To his credit, though, he had kept his opinions to himself. But then, she supposed, he always did. She tried to remember a time when he had criticised a favourite book or show, and wasn’t surprised when she came up empty. In some ways, he’d actually been a good father.
Amber turned off the TV. It was dark now, almost eleven. She should sleep, or at least try. Instead, she picked up the iPad and logged on to the Dark Places forum. Nobody she liked was chatting so she skimmed the conversations and the GIFs. She looked into Balthazar’s ice-blue eyes and found a piece of that old comfort, that sense of familiarity. She started to well up, and laughed at herself, but it was a laugh without humour. She dropped the iPad on the bed and went to the window, pressed her forehead against the glass. She watched a man walk from one of the rooms towards the street.
Bill had been right, of course. The scepticism on his face was entirely justified. The way the hunters had been tracking Balthazar was indeed stupid. She was just thankful that her parents had no such things as subdermal locators. The only way they could track her was by searching for the Charger – but looking for one car in all of America was an almost impossible task, even with their resources. Still, the car was a possibility, no matter how unlikely, but the people within the car were mere ghosts – Amber hadn’t sent emails, she hadn’t posted anything that could be traced back to her, Milo didn’t use a credit card, and Glen didn’t even have a credit card.
The man passed through a patch of darkness and she waited for him to emerge. When he didn’t, she looked closer, trying to pick him out in the gloom. A bus’s headlights swept the area, revealing its emptiness. She found herself looking up, like the guy was a vampire who had just lifted into the air and flown away instead of turning left or right or walking off down some lane she couldn’t see. This was what she had been reduced to – seeing the supernatural when she should have been seeing the ordinary. In that direction, craziness lay.
Of course, the only way anyone could possibly track them was – according to Althea Buxton – if one of the vampires who had bitten Glen decided to come after him, but why the hell would they have done that? Why go after Glen, of all people? What was so important about him? The only reason she could think of, in all her wild imaginings, would be if her parents had noticed he’d been bitten. Then the smart move would be to either force or coerce the vampire who’d done it to lead them to him and, as a result, her. That’d be the smart move. That’d be the sneaky, unexpected thing that they’d probably think of.
Amber took her head away from the glass as her body very slowly turned cold. She felt sick and weak and she didn’t want to move, but she went to her bag, took out the crucifix. Her hands were shaking.
She opened the door and stepped out. The parking lot was half full and still, lit by a street lamp that sprouted from a half-hearted flower bed along the sidewalk. Cars passed on the street beyond, but not many. The night was dark and it was quiet. It was holding a secret.
On bare feet Amber walked from her room, passing window and door, window and door, window and door.
She was paranoid. Of course she was. She was letting her imagination take over. This was natural. She was going to knock on Glen’s door and he’d answer and she’d hand him the crucifix and the next morning he’d insist that she’d been sleepwalking, that he was irresistible to her, and she’d ignore him and they’d drive on and that would be the end of it.
Amber got to his room. His door was open. She stepped in.
The room was dark. Glen lay across the bed in his boxers. There was blood still dripping from his neck and his eyes were open but unseeing.
Amber dropped the crucifix and both hands went to her mouth as her knees gave out and she sagged against the wall. A whine escaped her lips that she quickly bit back before it became a scream.
He thought he’d got away from them. They all did. But Glen had been killed that first night in Cascade Falls – it had just taken this long for it to register.
She turned on to her hands and knees, finding it difficult to breathe. She needed to get out. Get Milo. Get in the car and drive. The vampire had found them, and if the vampire was here …
She looked up. From where she was, she could see through the open door, all the way across the parking lot, to where her parents and their friends were standing.
AMBER CLAMPED A HAND over her mouth to keep from crying out. Her father emerged from the manager’s office, talked with the others. Grant and Kirsty started walking towards Milo’s room. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like they had guns in their hands.
Her parents and Imelda went left, headed for Amber’s room. Alastair hung back, keeping an eye out. Amber left the door to Glen’s room open – she didn’t want anything to draw them to her – and forced herself to her feet. She stumbled to the window. Once her parents realised that her room was empty, they’d come straight here. Imelda would probably try to distract them, but she only had moments.
Alastair approached the Charger, running his hand over the bodywork admiringly. From where she was, Amber could see the trunk as it clicked open, spilling red light. Alastair frowned, moved closer.
Dacre Shanks lunged out at him.
They went down and there were shouts and curses and Amber backed away from the window, nearly falling over the bed, nearly falling over Glen’s body. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as she turned red and grew horns. She may have looked fierce, even in her pyjama bottoms and little T-shirt, but she didn’t feel it. Outside in that parking lot right now was no mercy and certain death. The idea that she should stand and fight passed so fleetingly it was like it was never there. Which left only one course of action.
She hurried into the bathroom, shut the door and, as an afterthought, locked it. She stepped to the wall as her hands grew talons. Her first slash was pitiful – it barely scraped the plaster. But her second took some of that ridiculously light wood with it. She slashed again, and kicked, her bare foot smashing through to the other side. Another few slashes to weaken it further and then she took three steps back.
She heard gunshots. Grant and Kirsty had found Milo.
She charged, hit the wall with her shoulder, and exploded into the bathroom on the other side in a shower of splinters and cheap plaster. She stumbled a little but stayed upright, yanked the door open and hurried through. The room’s occupant, a startled man with an alarming beard, was already on his feet, clutching a pillow to his chest. She backhanded him on her way past and he flew into the corner, crumpling into an unconscious heap. For his own good. Her parents would most likely kill any witness they came across.
Right before she left the man’s room, she heard her father’s voice somewhere behind her.
She ran out. Gaudy green neon lit up the small swimming pool in which dead bugs swam with cigarette butts. She jumped the railing. On the road ahead a patrol car was swerving into a U-turn, its siren suddenly blaring, coming back to investigate the sound of gunfire. For one crazy moment, Amber thought they could help her, but of course they couldn’t. No one could.
She stuck to the darkness, running along the embankment beside the railing, keeping the motel on her left. The patrol car braked sharply and she looked back. Betty stood in the middle of the road, entirely calm in the headlights. The cops got out, yelled at her to put her hands up, and Bill landed on the car roof. He yanked the first cop off his feet and the second cop started shouting and then a shadow lunged at Amber and she went sliding down the embankment, tangled in arms and legs, catching the glint of a knife in the corner of her eye.
She hit the ground – cold, hard concrete – and Dacre Shanks squirmed on top of her. She grabbed his wrist, keeping the blade at bay. He hissed at her, trying to scratch through her scales with his other hand. He was thinner. His cheeks were sunken and his skin was pallid. The Charger had drained him and it showed. He looked ill, the kind of ill you don’t recover from.
Amber rolled, shoved him off, let go of his wrist and kicked him away from her.
He got up, slashing, and she kept back, out of range, her talons out and her fangs bared.
She would have spoken to him, would have told him to run now, while he still could, but there was something in his eyes that told her he wasn’t going to listen. A madness. The reasoning side of Shanks’s brain had shut down at some stage in that trunk and this was all that was left.
He came at her and the blade slid off the scales that had formed round her ribs. She hit him, a punch that lifted him sideways, that cracked his fragile bones. He gasped and she brought her fist down on his forearm. His fingers sprang open and his knife fell and he staggered back, clutching his hand and tilting to one side. She glanced behind her, making sure she was out of her parents’ line of sight, and, when she looked back, Shanks was coming for her again.
She slashed at him, her talons gouging furrows into his cheek. He stumbled past, hands at his face, his bottom lip flapping against his chin. Moaning words she couldn’t understand, Shanks tried reaching for her, but Amber grabbed him, took him off his feet. She slammed him against the wall and his head smacked wetly against concrete. Then she let go, and he dropped.
He tried to crawl, but that was all his body could take. With catastrophic speed, he came apart as she watched. His arms folded beneath him like they were made of rubber, and his face hit the ground, shattering his jaw. His eyes rolled up so he was looking at her when his flesh caved in. His hair, his scalp, his skin slid from his skull, and blood and bile and a dozen other noxious fluids sluiced from his pores. His eyes clouded and melted, dripped from their sockets while his face peeled back like the skin of a grape and his clothes flattened, soaked in the juices of all that remained of Dacre Shanks.
“What a way to go,” Alastair said from behind her, and she spun.
In demon form, Alastair was seven feet tall, his shirt stretching to contain his mass. His beard was longer, and pointed. Behind it he smiled. “I don’t know who he was, or why he was locked in the trunk of that car, but to die by melting? That is quite something.”
Her mouth was dry. She’d never be able to outrun him. She didn’t have a hope of overpowering him, either.
“You’ve led us on quite the chase, young lady,” he continued. “I’ve got to admit – I didn’t think you had it in you. Honestly. You’ve surprised me. Hell, you’ve impressed me. But it all ends here, I’m afraid.”
She only had once chance – attack him now, while he least expected it. Attack him, put him on his back, and run. Sprint. Hide.
“Alastair,” she said, “please don’t hurt me.”
He smiled, stepped forward, about to say something else, and she slammed into him. He grunted and she went for his eyes. When he grabbed her wrists, she tried to knee him in the groin, but he shifted position, took the knee on his hip, and a simple push sent her tumbling head over heels across the ground.
“It takes a while to get used to, doesn’t it?” he asked. “The strength, I mean. It takes a while longer to stop relying on it, though.”
She ran at him and he ripped a metal pipe from the wall and swung it into her jaw. The impact rattled her skull, and when her brain came back online she was lying face down on the ground.
“See what I mean?” Alastair said, standing over her. “You’ve got all this strength and so you figure hey, all I need to do is land a few punches, am I right? And then before you know it you’ve run headlong into a metal pipe and it’s lights out.”
Amber started to get to her hands and knees.
“I think it’d be a nice thing to tell you that I liked you most of all, out of all our children that we’ve killed. But that’d be a lie.” He stomped on her back and her face hit the ground. “But you’re a sweet girl, there’s no denying it, and I hope you feel like you’ve had a good life.”
“I’m sure she does,” said Imelda, walking up to join them.
Alastair chuckled, picked Amber up by the scruff of the neck. “Look what I found.”
“Doesn’t she look beautiful?” Imelda said, sauntering closer. “Red suits you, sweetie.”
She picked up the fallen metal pipe. “You hit her with this?”
“Indeed I did,” said Alastair.
“And she’s still conscious?”
“As it turns out, our little Amber is a bit of a tough cookie.”
“Yes, she is,” said Imelda, and swung the pipe into Alastair’s face.
Amber dropped as Alastair staggered back. Imelda hit him three more times – once to get him on the ground, and twice more to keep him there – and then hurried back to help Amber to her feet.
“We have to run now,” she said, and they ran.
They got a few streets over, reverting to normal, but still sticking to the shadows. They found a small park, the grass easier on Amber’s bare feet than the sidewalks, and hurried to the group of trees at its centre.
“Milo,” said Amber. “Where’s Milo? I heard gunshots.”
Imelda hesitated. “Me too.”
“You think they … you think they got him?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. We can’t think about Milo right now.”
“What? We can’t just leave him. Glen’s dead but Milo, Milo might still be alive.”
“It’s you they want, Amber, not Milo. The best thing we can do is get you as far away from here as possible.”
“You’re coming with me?”
“Well, I can hardly stick around after beating up my ex-husband, now can I?” Imelda said, and glanced behind them. She hissed, dragged Amber into the trees and ducked down. “They’re behind us,” she whispered.
“So we run.”
Imelda bit her lip.
“Imelda, we run.”
“They’re faster than us,” Imelda said. “We’d never make it.”
“Then we hide,” said Amber. “We stay here and we don’t make a sound.”
“They’ll find us.”
“Then what do we do? Do we fight?”
Imelda peeked out, and a soft moan of panic escaped her. Finally, she looked Amber dead in the eyes. “You’re going to have to run.”
Amber frowned. “You said you were coming with me.”
“I know, sweetie, and I’m sorry, but I’ll hold them off, all right? You get as far away from here as—”
“No,” said Amber. “No. I am not leaving you. I’m not leaving Milo and I’m not leaving you. I already had to leave Glen and I’m not doing that again. I need you to come with me.”
Imelda gripped Amber’s shoulders. “Amber, please. All I care about in this world is you. Your safety is the only thing that matters to me. I have done awful, terrible, unforgivable things in my life, things I can’t walk away from. All that bad stuff has finally caught up to me. Tonight is the night I pay for all the evil I’ve done. No, no, I’m okay with that. Do you understand? I’m okay with it. I deserve it. I … I think I even need it. But please, I am begging you, let the last thing I do be counted as a good thing. Let me help you escape.”
“But I don’t want you to die.”
“I love you, Amber. I love you, sweetheart. I need you to live. I need you to be the one that lives. I couldn’t do that for my own children. I can do it for you. That’s what a parent is for. That’s what it means. When you’re older, you’ll understand. When you have children of your own, you’ll see. You’re all that matters. You’re all that should matter. You replace us. You carry on. You have to carry on, Amber.”
And then a familiar roar, and the Charger screeched to a halt on the street ahead. The passenger door swung open and Milo pulled the seat forward.
“Move!” he yelled.
Amber glanced at Imelda, and Imelda grinned. “Of course, I’d like to carry on as well.”
They started running.
Amber glanced behind her. The others were in pursuit, with Bill way out in front. He was moving so fast he’d be on them in seconds.
Milo revved the engine, like that would make them run faster.
When they were in throwing distanc
e of the Charger, Amber heard a gunshot. Imelda grunted, lost her rhythm and stumbled, and Amber tried to stop, but Imelda shoved her on.
“Run!” Imelda snapped, and fell.
Amber ran. Milo pushed the seat back and she jumped in. Behind her, Imelda lunged at Bill as he tried to sprint by her. They went down in a snarling, snapping tumble. The Charger’s wheels spun as Milo accelerated, but Amber twisted in her seat as the others descended on Imelda, claws slashing and fangs tearing.
“Go back,” Amber said. “We have to go back!”
“They’d kill us,” said Milo.
“I’ll pay you! I’ll pay you everything I have!”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
She turned to argue with him, to scream at him, and only then did she notice how pale he was, how much he was sweating. He steered with his left hand while his right was pressed into his side. Blood darkened his T-shirt.
His head dipped and his hand dropped from the wheel and the Charger started to swerve off the road. Amber reached over, tried to correct their course, shouting for Milo to wake up.
The Charger hit the lamppost and Amber slammed her head against the dash.
THE SUDDEN PEACE AND quiet was unnatural, and it brought Amber back from the brink of unconsciousness.
She opened her eyes, sat up, looked around. A few seconds. She’d only lost a few seconds.
In the distance, she heard sirens.
She got out of the car, made sure her parents weren’t anywhere in sight, and reached back in, pulling Milo on to the passenger seat and trying to ignore the amount of blood he was losing. When he was strapped in, she hurried round to the driver’s side. As she reached for the handle, she had a sudden fear that the Charger would lock her out, but the door opened under her touch and she slid in.
Her horns scraped the car ceiling, and she reluctantly reverted to give herself more room.
She adjusted her seat, buckled her belt, and put the Charger into gear. They lurched on to the road and she hissed, wrenched the wheel, managed to get them going straight. This wasn’t like the car she’d driven in Driver’s Ed. This was a monstrosity, a heavy metal beast, and she was fully aware that any moment it could surge out of her control. She slowed at a Stop sign, signalled, and turned on to a larger road. A larger road with other cars moving.