Blood Run (44 page)

They turned onto Promise’s old street and a familiar swell of depression enveloped her. The neighborhood looked both the same and also, irretrievably altered. The same because the same houses, mailboxes, lampposts, trees, and in some cases, cars, were still here. Altered in that it had that fundamentally abandoned look that Promise had seen in town after town as they’d traveled to and from the base. The lack of children or children’s toys, the lack of dogs barking and lawnmowers mowing, the lack of
life
.

She glanced down at Evans. His face was neutral as his eyes scanned and rescanned the street and houses. “You don’t notice it anymore, do you?”

Evans looked up at her. “Notice what?” he asked, sounding surprised. He noticed everything, his raised brows seemed to say.

The horses’ hooves clip-clopped hollowly, the sound dying a muffled death when it hit the cold, brown grasses on the lawns surrounding them. It reminded her of how little she had left in this world.

“The emptiness,” Promise said. “How sad it is…do you even see it?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, and he clenched his jaw. “Don’t do that,” he told her flatly. “It doesn’t do either of us any good.”

“Do what?” she asked, her voice incredulous–a little
too
incredulous.

“Don’t try and make me the bad guy,” he said. “This the one?”

Promise looked where he was indicating. Her old house. She nodded, unable to speak, and pulled Ash to a stop. She was suddenly afraid to go in. Afraid of what she’d find. Or not find.

Evans pedaled up the driveway and leaned the bike against the garage. Then he turned and looked at them expectantly. “Come on,” he said, with slight impatience but no unkindness.

Peter turned to Promise and ran a hand down her arm. “You ready?”

“As I’ll…” she said, her voice trailing away. She had a sudden presentiment that Chance would be dead, and her throat tried to close, tightened by tears unshed. But, whatever was, was. She had to face it. It’s what she’d gone all that way for. She cleared her throat and lifted her chin. “As I’ll ever be.”

The house was bone chillingly cold inside. And dark, darker it seemed, than the outside would indicate. Promise blinked several times, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the gloom, but nothing changed. She realized it was her nerves, her mindset.

“Go ahead,” Evans said.

Peter squeezed her hand. “Come with you or wait? What do you want us to do?”

She hesitated and then decided. “Let me go see him first. Then…then I’ll…” she trailed away as her eyes wandered down the hall. She swallowed as she took a step, and Peter dropped her hand.

The familiar hallway, familiar kitchen. The family room looking out over the backyard where her parents had died, the sliding glass doors busted out from the night they’d captured Chase in the laundry room.

The laundry room. Heavily reinforced, a small, rough-hewn door at the bottom. Silent. Deathly still.

“Chance?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. No answer. She cleared her throat and knelt, her eyes on the bottom of the door as though she might be able to will her sight under it, to see him. “Chance? It’s me, it’s Destiny. Are you there, honey?”

Her voice almost broke on ‘honey’, and she swallowed again. Fear caused a wave of anger to flood through her. “Chance! You answer me!”

Silence.

She leaned her forehead against the door and tears slipped from beneath her closed eyelids.
Please
, she thought, rocking her head side to side, the rough wood digging into her chilled skin. Her teeth began to chatter lightly.
Please, please…please let him be alive…he’s all I have…he’s all I have in this world…please let him
–

“Prooomissss…”

Her eyes snapped open and both hands went to the door. “Chance!” Had he really spoken? Or had her desperate mind manufactured it? “Chance, say it again!”

Seeming to slip around the edges of the small, makeshift door, his voice came again. “Prooomissss…” It was his voice, but it was also the voice of a vampire: the swallowed breath, the inhuman hiss. “Proomissssss…”

And was it also sad? And also happy? Yes, she thought so. Happy and sad, both, just like she felt right now. “Yes, it’s me, Chance, your sister. Chance, I’ve missed you so much.”

“Missss you, Prooomisssssss…”

Her eyes widened in surprise. He spoke? Words other than her name? Was she hearing things? Somehow
hallucinating
what she wanted to hear?

“I’ve been teaching him.” Lea’s voice came from behind her, and Promise jumped, giving out a breathy little shriek. “Oh, Promise, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!” Lea closed the distance between them and dropped to her knees, too. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. They told me to wait outside, but I told them to…well, I told them to go to heck…” She grinned nervously at her friend. “Was I wrong? Should I have left you alone?”

“How?” Promise asked, ignoring Lea’s question. “How did you teach him?”

“I just spent a lot of time talking to him. I found pictures upstairs in your old bedroom…you had an album in your closet, do you remember it?…and I put pictures under the door and told him about everyone in them.” She put her mouth to Promise’s ear, whispering. “Mostly pictures of you and friends, the dog you guys had back when he was just a little guy…but I didn’t put any pictures of your parents under the door.” Lea leaned back and checked Promise’s eyes as if she thought she might have offended her. Then she leaned back in. “I didn’t know if that would be too much…too sad, you know? I’m not sure how much he remembers.”

“No, it’s okay,” Promise said. She felt slightly dazed. “You did exactly right. The exact right things.” Tears welled again as she looked at Lea. “Thank you so much. I could never thank you enough. You and Mark, both.”

Lea smiled and hugged her. “Don’t give it a second thought,” she whispered. Then she stood. “Listen, I’m going back out with the guys. You visit with Chance a little more, okay?” She didn’t mention Evans and bringing him in to assess the situation for Mr. West. She didn’t need to mention it–the knowledge was written on Promise’s face like eminent disaster.

Promise listened as Lea closed the front door behind her, and then she put the worry about Evans aside as she turned back to the laundry room door. She smiled. “Chance, I…I can’t wait to see you and to get you out of here. We have something that will help you get better.” She swallowed and relaxed her shoulders. “You hear me, honey?”

“Yeeessss…”

She shivered, but still, her smile widened. “Just wait till you see what I have now, Chance. I have a horse! His name is Ash, and he’s pitch black. You’re gonna love him. You hear me, Chance?”

“Hooorse…aaaaassssshhhh…”

“That’s right, honey,” Promise said and put her hands flat on the door. The wood grain melted and swirled as tears filled her eyes. She leaned her forehead against the door again and took a deep, shaking breath.

She talked to her little brother.

~ ~ ~

“Looks good,” Evans said, his voice indicating only a slight surprise. He turned to look at Peter, Mark, Lea and Promise where they sat at the kitchen table. He had inspected the entire outside of the laundry room, including going upstairs to the room above it that held the trap door. Everything had looked tight and strong, well constructed. “I only worry about this.” He indicated the small, hinged door at the bottom of the laundry room door. “This is where you put the, ah, the blood?”

Lea nodded. “Yeah, but he can’t get out that little door.” Her tone was one of honest confusion, but Evans shot her a look. She cringed back a little in her chair. She was a shy, non-confrontational girl who been raised mainly by an adoptive father who’d had very little to do with her. He’d died or been changed in the initial plague, and she’d gone to the high school where she’d met Promise and Mark. They were the first real friends she’d ever had. She was uneasy around everyone else, except for children, of course. She loved children.

Promise smiled at her encouragingly across the table. Then she turned to Evans. “Why, Ev? What bothers you about it?”

“He could reach through it. Grab a hand and pull it in. Bite it.”

“He’s pretty interested in the blood, though, when we put it through. I don’t know if he even knows a hand is there,” Mark said.

Evans shrugged. “Doesn’t convince me. I’ve seen a lot of situations where carelessness was the end of a good operation. Just like the kudzu crawling up your safe house, you don’t always see the potential for disaster when you’re too close to it.” He glanced at Promise and then away. Her heart sank. She knew what he was going to say next. “I am going to recommend that this house needs to be sealed, and the four of you are not to come back here. I’m sorry, Promise, I know how much–”

Promise stood abruptly, and her chair tilted and crashed onto the floor behind her. “I won’t,” she said. “I won’t let you kill him.” Her hands were in fists, and her stomach rolled as though she were ill. Her face was calm, but her voice carried an angry tremor. “Everyone else can stay away. But I’m staying right here.”

Impatience and anger flitted over Evans’ features. “Be reasonable, Promise. You can’t stay here at night. You can’t keep feeding that thing in there forever. You–”

“He’s not a thing!” Her voice rose, cutting across his words. “He’s a little boy! And you’re talking about…about
killing
him!”

Evans took a step toward Promise, and Peter stood, watching him warily. Evans glanced at Peter and now anger,
real
anger suffused his features. He looked back at Promise. “What about the base, huh? About what happened there? Those were smart people, Promise. Smart people with a lot of checks and balances on what they were doing. And
still
it–”

“That changes nothing! This is entirely different! I don’t care how smart they were or how much they–”

“It’s not different! It’s dangerous, and you’re putting other people in jeopardy! Are you so selfish that–”

“Selfish?!
Me
? You’ve got to be–”

They were nearly toe-to-toe, yelling, their voices whip cracking through the small kitchen.

“Be quiet!” Lea commanded, her voice cutting across both of theirs. They all looked at her in shock. She’d never raised her voice before.

In the sudden silence, a child’s sobbing could be heard from the direction of the laundry room. It was a sound of terribly inconsolable sadness.

“Chance!” Promise brushed past Evans, pushing him roughly and nearly crashing into the wall herself. Evans grabbed her arms to steady her, and she turned to him. Her eyes were filled with a sadness that matched the childish sobbing. “You hear that?” she said, her voice a whisper. “That’s no monster.” She disengaged herself gently and turned away.

He followed her as she went to the laundry room.

She knelt, her forehead against the door. “Chance, it’s okay, no one is going to hurt you,” she said. “I love you, honey; everything is going to be fine.”

“Don’t leave, Prooomisssss, pleeease…don’t leeeave…” Chance’s voice, more little boy than gibbering vampire, caused Evans to step back, shock and realization dawning across his features. Chance sobbed again. “Love you Proomissss, love you…” The hint of the monster was still there, ringing across the sibilant esses and tightening some of the consonants, but for all that, it was still just a little boy on the other side of that door. Just as Promise had said. All the color drained from Evans’ face. He’d been calmly proposing manslaughter.

“I’m here, honey, I’m here. I love you, too,” Promise said. She could feel her friends gathered behind her in the family room. “We’re all here, Chance. We’re going to take care of you.”

Before Evans could react, Promise slipped the lock on the small door and lifted it open. “Promise, no!” Evans yelled, taking a step forward, but Peter put an arm against his chest, stopping him easily.

A small, grubby hand, the nails as black as pitch, the skin ragged and dry, reached out of the opening. Promise blocked the sun with her body, and her hand hovered over Chance’s. She sighed, her shoulders relaxing, and gripped his hand, squeezing it gently. On the other side of the door, Chance sobbed again. Evans sat abruptly, sliding down the family room wall.

Promise looked over her shoulder at him. She smiled as tears ran down her cheeks.

Evans nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, you were right. You were all right.” He looked up at the rest of them. Peter’s eyes were on Promise, but Lea and Mark were smiling at him.

“Hey…Evans?” Promise said, and he looked at her. “Want to meet my little brother?”

He knee-walked across to her, and though he wouldn’t take Chance’s hand, he did talk to him. Briefly. His face did not lose its blown away look.

When they were all back in the kitchen, Evans–getting ready to ride back to Wereburg–asked Promise, “And you said he was fully changed? Before?”

She nodded. “As far as I could tell, yeah.”

Evans’ eyes went to Lea. “And you’ve been just…what? Showing him pictures? Is that it?”

“No, not exactly,” Lea said and smiled. “I’ve been
reminding
him of things.”

“I think Mr. West needs to come out here and see him,” Evans said, almost more to himself than to the room at large. He still didn’t seem completely recovered from his shock. The implications of what they’d done here, what they’d accomplished, it would change everything. And right now, that little kid trapped in the laundry room was a pretty big piece of the puzzle. “When I come back tomorrow, I’m bringing a crew with me. We’re going to make this into a safe house, too. Maybe a safe lab.” He looked at Promise and mustered a ghost of his authoritarian attitude. “You’re not to stay here tonight. It’s too risky. But after tomorrow, I think you’ll be able to stay here all the time. Deal?”

“I’ll come with you,” Promise said. “I can help talk to Mr. West. Whether I stay in the safe house or Wereburg tonight doesn’t matter. Chance will be okay, and I’ll explain it to him, that it’s just until tomorrow, and then I’ll be back for good.”

“Lea should come, too, then,” Evans said. “She’s the one who trained–not trained–I mean, she’s the one who
worked
with him. I want Mr. West to hear it from her.”