How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (23 page)

I
tried to look confident so she wouldn’t freak out. I’d only had a couple of
minutes to bring Jax back around and get my plan across to him and Harper
before the Tracker showed up. Harper had told me straight-up that she didn’t
think there was any chance it would work.

“Should’ve
brought steel,” the Tracker said. He had a voice like someone with throat
cancer had eaten a bag of nails and he stunk like rotting shit. Not having to
breathe was kind of a blessing with him in the room. He gave the chains a
test-jerk. “These’ll work ‘til Mikal gets here. Try to break out…” He pulled an
old Wild West .44-40 out of his gun belt and aimed it at Jax and Harper. “Bang.
Bang.”

I
growled at him—as much as someone could without a voice.

The
Tracker ignored me and slopped over to the window, maybe to watch for Mikal.

I
started feeling around behind my back for the padlock.

Jax
shook his head at me. He touched the step, then waved his hands around him and
Harper.

I
rolled my eyes. I didn’t play baseball and neither did Jax. If he was trying to
send me some kind of message, it wasn’t going to work.

My
fingers grazed the padlock and I worked at it until I got the shackle into my
hand.

But
Jax touched the step again, pushing down really hard this time. There was a
spark like when you flick a lighter, then he gave me a thumbs-up.

What
the hell?
Jax had just done something with magic.

Then
I got it—he wanted me to know that they were safe. That I could go ahead with
my plan and not worry about them getting killed.

The
Tracker turned back around and squinted at me. I smiled up at him like a good
little prisoner.

Tiffani

I
threw the last bucket of soapy water on the sidewalk in front of my bakery,
then went inside and hooked up the hose to the sink. I’d have customers coming
in half an hour and I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone while I could still
smell the Tracker’s putrefied corpse.

That
damn kid. Why couldn’t he have figured out another way? Damn me, too. Making
Tough wasn’t the same as doing something. It was more like putting a Band-Aid
on a knife wound.

Hell.
Now I was starting to sound like Colt.

I
dragged the hose outside and unkinked it. Water sputtered, then exploded out
and washed the suds off the concrete. I pulled out a cigarette and held it between
my lips while I lit up. The crisp, ashy smoke helped hide the reek of the
Tracker and the cigarette gave my other hand something to do while I hosed off
the sidewalk.

Two
crows flew over, crawking at each other and heading for the highway. Probably
off to patrol the edges of their territory for coyote trespassers.

After
Ryder died, the closest thing Colt had to friends were crows. Although it had
always struck me as more mutual understanding than friendship—the primals never
stopped fighting their wars with each other and Colt never stopped fighting his
war. Probably didn’t hurt that Colt was supplying the crows with guns and
ammunition, either. They were how he found out that Mitzi was letting me listen
in while she and Tough had sex. The crows at the tattoo parlor gossiped like
biddies at the hair salon.

I
had come back from hunting one morning to find Colt waiting outside the bakery,
hunched over against the wind in a ratty Carhart coat and watching me like he
couldn’t decide whether to stake me or throw holy water in my face. That hair,
those eyes—he hadn’t filled out much yet, but even all arms and legs and
angles, he screamed Danny. Just being near him made me feel as if I’d somehow
fallen backward in time.

“What
the hell do you want?” I asked.

“Lonely
Pershing said Mitzi lets you listen in while she and Tough are—are together,”
Colt said.

I
had less than an hour to shower, throw stuff in the oven, get the coffee going,
and suck down a breakfast smoke.

“Piss
off, kid. I don’t have time for a sermon today.”

Colt
took a step toward me.

“No,
I’m not—I wouldn’t—” He had that innocent look in his eyes that Shannon used to
flash at people like a Get Out of Jail Free card. I could smell her in
him—tattoo ink and skin so hot that it could only be full of unbalanced, unholy
fury. “I just wondered whether Tough was okay.”

“Well,
he had a rocky start,” I said. “But Mitzi got him whipped into a Casanova who
can go all night and be ready for another round in the morning, so I’d say he’s
better than okay. Maybe even—”

“That’s
not what I meant,” Colt said.

“Piss
off,” I said again, and I started to unlock the door.

Behind
me, I heard the sound of fingers curling into fists. I braced myself. Colt had
inherited too much of Danny’s looks to have gotten anything from Shannon but
her temper.

“Tough
thinks he’s so damn smart,” Colt said. “That he’s beating the system. But he
doesn’t get that as long as he’s got a protector, Kathan can give the word and
the protector will kill him. He’s being a stupid teenager.”

I
turned my head and gave Colt an exaggerated once-over. “You should see the view
from eighty, kid.”

“I’m
older than I look,” he said.

“Yeah?”
I laughed. “By how much?”

Colt
was quiet for a second. Then he hit below the belt, just like Shannon always
did.

“Tough
was her favorite,” he said. “You know he was.”

That
was before I installed the electronic security system. The key snapped off in
the lock.

“Look,
vamp, I get that you hated Dad and all us kids, too, but if you loved Mom—if
you ever even liked her—”

I
spun around and slapped him. With the key ring still in my hand, I smacked Colt
across the face so hard that the broken head of the key cut his cheek.

Colt
hadn’t reacted. The way he had stared made me feel as if he was measuring me
somehow. After a few seconds, he left. But he came back the next day, then the
next, and the next. He was persistent. Exhausting. Too damn smart for his own
good. He knew he’d picked the right vampire to chip away at.

I
finished rinsing off the sidewalk, then re-kinked the hose and flicked my
cigarette butt into the gutter.

Tough
was right. His plan was stupid and it could only end one way.

The
last two Whitneys—one destroyed beyond all recognition and the other one
rotting in hell. Kathan would probably throw Mikal a parade.

Tough

For
some reason, I’d had it in my head that Mikal would have trouble fitting
through our front door. I guess I pictured her wings as bigger than they were. But
she stepped into the living room, no problem, with Colt following her like a
good dog. When she saw me chained up, kneeling on the floor, she grinned and
reached down to push my lip up. I snapped at her, but she jerked her fingers
back before I ripped one off.

“A
vampire?” she said. “People really don’t give you enough credit, Tough.”

If
you like this, you’re going to love my next trick,
I
thought.

I
looked over at Colt. Today he had on that dog collar, his tore up Lucky shirt,
and an old pair of jeans. Dressed for the most part like he used to, but even
when he looked me in the eyes, there wasn’t any sort of sign he recognized me.

Mikal
caught me staring at him.

“I
promised Colt if he was a good dog today, I would throw him a bone later,” she
said. “He’s been begging me, but we’ve been so busy working on obedience
training that we haven’t had any time to play.”

I
snapped at her again, growling so she wouldn’t hear me bend the padlock shackle
in the opposite direction. Every time I bent it, it gave a little bit easier.

Mikal
laughed and did the room-jump thing. With the vamp senses, I could tell that
she didn’t really disappear and appear somewhere else, she just moved too fast
for humans to see. She stopped by the TV stand and up-ended it. Jax sucked in a
breath when the TV and his games and shit went flying.

“Colt,”
Mikal said in a voice like a dog trainer. She threw him the TV stand leg. He
caught it one-handed, with the jagged end down like a professional vamp
hunter’s stake. Mikal pointed at me. “Kill.”

Time
slowed down as the vamp speed kicked in. I jerked the padlock shackle. It
broke. The chains rolled off.

The
Tracker looked like he was pulling his revolver in super-slow motion. I hoped
to hell Jax’s magic trick worked.

Colt
cocked the stake back and jumped, throwing his weight behind it so it would
crack my breastbone. To me, it looked like he was moving in regular slow
motion. I snatched the log chain up off the floor and whipped the end at Colt’s
hand. The stake went flying and the chain snapped two of his finger bones.

The
breaks didn’t even slow Colt down. He made a fist and tried to knock my teeth
out.

I
swung the chain again. This time it slapped around his wrist. I yanked him off
balance.

Colt
still didn’t go down.

I
grabbed him by the throat and slammed him onto his back so hard the house
shook.

His
eyes rolled back, but he didn’t black out.

I
ripped through my shirt and dug into my stomach with my fingernails. Laid
across his nose and mouth. Colt started choking. He had to breathe and every
breath sucked down vamp venom. It was probably a lot like being water-boarded
with pepper spray. He tried to fight me, but I clamped one of his arms between
my knees and jerked the chain tight around the other.

There
was a big, pulsing vein in his bicep. I tore it wide open with my teeth and
started drinking as much as I could get down.

Mikal
screamed—a sound like massive amp feedback—and I braced myself for the stake.

But
there was this crackle.

Then
Harper screamed, “Jax!”

I
looked up just in time to see Mikal slam Jax into the wall.

“Little
boy,” Mikal growled, digging her fingers into Jax’s neck. “Didn’t your mother
ever tell you not to play with magic?”

Jax’s
sneakers banged and scraped against the wall. He was trying to push himself up.
His face turned purple, mouth moving like he was trying to say something. He
grabbed Mikal’s wrist, but couldn’t pry her hand away from his throat.

I
pushed up off of Colt and sprinted, ready to tackle Mikal, but she dropped Jax
and swung around before I made it that far.

Getting
gut-checked by Mikal was like getting plowed down by a semi running eighty. We
smashed into the opposite wall. Plaster and laths broke off around me and stuck
in my back. Mikal screamed again and the room echoed that feedback sound. The
vamp reaction was to hiss at her. Colt’s blood sprayed through my teeth onto
her cheek.

And
that’s when the vamp speed crapped out on me.

Mikal
let me go, grabbed the TV stand, and snapped the other legs off. She was back
before I could move. She shoved the sharp end of the first stake through my
stomach and pinned me to the wall. I heard the point break through the wood
siding outside. I screamed, even though no sound came out.

“You
were fun, Tough,” Mikal said, stabbing another stake through my dick and pelvis
and out my back. That one dug into a stud. “But Colter is mine.”

We
both looked over at him then, twisting and turning and gagging on the floor.
Red-brown bubbles were foaming from his mouth and nose. He was trying to scrape
the venom off, get it out, do anything to make it stop hurting. When Tiffani
had made me, I remember thinking that the venom was burning me alive and
wishing I would die faster so it would stop. With all that going on, I bet Colt
couldn’t feel his lungs fighting and his heart seizing up.

It
seemed like forever before he slowed down, then, finally, stopped moving. His
arms and legs relaxed. His eyes half-closed. He shivered and then his body shut
off. I felt it.

I
killed him. He’s dead.  I saved Colt.

The
third TV stand leg cut through my Adam’s apple and hit a stud, too. It’s hard
to believe how much that one hurt, even compared to the dick-stake.

Mikal
grabbed Colt’s stake from where he’d dropped it earlier and aimed for my heart.
I jerked and twisted and fought, but I couldn’t get off those fucking stakes. I
was going to die and burn in Hell for the rest of forever and all my stupid-ass
brain did was start looping this song Ryder had made up about Mikal.

One
up, one down, and she don’t mess around—fuck!

Two
up, two down, and she don’t mess around—shit!

Three
up, three—

“Wait,”
Jax half-yelled, half-rasped. He jumped up from where Mikal had dropped him.
“Tough’s not under your jurisdiction! He’s not a human living in Halo
anymore—which means he’s not responsible for finding a protector—and since he’s
an NP now, you have to follow the NP laws and take up any grievances in a court
with Kathan!”

Mikal’s
head snaked all the way around on her neck so that she could glare at Jax.

“Shit.”
Jax started coughing. He had to clear his throat before he could talk again.
“They’re your rules. All non-people are required to follow the laws set forth
by Kathan for the NP community at the creation of the Armistice or be brought
up on formal charges before the sitting NP circuit judge—who is also Kathan.”

Mikal
didn’t move.

“And
even if you weren’t bound by those laws,” Jax said, “You know that Desty will
never agree to become Kathan’s joint-familiar if you stake Tough. It has to be
a willing agreement on her part for Kathan to rise to commander. Fuck this up
and you’re fucking over any chance your army has of winning the last battle.”

No
one breathed. I could hear Jax’s heart pounding, Harper shaking. A glob of vamp
venom and spit dripped from the corner of Colt’s mouth into the pool of blood
on the floor. The Tracker’s eyes made a scratching noise in his sockets every
time he looked from Mikal to Jax, then back.

Mikal
laughed. “You’re such a good friend, Ajax. So loyal.”

I
didn’t get why she thought that shit was funny. Right then, I could’ve
French-kissed the guy.

Mikal’s
head twisted back around until she was facing me. She touched the tip of the
last TV stand leg to my chest and put just enough pressure on it to snap the bone
without shoving it through my heart. Pain shot out in every direction, but I
was too scared to squirm.

“So,
Ajax,” Mikal said, “Can you tell me why I haven’t staked this fucking redneck
cockroach yet? Without the legal bullshit. You know I would get away with it.
What’s the real reason I don’t just waste him?” She waited. “Nobody? Then let
me enlighten you—Tough here turned his back on God.”

Mikal
looked over at Colt’s body again, then back at me. “You are a disease, Tough.
You ruin everything you touch—you always have. Your Creator was the only one
who could’ve loved a piece of shit like you, but you turned your back on Him.
Now, your sorry ass belongs to me.”

The
black in her eyes was so deep that it felt like they were trying to suck me in.

“I’m
going to get my money’s worth out of you,” Mikal said. “You will be the reason
we win the last battle. You will be the Whitney who lives to watch everything
you love crack under my boot—just like your mama’s skull.”

I
tried to hock something up to spit in her face, but I gagged on the Adam’s
apple stake.

“Then,
when it’s all over, I’m going to send your ass first-class to Hell.” Mikal’s
smile was so wide that I could see all of her teeth. “Want to know what it
smells like when a soul burns for all eternity?”

She
yanked my arm into the sunlight coming through the screen door.

Fire
popped like someone had sprayed me down with lighter fluid and flicked a match
at me. I could smell the meat cooking on my bones and hear the crackling. I
couldn’t fight my way off the stakes, but I kept trying, even with the pain
shredding my throat and stomach and dick. Compared to that scared-shitless
screaming in my head, the stakes barely registered.

Mikal’s
voice cut through the noise. “I think I’ll save this stake for later. Be seeing
you real soon, Tough.”

The
screen door opened and closed twice. Then someone was running. A blanket
smothered the flames. I sagged on the stakes. I probably should’ve been trying
to get them out, but screw it, I was too tired.

“Okay,
okay, don’t panic, guys,” Harper said. “For right now…”

I
could hear her mopping up something with the blanket. Then she was rubbing it
on my face and arm—everywhere I was burned. It was like morphine. The pain
faded into fuzz.

Harper
went back to soaking stuff up again, then she shoved the wet corner of the
blanket into my mouth.

“Sorry,”
she said. “I know it’s Colt’s, but blood is blood.”

I
sucked it down like I was trying to drain the blanket.

After
a few seconds, I tried to open my eyes. One eyelid stuck. The other ripped.
Harper winced and Jax looked like he might barf. I reached for the
blood-blanket. Harper handed it to me. Another couple mouthfuls and I pulled
the Adam’s apple stake, then the stomach stake. The stake through my dick
really freaked me out. I had to psych myself up, count to three, then rip it
out.

I
don’t know why I thought I’d be able to stand. Vamps can take a lot, right? But
I hit the floor on my hands and knees and I’m pretty sure I was lucky to stay
like that. Especially when the healing started.

It
felt like maggots were chewing the damaged skin off of my body. I tried to
scratch and just ended up tearing off as much of my skin as I could get ahold
of. The skin I couldn’t reach peeled away and turned into dust, but it all
happened too slow to stand. Splinters and bits of the old plaster and laths and
nails from the wall pushed to the surface and dropped onto the floor. I’d never
missed being able to scream so bad.

Seemed
like it took forever before everything on me stopped moving. When it was
finally done, I stood up and shook myself off. I felt like I needed to so that
my body would know I was back in charge.

This
time I rubbed my eyes before I opened them. That whole stuck-together thing had
freaked me out and I needed to make sure I wasn’t extra crispy anymore.

“Jesus,
Tough,” Harper said. She looked like she was trying not to cry. “I don’t even
know what to say. Is this why? So you could—” She pointed at Colt’s body.

I
nodded.

“It’s
not a fair trade,” Harper said. She choked and started sobbing. “Not even
fucking close, you asshole.”

I
didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to calm Harper
down and Jax wasn’t doing anything but staring at me like I killed his best
friend. Which I guess I sort of did.

Finally—and
it seemed like too damn long to me—Jax snapped out of it. He put his arms
around Harper and started whispering how everything was okay.

I
didn’t want to deal with the body on the floor yet, didn’t even want to have to
think about him, so I looked at the ceiling. Made myself hear past Harper and
Jax to Desty. Her breathing had been really shallow before. What if she’d
stopped while the shit was hitting the fan down here?

One
pump of her heart, a rush of blood. Then, later, another pump, with too long in
between. I needed to make sure she was really okay. I took a step toward the
stairs.