Книга - The Eternity Cure

The Eternity Cure
Julie Kagawa


Allison Sekemoto died so that she might live.As a vampire, she faces the rise of a deadly new plague to her kind. Allison thought that immortality was forever. Now eternity itself hangs in the balance. . .The legend continues BOOK TWO The Virus Must Be Stopped No matter what the cost No matter what the sacrifice Mankind’s survival depends on us












PRAISE FOR BESTSELLING AUTHOR


JULIE KAGAWA

‘Katniss Everdeen better watch out’ —Huffington Post on The Immortal Rules

‘Julie Kagawa is one killer storyteller’

—MTV’s Hollywood Crush blog

‘Julie Kagawa’s Iron Fey series is the next Twilight” —Teen.com

‘Fans of Melissa Marr … will enjoy the ride’

—Kirkus Reviews on The Iron Queen

‘wholly satisfying’

—Realms of Fantasy on The Iron Queen

‘a book that will keep its readers glued to the pages until the very end’

—New York Journal of Books on The Iron Daughter

‘The Iron King surpasses the greater majority of dark fantasies’ —teenreads.com


Also byJulie Kagawafrom






The Iron Fey series (in reading order)

THE IRON KING

WINTER’S PASSAGE (eBook) THE IRON DAUGHTER THE IRON QUEEN SUMMER’S CROSSING (eBook) THE IRON KNIGHT IRON’S PROPHECY (eBook) THE LOST PRINCE

Coming soon

THE IRON TRAITOR

Blood of Eden series

THE IMMORTAL RULES

THE ETERNITY CURE





The

EternityCure


The legend continues

A BLOOD OF EDEN NOVEL




Julie Kagawa










To Natashya, for encouraging me to kill my darlings.

And to Nick, for everything else.







PART I




CHAPTER 1


I smelled blood as soon as I walked into the room.

A blast of snow-laced air accompanied me, swirling around my black coat, clinging to my hair and clothes as I shoved back the door. The space beyond was small and dirty, with rotting tables scattered about the floor and steel drums set at every corner, thick smoke pouring from the mouths to hover near the roof. An ancient ceiling fan, half its blades broken or missing, spun limply, doing little to disperse the choking air.

Every eye in the room turned as I stepped through the frame and, once settled on me, didn’t glance away. Hard, dangerous, broken faces watched intently as I passed their tables, like feral dogs scenting blood. I ignored them, moving steadily across the creaky floorboards, feeling nails and chips of glass under my boots. I didn’t need to take a breath to know the air reeked of sweat and alcohol and human filth.

And blood. The scent of it clung to the walls and floors, soaked into the rotting tables, smeared in dark stains across the wood. It flowed through the veins of every human here, hot and heady. I heard several heartbeats quicken as I made my way to the counter, felt the eager stirrings of lust and hunger, but also the hint of fear, unease. Some of them, at least, were sober enough to guess the truth.

The man behind the counter was a grizzled giant with a snarl of scar tissue across his throat. It crept up his neck and twisted the left corner of his lip into a permanent scowl. He eyed me without expression as I took a seat on one of the moldy bar stools, resting my arms on the badly dinged counter. His gaze flicked to the hilt of the sword strapped to my back, and one of his eyelids twitched.

“I’m afraid I don’t have the type of drink you’re looking for,” he said in a low voice, as his hands slid under the bar. When they came up again, I knew they wouldn’t be empty. Shotgun, probably, I guessed. Or maybe a baseball bat. “Not on tap, anyway.”

I smiled without looking up. “You know what I am.”

“Wasn’t difficult. Pretty girl walking into a place like this either has a death wish or is already dead.” He snorted, shooting a dark look at the patrons behind us. I could feel their hooded gazes even now. “I know what you want, and I’m not about to stop you. No one here will miss these idiots. You take what you have to, but don’t trash my bar, understand?”

“Actually, I’m just looking for someone,” I said, knowing I didn’t have a lot of time. The dogs at my back were already stirring. “Someone like me. Bald. Tall. Face scarred all to hell.” I finally looked up, meeting his impassive gaze. “Anyone like that come through here?”

A muscle worked in his jaw. Beneath his grimy shirt, his heartbeat picked up, and a sheen of sweat appeared on his brow. For a moment, he seemed torn about whether he should pull out the gun or whatever he had beneath the counter. I kept my expression neutral, unthreatening, my hands on the bar between us.

“You’ve seen him,” I prodded carefully. He shook himself, then turned that blank stare on me.

“No.” The reply seemed dragged from somewhere deep within. “I didn’t see him. But …” He glanced at the men behind me, as if judging how much time we had, before shaking his head. “About a month ago, a stranger came through. No one saw him enter, and no one saw him leave. But we found what he left behind.”

“Left behind?”

“Rickson and his boys. In their home. From one end of it to the other. They said the bodies were so scattered they never found all the pieces.”

I bit the inside of my lip. “Did anyone see who did it?”

“Rickson’s woman. She lived. At least, until she blew her brains out three days later. But she said the killer was a tall, pale man with a face scarred like the devil himself.”

“Anyone with him?”

The barkeep frowned then shook his head. “No, she said he was alone. But he carried a large black bag with him, like a body bag. That’s all we could get out of her, anyway. She wasn’t terribly coherent, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded, drawing back, though the words body bag sent a chill through my stomach. I’m getting closer, though. “Thank you,” I murmured, sliding off the stool. “I’ll be going now.”

That’s when I felt the arm on my shoulder.

“Oh, you’re not leaving yet, little girl,” murmured a voice in my ear, hot and rancid. A large hand reached down and gripped my wrist, hard enough to bruise, if I could still bruise. “It’s too cold outside. Come over here and keep us warm.”

A smile tugged at one corner of my mouth. Finally. Took you long enough.

I looked at the barkeep. He met my gaze, then very deliberately turned and walked toward the back room. The man next to me didn’t seem to notice; his arm slid down my back and curled around my waist, trying to drag me away. I didn’t budge an inch, and he frowned, too drunk to realize what was happening.

I waited until the barkeep vanished through the door, letting it swing shut behind him, before I turned to my assailant.

He leered at me, the stench of alcohol coming off him in waves. “That’s right, little girl. You want some of this, don’cha?” Behind us, a few more patrons were starting to get up; either they wanted in on the fun, or they thought they could take me out together. The rest watched behind their tankards, tense and wary, smelling of fear.

“Come on then, bitch,” the man beside me said, and grabbed my other arm, his face mean and eager. “Let’s do this. I can go all night.”

I smiled. “Can you now?” I said quietly.

And lunged at him with a roar, sinking my fangs into his throat.

When the barkeep returned, I was already gone. He would find the bodies—the ones stupid enough to stay and fight—lying where they had fallen, a couple in pieces, but most of them still alive. I had what I’d come for. The Hunger had been sated, and better here, in this outpost full of bandits and murderers, than anywhere else. Better these kinds of men than an innocent family or an old couple huddled together in the ruins of an isolated cabin, trying to keep warm. I was a monster who killed and preyed on human life; I could never escape that, but at least I could choose what kind of lives I took.

Outside, the snow was falling again. Thick flakes clung to my eyelashes and cheeks and stuck to my straight black hair, but I didn’t feel them. The bitter chill couldn’t touch someone who was already dead.

I gave my katana a flick, causing a line of crimson to spatter to the ground. Sliding it into the sheath on my back, I started walking, my boots crunching over frozen mud. Around me, the wood and tin shanties were silent, dark smoke leaking from windows and chimney stacks. No one was out tonight; the humans were all inside, huddled around steel drums and bottles, keeping fire and alcohol between them and the icy cold. No one would see the lone teenage girl in the long black coat, walking down the path between shanties. Just like the town’s other visitor, I’d come, taken what I needed and vanished back into the night. Leaving carnage behind me.

About a hundred yards away, a wall of corrugated steel and wire rose into the air, dark and bristling. It was uneven in places, with gaps and holes that had been patched and re-patched and finally forgotten about. A flimsy barrier against the creatures that lurked outside the wall. If things continued here with no change, this little outpost would eventually vanish off the face of the earth.

Not my problem.

I leaped to the roof of a shanty leaning against the wall, then over the wall itself, landing lightly on the other side. Straightening, I gazed down the rocky slope to the road that had led me here, now invisible beneath the snow. Even my footsteps, coming in from the east, had vanished beneath the layer of white.

He was here, I thought as the wind whipped my face, tugging at my hair and coat. Barely a month ago. I’m getting closer. I’m closing the gap.

Dropping from the cliff, I fell the twenty feet, coat flapping behind me, and landed at the edge of the road, grunting as my body absorbed the shock. Stepping onto the rough, uneven pavement, feeling it crumble under my boots, I walked to where the road split, weaving off in two directions. One path curved away, circling the tiny outpost before heading south; the other continued east, toward the soon-to-be-rising sun.

I gazed down one direction, then the other, waiting. And just like at the last crossroads I’d hit, it was there again. That faint pull, telling me to continue northeast. It was more than a hunch, more than a gut instinct. Though I couldn’t explain it completely, I knew which direction would lead me to my sire. Blood calls to blood. The killings I’d found on my travels, like the unfortunate family in the settlement behind me, only confirmed it. He was traveling fast, but I was catching up, slowly but surely. He couldn’t hide from me forever.

I’m still coming, Kanin.

Dawn was a couple hours away. I could cover a lot of ground before then, so I started off once more, heading down the road toward an unknown destination. Chasing a shadow.

Knowing we were running out of time.

I walked through the night, the wind icy in my face, unable to numb my already cold skin. The road stretched on, silent and empty. Nothing moved in the darkness. I passed the tangled remains of old neighborhoods, streets vacant and overgrown, buildings crumbling under the weight of the snow and time. Since the plague that wiped out most of humanity and the rabid outbreak soon after, most cities had been reduced to empty husks. I’d found a few settlements scattered here and there, humans living free despite the constant threat of rabids or invasion from their own kind. But the majority of the population existed in the vampire cities, the great, walled-in territories where the coven provided food and “safety” in exchange for blood and freedom. The humans in the vampire cities were nothing more than cattle, really, but that was the price of vampire protection. Or, that’s what they wanted you to believe. Monsters existed on both sides of the wall, but at least the rabids were honest about wanting to eat you. In a vampire city, you were really just living on borrowed time, until the killers who smiled and patted you on the head finally showed their true colors.

I should know. I was born there.

The road stretched on, and I followed as it snaked through white forests grown up around sprawling towns and suburbs, until the sky turned charcoal-gray and sluggishness began to drag me under. Heading off the road, I found a faded ranch house choked with weeds and brambles. They grew up through the porch and coiled around the roof, smothering the walls, but the house itself seemed fairly intact. I eased my way up the steps and kicked open the door, ducking inside.

Small furry creatures scurried into the shadows, and a cloud of snow rose from my entry, swirling across the floor. I spared a glance at the simple furniture, covered in dust and cobwebs, strangely undisturbed.

On the wall closest to me sat an old yellow sofa, one side chewed by rodents, spilling dirty fluff over the floor. Memory stirred, a scene of another time, another house like this one, empty and abandoned.

For just a moment, I saw him there, slumped against the cushions with his elbows on his knees, pale hair glimmering in the darkness. I remembered the warmth of his hands on my skin, those piercing blue eyes as they gazed at me, trying to figure me out, the tightness in my chest when I’d had to turn away, to leave him behind.

Frowning, I collapsed to the sofa myself and ran a hand over my eyes, dissolving the memory and the last of the frost clinging to my lashes. I couldn’t think of him now. He was in Eden with the others. He was safe. Kanin was not.

I leaned back, resting my head on the back of the couch. Kanin. My sire, the vampire who’d Turned me, who’d saved my life and taught me everything I knew—he was the one I had to focus on now.

Just thinking of my maker caused a frown to crease my forehead. I owed the vampire my life, and it was a debt I was determined to repay, though I could never understand him. Kanin had been a mystery from the very start, from that fateful night in the rain when I’d been attacked by rabids outside my city’s walls. I’d been dying, and a stranger had appeared out of nowhere, offering to save me, presenting me with the choice. Die … or become a monster.

Obviously, I’d chosen to live. But even after I’d made my decision, Kanin hadn’t left. He’d stayed, teaching me what it meant to be a vampire, making sure I knew exactly what I had chosen. I probably wouldn’t have survived those first few weeks without him.

But Kanin had secrets of his own, and one night the darkest of them caught up to us in the form of Sarren, a twisted vampire with a vendetta. Dangerous, cunning and completely out of his mind, Sarren had tracked us to the hidden lab we were using as a hideout, and we were forced to flee. In the chaos that had followed, Kanin and I were separated, and my mentor had vanished back into the unknown from where he’d come. I hadn’t seen him since.

But then the dreams began.

I rose, the cushions squeaking beneath me, and wandered down a musty hallway to the room at the end. It had been a bedroom at one point, and the twin bed in the corner was far enough away from the window to be out of the sun if it came creeping into the room.

Just to be safe, I hung a ratty blanket over the sill, covering the pane and plunging the room into shadow. Outside, it was still snowing, tiny flakes drifting from a dark, cloudy sky, but I wasn’t taking any chances should it clear up. Lying back on the bed, keeping my sword close, I stared at the ceiling and waited for sleep to claim me.

Vampires don’t dream. Technically, we are dead, our sleep that of a corpse, black and depthless. My “dreams” were of Kanin, in trouble. Seeing through his eyes and feeling what he felt. Because in times of extreme duress, pain or emotion, blood called to blood, and I could sense what my sire was feeling. Agony. Sarren had found him. And was taking his revenge.

My eyes narrowed as I recalled the very last one.

My throat is raw from screaming.

He didn’t hold back last night. He was toying with me before, just showing me the edge of his deranged cruelty. But last night, the true demon came out. He wanted to talk, tried to get me to talk, but I wasn’t going to oblige him. So he made me scream instead. At one point, I looked down at my body, hanging like a piece of flayed meat from the ceiling, and wondered how I was still alive. I’ve never wanted to die so badly as I did then. Surely hell would not be as bad as this. It was testament to Sarren’s skill, or perhaps insanity, that he kept me alive when I was doing my best to die.

Tonight, though, he is oddly passive. I woke, as I had countless nights before, hanging by my wrists from the ceiling, mentally preparing myself for the agony that would come later. The Hunger is a living thing, devouring me, a torment all in itself. Lately I see blood everywhere, trickling from the ceiling, oozing past the door. Salvation always beyond reach.

“It’s no use.”

His voice is a whisper, slithering out of the darkness. Sarren stands a few feet away, watching me blankly, his pale face a web of scars. Last night, his eyes glowed feverishly bright as he screamed and railed at me, demanding I talk, answer his question. Tonight, the dead, empty look on his face chills me like nothing else.

“It’s no use,” he whispers again, shaking his head. “You’re right here, right at my fingertips, and yet I feel nothing.” He slides forward, touching my neck with long, bony fingers, his gaze searching. I don’t have the strength to jerk away. “Your scream, such a glorious song. Iimagined how it would sound for years. Your blood, your flesh, your bones—I imagined it all. Breaking them. Tasting them.” He runs a finger down my throat. “You were mine to break, to peel apart, so I could see the rotted soul that lies beneath this shell of meat and blood. It was to be a magnificent requiem.” He steps back, his expression one of near despair. “But I see nothing. And I feel … nothing. Why?” Whirling away, he stalks to the nearby table, where dozens of sharp instruments glint in the darkness. “Am I doing something wrong?” he murmurs, tracing them with a fingertip. “Is he not to pay for what he has done?”

I close my eyes. What he has done. Sarren deserves to hate me. What I did to him, what I was responsible for—I deserve every torment he heaps on my head. But it won’t make things right. It won’t put an end to what I caused.

As if reading my thoughts, Sarren turns back, and the gleam in his eyes has returned. It burns with searing intensity, showing the madness and brilliance behind it, and for the first time, I feel a stirring fear through the numbing agony and pain.

“No,” he whispers slowly, in a daze, as if everything has suddenly become clear. “No, I see now. I see what I must do. It is not you that is the source of the corruption. You were merely the harbinger. This whole world is pulsing with rot and decay and filth. But, we will fix it, old friend. Yes, we will fix it. Together.”

His hand skims the top of the table to the very end, picking up the item on the corner. It isn’t bright like the others—shiny metal polished to a gleaming edge. It is long, wooden, and comes to a crude, whittled point at the end.

I shiver, every instinct telling me to back away, to put distance between myself and that sharp wooden point. But I can’t move, and Sarren approaches slowly, the stake held before him like a cross. Heis smiling again, a demonic grin that stretches his entire ravaged face and makes his fangs gleam.

“I can’t kill you, yet,” he says, touching my chest with the very tip of the stake, right over my heart. “No, not yet. That would spoil the ending, and I have a glorious song in mind. Oh, yes, it will be magnificent. And you … you will be the instrument on which I compose this symphony.” He steps forward and pushes the tip of the stake into my chest, slowly, twisting it as it sinks beneath my skin. I throw back my head, clenching my jaw to keep the scream contained, as Sarren continues. “No, old friend. Death is still too good for you. We’re just going to send you to sleep for a while.” The stake continues to slide into my flesh, parting muscle and scraping against my breastbone, creeping closer to my heart. The wood becomes a bright strip of fire, searing me from the inside. My body convulses and starts to shut down. Darkness hovers at the edge of my vision—hibernation pulling me under, a last effort at self-preservation. Sarren smiles.

“Sleep now, old friend,” he whispers, his scarred face fading rapidly as my vision goes dark. “But not for long. I have something special planned.” He chuckles, the empty sound following me down into blackness. “You won’t want to miss it.”

The vision had ended there. And I hadn’t had any more dreams since.

I shifted on the bed, bringing the sword close to my chest, thinking. I’d tracked Sarren to one place he had been: a rotted-out ruin of a house in an empty suburb, a long flight of steps leading down to the basement. The scent of Kanin’s blood had hit me like a hammer as soon as I’d opened the door. It had been everywhere—on the walls, on the chains that hung from the ceiling, on the instruments spread over the table. A dark stain had marred the floor right below the metal links, making my stomach turn. It didn’t seem possible that Kanin had survived, that anything could have survived that macabre dungeon. But I had to believe that he was still alive, that Sarren wasn’t finished with him just yet.

My hunch had been confirmed when, as I’d explored further, I’d discovered the stiff, decaying bodies of several humans tossed casually in a closet upstairs. They had been drained of blood, their throats cut open instead of bitten, a stained pitcher sitting on a table nearby. Sarren had been feeding Kanin, letting him heal between sessions. Closing the door on the pile of corpses, I’d felt a deep stab of sympathy and fear for my mentor. Kanin had made mistakes, but no one deserved that. I had to rescue him from Sarren’s sick insanity, before he drove my sire completely over the edge.

Gray light was beginning to filter through the holes in the blanket over the window, and I grew evermore sluggish in response. Hang in there, Kanin, I thought. I’ll find you, I swear. I’m catching up.

Although, if I was honest with myself, the thought of facing Sarren again, seeing that blank, empty smile, the fevered intensity of his gaze, terrified me more then I cared to admit. I remembered his face through Kanin’s eyes, and though I hadn’t noticed it in the dream, I’d later recalled the film across his left eye, pale and cloudy. He’d been blinded there, and recently. I knew, because the pocketknife that had been jammed into his pupil the last time I saw him … was mine.

And I knew he hadn’t forgotten me, either.




CHAPTER 2


Four months ago, I walked away from Eden.

Or, more accurately, I was forced out. Much like Adam and Eve getting kicked out of their infamous garden, I had reached Eden with a small group of pilgrims only to be turned away at the gates. Eden was a city under human rule, the only one of its kind, a walled-in paradise with no monsters or demons to prey on its unsuspecting citizens. And I was the monster they feared most. I had no place there.

Not that I would’ve stayed, regardless. I had a promise to keep. I had to find someone, help him, before his time ran out.

So, I’d left Eden and the company of the humans I’d protected all the way there. The group I’d left was smaller than the group I’d first joined; the journey had been hard and dangerous, and we’d lost several along the way. But I was glad for the ones who’d made it. They were safe, now. They no longer had to worry about starvation or cold, being chased by raiders or stalked by vampires. They no longer had to fear the rabids, the vicious, mindless creatures that roamed the land after dark, killing anything they came across. No, the humans who’d made it to Eden had found their sanctuary. I was happy for them.

Though, there was … one … I regretted leaving behind.

The sky was clear the following night, spotted with stars, a frozen half-moon lighting the way. The wind and the crunch of my boots in the snow were the only sounds keeping me company. As always, while walking alone through this quiet, empty landscape, my mind drifted to places I wished it wouldn’t.

I thought of my old life, my human one, when I was simply Allie the street rat, Allie the Fringer, scraping out a meager existence with my old crew, facing starvation and exposure and a million other deaths, just to declare that we were “free.” Until the night we’d tempted fate a bit more than usual and had paid for it with our lives.

New Covington. That was the name of the vampire city where I was born, grew up and ultimately died. In my seventeen years, I hadn’t known anything else. I’d known nothing of the world beyond the Outer Wall that kept out the rabids, or of the Inner City, where the vampires lived in their dark, gleaming towers, looking down on all of us. My whole existence had consisted of the Fringe, the outer ring of New Covington where the human cattle were kept, herded in by fences and branded with tattoos. The rules were simple: if you were branded—Registered to the masters—you were fed and somewhat taken care of, but the catch was, you were owned. Property. And that meant you had to donate blood on a regular basis. If you were Unregistered, you were left to fend for yourself in a city with no food and no supplies except the ones the masters allotted; but at least the vamps couldn’t take your blood unless they caught you themselves.

Of course, you still had to worry about starving to death.

Back when I was human, I’d struggled with hunger every day. My life had revolved around finding food and little else. There had been four of us in my small gang—me, Lucas, Rat and Stick. We had all been Unregistered; street rats, beggars and thieves, living together in an abandoned school and barely scraping by. Until one stormy night when we’d ventured beyond the Outer Wall to find food … and became the hunted ourselves. It had been stupid to step outside the protection of New Covington, but I’d insisted, and my stubbornness had cost us everything. Lucas and Rat had been killed, and I’d been pulled down and torn apart by a pack of rabids. My life should’ve ended that night in the rain.

In a way, I guess it had. I’d died that night in Kanin’s arms. And now that I was a monster, I could never go back to the life I’d known. I’d tried, once, to contact a friend from my old life, the boy named Stick whom I’d looked after for years. But Stick, seeing what I’d become, had screamed and fled from me in terror, confirming what Kanin had always told me. There was no going back. Not to New Covington, not to my old life, not to anything that was human. Kanin had been right all along. He was always right.

I thought of him often, of the nights we’d spent in the secret lab beneath the vampire city where I was born. His lessons, teaching me what it meant to be a vampire, how to hunt and fight and kill. The humans I’d preyed on, their screams, the warm blood in my mouth, intoxicating and terrible. And Kanin himself, who’d taught me, in no uncertain terms, what I was—a vampire and a demon—but also that my path was my own; that I had a choice.

You are a monster. His voice was always so clear in my head, as if he was standing right next to me, his dark eyes boring into my skull. You will always be a monster—there is no turning back from it. But what kind of monster you become is entirely up to you. That was the lesson I clung to most, the one I swore I’d never forget.

But Kanin had another rule as well, one I hadn’t remembered so clearly as the first. The one about humans, and becoming attached …

And just like that, my traitor mind shifted to a lean figure with jagged blond hair and solemn blue eyes. I remembered his smile, that lopsided grin meant only for me. I remembered his touch, the heat that radiated from him when we were close. His fingers sliding over my skin, the warmth of his lips on mine …

I shook my head. Ezekiel Crosse was human. I was a vampire. No matter what I felt, no matter how strong my feelings, I could never separate the urge to kiss Zeke from the desire to sink my fangs into his throat. That was another reason I’d left Eden without saying goodbye, without letting anyone know where I was going. I couldn’t be near Zeke without putting his life in danger. Eventually, I would kill him.

It was better to be alone. Vampires were predators; the Hunger was always with us, the craving for human blood that could take over at any time. Lose yourself to the Hunger, and the people around you died. It had been a hard lesson for me to learn, and one that I did not ever want to repeat. It was always there—that fear that I would slip, that the Hunger would take over again and when I came back to myself I would have killed someone I knew. Even the men I preyed on—bandits, raiders, marauders, murderers—they were all still human. They were living beings, and I killed them to feed myself. To keep myself from attacking others. I could choose what kind of people I preyed on, but in the end, I had to prey on someone. The lesser of the two evils was still evil.

Zeke was too good to be dragged down by that darkness.

Deliberately, I forced my thoughts away from Zeke before they grew too painful. To keep myself distracted, I concentrated on the pull, the strange tug that I still didn’t understand, even now. Awake, I barely felt it; only in sleep could I sense Kanin’s thoughts, see through his eyes. Or, at least, I could before that last vision, when Sarren had driven a wooden stake into Kanin’s chest, sending him into hibernation.

I couldn’t feel Kanin’s experiences anymore. But when I concentrated, I did know which direction would lead me to my sire. I did that now, emptying my mind of all other thoughts, and searched for Kanin.

The pull was still there, a faint pulse to the east, but … something was wrong. Not dangerous or threatening, but there was an odd sensation in my gut, that nagging feeling you get when you know you’ve forgotten something and you just can’t remember what. Dawn was still hours away; I wasn’t in danger of being caught outside in the light. There was nothing I could have left behind except my sword, and that was strapped firmly across my back. Why, then, did I feel so uneasy?

A few minutes later, it hit me.

The pull I was following, that strange but unerring sense of knowing, was slowly splitting off, moving in different directions. I stopped in the middle of the road, wondering if I was mistaken. I wasn’t. There was still a strong pull to the east, but also a fainter one, now, to the north.

I frowned. Two directions. What could it mean? And where was I supposed to go, now? The feeling to the east was stronger; I just barely felt the compulsion to the north, but it was definitely there. Impossible as it seemed, I had come to a crossroad. And I had no idea where to go.

Did Kanin free himself, somehow? Is he fleeing north, and I’m tracking Sarren down alone? It doesn’t seem likely that Sarren would be the one to run. Upon reflection, my frown deepened, the sense of worry and unease growing stronger. Is it Sarren? Would I even feel anything from him? We’re not blood kin, we’re not related in any way that I know of. What’s going on here?

Utterly bewildered, I stood in the center of the road trying to decide what to do, which direction to follow. I was still new to this vampire-blood-tie thing and had no idea why there would be two pulls instead of one. Had Sarren fed from Kanin, perhaps? Was it possible that Sarren was related to me and my sire in some distant past, centuries ago?

It was a mystery, and one I had no way to solve. In the end, I continued east. Indecision and doubt still nagged at me as the other sense of knowing continued to pull away, but I couldn’t be in two places at once; I had to pick a direction and keep going. So I chose the stronger of the two urges, and if it led me right to a pissed-off, psychotic vampire eager to peel the skin from my bones, then I would just have to deal with that bump when I got there.

When I woke the next evening, the second pull had shifted completely to the west. I ignored it and my doubts and continued eastward. For two more nights, I walked through unending forest and rotted towns, my only company the road and the occasional flash of wildlife in the darkness. Deer were abundant out here, as were raccoons, opossums and the odd mountain lion stalking its prey through the trees and broken houses. They didn’t bother me, except to give me the evil eye, and I left them alone, as well. I wasn’t Hungry, and animal blood, as I’d learned the hard way, did nothing to satisfy the monster within.

The snow and heavy woodlands continued, the road I traveled strangled on either side with vegetation that split the pavement and pushed its way up through the cracks. Eventually, though, the road widened, and dead cars began to appear, rusty hulks of metal beneath the snow, growing more numerous as I traveled. I was approaching a city, and my instincts prickled a warning. Most empty towns and suburbs were just that, broken and deserted, with crumbling houses lining silent, overgrown streets. But the cities, once a place of thousands of humans living side by side, were overrun with a different species now.

The road widened even more, became a highway, stubbornly pushing back the choking forest. More vehicles appeared, turning the road into a maze of rusted metal and glass, though only on the side of the highway leaving the city. I kept to the other, empty lane, passing the endless stream of dead, smashed cars, trying not to look inside, though sometimes it was impossible not to see. A skeleton lay against the steering wheel of a crumpled car, half-buried in the snow that drifted through the broken windshield. Another dangled beneath a charred, overturned truck. Thousands of people, trying to leave the city all at once. Had they been fleeing the plague, or the madness that came soon after?

The road wound through the sprawling city streets, piled high with snow and coated with a thick layer of ice. I left the car-choked main road and entered the empty side streets, finding it easier to navigate the smaller paths.

After crossing a windy bridge over a sullen gray river, I stumbled upon a huge marble building, relatively clear of vegetation and strangely undisturbed. Curious, and because it was in the same direction of the pull I’d been following, I headed toward it then made my way along the outer wall. Half the roof had fallen in, and a couple of the enormous pillars surrounding it were crushed and broken. An entire corner had crumbled away, and rubble was strewn across the floor. I ducked inside, gazing around cautiously.

The room, for its enormous size, was quite empty. Nothing lived here, it seemed, except the single owl that swooped out from the high, vaulted ceiling when I came in. Marble pillars lined the room, and I could make out words carved into the walls on both sides, though they were too cracked and eroded to read.

Against the back wall, looming up to an impossible height, was a statue. An enormous statue of a man sitting on a marble chair, his wrists resting against the arms. One of his hands was missing, and there were many small cracks in his stony features, but he was surprisingly undamaged. The marble chair had been streaked with paint, scrawled with ugly words that continued up the wall, and one corner of the statue was blackened, as if burned. But the man in the chair was still noble looking despite the damage. His great, craggy face peered down, looking right at me, and it was eerie, standing there beneath the stone gaze of a giant. As I backed toward the exit, the hollow eyes appeared to follow me out. Still, I thought it was a kind face, one that didn’t belong in this time. I wondered who he had been, to be immortalized in such a way. There were so many things about the time Before that I didn’t know; huge statues and marble buildings that seemed to serve no purpose. All very strange.

Outside, I paused to get my bearings. Straight ahead, a rectangle of cracked cement stretched away from the bottom of the steps. Leaves and branches were frozen beneath a layer of ice filling the shallow pool, and the rusty hulk of a car lay on its side at the edge.

And then, I saw the strangest sight yet. Beyond the steps, directly in front of me, a huge white tower rose into the night. It was ridiculously thin and pointed, a pale needle scraping the clouds, looking as if a strong breeze could blow it over.

And that faint pull was drawing me right toward it.

I hurried down the steps and skirted the edges of the pool, my boots squelching in mud, weeds and slush. Past the cement, the land dissolved into swampy marshland filled with brush, reeds and puddles of icy water. As I drew closer and the tower loomed overhead, I realized that the tug, the pull I’d been tracking for months, was stronger than it had ever been. Though it wasn’t coming from the tower itself; rather, from another large white building, barely visible over a canopy of trees beyond.

Resolved that my prey was so close, I stalked forward, pushing through weeds and brush.

And stopped.

Several hundred yards from the tower, past a crumbling street lined with rusty cars and across another swampy lawn, a bristling fence rose out of the ground to scar the horizon. About twelve feet tall, made of black iron bars topped with coils of barbed wire, it was a familiar sight. I’d seen many walls in my travels across the country—concrete and wood, steel and stone. They were everywhere, surrounding every settlement, from tiny farms to entire cities. They all had one purpose, and that purpose was right in front of me, preventing any further advances tonight.

A huge swarm of spindly, emaciated creatures crowded the fence line, hissing and snarling, baring jagged fangs. They moved with a jerky, spastic gait, sometimes on all fours, hunched over and unnatural. Their clothes—the few that had them anyway—were in tatters, their hair tangled and matted. Chalky skin was stretched tightly over bones, and the eyes in the gaunt, bony faces reflected the soullessness behind them. A blank, dead wall of white.

Rabids. I growled softly and eased back into the shadow of a tree. They hadn’t seen me yet. As I huddled behind the trunk, watching the shambling horde, I noticed a weird thing. The rabids didn’t rush the fence or try to scramble over it, though they could have easily clawed their way to the top if they tried. Instead, they skulked around the edge, always a few feet away, never touching the iron bars.

Even more curious now, I peered past the rabid horde through the fence and clenched my fists so hard the nails dug into my palms.

Looming above the gates, beyond the iron barrier, a squat white building crouched in the weeds. The entrance to the place was circular, lined with columns, and I could make out flickering lights through the windows.

And I knew.

He’s in there. If I had a heartbeat, it would be thudding loudly now. I was so close. But who would it be? Who would I run into, once I finally caught up? Would I meet my sire, and would he be surprised to see me? Would he be angry that I’d tracked him down? Or would I run into a dangerous, terrifyingly insane vampire all too eager to torture me to death?

Guess I’ll find out soon enough.

The breeze shifted, and the awful, dead stench of the rabids hit me full force, making me wrinkle my nose. They weren’t going to let me saunter up and knock on what was probably the local vampire Prince’s door. And I couldn’t fight the whole huge swarm. A few of the savage creatures I could deal with, but taking on this many ventured very close to suicide. Once was enough, thanks. I’d dealt with a massive horde like this one outside the gates of Eden, and survived only because there had been a large lake nearby, and rabids were afraid of deep water. Vampire or not, even I could be dragged under and torn apart by sheer numbers.

Frowning, I pondered my plan of attack. I needed to get past the rabids without being seen. The fence was only twelve feet tall; maybe I could vault over it?

One of the rabids snarled and shoved another that had jostled it, sending it stumbling toward the fence. Hissing, the other rabid put out a hand to catch itself, grabbing on to the iron bars.

There was a blinding flash and an explosion of sparks, and the rabid shrieked, convulsing on the metal. Its body jerked and spasmed, sending the other rabids skittering back. Finally, the smoke pouring off its blackened skin erupted into flame and consumed the monster from the inside.

Okay, definitely not touching the fence.

I growled. Dawn wasn’t far, and soon I would have to fall back to find shelter from the sun. Which meant abandoning any plans to get past the gate until tomorrow night. I was so close! It irked me that I was mere yards from my target and the only thing keeping me from my goal was a rabid horde and a length of electrified metal.

Wait. Dawn was approaching. Which meant that the rabids would have to sleep soon. They couldn’t face the light any better than a vampire; they would have to burrow into the ground to escape the burning rays of the sun.

Under normal circumstances, I would, as well.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. And I wasn’t your average vampire. Kanin had taught me better than that.

To keep up the appearance of being human, I’d trained myself to stay awake when the sun rose. Even though it was very, very difficult and something that went against all my vampire instincts, I could remain awake and active if I had to. For a little while, at least. But the rabids were slaves to instinct and wouldn’t even try to resist. They would vanish into the earth, and with the threat of rabids gone, the power that ran through the fence would probably be shut off. There’d be no need to keep it running in the daytime, especially with fuel or whatever powered the fence in short supply. If I could stay awake long enough, the rabids would disappear and the fence would be shut off. And I’d have a clear shot to the house and whoever was inside it. I just had to deal with the sun.

It might not be wise, continuing my quest in the daylight. I would be slow, my reactions muted. But if Sarren was in that house, he would be slow, too. He might even be asleep, not expecting Kanin’s vengeful daughter to come looking for him here. I could get the jump on him … if I could stay awake.

I scanned the grounds, marking where the shadows were thickest, where the trees grew close together. Smartly, the area surrounding the fence was clear of brush and trees. Indirect sunlight wouldn’t harm us, but it was still unpleasant, even in the shade, knowing that if the light shifted or a gust of wind tossed the branches, you’d be in a great deal of pain.

As the sky lightened and the sun grew close to breaking the horizon, the horde began to disappear. Breaking away from the fence, they skulked off to bury themselves in the soft mud, their pale bodies vanishing beneath water and earth. The grounds surrounding the fence emptied swiftly, until there wasn’t a rabid to be seen.

I leaned against the trunk of a thick oak, fighting the urge to follow the vicious creatures beneath the earth. It was still madly difficult to remain conscious as the sun rose into the sky. My thoughts felt sluggish, my body heavy and tired. But my training to remain above ground, even when our greatest enemy poked its head above the trees, paid off, and I was still standing when the last stubborn rabid disappeared beneath the earth. Still I waited until the sun had nearly risen above the trees, to allow time for the fence to be shut off. It would be hilariously tragic if I avoided the rabids, avoided the sun, only to be fried to a crisp on a damn electric fence because I was too impatient. About twenty or so minutes after the horde disappeared, the faint hum coming from the metal barrier finally clicked off. The fence was down.

Now came the most dangerous part.

I pulled my coat over my head and tugged down the sleeves so they covered my hands. Direct sunlight on my skin would cause it to blacken, rupture and eventually burst into flame, but I could buy myself time if it was covered.

Still, I was not looking forward to this.

All my vampire instincts were screaming at me to stop when I stepped out from under the branches, feeling the weak rays of dawn beating down on me. Not daring to look up, I hurried across the grounds, moving from tree to tree and darting into shade whenever I could. The stretch closest to the fence was the most dangerous, with no trees, no cover, nothing but short grass and the sun heating the back of my coat. I clenched my teeth, hunched my shoulders and kept moving.

As I approached the black iron barrier, I scooped up a scrap of metal and hurled it out in front of me. It arced through the air and struck the bars with a faint clatter before dropping to the ground. No sparks, no flash of light, no smoke. I didn’t know much about electric fences, but I took that as a good sign.

Let’s hope that fence really is off.

I leaped toward the top, feeling a brief stab of fear as my fingers curled around the bars. Thankfully, they remained cold and dead beneath my hands, and I scrambled over the fence in half a second and landed on the other side in a crouch.

In the brief moment it took me to leap over the iron barrier, my coat slipped off my head. My relief at being inside the fence without cooking myself was short-lived as blinding pain seared my face and hands. I gasped, frantically tugging my coat back up while scrambling under the nearest tree. Crouching down, I examined my hands and winced. They were red and aching from just a few seconds in the sunlight.

I’ve got to get inside.

Keeping close to the ground, I hurried across the tangled, snowy lawn, feeling horribly exposed as I drew closer to the building. If someone pushed aside those heavy curtains in front of the huge windows, they would most definitely spot me. But the windows and grounds remained dark and empty as I reached the curving wall and darted beneath an archway, relieved to be out of the light.

Okay. Now what?

The faint tug, that subtle hint of knowing, was stronger than ever as I crept up the stairs and peeked through a curtained window. The strange, circular room beyond was surprisingly intact. A table stood in the center with several chairs around it, all thankfully deserted. Beyond that room was an empty hallway, and even more rooms beyond that.

I stifled a groan. Finding one comatose vampire in such a huge house was going to be a challenge. But I couldn’t give up.

The glass on the windows was shockingly unbroken, and the window itself was unlocked. I slid through the frame and dropped silently onto the hardwood floor, glancing warily about. Humans lived here, I realized, a lot of them. I could smell them on the air, the lingering scent of warm bodies and blood. I wondered why the scent didn’t knock me down the second I came into the room. If Sarren was here, he’d likely paint the walls in their blood.

But I didn’t run into any humans, alive or dead, as I made my way through the gigantic house, and that worried me. Especially since it was obvious this place was well taken care of. Nothing appeared broken. The walls and floor were clean and uncluttered, the furniture, though old, was sturdy and carefully arranged. The Prince who lived here either had a lot of servants to keep this place up and running, or he was incredibly dedicated to cleaning.

I continued to scan the shadows and the dozens of empty rooms, wary and alert, searching for movement. But the house remained dark and lifeless as I crept up a long flight of steps, down an equally long corridor, and stopped outside the thick wooden door at the end.

This is it.

Carefully, I grasped my sword and eased it out, being sure the metal didn’t scrape against the sheath. Getting here had been way too easy. Whoever was on the other side of that door knew I was coming. If Sarren was expecting me, I’d be ready, too. If Kanin was in there, I wasn’t leaving until I got him out safe.

Firmly grasping the door handle, I wrenched it to the side and flung the door open.

A figure stood at the back wall, waiting, as I’d feared. He wore a black leather duster, and his arms, crossed lazily over his chest, were empty of weapons. Thick, dark hair tumbled to his shoulders, and a pale, handsome face met mine over the room, lips curled into an evil smile.

“Hello, sister,” Jackal greeted, his gold eyes shining in the dim light. “It’s about time you showed up.”




CHAPTER 3


“Jackal,” I whispered, as the tall, lean vampire sauntered toward me. I remembered when I’d seen him last, the self-declared Prince of a flooded raider city, its residents as dangerous and ruthless as himself. He had gone through a lot of trouble to capture the humans I’d traveled with, three years of searching the roads, of having his men comb the countryside. And once Jackal had found them, he hadn’t been above sacrificing them, one by one, to get what he wanted. Zeke and I had managed to rescue our group from Jackal’s demented clutches, but several had died in the process, and the pain of that failure to save them still haunted me.

Why was Jackal here now? The last I’d seen of him, he had been shoved out of a thirty-story window—after, I remembered quite clearly, he’d jammed a wooden stake into my stomach. I didn’t have fond memories of the raider king, and I knew Jackal wasn’t terribly happy with me, either.

Then the implication hit me like a brick in the chest, and I stared at him in horror. Kanin was our sire, having Turned the both of us. The raider king was my “blood brother,” and blood called to blood. No wonder there had been two pulls. If Jackal was here, then he was the presence I’d been following. Not Kanin. Not Sarren. I’d chosen to track the wrong lead.

I gripped my sword so hard the hilt bit into my palm, and I would’ve snarled in frustration had Jackal not been twenty feet away. Who knew how far Sarren had extended his lead now? Months of searching, of trying to close the gap and find my sire, all for nothing! The psychotic vampire still had him and could be on the other side of the world for all I knew.

And here I was, trapped in this house with my brother, who probably wanted to kill me.

“I’ve been waiting for you, sister.” Jackal smiled as he approached, fangs gleaming. His duster billowed behind him, and I caught a glint of metal beneath. “You took your sweet time, didn’t you? And after the Prince of Old D.C. told all the guards and house staff to hide in the basement to let you through, just in case you were Hungry, you still had to skulk through the house like a common burglar. Didn’t it seem a bit odd, not running into anyone?”

Now I did snarl at him, baring my fangs. “What are you doing here, Jackal?”

“Visiting the Prince,” Jackal said mildly, and shrugged. “Waiting for you.” He continued to grin at me, smug and dangerous. “Oh, what’s the matter, sister? Did you not expect me? Were you hoping to run into someone else?”

“I was, actually,” I shot back, and took a step forward, raising my sword. “But I’ll take care of you before I go looking for him again. Let’s get on with it.”

“Let’s not,” said a low voice, and a new presence entered the room, closing the door behind her. A tall, statuesque woman gazed down at me with large black eyes. Full red lips stood out sharply against her dusky skin, and her hair floated around her face like a dark cloud. “If you and Jackal are going to fight,” she said in a throaty voice, “then wait until tonight and do it outside. I’d rather not have you throwing each other around and breaking furniture.”

“Azura.” Jackal smiled, waving a hand at me. “This is my lovely little sister.”

“I gathered that,” the vampiress said, not returning the smile. To me, she said, “Please put your weapon away. If you are going to remain in my house, you will do so on civil terms. I would hate to have you thrown out to face the sun.”

I felt trapped, staring them down. Two vampires, one of whom was still a Prince and probably a Master. I was all too happy to fight Jackal again, but I doubted I could take them both. The female had that same calm, cool air of another vampire I knew, another Master, and I could feel the power in that deceitfully slender form.

I sheathed my blade cautiously, still keeping a wary eye on Jackal, who looked far too pleased with this whole situation. “What’s going on?”

“Azura is an old … acquaintance of mine,” Jackal said, shooting the vampire woman a sultry look. Other than a raised eyebrow, she did not respond. “I thought, since I was passing through, I would her pay a visit. Of course, once I sensed you coming, I thought I’d stick around and wait for you.”

“If you’re looking for a fight, I’ll be glad to give you one.”

“Trust me, sister. Nothing would make me happier.” Jackal bared his fangs in an evil grin, and I tensed, ready to draw my sword again. “I would love to tear the head from your neck and stick it on the wall outside, but I promised Azura I would behave.” He jerked his head at the vampire woman, who continued to watch us both with detached amusement. “Besides,” Jackal continued, “I thought you might be interested to know what I discovered about Kanin and Sarren.”

That threw me. I narrowed my eyes, staring him down. “How do you know about that?”

“Oh, come on.” Jackal crossed his arms. “You’re not the only one looking for our dear sire. Kanin and I need to have a little talk, but that freak Sarren is making it difficult. Did you actually come here looking for them?” He shook his head, either in admiration or disgust. “What would you have done if it had been Sarren you stumbled onto, and not me? You think you’re a match for him, little sister? He would have turned you inside out.”

“So what are you doing?” I challenged. “Hiding out here, hoping Sarren gets bored or tired of tormenting Kanin? Don’t want to take on Sarren yourself?”

“Damn straight,” Jackal returned with a flash of fangs. “I’m not going after that psycho unless I have to. You think I’m bad?” He snorted and shook his head. “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve met crazy Sarren. And you sure as hell won’t be able to take him on alone. Not even Kanin wanted to cross paths with him. He’ll completely destroy you.”

I blinked, startled at the underlying fear in Jackal’s voice. It sounded like he had run into Sarren before, as well, or maybe Kanin had simply warned him about Psycho Vamp and his eternal vendetta. Whatever the reason, hearing Jackal’s warning made me even more reluctant to face Sarren and more desperate to get Kanin away from him.

“Listen to your brother,” Azura broke in, startling me. “He is correct. We all have heard of Sarren and his cruelty, his ruthlessness, his brilliance even through his madness. When I heard that he was in the city, I ordered my humans to not leave the house even during the day, and ran the fence continuously until I was certain he was gone.”

Damn. Even the Master vampire, the Prince of this city, was scared of Sarren. How strong was he, really? Or was he just an unpredictable nut job that no one wanted around, spouting creepy poetry and making everyone nervous?

Somehow, I doubted it. Sarren was cunning and dangerous enough to capture Kanin, the strongest vampire I knew. True, Psycho Vamp had been after him for a very, very long time, and it was partially my fault that he had found us, but still. If Kanin had succumbed to Sarren’s cruel insanity, what would he do to me?

“So, why are you still here?” I demanded, glaring at Jackal. “You said you were waiting for me—here I am. What do you want?”

“I have a proposition for you.”

Instantly suspicious, I stiffened, and Jackal sighed. “Oh, don’t give me that look, sister. I’m a reasonable guy.” He smiled dangerously. “You invaded my city, set it on fire, killed my men, and destroyed over ten years of careful planning, but that doesn’t mean we can’t reach an agreement.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” I growled. “There’s nothing you can offer that will keep me here. I’m leaving. If you want a fight, try me again when the sun goes down.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” Jackal replied, seeming unconcerned as I turned away. “Because I know what Sarren was looking for.”

I paused a few feet from the hall. I could feel Jackal’s smug, knowing grin at my back and, hating myself, turned slowly back around. “What are you talking about?”

“Like I said, Sarren came to Old D.C. looking for something. Showed up a few days before I did, then took off again with Kanin. I didn’t follow, because I’m not stupid enough to take him on myself, and because I could feel you coming. So I thought I’d wait for you.”

“You still haven’t answered my question. Or given me any reason to stick around.” I narrowed my eyes. “In fact, you have about five seconds to make your case before I walk out that door.”

“Oh, trust me. You’ll want to hear this.” The former raider king crossed his arms, unconcerned. “You know how the rabids were created, don’t you?” he asked. “That it was our dear sire, the noble Kanin himself, who sacrificed our own kind to seek a cure to the plague, only to have the humans screw everything up when they changed those vampires into rabids?”

“He told me.”

“Good. Saves me the time of explaining everything.” Jackal leaned against a bookcase. “Well, they didn’t have just the one lab. The government had a few of them, scattered about the country, all frantically working to end the plague. And one of them is somewhere in this city.” He grinned at my startled expression. “Yeah, Kanin once mentioned there was a hidden lab in the old capital, and when Sarren came sniffing around, I figured that’s what he was looking for.”

“Where is this lab?”

“No idea.” Jackal shrugged. “Figured I’d talk to Azura, see if she knew anything about it. She thinks that it’s underneath the city somewhere, down in the old tunnel systems that run belowground. Problem is, those tunnels are crawling with rabids, making it difficult to search for it. That’s when I got the brilliant idea to wait until you showed up. I figured we’d cover more ground if we looked for it together.”

It was my turn to snort. “And I’m going to agree to help you … why?”

“Because if you help me find the lab,” Jackal returned, “I’ll help you save Kanin.”

“I don’t need your help—”

“Yes, you do.” He pushed himself off the bookcase, giving me an intense look. “You don’t know Sarren. You don’t know what he’s capable of. You think you’re going to storm his lair, take him out and rescue Kanin, but you’re wrong. Sarren’s a crazy bastard, and he’s older and smarter than either of us. You want to stop him, you’re going to need my help. We can always kill each other later, when we catch up to our sire. But if you want to see Kanin again, you’re going to have to trust me.”

“Because you have such a great track record in that department?”

“Oh, come on,” Jackal said, smiling encouragingly. “Just because I staked you and tossed you out a window? Surely we can get past that little misunderstanding.”

“No,” I growled, feeling my fangs slip through my gums. “It’s not what you did to me. You kidnapped and murdered my friends. You fed one of them to a rabid. You tortured a man to get what you wanted, and you are responsible for his death.” I remembered the bloodstained arena, the cage in the center and the rabid pulling its victim down with chilling screams. My lip curled back from my fangs. “I should kill you now for what you did to them.”

“Is that so?” Jackal regarded me intently. “Then tell me, my dear sister, how many have you killed? How many of my men died when you fled the city with your little ‘friends,’ hmm? How many throats have you torn out, how many humans have you ripped apart, because you couldn’t control the Hunger? Or maybe I’m wrong.” He tilted his head with a fake quizzical expression. “Maybe you’re the first of our kind who doesn’t need human blood to survive. If that’s the case, then please, tell me now so I can apologize and be on my way.” He looked at me expectantly with his eyebrows raised. I clenched my fists and glared back, and he nodded. “Who are you trying to fool? People are food. You know it as well as I do. So don’t expect me to feel terribly guilty about killing your humans, not when you reek of blood and death. You’re not any less of a monster then I am.”

I growled, half tempted to lunge and cut that smirking head from his body. Zeke’s father, Jebbadiah Crosse, deserved that much justice. So did Darren and Ruth and all the others we’d lost because of the raider king. But Azura took a single step forward, placing herself closer to me and Jackal, and I could feel her readiness to jump in if needed.

“Work with me here, sister,” Jackal went on, his voice low and cajoling. “I’m not asking for much. I just want you to help me find the lab. Then we can go rescue the old man, but I need to find the lab first.”

“That could take time,” I argued. “Time I don’t have. Time Kanin doesn’t have. We have to get to him before—”

“Kanin is already dead,” Jackal snapped. “Or as near to it as he can be. Sarren forced him into hibernation, and it’s rare for us to come out of that. He isn’t going to wake up anytime soon. And if Sarren wanted him truly destroyed, he would’ve done it by now.”

“Why are you so eager to find this place?”

Jackal gave me a look of incredulous contempt. “You really have to ask me that?” He sighed and shook his head. “What have I been after this whole time? What was so important that I searched the country for three years to find that old preacher and his little congregation? What would bring me here, to ask for your help, when I had a whole army of raiders and minions ready to do my bidding? Think hard, sister. It’s not that difficult.”

I didn’t have to think about it. “The cure,” I whispered. Jackal smirked and nodded.

“Yeah. The cure. The end of Rabidism. That’s a little more important than finding Kanin right now.” He held up a hand as I glared. “I still want to find the old man,” he told me. “Like I said, we need to have a talk. And I’m going to need your help to get him away from Sarren. So … you help me, and I’ll do the same.” He bared his fangs in a savage grin. “And then, after all that is out of the way, you can try to kill me, and I’ll stick another stake in your gut and leave you for the rabids, what d’ya say?”

“Jackal,” Azura said, sounding faintly exasperated, “if you wish this girl’s cooperation, I suggest you stop taunting her. She is not one of your simple human thugs whom you can cower with a threat. If I am forced to kill her because of your uncharitable attitude, I will be very annoyed with you. Now …” She turned that dark, intense stare on me. “The sun is up, and I am very tired. If you two wish to continue your verbal sparring, I ask that you wait until evening. For now, I offer my home for as long as you have need of it.”

“Um …” I hesitated, not sure what to make of this generosity, if I should trust it. Or her. But she was right. The sun was up, and unless I wanted to venture outside, I would have to take my chances. “Thank you.”

Azura blinked slowly. “I would offer you the guest suite across from Jackal’s, but I fear I might return to a war zone. So I will have William show you to one of the lower suites. We will continue this conversation tonight. And, girl …” Her dark gaze narrowed, turning ominous and threatening. “I can smell the blood on you. Do not eat my staff, or I will forget my hospitality long enough to remove the head from your neck, is that understood?”

I bit down a smirk. Diplomacy was necessary when dealing with Master vampires, and Princes especially; they did not deal well with sarcasm, I’d discovered. “Yes,” I replied simply. “I understand.”

Apparently satisfied, Azura turned to the door and raised a hand. One second later, a human in a black-and-white uniform stepped through the frame and bowed to me. “I will show you to your room,” he said in a formal voice. “Please, follow me.”

I shot Jackal one last glare and followed the human, trailing him down several long hallways and flights of stairs, my mind reeling. I had fully expected to find Sarren or my sire tonight; that it was Jackal threw a wrench in all my plans. I wasn’t sure what to do next.

The human made his way unerringly through the massive house, until we came to a long hallway of doors. After pointing out the one to my room, the man bowed hurriedly and left, leaving me alone in the corridor. Still wary, I opened the door, revealing a small but lavishly furnished room. The bed, dresser, nightstand and table were old but meticulously cared for, polished to a dark shine and smelling faintly of chemicals. A pitcher and glass sat on the nightstand beside the bed, and the scent of warm blood roused my Hunger with a vengeance. I didn’t trust Jackal at all, but it wouldn’t hurt to take advantage of the Prince’s hospitality, especially since it came in a cup and not the veins of a human.

I drained the pitcher, feeling the blood settle in my empty stomach and the sharp ache vanish for now. As my Hunger subsided, sleep took its place, dragging at my mind, weighing me down. After locking my door, I dragged the bulky dresser from its place against the wall and shoved it up against the frame. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I was not going to sleep in a strange house with two vampires, one of whom was Jackal, without some kind of precaution.

Satisfied that I’d at least have warning if someone came bursting through my door, I crawled atop the cool red sheets, not bothering to take off my coat or boots, and pondered what Jackal had said for as long as I could before succumbing to the darkness.

I woke the next evening with my sword in hand, having unsheathed and readied it as sleep finally dragged me under. Unfamiliar walls and furniture stared back at me as I rose, pausing a moment to remember where I was. A glance at the door revealed that it was still locked and barricaded, untouched. The pitcher sat empty on the end table, so no one had disturbed me while I slept—no servant, anyway.

As I sheathed my weapon, the previous night’s conversation came back to me, making me frown. Jackal was here. My ruthless, murdering blood brother. I should leave. Better yet, I should kill him. We had a clear night sky and an empty lawn perfect for it. He’d kicked my ass the last time we’d fought, nearly killed me, but I was stronger now. If it came down to blows, this time I’d give him a hell of a fight.

But, if he was telling the truth, if the cure to Rabidism lay somewhere beneath our feet, no cost would be too high to find it. Much as I hated to admit it, Jackal was right. Charging in blind after Kanin wouldn’t help him; I needed a plan if I was going to face Sarren. The help of another strong vampire was too great an opportunity to pass up.

Still, the thought of working with Jackal made my blood boil. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to our group. He was cruel and vicious, and saw humans only as food or the means to an end. He killed without a second thought. He’d killed people I knew, people I considered friends.

Zeke would never consider letting him live.

I was still trying to decide what to do when a servant knocked timidly on the door, informing me that Master Azura and Master Jackal were waiting for me in the living room and to follow him please. After returning the dresser to its proper place, I followed the well-dressed human down the many hallways and up a flight of stairs before he paused outside a doorway and motioned me inside.

Azura and Jackal were there, of course, Azura sitting on a sofa with her long legs crossed, a wineglass of blood dangling between her fingers. Jackal slouched against the fireplace mantel, despite the flames flickering in the hearth, and the light cast his features in an eerie red glow. How he could stand being so close to the flames was baffling; I would never consider tempting fate like that. But then Jackal shot me a grin, smug and challenging, and I realized he was playing me. He knew the effect it would have on a vampire and was making sure I knew that he was not afraid.

“Oh, hey, the queen finally makes her appearance.” Jackal raised his glass in a mocking salute before tossing the whole thing back in one swig. Azura gave him a disdainful look and sipped her drink. “So, little sister, are you ready to get this project underway?”

“I still haven’t agreed to help you,” I said, making Jackal sigh with impatience. “Why is that so surprising? As if I would agree to work with the guy who slaughtered my friends, who will probably stick a knife in my back as soon as I turn around.”

“Don’t think of it as helping me,” Jackal said in a reasonable voice. He didn’t, I noticed, deny either accusation. “Think of it as helping Kanin. I, at least, will take any advantage I can get if I’m going to be facing Sarren.”

I turned to Azura. “What do you think of all this?”

“Me?” Azura raised a thin eyebrow. “I don’t care one way or the other. I’m just here to make sure you two don’t turn my house inside out.”

“Come on, sister,” Jackal implored. “Let’s not have a repeat of last night. You know this is the best way to help Kanin. And, admit it, you’re just as curious as I am.”

I glared at him. “Let’s say I do agree to this, for now.” His smirk grew wider, and I ignored it. “You said Sarren was searching for the lab, as well. Where do you think it could be?”

Azura uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, setting her glass on the low table in front of the couch. “I had my people track down some old maps of the city and its subway systems,” she said, smoothing a large sheet of paper over the wood. “They don’t tell us exactly where to find a supersecret government lab, but I have a few good guesses.”

Jackal remained where he was, but I crossed the room to the other side of the table, looking down at the paper on the surface. I’d never seen a map before and had no idea how to read one; it was a tangle of lines and scribbles that merged together into a chaotic mess. But Azura placed one dark red fingernail on a random line, tracing it across the page.

“The rabids,” she began in her throaty voice, “keep to the subway tunnels in the daytime. At night, they emerge to hunt and stalk for prey, but usually return to the underground stations at dawn. Except for those few that cannot seem to leave my fence alone, at least. No one in this city ventures down into the tunnels, for any reason, at any time. It is not known exactly how many rabids are down there, but there are likely thousands of them. And this,” she added, circling a place on the map with her finger, “is where we think the main nest is located.” Withdrawing her hand, she glanced up at me. “That’s where you’re going to want to look for the lab.”

“Why is that?”

“If this laboratory unleashed the rabid virus, it would have spread quickly. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people would have been infected around that area. There would be a very high rabid population starting from that point and spreading outward.”

“Wait a second.” I frowned, thinking back to what Kanin had told me. “I thought the laboratory in New Covington was responsible for creating the rabids—they escaped, and that’s how the rabid plague started.”

“Is that what Kanin said?” Jackal snorted. “That’s part of the story, but not the whole of it.” He pushed himself off the wall and sauntered to an end table, grabbing a pitcher half-full of red and refilling his glass. Sitting comfortably in one of the armchairs, he took a large swallow from the glass and smiled at me.

“Have a seat, sister. Let me tell you exactly what happened, so you can fully appreciate the role our sire had in this whole fubar’ed situation.” Jackal took another long, leisurely sip, waiting for me to sit down. I perched cautiously on the opposite chair.

“You know that Kanin captured vampires and handed them over to the scientists to experiment on,” Jackal began, pleased now that he had an audience. It reminded me of his speech in the arena, standing in front of his army, the raiders cheering his name … right before he’d thrown Darren into the arena with a rabid for their entertainment. I could still hear Darren’s screams as the rabid tore him apart. Rage flared, and I swallowed the growl rising to my throat, trying to concentrate on what the raider king was saying now.

“It was all in the interest of curing Red Lung,” Jackal continued, oblivious to my sudden anger, “or that’s what Kanin probably told himself while he was selling out his own kind. He would track down a likely target, stake them to send them into hibernation, then deliver them to the laboratories, where the scientists would do all the happy things scientists do to their hapless subjects.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, disturbed to think of Kanin that way, even though I already knew about it. Or had thought I did, anyway.

“Thing was,” Jackal continued, putting his boots up on the low, polished table, ignoring the glare from Azura, “New Covington wasn’t the only lab searching for a cure. True, they were the one with the vampire patients, but they also shared their research with the other labs. And something happened here in D.C. to cause a massive rabid outbreak. Hundreds of people Turned within a matter of hours. We know the New Covington lab burned down and all the research was either taken or destroyed, but we don’t know anything about the lab below this city. Is it still standing? Does it have the research from decades ago? What’s been left behind, I wonder? The cure? Hopefully. But, what about the other things, the research on the plague and the virus and how Rabidism came to be?” Jackal’s gold gaze narrowed, and something in that intense look made my skin crawl. “If any of that research is left behind, who is the very last person we’d want to stumble upon it? Sarren is brilliant and crazy and more than a little unstable. Think of all the nasty things he could do if he got his hands on that kind of information.”

I shivered and felt the last of my protests dissolve. If Sarren was planning something, he had to be stopped. And if there was a cure to Rabidism, we had to find it. For better or worse, it appeared I would be working with my blood brother. For now, at least. I desperately hoped I was making the right choice and that Kanin would be able to hang on until we could get to him.

“I thought you would see it that way.” Jackal smiled and rose, his duster falling behind him. “So, now that we’re all finally on the same page, shall we get this party started?”




CHAPTER 4


The rabids were back, milling around the perimeter, but Azura showed us a tunnel that led from the house to an empty building beyond the fence. She wasn’t sad to see us go, but provided us with maps, thermoses of blood and the reluctant offer that we could return if we absolutely had to.

“The subway is several blocks in that direction,” Azura told Jackal, pointing to a spot on the half-open map. “It’s the quickest way to get to the nest, but remember, once the sun rises, the tunnels will be crawling with rabids when they return underground to sleep. I suggest that you hurry. And try to stay off the streets. Use the rooftop—the rabids rarely think to venture off the ground.”

“Thanks, darlin’,” Jackal said, giving her a suggestive smile. “Maybe I’ll drop by again someday, and we can ‘reacquaint’ ourselves when we have a little more time, eh?”

“Yes, just let me know when you’re coming.” Azura gave a tight smile. “I’ll try to remember to turn the fence off for you.”

“Minx.” Jackal grinned, and Azura closed the door, shutting us out.

The city that lay beyond the fence was dark and eerie, overgrown with trees and bramble, as if a forest had grown up and smothered everything beneath. It was easy enough for two vampires to climb to the top of the nearest building and pick our way over loose shingles and gaping holes. Sometimes, where the space between buildings was too far to jump, we had to drop to ground level, but only until we could get to the next building and scale the walls. On the rooftops, the path was fairly clear, the moon lighting our way as we traveled above the streets, following Azura’s map.

Below us was a different story.

Rabids roamed the tangled streets, skulking between cars, climbing out of windows, loping along crumbling sidewalks. They snarled and hissed at each other, blind in their rage and driven mad by the Hunger. There didn’t seem to be any humans beyond the fence; I wondered if the ones in Azura’s fortified house were the only humans left. An unfortunate cat tried scurrying across the road and was instantly pounced on by a rabid, who shoved the feline’s head between his jaws and ripped it in two. The smell of blood drew several more rabids to the area, and a vicious fight erupted, with the rabids screaming and tearing at each other for the remains of the animal.

“You’re not very talkative.”

I ignored him, keeping my gaze straight ahead. Jackal strode easily next to me, sometimes glancing at the map as we traversed the rooftops.

“Nothing to say?” Jackal went on. “That’s a surprise. You were so verbose the first time we met. I must admit, I’ve killed a few siblings, but you’re the first one I actually thought I could get along with.” He sighed. “But then, of course, you killed my men and ran off with those humans I worked so hard to acquire. You and that boy.” His voice took on a slight edge. “What was that kid’s name again? The old preacher’s son, the one the humans kept crying over, thinking he was dead? Something biblical, wasn’t it? Jeremiah? Zachariah?”

Ezekiel, I thought, as my stomach went cold. And there’s no way I’m ever telling you about Zeke. I shouldn’t be here, helping you. I should take my sword and shove it through your sneering face.

“So, whatever happened to your humans?” Jackal inquired after several more minutes of tense silence. “Did they leave? Run away? After you went through so much trouble to get them out of my city?” He grinned. “Or did you wind up eating them all?”

“Shut up,” I finally snapped, not looking at him. “They’re safe. That’s all you need to know.”

“Oh?” I could feel his sneer, sense the gleeful smugness as we continued over the broken rooftops. “Got them to Eden, then? How very charitable of you.” He grinned at my sharp glance. “What? Shocked that I know about Eden? Don’t be. I always knew it was out there—a city with no vampires, just a bunch of fat little humans scurrying around, pretending to be in charge. I knew that old man was looking for it, too, and that, eventually, he would slip up and land right in my lap. He and his little band couldn’t run from me forever, I just had to be patient. And it paid off—we finally got them. Everything was going to plan.” His eyes narrowed. “Or, it was, until you showed up.”

“Yeah, sorry to ruin your plans to take over the world.”

“That is not true,” Jackal said, sounding affronted. “I was trying to find a cure for Rabidism.”

I snorted. Any living thing bitten by a rabid would Turn rabid itself, but that wasn’t the only way to create one. Vampires, through the result of the mutated Red Lung virus, were all carriers of Rabidism, as well. Just biting or feeding from a human wouldn’t Turn them, but for most of our kind, attempting to create a new vampire through the exchange of blood would birth not a vampire, but a rabid. Only the few Masters, the Princes of the cities, could spawn new offspring anymore, and even then, they were just as likely to spawn a rabid. Kanin, our sire, was a Master himself, but I was still very lucky to have made the transition to vampire instead of rising again as a monstrous, mindless horror.

“That old human was the key,” Jackal went on, glaring at me now. “He had all the information we needed. The results the scientists had on the plague, the tests they ran, how the rabids were created, everything. I was trying to save our race, sister. I came so close, and you ruined it all.”

“You were trying to cure Rabidism so you could turn your raider pets into a vampire army and take over everything,” I shot back. “Don’t even try to sell me the saint act. You’re nothing but a scheming, bloodthirsty killer who’s out for power. And by the way, where is that raider army of yours? Did they finally turn on you once you couldn’t promise them immortality anymore?”

“Oh, don’t worry, they’re still there.” Jackal’s smile was not friendly. “It’s fairly easy to govern a city that has no rules—the minions do what they please, and I don’t stop them. But, with that old human dead, I had to come up with a new plan. That’s when I thought you and I needed to have a little talk, and I certainly couldn’t do that with a raider gang following me about the country.” He shrugged. “They’ll be there when I get back, with the cure. You haven’t stopped anything, sister. You’ve just delayed things a bit.”

“If there is a cure. We don’t know if this lab created one or not, even a partial one.”

“I would have shared it with you,” Jackal said, sounding angry and hurt at the same time. “You and me, sister, we could’ve had it all. We could’ve had everything.”

“I didn’t want everything.” I glared at him. “I didn’t want your city, your minions, your schemes for power, any of it. I just wanted to get my friends to safety.”

“Uh-huh.” Jackal raised an eyebrow. “And how did that turn out? I don’t see any of your ‘friends’ here now. Where are they? Back in their Eden, I suppose? Why didn’t you hang around, if you’re such great pals?” He snickered and went on before I could answer. “Here’s what I think happened. You got the little bloodbags to Eden, like you said you would, but oh, they couldn’t let a vampire into the city, now could they? That would just cause a panic, having a wolf walking among the sheep. So they either turned you away or drove you off. And your little friends, the humans that you rescued from the big bad raider king, the people you stuck your neck out for, they didn’t do anything. Because they knew the others were right. Because you’re a monster who kills humans to live, and no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise, that’s all you’ll ever be.”

“Tell me again why I’m helping you?”

Jackal laughed. “You know I’m right, sister. You can deny it until the sky falls down, but you’re only fooling yourself.”

“You don’t know me.” He snickered again, and I whirled on him. “And another thing. Stop calling me ‘sister.’ We’re not related just because Kanin sired us both. I have a name—Allison. Start using it.”

“Sure thing, Allison.” Jackal bared his fangs in a sneer. “But we both know the truth. Vampire blood is stronger than human ties—our blood links us together in a way they can’t even imagine. Why do you think you could sense where I was, where Kanin is? Because you’re getting stronger, and the stronger the vamp, the easier it becomes to know where the members of your particular family are at any time. That’s why most covens are all members of the Prince’s family, the ones he sired himself. He can sense where they are, and sometimes even what they’re thinking. Makes it hard for them to turn on him. But the tie goes both ways.”

“That’s why we’ve been able to sense Kanin.”

“Yep.” Jackal looked off to the west as we started walking again. “And each other, to a lesser extent. But the strongest pull is toward our sire, or at least, it was until he went into hibernation. It doesn’t work as well if the vampire is close to death, but it’s still there.”

“Why?”

“Because, in some small, subconscious way, Kanin is calling for us.”

A couple hours later, we were no closer to finding the subway entrance than when we first started.

“Hmm.” Jackal stopped at the edge of a roof, the open map in both hands, turning it this way and that. “Well, damn. There’s supposed to be an entrance to the subway somewhere on this street, but how the hell are you supposed to read a map if there are no damn signs?”

I let him fiddle with the map in silence and watched the pale forms of the rabids slipping through the shadows below. “Why would Sarren be looking for this laboratory?” I mused, softly so my voice didn’t alert the monsters under our feet. “What do you think he wants?” Jackal gave a distracted grunt.

“Don’t ask me. I’m not a psychotic maniac.” He paused. “Well, not as much of a psychotic maniac. Okay, there’s the Foggy Bottom metro entrance … Where the hell is the tunnel?” He glanced down at the street and sighed. “Maybe he’s searching for the cure to Rabidism, too,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Oh, but wait, you don’t care about that, do you?”

A large group of rabids slid from between two buildings, directly below Jackal. He ignored both them and me as he studied the map. For a moment, I had the murderous thought of shoving him over the edge, letting him fall into the group of rabids, seeing if he could survive. The monster within approved of this plan, urging me to step forward, to attack when he wasn’t looking. Yes, it whispered. Do it. Jackal would, and he will someday. As soon as he doesn’t need you anymore, he’ll hit you from behind without a second thought.

But that would make me just like him, wouldn’t it?

The opportunity passed before I had a chance to decide. The rabid pack moved away, and the moment was lost. I watched them skulk across the street, hissing and snarling … and then vanish beneath a rubble pile.

I blinked. “Hey,” I said, and Jackal lowered the map, watching as I walked to the edge of the roof and crouched down. “I think I found it.”

We dropped carefully into the street, glancing around for rabids lurking behind cars or around buildings. Warily, we crossed the road and examined the spot where the pack had disappeared. The building next door had partially fallen, and the ground was strewn with broken glass, steel and cement. But beneath a collapsed overhang, a tiny, nearly invisible hole snaked down into the darkness.

Jackal grinned at me, hard and challenging. “Ladies first.”

I bristled. The tunnel entrance sat quietly, like the open gullet of something huge and evil, waiting to swallow me whole. I crouched down and peered inside. Darkness greeted me, thick and eternal, difficult to pierce even with my vampiric night vision. Cold, dry air wafted from the crack, smelling of dust and rot and decay.

“What’s the matter?” Jackal’s smug voice echoed behind me. “Scared? Need your big vampire brother to go down first?”

“Shut up.” Scowling, I reached back and drew my sword, sending a faint metallic rasp into the darkness. If something came leaping at me out of the black, I wanted to be prepared. Holding the hilt backward so that the flat of the blade pressed against my arm, I crouched down, rabid style, and slid into the hole.

My fingers touched rock and cold metal and, when I straightened, I found myself at the top of a long flight of stairs leading down into the unknown. The stairs, partially buried under earth and stone, were metallic, uneven and had a strange rippling effect to them, as if they hadn’t been firmly grounded. If you looked at them a certain way, you could almost imagine they had once moved.

Jackal slid in behind me, feetfirst, dropping to the stairs with a grunt. “All right,” he muttered as he straightened. Unlike me, he had to bend over slightly to avoid scraping his head on the ceiling. Being small did have its advantages sometimes. Shaking out the map, he squinted at it in the dark. “So, according to this, we have to take the red line North to get to the nest, which will be somewhere around this area …” He tapped the paper with a knuckle, looking thoughtful.

“Where, exactly?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“So we’re going in blind. Searching for a lab that may or may not be there. In the middle of a nest of rabids who will trap us underground if we can’t find a way out.”

“Exciting, isn’t it?” Jackal grinned and folded the map again. “It’s moments like this that really make you appreciate immortal life. Don’t you love it, sister? Doesn’t it make you feel alive?”

“I’ll pass, thanks.” Sheathing my sword, I started down the stairs. “Right now, I’ll settle for finding the lab and getting out of here in one piece.”

The staircase descended deeper underground, opening into an enormous tunnel. The familiar rails lined either side of the platform, once having shuttled metal cars back and forth between stations, now quite empty. The ceiling of the huge domed tunnel was strange—a motif of concrete squares, some fallen in large chunks to the platform, stretching all the way down the corridor.

Jackal walked to the edge of the platform and dropped to the tracks, peering down the tunnel. “No sign of rabids,” he muttered. “At least not yet.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “You coming or not?”

I leaped onto the tracks behind him. “What’s the matter, Jackal?” I sneered, wanting to repay him for that last quip. “Need me to hold your hand every time we go down a dark hole?”

He laughed, the sound bouncing off the domed roof of the ceiling, surprising me. “See, this is why I like you, sister. You and me, we’re exactly the same.”

I’m nothing like you, I thought, but his words continued to haunt me long after we entered the tunnel.

“Man, these things go on forever, don’t they?”

I winced as his voice echoed loudly in the looming silence, a wave of noise traveling down the endless corridor. “Mind keeping it down?” I growled, listening for the shuffle of feet or the skitter of claws over rock, rabids alerted to our presence. We’d encountered a few of the monsters already, and I had no desire to cut my way through another wave. The dark subway tunnels reeked of them, their foul stench clinging to the walls. Nothing else moved here, not even rats. Sometimes, we encountered bodies of rabids, ravaged corpses torn apart by their own kind. Once, we came across what we thought was another dead body, only to have it leap at us with a shriek, swiping at us with its one remaining arm. Jackal seemed to enjoy these encounters, swinging the steel fire ax hidden beneath his duster with vicious force, crushing skulls and snapping bones with a savage grin on his face. I was far less enthused. I didn’t want to be in this underground labyrinth of death, with this vampire I didn’t like and certainly didn’t trust. Because watching him fling himself at the rabids, grinning demonically as he tore them limb from limb, reminded me too much of myself. That thing that I kept locked away, the beast that goaded me into raw animal rage and bloodlust. The part that made us dangerous to every human we encountered.

The part that kept me from ever being with Zeke.

My blood brother grinned at me, swinging his bloody fire ax to his shoulder. “Aw, sister. Don’t tell me you’re scared of a few rabids.”

“A few rabids is one thing. A massive horde in a narrow tunnel is another. And dawn is just a couple hours away.” I glared down the crumbling cement tube in frustration. Old D.C.’s underground was a never-ending maze of tunnels and pipes and corridors that snaked and twisted and stretched away into the darkness. The night was waning, and the tunnels just went on and on, forever it seemed. We’d even stumbled into what looked like an underground mall, with ancient stores crumbling to rubble, strange items rotting on near-empty shelves. I’d once thought the sewers beneath New Covington were confusing; they were nothing compared to this. “Where is this stupid lab?” I muttered. “It feels like we’ve been walking in circles all night.”

Jackal started to reply but suddenly paused, a slight frown crossing his face. “Do you hear that?” he asked me.

“No. What is it?”

He motioned me to be quiet, then crept forward again. The cement tube that we were walking down narrowed, and then I did hear something—something that raised the hair on my neck. If the low growls and hisses didn’t rouse my suspicions, the dead, rotting stench that slithered down the tunnel confirmed it.

Weapons out, we eased forward, silent as death. Ahead of us, the tunnel abruptly ended in open air, and a rusty, narrow catwalk stretched out over nothing. Gripping my weapon, I followed Jackal to the edge of the catwalk and peered down, into the darkness.

“Shit,” Jackal murmured, sounding faintly awed.

We stood at the edge of a massive round chamber, the walls soaring up a good fifteen feet above us. The narrow metal bridge, stretching to another tunnel on the opposite side, had to be at least two hundred feet across. The railings had rusted away completely, and the mesh floor had disintegrated in spots, but that wasn’t what worried me the most.

Below us, about twenty feet down, the cement floor was a shifting, roiling carpet of pale bodies and jagged fangs. Rabids filled the chamber, growling, hissing, moving about the room like a swarm of ants. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, coming in from various tunnels and pipes near the ground. I hissed as their scent wafted up from the pit—blood and rot and decay and wrongness—and took a step back from the edge.

“Well,” Jackal mused softly, watching the rabid swarm with vague amusement. “I think it’s safe to say that we found the nest.” He shook the catwalk experimentally. It creaked, rust and metallic flakes drifting down to the horde below. Thankfully, they didn’t notice. “Doesn’t seem very sturdy, does it? This is going to be interesting.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Do you see any other way across?” Jackal crossed his arms, shooting me a challenging smirk. “I thought you were so anxious to find the lab.”

I smirked back. “Fine. After you, then.”

He shrugged. Stepping onto the narrow bridge, he carefully eased out over the sheer drop, testing for weakness. The catwalk groaned but held, and he grinned at me.

“Afraid of heights, sister? Need me to carry you across?”

“Yeah, why don’t you save the smart comments until you’re on the other side?”

He rolled his eyes, turned, and began walking across the gap, moving with unnatural grace. Despite that, the catwalk creaked and groaned horribly under his weight. It shuddered and swayed, and I bit my lip, certain it would snap at any second and Jackal would plummet to his death.

Beneath us, the rabids had noticed the vampire trying to cross the bridge, and their shrieks and snarls rose from the pit as they surged forward, gazing up hungrily. Some of them began leaping for the catwalk, swiping at it with their claws, and though they couldn’t quite make it, some of those leaps came frighteningly close.

After several long, tense moments, Jackal finally reached the other side. The hisses and screams from the rabids were deafening now, echoing through the chamber, as Jackal turned and beckoned me across with a grin.

Oh, dammit. Swallowing hard, I stepped to the edge and peered down again. The rabids saw me immediately and began flinging themselves at my end of the catwalk, slashing at the air. Trying to ignore them, I stepped onto the rickety metal walkway, feeling it shake and shudder under my feet. The end of the bridge seemed an impossible distance away.

One step at a time, Allie.

Keeping my gaze straight ahead, I started across the catwalk, putting one foot in front of the other as lightly as I could. There were no railings to grab hold of; I had to make my way across on balance alone. The bridge swayed and groaned as I neared the center, carefully stepping over the gaping holes in the mesh floor. Through the gaps, the rabids churned below me, glaring up with dead white eyes and gnashing their fangs.

As I was nearing the end, trying to move faster but still keep my steps light, a rabid leaped up from the floor, lashed out, and struck the bottom of the catwalk with a metallic screech that lanced up my spine. The walkway jerked to the side, nearly spilling me off, then let out a deafening groan as one side of the bridge shuddered and twisted like paper.

Fear shot through me. I gave a frantic leap for the edge of the tunnel, just as the catwalk snapped and plummeted into the hordes below. I hit the wall a few inches from the edge and clawed desperately for a handhold, my fingers scrabbling against the smooth wall as I slid toward the wailing sea of death below.

Something clamped around my wrist, jerking me to a stop. Wide-eyed, I looked up to see Jackal on his stomach, one hand around my arm, his jaw clenched. His face was tight with concentration as he started to pull me up.

A reeking, skeletal body landed on my back, sinking claws into my shoulders, screaming in my ear. I snarled in pain, ducking my head as the rabid tore at my collar, trying to bite my neck. I couldn’t do anything, but Jackal reached down with his other hand, drew the katana from its sheath on my back, and plunged it into the rabid. The weight clinging to me dropped away as the rabid screeched and fell back into the mob below, and Jackal yanked me into the tunnel.

I collapsed against the wall, staring at him as he glared down at the rabids. He … had just saved my life. Stunned, I watched him approach and hold the katana hilt out to me.

“So.” His gold eyes shone as he gazed into mine. “I think I’m entitled to a smart comment or two now, don’t you think?”

I took the sword numbly. “Yeah,” I muttered as his smug look faded into something that wasn’t completely obnoxious. “Thanks.”

“No problem, little sister.” The leer returned, making him look normal again. “Comment number one—how much do you weigh to snap the bridge like that? I thought you Asians were supposed to be petite and dainty.”

Okay, moment over. I sheathed my blade and glared at him. “And here I almost thought you weren’t a complete bastard.”

“Well, that’s your mistake, not mine.” Jackal dusted his hands and gave the edge of the tunnel a rueful look. “Shall we continue? Before our friends start climbing each other to get to us? If that’s the nest, the lab should be around here somewhere.”

A clang from the pit below drew my attention. Walking to the edge, I peered out, just as a rabid landed on the tunnel rim with a snarl. As I snarled back and kicked the thing in the chest, sending it toppling back into the hole, I saw that the catwalk had fallen against the wall of the pit, and that rabids were scrambling up to leap into the tunnel. I drew my katana, slashing another out of the air as it flew at me, howling, but Jackal grabbed the back of my coat, yanking me away.

“No time for that! The whole nest will be up here in a second. Come on!”

The wails and shrieks intensified as more rabids entered the tunnel, snarling and baring their fangs. I spun, shrugging free of Jackal’s grip, and we bolted down the passage, the screams of the monsters close behind.

A few miles from the nest, we didn’t seem to be any closer to the hidden lab.

“You’re just guessing now, aren’t you?” I snapped at Jackal, who shot me an annoyed look over his shoulder as we ran.

“Sorry, I didn’t see the big X with the words Top Secret Government Laboratory on the map, did you?”

A rabid dropped down from a breach overhead, hissing as it landing in front of us. Jackal whirled his ax, striking it under the jaw and smashing it aside, and we continued without slowing down. I could still hear the horde in pursuit, their screams echoing all around us, reverberating from everywhere. We had definitely poked a stick into a wasp nest, stirring them into a frenzy. We were in their world now, and they were closing in.

I snarled at the vampire’s retreating back. “Yeah, well maybe you’d like to get that map out so we know where the hell we’re going!”

We ducked through a door frame into yet another narrow cement corridor, rusted beams and pipes lining the walls and ceiling, dripping water on us from above. Jackal yanked the map from his coat and shook it open with a rustle of paper, scowling as the shrieks of the rabids echoed behind us.

“All right, where the hell are we?” he muttered, squinting at the map in the darkness, eyes narrowed in concentration. I glanced nervously at the hall we’d just come through, hearing the rabids draw closer, their claws skittering over the cement. Jackal began walking down the corridor, weaving around fallen beams and pipes, and I followed.

“You know they’re right on our tail.”

“First you want me to look at the map, now you’re rushing me along. Make up your mind, sister.” He walked by a tall square pillar that jutted out of the wall; two sliding doors stood half-open in the front, and a cold breeze wafted out of the crack. “Okay, there’s the subway tunnels,” Jackal muttered, walking a little faster now, holding the map close to see it in the dark. “And there’s the entrance we came in … wait a second.”

He stopped and half turned in the corridor, looking back the way we’d come. I followed his gaze, but saw nothing except empty hallway and rusty pipes, though I could still hear the rabids, getting closer.

“Um, where are you going?” I asked as Jackal began walking again, back toward the approaching horde. “Hey, wrong direction! In case you didn’t know, we usually want to move away from certain death.”

Jackal stopped at the long, square pillar jutting from the wall. “Yeah, I thought so,” I heard him mutter. “This isn’t on the map, and there shouldn’t be anything down there. Get over here and look at this.”

Against my better judgment, I jogged over to where Jackal stood, staring at the doors. Cold, dry air billowed out of a gap that ran down the center, and Jackal gave a snort.

“He’s been here.”

“What? Sarren?”

“No, the boogeyman. Look.” Jackal pointed to the sliding doors. The metal was crumpled along the edges, as if something had slipped ironlike fingers into the seam and pried them open.

I peered through the gap, following the narrow shaft as it plunged into the dark. It was a long, long way down.

A howl rang out behind us, and rabids spilled into the corridor, a pale, hissing flood. They screamed as they spotted us and charged, hurtling themselves over beams and around pipes, their claws sparking against the metal.

“Move, sister!” Jackal’s voice boomed through the shaft, making my ears pound, and something shoved me through the opening. I leaped forward, grabbing thick cables as I dropped into the tube, catching myself with a grimace. Jackal squeezed through the doors and, instead of grabbing for the metal ropes, swung himself onto a rusty ladder on one side of the wall. He glanced over his shoulder and grinned at me.

“I’ll meet you down there.”

“You’re lucky I can’t reach you right now.”

Jackal only laughed, but at that moment a rabid slammed into the door frame, hissing and gnashing its fangs across the gap separating us. With a shriek, it sprang forward, soaring through the air, grabbing the cables next to mine. Claws slashed at me, and I yelled, kicking at it as it we hung there, the metal ropes shaking wildly. Curved talons sparked off the cables, and I swung myself around the ropes, out of its reach.

The rabid shimmied through the cables like a grotesque monkey, lunging at my face with fangs bared. With a snarl, I threw up my arm, letting jagged teeth sink into my coat and skin, and then yanked it to the side, ripping the monster off the cables into empty air. It snatched desperately for another rope, missed and plummeted down the shaft, screaming. It was a long time before I heard the faint thud at the bottom.

More rabids crowded the door frame, their empty, dead eyes locked on me, but these seemed reluctant to take that leap. I looked around and saw Jackal already several yards below me, descending the ladder at shocking speed. Muttering dark promises under my breath, I began climbing down into the darkness.

The shaft went down at least a couple hundred feet, a pitch-black, claustrophobic tube that seemed to descend into the center of the earth. Even with my vampire sight, which turned complete darkness into shades of gray, I couldn’t see the bottom or the top. It made me feel like I was dangling over a bottomless pit. I was relieved when I finally heard Jackal hit the bottom, sending a metallic thump up the shaft.

I slid down the remaining length of rope, landing on a square metal platform that swayed slightly under my weight. Gazing around, I discovered the platform wasn’t attached to the walls of the tube; it appeared to be a large metal box at the bottom of the cables. A pale, broken body lay in the crack between the wall and the box, its skull smashed open on the corner.

Jackal stepped up, smirking, and I fought the urge to kick him in the shin. “Looks like we’re on the right trail,” he stated, pointing to a hatch in the center of the box that had already been pulled open. “After you.”

Pulling my sword, I dropped through the hatch, landing inside the rectangular box, finding these doors shoved open, as well. Beyond the opening, a long hallway ended at two thick metal doors.

Jackal hit the floor beside me, his duster settling around him, and straightened, giving the entrance a shrewd look. “All right, you bastard,” he muttered, walking forward. “What were you looking for down here?”

We went through the doors together, pushing them back, and stepped into a dark, chilling room. At first, it reminded me of the old hospital where Kanin and I had stayed in New Covington. Beds on wheels sat against the wall, sectioned off by rotted curtains, or lay tipped over on the ground. Shelves of strange instruments were scattered about, and bulky machines sprawled in the middle of the floor or in corners, knocked down and broken. Glass clinked under our feet as we maneuvered the maze of rubble and sharp objects,

I looked closer and saw that most of the beds had leather straps dangling from the sides, thick cuffs to restrain wrists and ankles. Pushing aside a moldy curtain, I jumped as a skeleton grinned at me from a bed, rotten leather restraints hanging on bony wrists. My stomach turned as I stared at the naked bones. What had happened here?

Jackal had already moved on, searching the hidden corners of the room, so I continued along a wall until I found another door. Unlike the others, this one didn’t swing open at my touch. Why was it locked when none of the other doors had been? I braced myself and then lashed out with a kick, aiming for just beside the doorknob. There was a sharp, splintering crack, and the door crashed open.

It was an office, at least, it looked like one from the shelves and metal cabinets and large wooden desk in the corner. Unlike the rest of the lab, this one looked fairly clean and intact; nothing looked broken, and the furniture, though old and covered in dust, was still standing.

Except, there was a suspicious-looking dark spatter on the wall behind the desk and, when I walked around, I discovered a skeleton slumped in the corner, the threads of a long, once-white coat still clinging to him. One bony hand clutched a pistol.

Wrinkling my nose, I turned around and noticed a single book lying in the middle of the desk. Curious, I walked over and picked it up, examining the cover. It didn’t have a title, and when I flipped it open, messy, handwritten pages sprang to light, instead of neat rows of typing.

Day 36 of the Human-Vampire experiment, the top line read.

All power is being redirected to keeping the lab up and running, so I am writing down my findings here, in case we lose it all. Then, if something happens to me, perhaps the project can continue from the notes I will leave behind.

We continue to lose patients at an alarming rate. Early tests with the samples from the New Covington lab have been disastrous, with our human subjects dying outright. We have not had a single patient survive the infusion of vampire blood. I hope the team in New Covington can send us samples we can actually work with.

—Dr. Robertson, head scientist of the D.C. Vampire Project

I shuddered. So, it sounded like the scientists here had been working with the New Covington lab, only they’d been experimenting on humans instead of vampires. That couldn’t be good. I flipped a couple more pages and read on.

Day 52 of the Human-Vampire experiment,

The power grid in the city has gone down. We are running on the emergency backup generators, but we might have had our first breakthrough today. One of the patients that we injected with the experimental cure did not immediately die. She became increasingly agitated and restless minutes after receiving the injection, and appeared to gain the heightened strength of the vampire subjects. Interestingly, she became increasingly aggressive, to the point where her mental capacities appeared to shut down and she resembled a mad or rabid animal. Sadly, she died a few hours later, but I am still hopeful that a cure can be found from this. However, some of the younger assistants are beginning to mutter; that last experiment rattled them pretty badly, and I don’t blame them for wanting to quit. But we cannot let fear hinder us now. The virus must be stopped, no matter what the cost, no matter what the sacrifice. Mankind’s survival depends on us.

We’re close, I can feel it.

A chill crawled down my spine. I turned the page and kept reading.

Day 60 of the Human-Vampire experiment,

I received a rather frantic message today from the lead scientistat the New Covington lab. “Abort the project,” he told me. “Do not use any more of the samples on human patients. Shut down the lab and get out.”

It was shocking, to say the least. That the brilliant Malachi Crosse was telling me to abandon the project.

I’m sorry, my friend. But I cannot do that. We are close to something, so very close to a breakthrough. I cannot abandon months of research, even for you. The samples that came in yesterday are the key. They will work, I am sure of it. We will beat this thing, even if I have to inject my own assistants with the new serum. It will work.

It must. We are running out of time.

I swallowed hard, then turned to the very last entry. This one was blotched and messy, as if the author had written it in a great hurry.

The lab is lost. Everyone is dead or will be dead soon. Don’t know what happened, those monsters suddenly everywhere. Malachi was right. Shouldn’t have insisted we go through with the last experiment. This is all on me.

I’ve locked myself in my office. Can’t go out, not with those things running around. I only hope they don’t find a way back to the surface. If they do, heaven help us all.

If anyone finds this, the remaining samples of the retrovirus have been placed in freezer number two in cryogenic storage. And if you do find them, I pray that you will have better success than I, that you will use them to find a cure for Red Lung and for this new monstrosity we have unleashed.

“Hey.” Jackal appeared in the doorway before I could finish the entry. He jerked his head into the hall, serious for once. “I found something. And I think you’d better see this.”

Taking the journal, I followed him, already suspecting what I would find. We swept through another pair of metal doors, into a small, bare room with tiled floors and walls. It was colder in here; if I were a human, my breath would be billowing out in front of me and bumps would be raised along my skin. Looking across the room, I saw why.

Four large white boxes stood along the back wall. They looked like bigger versions of normal refrigerators, except I’d never seen a working one before. One of the doors was open, and a pale mist writhed out of the gap, creeping along the ground.

Silently, I walked up to the door and pulled it back, releasing a blast of cold. Inside, rows of white shelves greeted me. The shelves were plastic and narrowly spaced, and tiny glass vials winked at me from where they stood in tiered holders.

Jackal stepped behind me. “Notice anything … missing?” he asked softly.

I scanned the shelves, and saw what he meant. Near the top, one of the layers was gone, as if it had been pulled out and never returned.

Jackal followed my gaze, his eyes darkening. “Somebody took something from this freezer,” he growled. “None of the others are touched. And that someone was here recently, too. Now, who do you think that could be?”

I shivered and stepped back, knowing exactly who it had been. As I shut the door, my gaze went to the simple, hand-drawn sign taped to the front, just to confirm what I already knew.

Freezer 2, it read in faded letters.

Sarren, I thought, feeling an icy chill spread through my veins. What the hell are you planning?

“Well,” Jackal muttered, crossing his arms. “I will say I am officially more disturbed than I was when we first started. I don’t know what was in that freezer, but I can hazard a pretty good guess, which just seems all kinds of bad news.” His voice was flippant, but his eyes gleamed dangerously. “There’s no cure here, that’s for certain. So, I guess the million-dollar question is—what would a brilliantly insane psychotic vampire want with a live virus, and where is he taking it now?”

Sarren had the Red Lung virus. The thought was chilling. What did he want with it? Where was he going? And how did Kanin figure into everything? At a loss, I looked down at the forgotten journal, at the unfinished entry on the last page.

I pray that this can be stopped. I pray that the team in New Covington is already working on a way to counter this. The lab there was designed to go into stasis if anything happened. It may be our only salvation now.

May God forgive us.

And I knew.

The journal dropped from my hands, hitting the floor with a thump. I felt Jackal’s eyes on me, but I ignored him, dazed from the realization. If Sarren wanted to use that virus, there was only one other place he could go. The place I’d sworn I would never return to.

“New Covington,” I whispered, as the path loomed unerringly before me, pointing back to where it all began. “I have to go home.”







PART II




CHAPTER 5


There were no spotlights up on the Wall.

In New Covington, the Outer Wall was the city’s shield, lifeline and best defense, and everyone knew it. The thirty-foot monstrosity of steel, iron and concrete was always lit up at night, with spotlights sliding over the razed ground in front of it and guards marching back and forth up top. It circled the entire city, protecting New Covington from the mindless horrors that lurked just outside, the only barrier between the humans and the ever-Hungry rabids. It was the one thing that kept the Prince in power. This was his city; if you wanted to live behind his Wall, under his protection, you had to consent to his rules.

In my seventeen years of living in New Covington, the Wall had never once been abandoned.

“Something is wrong,” I muttered as Jackal and I stood on the outskirts of the kill zone, the flat, barren strip of ground that surrounded the Wall. Pits, mines and coils of barbed wire covered that rocky field, making it deadly to venture into. Spotlights—blinding beams of light that were rumored to have ultraviolet bulbs in them to further discourage rabids from coming close—usually scanned the ground every fifty feet. They were dark now. Nothing moved out in the kill zone, not even leaves blowing across the barren landscape. “The Wall is never unmanned. Not even during lockdowns. They always keep the lights on and the guards patrolling, no matter what.”

“Yeah?” Jackal scanned the Wall and kill zone skeptically. “Well, either the Prince is getting lazy, or Sarren is wreaking his personal brand of havoc inside. I’m guessing the latter, unless this Prince is a spineless tool.” He glanced at me from where he was leaning against a tree trunk. “Who rules New Covington anyway? I forgot.”

“Salazar,” I muttered.

“Oh, yeah.” Jackal snorted. “Little gypsy bastard, from what Kanin told me. One of the older bloodlines, prided himself on being ‘royal,’ for all the good it did him here.” He pushed himself off the tree and raised an eyebrow. “Well, this was your city, once upon a time, sister. Should we walk up to the front gate and ring the doorbell, or did you have another way in?”

“We can’t just walk across the kill zone.” I backed away from the edge, heading into the ruins surrounding the Wall, the rows of dilapidated houses and crumbling streets. There were still mines and booby traps and other nasty things, even if the Wall wasn’t being patrolled. But I knew this city. I’d been able to get in and out of it pretty consistently, back when I was human. The sewers below New Covington ran for miles, and weren’t filled with rabids like the Old D.C. tunnels. “The sewers,” I told Jackal. “We can get into the city by going beneath the Wall.”

“The sewers, huh? Why does this not surprise me?” Jackal followed me up the bank, and we wove our way through the tall weeds and rusted hulks of cars at the edge of the kill zone, back into the ruins. “You couldn’t have mentioned this on the way?”

I ignored him, both relieved and apprehensive to be back. It had taken us the better part of a month, walking from Old D.C. across the ravaged countryside, through plains and forest and countless dead towns, to reach the walls of my old home. In fact, it would’ve taken us even longer had we not stumbled upon a working vehicle one night. The “jeep,” as Jackal called it, had cut down our travel time immensely, but I still feared we’d taken too long. I hadn’t had any dreams to assure me that Kanin was still alive, though if I concentrated, I could still feel that faint tug, urging me on.

Back to New Covington. The place where it all began. Where I’d died and become a monster.

“So, you were born here, were you?” Jackal mused, gazing over the blasted field as we skirted the perimeter. “How positively nostalgic. How does it feel, coming back to this place as a vampire instead of a bloodcow?”

“Shut up, Jackal.” I paused, glancing at a broken fountain in front of an apartment complex. The limbless cement lady in its center gazed sightlessly back, and I felt a twinge of familiarity, knowing exactly where I was. The last time I’d seen New Covington, Kanin and I had been trying to get past the ruins into the forest before Salazar’s men blew us to pieces. “I thought I was done with this place,” I muttered, continuing past the statue. “I never thought I’d come back.”

“Aw,” Jackal mocked. “No old friends to see, then? No places you’re just dying to revisit?” His mouth twisted into a smirk as I glared at him. “I would think you’d have lots of people you’d want to contact, since you’re so fond of these walking bloodbags. After all, you’re practically one of them.”

I stifled a growl, clenching my fists. “No,” I rasped as memory surged up despite my attempts to block it out. My old gang: Lucas and Rat and Stick. The crumbling, dilapidated school we’d used as our hideout. That fateful night in the rain … “There’s no one here,” I continued, shoving those memories back into the dark corner they’d come from. “All my friends are dead.”

“Oh, well. That’s humans for you, always so disgustingly mortal.” Jackal shrugged, and I wanted to punch his smirking mouth. All through our journey from Old D.C., he’d been an entertaining, if not pleasant, travel companion. I’d heard more stories, pointed questions and crude jokes than I’d ever wanted to know about, and I’d gotten used to his sharp, often cruel sense of humor. Once I’d realized his remarks were purposefully barbed to get a rise out of me, it was easier to ignore them. We did almost come to blows one night, when he’d wanted to “share” an older couple living in an isolated farmhouse, and I’d refused to let him attack them. We’d gone so far as to draw weapons on each other, when he’d rolled his eyes and stalked away into the night, returning later as if nothing had happened. The next evening, three men in a black jeep had pulled alongside us, pointed guns in our direction and told us to get in the vehicle.

It had not gone well for them, but we did end up with that nice jeep. And with our Hunger temporarily sated, the tension between Jackal and me had been defused a bit. Of course, I still wanted to kick him in his smart mouth sometimes.

But he’d never brought up New Covington or my years as a human until now.

“So very fragile, these bloodbags,” he continued, shaking his head. “You blink and another one has up and died. Probably better in the long run, anyway. I’m sure you got the whole you must leave your past behind lecture from Kanin.”

“Jackal, just …” I sighed. “Just drop it.”

To my surprise, he did, not saying another word until we reached the drainage pipe that led into the sewers. It was an odd feeling, sliding through the pipe, emerging into the familiar darkness of the tunnels. The last time I’d done this, I’d been human.

“Ugh.” Jackal grunted, straightening behind me, wringing dirty water from his sleeves. “Well, it’s not the nastiest place I’ve ever crawled through, but it’s definitely up there. At least they’re not in use anymore. From what Kanin told me, all the human crap in the city used to flow through these kinds of tunnels.” He grinned as I gave him a sideways look. “Disgusting thought, ain’t it? Kind of makes you glad you’re not human anymore.”

Without replying, I started down the tunnels, tracing invisible steps back toward the city.

We walked in silence for a while, the only sounds our soft footsteps and the trickle of water flowing sluggishly by our feet. For once, I was glad that I was a vampire and didn’t have to breathe.

“So.” Jackal’s low, quiet voice broke the stillness. “How did you meet Kanin? It was here, right? You never told me much about you and him. Why’d he do it?”

“Do what?”

“Turn you.” Jackal’s eyes glowed yellow in the darkness of the tunnel, practically burning the side of my face. “He swore that he would never create another spawn after me. You must’ve done something to catch his attention, to make him break his promise.” Jackal smiled, showing the very tips of his fangs. “What made you so special, I wonder?”

“I was dying.” My voice came out flat, echoing down the tunnel. “I got caught outside the Wall one night and was attacked by rabids. Kanin killed them all, but it was too late to save me.” I shrugged, remembering the terror, the phantom pain of claws in my skin, ripping my body apart. “I guess he felt sorry for me.”

“No.” Jackal shook his head. “Kanin never Turned humans just because he pitied them. How many humans do you think we’ve watched die in horrible and painful ways? If he offered to make you immortal, he must have seen something in you that he liked, made him think you could make it as a vampire. He doesn’t bestow his ‘curse’ on just anyone.”

“I don’t know, then,” I snapped, because I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “What does it matter? I’m a vampire now. I can’t go back and change his mind.”

Jackal raised an eyebrow. “Would you want to?”

His question caught me off guard. I thought of my life as a vampire, an immortal. How long had it been since I’d seen the sun, let it warm my face? How long since I had done anything truly human? I realized I didn’t remember what real food tasted like anymore. The Hunger had completely infused my memories so the only thing I ever craved was blood.

And the most ironic thing? If Kanin hadn’t Turned me, I would never have met Zeke. But being a vampire meant I could never be with him, either.

“I don’t know,” I said evasively, and heard Jackal’s disbelieving snort. Of course, it was easy for him—he reveled in his strength and immortality, caring nothing for those he slaughtered along the way. A few months ago, I’d been so certain, but now … if it came back to that night, lying in the rain as my life slowly drained away, and a vampire asked me, once more, what I wanted … would my choice be the same?

“What about you?” I challenged, to get him off the subject. “Why did Kanin Turn you? Certainly not for your charming personality.” He snorted a laugh. “So how did you meet Kanin? You two don’t seem like you’d get along very well.”

“We didn’t,” Jackal said easily. “Especially at the end, right before we parted ways. I guess you can say I was his biggest disappointment as a vampire.”

“Why?”

He smiled evilly. “Oh, no. You’re not getting my story that easily, sister. You want me to open up?” He grinned wider and pressed close, making me uncomfortable. His voice dropped to a low murmur. “You’re going to have to prove that I can trust you.”

“You can trust me?” I pulled back to glare at him, feeling my fangs press against my gums. “You’re joking, right? I’m not the egotistical murdering bastard. I don’t toss unarmed humans into cages with rabids and let them rip them apart for sport! I’m not the one who put a stake in my gut and threw me out a window.”

“You keep harping on that,” Jackal said with exaggerated patience. “And yet, you are a vicious, murdering vampire, sister. It’s in your blood. When are you going to realize that you and I are exactly the same?”

We’re not, I wanted to snarl at him, but a noise in the tunnels ahead made me pause. Halting, I put up a hand and looked at Jackal, who had stopped, as well. He’d heard it, too.

We eased forward, quietly but not too concerned with what we might find. Rabids rarely came down here; the Prince had sealed off all entrances into the sewers except a few, for the sole purpose of keeping them out of the city. Occasionally, a rabid would wander down here, but never for long, and never in the huge swarms we’d seen in Old D.C.

As we rounded a corner, there was a shout, and a flashlight beam shone painfully into my eyes, making me hiss and look away. Raising my arm, I peered back to see three pale, skinny figures standing at the mouth of the tunnel, gaping at us.

I relaxed. Mole men, as they were called, had been nothing but urban legends to me when I was a Fringer, just creepy stories we told each other about the cannibals living under the streets, until I’d run into a group of them one night in the tunnels. They were not, as some stories claimed, giant hairless rat-people. They were just emaciated, but otherwise normal, humans whose skin had turned pale and diseased from a lifetime of living in dark sewers. However, the stories about mole men preying on and eating fellow humans weren’t entirely false, either.

That seemed a lifetime ago. This time, I was the thing they feared, the monster.

“Who are you?” one of them, a skinny human with scabs crusting his arms and face, demanded. “More topsiders, coming down to crowd our turf?” He stepped forward and waved his flashlight menacingly. “Get out! Go back to your precious streets and stop trying to invade our space. This is our territory.”

Jackal gave him an evil, indulgent smile. “Why don’t you make us, little man?” he purred.

“Knock it off.” I moved forward, blocking his view of the humans before he could kill them. “What do you mean?” I demanded, as the three mole men crowded together, glaring at us. “Are people from the Fringe coming down here? Why?”

“Vampire,” whispered one of them, his eyes going wild and terrified, and the others cringed. They started edging away, back into the shadows. I swallowed a growl, stepped forward, and the scabby human hurled the flashlight at my face before they all scattered in different directions.

I ducked, the flashlight striking the wall behind me, and Jackal lunged forward with a roar. By the time I’d straightened and whirled around, he had already grabbed a skinny mole man, lifted him off his feet and thrown him into the wall. The human slumped to the ground, dazed, and Jackal heaved him up by the throat, slamming him into the cement.

“That wasn’t very nice of you,” he said, baring his fangs as the human clawed weakly at his arm. “My sister was only asking a simple question.” His grip on the human’s throat tightened, and the man gagged for air. “So how about you answer her, before I have to snap your skinny neck like a twig?”

I stalked up to him. “Oh, that’s a good idea, choke him into unconsciousness—we’re sure to get answers that way.”

He ignored me, though his fingers loosened a bit, and the human gasped painfully. “Start talking, bloodbag,” the raider king said. “Why are topsiders coming down here? I’m guessing it’s not because of your hospitality.”

“I don’t know,” the mole man rasped, and Jackal shook his head in mock sorrow before tightening his grip again. The human choked, writhing limply in his grip, his face turning blue. “Wait!” it croaked, just as I was about to step in. “Last topsider we saw … he was trying to get out of the city … said the vampires had locked it down. Some kind of emergency. No one goes in or out.”

“Why?” I asked, frowning. The human shook his head. “What about this topsider, then? He probably knows. Where is he now?”

The mole man gagged. “You … can’t talk to him now, vampire. His bones … rotting in a sewer drain.”

Horror and disgust curled my stomach. “You ate him.”

“Oh, well, that’s disgusting,” Jackal said conversationally, and gave his hand a sharp jerk. There was a sickening crack, and the human slumped down the wall, collapsing face-first into the mud at our feet.

Horror and rage flared, and I spun on Jackal. “You killed him! Why did you do that? He wasn’t even able to defend himself! There was no point in killing him!”

“He annoyed me.” Jackal shoved the limp arm with a boot. “And there was no way I was going to feed on him. Why do you care, sister? He was a bloodthirsty cannibal who probably killed dozens himself. I did the city a favor by getting rid of him.”

I snarled, baring my fangs. “The next human you kill in front of me, you’d better be ready for a fight, because I will come after you with everything I have.”

“You’re so boring.” Jackal rolled his eyes, then faced me with a dangerous smile of his own. “And I’m getting a little tired of your holier-than-thou act, sister. You’re not a saint. You’re a demon. Own up to it.”

“You want my help?” I didn’t look away. “You want your head to stay on your neck the next time you turn your back on me?” His eyebrows rose, and I stepped forward, my face inches from his. “Stop killing indiscriminately. Or I swear, I will bury you in pieces.”

“Yes, that worked out so well for you last time, didn’t it? And it seems we keep having this conversation. Let me make something perfectly clear.” Jackal, his eyes glowing a dangerous yellow, leaned closer, crowding me. I stood my ground. “If you think I’m afraid of you,” he said softly, “or that I won’t put another stick in your heart and cut off your head this time, you’re only fooling yourself. I’ve been around a lot longer than you. I’ve seen my share of cocky vampires who think they’re invincible. Until I rip their heads off.”

“Anytime, Jackal.” I reached back and touched the hilt of my sword. “You want that fight, just say the word.”

Jackal stared at me a moment longer, then smiled. “Not today,” he murmured. “Definitely soon. But not today.” He stepped back, raising his hands. “Fine, sister. You win. I won’t kill any more of your precious bloodbags. Unless I have cause, of course.” He looked down at the dead mole man and curled a lip. “But if they come at me with knives or stakes or guns, all bets are off. Now, are we going to head into the city, or were you planning to hold hands with these cannibals and have a sing-along?”

I glanced once more at the broken corpse, wondering if his people would come for him and what they would do with his body if they did. Shying away from those thoughts, I stalked past Jackal and continued down the tunnel.

The rusty ladder that led up to the surface was exactly where I remembered it, and I felt another weird flicker of déjà vu as I pushed back the heavy round cover and emerged topside. Nothing had changed. The buildings were still there, dark and skeletal, falling to dust beneath vines and weeds. The rusted hulks of cars, their innards gutted and stripped away, sat decaying along sidewalks and half-buried in ditches. The vampire towers glimmered in the distant Inner City, as they had every night before this. Familiar and unchanged, though I didn’t know what I’d expected. Maybe I’d thought things would be different, because I was so different.

“Huh,” Jackal commented as he emerged from underground, gazing around at the crumbling buildings, the roots and weeds that grew over everything and pushed up through the pavement. “This place is a right mess, isn’t it? Where is everyone?”

“Nobody stays out after dark,” I muttered as we walked through the weed-tangled ditch, hopped the embankment and strode into the street. “Even though the vamps force the Registered humans to give blood every two weeks, and have plenty of bloodslaves in the Inner City, they still go hunting sometimes.”

“Of course they do,” Jackal said, as if that was obvious. “What fun is feeding from bloodbags you don’t catch yourself? It’s like having a stocked lake and never fishing from it.”

I ignored that comment, nodding to the very center of the city, where the three vampire towers were lit up against the night sky. “That’s where the Prince lives. Him and his coven. They never come down to the Fringe. At least, I never saw them when I lived here.”

Jackal grunted, following my gaze. “According to vampire law, as visitors to the city, we’re supposed to check in with the Prince,” he muttered. “Tell him where we’re from, what our business is here, how long we’re staying.” He snorted and curled a lip. “I don’t really feel like playing by the little Prince’s rules, and normally I would say ‘the hell with it,’ but that’s going to be a problem now, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. I could feel the pull that drew me toward my sire. It was faint now, flickering erratically, as if Kanin was barely hanging on to life, but it still pulled at me, right toward the three towers in the center of New Covington. “He’s in the Inner City.” I sighed.

“Yep. And we’ll probably run into Salazar’s men while we’re there. Could make searching for Kanin challenging if they decide we don’t belong.” Jackal grimaced as if speaking from experience. “Princes tend to be irrationally paranoid about strange vamps in their cities.”

“We’ll just have to take that chance.” I gazed at the vampire towers and narrowed my eyes. “Salazar tried to kill Kanin and me both after he found us in the city.” Jackal snickered, and I scowled at him. “He won’t be too fond of you, either, because you’re Kanin’s blood. He hates Kanin with a vengeance.”

“Everyone hates Kanin,” Jackal said with a shrug. “All the old Masters know what he did, what he helped create. If we say we’re looking for him, Salazar will probably assume we want to kill him. He doesn’t have to know the truth.”

“And what if he decides he wants to come with us and do the honors himself?”

“Salazar is a Master.” Jackal smiled evilly. “It would be helpful to have a Master around when we run into Sarren—they can tear each other to pieces, and we can sneak out with Kanin. If we’re lucky, they’ll kill each other. If not …” He shrugged. “Then we’ll just finish off the survivor when he’s distracted.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Jackal’s voice was flat. “What, exactly, is tripping you up here, sister? Having the Prince help us? Letting him fight our psychotically murderous vampire friend? Or is it the whole ‘kick him when he’s down’ thing that’s tweaking your conscience?” He shook his head. “Don’t be so bloody naive. Salazar is a vampire, one who’s lived a very long time and has become a Prince the old-fashioned way—by killing all his competition. He’ll do exactly the same to us if he has the chance.” He bared his fangs. “And you are going to have to start thinking like a vampire, my dear little sister, or you’re never going to survive this world.”

His words had an eerily familiar ring to them. I’d told Zeke Crosse the same thing once, that the world was harsh and unmerciful, and he wasn’t going to survive if he didn’t see it for what it was.

“All right,” I snarled. “Fine. Let’s go see the Prince, but I’m not spending any more time with him than we have to. We’re here for Kanin, nothing else.”

“Finally.” Jackal rolled his eyes. “The shrew can see reason after all.” Bristling, I was about to tell him what he could do with his reason, when a noise stopped me. A soft noise. One that, for whatever reason, raised the hair on the back of my neck.

We both turned to see a lone figure staggering down the street toward us.




CHAPTER 6


The human moved like it was drunk—shuffling, swaying from side to side, nearly tripping over its own feet. It would hit a car or the side of a building and lurch back, staggering and confused. I gave a soft growl, resisting the urge to pull away. Maybe because it reminded me of the animals bitten by rabids: stumbling around one moment, trying to eat your face off the next. Or maybe because there was just something off about it. Humans, even drunk humans, never ventured out this late at night. Save for a few of the more vicious gangs (and one very stubborn street rat who, incidentally, was no longer alive), all residents of New Covington fled inside when the sun went down. They had nothing to fear from rabids, of course, but wander the streets after dark, and you were just begging to be noticed by a vampire out hunting for live prey.

As the human drew closer, pawing blindly at its face, it tripped over a curb and fell, striking its head on the pavement. I saw its skull bounce on the asphalt, and the body collapse, twitching and gasping, in the gutter. At first, I thought it was dead, or at least dying.

Then, I realized it was laughing.

“Nice. Bloodbag’s either too drunk to live or has gone right off the deep end,” Jackal said, in what would’ve been a conversational tone if his fangs hadn’t been showing through his gums. “I don’t know whether to laugh or put it out of its misery.”

At his voice, the human raised its head, regarding us with eyes that were as blank and glassy as a mirror. It was a woman, though it had been difficult to tell at first. Her hair had either been cut or torn out, as the top of her head was sticky with blood. Long gashes ran down both sides of her face, bleeding freely over her skin, but she didn’t seem to notice the open wounds.

I resisted the urge to take several steps back. “Are you all right?” I asked, ignoring Jackal, who snorted. “You’re hurt. What happened?”

The woman stared at me a second before her face contorted in a gaping, laughing scream. Baring bloodstained teeth, she lurched to her feet and charged me, swinging her arms. I leaped aside, and she ran headfirst into a cement wall, hitting the bricks with a muffled thump and reeling back. Shaking her head, she turned, spotting me through the curtain of blood running down her face, and shrieked with laughter.

As she lurched forward again, I drew my sword. At the sight of the weapon, she paused, still giggling, and suddenly clawed at her face, tearing open the already bleeding scars. More dark blood oozed down her cheeks.

“Is it … someone new?” she rasped, making my skin crawl. “Someone new, to make the burning stop?”

“What the hell—?” Jackal began, just as she lunged again, howling. Again, I dodged, but she followed me this time, swinging and flailing in complete abandon.

“Back off!” I snarled at her, baring my teeth. But the sight of fangs seemed to incense the human further. With a screech, she leaped, swiping at my face. I ducked her wild slashing and drove my sword hilt between her eyes, knocking her off her feet.

The human fell backward, her skull giving a faint crack as it hit the pavement again. She twitched, moaning, but didn’t get up. Stepping past her body, I shot Jackal an evil look.

“Thanks for the help,” I growled, and he smirked back.

“Hey, I am forbidden to kill any more bloodbags.” Jackal crossed his arms and peered down at me, enjoying himself. “You were the one who told me to stop killing indiscriminately. I’m just following orders, here.”

I bristled. “You can be such a—”

The woman screamed and, this time, I reacted on instinct, spinning around. As the human lunged for me, my blade sliced through ribs and out the other side, nearly cutting her in two. The body struck the curb with a wet splat, and though it thrashed and spasmed for a while as we watched it warily, it did not rise again.

Jackal and I exchanged a look as the body finally stopped moving. The night seemed deathly quiet and still.

“Okay.” My blood brother nudged the corpse’s leg with the toe of his boot. It flopped limply. “That’s something completely new. Any guesses as to what that was all about?”

I peered down at the body, though I certainly wasn’t going to touch it. “Maybe a rabid got in somehow,” I mused. “Maybe that’s why they shut down the city.”

Jackal shook his head. “This wasn’t a rabid. Look at it.” He nudged the body, harder this time, flipping it over. He was right, and I had known it wasn’t a rabid from the beginning. The rabids were pale, emaciated things, with blank white eyes, hooked fingernails and a mouthful of jagged fangs. This wasn’t a rabid corpse. It looked perfectly human, except for the deep gouges down its cheek, and the wild, bulging stare.

“Smells human, too,” Jackal added, taking a slow breath before wrinkling his nose. “Or at least, she doesn’t smell dead. Not like they do. Though she must’ve been pumping herself full of something good, the way she put a hole through those bricks.” He nodded at the cement wall, where the cracked indentation of a human skull sat in the middle of a bloody smear. “What did the crazy say to you? Something about making the burning stop?”

“Jackal,” I growled, lifting my sword again. My blood brother looked up, following my gaze, and his eyes narrowed.

Across the street, two more humans shambled from a skeletal building, heads and faces torn, bright mad gazes searching the road. They muttered in low, harsh voices, garbled nonsense with only a few recognizable words. One of them held a lead pipe, which he banged on a line of dead cars as he crossed the street. Glass shattered and metal crumpled with hollow booms, ringing into the silence.

And then, another human emerged from an alleyway, followed by a friend.

And another.

And another.

More torn, bloody faces. More glassy eyes and mad, wild laughter, echoing all around us. The mob of humans hadn’t seen us yet, but they were steadily drawing closer, and there were a lot of them. Their raspy voices slithered off the stones and rose into the air, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Vampire or no, I did not want to fight my way through that.

I snuck a glance at Jackal and saw that, for once, he was thinking the same. He jerked his head toward a building, and we quickly slipped away, ducking through a shattered window into the gutted remains of an old store. Dust and cobwebs clung to everything, and the floor was littered with rubble and glass, though the shelves were bare. Anything useful had been ripped out and taken long ago.

Outside the windows, the mob shambled about aimlessly. Sometimes they yelled at each other or no one, waving crude weapons at things that weren’t there. Sometimes they shrieked and laughed and clawed at themselves, leaving deep bloody furrows across their skin. Once, a man fell to his knees and beat his head against the pavement until he collapsed, moaning, to the curb.

“Well,” Jackal said with a brief flash of fangs, “this whole city has gone right to hell, hasn’t it?” He shot me a dangerous look as we pressed farther into the building, speaking in harsh whispers. “I don’t suppose the population was like this when you were here last, were they?”

I shivered and shook my head. “No.”

“Nice. Well, if we’re going to pay a visit to old Salazar, we need to hurry,” Jackal said, glancing at the sky through the windows. “Sun’s coming up, and I don’t particularly want to be stuck here with a mob of bat-shit-crazy bloodbags.”

For once, I agreed wholeheartedly.

Silently, we made our way through the Fringe, ducking into shadows and behind walls, leaping onto roofs or through windows, trying to avoid the crowds of moaning, laughing, crazy humans wandering the streets.

“This way,” I hissed, and darted through a hole into an apartment building. The narrow corridors of the apartments were filled with rock and broken beams but were still fairly easy to navigate. Being inside brought back memories; when I’d lived here, I’d often taken this shortcut to the district square.

A moan drifted out of a hallway, stopping us. Sliding up against the wall, Jackal peered around a corner then quickly drew back, motioning for me to do the same. We both melted into the shadows, becoming vampire still, and waited.

A human staggered by, clutching a length of wood in one hand. He passed uncomfortably close, and I saw that he had clawed at his face until his eye had come out. Pausing, he glanced our way, but either it was too dark or his face was too ravaged for him to see clearly, for he turned his head and continued walking.

Suddenly, the one-eyed human staggered, dropping his club. Gagging, he fell to his hands and knees, heaving and gasping as if he couldn’t catch his breath. Red foam bubbled from his mouth and nose, dripping to the ground beneath him. Finally, with a desperate choking sound, the human collapsed, twitched weakly for a moment and then stopped moving.

Jackal straightened, muttering a low, savage curse. “Oh, damn,” he growled, more serious then I’d ever heard him sound. “That’s why the city is locked down.”

“What?” I asked, tearing my gaze away from the dead human. “What’s going on? What is this?” Jackal stared at the human, then turned to face me.

“Red Lung,” he said, making my blood freeze. “What you saw right there, those are the final symptoms of the Red Lung virus. Without the crazy muttering and tearing the eyes out, anyway.” He shook his head violently, as if remembering. “I’ve never seen it, but Kanin told me how it worked. The infected humans would bleed internally, and eventually they would drown in their own blood, trying to throw up their organs. Nasty way to go, even for the bloodbags.”

Dread gripped me. I glanced back at the body lying motionless in the hall, in the weeds poking through the floor, and felt cold. I remembered what Kanin had told me once, in the hidden lab when I first became a vampire. I’d asked him about the virus, why there was no Red Lung in the world anymore, if the scientists had found a cure. He’d given a bitter smile.

“No,” Kanin said. “Red Lung was never cured. The Red Lung virus mutated when the rabids were born. That’s how Rabidism spread so quickly. It was an airborne pathogen, just like Red Lung, only instead of getting sick and dying, people turned into rabids.” He shook his head, looking grave. “Some people survived, obviously, and passed on their immunities, which is why the world isn’t full of rabids and nothing else. But there was no cure for Red Lung. The rabids destroyed that hope when they were created and escaped.”

And now, Red Lung had emerged again, in New Covington. Or a version of it had, anyway. Jackal and I exchanged a grave look, no doubt both thinking the same thing. This was what Sarren wanted, why he’d taken the virus samples. Somehow, he’d created another strain of the plague that had destroyed most of the world, and he’d unleashed it on New Covington.

The thought was terrifying.

Voices drifted out from the shadows, and we went still. The corpse in the hall had attracted another pair of humans from a nearby room. They poked it halfheartedly, asking crazy, nonsensical questions. When it didn’t move, they quickly lost interest and shuffled back to the room, leaving it to rot at the mouth of the corridor.

We made our way through the apartments, slipping past the room with the crazy humans, and out to the street. I looked back and shuddered. “Why would he do this?” I whispered.

“Sarren doesn’t need a reason for what he does.” Jackal curled a lip in disgust. “He and his sanity parted ways a while back, and he’s only gotten more deranged since. But this …” He gazed around the city and shook his head. “You bloody insane bastard,” he muttered. “Why are you screwing with the food supply? We might not survive another epidemic.”

Overhead, the sky was an uncomfortable navy blue, and most of the stars had faded. We didn’t have a lot of time to reach the Inner City. “This way,” I hissed at Jackal, slipping through the gap in the wooden fence surrounding the apartment. “It’s still a good distance to the Sector Four gate.”

We didn’t quite make it.

I got us there as quickly as I could, of course. This was still my old neighborhood, my district. I had spent seventeen years of my life in this filthy, dilapidated ruin of a town, scavenging for food, dodging patrols, doing whatever it took to survive. This was my territory; I knew its quirks, its shortcuts, and where to go if I wanted to get somewhere quickly.

That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was, back when I was human, everyone else had been human, too. The sane, rational, not-trying-to-kill-you kind of human. Now, the streets, the buildings, the side alleys and parking lots, were filled with infected madmen. Madmen who didn’t fear vampires or pain or anything, and who would come at us, screaming, if they so much as saw our shadows move. Jackal and I cut several of these humans down as they flung themselves at us with a wild abandon almost like the rabids’ single-minded viciousness. Other times, we would escape into the shadows, over walls, or onto the roofs where the infected couldn’t follow. I’d never seen so many humans wandering the streets at night, and wondered where all the sane, noninfected people were. If there were any left at all.

A pink glow was threatening the eastern horizon when we finally reached the wall of the Inner City, fighting our way through another group of shrieking madmen to the big iron gates that led to the Prince’s territory. Normally, the thick metal doors were heavily guarded, with soldiers stationed up top and two well-armed humans standing in front. Now, the gates were sealed tight, and no guards patrolled the Inner Wall. Nor did anyone respond to our shouts and banging on the doors. It seemed the Prince had drawn all his people farther into the city, leaving the Fringe to fend for itself.

Jackal swore and gave the gate a resounding kick. The blow made a hollow, booming sound that echoed down the wall, but the doors were thick, sturdy and designed to hold up to vampire attacks. They didn’t even shake.

“What now?” he snarled, looking at the top of the Inner Wall, a good twenty feet straight up. Like the gates, the wall protecting the Inner City was built with vampires in mind. There were no handholds, no ledges to cling to, no buildings close enough to launch off. We wouldn’t be getting into the city this way.

And dawn was dangerously close.

“Come on,” I told Jackal, who glared at the wall as if he might take an ax to it when he came back. “We can’t stay out here, and we’re not getting in this way. I know a place where we can sleep—it’s secure enough, we won’t have to worry about crazy humans.”

A woman staggered around a corner, her entire face an open, bleeding wound, and lunged at us with a howl. I dodged, letting her smack into the wall, then bolted into the Fringe again, Jackal following and snarling curses at my back.

Several streets and close calls later, with the sun moments away from breaking over the jagged horizon, I squeezed through a familiar chain-link fence at the edge of a cracked, overgrown parking lot. A squat, three-story building sat at the end of the lot, making a lump rise to my throat. Home. This had been home, once.

Then a searing light spilled over the buildings, turning the tops a blinding orange, and we ran.

Miraculously, no crazy humans waited in the parking lot to ambush us. After ducking through the doors into the shade of the hallway, I collapsed against the wall in relief.

“Nice place,” Jackal remarked, slouched against the opposite wall, where a row of lockers rusted against the plaster. He gazed down the dark corridor, where rooms lined each wall, and curled a lip. “Let me guess—hospital? Or asylum.”

“It’s a school,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Or it was, back before the plague.” I pushed myself off the wall, feeling sluggish and tired now that the sun was out. “This way. There’s a basement we used to hole up in when the vamps were out.”

“We?” Jackal raised an eyebrow as we picked our way down the hall. I winced, realizing my slip, and didn’t reply. “So,” Jackal continued, gazing around with more interest, “this was where you lived as a bloodbag.”

“You really like that term, don’t you?”

“What?” Jackal looked confused.

“Bloodbag. That’s all humans are to you.” I turned down another hallway, one even more cluttered with rubble and fallen plaster. “You keep forgetting that you were one, once.”

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. “Look, sister. I’ve been a vampire for a long time now. Maybe not as long as Kanin, but definitely longer than you. Live a few decades, and yes, they all start to look the same. Like cows. Intelligent, talking pieces of meat.” He ducked under a beam lying across the corridor, barely clearing it. “Granted, I didn’t always see them that way, but time has a way of breaking down your convictions.”

Surprised, I stopped and turned to blink up at him. “Really? You?”

“Does that shock you?” Jackal grinned, enjoying himself. “Yeah, sister. I was like you once. So worried about not hurting the poor defenseless humans, only taking what I needed, so scared about losing control.” He shook his head. “And then, one night Kanin and I met a group of men who wanted to kill us. And we slaughtered them all. As easily as killing spiders.” He grinned then, showing fangs. “Right then, I realized we were always meant to rule over humans. We could do whatever we wanted, and they couldn’t stop us. Why deny your base nature? It’s what we are.

“So, yes,” he finished, still smirking at me. “I call humans ‘bloodbags.’ I don’t need to know their names, or if they have a family, or what their favorite color is. Because I’m either going to outlive them, or I’m going to tear their throats open and suck them dry. And life got a lot simpler once I realized that.”

“You gave up,” I accused. “It just got too hard to fight it anymore.”

“Did you ever think there was a reason for that? Because we’re not supposed to! Why would I want to keep fighting my instincts?”

“You don’t have to be a murdering bastard to be a vampire.”

Jackal snorted. “You don’t believe that,” he mocked. “Not even Kanin believed that, and he was the biggest softhearted prick I ever came across. Before you, anyway.” He sneered at my dark look. “But, go ahead. Keep telling yourself your pretty little lies. I just hope I’m there when it all comes crashing down around you.”

We’d reached the end of the hall, and I pulled open the rusty metal door that led to the basement. Memories continued to haunt me as I made my way down the stairs, into the cement walled rooms of the school’s lowest floor. This was where the gang and I had retreated whenever there was trouble—a rival gang, a vampire in the area, an unexpected patrol. The door could be barred from the inside, and the thick walls and floor made it hard for anything to get at us. Of course, now that I was a vampire, it was chilling to realize how easily I could have blown through that flimsy barrier, locked or not. And with no other way out of the basement, whoever came down here would be trapped.

Shutting the door, I let the bar clang into place. Hopefully, the crazies outside were not as strong as a vampire, because sleep was clawing at the edges of my mind. Jackal, gripping the railing like he, too, was in danger of falling over, looked around the dark, cold room.

“Where exactly do you expect us to sleep?”

“I don’t care,” I slurred, moving carefully down the steps. “Pick a corner. Just leave me alone.” I found the spot behind several low-hanging pipes where I’d kept a ratty quilt for myself, and found it was still there. Drawing it over my shoulders, I sat down with my back to the corner and unsheathed my sword beneath the quilt. When we were traveling, we’d separated at dawn to bury ourselves in the frozen earth, hidden and safe from each other. Having him in the same room with me as I lay exposed and helpless made me nervous.

Jackal was still wandering around, looking for a place to lie down. I stayed awake as long as I could, listening to his footsteps, waiting for him to find a spot. I forced myself to keep my eyes open, fighting the sluggish pull threatening to draw me under, until the noises ceased.

Finally. Leaning my head against the wall, I let my eyes slip shut, and had just started to relax when his dark chuckle echoed out of the darkness.

“I know you’re still awake.”

“Good for you. Shut up and go to sleep.”

Another snicker. “What you have to ask yourself,” he continued, “is whether I’m the type who would stay awake long enough to kill you after you fall asleep, or if I’m an early riser who would kill you before you wake up.”

“If you want your head to stay on your neck, you’d better be neither,” I growled, though his words sent a cold spear of dread through my stomach. My hands tightened on my sword hilt, and Jackal laughed somewhere in the darkness, unseen.

“I’m just kidding, sis,” he said. “Or am I? Something to think about, before you fall asleep. Nighty-night, then. Sleep tight.”

I struggled to stay awake awhile longer, knowing I was playing right into Jackal’s twisted sense of humor, yet unable to stop myself. I couldn’t see Jackal, couldn’t hear him, so I didn’t know if he had already fallen asleep, if he was lying awake snickering to himself, or if he was waiting for me to drift off so he could creep over and quietly rip off my head.





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