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“Show yourself,” I croaked, barely able to get the command out around the fist forming in my own throat. “Show yourself, you fucking coward. ”
I expected the shooter to be Hank. Or any one of my mother’s other lackeys. What I didn’t expect was Mercy McQueen herself to step out from behind the car. Any words I might have had for someone else vanished the moment I saw her.
Mercy was still lovely now that she was forty, though I’d never seen anything resembling happiness on my mother’s face. Probably because every time I saw her she was looking at me, and no one alive hated me as much as she did.
“It was supposed to be you,” she seethed, then spit on the concrete. “I waited, I saw the wolf leave. It was supposed to be you coming out. ”
“S-s—” Brigit started to apologize again but stopped to cough up more blood.
I hugged her close to me, trying my best to keep her protected should my mother decide to finish the vampire off. I gave Brigit’s shoulder a gentle squeeze and whispered another shushing noise. In response she wrapped her arms limply around my middle.
I could stand and get my gun. There was a chance I might even make it before Mercy showed where she was hiding hers and took a shot. But I couldn’t do it. Brigit held me, and any resolve I had to get up and kill my mother faded into a secondary concern. A nuclear explosion wouldn’t make me come to my feet right then.
Sirens howled nearby.
Mercy had been stupid enough to fire in a residential neighborhood without a silencer. It might have been Hell’s Kitchen, but I also lived a few blocks from a school where a student had been brutally murdered. People took violence seriously in my area.
She looked hesitant, like she was debating whether or not she should try to take the shot or get out while she still had a chance.
“She looks just like you,” Mercy said, stepping away from the sidewalk. “It was supposed to be you. ”
I held Brigit close, my fingers tangled in the blood-soaked strands of her blonde hair. I watched my mother carefully until she made up her mind. Mercy lifted the weapon and pulled the trigger. I winced when it clicked, but soon realized the sound I heard was the familiar one of a bullet jamming in the slide. Mercy mustn’t have been accustomed to using silver bullets, because she swore and pulled the slide back to eject the round. If her gun wasn’t designed for use with silver ammunition, and most weren’t, the only way she’d fire a shot now was if she reloaded with standard rounds.
She didn’t have time and she knew it. Giving me one last look, she snarled and bolted into the night. I waited until the sound of her heels was gone before I tried moving again.
“It was supposed to be me,” I whispered.
Tears burned my eyes, streaming down my cheeks in a hot, unstoppable torrent.
One of the things I’d most longed for when I’d dealt with being half-vampire was the desire to cry without seeing blood. My pink-hued tears had been the bane of my existence, and I’d wished sometimes I could cry like a normal person.
Now I would trade it all to give the clean tears back.
I’d do anything to have the strength to easily carry a hundred-and-thirty-pound girl a few blocks. Instead, I was left with only the upper-body strength I’d cultivated and none of the supernatural ability. I dragged Brigit’s body, limp and unresponsive, with agonizing slowness towards Calliope’s Starbucks. I had it in my head if I could get her to the gateway on time, I could undo the damage of a silver bullet straight through the heart.
Bargaining.
I shook my head, chasing away the thought. I wasn’t going through the stages of grief.
Denial.
The dead weight of her body made me stumble and pause to get my balance against a laundromat wall. I tugged her closer. Her arm was wrapped around my neck, and her head lolled forward like a rag doll whose stuffing had come out. Her feet were dragging limply with every step I took, not even giving the impression she was trying to help move herself along.
Of course she’s not helping, the mean voice in the back of my head s
aid. She’s dead.
“No,” I said out loud, angrily and with so much force I wondered if I could make it true just by insisting on it. “Come on, Bri, hang on. ” I choked on the last words, my bottom lip quivering hard as I tried to keep my composure.
The police couldn’t be far. They’d been close enough to scare off Mercy. But human support couldn’t do anything for Brigit. If there was a hope in hell of her pulling through, I needed to get her to Calliope.
The bright green Starbucks sign bathed the sidewalk ahead in a beautiful glow. I cried harder, both from relief and the desperate ache building in my shoulders. A block had never seemed so far. I hobbled forward, dragging Brigit along with me. Each square of the sidewalk felt like a mile unto itself.
When we finally stood outside the door, I thought I might collapse. My knees were shaking, and each breath burned my lungs. I was crying so hard I couldn’t see anything clearly through the veil of tears clouding my vision. I balanced Brigit against me and pushed the door open. Her weight shifted, and we both teetered forward.
It didn’t matter. We’d made it. Falling through the gateway would work just as well as walking through it on two feet, and Brigit was a vampire so there should be no issues with her passing through.
Except we didn’t.
