Hourglass

Page 19

“Don’t do that.” Lucas held up his hands, trying in vain to reason with them. “If you guys will just listen—dammit!”
Milos sprayed holy water at me, and Lucas stepped between me and the spray. I was so grateful to him—at least, in the split second before I realized he’d made the worst mistake of his life.
The holy water hit Lucas and began to smoke. He cried out as it burned his flesh, the same way that it would burn a vampire’s.
“What the hell?” Milos shouted, as people began to swear and freak out. I was nearly as shocked as they were, but only for an instant; Lucas had been gaining vampire powers and vulnerabilities ever since I first drank his blood. Now holy water was as dangerous to him as it was to me. Lucas winced in pain, but his expression soon shifted to one of horror. Our eyes met, and I could see that he knew: Now he would be only a monster to them, too.
Eliza stepped forward. There were no words to describe the depthless contempt in her voice as she said, “Lucas feeds it.”
The silence that fell was deadly. I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing. Instead I took Lucas’s hand and attempted to feel that, only that, just his fingers in mine. I wanted him to be the only thing in the world.
“Guys,” Lucas began, “listen to me.”
Milos held up the gun in a wordless warning to shut up. Lucas stopped talking.
Eliza said, “We need to get these two to one of the professors. Study them, figure out how they’ve changed and why. We need all the info we can get out of them.”
Before they die went unsaid.
“Cuff ’em. Load them into one of the vans.” Her eyes were cold as she finished, “Get this trash out of here.”
They handcuffed our hands in front of us and walked us to one of the vans. To my shock, Dana sat in the driver’s seat, and she didn’t glance at me or Lucas as we were brought out. Was that guilt? Revulsion? Did she simply not care any longer?
Milos sat beside her, and he had holy water and stakes handy. Some of the others chained our handcuffs to metal bars soldered to the wall of the van; I’d always wondered why the vans had those. Well, now I knew. Dana came around briefly to double-check that we were securely bound. I stared at her with all the hatred in my heart—more hate than I’d known I could feel for a human being. She didn’t seem to notice the venom in my glare as she turned to check Lucas’s cuffs, too.
Then she returned to the driver’s seat, and we took off. I knew there were a couple of cars following us; the headlights shone through the back windows of the van.
“Bet you cash money they didn’t torch that other one,” Milos said to Dana. “We’re gonna have to go looking for pretty boy.”
Great. Now Balthazar’s doomed, too.
In despair, I glanced over at Lucas. He didn’t look nearly as upset as I did. Actually, he didn’t look that upset at all. He looked—excited.
Slowly he unfolded one of his fists to reveal handcuff keys in his palm.
How did he do that? All I knew was that we could get our handcuffs open, and maybe we had a chance.
Dana turned on the van’s radio, and music flooded the space. Instantly Lucas went to work, fumbling with his own cuffs for just a second until they opened. I watched him flex his hands, testing his strength. Together we looked toward the front of the van, but neither Dana nor Milos was watching us. So he leaned forward, flash fast, and dropped the keys in my hand.
My clammy hands were slick, and I was scared I might drop the keys, but I didn’t. Instead I tried to work the key into the lock; it was harder than it looked and made my fingers cramp. I wondered what we’d do once we were free. Jump out the back and run for it? With the cars right behind us, that didn’t give us much hope—but it was better than nothing.
“Hey,” Milos said. “Stop at the yellow.”
“I can make it.” Dana nonchalantly drove on.
“Dammit.” Milos leaned to examine his passenger-side mirror. “The others got stuck behind the light. Cop’s right there, so they can’t run it.”
“No big,” Dana said. “They know where we’re going.”
Lucas lunged forward, grabbing Dana across the neck. He snarled at Milos, “Get outta the van or I slash her throat.”
Dana screamed. My mind went blank with panic.
Where did Lucas get a knife? With shaking hands, I kept working with the handcuff key, and finally the metal cuffs snapped open. Milos nodded once, at Dana, and she pulled the van over with a jerk.
Milos got out, but he said, “You aren’t getting far.”
“Wait and see,” Lucas said, leaning forward to pull the van’s door shut. Instantly Dana slammed onto the gas. The van’s tires squealed against the pavement. Lucas said, “You think they bought it?”
I wanted to ask what they were supposed to have bought, but it was Dana who answered. “Maybe. Maybe not. We gotta move.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded. The van bumped along the pavement, jarring us all.
Lucas gave me a quick hug. “Dana slipped me the handcuff keys. I knew how to play it from there. What I don’t know is whether she’s got any plan beyond this.”
“Nope,” Dana said. “This is pretty much it, plan-wise. Sorry, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time.”
“Why are you doing this?” I demanded. “Why turn us in and then get us out? Did your conscience finally get to you?”
There was a brief pause, during which all we heard was the music on the radio. Dana finally said, “Bianca, I didn’t turn you in.”
Raquel.
Betrayal burned like fire. I should’ve felt angry, but I didn’t. All I could think about was the picnic we had on the Evernight grounds, the one Raquel had put together to cheer me up. We’d eaten sandwiches together on the grass and pointed out the new yellow starburst blooms of dandelions. It had been springtime. She had done that for me, and then in summer she’d given me up to die.
“Don’t be mad at her,” Dana said. “She’s new to all this. She got confused. I know she’s going to regret it.”
Lucas said, roughly, “Later. What are we doing now?”
“I’m dropping y’all around Grand Central,” Dana said. “From there you can catch a train to anywhere.”
“Not if we’re broke.” My voice sounded unbelievably harsh, even to me. “Did you think to bring money?”
Dana winced. “No. No time. This isn’t going in the Rescue Hall of Fame, is it?”
“You’re doing great,” Lucas said. “Just let us out and I can take it from there.”
She pulled over on a side street. Skyscrapers loomed here, their lights blazing even at this hour. It wasn’t yet dawn, but the sky had begun to lighten. Nobody much was on the roads, just a few taxis. To my surprise, Dana got out of the van when we did and walked around to us. She and Lucas faced each other squarely.
“You still don’t know what to think,” Lucas said. “Do you?”
She shook her head. “Nope. But, Lucas, you’re as close to a brother as I’m ever gonna have. I’d rather be wrong to set you free than be right to do you harm.”
Lucas made this weird choking sound in his throat, and then all of a sudden, he and Dana were hugging each other tightly. I saw a tear roll down Dana’s cheek.
When they let go, I wanted to say thank you, but I was still angry with her. The fact that I was wrong to be angry with Dana instead of Raquel didn’t seem to have much to do with anything. I managed to say, “What will you tell the others?”
“That Lucas took me hostage.”
“Will they believe that?” I said. Milos was already suspicious of Balthazar’s “death.”
“He will once Lucas makes it convincing,” Dana said, squaring her shoulders.
I didn’t get what was going on, but Lucas apparently did. He grimaced. “I really don’t want to.”
“Let me refresh your memory on how this works,” Dana said. “I save your butt, you save mine. Do it!”
Lucas punched her in the face so hard she slammed into the back of the van. I gasped. Although Dana staggered, she managed to stay on her feet. Lucas said, “You okay?”
“Will be,” she said thickly. Blood dripped from her lip onto the pavement. “Why do you have to be so good at your work?”
“Dana,” I began. “Are you sure—”
“Why are you still here?” she demanded.
Lucas grabbed my hand, and the two of us began to run. My breath caught in my throat, and the sidewalk jarred my feet, but I pushed myself to go faster and faster. All I could hear was Dana’s voice behind us, shouting, “Get out while you can!”
Chapter Twelve
ALTHOUGH THERE SHOULD’VE BEEN AN AGENT IN the subway booth, it was empty; maybe somebody thought 4 A.M. was as good a time as any to take a break. It gave us a chance to jump the turnstiles and wait for a train.
We sat together on one of the old wooden benches, which was layered thick with graffiti. Neither of us said anything at first. I felt like everything around me was very far away, and it was hard to remember that this wasn’t some bad dream or a terrible memory. It was like my brain wanted to trick me into thinking that it couldn’t be happening here or now.
The first thing that intruded into my consciousness sharply enough to goad me into speaking was the sign hanging overhead.
“‘Downtown,’” I read. “That’s the direction we want to go, right?”
“Don’t see what difference it makes.” Lucas leaned his head against the tiled wall. “As long as we’re putting some distance between us and them, it’s all good.”
All good were not words I would’ve used to describe our situation. I thought I realized what he was trying to do. “I know you want to be strong for me,” I said softly, “but right now I think it’s more important that you be honest with me.”
“Strong.” Lucas closed his eyes tightly. “Is that what I’m being? Because it doesn’t feel like it.”
Black Cross was all he ever had in the world, I told myself. What I went through was horrible, but for Lucas, tonight was even worse. He lost his mother, his best friend—everything but me. Maybe it’s my turn to be the strong one for a while.
“We’ll be okay.” I took his arm in my hands and examined the burns from the holy water. They were thin pink stripes that looked like lines of very bad sunburn. “Wait and see.”
Just then a gust of wind blew through the tunnel, heralding the arrival of the train. I cast a worried glance behind us as we boarded, but nobody followed. Only one other person was on the car, a college-age guy who was asleep across the seats and smelled strongly of beer.
As the train rumbled into motion, I led Lucas toward a map of the subway system. “You know your way around New York better than I do,” I said. “So you can figure out if we’re going the right way.”
Lucas moved slowly, like a man walking through water. He focused on the map, clearly wanting to do something useful. “Like I said before, there’s no right way. Except, you know, farther from them.”
“Of course there’s a right way.” I was surprised Lucas hadn’t seen it; the answer seemed so obvious, to me. “We need money and a safe place to hide for a little while. In other words, we need to find a friend.”
“Balthazar,” he said.
I nodded. “So, are we headed to Chinatown or not?”
Lucas put his hands on either side of the map. “Yeah. We’re going the right way.”
Although Lucas remembered the name of the street Balthazar had directed us to, at first neither of us could spot the correct store. It was too early for the shops to be open, so they all looked the same: identical storefronts shuttered tightly with metal grates. We had to wait.