Blood Brothers

Table of Contents

 

 

Danger
.

Lucy tried to pull free.
No more visions! Make them stop!

But the stranger's hand squeezed tighter, sending a chaos of sensations to her very core.

“Is he?” she heard him ask again. “Is Byron
dead
?”

Lucy felt the walls sway around her, the stones shift beneath her feet. For one brief second the young man's eyes actually seemed to change color, black and amber fusing together in a liquid, luminous glow—yet she convinced herself it was only a trick of her own unshed tears. She tried to answer him—
wanted
to answer him—but her thoughts were all muddled, and she was so hot, and he was holding her so tight . . .
so tight
. . .

“Yes.”
Don't make me say it—I can't bear to say it!
“Yes! He's dead!”

“You're sure?”

Memories stabbed through her head, pierced through her heart. “If you were really his brother, you wouldn't be asking me these questions! If you were really his brother, you'd already know—”

SPEAK
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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2005
Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006

Copyright © Richie Tankersley Cusick, 2005 All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Cusick, Richie Tankersley.
Blood brothers / by Richie Tankersley Cusick.
p. cm.—(The unseen ; pt. 3)
Summary: A stranger claiming to be Byron's brother appears, horribly wounded, and
throws Lucy's life into further turmoil.

eISBN : 978-1-101-17679-5

[ 1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Mistaken identity—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C9646Blo 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005051630

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any
responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

 

He'd had to think quickly.

After this last kill he'd been so gorged, so utterly exhausted from frenzy and frustration, he'd been unable to return to his bed. He'd been forced to seek out another hiding place . . . and then he'd crept inside and he'd slept.

Slept far past his normal hour of waking . . .

Slept right through the day . . . into the night . . .

Slept the fathomless sleep of the dead.

He'd never seen the attack coming.

Never awakened fully, even, until the first hot spurt of blood, the first scream of ripping flesh, the whole world exploding in a thick, wet fountain of scarlet and black.

He had no idea which of them had struck the first blow. Or when instinct had taken ahold of him, every primal sense honed for survival, no matter what the pain, no matter what the cost . . .

He did not remember which had been the last to fall . . .

He was only and finally aware of the silence and the peace. The wind upon his face, the snow upon his lips. He was thirsty, yet could not seem to drink. He needed warmth and shelter, yet could not seem to move.

He was in desperate agony, yet could not help himself.

And so he lay there, stunned and weakened, too sick to lick his wounds. Until at last, and like a dream, the sound of quiet footsteps had floated through his mind . . .

He heard them from a distance, moving closer and closer, phantom footsteps of no real concern, no imminent danger. But as he struggled to comprehend them, he realized these footsteps were no dream at all.

They were real, and they were human.

They were coming toward the burial place, dangerously close to where he rested.

And so he'd had to think quickly.

Think quickly and act with haste.

Transform to a shadow? Mist? A guise of the living, a memory of the dead?

Or, in one swift, smooth motion, ready himself to strike again?

But then he paused, consumed by an ache so deep he had not even realized he moaned.

For now he saw this was no enemy.

Now he realized this was Lucy—
his Lucy
—approaching him unaware and unsuspecting, steeped in grief and sorrow as he had always known her.

And yet . . . different somehow.

Unsettlingly
different, somehow.

He could feel it, as sharply as he could feel the rats cowering around him, their ears twitching in fear, their glowing eyes averted from his own, their teeth stained red from the remnants of his meal and the raw meat of his wound. And he could smell it, too—as surely as he smelled the slow and steady creeping of decay, the lingering despair of so many wasted lives rotting in the graves around him.

No, Lucy was not quite the same as before.

Something had changed since he'd last laid eyes upon her.

Despite her confusion, there was now resolve.

And amid her fear and helplessness burned a new strength—small yet, to be sure, but solid with determination.

How interesting
, he thought . . .
and how curious.

So delightful, it made him smile, despite his anguish.

He couldn't help wondering what had happened—
one incident? or many?
—to touch her at such a profound level in so short a time.

But no matter.

This newfound strength of Lucy's would only serve to make the Game more interesting. More challenging. More worth winning.

So he'd narrowed his eyes and waited.

Waited until her footsteps were practically upon him.

Until, in one more second, Lucy would be at the gates of the mausoleum, peering into the shadows of the tomb, stepping across that crumbling threshold between life and death.

Could he take her? As this desperate need for her surged through every vein, filling him with brief and savage power?

But he did not.

He thought quickly instead.

And felt that explosive rush of skin and muscles shifting, features rearranging, as quick as a heartbeat, as natural as breath.

So now he could listen.

Stay close and watch.

And like so many times before, Lucy would never even know.

She hadn't expected the cemetery to look so spooky at this hour of the morning.

Like wandering phantoms, tatters of soft white mist hovered among the graves, and an unnatural quiet smothered the sound of Lucy's footsteps as she made her way to the remote section of the burial grounds. The dead slept deep and undisturbed. Remembered and forgotten alike, they surrounded her on all sides, rotting peacefully to dust.

In the distance, the Wetherly mausoleum came darkly into view, silhouetted against the gloom. As Lucy got nearer, she could see the wrought-iron gates and stone angels that guarded it, and for one unsettling moment, she remembered her dream about Byron and his warning.

An icy shudder worked its way up her spine. Hesitating, she dug her hands into her coat pockets and glanced back over her shoulder.

It was easy to imagine eerie whispers and invisible watchers in a creepy place like this—what had she been thinking anyway, coming here so early?

Giving herself a stern mental shake, she walked over to the front of the tomb. To her surprise, the double gates weren't padlocked as she'd assumed they'd be—in fact, they were standing partway open, one of them creaking rustily as the breeze swung it back and forth.

Heart quickening, Lucy glanced around a second time.

If someone
were
here, they'd be impossible to see, she admitted to herself. Anyone could be hiding close by or far away.

Lucy suppressed another shiver.

Turning in a slow circle, she scanned the graves and headstones, the sepulchres and statues, the trees and shadows and mist. A taste of fear crept into her throat, and she tried to choke it down.

Cautiously, she turned back to the gates.

Taking one in each hand, she eased them open the rest of the way. Cracks had widened along the foundation, and leaves had sifted in over the broken, weathered stones of the floor.

Holding her breath, Lucy walked into the crypt.

She saw the muddy footprints and tufts of clotted hair, the dark, reddish-brown stains smeared along the walls . . .

But she didn't see the figure behind her.

Not till she turned and screamed and stumbled from his arms, trying wildly to fight her way free.

And then she stared up, shocked, into eyes as black and deep as midnight.

“Oh my God,” she choked. “Who are you?”

The dark-haired young man gazed coolly back at her.

“Byron's brother,” he answered. “Who the hell are
you
?”

He could almost have
been
Byron.

The likeness was so incredible that for one wild moment Lucy actually glanced around at the walls of the mausoleum, as though Byron himself might have stepped from his burial place to stand before her now.

And yet, in one swift moment of scrutiny, she could see that there were differences. Differences not only obvious, but subtle as well—differences she felt certain of but couldn't totally define. Even in that moment of shock, Lucy sensed a sadness even more complicated than Byron's, and a raw sensitivity far beyond any that Byron had ever shown.