Everyone already thinks I’m dead. I figure this is as good a time as any to start over. I’m learning to control myself better and better, so I thought I might be able to actual y help people somewhere down the line.”
Her intention hung between us like a living thing, as if she had spoken the words, Anything to make up for what I’ve done.
I could only imagine how she felt. The guilt I’d already experienced over my reaction to my mother was just a taste of what Trinity must be going through. She’d actual y hurt people.
I wanted to ask her about Drew and Aisha, but I didn’t want to add to her already burning conscience. Not that it mattered. One of the answers chose that very moment to come busting through my bedroom window.
CHAPTER NINE
Glass shards sprayed in every direction as Aisha’s body crashed through the window. When her feet hit my carpeted floor, she paused. In that slight hesitation, I could see that she was no longer the Aisha we’d known.
As I’d feared, she was gradual y succumbing to the life-draining bite of the vampire. Now she was consumed with the madness left in its wake. Though she wasn’t quite as dirty and bedraggled as Summer had been, I recognized the signs.
Aisha’s rich chocolate skin was now sal ow and unhealthy looking. Her eyes were yel owed and ringed with a darkness that seemed to come from within. Her lips twitched as if in readiness to pul back from her teeth in a sneer, and her chin was wet with drool she could no longer control.
Unfortunately, none of that affected her speed. Just like Summer, she was fast and she was strong. Very, very strong.
As if in slow motion, Trinity and I watched Aisha move toward us. When we glanced at one another, I saw some smal amount of satisfaction in Trinity’s eyes, as if she was somehow deserving of the gruesome death that was headed straight for us. I was so shocked by Trinity’s reaction that when Aisha grabbed her around the waist, turned and leapt through the window, my reaction was delayed by a few very valuable seconds.
When my mind regained control and transmitted orders to my legs, I didn’t hesitate to pursue the duo. Though I might’ve paused before lending a hand to Trinity the last time she was at my house, things had changed and I couldn’t let her be kil ed without putting up some kind resistance on her behalf.
As my feet hit the ground on the outside of my bedroom window, Bo appeared at my side. Immediately, he started firing off questions.
“What happened? Where’s your mom? Are you alright?
Who was that?”
“I’m fine. Bo, we need to help Trinity,” I said, tugging his arm in the direction I thought they’d fled.
“What? Why?” he asked, resisting.
“Because she came to apologize and to help us. My mom was never in any danger. Now Trinity’s in trouble and I can’t just stand by and let Aisha take her. Not without a fight.
She’l kil her.”
Bo’s lips thinned, a clear indication that he didn’t like my reasoning, but it didn’t stop him from coming to my aid. I knew he was the one person I could always count on to help me.
“Alright, let’s go. But you need to promise me you’l let me take care of this. I saw the girl as she left. She’s mad and she’s dangerous.”
“I know, Bo. That’s why we have to go now.”
Without further hesitation, Bo took my hand and we raced away, speeding over the thick grass of my yard. The sun had set and dusk was stretching across the streets and lawns like dark, yawning mouths gobbling up the last bits of light.
We flitted from shadow to shadow, clinging to the gloom as we tracked the fetid stench of Aisha’s dying flesh.
Night had al but fal en when we reached an old abandoned barn. It sat on the back property line of a large farm that lay at the outskirts of my subdivision. I’d crossed the wide field surrounding the rickety structure dozens of times. That summer, Drew and I would meet some of our friends to go swimming at the river that ran across the property. We’d played in the water for hours on warm days
—before, in what seemed like a different life.
Now, I would never see that field in the same way again. I could smel Aisha’s horrible stench as we drew closer to the barn.
At the front of the structure was a big wooden door that hung crookedly off one hinge. Bo and I slipped quietly through the crack, stepping into the deeply shadowed interior. He stopped and scanned the darkness. I did the same. Al my senses were wide open and stretched out before me like so many fingers, feeling the air and the ground around me.
My eyes stopped on an old, defunct piece of farm equipment. It looked like a big, rusty tractor with sharp metal teeth attached to its front end. There were about ten of them, each tooth easily as thick as my arm. They curved upward like the tines of a pitch fork.
A figure stood in front of the old tractor. It swayed gently back and forth, rocking from one foot to the other. It was Aisha. I could see that her arms were stretched high over her head. Draped across her hands, lying perfectly stil , was Trinity.
She was conscious. Even in the dark, I could see that her eyes were on me.
Bo and I stood perfectly stil and watched Aisha. It appeared that she was looking right through us, but I wasn’t fooled. I’d seen that look before—on Summer. Aisha knew we were there and it would be a grave mistake to assume otherwise.
I’d never wished so much in al my life that I could read another person’s thoughts than I did right then. I desperately needed to know what Bo was thinking, how we could work together to see that Trinity wasn’t hurt.
But there was no need for that. Both Aisha and Trinity had made up their mind and we were too late to stop them from proceeding. Aisha wanted Trinity’s life and Trinity was wil ing to give it. I knew it the instant Trinity opened her mouth.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
That single word sent my heart into a panic and my legs into action. Simultaneously, Bo and I launched ourselves across the room toward the couple.
At the first sign of our movement, Aisha turned toward the machine behind her. With a cry that brought chil s to the skin al over my body, she threw Trinity’s body onto the sharp teeth of the tractor.
The echo of air leaving Trinity’s punctured chest rang through the stil barn long after the sound of her breaking bones had faded. It hissed inside my head like a cobra of death.
Within a fraction of a second, Bo and I were upon them. I lost al thought of anyone and anything else, however, when I stopped in front of Trinity.