CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Wednesday morning arrived with a cold, cold rain. With Menessos’s message I hadn’t slept much and was still awake when Johnny came in late. Now, he was sleeping in. The recent injury, the fighting and transforming left him drained, and the energy drinks had only delayed the inevitable crash. When Nana took Beverley to the bus stop, I checked on Thunderbird with Maxine at my heels, gun in her hand. Menessos had told her of his concerns and now she was on alert. The griffon remained asleep and surrounded by warm friends.
Then I focused on my column, which was due today. Maxine paced.
Despite the noise of Beholders working on Nana’s room addition, I polished up the column and emailed it to my editor, Jimmy Martin. Not long after I hit the send button, though, Mountain informed me that they were ready to break through the exterior wall and install Nana’s bedroom door. I opted to completely relocate my computer instead of merely covering it against the dust they were about to stir up.
By eleven o’clock, everything that could be moved was out of the dining room. Dust barriers were put up to minimize the effect throughout the house. Then the real noise began. Nana retreated to her room upstairs with Ares and cranked up a country music station on her clock radio.
Having someone tearing a giant hole in your house in November, I found, was cause for pacing. Which had me and Maxine at cross purposes.
Maxine suggested, “Aren’t there any errands you can run?”
By “you,” she obviously meant “we.” “Groceries.”
“Great idea. You’ll need help with bags?”
“Of course.”
We left Zhan in charge and fled, grateful to be away from the cacophony. The Audi was a smooth ride, even on the rolling country hills. Max drove as if the road was her personal course to test the vehicle’s maneuverability. On the upside, it took only twenty minutes to get to town. I’d been quiet during the ride, clenching the handle on the door, but she was now obeying the speed limit and I loosed my grip and found my voice. “So, Maxine, how did you come to be an Offerling to Menessos?”
“I’ve always been a risk taker, craving excitement, y’know?”
After that drive, yeah, I believe her.
“I never had the typical girl goals,” she said, a tinge of sadness in her voice.
“Do you feel differently now?”
“No … it’s just … my mom got a tomboy when she wanted a princess. Growing up in Connecticut, she wanted me to be in beauty pageants. She couldn’t understand why I wanted to rock climb, why I wanted to know how to pilot a helicopter or shoot guns.” Maxine drove into the grocery parking lot. “She didn’t understand how I could like getting dirty. She thought I was being defiant.”
“Were you?”
“Not of her. Of her illness. My mother had multiple sclerosis.”
“Oh,” I said.
“My teen years were spent watching her get weaker, get older, frailer. As the illness gripped her more and more, she wanted to think I’d have the happily-ever-after kind of life, even though she wouldn’t be around.” Maxine parked in a space at the back of the lot where there were few other cars. “In the end, she was bedridden. She couldn’t even move.” She plucked the keys from the ignition and got out.
I grabbed my purse.
Over the car’s roof Maxine continued. “I wanted to live. To feel my heart pound every day and never fear the risk so much that I missed out on a thrill. Before she died, she told me, ‘Run, Max. Climb and get dirty. Just don’t stop moving.’ I did. After she died, I did more. I pushed the limits. I pushed for her as much as I pushed for me.”
We started across the parking lot. I asked, “So she did understand.”
“Yeah.” Maxine nodded. “If I have to die, it’ll be quick. No long years of fading.”
The “if” in there made me understand why she was with a vampire. “So how’d you end up with Menessos?”
“There are services, not unlike eHarmony, that try to match people up with vampires. It’s a complicated process, secretive and labyrinthine to the point that many times I thought I was being fleeced. Four months later, I met Goliath. Six weeks after that, I met Menessos.”
“Were you scared?”
“Hell yes. But I loved it. Better than any roller coaster.”
“Oh.”
“Being an Offerling provides the excitement I crave, and the pair of marks Menessos placed on me means I won’t be fading anytime soon.”
“So you want to be a vampire?”
“To be ageless and never die? Absolutely. Where do I sign?”
We stopped at the end of the parking row as a white delivery van rushed by, apparently in a hurry. When it stopped nearly in front of us the driver opened his door and we angled our steps to go around the back of it toward the grocery entrance.
As we cleared the back, the rear doors swung wildly open, nearly hitting us. Maxine lurched around the door and snapped, “Hey, assho—”
I heard a thunk and Maxine dropped to the ground.
Even as I thought to bend over her and help her up I realized there was a hole in her forehead. A circle of blood was spreading on the pavement like a wine-red nimbus around her head. She’s never getting up.
I heard another sound, like the whack of a baseball bat meeting a fastball. My world went black.
Consciousness returned in brief snippets, each a little longer than the last. I wanted to hold on to it—where am I?— but it kept escaping and that made me angry. Or maybe it was the dull ache that made me angry. Or the fact that I was nauseated and there was a soppy gag in my mouth and I wasn’t sure how to throw up around it.
I was also blindfolded. That part I was almost grateful for. It felt like the backs of my eyes had been stung by bees and I was certain that any light would have intensified my headache. The downside was having no idea where I was, except that there was cold cement under me. I’d been hog-tied—my hands and feet bound behind me—and now lay on my side. Every movement shot splinters of pain through my head so I didn’t try very hard to inspect further. I did try very hard to just breathe and listen. Then the shivering set in. Too bad the cold didn’t help the nausea.
Voices echoed to me as if from a tunnel, muffled enough that even with my amplified hearing I made out only a word here and there. Maybe I’m at the bottom of the well. Where’s Lassie when I need a big collie rescuer?
As the voices continued, I realized they were arguing. Something about that anger got through the punch-drunk fuzz inside my head. It swept away the confusion and reality hit home: I’ve been kidnapped and Maxine’s dead. They shot her in the head!
Menessos’s warning about Heldridge replayed in my memory.
The shouting continued and I strained to hear, needing yet fearing to have confirmation that Heldridge had me. The prospect of being tortured didn’t help my stomach settle. Was I so weak and scared that I would tell everything immediately to avoid Heldridge’s methods?
Then I caught the word “Bindspoken.”
That left me wondering if maybe it wasn’t Heldridge but the witches who had me. Xerxadrea had played up to the high priestesses of her lucusi the notion that Menessos was a serious threat when she officially ousted me from the group. Because I’d become his Erus Veneficus, WEC certainly wasn’t happy with me. Killing one of Menessos’s Offerlings wouldn’t have been their style, however, with “Harm none” being their motto and all.
Besides, Xerxadrea’s claims were all for show.
Not that Vilna-Daluca was aware of it. And now that Xerxadrea was dead, Vilna blamed me. Problem was, Vilna wasn’t exactly wrong. But who else would have cause to throw the word “Bindspoken” into an argument?