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I watched as a blurred figure on foot raced a yellow sports car. The vehicle swerved, pushing her into the sidewalk where she barrelled over a dozen men before rolling to her feet. She swung from a lampost and pulled three blades from a strap on her thigh, tossing them at the car. One broke the back windshield, the other pierced a tire. The driver lost control, and by the time the figure had caught up again, the car had flipped over and rolled like a wooden block, until it burst into flames.
I saw money changing hands, and a few of the spectators raised a celebratory chorus, while others scowled back away into the alleys. At the end of the street, the racer opened the burning vehicle and dragged the driver out, her body silhouetted in the flames. His body was broken, but from the moans I could tell he was still alive.
The woman’s face lit up, her eyes bright. I could tell she was a vampire, from how fast she’d been moving—racing a car on foot—but I still stiffened when she latched herself at the man’s neck and chewed through him until his arm was nearly severed. Then she looked up, straight at me.
“We should go,” I said, grabbing Luke’s elbow.
“Want a bite?” a coy voice whispered in my ear. She moved like a shadow, and even as I spun around, she was behind me again. Luke must have tried to strike her, and ended up in a pile of garbage cans.
“Ah, fresh meat,” she sniffed my neck, her lips red. “You must be Augustine’s imports. It’s been a while since I tasted something new.”
I gasped when she stepped into the light. Her fangs protruded like daggers, her jaw was distended and ferocious, with blood dripping down her chin and neck. In one hand she was dragging a severed arm, as casually as a little girl’s teddy bear.
“Augustine told us the rules,” I said, my voice shaking. “Nothing can be taken by force.”
“Of course not,” she winked. “Care for a friendly wager? I’m not hungry, but the weather is cold, so your corpses will probably keep for a day or two.”
Despite the tanktop and floral tattoos up her bare arms, there was something youngish about her, maybe just her pale, smooth face. Like a young girl trying to dress edgy, or maybe like an older woman trying to appear young.
“Um, no thanks,” I said.
“Just as well,” she stretched, walking past us. “It’s almost my bedtime anyway.”
She vanished, and Luke walked me home. It was hard to get lost with basically one long road, but I hadn’t realized how far we’d wandered. Luke said goodnight after the elevator opened on our floor, and when I finally got back to my room, it was nearly sunrise. Trevor was passed out on the bed, so I curled up next to him. When I woke again, it was dark, and Trevor was gone.
3
The building was empty as I headed downstairs, the silent, dark corridors stretching out in each floor as I descended. The street outside was already busy, churning like a sea of strangers. There was a rhythm to it, a current, so I walked along with the crowd, looking for familiar faces.
This time I paid closer attention to my surroundings, exploring the darker outskirts of the settlement. The light was blue, with wooden scaffolding built around older sections of concrete and metal, sprayed over with neon graffiti tags. Offers and messages, symbols whose meaning I could not fathom. At one end of the street was a small camp with a few hundred plastic and canvas tents. At the other end, a junkpile of discarded crap and rotting cars. In the center, the neon lights and music pumped like an electric heart, promising a thousand different forms of diversion.
But I didn’t feel like having fun, and I didn’t even want to be here. How could I be trapped by something as trivial as distance? If I stole a car, would they come after me? Could I even attempt to challenge Nigel, when he already had Damien in his possession? Without him, I had no legitimate claim to the throne. I also had no tolerable motivations.
The headache and nausea from the thirst had faded, but now I felt a deep restlessness, like ants on my skin. My joints seemed to grind together like sandpaper. I needed todosomething.
I wanted to find Augustine again, even though I wasn’t sure exactly what to tell him. I felt like he was playing a game with me, and expecting me to figure out the rules myself. But I couldn’t spend another night sitting around. The moon was out, but Augustine hadn’t mentioned where he lived or how to get in touch with him. The more I walked, the more upset I was at him for making me waste time seeking him out.
I cut through three different casinos, half a dozen hotels and a handful of dive bars and dance clubs before finding an old theatre with balcony seating, long purple drapes and sleek wooden banisters. A movie screen was behind the stage, but tonight there was just a young girl with braids and a guitar, singing a soft folk song.
I paused to listen to the music, which stirred something in me. Then as I scanned the half-filled seats again, I saw Augustine. His eyes snapped to mine a moment later, but he waited until the end of the song to get up and join me.
“Is this an audition?” I asked.
“Every day is an audition, for everyone. Shall we walk?”
I followed him towards the exit, letting him choose the path, though he didn’t seem to have a destination in mind. It was unnerving how low-key and unceremonious things were here. Augustine was dressed even more casually tonight, in jeans and sneakers, with a black T-shirt and wooden beads around his neck and wrists. His dark hair was rakishly styled in disarray.
In Crollust, I’d known exactly what he was, from his glowing eyes, fine dress and pompous attitude, but here he was quiet, almost politely reserved. I still felt the tension in the air between us, knowing how powerful and dangerous he was, but with all the people and distractions, nobody really paid us any attention. In any other compound, an elite visitor would cause a stir, and be surrounded by fawning subjects. But Augustine seemed to prefer being ignored. Even so, the crowd appeared to shy away from his presence, almost like an involuntary reaction, giving us a bubble of space.
“I met another elite last night,” I said finally, breaking the silence.
“Let me guess, red hair and sociopathic tendencies?” he said. “That’s Tate.”
“How did you know?” I asked.
“She makes herself easy to find.”
There was something in his expression that made me want to probe further.
