Shapeshifted

“I’m rescuing my friend.” There wasn’t any point in lying.



Maldonado smiled. “He was always free to leave. All he had to manage to do was walk out.” Some of his cohorts laughed as Maldonado continued. “He’s the kind of beast we protect ourselves from. Him and la Reina. He deserves what he got.”



Under other circumstances, before this, I would totally agree. But after what I’d seen tonight? No. The bone room had gone above and beyond.



“And what about her?” I pointed back up to where the bone room had been. Dren kept crawling away behind me. I could hear his good arm splash into puddles and the rest of him slide.



“She was with la Reina. As, clearly, are you. Which makes many things of yours forfeit.” Maldonado closed the distance between us. “First your bones, then your life.” He raised his hand, and many of his men put guns away to pull out knives. Somehow the knives seemed worse. I took a step back.



I was cast in sudden shadow by headlights behind me, and I heard the squealing of tires. Some of the Three Crosses men raised their hands to protect their eyes, and I heard “Get in!” from behind me. I whirled and saw Hector, frantically waving at me from inside his car.



“Jorgen! Now!” I yelled at the Hound. He ran back through their numbers, clawing and biting, shoving them aside.



I ran until I caught up with Dren, and hauled him toward the waiting car’s backseat. Shots rang out; I prayed to God that they hadn’t made contact. I hopped in beside Dren, almost on top of him, and slammed the door.



“Go go go!” I looked behind us, at Jorgen, running away.



Hector raced backward down the alley, then went flying down the street.



“How did you know?” I asked his reflection in the rearview mirror.



“As soon as Catrina got home she called me and told me where you’d been.” Hector looked into the backseat at Dren. “Where are we taking him?”



Dren seized his chance. He lunged forward and wrapped his good arm around Hector’s neck, the headrest in between them.



“Dren, no!” I yanked at the vampire. His arm nearest me was too flaccid to get traction on, and his good arm was too strong. I reached out and grabbed hold of his head, hauling it backward by his ears and hair.



“I need blood to heal—” Dren said, and it was clear that he didn’t care where it came from.



“He has to drive! Let him go!” Hector wove from side to side in the empty street, reaching for the glove compartment with the hand that wasn’t on the wheel. He teased the latch with his fingers and it slid open. He grabbed whatever was inside, and then bashed Dren in the head with it. The vampire hissed like a rattlesnake and recoiled, sinking down behind the driver’s seat.



Hector held up what he’d hit Dren with so that it was visible in the rearview mirror. The good old King James. “I was raised Catholic, motherfucker. Stay in the backseat.”



The rest of our ride passed in silence. I’d done it. I had some help—but we were gonna be okay. No one had gotten hurt. My mom was going to be just fine. To borrow a phrase from Hector, I had saved the motherfucking day. As the streets got nicer and it was clear we were out of Three Crosses’ realm, I began to beam.



“Why are you so pleased?” Dren asked from beside me.



“Because.” I inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Just because.”



CHAPTER THIRTY



Hector pulled the car into a well-lit place—the parking lot of a Catholic church. As soon as we parked, he got out and slammed his door.



I hopped out after him, leaving my door open.



“We’re going to kill that thing.” He popped the trunk of his car, bringing out duct tape and a tire iron.



I took a step back. “We’re not going to kill him, and I’m not going to ask you why you’re driving a kidnap-mobile.”



“He tried to kill me,” Hector said, shaking the tire iron for emphasis.



“I need him! To save my mom! Remember?”



“Technically, I only wanted some of your blood,” Dren said from his slumped position inside the car, eyes glittering in the night. “I didn’t need all of it.”



I pointed at him. “Do me a favor, and don’t try to help.” Then I moved to stand between Hector and Dren. Normally, a vampire would have no problem fighting back, but since Dren was missing half of his long bones and starved for blood and Hector was pissed, I gave humanity an even chance. “Let me explain. Some. As much as I can. Hector—that place up there—it was awful. They were torturing him. Taking out his bones and using them to decorate—” My voice failed me at the memory. “Adriana’s up there, Hector. She’s trapped in a cage of bones and rebar. It is literally insane.”



Then I looked to Dren. “And you swore to help my mother. I need some of your blood. She’s got cancer. I want to heal her.”



Dren’s eyebrows rose up on his forehead. A smile pulled up the edges of his lips, and then he gave a barking laugh. He laughed again, and again, sounding like an overexcited dog, until he started coughing, and the coughing won out.



“What’s so funny?” I stood outside the car with my hands on my hips. “You promised—you swore!”



Dren recovered himself from the coughing. “You need to make your oaths more precise. Trust me, you do not want your own sweet mother to be bound to my blood.”



“Fuck you, Dren.” I took a step nearer to the car, strength building in me. “You’re doing this.”



He slunk forward in the car, crawling out of it with his one good leg and arm, and both Hector and I scooted back. “If she were bound to me, I would make you regret giving her my blood until the day you died. She would come to hate you as the person who enslaved her to me.” He paused to arrange himself on the pavement once he was on the ground, straightening out his messed-up leg. Then he appeared to think, and smiled, full of fangs. “Just think of all the things I could order her to do. Oh, my.”



My fists curled in impotent rage. “But I saved your life!”



“And I thank you for that. But I also swore an oath not to hurt her, whoever she may be. Trust me that my blood would only do that. I would see to it, in fact.”



I leaned forward and screamed at him, “I did not come all the way down here just to save you! If I had known, I would have tried harder to save the girl instead!” I whirled on Hector. “Give me the tire iron.”



He took a step back. “I thought we weren’t supposed to kill him?”



“That was before,” I said, my hand still out.



“Edie—he has a point.”



“Fuck both of you, then.” I walked in a small circle. I ran my hands up through my hair. “We have to go back for her.”



“Not tonight. We’re not going anywhere tonight.” Hector brought the tire iron down with finality.



“We may not be—but Luz, I mean Reina, is going to be all over Maldonado when she hears about this. Do you have her phone number? Does she have a phone?”



“And what do you think she will do to your precious zombie when she finds him there, girl?” Dren said from his position on the ground.



“You shut up.”



“Go on. Tell him about the zombie,” Dren crooned. “I’d love to hear you explain him away.”



I knelt down to be on a level with him. “How is it you were stupid enough to get caught?”



“What’s it matter to you?” he challenged me.



“More mouth from you, and we’re going to wait out here for the sun,” Hector threatened, waving the tire iron. I blinked, startled that he knew how to kill a vampire. Then again, it was on every other TV show right now. At least Hector was still on my side, even though he had to know I was holding out information on him.



Dren sighed in exaggerated exhaustion. “I came looking for Santa Muerte. The Shadows sent me in. She’s got a high bounty.”



“Did you find her?”



“No. Those fools are trying to summon her. The girl in the cage is meant to be some sort of sacrifice.” He shrugged his weak shoulder, which yanked his limp arm up in a grotesque fashion. “Santa Muerte herself is still loose—and they’ve almost got enough magic to draw her there. I’ll give them that. I sorely underestimated the magician inside.”



“That’s because he’s a bruja,” Hector said. I didn’t know what that meant yet, but somebody was going to be explaining it to me soon.



“Someone is helping them,” Dren went on. “You don’t get knowledge like they’ve gained through experimenting on your own. You try magic that strong without practice and you’d blow yourself up.” His eyes narrowed. “I suspect House Grey is funding them, or helping them outright. I didn’t meet any of them personally, but my torture did have the feel of poetic justice to it.”



The last time I’d seen any vampires from House Grey, Dren had been lopping their arms off at Anna’s command. His torture had a grim symmetry to it. Vampires didn’t forgive, and they sure as hell never forgot.



“What would they want with Santa Muerte?” I asked aloud.



“She’s hugely powerful. Who wouldn’t want death on their side?”



“Why didn’t the Shadows send anyone in after you?”



“And admit defeat? Or that they’d sent me to begin with?” He snorted, pushing himself up against the car’s open door with his good arm. “I sent my Hound out for help—and the stubborn thing spent a month trying to run away before admitting defeat and realizing it couldn’t. I think it was hoping I would die. Little does it know, that wouldn’t free it. Our fates are linked.”



“Why did it find me?”



Dren rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t like the weres would help me now, was it? And I’d kept him away from other vampire kind. In the circles of the people he could find, and the people who were likely to be stupid enough to help me, the only overlap was you.”