Damned if I Don't (The Harker Trilogy Book 2) (2 page)

Edie

I’m Edie Harker, the greatest vampire hunter in the world, and I still can’t win an argument with my big sister.

Even if she is dead.

I’m sitting on a bench with Meghan in the Void, a reality parallel to ours where the dead walk. It’s also home to an evil from within the vampire virus. My arms are crossed, and I relish the fact that I
can
cross my arms. In the real world, my left arm was torn off at the elbow by a bastard vampire, and I still haven’t gotten used to it.

“So let me get this straight—you knew that there was someone who was going to betray us, yet you couldn’t tell me that our aunt was the betrayer?” I demand. My voice sounds shrill, even to myself.

Meghan spears me with a cool look. “You’re the Harker, Edie. You can’t expect everything on a silver platter.”

As if my life up to this point has been all silver spoons and platters. My parents are dead, Meghan is dead, I’m infected with a virus that is slowly and painfully killing me, and—oh yeah—I need to stop the end of the world from happening.

I’m a lot of things right now. “Injured” and “diseased” are at the top of the list. I’m also “confused” and “scared”. And I can go ahead and add “in-love” to the mix.

But we’re not talking about that right now.

“Pardon me for wanting a bit of help,” I grumble.

“I didn’t know who would betray you.”

I must look pissed and rightfully so, because Meghan snickers at my expression. But I’m facing shit that she never had to face as the Harker. Like a villain trying to use her as a means to become the most powerful vampire of all.

“I warned you,” Meghan said. “I just couldn’t tell you that it was Aunt Tessa because
I didn’t know myself
. You may think that I was the best at what we do, but I’m still human.
Mostly
human, in any case, but you stay here long enough in the Void and you start to hear whisperings. Things that aren’t right with the world. That’s how I knew that someone was betraying you. I just didn’t know it was her.”

“I hate you,” I say, half playfully and half angry like a toddler stamping her foot. Although as the words leave my mouth, my heart breaks all over again.

“I love you too, Edie,” she says. She sighs and leans back on the bench. “Aunt Tessa, huh? I can’t believe it.”

My jaw muscles work painfully as I look at her, then I finally nod. “Yeah. It’s weird.”

Had I known…

Maybe I could have talked to Aunt Tessa. Maybe I could have convinced her to stop working for Anthony. Maybe I could have gotten her to help us.

I sigh, trying to shake off the last vestiges of my anger. When you only get to see your sister in a magical realm as you sleep, you don’t want to spend the entire time pissed off. So I have to cool my shit.

I comb my left hand through my long, black and red-streaked hair and let out a long breath.

The betrayal still burns deep in the pit of my stomach, the idea that my aunt―someone I trusted with
everything
—could have done something like that. She said she did it for Carl. I’m not sure that she knew the full extent of her actions and the implications they carried. I
saw
the horrible world that the vampires were keeping at bay. And in the wrong hands…

I shudder.

Meghan’s eyes crinkle in the corners as she frowns at me. I can tell that she’s still smarting after my verbal attack earlier, but she’s the more mature one. She knows when to drop the subject.

“How’s Graeme? And…” she licks her lips as her eyes grow glassy, “…how’s Amelia?”

That cools my jets finally. It must be hard to be dead and wonder how your three-year-old daughter is faring. I’ve seen Meghan in the Void a few times, and she doesn’t bring up her husband and daughter too often. I imagine it hurts just as much for her now, as though she were still alive and her loved ones had died.

“I talked to Graeme just before I fell asleep,” I assure her. “They’re safe. Good thing he left when he did.”

Yesterday—fuck, was it only yesterday?—Graeme had left Aunt Tessa’s in a huff because he found out that Jude is a vampire. It stung, but I realize now that they could have been caught in Aunt Tessa’s clutches if he had stayed. I’m not sure if Tessa would have tried to use them against me, but still, it’s good that we never had to cross that bridge.

“Please,” Meghan says, closing her eyes, “please make sure they’re safe. Since I can’t.”

I put my hand over hers and give it a quick squeeze. “I promise you. I will do everything in my power for them.”

I don’t make promises lightly, although I’m not sure how valuable that is coming from a dying, one-armed Harker. Who also happens to have feelings for one of the very monsters she hunts.

Worst. Harker. Ever.

Meghan opens her eyes and looks at me, so alike and yet so different from my own. While I went down the rebellious punk route, Meghan had always been prim and proper, probably because she knew she was destined to be the Harker. Destiny makes people act differently. She had to put on a brave face for both of us. Meanwhile, I was supposed to be the one who was free to live my life. Saving the world wasn’t supposed to my problem.

“Do you think that it’s gone?” I ask, holding up my left arm. It’s no longer attached in the real world, so being able to use it ethereally here gives me a bit of a rush. “My scar?” I wiggle my fingers to emphasize my point.

Meghan looks at my hand, then looks to me. “It’s a blood disease, Edie,” she says softly. “Do you really think that with your hand gone, it will—?”

“I can dream can’t I?”

“No,” Meghan says. “There are no dreams for us now. Only what is in the immediate future.”

“You sound fatalistic.”

“I’m being realistic.” My sister scowls. “What are you going to do now? With Carl and that vampire?”

Despite everything that has happened, my cheeks flush at the mention of Jude. The object of my affections, the one thing I’m not supposed to have. Even worse, Anthony had recognized him yesterday as one of the vampires that he sired. Meaning that somewhere in Jude’s hazy past, he was beholden to Anthony. I don’t distrust Jude—he’s made his own feelings for me abundantly clear and I know that he’d never betray me. I know that, deep in my stomach.

But there will always the big question mark about who Jude is.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Everything is so fucked up now.”

“Edie and Jude, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

“You’re not making this any better.”

“What, I can’t tease my baby sister for having a boyfriend?”

I don’t know how to respond to that. The truth is, I don’t know
what
we are. Although we’ve kissed and I’ve said I loved him (trust me, it’s not a word I throw around often), nothing is official. “Boyfriend” seems too casual for what I feel, but there’s not enough time for anything more. I’m still dying and he’s still a vampire. I guess you’d call us star-crossed lovers, although that sounds wildly romantic when we’re just Edie and Jude.

It's both as simple and as complex as that.

Still, Meghan can reduce me to acting like an embarrassed five-year-old. And her smile is giving that away. I guess you never stop being a big sister.

She shrugs, playing off my discomfort. “He’s a better catch than Mike.”

Now that’s saying something. “I thought you never liked Mike.”

“He wasn’t good enough for you.”

“And you think Jude is?”

“All I know is that he’s making you happy and while that may seem like a small thing, take it from someone who’s dead, Edie, you have to cherish everything you can get.”

“I’m dying too, you know.”

Meghan gives me a smile tinged with sadness. “You’ll figure it out. You’re the Harker after all.”

“A lot of good that does.”

“The road of the Harker is not an easy one. But it’s necessary. Save the world, Edie.”

Save the world.

Easier said than done.

Jude

“Whoa, so that lady—Tessa? —betrayed us?” Zhi says on the phone. “I thought it was weird that Anthony and his shit-tastic entourage showed up, but I never would have thought it was an insider telling him we were in Dallas.”

“Yeah,” I grumble. “We didn’t either. Obviously.”

I rub at my eyes, groaning lightly. I regret telling him about Tessa’s betrayal. I wasn’t going to, for Edie’s privacy. And here I am, doing that very thing.

I should have kept my fucking mouth shut, but after the initial shock wore off, and Edie fell asleep, I called Zhi back and told him the news. Because he’s in as much danger as we are, especially since he’s pulling Progenitor-babysitting duty. He needs to know if there’s any chance of someone else showing up on his doorstep.

We’re all in this together, right?

It’s sometime around five o’clock in the evening, and I’ve been up all day. The sunlight is starting to wear on me, and I know that we’re going to have a long night ahead of us. After Edie called the cops to report her aunt as “missing” (they won’t do anything until Tessa has been missing for twenty-four hours), she passed out on the couch in the living room. She’s bundled up tightly so that when she thrashes about from nightmares, she won’t hurt her bad arm. Or what’s left of it.

I’ll get her up in a moment, but for now, I just want her to sleep as much as possible. She needs it.

“So, what does that mean now?” Zhi asks. He doesn’t sound like the cocky bastard we originally met in San Antonio. It almost makes me smile.

“Well, Anthony still has Edie’s arm, and he can use the blood from that at any time.”

“So our only option is to protect the Progenitor until we find a someone else who can be the new Progenitor,” Zhi intones.

The Progenitor, a vampire who looks to be in his sixties, but is actually much, much older, was supposed to have been replaced last night by his first generation descendant, Esther. But Anthony came in and destroyed that plan and the old man is despondent at the moment, like he can’t believe what has happened.

I clench my jaw in answer, which is long enough for Zhi, who continues. “Fuck knows that the old man can’t defend himself anymore.”

Join the club.
But if we all lay around and stare off into the distance, then the world as we know it will be destroyed.

“We need to find someone that he sired directly,” I say. “And I don’t know how to go about
doing
stuff like that.” It’s not like, after everything that’s happened in the past five months, I’m popular around my kind right now. Once word gets out about what happened in Dallas, I’m sure my name will be smeared all over the place.

Whatever the fuck my name really is.
I won’t even get into that right now. Just focus on the task at hand.

“Fucking vampires,” Zhi sighs. “So many rules and magical, mystical problems.”

“We’ll figure out it. We have to.”

“Without our help,” Zhi says bitterly. “We’re going to be busy protecting his majesty.”

“I know. You and Maria and your crazy grandma.”

To my surprise, Zhi chuckles. “Năinai has been known to kick vampire ass in her old age.”

“Here’s hoping she’s still got it.” We both know how precarious a position they’re in—basically our fates are in their hands. Everything depends upon whether they can keep the Progenitor away from Anthony.

I don’t like the odds.

“Lemme talk to him,” I hear the Spanish-tinged accent of Maria in the background. There’s a bit of shuffling, then Maria comes in loud and clear.

“How’s the Harker?” she asks, her bluntness making me grin.

I look at Edie, who has been mostly still throughout this conversation. While asleep, her face is peaceful, devoid of all the turmoil that’s going through our lives at the moment. What’s left of her left arm is bandaged up, and thankfully, it looks like it’s not bleeding anymore. There was one horrible point where I thought she died in my arms last night from blood loss.

I would fall apart if she died. Really. I would go crazy and tear up everything. I can’t lose her. Not when she gives my life meaning.

Not when I love her.

“She’s doing as well as can be expected,” I decide. “She’s asleep.”

“What?” Maria’s voice is panicked, concerned for us. “You haven’t left the house yet?! But when night falls…”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I comb a hand through my hair, knowing full well that leaving here at the last minute is dangerous. Although daytime won’t stop vampires from roaming, we’re far more vulnerable here at nighttime than if we keep a move on. But I don’t want to move Edie. I want her to sleep.

She’s going to need it.

“
Dios mio,”
Maria mutters. “You’re stupid if you don’t get the fuck outta there.”

Thing is, I don’t know where to go from here. We can’t go back to Dallas. We can’t stay in Austin, it’s too dangerous for us here. Zhi’s in San Antonio, so I don’t want to bring Edie any closer to him, in case Anthony is following us, because if he finds the Progenitor…

I shake my head. No, we can’t let that happen.

So my options are to strike out in a random direction, or we head for another big city where we can get lost among a sea of humans and vampires, and we won’t be able to be traced as easily. Some place like Houston.

Which gives me an inkling of an idea.

“We’ll get going,” I assure her again. I don’t tell her about my idea in case it doesn’t pan out. No use giving false hope to this entire debacle. We just need to get through this.

“Stay safe,” Maria says.

“You too.”

The line goes dead. I scroll through my contacts, wondering if I actually have the number I’m looking for. And even if I have it, his number might have changed. We vampires don’t keep our numbers for very long. It’s too risky to have something that traceable and identifiable to us, if we have them for any extended amount of time. To my relief, I find that there is a contact saved for him.

Dean.

The vampire who knew that Anthony was going after the Progenitor. The vampire that knew
why
Anthony had infected Edie in the first place. The vampire who knows more than he wants anyone to believe. Because knowledge is both liberating and dangerous in our worlds.

If I know Dean—and, granted, I don’t know him very well—he’s probably asleep, like 99% of the vampire population in the daytime. So I send him a text that he’ll find when he wakes up.

nice night for a feeding. care 2 join me?

He’ll know it’s me. And he’ll also know that there’s a deeper meaning behind the text. I’m not going to outright say that I want to meet at the Hive in Houston, in case someone else has his phone. As it’s filled with vampires, the Hive isn’t the best place to bring the Harker, so I’m going to have to figure something out. I promised I wouldn’t leave her alone, but that’s one place where she shouldn’t go right now.

I toss my phone aside and get to my feet, careful to avoid the sunlight. All of the curtains are closed, but I can’t be too careful. I don’t trust Edie’s cat to not try pulling them down as I walk past them.

The black cat hasn’t left Edie’s side since she fell asleep on the couch. It’s as if she’s trying to keep watch over her. She glares at me as I pass Edie and head up the stairs, two at a time, so I can check up on Carl, Edie’s cousin. He’s upstairs in his room, mourning his mother’s death hard. Understandably so.

Still, we have to leave.

As I head up the stairs, I think back to my fight with Anthony at the Ritz Carlton in Dallas. Granted, it feels a bit hazy because I was souped-up on Edie’s blood—which is like PCP to vampires—but he recognized me, to the point that he was yelling at me to stop.

“What the fuck are you doing? You’re on my side!”

Anthony’s words echo in my brain. He called me his progeny. The vast, black hole that is my memory prior to 1968 is as blank as it ever was, even with that admission. It feels like there is something big, something huge just out of reach, locked in a safe. And if I’m completely honest with myself, I don’t
want
to know what’s there.

I grimace as I reach the landing and head to Carl’s room.

“Carl?” I rap lightly.

No answer.

“Hey, Carl?” I knock again, louder.

No answer again.

I jiggle the knob and find it locked. I pound harder still, rattling the door on its hinges. We don’t have time to be considerate around here. Now that I’m off the phone with Zhi and Maria, and I have a sense of where we should go next, all I want to do is get the fuck out.

“Carl,” I hiss.

“What?” comes the muffled answer from within. Carl sounds defeated, like he’s been crying. There’s no shame in that, especially when it all happened so suddenly. I know he’s hurting.

But still…

“Pack your stuff,” I say through the lump in my throat.

There’s a long pause and then I hear the lock turn. The door opens, showing the eighteen-year-old’s tearstained face and his trademark Sublime t-shirt. He’s glaring up at me. I think he one time had a crush on me. Not any more.

“I’m not fucking leaving,” he says tightly.

Thought he’d say that.

“We have an hour and a half until nighttime,” I hiss at him, jabbing a finger towards the window to make my point. “And when that happens, this place is going to be swarming with vampires. I don’t want to be around for them to tear me to pieces.”

I know that I’m making an imposing figure, towering over him, but intimidation might be the only thing that will get his ass moving. He needs to know that this is a life or death situation, and at the end of it, he’ll remember that he wants to be alive, no matter how much he’s grieving.

Carl stands his ground and puffs up his chest. “I said, I’m not going anywhere. Not with
her
.”

I frown. He’s blaming Edie for his mother’s death, when we all know that Tessa acted on her own accord and ratted us out to the enemy. I’m not saying she deserved it, but she deserved
something
for betraying Edie.

Logically it makes sense, but nothing’s working logically with him at the moment.

“Look,” I say, “you need to make the decision. Either you’re going to be a victim, or you’re going to do the right thing: prove your mother wrong, and save the world and your future. Because you can’t do both, my friend.”

Carl’s eyes widen and he slowly nods. Smart kid.

Good.

“I’m going wake Edie up now. We’ll be leaving in five minutes.”

Carl looks around me, down the stairs. The muscles in his jaw twitch as I can tell that he’s contemplating running away.

Give the kid a break, his mother just died.

I need to keep reminding myself that.

“Five minutes. Or else.” Although I don’t know what “else” could be. It’s not like I’m leaving him behind. Edie would kill me if I did that. Stake and all.

I leave Carl there and jog back down the stairs, grateful that Edie hasn’t woken. The cat, Purl, gets up in a hiss as I make my way over to her master. I don’t want to wake her. I really don’t.

Please let her be healed enough in there.

“Edie,” I whisper, gently shaking her. The space between her eyebrows creases and she turns her head away from me.

“Meghan,” she mumbles in her sleep, which I recognize as the former Harker’s name, her sister. Still asleep, her face tenses with worry.

I kiss her forehead and smooth back some of her hair, noting that her skin is chilly to the touch. Not enough to scare me, but it’s enough to raise an eyebrow. She must have gone into a trance while she slept. Her cold, frosted breath confirms it.

I watch her face contort and she continues to talk in her sleep.

What are you seeing in there?