I nod, giving him a small salute before taking off to go find my sister. After some searching I locate her at Cinder’s side, fairy wings fully furled and a dagger in her hand.
“Come on!” I cry, grabbing her by the arm. “I know a way out.”
She turns to me, looking at me as if I asked her to skin a baby puppy for its fur coat and then eat the remains for breakfast. “Are you kidding? I told you before, I’m not leaving without Magnus.”
“He’s the one who asked me to get you out of here!”
Sunny frowns. “Yeah, well, too bad. I’m not going anywhere. And you know you’d do the same thing if you were me.”
She’s got me there. But then again, I’m the foolish, rash, crazy twin. She’s supposed to be the one with more common sense. “Sunny, don’t be an idiot!” I scold her. “You know Magnus won’t be able to fight if he thinks you’re in danger. Which means you being here endangers the entire coven.”
A loud roar cuts through Sunny’s protest. I look over, my jaw dropping as I see a horde of what appear to be werewolves stampeding toward us with lightning speed. Pyrus must have hired these mercenaries to do his dirty work once he realized he couldn’t rely on Slayer Inc. The wolves tear through the poor Chupacabra, chomping down on them with jaws of steel then tossing their broken bodies away as they advance on the trembling vampire front lines.
“Come on!” I cry, grabbing Sunny’s arm again. “For Magnus’s sake if not mine!”
“Fine!” Sunny breaks her stance and turns to follow me. Together we rush through the camp until we find the purple tent. Diving in and digging through the ratty blankets and pillows, I discover the trap door, embedded in the ground. Ripping it open, I motion for Sunny to go through, praying her claustrophobia won’t pick now to rear its ugly head. Luckily, Sunny doesn’t object, dropping down into the hole without question. I follow, pulling the trap door shut behind me.
We find ourselves in a damp, narrow crawl space slick with some kind of lime-green moldy moisture. I shove Sunny through, then suck in a breath and follow, praying the tunnel won’t collapse on top of us, burying us under a thousand tons of dirt and rock. Especially since, as a vampire, I wouldn’t actually die from this kind of horrific experience. I’d just be spending eternity trying to claw my way out. After the first hundred years, I’m guessing I’d go at least a little bit insane.
I push at Sunny’s butt in front of me. “Hurry!” I hiss. She doesn’t reply but picks up the pace.
After what seems an eternity, we finally emerge from the crawl space into a wide subway tunnel that is illuminated by large ceiling grates. Guess it must be mid afternoon by now. Above us I can see the shadows of cars—commuters going about their days without a care in the world. With no idea of the immortal battle being fought below.
Sunny tosses me a worried look, then glances back to the crawl space. She doesn’t have to speak for me to know what she’s thinking.
“He’ll be okay,” I try to assure her, though in my heart I’m not so sure. After all, there were so many of them. And those refugees were not exactly healthy vampire soldiers trained in combat. Do Jareth and Magnus and the rest even have a chance? And if they are overpowered, will they be killed outright? Or dragged home for Pyrus to do the dirty deed himself?
“I’m not thinking about Magnus,” Sunny corrects, glancing at the crawl space again. “I mean, of course I am. But… did you hear something?”
I freeze in my tracks, training my vampire-enhanced ears to listen for noises coming from the tunnel. Maybe it’s just the corridor collapsing behind us. Or an echo from the battlefield. Or one of the Chupacabra…
…I hope.
“Let’s keep moving,” I say, urging my sister to pick up the pace. But the sound only grows louder as we rush down the tracks. And as we hit a collapsed section of tunnel ahead, blocking our path, a familiar female voice cuts through the darkness.
“Rayne and Sunshine McDonald! Show yourselves!”
Oh God. We slowly turn around, coming face to face with pretty much my worst nightmare.
“Bertha,” I whisper.
The slayer is back in her full Resident Evil attire, her long brown hair pulled back from her sneering face and a razor-sharp stake in her hand. She smiles slowly, a greedy look in her beady eyes.
“Um, what are you doing here?” I ask. As if I hadn’t already pretty much figured it out. One soppy phone call from her asshole ex-boyfriend and she was back on the payroll. Did all my wise advice mean nothing to her?
“You stupid, stupid girl,” she spits, taking a slow step toward us. “Falling for my ridiculous trap. You know, I totally laughed at Pyrus when he first suggested it. I told him there was no way on earth you’d believe that this beautiful body of mine was carved from some eating disorder. That I, Bertha the Vampire Slayer, was nothing more than a weak, lovelorn teen, craving food to make up for her ongoing self-esteem issues like some bad teen novel.”
She’s lying. I know she is. There’s no way she could have been faking her panic when I discovered her ugly secret in the hotel bathroom. Unfortunately I’m not sure this knowledge is going to do me any good now.
But I have to try. “Bertha, you have a problem,” I say, taking a cautious step forward. “You need help. Why don’t you come with us? We can help you get away from Pyrus. And then, once you’re safe, we can deal with your food issues.”
“I have no food issues,” she growls, her eyes narrowing into furious slits. “It’s all diet and exercise, bitch.” She raises her stake.
“Bertha…” I want to tell her overcoming denial is the first step, but I’m worried it will only make her angrier. “Look, I know what you’re going through. I know it’s hard. But—”
“Please. You don’t know anything,” Bertha cuts me off, her voice thick with scorn. “You’re just a total idiot who fell for my trap. All I had to do was hint that Pyrus knew about Sunny’s whereabouts and you were on the next plane—in some moronic attempt to save her. Then we simply had to follow our noses—or, more technically, the bug our loyal Consortium member Marcia placed on Jareth’s dry-cleaning. And BINGO—the two of you led us straight to our prize.” She smirks. “Way to go, slayer. You’ve done your job and then some! Sunny, Magnus, and some other vampires in the refugee camp whom we’ve been after for centuries—what a bounty! Feel free to head back home. I can take it from here.”
“Come on,” I try, switching tactics. “You know you don’t want to do this. Sunny and Magnus have been wrongfully accused. They’re innocent. Sunny only did what she had to, to save my life.”
“Keep on defending her,” Bertha replies smugly. “It’ll be fun to report back to Slayer Inc. about how you not only denied your commission but also purposely set out to obstruct justice.”
I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from informing her that actually I’m following Slayer Inc.’s directives to the letter. Don’t want her to go back to Pyrus and tell him he’s been played like a fool this whole time—and that the organization would much rather dust HIM than my sister’s boyfriend. That would ruin everything.
“What commission?” Sunny demands. Uh-oh.
Bertha turns to her smugly. “Oh, didn’t you know? Your sister was assigned to bring you back to justice. And if she doesn’t follow through, her employment—and also her pathetic little life—will be terminated, permanently.”
I cringe as Sunny’s eyes widen in horror. Great. For the millionth time, I wish the two of us had telepathic powers—so I could let her know the real deal without spilling the beans to Bertha.
“Rayne!” Sunny cries, grabbing my arm. “Let her arrest me. It’s not worth you getting nano-ed over.”
I try to shake her off. “Sorry, sis, but that’s not going to happen. I refuse to stand here and let this Barbie-doll bitch take you away for a crime you didn’t commit ’cause she’s trying to please her sicko, abusive boyfriend.”
“Well, I refuse to let you die for simply defending me.”
Argh
, she is so impossible. “Well I refuse to—”
Bertha makes an exaggerated yawn. “Can you two let me know when you’re done bickering so I can get on with arresting Sunny already? I don’t want to miss American Idol.”
“I hope you set your TiVo,” I tell her. “Because while there is breath in my body, you will never take my sister away.”
“I don’t own a TiVo. So I suggest you prepare yourself for a fight!”
Now when most people use the word prepare, that means they’re planning to give you time to get ready for the upcoming event in question. Not Bertha. The moment the words leave her mouth, she’s diving at me, screaming like some freaking banshee from Hell. It’s all I can do to leap to the side, a split second before she nearly stakes me through the heart. As she whirls around, I shove her as hard as I can, now wishing I’d taken Cinder up on the human blood—to shore up my admittedly pathetic vampire strength.
Bertha stumbles for a second then regains her balance, waving her stake in my direction, ready to spar.
“Sunny, run!” I yell at my sister as I dance at my enemy, attempting to get a punch in while avoiding her stake. It really sucks that she can end my life in a second with her weapon and I can only give her glorified splinters with my own. Of course I can do some serious damage with my teeth, if only I can get close enough.
Time to make my move. A roundhouse kick takes out her stake; it goes skittering across the room. Then I follow up with a one-two punch to the stomach, attempting to knock her back. She blocks my second punch, then makes a right jab at my head, her fist slamming into my temple. The world spins, and I stumble backward, trying to see through the blood that rains down my face—cut by one of her razor-sharp rings. Bertha takes advantage of my momentary blindness and slams a fist into my stomach, causing me to double over in pain.
She grabs me by the shoulders, slamming me against the rock wall over and over again until I think my back’s about to break. It takes all my might to smash my boot down on her foot, then kick her to the stomach. As she falls backward, I throw myself on top of her, wiping the blood from my eyes and then finding her throat with my two hands and squeezing with all my might.
Her eyes bulge from her head as I tighten my grip. From behind me I can hear Sunny screaming—begging me not to kill her—to think of the consequences. But the rage inside of me is too great, and the sudden bloodlust washes over me in a tidal wave. All the kinder, gentler vampire training flees as my anger takes control, pure fury spilling over at this girl who thinks she can hurt my family and get away with it. My fangs descend from my gums and I sink them into her now-bloated jugular, ready to steal away her life as she tried to steal my sister’s and my own.
“Rayne! Stop it!” Sunny’s cries are dim and muted under the bloodlust rushing through my ears. “Don’t kill her! Don’t sink to her level! Remember what you learned in rehab. Remember what happened to Corbin!”
It takes all my strength and willpower, but somehow I manage to pull away, ripping my fangs from her flesh and staring down at her blotchy face, full of broken blood vessels. Is she dead? Did I kill her? Oh God. I’m supposed to be the good guy here. And the good guys arrest the bad guys and bring them to justice. They don’t eat them.
“Bertha?” I venture after a hard swallow. “Um, are you okay?”
Suddenly her eyes shoot open and she flips me around. With one movement, the tables are turned and I’m the one on my back. Pinning me between her strong thighs, she reaches for her stake, managing to grasp it in her fingers.
“Now we see who’s the real vampire slayer,” she snarls, her face beet red and her mouth dripping blood. She pulls back, ready to stake me through the heart. I squirm, desperately trying to get away. But she’s too strong. She’s got me down. This is the end. My final swan song.
“Please, Bertha!” I cry. “Please don’t—”
I squeeze my eyes shut, not wanting to watch myself poof into dust. What will it feel like to die? Where do I go afterward? I sold my soul a long time ago to become a vampire. Does that mean this is it? The end of me? Or the beginning of a life of eternal suffering?
Suddenly Bertha screams. My eyes fly open. Sunny has her by the hair, dragging her off of me. “No one stakes my sister, you bitch!” she cries in a voice I’ve never heard her use before. She smacks the stake out of Bertha’s hands.
I try to scramble to my feet, to help my sister. But I’m woozy and stunned and stumble backward instead. Bertha yanks free from Sunny’s grasp—leaving my sister with nothing more than a handful of hair extensions. (I should have known that gorgeous head of hair was nothing more than a weave!) Then, as I watch in horror, she pulls something else from her pocket.
A knife made of iron.
No! I dive at Bertha, using everything left inside of me to get to her before she can touch my fairy sister and poison her with her blade. As a vampire/fairy combo, I have some resistance to iron—it won’t kill me, but it’ll make me pretty damn sick. But Sunny—one touch and…
I leap onto Bertha, trying to wrestle the knife away. I manage to knock it from her grasp and yank her backward. This time there will be no mercy. She’s gone too far. I rip out her throat with my teeth and let the blood spill onto the floor without any interest in drinking. She’s too repulsive for that.
A moan interrupts me and I drop Bertha to the ground and run to my sister. Oh God! My eyes widen as I realize that my efforts were too late. Sunny falls to the ground, blood seeping from a small cut in her arm. But it’s enough. The poison is already swimming through her veins.
“Rayne!” she cries, her eyes going glassy and her legs and arms flopping uselessly.
“No!” This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening! I fall to the floor, grabbing her arm, trying to suck out the poison best I can. I suck and I suck until I puke, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good. Her body convulses and her eyes roll to the back of her head.
“I’m cold, Rayne,” she sobs as I pull her into my arms, rocking her close as bloody tears stream down my cheeks. “So cold.”
“It’s going to be okay,” I try. But I know in my heart it won’t be. The poison will take her, just as it stole our dad away.
And it’s all my fault.
“Rayne…” she tries to speak, but I can see it’s an effort to do so. “Rayne…”
“Shhh…” I try to shush her. “Be still.”
“You’re the best sister a girl could ever have. I love you.” Sunny whispers before closing her eyes. I watch in horror as her breath dies in her throat and her body goes limp.
“No!” I cry, trying to shake her awake. “Sunny! Stay with me!” But even as I scream and pound at her, I know it will do no good.
My sister. My beautiful, innocent, sweet twin sister is dead. Forever. And there’s nothing I can do to bring her back.
13
I can’t tell you how long I sat there in the cold, dank, dark abandoned subway tunnel underneath the skin of New York City, my sister’s lifeless body resting silently in my lap. I can tell you that I didn’t cry much at first. Not that I didn’t want to, but for some reason the sobs refused to break free from my frozen body. Instead, I mostly stared into space, into the darkness, numb with overwhelming grief and filled with wild wonderings of when the hell I was going to wake up and realize this was all some terrible nightmare. That my sister wasn’t actually dead.
Because she couldn’t be dead. That’s not how this story was supposed to go. I was supposed to rescue her and we were supposed to live happily ever after. I mean, who would ever want to read a story or see a film where the heroine dies a bloody, nasty death for a crime she didn’t commit? Hollywood doesn’t work like that.
Unfortunately, real life, I realize with a sickening thought, often does.
Eventually I manage to haul myself to my feet, dimly aware that, though at the moment, nothing else seems to matter, in truth something does. Jareth and Magnus—did they survive the attack? Are they worried sick—wondering where we are?
I need to get back to them. I need to tell them what happened. If they’re even there to tell. My stomach heaves and I lean over to empty the rat blood I drank a mere hour ago, mixed with Bertha’s vile bodily fluids. It’s insane how one hour can change the rest of your life.
I want to take Sunny. I don’t want to leave her lifeless body sprawled out on the tracks, a gourmet meal for some lucky subway rats. But try as I might, I can’t manage to carry her dead weight in my arms. Especially not through the tiny crawl space we came from. You know that old sixties song “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother”? Well, either that dude had some seriously anorexic brother—or he spent way more hours than me in his local gym. Finally I give up, deciding to drag her to the collapsed section of the tunnel and cover her body as much as I can with stones and debris. The best burial I can do under the circumstances.
“Dear God,” I murmur when I’m finished, kneeling down in front of the pile. I’m not a very religious person by any means, and let’s face it, God probably isn’t all that into vampires either. But for Sunny’s sake I try. “Please take care of my sister,” I whisper, the tears now falling unchecked from my eyes. I place her birthday present—still unwrapped—into her hands. “She didn’t deserve this.”
I find I can’t say any more. The lump in my throat is too big. I rise to my feet and slowly head back down the tunnel from where we came. As I crawl through, no longer really caring whether the ceiling collapses on me or not, all I can think, all I can beg for in my muddled, grief-stricken brain, is that Jareth is there, waiting for me on the other end. Because otherwise I seriously don’t know how I’m going to deal.
Soon, I arrive at the trap door, pushing it open and standing up into the purple tent, which, I quickly realize, has been torn to shreds. In fact, the entire camp is pretty much in shambles. The aftereffects of what appears to be a massacre. Vampires scurry past me, blood bags in their arms, rushing to and fro to attend to the wounded who lie scattered everywhere, their mournful cries sound tracking the air.