Betrayals

the most hurtful memory of all, even worse than Dad’s eyes, the whites rotting and the blue irises clouded as his dead body chewed at the air and shambled straight for me.

This memory lay at the very bottom of a deep well inside my head, and dragging it out made my entire body shake just a little.

“Dru,” she says, softly but urgently. “Get up.”

I rub my eyes and yawn. “Mommy?” My voice is muffled. Sometimes it’s the voice of a two- year-old, sometimes it’s older. But always, it’s wondering and quiet, sleepy.

“Come on, Dru.” She puts her hands down and picks me up, with a slight oof! as if she can’t believe how much I’ve grown. I’m a big girl now, and I don’t need her to carry me, but I’m so tired I don’t protest. I cuddle into her warmth and feel the hummingbird beat of her heart. “I love you, baby,” she whispers into my hair. She smells of fresh cookies and warm perfume, and it is here the dream starts to fray. Because I hear something like footsteps, or a pulse. It is quiet at first, but it gets louder and more rapid with each beat. “I love you so much.”

“Mommy…” I put my head on her shoulder. I know I am heavy, but she is carrying me, and when she sets me down to open a door I protest only a little.

It is the closet downstairs. Just how I know it’s downstairs I’m not sure. There is something in the floor she pulls up, and some of my stuffed animals have been jammed into the square hole, along with blankets and a pillow from her and Daddy’s bed. She scoops me up again and settles me in the hole, and I begin to feel faintly alarmed. “Mommy?”

“We’re going to play the game, Dru. You hide here and wait for Daddy to come home from work.”

This is all wrong. Sometimes I hide in the closet to scare Daddy, but never in the middle of the night. And never in a hole in the floor, a hole I didn’t even know was there. “I don’t wanna,” I say, and try to get up.

“Dru.” She grabs my arm, and it hurts for a second before her grip gentles. “It’s important, baby. This is a special game. Hide in the closet, and when Daddy comes home, he’ll find you. Lie down now. Be a good girl.”

I protest, I whine a little. “I don’t wanna.” But I am a good girl. I snuggle down into the hole, because it’s dark and warm and I’m tired, and the shadow on Mommy’s face gets deeper. Only her eyes glitter, glowing summer-blue. She covers me up with a blanket and smiles at me until I close my eyes. Sleep isn’t far behind, but as I go down I hear something, and I understand she’s fitted the cover over the hole, and I am in the dark. But it smells like her, and I am so tired.

I hear, very faint and far away, the closet door close, and a scratching sound. And just before the dream ends, I hear a long, low, chilling laugh, like someone trying to speak with a mouthful of razor blades, and I know my mother is somewhere close, and she is desperate, and something very bad is about to happen.

My eyes flew open. Sunlight poured in a flood through the window, past the curtains.

Things don’t just go wrong once. They go wrong far enough and then they explode and it’s impossible to put everything back together. If I was with Dad down South right now, we’d be either getting ready to go out and deal with something, poltergeist infestation, hex trouble, cockroach or gator spirits, you name it. Or he’d be getting ready to go out and I’d be cooking dinner, moving around the kitchen while he loaded clips or filled holy-water ampoules, and sometimes played Twenty Hunter Questions with me. He’d pop the questions and I’d answer, usually correctly. Each right answer would get me a smile and a Good girl, Dru. Now here’s another one for you.

Everything from How do you take apart a poltergeist? to What are the rules in a bar full of Others? And if it took me more than thirty seconds of thinking, he wouldn’t let me flounder. He would jump right in and explain. Not like so many others who liked to call themselves teachers.

Say it, Dru. Say it out loud.

“No.” My own voice startled me. Here I was, sitting up here in this bedroom that was kind of pretty, yeah, but it was also cold and soulless and there was no safety in it. Dylan had just brought me back and plopped me down in here with the gun and the transcript, and a warning.

Don’t trust anyone. If we’re attacked again, hide. Don’t let anyone know where you’re hiding until the all-clear sounds. Take the gun with you, and for God’s sake keep it hidden.

And the point to this whole thing, delivered just before he closed my door.

I’m going to try to find Christophe. He needs to know that this is a blackout zone, and that wampyr attacks have been increasing. We need to get you out of here.

There I was, throwing a distraction across my own brain. Say it, Dru. You might as well.

“He’s gone,” I whispered.

Gran had pretty much raised me, until she let go and I was in free fall for that one awful night before Dad showed up to sign all the papers and collect me. I never knew how he’d known, but then again, she’d raised him, too. He hadn’t put much credence to “that backwoods foolishness,” but he still tossed salt over his shoulder when it spilled.

You’d be a fool not to, when you’re hunting the things that go bump in the night.

And he’d still sometimes known things. He didn’t laugh when people talked about intuition. He also never really doubted mine.

“He’s really gone.” It sounded even worse when I repeated it. It was like I had just fully realized I wasn’t dreaming, that I wouldn’t wake up from this and find him in the kitchen loading bullets in clips, or in his camp chair in front of the TV, or…

No more driving with the windows down and the atlas in my lap, navigating him to where he needed to go. No more handing ammunition in through the broken windows while things skittered and leapt for him. No more playing the guessing game, figuring out which part of the Real World we were up against this time.

No more listening to someone else breathing in the house in the middle of the night. No more seeing him slumped in his chair in front of the television, no more of his special pancakes on Sunday mornings or the immediate call when he stamped in the door. Dru? Dru, honey, you there?

No more chili nights or warm arms over my shoulder, no more reassurance in the middle of the night when I woke up screaming, it didn’t happen often after I was about fourteen, but it was nice to know he was there, you know?

He was really, truly gone. I was all alone here, and what I thought would be a safe place was turning out to be a snakes’ nest. Like that little store we’d been in before heading to the Dakotas.

The one with the copperheads and cottonmouths in glass aquariums, stinking and making that awful ratcheting noise.

Cottonmouths are mean, too. They’ll jump you with no warning. They hit the sides of the aquariums with dry thumps the entire time I was in there, while Dad was closeted with the owner.

Had he been getting Christophe’s phone number? What else had he been doing?

I rubbed at my wet cheeks. I hate crying. It fills up your head with stupid and makes your entire face hurt. I folded up the transcript, leaving damp tear marks on the edges of the paper.

The malaika were still under my bed. Right next to them were Dad’s billfold and a blot of darkness I grabbed and pulled out. It was my black canvas bag, still dirty from the snowy mess of the Dakotas. I’d packed it carefully while Graves and I were clearing out the house and Christophe was on the phone, arguing with someone about coming to pick me up.

That felt like a lifetime ago. Back when I’d still been thinking things could be fixed, maybe, if I just coped hard enough.

Cash, both in my wallet and in the little space under the flap at the bottom of the bag, a sort of secret compartment Dad had shown me how to sew in and use. ID, both in the wallet and under the flap. A fresh clip of nine-millimeter ammo under the flap. ChapStick, my Yoda notebook, a comb, two pens, a handkerchief, a clean pair of underwear and a bra, and a small bar of hotel soap.

Hey, you never know.