A Shade of Vampire 28: A Touch of Truth (7 page)

“
G
oodbye
, Victoria,” I found myself breathing as I watched her disappear into the sky. My new responsibilities would feel a lot heavier without her presence. My bed would feel a lot colder. I would no longer hear her laughter in the evenings, have her sweet kisses waking me in the mornings. Breathe in her scent as she followed me around during the day. I would be alone now… though, I reminded myself, I was not actually alone. I had Cecil, and a whole pack of wolves who were loyal to me and my family. It would be ungrateful to feel that I was alone. I couldn’t take what I had for granted when only a short while ago I had been without food or shelter, fleeing for not only my life, but my sanity.

Victoria had mentioned to me that her stay in my home had felt like a dream to her, and that was exactly the way it had felt to me too. A dream that had now faded. A dream that I couldn’t be sure would ever return.

I had been uncomfortable about Victoria coming to The Woodlands from the very start, as soon as she had proposed the idea. I had given in because… well, she had wanted it, and I had wanted it, too. I had been too selfish, too greedy for her, to hold my ground and insist that she stay in The Shade. Now her father had come to do what I should’ve done: lead her back to safety.

I tore my eyes away from the empty sky and turned around, heading slowly and heavily back to the castle.

As I reached the entrance, I reminded myself of the assurance I had given Victoria—that we would see each other again.
We will,
I told myself firmly.
Sooner or later, we will.
We had managed to reunite before against all odds. There was no reason why we couldn’t now, when the odds were far, far less…

We just had to be patient and wait. I felt a little more cheerful as I passed through the entrance hall. Victoria was certainly a woman I was willing to wait for.

I had tried to hide it, but those nights she had spent with me in my bed had been torture. More times than I would like to admit, I’d had to fight the urge to claim her as mine… completely. One of my weaknesses was my impulsiveness, the force of my emotions. It was truly a wonder to me that I had managed to control myself and allowed her to leave The Woodlands as she had come—with her virtue intact. In werewolf culture, it wasn’t tradition for men and women to share a bed until they had committed themselves to each other in marriage. But with Victoria being a human, her and my relationship had been anything but traditional until now.

“Bastien,” Cecil addressed me, spying me in the corridor. “Back so soon? Where is Victoria?”

“She is gone,” I said resolutely, “at least for now. Her father came to collect her.”

I attempted to turn my mind to other things now—specifically to the journey that lay ahead of me. We could leave sooner now that Victoria was gone.

Traveling would help me take my mind off of her… and hopefully make the days pass more quickly.

A
fter Orlando had agreed
to talk to his sister about escaping with me to The Shade, we left the roof and returned to the dry loft. Maura appeared to be sleeping by now; her chest heaved gently as she lay beneath her blankets on the mattress. Orlando and I took it in turns to use the bathroom in preparation for bed. He provided me with a pair of snowflake pajamas that were brand-new—still in their plastic packaging. I guessed that they had foraged for these in a store or something downtown. I changed into them and disposed of my old clothes in the trashcan.

There were only two mattresses in the loft, though they had an impressive stock of pillows and blankets in their cupboard. Orlando laid two blankets one on top of the other in a relatively empty corner of the loft. He gave me a third blanket to cover myself with, and a pillow.

I sank into the makeshift bed and turned on my side. I gazed at the tall, sickly Orlando on the opposite end of the room and experienced an uncanny wave of déjà vu as I thought of Lawrence.

Orlando stooped to his mattress and lay down. He turned his back on me, facing the ceiling. I watched through the dim lighting of the one gas lamp he had left on as his breathing grew slower and heavier.

Although my body was completely exhausted, and I needed as much rest as I could get, for the life of me, I couldn’t fall asleep. I stayed up, tossing and turning and worrying and speculating about the next day—what if Maura refused? Would Orlando stand up to her? Would I be left out on my own?—until eventually, as the morning hours drew in, I managed to nod off for a couple of hours.

I was woken up by a chilly breeze touching my face. I opened my eyes to a loft streaming with pale daylight. I heard the siblings’ voices, faint. They weren’t in the loft. They were up on the roof. As I rubbed my eyes, coming to consciousness, I caught onto more of their conversation. They had already started discussing the issue. My stomach clenched. It didn’t sound like it was going well so far.

Pushing aside my blanket, I crawled directly beneath the skylight and stood up, hoping to glean more of their conversation from this position. I didn’t want them to think that I had woken up yet.

“We’ve worked so hard to get what we have,” Maura was saying, her voice unsteady. “Why can’t we just be happy with what we’ve built?”

“Happy?” Orlando spat back. “We’re not happy, Maura. You’ve forgotten what happiness is.”

“Happiness is peace,” she replied pleadingly. “We have peace here. We’ve figured out how to get by. We have enough food to last us. We have a warm, dry shelter. We—”

“Like I said,” Orlando steamrolled over her, “you’ve forgotten what happiness is.”

There was a pause, as perhaps Maura was at a loss for words. I heard her blow out in exasperation. “Well, maybe I have, Orlando. Maybe I have!” At this point, it seemed that she had forgotten about me supposedly sleeping down here. Her voice rose to an almost desperate pitch. “But I’m not willing to risk what we have for something so… unreachable. You know what could happen if we got caught—”

“Yes, I know,” Orlando growled. “But I would rather die fighting for something better than spend our final days in here, in ‘peace’… rotting. We’ll have enough time in our graves for that.”

I was taken aback by the fire in his voice. When talking to him last night, he had appeared completely pessimistic, even right up until the end of our conversation. Maybe I had managed to spark something in him after all, more than I’d thought I had.

Maura didn’t respond for a couple of minutes. I heard the sound of footsteps above me, pacing up and down.

“And all this… because of
her
?” Her tone was disbelieving now. “How can you even trust her? She’s a total stranger. Even if we agreed to go along with her and help her find a phone, she could just be using us. She could abandon us the minute she manages to make contact with her family.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Orlando retorted so quickly and firmly, even I was taken aback.

“How can you say something like that?” Maura spluttered.

“I just… I just know, okay?” he shot back. “I can see through people. I know when someone’s BSing me. I believe that she is from where she says she’s from, and I believe that she will take us in, if we help her…” He drew in a deep breath. “Maura. Please. Let’s at least
try
to live again.”

Another pause. When Maura finally spoke again, this time, her voice was lower, deeper. “If I said no, would you leave with her, without me?” As she asked the question, she sounded like a child again, the way she had last night, when she had seemed afraid of being left alone. Clearly, the girl had abandonment issues.

Orlando groaned in irritation. “No, Maura! What makes you even ask that? Of course not. Of course I would not abandon you. That’s why I’m busting my balls trying to convince you that we should do this. If we refuse, she might wander off by herself and then…”

His voice trailed off.

“And then
what
?” Maura asked.

“We’ll never know what could have been,” Orlando finished.

I waited with bated breath for Maura to respond.

“Okay,” she said, eventually, in a voice so soft I barely heard it. “If this is what you want… then okay.”

“I know we’d regret it if we didn’t,” Orlando said, sounding relieved.

“When would we leave?” Maura asked, tentative.

“I don’t know. We need to talk to her.”

As I heard them begin to make their way back to the skylight, I left the ladder and hurried back into bed. It would’ve been awkward if they’d thought I had just listened to the whole conversation. I quickly pulled the blanket over me and turned my back on them just before they climbed down the ladder and returned to the loft.

I sensed their gazes fall on me and slowly, I stretched out, allowing them to see me awake. Orlando was the first to catch my eye. Based on his expression, he seemed to already suspect that I had overheard everything.

Maura turned away and headed into the bathroom, leaving her brother and me alone.

“She agreed,” he said, “in case you didn’t hear.” What I had sensed in Orlando’s voice just now when he’d been talking to his sister up on the roof—life, a spark of passion—I now saw in his eyes as he continued: “If we’re going to attempt this, then we should do it sooner rather than later. We ought to leave as soon as possible, right?”

“Right,” I said. I nodded firmly, even as a chill ran down my spine.

W
e began preparing to leave
. Not knowing where everything was in their loft, I felt rather useless as I sat in one corner, watching while the two siblings went about pulling items from shelves and rummaging through their possessions. They gathered together three generously sized backpacks and started filling them up with food and water, followed by some clothes. They packed only one set of clothes for each of us, along with some waterproof overalls. I put on the warmest items from my outfit now, anticipating stepping outside. Next came the weapons: knives, guns and ammunition. These took up most of the backpacks’ space.

“Oh, and matches,” I said, “We need matches, or lighters—or both. Bring as many of those as you have.”

Orlando grunted an agreement before heading to the chest of drawers and emptying it of about ten lighters and six boxes of matches. I only needed a single spark to brew up a fire, so what he had should be more than enough.

“Make sure you put the matches in a waterproof container,” Maura said. She moved to the other side of the room and brought back three sturdy plastic boxes. “Put anything else that’s water-sensitive in there too,” she advised her brother. “Chances are we’ll get soaked at some point.”

Once the bags had been filled up, Orlando handed one to me. The siblings strapped their belts around their waists.

“We don’t have a spare one of these,” Orlando explained, gesturing to his belt, “so you’ll just have to borrow mine. Like we did before.”

I nodded, feeling queasy at the thought of having to zipline again.

“Now, we’re almost done,” Orlando muttered. “We need a map.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a map of Chicago. He planted it down on the table and spread it out. Maura and I peered over his shoulder. His finger traced from our current location to Lake Michigan. “The fence is supposed to run all the way along here,” he said, continuing to glide his finger. “And there are posts, manned by IBSI members.”

“Who are armed,” Maura added, as if that would not have been obvious to me.

I sucked in a breath.
Okay…
Each of us stared at the map a few moments longer before Orlando folded it up and stuffed it into one of the waterproof boxes, where it would stay safe and dry. Then he picked up the blade-wheel and its remote.

“That’s like… recharged and everything?” I asked, eyeing it nervously.

Orlando smirked darkly. “Yes.”

I didn’t know how that thing ran, whether on batteries or something else. “Where did you get that thing from?” I asked.

“I built it,” Orlando replied.

“Seriously?”

He nodded, making his way with his sister toward the trap door. “Our father was an engineer, once upon a time. I learned some stuff from him and managed to scrounge the components for it from a mixture of places—derelict stores and such…”

He bent down to lift open the trap door and extended the ladder to the ground. He climbed down first, followed by Maura and then me.

“Oh, wait,” Maura said, as Orlando’s feet touched the floor. “We’re idiots.”

“What?” I asked, anxious.

“Oh, yeah,” Orlando said, apparently reading his sister’s thoughts. “We forgot the helmets.”

“Helmets?”

“Those gas mask things we were wearing,” Orlando explained. “We have four of them, actually—we keep them in the largest cabinet, on top of the pile of clothes. Can you grab them?” he requested of me, since I was closest to the loft.

“Yeah.” I climbed back up and found them quickly. “So what do we need these for, exactly?” I asked, climbing down the ladder and arriving next to the siblings.

“We use them like helmets,” Orlando said. I handed one to each of them. They placed them over their heads, concealing their faces, while I pulled on mine. “They extend low enough to protect our necks… I’m sure I don’t have to explain why that’s useful.”

Still keenly aware of the fang wounds in my leg, I nodded, gulping.

W
e headed
up the old stairwell toward the dreaded main roof of the building. I was already securing my heavy backpack around my shoulders, anticipating the glide. A spiteful wind whipped us as we strode out into the open. It was raining again—more heavily than when I had been outside with Orlando last night.

We did things in the same order as the day before. Maura was first to withdraw her hook, climb onto the ledge of the roof, and attach herself to the metal cable. She kicked off and swung gracefully, like the pro she was, to the neighboring skyscraper. Orlando followed her, threw me his belt once he reached the other side, and then it was my turn again.

I had done this enough times by now to know that it was better not to procrastinate. Before taking the leap this time, however, I focused my eyes on Orlando standing on the roof of the opposite building. I willed myself to remain fixed on him and not allow myself to glance down even for a moment as I launched myself off and went hurtling to the other side. I was still staring at Orlando’s face with fierce determination when he reached down for me and helped me climb up onto the roof.

“Okay?” he asked, a touch of amusement in his eyes.

“Yeah.”

We traveled across three streets in this manner before I spotted something in the sky, worryingly close. A helicopter. I could tell instantly from the build and shade of it that it was an IBSI helicopter. I had seen enough of them by now. It was the exact same type as the ones that had been sent to harass us in The Shade when we’d still had Lawrence in our midst.

“You see that, guys?” I asked the siblings nervously, pointing to it. They glanced up, then shrugged and proceeded to glide to the next building. I had no choice but to follow them once Orlando had chucked his belt my way. I held my tongue, refraining from mentioning the helicopter again until it turned in the sky and began heading our way.

“Guys,” I couldn’t help but say again. “Are you sure that helicopter isn’t something we should be worrying about?” I couldn’t help but feel that the IBSI wouldn’t just let me get away so easily after discovering that I had found out about the existence of FOEBA. But I did not want to let on to Maura and Orlando that I feared the hunters might be after me. It’d been difficult enough to get them to come with me on this mission in the first place. If they suspected that I was a prime target of the hunters, it would only increase their tensions—maybe not so much Orlando’s, but definitely Maura’s. I detected that even now she was coming only because her brother believed so strongly that they should. If it had been up to her, they wouldn’t have budged from their loft.

“I think we all ought to be more concerned about what’s on the ground than in the air,” Maura said irritably. “Let’s keep moving. We’ve got a lot more ground to cover.”

With that, she swung herself to the next building. Before Orlando could follow her, I caught his arm and pulled him back. “Orlando,” I said in a low voice. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

He turned on me. “What do you mean?”

“That’s an IBSI helicopter. The IBSI is bad news all around. Both for me and for you.”

“We’ve seen them around before and they haven’t bothered us. What, exactly, are you worried about?” he asked, narrowing his eyes on me. He’d already clearly suspected that I was holding something back from him.

“Well, I did tell you before that I escaped from them. I’m not entirely sure that they would send an actual search party out for me… but they might.”

Orlando swore beneath his breath. “This is the last thing we need.”

“I know,” I said, wincing. “But I think maybe we should try to stay a bit more inconspicuous. We’re so easy to spot on these roofs.”

“Maura isn’t going to like this,” he murmured before pushing himself off the ledge. By the time he’d thrown the belt back and I’d reached the other side, he had already broached the subject with his sister. Her expression was sour as she looked at me.

“You never mentioned that they might care about you enough to follow you,” she said sharply. “You just said that you escaped from them.”

“Well, I’m not necessarily saying that they do care that much. It’s just a guess,” I said, glancing once again up at the helicopter, which was drawing ever closer.

Quelling an argument before it could start, Orlando gripped his sister’s arm and then my own. He pulled us both toward the peeling shelter covering the door that led down to the inside of the skyscraper we were perched on.

The door did not open easily, though thankfully, it wasn’t locked. The three of us kicked against it and spilled inside, slamming the stiff door shut behind us.

“I really don’t like this,” Maura said, not making the slightest attempt to hide the discomfort in her tone. “This is not a good start to things.”

“I agree that it’s not,” I said, gritting my teeth. “But I hope that I will be able to provide you both with a pretty good
end
to things.”

Orlando made the blade-wheel fly beneath, and in front of, us as we descended the staircase, deeper into the building. We reached the bottom of the first flight of stairs, and found ourselves in a hallway. “I’m pretty sure there are Bloodless in this building,” Orlando said. “So keep a sharp eye and ear.”

I reached into my backpack and pulled out a lighter, my thumb resting on the flint wheel, at the ready.

We traveled further along the corridor and then took to another staircase.

“So if we’re not going to take the quickest route over the roofs, which route will we take?” Maura asked her brother. At least she sounded resigned and less resentful this time.

“We’ll have to wind our way through the streets for a bit,” her brother replied, his eyes fixed firmly in front of us. “At least until the chopper has gone away.”

Somehow, I doubted there would only be one.

Let’s just hope that they do go away,
I prayed in my mind.
They need to think that I died in that river.

I also had to hope that we really would be safer on the ground than up there. That there wouldn’t be swarms of hunters searching the streets. Because we’d be faced with enough obstacles down below—namely the Bloodless and the bloodthirsty gangs of convicts—without having to fear every corner we turned that we would bump into a crowd of IBSI members.

As my mind began to spiral into thinking about all the awful things that might happen on ground level, I very quickly realized that if I wanted to stand any chance of escaping this place with my sanity intact, I could not think of anything but the present. I had to become like an animal—go on my raw instincts at every turn, and be alert at all times.

“I knew it,” Orlando said suddenly, raising a hand. My eyes shot toward where he was pointing. We had just emerged on the twelfth floor of the building—according to a helpful sign. At the end of the hallway we were standing on was a lanky pale body crouched over another lanky, pale body. Two Bloodless on top of each other.

At first I thought… well, probably what most people would think if they saw two naked bodies pressed against one another. But I soon realized that was
definitely
not the case. The Bloodless on top looked like it was eating the other. Biting into its neck, creating a sickening squelching sound. It appeared to be so consumed with what it was doing that it had not even noticed us yet. Orlando grabbed my hand and Maura’s and quickly pulled us back into the stairwell, where we rushed to continue our journey down the building.

It must have sensed us—I knew how sharp Bloodless’ senses were—but simply found us less interesting in that moment. How could that be? It was a shocking sight to behold. I’d never thought that Bloodless preyed on their own kind.

My throat was hoarse as I asked, “Why was it doing that?”

Maura and Orlando, although their breathing had quickened as we hurried down the stairs, hardly seemed surprised by it at all.

“Most likely the one on the bottom had recently preyed on someone,” Orlando replied in between pants. “The one on top detected blood in it and managed to bring it down. As I said, this city is a place of desperation. Sometimes Bloodless who are particularly vicious and starved will attack their own kind and rip at them, attempting to suck out any blood they might have consumed in a recent meal.”

My God.

Screeching echoed down the stairwell.

Maura groaned. “Great. It’s had second thoughts.”

My instinct was to immediately increase my speed, but the first thing that Maura and Orlando did was stop completely. “There is no point whatsoever in running now,” Orlando said, a steely expression in his gaze as he looked up the stairs.

And he was right. We didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting far with this creature. It was leaping ten steps at a time and reached us within a matter of seconds—just in time for me to fumble with my lighter and spark up a flame.

I sent a blast shooting in the monster’s direction. It screeched again and staggered back, at which point Orlando set the blade-wheel hurtling toward it at full speed. As the sharp knives made contact with the Bloodless’ body, it practically exploded from the force, splattering us and everything around us with blood and mushy pieces of limb.

My stomach clenched as Orlando’s blade-wheel completed its task. The Bloodless’ body had been mangled as though it had been put through a grinder and spread all over the staircase.

I sure hope I don’t piss off Orlando one of these days…

Taking in the nauseating sight, I gained a whole new appreciation for the clunky gas mask that I was wearing.

“If there are two in this building, there will be more,” Maura said.

Her words proved to be true within less than a minute. Whatever Bloodless were present in this building appeared to have been summoned by the commotion—and we heard the sound of clattering on the levels both above and beneath us. Then terrifyingly fast footsteps on the metal stairs. Two crowds of the murderous creatures came into view, both above and beneath us on the staircase.

No!
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I had expected us to get a little bit further into our journey before having to deal with this level of crap. We had only just left the loft and already we were surrounded by dozens of Bloodless. I feared that the siblings’ blade might not be able to handle them all.

Maura, who had pulled out two guns from her backpack, began firing at both groups. She appeared to be aiming primarily at the Bloodless’ skulls, but also smattering bullets into their chests and necks. I already knew that bullets weren’t an effective way to deal with Bloodless—they had to be completely dismembered or burnt to ashes in order to end them. Her bullets were clearly a painful annoyance to them, however, and it helped distract them. But the real work had to be done by me and Orlando.

Orlando revved the rotor blades and sent them soaring to the Bloodless above us. I pressed down hard on my lighter’s flint wheel, coaxing the fire into my palm. I made it blaze up into a deadly billow and scorched the staircase, surprising some Bloodless so much they jolted back. Others willingly dove down the stairwell to escape my heat. But the more tenacious among them kept trying to get at us, even despite the flames. They backed up a bit before relaunching an attack, hoping to catch me off guard.

I couldn’t tell how many I managed to burn, since it was hard to see by now. It was dark as it was, and the smoke was beginning to impair my vision. But soon, the screeching lessened on my side, giving me confidence to relinquish my flames just a little and turn to my right to check on how Maura and Orlando were doing. There appeared to be a lot more attacking from their side, since they were still tackling the crowd.

“Orlando,” I yelled, “watch out!” One of the Bloodless had taken to the ceiling to dodge the blades. He was crawling above Orlando and looked like he was on the verge of pouncing.

Orlando’s reflexes were slower than mine on this occasion. I launched myself at him, shoving him out of the way, before engulfing the offending Bloodless with my flames.

Catching fire, it dropped from the ceiling and rolled down the stairs, attempting to put itself out.

More Bloodless attempted to pull off the same ceiling trick, but Orlando was more alert now. And so was I. I kept my fire directed at the ceiling while Orlando made the blade hover up and down in a constant whizzing motion to slash the Bloodless both ducking and leaping on the stairs… until Bloodless stopped approaching. We had fought them off… for now.

By now, we found ourselves standing in puddles of Bloodless stew. And the walls were completely coated with their juices.

Orlando caught my eye. His chest was heaving, his breathing coming in dry pants.

“Thanks,” he croaked.

I nodded, stoic. “I owed you one.”