“It’s going to be okay, Edie,” she said, taking a step toward me. “I promise you it’s going to be okay.”
“No. It’s not. This is the least okay thing in the history of forever.” My resolve flagged, and the weapon spun in my hand, blade aimed straight at my stomach.
I’d been stabbed once by vampires before. Perhaps it was fitting that I stab myself as they had now.
“Don’t do that,” Anna warned.
“I don’t want to—I don’t want any of this!”
“I know.” She took another step toward me. What if she took the knife away? Would I use something else, bound to fulfill Raven’s last terrible command? I had visions of me going at my radial pulses with my own teeth, or trying to bare-handedly twist off Anna’s head.
“Make it stop. Please. Think of something. Fast,” I begged, knife inching closer toward my belly.
I can’t do this to you, baby.
“Don’t,” Anna said, reaching out for me. She was so close now, only three steps away. As my attention went to her, so did the knife. Her arms were still open, so close she could hug me.
“Come here, Edie,” she said, and leaned in—and I did as I was told.
Three things happened at almost the same time:
Anna and I cleared the line of sight between Dren and Raven. Dren raised his scythe and threw it at him.
Wolf spotted the spinning weapon heading for his Master and let go of Gemellus to leap up for it like an eager dog, meeting it halfway, and the scythe spun across his neck like a guillotine blade. Wolf died instantly, midair, spilling ash on the floor like a burst of sudden rain, followed by the sound of two dull silver pieces falling.
And I found myself covered in my best friend’s blood.
“Oh, God, no,” I whispered as we sank together, me holding her, the knife in my right hand piercing through her back, up into her heart. I looked up into her dying eyes—there was no surprise there, just a magnificent sorrow. Raven’s compulsion was gone now, I was in full control again, but it was too late. Blood poured out, as if without end, as her body desperately made more to replace what her silver-pierced heart couldn’t pump, as if she were a fountain and we were both drowning. Then her head sagged back and she went limp in my arms.
“I’m so sorry, Anna, oh my God—”
She didn’t say anything. And she’d lied to me. It wasn’t okay.
I dropped the knife, kneeling in a pool of her blood, put my hands to my face, and wept.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“I invoke!” Raven shouted the second Gemellus was free.
“Accepted,” I heard Gemellus say, but I wasn’t looking. All I could see was Anna’s face, lying in an ever-growing pool of blood.
The sounds of their fight began behind me, as footsteps neared. I looked up and saw Dren.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not!” I screamed up at him. He sank down on his heels beside me, the retrieved scythe across his knees. How was I going to explain this to my child? We got free because your mother killed her friend?
“She’ll only be dead for three days. Assuming all the mythology’s right about living vampires and that sort of thing. Nobody mentioned silver, but we won’t tell anyone else about that. It’ll be our secret, okay?” He reached behind Anna, pulled the knife free, and slid it across the room. I was conscious of Gemellus and Raven behind us, whirling in the dust and bloodstains, but I was too blinded by tears and sorrow to tell who was ahead.
I nodded, willing to clutch desperately to any belief that would undo what I’d just done.
“She had to die, Edie. This is her change. If you think about it, you were the only one she could trust to do it,” he went on.
“Not even you?”
“Oh, no. Especially not me. I’m inherently untrustworthy.” He stood up again. “Jorgen,” he said, and whistled, and the Hound trotted over. “Go tell the others we’re on our way.” Jorgen disappeared down the stairs. “You’re strong enough to carry her, aren’t you?” Dren asked. “There might be a few left. I’d rather be free to fight.”
I nodded again. She hadn’t turned into dust, and we weren’t leaving her behind. Those things were good, right?
Oh, please, baby, please.
I swiped a bloodstained piece of hair away from my face, making an even bigger mess of things. “What about them?” I asked, leaning forward to pick Anna up.
“Not our problem. We need to be on the road by dawn.”
I looked back. Gemellus was still my concern. As much as I wanted to leave him, I didn’t dare set him free. And he had gotten me this far.
“Raven will either die here or be punished in other ways. There’s blood in the water now, and Los Angeles isn’t a very deep pool. Besides, if we’re not here, then Gemellus can start giving Raven commands—if he is who he claims to be.”
No time to ask Dren what he meant by that now, but it gave me an idea—along with Anna’s limp body pressing the contents of my pockets against my thighs. I’d been through so much in the past week. I didn’t go through all this not to be free.
I carefully put Anna back down on the floor and turned to the scene behind us. “I command you to uninvoke him,” I demanded, not knowing if it would work.
Gemellus seemed to momentarily have the upper hand. He tried to finish Raven off, and Raven only barely managed to push him back in time.
“You can’t kill him. I change my mind, I forbid it. So uninvoke him now.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Dren began.
“It does now.”
Gemellus shoved Raven back. “I forsake your rights and you are mine again to command.”
“But I invoke!” Raven shouted, trapped, wildly looking for someone to help him.
“Tell him to be still. Tell him he can’t move, or say a thing.”
Gemellus looked at me, breathing heavy. “Revenge on him should be mine.”
“I know, and it will be. But I need something from him first. Tell him to stick his arm out.”
Gemellus reached out and punched Raven before commanding him. “Stick out your arm.”
“And clench your fist,” I said.
“You heard her,” Gemellus threatened.
Dren looked torn between guarding Anna’s body and coming over to see what we were up to. “Edie, what the hell are you doing? Dawn comes—”
“Dawn’s always coming. She’s quite the whore,” Gemellus said with a grin. “Do as you’re told.” Raven, as trapped as I had been, obeyed.
Gemellus stepped away, and there was that pull between Raven and me again. If he’d ordered me, I would have had to listen. I could read what he wanted me to do in his eyes, how he begged. But my hands were covered in blood, and that made it easy to look away.
I tore needles out of packages and thought about missing, and a hundred more painful places to poke him than his arm sprang to my mind, but I concentrated on the task at hand. Blood flowed up into the butterfly needle’s hub, and I shoved a test tube onto the tubing’s free end. Raven’s blood twirled down the tubing like it was a straw, then filled the vacuum of the test tube.
I’d grabbed six test tubes earlier, and now I filled them all. Blood was power—hopefully if I ever needed it, these would be enough.
Gemellus chuckled darkly as he returned, realizing what was going on. “I thought you wanted to go back to human.”
“I do. But I also never want to have to rely on anyone else,” I said, still not meeting Raven’s eyes.
“If you drink that without him, you’ll be a rogue without a House.”
“That’s fine.”
“Edie—” Dren said, encouraging us to hurry up. I disengaged the needle, letting the last drops flow into the final test tube. Not even a pint. I wasn’t sure what good they’d do me, but I’d rather have them from a vampire who was going to be dead soon than one who was still alive. I looked over at Gemellus. He’d retrieved the silver-b
laded knife.
“I assume you’re done with this?” he asked, turning it in his hand to offer the hilt back to me. His tone and his gesture were sarcastic.
“Very done.” I slid the last slightly warm tube into my pocket. “Kill him fast. We’ll be waiting outside.” I ran for Anna and picked her up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Dren made a growling sound as I threaded the stairs holding Anna behind him. “No one likes rogues.”
“Do you have a Master?” He didn’t seem like the type who did. And he snorted, but he didn’t answer me.
Purgatory was covered in dust, which, oddly, matched the décor. We were halfway down the stairs to Hell when it felt like I’d just been kicked in the chest by a donkey. “Whoa—” I stumbled down a stair, and Dren whirled to catch me. The squeezing feeling in my chest didn’t stop.
“That’s what it feels like when your Master dies.”
I didn’t ask him how he knew. I put my back against the wall and breathed—my heart was beating wildly, and I didn’t know if it was in freedom or in fear.
“Can you continue?” he asked.
I waited another moment, to see if another attack would hit me. When it didn’t I nodded. “Yeah. Just stay near.”