“My kingdom is not just the catacombs,” he said, sitting up straight in his absurd chair. “My kingdom is the night.”
Noor and I looked at each other in slack-jawed disbelief. “Did he just use the most hackneyed vampire phrase in the whole history of bloodsucking monsters?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I find it difficult to believe, but yes.” She turned back to him. “Does drinking blood damage your brain?”
He looked shocked for a moment. “No,” he snapped, recovering. “It makes me powerful.”
“How?” I asked, genuinely curious. “How does being a bloodsucking predator make you powerful?”
He held up a pedantic index finger. “In fact, I am not a predator.”
“You stalk people. You attack them. You kill them or turn them into monsters. That’s the definition of predator.”
The finger rocked side to side, chiding me. “I do not killpeople. I bite them and they change. Sometimes they change into beautiful predators, like you two. Sometimes they change into corpses.” He smiled, the snotty little superior smirk that debaters are really good at because it provokes an opponent so effectively. And an angry opponent is a careless opponent.
I matched his smile. “You bite people against their will and without their consent. You feed on their blood.”
Noor backstopped me as smoothly as if we’d been debate partners since middle school. “You do not ask; you just attack. You—”
“I do not need to ask. Who would not want to be like me?” Noor and I both raised our hands, and he seemed genuinely surprised. “Écoutez, les filles; there are two sorts of people in the world: victors and victims. I made you victors. You have power now; you can do whatever you want.”
“You made me yourvictim,” Noor said. “Your unprovoked, uninvited attack took away my ability to draw. It—”
Le Bec laughed. “You were not a good artist in any case. It is hardly a loss.”
She looked stricken, and a sickening thought came to me. “Did you bite her because you were afraid her art would be more popular than yours?”
He folded his arms. “Of course not. She is not good enough to be competition.” But in the moment between my question and his reply, before he’d controlled himself, he’d recoiled, and I knew I was right. He settled himself in his pretend throne and steepled his fingers. “Bon, you have invaded my home without my invitation; you have insulted and accused me; and you say you do not intend to join me. Why are you here?”
I grasped my candleholder tightly. “Because in order to cure ourselves of the disease you gave us, we need your blood,” I told him.
He started to laugh. I struck with the stake, hitting him as hard as I could. I felt it pierce his flesh, then rebound off bone. Noor attacked from the other side, but he’d recovered from his surprise and jumped up, dancing away from us. We went after him in a fury, stabbing and slashing. He fought back. He was strong, and his hits landed hard. I knew our blows were landing, too, because I saw the blood. But he just kept hitting, and we were defending ourselves instead of attacking him. We careened around the room, slashing and thrusting with our stakes but unable to slow the momentum of his attack. I was panting and sweaty, aching from his blows and ashamed of my weakness, of my inability even to hurt him as much as he was hurting me. He was trying to wear us down, and I realized he’d kill us if we didn’t stake him soon. “You…don’t…win,” I grunted as I slashed at him, but I knew we couldn’t overcome his strength advantage. If we could incapacitate him somehow, though—I remembered Noor’s instructions about the spray paint, and I threw a quick glance back at the sleeping bench, looking for my can. He elbowed me in the chest, knocking me backward. Noor was still all over him. I tried to catch my breath. He grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her against the wall, leaving his left side—his heart side—open. I plunged the stake into him. A second later, my face exploded. I howled as the pain of his punch pulsed through me, blowing me apart in an explosion of agony.
I came to lying on my back, feeling shattered. I wasn’t surewhere I was. Moving my head sent white-hot knives slashing, so I held still. Then Noor cried out, and everything came crashing back. I rolled slowly up to sitting, the pain throbbing so hard I retched, which made the pain worse. I forced myself to my knees, and then to my feet, wishing my head would just split in two and get it over with. Noor was making small urgent gasping noises that sounded worse than screaming. They sounded like the end of something. I swallowed my nausea and tried to focus.
Le Bec had her pinned against the wall, his forearm across her throat. “I created you,” he growled. “I own you. I can do anything I want with you.” He leaned harder on her neck, and she gurgled weakly. My heart turned to stone. I took an unsteady step toward him, raising my arm, ready to drive the stake through him and send him to hell. But my hand was empty. I cast my eyes desperately around, but I didn’t see my stake. Noor gurgled again, a wave of panic hit me, and I snatched up the closest thing—his sleeping bag. Noor’s lips were blue. I staggered across the room and flung the bag over him.Please work, I thought, gathering it to me. I stepped back, yanking as hard as I could, and pulled him over backward. I scrambled to find the zipper, my head screaming, and zipped it quickly as he struggled, turning him into a vampire burrito. He flailed his legs, starting to work his way out the bottom, and I wanted to cry. I kicked him as hard as I could. While he writhed and wheezed, I dragged him to the rug and rolled him up in it. It was all I could think to do.
I turned to Noor, who was slumped against the wall, eyes closed. She was still breathing. Tears spilled down my face, relief and pain together. I heard a noise behind me and turnedto see the carpet moving. He was trying to unroll it. “Just stop!” I screamed at him, but he kept rolling, a tail of carpet expanding behind him. I leaned over and rolled him back up, and he immediately started unrolling again. I needed him to stop. Just for a minute, so I could think. I grabbed one end of the roll and dragged it in front of the cabinet, sobbing in frustration and fighting him the whole time. I wedged myself between the cabinet and the wall, pushed desperately, and felt it lean forward, then crash down, driving an animal wail from him. I scrambled back to Noor, who was coughing, and knelt beside her. “Are you okay?” I touched her shoulder like she might break. She nodded, and I hugged her, sobbing.
“Is he dead?” she rasped.
I shook my head. “No. I rolled him up in the carpet and pushed the cabinet on top of him. He wouldn’t stop moving.”
“We have to stake him.”
I nodded. “I lost mine. Where’s yours?”
She felt around and found it. I reached out for it, but she shook her head. She didn’t look strong enough to stand up, but she levered herself to her feet with me helping. The overturned cabinet still heaved every so often as Le Bec continued to struggle. I picked up the spray can I was supposed to use when we rushed him. Noor took a breath, wheezed, and nodded. We wrestled the cabinet upright and unrolled the rug. He twitched as I unzipped the sleeping bag. Freed from his bindings, he pushed himself up and made a rush for us. I blasted him in the eyes with pigeon-feather gray, and he screeched, reeling. We tackled him, piling on as he struggled to get up, pinning him with our bodies. Noor moved her fingers over his ribs, stopping where she felt his heartbeat. Hebucked, almost knocking her sideways, while I focused on grinding his shoulders into the ground to keep him still.
“You are worthless,” he spat.
“And you are dead,” she said. We both grasped the stake.
He started to say something else, but his words gurgled away. His eyes went wide; then they went out. We’d found his heart.
Chapter 24
Five Weeks Ago
