Replica(24)

“Well, that’s just fucking great, isn’t it?” Rachel spat out as she began to pace again.

I leaned back against one of the broken pillars. “Who gave you the stake?”

“Some guy.” She raised her left hand to her lips again—an unconscious gesture. So. The man who’d given her the stake had also kissed her. Her face pinked up again, but I didn’t pursue that line of questioning. There had to be some give and take in the trust department, on both sides, for our partnership to work.

“Where’s the vampire you were going to bring back for questioning?” Rachel half turned toward me.

“They’ve all fled the city. Except for Calvin, and I have little hope of finding him until he’s ready to be found. Since Ivan is following the contact, I assume that means you got nothing.”

Rachel dug into the bag hanging at her side and pulled out an envelope. “Not nothing. But not everything I’d hoped for, either.”

I took it from her and flipped through the contents. A couple of pictures, one of them with coordinates written on the back, and a phrase that meant nothing to me.

“This is where we’ll find Stravinsky.” I tapped the back of the picture, holding it with the coordinates. “This just confirms that we’re on the right path.”

“That would make the most sense. It almost feels too easy, though. Like a trap.”

I snorted softly, memorizing the coordinates and the phrase before I tucked the documents back into the envelope and handed it to Rachel. “Life is a trap, my friend. It’s how you handle the snap of the killing blow that determines if you are the prey or the predator.”

“Lea,” the way she said my name should have tipped me off, “why do you hate vampires so much? Not that I’m against going after them, but I met Louis. He wasn’t a bad guy. And while you’re a crazy-ass bitch when it comes to fighting, you don’t go around killing vamps left and right. They can’t all be bad.”

“No? Do you know that for the first fifty years of a vampire’s life, the blood lust is nearly uncontrollable? They’ll feed on anyone without thought unless controlled by a master vampire. Louis was only as polite as he was because whoever made him had a tight hold on the reins. One slip, and he would have been on you and Calvin in an instant.”

“Then why didn’t you kill him?” she asked.

“Because I gave you my word!” I snapped. “You ask questions because it’s in your blood. And I kill vampires because it is in mine. They took everything from me. They drained my older sister, making her one of them.”

I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through the memory. “They left me and my parents tied to three chairs, cuts in our necks so the blood dripped freely.” I could taste the fear on my tongue, the salt of my tears as I cried for Anna to wake up. Her dark hair just like mine spread about her face as if she were sleeping. Rachel said something, but I didn’t hear it as the words poured from me.

“She did wake up. Anna drained our mother first. My father screamed for her to stop, begged her. Called on God to stop her. His cries drew her to him next. Whether he meant to or not, my father bought me the time I needed.”

“Lea. You don’t have to—”

“I worked my hands out of the bonds before she made it to me, and she was so intent on her feeding, she didn’t notice I was free. I took a silver candlestick and rammed it through her heart as she drained my father. Her screams echoed through the night, and the Cazadors found me sobbing in a puddle of my sister’s blood. They told me my parents would rise as monsters if I didn’t drive stakes through them too. But that was a test to see how strong I was. I later learned they wouldn’t have turned without drinking vampire blood.”

I stared hard at Rachel, seeing the fear in her eyes. “I am not angry you asked. But it is not something I like to remember.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Ivan said from the shadows. Rachel and I had our stakes out, one right after the other.

I glared at Ivan, unreasonably angry that he had heard my story. Even more so that he’d snuck up on us.

Again.

“Stop doing that,” Rachel snapped. “Make some fucking noise, would you?”

He grinned at her. “Bet you don’t yell at Lea for being quiet.”

“She’s on my side.”

“So am I.”

“Stop it,” I said. “Both of you. Did you catch up with her contact?”

His grin faltered and he shook his head. “No. I have no idea how the hell he slipped me, but from one street to the next his scent was completely gone. Maybe even from one step to the next.”