Under Attack

Chapter Twenty-Four

I closed the door and rummaged through my underwear drawer, finding the gun Alex had given me a year ago. It was now nestled between a lacy thong with the tags still on and a pair of fuzzy socks with polar bears on them. The gun used to live in the freezer, but after an unfortunate accident with a Skinny Cow Mint Dipper, I decided to move it to a safer location. I pulled my bathrobe from the peg by the door, slipped it on, and tucked the gun in my pocket. I trudged out past the guys, head down, shoulders hunched under the guise of girlish modesty—and just as I suspected, they all did their best to look away.

The one benefit of undead men—they’ve got all that old-school chivalry.

I locked the bathroom door behind me and turned the tub on full bore. Then I slid out of my bathrobe, unrolled both of my pant legs, and yanked my discarded sneakers from their “I’m going to get rid of these tomorrow” spot on the floor. I threw my well-thawed .22 into my shoulder bag and added a couple bars of soap for good measure. I wedged the bathroom window open, sucked in my stomach, and launched myself through.

My apartment was on the second floor and my hefty rent gave me a priceless view of a well-tagged brick wall and a bank of Dumpsters—not so useful for romantic dinners on the fire escape, but excellent for a midnight sojourn with destiny. In my own Nadia Comaneci move I vaulted from the end of my fire escape to land in an inglorious belly flop on a pile of bagged garbage. I bit my lip to keep from screaming as I picked my way through splitting bags of God knows what, cursing my neighbors for buying cheap garbage bags and Cala Foods for selling them. I swamp-walked through the trash, willing myself not to breathe, reminding myself that all the slimy hands that I felt reaching out for me were either banana peels or burger wrappers.

When I mercifully reached the rusted metal side of the Dumpster I hauled myself out, landing with an impressive thud on the cement below. I dared a look up to my illuminated bathroom window to check if Alex and the guys were on to me—nope. I took off running then, the sound of my sneakers slapping the pavement echoing through the dark alley.

Halfway to my destination I was heaving and certain my lungs were going to explode; I hailed a cab and paid the shameful $5.65 to go the next six blocks, then tore through the police-station parking lot, mashing my fingers against the elevator’s down button.

“Come on, come on,” I moaned to the molasses-slow machine as I danced from foot to foot. “Come on!” As I waited, I scanned the lineup of menacing-looking mug shots in the MOST WANTED photos and shivered. If Ophelia was just your basic, everyday homicidal maniac or computer hacker, I’d feel a lot better. At least then I’d have the whole police force behind me and she’d stay out of my head—and her mug could be plastered all over the streets of San Francisco, making everyone on high alert.

I stepped inside the elevator and watched the doors close on the safety of the police station vestibule. “I have to do this,” I told myself out loud. Suddenly, the thundering beat of my heart was all I could hear. My mouth went dry and my palms were wet; my stomach seemed to drop with every floor. I dipped my hand into my shoulder bag, fingering the comforting coolness of my gun.

“Everything is going to be okay,” I whispered.

When the elevator’s big steel doors opened, the UDA waiting room was dim, the empty furniture and deserted kiosks bathed in an eerie yellow glow from the room’s flickering emergency lights. The UDA was technically closed, but since the standard lock-and-key method did little to deter the undead who wanted in, the company was locked up tight with a magical charm, courtesy of the higher-ups at Underworld corporate. The supernatural padlock method was ingenious for keeping out curious breathers and impatient demons, but it had one weak spot—me. My magical immunity wasn’t just a fun parlor trick; it occasionally came in handy, too. I breathed deeply and tried to convince myself of my confidence.

Ophelia may have the supernatural powers of the otherworld behind her, but I had a gun, a handbag full of soap, and a team of mythical defenders who thought I was taking a bubble bath.

I gulped.

“Ophelia?” I called out.

I heard her giggle—this time it was out in the open and not in my head.

And then I heard a scream.

I tore down the hall, screaming for Nina and kicking open doors. When I got to the last one—the room the UDA used for storage—I paused, until I heard Ophelia’s laugh again. I yanked open the door.

I lost my breath when I saw the storeroom. Just like the rest of the UDA, the lights were off, the only illumination coming from the sickly yellow glow of the emergency lights. The storeroom furniture had been pushed back and heaped up against the walls, so towers of used office chairs and obsolete phones were stacked in precarious mountains all around me—everything except for one wooden desk and one chair. The desk had been pushed to the front of the room and Ophelia was stretched out on her stomach on top of it. Her fingers were knitted and her chin rested in her hands. Her long, bare legs were kicked up and she would occasionally kick her bare foot like a child watching fireflies. She was dressed in a red cotton sundress with crisp white piping—inappropriate both for the situation and for San Francisco weather—and her long blond hair looked flawless, held back by a thick white headband. Her curls trailed over her bare shoulders and spilled down to her elbows. There was a jaunty straw purse sitting on the desk next to her. If her arms and shoulders hadn’t been streaked in blood, she would have looked like a teenage girl lounging on a summer day.

“Sophie!” Ophelia squealed gleefully when she saw me. “So glad you could make it!” She waggled her bare feet and grinned at me, a shiny prom-queen grin that morphed into a pouty frown. “I don’t think Nina wants to play with me anymore.”

Ophelia stretched one arm, her talonlike nail pointing to where Nina was tied against one wall.

My stomach sank and I had to bite down hard on my lower lip to stop myself from crying.

“Nina?” I breathed.

My best friend was sitting on the missing desk chair, bare ankles double-roped against the legs of the chair, her arms tied behind her. She was wearing the slip dress I had last seen her in, except now it hung listlessly on her and her once-glossy hair was snarled in a series of rats-nest knots. There were large tears in the silky fabric of her dress and the elegant lace that edged the bodice was torn and hung around Nina’s neck like a noose; one strap hung ineffectually around her upper arm, right next to it a series of oblong purple bruises. Her exposed skin—usually marblesque and perfect—was pockmarked with angry red gashes, burn marks, and cuts. Splatters of blood marched across her chest and arms, and long, bloody rivers dripped down each leg.

“Oh,” I whimpered, feeling the sting of tears that wanted to fall, feeling the tension in my spine as it crawled up the back of my neck.

Nina’s head lolled to the side and I saw that her lips were puckered and had a handful of tiny cut marks on them. There was blood caked at the corner of her mouth and under her nose and one eye—usually decked out in a luxe MAC eye shadow palette—was nearly swollen shut. Half-empty blood bags were torn open and leaking all around Nina. I cringed.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, swallowing hard against the lump in my throat.

“You know what’s neat?” Ophelia said, hopping from her spot on the desk like an excited school child. “I can hurt vampires! And if I feed them just enough to get their system going—but not enough to gain their strength—I can make them bleed.” Ophelia was downright giddy and she clapped her hands, her straw purse bobbing jauntily as she wound it around her arm. “Isn’t that fun?”

My jaw tightened and my stomach went leaden. “Great. You can hurt a vampire when she has a quarter of her powers. You’re real tough.”

Ophelia’s eyes narrowed and she went on, ignoring me. “I wanted to tell you—I tried to get in your mind to show you all the fun stuff that Nina and I had discovered but your mind was closed completely. It was clogged by all the others around you.” She frowned a pouty little girl’s frown. “It made me sad. Where were you—the mall?”

“Broadway.” My voice was barely audible to myself and I didn’t want to raise it. I thought of us wandering aimlessly through town, and Alex and I rolling around in bed, all the while, Ophelia was learning—and hurting Nina.

“Don’t cry!” Ophelia said. “There’s plenty left for you, too!”

I backed up, slipped my hand into my shoulder bag. Ophelia’s eyes followed the line of my arm.

“You know what else is different?” Ophelia asked. “I can’t read your mind in here.” She held her arms open, blue eyes grazing the ceiling. “Must be something about the Underworld—protects their own or something? No, that can’t be it because you don’t belong here.” She grinned. “You don’t belong anywhere.”

I gritted my teeth. “Are you through?”

“No. Like I said, I couldn’t read your mind—it was frustrating. Imagine how I felt, having to cart around that bag of bones”—she inclined her blond head toward Nina—“on the off chance that you’d be where I wanted you to be.”

I licked my lips. “So you took a chance?”

“No, silly.” Ophelia paused then, her eyes wide and dripping spurious innocence. “I couldn’t read your thoughts, so I read Alex’s.”

Ophelia smiled serenely, stepping back toward Nina. She gingerly slipped her fingers under the strap of Nina’s dress and lifted it back up to her shoulder, smoothing it carefully. Then she trailed her fingers slowly through Nina’s hair, playing with the few strands that weren’t snarled and blood caked.

“You get away from her,” I spat.

Ophelia just smiled and sweetly patted Nina’s unmoving head. “That’s okay. I’m done playing with her. Now I’m ready to play with you.”

Nina’s body lurched forward in the chair and Ophelia slapped her back. I sucked in a breath, praying that my best friend wasn’t dead. I kept my eyes fixed on Ophelia, but gingerly kicked one of the blood bags closer to Nina.

Ophelia kept up her lament.

“You know, Sophie, I should be really, really jealous of you. Alex loves you in a way that he never even considered me.” The soft lilt of Ophelia’s voice took on a hard edge. “He thinks about you so often, he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.”

Ophelia walked slowly, closing the distance between us. “He’s been so worried that I’m going to hurt you. He thinks about it constantly. He’s even thinking about it now as he drives to your grandmother’s old house.”

“What?”

“Alex was right when he said it was easy to hijack your mind—the maggots, Daddy.” Ophelia pressed her manicured fingers to her lips and giggled. “But it wasn’t too hard to put a few suggestions into his mind. Especially since they seemed to be the same thoughts that your ragtag bunch of supernatural friends were having. And because I wrote your grandmother’s address in the margins of all my books. I would have included a Google map, but I thought that would be just a little too obvious.”

I nudged closer to Nina, trying to eye her through my peripheral, to see if she was alive.

“But that Alex—” Ophelia clasped her hands and batted her eyelashes innocently. “Try as I might, I just can’t get over him. I guess it’s a girl thing—or maybe it’s those sweet baby blues of his.” She licked her lips as if the memory was a delicious one and winked at me. “You know how mesmerizing those eyes are. I still love him, Sophie; a part of me still wants him back. I just can’t do anything to hurt him. So, you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and Ophelia smiled.

“I’m just going to kill you.”

Ophelia’s face fell when mine did. “Oh, honey! Don’t take it personally. I mean, we are sisters after all, and I’ve always wanted a kid sister. But you know what I want more? Complete control.”

I took another step back, the hammering of my heart so dramatic it hurt as it thumped against my rib cage. I blinked and Ophelia was right in front of me, standing on the vacated desk. She held her hands out, palms up, like a scale.

“Have a kid sister to control”—she sank her left hand down a quarter of an inch—“or have the entire world to control.” Her right hand thudded downward, and Ophelia cocked her head, looking genuinely sad. “Sorry, sis, looks like you lose.”

Ophelia lunged for me and I skidded out of the way, winding my way back to the storage-room door. I heard the slap-slap-slap of Ophelia’s bare feet on the concrete; I heard them gaining on me. I crouched, snatched my .22 out of my bag, and then used my bag to wallop Ophelia on the side of the head. The bars of soap made a satisfying thunk as they made contact with Ophelia’s pretty blond curls.

“Ow!” she howled, looking stunned. “What the hell do you have in there?”

I took the opportunity to lunge closer, arm outstretched, gun aloft, finger firmly on the trigger. I tried to focus, but the barrel trembled, and so did Ophelia’s shoulders.

She pressed her fingers to her mouth and I felt a bead of sweat make its way down my back.

Ophelia couldn’t hold my gaze—because she was laughing so hard.

“Really, Sophie?”

I swallowed, my throat constricting. I was afraid if I opened my mouth I’d vomit, so I just nodded, hoping the movement looked cool and certain.

Ophelia laughed harder and skipped toward me. She flicked my hand, then pressed her forehead against the barrel of the gun.

“Go ahead.”

“I will,” I said with every ounce of confidence I could muster.

“I’m waiting.” Ophelia’s ice-blue eyes locked on me and her lips turned up into a mocking smile. “You wouldn’t. I’m your sister—the only family you have left. And you’re a complete wimp.” She stepped back, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

A pinprick of pain started behind my eyes and began pulsing, coursing through every fiber of my being. The room dropped into stony silence. A drop of sweat fell from my hands in achingly slow motion and then the world cracked. Loudly. There was a spit of fire and I was vaulting backward.

“You bitch!” Ophelia was a hairbreadth away and she smacked the gun from my hand. “You shot me!”

I didn’t notice any blood on Ophelia so I hurriedly glanced at the ceiling and floor (my two usual targets). Nothing.

Ophelia grinned at my confusion. “Not corporeal,” she said, thumping her chest. “There is nothing inside here!”

I’ll say.

I took off running toward the waiting room with Ophelia close behind.

“Come on, Sophie,” Ophelia yelled. “Don’t you want to be a part of something bigger? Don’t you want to be something greater than yourself?”

I stopped and held my ground. “Like a Vessel?” I said, my own voice a fearsome snarl.

Ophelia giggled—a sweet, completely inappropriate giggle. “Oh, you know about that.”

I snatched a metal ruler out of Pierre’s I Heart Tuscaloosa penholder mug in the waiting room and brandished it like a sword. “And I know about our father.”

Ophelia paused, her eyes wide. She pulled herself up on a desk and sat down, crossing her long bare legs. “What do you know about Daddy?”

Hearing her say the word daddy tugged at my heart. Ophelia cocked her head and stuck out her lower lip. “What’s the matter, Sophie-pie? Feeling a little abandoned since Daddy left you and Mommy couldn’t stand you?”

I felt that snarl of anger roil through me again.

“Shut up, Ophelia.”

Ophelia bobbed her foot playfully. “Don’t worry; it probably wasn’t you at all. I mean, Daddy did have me at home and your mom, well”—Ophelia looked at me, her eyes sharp and icicle blue—“he always said she was a regular nutcase.”

“That’s not true!”

“Oh come on, Sophie! How many people who are square in the head go out and kill themselves?”

I bit my cheek hard, feeling the bitter taste of my blood.

Ophelia jumped off the desk and landed, sure-footed, on the ground. “Okay, enough with the family reunion crap. I’m impatient. I’m ready to rule.” She snapped her fingers. “Come here, chop, chop!” Ophelia giggled at her own horrible pun. “Or shoot, shoot.” She dug into her prissy straw purse and pulled out a gun. I gulped, the sudden thunderous beat of my heart—corporeal as I was—nearly choking me.

“Um, will that really work to release the Vessel?”

Ophelia looked at the gun in her hand and frowned. “Yeah, why?” She acted confident, but I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was unsure. I sucked in a breath and stood a little taller.

“You have to know that something with”—my eyes flicked over the barrel of the .357 Magnum she held—“that kind of firepower runs the risk of shattering the Vessel.”

Ophelia faltered for a split second, the barrel of the gun dropping a fraction of an inch. “You don’t know that.”

I shrugged. “Suit yourself. But, being the Vessel, I think I pretty much know how this works.”

Ophelia narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t even know what you were until I came along.”

I raised my brows. “Really? Is that what you think? The Vessel of Souls—a divine vessel used to hold the souls of the recently departed until their fate is decided. Desired by the fallen, protected by the righteous. The holder has the power to tip the scales and control both worlds. Hidden in plain sight. The guardian of the Vessel must do anything in her power to ensure the safety of the Vessel.” Even as I said it—a definition made up from snippets I had heard from Alex, read in my father’s journals—things were becoming clearer. I couldn’t let Ophelia see me falter.

I put my hands on my hips, jutting my chin toward the butt of Ophelia’s gun. “So, you tell me. Do you really want to risk it?”