James. “I was raised Catholic, motherfucker. Stay in the backseat.”
The rest of our ride passed in silence. I’d done it. I had some help—but we were gonna be okay. No one had gotten hurt. My mom was going to be just fine. To borrow a phrase from Hector, I had saved the motherfucking day. As the streets got nicer and it was clear we were out of Three Crosses’ realm, I began to beam.
“Why are you so pleased?” Dren asked from beside me.
“Because.” I inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Just because.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Hector pulled the car into a well-lit place—the parking lot of a Catholic church. As soon as we parked, he got out and slammed his door.
I hopped out after him, leaving my door open.
“We’re going to kill that thing.” He popped the trunk of his car, bringing out duct tape and a tire iron.
I took a step back. “We’re not going to kill him, and I’m not going to ask you why you’re driving a kidnap- mobile.”
“He tried to kill me,” Hector said, shaking the tire iron for emphasis.
“I need him! To save my mom! Remember?”
“Technically, I only wanted some of your blood,” Dren said from his slumped position inside the car, eyes glittering in the night. “I didn’t need all of it.”
I pointed at him. “Do me a favor, and don’t try to help.” Then I moved to stand between Hector and Dren. Normally, a vampire would have no problem fighting back, but since Dren was missing half of his long bones and starved for blood and Hector was pissed, I gave humanity an even chance. “Let me explain. Some. As much as I can. Hector—that place up there—it was awful. They were torturing him. Taking out his bones and using them to decorate—” My voice failed me at the memory. “Adriana’s up there, Hector. She’s trapped in a cage of bones and rebar. It is literally insane.”
Then I looked to Dren. “And you swore to help my mother. I need some of your blood. She’s got cancer. I want to heal her.”
Dren’s eyebrows rose up on his forehead. A smile pulled up the edges of his lips, and then he gave a barking laugh. He laughed again, and again, sounding like an overexcited dog, until he started coughing, and the coughing won out.
“What’s so funny?” I stood outside the car with my hands on my hips. “You promised—you swore!”
Dren recovered himself from the coughing. “You need to make your oaths more precise. Trust me, you do not want your own sweet mother to be bound to my blood.”
“Fuck you, Dren.” I took a step nearer to the car, strength building in me. “You’re doing this.”
He slunk forward in the car, crawling out of it with his one good leg and arm, and both Hector and I scooted back. “If she were bound to me, I would make you regret giving her my blood until the day you died. She would come to hate you as the person who enslaved her to me.” He paused to arrange himself on the pavement once he was on the ground, straightening out his messed-up leg. Then he appeared to think, and smiled, full of fangs. “Just think of all the things I could order her to do. Oh, my.”
My fists curled in impotent rage. “But I saved your life!”
“And I thank you for that. But I also swore an oath not to hurt her, whoever she may be. Trust me that my blood would only do that. I would see to it, in fact.”
I leaned forward and screamed at him, “I did not come all the way down here just to save you! If I had known, I would have tried harder to save the girl instead!” I whirled on Hector. “Give me the tire iron.”
He took a step back. “I thought we weren’t supposed to kill him?”
“That was before,” I said, my hand still out.
“Edie—he has a point.”
“Fuck both of you, then.” I walked in a small circle. I ran my hands up through my hair. “We have to go back for her.”
“Not tonight. We’re not going anywhere tonight.” Hector brought the tire iron down with finality.
“We may not be—but Luz, I mean Reina, is going to be all over Maldonado when she hears about this. Do you have her phone number? Does she have a phone?”
“And what do you think she will do to your precious zombie when she finds him there, girl?” Dren said from his position on the ground.
“You shut up.”
“Go on. Tell him about the zombie,” Dren crooned. “I’d love to hear you explain him away.”
I knelt down to be on a level with him. “How is it you were stupid enough to get caught?”
“What’s it matter to you?” he challenged me.
“More mouth from you, and we’re going to wait out here for the sun,” Hector threatened, waving the tire iron. I blinked, startled that he knew how to kill a vampire. Then again, it was on every other TV show right now. At least Hector was still on my side, even though he had to know I was holding out information on him.
Dren sighed in exaggerated exhaustion. “I came looking for Santa Muerte. The Shadows sent me in. She’s got a high bounty.”
“Did you find her?”
“No. Those fools are trying to summon her. The girl in the cage is meant to be some sort of sacrifice.” He shrugged his weak shoulder, which yanked his limp arm up in a grotesque fashion. “Santa Muerte herself is still loose—and they’ve almost got enough magic to draw her there. I’ll give them that. I sorely underestimated the magician inside.”
“That’s because he’s a
“Someone is helping them,” Dren went on. “You don’t get knowledge like they’ve gained through experimenting on your own. You try magic that strong without practice and you’d blow yourself up.” His eyes narrowed. “I suspect House Grey is funding them, or helping them outright. I didn’t meet any of them personally, but my torture did have the feel of poetic justice to it.”
The last time I’d seen any vampires from House Grey, Dren had been lopping their arms off at Anna’s command. His torture had a grim symmetry to it. Vampires didn’t forgive, and they sure as hell never forgot.
“What would they want with Santa Muerte?” I asked aloud.
“She’s hugely powerful. Who wouldn’t want death on their side?”
“Why didn’t the Shadows send anyone in after you?”
“And admit defeat? Or that they’d sent me to begin with?” He snorted, pushing himself up against the car’s open door with his good arm. “I sent my Hound out for help—and the stubborn thing spent a month trying to run away before admitting defeat and realizing it couldn’t. I think it was hoping I would die. Little does it know, that wouldn’t free it. Our fates are linked.”
“Why did it find me?”
Dren rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t like the weres would help me now, was it? And I’d kept him away from other vampire kind. In the circles of the people he could find, and the people who were likely to be stupid enough to help me, the only overlap was you.”
“You always know how to make a girl feel special, Dren.” I rocked back up. My calves ached from all the crouching and pulling I’d done tonight. “Look, where can we take you? You need to go somewhere.”
“I need blood is what I need.” His eyes shone in the car-door shadow, backlit like a cat’s.
“Neither of us is going to give you any.” I did feel bad for him. He was a shade of his former self here. Still frightening, but also sad.
Throughout all this, Hector was surprisingly nonplussed. He still held the tire iron at the ready, but he didn’t seem as ready to use it as when he’d first gotten out of his car.
“Once, I made it halfway down the stairs,” Dren went on. “The sun began to come up. I had to crawl myself back up again before I passed out in the light. And your boyfriend—he’s a piece of work.”
