Almost dawn in the Body of Christ. As gross as that sounds, Corpus Christi glowed like a promise from our vantage point on Bay Trail. The breeze felt great, invigorating. Or maybe it was the renewed hope that our plans could work, that we might all make it to the other side of this mission without being roasted alive by Iron Chef Lung.
The five of us watched the lights of theConstance Malloy wink out one by one. We’d emerged from the RV by silent agreement. Even Bergman stepped out for a breath of fresh air, as if the massacre we’d watched had somehow poisoned the RV’s ventilation system. He didn’t stay long.
“Gotta get some sleep if I’m going to come up with anything workable in the morning,” he said. By “anything workable” he meant a new invention. One that, after several hours of brainstorming, we agreed could actually destroy Lung if we could get him to ingest it.
“Okay, that puts me at the monitors,” said Cole. He’d stay up while the rest of us slept. And if I dreamed again, my safety would be his responsibility. Maybe Cole could tell how much the whole deal bothered me, because he patted me on the shoulder and grinned. “Don’t worry, Jaz. If you try anything funny I’ll wrestle you to the ground and tickle you until you pee yourself.”
“Oh great, that gives me something to look forward to,” I drawled. “Killer nightmaresand incontinence. Thanks a lot.”
He spread his arms and gave me a disarming grin. “I am here but to serve.” With a parting chuckle he followed Bergman back into the RV.
Cassandra remained with us, arms crossed over her chest, staring into the dark water.
“You are troubled,” Vayl said.
She didn’t roll her eyes at him, but it struck me as a close thing. “Naturally.”
“A vision?” he asked hopefully.
She shook her head. “Nothing that specific. Just a feeling.” She stood a little straighter, and you could almost see her slamming all the doors and windows. “Never mind,” she said.
“But—”
“Believe me, Vayl, if I knew anything that would help, I’d tell you.” She stared at him. I got the feeling she was talking about two things at once. She left at a regal, controlled pace although I suspected she would’ve enjoyed it more if she could’ve stomped on his foot and run off, cackling madly as she receded into the Texas dawn.
Vayl and I stood quietly for a couple of seconds while I tried to decide how much I was about to upset him. In the end, it didn’t matter. We were on the job, which meant the team came before everything. Even our personal feelings.
I decided to be blunt. “What did you do to piss her off?”
“Nothing I know of.” I felt a surge in his power and the temperature dropped a couple of degrees.
“Don’t you pull that vamp crap on me,” I told him. “If you don’t feel like talking about something, just say so.”
“I do not feel like discussing it.” He gave me that raised eyebrow that I’d come to learn was a challenge.Go ahead, it said,just try and go there. We’ll just see who’s more stubborn .
“Fine,” I said. “But you and I both know that allowing your search for your boys to come between you and the people who are helping you complete this mission is not only wrong, it’s stupid. And I am not losing another team to one member’s idiocy.” Vayl believed Cassandra might be able to connect him with the men who had, in another life, been his sons. A long succession of Seers had led him to believe they were Americans. But he’d had no luck finding them.
“I am not some amateur slayer who is going to call doom upon the heads of another group of your companions,” Vayl said, his voice deepening, as it usually did when he was seriously disturbed. “I simply want what is mine.”
Here we go again, tromping into no-reasoning-with-the-man territory. If his boys had lived out their natural lives they’d have still died over two hundred years ago. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t let them go. And who was I to judge, when the pain of my own losses still had the power to bring me to my knees? I wouldn’t have said another word if the job had only involved the two of us. But we’d attracted a crowd that I felt a deep need to protect, the way I hadn’t been able to protect my first crew.
“You’re just going to have to be patient—”
“I am tired of being patient!” Vayl blasted the words toward the water, as if to challenge some unseen god who’d been playing hide-and-seek with his boys all these years. He looked down at me. “I want to know where they are. I want to see them. Speak to them. Tell them everything I have been holding in my heart since the day they died. Cassandra can do that for me. She can connect me to them if she would just try! So stop coddling her and let her do her job!” Desperate tone in his voice now. Raw and angry. Patently unfair.
“Cassandra’s not going to pull a vision out of her ass just to appease you. But she is going to tell you where to shove it if you keep pushing her. And we need her if we’re going to do this job right. So knock it off!”
I tried to make a graceful exit, but apparently Cassandra had the market cornered on that one. I tripped over a bunch of electric cords Bergman had run from the RV to the closest outlet and nearly fell on my face.
“Fuck!”Funny how sometimes that one word says it all. And how, having said it all, I felt much better. Maybe I’d even sleep right through the next eight hours.
I didn’t. Awake and restless after only forty-five minutes on a couch that felt more like a pile of rocks covered by a thin layer of batting, I wandered around the empty RV. Figuring everybody had gone outside to investigate the mouthwatering aromas coming from our neighbors’ grills, I followed suit.
Bergman, Cole, and Cassandra had made themselves scarce, but I found my brother sitting at a picnic table, stirring a bowl of glop that might have once been ice cream. It broke my heart to see him so sad. And it didn’t help that we were surrounded by families who were having a blast eating greasy food and riding in various spinning, rolling, teeter-tottering contraptions that looked like they could fly apart at any moment.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Dave said as I sat down beside him. I waited for him to jump down my throat, accuse me of destroying the only woman he’d ever loved. In some twisted way I wanted his rage, knowing it would make me feel better if he couldn’t stand me. I could hardly bear the look in his eyes as they met mine.
“Is there a way to bring her back?”
“I don’t . . . no, Dave, there’s no way.”
“Why did she go?”
“I don’t think she had a choice.” But we both knew better. Unwilling people cannot be turned. I looked down at my hands as they rested on the table, watched them curl into fists. I felt a strange sense of detachment as I realized I had never hated Jesse more than I did at this moment.
When I looked up it was dark. Dave was gone and Matt sat in his place. He looked hungry. And not for ice cream.
“Wanna tango?” he asked, giving me his lazy, come-get-me smile. But the fangs ruined the effect.
“You’re not a vampire,” I said, digging my fingernails into my palms to keep myself from punching that look off his face. It mocked everything we’d been, everything we might have become. “Aidyn Strait killed you. I saw your soul . . . fly away. Remember?”
“Can I help it if this is how you dream of me?”
“Yes!” I yelled, though I knew I was lying. “You have all kinds of choices, you son of a bitch, and they all affect me! Did you think of that even once before you turned?”What? Now I was confusing myself. Was he a vampire or not?