The Forever Song (11 page)

A few hours later, we stood on the banks of a sullen black lake so vast you couldn’t see the other side. According to Kanin, in the time before, it was called Lake Michigan, and Chicago had stood proudly along its edge. Now, the lake and the rivers that cut through the downtown area had crept over their banks and merged together, flooding part of the city but also creating a natural barrier against rabids.

I gazed over the rough waters, narrowing my eyes. I remembered Jackal’s city from the last time I’d come through; a tangle of narrow bridges, walkways and platforms that crisscrossed submerged buildings. From where I stood, it looked much the same. I could see the old barge that sat in the center of the river, and the ramshackle bridge that spanned the dark waters. Motorcycles and a few other vehicles were parked in haphazard rows along the surface of the barge, the final stop before you crossed into the lair of a raider king.

Or a deranged psychopathic vampire hell-bent on destroying the world.

“Home, sweet home.” Jackal sighed. “Or it will be, once I slaughter all the bastards who turned on me, stick their heads on pikes, and decorate the city with them. Maybe shove a torch through their teeth and use them to light the walkways, wha’d’ya think, sister?”

“It would definitely be you.” I gazed out over the water, seeing the distant lanterns and torchlight glimmering in the haze. Even from this distance, I could tell something was wrong. “There’s no one on the bridges,” I mused, remembering that the last time I’d come through, the walkways had been swarming with raiders. Now, the bridges and platforms stood empty, abandoned. “Everything looks deserted.”

Which meant we were walking into a trap, of course.

“Where do you think Sarren will be?” Kanin asked quietly. The Master vampire gazed over the water, observing the city with dark, impassive eyes. Jackal shrugged.

“Only one place he would be.” He pointed to where a tall, narrow skyscraper stood against the skyline. A light shone near the top, bright and familiar, making my skin prickle with recognition.

Jackal’s tower. The place I’d met my blood brother for the first time. Where we’d fought, on the top floor of the building, and he’d nearly killed me.

The place where Jebbadiah Crosse had died.

“It’s the only building in the city that still has power,” Jackal continued, staring up at the tower and the flickering light at the top. “And you can see everything that’s going on below. If I were Sarren, that’s where I would be.”

“Then that’s where we’re going.” The light shimmered across the water, taunting me, and I felt my fangs slide out. Sarren was close. This time, I wouldn’t just cut off his arm. This time, I was going for his head.

“I suggest we do so quietly,” Kanin interjected, his low, calm voice breaking through my sudden hate. “Sarren knows we’re coming, and the whole city will be on high alert. If we can, we should avoid alerting them to our presence. It would be wiser to deal with Sarren first, before confronting the rest of the army. If we remove their new king, they will have lost their reason to fight us.”

Jackal snorted. “Sneak into my own city and skulk around like a sewer rat,” he muttered darkly, shaking his head. “Oh, heads are going to roll for this. I’m going to set up a special lane and use their skulls for bowling balls.”

Ignoring him, I glanced at Kanin. “How are we going to sneak in?”

My sire gave a tight smile. “I expect the roads will be well guarded, but slipping into a flooded city is not hard. As large as this army is, they cannot watch the whole river.”

Great. Looked like we were going for a swim.

Chapter 6

We crossed the river easily, as silent as the shadows that clung to the waves. Thankfully, though there was a thin sheet of ice clinging to the edges of the bank, the rest of the river was clear. And navigating large bodies of water wasn’t difficult if you didn’t have to worry about things like breathing or hypothermia. We slipped below the hulk of the huge barge, vampire sight piercing the pitch-black waters, as we continued into the flooded streets of Jackal’s territory. Fish glided past us in large schools, flitting through an eerie underwater world of drowned buildings and submerged roads, rusty cars lining the pavement. A massive dark shape, almost as long as me, swished by my head, making me grit my teeth. Kanin had assured me that fish could not become rabid—and Jackal had laughed at the question—but I had no issues with drawing my katana underwater and slashing the next thing that came out of the depths toward me.

Above us, the city was silent. Bridges and walkways sat empty, platforms were deserted and still. Nothing moved overhead, and the ominous silence began to eat at me. This was a trap; I knew it, and the others had to know it, but there was nothing we could do except press forward. I’d face whatever Sarren could throw at me if it meant I would find him waiting at the end, with nothing between us but my katana.

“Careful.” Kanin grabbed my collar when we surfaced, drawing me back a pace. We’d come out beneath a bridge, a flimsy walkway of wood and metal that stretched from one roof to another. Puzzled, I frowned back at him, and he pointed to the underside of the planks.

A strange metal device had been taped to the bridge, wires poking out in every direction. I didn’t know what it could be, but the blinking red light on one corner looked fairly ominous.

“That’s why the city is deserted,” Kanin mused as Jackal looked up at the strange device and swore. “He likely has the whole place booby-trapped. Step on the wrong bridge, and it won’t be there anymore.”

“Huh,” Jackal remarked, gazing at the wired bridge with the hint of a smirk. “That must’ve taken him a while. Bastard sure went through a lot of trouble, just for us. I feel so special, don’t you?”

I paused. Something about Jackal’s comment didn’t feel right. “Why is he doing all this?” I asked as we began moving again, keeping well back from the mine. “Isn’t he trying to reach Eden? Why stop here?”

“I don’t know,” Kanin murmured, and he sounded troubled, too. “Perhaps he wants to stop us for good, so he can continue his plans undisturbed. But that does not seem like him.” His brow furrowed, and he shook his head. “Sarren is as unpredictable as he is brilliant and cruel. If he is in the city, he has a reason for it.”

“Does it matter?” asked Jackal behind us. “Who cares what he’s up to? He can be planning to fill the world with puppies, and I’m still going to rip the shriveled black heart from his chest and shove it down his throat until he chokes on it.”

A memory flickered to life then, making my stomach cold, and I whirled on Jackal. “Wait,” I said, as realization dawned. “The lab! You had a lab set up at the top floor of your tower. That’s why you kidnapped Jeb—you wanted him to develop a cure for Red Lung, and you had given him everything he needed to do it—”

“Well, shit.” Jackal raked a hand through his hair. “I forgot about that. Now I’m kinda embarrassed.”

“There’s a lab here?” Kanin echoed, his eyes grim. I nodded. “Then we must hurry. If Sarren uses that virus now, it will be New Covington all over again.”

“Great,” Jackal said as we struck out again, moving a bit faster now. “More bat-shit crazy bleeders. Hey, sister, here’s a riddle for you. What’s worse than infected killer psychos tearing their faces off?”

I frowned, confused for a moment, until it hit me. “
Armed
infected psychos tearing their faces off?”

“Bingo,” Jackal growled. “So if you do see any of my former minions, do me a favor and cut their heads off, hmm? It’ll save me the trouble of burning this place to the ground after we kill Sarren.”

We encountered no resistance as we made our way toward the looming expanse of Jackal’s tower. Kanin did point out a few more mines and traps, stuck to bridges or placed innocuously along walkways. Sarren was definitely here, and had been expecting us for a while.

Put out all the traps you want, you psychopath,
I thought as the shadow of the huge tower encompassed us, dark and threatening.
Block the way, sic your army on us, do whatever you want. I’m still coming for you. And when I find you, one of us is going to die.

The last stretch to the tower was made completely underwater. Jackal took us down until we reached the cracked pavement of the flooded city, weaving through cars and rubble piles with the fish. The base of the tower rose from the riverbed, the front doors ajar at the top of the steps, but the raider king didn’t use the front entrance. Instead, we swam around back, slipping through a shattered window into what appeared to be an office. The remains of a desk sat disintegrating on the floor, silvery schools of fish darting through it. We followed Jackal through the office door and into a long, pitch-black hallway. Chunks of wall filled the narrow corridor, and metal beams lay slantwise across the passage, forcing us to weave through or move them aside. I received a shock when I swam around a corner and nearly ran into a bloated, half-eaten corpse floating in the water. It was a good thing I didn’t have to breathe, because I snarled and quickly jerked back, filling my nose and mouth with river water as the corpse drifted by. Jackal turned, and I didn’t need to hear his voice to know he was laughing at me.

Finally, Jackal wrenched open a peeling metal door, the rusty screech reverberating through the water and making fish flee in terror. Through the gap, I saw a flooded stairwell ascending into darkness.

We trailed Jackal through the door and followed the stairway until it broke free of the water, continuing its spiraled path up the side of the wall. Jackal watched, grinning, as I emerged, dripping wet from the river, water streaming from my hair and coat to puddle on the landing.

“What?” I asked softly, my voice echoing weirdly in the flooded stairwell. Kanin emerged at my back, making no noise at all even in the water. Jackal’s grin widened, and he shook his head.

“Oh, nothing. You’ve never drowned a cat before, have you, sister?”

“Where are we?” asked Kanin before I could reply. His voice carried a faint undertone that warned us to stay on target. That we were in Sarren’s territory now, and he was waiting for us. The raider king raked his hair back and looked up the stairs.

“Third floor, back stairwell,” he muttered. “No one ever uses it because some of the higher floors collapsed and the stairs are blocked on this side. But there’s a second stairwell we can reach from the ninth floor, and that one goes all the way to the top.” Jackal crossed his arms, smirking. “I figure everyone will be expecting us to use the elevator, and the minions might surprise me and cut the cables when we’re near the top. And trust me when I say that falling from the top floor of this tower is
not
a pleasant experience.”

He looked at me when he said this, narrowing his eyes. I thought again of our fight on the top floor, him staking me through the gut, the intense pain that had followed. Dangling from a broken window high above Chicago, desperately clinging to the ledge as my strength slowly gave out. Looking up, seeing Jackal standing above me, ready to end it—and Jebbadiah Crosse slamming into him from behind, hurling them both into open space.

“I always wondered how you survived,” I told him, and his smirk widened. “You’re like a rat that’s impossible to kill— no matter what you do, it always comes back.”

“One of my best qualities, sister.” Jackal lowered his arms. “You’ll appreciate it one day, trust me. Now…” He gazed up the steps again, a dangerous glint coming into his eyes. “What do you say we find Sarren and beat the ever-loving shit out of him?”

That
I could get behind. My enemy was close, and I had never wanted someone’s death as badly as I wanted Sarren’s.

“Let’s go,” I told Jackal.

We started up the stairs, Jackal in front, Kanin silently bringing up the rear. Around us, the stairwell creaked and groaned, the sounds echoing through the tight corridor and making my skin crawl. I did not like small, enclosed spaces with no way out, especially when it seemed the ancient, crumbling stairs could collapse at any moment. I concentrated on taking one step at a time and focused my anger and rage into a burning determination. Because if I concentrated on my hate, I could almost forget the fact that Sarren still terrified me, he had an entire raider army under his control, and that facing him again would be the hardest fight of my life. That he was still stronger than me, and even with Kanin’s and Jackal’s help, we might not be able to beat him. Especially since he knew we were coming.

None of that mattered. I didn’t know how he planned to spread his awful virus, but I did know he was fully capable of destroying everything without a second thought. And I wouldn’t let that happen. No matter what it took, no matter what nasty surprises he had waiting, we had to kill Sarren, tonight.

The stairs wove around the walls of the building, spiraling ever higher, before they ended in a blockade of stone, metal beams and twisted pipes. Jackal stopped us on the final landing and nodded to a peeling metal door set into the concrete.

“The other stairwell is through here. We’ll have to cross the floor to get to it, but once we do, it’s a straight shot to the top floor and Sarren.”

I nodded back, but then I caught something that made me freeze. Filtering through the door, slipping underneath the crack, was an unmistakable scent.

The other two vampires paused, as well. “Blood,” Kanin mused, his gaze dark and grim. “A lot of it. Something is waiting for us beyond this door. It appears your humans are expecting us, after all.”

“Yep.” Jackal sighed. “The minions aren’t completely stupid all the time. And they know that blood is an excellent way to mask your presence from a vampire. We won’t be able to pinpoint exactly where they are. If the whole army is waiting for us, it could get messy.” He glanced at me, fangs shining in the darkened corridor. “Ready for this, little sister? No turning back now.”

I drew my katana, the soft rasp shivering through the stairwell, and smiled grimly. “Ready,” I whispered. Jackal grinned and pulled open the door with a rusty screech.

A cold breeze ruffled my hair, hissing into the stairwell. The room beyond the frame was huge, with a low ceiling and shattered windows surrounding us. Low sections of wall created a labyrinth of cubicles and narrow aisles, perfect for hiding behind or staging an ambush. Rubble, fallen beams and rotting desks were scattered throughout the floor, silent and still, and the room seemed to hold its breath.