Evernight

by Claudia Gray

  His fingers brushed the slim strap of my dress, until it slipped down my shoulder, exposing the very top curve of my breast. Lucas traced the line from my ear to my shoulder with his thumb. I wanted him to go further, to touch me in every way I needed to be touched. My mind was clouded, almost like I couldn't think at all; there was only my body and what it demanded from me. I knew what I had to do, even if I couldn't imagine it yet. I knew.

  Stop, I told myself. But Lucas and I were past stopping. I needed him, all of him, now.

  I took his face in my hands and pressed my lips softly to his mouth, his chin, and his neck. I could see his pulse throbbing just beneath the skin, and then the hunger was too much to hold back.

  I bit into Lucas's throat, hard. I heard him gasp in pain and shock, but in that moment the blood rushed over my tongue. The thick metallic taste of it spread through me like fire, hot and uncontrollable and dangerous and beautiful. I swallowed, and the feel of Lucas's blood in my throat was sweeter than anything else I'd ever known.

  Lucas tried to push away from me, but he was already weak. As he began to slump backward, I caught him in my arms so that I could keep drinking deeply. I felt as though I were drawing his soul into me along with his blood. We had never been closer than this.

  Mine, I thought. Mine.

  Then Lucas went completely limp. He'd passed out. That realization crashed into me like a wave of cold water, shocking me out of the trance.

  I gasped and let Lucas go. He fell bonelessly to the floor of the gazebo with a thud. The wide gash my teeth had left in his throat was dark and wet in the moonlight, glistening like spilled ink. A small stream of blood trickled across the wood and pooled around a small silver star that had fallen from my hair.

  "Help," I choked out. It was hardly more than a whisper. My lips were still sticky and hot with Lucas's blood. "Somebody, please. Help!"

  I stumbled down the gazebo steps, desperate to find someone, anyone. My parents would be furious—Mrs. Bethany would be a thousand times worse—but somebody had to help Lucas. "Is anyone out there?"

  "What is wrong with you?" Courtney stepped out of the woods, clearly annoyed. Her lacy white dress was rumpled, and I could see her date standing behind her; apparently I'd interrupted a hook-up session. "Wait—on your mouth—is that blood?"

  "Lucas." I was too deep in shock to even try to explain. "Please. Help Lucas."

  Courtney tossed her long blond hair and stepped up into the gazebo to see Lucas lying there, his throat ripped open. She breathed, "Oh, my God." Then she turned back to me with a smug smile. "About time you grew up and became a vampire like the rest of us."

  Chapter Eight

  "Did I kill lucas? Is he okay?" I sobbed. I couldn't stop crying. My mother's arm was around my shoulder; I blindly let her lead me away from the gazebo. My father had run ahead with Lucas's unconscious body in his arms. Some of the teachers were nearby, making sure none of the other students realized there was a disturbance. "Mom, what did I do?"

  "Lucas's alive." Her voice had never sounded gentler. "He'll make it."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Pretty sure." We went up the stone steps, and I nearly stumbled over each one. My entire body was shaking so hard that I could barely walk. Mom stroked my hair, which had tumbled loose from its braids and hung limply around my face. "Honey, go up to our rooms, okay? Wash your face. Calm down."

  I shook my head. "I want to be with Lucas."

  "He won't even know you're there."

  "Mom. Please."

  She started to refuse, but then I saw her realize that there was no point in arguing. "Come on."

  My father had taken Lucas to the carriage house. When I first walked in, I wondered why there was an apartment in the carriage house, paneled with black-stained wood and hung with sepia-tinted photographs in old oval frames. Then I remembered that this was where Mrs. Bethany lived. I was too shaken up even to be afraid of her. When I tried to push into the bedroom to see Lucas, Mom shook her head. "Wash your face with some cold water. Take a few deep breaths. Pull yourself together, honey. Then we'll talk." Smiling unevenly, she added, "Everything's all right. You'll see."

  My clammy, trembling hands fumbled with the glass doorknob to the bathroom. As soon as I glimpsed my face in the mirror, I realized why my mother had kept telling me to wash my face. My lips were stained with Lucas's blood. A few drops had been smeared across my cheeks. Instantly I turned on the taps, desperate to clean away the evidence of what I'd done—but as the cool water began flowing over my fingers, I found myself looking at the bloodstains more closely. My lips were so red, and they were still swollen from our kisses.

  Slowly, I traced the outline of my lips with the tip of my tongue. I could taste Lucas's blood, and it was as if he were as close to me in that moment as he had been in my arms.

  So this is what it means, I thought. All my life, my parents had told me that someday blood would be more than blood, more than just something from the butcher's shop they gave me with my dinner. I had never been able to comprehend what they meant. Now I understood. In some ways, it really was just like my first kiss with Lucas; my body had known what I needed and wanted long before my mind could even guess.

  Then I thought about Lucas, leaning back for my kiss and trusting me completely. Guilt made me start crying again, and then I splashed water on my face and the back of my neck. It took several minutes of deep breaths before I could walk out of the bathroom again.

  Mrs. Bethany's bed was a carved black monstrosity, with spiral columns that supported the canopy overhead. It was obviously centuries old. Unconscious in the center of the bed, Lucas was as pale as the bandage covering his throat, but he was breathing.

  "He's all right," I whispered.

  "You didn't drink enough blood to hurt him." My father looked at me for the first time since he'd run to the gazebo. I'd been afraid of seeing condemnation—or, given what I'd been doing when the urge to bite hit, embarrassment—but Dad was calm, even kind. "You have to make an effort to drink more than a pint or so at a time."

  "Then why did Lucas pass out?"

  "The bite does that to them," Mom said. By "them" she meant humans. Normally she made an effort not to draw a distinction, because she liked to say that people were people no matter what, but the dividing line between us had never been clearer. "It's like they're—hypnotized, maybe, or under a spell. They'll fight hard at first, but soon they slip into this trance."

  "Good thing, too, because that means he won't remember a thing tomorrow." Dad held Lucas's wrist in his hand, checking the pulse. "We'll invent a story to tell him about the wound, something simple about an accident. That old gazebo has a couple of loose crossbars—maybe one of them could've fallen. Whacked him on the head."

  "I don't like lying to Lucas."

  Mom shook her head. "Honey, you've always understood that there are things that the people around us don't need to know."

  "Lucas's not most people."

  What I knew, and they didn't, was that Lucas was suspicious of Evernight Academy already. Of course he didn't know the truth about this place—if he had, he'd never have walked through the front door—but he understood that something was up, that there was more to this school than met the eye. I could be proud of Lucas's sharp instincts at the same time I recognized that they made everything a lot more difficult.

  But how could I even think of telling him the truth? Sorry I almost killed you last night? I nodded slowly, accepting what I had to do. Lucas couldn't know how badly I'd failed him. He'd never forgive me—if he even believed me when I started talking about vampires. He might as easily think I'd gone insane.

  "Okay," I conceded. "We have to lie. I understand."

  "If only I understood," Mrs. Bethany said crisply. She walked through the bedroom doorway, hands clasped in front of her. Instead of her usual lacy blouses and dark skirts, she wore a deep purple ball gown and black satin gloves that came up to her elbows. Black pearl earrings shimmered as she shook her he
ad. "When we invited human students to join us here at Evernight, we knew there could be security troubles. We've lectured all our older students, monitored the hallways, kept the groups as separate as possible—and with good results, I thought. I would never have expected an outburst from you, Miss Olivier."

  My parents both rose to their feet. At first I thought they were showing Mrs. Bethany respect as their boss—they'd always deferred to her and taught me to do the same. But then my father stepped forward to defend me. "You know that Bianca isn't like the rest of us. This is the first time she's ever tasted living blood. She didn't realize how it could affect her."

  Mrs. Bethany's lips turned slightly upward in a prim, unpleasant smile. "Bianca is of course a special case. So few vampires are born, rather than made. Do you know, you're only the third one I've met since 1812?"

  My parents had told me that only a handful of vampire babies were conceived every century; they'd been together for almost 350 years before Mom stunned them both by getting pregnant with me. I always thought they'd been exaggerating a little to make me feel unique. Now I realized it was the absolute truth.

  Mrs. Bethany wasn't done. "I would think that being raised by vampires—with a knowledge of our nature and our needs—wouldn't that be an advantage? A reason for more self-control, rather than less?"

  "I'm sorry." I couldn't let my parents take the blame for this, not when it was my fault alone. "Dad and Mom always told me how it would happen someday. That I'd feel this need to bite. I still didn't understand, not really. Not until it happened to me."

  She nodded, considering this. Her dark eyes flicked over to Lucas once, as if he were litter we'd left in her room. "He'll live? No permanent harm done, then. We'll assign Bianca's punishment tomorrow."

  Mom shot me an apologetic glance. "Bianca has sworn to us she wouldn't do anything like this again."

  "If word should get around the school that someone has bitten one of the new students and suffered no consequences, there will be other incidents." Mrs. Bethany gathered her skirt in one hand. "Some of them might not end as well. It is vital that no more human students are so much as touched, as we cannot afford even a whisper of suspicion. Such a transgression must not go unpunished."

  For the first time ever, Mrs. Bethany and I were in complete agreement. I felt terrible for having hurt Lucas, and a few evenings of hall-cleaning duty were the least I deserved. But I saw one difficulty right away. "I can't have detention. Or be forced to clean up or anything like that."

  Her eyebrows arched even higher. "Are you above such menial tasks?"

  "If I'm being punished in some obvious way, Lucas will ask why. We don't want him to ask any questions. Right?"

  I'd made my point. Mrs. Bethany nodded once, but I could tell she was displeased that I'd bested her. "Then you will write a ten-page paper on—let us say—the use of the epistolary form in novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Due in two weeks."

  It was a measure of how depressed and freaked-out I already was that this assignment couldn't make me feel any worse.

  Mrs. Bethany stepped closer to me, the full skirts of her gown rustling like birds' wings. The fragrance of lavender curled around me like smoke. It was difficult for me to meet her eyes; I felt so exposed, so ashamed. "For more than two centuries, Evernight Academy has served as a sanctuary for our kind. Those of us who appear young enough to be students can come here to learn about how the world has changed, so that they can reenter society and move freely without arousing suspicion. This is a place of learning. A place of safety. It can remain so only if the humans beyond our walls—and now, within our walls—have safety as well. If our students lose control and take human life, Evernight would soon come under suspicion. This sanctuary would fall. Two centuries of tradition would end. I have safeguarded this school almost all that time, Miss Olivier. I do not intend to see the balance upset by you or by anyone. Am I quite clear?"

  "Yes, ma'am," I whispered. "I'm so sorry. It won't happen again."

  "You say that now." She glanced at Lucas, coolly curious. "We'll see what happens when Mr. Ross wakes." Then she swept out to return to the ball.

  It was strange to think that, just a few hundred feet away, people were still waltzing.

  "I'll stay with Lucas," Dad said. "Celia, you take Bianca back to the school."

  "I can't go back to my dorm room now. I want to be here when Lucas wakes up," I pleaded.

  Mom shook her head. "It's better for you both if you're not. Your presence might remind him of what really happened, and Lucas needs to forget. I tell you what—come up to your old room. Just for tonight. Nobody will mind."

  My snug turret room at the top of the tower had never sounded more welcoming. I even wanted to see the gargoyle again. "That sounds great. Thank you both so much, for everything." Tears welled in my eyes again. "You saved me and Lucas tonight."

  "Don't be so melodramatic." Dad's smile softened his words. "Lucas would've lived no matter what. And you would've bitten somebody eventually. I wish you'd waited awhile, but I guess our little girl had to grow up sometime."

  "Adrian?" My mother took Dad's hand and started pulling him from the room. "We should talk about that thing."

  "Thing? What thing?"

  "The thing that's in the hallway."

  "Oh." My dad got it about the same time I did. Mom had found an excuse to give me a moment alone with Lucas.

  As soon as they'd gone, I sat on the edge of the bed by Lucas's side. He was still handsome, despite his pale skin and the dark circles beneath his eyes. His bronze hair looked almost brown next to his pallor, and when I lay my hand on his forehead, he was cool to the touch.

  "I'm so sorry I hurt you." A hot tear trickled down my cheek. Poor Lucas, always trying to protect me from danger. He'd never guessed that I was the dangerous one.

  * * *

  Later that night, I stared at my beautiful dress, now stained with blood. Mom had hung it on the hook on my bedroom door. "I thought the dance was going to be so perfect," I whispered.

  "I wish it could've been, honey." She sat beside my bed, stroking my hair, the way she used to when I was small. "Everything will be better in the morning. You'll see."

  "You're sure Lucas won't be a vampire when he wakes up?"

  "I'm sure. Lucas didn't lose nearly enough blood to put his life in danger. And this is the first time you've bitten him—right?"

  "Right." I sniffled.

  "Only people who have been bitten multiple times become vampires, and even then only when the last bite is fatal. And like we told you, killing someone by drinking their blood is actually pretty hard work. No matter what, you have to die to become a vampire, and Lucas's not going to die."

  "I'm a vampire, and I never died."

  "That's different, honey. You know that. You were born special." Mom touched my chin, turning my head so that we faced each other. Behind her I could see the gargoyle grinning at us, like an eavesdropper. "You won't become a true vampire until you kill someone. When you do that, you'll die too—but only for a little while. It'll be just like taking a nap."

  My parents had told me all of this, of course, a thousand times at least, just like they told me to brush my teeth before bed or to get a full name and phone number if somebody called while they were out. Most vampires never killed anyone, they said, and even though I couldn't imagine hurting anyone, they insisted there were ways to do it that would be okay. We'd been over and over my eventual transformation: I could go to a hospital or nursing home, find someone really old or near death, and do it that way. They'd always told me it would be that simple—ending someone's suffering, maybe even giving them the chance to live forever as a vampire, too, if we planned ahead and made sure I would have more than one opportunity to drink. The explanation was nice and neat, the way they liked me to leave my room.

  What had happened between Lucas and me had proved that reality wasn't as tidy as my parents' explanations.

  "I don't have to become a vampire
before I'm ready," I said. That was another thing they'd told me countless times, and I expected my mother to agree automatically.

  Instead she was quiet for a few moments. "We'll see, Bianca. We'll see."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've tasted the blood of a living person. Basically, you've turned over the hourglass—your body will begin reacting like a vampire now, sometimes." I must have looked terrified, because she squeezed my hand. "Don't worry. It's not like you have to change this week or even this year, probably. But your need to do the things we do will be stronger now, and get stronger all the time. Besides all that, you care about Lucas. The two of you will be very—well, drawn together now. When your body is changing as fast as your heart, it's a powerful combination." Mom leaned her head against the wall, and I wondered if she was remembering the mid-1600s, when she was alive and Dad was a handsome, mysterious stranger. "Try not to get in over your head."