Destiny's Child (Kitsune series Book 3) (28 page)

Elektra stopped at our table.  Her hands were stacked on the backrest of an empty chair.  She wore two rings on her top hand.  Both bands were gold.  One ring had a ruby.  The other sported a blue tiger’s eye.  She leaned on the chair as if bracing against some attractive force were pulling her to Maddy. 

“Hi, Maddy.  You’re looking good.”

Maddy nodded curtly.  “Have a seat if you want.”

Elektra pulled out the chair and settled on it.  Her air of nervous energy gave the impression that she might float up from her seat at any moment.  Her hands went back to being stacked, this time on the tabletop.  Her stare flicked to Fran and me, then returned to Maddy.  “These are your friends?”

“Grace and Fran.”  She wagged a finger to show who was who.

“And what’s that under Fran’s coat?”  Elektra smiled.  “A gun?”

“A stake,” Maddy said.  “I can always trust Fran to have my back.  She’s my best friend.”

At the bald declaration, I watched Fran blush with pleasure. 

“They’re both slayers?” Elektra asked.

Maddy gave another of her curt nods.  “More or less.”

Elektra sighed.  “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

“Then why did you bring all the other thralls?  You’ve got your backup,” I said.

Her stare came back to me.  “You don’t miss much.”

I shrugged.

Elektra returned her attention to Maddy.  “I wanted it to be just you and me, but Conrad insisted I bring my security.  My celebrity status makes me a target.”

“That and your taste in men,” Maddy said. “Couldn’t you find someone with a pulse?”

“You should give Conrad a chance.  He’s not the monster you imagine.”

“He’s a vampire.  A blood sucking fiend,” Maddy said.

Fran nodded agreement.

“There are several African tribes that mix cow’s milk with blood as the main staple of their diet,” Elektra said.  “No one calls them monsters.”

“They don’t kill the cows for fun,” Maddy said.

Elektra stared down at her hands.  “There are rogue vampires that kill freely to feed, but the great Vampire Houses police their own.”

“Not too well,” Fran said.  “That’s why slayers are necessary.”

My eyes were drawn to the approaching waitress.  Now that I was out of the ghost realm, I could tell she had red hair—the bright orangey kind—pulled back from her pale face, tied in back.  Her eyes were made up in smoky eyeliner, a stab at mystery, and her slash of a mouth was given substance by tangerine lipstick.   She stopped beside Elektra, as if lending immoral support.  “Can I get you something?”

“Some privacy.  They’ve seen through all of you,” Elektra said, “and no one has staked me.  I told you I didn’t need an escort.”

The waitress looked over the table, frowning at the untouched drinks.  That heightened my suspicion they’d been drugged.  I pushed Maddy’s drink over to Elektra.  “Here, have this.  It hasn’t been touched.”

Maddy looked at me, then her mother.  “Yes, you must be thirsty.  Take my drink.”

Elektra reached out and claimed the cold, sweaty glass.  She lifted it to her lips.

The waitress stopped her with a hand on her arm.  “Don’t drink that.  It’s probably been spiked.  They doubtless mean to knock you out so they can run off with you and have you forcibly deprogrammed.”

“My daughter wouldn’t do that to me.”

I stared at the waitress.  “You’re the one who brought the drink.  If something’s funny with it, it’s your fault.”

The waitress ignored me.  She told Elektra, “This was a bad idea.  We need to go.”

“I’m not above kidnapping and torture in a good cause,” Maddy said, “but not to save you.  People can only save themselves.  I’ve had to accept that if you want to walk to Hell, I have to let you.  But if Conrad turns you into what he is, I’ll consider it murder since he’s
rolled your mind
with his vamp hypnotism, leaving you in no condition to consent.”

“Maddy!”  Elektra had a shocked-numb expression on her face.  “It’s not like that.  We love each other—enough to want to spend forever together.”

“You’d say that, being his
thrall
.”  Her voice hard and cold, Maddy made the word sound like an obscene curse.  “The day he turns you, he signs his death warrant.  I will be judge, jury, and executioner.”  Her eyes had a dangerous glitter.  I felt her aura rolling out, thickened with the will to kill.  She crossed her arms under her breasts in absolute finality.  “If I can’t save you, I will at least avenge you.”

“Whether I want you to or not?”  Elektra’s face shut down, locking her feelings away from us—they were her burden to bear.  Mother and daughter had that attitude in common.  Elektra stood, kicking her chair back with her legs.  She nodded at some thought of her own.  “This was a mistake.  I thought you could be happy for me, or at least understand.”

Maddy stood as well, facing her mom across the table.  The candle on the table gave their features a spooky, theatrical lighting.

“I do understand.  I know what a vampire really is.”  Her voice heated.  “I was ten when you moved Conrad in to our home.  Do you want to know what he used to do to me when you weren’t around?  You want to see the fang scars on my inner thighs?  You’re my mom.  It was your job to protect me.  Would it have even made a difference if you’d known?”

“Y-you’re lying.”

I saw the thralls approaching, falling in behind the waitress and Elektra.  Fran and I stood up slowly, getting ready in case a throw-down erupted. 

Maddy’s voice got even colder, as if her heart were icing over.  “Am I?  You know better, somewhere deep inside.”

Without a word, Elektra turned and pushed through her entourage.  She headed for the door—the other thralls packed in tight with her—shoving away those that blocked their path.  The bouncer saw the commotion and slid off his stool, but seeing the trouble element was already heading for the door, he just let them. 

Maddy caught the eye of the bartender, waving a few bills which she dropped on the table between the drinks.  She headed for the door with me and Fran right behind her.  As we passed the bouncer, he looked at me, puzzled, no doubt wondering how I got inside without him seeing me.

Sorry, trade secret.

We went through the double doors, down the steps, and crunched the gravel of the parking lot under our feet.  More cars were pulling into the parking lot.  Low-slung and cobalt blue, a Corvette shot in front of us, raising a plume of dust.  It was Elektra, taking off like a bat out of hell.  I had to wonder if she was running from Maddy’s words, or running to confront Conrad with what she’d learned.  Right behind the coupe, a black Nissan NV Passenger van followed.  The thing was long, almost a minibus, well able to hold twelve people.  The waitress was at the wheel.  She flipped us off as she went by, raising more dust.

“See,” I said, “that’s why you never get any tips.”

After the vehicles cleared out of our way, we continued on to the white van.

White van—good guys.  Black van—bad guys.  The whole world really is black and white.
  I’d always suspected that those who talked about “shades of gray” just weren’t close enough to see the separation; like pointillism in comic artwork, shading is gray from a distance, but up close, it resolves into black dots on white paper.

“Where’s Faith?” Fran said.

Her question snapped Maddy and me out of our thoughts.  We hurried closer to the van, peering inside.  Faith was gone.  We tried the doors.  They were locked.  The vehicle hadn’t been broken into.  The windows were intact.

“The thralls,” I said, “could they have somehow—”

Maddy whipped her phone out of her pocket.  “Good thing I had her give me her number on the way here.”  She speed-dialed Faith’s number.  We waited.  And heard a ringtone—
Monster Mash
—from within the black, exterminator’s van with the dead plastic rat on top.  A moment later, the van’s side door slid open.  There was Faith, a few of the slayers from her school, and Van Helsing, holding some sort of long-range listening device like a foam-headed microphone that had been turned into a gun.  A cord connected the device to a box with an old-style cassette recorder built in.  The same box had headphones plugged into it, the headset worn around Van Helsing’s neck.

“Hey, guys,” Faith was exuberant, all but bouncing in place. 

Maddy ended her call, putting her phone away.  “Yeah?  What?”

“Your mom’s on her way to see Conrad.”

“We know that,” I said.

Faith came closer.  “Yeah, but we overheard that driver in the van saying that Elektra has outlived her usefulness and is getting too hard to handle.  Conrad’s not going to convert her tonight like she thinks.  He’s planning on just plain killing her.  The red-headed bimbo is moving up from back-ground vocals to center stage.”

“One star falls,” Van Helsing said, “and another rises.  I’ll text you directions to the meet.”

Maddy said a bad word, wheeled about, and lunged to the door of the white van.  Fran and I hurried to get in so Maddy wouldn’t race off and leave us behind.  Faith managed to climb into the back of the van and slam the door shut as we peeled out, slinging gravel. 

She asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Kick ass,” Maddy said.

“Kick vamp ass,” Fran added.

“Keep Elektra alive—if possible,” I said.

“Sounds like fun,” Faith said.

I looked behind us and noticed that Van Helsing and the other slayers were right on our tail.  We may have left the bar, but we were headed straight for a
Barroom Blitz
.  The song ran through my head, and in the back shadows of my mind, Taliesina pranced, yapping out a foxy version of the lyrics.  Hurtling through the sunset, I rocked my head in time to the beat.

TWENTY-EIGHT

“I’ll take no names.  I’ll take no prisoners.

I’ll take no crap in ribbons and bows.

I need what I want and I want what you’ve got.

So take the last piece of my soul.”

                             
                           —Take the Last Piece

                            
                    Elektra Blue

So much for Maddy’s stoic indifference to her mom’s fate.

The slayer had spent a great deal of energy telling her mom to go get screwed by the bat she rode in on.  Now we were racing after Elektra, saving her after all.  Maddy had been wounded deep by her mom, and couldn’t forgive her—but couldn’t stop loving her. 
Easier for Maddy if she could.  If her mom dies now, I just know Maddy will blame herself for the rest of her life.  Logic has little to do with the heart. 

My thoughts turned to Shaun and me—and that skank sorceress making time with him.  I mean, Fenn’s cool, not hard on the eyes at all, and he, too, has that bad-boy danger vibe about him.  If I’d any sense at all, I’d give Fenn a shot—or Onyx, once he got back from the shadow realm, visiting his dad.

Thinking of Fenn reminded me of a promise I’d made him about the next time I went into action, putting my neck on the line.  “Faith, can I borrow your phone?”

“Sure.”  She handed it over.

I called Fenn’s number.  He picked up on two chimes.  “Hello?”

“Hi, it’s me, Grace.”

“Grace!” he screamed into the phone. 

I winced, pulled the phone from my ear, then put it back so I could speak.  “Hey, tone it down.”

“Where are you?  What happened to you?  You were supposed to follow us out of camp and rendezvous.”

Next to me, Faith said, “Oooooo, your boyfriend speaks French.  How sexy!”

“Hey, this is a private call.”

She pointed to one ear.  “Sorry, superhuman hearing remember?  Shall I hum quietly to myself?”

I scowled.  “Oh, never mind.”  I picked up my conversation with Fenn.  “Hey, you remember that promise I made to you about asking for your help?”

“Yeah?” he put a lot of edge on that one syllable. 

“Well, I’m headed into some trouble with my slayer friends.  Want to
rendezvous
with me, save a life, and stomp a vamp?”

“Where?” he asked.

Fran looked back at me, a tablet glowing in her lap.  The screen above the tiny keyboard displayed a street map as well as GPS coordinates.  Fran rattled off the street address and other particulars.  I was about to repeat it all when he said, “Got it.  Don’t start the fight without me.”