Читать книгу Edge of Twilight - Maggie Shayne - Страница 8

Summer, 1959

“The guy actually pissed himself, I scared him so badly,” Bridget said, laughing as they cut through the alley, jumped up onto the skeletal remains of a fire escape and swung inward through the broken window to land on the floor far below. The abandoned warehouse’s floorboards were cracked from these oft repeated impacts. But it was home to the Gang of Five.

Edge loved the kid. But he wasn’t happy with her right now. He tousled her Orphan Annie curls, knocked the matching barrettes askew. Twelve years old when she was made over; twelve she would remain, even though she’d been undead for more than a decade now. He’d found her on the street, wandering, alone. Orphaned by her maker, just as he’d been. Just as they all had been.

“So who the hell was he?” he asked.

Shrugging, Bridget climbed a ladder to the loft-like second floor, where they always met after a day of scavenging to divvy up the take. Edge didn’t climb, he jumped. When he landed, a little cloud of dust rose up.

“Nice entrance,” Ginger said without getting up from where she sat on the floor, her voice dripping sarcasm. She dressed all in black, kept her short hair and dagger-sharp nails that color, too, as if trying to live the cliché. She brushed the dust from her black jeans as if he’d put it there deliberately.

“Quit your bitching, Ginger,” Bridget snapped.

“Watch your mouth, pipsqueak.”

Bridget spun on her, and Ginger leaped to her feet.

“Hey, hey, knock it off!” Baby-faced Scott got to his feet, as well, putting himself between them. “Come on, what’s your problem, anyway?” He was skinny but strong. As strong as any of them were, at least, which was damn strong in comparison to humans. As vampires, they were kittens. “Fledglings” was the term Edge had heard older ones use. Both Ginger and Scottie had been undead for less than five years. She’d been eighteen, and he’d been a year younger, when the change occurred. Babies. But that was why they needed each other. And why they needed him.

Ginger and Bridget didn’t show any signs of backing off. Scottie’s blond, blue-eyed head and rail-thin build were hardly any more intimidating than his butter-soft voice.

“Settle down,” Edge said. He said it sternly. “Now.”

Blinking guiltily, the females parted. They always followed his orders. Edge hadn’t applied for the job of leader of this little gang, it had just fallen to him naturally. He was the oldest. He’d been twenty-three when he was made over, which was older than any of them had been. And he’d been a vampire longer than any of them. Twelve years now. The hideout was his own. They’d just sort of … followed him home, one by one, until he had this gang of homeless vamps. A natural progression, he figured. He’d been part of a street gang in Ireland, the year he’d been transformed. Though that gang had been different. Homeless toughs, each trying to out-tough the others. This little group … damned if they hadn’t become almost like—a family.

Edge loved them, every one of them. He took care of them. And they looked to him to lead, trusted him to protect them, for some reason. His age, his experience, he didn’t know. It was just the way things had worked out.

“So where’s Billy Boy?” Ginger asked. “He should have been back by now.”

Bridget shrugged and opened her backpack. “I took a mark all by myself today,” she said, dumping out the contents. A wallet, cuff links and expensive watch fell out onto the floor.

“And as I’ve already reminded you, Bridget,” Edge began, “you’re not supposed to—”

“Hell, Edge, I’m not really twelve, I only look it.” She smiled, deep dimples in little-girl cheeks. “You should have seen this guy,” she said to the others. “College student, I think. Young, maybe a freshman. Rich as hell and looking lost. Probably his first time in the big city, right? So I spotted him on the street, caught a glimpse of the Rolex on his wrist and decided it was too good to pass up. So I got ahead of him a little ways and ducked into an alley. When he came past, I called out in this sweet little girl voice.” She softened her tone, raised its pitch to a plaintive, innocent whine. “Help me. Please help me, mister.”

Edge frowned but saw the rapt attention on the faces of the others.

“So he comes walking into the alley, and that’s when I jumped him.” She shrugged. “Heck, I was hungry anyways.”

“Bridget, you didn’t kill him, did you?” Scottie asked, while sending Edge a worried look. “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

“I didn’t drink enough to kill him. Just scared the hell out of him. Quenched my thirst, too.” She licked her lips. Then she smiled, falling back into her story. “I jumped onto his back, wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck and bit him hard. He was so scared he wet his pants! I laughed my ass off!”

Scottie muttered, “Oh, Bridget,” shaking his head slowly. “What did this poor fellow ever do to you?”

“Leave her alone, Scottie,” Ginger barked. “It’s survival of the fittest out here. Kill or be killed. We do what we have to. Besides, she didn’t hurt him.”

“She didn’t have to scare him that badly, either.”

Bridget rolled her eyes. “All I took were his watch, wallet and fancy-schmancy cuff links,” she insisted.

“You took a lot more from him than that, Bridge,” Scottie said. “You took his pride.”

Edge found himself agreeing. “Moreover, you put the rest of us at risk, Bridget,” he told the girl. “What do you suppose this man is going to do now? What if he goes to the police or the press, and talks about a little girl with superhuman strength who stole his wallet and bit his neck?”

“He won’t,” she said with a smile. “He’s a man, after all. He has his ego to think about. It’s bad enough he has to live with the memory. He’d never dream of admitting it to anyone else. Besides, who’d believe him?” She grinned. “You should have heard him when I left him there, lying in the garbage with his pissy pants and bleeding neck. He starts screaming at me, swearing he’ll get revenge. So I turn around and I say, ‘Yeah, I’m real scared of a man who wets his pants in fear of a little girl with sharp teeth.’ She threw her head back and laughed. “That shut him up in a hurry.”

Edge sighed, a dark feeling creeping over his soul. Bridget was not developing any sort of empathy, nor any moral values, despite his efforts to instill a modicum of something like ethics. Take only what you need, don’t harm the innocent unnecessarily, that sort of thing. Scottie had a heart as big as the night, but he’d been that way before the change, Edge suspected. Ginger had just been mean, and she’d only grown meaner, and Bridget hadn’t been old enough to know what she would have become. She seemed to be modeling herself after Ginger, though, more than any of them.

He took the wallet Bridget had stolen, removed the driver’s license from it and examined the photo of a rather handsome young man with dark hair and eyes. “Frank W. Stiles,” he read. “He’s twenty-one.” He flipped through the wallet, finding little else of interest, other than a business card with a phone number on it and the letters “DPI” embossed in black on its surface. He didn’t know what that was, but the name on the card was J.D. Smith, and the title that followed it was “recruiter.” Apparently the young Mr. Stiles was being courted by some company. Must be a gifted student.

Sighing, Edge shook his head. “What’s done is done, I suppose. But you and I are due for a long talk, Bridget.”

Sighing, he put the license and business card back, and tossed the wallet onto the floor. “How did the rest of you do?”

“Got seventy-five in cash and three credit cards,” Scottie said. “I used that mind control technique you taught us, Edge. If it worked, none of them will remember a thing. And since I only took a little cash and one card from each victim, they’ll just assume they misplaced their missing cards. Probably won’t even miss the cash.” He looked at Bridget as he spoke, as if it would help her get the message. “See, kid? It can be done without scaring them half to death and announcing our presence to the world.”

Bridget stuck her tongue out at him.

“I got three hundred bucks and a diamond bracelet,” Ginger added, her expression smugly superior. ‘One victim. I hid in the back of her limo, knocked the driver out and waited. She got in, and I snagged the purse and bracelet and hopped out the other side. She barely knew what hit her.”

“Poor little rich bitch, I hope she wasn’t too traumatized,” Bridget said.

Scottie knew the remark was directed at him. “Just because she’s wealthy doesn’t mean she deserves to be harmed or frightened, Bridget.”

Edge sighed. “Add the cash to the till. We’ll hock the rest.” He glanced at the Rolex, which had Frank Stiles’s name engraved on its back. “It’ll be dawn in two hours. I’m going back out to look for Billy Boy. I don’t like that he’s this late.”

“Will we have enough to get out of here soon, Edge?” Bridget asked.

She wanted a place in the country. A safe place where they didn’t have to worry about being discovered some sunny day while they slept. Frankly, he thought it was going to take a lot more than the pittance they managed to take in from petty crime and picking pockets. He was going to have to think of something better, something bigger.

“Soon,” he told Bridget. “Real soon, hon.”

Then he went out. But he didn’t find Billy Boy. Not until he came back, just a little while before dawn, and found all of them.

They were hanging upside down from the beam that supported the loft. Ropes had been tied around their ankles and looped over the beam. The floor beneath them was soaked in their blood. Every one of their throats had been cut.

Ginger, Billy Boy, gentle, sweet spirited Scottie, and his precious little Bridget. Dead. Murdered. The sight knocked the breath out of him, made his body go limp, and Edge fell to his knees. He didn’t need to check their bodies to know they were gone. The stench of death was powerful. He’d felt it from the moment he’d neared the warehouse, and he’d run full speed the last several blocks.

But he was too late. His little misfits, his fledglings who’d depended on him to keep them safe, had been murdered.

He closed his eyes against the pain, but that didn’t ease it.

And finally he had to face the grim task ahead. He had to take care of them one last time. He climbed up to the loft to cut them down. And there on the floor he saw the little pile of stolen wallets, cash and credit cards, right where they’d been when he’d left. A few new items had been added to the pile, Billy Boy’s take, no doubt. The diamond bracelet glittered up at him. Apparently the killer hadn’t been interested in it.

And yet, Edge noticed, there were a few things missing from the pile.

Frowning, he moved closer. The Rolex was gone. The cuff links, too. And the wallet that had belonged to the man named Frank W. Stiles.

Blinking slowly, Edge realized that the man had come back. He’d had his revenge, just as he’d promised he would. How he’d done it, Edge didn’t know. One man against four vampires? It seemed impossible. And yet it had happened.

Edge closed his eyes, vowed vengeance on the man who’d murdered his family. “You’ll pay, Frank Stiles,” he said aloud. “If it takes me an eternity, I will find you, and you will pay.”