The two vampires looked at each other, and as their master howled, they levered themselves back out through the ceiling. There was a faint thump of feet overhead—and they were gone.
"I think I'm going to pass out," I said, breathless, and Pierce eased me to the carpet. My head lolled, and the edges of my sight grayed. "I'm sorry," I started to babble, feeling light and airy. "I shouldn't have come down here. I'm no good at this."
"You are exceptional at this." Pierce held my hand and fanned me with a magazine. "But please, Miss Rachel, don't pass out. Stay with me. At least a little longer. If you succumb, your circle might fall."
"That's not good," I mumbled, struggling to keep my eyes open, but damn it, I had overtaxed my body and it was shutting down. When the adrenaline had flowed, it had been fantastic. I had been alive and strong. I felt normal. Now all that was left was the ash of a spent fire. And it was starting to rain.
"Rachel?"
It was close, and I pulled my eyes open to find Pierce had cradled my head in his lap. "Okay," I breathed. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," he said, and I smiled, snuggling in so I could hear his heartbeat. Maybe it was mine. "Stay with me," he said. "Just a few minutes more. They're almost here."
Distantly I heard the sound of thumping feet overhead and loud voices. The heater clicked on, and the warm breeze made my hair tickle my face. Pierce brushed it off me, and I opened my eyes, smiling up at him blissfully.
"Holy shit!" a deep voice said. "There's a hole in the floor."
The girl revealed us with a little sob. Standing under the hole she peered up, screaming, "Get me out of here! Someone get me out of here!"
"My God, it's the girl!" another man said. "Damn, he was telling the truth."
"Just a little longer, Miss Rachel," Pierce whispered, and I closed my eyes again. But a icing of fear slid through me, almost waking me up when my mom's voice cut through the babble, high pitched and determined.
"Of course Robbie was telling the truth. You smart-assed agents think you're so clever your crap doesn't stink, but you couldn't spell your way out of a paper bag."
"That's my mom," I whispered, and Pierce's grip on me tightened.
"Rachel?" she called, her voice getting louder, then, "Get your sorry ass out of my way. Rachel! Are you down there? My God, she circled a vampire. Look what my daughter did! She got him. She got him for you, you lazy bastards. Ignore my kids when they come to you, huh? I bet the news crew would like that. You either drop the charges on my kids, or I'm going out there and give them what they want."
I smiled, but I couldn't open my eyes. "Hi, Mom," I whispered, my breath slipping past my lips. And then to Pierce, I added, "Don't mind my mother. She's a little nuts."
He chuckled, raising my head and rocking me. "I expect a body would have to be to raise you properly."
I wanted to laugh, but I couldn't, so I just smiled. There was the brush of wind against me as people moved about us. Someone had finally gotten Sarah out of here, and the sound of two-way radios and excited chatter had replaced her blubbering. "I'm sorry," I said feeling like I'd failed them. "Someone needs to circle him. I'm passing out."
"Rest," Pierce whispered. "They have him. Let your circle down, Miss Rachel. I've got you."
I could hear a faint call for an ambulance and oxygen, and I had a fading thought that I was going to spend the last half of my solstice in the hospital, but we had done it.
And with that, I let go of the line and let oblivion take me, satisfied to the depths of my soul.
* * *
Chapter 8
They say when you're ten, you think your parents know everything. At sixteen, you're convinced they know nothing at all. By thirty, if you haven't figured out they really did know what they were doing, then you're still sixteen. After watching my mom work the I.S. like a fish on a line, I was suitably impressed that she knew everything in the freaking world.
Smiling, I tugged the wool blanket tighter around me and scooted my folding chair closer to the small fire Robbie had started in the backyard. My mom was beside me, pointedly between my brother and me as we toasted marshmallows and waited for sunrise. I hadn't been outside very long, and my breath steamed in the steadily brightening day. It was a few hours past my normal bedtime, but that's not why my arms shook and my breath was slow. Damn, I was tired.
I'd fully expected to wake up in the hospital or ambulance, and was surprised when I had come to in the back of my mom's car, still at the crime site. Wrapped in an I.S. blanket, I had stumbled out looking for Pierce to find myself in a media circus. Robbie and I had stood in the shadows and watched in awe as my mother worked a system I hadn't even known existed. Through her deadly serious threats disguised as scatterbrained fussing, she not only managed to get the charges against me for willful destruction of private property dropped, but got them to agree that I didn't have anything to do with their doors being blown out, much less fled their custody with an unknown person. The I.S. personnel were more than happy to give my mom whatever she wanted if she would keep her voice down, seeing as three news crews were within shouting distance.