anightwithoutstarsfinal Page 7

  The girl seemed surprised by the question. “My name?” she echoed. “Angelique. It’s French. Do you know what it means?”

  “No.”

  “Messenger of God.” For some reason this seemed to strike Angelique as supremely funny. She doubled over, clutching her stomach and dissolving into a fit of giggles. “What – what’s your name, little human?” she gasped once she’d managed to get herself under control.

  Never give your name to strangers.

  I don’t know why my mother’s voice would choose then and there to echo in my head, but it served to refocus me. I couldn’t waste any more time with Angelique. Not when Dad and Travis were still out there. But how was I supposed to get away? I was fast, but I was willing to bet Angelique was faster. Stronger too, especially now that I didn’t have the element of surprise… or a weapon.

  “I asked you what your name was,” Angelique said, the hard edge in her voice reminding me that even though she looked like a regular teenager – minus the fangs and the bloodstains – she was really a monster. What kind, I didn’t know… Although I had a feeling I would be finding out soon enough. “Don’t you know it’s rude to keep people waiting?”

  “Don’t you know it’s rude to bite?” I snapped.

  “Oh, I like you.” Angelique skimmed her fingers across my cheek. I jerked back, but her grip only tightened, her nails sinking delicately into my flesh. “You’re feisty. So different from all the others. All they do is beg and cry and beg and cry.” Her sigh was long and suffering. “I’m sure you can imagine it gets pretty annoying after a while.”

  If there was ever a time to keep your mouth shut, it was when a crazy person had a hold of your face. I really needed to work on my impulse control. “Yeah, I bet people begging for their lives is a regular snooze fest.”

  “You’re my new favorite,” Angelique said with a delighted laugh. “Do you want to be my pet? Oh, please say yes!” She released her death grip on my cheek to clap her hands together and jump up and down. Her earrings danced, reflecting off the light still glaring from the side of the house. “Please. I haven’t had my own pet for years and years.”

  What I wanted was for this crazy nightmare to end. I wanted to wake up safe in a hospital bed, the victim of an electric shock from being stupid enough to try to hotwire a car. I wanted Travis and Dad to be there. I wanted the past forty-eight hours to have never happened. I wanted to never know what it felt like to bludgeon someone over the head with a horseshoe until their nose cracked. I wanted to never feel fear so intense and so crippling I was paralyzed from it.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be your pet.”

  Angelique shrieked and threw her hands in the air. “This is going to be so much fun! And Mona is going to be so jealous. I can’t wait until she sees you! Of course we will have to get you out of those awful clothes and do something with your hair.” Her nose wrinkled as she picked up the end of my scraggly braid.

  I remained perfectly still; a living doll. My hand itched to slap Angelique across the face, but for once I controlled myself. I needed her to trust me, or I knew it would only be a matter of time before I ended up like the poor woman she’d slammed against the gate.

  “Tell me your name, little pet” she ordered, “or I’ll have to pick one out for you. Actually, that might be even better! Suri,” she said. “No… Harper! No, no, you don’t look like a Harper… I’ve got it!” She snapped her fingers. “North.”

  “You’re just naming famous people’s kids.”

  “I am rather fond of tabloid magazines. I suppose you could it my guilty pleasure.” Her lips curved in a smile even as her eyes glittered with malice. “One of them, anyways. Do you want to know the others?”

  No, I most certainly did not. Hoping to distract her I said, “Lola. My name is Lola.”

  “Lola,” she repeated thoughtfully, rolling the second L on her tongue. “I like it. It’s quite… spicy, isn’t it? Now, about your hair…” She held my braid out, examining the length before she let it drop and rubbed her hand on her jeans as though my hair had offended her in some way. “Definitely a cut and color. Have you ever—”

  “ANGELIQUE!” A man’s roar ripped through the night and Angelique’s entire body went rigid.

  “Oh drats,” she breathed. “He found me and I’m not even in the right sector. He’s going to be so angry.”

  “Who’s going to be angry?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  Angelique tossed her head. “None of your beeswax. I’ll only be gone for a minute. You’ll wait here, won’t you? I would invite you inside but, well, it’s a bit of a mess and I know how squeamish you humans can be.”

  She was leaving me? “I – uh – no. I won’t go anywhere.” And if you believe that you’re dumber than you look.

  “That’s good because if you did run off I would have to find you and torture you and that wouldn’t be any fun at all.” Angelique leaned in close and I felt the whisper of her words like a soft, cold caress against my neck. “For you, at least.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I lied. “I’ll stay right here and keep the dead woman company.”

  Angelique’s glanced carelessly at the gate. “Is she dead?”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s not taking a nap.”

  “You really are delicate creatures, aren’t you?” She shook her head. “Be careful, little pet. I don’t want anything to happen to you. At least not yet.”

  Faster than my eyes could follow she disappeared into the house. I stood in place and made myself count to twenty before I sprinted to the gate. The woman’s body was slumped up against it, preventing me from pulling it inwards.

  “I’m sorry,” I gasped as I used her as human stepstool to pull myself up and over the fence. “I’m so sorry.”

  It was dark on the other side; it seemed the floodlights only extended as far as the property to which they belonged. I wanted to run, but I made myself take a few precious seconds and get a feel for my surroundings. I was standing on the edge of another backyard. A clothesline stretched diagonally across it. Three shirts hung down, blowing faintly in the breeze.

  Awareness prickled at the back of me neck and it wasn’t until I took a few steps forward that I realized what was wrong.

  The screams.

  They’d stopped.

  In their place was an eerie silence that weighed heavily on my shoulders.

  I wasn’t naïve enough to think everyone had gotten away. There was an explanation for the silence. An explanation I didn’t want to think about.

  I started running. Not flat out, like I’d been doing before, but a steady jog that carried me swiftly towards the apartment complex. I could see it looming in the distance; an ugly building that stuck out from the rest of the turn of the century architecture like a sore thumb. Only a handful of yards, the train tracks, and the old abandoned baseball field stood in my way.

  My tempo increased, my legs pumping faster, my breaths coming harder. Get home, get Dad, get Travis. Get home, get Dad, get Travis. Get home, get Dad, get Travis.

  It became a chant inside my head, repeating itself with every step I took. I didn’t allow myself to think about what it would mean if I got home and my dad wasn’t there. What it would mean if no one were there.

  My foot hooked on something. A hose, left out to water the lawn. I went flying through the air, arms outstretched, hair lifted away from my face, completely weightless… and then the ground was rushing up too fast and I landed hard on my side, hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs.

  The shock of not being able to breathe was unlike anything I’d felt before. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. The panic threatened to overwhelm me and I battled it back, knowing if I let it consume me now I would turn into one of those crying, mindless idiots Angelique had talked about.

  Hugging my knees to my chest I curled into the fetal position and whimpered into the grass, using the warm blades and damp soil to muffle my sob of pain.

&
nbsp; I tried to concentrate on taking one deep breath. Just one good, full breath to fill up my starving lungs and extinguish the awful feeling of drowning out of water.

  When I was finally able to drag in a ragged gasp of air it hurt, more than I had anticipated. I clenched my teeth against the pain that seemed to fill every nook and cranny of my body – one thing was for sure, I was never complaining about something so stupid as a hangnail or paper cut ever again – and reeled to my feet.

  I had to keep going. I had to run. There was no other option. If Angelique caught me… If she caught me I was certain the pain I’d experienced so far would pale in comparison to the torture she had in mind.

  A gap opened between the houses. A long stretch of cracked pavement that gave way to the baseball field. I’d finally reached my side of town. Abandoned warehouses loomed on either side of the field, crisscrossed with alleys and empty parking lots. One lone street lamp flickered, its pitiful light barely touching the ground.

  The familiar surroundings were a small comfort. I considered cutting through the narrow stretch of trees that bordered the left side of the field, then thought better of it. If monsters like Angelique had invaded the houses I did not want to know what lurked in the woods.

  I turned right, using the light of the moon and my knowledge of this dark, dingy stretch of town to guide me. Fueling my body with the last lingering fumes of adrenaline I broke into a jog, then a run, and finally an all out sprint. I was so close to my goal I could taste it. I flew towards the baseball field, focusing on the hard slap of my sneakers on asphalt and the drumming of my own heart.

  The boy who stepped in front of me never had a chance.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Guy With A Gun

  We collided with the force of two freight trains coming together and went down in a tangle of arms and legs. I saw a startled pair of gray eyes, olive skin, and hair as black as mine before we pulled apart, both of us gasping for air.

  In a move too quick for me to anticipate the boy had my arms pinned behind my back and I was shoved against the side of a warehouse. My chin bounced painfully off the rusted metal and blood, salty and metallic and all too familiar, flooded my mouth.

  I tried to pull free, but the boy was too strong. He held me easily, as an adult would hold a writhing child, except I was pretty sure he wasn’t older than seventeen or eighteen.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded in a harsh voice, his mouth so close to my ear that I jumped. I could feel something hard pressing against my spine – a belt buckle? – and a woodsy scent invaded my nostrils.

  “What are you doing here? I countered. Yesterday if a random stranger had shoved me up against a building I would have screamed bloody murder, but after playing cat and mouse with Angelique this guy didn’t seem so bad. At least he hadn’t tried to kill me.

  Yet.

  He did, however, squeeze my wrists until I released a squawk of protest.

  “Loosen up, would you? I’m not going anywhere.”

  The boy growled under his breath, but he did release his grip a fraction of an inch. “Don’t you know what’s happening? Don’t you know what’s out there?”

  “Well… No,” I admitted. “Actually I have no freaking idea what is happening. Do you?” I twisted my neck around as far as it would go and caught a shadowed glimpse of his face. He had thick dark eyebrows. A nose that sat a little off center. Lips that were compressed into a tight scowl. His hair wasn’t black, as I’d originally thought, but a deep glossy brown. It was longer than I was used to seeing and touched the collar of his black leather jacket.

  “You look like hell and you’re bleeding. How did you get this far if you’re bleeding?” He sounded shocked.

  I followed his gaze down to my right knee. Sure enough there was a tear in my jeans about four inches across and blood had stained the blue denim an inky red. The cut looked pretty deep. I must have gotten it when I tripped over the hose, and as I flexed my leg I wondered why I couldn’t feel anything. Shock, I supposed.

  “I fell. I was running from one of those… those crazy people and I fell. Are you going to let me go or what?” I asked in exasperation. At last count I’d been sliced with glass, scratched, and bitten. The last thing I needed was to be pinned up against some old warehouse building. “I won’t run, if that’s what you’re worried about. I promise.”

  The boy released my hands and stepped to the side. “I don’t care if you run or not. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  Rubbing my wrists, I slowly turned to face him. His slouched posture and bored expression said otherwise, but I knew he was studying me just as intently as I was studying him.

  I’d checked out boys before, of course, but this was the first time I’d stared at one and wondered if he was a murderer.

  “Show me your teeth,” I said at last. “So I can make sure you’re not one of Them.”

  One dark eyebrow shot up. “You go first.”

  I wanted to argue on principal, but I swallowed my pride and opened my mouth, revealing teeth that even braces had never managed to make completely straight. “Nuh sivah,” I said.

  “What?”

  I smacked my lips together and ran my tongue along the top of my gum line. “No silver,” I repeated. “Now you go.”

  “There are other ways to check, you know.” He spoke with an unmistakable note of condescension in his tone, as though the way to tell a normal person from someone like Angelique was obvious and I was an idiot for not knowing the difference. Well, fine. Let him think I was an idiot. But he was still going to show me his teeth.

  I edged sideways, not wanting a solid wall of steel at my back. Clouds continued to shift overhead, revealing the moon in little slivers of light. I wondered what time it was. Without a cell phone or a watch it was impossible to tell. I couldn’t even rely on my inner clock. I’d been twisted upside and sideways so much I was lucky I still knew my own name.

  “Teeth,” I demanded. “Now.”

  The boy’s smile was lazy, but above the careless slant of his mouth his eyes were hard as stone. “Do you always get your way?”

  “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” he murmured, “you certainly are.”

  His lips peeled back. No silver fangs. I almost sagged in relief. I couldn’t deal with another monster. Not right now. Preferably not ever again.

  Suddenly the boy stiffened, his head tilting to the side. His hand pulled something out of the waistband of his jeans and my eyes widened.

  “Is that a gun?” I asked incredulously. I didn’t know why, of all the things that had happened tonight, a gun would set me on edge, but it did. Maybe because people in Revere didn’t carry guns. Maybe because I wasn’t accustomed to seeing a boy my age packing heat (I always wanted to use that term). Or maybe it was simply because my brain was on violence overflow. Either way, I took a wary step back, my gaze trained on the small, sleek pistol as he cocked it with a sharp click and held it up against his right shoulder.

  “This” – the boy lifted the gun – “is a Beretta Elite semi-automatic double action.”

  He might as well have been speaking Greek. “What does it do?”

  “What does it do?” he echoed. “It kills the bad guys.”

  “You can’t strangle them with your bare hands?” I’d meant it as a joke – the situation could use some serious lifting up – but the boy didn’t take it that way.

  “I do that too.” He shrugged, as though the idea of choking the life out of someone was no big deal. “But this is faster.”

  My mouth opened. Closed. For once, I didn’t have a witty response.

  “Well, good luck,” he said indifferently before he turned to go.

  “Wait. You’re not… Are you leaving?” Under normal circumstances I stayed as far away from the dark, brooding types as I possibly could. They were nothing but trouble with their intense stares and intellectual conversations about the meaning of life. But these weren’t normal circumstances, an
d given the choice between going it on my own or sticking with the guy with the gun, I was choosing the gun.

  I grabbed the boy’s arm and felt the rigid tautness of his muscles through his jacket. My fingers dug in, harder than I had intended. He didn’t so much as flinch. “You have to help me.” I didn’t like the desperate edge in my voice, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I was desperate, in every sense of the word. “I live in the apartments out behind the old baseball field and my dad—”

  “We can’t talk here,” he interrupted. For the second time his head tilted to the side, as though he were listening for something. “Follow me.”

  He moved quickly, ducking in and out of the shadows until it seemed he was little more than a shadow himself. I struggled to keep up as we went up one alley and down another, ensnaring ourselves deeper and deeper into the twisted maze of warehouses. When I tripped – for the third time – he grabbed my wrist and ordered me to stay behind him or get lost.

  Such a charmer.

  Finally we stopped short in front of a gray door. The boy kicked it open with one well-placed strike of his boot and I followed him inside. The door slammed shut behind me, plunging the room into absolute darkness. It smelled vaguely of urine, and something sweet I couldn’t identify.

  “Lights,” I said when I bumped into something hard. “Lights would be nice.”

  I heard the flick of a switch and then a single bulb flickered to life, allowing me to do a quick study of my new surroundings.

  The room was small and cramped and filled with office furniture. An old storage unit if I had to guess, one possibly owned by the high school. The metal desk shoved diagonally into one corner looked exactly like my history teacher’s desk at school.

  The boy lifted a folding chair from a mess of other chairs stacked haphazardly against the far wall and held it above his head. “Move away from the door,” he said curtly.

  “A please wouldn’t kill you.”

  “Move or get out.”

  “I’m going, I’m going.”

  I wondered if my new friend was always so grumpy, or if his delightful personality only shined through during life threatening situations. Either way, I couldn’t be mad at him. Not really. A little disgruntled, maybe, but that’s only because for once someone was being ruder than me and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. I stepped to the side and he jammed the chair underneath the door handle.