On the way to the address Zara had provided her with, Iro thought about what she would do if she had to in order to protect Arwen. She would do anything, which meant that if Cassia agreed to let Arwen go, she would have to stay with Cassia to keep Arwen safe. She’d stay at least until she could come upwith a new, better plan. As it was, she took in Cassia’s house from across the street and behind a few large trash cans. She probably looked ridiculous, in a T-shirt with a vest over it and jeans, taking cover behind the trash cans, but she didn’t care. If someone noticed her and wondered what was going on, she’d deal with it.
She wished she had worked to hone her vampire senses a little more before today because she could really use them right now. She breathed in the air and could tell there were no vampires nearby; at least, not on this side of the street. She also couldn’t hear any of them talking to each other, but she didn’t use her enhanced senses often, and it showed. There was one thing shecoulddo, though, so if it worked, she might be able to get Arwen out of there, but it was a risk because it, too, was something she hadn’t practiced.
The back door was probably her best bet, so she had planned her way out the front just in case she needed to and assumed that Cassia would have Arwen upstairs somewhere. The house had three stories, and if it was built like the one she lived in, the bedrooms would be split across two floors. Hers had been modernized pretty substantially, but Cassia liked the old things, so it was likely that this one hadn’t been. Iro crossed the street at the end of the block and made her way over walls and fences, through backyards, until she got close enough. Then, she pulled out her phone, found the address on a real estate site, and located pictures of the house. Cassia wouldn’t have thought about this. That was one of the dangers of preferring the ways of old, not thinking about how someone could look up the plans online and find the best way to get in without detection.
Iro tried to map the house in her mind by looking at the photos and surmised that Cassia would be keeping Arwen in her own bedroom. It would be more poetic that way. Cassia would want Iro there. She would want her to see the consequences ofher actions: Arwen lying in Cassia’s bed, dead or already turned by Cassia’s blood. Cassia would undoubtedly find it funny, and she would walk into the room laughing while Iro took in Arwen’s body. Iro’s stomach roiled at the thought.
“She’s still alive,” she told herself in a whisper.
She tucked the phone away and noticed that there was a ladder in the backyard she was currently standing in. It was lying on the ground as if someone had used it one day and had forgotten all about it. A few weeds had grown between the horizontal pieces of metal, and she thought for a second about how it would make an interesting garden if they used it for that. Iro shook her head then, needing to refocus. The ladder was easy to carry, so she lifted it over the fence separating the yards and let it rest there for a second so that she could jump over and lower it down on the other side slowly so as not to make too much noise.
She would have to be careful, but if she did this right, she wouldn’t have to use the items in the vest she was wearing, and no one would have to get hurt. She could figure out the next steps in the plan to keep Arwen safe after that. It would likely involve them skipping town as quickly as possible and explaining everything to Arwen once they had new names and were safe on some island somewhere until Iro could find them a more permanent home.
She hadn’t seen anyone guarding the back of the house, but they could be inside, out of sight, she supposed. If that were the case, she would do whatever she had to in order to get past them and to Arwen. She moved quickly but softly in the grass, aimed the ladder at the window she believed to be Cassia’s bedroom, and hoped she was right. She knew real estate, both commercial and residential, and she understood how the house would have to be set up on the inside to form the outside, but there was stilla chance she could’ve gotten it wrong, and Arwen would suffer, which she couldn’t let happen.
Climbing the ladder was easy. It was metal and seemed relatively new, so it made no loud sounds as she climbed up it. Some small creaks, yes, but she took her time to minimize those. When she was able to look through a window on the second floor that showed one of the bedrooms, Arwen didn’t appear to be in it, but there were two women having sex on the bed. It made Iro seethe. Arwen was being held captive, and these women didn’t care; all they wanted was pleasure. This was the life that Cassia wanted them to have together: pleasure only. Iro didn’t want that anymore. She wasn’t sure she ever really had, but now that she had Arwen, she knew she could have more. She only hoped that she would be in time.
As she climbed farther, hearing all the sex sounds and noting how loud they were, she hoped they could help cover up her presence, and she climbed until she could peer into the next window from the very bottom, letting her eyes see, her ears listen, and her nose smell for anything nearby.
“No,” she whispered when she saw her.
Arwen was lying on the bed, and her eyes were closed. Her arms were crossed over her body, and she looked dead. Iro would’ve assumed shewas, were it not for the IV stand and a blood bag hooked up to Arwen’s arm. It was a little-known vampire fact, one that Cassia had taught her. Once turned, a new vampire had to wake up, and that often took hours. Sometimes, only two to three. Other times, it took all night. It depended on the person, and Iro had always suspected that it depended on what needed to be healed within them first to be reborn without injury or disease. To make the whole process go faster, though, they could be fed human blood because, as their body transitioned, the blood helped speed up their healing. Now, based on how little blood was left in the bag, it was possible thatArwen could wake at any moment, so Iro needed to get her out of there first.
She knew opening the old window would likely be a challenge – it had a cracked wooden frame that could creak and groan as she pulled it up – but she had no choice. She just needed to be fast. Aiming her left ear down, she listened for the two women and waited. When one of them yelled out as she came, Iro yanked the unlocked window open. Hubris was always a bad thing, she thought as she climbed through it and stopped to listen again. Cassia never locked anything out of fear because Cassia didn’t fear anything, and Iro was determined to make her pay for that.
She hurried to Arwen’s side and detached the IV, pushing the smell of human blood out of her mind and focusing on Arwen’s scent, which was still sweet, but ithadchanged. Iro didn’t have time to wallow now, though. She had to get them out of there, and the only way out was the way she had gotten in, so she lifted Arwen, slung her over her shoulder, and carried her to the window. Turning back to see if anyone was on their way to stop her, she, thankfully, saw and heard nothing, but the ladder would make too much noise if both of them were on it, so she didn’t have an alternative. Arwen was in transition, so she would be fine. The only thing that mattered was that Cassia hadn’t killed her. Iro told herself that over and over again as she shifted Arwen until she was sitting on the edge of the windowsill and moved to sit next to her, grateful that they both fit, though barely. Then, she turned to Arwen, pulled her body into her own as much as she could, and she jumped.
Since climbing down the ladder with Arwen slung over her hadn’t been an option, yet again, Iro regretted not using her vampire abilities more, causing her to be too out of practice to ensure that they would be okay. She landed with a loud thump, and the wind was knocked out of her as she hit the ground hard.Arwen landed on top of her. They couldn’t lie there for long without being noticed, but Iro couldn’t move just yet. She felt it now and shifted Arwen off to the side to see that one of the silver knives, which she had brought and stowed in her weapon’s vest, had touched her skin and had cut her just enough to draw blood. She couldn’t do anything about it, and she really had to go now, because if Cassia was anywhere in that house, she’d smell her soon. Jumping with a vest full of weapons that could kill her hadn’t been her best move, but speed had been more important.
Iro managed to get herself up, but now she had to find an easier way of escape than climbing over tall fences. There should be a back alley that she could use, but she needed a gate. She looked, swiveling her head until she found a gate that led somewhere. Anywhere away from Cassia would work at this point, so she picked Arwen up, feeling the pain just above her hip from where the knife had cut. It wouldn’t kill her, but she needed to eat and get out of the sun. It would be setting soon, which would help, but her energy was draining fast, so she was putting them both at risk. Arwen was also in transition, and the sun would drainhereven faster.
Iro moved to the wall she’d already climbed over once and got Arwen to the top of it probably on adrenaline alone. She repeated the movement she’d made with the ladder, and once on the other side of it, she carried Arwen through the yard and to the gate that would lead to the front and not a back alley. That was good. She’d parked her car a block away, and it was closer from this house. She hadn’t thought about what it would look like to be carrying a dead woman over her shoulder to get back to her car, though, so she thought about waiting there, hidden until Arwen woke up, but their smell would get them discovered where they stood. She really had no choice. She used everything she had in her to scoop and carry Arwen, figuring she could tell people that her girlfriend had had one too many at abachelorette party and she was just taking her home. At least, that looked better than carrying her like deadweight over her shoulder.
The sidewalk was empty, but she carried Arwen down a side street instead of the main one. It took her longer, but it meant that fewer people would see them. When a couple walked on the opposite sidewalk and seemed to pay attention to her, Iro looked down at Arwen, whose face was away from the couple, and laughed as if Arwen had just said something funny.
“Next time, you won’t insist on wearing cheap heels that only hurt your ankle,” she said and laughed again before she looked up at the couple and shook her head as if they were all in on the secret that the woman in her arms had hurt herself, which was why she was carrying her.
When the couple finally turned away, Iro found her car parked on the street and managed to get Arwen into the back seat. She looked around and saw that no one seemed to be following her, and the couple had turned a corner and was no longer in view, so she got into the driver’s seat and turned on the car.
“Iro?”
Iro’s heart jumped. She looked up in the rearview mirror and saw Arwen with her eyes open, shifting in her seat. She was looking around the car, clearly confused.
“Hi,” she replied, breathing both a sigh of relief and one of anger because Cassia had done this to her. “Everything’s okay.”
But Arwen’s eyes closed, and she was probably asleep again. Iro recalled her own experience of being reborn a vampire and how disorienting it was. The last memory she’d had was of Cassia killing her, but when she’d woken at first, that had been a difficult thing to remember. Her brain had struggled, and she’d passed back out a few times before she had woken for real and could remember it all. Then, she’d been terrified. Her goal nowwas to get Arwen back to her house before that fear hit her, because if she screamed right now, while Cassia might not be able to hear it from this far away, if she had anyone patrolling the area,theywould.
“It’s okay, my love,” she said more to herself than to Arwen. “We’ll be okay.”
She pulled out into traffic and turned away from Cassia’s house as soon as she could, headed toward her own.
???
As she carried Arwen up the concrete stairs, she noticed that the thin, stained-glass window next to her front door was broken. Iro knew what that meant, but she had been smart: wherever she moved, she always made sure to include silver in unexpected places, and that stained glass came with slivers of silver embedded in it, as did many of the ornamental windows in this house. She had gotten used to taking precautions like that because of Cassia, who had made more than enough enemies over the centuries, and while none of them had ever made a move when Iro had been with her, she didn’t want to chance someone coming after her just to spite Cassia.
Her alarm app hadn’t notified her about any intruders, though, which meant that someone had been smart enough to disable the connections from the outside. Iro hadn’t had the chance to have the cameras she wanted installed, having gotten so caught up with Arwen right after moving here, but there was no need to waste precious time kicking herself for that now. Wherever they landed soon, she would just have to put up the cameras first and hire security to patrol around the clock until she could figure out what to do about Cassia.
First, she had to do something about Arwen while she went inside to check if whoever had broken in was still there, or they’dcome and gone with Zara. Her car had tinted windows, so she put Arwen back in the back seat and locked the car, hoping Arwen would stay asleep and protected from the sun until she returned. Then, she withdrew a silver knife from the inside of her vest and slowly opened the front door of the house.
