Afterlight (23 page)

I kept my eyes locked on his as I lifted my whiskey, downed it in one gulp, pulled two bucks from my pocket, and dropped them on the table. “Duties relieved,” I snarled, and headed for the door. I was the last person who needed a freaking babysitter; I’d gone through too much in my young life and handled a lot of problems most never encounter in their entire existence. Screw that. I threw a hand up at Martin when he said, “Take it easy, Riley,” and I pushed out into the City Market nightlife crowd. It was nearly midnight; the tourists had somewhat thinned, but the locals, the SCAD students, still hung around, and would for a few more hours. It wasn’t like I blended into the crowd; I stood out because of more than my choice of clothing. I was tall on top of it, and I knew that if Eli wanted to come after me, he’d have no trouble. Still, leaving returned to me some sort of control; I’d lost it, and dammit, I wanted it back. I didn’t like my every move being tracked. It was . . . suffocating.

As I walked up Congress, moving farther away from Molly’s, the air grew somewhat quieter, and Capote’s familiar music tinged the air; I headed straight for John-son Square and found him among the mossy oaks. When he saw me, he lowered his sax.

“Now, dere’s a sight,” he said, grinning. “How you walk in dem things?” he pointed to my boots.

I walked up and hugged the older Gullah, and he patted my back. “Dere now, baby. You don’t worry about nothin’, you hear? You listen to da Preacher man and do what dem Duprés say.” He chuckled the laugh of a man who’d seen it all. “I known you long enough, Riley Poe, to know you ain’t takin’ fast to havin’ someone tell you what to do, right? But you keep dat temper down.” He looked at me. “You mind dem.”

I gave Capote a smile and a nod. “I’ll do my best.” I inclined my head to his sax. “Don’t stop playing.”

“Ha-ha,” Capote laughed, and gave a nod. “I never do, baby.” He started again, his music soothing and enlightening all at once. So, even old Capote knew about the vampires of Savannah. Somehow, I wasn’t shocked. A slow, light drizzle began again, but I didn’t care. I stood there surrounded by towering live oaks draped in moss, and I watched the long gray clumps sway in the breeze. The streetlamps cast a tawny glow against the slick brick and cobbles, making them seem glassy, and I inhaled a long, deep lungful of sultry August air. It almost calmed me, until I remembered the cicadas. Rather, their absence.

A couple walked up, wrapped in each other’s arms, and stood close by to listen to Capote play. I stood there for a moment longer; then with a wave, I left and started walking up Whitaker toward Bay. I let my thoughts ramble. I was somewhat shocked that Eli had allowed me this much freedom; perhaps he sincerely was sick of babysitting and had gone back to his parents with a refusal to do it any longer. I couldn’t blame him. I’d been a bitch. I’d allowed the situation to overwhelm me, and I’d called him a . . .
thing
. I of course hadn’t meant the Duprés were
things
, but at the time, it had sounded that way; maybe I’d allowed it to sound that way, too. Some small, sick part of me wanted to make Eli sting, and I didn’t know why. I thought of Eli as
anything
but a thing. I found him intriguing, mysterious, and disturbingly unique. The attraction I felt for him seemed real, not just heightened because he was a vampire. Hell—I sometimes had to remind myself he really
was
a vampire. Other than his exceptional capabilities, and his transformation in my bedroom when Seth had lunged toward me, I’d not witnessed anything overt. He and his siblings and his mother and father certainly weren’t like Hollywood vampires. They seemed like an ordinary, loving family. Yet . . . I
felt
it. I felt that they were anything but ordinary—that, and much, much more. Precarious circumstances were keeping things settled. I knew that. Just like I knew that one day very soon, I’d see them.
Really see them.

Just as I crossed Bryan Street, I heard them. I don’t know how I knew it was Riggs, Seth, and the others, but I did—maybe it was their distinctive, squeaky, adolescent laughter. I searched the darkness, down Bryan Street, and there they were: seven altogether, wearing dark hoodies like some weird fight-club, free-running hoodie cult, surrounding some skinny dude on the sidewalk. He was alone, and the boys were harassing him, crowding the guy against a car parked on the curb. I couldn’t tell which one was Seth; they all looked alike from my vantage point. They weren’t full-fledged vampires yet, still just a bunch of stupid kids experiencing quickening, so I changed directions, ducked into the shadows, and moved toward them. I knew I could take at least three of their skinny little asses out; maybe then they’d run off and leave the guy alone. Junkie or not, I wasn’t going to stand by and watch while they killed him, or lured him. Whichever.

By the time I’d gotten close, the boys had surrounded the guy and were pushing him, laughing, calling him foul names. I could tell right then that the guy was as high as a kite; he just flailed between the boys, and they laughed, and he even laughed with them. It enraged me. He didn’t deserve what they had for him—either transformation by the Arcoses, or ending up as their freaking dinner. Both were unacceptable.

No sooner did I step out of the shadows than I was pushed back into them, and Eli’s body pinned me against the brick wall of an empty historic residence that had a FOR SALE sign in the yard. Damn, he was fast.
Freaking
fast, silent and strong. I pushed with all my strength and couldn’t budge him a fraction of an inch. I hadn’t even heard him coming. We were front to front, our bodies pressed intimately together. He looked down at me as the brick scored into the bared flesh of my back, and he put his finger to his lips.
Shushing me.

He glanced over his shoulder and then lowered his mouth to my ear. “No matter what you see, stay here,” he warned, and when he lifted his head and looked at me, I saw just how much he meant it. I nodded, and just that fast he moved off of me. I barely felt the air shift as he stirred.

In the next breath, Eli stood among the boys and in one lightning-fast move pushed the junkie clear; he landed on the other side of the car with a thud and a moan. Now the boys surrounded Eli, and they became a pack of wild dogs, darting at him, growling; in the middle of two streetlamps, a long shadow fell over Eli, and as I watched, my gut in knots, I saw his transformation. It took all of two seconds, and as I caught glimpses of his horrible face, opaque eyes, unhinged jaw, and jagged fangs, my insides clinched with fear. It was still a hard thing to comprehend.
Don’t hurt them!
I yelled inside my head. I wanted their asses kicked, not killed. They were just boys, and one of them was Seth. Eli had two by the throat; I couldn’t tell who they were, but their faces were so pale I could see their seemingly luminescent skin almost glowing from where I stood pressed against the brick. Eli dangled them high, their sneakers completely off the ground; then he threw them—threw
both
of them. They landed in the street, and like strung-out users, they jumped right up, unfazed, and lunged at him again. The others followed. Next, adolescent bodies flew everywhere as Eli tossed them like rag dolls; the boys got right back up and surged toward him. Snarls and curses filled the air as they fought; I don’t know how much control Eli issued to keep them alive, but he somehow managed. I couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe with two, they wouldn’t make such bold moves.

The moment I stepped out of the shadows and into the street, one of the rabid boys noticed me and lunged. I mean freaking
lunged
. He was on me in seconds, and I found myself flat on my back in the middle of the street. Beneath the hoodie I stared into a pair of opaque eyes and a pale face; relief washed over me when I saw it wasn’t Seth. It was his other friend, Todd, and I grabbed the boy by his skinny throat and held his gnashing mouth away from me. The sensation of his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down against my palm made me want to shake him off. But the kid was as strong as a friggin’ ox, and it took all of my strength to push him back and shove him off of me. I rolled and crouched, and just as Todd lunged again, I kicked with the flat of my shin and knocked him back. It was almost as if he hadn’t felt it; he rushed me again, and this time I gripped both of my hands together to make one big fist and swung upward as he neared me, then elbowed his solar plexus. Still he came at me and in seconds had me on my back again. As much as I hated it, I fished the dope out of my pocket and dangled the baggie in front of Todd with my free hand; his eyes averted from mine, and he grabbed it. Then a smile pulled at his mouth, and it made my insides ice over. His fist came down on my mouth with blinding speed; I didn’t even have time to deflect it. Warm liquid spilled onto my lip, and the pinpoint pupils in Todd’s white eyes widened as he stared hard at me, at my mouth. At my blood.
Damn.

Out of the darkness, the other Duprés emerged and descended upon the boys; it took all of three seconds for the boys to realize they were outweighed. Todd leapt off me, and he and the others took off down the street, laughing, leaping off ledges, and doing crazy, mindless jumps that landed them into handstands; they kept on running, kept moving. I could hardly believe one of them was Seth. Seth wouldn’t believe he was Seth. Phin, Luc, and Josie took off after them in the same manner, until darkness swallowed them all. Only their echoes bounced off the buildings of the historic district.

By the time Eli emerged by my side, he’d transformed into the beautiful guy I’d grown painfully used to; all traces of his previous horror vanished. Now he looked more pissed than he had before. His gaze lit on my bleeding lip, and his frown deepened, nostrils flared.

“What in the hell are you doing, Riley?” Eli asked, and yanked me up hard, nearly flinging me across the street. “Can’t you listen to anyone? Something wrong with your goddamn ears?” he asked. He looked down, shook his head, and then clasped his hands behind his neck and stared up and off into the shadows. “Wipe the blood off your mouth. Now,” he said with almost a growl.

Pulling my minipack off my back, I opened it and searched for something to get the blood off my lip. An old Krispy Kreme napkin wrapped around a wad of gum sat in the bottom; I quickly used it.

“Throw it down,” Eli commanded.

Without question, I did as he asked. I knew that having fresh blood on my face was stupid. I wasn’t about to push Eli. Not now.

“One of them could have easily killed you,” he said without looking at me. Then he turned on me. “All of them would have left nothing for the coroner to piece together.”

“I—,” I started.

“If you say you can take care of yourself one more damn time, I’m gonna explode,” he ground out between clinched teeth. In a blink he was at me, grasping my shoulders and all but shaking me. “You can’t, Riley. Not with this. This is way out of your capabilities, no matter how much of a badass you think you are.” He did shake me then. “Do you hear me?” He drew so close, our noses nearly touched, and his eyes bored hard into mine. “When I tell you stay put,
stay the fuck put
.”

I could do nothing more than scowl at Eli. I didn’t like being chastised, even if he was right.

He shook me harder, his expression lethal. “I don’t care that you don’t like being chastised. Next time”—his face hardened—“listen.”

“Let. Go. Of. Me,” I said, emphasizing each word with as much venom as I could muster. He did, and I turned on my heels and began walking, back toward Whitaker, Eli a few steps behind. I played with my cut lip with my tongue and didn’t say a word until we stopped at the cross light on Bay. “If your brothers and sister follow Seth and Riggs, why is it that we still don’t know where the Arcoses are . . . restoring, rejuvenating, or whatever it is they’re doing?” I asked, frustrated. “Won’t the boys lead them?”

“No,” he said flatly, the light from the streetlamp behind him throwing his whole face into darkness. “They will play all night until dawn, jumping the rooftops and gathering forces, reveling in their freedom and new-found powers; they’ll eventually disperse and run in different directions, and the Arcoses will continue to move. Even if we did follow the boys, they’d never be able to lead us to the brothers. The Arcoses are too smart for that. Weak as they are, they’ll move, too.” He ducked his head and caught my gaze. “Patience.”

I glanced back down the street, where the junkie was just stumbling up the sidewalk. “They were going to kill that guy,” I said, sickened by the thought.

“No,” Eli said. “They were going to either lure him to the Arcoses or force him. Either way, yes—he would have died. They prey on people like him—homeless, junkies, prostitutes—because they’re easily overlooked in the public eye.”

“What if your parents helped? And Ned? If we all gathered and followed Seth and the others, couldn’t we just take them?” I said angrily. “I just don’t get it.”

Eli grasped me by the chin and held my head in place as he looked at me. “You’re forgetting about the Gullah magic, Riley,” he said harshly. “They’re untouchable until fully regenerated. It might get your brother and his friends killed if we overstepped the boundaries of the magic. Understand?”

I had a hard time breathing; Eli’s face in shadows, the glassy reflection in his eyes—even his angry voice all but lulled me into another zone. “Not really,” I said, equally angered. “But I guess I have no choice but to go along with it, huh?”

Eli dropped his hand and stepped away. “Yeah. It’d make things a hell of a lot easier if you did.”

Thunder rumbled directly overhead, and just that fast, heavy drops of rain began to fall. “Let’s go,” he said, and we started home. The cars on Bay rolled by on the wet pavement with a hiss, and the warmth of coastal Savannah mixed with that unique smell only rain has. I inhaled deeply. It seemed the last of normalcy for me, and I greedily sucked it in. The rain fell faster and harder, and before we’d even made it to merchant’s drive, we were both soaked. I stomped up the cobbles in my spiked boots, my hair like a pile of wet moss hanging in thick, sopping hanks, my skin slick from the rain and the lotion I’d used earlier.