Mercy (19 page)

Aunt Brown glanced at Alan's unmoving body and then shifted her disapproving gaze to Haley. “Children today have no manners at all,” she said. “It is extremely rude to enter a house uninvited.”

Haley wrenched herself into motion and scrambled down the stairs. Alan was sprawled faceup across the faded carpet. His eyes were closed, but Haley couldn't see any blood. He was breathing.

She looked up. Aunt Brown was coming slowly down the stairs.

Haley was pretty sure you weren't supposed to move someone after a fall. Concussion. Broken back. Paralysis.

She was also pretty sure you weren't supposed to leave someone in the path of a hungry vampire.

She grabbed at the shoulder of Alan's jacket and heaved. His body moved a few inches before her hand slipped free. She flopped back and sat down hard.

Aunt Brown stepped off the staircase and onto the floor of the hallway.

“Stay away,” Haley said. Her voice was thin and weak and quavering. She didn't sound brave at all.

Well, she wasn't.

“Don't hurt him.” She tried again. “Don't you hurt him, or I'll—”

“He does not matter.” Aunt Brown stepped over Alan as if he were a pile of trash. “But you should not have brought him here.”

She stood looking down at Haley.

“He is not
family
,” Aunt Brown said. “Family is what matters.”

Then Haley heard it. The whine of tires spinning in gravel. The growl of a car engine trying to climb a steep hill.

Someone was coming. Someone who would help! Haley saw her stake lying on the carpet and snatched it up, stuffing it in her pocket as she scrambled to her feet. She threw herself out the door just as a silver car skidded to a stop beside Alan's.

The door opened and Jake got out.

Haley knew she was babbling and couldn't help herself. Words were tumbling out, that it was true, it was all true, and she was in there, and Alan was hurt. Jake was looking at her as if she were crazy, which was exactly how she sounded.

“Wait,” he said. “Haley,
wait
.”

He was breathing heavily, and leaned against the car. And Haley remembered that Jake wasn't supposed to drive anymore. “Your dad called me, said you weren't answering your cell or at home,” he went on. “I thought you might be out here. I can't believe you really—”

But Haley couldn't wait for him to finish. “He's hurt, Jake, she hurt him.” She grabbed at her cousin's arm and felt how thin it was, the bones right under the skin. Disloyally, ungratefully, she wished someone else had come to rescue her, somebody who would be more use in a fight. “We have to get out of—I mean, we have to help him—I mean—”

“Aunt Brown?”

There came the quiet, definite thud of a door closing, and the metallic snick of a latch clicking into place. Haley spun around to see Aunt Brown standing on the porch.

“Haley's very upset,” Jake said calmly to Aunt Brown. “I've come to take her home.”

A
unt Brown didn't answer Jake. She set a foot on the first of the porch steps.

“It's all right,” Haley said to Jake. “She can't come down; it's all right.”

“
What
are you talking about?”

“Just watch. The sunlight. She can't go out into the sunlight.”

In a few seconds, Jake would see. He'd have to admit that he had been wrong, and she'd been right.

Aunt Brown stepped off of the stairs and walked calmly across the dry, withered grass. Nothing—not her calm face, her steady gait, her disapproving eyes—changed as the sunlight fell over her.

Jake let out his breath in an irritated sound that was half snort, half sigh.

“Okay. Now can you see that you made all of this up?” he asked as Aunt Brown walked closer.

“But she—but she—”
Could
Jake be right? Was Aunt Brown really—not what Mercy had shown her? But whatever she was, she'd hurt Alan. She could have killed him. “Jake, she—”

Aunt Brown had come to a stop in front of them. She looked thoughtfully at Jake. Then she drew her arm back and hit him.

As thin as Jake was, he was still taller and heavier than Aunt Brown. Her slap shouldn't have done more than turn his head on his neck. It certainly shouldn't have flung him to the ground ten feet away.

Haley stared, appalled, at Jake as he struggled to rise to his hands and knees. Blood dripped from his nose. That was impossible, it couldn't have happened, it didn't—

Before she could break through her shock, she saw Aunt Brown lift her hand to her mouth. There was a smear of red across her knuckles. She licked it delicately as she raised her eyes to meet Haley's.

Haley felt as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over her head. She stumbled back a step, shoving both hands in the pockets of her jacket, searching. She'd put the stake in there, she had it—

Aunt Brown was right in front of her now. Haley had barely seen her move. As Haley's left hand, clutching something, came out of her pocket, Aunt Brown's fingers clamped around hers.

Cold. The fingers touching Haley's were as icy as bare metal on a winter day. Was it possible that Haley had never touched her aunt before? Not a kiss on the cheek, not a handshake, not a brush of fingertips? It must be. Because if she had ever felt this before, this cold that was freezing her hand, creeping past her wrist and up her arm, she'd have remembered. She'd have known.

It wasn't the stake in her hand after all. It was the clove of garlic. Aunt Brown's fingers tightened over Haley's. The juice of the raw garlic began to drip through Haley's fingers.

“That won't work,” Aunt Brown said—
Patience, think of her as Patience
, Haley thought wildly.
Think of her as Patience, not your
aunt. It will be easier
. “Foolish foreign superstition.” Patience tightened her grip a little. “Nothing to do with what I am.”

Patience's eyes were as cold as her fingers, her voice even and calm, and Haley couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Couldn't think. Could barely breathe. Was this the feeling that had trapped Mercy and Jake, both asleep, unable to wake, unable to resist, as the vampire's teeth met the soft flesh of their throats?

“Hunger drives every living thing,” Patience said reasonably. “Animals hunt. Even plants fight for soil and light. Life is hunger. Why shouldn't I take life to feed my own?”

Because you had a life
, Haley thought. Her jaws were locked, incapable of forming words, but her mind still functioned.
Now you're taking other people's. Mercy's. Jake's. Eddie's
.

“They tried to leave me in the cold,” Patience said, as if she'd heard Haley thinking the names of her family. “They said they loved me, but they would have abandoned me. Piled earth over me and left me to rot. If I'd let them. If I'd stayed—”

Dead
. Patience wouldn't say the word
dead
.

Haley wrenched at her arm, but it was like pulling against a steel bolt. She'd have to break her hand off at the wrist to be free.

“You understand.” Patience's arm bent at the elbow. Slowly, she was pulling Haley closer. “It's what you want yourself. You can have it if you choose. No more grief. No more loss. Nothing changes.”

That's not—that's not what I wanted!
But the thought wasn't true. Haley had wished for that, longed for it. Somehow, Patience had known.

“I told you.” Patience's voice was as chilly and smooth and gray as polished steel. “We are an old family. And this is in us. We have the will to choose life. The strength to go on. You merely . . .” She hesitated, as if it were hard to find words for something so simple. “
Make a choice
.” She whispered it. “When
that cold comes, you turn away from it. You take what you want. You take
life
.”

From others
, Haley thought.
You take life from others
. Was that what Patience was telling her?
If I want life badly enough to steal it from the people I love most—then I never have to die?

“You are the first I've seen whose desire is strong enough. I have felt it in you. You want what I wanted. For life to go on. Forever.”

Cold. That hand was so cold on her wrist. Those words were so cold in her mind.

“And you can have what you want so much. It is simply—the choice to live.”

Incredibly, Patience smiled. Gently, tenderly.

“Then we could be together. Family.”

Something crashed into both of them. Haley hit the ground hard, and the icy grip on her hand was broken. Her hair was flung into her eyes; she couldn't see; something was on her, a heavy pressure; an angry snarl rang in her ears; a hand snatched at her face—

Someone dragged her up and shoved her forward. “Car!” Jake yelled. He was the one who'd shoved them both down, Haley realized; he was the one who'd broken Patience's hold on her. Then she thought of nothing but running. She fell against Jake's car, the metal of the door handle slick under her fingers. Sobbing, she wrenched at it, the door swung wide, and she threw herself into the passenger seat, slamming the door after her.

Jake was beside her, blood dripping down his face. He jerked the gearshift into neutral so that the car began rolling down the hill even before he jammed the keys into the ignition.

“Alan,” Haley gasped. “Jake, we can't leave Alan!”

“Who's Alan?”

Something thudded against the car door on Haley's side. Patience's fingers scrabbled at the window. But then the engine caught and Jake stamped on the gas. Gravel shot from under the wheels and Jake's door swung wildly—he hadn't taken a second to close it—as the car tore down the driveway.

Haley heard her own shriek echoing in her ears. She hadn't even been aware of yelling.

Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, Jake reached out with the other to snag the door on his side and swing it shut before returning both hands to the wheel and braking a little to make the turn out onto the highway.

“Jake, listen!” Haley insisted. “We have to go back for—”

Then the glass in Jake's window exploded.

In the half-second before the car swerved wildly, Haley's mind saw the picture.
Click
. The arm thrusting through the broken glass to grab at Jake's shoulder. The glass didn't shatter; it crumbled into glittering gravel. One sharp edge sliced through cloth and skin into muscle, but no blood flowed. The arm reaching into the car was dead flesh.

Then the car swung toward the ditch on the side of the road and the dashboard came flying up at Haley's face.

Haley woke up a little bit at a time. She was huddled uncomfortably, her knees tucked up near her chest, one arm twisted under her. She tried to turn, to stretch, but there was no room. How had her bed cramped around her like this, holding her like a nut in its shell? Her head throbbed and her lower lip stung. A taste that was thin and salty was leaking into her mouth.