boy did not move, Eph stepped back, pulling away his sword. Something wasn’t right here.
You cannot slay the boy. You hide behind weakness by calling it strength.
Eph said, “Weakness is giving in to temptation. Strength is resisting it.” He looked at the feeler, Kelly’s voice still hanging in his head. The feeler had no link to Eph, not without Kelly. And her voice was being projected by the Master, in an attempt to distract and weaken him, but the vampire Kelly could be anywhere at that moment. Anywhere.
Eph backed out of the stall and started running, rushing up the escalator to where he had left Nora.
Kelly stayed close to the wall, padding barefoot past the racks of clothes. The woman’s scent lingered in the back room behind the shoe display … but her bloodbeat thrummed across the display floor. Kelly approached the changing-room doorway. Nora Martinez waited there with a silver sword.
“Hey, bitch,” Nora greeted her.
Kelly seethed, her mind going out to the feelers, calling them close. She had no clear angle of attack. The silver weapon glowed hot in her view as the bald female human started toward her.
“You really let yourself go,” said Nora, circling around a register. “Cosmetics is on the first floor, by the way. And maybe a turtleneck to cover up that nasty turkey neck.”
The girl feeler came bounding from the stairs, stopping near Kelly.
“Mother-daughter shopping day,” said Nora. “How sweet. I’ve got some silver jewelry I’d love to see you two try on.”
Nora feigned a jab; Kelly and the girl feeler just stared at her.
“I used to be afraid,” said Nora. “In the train tunnel, I was afraid of you. I’m not afraid now.”
Nora unclipped the Luma lamp hanging from her pack, switching on the battery-powered black light. The ultraviolet rays repelled the vampires, the feeler snarling and backing away on all fours. Kelly remained still, only turning as Nora circled away from them, backing away to the stairs. She was using the mirrors to check behind her, which was how she saw the blurred figure darting up from the handrail.
Nora spun and drove her blade deep into the mouth of the boy feeler, the searing silver releasing him almost immediately. She jerked the blade out and spun back, ready for the attack.
Kelly and the girl feeler were gone. Vanished—as though they had never been there in the first place.
“Nora!”
Eph called to her from the floor below. “Coming down!” she yelled back, descending the wooden steps.
He met her there, anxious, having feared the worst. He saw the slick white blood on her blade.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded, grabbing a scarf off a nearby rack to clean off her sword. “Ran into Kelly upstairs. She says hi.”
Eph stared at the sword. “Did you … ?”
“No, unfortunately. Just one of her little foster monsters.”
Eph said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Outside, she half-expected a swarm of vampires to greet them. But no. Regular humans moving between work and home, shoulders hunched against the rain.
“How did it go?” asked Nora.
“It’s a bastard,” said Eph. “A true bastard.”
“But do you think it bought it?”
Eph could not look her in the eye. “Yes,” he said. “It bought it.”
Eph was vigilant for vampires, scanning the sidewalks as they went.
“Where are we going?” she asked.