It’s true that wounded animals can be unpredictable, but I couldn’t be bothered to care about that. I knelt at Bob’s side and shuddered in relief when I saw that the wound, though bloody, was in his shoulder, not his chest. It obviously hurt, but it didn’t look life threatening.
The mail slot creaked again, and I saw a pair of brilliant green eyes watching me through the opening. Bob growled and tried to stand up, but I held on to his collar.
“Your dog will be fine,” said a male voice, and I finally realized those green eyes belonged to Aleric. “I was careful not to hurt him too much.”
Bob’s growl deepened, and he lurched to his feet despite my effort to keep him down.
“Luke, will you get his leash, please?” I asked without looking. Blood trickled down Bob’s leg, but even with the wound I was sure he was stronger than me—especially when I could only hold on with one hand because of the gun—and I couldn’t let Aleric take another poke at him.
Apparently Luke was the proactive type, because before I’d finished the sentence he was there at my side, leash in hand. He clipped the leash on Bob’s collar and gave a little tug.
“Come on, Bob,” Luke said, patting his leg encouragingly. “Let’s go have a Milk-Bone, okay, buddy?” Luke leaned close so he didn’t have to shout. “I’m going to take him upstairs. I’ll be right back.”
I felt safer having Bob close by, but with him already hurt and me waving a gun around, Luke probably had the right idea. I nodded reluctantly, and Luke gave Bob’s leash a tug.
Luke and Bob had definitely bonded during the time we’d spent together, and though Bob resisted being led away, he didn’t resist as hard as he could have. I pointed my gun at the mail slot, but Aleric’s eyes had disappeared and the metal flap was closed. I wished that meant he was gone, but of course I knew better.
“Don’t think I won’t shoot you through the door,” I yelled, though in all honesty, it wasn’t something I saw myself doing. Aleric was obviously one of the Nightstruck, and that automatically made him a bad guy. However, he hadn’t done anything to me, hadn’t been there on the night my dad was killed, and I didn’t feel justified shooting him in cold blood.
“That might be a bad idea,” Aleric said. “There are metal reinforcements in the door, aren’t there? You wouldn’t want to hit one of those reinforcements and have the bullet ricochet.”
Unfortunately, he was right. Firing through the door would be a dumb idea. It was just as well I hadn’t really planned on doing it.
“Let me make it easier for you,” he said.
The first of the dead bolts on our door turned with a click, and I gasped. There was the sound of keys clinking together, then the second dead bolt turned.
My mouth hung open and I started to shake. Apparently Aleric had my dad’s keys.
“Don’t worry,” Aleric said as the doorknob began to turn. “I’m not here to hurt you. I won’t even cross your threshold. I just want to talk face-to-face.”
The door swung slowly open, letting in a blast of chill air. Pull the trigger, I urged myself, but I stood frozen, almost unable to move. Bob was barking himself hoarse, but the sound came from a distance now as Luke dragged him up the stairs. I considered yelling for Luke to let him go, but didn’t. My every instinct said Aleric was out of Bob’s league.
My finger tightened on the trigger as the opening door revealed Aleric standing there, tucking a ring of keys into the front pocket of his tight black jeans. It was freezing out, but his bomber jacket was hanging open, revealing a green T-shirt that matched his eyes. On the pavement at his feet lay the fireplace poker he’d used to jab Bob. There was blood on its sharpened tip.
As he’d promised, he made no attempt to cross the threshold, and the moment Dad’s keys were tucked away, he held both his hands out to his sides in a gesture of surrender. Despite my fear, despite my anger at him for hurting Bob, I found I couldn’t shoot someone who was just standing there in front of me and going out of his way to show he was no threat. Even remembering the consequences of failing to shoot immediately on the night of my dad’s death couldn’t motivate me to pull the trigger.
“Why do you have my dad’s keys?” I asked, still pointing the gun and trying to find the will to shoot.
“Piper gave them to me,” he answered. “I thought it was time you and I talk, but I didn’t think you’d open the door for me.”
“I have nothing to talk to you about!”
He arched an eyebrow. “You sure about that? Sure you don’t have any questions you’d like to ask me? Because I’m willing to give you some answers.”
I snorted. “Like I would believe anything you said.”
To my immense relief, I heard the slam of the study door upstairs, followed by the pounding of Luke’s feet on the stairs as he ran back to me. I was armed and dangerous, and Aleric showed no sign of attacking me, but I didn’t want to face him alone.
Aleric shrugged. “You’ll never know until you try, now will you?”
I was skeptical. I was afraid this was some kind of trick. I was afraid I’d already made a huge mistake by not pulling the trigger.
But I had to admit I was also curious. No one really understood what had happened to the Nightstruck, why they had changed so dramatically. I couldn’t trust anything Aleric said, but it was possible I might learn something of interest, something that might help restore the Nightstruck to their old selves.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll play your game. But if I even think you’re about to set foot in this house, I’ll blow you away.”
“Don’t worry,” Aleric said. He smiled, and for once there was no particular malice behind it. “I physically can’t come into your house.”
He looked at something over my shoulder and laughed. I turned my head just slightly and saw that Luke had armed himself with a fireplace poker of his own. It wasn’t sharpened, like the one Aleric had stabbed Bob with, but Luke was more than big and strong enough to make it into a formidable weapon. Why Aleric found it funny was beyond me. Luke’s a really nice guy, but the look on his face right now would have scared the shit out of anyone sane.
“Let me guess,” Luke said, holding the poker like a baseball bat and looking ready to swing for the fences. “This must be that Aleric guy Piper was going on about.” He looked so angry I feared for a moment he would go into testosterone overload and attack, but he wasn’t completely out of his mind and knew better than to step in front of my gun.
“And you must be the Boy Wonder,” Aleric said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He gave a silly little bow, eyes fixed on Luke’s face to take in his reaction. I suspected that, thanks to Piper, Aleric would know all too well how to push Luke’s buttons, so I tried to draw Aleric’s attention back to myself.
“What did you mean when you said you can’t come into the house?” I asked. “The Nightstruck break into people’s houses every night.”
Aleric let his hands fall slowly back to his sides, but he kept his fingers splayed open so I could see he wasn’t reaching for anything or making any threatening gesture. “If I were one of the Nightstruck, then yes, I would be able to come into your house. But I’m not.”
“That makes no sense. If you’re not Nightstruck, what are you?”
He frowned and cocked his head for a moment. “I’m not exactly sure what to call myself. I am one of a kind, and that’s not ego talking.”
“Explain.”
“I’m basically like those things you call magical constructs.”
I looked him up and down quickly. “You don’t look like any statue I’ve ever seen in the city.”
“I said I’m basically like those things, not that I’m exactly like one. They are inanimate objects, given a semblance of life by magic. I am actually alive in and of myself. I’m just not human.” He gestured toward my gun with his chin. “That would have no effect on me because I don’t have internal organs you can damage.”
That elicited another snort from me. “Yeah, right.
I’m just going to lower my weapon and give up because you said so.”
“Go ahead and shoot me if you don’t believe me. That’ll prove I’m telling the truth. I won’t hold it against you.”
I glanced over at Luke. There was cold anger and resolve in his face, but when our eyes met I saw a hint of uncertainty. He didn’t know what to make of Aleric any more than I did.
“You seriously want me to shoot you?” I asked, more because I was stalling to give myself time to process than because I wanted an answer.
“I don’t care one way or another,” Aleric said. “Just making a helpful suggestion.”
“Shoot him in the leg,” Luke suggested. “As long as you don’t kill him, you’ll be able to live with yourself if it turns out he’s bluffing, right?”
I gave Luke a grateful nod. It was the perfect idea. I lowered my aim from Aleric’s chest to his thigh, then hesitated just a beat to make sure he wasn’t going to object. My aim was steady, my hands not shaking. I swallowed hard and squeezed the trigger.
Aleric didn’t even flinch. I thought I had to have missed, as impossible as that seemed from this range. But even if I had missed, Aleric would have at least flinched if he’d been lying about his invulnerability.
Just to be sure, I raised the gun to his chest again and pulled the trigger a second time. And again he just stood there patiently, unaffected.
Reluctantly, I lowered the gun. I hoped he was telling the truth about not being able to come inside. If my gun didn’t hurt him, then I didn’t suppose Luke’s fireplace poker would be any more effective. We had no way to defend ourselves.
“Satisfied?” Aleric asked with a quirk of his eyebrow and a jaunty smile that grated on my raw nerves.
“That’s not the word I’d use,” I answered, shivering in the cold that was pouring through my open door. “What is it you want with me, anyway?”
His eyes widened in mock surprise. “Isn’t that obvious? I want you to come out.”
“But why? Why me, I mean?”
He pursed his lips, and once again I had the feeling that he was searching for an answer, like I was somehow asking him questions he wasn’t expecting. “Because you’re special to me. Because we share a bond.”
“Bullshit! I don’t even know you, and I don’t want to.”
“The bond is there, whether you like it or not. I am blood of your blood, as it were.”
I felt momentarily dizzy and had to put a hand on the wall to steady myself. Blood of my blood.
“Becket?” Luke asked with concern. He touched my shoulder lightly. “Are you all right?”
I looked into Aleric’s eyes, at those electric green eyes that couldn’t exist in the natural world. Eyes I had first seen in the nearly invisible face of the not-baby I had tried to save. A creature I had bled onto, thanks to the hidden pin that had pricked me.
Blood has significance in folktales the world over, and though the magic that had taken over our nights was like no folktale I’d ever heard, it wasn’t hard to believe that blood was the key. That pin had been in the not-baby’s blanket for a reason. I remembered my thought that the creature’s eyes sparked with triumph when my blood hit it.
Luke’s hand tightened on my shoulder, the concern on his face deepening. “Talk to me, Becket. What’s wrong?”
How could I possibly answer that?
“She’s putting the pieces together,” Aleric answered for me. “Figuring out who and what I am.”
“B-But…” I stammered, then took a deep breath to try to pull myself together. “But that … thing … burst into a million little bits and blew away.”
Aleric nodded. “And so it did, spreading the seeds of magic all through the city. But your blood remained, rich with the magic it had absorbed, and I am what it produced. I might almost claim you as my mother.”
“You’re lying,” I said, without conviction.
“You know I’m not. You brought me into this world.”
Luke gave my shoulder a little shake. “Hey, don’t let this guy get to you. He … it is just trying to get into your head.”
“Like calls to like,” Aleric said. “Blood calls to blood. Come with me, and I can take all your pain away. You’ll be free of mourning and fear and loss. Anything you want can be yours. All you have to do is take it.”
My heart thumped loud and hard against my breastbone.
Luke stepped in front of me, shielding me from Aleric’s view and brandishing the fireplace poker. “You leave her alone,” he snarled. “She’s not coming with you, so get the hell out of here.”
Aleric laughed. “You couldn’t stop me from taking Piper. Hell, you didn’t even try. What makes you think you have any say in this?”
I couldn’t see Luke’s face, because he had his back to me, but I could see the red flush that crept up the back of his neck. It hadn’t occurred to me that he felt guilty about what had happened to Piper, that he might consider it was somehow his fault he wasn’t with her on the night she succumbed.
Aleric clearly had a knack for finding people’s weak spots. I moved forward to stand by Luke’s side, hoping to present a united front.
“Don’t let this guy get to you,” I said quietly, and Luke smiled ever so slightly to hear his own words echoed back at him.
“It’s so precious how the two of you defend each other,” Aleric said. He fixed me with a piercing stare. “I think you’ll find that changes when it sinks in that you’re directly responsible for opening the door between our worlds. Every death and every loss can be laid squarely at your feet. The only way to escape what you’ve done is to come with me. One day, I’ll be king of this world, and you’ll be my queen.”
“You turned my best friend into a monster, and she killed my father right in front of me. You’re delusional if you think I’m coming anywhere near you.”
Aleric shrugged. “Piper would have turned, with or without me. The night magic finds fertile ground in the weak and the selfish, and her nature left her vulnerable. Only the night can take that pain away from you, can make you whole again. Come with me. There is nothing for you here but misery. I can—”
Nothing but misery? Of course there was nothing but misery! Because Aleric had made it that way.
My hand rose with no conscious order from my brain, and I squeezed the trigger, emptying the gun into Aleric’s chest despite knowing it would have no effect. He just stood there with a condescending smile and took it.
When the gun clicked on empty, Luke strode past me and slammed the door in Aleric’s face.
“You’re through listening to him,” he said, turning all the locks.
I sat down on the floor with a thump, my legs too jellylike to hold me. I should never have taken Aleric’s bait in the first place, should have done exactly what Luke just did and slammed the door. Aleric might be able to open it again, but it would have been hard to have a conversation while we fought over the door.
Luke and I both waited in silence for Aleric to start unlocking the door again. But with Luke standing there at the ready, there was no way Aleric could get all the locks open at the same time.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Aleric called. “The Night Makers are coming, with or without your help. Fight me if you must, but in the end you’ll find that I’m right.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Luke sat me on the couch and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. As if he wasn’t being awesome enough already, he also made me a cup of cocoa and brought Bob back downstairs to cuddle up next to me. Bob’s wound had stopped bleeding, and from what I could see through his fur, it was relatively shallow. I’d still take him to the vet and have it looked at in the morning, but at least it didn’t seem to be bothering him much.
I held my cocoa in my right hand, taking cautious sips, while with my other hand I scratched behind Bob’s ears and earned his undying love. Luke sat on Bob’s other side and patted his flank.
“Guess we’ll have to find some way to block the mail slot
,” he commented. “I’m sure that asshole and his friends could have done a lot worse.”
I nodded but couldn’t find my voice. I kept hearing Aleric saying Blood of your blood over and over in my mind. Whatever that not-baby was, my blood had somehow triggered its dispersal, had triggered the evil magic that had taken hold of our city. Thousands had died already, and no one had any clue how to stop what was happening.
And it was all because of me.
Luke reached over Bob and put his hand on my shoulder. “Stop that,” he said gently.
“Stop what?”
He gave me a knowing look. “Just because Aleric said it, that doesn’t mean it’s true.” If he had any doubts, he did a great job of keeping them hidden.
“He told the truth about the bullets not being able to hurt him.”
Luke looked distinctly unimpressed. “So he told the truth about something you could verify yourself. That doesn’t mean he told the truth about anything else.”
“Remember how I told you that baby thing had weirdly green eyes? I didn’t make the connection at first, but those eyes looked exactly like Aleric’s, just on a smaller scale.”
“All of the Nightstruck have the weird green eyes,” he reminded me. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
I put my cocoa down and crossed my arms over my chest, clutching the blanket tighter. The heater was doing its best to counteract the effects of having the door wide open for so long, but it would take a while for the living room to get up to a comfortable temperature again. Though I suspected much of my own chill was coming from the inside.
“Just because we don’t want to believe what he said, it doesn’t make it not true.” My voice was little more than a whisper. I was afraid I’d start crying if I spoke any louder.
Luke rose to his feet and snapped his fingers at Bob. “Move over, buddy,” he said.
Bob raised his head just slightly, and his look said, Really? You think that’s going to work?
But Luke was no idiot, and he’d come prepared. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a Milk-Bone. Suddenly, Bob was a lot more interested in what Luke had to say. His ears perked, his tail wagging.