The Casquette Girls (36 page)

“Do
no
t
mess with me,” I spat. “I am
not
having a good night.”

His fangs appeared to protrude even further as he reeled from the power reversal. “That’s
it
, Adele!” he hissed. “Trust your instincts,
not
your intuition. Instincts exist for your survival. They will keep you alive. Intuition is muddled with emotion.” He attempted to compose himself beneath the makeshift shackle. “Emotions will get you killed.”

My instincts told me to run as he began to pull at the cross, but I easily held it in place. The tug-of-war only further charged him. With only a couple of spare inches, he slammed his neck into the iron with excited rage. The burst of emotion made me back away, but I kept my mind locked on the restraint. The more I focused, the warmer it became, until the iron nearly glowed and he had to stop or risk searing his neck.

And then we were back to silently staring at each other.

* * *

I had no idea how much time had passed. Ten minutes? Twenty? Thirty? The only thing I knew for certain was that I would never beat him at the silent stare-off. Niccolò Medici had the patience of a marble statue.

I loosened my grip.

As soon as my mind let go of the metal, he ripped it from the wall and was behind me in a flash – one crushing arm around my chest and the other around my head, forcing my neck to the side. With his mouth against my nape he quietly asked, “Did you hear anything I just said,
bella
?”

His s
harp points grazed my skin. Blue eyes blazed in my mind. My upper arms were pinned to my sides, but my hands were free.

“
S
i
,”
I said. My fingers spidered outward, and with every ounce of momentum I could muster, I grabbed the tops of his legs.

When
my hands made contact, he howled in pain and fell forward over me. I slipped out from underneath him and scurried to the wall, still confused at how I had gotten the upper hand.

“So, it’s true,” he mumbled under his breath.

A killer’s instinct shone through his eyes, but the smile on his mouth said otherwise. I followed his gaze to my own palms and jumped back – only then feeling the heat. A small sphere of fire sat in each palm, miraculously not burning my skin.
What the hel
l
?
My heart raced as I tried to hide my shock as we both slumped against the walls on our respective sides of the tower.

He winced as he carefully ripped the burned denim away from his thighs, and I watched in silent astonishment as his charred skin began to regenerate. Minutes later, there were two singed holes the size of my hands in his dark jeans, but they revealed nothing but his pale, China-doll skin. I sucked in air, still struggling not to panic.

Eventually my heartbeat calmed and the flames in my palms extinguished, bringing back the darkness. The burning sensation in my arms and the tingling in my fingers didn’t go away as easily.

We defensively waited – watching, wondering if the other would make an aggressive move, but neither of us stirred. Finally, he spoke. “You fiddle with your necklace a lot… just as she did.”

I looked down. My fingers were around the charms that hung on my chain. I hadn’t even realized I was doing it. “So, I guess the whole ‘church is a sanctuary from vampires’ thing is not so much?” I said, looking back at him.

He laughed. My shoulders relaxed a little.

“No, not so much. That’s just antiquated Christian propaganda. Recruitment strategy.”

“Coffins?”

“Hmm… derived from a multitude of Eastern European superstitions, but you can mostly blame the nineteenth-century novel
Dracul
a
.
” As he spoke, I tried not to stare at the two fangs he no longer attempted to hide, but my defenses wouldn’t allow my gaze to wander too far from them. “Oh, and that atrocious German expressionist film
Nosferat
u
in the twenties.”

“House entrances?”

“There’s no physical reaction when crossing a threshold without invitation, but philosophically most vampires believe that all creatures should be able to find asylum in their own homes.”

“Holy water?”

“See ‘church.’ As with crucifixes, rosaries and exorcisms.”

“Silver?”

“Most vampires do have a severe sensitivity to silver, but only in extreme cases would it have a grave effect like anaphylactic shock.”

“Garlic? No, wait…” Ren’s accent crept into my voice as I answered my own question. “Crypt keepers in New Orleans used to wear strands of garlic around their neck to help cover the stench of the corpses, not because they actually thought vampires would rise from the ground.”

“
Molto brava
. And, centuries ago, people used to stuff cloves of garlic into the mouths of their beloved dead so they wouldn’t return as vampires and hunt them…. because the first thing on every newborn vampire’s mind is to terrorize their previous family.”

“Is that true?”

“The garlic? No. Terrorizing one’s previous family? Not usually.”

“Blood?”

“Sustenance.”

“Mind-reading?”

“No. Mind-bending, yes.”

“Mirrors?”

“Myth.”

“Murder?”

“Inconsequential.”

I looked away, trying to digest his blasé answer to my last question, but then forced myself to look back at him. I couldn’t afford to be terrified if I wanted something from him.

“I have two more questions.”

“Just two,
bella
? I have a sneaking suspicion there will be more, but please, go on.”

“I thought vampires couldn’t come out in the sunlight?”

“We don’t need Vitamin D to survive. Our senses are heightened by the darkness and dulled by the daylight, so most vampire beings are nocturnal.” He paused, smiling to himself.

“What?”

“All vampires are very susceptible to sunburn, but you won’t find any who will spontaneously combust, if that’s what you are wondering.” He became serious again. “Humans think many things about vampires, almost none of which are true. Some think we are creatures spawned from Satan.”

“Are you?” I felt foolish as the words slipped off my tongue.

“Do you believe that you descended from God?”

I stumbled over the question, picturing Jeanne and Sébastien sighing at me in the name of science. “Um, I don’t know.”

He smiled. Luckily, my answer was exactly the point he was trying to make.

“Well then, where
did
vampires come from?”

“Whoa, so existential. It’s going to be one of those kinds of nights, then?” His long index finger stroked his well-defined chin. “The mythology is vast. Some vampires believe we descended from Cain and Lilith, some believe we are fallen angels, others believe we are alien life forms, et cetera. Most just believe the obvious – that we evolved from humans. Just the way humans evolved ages ago.”

“It’s not the same. Human beings evolved over an insanely long period of time, as a species, but you
used
to be a human, right?”

“Of course, I did. And no, it’s not exactly the same. We have a far superior evolutionary process. I was just trying to make things as linear as possible to explain—”

“The point is, no one knows.”

“Exactly. There are many theories for the genesis of man, vampires, and everything else on the planet.”

We both gripped onto another moment of silence, contemplating the origin of the universe.

“What is your second question,
bella
?”

I didn’t want to ruin the mood, so I ditched my original accusat
ion and opted for triviality with a press-lipped smile. “Did you… ever meet Leonardo da Vinci?”

He let out a hearty laugh. “I’m not
tha
t
old
,
bella
,
”
and then joked in a faux American accent
,“
Leo died, like, a hundred and eighty years before I was born.”

The jest sounded strange coming from his lips. I smiled. His fangs retracted.

He may not have met da Vinci, but he had a million and one stories to share about the Italian Renaissance. My knowledge of Italian history was slim, so I asked a lot of questions, listened intently, and tried not to become too mesmerized when his eyes lit up as he zealously bopped from eighteenth-century Florence to Mussolini’s Rome.

Hours escaped, and the city became even quieter – it felt like we were the only two people in it. Like we were the only two beings on the planet. Somewhere in the middle of the rise of Italian cinema, he moved beside me, causing my heart to pitter-patter and my brain to forget about the first half of the night.

“How is it possible that you’ve never see
n
La Dolce Vit
a
?
It’s a cinematic masterpiece!” His accent became thicker the more passionate he became. “You have a lot of homework,
bell
a
,
” he said without a trace of judgment. Trying not to swoon, I mentally filed away the name Federico Fellini.

I wanted to hide here forever. With him.

Before I could fall too deeply, a bloodcurdling scream shattered our night. We both bolted up and leaned out the back window of the tower just in time to see a dark figure dart through the humungous Jesus shadow in the garden below. The screams didn’t stop after the one, and they sounded close. Very close.

“Emi…” he muttered under his breath.

“Huh?” I turned to ask. The rickety door was bouncing against the frame. I ran down the dizzying stairs after him, but catching up was a lost cause.

* * *

Black lines of makeup streaked the traumatized face of a hysterical woman on her knees at the base of the statue. I fell beside her, squeezing my arms around her shoulders. She murmured words in Spanish, which must have been prayers because I kept hearing the word “Jesus
”
over and over.

“What happened? Are you hurt?” My head continued to flip in either direction, but I found no one else.

“Not me.” She raised her head to the shadow. “Jesus.”

The shadow seemed distorted. She pointed a shaking finger up at the statue. There were two extra appendages hanging around Jesus’ neck. Two dead human arms. Trickles of blood had dripped down the slick marble to his knees. Vomit rose in my throat, and I gagged, forcing it back down. The body of a man was hanging on Jesus’ back.

The ruffle of a large black bird in my peripheral vision distracted me. I whipped around, but it was too late – the bird became smaller as it flew towards the moon and disappeared into the distance.

The woman clutched my arm. I was clueless about what to do.

Breath
e
.

Through the fog, the muffled sounds of footsteps approached down Orleans Avenue. My grip on the poor woman’s arm lessened when I saw Ren leading the way, flanked by Theis. It must have been part of the crowd from Le Chat Noir.

No sign of my father, thank God. Or Isaac. Or… Gabe’s crew.

“
Bébé
!” Ren ran and scooped me into a bear hug.

“Ça va bien
,”
Ren
.

He set me down, casually moving aside one of my braids to catch a glimpse of my neck. Theis looked at me with suspicion.

I suddenly remembered all the freshmen girls scattering away from the bouncer. Guilt attacked me.
Jesus. What had I been thinking? It was after curfew by then. I should have made sure they got home
!

I scanned the crowd.

Jaime and Bri were taking photos with their phones. Annabelle’s face was buried into the pecs of some frat boy, crying, but she was obviously enlivened by the drama. I frantically scanned the rest of the crowd for the missing Big Sister.

There was no sign of her.

I hurried over to the girls, calling out, “Where’s Désirée?”

“She went off with that ridiculously hot foreigner Gabriel,” Annabelle said with an exaggerated tongue roll on the “r.”

“What? Do you know where they went?”

She shook her head, utterly unconcerned. My cheeks flushed as she scanned the two additions to my grungy ensemble.

“Where did you get off to, by the way?” she asked. “That cute little ponytail ever catch up with you?”

I ignored her and checked my watch. 2 a.m
.
Should I be worried about Désirée? Are Gabe and Nicco really even brothers
?
Nicco’s words echoed in the back of my mind.