A Fall of Silver (19 page)

“
I don’t—”

“
So we’re agreed.”

“I—”

The phone rang.

When Kethan didn’t
react and kept his eyes fixed on her face, she gestured impatiently toward the phone. Her nerves jangled with each insistent brrring.

He
still didn’t move.

Antsy, s
he nodded her agreement just to get him to answer the darn phone and end the loud ringing that jangled her already taut nerves. With a satisfied grin, he rose and picked up the extension in the hallway just outside the kitchen. She watched him, not even pretending not to listen. His deep voice carried, and when he caught her eye, he winked. However, other than the fact that he was speaking to Father Donatello, she obtained precious little information. Kethan said nothing other than a few monosyllabic replies.

“Martyn wants
another meeting.” He replaced the old-fashioned, beige receiver on its cradle and motioned for her to join him in the living room.

What was with him? Even his phone was practically Victorian.

“So he confessed? He did kill that woman, didn’t he?” she asked.

“No.” He gestured again for her to precede him.

Curious, she obeyed and settled into his easy chair. As he followed suit, she glanced at the window. The sun had set while they ate, and the windows behind the sofa were dark, revealing nothing except dim reflections of the room and their pallid faces. The wooden Sessions mantle clock above the fireplace solemnly ticked toward nine.

“Where
does he want to meet?” Unable to stay seated, she got up again and paced toward the clock as if to take a closer look at the lovely antique. It was night, and they had wasted the entire day. A trickle of panic chilled her back.

“Not far.
There’s a park near the Potomac River, close to here.”

She studied his face and hooded eyes, sensing
he’d switched into neutral negotiator mode. The sudden feeling of being left outside made her heart clench, and her anxiety increased.

“What’s going on?”
she asked.

“We’ll see when we get there.”

“I—I don’t think this is a good idea.” He had to know more. Was he going to hand her over to the vampires because she’d killed one of their clan? Would he do that if they demanded it to even things out?

Her
full stomach gurgled and cramped. Memories of pain and her innocent foolishness in trusting anyone made her nearly sick, her full belly cramping. In the blink of an eye, she relived the moment when her innocence died, when she realized that vampires really did exist and were just as evil as portrayed in any horror movie.

Pressing a hand against her
stomach, she turned away. “I’ve got to visit the lady’s room. Sorry.” She ran into the small bathroom off the kitchen.

Dizzy, she dropped to her knees and clutched the cool porcelain bowl of the toilet. She took deep breaths, trying to control her reaction.

She was in control and free to come and go as she pleased. It was her decision to stay here for now. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Her body trembled.
If he betrayed her now, then at least she’d discover the truth. She’d force him to reveal his Judas hand.

After a few minutes, the room stopped tilting sideways
, and the nausea dissipated. The ache at the back of her head dulled until she could open her eyes without the light sparking an intense, throbbing sensation. When she could stand without her stomach protesting, she rinsed her face with icy water and tried not to notice the dark circles around her eyes or the pallor of her skin. Finally, she jerked the door open.

“Are you all right?” Kethan asked when she joined him in the hallway.

“Yes. I’m just not used to eating so much.”

He examined her face, but if he noticed
her gray skin, he withheld any comment. “You’re not going to like this, but I want you to leave your whips here.”

It’s a trap.
She was right and Kethan was a Judas
.

“Why?”
Her hand snuck around to her back and touched the three handles. Her fingers tapped:
one, two, three; one, two three
. The familiar rhythm comforted her.

“Just do as I say.
Please.”

“Yo
u want me to be defenseless?”

“As an act of good faith.”

“Screw faith! That’s just plain stupid.” Panic tightened her chest again, and she pressed a hand against her stomach. A hot, pricking sensation like getting caught in a cat briar thicket on the hottest day of summer caught her, and she clenched her jaw, praying for the feeling to pass without embarrassing herself by throwing up on the floor.

She had wanted to believe in him, wanted to believe he was a good person, but this…
. What was she to think? He was leading her into a trap and wanted her unarmed while he did it.

Surely he saw that
and knew how she’d feel.

However instead of showing sympathy, h
is face grew cold. His eyes grew hard with an impersonal edge that frightened her. He had turned into a stranger before her eyes. “Leave them here.”

Hesi
tating only a few seconds, she slowly unsnapped the leather tabs that held the weapons to her belt. Then she placed them on the coffee table. Her back felt cold, vulnerable, and unbearably light without the weight of the whips dragging down her belt.

So be it. At least I’ll know the truth
, even if it finally kills me.
The darkness within her writhed before fatalistic calm encased her emotions in a globe of glass.

However, o
ne small voice reminded her that there were alternatives. If they met near the river, there would be trees and plenty of wood from wind-snapped limbs among the forest debris. Something could be fashioned into a stake. Hope remained possible.

T
he first thing she taught her students in Krav Maga was to use whatever worked, whatever was at hand. There were no rules; it was street fighting, dirty and effective, and the only kind she believed in.

Her pulse accelerated.
There would be other weapons.

S
he could defend herself, all she had to do was practice what she taught. Even if Kethan had agreed to betray her and lead her into a trap, she had the skills to survive.

Betrayal was a fact of life.
She knew that, but what she couldn’t understand was why it still hurt so much. Her head throbbed as if a small tear in her heart had formed, leaking blood like tears.

Quiet and withdrawn, s
he rubbed the scars on her neck and didn’t protest when Kethan decided to drive. His car was a weathered, beat-up old sedan that smelled of gas and burnt oil. The blue paint was so faded it looked gray under the streetlights. Or maybe it was gray, she couldn’t tell for sure. The vehicle was so battered that even the manufacturer’s logos had fallen off, as if too humiliated to claim such a rattling heap as their own, leaving the car unidentifiable.

Settling
gingerly into the worn passenger’s seat, she ignored Kethan and studied her rather tattered fingernails and then the church across the street while he worked to get the car started. When the engine finally turned over, his sigh of relief was audible. They jerked away from the curb. The car rattled and gasped, and each time they had to stop at a light, Kethan frowned and gazed tensely at the gauges.

“Mayb
e we should’ve walked,” she said as the car shuddered violently at a stop sign.

“No. She’ll get us there.
I just got her overhauled.”

“Great
job. It’s running smooth as silk.”

His firm jaw firmed even more and it was all she could do to keep from laughing.

The car sputtered as they jerked forward and coasted for about a mile at a rousing ten miles an hour. The engine moaned when he depressed the gas further, speeding up to almost thirty.

“
See?” He patted the dash.

“Well, we can always walk back.
I don’t have to teach another class until ten.” After a sidelong glance, she added, “Tomorrow morning. Plenty of time.”

“She just needs to warm up.
”

“
Isn’t that just like a woman?”

A rumbling chuckle answered her.
“Yes, like a great many women I know. Certainly.” Every once in a while, an odd turn of phrase laced with a light Irish lilt echoed in his voice.

“Where were y
ou from originally?”

“I was born in Ireland
, but we came to Virginia when I was a child.”

She nodded.
No wonder he had that touch of blarney about him, not enough to be obvious, but enough to make his voice smooth and different.

“What about you?” he asked.

“New Mexico. Las Vegas, New Mexico.”

“How did you end up in Virginia?”

“Long story.”

“Did your family move here?”

Her heart thudded. She twisted in her seat and stared out the window. She didn’t want to talk about the past, Allison was long dead.

R
est in peace.

“No.
Suffice to say, I was one of Theresa Blackstone’s orphans.” She’d told him enough about her Grandmother and didn’t want to talk about the past. That short answer was safe and mostly true. She’d been lost for several months until she arrived, exhausted and hungry, at the doors to the convent.

She didn’t know the convent
had been turned into an orphanage, but despite her mistake, it had proved to be a safe refuge, anyway.

“That’s the connection, then.”
Kethan smiled.

“Yeah.
I’m an alumnus.” She bared her teeth, daring him to make some comment about sentimentality. She didn’t miss sharing a room with other, younger girls or the lack of privacy at the orphanage, and she surely didn’t miss Theresa’s firm, controlling interference or her attempts to shove her into a time machine through psychiatrists and good, old fashioned drugs intended to remake her into the innocent girl she once was.

However
, despite it all, Quicksilver had formed a tenuous attachment to the people at the orphanage and remained in the area. She knew the small town nestled against the Potomac, just a few miles from Great Falls, and felt comfortable. In many ways, it gave her a focal point and sense of community, no matter how slight.

Her uncontrollable, ferocious need to kill vampires
didn’t seem so bad if her motivation was to protect the kids at the orphanage. The justification let her sleep at night and allowed her to believe she wasn’t an inhuman monster, no different than those she destroyed.

Everything was fine u
ntil Kethan’s negotiations and the implicit message that she’d been wrong to hunt vampires.

As they neared the river, the streetlights grew farther and farther apart.
The autumn wind tore at the trees, rattling the twigs like bony fingers making voodoo over the car. Despite the bareness of the branches arching over the road, the thick, black limbs blocked the faint light of the quarter moon and stars, intensifying the darkness.

Drifts of dead leaves rustled along
the ditches at the edge of the pavement. The night breezes picked up handfuls and scattered them across the road to flutter through the beams from the car’s headlights like swarms of brittle moths.

With her wi
ndow partially down, she could smell the musty, old-wood scent of autumn leaves intertwined with the moist, muddy odor of the river. A series of irregular, gray, granite boulders marked a bend in the road ahead. As they rounded the curve, she caught sight of several cars parked in a narrow lot on the right. A small, brown Park Service sign indicated the entrance to the park.

“This is it,
” Kethan announced.

“Ye
s.” She straightened. Despite the parked cars, the area appeared deserted. What would happen if innocent people showed up here? Teenagers intent on partying? It would be a disaster. “The police are going to think we’re buying drugs. These parks are notorious for drug deals.”

“W
e won’t be here long enough for anyone to notice.” He pulled in and parked next to another ancient, boxy car that might have been white when it rolled off the assembly line at the end of the last century. “That’s Father Donatello’s car.”

“Father Donatello? What’s he doing here?
” Even someone who preferred talk over action and who thought every poor little vampire deserved a second chance wasn’t insane enough to risk the life of such a priest.

Father Donatello had
seemed so frail, too, and helpless as a newborn mouse.

“He’s here to
keep us on track.” The car door resisted and squealed as Kethan forced it open, a small cloud of rust flakes swirling into the car’s interior. One foot on the ground and an arm resting on the steering wheel, he glanced over his shoulder at her. “You ready?”