He leans over her and grips the stake. The muscles of his arm tighten, then release. “I can’t do that.” He lowers his head. “Not to you.”
I kneel next to them and wrap my hands around the stake, covering his.
His grip tightens as he stares at me. “You don’t understand.”
“David!” Elizabeth lets loose a gurgling scream. She tries to cough again, but only pulls more blood into her lungs. Her eyes roll up to show pure white, and her hands flail at us, nails scratching my bare arms.
“David, she’s in pain. We can stop it.” I plant my feet under myself for better leverage. “On three, okay?”
His gaze meets mine with agony, then returns to her face.
“One,” I whisper. She’s looking at me instead of him. “Two.” Come on, Elizabeth, give him one last look. Don’t waste your final sight on my silly mug.
Her eyes close, and when they open again, they focus on David.
“I love you,” he whispers.
“Three!”
I fall backward, the stake clutched in my fists. One of Gideon’s door guards snatches the weapon from me. I sit up to see David cradling Elizabeth in his lap, stroking her hair. Blood gushes from the wound, but nothing else happens. Maybe Gideon missed her heart, or maybe she never was a vampire. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen her fangs.
Suddenly she begins to tremble, but it’s not like any spasm I’ve ever seen. It’s like every atom is vibrating, ready to trade places with another one at the opposite edge of her body. David lays her gently on the floor and backs away. He puts an arm around my shoulders and covers my eyes with the other palm. “Ciara, don’t look.”
I swipe his hand from my face but don’t push him away. The others, except for Travis and Gideon, have already turned their heads. I clutch David’s arm with both hands and watch.
The blood runs back into the hole, trickling like rain down a windshield. Maybe the wound is healing itself, the way the scratches on Shane’s back disappeared.
But now her flesh is being drawn toward the hole, flesh from her chest, her stomach—oh God, from everywhere, muscles stretching, bones creaking and snapping, all moving toward that single two-inch circle in her heart. The speed of the disintegration builds, but not fast enough to keep me from seeing her face stretch and tear, pulled downward as if it’s melting off her skull.
I don’t know if Elizabeth’s collapse makes a noise, because I can’t hear anything over the siren of my own shrieks. David clamps my mouth shut, and only then do I remember not to scream around vampires.
Elizabeth’s not screaming, because her throat is slipping into the void, followed by her teeth, then her nose, then her eyes, staring into nothingness with what I hope is relief. Her hair rasps as it slides against her blouse and into the hole. Finally, limbs flop and flail against the dirt floor, fingers scraping trails in the dust as they’re dragged toward the vacuum.
When it’s over, a soft pop, then silence. David lets me go, and I crawl to the other corner, stomach heaving.
Someone far stronger than David grabs me and closes my mouth. “There’ll be no vomiting on Gideon’s floor, understand? Swallow it or choke on it. Your choice.”
Tears squeeze from my eyes as I nod. One of the rat-faced guards lets me go, and I gulp the smoky air, hacking and belching.
“That,” Gideon points to the place Elizabeth died, “never happens to a human. Plane-crash victims might be pulverized to almost nothing, but if you look hard enough, you can always find a tooth, a smear of entrails. Their bodies exist somewhere, even if they’re fused with a hundred other bodies, or with concrete and steel. But Elizabeth is nowhere. She’s nothing.”
I stare at the pile of clothing and jewelry left behind, and suddenly notice they bear no stains. I examine my own clothes—clean. A minute ago they were spattered in blood. Even my hands bear no trace of Elizabeth’s fluids.
“Nothing,” Gideon repeats. He leans forward. “Now do you understand fear, Ciara?”
I clutch my knees, feeling a cold sweat trickle down my back. Shane’s fangs, Regina’s glare, even Travis’s re-animation were one thing, but this—this is a whole other realm of wrongness.
Something can’t just turn into nothing. Can’t. Happen. But it just did. What else could happen? There are no rules, no boundaries, nothing for me to cling to. For a moment I feel like the panic will shatter me, and what’s left of my body will soak into the soil a hundred feet below the ground.
“You may all go now,” Gideon says to David, then turns to me. “Except you.”
My heart goes cold. I whimper a wordless protest. I don’t want to be livestock.
“No,” David says in a hoarse voice. “We won’t leave her behind for you to drink.”
“I won’t drink her.” He keeps his gaze on my neck as he says, “Not if you bring me proof that the campaign is over. At sunset tomorrow.” He regards Travis like an artist with a finished canvas. “Or I’ll do more than drink her.”
I start to tremble all over. As much as I don’t want to be livestock, I want even less to be a vampire.
“Absolutely not.” David crosses his arms over his chest, looking a lot less pathetic than he did a minute ago. “I’ll stay instead.”
“You have important work to do back at the station,” Gideon says. “Besides, in your state, you’d be inclined to foolishness toward me. Just the girl.”
Jim pushes past David to stand next to me. “I’ll stay with her.” He reaches down, takes my elbow, and helps me to my feet. I look at him, amazed and a little confused.
A smile slides over Gideon’s face. “Yes, I think you could be useful.”
Lawrence jerks his chin toward the door. “Upstairs.”
I follow him and Jim into the hallway, then take a last look back at David’s tearstained face. “Have Spencer drive you home,” I tell him. “You don’t look so good.”
“Ciara—”
“I won’t do anything stupid.” I consider the events of the last ten minutes. “Anything else stupid.”
Jim and I are being held in an empty “guest” room, the furnishings of which consist of a full-size bed with yellow-white posts and a matching nightstand. One wall is paneled with laminated wood and the rest painted a dusty pink.
Jim is sprawled across the bed, staring at the ceiling and tapping his fingers in a slow rhythm against his chest. I’m huddled on the floor in the far corner, every muscle taut. It’s been ten minutes since Lawrence locked us in here, and we have yet to speak.
Jim starts humming a familiar tune. After a few bars, I realize it’s “Norwegian Wood” by The Beatles.
“Get it?” he says finally. “There are no chairs in this room, like in the song.”
“Ha.” I stare at the white wooden door, as if I can hold it shut with my eyes.
“I wouldn’t have let that chick laugh at me.”
“Who?”
“In the song. She leads him on and laughs at him.”
“Oh.” I blink for what feels like the first time in minutes. “I thought she was throwing herself at him and he turned her down.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because he sits on the rug instead of on the bed with her.”
“She’s not on the bed, she’s on the rug.”
“But she doesn’t have any chairs because she wants him on the bed.”
“She doesn’t have chairs because she lives in a cruddy flat with cheap pine board.” His voice drips with scorn. “That’s what Norwegian wood is.”
“Oh.” I can’t believe I’m having this conversation right now. “So it’s just a song about a guy who didn’t get laid? My version’s more interesting.”
He scoffs. “Tell that to John Lennon.”
“John Lennon’s dead,” I state, with emphasis. “You know that, right?”
Jim lets out a long sigh through his nose. “Yes. I know that.” He sits up suddenly. “You know what’s interesting? What’s interesting is why you interprete
d the song that way, what it says about you.” He tilts his head. “Have you scared a lot of men with your sexuality, Ciara?”
“No.” I look away and rub my cold hands together. “Define ‘a lot.’”
From the corner of my eye I see him staring at me. “Gideon can probably hear your heartbeat from all the way down in his cave.”
“Great. Thanks for the info.”
“What I mean is,” he digs in his jeans pocket, “you need to calm down. And I’ve got just the thing.” He unfolds a plastic Baggie containing a pair of rolled joints.
“No thanks.” God only knows what those things are laced with. “I’d like to keep my wits about me.”
“So you can do what, make a break for it?” He lights one of the joints and takes a hit. “Sometimes, Ciara, one must accept when one has no control over a situation. This is one of those times.”
The door opens, and Gideon enters, as if to prove Jim’s point. A chill breeze seems to precede him. Lawrence and the other two lackeys follow, one lugging an old-fashioned Baroque-looking radio, the kind that sat in everyone’s living room back in the early fifties.
Without looking at Jim, Gideon crosses the room toward me, soft and deliberate as a lion. He takes my arm and leads me to the bed. His touch is cold, and though his fingers are well fleshed, I can feel the bones through them, as if they were talons. He sits on the edge of the bed with me and nods to his radio-carrying minion.
The guard sets the contraption on the floor with a thud. He adjusts one of the knobs until we hear the haunting strains of an early Cure song. The radio’s single speaker turns the notes flat and hollow, making our surroundings feel more alien than ever.
“Whoa,” Jim says. “The station’s signal is a lot stronger than it used to be.”
Plus we’re on top of a hill, I realize but don’t say out loud. Gideon’s touch makes my throat too tight to speak.
I hate this guy. Not just for killing Elizabeth; he may have had his own reasons for doing that. I hate him for killing Elizabeth as an answer to my words. If I had just kept my mouth shut, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
The song fades, and rather than Regina, it’s Shane who comes on the air. “94.3 WVMP. Twenty minutes past midnight. Evening, Drastic Plastic listeners. Regina’s gone on a bit of a bender, so I’m taking over early for her tonight. Letters of complaint can be sent—hold on, where, Regina? Oh, right. Up your own ass.”
I admire his ability to hold it together on the air. It’s like an act of defiance. I want to reach out and touch the speaker, connect with him through the low vibration of radio waves.
“Anyway,” he continues, “it appears that some people out there, and you know who you are, are taking this vampire gimmick too seriously. Our situation’s gotten a little ‘stalky’ as the kids today might say. At least I think they might. So for everyone out there listening: once and for all, we’re not—” He clears his throat, which I’ve never heard him do on the air. “We’re not vampires. Okay? Moving on. This first song isn’t from my time, but it’s by a guy many call the ‘godfather of grunge.’ It was a favorite of a friend of ours who is no longer with us.”
The first quiet strains of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s “Running Dry” trickle over the airwaves.
“Great song,” Jim says. “Bet it was David’s request.”
I speak to Gideon without looking at him. “We can go now, right? He’s made the announcement.”
“It’s a promising start. But I need proof of a more permanent commitment.” He finally lets go of me and stands up. “I’ll return before sunrise. I suggest you sleep.” His fingertips graze my chin, bringing ice to my veins. “Tomorrow night might be a long one for you.”
Gideon and the three guards exit, leaving the radio on.
Neil Young’s slow, reverberating guitar mourns with a keening violin. They hold each other up like siblings at a funeral.
I used to think that this song’s subtitle, “Requiem for the Rockets,” was for people who had died. But Shane told me the Rockets were the band that eventually became Crazy Horse. Their “Requiem” meant abandoning what they used to be and moving on to a new beginning.
Which means that there’s more than one kind of death in this world.
I try to take Gideon’s advice, but I can’t sleep. Despite having consumed both joints, Jim is anything but calm. He paces the floor, rubbing his cheeks and eyes and mouth, a sure symptom of bloodthirst. He glances over at me, lying in bed.
Great. He’s got the munchies.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warn him. The secondhand marijuana smoke is the only thing keeping me from a fear-induced aneurism.
“I can smell them.” He points to the air-conditioning vent in the ceiling. “The others are drinking, everywhere. But not me.” He rubs his hands on the sides of his jeans. “It’s like that time before I died, when I tried to go vegetarian to impress a girl, and all my friends were still eating burgers and steaks.”
The doorknob rattles, then turns. The door opens to reveal Lawrence standing next to a short plump redhead. I recognize her as the cigarette girl from the party upstairs.
She beams up at Jim. “Room service?”
“Thank you,” he groans in Lawrence’s direction. He yanks the woman into the room and drags her to the bed.
“Hey!” I leap out of the way of their bodies and retreat to my original corner. Lawrence sends me a grin on his way out.
The room fills with moans of pain and pleasure. I crawl to the radio and turn up the volume, then lie on the floor beside it, folding my arm into a hard pillow.
Shane’s voice is the lifeline I cling to as the scents and sounds of sex and bloodshed surround me. He must know I can hear him, because he plays every one of my “last songs” in order, starting with “Hard to Handle” and going through the summer, twenty-some tunes from the late eighties and early nineties. “I’m No Angel” by Greg Allman, Matthew Sweet’s “Girlfriend,” Cracker’s “Low.”
In the middle of Springsteen’s “Human Touch,” the room goes quiet. The door opens. I yank my mind out of my musical sanctuary.
Lawrence comes in and lifts the semiconscious girl from the bed. As he exits, Gideon enters, alone.
I stand and move behind the bed, as if Jim—naked, stoned, and satiated—can somehow protect me.
Gideon shuts the door. “Sit.”
His will is like a hand reaching out. I sit on the bed and cover Jim’s, uh, self with the bloodstained sheet. He stirs and shifts, then his eyes move behind his lids in REM sleep. So much for my knight in tie-dyed armor.
Gideon sits at the end of the bed, for once not trying to overwhelm me with his physical presence. I rub my arms to ward off the chill.
“Admit it,” he says. “We fascinate you.”
I can’t speak and look at him at the same time, and right now his shadow-eyed face glues my gaze.
He grunts and continues. “You wouldn’t be working at the station if we held no attraction. Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to be one of us?” He holds up one finger. “Before you answer, you should know I can read a lie even better than you can.”
Of course. He can hear my heartbeat, probably feel my body temperature rise and fall.
I clear my throat and look away. “Of course I’ve wondered. Everyone does, even people who don’t believe in vampires.” With an effort, I speak to his face, though not his eyes. “But I don’t envy you. I like sunshine, I like food. Plus, I wouldn’t want to outlive all my friends and family.”
“Family?” His dark gaze sharpens. “You’re close to your family?”
“Not now. But maybe someday. If I were a vampire, I’d have to leave them behind forever.”
“No.” He stands and begins to pace, slowly. “My father was a vampire. Rather than abandon his children, he turned each of us at the age of thirty-three. For me it was 1918.” He smooths his brown, pinstriped waistcoat, regarding it like a window to the past. “Later that year I did th
e same to my son. He took ill with the Spanish flu and within a day was at death’s door. It was an easy choice. He was only fifteen, with his whole life before him.”
“Is your son here with you?”
Gideon slides his hands into his trouser pockets and regards the floor. “He was always intractable, especially after death. I tried to teach him to keep out of humans’ way, and for several decades he stayed at my side, though never satisfied. Ten years ago he left me, headed west, and began hunting people indiscriminately, like a rabid animal.”
Gideon turns the radio volume down to near silence. “The Control and I came to an agreement, that upon his capture, they would bring him here, where I would deal with him. In exchange I allowed them to inspect my compound to ensure I wasn’t harming humans.”
His hands form fists inside his pockets. “Naturally the traitorous worms double-crossed me. One of their agents staked Antoine in Memphis.”
Antoine? My heart gives a sudden pound. Memphis? David said Elizabeth’s maker was a teenager in human years. It couldn’t be ...
Gideon pauses, examining me, then begins to pace again. “They claimed it was a rogue agent going against orders, but they wouldn’t give up the man’s name, so I could never confirm their story. I had no choice but to believe it a sanctioned assassination.” He stops and looks at me. “Now you know why I staked Elizabeth, why I lured her here in the first place.”
He knows who she was. He staked his own—what, granddaughter?
I try to stay calm, keep bluffing. “I thought you brought us here to threaten the station into anonymity.” Fear makes my lips flub the last word, so that it comes out “anemone.”
“That as well. I’ve ended your silly and dangerous campaign, and avenged Antoine’s death. You could say I’ve killed two birds with one stake.”
I lower my gaze, my mind racing. So he murdered Elizabeth because she was a Control agent, not because of her relationship to his son, which he doesn’t seem to know about.
But he could find out. I have to warn David. He and Elizabeth wouldn’t have come here if they’d known Gideon was her maker’s maker. Someone in the Control’s upper ranks got careless or arrogant or both.
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