The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (9 page)

We would want to hunt. That was a given.

If we didn’t have to come back, if we didn’t have to hide… well, many of us wouldn’t come back very regularly. It was hard
to focus on the return while the thirst was in charge. But Riley had drilled so deeply into all of us the threat of burning,
of a return of that hideous pain we’d all experienced once. That was the reason we could stop ourselves. Self-preservation,
the only instinct stronger than thirst.

So the threat kept us together. There were other hiding places, like Diego’s cave, but who else thought about that kind of
thing? We had a place to go, a base, so we went to it. Clear heads were not a vampire specialty. Or, at least, they weren’t
the specialty of
young
vampires. Riley was clearheaded. Diego was more clearheaded than I was. Those cloaked vampires were terrifyingly focused.
I shuddered. So the
routine wouldn’t control us forever. What would they do when we were older, clearer? It struck me that nobody was older than
Riley. Everyone here was new. She needed a bunch of us now for this mystery enemy. But what about afterward?

I had a strong feeling that I didn’t want to be around for that part. And I suddenly realized something stupendously obvious.
It was the solution that had tickled the edges of my understanding before, when I was tracking the vampire herd to this place
with Diego.

I didn’t have to be around for that part. I didn’t have to be around for one more night.

I was a statue again as I thought over this stunning idea.

If Diego and I hadn’t known where the gang was most likely headed, would we ever have found them? Probably not. And that was
a big group leaving a wide trail. What if it were a single vampire, one who could leap up onto the land, maybe into a tree,
without leaving a trail at the edge of the water…. Just one, or maybe two vampires who could swim as far out to sea as they
wanted… Who could return to land anywhere… Canada, California, Chile, China…

You would never be able to find those two vampires. They would be gone. Disappeared like they’d gone up in smoke.

We didn’t have to come back the other night! We
shouldn’t
have! Why hadn’t I thought of it then?

But… would Diego have agreed? I was abruptly not so sure of myself. Was Diego more loyal to Riley after all? Would he have
felt it was his responsibility to stand by Riley? He’d known Riley a lot longer—he’d really only known me a day. Was he closer
to Riley than he was to me?

I pondered that, frowning.

Well, I would find out as soon as we had a minute alone. And then maybe, if our secret club really meant something, it wouldn’t
matter what our creator had planned for us. We could disappear, and Riley would have to make do with nineteen vampires, or
make some new ones quick. Either way, not our problem.

I couldn’t wait to tell Diego my plan. My gut instinct was that he would feel the same. Hopefully.

Suddenly, I wondered if this was what had really happened to Shelly and Steve and the other kids who had disappeared. I knew
they hadn’t burned in the sun. Had Riley only claimed he’d seen their ashes as another way to keep the rest of us afraid and
dependent on him? Returning home to him every dawn? Maybe Shelly and Steve had just set off on their own. No more Raoul. No
enemies or armies threatening their immediate future.

Maybe that’s what Riley had meant by
lost to the sun
. Runaways. In which case, he’d be happy that Diego hadn’t bailed, right?

If only Diego and I
had
taken off! We could be free, too, like Shelly and Steve. No rules, no fear of the sunrise.

Again, I imagined the whole horde of us on the loose without a curfew. I could see Diego and me moving like ninjas through
the shade. But I could also see Raoul, Kevin, and the rest, sparkling disco-ball monsters in the center of a busy downtown
street, the bodies piling up, the screaming, the helicopters whirring, the soft, helpless cops with their dinky little bullets
that wouldn’t make a dent, the cameras, the panic that would spread so fast as the pictures bounced swiftly around the globe.

Vampires wouldn’t be a secret for very long. Even Raoul couldn’t kill people fast enough to keep the story from spreading.

There was a chain of logic here, and I tried to grasp it before I could be distracted again.

One, humans didn’t know about vampires. Two, Riley encouraged us to be inconspicuous, not to attract the notice of humans
and educate them otherwise. Three, Diego and I had decided that all vampires must be following that guideline, or else the
world would know about us. Four, they must
have a reason for doing so, and it wasn’t the little popguns of the human police that motivated them. Yeah, the reason must
be pretty important to make all vampires hide all day long in stuffy basements. Maybe reason enough to make Riley and our
creator lie to us, terrify us about the burning sun. Maybe it was a reason Riley would explain to Diego, and since it was
so important and he was so responsible, Diego would promise to keep the secret and they would be cool with that. Sure they
would. But what if what actually happened to Shelly and Steve was that they’d discovered the shiny skin thing and
not
run? What if they’d gone to Riley?

And, crap, there went the next step in my logical path. The chain dissolved and I started panicking about Diego again.

As I stressed, I realized that I’d been thinking things through for a while. I could feel dawn coming on. No more than an
hour away. So where was Diego? Where was Riley?

As I thought this, the door opened and Raoul leaped down the stairs, laughing with his buddies. I hunched down, leaning closer
to Fred. Raoul didn’t notice us. He looked at the crispy-fried vampire in the center of the floor and laughed harder. His
eyes were brilliant red.

On the nights Raoul went hunting, he never
came home till he had to. He would keep feeding as long as he could. So dawn must have been even closer than I’d thought.

Riley must have demanded that Diego prove his words. That was the only explanation. And they were waiting for the dawn. Only…
that would mean that Riley
didn’t
know the truth, that our creator was lying to him, too. Or did it? My thoughts twisted up again.

Kristie showed up minutes later with three of her gang. She reacted indifferently to the pile of ashes. I did a quick head
count as two more hunters hurried through the door. Twenty vampires. Everyone was home except Diego and Riley. The sun would
rise at any moment.

The door at the top of the basement stairs creaked as someone opened it. I sprang to my feet.

Riley entered. He shut the door behind him. He walked down the stairs.

No one followed.

Before I could process this, Riley roared out an animalistic shriek of rage. He was staring down at the ashy remains on the
floor, his eyes bulging in fury. Everyone stood silent, immobile. We’d all seen Riley lose his temper, but this was something
different.

Riley spun and raked his fingers through a blaring
speaker, then ripped it from the wall and hurled it across the room. Jen and Kristie dodged out of the way as it exploded
into the far wall, sending up a cloud of pulverized drywall dust. Riley smashed the sound system with his foot, and the thudding
bass went silent. Then he leaped to where Raoul stood, and grabbed him by the throat.

“I wasn’t even here!” Raoul yelled, looking afraid—I’d never seen
that
before.

Riley growled hideously and threw Raoul as he’d thrown the speaker. Jen and Kristie jumped out of the way again. Raoul’s body
crashed right through the wall, leaving an enormous hole.

Riley caught Kevin by the shoulder and—with a familiar screech—ripped off his right hand. Kevin cried out in pain and tried
to twist out of Riley’s grip. Riley kicked him in the side. Another harsh shriek and Riley had the rest of Kevin’s arm. He
tore the arm in half at the elbow and threw the pieces hard into Kevin’s anguished face—
smack, smack, smack
, like a hammer striking stone.

“What is
wrong
with you?” Riley screamed at us. “Why are you all
so stupid
?” He made a grab for the blond Spider-Man kid, but that kid leaped out of his way. His jump left him too close to Fred, and
he stumbled back toward Riley again, gagging.

“Do
any
of you have a brain?”

Riley smacked a kid named Dean into the entertainment center, shattering it, then caught another girl—Sara—and tore her left
ear and a handful of hair from her head. She snarled in anguish.

It became suddenly obvious that Riley was doing a very dangerous thing. There were a lot of us in here. Already Raoul was
back, with Kristie and Jen—usually his enemies—flanking him defensively. A few others banded together in clusters around the
room.

I wasn’t sure if Riley was aware of the threat or if his rant came to an end naturally. He took a deep breath. He tossed Sara
her ear and the hair. She recoiled away from him, licking the torn edge of her ear, coating it with venom so that it would
reattach. There was no remedy for the hair, though; Sara was going to have a bald spot.

“Listen to me!” Riley said, quiet but fierce. “All our lives depend on you listening to what I’m saying now and
thinking
! We are all going to
die
. Every one of us, you and me, too, if you can’t act like you have brains for just a few short days!”

This was nothing like his usual lectures and pleadings for control. He definitely had everyone’s attention.

“It’s time for you to grow up and take responsibility for yourselves. Do you think you get to live
like this for
free
? That all the blood in Seattle doesn’t have a
price
?”

The little clusters of vampires no longer seemed threatening. Everyone was wide-eyed, some exchanging mystified glances. I
saw Fred’s head turn toward me in my peripheral vision, but I didn’t meet his gaze. My attention was focused on two things:
Riley, just in case he started to attack again, and the door. The door that was still closed.

“Are you listening now? Really listening?” Riley paused, but no one nodded. The room was very still. “Let me explain to you
the precarious situation we are all in. I’ll try to keep it simple for the slowest ones. Raoul, Kristie, come here.”

He motioned to the leaders of the two largest gangs, allied for this brief moment against him. Neither of them moved toward
him. They braced themselves, Kristie baring her teeth.

I expected Riley to soften, to apologize. To placate them and then persuade them to do what he wanted. But this was a different
Riley.

“Fine,” he snapped. “We’re going to need leaders if we’re going to survive, but apparently neither of you is up to the task.
I thought you had aptitude. I was wrong. Kevin, Jen, please join me as the heads of this team.”

Kevin looked up in surprise. He had just finished
putting his arm back together. Though his expression was wary, it was also unmistakably flattered. He slowly got to his feet.
Jen looked at Kristie as if waiting for permission. Raoul ground his teeth together.

The door at the top of the stairs did not open.

“Are you not able, either?” Riley asked, irritated.

Kevin took a step toward Riley, but then Raoul rushed him, leaping across the long room in two low bounds. He shoved Kevin
against the wall without a word and then stood by Riley’s right shoulder.

Riley permitted himself a tiny smile. The manipulation wasn’t subtle, but it was effective.

“Kristie or Jen, who will lead us?” Riley asked with a hint of amusement in his voice.

Jen was still waiting for a sign from Kristie as to what she should do. Kristie glowered at Jen for an instant, then flipped
her sandy hair out of her face and darted to stand on Riley’s other side.

“That took too long to decide,” Riley said seriously. “We don’t have the luxury of time. We don’t get to fool around anymore.
I’ve let you all do pretty much whatever you feel like, but that ends tonight.”

He looked around the room, meeting everyone’s eyes, making sure we were listening. I held his gaze for only a second when
it was my turn, and then my eyes flipped back to the door. I corrected instantly, but
his glare had moved on. I wondered if he’d noticed my slip. Or had he seen me at all, here beside Fred?

“We have an enemy,” Riley announced. He let that sink in for a moment. I could tell the idea was shocking to several of the
vampires in the basement. The enemy was Raoul—or if you were with Raoul, the enemy was Kristie. The enemy was here, because
the whole world was here. The thought that there were other forces out there strong enough to affect us was new for most.
Would have been new to me, too, yesterday.

“A few of you might be smart enough to have realized that if we exist, so do other vampires. Other vampires who are older,
smarter… more talented. Other vampires who
want our blood
!”

Raoul hissed, and then several of his followers echoed him in support.

“That’s right,” Riley said, seeming intent on egging them on. “Seattle was once theirs, but they moved on a long time ago.
Now they know about us, and they are jealous of the easy blood they used to have here. They know it belongs to us now, but
they want to take it back. They are coming after what they want. One by one, they’ll hunt us down! We’ll burn while they feast!”

“Never,” Kristie growled. Some of hers and some of Raoul’s growled, too.

“We don’t have a lot of choices,” Riley told us. “If we wait for them to show up here, they will have the advantage. This
is their turf, after all. And they don’t want to face us head-on, because we outnumber them and we are stronger than they
are. They want to catch us separated; they want to take advantage of our biggest weakness. Are any of you smart enough to
know what that is?” He pointed at the ashes at his feet—now smeared into the carpet and unrecognizable as a former vampire—and
waited.

No one moved.

Riley made a disgusted sound. “Unity!” he shouted. “We don’t have it! What kind of a threat can we pose when we won’t stop
killing each other?” He kicked the dust, sending up a small black cloud. “Can you imagine them laughing at us? They think
taking the city from us will be easy. That we’re weak with stupidity! That we’ll just hand them our blood.”