Blessed (27 page)

“Free-range bleeding stock,” Harrison replied in a bored voice. “We’d considered going organic, however —”

“Stop!” I yelled. “We don’t have time for this! Brad’s not stupid. If
we
know that the Wolves might be able to stop him, then
he
probably knows it, too.”

“If only you could contact the international training pack,” Philippe said. “The elder Wolves — the one or two with enough expertise in the historical supernatural to perhaps counter Bradley, they would most likely be teachers there.”

Shaking her head, Sabine returned to her throne. “If all that you say is true, this Bradley will find and kill the Wolves — the old scholars, the young. He will kill them all.”

Kieren.

“Wait!” Harrison had chased after us through the parking lot to the SUV.

Zachary paused in front of his already open driver’s door. “What do you want?”

“In light of the threat, Her Royal Majesty offers use of her personal jet.”

“Pass,” Freddy said with a wave of his hand from the other side of the car.

“It occurs to me, brother,” Harrison replied, “that you underestimate —”

“The queen has enforcers, right?” I asked. Already buckled in, I’d lowered a window. “Worst-case scenario, wouldn’t she send them to fight Brad’s army?”

“Of course not,” Harrison replied. “The enforcers would go where the power is.”

“The weak always do,” Freddy shot back at his twin.

“You mean they would switch sides?” I asked. “Abandon Sabine for Brad?”

Harrison’s lips tightened. “We speak of powers that have become legendary, even among creatures of legend. Yes, of course we would only be delivering the queen’s forces to join his. But Her Majesty cannot stand idle with so much at stake.”

After a weighty silence, he declared, “All right. If you won’t accept the jet, from here on, I’ll be joining you as her representative.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Freddy exclaimed.

Apparently uncomfortable with my sitting next to Harrison, Zachary had asked me to ride beside him up front. On the drive south, the twins bickered in back while the angel behind the wheel seethed.

Had it been my fault he was caught and brought to Sabine? Probably. I’d never so much as exchanged a word with the security guard, let alone pitched the ruse concocted to distract him from the cameras.

As we passed Navy Pier, I remembered that Vaggio was originally from Chicago. That he was buried here. By failing to stop his killer tonight, I’d let him down, too.

Then Zachary surprised me by saying, “I was proud of you. The way you held your own against Sabine.”

I stared past him at the traffic and the black abyss that was Lake Michigan. “You wouldn’t have been, if you’d seen me earlier in the courtyard.”

When his jaw tightened to the point that I thought he might crush his teeth, I realized that Zachary had misunderstood. “I didn’t hurt anyone. I didn’t partake . . .” An old-fashioned word, but it seemed to fit. “Of the suicidal. But I was tempted. Brad spun my brain, and I made a total fool out of —”

“I was proud of you,” Zachary said again.

After a hot shower back at the Edison Hotel, I’d slipped on the thick white complimentary robe and curled up in a plush chair, gripping my vial of holy water.

Tonight had been a disaster. The smell of blood had saturated the air, and Bradley had managed to reach beyond mental manipulations to take over my waking behavior. Even worse, Brad now had possession of both enchanted knives and, therefore, the full range of Dracula Prime’s powers at his disposal.

Once the infected rose undead, they would all be slaves to his whim.

In fact, if Lucy’s sleepwalking and Mina’s blood-drinking had happened as Stoker had reported, Brad might already be able to control the baby-squirrel eaters and anyone else he’d cursed, even though they were, at least for now, still human.

Poor Aimee. It was amazing how well she was holding up.

I turned the vial in my hands. Sabine and Philippe had said the training pack — Kieren’s pack? — might be able to help us and might be targeted by Brad for that very reason. But none of us knew how to contact the Wolves.

Our only potential source was Miz Morales. I seriously doubted she’d tell me, though, even if I mentioned the risk to Kieren specifically. But if I called, she’d definitely order me back to Austin. Zachary, being my GA, would have to return, too, and then where would that leave us?

I fell asleep in the chair, trying to figure it all out.

The human servant from the castle, the needy, flirtatious girl with gold ribbons in her dark hair. The toga dress had been ripped open, her spine broken, her too-pale body arranged on a circle of red satin along the lakefront.

Earth, air, fire, water. I was seeing through Bradley’s eyes.

Even after brushing her off, it would’ve been nothing for Brad to seduce the girl into leaving with him. His long fingers swirled in her raw throat, and he began painting a lizard . . . bird . . . a
dragon
on the skin over her heart. A target.

Her mouth opened, closed. She’d lost the ability to speak, but — God help her — she still understood what was happening.

“Don’t,” I whispered, but Brad wasn’t paying attention.

Instead, he grabbed the bowie knife in his right hand, the kukri knife in his left, and raised them both above the symbol he’d painted on his sacrifice.

As the knives came down, I screamed. Then he yanked the blades up and away from her still-beating heart, turned them inward, and stabbed both into his own gut.

I awoke, teary and drenched in sweat, to a pounding on the door.

After checking the peephole, I let the Possum in.

“Is it true that Kieren’s in danger?” Clyde asked. Then he noticed that I’d been crying. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yes. I don’t know. Maybe,” I replied, trying to answer both questions. “Why?”

He motioned for me to shut the door. “Because if so, the Wolf pack is based in a little German-American town called New Schwarzwald, Michigan.”

“You know this how?”

“Before Kieren left, his dad ran into my mom at Travis’s house. He’d gone to drop off tamales. She’d gone to drop off a casserole. Dr. Morales gave her an envelope to give to me to give to Kieren. It had a lot of cash in it and directions —”

“To the Wolf pack,” I finished. “You sneaky little marsupial! You peeked!” It wasn’t until then that I remembered that Clyde should’ve told Zachary or Freddy instead. That Brad could yank the information from my brain. “Why tell me? You know —”

“I know that the fastest way to reach Kieren is probably a phone. He was pretty pissed at me when I dropped him off outside Denton. And if anybody’s going to convince him that the ultimate badass vampire is headed his way, it’s going to be you.”

I’d tried calling ahead for Kieren, but when I got directory information, the only place I could think to find him was the closest high school. The receptionist had said no student by his name was enrolled.

Aimee had suggested trying the New Schwarzwald mayor’s office, but Clyde reminded her that we didn’t know how the pack was organized — if its members made up all the town’s residents or just a percentage of the local population. We couldn’t risk accidentally outing the Wolves to humans who might be just as deadly to them as Brad.

On the upside, if Brad had already known about the werewolf threat and the pack’s location, now we had a fighting chance to head him off. Plus, the Wolf magic experts might be able to tell us how to defeat him.

“What if he’s already hopped a plane to Detroit?” Zachary asked. “He could rent a car from there and —”

“The first thing Sabine’s enforcers did was to insert Brad’s known pseudonyms (with a sketch) at the top of every international list of wanted terrorists,” Harrison assured us. “Believe me, the Eternal Air Defense System is far, far more merciless — and therefore, more effective — than Homeland Security and, most especially, the TSA.”

Passing through Gary, Indiana, I learned that Harrison was a neophyte, too.

“I’m still twice your age, children.” He paused. “Not that I look it.”

“And you like being a vampire?” Aimee asked from the bench behind him.

Zachary adjusted the rearview mirror.

“It holds pleasures, unspeakable pleasures,” Harrison replied, “and I was reared from infancy to view eternals as superior beings.”

Which didn’t explain why he’d chosen one road and Freddy another, and it wasn’t exactly a yes, either.

I didn’t remember falling back asleep. I could still feel the motion of the SUV, but I also had the sensation of moving up and then backward. I could see the Chicago skyline to one side, what looked like an inland sea to the other. “Where are we?”

“Navy Pier,” Bradley answered from beside me in the gondola. “Ferris wheel.”

Of course. I’d seen it from Lake Shore Drive on the way back to the hotel. An impressive metal structure, soaring, lit by thousands of sparkling lights.

“You can’t keep doing this,” I insisted. “Slipping in and out of my mind.”

“I won’t have to much longer. My mission is nearly complete. I owe you my humble thanks. I hadn’t realized those mongrels might be able to undo all my hard work.”

Damn. Just as I’d feared, he’d plucked the information about the Wolf pack from my brain. Before I could protest, he began laughing. “See you in Michigan, and your little dog boy, too!”

My eyes fluttered open. Leaning forward, I urged the angel, “Hurry.”

Only moments outside of New Schwarzwald, lightning cracked, thunder boomed, and rain fell in sheets across the windshield.

“Looks like weather,” Zachary said, refusing to slow down.

Meanwhile, I handed out snacks. Aimee wanted to help, but if we spun out into a tree, it was more important that she was the one wearing a seat belt.

“I categorically refuse,” Harrison said, taking a whiff of porcine blood.

“Drink it,” Freddy ordered. “Or we’ll hog-tie you for the rest of the trip.”

Harrison wasn’t impressed. “You know ropes can’t hold me.”

“We have chains in back,” his twin replied.