Chapter Thirteen
Damien
Cree calls.
"Damien, you can't go."
"I have to. I have to tell them."
"You'll kill yourself. He knows."
"What?"
"It was my fault. I can't keep a secret; you know I can't. Can you get out of there?"
"He can't hurt me, Cree."
"He's got a wand now. He can. How close are you?" She's breathless. Slightly hysterical.
"It doesn't matter. I have to warn them."
"You can't!"
"They'll be helpless if he comes. When he comes."
"Just come home. We can forget it ever happened."
"I can't."
"Softhearted." She spits the word.
"And proud of it."
"God, Damien-"
"It's okay."
She sighs. "Be careful."
"I have a wand, too. He'll be weak, anyway."
"Isabel's with him."
"She's a sorry excuse for a magician. I'll be home by four."
Rain beats the windshield. Cree's silent, just her breath whistling through the speaker. I can hear the catch to each inhale.
"I love you," she says eventually.
"I love you too, baby."
"Say it like you mean it."
I hesitate. "This isn't a good idea."
Pause.
She says, "I have to go."
"Cree, no. Don't-"
"I believe that's called rejection." She laughs bitterly. "I'm not that dumb."
"You're not dumb at all."
"Dumb enough to fall for you."
I don't say anything.
"Don't die," she says.
"I won't. Look-"
"I don't want to hear it."
"I do love you."
There's a second of quiet, and then another shaky laugh. "I know. That's the problem."
And she hangs up.
Lucrezia
I've been in love with Damien Remend since the day I met him.
I'm not the type of woman to do that. Fall in love, I mean, let alone at first sight. I'm sensible. Ask anyone. Until I was Turned, I ran a management consulting business in east London. I shed boyfriends like tissue paper, and didn't cry a tear for any one of them. My smile was tight, and the ship I ran was tighter.
Then the vampire broke down my door.
Damien told me later that it was a fluke. He'd been a young loner, and starving. Ended up in the ritzier part of London, without any easy homeless targets. I'd stayed late to work, and he'd seen the light in our first-floor office.
I was made of pain.
Spinning in it. I would have died if it hadn't been for Damien. He was hunting, and following the smell of blood. When he saw the loner savaging me, he pulled him off of me and threw him in the street.
He tried to save me, but it was too late. So he Turned me instead. To keep me alive.
I don't remember much about that day. Just fragments. The pain. The papers on my desk spilling to the floor. Blood coloring the loner's fangs. The line Damien's body made, crouched over mine.
No other vampire would have saved me the way he did. Anyone else would have passed me off as just another Normal, lost to a bloodsucker's insatiable thirst. But Damien-
We throw the word soft-hearted at him like an insult, but it's not.
My sense vanished with my mortality.
I love him.
I love him more than any of my dispensable boyfriends. I love him more than anyone I've ever known.
And he's driving straight into danger. He's the weaker army converging on the battlefield. He's risking his life to save the Snow brat and the boy who loves him.
Simon
The woman stood for a while throwing curses at us, but when Baz put his hands under my shirt, she finally left with her husband. Now it's just Baz and me in the empty parking lot, and the rain's coming down so hard that the Aero bar in my pocket's melting.
"This'd better be worth it," says Baz.
We've moved apart, and he's begun to sneer again. The tip of his wand shows under his sleeve.
"It will be," I say, though I'm having doubts myself.
"He said the other one-the female-she isn't coming with him?"
"Yeah."
Baz exhales. "That's good, anyway. One is better than two. I'd prefer she came, but we've got to take what we can."
"She's worse than he is," I remind him.
"He didn't have a reason to take you to Nicodemus."
"Maybe he's just nice."
"Vampires aren't nice."
"You sure aren't," I say bitterly.
"The difference is, I don't pretend to be."
We stand in silence for a moment. Baz is sulking. I'm fuming. When an appropriate amount of time has passed, Baz starts pacing again.
"Will you stop that?" I growl at him.
He does, but I don't think it's because of me. He leans towards the entrance to the parking lot, mouth open, hair black with rain. His fangs are popping. It's an admittedly sexy pose, but I don't think that has anything to do with me, either.
"You hear him?"
Baz nods. "Coming. Fast." His voice is a little slurred from the fangs.
"Good. He's already late."
I go to stand beside Baz, and he puts his hand on my shoulder. A wordless apology.
"Okay," I tell him.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
A black Chevy truck pulls into the parking lot, sluicing water. Damien's hunched silhouette is visible in the driver's side window. By the time the truck's in park, he's already leaping out, wand in hand.
"We need to get out of here," he says.
"You were late," Baz snaps.
Damien glances at him, then at me. "Get your psycho boyfriend in the truck."
"You said he was nice, Snow." Baz spits on the ground.
"You're trying my patience. We don't have time. Nicodemus is coming, and he's got a wand."
Baz coughs. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
"I'm not. Get in the truck. Both of you. Now."
But it's already too late. There's a red car, lowslung, fat-tired, riding the white lines into the parking lot, and Nicodemus is sitting in the front seat.
Baz
Well, fuck me.
Nicodemus comes leaping out of this really slick Cadillac, and he's got another vampire mage behind him, and they're both coming for me with their wands out, shouting spells. For a moment there's everything, everything, and Snow screaming, and the feel of his magic bursting out, and then there's a bolt of pain and nothing all at once and a great long high-pitched humming note and I can't see Snow anymore, and the whole wide world is made of not.
