She was a sight. A horrific yet beautiful sight. Her blond hair was tinted gray from all the newborn vampire dust. Her clothing was torn. But she was intact, and there was a sad smile on her face.
“In the tales of the Beast that I’ve heard, the Beast does not have friends. So imagine my surprise when you requested that we save her,” Raven said from behind me.
“Your storytellers are wrong then. I have many friends—and also many enemies. Which are you? Choose carefully.”
“Like you would give me a choice.” What had Gemellus done to turn him into this? There was a wheezing gasp from the wrestling vampires as Wolf gained on Gemellus. I could see where Wolf’s fingers were straining into the meat of Gemellus’s windpipe; if Gemellus gave him even one more half inch of leverage, he would twist it free.
“Just because you were raised without honor does not mean there is none.”
“And all of this?” He twisted us both to look through the glass at the carnage below. “Ignored? Erased?”
“We have ways of making you forget.”
I could feel him weighing his options as he held me. Trust someone he’d never met, who’d just destroyed his livelihood, love, and house, or play his final awful card? The blade hovered, burning me as he considered, and I knew the moment he’d made up his mind. Poor Natasha; Raven never was going to be able to outrun his past.
This is it, baby. I’m sorry. I loved you and your father.
Then he released me. I fell to the ground in limp surprise. The knife clattered beside me, dropped.
Had he—were we?—I twisted to look up at him, but nothing had changed. “Edie, pick it up.”
My hand reached for the knife like it was told.
“Kill her, or kill yourself. You choose.”
The silver blade was a living thing in my hand, twisting in the air like a snake. Either I pointed it at me, or it had to be pointed at Anna.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I looked hopelessly at Anna, and at Dren, and at Gemellus, fighting myself. I didn’t want to die. But I didn’t want to kill her. The blade wavered as I tried to make up my mind, picking between two horrible options.
“Help me. Please,” I begged anyone who could listen. I took a staggering step toward Anna, as if pulled by the knife.
If I did try to kill her, would she kill me? What if she somehow changed me now? That would be a way out, but it wouldn’t save the baby. I needed to live—but could I live with myself knowing that I had killed a friend?
“My people have your land surrounded and we’ve already killed everything in this building,” Anna said. “End this, and I swear I’ll let you live until dawn.”
“You heard her. Go to her, Edie.”
I took another stumbling step forward. “I don’t want this. Make it stop. Gemellus—”
“Don’t talk to him,” Raven commanded. Dren stepped forward to intercept me, but Anna put her hand out, denying him.
“It’s going to be okay, Edie,” she said, taking a step toward me. “I promise you it’s going to be okay.”
“No. It’s not. This is the least okay thing in the history of forever.” My resolve flagged, and the weapon spun in my hand, blade aimed straight at my stomach.
I’d been stabbed once by vampires before. Perhaps it was fitting that I stab myself as they had now.
“Don’t do that,” Anna warned.
“I don’t want to—I don’t want any of this!”
“I know.” She took another step toward me. What if she took the knife away? Would I use something else, bound to fulfill Raven’s last terrible command? I had visions of me going at my radial pulses with my own teeth, or trying to bare-handedly twist off Anna’s head.
“Make it stop. Please. Think of something. Fast,” I begged, knife inching closer toward my belly.
I can’t do this to you, baby.
“Don’t,” Anna said, reaching out for me. She was so close now, only three steps away. As my attention went to her, so did the knife. Her arms were still open, so close she could hug me.
“Come here, Edie,” she said, and leaned in—and I did as I was told.
Three things happened at almost the same time:
Anna and I cleared the line of sight between Dren and Raven. Dren raised his scythe and threw it at him.
Wolf spotted the spinning weapon heading for his Master and let go of Gemellus to leap up for it like an eager dog, meeting it halfway, and the scythe spun across his neck like a guillotine blade. Wolf died instantly, midair, spilling ash on the floor like a burst of sudden rain, followed by the sound of two dull silver pieces falling.
And I found myself covered in my best friend’s blood.
“Oh, God, no,” I whispered as we sank together, me holding her, the knife in my right hand piercing through her back, up into her heart. I looked up into her dying eyes—there was no surprise there, just a magnificent sorrow. Raven’s compulsion was gone now, I was in full control again, but it was too late. Blood poured out, as if without end, as her body desperately made more to replace what her silver-pierced heart couldn’t pump, as if she were a fountain and we were both drowning. Then her head sagged back and she went limp in my arms.
“I’m so sorry, Anna, oh my God—”
She didn’t say anything. And she’d lied to me. It wasn’t okay.
I dropped the knife, kneeling in a pool of her blood, put my hands to my face, and wept.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“I invoke!” Raven shouted the second Gemellus was free.
“Accepted,” I heard Gemellus say, but I wasn’t looking. All I could see was Anna’s face, lying in an ever-growing pool of blood.
The sounds of their fight began behind me, as footsteps neared. I looked up and saw Dren.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not!” I screamed up at him. He sank down on his heels beside me, the retrieved scythe across his knees. How was I going to explain this to my child? We got free because your mother killed her friend?
“She’ll only be dead for three days. Assuming all the mythology’s right about living vampires and that sort of thing. Nobody mentioned silver, but we won’t tell anyone else about that. It’ll be our secret, okay?” He reached behind Anna, pulled the knife free, and slid it across the room. I was conscious of Gemellus and Raven behind us, whirling in the dust and bloodstains, but I was too blinded by tears and sorrow to tell who was ahead.
I nodded, willing to clutch desperately to any belief that would undo what I’d just done.
“She had to die, Edie. This is her change. If you think about it, you were the only one she could trust to do it,” he went on.
“Not even you?”
“Oh, no. Especially not me. I’m inherently untrustworthy.” He stood up again. “Jorgen,” he said, and whistled, and the Hound trotted over. “Go tell the others we’re on our way.” Jorgen disappeared down the stairs. “You’re strong enough to carry her, aren’t you?” Dren asked. “There might be a few left. I’d rather be free to fight.”
I nodded again. She hadn’t turned into dust, and we weren’t leaving her behind. Those things were good, right?
Oh, please, baby, please.
I swiped a bloodstained piece of hair away from my face, making an even bigger mess of things. “What about them?” I asked, leaning forward to pick Anna up.
“Not our problem. We need to be on the road by dawn.”
I looked back. Gemellus was still my concern. As much as I wanted to leave him, I didn’t dare set him free. And he had gotten me this far.
“Raven will either die here or be punished in other ways. There’s blood in the water now, and Los Angeles isn’t a very deep pool. Besides, if we’re not here, then Gemellus can start giving Raven commands—if he is who he claims to be.”
No time to ask Dren what he meant by that now, but it gave me an idea—along with Anna’s limp body pressing the contents of my pockets against my thighs. I’d been through so much in the past week. I didn’t go through all this not to be free.
I carefully put Anna back down on the floor and turned to the scene behind us. “I command you to uninvoke him,” I demanded, not knowing if it would work.
Gemellus seemed to momentarily have the upper hand. He tried to finish Raven off, and Raven only barely managed to push him back in time.
“You can’t kill him. I change my mind, I forbid it. So uninvoke him now.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Dren began.
“It does now.”
Gemellus shoved Raven back. “I forsake your rights and you are mine again to command.”
“But I invoke!” Raven shouted, trapped, wildly looking for someone to help him.
“Tell him to be still. Tell him he can’t move, or say a thing.”
Gemellus looked at me, breathing heavy. “Revenge on him should be mine.”
“I know, and it will be. But I need something from him first. Tell him to stick his arm out.”
Gemellus reached out and punched Raven before commanding him. “Stick out your arm.”
“And clench your fist,” I said.
“You heard her,” Gemellus threatened.
Dren looked torn between guarding Anna’s body and coming over to see what we were up to. “Edie, what the hell are you doing? Dawn comes—”
“Dawn’s always coming. She’s quite the whore,” Gemellus said with a grin. “Do as you’re told.” Raven, as trapped as I had been, obeyed.
Gemellus stepped away, and there was that pull between Raven and me again. If he’d ordered me, I would have had to listen. I could read what he wanted me to do in his eyes, how he begged. But my hands were covered in blood, and that made it easy to look away.
I tore needles out of packages and thought about missing, and a hundred more painful places to poke him than his arm sprang to my mind, but I concentrated on the task at hand. Blood flowed up into the butterfly needle’s hub, and I shoved a test tube onto the tubing’s free end. Raven’s blood twirled down the tubing like it was a straw, then filled the vacuum of the test tube.
I’d grabbed six test tubes earlier, and now I filled them all. Blood was power—hopefully if I ever needed it, these would be enough.
Gemellus chuckled darkly as he returned, realizing what was going on. “I thought you wanted to go back to human.”
“I do. But I also never want to have to rely on anyone else,” I said, still not meeting Raven’s eyes.
“If you drink that without him, you’ll be a rogue without a House.”
“That’s fine.”
“Edie—” Dren said, encouraging us to hurry up. I disengaged the needle, letting the last drops flow into the final test tube. Not even a pint. I wasn’t sure what good they’d do me, but I’d rather have them from a vampire who was going to be dead soon than one who was still alive. I looked over at Gemellus. He’d retrieved the silver-bladed knife.
“I assume you’re done with this?” he asked, turning it in his hand to offer the hilt back to me. His tone and his gesture were sarcastic.
“Very done.” I slid the last slightly warm tube into my pocket. “Kill him fast. We’ll be waiting outside.” I ran for Anna and picked her up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Dren made a growling sound as I threaded the stairs holding Anna behind him. “No one likes rogues.”
“Do you have a Master?” He didn’t seem like the type who did. And he snorted, but he didn’t answer me.
Purgatory was covered in dust, which, oddly, matched the décor. We were halfway down the stairs to Hell when it felt like I’d just been kicked in the chest by a donkey. “Whoa—” I stumbled down a stair, and Dren whirled to catch me. The squeezing feeling in my chest didn’t stop.
“That’s what it feels like when your Master dies.”
I didn’t ask him how he knew. I put my back against the wall and breathed—my heart was beating wildly, and I didn’t know if it was in freedom or in fear.
“Can you continue?” he asked.
I waited another moment, to see if another attack would hit me. When it didn’t I nodded. “Yeah. Just stay near.”
* * *
Hell looked like it. Whereas before, Raven’s club version of Hell had been cheesy pointed-tail devils and flames, the version we walked out into looked like it’d come from another dimension. There were holes punched in walls, support columns were diagonal, the bar looked like someone had taken a bite out of it, and the stench from broken liquor bottles was strong.
Jorgen was waiting for us there, eager to lead us outside. We went together into the entry hall. I’d never gotten to see what was past the Catacombs’s front door.
“Wait—” If I’d felt Raven dying—
Gemellus thundered down the stairs after us, triumphant. Dren’s eyes narrowed.
“He’s coming with us,” I said.
“So I feared,” Dren said drily.
Gemellus pulled up. “Do you want to know if I killed him with or without honor, first?”
“No. It’s just that we didn’t bring any extra boxes to carry freeloaders back home in.”
“He’s not a freeloader. He’s the only reason I lived this long—he killed at least twenty newborns by himself before you all arrived.”
Dren’s mood changed, ever so slightly, in Gemellus’s favor, and Gemellus looked to me, burdened with Anna. “Would you like me to carry her for you?”
I pulled back. “No.” She was mine. With her in my arms, I stepped outside.
* * *
It was damp out, and the air tasted like wet cement, as it sometimes does in cities when it’s humid but not quite enough to rain. The asphalt was covered in a thin layer of sweat, just like I was.
“Rain,” Dren said, and started cursing loudly.
There was one black trailer truck, the only vehicle in the street, and it was parked in front of the Catacombs, engine idling. A female daytimer I didn’t recognize hopped out of the back of it.
“Don’t worry about it—it’s dry inside, and I’ve got the whole thing rigged to blow. There’s enough dust in there to take this whole block into the ground.” Then she blinked and looked at me, and Anna, and then turned back to Dren. “You let her die?” Her voice arched, and I thought she might slap him.
“Keep your voice down. Vish—may I introduce you to the Beastkiller, also known as Edie. For what it’s worth, Anna went willingly. I suspect she knew.”
The daytimer named Vish gawked at me. “You killed her. Why?”
My mouth opened like a gasping fish. Because I’d been commanded? Because I’d desperately wanted to save my child?