A rabid leaped atop a car hood, hissing. Jackal snarled and brought his weapon down with a vicious crunch, crushing metal and the rabid’s spine equally. “Starting to feel like a rat in a maze, here,” he said, glaring at the mob closing in around us. “If anyone has an idea beyond ‘run in circles and kill everything that fucks with us,’ I’d love to hear it.”
Zeke dodged a rabid that leaped at him, and swung his blade into another’s neck, severing it neatly. His backswing hammered into the first rabid as it lunged at him again, slamming it into a wall. “Where are we?” he growled, casting a quick look at a street sign on the corner. A rabid tried charging at him while he was distracted, but met a katana instead as I ripped my blade through its middle and cut it in half. “Centre Dyke and Sandpoint,” Zeke muttered, and took a step back. “Okay, I know where we can go. Everyone, follow me!”
He took off down another side street, the rest of us close behind, cutting down rabids that got too close or blocked our path. Zeke and Jackal led the way, the machete and fire ax working in tandem, slicing through bodies or bashing them aside. Kanin hung back with me and covered our escape, his thin, bright dagger lethally accurate as it flashed through the air.
The streets opened up, and right ahead of us, a small stone building sat within a wrought-iron fence at the end of a small grassy lot. As we fought our way toward the gate, headstones became visible through the neatly cut grass, crosses and angels rising into the air, and Jackal gave a snarl of disgust.
“Oh, sure! Of course it would be a damn church. What else was I expecting?”
Zeke, slicing his way through two more rabids that came at us, didn’t slow down. “If you’re worried about bursting into flames if you cross the threshold, feel free to stay outside,” he said without looking at Jackal, who snorted and rammed the hilt of his ax into a rabid’s face, flinging it back.
“Hey, not to rain on your little parade, but I think you’ve forgotten something.” He swung his weapon in a vicious arc, striking an attacker down with bone-crunching force before turning on Zeke. “ You’re a demon now, puppy, same as the rest of us. I wouldn’t be so smug—you’re just as likely to get the lightning bolt when you step through those doors.”
“Then I’ll know where I stand,” Zeke muttered, and hit the cemetery gates, pushing them back with a creak. The rabids followed us across the lawn, between headstones and angel statues, scrabbling over the graves to get to us. We fought our way up the steps of the small church, toward the heavy wooden doors at the top. With the church at our back, the monsters were forced into a bottleneck as they pressed up the stairs, making it easier to deal with them. But there were still a lot of the bastards, and they were stupidly persistent. While Kanin, Jackal and I blocked the stairs, Zeke turned to open the doors. They rattled when he tried the handle, but didn’t budge.
“Locked,” he growled. “Someone’s already sealed the way in.” He bashed his shoulder into the doors, putting his considerable vampire strength behind the blows. The heavy doors shuddered violently, but didn’t move. “Dammit! It’s blocked off. Something is on the other side. I can’t move it.”
The rabids shrieked and pressed forward, as if sensing blood and knowing we were trapped. Kanin stabbed one through the eye and drew back a step, sheathing his blade. “Hold them off,” he ordered, and whirled around, joining Zeke at the entrance. Jackal snarled a curse and slid toward me, closing the gap. The rabids hissed and clawed at us, surging forward, and we desperately fended them off.
“You know,” Jackal said, kicking a rabid in the face, sending it reeling, “it seems that whenever I’m with you, I’m constantly fighting my way into places I really don’t want to be. The sewers, the Prince’s tower, a bloody freaking church.” A rabid clawed at him from the side of the stairs, and he slammed its head into the railing. “If I ever need a favor, sister, I hope you’ll remember this shit. All these life-threatening situations? Not really my thing. I should’ve cleared out a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you, then?” I snapped back, dodging a rabid’s claws to my face. “No one was stopping you. You could’ve left anytime, just like that time in New Covington. Or are you waiting until you find the cure to jump ship?”
He snarled, whirled around, and smashed the rabid leaping at me to the concrete. “You are so bloody frustrating!” he roared, back fisting another rabid with the axhead. “Do you really think the cure is worth this? You think I’d be here now if that’s all I wanted?” He turned and sliced his weapon through the air, beheading one rabid and sinking it into another. “Get your damn head out of your ass, sister!” he seethed. “And give me a little fucking credit. That’s not why I’m here.”
A hollow boom interrupted anything I was going to say. Kanin and Zeke both hit the doors at the same time, and the added strength of a Master vampire shattered whatever was on the other side. The doors flew open with a crash, the sound of rubble scattering across the floor.
“Go,” Jackal spat at me, and we swiftly backed toward the doors, where Zeke and Kanin stood just inside, ready to slam them shut. I crossed the threshold, and Jackal turned, flinging himself through the opening, his ax thudding against the floor as he rolled.
Screeching, the rabids surged forward. Zeke, Kanin and I slammed the doors, and the blows of the mob vibrated through the wood. But the wood was thick and reinforced with iron bands that could weather the relentless assault. Leaping forward, Jackal grabbed a snapped beam from the floor and shoved it between the handles, barring the doors shut. They rattled, shaking violently, but held.
Backing away, I looked around the room. Wooden pews filled the interior, some overturned or broken, but most intact. The windows were high and narrow, and had metal frames that once held stained glass, broken now, but too small for rabids to squeeze through. From the smell of death and the few rabid corpses littering the floor, it looked like people had tried to hole up here, just as we were doing, but hadn’t succeeded. Either someone inside had been bitten and Turned, or the rabids had gotten in another way. Dried blood streaked the walls, benches were in pieces, and bloody bones were scattered here and there. Several pews had been piled in the corner in what looked like a makeshift barricade, but in the end, it hadn’t helped.
“Well,” Jackal muttered, dusting off his hands, “here we are. In a church. Vampires taking refuge in a church—that’s gotta be the most ironic thing of the decade. Puppy, you’d better tell me this place has a back door.”
Zeke had started across the room but suddenly paused near the front, his gaze falling to an overturned pulpit. Bending down, he picked up a book from the wreckage, a small black book with a gold ribbon dangling between pages. The corner was soaked red, and he closed his eyes.
Behind us, the door boomed, making me jump. “That won’t hold them for long,” I said. My gaze fell on a pew lying a few feet away, and I started toward it. “Zeke, help me move this! We have to brace the door or they’ll break it down in a few minutes.”
Zeke blinked, then shook himself out of his trance. “No,” he said, stopping me. Gently placing the book on a pew, he turned, eyes hard. “We can’t hole up. There’s no time. This was just to give us an out, to slow them a bit. Follow me.”
He turned and jogged across the room, weaving around pews and rabid bodies, toward the makeshift barricade in the corner. Puzzled, I followed, Kanin close behind. Jackal snatched an oil lamp that had been lying, remarkably unbroken, on a pew, before trailing after us.
A massive blow echoed through the church, and the door bowed inward. Rabid faces peered through the crack, vicious and snarling, their claws and fangs starting to rip the wood to pieces. I hurried after Zeke, hoping he knew what he was talking about, that there was another way out of here.
Behind the barricade, Zeke ducked into a short hall and opened the door at the end, revealing a set of narrow, wooden steps, twisting up into darkness. “This way,” he urged, and disappeared through the door. I was right behind him, following the stairs as they s
piraled upward through a stone tower and ended at a wooden ceiling with a trapdoor. Zeke pushed it back, and we scrambled into a tiny open-air room. Above us, a large brass bell sat silent and dark, and through the curved stone windows, I could see all of Eden spread out below.
“There’s the power plant,” Zeke said, pointing to a scattering of lights beyond the city. A set of massive smokestacks rose skyward, looming over the buildings and billowing white clouds into the air. “The lab is right next to the—”
A crash from below warned us that we were out of time. “Quickly,” Kanin said, taking command, and leaped from the tower into the branches of the single huge tree sitting beside the church.
“Go, Allie,” Zeke urged, and I went, getting a running start before flinging myself off the edge of the tower. For a second, I could see the church directly below my feet, and a huge horde of rabids surrounding it, swarming through the door. Then branches filled my vision, and I grabbed at the first one I saw, clinging desperately as it swayed and gave an ominous groan, but didn’t snap.
Pulling myself up, I looked back for the rest of our party. Zeke was at the edge, preparing to jump, but Jackal hadn’t moved from the open trapdoor. He still held the oil lamp he’d picked up earlier, and as I watched, he raised it over his head and flung it through the opening. There was a faint crash, and Zeke whirled at the noise.
“Jackal, what are you doing? Come on!”
A hiss, and a tiny flame appeared between Jackal’s fingers. For just a moment, it flickered over his sharp features and the evil grin spreading across his face, right before he dropped it through the hole. There was a sputter, and a bright orange glow flared to life through the trapdoor.
The shrieks and screams coming from within suddenly took on an alarmed note. I looked down to see several rabids shoot out the building, clawing frantically at the rest of the horde to get free, before skittering off into the darkness. Smiling, Jackal kicked the trapdoor shut and sauntered up to join Zeke, who was glaring at him with unmistakable menace.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Hey, it got the rabids off our backs, didn’t it?” Jackal’s grin was insufferably smug as he stepped to the edge of the tower. “I would think you’d be grateful, puppy. Kill some rabids, burn down a church—I don’t see a downside here, do you?” And he leaped to the branches before Zeke could respond. Zeke snarled at him, fangs bared, but he jumped off the roof as well, landing beside me on the narrow limb.
“Come,” Kanin murmured when we had all converged in the tree. Below us, the rabids had all but fled, slipping back into the ravaged city, while smoke trickled out of the bell tower and the first tiny flames began to flicker through the windows. “We’ll take the rooftops as far as we can,” Kanin went on, nodding to the edge of an apartment building beyond the fence. From here, it would be quite the jump, but we could make it. “Hopefully we can circumvent the rabids and any other surprises Sarren has left us by avoiding the streets. Let’s go.”
He turned and walked gracefully down the narrow branch, as easily as he would the sidewalk. Jackal pushed himself off the trunk and started to follow, but Zeke paused, casting one final glance at the doomed church, a flicker of sorrow and guilt crossing his face. I reached out, gently brushing his arm, and he turned back with a pained smile.
“Sorry.” He drew back, turning away from the church, though his face was still dark. “Just…memories. I spent a lot of time in that building after we came here, praying for guidance, asking where I should go next. It’s also one of the few places where I got to see Caleb and Bethany and the others. They’d attend Sunday morning service, and sometimes their parents would invite me home, just for the afternoon. All the other days, I’d be so busy at the lab, working with the scientists, I didn’t see much of them at all.” He sighed, glancing back once more, watching the flames flicker through the tower windows. “Lots of memories there. It’s hard to see it all burn.”
“It’s just a building, Zeke. It can be rebuilt.”
“Yeah.” Zeke nodded and turned away. “You’re right. It’s just a building.” His voice grew stronger, more determined. “Eden can be rebuilt. We can start over. We just have to make sure there is a new beginning to look forward to.”
We came to the end of the branch, Kanin’s and Jackal’s dark silhouettes waiting for us on the nearby roof. Zeke went first, leaping into the air, farther than any human could hope to accomplish, landing easily on the other side. I gathered myself and followed, my coat flapping behind me, feeling a momentary thrill as my body propelled itself through open space and hit the edge with room to spare.
Kanin took the lead again, and we moved quietly over the rooftops of Eden, heading toward the huge billowing smokestacks in the distance. I walked next to Zeke, watching him from the corner of my eye. His expression was grim and determined, but composed. Given the state of his home and all the horrors he’d seen and been through, I thought that was pretty remarkable. I hoped it wasn’t just a stoic front, a serene mask like the one Kanin wore all the time, and in reality he was about to fall apart. His city, his home, was in shambles, and everything he knew had been turned on its head. I knew what that was like, all too well.
Walking closer, I gently brushed his arm. “You okay?” I murmured.
He nodded once. “Trying not to think about it,” he said. “About…them. About everyone. Mostly Caleb and Bethany, and how they used to sit next to me in church and tell me everything their goats did that week. And…I just failed spectacularly, didn’t I?” He gave a humorless chuckle and hung his head, running his fingers through his hair. “They’re the last ones, Allie,” he said, his voice pained as he raised his head. “They can’t be gone.”
It was hard to think anything could still be alive out here. It was foolish to hope, and to offer hope, when reality was dark and cruel and didn’t care about human attachments, or emotions, or what was right. I had dared to hope before, and it had nearly killed me. It went against everything Allie the Fringer believed; nothing lasted in the world, and the only way to survive was not to care, about anything.
But Allie the Fringer was dead. And Allison the vampire had a family now. A strange, undead, sometimes infuriating family, but she was no longer alone. She had lost the human boy she loved, only to find him again, back from the dead. And, somehow, though he’d sworn that he would rather die than become a vampire, he was still here, walking right beside her.
So…maybe it was okay to hope, to trust that things could work out. Maybe…maybe that was what had kept me human all this time, that faith that I could be more than a monster. When I lost that hope—that was when the monster won.
I shook myself. Epiphanies aside, I could not let myself be distracted. And I couldn’t let Zeke be distracted, either. If there was hope for a future, for all of us, we had to stop Sarren, before he destroyed all hope, forever.
“They’re tough,” I told Zeke. “Those little kids followed you all the way to Eden, through rabids and wild animals and the psycho raider king himself. If they’re alive, we’ll f ind them.”
“But Sarren comes first,” Zeke finished, nodding gravely. “I know.” Meeting my gaze, he offered a grim smile. “Don’t worry about me, Allison. I have my priorities straight. I know what we have to do.” He paused, then added in a very soft voice, “But you have to be ready to do the same.”
I frowned at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Hey, puppy.” Jackal’s voice echoed over the rooftops, interrupting us. He and Kanin stood at the edge of the roof, looking back at us. In the distance, wisps of smoke writhed into the air from a much closer power plant. Jackal’s eyes glowed yellow, and he crossed his arms with a smirk in Zeke’s direction. “When you’re done making goo-goo eyes at my sister, why don’t you step on over here and show us where we’re supposed to go?”
Zeke gave me an apologetic look and moved forward, joining Kanin and Jackal at the edge of the rooftops. I followed, peering down from our perch,
curious as to what lay below. Several yards from where we stood, the crowded apartments ended, and a chain-link fence separated the buildings from a large, flat field. Across the open lot, surrounded by another fence, the power plant glimmered like a metal castle, wreathed in billowing smoke. Smaller buildings surrounded it, long and white, and Zeke pointed to one on the very corner, engulfed in the shadow of the plant.
“There,” he said, his voice grim. “That’s the laboratory.”
Where Sarren will be, I added to myself, feeling a chill crawl up my spine. Waiting for us. I swallowed as the realization hit hard: this was it. We were going in to face the terrifying, brilliantly insane vampire who wanted to destroy the world. No telling what we would find when we went in, but it would probably be awful, dangerous and as horrifying as Sarren’s twisted brain would allow. I hope you’re ready, Allie. The last time you went down into his lair, one of you didn’t come out.
Kanin, standing motionless at the edge of the roof, observed the lab with impassive black eyes and nodded once. “Let’s be careful,” he said quietly, echoing my thoughts. “Sarren knows we’re here and that we’re very close. He has had time to prepare for our arrival. When we go into the lab, it is likely that he will attempt to whittle us down first, either with traps or living creatures. We must be prepared to face whatever horrors he is sure to throw at us. Sarren himself is at his most dangerous face-to-face, and his mood can shift in the blink of an eye. Even after decades of knowing him, learning his patterns and how his mind works, I still could not tell you exactly what he will do in a fight.”
“Well, I can answer that,” Jackal said breezily, and bared his fangs in a lethal grin. “He can die. Painfully. After I rip his other arm from the socket and shove it so far down his poetry-spouting piehole that he chokes on it. What I don’t understand is why we’re standing up here yapping away when we should be down there kicking in his door. So, come on, team.” Jackal’s gaze was mocking but dangerous. “Let’s go kill ourselves a psychopath.”