Marked by Courage Read online

  “They aren’t my kind,” she said automatically. And then, realizing that it was true, she reached out to take his hands. “You’re my kind.”

  “What?” There was so much hope in that word that she hated to disillusion him.

  “And Caleb is my kind.” She watched as he turned his face away sharply, as if he had been slapped. “And my father is my kind. Maybe Petra, too. I don’t know—I don’t know anything about her. But I need you, all of you, to understand this: I got into this to save my father, and now I won’t let anything happen him, to you or to Caleb. I’m not picking any other sides. I hold no other allegiances. Do you understand?”

  “No,” he told her simply. “I don’t know what it must be like to have Red and Blue in your blood. I think it must be like being at war, all the time.”

  “I’m just me.”

  “But what is that?” He stepped forward, cupping her face. “Kallie, I don’t mean to frighten you. I don’t mean to take away this vow. But somehow, someday, the world may force you to pick a side. I’m not going to ask you now the choice you’ll make. I could never ask you that.” He ran his hand through his dark hair. “Maybe there is no way to prepare yourself for it—but one day you are going to have to make a choice. Try,” he said as he clasped his fingers in her. “Try tonight to hold yourself back. Just stay here and I’ll get your father. If Caleb overheard correctly, they’ll leave him when they’re done. We can save your father first.”

  “What if they decide kill him?” Kallie’s voice rose with her fear.

  “They won’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because they want to make a point.” His face was screwed up with something she couldn’t guess. Hatred? Empathy? “You’ve never seen a vampire die by sunlight. I have. It’s…not a good death.”

  Kallie had a sudden vivid memory of her high school history class, and her teacher saying solemnly that witches were burned because it was such a cruel death. The students hadn’t even paid attention, as if it were something that didn’t happen anymore.

  And now this. She wanted to be sick. She whispered hoarsely, “They want to hurt him.”

  “Him. You. Petra.” He shook his head. “They won’t tell her until it’s done, and she’ll have to live her whole life knowing…” He swallowed hard. “Forever. It’s one of the greatest cruelties they could inflict. But that’s the thing we have going for us now, Kallie. They’ll leave him alive, and they’ll have to go. They’ll run back to their nest and leave him here, and then we can get him.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. It would have to be enough. They would save him in time.

  They scaled the fence quietly. Almost too quietly. Kallie felt a twist of unease at her own strength and silence. It was unnatural, something in her whispered. She was unnatural. It was an old reflex, she told herself. She was still thinking like a human. And however vampires had happened…it wasn’t any more or less natural than being a normal person.

  She had to believe that.

  But the next moment, she heard the sound of the Honda and burst into a sprint. If she could get to him before he made it to the rendezvous point, if she could get her father away from them, preserve his strength, they had a chance.

  She almost made it. It was Liam who yanked her back into the darkness, and Kallie turned on him with a snarl. She fought him with all her strength and he batted her hands away with the skill born of endless practice. There was desperation in his face when he yanked her close.

  “Look around the corner. Carefully.”

  Jerking away and releasing him, Kallie obeyed with a snarl. Her father’s car had been within sight of the rogue Reds. If she had tried to stop him, they would have seen her, and after what they had tried to do to her twice now, she harbored no illusions about what they would try to do now.

  There were too many of them to fight. She absorbed the sight, and then turned away, her hand over her mouth. Liam wrapped his arms around her, his cheek pillowed against the top of her head. As she heard her father’s car door open, Kallie squeezed her hand into a fist with the effort to stop from crying out and screaming at him to run.

  Knowing what she had to do didn’t make it any easier. As she heard the first blow against her father, tears escaped her eyes and her whole body shook. Her father grunted in pain, a tiny, suppressed sound that was so full of pride and honor and fear that Kallie could hardly stand it.

  He had told her that it was only instinct to fight back, but she thought now that it was something more. Others might have given up and died, obeyed the instinct that taught them to hunt humans—but her father had never done that. He was strong; he was not going to give up. He submitted to these beatings every month, and yet he told Kallie that his worst battle was trying to protect her and her mother from his nature as a vampire.

  She could hear him fighting back now, a low snarl building in his chest as he lashed out at the others. There was the sickening sound of skin on skin, and his cries of pain as they cut him. The sounds went on and on, an eternity that she wanted to scream at to be over. She wanted to pray, and didn’t know if she was still allowed to. She didn’t understand, didn’t comprehend…

  They must have held him down, eventually, for there were only the sounds of feeding and her father’s cries. This was immeasurably worse.

  “Can you keep yourself back?” Liam murmured in her ear.

  She looked up at him, stricken. It was only his touch that kept her here and sane. “Why?” she mouthed the word almost silently, as he had.

  “I want to see them. Know their faces so I can track them down later.”

  “I’m coming with you, then.”

  “No.” He shook his head, holding her face with both hands. “If you see what’s going on…”

  “I have to know my enemies, too.” Her words were no less fierce for being almost silent, and with a grimace, he beckoned her up onto the roof after him.

  It was almost over, and Kallie thought it might be worse for that. Her father’s movements were sluggish now as the vampires lapped up his blood. She and Liam crawled silently across the roof of one of the storage units, eyes flicking between the vampires below. Their faces, Kallie thought, would be etched in her mind forever. There was a man with a square jaw, and a neck almost thicker than his head. There was a woman with white hair and pale, papery skin. She must have been turned when she was older, and she looked deceptively frail; when she looked up to smile at another of the vampires, her lips dripping with blood, her eyes stood out all the more for her old complexion.

  There were a dozen others, and Kallie marked them all. They would soon all be dead. She would see them destroyed and staked, taken from their un-death and ripped out of this hellish world they had conspired to create. When she was done, only those who were pure, who were determined to be like Liam, Caleb, like her father, would remain.

  Her father was near death, but even he knew what was happening when they tied him to the ground. Metal stakes were driven into the concrete, and chains held him down. There was silver in the cuffs, and he cried out at the touch of it.

  “What…what…”

  “When Petra comes to meet you in hell,” one of the rogue Reds whispered hatefully, “tell her how you died.”

  “What are you…?”

  “You’ll wish you were dead a thousand times before death takes you,” the old woman told him cruelly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if hell spits you back out. Don’t worry; Petra will know just what happened to you. Right before we kill her. But please, make sure to give her our regards when next you two meet.”

  And then they were gone with a laugh, racing along the alleyways and out into the night while Liam held Kallie down on the ground. It was like a twisted scene from The Lost Boys.

  Kallie shuddered and fought against Liam.

  “Stop, Kallie!” he hissed. “I’ll let you go if you stop fighting me.”

  She dropped her defense instantly. Her chest heaved as she fought to control
her emotions and body.

  “Look. Just like I said.”

  She stood up and stared down to where her father was.

  They’d left no lookout, nothing.

  Kallie rolled onto her stomach and pushed with her legs, instantly sprinting to the pavement, with Liam a just behind her.

  “Dad! Dad!”

  “Kallie.” The word was a breath. One of his eyes was swollen shut. “You have to go. They…”

  “They’re gone.” Kallie braced herself, then wrenched one of the cuffs open, biting back a yell as the silver seared her skin. She and Liam alternated on the next three, and Liam looked over to where the Honda was still running.

  “Can you get him home?”

  She nodded. “Where are you going?”

  “Away. I…can’t be close…” His voice was thick now. “I have to…I have to…” He turned his face away and leapt up to the roof of the car. “I’ll track down what information I can. I’ll be back tomorrow.” He pressed down a second before dashing away.

  Kallie hauled her father upright. “Come on.”

  “You’ve…you smell different.”

  “Come on, Dad.” She figured he was delirious with all the blood he’d lost and trauma he’d just been through.

  “What…?” he mumbled as his head lolled sideways at her. “You got turned? You went through with it?”

  Chapter 3

  She managed to get him into the front seat, but only barely. Every movement she made caused her father to hiss softly with pain. Once, Kallie would not have been able to tell the difference between that hiss and the noise she had made at Red Dragon. Now she knew the difference instinctively. Her father was in terrible pain, trying desperately to keep from crying out. If Kallie had said that she needed his help, she knew he would have dragged himself after her like a loyal old dog, heedless of the pain.

  It didn’t matter; she would never ask any such thing of him. Not now. Not anymore.

  As she buckled his seatbelt carefully, she was surprised by the wave of protectiveness she felt. It was savage, as desperate in its own way as his pained hiss. It seemed oddly backwards to feel this way about her father, but she couldn’t help it.

  As she got into the car and did a three-point turn, her father turned his head to look over at her through his one half-opened eye. “So you went through with it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kallie looked away from him, and then fumbled for an old pair of sunglasses. He could not see her eyes. He didn’t need that right now.

  “Why’re you…” His voice trailed off into a cough that came with a low cry of pain, and Kallie winced.

  “Don’t try to talk. I’m still…sensitive to things. Getting used to my new senses. Don’t you remember? You told me you felt like this at the start.” He hadn’t, not exactly, but it was the best lie she could come up with on short notice.

  “You smell…odd.” When she spared a glance for him, he was staring at her, frowning. “Why?”

  “Liam came with me.”

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, she realized her mistake. Her father turned his head sharply. “How? How could you two bear to—”

  “It must have to do with us knowing each other before we turned.” Kallie gripped the steering wheel and realized that her newfound strength was about to crack it. She released her hold, swearing softly under her breath. She had just meant to throw her father off the scent, quite literally, she supposed, but every lie seemed to lead to a bigger one. “Dad, I swear, everything’s okay.”

  To her surprise, her father started laughing. It was a painful sound, but also curiously hopeful, and Kallie glanced over at him, frowning.

  “What is it?”

  “You’ve…” He kept laughing, shaking and wincing, but the smile on his cracked lips was real. “You’ve been lying since you found me, but that’s the worst one so far. Everything is fine.” He repeated her words sardonically. “Oh, that’s rich. Everything is fine. Best joke I’ve heard all year.”

  Kallie laughed; she couldn’t help herself. He was right; it was the most ridiculous thing either one of them had said in years. One uptight part of her brain told her that none of this was funny and that she needed to be scanning for enemies, but the rest of her said that she had to laugh. She had to let this be funny, or it would kill her. When they finally stopped, both gasping for breath, Kallie was still smiling.

  “Sorry about the lying.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is it some kind of vampire thing? Can you…smell it?”

  “Kallie, vampire or no vampire, I’ve been your father for nineteen years. I know when you’re lying.”

  “Oh. That.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She knew she should keep the humor going, but there was no way to stave off the conversation forever.

  Her father sank into silence, looking out the window as the streets flashed by, and finally said, “How did you know where I was?”

  “Caleb.” Thinking about him made her draw in her breath sharply, and she closed her eyes for a moment. Just a moment. She had to stay alert.

  “What happened?” The sharpness in his words showed he cared.

  “They have him. They’re…they’re harvesting his power, drinking his blood. I don’t know who knows, and who doesn’t.”

  “You mean Petra,” her father said flatly.

  “Yes,” Kallie admitted.

  “Kallie, she’s doing the best she can to keep us all safe. You, me, your mo—Helen.”

  “Helen’s always going to be mom to me.” Kallie shook her head.

  “That’s not wrong.” Her father reached out one trembling hand to touch her cheek, and Kallie knew his touch left a smear of blood. When she stole a glance, he was smiling despite his cracked lip. “In many ways, she truly is the one who’s your mother now. Petra…” He turned to stare out the window.

  “What?”

  “When I see her now, I wonder if she’d have made a good mother.” He sighed. “It’s not fair to her to wonder. She had to become what she was to save you. There’s no greater sacrifice. She adored you, always.”

  “But Mom is the one who raised me,” Kallie said quietly, knowing she was finishing a part of his sentence that he couldn’t bring himself to say. “It’s not disloyal, right? She did raise me.”

  “She did,” he agreed. Then, sounding almost grumpy, “This hurts so bad. They…I didn’t dream that, did I? They left me to die.” He looked down at his wrists. “I remember something burning.”

  This was what she hadn’t wanted to discuss. Kallie swallowed. “They were going to kill you to get back at Petra.”

  He looked over at her sharply, and winced at the motion. “How?” he snapped. “What did you do? You can’t have fought them all off, Kallie.”

  It was a relief, in a way, to know that he didn’t remember their cruel words to him. She hesitated, not sure she wanted to remind him. “Actually, you’ll be happy to know I waited until they were gone. Liam made me.”

  Her father’s mouth quirked. “Well, thank goodness that boy has some scruples.”

  To him, Liam still would be a boy. Kallie smiled sadly. At least he had scruples. She nearly laughed out loud at the silly word.

  “What else, Kallie?” he tutted, and she knew he was pushing for the whole story, not the good part summary version.

  “I don’t want to tell you,” she admitted. “I can’t. They said horrible things. Can’t we just let it be? They wanted to kill you, and we got you free. That’s all the matters.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it lightly. “That’s all that matters.”

  “They just left me there?”

  “Dad, please. Please don’t think about—”

  “They were going to burn me to death.” His voice was hollow. “Weren’t they?”

  “Yes.” A tear traced down her cheek.

  He leaned his head back. “I wonder…how it came to this.”

  “Liam said the same thing.” She shook her head. “He wondered how Reds could do thi
s to one of their own.”

  “Liam’s lucky,” her father said brutally.

  “His kind is being hunted down!”

  “And so he doesn’t have to know how wrong he is.” Her father looked over at her sharply. “The Blues were every bit as bad before Petra took them down. She thought she’d gotten all of them, but I guess she was wrong.”

  “Doesn’t that seem...”

  “What?”

  “Wrong? Doesn’t it seem wrong, to kill them all off?”

  “Your mother,” he said philosophically, “was never one for half-measures.”

  “Noted.” She’s not my mother. She felt herself tense as they turned onto the street. “What if they’re watching the house?”

  “If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead.” He sighed. “I doubt they are…for now.”

  Kallie slowed the car and glanced around everywhere, just to be safe.

  “We have to risk it, Kallie. I don’t know where else to get blood, and I need…”

  “I know.” She gave a sigh as she pulled into the driveway and saw her mother’s car. “I hope she’s not downstairs.”

  “I’ll go in first.”

  “What?”

  He gave a tired smile. “You’ve fought tonight. You don’t understand what the hunger will be like. You haven’t fed yet, have you?”

  Kallie shook her head, and he gave a sad smile. “Come after me. And hold my hand.”

  He was right to be wary. As soon as she stepped into the house, Kallie could smell her mother. She knew just who it was, the temperature, how good it would taste. She forced herself to breathe through her mouth, trying to mask the scent. She had smelled her mother for her whole life without realizing just what her nose was telling her. She could smell that her mother was a vegetarian, that she’d gotten someone else’s blood on her scrubs and tried to wash it out before she came home. Kallie could even smell her sweat.

  She wanted to hunt.

  To her horror, she wanted to hunt her mother. Her own mother. Her eyes filled with tears as her father yanked her across the floor toward the basement.