Chapter 436
Katelina followed Verchiel, though her eyes were pulled back to the gate and the high wall. She could feel the peace ebbing away with every step. Some part of her didn't want to let it go. She knew what was out there, waiting for her in the world, and didn't want to face it.
Her steps slowed, then stopped. Verchiel scooped her up again. She twisted in his arms until his violet eyes met hers. The world fell away in a moment of purple twilight, soft and sweet like summer and watermelon. Katelina sank into his gaze amid dancing fireflies and promises of adventure. When she resurfaced she was seated at a table in a tightly packed caf¨¦. People laughed and talked, dishes clinked, and bright lights gave the illusion of a haven from the darkness.
"What-?" She looked across the table to where Kai sat.
"You weren't cooperating," Verchiel said as he took the chair next to her.
"Cooperating?" She rubbed her aching head and tried to remember what was going on.
"Here." Verchiel handed her the Ziploc baggy from her bedroom. She tugged it open to find a full disposable camera, a bottle of nail polish, a compact, a tube of Chap Stick, a toothbrush, and a worn metal cross.
She turned the pendant over in her hand. It was Velnya's cross, the last relic of Jorick's first wife, a vampiress who'd been burned to death by Nebraskan settlers as a witch. A clever manipulation created by Jorick's master Malick to punish him for wanting a life.
Malick.
The name conjured a tremor of fear that left Katelina gripping the cross like a good luck totem. The final scenes of the battle came back to her. Malick appeared and filled the air with a horrific thrumming, so loud that she thought her eardrums might explode and then
"And then Jorick cut off his hand," Verchiel said. "And Malick activated the kill switch he put in your mind."
"Kill switch?" She remembered Verchiel telling her about that once.
"It's like brainwashing, where they embed this horrible action and a trigger. Trigger happens and boom!the brainwashee goes nuts, kills everyone in sight."
"But I didn't kill everyone."
"Nope. It turned out Malick meant for you to kill yourself. I guess you never can tell with the old geezer. That's when Samael showed up. He's more powerful than Malick, since he has a few thousand years on him, so he removed what Malick had implanted in your mind, then grabbed you and took off."
"To reward me," she murmured.
"If that's what he's calling it." A waiter walked past and Verchiel motioned to him. "I suppose Samael isn't really a bad guy, but he caused a lot of problems with the grand exit."
The waiter bowed and after Verchiel ordered he hurried away. Katelina toyed with a bottle of soy sauce. "I don't understand. When did Malick implant the kill switch?"
"When he broke into the stronghold in Munich, looking for the Heart of the Raven, remember? He buried the switch pretty deep and no one noticed it until after you'd woken Samael up. We just assumed it was Samael's handiwork. I mean, how were we supposed to know that it would look like a door? It's not like I've ever come across one, and I doubt Jorick has either."
"Jorick." His name left an empty ache where her heart belonged. She wanted to hide in the safety of his arms. Then nothing would matter. Not Samael, not Malick, not half forgotten memories of bloody battles.
"He's on his way. Probably with half the world if he can manage it. He's going to be mad when he finds us because I rescued you. Only, I don't suppose it was much of a rescue since Samael let us go. Still you know how Jorick likes to be the hero."
She nodded absently and closed her eyes against the conversations drifting around them. The atmosphere was too loud and too organic. "If we've just escaped, why did we stop for dinner?"
"Because you're hungry, and Kai's hungry." He jerked his thumb at the silent boy across the table. "And after the weird captivity, I thought you'd enjoy spending time with your own kind."
Katelina looked from person to person, and shook her head. "I don't have anything in common with them."
"I know they're speaking Chinese, but come on, people are people."
"That's not what I mean." Most of them were younger than she was and smelled of alcohol. Though she didn't understand their words, she had a vague sense of their meaning. They spoke of dates, cars, houses, children, work, and vacations. They had never seen the gaping, fanged mouth of darkness waiting to swallow them, never counted their last moments on their fingers, never listened to the screams of the dying, or the whimpers of the damned. They'd never seen children burned to death, or lovers commit suicide, or watched as someone's legs and arms were ripped from their body in a spray of crimson. They worked, they shopped, they cooked, laughed, watched TV, and talked of old times and even older wars with the reverence reserved for fairytales. They knew nothing.
She'd been that way once, though it seemed an eternity ago. She'd worked at the newspaper as a glorified gopher. She'd made coffee, fetched things, taken phone calls sometimes. Once in a while she'd accompanied Jim, the photographer, to local sporting events or parades. When she was off work she'd watched TV, hung out at the bar where her best friend's boyfriend worked, visited her crazy mother, and secretly worried about her bizarre love life. Then the vampires had come crashing into her world and everything had changed. She lost her job and her apartment. Her best friend was dead and her mother- God her mother had no idea. She thought Katelina had run away with a hippy bum. As if Jorick even looked like a hippy.
"He has the long hair for it," Verchiel quipped.
Katelina glanced at him sharply. "Wait a minute. Your mind reading is only supposed to work when you're stressed out."
"All this delicious, fresh blood." He motioned around the restaurant. "I have to behave. If you don't think that's stressful-"
"Yeah, whatever you say." She dismissed him with a motion and looked back to the diners. When she first met Jorick, he'd told her that finding out about vampires might change her perception of the world. He was wrong. It wasn't her perceptions that had changed, but herself. And thanks to all the vampire blood she'd had, she wasn't sure she was even human anymore. She drank from Jorick when they made love. She'd drained Kateesha's heart when she'd killed her. She'd even drank from Verchiel once during a misunderstanding. Then Samael had given her his blood and things had really changed. It wasn't just the word "tainted" that the Kugsankal in Munich used, she could feel it, and every day she felt it more. Just as she could almost understand what the people in the restaurant said without knowing their language. What was it? A kind of low level mind reading that only worked on weaker minds?
Weaker. As if humans were less than vampires; less than she was. And they were. With a sad sense of finality she realized that she wasn't one of them anymore. She was in a place apart from humanity, and from there on she would only drift farther away.
By the time she and Kai finished eating, Samael and her time at the ancient palace seemed like a blurry dream. It was only the musty robe and exotic locale that proved it had been real.
Verchiel led them out of the restaurant to a tiny pink car that looked more suited to a Barbie doll than a vampire.
"I stole it." He shrugged. "It was the only one with an empty trunk, but you should see the gadgets. The dashboard has everything, even a happy face that gets sad when it's low on gas. Check it out."
With a resigned sigh, she climbed inside. Though she wasn't tall, she couldn't straighten her legs, and she wasn't sure what to do with her elbows.
Kai silently crammed his way into the so-called backseat. Verchiel hopped in behind the wheel. The car started with a near silent purr, and the dash glittered with multicolored lights and displays. It was like being in a UFO designed for midgets.
The traffic was as insane as the vehicle. Half the cars didn't bother with headlights. Those that did left their high beams on. Verchiel weaved and bobbed through the other vehicles, and Katelina clutched the door to keep from flying around. Finally, fearing for her life, she put on her bright pink seat belt.
"They all drive like this." Verchiel nodded toward the road. "And the bicyclists should start popping up again soon."
"Great." She punched buttons on the dash in an effort to quiet the Chinese pop music blaring over the radio. "Make this thing shut up!"
"Okay, okay, geeze." With a couple of clicks silence fell.
"Thank you." She shifted and tried to find something to do with her arm. "I thought Jorick was coming. Aren't we going to meet him?"
"That would be ideal. But-"
"But what?"
"He doesn't have a phone. That's why we're heading back to Indonesia. From there we can probably contact him or someone who's with him. Trust me. It will be fine."
Jorick's lack of a phone was an annoyance. Other vampires had them, like Sorino - Sorino! "Just call Sorino! He has a phone. If he's with Jorick we can tell them where we are."
Verchiel hesitated. "We can try, but we'll have to wait until we find a motel. My phone died a long time ago. Plus, I'm not sure I can use it in China."
She nodded her understanding. The silence stretched and Verchiel reached past her to pop open the glove box. "There's a magazine if you're bored."
She fished it out and turned the shiny pages. Crammed with Chinese characters and loud colored pictures, she had no idea what any of it was about. Then she flipped to the middle and stopped. A young woman lay in a dark puddle, her black hair fanned around her head, and her throat gaping open.
Verchiel glanced at the photo. "That's a murder. Her husband slit her throat because he thought she was cheating on him. Here." He turned several pages to a spread of girls in dresses. "The clothes are more up your alley."
"You can read Chinese?"
"Sure, and I can speak a little of it. You pick up a lot of things over the years."
She stuffed the magazine back in the glove box. Kai snored softly in the back and she thought about everything that had happened. The battle was her last reference point, but before that they'd been in the jungle with the Black Vigil, a secret organization of vampires whose sole purpose was to wipe out The Children of Shadows. With the fight over and the Children of Shadows destroyed, Katelina wondered what the Black Vigil would do now.
"The Children of Shadows aren't destroyed. I imagine most of the survivors were taken prisoner, but some of them probably escaped. "
"How?"
"If I made it out, don't you think they did?"
She nodded absently and wondered who else had survived.
