I raised the Glock and pointed it at her head but Michael grabbed my arm and pulled it down.
“Melody?” His deep voice was surprised and upset. The girl never stopped struggling but she did look up briefly. She was still only halfway through the window and there was an odd light in her pale, no-color eyes.
“Melody Jenkins?” Michael stepped towards her, a frown on his face. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Why are you breaking into my house?”
The girl didn’t answer. She just continued to struggle, half in, half out of the window in eerie silence.
“Be careful.” I stepped forward, the Glock still in my hand. “You know this girl?”
Michael stared at her, a puzzled look on his face. “Yeah, she’s one of the neighbor’s kids. But she’s never tried anything like this before.” He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Melody? Hello? Melody?”
She looked up at him again and her narrow face contorted in a hiss. Too late, I saw she had something in her hand.
“Get back!” I planted my hand in the middle of his chest and pushed him backwards as hard as I could. At the same time I rapped the girl he’d called Melody hard on the knuckles with the butt of my Glock. Michael stumbled and nearly fell just as the tiny device she’d been holding fell into my hand. It was a small metal canister and the moment it touched my hand it began to hiss, releasing some kind of gas.
I threw the canister as hard as I could out the hole in the window. We watched as it continued to hiss and release its payload harmlessly into the green expanse of Michael’s back lawn.
Michael was on his feet again and he looked shaken. “What was that?”
I looked at the palm of my hand. There was no change at first, then as the light hit my skin, it started to turn black.
“Silver nitrate,” I said. I sniffed my hand. “And some kind of ammonia compound.” Just as I said the words, the hissing gas canister in the backyard exploded with a flat bang that sounded like a firecracker. A lethal firecracker.
Michael and I both ducked instinctively but Melody didn’t show any reaction other than to struggle harder to get through the window.
“What the hell?” Michael stared out the window which was partially blocked by the teenaged girl.
“Silver nitrate mixed with an ammonium compound makes a powerful explosive,” I told him. “They were probably hoping to spray enough of it into the air that you’d inhale it. Failing that, the explosion at the end would have driven it into your skin. Either way you would have been out for the count for a while—maybe long enough for them to come and collect you after it got too dark for Mrs. Lebowitz to see what was happening.” I gestured with my blackened hand. “Do you have any salt? If I don’t get this off soon I never will.”
“Second cabinet on the right. Why did they send Melody in with it?”
I shrugged as I dug for the salt. “Think about it. Mrs. Lebowitz isn’t going to think anything about your next door neighbor’s kid going through your yard. So she won’t call the police and the vamps won’t have any trouble taking you down. No muss, no fuss.”
“But…but look at her. What did they do to her?” He gestured at Melody who had almost managed to get all the way into the kitchen by now. He sounded shaken but it was no more than I had expected. The vamps fight dirty—they always have and they always will.
“She’s in thrall to a vampire,” I said, finally locating the salt and pouring a handful into my blackened palm. I reached around the oblivious Melody to get a small amount of water from the sink and began to scrub the salt into my skin. “They’ve planted some kind of a post-hypnotic suggestion in her brain. Probably to break in and hand you the canister. Maybe to try and hurt you too, so be careful.”
The thin teenaged girl was finally through the window— she unfolded herself from her awkward position like a living, flesh colored origami and climbed down from the sill above the sink. But instead of attacking as I had feared, she stood blinking in the mid-morning light. Suddenly I had an idea.
“Michael, look into her eyes and ask her something,” I said.
He glanced at me. “Like what?”
“Gosh, let me think about it,” I said, my voice laced with sarcasm. “How about asking her who sent her to break into your house and gas you?” I scrubbed harder at my hand. The black stain was beginning to fade—a little, anyway.
Michael stooped down so that he was on eye-level with the girl. “Melody, honey?” he said, uncertainly, “Can you tell me how you got here and who sent you?”
Melody stared right through him. She didn’t even blink.
“No, no.” I shook my head impatiently. “Michael, you’re a vampire now. Use your powers. Don’t ask—tell. Look her in the eye and command her to tell you who sent her. And really believe that you have the authority to command her.”
He glanced at me. “How do you know all this?”
I thought of one long, cold night in the belly of the Andretti coven when Uncle Harry and I had barely escaped with our lives. It was one of those times you’d just rather forget about. So I shrugged.
“I kill vampires for a living—or I did, anyway. It’s my job to know all their nasty little tricks.”
He nodded at me. “Thanks.”
“For what?” I said.
“For saying ‘their’ nasty tricks instead of ‘your’ nasty tricks. Thanks for not lumping me in with them,” he said.
I sighed. “The jury’s still out on that one.” I nodded at the girl. “Now try it again.”
Michael took a deep breath and looked down into the girl’s eyes again. “Melody, look at me,” he said. This time his voice was low and commanding. For the first time, I felt a flow of power coming from him, an almost electrical charge that raised the short hairs on the back of my neck and made my skin break out in a rash of chill bumps.
Slowly, the girl’s head turned and I saw her no-color eyes focus on his face.
“Tell me who sent you to my house,” Michael commanded in that same, deep powerful tone.
The girl’s thin pink lips opened but what came out wasn’t the voice of a teenager. “He who is looking for you sent me,” she said, or someone said through her. I wrapped my arms around my shoulders and shuddered helplessly. I would know that pale, whispery voice anywhere.
“Who is that?” If Michael was rattled by the whispery voice coming from Melody’s mouth, he didn’t show it. Slowly, her narrow face turned toward me. “Ask Katherine. She knows.”
I stepped forward, my fright turned to anger. “Say your name, you coward,” I demanded. “You never have before. In all the years I’ve known you, I never really knew who you were.”
“It was not necessary for you to know.” Melody’s head turned blindly until she was facing Michael again. “You are the future of the race, Michael—the culmination of centuries—that which was foretold,” she said in that same, dry, horribly familiar voice. “Come to me peacefully and Katherine will have an easy death. If you force me to seek you out, the method of her death will be both painful and slow.”
“You bastard,” I said, my voice grating low with hate. “If you come for me you’d better come prepared. Or have you forgotten how many blood-suckers I killed on your orders? You’ll just be one more notch on my belt.”
The girl’s head turned towards me again and her mouth opened to emit a high, whispery laugh. I felt my stomach clench like a slick fist and then I leaned over the sink and lost every drop of the black coffee I’d had at Mrs. Lebowitz’s.
“Hey, hey…are you all right?” Michael was right behind me, holding my hair out of my face and putting a cool, soothing hand on the back of my neck. I shook him off.
“Fine. I’m fine.” I ran some water in the sink and rinsed out my mouth. While I was at it, I rinsed off my palm as well which was still faintly stained with the remains of the silver nitrate.
I could feel my cheeks getting hot. I hate to puke almost as much as I hate to cry. Especially in front of an audience
.
I splashed some cool water on my face and straightened up. Melody was still standing there but her pale eyes were mercifully vacant now. I didn’t know if she’d been trained to parrot The Monsignor exactly or if he had actually been speaking through her somehow. I just hoped the show was over.
“What, uh, what was that all about—calling me the future of the race? Does that mean the vampire race?”
“I don’t know but I have a feeling we need to find out,” I said. “But right now we have to get out of here. We don’t know who he might send next or what they might do.”
“But look at her.” He gestured helplessly. “We can’t just leave her here.”
“So tell her to go home and forget all about it,” I snapped. “But get rid of her. Every minute we’re here is another minute he knows exactly where we are. We have to go!”
“Fine.” He leaned over Melody again. “Melody,” he said, in that deep tone of command, “I want you to go home and forget this ever happened. And if anyone else ever approaches you and tries to give you a suggestion like the one that brought you to my house, I want you to fight it. Do you understand?”
Slowly, she nodded.
“Good.” Michael opened the back door that led from his kitchen into his back yard and shooed her out. She walked with a stiff, almost robotic gait that reminded me of one of the walking dead in a zombie movie.
The minute she was clear of the door, I reached forward and slammed it shut. “Come on, let’s go!”
“But the window…” He gestured at the broken glass pane and the half-opened window Melody had crawled through. “I need to get a piece of plywood and—”
“And stay here boarding up your house until they find you and drag your ass out of it?” I finished for him. “I don’t think so, Michael. There’s no time.” I picked up the Glock and grabbed his hand, making sure I wasn’t touching him with my silver nitrate stained palm. I let him get his bag and I took my suit and then we left, barely taking time to slam the door behind us.
Our only chance was to put some serious miles between us and the vamps before nightfall.
Chapter Twelve
“Why don’t you pull over and let me drive awhile?”
Michael’s voice pulled me back from the brink of a dream and my head jerked suddenly, the way it does when you’re almost asleep and something wakes you up.
“’Mm fine,” I mumbled, trying to concentrate on the twin strips of asphalt and the wavy yellow line between them.
It was past noon and we were still in Florida which is a hell of a long state to drive through, especially when you’re trying to get out of it. I’d stopped once about an hour before to get more black coffee and a pack of crackers to eat.
Michael had denied being hungry but he had bought several large bottles of water and systematically drank all of them, a fact which made me really nervous. I didn’t think it was water he was really thirsty for, but he wasn’t ready to admit it yet.
“Come on, Kate, you’re falling asleep at the wheel,” Michael said.
“You’ve been up as long as I have,” I pointed out. “How come you’re so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?”
He shrugged. “I’m used to it. Interns routinely work twenty-four to thirty-six hour shifts. When you came in to be stitched up, I’d only been there four or five hours. So this is nothing for me.”
I frowned. “You told me your shift was almost over.”
He grinned charmingly.
“I told a little white lie. I was going to take a lunch early and hope you’d meet me at Mannie’s. Can you blame me?”
I looked back at the road. “I don’t know. Depends.” My eyelids really wanted to close which made it hard to concentrate on the conversation.
“Depends on what? Kate? Kate!” Michael’s voice woke me again just as the Charger was drifting into the other lane. Adrenaline coursed through my sludgy nervous system and I grabbed at the wheel and jerked the car back on course.
“Sorry,” I muttered but Michael wasn’t having it.
“That’s it—pull over.” His voice sounded both angry and frightened. “You’re going to get us both killed,” he said.
I gave him a level glare. “Nope, only one of us. You’re a vampire now, remember? You’re already dead. Or undead. Or whatever you want to call it.”
The stricken look on his face gave me instant guilt pangs. Maybe it wasn’t so nice to be telling someone they were dead. But damn it, I had never had to worry about being nice to the vampires before. You don’t spend a lot of time worrying about if you’re going to hurt someone’s feelings when your main object in life is to blow them away.
“Sorry,” I mumbled again. “I…didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“Yes, you did.” Michael was facing front again, not looking at me.
“Look, the point is, you’re damn near invulnerable. A trip through the windshield wouldn’t hurt you a bit so you can shut up about my driving. All right?” Feeling guilty always makes me angry—maybe because anger is an easier emotion to deal with than guilt or fear or love.
Consequently I spend a lot of my time pretty pissed off.
“It’s not your driving that’s the problem.” Michael turned back to look at me. “It’s the fact that you’re falling asleep at the wheel. And I don’t care if a wreck wouldn’t hurt me—it would hurt you and that matters to me. Matters a lot.” He was staring at me, those gold-flecked green eyes filled with an intensity I didn’t want to see. “Kate,” he said softly, reaching over to put his hand on my knee. “Why don’t you just let me drive a while so you can sleep?”
I tried to laugh. “Are you kidding? Do you even know what kind of car this is?” I gestured at the interior of the Charger, trying to ignore the heat of his hand on the bare skin of my knee. “It’s an eighty-seven Shelby Charger. It has a multi-point EFI turbo power plant engine and it’ll go from zero to sixty in five point six seconds. It’ll do one hundred twenty-four mph on a straightaway and there were only five hundred and sixty-six of them made.” I patted the dash lovingly. “This is my baby. My Uncle Harry left it to me. Nobody drives it but me.”
Michael took his hand off my knee.
“Why don’t we talk about what this is really about, Kate? And it’s not the fact that you don’t want me to drive your ‘baby.’”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, keeping my eyes straight forward and trying to concentrate on the road.
“Yes, you do. This is about the fact that you don’t trust me. You don’t want to take your eyes off me for one second because you’re afraid I’ll go for your throat.”
“Can you blame me?” I flared, throwing his own words back at him. “I’ve been killing your kind since I was sixteen and I’ve seen what you’re capable of. You expect me to throw ten years of life experience out the window and trust you because you ask me to?”
“I trusted you,” he said quietly. “You told me we had to get out of town and I went with you, even though it might mean sacrificing my future. A lot of guys would have thought you were crazy.”
“A lot of guys haven’t seen what you’ve seen,” I pointed out. “Or lifted a dumpster over their heads. Or grown fangs.”
“Fine—my teeth are a little pointy and I seem to be stronger than I was.” He shrugged. “So what? I’m willing to bet that if I did a little research I’d find some way to explain it. I probably have some kind of rare syndrome—something that makes me sensitive to silver and—”
“Stop trying to pretend this isn’t happening!” I pounded the steering wheel with my closed fist and shot him an angry glare. “Stop acting like you haven’t changed—you have! You’re a vampire now and there’s no going back and if I don’t trust you it’s because I have a goddamn good reason not to!”
“Which is?” His voice was icy cold at this point. Great, he was one of those guys that gets really calm in an argument instead of getting mad. I hate that.
“Which is because sooner or
later you’re going to want blood,” I nearly shouted. “And I’m the closest source. Think about it, Michael—are you hungry at all?”
He shook his head reluctantly.
“No, but if I get hungry, I’ll eat—food, not blood. Okay?”
I gave him another sidelong glare.
“Right. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“You know what your problem is?” he demanded, pointing a finger at me. “You’re prejudiced.”
“I’m what?” It almost made me laugh.
“Prejudiced. You’re prejudiced against vampires.”
“Look, Michael,” I said, gripping the wheel, “This is not a matter of race or social class or sexual orientation—it’s a matter of life and death. This is not the same as me saying, ‘Oh, you’re gay and I hate all gay people, therefore I hate you.’ This is me saying, ‘You might kill me if I give you the chance so I’m not going to give you that chance.’ Do you see what I mean?”
“Kate…” His deep voice was quiet suddenly, almost despairing. It made me look at him, despite the fact that I wanted to keep my eyes on the road and stay angry. He leaned towards me and put a hand on my knee again. “Kate, how can I make you believe that I’m not going to hurt you? How can I get you to trust me?”
I sighed in exasperation.
“I don’t know, Michael. Every instinct I have says I should keep you at arms length. Every experience I’ve had with your kind has been negative—hell, nearly fatal on several occasions.” I wanted to move his hand from my knee but I didn’t. I kept both hands on the wheel.
“But you said yourself that I’m something new. That you’ve never seen a vampire like me before,” he pointed out. “Maybe I’m the only one—an improvement on the original.”
Or maybe you’re the same old thing with a fresh coat of pain slapped on, I thought but didn’t say. See? I can be tactful sometimes.