The Academy (55 page)

Alex decided to breathe in. He decided that, if this was one of those things that someone could live through, that he didn’t want to. He gave up, relaxing his chest and throat and opening his mouth. For a moment, he felt no fear at all, just disgust, regret and profound disappointment.

With a quickly dawning horror, Alex realized that he could not make himself breathe in, his body would not obey him, he could not fill his lungs with water. Despite the horror and shame, despite the pain in his chest that defied description, Alex could not make himself drown. He struggled against the hand on his neck, and then finding his legs suddenly free, he kicked out frantically at the Weir behind him, struggling like an animal in a trap. He knew with a clarity that surprised him that he was dying. Alex decided to die fighting.

Slowly, he realized that the person behind him was altogether too small to be Mr. Blue-Tie, or any of the other men he’d seen in the hotel room. Then Alex noticed that the other Weir who’d been holding him down on other side seemed to have disappeared. And, finally, that the hand on his neck was attempting to pull him up and out of the water, not pushing him into it, something made more difficult by his struggling and kicking.

Alex tried to cooperate with the effort, then, and found that he could do little to influence affairs. The whole thing seemed rather impersonal, as if he were observing the struggle.

Then he was out into the light and the air again, and that was ridiculously good, even if his chest rattled and wheezed as he gasped, even if the air burned his mouth and throat. A moment later, the bag came off his head, and that was even better. Lying on the floor, with the bathroom tile cool against the side of his face was like heaven.

Alex looked up at Eerie, her face streaked with tears and her mouth moving, and smiled adoringly at her, like she was an angel.

Then his expression froze, and his face twisted as he struggled for breath, clutching at his throat and writhing. The air was wrong, somehow, unless it was a trick of his vision – it was dense and faintly discolored, and it burned his eyes and mouth, and the inside of his nose. It was even worse in his lungs, and he found that he could not hold the air in. Every breath he took was expelled instantly with a series of choking coughs.

It took a little while for Eerie to pin his head down, her knees on his shoulders, and longer to force his mouth open and wedge something inside it. It was sweet, too sweet, sickeningly so, and Alex thought at first that he might be ill, the candy floating syrupy and huge in the dry confines of his mouth. And then, slowly, he felt his chest and throat relax, and the burning in his sinuses died down.

“Sorry, Alex,” Eerie apologized, blushing for reasons he could not understand. “I know it’s gross, but please keep this inside of your mouth until I tell you, okay?”

He lay on the bathroom floor for a few minutes, caring only about breathing, about the simple luxury that he had never appreciated fully before, while the candy disintegrated in his mouth. It was almost gone before he realized that it was a toffee. Then, almost reluctantly, he opened his eyes.

“Do you feel better, Alex? I’m sorry I had to poison you, too, but I couldn’t figure out any other way to help.” Eerie leaned him against the side of the bathtub, then reached over his head to empty the water from it. Alex shuddered when he heard the splash. “You can spit out the candy now, if you want,” she added shyly.

Alex didn’t really want to, not anymore. In fact, it was pretty much gone, and Alex was surprised at how much better he felt, how amazing it felt to be able to breathe freely, free of the awful weight of the Weir, and the terrible confines of the bag. Maybe it was shock, but Alex felt surprisingly okay with the situation, despite his physical distress.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Eerie said, patting his back and fretting over him. “I’m so sorry that I couldn’t stop them. It took a long time for me to poison the entire room with something that would kill the Weir, but not you.”

Alex shook his head, his mouth terribly dry. He couldn’t imagine Eerie feeling bad for anything. In his book, she was a candidate for sainthood.

Eerie walked over and bent down next to Mr. Blue-Tie and dug through his pockets. He was totally unresponsive, and judging from the trouble she had moving his arm, Alex figured he was probably dead. A moment later, Eerie produced a key ring from his pants pocket, and then used it to free Alex’s aching wrists from the handcuffs.

“Are you starting to feel better?”

Alex nodded, still unable to speak. Eerie ducked back to the room and rummaged for a moment, then returned, twisting the cap off a bottle of mineral water that she gave to Alex.

“Eerie,” he managed, after a few sips of water. “Eerie, what did you do?”

She flinched, and then looked away.

“I did not want you to see that. I have never,” Eerie stopped and then turned back to face him, face streaked with tears, “Alex, I have never done anything like this before. I’ve never even thought about doing something like this. It’s not, it’s not me.” Eerie shook her head despondently. “This is not the kind of thing that I do.”

“So, this was like the other night?” Alex asked groggily. “Like at the party? Except…”

“Except that I was how I felt then,” Eerie said, hanging her head, “and this is how I felt today, watching them hurt you. And now,” Eerie said sadly, “now Alex will be afraid of me, because of what I am, right? Do you hate me?”

“Hate you?” Alex said, coughing. “Fuck, Eerie, as far as I’m concerned, you’re Mother Teresa. I’m not afraid or angry, I’m grateful, grateful as all hell, really. That was,” he added thoughtfully, inclining his head in the direction of the dead Weir, “quite possibly the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. You saved me, Eerie.”

Alex tried to get Eerie to smile, but she just stared over his shoulder, transfixed by something behind him. It took Alex a while to manage turning around, as his back and neck seemed to have seized up.

Renton was peering in through the doorway, a nickel-plated H&K semiautomatic pistol in his left hand. Behind him, barely visible, Margot peaked around the corner. In front of both of them, Anastasia stood, arms folded across her chest, immaculate in a black dress. She seemed terribly amused by the situation.

“Well, I can see why you’d want to stay here,” she said seriously, after deliberation. “It is a very nice room. Perhaps you would consider staying the night at my suite, instead? The hotel is better, for one, and there are also significantly fewer dead people in the bathroom.”

“I heard that you and Eerie went on a date.”

“I’m not sure that it was a date. Exactly.”

“But you
did
go dancing with her.”

“Did Eerie tell you all this stuff? It was more like she went dancing, and I sat there and watched.”

“Huh. Very smooth. Quite the lady-killer.”

“Shut up, Margot. Why do we have to walk halfway across town to make a phone call, anyway?” Alex complained, hurrying after the vampire, who set a rapid pace. “There were phones back at the hotel. Cars, too, if we absolutely had to leave the room.”

“I need a pay phone, and it has to be far enough away from where we are staying that they won’t find us if they trace it. Besides, these days, it’s pretty hard to find one in the first place.” Margot threaded through the crowded street, talking without looking back at Alex, sounding bored with the whole thing. “I figured you could use the walk, to clear your head.”

“Really? Pardon me for doubting your concern for my well-being, but…”

Margot stopped at closed-down strip mall, glanced around for cameras, and then strolled over to a bank of phones so deep in the shadow cast by the flickering streetlight that Alex hadn’t even seen them. She inspected the phones from a distance with obvious distaste, and then pulled a set of latex gloves from her pocket and began sliding them on.

“Okay, okay,” Margot said, looking at the phones reluctantly. “Renton had an errand to run, and procedure demands that none of us be alone, until we are out of the field. Edward went with him, and Anastasia hates to walk, so I got you. Lucky me, right?”

“I don’t understand why this is such a big deal,” Alex complained. “I mean, Eerie already killed those Weir,” he said, immediately regretting having brought it up. “We are good, right?”

“Are you kidding me?” Margot stared at him in disbelief, and Alex felt very small indeed. “There have to be more. And anyway, I doubt that the silver one was dead.”

Margot shook her head, as if he had saddened her.

“I knew that was him,” Alex said with conviction. “I knew I had seen that bastard somewhere before. But, he sure looked dead…”

“Bet he did after Mitsuru was done with him, too,” Margot said, “and look how that worked out. I’ve never actually seen a silver one before, Alex, but they are supposedly very hard to kill.”

“Do we need, like, silver bullets, or something?”

Margot shook her head dismissively.

“More like a train to hit him with,” she said grimly, “or a cruise missile. Or,” she added, reaching for the handset, “Mitsuru, assuming you plan on letting me make this phone call.”

--

“Where did Renton go? And the cute one who never talks?”

“Edward?”

“Right. Him. Where did they go?”

Anastasia continued to stare at the television, the evening news turned on, with the volume turned off. The information was so dated already, she could hardly believe anyone watched the news channels.

“I sent them on an errand,” Anastasia said, glancing over at the changeling lying on the plush, queen-sized bed opposite her own, and then flipping the TV off. “There was something I wanted to talk to you about, anyway.”

Anastasia sat up and turned to face Eerie, smoothing the wrinkles from her black silk dress. Eerie looked over at Anastasia, propping her head up on her elbow, appearing genuinely surprised.

“Really? Because if this is about the cartel thing, then it’s very nice of you to offer, but…”

Anastasia waved her off, looking a bit distracted.

“No, Eerie, nothing like that,” Anastasia said, “I am not trying to recruit you.” Anastasia paused, then smiled at her. “At least not at the moment.”

Eerie stared at her blankly. Anastasia sighed, and shook her head.

“I will be direct, then,” Anastasia said unhappily, her hands folded in her lap in front of her, her posture rigid, her eyes boring into Eerie. “What is there between you and Alex?”

Eerie turned an immediate bright red, and hurriedly looked away. Anastasia had to stifle a laugh. They were two easy, Alex and Eerie both. She almost couldn’t help herself.

“N-nothing,” Eerie sputtered, still looking conspicuously away from Anastasia with all the guile of a guilty child. “Well, just friends. I mean, we only met recently, and…”

“Why did you ask Svetlana to send the two of you to San Francisco, then?” Anastasia asked patiently. “That is out of the ordinary, even for you, Eerie.”

Anastasia waited, her eyes fixed on Eerie. The impasse was not long. Eerie hung her head in resignation.

“You’re scary, Anastasia,” Eerie hummed quietly. “I am helping Alex. I didn’t do anything bad.”

Anastasia sat up, and reached over to pat Eerie on the knee. She noticed that Eerie had found time to buy cute patterned pajamas. She wondered what kind of underwear she had bought, with an internal smirk.

“Why Alex, though? Why are you interested in helping him?”