Fang Girl (23 page)

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and your whole family are invulnerable immortals too. Think, Jane. You can bet Hakon will be spying on you as often as he can. You wade in there, and he’ll promptly put a bullet through your mum’s skull. You can’t ambush him.”

“I can.” Van perked up, like a dog hearing the word
walkies
. “Can I? Please?”

“You are currently captaining the good ship
Stupid
through the seas of Crazy,” Sarah informed him. She shrugged, glancing at me. “On the other hand, we don’t have anyone else.”

I looked at his hopeful expression. “Van, no offense, but how many vampires have you actually staked?”

Van subjected this to deep consideration. “Including you?”

“No. I got better.”

“Then …” Van’s lips moved silently. He seemed to be counting. “None.”

“Okay,” Sarah said after a pause. “You suck.”

“’S not my fault,” Van protested. “M’ uncle never let me go out. Too valuable. Had to run away to take this job. I’ll show him. Protect t’ innocents, like Mother did.” With great dignity, he drew himself upright, squaring his shoulders in determination. “Fight all t’ vamp’rs, ’cept Jane. Ha.”

“Great,” I said as Van toppled over like a felled tree, ending up face-planted into the carpet. “Van can’t do it, I can’t do it—”

“Don’t even think about me,” Sarah said, waving one hand to indicate her frail form. “Not only am I sick, I’m also not insane.” She saw my gaze move to Brains. “Okay,
you
are insane.”

“I wasn’t seriously contemplating it.” I rubbed my forehead. “It’s got to be me. No one else stands a chance. Maybe … maybe if I keep my eyes shut?”

“Brilliant,” Sarah said witheringly. “Not only are you going to fight vampires blind, you’re going to advertise to Hakon that something is up. Don’t you think he’ll be a little suspicious when he can’t see anything through your eyes?”

An idea burst in my mind like a firework. “Then we have to give him something to look at.” Rolling Van over, I rifled through his pockets until I found his wallet.
I hoped his credit card limit was high enough to get all the supplies we’d need. “Hey, Superluminal?”

Sarah blinked at my use of her online name. “What?”

I grinned at her. “I want you to make me a vid.”

I
just don’t want you to get hurt,” I said. I fought down a rush of embarrassment, avoiding eye contact. “I mean, we didn’t get off to the best of starts, but I’ve come to feel that there’s a real connection between us. I’d feel awful if anything happened to you. So, because I care for you”—I took a deep breath—“I have to let you go.”

There was a pause. A couple of leaves fell into the canal. Brains nosed at them, then looked back up at me.

“Are you even listening?” I waved my arms. “Go! Shoo! Swim away!”

Brains turned in a circle, surveying the muddy waters of the canal, then neatly jumped out of the water and back into its jar.

I groaned, rubbing at my eyes. The sun was only barely under the horizon, and I still wasn’t properly awake. It was far too early in the evening to be trying to wrangle a goldfish. “Look, you can’t come with us. If things go badly, it could get messy. Violent.”

Brains bounced up and down in its jar like an excited puppy. It snapped its toothless mouth viciously.

“No. You are a
fish
. It would be carnage.” I dumped it back out into the canal again, and held the jar up-ended above my head. “Go on, I mean it! You have to leave, otherwise Hakon can use you to spy on us. You can find me later with the Bloodline if you really miss me too much. But for now, be free! Return to your ancestral spawning grounds, or whatever.” Concentrating on the Bloodline between us, I tried a sort of mental push. “As your sire, I command you—
go home.
”

With one last disappointed glance at me, Brains flicked its tail, disappearing into the murky depths of the canal.

“Huh.” From the wake I could see on the surface of the water, Brains could superspeed with the best of them. I stood up again, dusting the dirt off my knees, and set off back to the house. Behind me, there was a brief, startled quack, and the splash of a struggling bird
being yanked underwater.

The sun had set properly by the time I’d made it back to the house. I suddenly felt much more alert and energetic. Van was outside, folding up a wheelchair he’d liberated from a nearby shopping center. “Hi,” I said, jogging up to him. “Brains is gone. How long until things kick off?”

Van glanced at his watch, doing some mental calculations. “Under ten minutes until Lily wakes up, twenty-three minutes for Ebenezer. Hakon should rise in about forty minutes, though I can’t be precise. I don’t know his exact age.”

“Great.” I picked up a shopping bag from near Van’s feet, checking the contents. Two iPods and two video headsets, all present and correct. “Looks like we’re all ready then.” I hesitated, looking at Van out of the corner of my eye. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m fine.” Van did not look fine. His skin was pale, and he was moving a bit gingerly, as if afraid the top of his head might fall off. He still managed to make the heavy wheelchair look like it was made of Styrofoam as he hoisted it without apparent effort into the back of his van. He jerked his chin in the direction of the shopping bag. “Better than my credit rating anyway.
Uncle’s going to—” He cut himself off, his habitual stoic expression turning even more stony.

Van hadn’t taken the news about his organization’s real employers well. Of course, Sarah’s cheerful greeting of “Hey, did you know you guys work for the vampires?” as soon as he’d sobered up hadn’t been the gentlest of ways to break it to him. He’d been rather quiet and withdrawn ever since. Given that I was feeling self-conscious around him too—having him jump from mortal enemy to staunch ally in the space of a day was enough to give me mental whiplash—it made for some awkward conversations.

Or in this case, awkward silences. I fiddled with one of the video headsets, pretending to be deeply interested in the technical specifications. I’d felt more comfortable when Van had been trying to cut my head off. At least that had been straightforward. I sneaked a peek at him, and found that he was studying the health and safety instructions on the back of the wheelchair with the same sort of intent fascination I’d been giving to the headset. The silence lengthened.

I was barely five minutes from being plunged into a life-or-death situation where one mistake could mean the end of my family. I should have been dreading Lily
waking up. Instead, I was starting to wonder if she’d rise earlier if I prodded her.

“So,” Van and I said at the same time, just as the silence was reaching a painful volume. We both stopped again, with a little wave for the other to go first. Another awkward pause. “Um, so,” we chorused in inadvertent unison again.

“For God’s sake, will you two get a
room
?” Sarah snapped from the shadowed depths of van. “I’m sitting right here, you know.”

“Sarah!” I yelped, spinning away from Van to glower at where she was sitting cross-legged next to the chain-wrapped, slumbering Lily. I’d always thought it might be nice to have a little sister rather than a brother, but I was rapidly changing my mind. Certain that my face was bright red, I forced myself to turn back to Van. “Sorry. Uh, what were you about to say?”

Van wasn’t blushing, but he’d turned about as expressive as the average brick wall. “You first.”

“Oh. Okay.” I bit my lip, glancing back into the van. Sarah had gone back to watching Lily for any sign of movement. Her usual cocky expression slid away, leaving her looking young and anxious. As I watched, she gently brushed a stray lock of auburn hair away from Lily’s slack face.

It had been a surprise to find that Lily hadn’t been using her real appearance. Asleep, she was a stunning redhead, amazingly tall and curvaceous with strong, lean muscles. When she walked down the street, she must have stopped guys like a traffic light. I couldn’t imagine why she preferred her more subdued, dark-and-elegant look.

Or maybe I could. “I was wondering something,” I said to Van. “Do you know who your vampire parent was?”

“No,” he said curtly. “I told you before. My mother was captured and raped by a vampire.”

“Your mother?” I’d forgotten about that. It rather torpedoed my half-formed suspicion out of the water. “Your mum was human? Are you sure?”

Van treated me to a do-you-think-I-am-an-idiot variation of his infinitely adaptable glare. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out a well-worn leather photo wallet and flipped it open. “There,” he said. “Hunter-General Lucy Helsing.”

A short, tough-looking brunette grinned up at me from the photo, a crossbow in one hand and a toddler in the other. Baby Van stared owlishly at the camera, chewing on a stake that a redheaded guy was trying
unsuccessfully to wrestle away. The family resemblance between all three faces was unmistakable. “That’s your mum and … her brother? Your uncle?”

Van nodded. “She died a couple of months after this, on a hunt. My uncle took over. Both the business and me.” He folded the wallet shut again with care, tucking it back into the pocket next to his heart. “Why?”

“Oh, uh. Not important,” I said hastily. So much for that theory. “Anyway. What were you going to say?”

Van thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, hunching his shoulders. “Wondered if you wanted to go hunt some vampires sometime,” he muttered at the ground.

I blinked. “Uh, yeah. That’s kinda what we’re about to do. Well, hopefully we won’t actually have to fight, but—”

“No,” Van interrupted. “After this. When we’re done.”

“When we’re done killing vampires, do I want to go kill some vampires?” My perplexed frown deepened. “Um, not really. I’m kind of hoping to get back to doing normal things. No offense.”

“Oh.” Van was now looking at his boots as if he’d just discovered they’d been made from the tanned skin of his favorite kitten. “Right.” He glanced at his watch
again. “It’s time. I’ll … go.”

I stared after him as he beat a retreat to the driver’s compartment of the van. “What the heck was that all about?”

“You,” Sarah remarked behind me in tones of deep pity, “are
such
an idiot.”

I replayed the conversation in my head … and face-palmed. Van had said “Go hunt some vampires” in exactly the same tones a normal guy might say “Go see a movie.” And I’d totally brushed him off. The guy who was risking everything to help me, and who coincidentally also had abs you could grate cheese with. “Oh, crap.”

“Forget your love life and get back here,” Sarah ordered. “Lily’s waking up.”

Reluctantly, I clambered into the van, reaching Sarah just as Lily’s head lifted. I caught a glimpse of her hazel eyes as they fluttered open—and then they were black once more, filled with such raw anger that I flinched. But the expression was gone so fast I could almost believe I’d imagined it. Her sharp, elegant face set in emotionless lines, totally neutral as she looked down at the silver chains binding her. Her gaze flicked to me, then settled on Sarah.
“Et tu, Brute?”
she murmured.

Sarah looked stricken. “Lily, it’s not what you think.”

“Ebon called,” I said, cutting over the top of her. “Hakon’s holding my family hostage. He’ll kill them unless we turn ourselves in.” The van floor vibrated beneath us as Van started the engine, letting it idle in neutral.

“I see.” Lily’s shoulders twitched as she tested her chains. She looked back at me, and I felt the Bloodline between us surge like the tide coming in. “Xanthe darling, I do understand how you must—”

“Cut it out,” I said through gritted teeth. The mental image of my family in danger was enough to counteract the worst of Lily’s influence, but I still couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. I was being an ungrateful child to even think of putting her at risk, when she’d given me the gift of unending life and power—“I
said
, cut it out, or I swear I really will turn you over to Hakon!”

“You will not,” Sarah said indignantly. “Don’t worry, Lily. No one’s turning in anyone.”

“But we’re going to make Hakon think we are.” I pulled Ebon’s iPhone out of my pocket, switching on its video camera. “Sarah, move back a little, you’re in the shot. Lily, you said you were an actress, right?”

Lily looked in bemusement from me to the phone I was pointing at her. At least she’d stopped trying to
beat my brain flat with her influence. “Yes?”

I pressed the
RECORD
button. “Act captured.”

It took a few hissed prompts of stage direction from Sarah to get Lily looking appropriately murderous, but I got a good ten minutes of footage before Van beeped the horn, indicating that Ebon was about to wake up. I saved the new video alongside the one that Sarah had taken of me earlier, and tossed her the phone. “You got enough there to do your thing?”

Sarah plugged the phone into her laptop, downloading the files. “Should do.” The phone rang in her hand; she disconnected the cable and flipped it back to me. “I think that’s for you. And now,” she muttered, crouching over her keyboard with a ferocious scowl, “for the world’s fastest and sloppiest vid.”

Lily’s general air of bafflement increased as Sarah began to key in commands at a breakneck pace. “What—” she started.

“No time!”
HAKON
, said the phone’s screen. I took the call. “Ebon?”