“Yes.” The word hovered in the air around them, condemning them—taunting them—hurting them.
“I’ve got to get outta here!” Marc lurched toward the grate, only pausing to grimace in pain when the slats of sunlight hit his body.
“Stop!” Kevin shouted, lunging for him. But he was already in the sunlight. Kevin recoiled, expecting Marc to burst into flames.
Instead Marc jumped back—staring down at his body. He was wearing a T-shirt and his exposed forearms were striped with a nasty sunburn that was already blistering. “I didn’t die.”
“We have been healed,” Dave said, scooting over closer to them as he gaped at Marc.
“Will it go away? Will we turn back into those—those things we were?” Marc asked.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said.
“How could this be? Who did this to us? I can’t—I can’t bear the memories. I can’t.” Ethan put his face in his hands and sobbed.
“No, no, no, no, no, no …” Justin babbled as he stared up at the grate.
“Do you remember what they shouted at us when they trapped us? They said we’d trespassed on a world not our own,” Kevin reasoned aloud. “I think they were right. We’re not in our world anymore.”
“It could be a trap. A rebel army trap,” said Marc.
“No. This isn’t our world. Since when have humans been allowed to decorate the streets for Christmas?” Kevin said. “And what about the depot? There was a restaurant there where humans were being waited on by fledglings—red fledglings.”
“That’s impossible,” Dave said.
“Exactly. And that vampyre—the blue one in the tunnels who stopped the others from killing us—she’s my sister. In our world, my sister died the day I was Marked, more than a year ago.”
“What does all of this mean?” Marc asked.
“I know who might help us figure this out,” Kevin said.
“Who?” Davis said.
“My sister. She tried to tell me. She said not to run. Zoey will help me. She’ll help us. I know it.”
“She can’t help this.” Ben stood and lifted a trembling finger to press it to his temple. “She can’t help the memories stop here.”
“No, but she can help us figure out how to go forward from here,” Kevin said.
“There’s no going forward after what I’ve done.” Ethan stood shakily beside Ben.
“But we have to,” Kevin said.
“No, no, no, no, no.” Justin repeated the word as he stood with Ben and Ethan.
The three vampyres shared a long look.
“Justin has it right. No,” Ben said. “No, we don’t have to go forward.”
“And we won’t,” Ethan said.
Together, Ben, Ethan, and Justin charged forward, knocking David off his feet and throwing Marc into Kevin. Caught off guard, Kevin scrambled to get out from under Marc and gain his footing. When he did it was too late. Ben had shoved the sewer grate aside and crawled through the opening, with Ethan and Justin following him.
Kevin lunged for Justin’s leg. He managed to snag his ankle, but Justin kicked him, sending Kevin back on his butt. By the time he regained his feet for the second time, the three red vampyres were already running clear of the grate.
Yanking his shirt up so that it covered his head and part of his face, Kevin pulled himself up in time to see Ethan, Ben, and Justin, bodies smoking in the winter sunlight, shouting incoherently at the group of uniformed men who had been getting into black SUVs. The men turned. Kevin heard them order, “TPD! Halt or we’ll shoot!” The three didn’t pause.
“Do it or we will eat you!” Ben’s anguished shout carried down to them.
The man with the flamethrower turned it on them.
Kevin pulled the grate back over the manhole and fell heavily to the ground as their screams died in flames and sunlight and blood.
Marc hurried to him, pulling him back out of the splotch of sunlight.
“I couldn’t stop them,” Kevin said between heaving breaths. “I tried. But I couldn’t stop them.” He stared up at Marc and David. “Are you going to do it, too? Are you going to commit suicide?”
“I can’t promise that I’ll be able to live with my past, but I need answers,” Marc said. “I’m coming with you, Lieutenant.”
“I’m with you, too. I won’t pretend that I can handle this, but I also need answers,” David said.
“So, our plan?” Marc asked as he sat beside Kevin.
“Wait here until dusk and then go to the House of Night and ask to see my sister.”
“What if they kill us?” David asked.
“Then we’re dead and we don’t have to figure out how to live with our memories,” Kevin said.
“Good point,” Marc said. “I’m in.”
“That’d solve one problem for us. I’m in, too,” David said.
Zoey
There was just enough room for the Escalade to fit beside the TPD transport bus and still be under the covered entrance to the Field House. Shaunee hadn’t even put it into park yet and I was out of the SUV and halfway through the door to the school, with Stark and Shaunee scrambling to catch up with me, when I ran into Aphrodite. Literally. Knocking her smack on her butt.
Well, technically I didn’t knock her on her butt. The door I’d pushed open did. But still, she fell with an ungraceful smack on the tile floor.
“Ouch! Damn, Z. I thought you said my apology was accepted.” She was rubbing her butt as she stood. She tilted her head up to give me a scrunch-faced look and there it was—the most incredible Mark I had ever seen.
“How? Wh—? I don’t—I’ve never seen anything like that!” I blurted when I finally managed to regain control over my mouth.
“Fuck me running, Aphrodite’s a vampyre!” Shaunee said as she slid to a stop behind me.
“Red and blue. Red and blue?” Stark babbled. “How could it be red and blue? And you weren’t even a fledgling anymore.”
“Right?! It’s crazy cool, isn’t it?” Aphrodite said. She shook back her hair so that we could get a better look.
I’ll admit it. I gawked.
Her Mark was spectacular! It looked like one of the handmade, vintage Mardi Gras masks sold in the gorgeous boutiques in Venice—the kind exquisite women held to frame their eyes after their hair was piled on top of their heads and their boobs billowed out of the bodice of their seventeenth-century reproduction gowns. Stark was right—the Mark was in red and blue, and it looked like delicate, glistening fireworks exploding in beauty across her flawless skin.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Neither do I,” Stark said.
“Yeah, it’s cool and all, but what the hell are you?” Shaunee asked.
Aphrodite lifted one perfect brow. “I am a bridge.”
“Huh?” I said.
“That’s what Nyx told me. That was pretty much my reaction, too. At first.”
“But why did this happen?” I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “Are you still a Prophetess?”
“Uh, yes. Squared. At least. And it happened because I finally let it go,” Aphrodite said.