Almost To Die For Part 20

As panic raced along my veins, I felt coldness move slowly outward from my solar plexus. My heart rate slowed, calming me. A sharp pain in my gums signaled that my fangs had dropped. My limbs felt heavier, and I sensed my captors struggle more to propel me along. The night became less dark, and I was able to kick at their ankles with more precision and force. My vampire powers, apparently, were coming out to play.

They exchanged a worried glance, but tightened their grip.

A semitruck rattled down a distant street, but otherwise it was quiet enough that I could hear the click of the signal light as it switched to "walk." Parked cars crowded along the curbs, hood to trunk, but their occupants were nowhere in sight.

"Where are you taking me?" I demanded, trying to sound authoritative.

"To your mother, the queen."

Twenty-one.

My mother, the what?

They couldn't really mean my mother, could they?

"You're vampires, right?" I asked them, as I continued to try to delay our progress down the street. Their lips curled, so I corrected, "Knights of the dark realm, I mean."

One of them spat. The other said, "We are knights in the service of the queen."

Right, these guys were the ones who wanted to be slaves, slaves to the . . . oh my G.o.d, to the witches!

Was Mom queen of the witches?

She'd talked on and on about legitimacy and treaties. . . . You didn't make treaties with just anyone, did you?

"My mother is the queen of witches?"

They looked at me like I had just asked if the night was black. I could almost read the "Duh" behind their eyes. "Of course."

"But--but," I sputtered, "there's not supposed to be hierarchy. . . . It's--it's . . ." All just a cover for outsiders, I realized. By the way she b.i.t.c.hed about them, the Elder Witches obviously had some power over my mom, but she had a lot of power in the coven. That's why Mom insisted I had to pa.s.s the Initiation before she could explain about Ramses. That's why Mom was so confident I'd pa.s.s, and why she kept insisting I get another chance.

"Holy c.r.a.p," I muttered.

They dragged me through a small park the size of a city block. A man-made river gurgled over bra.s.s-sculptured waterfalls. Birch trees dropped yellowing heart-shaped leaves on pavement and among the tufts of ornamental gra.s.s. We pa.s.sed under a miniature band sh.e.l.l, and my shouts of protest reverberated enough to scare a squirrel up into a tree and launch a troop of pigeons into flight.

The vampire thugs brought me to the entrance of an office building. It was an older building with a stone facade. Decorative carvings ran along the edges of the windows and the rooftop. Only a few lights shone through small panes.

In order to get me inside, they had to open the door. One of them released his hold on me, which gave me an opportunity to wriggle from their grasp. I wedged my tennis shoes into the edges of the door. Splaying my arms out, I grabbed the frame and held tight. Now that I knew that it was Mom they were taking me to, I fought even harder. No way in h.e.l.l was I going in there. She'd put another zombie spell on me, at the very least.

At that moment, the cavalry arrived, though it seemed more like a Mafia hit in retrospect.

From somewhere behind me, I heard the squeal of brakes. Car doors opened and slammed shut. Suddenly, the pressure behind me was gone. The guy yanking on my arms looked up in horror and fled. Panting from the exertion of my resistance, I spun around, ready to face whatever new threat had appeared.

Elias held a huge, silvery gun pointed at the chest of my former a.s.sailant. Two other men I didn't recognize held him firmly. I was about to ask Elias what was going on when he made the sign of the cross over the Mormon-looking guy and pulled the trigger.

I cringed, expecting a loud explosion. But the gun must have had a silencer. There was a soft noise, and the guy's body jerked where the bullet ripped through his chest.

A tiny gasp escaped my throat. I expected the guy to crumble to dust or do a vanish-except-for-his-clothes Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi. Instead, he slumped limply. His eyes stretched wide in horror and shock, unblinking.

He was dead.

Had I been wrong about him? Had he been human after all? My stomach convulsed. The one weird thing was that there was no blood that I could see. You'd think with a gunshot wound at such close range, there'd be spatters everywhere. Did vampires bleed? Maybe he was a vampire, after all?

All I knew was that I felt sick. The longer I stared at the body, the more my stomach gurgled unhappily.

Elias slid his gun into a holster under his coat and made a motion to the two holding the body. They dragged him to the car and, quite unceremoniously, dumped him in the trunk.

Too horrified to really react, I let Elias gently lead me to the car. "We must go, my lady."

"That guy is dead," I said. My eyes stayed riveted to the trunk as Elias opened the car door for me. "You killed him. Shot him."

Elias nodded patiently and helped me into the pa.s.senger-side seat. I went with no resistance. "It is regrettable," he said. "I do not relish dispatching our own, but he chose his fate."

"So he was a vampire . . . or demon," I said, feeling strangely relieved. "You can just shoot demons?"

"If you have a special gun," he said.

"Silver bullets?"

"Magic." He closed my door. In the rearview mirror, I watched the two other vampires slide into the backseat, and had my first good look at them. One of them was an Asian man with long, flowing hair tied back into a ponytail. The very front of his forehead, where his bangs would be, was shaved. The other vampire was a black man with short-cropped hair. He gave me a wink and a smile when he noticed me watching them both. I returned the smile, though my mind was stuck on the image of a dead man being shoved into the trunk of this very car. I s.h.i.+vered at the thought of being so close to an actual corpse.

The door opened and Elias dropped easily into the driver's seat. He turned and spoke to the two in the back in Greek. Okay, it could have been j.a.panese or German, but suffice it to say it wasn't English and I had no idea what he said. They did, apparently, because they nodded as though in understanding.

"Where's the other guy? " I asked. I thought I'd spotted three others before.

"Gal," Elias corrected lightly as he started the engine. "The lieutenant has gone after your other attacker. With luck, she will stop him before he alerts the queen."

"Who is my mom--did you know?"

Elias opened his mouth with a look of surprise, but then a commotion from inside the building distracted his attention. I followed his gaze. A group of people could be seen running out the door I'd struggled so hard not to go through. Elias. .h.i.t the gas. We sped away before they even hit the sidewalk.

"It appears the lieutenant failed," Elias remarked drily.

The way the lights were timed in downtown, Elias made it only up the block before hitting a red. He hesitated only a second before shooting through the intersection. Even though there was no obvious cross-traffic, I squeezed my eyes shut until we made it across. Then I double-checked my seat belt.

I heard clicks from the back.

When I glanced in the rearview, the Asian guy gave me a better-safe-than-sorry shrug.

"What just happened?"

"I ran a red."

"No, I meant back there."

"You were nearly abducted, my lady," Elias said.

"I know that, but why?"

"That part I don't know."

Suddenly, someone appeared in the middle of the street in front of us. Instinctively, Elias. .h.i.t the brakes. I should've known it was a trap. No one is out on the streets of St. Paul after dark. Too late, we discovered the ambush. The moment he stopped, we were surrounded by vampires.

"Time to surrender, Captain." It was Mom's voice.

Twenty-two.

Elias revved the engine menacingly. I put my hand on the steering wheel. "That's my mom! Don't even think about it." "How about I just back over the ones behind us?"

"Or the ones on the sidewalk," one of the guys in the backseat suggested.

"Be serious," I said, though I thought they might have been. I unbuckled my belt. "I'm going out there."

Elias touched my knee imploringly. "This is a mistake," he said. "But if you face them, we will stand beside you."

The two guys in the back nodded. From somewhere, the Asian guy produced an elegant katana and the other a curved scimitar.

What was this, a video game? And anyway, who brings a sword to a gunfight?

The threat, however, was obvious.

"I don't want a fight. It's not going to come to violence," I said. "Maybe I can talk to Mom, get her to understand."

"That we should be free?" Elias raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps you are a better negotiator than all the emissaries of the dark realm."

"She's my mom," I said, reaching for the latch. "I think I've got a bit of pull."

I hoped I did, because there were a whole lot of them and only four of us. I swallowed and closed the door behind me. The sound bounced hollowly through the tall buildings.

Mom stepped forward. It would have made a better scene if she'd changed into something billowy and queenly, but she still wore her academic drag: a knee-length skirt, sensible shoes, a blouse, and a shapeless coat. Her gla.s.ses glinted under the street-lights, obscuring her eyes.

I walked around to the front of the car to meet her. Elias instantly appeared at my side. The other two, literally, watched my back.

A grim smile spread across Mom's face. "I see you brought me the Praetorian Guard. A nice coup."

"This is no surrender," Elias said. "We parley."

Snickers drifted through the collection of vampires, but Mom raised her hand to stifle them. "Parley accepted," she said.

"What's a parley?" I whispered to Elias.

"Think of it as a negotiation on the field of battle," he said. I noticed he'd taken his gun out of its holster at some point. He held it loosely at his side. It was some sort of semiautomatic. I had no idea how many bullets were in a gun like that, but even if he was a crack shot, I doubted he could take out all the loyalist vampires before they got us.

Plus, I recognized a few faces in the crowd. Desperately, I tried to see Nikolai or his dad--would I even recognize his father? Did I look for a guy in Gypsy gear with a psychic knife?

Or were they hiding in the shadows?

Mom had brought along some coveners, including Bea's dad. This could be really bad. Elias and his crew were outgunned in more ways than one.

We were totally screwed.

We had stopped near a covered parking lot that doubled as the farmers' market. Pseudo-old-fas.h.i.+oned streetlamps held glowing orbs. Industrious spiders had stretched their webs between every available surface. The air had grown chilled and smelled of river. I straightened my jacket.

"Just one question," I said, trying, mostly successfully, to keep my voice from quaking. "What do you want from me, Mom?"

Mom's posture s.h.i.+fted. She drew herself out, as though softening a little. "It's not like that. I don't want anything from you, honey. I just want to protect you from these"--I could hear the sneer in her tone--"rebels until you have a chance to take the Initiation test again."

Probably, I should have been offended. She sneered at my friends and, clearly, had ordered a couple of guys to abduct me, but I sort of understood her position. She sounded like a mom. She didn't want me getting hurt or mixing with the wrong crowd, as it were.

If that was all, that would be the end of it. We could apologize, hug, and go home to a nice cup of hot chocolate.

There was just one really huge problem. "What about first blood? I'm a vampire now, Mom. It's too late to protect me."

"No, listen, I've discovered a way around that. We can bind you."

Elias stiffened. The two vampires behind me likewise s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably and raised their swords slightly.

"Binding?" I whispered to Elias.

"Enslavement," he said.

"Don't get advice from that creature," Mom said. "It wouldn't be like that, I promise."

Somehow I doubted it. Even without Elias's clarification, binding didn't sound like a good thing.

At my hesitation, Mom added, "I've consulted all the Elders. This could work. We would bind your vampire side to your witch side. Your will would still be your own. You'd serve yourself."

It was a neat little solution, if a little fuzzy on the details.

A shout came from the rooftop. "Laudable, Amelia, but you neglect something vitally important." It was Ramses. We craned our necks to locate him. I finally spotted him behind Mom, crouching on the ledge surrounding the flat roof of the parking lot. He peered down at us over the ENTER ONLY sign. His elbows rested casually on the L.

"The binding talisman is well lost. You can't use it against us anymore," Ramses said. "To do what you suggest, you'd have to destroy the vampire in our daughter. How are you going to do that?"

Mom apparently didn't have a good answer, because she shouted, "Seize them!"

Then all h.e.l.l broke loose.