Almost Everything (6 page)

The reason
I couldn’t look at Elias right now was that he and I both knew that if he died of starvation, it was completely my fault.

I’d stopped the hunt not once, but twice.

“I’m not the only one who suffers,” Elias said.

Like, I didn’t suspect that. As if I needed that kind of responsibility. I so needed to hear that there were hundreds of vampires who were slowly dying, thanks to me. My cheeks burned as I gathered up all the big pieces of bowl and tossed them into the garbage. I got the broom from where it rested behind the pantry shelf.

But I’d had good reason to stop the hunt. Last time, it had been Mom in the crosshairs. I couldn’t have let her be the victim, could I?

“So, you see, the Southern prince and his army are double the threat.” Elias’s voice was quiet, not at all accusatory, and he looked at my mother as he spoke, but still his words cut me. I focused on sweeping the floor and gathering up the bruised fruit.

Mom pursed her lips. “You worry too much about Ramses’ problems. You should focus on taking care of yourself. Go find a … friend. You’ll feel better.”

“Mom!” I was utterly grossed out by what Mom seemed to be implying.

“What? Blood has to help him, doesn’t it?”

I started
to speak, but Elias cut me off.

“Where do you think I was? Nothing does much good. I can’t get enough. Not without killing,” he said. As he crossed his arms in front of his stomach, his eyes flashed cold. “I could do it. I have … wanted to. But, if I kill outside of the hunt, alone, that makes me nosferatu. No turning back. Not ever.”

My mouth hung open; so did Mom’s. I didn’t know what “nosferatu” meant in this context, but the dark look on Mom’s face made me think that maybe she did.

Elias didn’t seem fazed by our reaction. “And if I cross that line, I would lose more than my place in the ranks of the kingdom. I would lose my mind. Over time, nosferatu are reduced to unthinking, soulless animals. That’s why their name is synonymous with zombielike vampires.”

It sounded as though he had some personal experience with one of those nosferatu. Our eyes met, and he nodded solemnly as if he’d heard my unspoken question.

He continued. “It was once part of my duties to hunt down and destroy escaped slaves who had become nosferatu.”

No wonder his reputation preceded him. Elias wasn’t just any old assassin; he was a
vampire
killer.

Mom chewed her lip and adjusted her glasses. “And you say you were tempted to cross this line … recently?”

Elias nodded. “I understand your concern, Amelia,” he said, hanging his head again. “It’s no longer safe for you to harbor me. If I could tarry but one last day, to gather my things and make alternate arrangements?”

“That
wasn’t what I was thinking about, but, yeah, that sounds like a really good idea. You should go,” Mom said plainly. I wanted to protest, but she continued before I could form any words. “But what I wanted to know was, if you’re tempted, how are the others faring? I mean, everyone says you’re such a noble gentleman, as if that’s something unusual. Is there going to be a nosferatu problem?”

Even though she stood in her nightshirt and slippers, there was something in the tone of her voice that made it very clear she was asking as the Queen of Witches.

Elias lifted his head defiantly. “I am in exile, and, as such, at much greater risk. The prince will surely call a hunt, and the kingdom will feed, if it has not already.”

“Oh, I think we’d know if it had.” There was that royal “we” Mom used only in her Queen of Witches role. “We need to talk to some people, if you’ll excuse us.”

Elias nodded briefly, as if only grudgingly acknowledging her sovereignty.

As I stood leaning against the broom, I suddenly felt exhausted. The clock on the wall ticked hollowly. Elias frowned, watching my mother head upstairs.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” I asked, feeling an old hurt. We talked so little these days; yet I couldn’t believe he’d kept something so important from me.

He gestured with his chin in the direction Mom had disappeared. “Her Majesty,” he said, his voice dripping with disdain. “I haven’t had a chance to have a private conversation with you the entire time I’ve been her guest. Do you think that wasn’t intentional?”

I’d thought
he just wasn’t that into me anymore. I didn’t want to say that, though. To cover my expression, I took the opportunity to put the broom back in its place. “I had kind of noticed, honestly,” I said.

“She’s been desperate for just this sort of information. At least I will no longer have to endure the interrogation she called ‘tea’ when I leave.”

OMG. Elias hated tea too? This news was almost as shocking as finding out that he was a vampire slayer. But I felt as if he and I had been attending a completely different event all these months. “Are you saying she was pumping you for information this whole time?”

He looked a bit surprised I hadn’t guessed. “Subtly, but, yes. I know this sounds a bit paranoid, but I think she was putting potions in my tea.”

“I doubt that,” I said quickly. I mean, my mom a poisoner? We didn’t always get along, but I couldn’t go that far. “I seriously thought you guys were talking about American history.”

“Sometimes we were, but more often it was barely veiled attempts to get me to give over information about the kingdom and what we have been doing since the secret war.”

“Oh.” Wow, I felt stupid. How did I manage to miss all that subtext?

“And now she has something she can use at last. Damn it all. Damn my weakness.”

Gripping
the edge of the table, Elias pulled himself up on wobbly knees.

“We must see your father,” he said. “He may have a war on two fronts now.”

“With witches? And Luis?” He nodded. I could hardly deny the urgency in Elias’s face. “But how are you going to get in? They’ll kill you. Didn’t we already have this discussion? Don’t you remember last time?”

“I surrendered before because I mistakenly trusted in my prince’s mercy. I will not go so unarmed this time.”

I wanted to believe the fierce flash in his eye, but his face looked so stark and pale. “You’re sick, Elias. You can’t fight. You can barely walk.”

“Then you have to go.”

“Me?”

“Your father wouldn’t dare harm his own blood heir.”

I wasn’t nearly so sure. My loving father had no problem calling a hunt on Mom, a woman he was still officially married to, or sending his vampire minions to attack me when I had the talisman. Still, Elias was in no shape to do it. “I guess I can go. You think I should try to go tonight?”

“I do,” he said. A creak in the wood floors upstairs had him lower his voice conspiratorially. “If the others suffer as I do, they’ll be even weaker now that the dawn is soon upon us.”

“So, what you’re saying is that now is a good time because I won’t get eaten before I can reach Dad?” I asked. He didn’t deny it and had the decency to look a bit chagrined. I sighed. “Fabulous.”

Have
I mentioned how much I hated going to see my dad?

First of all, thanks to their sun allergy, the vampires have to live underground—literally. In fact, St. Paul was the vampire capital of the Midwest because of its extensive sandstone tunnels, underground rivers, and warrens of natural and man-made caves. And, while that might sound kind of cool, trust me, it’s not. Sandstone always seems to smell kind of like dog piss, and, every time I go, I end up finding gross grit in my hair and clothes for weeks.

The other reason I loathed going to my father’s court was because the dress code freaked me out, in that they didn’t have one. Vampires will tell you that they are “natural” creatures, more like elves than demons. For this reason, they liked to cavort in the buff. Buck naked. Nude. Completely in the altogether.

I swear I put twenty bucks in my future-therapy fund every time I saw my dad in his birthday suit.

Being out at four in the morning is always kind of eerie, but in St. Paul it’s doubly so, because the streets are entirely empty. To be fair, downtown kind of shuts down early in my hometown, so much so that people joke that we roll up the streets after five p.m.

Since the buses stopped running just after midnight and time was of the essence, Elias dropped me off just a few blocks away from the railroad tunnel entrance that led to the kingdom.

He pulled into an unpaved driveway, the kind that always seemed mysteriously useless but was probably for rail crews of some sort. Elias put his hand on my arm when I reached for the door. “You won’t let me accompany you, my lady?”

I shook
my head. It wasn’t as if I wanted to go alone, but I really didn’t see much choice in the matter. “It’s nearly dawn. You should hurry home. If you were overcome by torpor at court, there’s no way I could drag you somewhere safely by myself, and Dad would probably command some Igor to stab you in your sleep.”

He grimaced. “A vivid image.”

“It’s also pretty accurate,” I said, opening the door and stepping out onto the scrub grass and gravel. The air felt heavy and humid after the air-conditioning of Elias’s car. I sort of regretted changing into jeans, but I couldn’t exactly go crawling around in tunnels in cotton shorts. I should really invest in decent hiking boots if I was going to keep making this trip on a regular basis. Glancing over my shoulder, I sighed. I should really get going, but I had one more question before I left. “Can you make it in past the wards?”

“Your mother promised to let me in when she saw me coming.”

I hoped she would keep her word. With all the queenly posturing she did before she left, I had my doubts. But I trusted Elias to be resourceful even if Mom didn’t play fair. “You have an Igor in the neighborhood, right? A backup hidey-hole?”

Vampires attracted a strange assortment of human groupies that acted as assistants during the daylight hours. Everyone referred to them as “Igors”; it was kind of a dis, but I’d heard worse, especially from Nikolai. But I had no idea what else they called themselves, if anything.

Elias’s cheeks
reddened as if I’d just suggested he was up to something naughty by being prepared. But he admitted, “I do.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ll talk tomorrow night, okay?”

“Be careful,” he said.

I nodded that I would and clicked the door shut. “You too,” I said, though I wasn’t sure he heard me with the windows rolled up. I watched him drive away, up the steep streets into Lowertown. The skyscrapers of St. Paul seemed to look reproachfully over one another’s shoulders at me as they rose up along the river valley basin. With a sigh, I turned away and headed along the tracks toward my father’s kingdom.

Court was winding down for the night by the time I’d wormed my way under the fence, deep into the abandoned tunnel, and through the narrow natural canyon. The Igor sentry at the cave’s mouth almost didn’t let me in, but, in my very best (and loudest) regal tone, I told him to announce that the exiled princess Anastasija Ramses Parker requested an audience. Curious vampires peeped around the cave wall, and the sentry shrugged and let me pass.

Quartz flecks glittered where dim candlelight flickered against the cave walls. The temperature underground was quite a bit cooler than outside. An underground river gurgled through the center of the vast space, and, where it dropped in a miniature waterfall, it sprayed mist into the already-damp air. Vampires, pale naked forms, clustered together on the natural shelves along the walls. My father sat on a throne of stone near where the waterfall disappeared into a hole in the floor that I’d always expected led to an underground lake. Brown bats were returning from their night forages, and they clung to the ceiling in clusters like tiny shivering, living chandeliers.

I wanted
to hide my face in my hands. This place was so danged creepy.

But it seemed emptier than usual … and quieter too. Most of the times I’d visited, there were crowds of vampires milling around, talking, doing whatever it was they did when they visited royal court. Where was everyone?

My dad, meanwhile, looked as if he could use a serious jolt of caffeine. He seemed to be having trouble staying awake. There were deep bags under his eyes, and his usually ageless face seemed ragged and worn. I could see the burn marks on his otherwise handsome face from where I’d blasted him with the talisman’s magic.

Outside of how awful he looked, I was struck as always by how much alike we looked. His hair was silken, black, and straight as a board. He had crystal blue eyes, like one of mine, and his body was lean and long. Frankly, it would have been nice if I’d inherited my mom’s curls or at least some of her curves.

He glanced blearily in my general direction. “What brings you here, exiled princess?”

Other eyes seemed to find me now. Those that had first watched me with curiosity now seemed to have a hint of something else. Was it hunger? Mom was right. Dad had not yet called a hunt, which meant
all
the vampires were starving just like Elias.

I suddenly
did not like the odds, even without the usual complement of vampires at court. What would happen if they all decided to pounce? My cell phone did not get reception this far underground. Besides, I didn’t think 911 would take seriously the call for help from a vampire attack.