Gigi protested. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Yes, you are. Now, get out of here.”
“But—but,” she spluttered. As she stalled, I saw John’s eyes narrow at us over Mr. Marchand’s shoulder. He tried to push past Mr. Marchand, to stop the kids, but the older vampire grabbed him and shoved him back into place with a thundering “Listen when I’m talking to you!”
“No buts.” I shoved her toward Ben. “Get her out of here now. Gigi, I love you, move it.”
Gigi hesitated, but Ben dragged her away. Her stiff, achy legs caught and stumbled, and he helped her to her feet. Mr. Marchand and John were full-on grappling now, with John yelling, “The younger one’s getting away, you fool!” I crept carefully over to Cal’s slumped form. One of the syringes stuck out from the cooler bag at an odd angle, the label catching my eye. VEE BALM. I snatched, snagged another capped needle, and jammed them into my pocket.
I bent to examine Cal’s cuffs, moving slowly so I wouldn’t attract the other vampires’ attention. The restraints were held together without locks, a rather ingenious but cruel invention. I just had to slide solid pins of silver out of the cuffs to release his wrists. Cal could have freed himself easily, if he could bear to touch the metal.
“What are you doing?” he asked, slurring softly.
“Getting us out of here. Can you walk?”
He nodded, then bent to unwind the wire around his ankles. I pulled out the syringe of Vee Balm.
“I’m sorry about this,” I whispered, jabbing the needle into his neck and pushing the plunger. Cal hissed, glaring up at me as the chemicals spread through his blood-stream. I grimaced and showed him the syringe label. “It’s going to help.”
I knelt and patted his calves, feeling for his sword. “Where’s the holster?”
“They took it off of me the moment they captured me,” he said, his voice hoarse and tired.
“Now?” I squeaked. “We’re in an actual combat situation, and you don’t have your sword now?”
“You’re not in a combat situation,” he told me. “You are in a running-and-hiding situation.”
“I won’t leave you,” I insisted, echoing Gigi’s stubborn belligerence.
Standing on unsteady legs, he forced me to my feet and cupped my chin in his hand. “Yes, you will.”
“Don’t make me—”
“If you love me at all, you will leave right now.”
“That’s not fair, Cal.”
“It isn’t,” he agreed. “But you’ll forgive me eventually. Now, go.”
I nodded, digging my fingers into the bloodied material of his shirt and yanking him to me so I could lay a hot, desperate kiss on his lips. The metallic tang of polluted donor blood clung to his mouth, but I pressed close, drank him in, unsure of whether I would see him again, feel him next to me. His freed hands locked around my face, caressing my cheeks, tracing the tear tracks he found there.
“Go,” he whispered, pushing me away.
And in a flicker of movement, he was gone, running across the lawn toward the arguing vampires. Swiping at my eyes, I ran around the house, ducking behind an arbor when I sensed movement in the trees. I crept through the long, purple shadows, keeping my back against the house. I wondered if Gigi had made it to Ben’s car. I wondered if I could sneak into Marchand’s house to use his phone or steal some car keys or if it would be better just to stay there, hiding in the dark … which seemed to be the direction that the weak, numbed muscles in my legs were leaning toward.
Outside was better, I told myself. In the house, I could be trapped, dragged into closets and small spaces. Outside, it was harder to sneak up behind me. I rounded a corner of the foundation to find John hovering over me, smiling sweetly.
Sneaking up in front of me, on the other hand, seemed to be pretty easy.
Sidestepping me in a blur of motion, John wrapped the length of my hair around his fist and yanked me close, nuzzling the place where my neck and shoulder joined and leaving a cold, wet spot on my skin. Inhaling deeply, he leered down at me, then dragged me off to a remote corner of the garden, under an arch of wisteria. Settling near a worn stone bench, he spun me, pinning my hips with his hands as he pressed against my back. It would have been quite a romantic spot if I didn’t have a clear view of Mr. Marchand destroying Cal’s laptop with a shovel.
My heart sank. Having already received the same treatment as his laptop, Cal was sprawled across the grass. John’s nimble fingers plucked at my shirt as he ground against my ass.
“Marchand has what he needs. Your friend Mr. Calix is as good as dead. I thought you might want to enjoy the show before we start our fun and games.”
“You are such an asshole!” I hissed.
“I like you so much.” He sighed. “Where did your sister skip off to, the little minx?” John chuckled. “Never mind, we’ll track her down later. You two are going to be so much fun. But first, I want you to run. Anywhere you like, into the woods, into the house, to the road. Just scamper off. I’ll be along any minute.”
“No,” I spat, eyeing the shovel lying abandoned on the ground, at least twenty feet away.
“Now, Iris, our games will be so much more fun if you just give yourself over to them. I don’t want to waste our precious time together disciplining you for your petulance. Run,” he ordered. “I loved it when you struggled with me at Cal’s house. Come on, pretty thing. Give me a challenge.”
“No.”
“Oh, come on, Iris,” he cooed, and that strange, detached cotton-headed feeling crept in at the edge of my brain. “Be a sport. I only want to play a little.”
I planted my feet, staring him in the eye—a big no-no when dealing with a predator. “You know what I think? I think you never learned to fight. I think your vocal talent meant you never had to learn. You just hum your little tunes, and people do whatever you want. I think I could probably kick your skinny, over-hair-gelled ass if I wanted to. And I think I mentioned earlier that I definitely want to.”
“Do you really want to fight me?” John asked, his musical tenor lilting sweetly. “You’re just a silly human. You don’t know anything about fighting. And I’m so much stronger than you.”
My arms felt like lead, like lifting them would take a crane. He chuckled as I struggled to move my feet toward him. I groaned.
“Why don’t you just sit down, Iris?” he asked. “Just sit down and wait for Marchand to kill your little boyfriend. And then you and I will make another game out of finding your sister.”
His cold, cruel laugh brought the memory of that day at Cal’s house hurtling to the surface of my brain, his icy-cold, slimy hands on me and the vicious bite at my throat. I thought of the time he’d spent with Gigi and how easily he could have hurt her and how hard it would be for her to trust boys after this. He could have killed her, arranged it so she never came home, and I would never have known what had happened to her.
Anger as hot and consuming as any blaze spread through my chest, loosening my arms. And what really pissed me off was his confidence. He was so sure of my inability to strike at him that he didn’t move when my arms flexed, not even when I did run, loping across the lawn like an overcaffeinated cheetah. I slid across the grass, diving for the kind of home base that meant more than “not it.” I snagged the shovel, turning to see that John had finally moved. He was sauntering toward me with the widest kid-in-a-candy-store grin I’d ever seen. He was enjoying this, the thrill of the chase, the taste of my fear. This was his game.
Well, olly-olly-oxen-free, asshole.
I stood, planting my feet wide. When John finally moved close enough, I swung the shovel handle like a bat toward his neck. Grunting with the effort, I landed it flat across his throat. He sank to his knees, clawing at his neck and making strange honking gasps.
I yanked his hair, stretching his neck back and making it even harder for him to speak. I whispered, “I don’t know anything about fighting. But I do know it’s hard to talk when you’ve been hit in the throat with a shovel.”
I swung again, splintering the wooden handle across his back. John fell to his hands and knees, honking all the way. I raised my arms over my head and plunged the jagged end through his back, pinning his heart in its descent into the dirt. John seemed to disintegrate in a wave. His skin turned gray and began to flake away to reveal his musculature, then a bare skeleton that exploded in a cloud of particles, leaving only a wavering wooden fragment sticking out of the ground.
With a triumphant cry, I looked up to see if anyone had seen me dispatch a vampire with a badass bon mot.
Of course not.
Having pushed himself back to his feet, Cal was too busy fighting off Mr. Marchand. The two of them were circling like feral dogs, searching for weaknesses, testing each other with random swings and swipes. They kept changing position, so that neither could get a grip on the other. Mr. Marchand was surprisingly agile for an older guy, ducking and sidestepping every blow with a toe dancer’s grace. Although I supposed the whole “vampire reflexes” thing was an unfair senior-citizen advantage.
Cal was less smooth. He took every shot he could, swinging wildly. He didn’t retreat; he only advanced. He was fighting angry, which was not good. Unfocused vampire fighting usually led to staking. I yanked at the shovel handle, but in my zeal to stake John, I’d apparently used that supernatural “mother lifts a car off her toddler” strength you only read about in tabloids, because I could not pull that sucker out of the ground. I leaned against it, changed my grip, tried kicking it at the base, but nothing worked.
“Damn it.”
What were my options? Think, Iris, I commanded myself. Think!
1. Running. Running as fast and far as my little feet could carry me.
Likely result: Escape to a dark country road, where, knowing my luck, I would be kidnapped and murdered by a drifter. Also, Cal would probably die because it looked like he was losing the fight.
2. Finding a pointy tree branch and jumping into the fight.
Likely result: A much faster and bloodier death than option 1.
3. Calling 911.
Likely result: Dead Cal and injured cops. Also, I would have to run inside to find a phone, and the possibility of getting trapped in Mr. Marchand’s house of horrors was not appealing.
Wait.
I patted my pockets for other potential weapons and found the syringes. The first needle I pulled out was marked “Calix, Batch 1.” Was this the poison that left Cal incapacitated? If John hadn’t shown up with the lovely Scanlon sisters bait package, had Marchand planned on giving Cal another dose to persuade him to give up the information he wanted? Was this the stuff that made him weak and ill and immobile?
Because that I could use.
I jumped onto a nearby wrought-iron chair, waiting until they moved close. I uncapped the needle and held it like a dagger, poised behind Mr. Marchand’s neck. Or the area near Marchand’s neck if he had been standing less than ten feet away from me. Cal saw this and shook his head violently. I mimed stabbing, which made Cal growl. I assumed that meant no.
Seeing me seemed to help Cal focus. He concentrated on keeping Mr. Marchand’s back to me, which kept his movements controlled, his anger in check. He swung, connecting his fist with Marchand’s nose. The old man’s head snapped back, and he stumbled. He snarled, advancing and kicking Cal’s legs out from under him. Cal landed on the grass with a thwump. He rolled as Mr. Marchand scissor-kicked down, just missing Cal’s solar plexus. But as he rolled, it shifted Mr. Marchand toward me, his back still turned.
When he was within leaping range, I launched myself at Mr. Marchand’s back. I wrapped my arm around his neck and my legs around his waist, clinging to him like a koala on crank.
Cal yelled, “Iris, no!”