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Hourglass
Claudia Gray
For Adair and Margaret Blake,
who heard the stories first
Table of Contents
“GET OUT,” I PLEADED. “GET OUT OF TOWN FOR good. That way we don’t have to kill you.”
The vampire snarled, “What makes you think you could?”
Lucas tackled him, and they fell to the pavement. Those were bad odds for Lucas; short-range fighting always worked to a vampire’s advantage, because a vampire’s best weapons were his fangs. I ran forward, determined to help.
“You’re stronger”—the vampire gasped—“than a human.”
Lucas said, “I’m human enough.”
The vampire grinned, a smile that had nothing to do with the desperate situation he was in and was therefore even scarier. “I heard somebody was looking for one of our babies,” he crooned to Lucas. “One of the powerful ones in my tribe. Lady named Charity. Heard of her?”
Charity’s tribe. A jolt of panic shivered through me.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of Charity. In fact, I staked her,” Lucas said as he tried to twist the vampire’s hand around his back. “Think I can’t stake you, too? You’re about to learn different.” Yet Lucas couldn’t gain the advantage. They were too evenly matched. He wasn’t even going to have a chance to go for his stakes. The vampire could turn the tables on him at any second.
That meant it was up to me to save him—by killing another vampire.
I GASPED FOR AIR SO HARD THAT MY CHEST ACHED. My face felt hot, and strands of my hair stuck to the sweaty back of my neck. Every single muscle hurt.
In front of me was Eduardo, one of the leaders of this Black Cross cell, with a stake in his hand. All around us, his vampire hunters, a ragtag army in denim and flannel, watched in silence. None of them would help me. We stood apart from them in the center of the room. Harsh overhead light painted him in stark shadows.
“Come on, Bianca. Get in the game.” His voice could sound like a growl when he chose, and every word echoed off the concrete floor and metal walls of the abandoned warehouse. “This is a fight to the death. Aren’t you even going to try to stop me?”
If I sprang at him in an effort to grab his weapon or knock him down, he’d be able to throw me to the floor. Eduardo was faster, and he’d been hunting for years. He’d probably killed hundreds of vampires—all of them older and more powerful than me.
Lucas, what can I do?
But I didn’t dare look around for Lucas. I knew that if I took my eyes away from Eduardo for a second, the battle would be over.
I took a couple of steps backward, but I stumbled. The borrowed shoes I wore were too big for me, and one of them slipped off my foot.
“Clumsy,” Eduardo said. He turned the stake between his fingers, as if imagining different angles at which to strike. His smile was so satisfied—so smug—that I stopped being scared and started being mad.
I grabbed up the shoe and flung it at Eduardo’s face as hard as I could.
It smacked into his nose, and our audience burst out laughing. A few of them clapped. The tension had disappeared in an instant, and I was once more part of the gang, or so they thought.
“Nice,” Lucas said as he emerged from the circle of watchers and put his hands on my shoulders. “Very nice.”
“I’m not exactly a black belt.” I couldn’t catch my breath. Sparring practice always wore me out; this was the first time it hadn’t ended with me flat on my back.
“You’ve got good instincts.” Lucas’s fingers kneaded the sore muscles at the base of my neck.
Eduardo