Chapter 6
Misty fixed up my bleeding hand with some burning antiseptic and another strip of thin bandages. The job was as professional as always, but I couldn’t help but scowl down at the wrappings.
Both of my hands were bound up tight, now. I could hardly move my fingers at all. Angrily, I flexed them, annoyed when I couldn’t get full range of motion.
I felt like a damn crab, or something.
“All done,” Misty said softly, stepping back.
She had worked on my wound with her same old pixie smile, but this time, as she pulled away her gaze was a little more serious than before.
I could hazard a guess as to why.
“We’re on our own, Mary,” she said, solemnly.
It wasn’t exactly true—yet. The others were still there, milling about in the great room. I could hear the commotion they made, picking through weapons and packing bags. Murmurs of serious chatter drifted in through the open doorway like smoke.
But they would be gone soon.
Already, night was starting to spread across the horizon. Great, big shadows loomed from the windows, making the room seem even chillier than it had this morning.
If they wanted to catch the vampires before they ‘awoke,’ now would be the time.
“Mary!” I turned to find Dave poking his head through the doorway. He wore his typical, calm ‘Dave’ expression—but there was a darkness hidden in his gaze that I didn’t like.
It was a way he never looked when he fought with me. Like he could…kill.
Like he wanted to.
“We’re heading out.” He seemed to want to say more, but a call from one of the others made him turn back to the great room in a blur of motion.
“Vampires.” I turned to find Misty glaring as she began to rummage through her tools.
Every now and again, she’d pick up something here or there only to set it aside; gathering supplies just in case someone would need first aid later, I guessed with a dry swallow. I didn’t like to think about it.
I watched as her tiny fingers worked with their usual grace, but I could tell that her shoulders were shaking beneath the collar of her pink shirt.
Then, all at once, she snapped.
“I hate this!”
I flinched as she slammed a brown bottle of liquid down on the desk, sending a spray of the stuff flying from the top.
“What if…what if…” Her big blue eyes were like saucers, and I could see her bottom lip tremble. “What if they don’t come back? What if it’s like what happened to Melanie all over again?”
“Aw, Mist!” I slid from the examining table and flung my arms around her tiny shoulders. She flinched, and I half-expected her to shove me away.
When she didn’t, I tried to think of something comforting to say.
“It’s alright,” I said with a false cheeriness I didn’t feel. “Dustyn’s the best remember?”
In some quaint family sitcom, my corny words might have worked.
As it was, Misty wrenched out of my grip with a scoff.
“I’m not ten, fucking years old, Mary.” Her tone was scathing.
Angrily, she whirled on me; her bouncy curls made her appear like some pissed-off cherub.
“This isn’t some stupid game where a few scrapes and bruises is the worst you might get.” Her chest heaved, and I watched in horror as giant tears began to roll down her chin.
“This is real!” She sobbed. “I don’t want another friend to die!”
“Mist…” I didn’t know what else to say.
She was right—probably more than I even realized. She had been with the slayers longer than I had, after all. Who knew what kind of messed-up stuff she’d seen?
If I coddled her the way I wanted too, I had a feeling she would see it only as me being a condescending bitch.
So, I did the next best thing and swallowed her in another bear hug instead. This time, when she tried to fight me off, I only squeezed tighter.
Comfort-talk might not have been my forte, but I knew a thing or two about mini-mental breakdowns. Sometimes, simple physical contact was the best cure.
“You never met Maloney,” Misty blubbered into the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “But she was….so…so—” Her breathing hitched. “I don’t know why she went there that day…I don’t know why…”
She didn’t speak for a long time, but I didn’t let her go until I felt her stop shaking. She wasn’t crying anymore, I saw as she turned to face me. If it weren’t for the wet sheen over her splotchy cheeks, I would have never known she had been in the first place.
Her eyes were clear, but the look on her face wasn’t typical that Misty smile. It was cold and hard; as if she were thirty years old instead of barely thirteen. There was a fierceness in those blue eyes that scared me.
“I’ll never forgive those bloodsuckers,” she said in a voice of iron. “I wish…I wish Dustyn would let me go so I could stake ‘em all!”
Her eyes were like blue fire. Those blond curls seemed to sizzle with an electric charge. A murderous tilt to her scowl made her look so much older than she was…
I had never seen Misty so unhinged.
Then all at once, her face fell flat, and the fire in her eyes went dead. It was as if she’d flipped a mental switch that shut her emotions off.
“I’m going to get ready for later.” She turned to her worktable, as though she’d forgotten I was there. As if her outburst had never happened.
But, her tone conveyed her meaning better than her words; Leave me alone.
“I’ll see you later, Mary,” she said firmly, without turning around.
“See ya…Mist…”
I couldn’t get out of that room fast enough. So fast, in fact, that I barreled into the hard shape of someone’s chest with a muffled oomph!
“Enacting your death wish, are you?”
I groaned, even before I pulled back to gaze up at the same smug face that had haunted me all day.
“Shouldn’t be off on the way to your bloodbath?”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Dustyn shied away from me, his face turning unnaturally pale, and—not for the first time today—I found myself rushing to apologize.
“I’m sorry!—”
“Don’t.” His voice was cold, but when those gray eyes met mine, I couldn’t see any hostility in them; other than the usual amount that was always there whenever he looked at me, that is.
“It’s the truth,” he added, a little softer. “Someone’s blood is going be spilled.”
“Don’t say that!”
I felt sick, even though this was a can of worms that I had stupidly opened. Why did I have such a big mouth?
But if I was good at spoiling the mood, well I was even better at changing the subject.
“You might want to say something to Misty,” I said, lowering my voice. “She’s not…handling everything too well.”
That was an understatement.
I couldn’t help but peek over my shoulder at the doorway of the infirmary; it felt icky talking about the kid behind her back—like some gossipy bitch.
But Dustyn didn’t seem very surprised
“Vampires are a…touchy subject with her.” He made it seem like common knowledge. “She was only ten when two rouges cornered her family on a camping trip. A family of four—she was the only one who survived…”
He said it all with a blank face and a crisp tone that reminded me of a telephone operator’s; sorry, the number you are dialing is emotionally disturbed. Please hang up and try again…
“It’s best to avoid the topic with her,” he added, on second thought.
Great. There was a fact that I could have used a lot earlier.
“Look.” Dustyn released a heavy breath. “Don’t worry about Misty. She’ll get over it.”
He seemed a lot more confident in the coping abilities of a twelve-year old than I was. That’s for damn sure.
But he had known her the longest, and it wasn’t like I could do anything else.
“So…” I glanced around, nervously—realizing for the first time that he was really close. Close enough to feel his breath ghost my cheek.
Why that made me all warm and tingly? I didn’t know.
“Shouldn’t you really be leaving soon…I mean that in the non-bitchiest way possible, of course,” I added in a rush.
“Yeah.” Dustyn’s gaze was about my head, toward the group of the others who seemed to be arguing in a flurry of muttered voices. “Right now, in fact.”
“Now?”
Even though I’d posed the question, 'right now' seemed too soon.
Too real.
In a moment, four of us would be fighting a hoard of creatures right out of a child’s nightmares.
God…we were all still just kids ourselves, after all.
Dave was my age, and Anna and Carlos were barely a few months older. Dustyn was the oldest of us all, and he was only eighteen.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a mocking grin, as if reading my mind. “We’ll make it.”
He leaned close, making me jump as his pale hand descended on my shoulder in a way that was alarmingly unthreatening.
Coming from anyone else, I would have assumed that the gesture was meant to be reassuring; but with him, I wasn’t so sure.
“I had Dave spell this place with everything he could," he assured me.
To my surprise, his mouth curled into something that could have been mistaken for a smile in better lighting.
“You and Misty will be locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
That mocking smile slipped a little to reveal the real human person beneath the calculating hunter.
He was worried. I could see it in his eyes along with something else….
But he turned away before I could put my finger on whatever it was.
“Don’t worry,” he repeated.
Though I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me…or himself.
“Come on, boss,” Carlos called from over by the door.
He, Dave and Anna were clustered together…and I realized they’d been watching us. Dave’s dark eyes were unusually intent as they darted from Dustyn to me and back again. I could only guess what he was thinking.
Automatically, I took a step back, widening the distance between us a little.
Dustyn sighed, but the sound was so low that only I could hear it.
“I’m coming.” He gave me one last searching look and then turned away and headed to join the others.
The darkness of his clothes clung to his pale skin, making him appear like some creature of the night himself, as he moved across the room—a whole new breed of monster.
In fact, everyone—from Anna with that glossy hair the color of sparks, to Carlos with his usually cheerful brown eyes—looked serious.
Even more so than usual.
I couldn’t help thinking that if I were a hoard of vampires about to get staked tonight, I’d probably piss myself if I had to fight against them.
But what did I know?
I watched them assemble, throat tight. Dave winked at me. Carlos flashed a grim smile, while Anna didn’t even glare at me, for once. I even saw Dustyn turn to give me one last searching look…
Then, in a hoard of black leather and spelled weapons, they were gone, leaving me alone with Misty and hell of confusing emotions.
Though, not quite.
Sasha and Melissa still lingered beside the door, sorting through flashlights and stakes and other things they would need while scouting.
At first glance, one might have wondered why Dustyn would assign the two of them—slender teenage girls who looked more like cheerleaders than slayers—to stalk the streets of downtown in search of wayward vampires.
Until they saw Sasha take down a grown man with a well-placed karate move, and Melissa’s uncanny ease for handling the sharp blades she pulled from the dusty old boxes gathered at her feet.
“Chin up,” Sasha called once she noticed me staring. There was a friendly glimmer in her green eyes—she, at least, seemed to like me. “You’ve never been on a big mission like this before—but trust me. Dustyn knows what’s up.”
“Big Mission,” Melissa scoffed. She held a military-style black flashlight in one hand and a wicked-looking blade in the other. “You make it sound like some level in a video game.”
She tucked both the flashlight into a messenger back that dangled over her shoulder and crossed her arms over the front of a plain black sweatshirt. “This isn’t some Dungeons and Dragons play-date, Sasha.”
Sasha rolled her eyes. “What else am I supposed to call it?”
“Maybe what it is,” Melissa hissed. Her tone was flat and empty. “Suicide.”
“Melissa!”
“What? It is.”
That red hair seemed to prickle with energy as she jabbed her silver gaze into mine—I had never really talked to Melissa alone before, but I had a sinking suspicion that I could chalk her up right along with Anna as someone who didn’t seem to like me too much.
“Dustyn has us all risking our lives just to avenge his dead girlfriend—”
“Melissa.” Sasha’s tone was like ice, and even I felt a glimmer of unease at the sound of it. “You know it’s not like that.”
Her gaze found mine. “You never knew Maloney,” she said softly—something that was quickly becoming the phrase of the day.
“But was a good slayer and a good friend. She was one of us,” she spat scathingly in Melissa’s direction. “And if Dustyn wanted to lead us into a hoard of a thousand vampires to avenge her I would—”
Melissa turned away, but not before I heard her mumble, “just what the hell was she doing tramping around the vampire’s territory, anyway? As far as I’m concerned—she deserve what she got.”
If Sasha heard her, she pretended not to, though the line of her pink mouth tightened.
“Besides,” She added forcefully, placing an ebony hand on her hip. “You know it’s not just about Mel—these vampires might be the ones killing those kids downtown. Don’t you think that is worth checking them out?”
Melissa shrugged, which was a feat within itself because Sasha was giving her a look that could easily melt steel. “We don’t know that.”
“Bullshit—”
“Killing?” I repeated without thinking. Something Dustyn had said chose that moment to run through my mind; they might be the ones responsible for the rash of murders downtown recently…
Once again, I wondered just how much I’d missed by being late.
Sasha nodded. “Yeah. It’s all over the news; all those kids going missing in East Haven. Those bodies found over by the docks…”
“She probably has no clue what the hell you’re talking about,” Melissa sneered. “She’s never at any of the meetings.”
Her blue eyes seemed to cut through me like a knife. “And she damn sure wasn’t there this morning.”
“Oh,” Sasha said absently. Her eyes were on a black digital watch on her wrist. “Well, we’ve better get going—but I think Dustyn has the newspaper clipping in his office somewhere, if you wanted to get updated.”
“Thanks,” I said, though in my gut I knew that I would rather run around butt-naked than step one foot into Dustyn Grayson’s office, willingly.
“Don’t worry,” Sasha called over her shoulder as she and Melissa headed to the door. “Dustyn always has everything covered. You just have to hold down the fort. It’ll be fine.”
Yeah, I thought as I watched them leave.
When had those words ever been wrong?