Blood Gamble

“You stupid lying liar!” I screamed at Jameson. “You are not fine!”

“I didn’t want to slow you down, Letts.” He gave me a weak grin that tore into my heart. I groaned and fought the urge to tear at my hair. “Argh!” Why did this have to be so hard?!

As I looked down at Jameson’s ashen face, fear and despair started to overtake me, and I felt my radius practically explode outward, farther than it had ever gone before. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t paying any attention to what was happening back at the boardinghouse. I only had eyes for the null in front of me.

Because he was dying.

Don’t cry, I told myself, though my eyes were burning. Don’t cry. Somewhere in the distance, I vaguely heard more gunfire, but it barely even registered in my thoughts. Jameson was dying. Wyatt was still out there. I needed to focus. With effort, I forced myself to look at Cliff. “Take Laurel, get him to the closest ER. Right now.”

He shook his head. “Look at you, you’re barely upright. You go to the hospital; I’ll find Wyatt.”

“That would be awesome,” I said tiredly, “except without a null, these guys are . . . you know. Vampires.”

“Oh,” he said in a small voice. “Okay. I’ll go get Laurel.” He turned and disappeared into the darkness behind the SUV.

I looked down at Jameson, who was blinking really hard, like he was trying to keep himself awake. I bent and kissed him on the lips. They were cold, but then, so were mine. “Don’t die,” I told him, brushing wet hair off my face. “I’ll be really pissed if you die.”

“Scarlett . . .” His fingers fluttered where they lay on his stomach, trying to find my hand. I grabbed them. “Come with me. Wyatt will be okay. He’s a vampire.” He didn’t say it, but his tone suggested that because Wyatt was a vampire, it didn’t really matter if he was okay.

“I’m not like you,” I whispered. His face shifted, becoming infinitely sad. “But I don’t hold it against you,” I added.

Cliff ran back toward us, with Laurel a few feet behind him. “Let’s get you up,” he said to Jameson, but before he could a loud crackle erupted from the direction of his belt. I jumped, then remembered the other walkie-talkie. We’d left it in that big room with the bust, along with my bulletproof vest.

Cliff and I had just enough time to exchange a look before the walkie-talkie crackled again. “Attention, useless bitch,” came Lucy Holmwood’s seething voice. “I have your little pet here, with a stake positioned right over his heart. If you want him, come fetch him. I fucking dare you.”

Cliff and Jameson both started to shake their heads, but I was already picking up the Glock and struggling to my feet. I leaned toward Cliff and pulled the handset off his belt. “Get them out of here,” I said quietly, and without listening to his response, I turned and began trudging back toward the boardinghouse, shivering with cold.

I forgot to get my damned boots.

Chapter 37

As I returned to the boardinghouse, I saw that I’d been right: the closest corner of the big white building had actually collapsed, right where Laurel had created the geyser. I could still see a bit of water spurting out, but it was dying down now, and with Laurel leaving it wouldn’t last much longer.

I held the walkie-talkie to my mouth. “Where are you?”

Lucy’s voice cackled at me. “Just behind the building. Come and get me, bitch.”

Name-calling? Really? But I clipped the handset to my belt loop and walked, trying to focus on my still-expanded radius. Behind me, I could feel a witch moving away. Laurel. Okay. I tuned out her signal and searched forward.

In the past, they’d killed four or five at each of these parties, but Lucy had said she’d invited more vampires to take advantage of having two nulls. The last time I’d paid attention like this, there were maybe a dozen vampires moving inside the boardinghouse and on the grounds around it. Now, though, I only felt two, one much weaker than the other. Lucy and Wyatt. But where were the others? Had they run away? Did Lucy persuade them to go back into the kill chute?

Cautiously, I kept walking around the side of the building, trying to slow my breathing. I might need to suppress my radius again, and that couldn’t happen until I calmed the fuck down. At the corner, I paused and peeked around the side of the building. There were some shrubs in my way, so I eased my body around them, trying to peek through to see the back gravel area I’d become all too familiar with earlier.

Then I saw them.

The gravel and the area immediately surrounding it were strewn with bodies. Dead bodies. No buzz of life at all.

There were maybe fifteen of them, all between the ages of twenty and forty, and where I could see their faces, they were all good-looking. So your typical vampire sample group. Some of them had tried to run, judging by the way they were positioned, and others had even crawled a few feet away before being cut down. Jesus. I’d heard shots earlier, but I’d been too distracted to count them.

This was my doing. I’d been upset, and I’d completely lost track of my radius and how it was expanding. Lucy had used my carelessness against these poor people.

In the center of all this carnage, Wyatt lay flat on his back, with Lucy Holmwood sitting on his chest. Her skinny legs were splayed out to either side of him, and there were discarded guns around her—probably Wyatt’s own weapons. Lucy had both hands wrapped around a large wooden stake, which had already pierced Wyatt’s chest. He was breathing shallowly, and I wondered if she’d punctured a lung.

I must have made some kind of noise, because her head suddenly shot up, her eyes finding me in the shadows. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she sang, her now-human eyes scanning the bushes.

I pushed out a deep breath and stepped around the shrub, into the light. “Hello, Lucy. Did you run out of bullets?”

She beamed, and I saw the wildness in her eyes, something I’d only seen before on a werewolf about to lose control entirely. Uh-oh. I didn’t know if it was my actions, Jameson shooting Arthur, or the news about Claire, but we’d definitely broken Lucy Holmwood’s brain. “Yes, more’s the pity. This creature”—she wiggled the stake a little bit, and a guttural moan escaped Wyatt—“has extra bullets, but I don’t know how to put them in.” She shrugged. “Ah, well. I never did mind getting my hands dirty.” She smirked at me. “I couldn’t have done it without your help, though.”

Guilt lanced through me, but no, I wasn’t taking responsibility for this massacre. This was all Lucy. “And what exactly is your goal here?” I asked, walking closer. I had the Glock tucked in the back of my jeans, right below the knife belt, but my hands and arms were shaky from cold and blood loss, and I didn’t trust my aim, especially with my injured right arm. If I missed, she would kill Wyatt, so I would need to be nearly within arm’s reach before I drew the gun, or even a throwing knife. “You could have run away just now, with or without killing Wyatt there. Why are you still here?”

Her eyes burned. “Because none of it matters,” she spat. “You killed Arthur. You killed Claire. You killed the show. I have nothing left, and it’s all because of you, you beastly little tart.”

Victorian insult words really don’t have much sting these days, I’ve noticed. “You want to fight, is that it?” I asked. “I’m right here.” I doubted I could even pull together a basic aikido throw, but if I could get her to step away from Wyatt, I could shrink my radius and he could heal and—

But Lucy shook her head. “First I’m going to make you watch me kill this little worm,” she said through gritted teeth, looking back at Wyatt. “This traitor who came here to—”

Enough. Wyatt was out of time, and I wasn’t going to get another chance. I didn’t want to risk the gun, in case I missed and hit Wyatt, so I whipped a knife out of my belt and threw it at her.

I was aiming for the neck again, but the blade flashed in the air and buried itself in Lucy’s right shoulder. She screamed, and her human instincts told her to retreat, so she scrambled off Wyatt and scooted away from me, moving toward the building door and escape.