Fang Girl (22 page)

“No time.” I grabbed Van’s leather-clad shoulder, unable to stop myself from collapsing against him. “I need you,” I said, up into his puzzled but still suspicious
face. “Hakon’s got my family. Get Lily. Help me!”

“What?”

I could
throttle
him for being so slow. “I’m hiring you, hunter!”

“What? No!” Sarah lunged for me. With a silent apology, I opened the blood-bond between us, deliberately drawing as much power as I could.

Sarah had just enough time to gasp, “Oh, you total cow,” before she keeled over. Fresh energy roared through my veins as she toppled into a limp heap.

I shook my head, clawing for a few more minutes of consciousness. “Ebon called,” I said to Van, my voice steadier. “He’s got my family. Hakon’s going to kill them unless I give myself up by tomorrow midnight.”

Enlightenment dawned across Van’s face. “And it’s not only you he wants.”

“Right. He wants Lily and Sarah and—” I stopped dead.

I was too late; Van had already worked it out. “And me,” he finished neutrally.

I hesitated, then nodded.

“And you want me to secure your sire for you.”

I nodded again, mute. We stared at each other, barely inches apart. His eyes were so green in the daylight.
They studied me, reading my desperation, and his own expression softened. I felt the rough calluses on his palm as he cupped my face in his hand, supporting my drooping head.

“I am a hunter,” he said, his deep voice very quiet. “And I protect the innocent with my blood. You can trust me.”

I closed my eyes for a second in relief, and then wished I hadn’t, as I couldn’t pry them open again. The dawn was beating on my skull like a hammer. Van’s hand holding me up was so warm, so nice. I could float away.

“Jane.” Van’s voice drifted down from somewhere very far away. I forced my eyelids up for a fraction of a second. His intent face swam before me, his hair blazing like fire. “Just in case … don’t surrender Sarah, but anything else you have to do to save your family … do it. Just do it.”

I was falling back into my grave. Earth closed over my head.

His words followed me into the darkness. “If you have to, give me to the vampires.”

W
e,” said a cold, curt voice, jolting me awake, “have got to talk.”

“Bzuh?” My eyes were blurry with sleep, and my neck was killing me. I seemed to be lying full length and facedown on the carpet. I managed to lift my head a few inches and saw a row of tan blurs laid out inches from my nose. I blinked them into focus.

Scrabble tiles. Y, O, U, A, R, E, A, N, I, D, I, O, and T.

An instant migraine lit up my skull. Wincing, I reached for the tiles, intending to rearrange them into a logical order—and hesitated. Either they could go in alphabetical order, or numerical sequence, but not both at the same time....

“Argh!” I clutched at my head. Any vampire couldn’t help but be paralyzed with indecision over the impossible choice. This was far worse than mere paper clips. Glaring at the unholy things, I came to the obvious conclusion.

“VAN HELSING, I AM GOING TO
MURDER
YOU.” My hands hovered helplessly over the tiles. “You jerk, we had a deal!”

“Not with me,” someone said from somewhere above me. I looked up, squinting against the searing glare of the light. Sarah was sitting on the sofa, with Lily’s gun in one hand and a seriously pissed-off expression on her face. Van was sprawled on the floor in front of her, limp as a dead fish.

“Things,” Van said, his syllables slurring together drunkenly, “didn’t go ’xactly as planned.”

“No kidding,” I said. Sarah was using him as an impromptu footstool. I tried pulling strength from her down the Bloodline, but it felt like trying to suck a thick milk shake through a thin straw—the pulse of power between us beat slow and sluggish. Looked like I wasn’t going to be able to lay her out that easily. I tried to think of ignoring the Scrabble tiles and making a lunge for her, and had to squeeze my eyes shut
against the bolt of pain. Opening them again, I nodded at Sarah’s gun. “You know you can’t actually kill me with that, right?”

“Yes.” Sarah had the gun pointed rock-steady at my forehead. “But
think
how much fun I could have shooting you.”

“Don’t shoot her,” Van mumbled. “’S a pretty nice vampire. Nice pretty vampire. Something.” He hiccuped.

I stared at him, at least as best as I could while wrestling with the siren call of the Scrabble tiles. “What’s up with him?”

“Drugged to the eyeballs.” Sarah twitched the gun down to point at the back of Van’s head. “And I’m pretty sure bullets would ruin
his
whole day. Now, do I have your attention?”

“Absolutely.” I had no doubt that she’d do it too. She looked healthier, stronger, in the bright sunlight streaming through the window; it picked out the warm tones of her skin and turned her brown eyes to topaz—

Hang on. Sun?

“Wait a sec. It’s day. And I’m awake.” This was a bit of an overstatement—my dry eyes burned, and I felt as though someone was lightly and repeatedly bouncing bricks off my skull. “How?”

“I reckoned that if Ebenezer Lee could use drugs to stay awake, I could do the same to get you to wake up.” Sarah waved an empty jar in one hand. “You have to be tapping my blood a little bit, all the time. So I loaded up with caffeine, in the hope that it would trickle down to you.”

I squinted at her. The way that she seemed to be vibrating was not, in fact, just a trick of the light. “My God, how much did you drink?”

She brandished the empty jar again, her eyes bright and slightly crazed. “I don’t know. I poured hot water straight into a full jar of instant. I had to eat it with a spoon.”

Great. Not only was I being held at gunpoint—or rather, Scrabble tile–point—by a juvenile sociopath, she was a juvenile sociopath hopped up on enough caffeine to fuel an entire class of students through end-of-year exams. No wonder I was awake. I was amazed that Sarah wasn’t
dead
. I looked down at my hands, which were shuffling tiles around of their own volition. Nope, alphabetical order wasn’t any better. “Did you go through all this trouble to wake me up in order to yell at me?”

“No.” Sarah leaned forward, shifting the gun so that she could rest her elbows on her knees. “This is the
only way to be certain that no one is listening in. You can’t give in to Hakon’s demands. It’s madness. Worse, it’s stupid.”

“They’ve got my family.” My voice cracked on the word. “My family, Sarah!”

She held my gaze, unfaltering. “Lily is
my
family.”

I pressed my lips together on the words
That’s different
. It couldn’t help.

“That’s diff’rent,” Van supplied helpfully. I winced as Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “’S a vampire. Should be dead.” He frowned as though wrestling with a deep conundrum. “Deader. More dead. Whatever.”

“Um, ignore Van, he’s got issues,” I said hurriedly as Sarah looked like she might be contemplating taking out a kneecap or two. “He doesn’t mean it personally. I mean, he’d kill
me
without a second thought.”

“Not true,” Van said, sounding hurt. “Feel sad abou’ it after.”

“Lily’s all I have, Jane. I won’t let you harm her.” Sarah’s face was fierce, uncompromising. “Anyway, Hakon’s deal stinks. There’s no way he’s going to release your family, no matter what. You really believe he’d let go of such a good bargaining chip? He’s going to keep your family locked up for the rest of their lives, so you’ll be
forced to do what he wants.”

I bit my lip. I hated to admit it, but what she said made sense. “How can you be so sure?”

Sarah shrugged. “It’s what
I’d
do, if I was him.”

And Sarah was, let’s face it, evil. I rubbed my forehead, fighting back both a Scrabble-induced migraine and a growing sense of despair. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, dropping my hand again. “Whether or not Hakon means to keep his word, I have to try. I can’t leave my family.”

“Of course you can’t,” Sarah said, sounding annoyed, as if I was insisting on stating the blatantly obvious. “They’re your
family
. We have to rescue them.”

“We?” I indicated the Scrabble tiles. “I thought you were trying to save Lily. Keep me here until past the deadline.”

“Yeah, what a good idea.” Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’ll just royally piss off the unstoppable supervampire I’m psychically linked to, by causing the horrific deaths of her nearest and dearest. Now why didn’t I think of that? Oh, yeah, because I’m not a drooling idiot.” She gestured impatiently with the gun, making me flinch. “We’re bound together now, for better or worse, and that means that our problems are shared. Now, are you
going to stop flailing around like a noob and let me help? God knows you need someone to do your thinking for you. Truce?”

“Truce.” I hesitated. “But what if the only way to save my family is to sell out Lily?”

“Let’s put it this way.” Sarah stuck the gun in her waistband and hopped off the sofa. “Don’t. I won’t be so nice to you next time.” She swept up the Scrabble tiles, much to my relief. “Anyway, I came up with a plan. We know Ebenezer called from Hakon’s office, so all we have to do is use the dhampir here,” she kicked Van, “to locate Hakon using your blood. As long as we get there in daylight, we can walk in there and bust your family out while Hakon’s goons are still sleeping.”

I thought it over, searching for weaknesses. “You know, that actually sounds like a
good
plan.”

“Yep,” Van said. “Good plan. Very good plan.” His tone turned tragic. “Won’t work, o’ course. Apart from that, ’s perfect.”

I looked at Sarah. “How long is he going to be like this?”

“Should wear off in an hour or two.” She frowned down at him. “I hope. His over-sharing has been kind of tedious. I really didn’t need to learn so much about his mommy issues.”

I struggled to prop Van up against the sofa. He kept sliding down again, with a glazed look on his face. “Why won’t the plan work, Van? I thought you could track anyone.”

“Can. Anyone. Jus’ need blood, can find ev’ry vampire of that Bloodline in abou’ five hundred miles.” Van seemed to mull this over for a moment. “Huh,” he said, sounding surprised. “I’m awesome.” Sarah snorted.

“Right,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm and soothing. “So what’s the problem? You can use my blood to find Hakon.”

Van shook his head doggedly. “’S not like looking up an address. Can’t tell who’s who, apart from t’ vampire the blood came from.” He started to slump sideways again, and I caught him. “And Hakon’s Bloodline? Big. Lotsa vampires.”

“How many?” I asked. “Twenty? Fifty? A hundred?”

“Thousands.”

There was a small silence.

“Shit,” Sarah supplied succinctly.

“But you can look through their eyes?” I asked Van. He grunted confirmation. “So trawl through them all until you find the ones who are looking at my family.”

“Thousands o’ vampires,” Van repeated patiently.
“Take too long. Can’t look all at once. Head would explode.” He made a vague motion with his hands. “Boom.”

“Small loss,” Sarah muttered. “So you’re useless, then.”

“Yes,” Van agreed woefully.

“If only we had a bit of Ebon’s blood—” I stopped, memory flashing on the hospital fight. The blood running down Ebon’s face where Lily had clawed him, and the way the crimson drops had scattered as he’d shaken his head, trying to clear his eyes … “Sarah! Get your pajamas!” She opened her mouth, obviously about to inquire if I’d gone completely bonkers, but I cut her off. “I think Ebon might have bled on them. Go look!”

Sarah’s face lit up in understanding. She dashed away, returning a moment later brandishing the crumpled, stained pajamas like a battle flag. Spreading them out on the floor, we both pored over the striped fabric.

“There,” I said, pointing to a spray of rust-brown stains. “Is that Ebon’s, Van?”

He blinked blearily at it. “’S dried on.”

“Well, lick it or something.” Even drugged into La-La Land, Van could still muster a remarkably good glare. I didn’t care; I was fully prepared to force-feed him the whole outfit in a sandwich, if required. “
Please
, Van.”

“A’right,” he said reluctantly. “For you. Since you’re a freak.”

“Gee,
thanks
,” I said, closing his groping hand around the cloth. “What a compliment. I’m touched.”

“Me too,” he said, both voice and expression painfully earnest. “Never met ’nyone like me b’fore.” His voice went muffled as he mashed the fabric against his face. “Didn’t think ever would.... ’S not Hakon’s flavor. Mus’ be t’ cat. Can try tracking him wi’ it later, at dark.” Letting the pajama top fall again, he leaned his head back on the sofa, closing his eyes. “Nap till then.”

I jabbed him in the shoulder, making him wince. “No. Now, Van!”

“Better wait until he sobers up,” Sarah said. “Don’t want him sending us off in the wrong direction like a cheap GPS.”

“Got to wait ’nyway,” Van said. “Can’t use Bloodlines during day. Vampires asleep.”

I checked my own Bloodlines. Sure enough, they were a mere whisper, far too quiet to follow. I couldn’t even sense Brains, who was barely two feet away, floating belly up in its jar on the coffee table. “Crap. That means we’ll have to go at night. They’ll all be awake.”
I flexed my hands, thinking about what Lily had said. Despite everything, there was one thing I didn’t think she’d been lying about. “Well, I am a supervamp. If it’s a straight fight, I’m pretty sure I can take them. It’s not like they can actually kill me.”