she pulled down her mask for a second to wipe her nose, her fangs showed white against her sienna skin. I felt so guilty I might fall into a hole.
“This is where the party starts, then,” Erica said. She squinted at the car. “I read on Discord from Millie about the Pearl, that they had Ned after the raid on the shelter, and that things were going down here. I saw Fawn’s video. I wanted to find out exactly what was up. Some ragtag idiots without a clue what they’re doing, it looks like. That you in there, Cain? You running this show?”
I didn’t want to look at her face. “Erica,” I said. You have wings was the thought in the front of my mind. She must have drunk more blood than normal to get them—whose? Roxanne’s? After that in my head was the image of her bending over Roxanne tenderly, the feeling of wanting the warmth that would include me in its glow.
“Rachel,” she said.
“She’s a slayer,” Angie said. “She’s June Sorkin’s daughter.”
Erica shook her head. “No she’s—”
I bit my lip; she saw. Existential terror. Erica’s eyes widened. Then she clapped her hands and spun in a circle, came back to looking at all of us.
“Okay. I don’t really know what to think, but as long as we’re on the same team, we can sort it out later. Where are we at? What’s happening? Is anyone paying attention to a bunch of bat-winged vampires hanging out on the side of the road?”
Millie climbed out of the driver door. “They’re going to be in a second,” she said. “I’m going to re-park the car.” She went around to the back of the trunk and opened it. She handed Fawn an empty glass bottle, and then a rag, and then moved to hand the same items from her bag to the winged vampires. “Gasoline tank’s in the back here,” she said. “Bic lighter for everyone. Hammer for everyone. Fawn?”
Erica balked at the Molotov supplies. “Millie,” she said. “That shit’s gonna get you on federal charges.”
Millie’s face was close and guarded. “Play it safe then,” she said. “But they have Ned in there.”
Erica took a bottle and a rag, and let Millie fill the bottle with gasoline. She pulled a KN95 mask out of her pocket and handed it to Millie. “At least don’t let them see your face.”
Fawn stood up a little taller, like she was a general.
“First wave, you go at the front, you smash some glass, you throw the incendiary device, and you bite anyone who comes out to look at you. If you can break into the building that way, do. But the goal is to be a distraction. If you want to set fire to cars in the parking lot, that’s probably fine too. Especially one that’s a big blue van.”
Cain stepped out of the car, drawing his long cape and cowl around himself like a bathrobe, tottering in his heeled shoes. He did not look as dangerous as he had the previous night. He looked queasy.
“Those of us who can fly should land on the roof and make some holes in the glass on the upper stories,” he said.
Fawn nodded to me. “Rachel, again. The best thing you can do right now is go inside, find your mom, and distract her for a while as we get started.”
I looked at her deep brown eyes, and the purple bruise that made one eyebrow swell and droop down. Her face was elegantly lopsided. She looked like an adorable dog about to win a street fight. I could not stand against her, and I wanted her love.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s my signal?”
“When you hear someone scream, ‘Oh my god, vampires,’” a vampire boy behind Angie said.
“All the way in the back of the building where the loading docks are,” Fawn said. “We need you to open an exit door.”
