Envious Of Fire (Kissing With Teeth #2)

30. No Such Thing as Virtue.

—?—

Kyle looks up. People upstairs are talking, moving around. He rises from the floor, listens more closely. He hurries up the creaky steps to the door, stops. After a glance back at the empty basement, he decides if Drake left, it must be dark enough for him to leave, too.

He cracks open the door.

The church is lit only by candles—and they are everywhere in sight. On the pews. Windowsills. Scattered all over the floor. Tall candles, short ones, wide, all of them black or white with no exceptions. Cade is at the pulpit, also covered with candles, the book spread before her. Layna is at her side, whispering. Ahead, the chief and his son are at the front window, which still glows with the last light of day. At the pew behind them, Mikey is sitting with one leg bouncing in place, all kinds of nervous.

“Where’s Elias?” asks Kyle to no one in particular.

The chief turns from the window. “Not sundown yet.”

“Where’s Drake?” he asks instead, coming toward the front of the church. The shred of deep blue light from the windows is annoying at worst, like a shower turned slightly too far to the hot side. Kyle walks right past them, brings himself to the east front window, peering outside. He sees someone standing in an oversized hoodie in front of the church, the hood drawn over their head. Elias is next to him. “Drake?” he mutters to himself.

“Since the sun started going down, he went out there,” says the chief, coming up to Kyle’s side. “His choice. My son had a jacket, the guy put it on, covered his hands and most of his face, went on out there like he was braving a winter storm.” He looks at Kyle. “Elias didn’t want you playing it risky to join them.”

Kyle goes to the door, peels it open. “What the hell, guys?” he calls out to them. Elias and Drake both turn. “You were just gonna let me sleep through everything?”

Drake, whose mouth and nose is covered by fabric and his eyes with a pair of shades, lifts a hand and wiggles his fingers. Elias, hands in his pockets, looking like he’s been through hell, says, “It’s not dark yet, Kyle. Don’t—”

Kyle steps right out of the church into the dark blue dusk. “I go to work at the bar in this light all the time.”

“Just … stay in the church,” Elias presses again, coming to him. Then he lowers his voice. “Please.”

That’s when Kyle senses the ice-cold brick of dread.

He meets Elias’s eyes. “What’s going on?” he hisses under his breath. “What is it?”

Elias can’t quite look at him. His foot is tapping in place. Though his hands are stuffed away in his pockets, Kyle senses they’re sweating.

Kyle looks into the distance down the road. Turns, looks at the nearby buildings, at the park behind which the dark blue of the sky is quickly giving away to night. His eyes search every corner, every shadow.

It isn’t that his Reach finds anything. It’s that he feels space between what his Reach sees. Pockets of nothing—vacuums.

“They’re here,” says Kyle, realizing it. “They got here last night somehow. They’ve been hiding all day.”

Elias nearly covers Kyle with his body, the way he gently pushes him back toward the church doors. “I’m serious, go back inside, back downstairs.”

Kyle stands his ground. “What’s going on?”

It’s Drake who answers: “He doesn’t want you to be part of the negotiation, hot stuff.”

“Drake,” snaps Elias, nearly growling.

Kyle stares at Drake, confused, then at Elias. “What in the hell are we negotiating?”

Drake, who unlike Elias has no reservations about telling everything to Kyle, comes right up to him and pulls out a small slip of parchment paper from a pocket, extending it to Kyle pinched between two fingers. Kyle gently takes it. The paper is fragile, like it could fall apart from a breeze. Handwritten by a fountain pen from the looks of it, tiny blotches of ink here and there, dotting the fancy letters. It reads:

Return my golden boy to me posthaste . If one further night falls without his sweet shape, I will be so inspired to impart a grim gift upon yours in parting with tenderer mortal coils .

Kyle lowers the note. “Golden boy?”

“It’s my dear Uncle Salazo’s writing,” explains Drake, “and he means his pet. I swear, he can’t just say things plainly. It gets so tiresome, listening to his twisty old vocabulary navigate itself around the simple message of: send Mikey back, I’m in heat.”

Kyle rereads the note again. “This sounds like a threat.”

“It is.” Drake sighs flippantly, rubs his eyes. “I guess we’ve got no choice but to deliver Mikey back.”

Kyle turns on Drake. “What? No.”

“Hey, it’s his only condition to keep the peace. Small price in my opinion. We ought to count ourselves lucky. I thought he was gonna show up and raze the town in retaliation. He literally just wants his pet back. Easy, right? And to be fair,” Drake adds with a gesture back at the church, “Mikey didn’t belong to us.”

“Mikey doesn’t belong to them! ” cries Kyle.

He lifts his hands. “I’m just trying to keep everyone happy. Well, except Mikey, but maybe I can talk with my brother, sort things out better, see if Uncle Sal can agree to treat Mikey with more dignity from now on, maybe an upgrade from the cage …”

“What’s all this ‘uncle’ crap? You weren’t like this before.”

“I was.” Drake frowns, bites his lip. “I just held back a little. I quickly got the sense that you … don’t really like my family all that much. Not that I blame you. They’re problematic. In many ways. But what family isn’t?”

Kyle tosses the note aside, lets the wind take it away. “And what’re you gonna do if I don’t let you hand Mikey back?”

Drake winces. “Well … it’s less what I’m gonna do …”

Through the thin, wispy trees of the park, a shadow moves, catching Kyle’s eye. It’s Lazarus, wearing a long, skinny pair of pants that don’t quite reach his ankles, and no shirt, long black hair swaying behind him like a cape as he slowly approaches.

Elias stands in front of Kyle brandishing a thick metal club, which Kyle hadn’t noticed until now. Drake glances forward, watching his brother approach with an eerie stillness.

Lazarus stops some distance away. “Are you done playing?”

Drake pulls back his hood, takes off his shades, tugs down the fabric covering his mouth. “Not quite.”

“You’ve had a couple of days,” says Lazarus, as if reminding him. “Plenty of time to play as you please. Have you had fun?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” confesses Drake with a tilt of his head. “Can you give me another day or two? Or maybe a week? Actually, a month might be more what I need …”

“You think this is a game?”

“Isn’t everything?”

“Come home, Drake. End this childish rebellion. Bring the pet with you. Everyone’s happy.”

“Everyone? You sure about that?” Drake laughs, nudges a rather stiff Kyle who doesn’t join in the laughter. “Uncle Salazo will be happy, he’s easy to occupy, like a cat given a ball to paw around or a box to squeeze into. But what about everyone else? You believe the rest of our family will be so willing to leave this place alone now that they all know where it is? I wouldn’t give them a night.”

Lazarus’s face hardens, shows little emotion, eyes blank and stony as he stares his brother down from across the park.

Kyle’s heart races, terrified of the vampire.

And Drake continues to act unsettlingly flippant. “Do you guys know why Laz is so edgy?” he asks, turning to Kyle and to Elias, smirking. “Unlike me and Kyle, my brother needs blood. When you drink enough, your body changes, and soon, human food doesn’t sustain you. Only the blood. I suggested once that we rob a bank,” he carries on, now turning his eyes toward his less-than-amused brother. “Not a regular one. A blood bank. At a hospital. To feed my family. But you know … it’s too boring, too safe … and Uncle Salazo prefers when his meal squirms.”

There’s a blast of air, grass spreading, dust taking flight, and the next instant, Lazarus is in front of his brother, gripping his throat with frightening power, silencing him.

And Drake keeps talking. “I’m just a bottleneck to your full potential, bro,” he chokes out through his squeezed throat. “Go back to Cali, do it the old way, boys and girls on the beach, the tourists, the stoned surfers … I wouldn’t be in your way.”

“Go into that church and bring me the pet.”

“You could even live in a condo. We’ve still got a hookup. I can visit you from time to time. Why do our lives have to be so hard? Why do we settle for smelly caves full of junk? We could all have what we want. Bro, you could live in an honest house, a real, honest house on the beach …”

“Get the pet and come home, now.”

“That’s not our—” His brother squeezes tighter. “— home .”

Kyle steps forward, despite Elias putting his arm out, trying to shield him. “Let go. That’s your brother you’re strangling.”

“You’ve made your point,” says Lazarus to Drake, ignoring Kyle outright, like he’s not there. “We’ll make adjustments for your needs. We’ll even allow your new friends to come and go as they please, unharmed. The only price, brother, the one and only price, is that fucking pet you’re housing in that church.”

“I can smell him,” comes another voice.

From the alleyway between the bakery and the corner store across the road, someone approaches. Bald, beady eyes, his long arms swallowed in the sleeves of his flowing red robe. His feet move so stealthily beneath his robe, it looks as if he’s floating across the street as he slowly approaches, the fingertips of his hands tapping upon one another, like an alien super-villain with an evil scheme in the oven.

Elias, who has never seen Salazo before, is flooded with debilitating nightmares at the sight of him. It’s painful to Kyle to feel his proud boyfriend’s confidence crumble so quickly.

“Inside the foul building,” says Salazo in his odd voice and fake dialect, stopping some distance away, warily gazing at the church with his unblinking eyes. “My golden boy.”

Not letting go of his brother’s neck, Lazarus turns his scary eyes onto Kyle. “You know, even after your grievances against me and my family, I am still more than willing to bring you into our numbers. You showed great promise in a short time.”

“This is how you convince me?” asks Kyle with a gesture at Drake. “The way you treat your own brother?”

“I can still see the exhilaration in your face when you drank my blood,” he goes on. “The power pulsing in your veins … in your soul , as you took flight over the sands with me … I saw the life in your eyes. Have you ever felt it before? You loved it.”

“Not when I realized the cost,” Kyle retorts.

Lazarus flicks his eyes away. “So it’s some pious reason that makes you hold back? Boring. Let me tell you, life experience is what you lack here. You’ll see after many more years of life how fruitless it is to cling to such flimsy ideals as right and wrong. Out there in the wilds, there is no such thing as virtue. Only predator and prey. Blood, life, quick deaths. That is the most honest that one will ever be with themselves, when one finally gives up the ridiculous, tired game of civility and suppressing oneself for the sake of making others happy. Such tedium.”

“We cannot get my pet back,” worries Salazo from the side as his spindly fingers drum along his lips. “He’s in the church.”

Lazarus lets out a ghastly sigh. “It’s just a fucking building, Salazo, a pile of wood and stone and glass. No spiritual power compels us not to enter it.”

“No,” hisses Salazo, shaking his head. “I do not trust it.”

“Fuck it,” grunts Lazarus, tossing his brother aside by the neck, then heading for the church.

But he only makes it a single step.

Then lets out a laugh.

Kyle turns toward the church—and is horrified to find the chief at the front window with a rifle aimed at Lazarus.

“Do you see this?” asks Lazarus, peering back at Drake, at Salazo closer to the road. “I am tempted to call it adorable. The last time I was shot with a gun … when was it? A decade ago? Didn’t feel a thing. I don’t even remember the human’s name, but I felt such great satisfaction when I tore his head off and put it on a spike. It took nineteen days for the head to rot.”

“It could be a holy gun,” whispers Salazo, nervous.

Lazarus smirks. “Blessed by the Pope? I’m so honored.”

“Not another step!” shouts out the chief from the window, rifle aimed, finger on the trigger.

“Lazarus, stop!” cries Kyle. “Salazo doesn’t need a fucking pet! Just go back to your cave and—”

Gunfire cracks through the air.

Lazarus flinches backwards, startled for half a second.

Then the vampire’s screams fill the night sky like a banshee cry, rippling out.

Even Drake appears shocked, eyes wide as he rushes over to his brother, who writhes in agony on the ground as smoke swirls out of the gunshot wound in his stomach, hissing under Lazarus’s anguished cries. “What the fuck!” cries out Drake, at a total loss, as he tries to bring any comfort to his brother. He looks over at the police chief in the window, confused, a pinch of betrayal in his eyes, then to Kyle. “What in the fuck??”

Kyle stands over Lazarus, aghast. “Silver,” he chokes out, realizing it. “S-Silver bullet.”

The next instant, every distant shadow seems to move. By the buildings across the street. Through the leafless trees in the park. More vampires. Over a dozen of them, emerging, coming into existence, so many more than Kyle had feared, the whole family. Maybe twenty. Or thirty. Had their numbers increased since Kyle left the Devil’s Mouth? Were there other families? Other caves? Have they united?

The chief is already aiming again. “Not one of you comes any closer!” he calls out. “I’ve got a lot more where that came from! Stay back, all of you fuckers!”

Kyle spins around, cold hard dread settling in his stomach. They’re surrounded. Vampires slowly closing in. Salazo and his beady, paranoid eyes. Elias’s heart races as he tightens his grip on his silver club, trembling. Drake crouched on the ground with his moaning, tormented brother, the bullet lodged in his stomach torturing him worse by the second.

This is when everything ends. That’s Kyle’s first and only thought. Everyone is about to die.

“Now, now, now, no need to get all dramatic n’ shit,” cuts in another voice from the shadows, a deep Southern twang, full of arrogance and authority. “Calm down, Jesus, y’all can’t have just a civil fuckin’ conversation?”

Lazarus grits his teeth as he fights against the burning in his abdomen, appearing unsure whether to lie back or curl up. He keeps trying to cover the bleeding wound with his hands, but each time his hands draw near, he retracts them with a hiss, as if his wound is a thousand-degree oven.

“Who the hell’s this?” asks Elias, then glances back at Kyle. “Someone else from their demented family?”

“I don’t know,” breathes Kyle, still in shock.

The approaching man is in a weathered cowboy hat and old trench coat, but underneath he’s dressed up in a fancy shirt, tie, vest, cummerbund, and slacks. When Kyle’s Reach touches the man, he finds an emotional texture he’s never encountered before. It is slippery like oil one second, then wispy like smoke the next, too tricky to grasp for any length of time, making it impossible for Kyle to read. Just when he thinks he understands the emotion, it changes shape, makes him question what it is.

“Let’s settle this easy-like,” announces the man as he draws closer, then comes to a stop, thumbs hooked into his pockets. “I just need one fella outta this shithole of a town, then all of these half-naked dead weirdos and I are gone.”

“We’re not handing him over,” states Kyle.

“Kyle Amos is the fella I need.”

Kyle freezes.

A smile twists its way onto the man’s face. “And lookin’ at that funny-ass expression of yours, seems you’re just the man I’m lookin’ for.” He struts forward a few paces, smirking. “My name’s Mance. You’ll never need to use it after tonight. Can we get the whiny one to quiet down?” he asks Drake at once, zero sympathy in his voice. “A little silver bullet in the gut ain’t the end of the world. Shit. Acting like he’s passin’ a kidney stone.”

Still clutching his quivering, moaning brother, Drake looks up. “Sorry, but who the actual fuck are you?”

“Who the actual fuck am I?” returns the man called Mance with a playful note of indignation. “I just actually fuckin’ said who the actual fuck I am. Ain’t you got ears?” He twists a finger in the air. “And upsy-daisy …”

The next instant, Lazarus pushes himself to his feet, but his movements seem forced, as if by invisible hands. He shouts out in pain and tries to double over, but something in him is held rigidly, like his spine has become a metal pole. His eyes are wild with rage and anguish.

“Good boy,” sings Mance, then squints at the church. “By the way, whatever kinda amateur-hour hocus pocus you’ve got goin’ on in there, it sure ain’t gonna do a lick of anything. I mean …” Suddenly he’s laughing. “I can smell the old-ass pages of a grimoire from here, the candles, the sage. Who the fuck do they think they are in there?” He can’t stop laughing. “And in a church? A fuckin’ church?? As if my pals out here are gonna … what? … burst into flames the second they step inside? Ha! Shit, man, you’re a bunch of comedians. Are you guys armed with crucifixes, too? Holy water? Where’s your— ha! —Where’s your garlic necklaces? Goddamn! I ain’t laughed this hard since—”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Kyle cuts him off.

Mance wipes tears of laughter out of his eyes and shakes his head. “Yeah, I ain’t gonna force you. I’m just gonna talk you into it. See, apparently, you’re the key to the very thing I want. And as it turns out, I’ve got a key to something you want.”

Kyle squints at him, confused. “What key …?”

“Peace. Security. You see how these dead weirdos don’t do anything unless I let them? That’s all me. I’m like the big bad undead puppeteer.” He grins, showing teeth, as cocky as they come, then spreads his hands. “So how about it? Let’s borrow each other’s key and make everyone happy before we go n’ start a silver-bullet bloodbath.”

Elias turns to Kyle. “Babe, don’t.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” says Kyle quietly back. “But what are we gonna do? Who is this guy?”

“Step back!” shouts the chief again from the church. Some of the vampires had come closer, but not too close, all of them appearing wary of the silver bullets that can fly from that man’s rifle with just the squeeze of a finger. Kyle is surprised to find Jeremy and Mikey at other windows with guns of their own.

A silver-bullet bloodbath indeed.

“You need a little more convincing,” Mance decides, arms crossed, head cocked. He peers off to the side, somewhere near Salazo. “Wanna tell him yourself, George? The big news?”

The power in a name. The moment it’s uttered.

How like a spell it is, casting a curse upon all who hear it.

Kyle not only feels his own heart cover in ice. He also feels Elias’s. Both of them are back at Vegasyn, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. Both of them, transported to the most terrifying and traumatizing night of their lives by that name.

The hard heels of his shiny shoes clack slowly, patiently on the pavement, as the gaunt, deathly pale face of George comes into the light. Lopsided parting of hair. Pencil mustache. Half-lidded, heartless eyes. Dressed in a too-skinny black-and-white pinstripe suit.

George stops suddenly, lifts his chin. “Oh … I do not wish to come any closer, I have just decided. This will do.”

Mance smirks, rolls his eyes. “Please yourself. Wanna do the honors?” he offers with a gesture at a wide-eyed, paralyzed Kyle.

George is a perfectly still, lifeless mannequin as he speaks. It seems unnatural, too stiff. “You’re invited as Tristan’s special guest to an important event tonight at the House of Vegasyn.”

It takes Kyle entirely too long to piece the words of that sentence together. And all he responds with is: “T-Tristan …?”

“I will be escorting you there myself,” states George.

Kyle can’t believe what he’s hearing. “I’m not going to any event with you. What the fuck? Markadian wants—”

“ Lord Markadian,” George dutifully cuts him off.

“—nothing to do with me,” Kyle carries on, ignoring the correction, “and wouldn’t dare welcome me into that fucked-up place again, and I sure as hell wouldn’t find myself back there no matter the occasion. You think I’m gonna fall for that?”

“Our esteemed and proud Lord Markadian even suggested your presence,” insists George. “He is a man of honor, as you learned by his sparing your life, the Protected Blood’s life, and every human’s life here in this town. You have the word of the Lord of Vegasyn that, as Tristan’s honored guest, you will attend the event, no harm shall come to you, and at the event’s conclusion, you will be escorted safely back here, alive and well. Lord Markadian never breaks his word.”

Kyle only now realizes he’s leaning on Elias, as if he can’t keep himself standing. His lungs have become so heavy. Special guest? Tristan? Lord Markadian’s suggestion?

None of this seems right.

“My pet,” says Salazo in a voice of great grieving, his tiny eyes welling up with yearning as he stares at the window from which Mikey is aiming his rifle. “My dear golden boy. I want it back . I want it back home . It is … It is mine …”

“No, he is not,” says George simply.

Salazo frowns. It’s an odd and unsightly expression. “I do not know who you are, nor do I wish to. You have interrupted an imperative quest of ours. We are rescuing my pet. I shall at any cost have my pet restored to my loving care.”

“No, you shall not,” says George.

“This is none of your business! Just take Kyle and go!” spits back Salazo. “You are in our way! I will have my pet—!”

There is a flash of red as Salazo’s robe goes flying. One sudden screech that rips the air apart. And then George is ten feet closer to Kyle somehow, yet standing atop a collapsed Salazo, who is flattened to the ground, becoming George’s red carpet. Salazo stares up from the pavement with bewilderment in his ugly eyes.

“You can take the man out of the Ferals,” says George, locking his hands behind his back like a butler assuming a pose, “but you shall never take the Feral out of the man.”

Salazo glares from the ground. “You dare call us feral? Like an animal? We are not animals! We are vampire !”

George lifts his dull eyes to Kyle. “As I have said, I will not force you. This is not an abduction. This is a formal invitation to a formal event.” After a brief pause, he bristles and lifts his chin even higher. “Honestly, you ought to be deeply honored you are receiving an invitation at all. It is rather quite … cool .”

That last word struggles its way out of George, completely out of place.

Elias takes hold of Kyle’s hands. “I bet it isn’t even Tristan inviting you. This is some cruel trick of Markadian’s. I don’t care what this Mance idiot says. He’s bluffing. Cade and Layna are on to something big. They just need more time.”

Kyle glances back at the church, at the chief and his son, each with a rifle poking out of a different window. Mikey, who has gained confidence with a silver-bullet-loaded rifle in hand, but whose insides still shiver with overabundant terror, like he truly believes this is still the last night of his mortal life. Beyond him, deeper in the church, a mother and daughter recite words Kyle can’t understand, whispering, wishing, praying to spirits and winds and forgotten deities.

What does Kyle believe? Do they really have a chance if Kyle defies George and stays here? Is he simply giving himself up and walking to his death if he goes with George?

“Just choose what’s right, man.”

Kyle turns to Drake, the one who spoke, who still clutches his forcibly-standing brother Lazarus, who is trapped in a state of perpetual agony, the silver bullet raging white-hot inside his abdomen, steam still swirling out.

“Don’t sweat anything else,” says Drake. His words are dry and less bubbly than usual. “Just think it over. Choose what you believe is right. You always have, haven’t you?”

Kyle looks away. His heart has never felt more troubled. “If I go …” he starts to say.

“No,” breathes Elias, shaking.

“If I go,” Kyle repeats anyway, “then everyone else is safe?”

“Everyone,” confirms George simply.

“Everyone,” agrees Mance, then eyes Lazarus. “Though I can’t guarantee that ugly one won’t hold a grudge.”

Elias grips Kyle’s hands tighter. “Babe, don’t.”

Kyle turns to him. “If I don’t go—”

“Then I’m coming with you!”

George makes a sound. “Mmm, I’m afraid you cannot.”

Elias’s eyes are fire when he turns. “I’m coming with him. I will not let my boyfriend go back to that hell without me.”

“Limited number of seats,” George drones on. “An invite-only affair. This is a special list, I am afraid, you are not on, dear Elias.”

Elias turns back to Kyle. “This is George that we’re talking about. George , the guy who killed your childhood friend in cold blood, who nearly got all of us killed over a stupid hobby of his.”

“Do you mean my hourglass collection?” asks George with a sparkle of unsettling joy, still standing atop the red platform that has become Salazo, who has not stopped glaring at George from the ground. “I have so often wondered, how is my hired thief Patrick faring? Is he still being held prisoner here in your local jail? I would very much like to see him.”

“You’re not seeing anyone,” Elias spits back at him.

Unfazed, George casually goes on. “I mean no harm. I only wish to taste of him … as I tasted his wife and child. It is like another collection of mine, a collection of blood. Within me.” He puts a hand upon his chest, as if feeling sentimental. “It will make me feel complete, I think, to drink his blood.”

Mance lets out a heavy sigh, cutting in. “Are you accepting the invitation or not, Kyle? We all got shit to do tonight. Ain’t none of us in the mood for another silver bullet to go flyin’.”

Kyle’s already made his choice. He hugs Elias. “No,” says Elias, part moan, part whimper, sensing the goodbye. “Don’t.”

He pulls away just enough to look Elias in the eye. “Protect this town while I’m gone tonight. Promise me.”

“Kyle …”

“Make sure Cade and Layna finish what they started.”

“P-Please …”

Kyle lets go of Elias. It takes more effort than he thought it would. With one last glance at the church, then Drake, whose heart is filled with warring emotions of his own, and finally at a jaw-clenched, shaking Elias, Kyle heads off, making way toward the terrifying sight of George. He doesn’t again peer over his shoulder for fear that one more look in Elias’s eyes will shatter his resolve and send him flying right back into his arms.

And if this is a mistake, and Kyle’s fate is to die tonight, well, perhaps he’s been waiting for it anyway, since the morning he sat against a rock in the desert and bid everything farewell.

That’s all this is. Just another game of chicken with the sunrise. Only this time, Kyle may have no one there to show up and stand in its way.