Dreams for the Dead (18 page)

Clouds, turned slightly red by light pollution, coated the near-morning sky. The air smelled like dust. It had taken hours, but Tristan was done. The inert bodies of Augusta, Branek, and Jared were laid out on the cracked ground in a staggered row. He was sure they must be healing, but they’d lost a lot of blood.

“You better not be dead,” Tristan muttered. The stillness of the air swallowed up his voice.

Slicing his teeth across his ulnar artery, he sank into a crouch beside Br
anek. Blood dripped into Branek’s mouth for several long seconds. The little wound closed over and Branek stirred, looking as if it hurt him to move. He sat up slowly, fixing Tristan with a long, untrusting glare. He wiped a hand vigorously across his mouth, clearing flakes of blood.

“Loftus … sacrificed us,” he said uncertainly.

“Are you surprised?”

“Only a little. I always knew she meant more to him than we did.”

“I didn’t know about her at all. But he always shared his secrets with you.”

“Not all of them.”

They locked wrists and Tristan helped Branek unsteadily to his feet. Branek’s eyes fell to the others, and his expression was briefly wounded before it hardened into an unreadable mask.

“Fallon’s still in there,” Tristan said. “I drank his blood.”

“Leave him there.”

“I need to find out what he knows about this. Did you just want to let it rest and go back to our lives? We were betrayed.”

“Betrayal is in our nature,” Branek said, but he went back in for Fallon while Tristan revived Augusta and Jared. They were all weak, but at least none of them were dead. The joke was on Loftus in that regard. He’d made them too strong to kill them with a bit of esoteric magic.

“How could he do that?” Augusta sobbed.

“Easily, it seems,” Tristan muttered. He rubbed at the dry crackle of blood on his chin. “Did you ever think he really cared about us?”

“He was our father.”

“No. He just raised us. Badly.”

Augusta nodded, obviously disappointed. “He destroyed us, didn’t he?” she said. “He disempo
wered us.”

“Is that today’s vocabulary word?” Branek asked, sauntering up with Fallon tossed over one shoulder. He dropped the boy to the ground without ceremony.

“Think about it,” she went on. “Power.
Em
power.
Dis
empower. It means we started off with wills of our own. It means he fostered and encouraged a sense of independence. And then he took it away, so we’d be utterly dependent on him.”

“Well, we aren’t anymore,” Tristan said.

“Are we getting out of here or what?” Jared demanded testily. “The sun’s coming up.”

“We all have to get blood. Then we’ll meet up.”

“Who’s taking this asshole?” Branek gave Fallon’s ribs a nudge.

They argued, but Branek finally agreed to take him after much posturing on how much trouble it would be. Typical. He and Jared shoved Fallon into the Corvette and sped off in a cloud of dust. Tri
stan and Augusta took the Nova. For now, it didn’t even matter what Loftus had done. They needed blood, so much of it. Just to feel strong again. Just to feel right.

They didn’t speak. Tristan was a shell. Sand blew across the road as they drove and cool wind snapped at the open windows. The merciless ri
sing sun speared through the clouds, blinding him, and oh, how it burned.

T
welve

T
hey
avoided the house and met in a bar, a shitty one where everyone looked suspicious and no one stared at anyone else. The few windows were tinted inside and out, rendering time ambiguous. Video poker machines lined the walls. Dim lights overhead tinged the smoky air a nervous, jittery color, a miasmic mustardy hue that seemed to permeate everything.

“So,” Tristan said. “That was your mom. Tell us about her.”

Fallon glanced at the vampires surrounding him, having no trouble meeting their eyes. “She met Loftus when I was thirteen. That was six years ago. He went to see her a lot, but she always turned him away. But he kept coming, and one day he tried turning her into a vampire. It didn’t work. She would have died, but he took her to the cavern and kept her in some half-alive state with human blood, delivered on full moons.”

“Where our toys go to die,” Branek mused.

“I didn’t think it was possible for Loftus to love,” Jared said.

Fallon blinked. “I’m sure it wasn’t. He was obsessed.”

“You’d think we would have remembered this happening,” Tristan muttered. Then again, he’d been pretty busy embracing his violent urges and hadn’t cared about much else. A lot must have happened without him noticing.

“I remember,” said Branek. “I was there the night he met her. She worked as a cocktail waitress. He didn’t like to speak of it, even to me, but he went to see her every night. Although I didn’t know about her connection with Fallon.”

Tristan looked at Fallon. “Okay, so he chased her and killed her. How did he convince you to help him?”

“He forced me,” Fallon said. “He threatened to kill this girl I liked if I didn’t learn the magic. So I agreed. I was only thirteen. He needed me because my blood is the same as my mother’s. Every year since then he’s made me fear for my life. There was nothing I could do but what he asked. Better I do this to my own mother’s body, I thought, than someone else do it.”

“Didn’t you
want
to help him?” Augusta asked. “Didn’t you want to see your own mother again?
I
would.”

“She’s not my mother anymore,” Fallon said darkly. “She’s an abomination.”

“But—”

“My mother would still be alive, as a human, if it hadn’t been for Loftus,” Fallon said sharply. “She’d have raised me. But Loftus killed her and it made him sorry. Not everyone can be immortal. That’s what he doesn’t understand.” He made a derisive sound. “He thinks, because of his little book collection, that he’s some sort of expert. But I’ve read more of the material than he has, and I’m the one with the talent, and he’s nothing more than some medieval hack who doesn’t care how many lives he’s r
uined.”

“Well, you ruined some lives yourself,” Branek pointed out. “You tried to kill us just a few hours ago.”

“How can you blame me? I was only doing what the four of you ever did. You’ve been such perfect little minions to him. I know his influence over you is deep. I would never be surprised to find one of you has turned on the others. Or on me.”

“That’s a flattering assessment,” Branek said without a hint of irony.

“What do you think Loftus will do if he finds us?” Augusta wondered. “As far as we know, he thinks we’re dead. He must have wanted us to stay that way.”

“He’ll bleed us,” Tristan said without thinking. “He’s done it to me before.”

“But he couldn’t do it to all of us. We’d outnumber him.”

“You must underestimate his powers of influence.”

“No, I just …” Augusta fell silent for a moment. “What do you mean, he’s bled you before?”

“Tristan was a bad boy,” Branek said in a mischievous singsong.

“I disobeyed him once,” Tristan explained. “More than once, actually, but he was testing me this time and didn’t like it. He found a girl for me and told me to make her into a vampire, and I didn’t want to. She was nothing to me, just a random girl off the streets. I told him I’d never do anything he said ever again. I was in a rebellious phase, I guess.”

Loftus had kept Tristan locked up and starved for days in an empty back room of the house with no windows and only one door. Once he was sufficiently weakened, Loftus took him into the bat
hroom and sat him down on the edge of the tub. Then he reached into the vanity drawer for a wood-tipped knife he kept there for just this purpose.

Tristan’s eyes had followed the silver gleam of the blade as Loftus moved it toward his wrist. He didn’t want to watch, but he barely blinked as Loftus pierced the skin. Blood flowed down his palms, dripping off his fingertips and sliding down the bathtub drain.

There was nothing he could have done to defend himself. This humiliating treatment was his punishment.

“This wouldn’t be necessary if you only listened to me,” Loftus remarked, already working to clean up the wounds and bandage them so they would heal cleanly, though not without scarring. There were ample su
pplies beneath the sink. He enjoyed seeing Tristan so weak and debased. He loved the power he held over him in that moment. “You
must
learn to obey me, Tristan. I know what is best for you. You know nothing.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tristan had replied mildly, trying not to let Loftus see his fury.

Horrible as the experience had been, it had felt … just, somehow. Loftus had acted within his rights as a father. It was similar to sending a child to bed without dinner for mouthing off at his parents.

It had taken Tristan years to realize Loftus had never expected or even wanted him to change the girl. The whole thing had just been an excuse to hurt him. To show him who was in charge.

“When have you
not
been rebellious?” Branek said carelessly.

“But he never did that to any of us,” Augusta said. She shared looks with Branek and Jared, who both shook their heads.

Tristan smirked darkly. “I was special, I guess.”

“Well,” said Branek, “what do we do now? We’re homeless.”

“I’ll get us a room.”

“I have an important errand,” Jared announced.

“Gee, I wonder what that could be.” Augusta rolled her eyes.

“Gus, you look after Fallon,” Tristan ordered. “Make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”

“What, you want me to babysit him in the hotel room?”

“Yes, I do. It’s easier than you’d think. And much more enjoyable.”

Augusta giggled. “You perv.”

Tristan shrugged good-naturedly. “It’s the perfect time to jumpstart that relationship you’ve been wan
ting.”

Annoyed, Fallon turned his gaze upward and did his best attempt to ignore them.

They dispersed. Augusta and Fallon came with Tristan to get the room, and then he left them there to go hunting.

Love or hate, it didn’t matter. It was shared experience connecting Tristan to his brothers and si
ster. They understood each other even in their differences, and they were not monstrous by their own measure. His capacity for forgiving them was boundless, and it was the same for them in return. A part of him felt Loftus’s betrayal had bonded them more fully.

Tristan had always thought it must be hard to leave your family, no matter how horrible they were. It must be hard to go against them, to say no when you’ve been conditioned to tell them yes. It must be hard, because he’d never been able to stay away. And he knew he never would.

~

It was amazing how little it took for Dawn to forget, or at least how easily she could fool herself into thinking she had. She relied on willful ignorance and a lot of denial. She sang in the shower. She cleared out the mailbox, which was practically overflowing with junk. She watched funny movies and lost herself in laughter.

She had dinner with her family. It had been a semi-regular tradition since she’d moved away from home, though the dinners grew further apart each year. This one served to remind her she was actually a resident of planet Earth, where she lived among humans who didn’t know vampires existed.

“That haircut is interesting,” her stepmother, Kathy, said across the table. A scooped-out dish of one of the random casseroles her dad liked to concoct sat in the center.

“Thank you. I like to think of it as”—Dawn flourished a hand—“gamine.”

“So you think of yourself as, like, a boy?” her eighteen-year-old sister, Annaca, quipped.

“Mischievously charming.”

“Well, your ears are huge.”

“They’re my ears,” her dad said mildly.

“What have you been up to?” Kathy asked solicitously, lifting her glass of boxed wine. “We hardly ever get to see you.”

“I … well …” Dawn struggled to remember the last interesting thing she’d done that didn’t involve vampires. “I’ve just been working. And reading books.” She turned to her dad. “I finally learned to use that sewing machine Grandma bought me so I could alter clothes for Leila to use in her photo shoots.”

“Oh. Good. I thought that thing was going to collect dust around here forever.”

“I took it like, six months ago.”

“Oh. I didn’t notice.”

“Have you lost weight?” Kathy asked.

Dawn sighed and shoveled a forkful of casserole into her mouth. “Nope.”

“Are you on a diet?” her dad asked, tilting his glass of vodka and coke at her. “Because if you are, you should stop.”

These comments were not unusual to Dawn. Someone somewhere was always commenting on her body, though Dawn had no idea why people, even strangers, felt the need to make their opinions about her known. She was on the curvy side, sure, but slim enough for her own satisfa
ction. She was healthy. Her self-esteem fluctuated a lot, but most of the time she could look at her naked body in the mirror without feeling too upset, and if she was upset about some perceived flaw, it was her own business.

“I don’t believe in diets!” she shouted, perhaps too forcefully. To make up for her outburst, she smiled with all her teeth. “How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?”

The dinner wasn’t a disaster, but it had been kind of exhausting. Dawn had a history of not liking Kathy, though as far as she knew her stepmother had stopped complaining about what ungrateful children her husband had. Dawn wondered how Annaca could keep living there without going nuts. She probably had an active social life.

Dawn returned home, feeling agitated. Her steps slowed as she neared the front door.

Not again.

It wasn’t Branek this time, but Jared. He stood outside the door with Leila, who’d probably just returned from school, both of them bathed in the porch light directly over their heads. “I don’t want to go with you!” Leila cried. Jared’s hand clamped on her wrist.

“That doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ll like it soon enough.”

“Let me go!”

Jared pressed his hand over her mouth as she tried to scream. “Leila,” he said desperately. “Haven’t you realized how much you need me? Don’t you know you’ll learn to love me?”

Instead of fear, Dawn filled with pure, hot anger. Hatred, even. Images of gruesome scenarios flashed through her mind: Jared dead, mangled, mutilated. His blood staining the concrete in copious puddles, blood matted thickly in his hair, blood smeared on his face and sealing his eyelids shut. His body beaten, burned, beheaded. How many ways could a va
mpire die? She imagined them all in an instant, her feelings becoming more violent with each passing second.

The truth was she and Leila would never be free, not while any of these vampires lived. So they had to die. Jared seemed like the best one to start with.

Without a word, Dawn rushed at him and knocked his hand off Leila’s wrist. She wouldn’t have been able to break his hold if he hadn’t already been planning to let go and smack her in the face. She sucked in a sharp breath, reeling to one side. Dizzy from the blow, she found her feet after a few seconds and started toward him again.

“You are
not
taking her,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “Just leave us alone!”

He was a vampire, and she knew it was stupid to attack him. But she did anyway, flinging herself at him with all her strength. Acting largely on instinct, she attempted the self-defense moves all girls were taught in P.E. class, though clumsily. She kicked at his shin and stomped on his instep. When he turned her around to crush her back against him, she grabbed hold of his pinky and yanked it to the side. He howled, and she bashed her head back into his nose. She stuck a hand between them to reach for his balls, but couldn’t grab them effectively because his jeans were too stiff.

“You dumb bitch,” he growled. “You dumb fucking bitch. You have no idea how you’re gonna pay for that.”

But Dawn paid for it exactly the way she’d expected. The only thing that surprised her was how much more savage Jared’s mouth felt than Branek’s had. She’d failed Leila, and failed herself, but it was hard to regret having tried.

She thought she’d passed out, because the next thing she knew there were arms holding her gently but unyieldingly about the waist, and they were the only things keeping her upright. A chin rested on her shoulder as if it belonged there. Black blooms danced before Dawn’s blinking eyes. She felt sick and braced herself for another bite.