Winter came back with Gavriel, who was wound in chains and shuffling. Aidan and Midnight stood beside the vampire, helping him keep balance, while Winter dragged the garbage bags and suitcase that made up their luggage. With flamethrowers raised, guards marched the group into the little office. In the bright light, Tana could see that one of the guards was bigger than the other, with a spray of pimples across his chin. The second guard had the patchy peach fuzz beginnings of a blond mustache. They were no longer laughing. They looked alert, and shocked at having to be, as if it had been weeks since they’d seen any action and maybe months since they’d had to deal with a real vampire.
Gavriel had his head down, hair in his eyes, but when he saw her, he looked up and grinned as though he was having an enormously good time. She studied him anew, the black T-shirt that pulled tight across his chest, the way his black jeans hung low on his hips, the steady gaze of his red eyes. Those clothes weren’t his, Tana realized. Those clothes didn’t quite fit him because they belonged to someone else—had probably been stolen from someone else. Probably someone dead. None of it was his.
Tana’s heart thudded dully. She thought of the necklace with the broken clasp resting at the bottom of her purse, of the random bills, and the new boots. How many people had he killed since he escaped from his cage?
The Thorn of Istra, her mind supplied. That’s the Thorn of Istra.
Lots. He’s killed lots and lots and lots.
Midnight was smiling, too, looping her arm through Aidan’s, as if they were going to a party. She tossed her blue hair, and Winter looked over at Tana, his lips pressed together as though he was biting back words.
The gray-haired clerk behind the desk took a plastic card from where it hung on a lanyard beneath her shirt. “I’ll swipe them into the holding rooms.”
“Who’s claiming the bounty on the vampire?” the pimple-faced guard asked.
“I guess me,” said Tana, half raising a hand as if she were in school. For a moment, she wondered what would happen if she named him, if she claimed the full bounty. It was a lot of money, enough to pay her sister’s way through community college. For catching the Thorn of Istra, they might even throw in the marker. Maybe she’d get her own TV show: Teenage Bounty Hunter. The thought made her smother a giddy laugh.
“Take her into number six,” the other guard told the gray-haired clerk.
“Where are you going to take—” Tana started.
“Worry not,” Gavriel said, a smile stretching his mouth as he reached for the door handle. “I like surprises.” He closed his eyes. Long, dark lashes dusted his cheeks as he stretched out his arms, the loosely wrapped chains falling to the floor with a loud clanking sound, his lean muscles thrown into sharp relief under the lights. He looked as if he was getting ready for a fight. He looked more tranquil than she’d ever seen him.
Well, so much for his appearing to be anyone’s prisoner.
Maybe what would happen if she named him was that he’d declare the ruse to be up and kill everyone, Tana included. Or maybe he’d just shrug a little ruefully and accept the betrayal. Neither was what she wanted.
As a kid, she’d occasionally wondered what it’d be like to meet a vampire that had been alive for a long time. She’d imagined it being like meeting a very old person, someone with a lot of experiences and a bunch of weird stories about walking around during the French Revolution. But spending time with Gavriel, she thought that every day since the one he’d died was not one where he aged, but rather one where he grew away from humanity. He didn’t seem older than he must have been when he died; just entirely stranger.
“This way,” a guard said in a trembling voice and nudged the ancient vampire with the butt of his flamethrower. Tana held her breath, but Gavriel did as he was told, disappearing through a doorway.
Tana was led in a different direction and then up in an elevator. The clerk took her to a small, dirty tiled room where she sat on a worn wooden bench and waited a half hour, all alone. She thought about calling Pauline, about waking her up and telling her the truth, but her phone couldn’t get a signal. Finally, a new guard came, looking tired, his eyes bloodshot, as though he’d been pulled from his bed in the middle of the night. He smelled like nicotine and mouthwash. His thinning hair was combed over his bald spot and still damp, probably from a hasty shower.
“Okay,” he said, sitting down next to her. He had a pen tucked behind his ear and a clipboard. “There was a vampire attack. A bloodbath, up north. A bunch of kids are dead. You know anything about that?”
“I was there.” She thought he probably knew it already, since his expression didn’t change. It seemed impossible that only a little more than twenty-four hours had passed since those vampires had crawled through the window of Lance’s farmhouse, only ten hours since her leg got scraped by their teeth. “I’m lucky to be alive, and Aidan, well, that’s where he got infected, but I guess he’s still lucky not to be dead.”
Immediately, she worried that she shouldn’t have said anything about Aidan, but the guard was nodding as if she wasn’t saying anything not already in the report.