Pitch (12 page)

Not going to lose you too
. Like he thought he had lost Mom and Gia. I swallowed hard and for the first time I could remember
I
looked away from
him
. What kind of person didn’t think about their own mother and sister? I had been so busy worrying about myself, worrying about Dad, and worrying about Travis that I had forgotten I had other family.
Just like they forgot about you
, a little voice added slyly. My shoulders stiffened. It was painful, but true. Travis and Dad, they were my only family now. I could not afford to think about anyone else.
And Maximus
, the voice piped in again.
Don’t forget about him
.

“We can’t risk going out there without a plan, even if it is daylight,” Dad said. He dropped my arm and glanced to the right, where my room was. His eyes narrowed. “Did you see this?” he asked before he plucked something off the door. A piece of paper. A piece of paper I hadn’t seen because I had rushed out of the room too fast. He read the note in silence, and when his face blanched and his hand trembled I tore it away.

“Lola, what does that mean? Who is Angelique? Is this for you? Is this about Travis? Lola? Lola, can you hear me?”

Head spinning, I sat down in the middle of the hallway and buried my head in my hands. The note fluttered to the carpet beside me. I didn’t need to see it again. Every word, every letter was already burned into my mind. My mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

Angelique had finally found me. Had I ever truly believed she wouldn’t? And instead of taking me, instead of killing
me
, she had done something far, far worse. She had taken Travis; sweet, helpless Travis who had already been traumatized by one Drinker. He had yet to talk about what happened that first night in Mr. Livingston’s house and I had never pressed him, but he screamed in his sleep sometimes. Horrible, gut wrenching cries that sliced through me like a knife and left me awake for hours trying not to imagine what sort of tortures he had been forced to endure.

By not telling him about Angelique – by not warning him I was some sort of monster magnet – I had allowed this to happen. My fault. It was all my fault.

Dad hovered over me and continued to ask the same questions again and again. Who is Angelique? What does she want? Where did she take Travis? I didn’t have any answers for him. I didn’t even have answers for myself. 

“Maximus,” I whispered.

Dad stopped talking. His eyebrows knitted together. “What? What did you say?”

I looked up at him. Inside my chest my heart was racing, but suddenly my head was clear as a bell and I knew what I had to do. “We need Maximus.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Operation Rescue Travis Commences

We could not find Maximus. It seemed he, like Travis, had simply… disappeared. As the hours began to tick by, each one bringing sundown closer and closer, the pit in the bottom of my stomach grew bigger and bigger. There was no question I knew what I had to do. I just didn’t
want
to do it.

I didn’t want to walk towards my death like the proverbial lamb meekly lining up to be slaughtered. Yet what choice did I have? Angelique had Travis. There was no denying that point. I don’t know how she found me, or why she didn’t kill me when she had, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting Travis back. This time I wouldn’t run the other way.

Dad spent the entire day trying to change my mind. He yelled, cajoled, and when that didn’t work threatened to ground me.

Finally I looked up from table where I had spread all of Maximus’s presents out and rolled my eyes at him.

“Seriously? Dad, I’m going. Stop wasting your breath.” I turned my attention back to the guns. I had decided to take two with me along with a whole slew of bullets. I was still debating on whether or not to bring a knife, since chances were I would slice off my own thumb before I got it anywhere near Angelique.

The breeze ruffled my hair and I sighed, tilting my face up at the clear blue sky. If I was going to face the dark, I wanted to spend as much time in the light as I could, which was why I had moved Operation Save Travis out to the picnic tables behind the hotel.

They were old and dilapidated, but the memories that had been created on them were a soothing balm for the nerves that snapped and danced in my belly like live wires.

How many family cookouts had been held back here? How many children had devoured cheeseburgers and begged for more ketchup for their hotdogs? How many couples had sat side by side, sharing laughter and silly stories?

“Lola, you can’t do this. It’s insane. Going out at night is crazy. You know what those things can do,” said Dad, chasing away my happy thoughts.

“What do you want me to do? Just abandon Travis? You know I can’t do that.”

His eyes pleaded with me to reconsider. “Travis wouldn’t want you to do this. He wouldn’t want you to risk your life for him.”

“Really?” My eyebrows shot up. “Because if some Drinker came in the middle of the night and kidnapped
me
I sure as hell would want him to come to my rescue.”

“That’s… that’s different,” he mumbled, shifting uncomfortably from side to side.

I picked up one of the smaller guns and cocked it, squinting along the sight. Not for the first time I wondered where Maximus had gotten his small arsenal of weapons.

 The more I thought about it the more convinced I became that he was part of some top secret government organization. Maybe he had been assigned to our town, or maybe he had just been passing through when the Drinkers started their attack. The reason why he was here didn’t matter. All that mattered was he seemed to be the only person who knew what the hell was going on – even if he wouldn’t tell me.

“I’m doing this with or without your approval, Dad.”

“Then I’m going with you,” he said.

I bobbled the gun in surprise and slammed it down on the table. “Absolutely not. You wouldn’t be able to do anything even if you did come. You’d just distract me.” Harsh, but true. Dad had not partaken in any of Maximus’s defense lessons. He was worse with a gun than I was with a knife, and that was saying something.

Covering his face with his hands, Dad sank down on one of the benches. The rotting wood groaned under his weight, but held. He stared down between his knees as he said, more to himself than to me, “I thought we were safe. We were so careful every night. I don’t know how they found us. I don’t know why they’re doing this.”

The guilt was like a rash on my skin. A rash I kept itching and itching, but could never get rid of. Dad assumed – and I let him continue doing so – that Angelique had picked us at random. How could I tell him, especially now, that I was the reason she had found us?

I should have gotten rid of the scars on my hand days ago, but I had selfishly kept them, knowing what they could do. If not for me Travis never would have been taken. There was no question of my going to get him back, even if it meant taking his place.

“It’s going to be dusk soon,” I said, shading my eyes against the sun as it crawled towards the distant mountains. “I should get going.”

The high school was in the middle of town. It was one of the oldest buildings on record, but recent renovations had given the old brick behemoth a modern facelift. I hadn’t planned on stepping foot through the front doors – painted maroon in honor of the school’s colors – until September 2
^nd
, when classes were scheduled to begin. Things changed, I supposed. Especially when blood drinking demons attacked.

“Do you even have a plan?” Dad asked.

If showing up at the school and offering myself up to Angelique in exchange for Travis counted as a plan then yes, I had one. “Of course I have a plan. I’m not stupid. And I know how to defend myself.” Well, at least one of those things was correct. I hoped.

“I don’t like it.” Dad stood and crossed his arms. “We could just go. Find a way to leave town. There has to be other people out there. People who know what is going on. People who can help us get Travis back without you having to risk your life.”

“Or,” I countered, “it’s even worse out there than it is here. No, Dad. I’m sorry, but I’m going to help Travis. I have to. And you can’t stop me.”

“I never could, could I?” he said. A rueful grin tugged at one side of his mouth. “Fine, Lola. I’ll wait for you at the hotel but if you’re not back in one hour I’m coming after you and that geek.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “His name is Travis.”

“I know. He’s still a geek. I never could figure out why you two got along so well, but I’m glad he’s been there for you Lola.” He cleared his throat, dropped his eyes, and mumbled, “Especially when your family couldn’t be.”

It was as close to an apology for his behavior as he had ever come before. “Yeah, well, it’s not your fault Mom took off across the country.”

“Yes,” he said simply. “It was.”  

A strained silence fell between us.

Part of me was glad that Dad was finally taking responsibility for his actions. The other part of me was annoyed that it had taken me marching off to my untimely death for him to do it. Why couldn’t I come from a normal family? A family where the child didn’t have to be the adult and the adult didn’t act like the child?
This
was why I needed to save Travis. Not because he was my best friend, not because it was the right thing to do, but because without him, I had nothing. Dad may have been related to me by blood, but Travis was my real family. And when your family was in danger you did everything possible to save them, no questions asked. Especially if you were the reason they were in danger in the first place.   

Clapping his hands briskly together Dad nodded towards the setting sun. “All right kiddo. You better get going. Remember, you don’t have to do this.”

As if I would back out now. Perusing the picnic table one last time I selected the smallest of the handguns and stuffed it in my back pocket I picked another – the one Maximus had given me the first night I met him – and held it loosely in my right hand, just like he had taught me. “See you soon Dad.”

We probably should have hugged. It was one of those occasions, but neither of us moved towards the other, and even though it meant I was a horrible person, I was secretly grateful.

I waited until Dad had turned around and headed back into the hotel before I struck out across the cornfield, following the path we had etched out between the stalks with our daily ventures into town.

When Maximus appeared at the edge of the field, as if he had been waiting for me the entire time, I didn’t even jump. He fell in step beside me, matching me stride for stride while those piercing blue eyes studied me head to toe.

“Why are you carrying a gun?” he said casually, as if he were asking why I had decided to wear a red t-shirt.

“Because of this.” Without pausing I fished Angelique’s note out from the back pocket of my jeans and handed it to him. He read it in the span of a few seconds, and I knew he had finished it when his curses filled the air. Crumpling the paper into a ball, he threw it on the ground and grinded it down beneath his boot heel.

“Hey,” I complained. “That’s mine.”

In a flash he was in front of me, his hands on my shoulders, his face in my face, his eyes burning into my eyes. “Stupid girl, does your life mean so little to you?”

I didn’t think, I just reacted. My hand jerked and the gun was between us, leveled straight at his chest. To his credit, he didn’t even blink.

“Good reflexes,” he said, lifting his hands from my shoulders in a gesture of surrender.

“I was taught by the best.” I slowly lowered the gun. Rookie move. Maximus was behind me and had my arm twisted up behind my back and the gun out of my hand before I had time to yell.

“Never,” he whispered in my ear, “let down your defenses.” He pushed my arm up a little higher, enough to cause a twinge of pain to rocket up through my shoulder blade, before he released it.

Rubbing my shoulder, I whipped around and glared. “Have I ever told you you’re a real asshole?”

“Every day since you met me,” Maximus said easily. Something sparked in those lake blue eyes of his – humor? affection? – before he jerked his chin towards the cornfield and his expression turned formidable. “Now turn around and go back to the hotel. I’ll get Travis for you.”