Cassie Alexander - Bloodshifted

I went to run out, then thought better of it and reached for Gemellus. He’d tucked the silver knife into his belt. I didn’t want to use it, but I put it into one of the pockets of my pants and ran for the back of the truck bed, my hand still clenched around the Shadows.

Dren was right: The sun was on its way. A second truck was idling right behind ours now, the cab so high I couldn’t see in. Vish closed the back of the first truck up behind me with herself inside. I wondered what Gemellus would think of being guarded by a woman come dusk.

I jumped for the door of the second truck, found it locked, and beat at it with my free hand. “Let me in!”

The cabin door didn’t open—but one behind it, to the trailer, did. Four daytimers I didn’t know stood inside, all armed to the teeth.

“Gonna light it up, let’s go let’s go let’s go—” came Vish’s voice on the radio from all of their shoulders—and a familiar arm reached out of the pack and grabbed me.

“Edie.” Asher pulled me inside as the door slammed shut and the truck we were in was rolling. He squeezed all the air out of me, and there were no words between us, just the physicality of making sure that someone else you loved and thought lost was not a ghost.

“I’m just going to assume all that blood is someone else’s,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Mostly.” I pulled back, breathing hard. I’d only left him a week ago but I could read the passage of that time around his eyes. My exploits were aging my shapeshifter.

“I know you can survive anything you put your mind to, but—” he pulled me to him again and kissed my forehead and stroked his fingers through my hair, catching on all the tangles and scabs.

There was the sound of a very large explosion from behind us. It rattled the truck and I could hear crashing glass—and then came a second softer sound, that of the Catacombs collapsing, tons of concrete and lumber falling into the caverns beneath.

All that mattered to me was that it was behind us, and that I was here, safe with Asher again. “I made it.” I wasn’t okay, but I was here. It counted for now.

“So you killed that other girl for nothing, eh?” one of the daytimers I didn’t know asked Asher. I felt him stiffen under my arms. Old Edie didn’t generally approve of killing people, and Asher knew that. New Edie couldn’t throw any stones.

“She was wearing your necklace,” Asher explained, pulling my chain out of his pocket. Celine.

“When you were supposed to be holding the line,” the other daytimer pressed.

“The line was fine.” Asher held me roughly. “I needed to know. I saw her racing by with your necklace on and I thought the worst—”

“It’s all right.” I didn’t need to hear the blow-by-blow. No one would be crying for Celine, least of all me.

The female daytimer leaned in to give me a smile. “I wish I had a man that willing to throw down for me. It was stupid—but sort of sexy, in a murderous way.”

“Thanks, I think,” I said. She put her hand out.

“Lilah,” she said.

I couldn’t shake her hand because I was still holding a thimbleful of Shadows. I inhaled to explain this, when they decided to speak.

“Did you kill them too?” Their voices were high and small.

Asher frowned, and the other daytimers stared.

“Shadows,” I explained. “Long story. Some of them were with Celine, the necklace-lady. The rest stayed with me.”

“Not that I know of,” Asher told my hand.

The Shadows didn’t respond again. The door between the RV-like living quarters we were crowding and the driver’s cabin was open. We were headed west, away from the sun, but it was almost light everywhere now.

“Holy fuck,” said the driver. I recognized him, Mr. Galeman. He’d once been a patient of mine.

“What?” Lilah started forward, gun in hand.

He pointed at his sideview mirror. She ducked in, and I could see her disbelieving expression reflected in the windshield. “What the hell is that thing?”

I had a feeling I knew who it was.

“Kill it,” Lilah commanded.

Two of the other daytimers started pulling a panel off the ceiling of the cabin. Asher started pulling me back into the rest of the trailer. It was half living quarters for daytimers during the day; two boxes with unknown occupants were strapped down in back.

“This isn’t your fight anymore, Edie.”

“No—I need to see.” I had to know. The second the ladders were pulled down and the daytimers mounted them, I smashed the Shadows to my chest and felt them dive underneath my left breast, chill against my heart. Then I squeezed in beside the daytimers, grabbing hold of the roof to pull myself up.

Racing up the street behind us was something utterly unreal.

“What is it?”

I grabbed someone else’s binoculars to look. “It’s Natasha.”

She was five times the size she’d been when I saw her last—she must have dosed herself hard, hoping to wake up in time to help Raven fight, but instead the vampire cells had made a monster out of her. She looked like a mutant, bigger in all directions, bubbled with tumors and dotted with spots of ash from where the fabric she’d found to cover herself with hadn’t done a good enough job and light had seeped in. I’d seen vampires manage to be awake during the day. They just didn’t function as well—but Natasha didn’t need to be functioning to kill us, charging down the street at us like a pissed-off water buffalo.

I turned toward the daytimer nearest me. “You have to kill her. And make sure she’s dead. All the way.”

“With pleasure,” he said, setting a sniper rifle into a mount on the roof. It locked into place and he aimed as carefully as he could and shot at her. It looked like he hit her head, but she didn’t stop.

“More,” I encouraged him.

“It’s daylight,” he muttered, re-aiming. I knew what he meant—the vampires weren’t up to divert attention from us. If anyone saw us out on a highway doing this, we’d be pulled over by cops and the coffins would be broken into for sure.

He shot again. This time, it looked like it hit her chest. Still nothing. She was gaining.

“Use silver!” I shouted.

He spared a dark look at me. We were in a caravan of vampires. Of course no silver weapons were allowed—except for the one in my pocket.

With a giant leap forward, Natasha grabbed hold of the back of the truck, making the entire trailer shake. Asher pulled me down as the frequency of the gun reports increased.

“I’m not losing you again—and I’m not letting you go anywhere unarmed.” He pressed a gun at me. I had never shot a gun before—but I could see myself doing it as I felt Natasha come closer, hearing her weight thunk against the trailer’s ceiling as she came for us. The daytimer didn’t care about being seen anymore, it was life or death—gunshots echoed through the cabin and hot casings flew out and ricocheted down. Asher pushed me behind him, toward the cabin, to where we could both sight out the window.

A ballooned hand swatted the gun away, tearing it free from its mounting, as the daytimer dropped inside, barely missing decapitation. “Shoot, shoot!”

Guns rang out in the small space and the hand yanked back.

“Did we get it?” Lilah asked.

“Do you want to go up and find out?” another daytimer asked.

“Natasha!” I shouted up. “Natasha, you felt him die, didn’t you?”

There was no sound except the whistling of the air as the truck picked up speed. I could only pray that the trailer was high enough that no one else could see Natasha clinging to the top of it.