Marisol turned the second key, swinging open the door and regarding the prisoners, smiling a fanged smile. “You’ll come with me like good little boys and girls, won’t you?”
The humans looked at one another with shadowed eyes.
“Come along,” Marisol told the prisoners. “That was just a story I made up for the big bad guard. Anyway, wouldn’t it be easier to escape from outside? Don’t you want to come with me?”
“No,” one of them said, the thin boy with his ribs sticking out and liquid eyes the color of weak tea. “I knew you were lying. Lucien is keeping us safe. We’re earning our place.”
Marisol shrugged thin shoulders and smiled in Tana’s direction. “We offered. You can’t ask for more than that.”
Tana gripped the cold flesh of the vampire’s shoulder. “No, wait.” She turned to the boy. “Please—please come with us. You’ve got to know this is a prison. You must know he’s never going to—”
“Shut up,” the boy said, folding his arms.
“Let them be,” Marisol told her, smug. “They made their choice.”
But a few, shamefaced, shuffled out. Others stayed put with the boy, resolute.
Only the muzzled girls and boys didn’t move. They slumbered away, barely stirring. Valentina shook one, but his lashes only fluttered. His eyes didn’t even open.
Marisol raised both her brows. “Satisfied?”
“There’s nothing else we can do, Tana,” Valentina said.
“Yeah,” said the dark-haired girl. “Time to cut and run. Jesus, I didn’t think we’d even get this far.”
Tana knew they were right. She couldn’t worry about the people they were leaving behind, not now. Not with Pearl out there somewhere. Not with Gavriel about to be betrayed.
“What’s wrong with your mouth?” the boy with the suspenders asked her. “Are you okay?”
Tana touched her lip and realized that her newly sharp teeth must have broken the skin. She hadn’t even noticed.
Valentina leaned heavily on Tana’s arm as she left the cage, clearly stiff and sore. The heat of her skin made Tana flinch with pleasure.
Marisol led them up the stairs and through a series of elaborately furnished rooms. There were a few vampires there, talking together. None looked armed for a fight with an ancient vampire’s minions. As Marisol and the others moved cautiously through the glass-domed banquet hall, Tana heard a vampire’s voice echo off the walls. “You, there! Stop! Stop where you are!”
At that, the prisoners ran for the door, wrenching it open and running across the dew-covered lawn under the moonlight. They scattered, with Tana, Valentina, and Marisol racing after. The moon was high in the sky, bright and full, like an overripe piece of fruit grown too heavy for its branch.
Only a single guard was stationed by the gate. He came running to intercept the boy in suspenders, calling for him to stop. Marisol shot him with the crossbow, dropping him onto the lawn with a single bolt. Tana stopped running, stunned.
You killed two of them! she yelled at herself. You’re not allowed to be shocked by death.
Behind her, another vampire exited the house, running after them. Marisol swung the crossbow around.
“Come on!” Valentina shouted, frantic, pushing her toward a hole cut in the iron fence, the bars snapped out.
Jameson was on the other side, holding a weathered-looking flamethrower pointed toward the house and waving the other prisoners through.
Tana went after, Valentina right behind her.
Jameson grabbed Valentina by the shoulder as soon as she was away from the fence, gripping her tightly and looking at her with a devouring gaze. “I would have gone for you,” he said, not quite making sense. “You should have told me and I would have done it instead, whatever it was.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Valentina said, clearly not sure what he thought had happened.
For a moment, Tana thought that Jameson would kiss Valentina, but he dropped his hand, turning toward his mother as she ducked between the bars and swinging the flamethrower off his shoulder.
“Thanks,” he said. “So, let me guess, you’re going straight back to Lucien?”
“Not tonight,” said his mother, glancing back at the house. It glowed with dark light. “Tonight I’m sticking with you, kid.”
Over their heads, the white crow was circling.
Tana thought of Pearl, on the lawn one late summer day, her pale hair tangled because she’d cry if anyone tried to brush it, spinning around and around until she got so dizzy she fell in a pile of bare feet and dandelions and sundress.