I HOPED TO GRAB TT FOR DELAYED VALENTINE'S DINNER, BUT VAMPIRES INTERVENED.
TT? Ethan asked, and I sighed with pity.
TUSCAN TERRACE, YOU TROGLODYTE. SORRY AGAIN FOR POSTPONEMENT.
LIFE GOES ON, Ethan philosophically answered. EVEN FOR TROGLODYTES. AND UNLIKE TROGLODYTES, I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE.
God, I loved that man.
-
Now that I had toured northern Chicago, it was time to head south. My grandfather lived in a working-class house in a working-class neighborhood, precisely the type of place my father avoided. Unlike my father, Grandfather didn't believe he had to prove himself by having the biggest or fanciest of anything.
The streets in this neighborhood weren't plowed as well as other places, and the street signs were in need of repair. But the people were good, and that was what kept my grandfather here.
The driveway held only my grandfather's giant boat of an Oldsmobile; Catcher, Jeff, and Marjorie, the admin, were gone. The living room light was on.
I pulled up to the curb and grabbed my katana and the plastic bag from the passenger seat. Maybe it was time to find a messenger bag to compliment my leathers, something I could transport my goods in. As I locked the door, I wondered if they made specialized messenger bags for vampires with straps for Blood4You bottles, hidden pockets for emergency weapons, and a flap for the registration cards we were required to carry.
I am a nerd, I thought to myself, slamming the car door.
I carefully navigated the ice at the edge of the street, then hopped onto a dry spot of sidewalk.
I was excited to see my grandfather, glad I had evidence in hand, and optimistic we might find something useful.
But in that excitement, I was oblivious.
The push came from behind, a strike that sent me reeling forward into the snow. I dropped the plastic bag and used my free hand to unsheathe my katana, but the push, like so much else, had been a distraction.
Time slowed to a crawl. I jumped to my feet, snow glinting off the steel in my hand, and ran toward the front door.
But they'd been ready, the plan under way. Three more ran from the back of the house to the front, the bottles already lit in their hands.
"Grandpa!" I screamed as they tossed the Molotov cocktails through the windows, still running through the snow.
The front of the house exploded, flames rushing through the windows and sending a spray of glass and fire and heat into the yard. The barrage hit me, full force, and threw me backward into the snow.
But I felt no pain, no fear.
There was no thinking, no rationalizing, no weighing of cost.
There was only do.
I dropped my sword, ran toward the flames, and leaped into the fire.
Chapter Seventeen
HELL HATH NO FURY
The front of the house was gone. There remained only a curtain of rising flames and burning debris. I landed in the middle of a conflagration, the fire crackling and climbing the walls to the ceiling as if it were a breathing thing. Like the fire was made of a thousand hands, all grasping upward, all climbing from some hell down below.
I'd seen a fire before, but I'd forgotten how loud it was. Loud and hazy and chemical. The smoke was blinding and seared my throat with each breath, but that was irrelevant now. I was a vampire; he was not. I'd heal. I couldn't guarantee he would.
But that I was a vampire didn't mean the burns hurt less; they'd just heal faster. I covered my face with a crooked arm, but sparks flew like horizontal rain, peppering me with stinging ash.
I ignored it.
"Grandpa!" I yelled over the roaring of the fire. I stumbled through the living room, which was empty, and into the kitchen, hands outstretched, feeling my way through the house with clumsy fingers. Thinking he might have been in his bedroom, I searched for the wall that led to the hallway. "Grandpa! Where are you?"
I pretended I was a child, sleeping over for a visit with my grandparents, moving through the house in the dark for a drink of water. I'd done it a thousand times, knew my way around the house even in utter darkness. I closed my eyes and willed my mind to remember to search for the clues that would get me where I needed to go.
I remembered, as a child, fumbling for the light switch on the left-hand wall. I reached out, groping blindly until I found smooth plastic, and then empty space. That was the hallway.
As the fire grew behind me, and the smoke thickened, I advanced. "Grandpa!"
I stumbled over an obstacle and fell down, then reached back to figure out what it had been. My fingers found a sharp corner - it was a bureau, a piece of furniture that had once stood in the hallway, holding my grandmother's tablecloths and napkins. Sentimentality hitting me, I grabbed the only fragment of fabric I could feel - probably a doily - and stuffed it into my jacket.
One grandparent down, one to go.
"Grandpa? Where are you?"
"Merit!"
I froze. The sound was faint, but distinctly his. "Grandpa? I can hear you! Keep talking!"
"Merit . . . Go . . . out . . . house!"
I caught only intermittent words - "Out . . . house!" - but the meaning was clear enough. Those words also sounded like they were coming from far away. But I was feet from the bedroom. . . .
He wasn't in the bedroom, I realized. He was in the basement.
The basement door was through the kitchen, so I'd have to backtrack and grope my way back to that side of the house - and then figure out a way to get him up again.
I dropped to the ground, where the air was still breathable and fresher, and crawled across the remains of the floor, ignoring the burning ash and glass beneath my hands. Adrenaline was pushing me now, sending me, regardless of the obstacle, toward the man who'd been like a father to me.
I crawled slowly forward, burned boards creaking beneath me as they struggled to hold up the remaining weight. I froze, not even taking a breath, before moving forward again.
My movement hadn't been light enough.
Without warning, the boards beneath me snapped, sending me free-falling to the basement.
I landed with a bounce atop a jumble of boards, debris, and the shag carpeting I was suddenly glad my grandfather had kept. The fall knocked the air from my lungs, and for a moment I sucked in air as my body remembered how to breathe again.
Unfortunately, the craving for oxygen gave way to pain as my senses returned. I'd fallen on my side, which was now racked by a piercing pain. Slowly, ignoring the stabbing sensation, I got to my feet to move again.
"Grandpa?"
"Here, Merit." He coughed, weakly enough that my heart nearly stopped.
"I'm coming, Grandpa. Hold on. I will be right there."
I searched frantically through smoke and ash, trying to fulfill my promise, but it was nearly pitch-black in the basement, and I couldn't find him.