Walk Among Us, page 10
“Jade?” she whispered, still frozen with one foot off the landing.
There was the whimpering sound again, and then a woman’s croaked, muffled “C-Clea?”
At the sound of her voice, Clea dashed down the stairs, not caring for the sound she made, and flicked her phone’s flashlight on as she bounded headfirst into the darkness.
She stopped short at what she saw inside.
Her flashlight shone upon Ingrid, curled up on the floor, her hands bound in front of her, her face and the side of her head smeared with blood, a thin strip of cotton tied around her mouth. Her cable-knit sweater and leggings were filthy and caked with blood, her eyes wild and terrified.
Clea staggered forward mechanically, like a zombie. This didn’t make sense. None of this made sense.
Holding her phone aloft to light the way, she reached down and pulled off Ingrid’s gag. The woman immediately hissed, “Clea—you have to go. She’s a fucking murderer. I found—I found her last victim in this basement a few hours ago when I came down for a mop. She’s gotten rid of the evidence, but you have to believe me—”
Clea shook her head back and forth slowly. “No. Wait—”
“There’s no time,” Ingrid said, her voice cracking. “Just leave me here and get out before she comes back, or you’ll be next—”
“Before who comes back?”
Then a single light bulb flickered to life overhead and a voice from behind Clea said, “On the contrary—Clea has nothing to fear from me.”
Ingrid froze in terror, and Clea stiffened and flicked off the flashlight on her phone, stuffing it in her pocket. Then she turned, slowly, to see Jade standing in the corner, leaning casually against the wall. Her short, dark hair was perfectly in place, her jeans and flannel shirt pristine down to her spotless Chuck Taylor sneakers.
She was very much alive . . . in a manner of speaking. Her complexion, normally a rich olive, was ashen, her cheeks colorless.
And when she opened her mouth to grin, the tips of a sharp pair of fangs rested cheekily on her bottom lip.
Clea could only gape at her.
“You were magnificent, girl,” Jade said, a fervor in her eyes as she stepped forward and reached both hands out to grasp Clea’s. Jade’s skin was cold, so very cold, and Clea nearly flinched away at her touch. “God, I wish I could’ve been there to see the looks on those old Camarilla fucks’ faces when their fancy mansion lit up like the fucking sun.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand,” Clea stammered, pulling her hands away from Jade’s icy grip. “You’re— Are you—?”
“You’d say vampire, but we call ourselves Kindred,” said Jade. She looked down at Ingrid with loathing as she bent down to resecure the woman’s gag. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it? Well, there’s your truth. Too bad you won’t live long enough to tell it. Just like Brendan.”
Clea started. “Brendan is—?”
“What are you doing?” came Finn’s startled voice from the doorway, his wide eyes on Ingrid. He, too, had his fangs bared.
The bottom dropped out of Clea’s stomach.
Both of them— They’re—
Jade sneered, “Doing what has to be done. Your little girlfriend here has been sniffing around for answers since day one. She would’ve blown our cover wide open. Did I not tell you to get rid of her weeks ago?”
“She could be an asset to our cause,” said Finn through gritted teeth.
“Or a birthday gift for Clea,” Jade shot back. “Or did you think you’d be an only childe forever?”
The sight of Finn being admonished by a woman an entire foot shorter than he was startled Clea, but it wasn’t more shocking than the realization that Jade—her friend, a perfectly normal gamer girl who shared meals with her and offered her a place to sleep and always spoke her mind and who cared about her—was really the one in charge.
Shared meals. She’d seen Jade with food, but had she ever seen her eat it? Come to think of it, had she ever even seen Jade or Finn in the daylight?
Clea felt like the world had just been turned upside down.
“What’s going on?” Clea asked in a small voice, looking to Finn. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. If you’re—if you’re a— Was it all a lie?”
“No,” Finn said vehemently. “I’d never lie to you, Clea. It just—it wasn’t the whole truth.”
“All that stuff about being special and being so good at doing everything you asked me to do—was that the whole truth, too?” Clea demanded, tears springing to her eyes, because oh, that was the answer she feared most, the answer that would completely pull the rug out from under her feet.
She didn’t know what any of this was, but she needed to know that the things she’d done had been every bit as important as Finn had led her to believe. She needed that truth like she needed air.
“Of course that’s all true,” Jade said, gesturing around them. “You’re the most promising person we’ve met in this whole damn city. That’s the whole reason we’re throwing you this birthday party.”
“And you—” Clea turned to Jade. “Are we really friends? What about your—your—?” She gestured to Jade’s crutch, abandoned in the opposite corner of the room.
Jade cast a glance at it and sighed. “It wasn’t all a lie. I was chronically ill when I was mortal. I met my sire online like fifteen years ago. He wanted to fix me.” She looked down at her hands, clenched and unclenched her fists. “But I didn’t need to be fixed. My illness didn’t make me any less worthwhile, any less valuable as a human being. But that asshole offered me what no doctor ever could: a permanent end to the pain. So I let him turn me into his ghoul even though it sounded horrible to be a vampire’s servant, but . . . I was good at my job, and I liked it. I liked the power. I wanted more. So I let him Embrace me.”
She balled her fists and looked back to Clea, grinning, fangs flashing in the dim light. “And then I killed him.”
Clea stepped back, shaking her head, and looked again to Finn for answers.
“I never lied to you, Clea,” Finn said from the doorway, shifting. “We’re the good guys. We’re the Anarchs. They’re the Camarilla, the old order who’d throw us to the wolves without a second thought. There would be no us without them.”
“Oh, come off your high horse. Our friend Clea here doesn’t need convincing,” said Jade, who was looking at Clea very closely. “She doesn’t care. Does she? She did it all anyway, only knowing a fraction of the truth.”
Clea was at a loss for words. She hugged her parka tighter around herself and took a deep breath. Then another. In. Out. Inhale. Exhale. She couldn’t stop shaking. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Oh, yes. She did it all anyway.” Jade came up close to her and added very quietly, “And she’d do it again, wouldn’t she?”
When Clea finally opened her eyes, she saw Jade looking up at her from a few inches away, giving her a crooked smile, her dark eyes alight with mischief.
“Yeah,” Clea whispered. Then her voice gained strength. “I would.”
Jade stepped back from her and raised her voice back to its normal volume. “I know you would. That’s why you get to join our team—if you want. I won’t say the Embrace is painless or that you’ll even make it through. But you’re the perfect candidate.”
“To be—turned into—one of you?” Clea asked, blinking furiously.
“You got it.” Jade smiled. “And honestly, there’s not a better friend I’d want by my side for the rest of time, y’know. You thought I was in trouble and got in the car and drove two hours down here to make sure I was okay.” She shifted. “I mean, that was a lie. Obviously. But after Ingrid stumbled down here and saw something she shouldn’t have—and after what you did last night—I knew now was the time. I couldn’t wait a month for you to get back from break. But so you know, once you’ve turned, I’ll need to keep you down here until the bloodlust has worn off. That’s why I’ve provided your first meal, right here.”
Ingrid’s eyes went wide as saucers and Finn made a sound of protest, which Jade cut off with “End of discussion.”
“But I—but I get to choose?” Clea asked meekly. But then she swallowed, stood up straighter, staring at the dirty floor. “Right? I get to choose.”
“I mean, I guess,” Jade said with a shrug.
“Would I—would you kill me if I said no?” Clea jerked her chin nervously down at Ingrid. “Would I end up like her? And like—like Brendan?”
“Not necessarily,” Jade said. “Brendan was an accident. Ingrid was snooping. She made it quite clear she doesn’t approve of what we’ve been up to. But you—Clea, you’re our friend. You’ve proven yourself. And it’s always helpful to have humans on our side, to do . . . Well, the things you’ve been doing.”
“Ingrid would do those things, too,” Finn said desperately, “if you only let her—”
“The fuck I would,” Ingrid said through her gag, giving him a savage look. Finn wilted and looked away.
“Which is why you’re going to die,” Jade said and looked back to Clea. “But why wouldn’t you want this? It’s like what you’re doing now, only better because you’ll be immortal. Besides, this has been everything for you, right? Your whole thing. Your whole purpose. You’d still be sitting in your dorm room feeling sorry for yourself if not for Finn and me. We changed your life. We gave you that purpose. We made you.”
Clea thought on that for a long moment, then lifted her head and looked Jade dead in the eye. The other girl scowled and raised her eyebrows.
“No. You just gave me the tools,” Clea said at last, raising her chin. “I made myself.”
For a second, she thought Jade was going to lunge forward and rip her throat out, but before either could move, Finn piped up from the doorway, “She’s right, Jade.”
“So she is. But she does still have a choice to make,” Jade mused, her lips curling up slowly into a smile as she spread her arms wide. “So what’ll it be, Clea?”
Chapter Nine
One Month Later
Tonight was the night.
She almost hadn’t gone through with it, had almost told Jade to call it off. But then, when she went back to her dorm to start tailing that night’s victims, she ducked into the supply closet and overheard their entire conversation as they walked down the hallway to the elevator on their way to the bars.
“So you haven’t seen your roommate since winter break?” Delaney said.
“No, but I know she’s been coming back,” said Hannah. “She’s been taking and leaving stuff, but I haven’t seen her.”
“Maybe she really did find a boyfriend.”
“Or girlfriend.”
“Ha. Fat chance she landed either. You wouldn’t date her, would you?”
Clea could hear the reproach in Hannah’s voice. “Being bi doesn’t mean I try to date everyone I meet.”
Delaney laughed that horrible laugh of hers. “I mean, keep telling yourself that. . . .”
“How am I even friends with you again?” This time Hannah’s disdain was palpable.
“Your own good fortune, Han,” Delaney drawled. “If you’re really lucky, you won’t see her for the rest of the semester. Just a couple more months and you and I will be roommates. It’s gonna rock.”
There was a ding to signal that the elevator was on their floor, and Clea put her hand on the doorknob of the supply closet and leaned in, ready to spring toward the stairs and follow them once the elevator took them down.
“Yeah, as long as you don’t leave nasty, dripping burritos on my pillow when I piss you off.” There was a hint of warning in Hannah’s voice and maybe even a little bit of regret.
“She deserved it,” was the last thing Clea heard Delaney say, loudly, as the elevator doors closed. “Maybe she’s dead. RIP, Cleopatra. And good riddance.”
The last of Clea’s doubts dissipated as she headed down the stairs. She caught sight of the two of them leaving through the dorm’s front doors and waited about thirty seconds before following. She figured she’d be unrecognizable to them even if they did turn around; her hair was stuffed under her hat, her scarf covering the bottom half of her face, and more importantly, she’d traded her baggy jeans and sneakers for a pair of black skinny jeans and ankle-high Doc Martens and her parka for a black anorak.
She was just another college kid.
She was invisible.
The frigid January wind whipped against her cheeks, and Clea put her chin down deeper into her scarf to brace herself against the cold, and pulled her hat down lower over her face, but not so low that she couldn’t still see her quarry. A block ahead of her, Hannah and Delaney finally picked a bar and disappeared inside.
Clea stopped, smiled, pulled out her phone, and sent a text with the name of the bar and a description of the two: a pretty redhead with short hair, wearing a tunic-length sweater, leggings, and riding boots, and her shorter, spray-tanned friend whose bosom strained against a tight dress, strutting confidently in stiletto boots, her hair long and straight, dark roots stark against platinum blond.
Then she made her way silently to the end of the dark alley where she’d been told to wait. She stuffed her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat and shivered—not with fear, not with anxiety, but with anticipation.
Less than an hour later, Jade appeared, arm in arm with Hannah, who was giggling drunkenly and stumbling.
“My car is back here, parked on a side street,” Jade said, half supporting the redhead. “We can cut through here.”
“Okay,” Hannah said, but as soon as they stepped into the shadows of the alleyway and were far enough from the street not to be seen, Jade made short work of her. The girl didn’t even cry out as Jade’s fangs pierced her neck, and within moments she had passed out.
Clea looked on silently from the darkness. Jade hadn’t acknowledged her yet, but she drank her fill and left Hannah’s body slumped against the cold brick wall of the alley.
“Is she dead?” Clea asked quietly as Jade approached her.
“Nah. I like her,” said Jade, giving her a sidelong look. “Which I hope you’ll be cool with. The other one is technically my gift to you, since you wouldn’t take me up on my original offer. I think I want this one for myself.”
Clea had hung around long enough to know what Jade meant by that, and she shrugged. “As long as she doesn’t end up like Ingrid. She’s not a bad person. She’s just . . . well, a sheep.”
“A couple months ago I would’ve said that was the pot calling the kettle black.” Jade snorted, then crouched down and cupped Hannah’s chin. “Trust me. I have my ways of keeping her quiet.”
Clea could see why. Jade had a strange gravity that had drawn Clea to her even when she was posing as a college kid; now, with her mask of humanity completely off, she was even more charismatic than before. Clea was fairly convinced that Jade had the ability to make anyone do anything she wanted. It didn’t hurt that she was dressed to the nines in dark-wash boyfriend jeans, Chuck Taylors, and a crisp flannel button-up. Her short, dark hair was styled artfully beneath an olive-green beanie.
“That sure is a look,” Clea observed.
“I could say the same about you,” Jade said with a grin, nodding at her outfit.
Then they heard Finn’s voice coming toward them from the sidewalk, and Jade and Clea looked at each other and grinned before ducking deeper into the shadows.
“You didn’t bring a jacket?” Finn was saying to someone.
“Didn’t want to carry it around,” Delaney replied. “I’m used to it. We do this almost every night. Usually I can find a guy to loan me one.”
“Ah. Well, if I’d worn a coat, I’d lend it to you. I don’t get cold too easily.”
“Yeah, I bet you’re used to this. It must be much colder in Switzerland.”
“Sweden.”
“Whatever.” Delaney shivered. “How much farther?”
“Not very far now—like I said, it’s right off campus. We can cut through here since you’re so cold, though.” He stopped at the mouth of the alley and gestured her forward. “Ladies first.”
Delaney brushed past him without hesitation, but her steps faltered as the darkness spread around her. “Hey. You got a light on your phone or something, Andy?”
“It’s Anders,” Finn said with a sigh, having given her a fake name, “and no, I’m afraid I left my phone at home.”
“Ugh.” Delaney reached into her clutch and fumbled for her phone; at the same moment, she almost tripped over Hannah’s legs. “What the hell—?” Her voice took on a note of terror. “Han—Hannah?”
“Oh dear,” said Finn in his most sympathetic voice. “She doesn’t look well.”
Delaney’s voice rose an octave. “I’m calling the cops.”
But when she tried to walk past Finn, he blocked her way. She moved to the other side and he blocked her again effortlessly, causing her to step back and glare at him.
“I have pepper spray, freak,” she warned him, her hand still in her clutch as she stood over Hannah’s unconscious body as if to protect her friend from him. “You’d better not try anything, or I swear to God—”
“Didn’t your mother ever warn you not to follow strange men to parties?” he asked, his friendly smile contrasting his words. “Ah, she did, didn’t she? That’s why you have the pepper spray. That’s very smart. But maybe it would’ve been smarter to stay in and reconsider your life choices.”
Delaney’s jaw dropped, her hand frozen in her clutch. She stared at him like he had two heads but didn’t move a muscle.
He took a step toward her and put a hand to her cold cheek, still with that reassuring smile on his face. “You really are a stunning woman, Delaney.” His hand dropped from her face, and the smile dropped off his own.
“With beauty like yours,” he added frostily, “it’s a shame you’re such a bully.”
Delaney still hadn’t moved, except to curl her upper lip as she asked, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
