“Alek,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he said. “Hannah, I love you so much. Please don’t leave me.” He brushed her hair back from her shoulder, stretched open her collar, and kissed the spot on her neck just over her pulse point. He wasn’t sure whether the tears he tasted were hers or his own, but the saltiness of them mingled with the coppery taste of the blood that filled his mouth as his fangs punctured her carotid artery. Her heart had already begun to slow. As her blood pressure dropped, he had to work to drain the infected blood out of her. It tasted foul, and wrong, and he could feel her life fading fast. He had no time to waste, no time to be careful about damaging her neck or leaving marks. He had to drain her fast.
When it was done, he used his teeth to tear open his own wrist, and pressed it to her mouth. “Come on,” he said when she made no move to respond. “Please, Hannah. Drink. Come on!”
At last, she swallowed. Unconsciously, she took his blood into her, replacing what he had taken. When it was done, she lay still as a corpse, and looked as pale as one, too. “Please,” he said, picking up her hand and pressing her fingers to his lips. He said it over and over again. “Please. Please, please, please.” It was a prayer, a benediction, all that remained of the last shred of hope he had in this world. “Please let it work this time.”
All that was left to do was wait. The sky had already begun to lighten. Alek looked around to see where they were, and realized they were in the old corral. It was open in the middle, but surrounded by a stone wall, and horse stalls. He picked Hannah up and carried her to the shelter of one of the stalls, and then lay down beside her, continuing his pleas. “Please come back to me. Please don’t leave me like this.”
He lay there and watched shadows form around the wall as the sun began to rise. It was high enough to bathe the center of the corral in sunlight when she began to stir.
Fear and hope wrestled for domination as Alek got to his knees beside her. He leaned over her, stroking her hair. “Come on,” he urged. “Come back to me.”
She opened her eyes.
“Hannah?”
They looked around wildly, unfocused and disoriented. His heart and stomach began to sink. “No. Please. Please, Hannah.”
Her eyes fixed on him, and focused. His heart lifted again, almost soared right out of him as he realized that her eyes had turned a bright, pale, icy blue. “Hannah?”
She licked her lips. “Alek?”
“Oh, God,” he said, gathering her into his arms. “Oh, God. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Slowly, she raised her arms to embrace him. “What happened?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He took her face in his hands and kissed her. “I know I promised, but I had to try. I couldn’t lose you.”
“You… what did you do? I feel different.”
“I know. But you’re still here.”
“I feel… strong.”
"You know,” said a voice from across the corral, “there’s a penalty for turning them.” Esme emerged from the shadows on the opposite end of the corral. “But I’d say you’re in enough trouble already.” She stood at the edge of the stalls, just beyond the reach of daylight. In her arms she held Noah.
“She has my brother,” said Hannah, shoving Alek out of her way as she jumped to her feet. Alek tried to grab her and pull her back, but she was too determined. He couldn’t stop her from running into the light.
“No!” he screamed, reaching his arm into the light, trying to grab her and pull her back. But she was too fast for him.
She kept going.
She didn’t burn.
Alek stared in amazement as she ran across the corral unharmed. Then his gaze fell to his arm, still outstretched and bathed in light.
He wasn’t burning, either.
He climbed to his feet, only partially aware of the confrontation happening across the yard. Tentatively, he reached his other hand into the sun, fascinated by its warmth, by the way it illuminated his pale skin. He looked up at the sky as he stepped out from the shadows, closed his eyes as he felt the warmth on his face and arms, felt the heat soak into his clothes and hair.
He felt different, too, he realized. Still strong, still powerful, but less so. His stomach growled, and he realized he felt hungry. But not for blood. What’s happening to me?
The vaccine. Of course. Of course! All this time, they’d been basing it on the resurrection virus, but if that was an offshoot of the vampiric virus as he’d suspected… it all made sense. Hannah took the vaccine, and once she was infected, he’d taken her blood into him, where the vaccine mixed with his vampiric blood. And then he’d given it back to her…
Zach had been so close. The minor adjustments Alek had made to the formula had gotten it closer, save for one final component.
It was the blood exchange that completed it.
It wasn’t simply a vaccine. It was a cure. The one he’d spent the last seventy years trying to produce.
Across the yard, he heard Hannah shout, snapping his attention back to the situation at hand. Putting his excitement on hold, he ran through the sunlit yard to fight by Hannah’s side.
FIFTY
She felt strong. As she ran across the courtyard, she moved faster than she’d ever moved before, without even getting winded. Her senses were heightened, aware of everything. Aware of Alek shouting at her to stop, of the heat of the sun on her skin, of the scent of mud beneath the rain-soaked grass. Mostly she was aware of Noah, crying in that bitch’s arms, and the fear in his cries as he reached out his chubby little arms toward her. And she was aware of her total lack of fear for herself. She felt unstoppable.
She felt like killing somebody.
And she had the perfect candidate in mind as Esme wrapped a hand around Noah’s neck. “Stop right there,” she said as Hannah reached her. “If you think I have any qualms about killing this infant, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“If you think there’s anything else to keep you alive if you hurt him,” said Hannah, “you’re an even stupider bitch than I thought. Give him to me.”
Esme laughed. “Celine!” she called. Immediately, three more vampires, identical in head-to-toe body armor, emerged from the deep shadows, all of them training rifles on Hannah. Esme smiled triumphantly, then looked Hannah up and down. “Funny, I could have sworn he turned you. But you’re obviously still human, and that means you’re not bullet-proof.”
No, she hadn’t been turned. But something had happened to her. She didn’t understand what it was, but she felt different—too different to be merely human any longer. Not that she had any intention of showing her hand to Esme.
“I’ll only tell you one more time,” she said. “Give me back my brother.”
“Or what?”
That was a good question. Be smart, Hannah, she told herself. Think! If she attempted a physical confrontation while Esme still held Noah, she would probably just get him hurt, or worse. She could also get herself shot. All she could do was to appeal to Esme’s pride, something the vampire had no shortage of.
“Come on, Esme,” she said. “We both know you want to hurt me. But is this really how you want to do it? Hiding behind a baby, threatening me at gunpoint?” Hannah glanced at the soldiers lined up behind her. She knew they probably had orders not to kill any humans. Their guns probably held tranquilizer darts instead of bullets, and Hannah already knew how far she could make it after getting tranqued.
Esme’s grin diminished into an amused smirk. “You’re not going to bait me, little girl.”
“You’re right,” said Hannah. “I am just a girl. And you’re a bad ass vampire. So why the hell are you so afraid of me?”
“Don’t mistake prudence for fear.” She leaned in closer. “I’ll have the satisfaction of killing you,” she said in Hannah’s ear, too softly for anyone else to hear. “Just not today.”
Hannah’s only response was to bring her knee up, hard, into Esme’s stomach. She c
aught the baby as the vampire doubled over, then turned her back to the soldiers’ guns, shielding Noah from them as she ran into the sunlight, too far for them to follow. “Shoot her!” she heard Esme shouting behind her. Hannah braced herself, but then Alek was there, putting himself between her and Esme and the guns. Hannah stared at him, her brain trying to process what was wrong with this picture, why she hadn’t expected him to be there.
The sun, she thought. He’s here with me in the sunlight, and he’s okay. She blinked. “Alek, what—”
But he didn’t give her time to ask before spinning around to face Esme. “Stop this!” he shouted.
***
Esme couldn’t believe what she was seeing. When she had first met Alek, he had mistaken her for an angel. But now he was the angelic-looking one, with his pale skin practically glowing in the sunlight, the morning sun forming a halo as it rose behind him. She felt an overpowering urge to touch him, to see if he was really there. She reached for him, her fingertips passing from shadow into light. But the light only scorched her flesh, and she yanked her hand back into the darkness.
“Alek,” she said, cradling her burned hand, “what have you done?”
“The vaccine,” he said. “Esme, I did it. I found a cure.”
“A… cure? For… for the contagion.”
“Yes, for that. It cured Hannah. But it also cured me.” He spoke animatedly, his voice full of excitement. “Look at me, Esme.”
No. It couldn’t be. All these years… she’d known about his ridiculous quest for a cure for their vampirism, knew that he saw it as an affliction, a curse rather than the blessing that it was. She had allowed it to go on because she had never believed it possible. But now… “I see you,” she whispered.
“My heart’s beating.” He moved closer, into the shadows. He held up a hand to ward off the soldiers, and they lowered their weapons. “Here,” he said, taking her hand and placing it over his chest. “Feel.”
She could feel it. She remembered the last time she’d felt his heart beating, as she’d held him in her arms in that alley in Prague, feeling it grow fainter and fainter as she drank the life from him. Now it beat strong, a hammer in his chest, pumping adrenaline through his veins. She could smell it. He smelled alive. Human.
“It’s over,” he told her. “It’s all over.”
Yes. It was over. If she let him go back and synthesize more of the vaccine from his own blood, or from the girl’s, the world she knew and loved, the world she had helped to build, the power she had attained for herself and her kind… it would all be lost.
The last time Esme had felt afraid, it had been the night Balthazar had come into her room at the bordello. He had paid her mother handsomely for the privilege, much more than what she usually charged. She had spent so many nights in that room afraid, helpless, praying for another life, for the power to make it all stop. And then Balthazar gave her that power and took away her fear forever.
But it wasn’t forever. Nearly two centuries couldn’t erase the memory of what it felt to be victimized, again and again, to be helpless to do anything about it. The thought of a world where Esme was on equal footing with everyone else… where some might be able to overpower her….
She couldn’t let that happen.
“I see,” she said again. “But do you?” Fury rose up within her, flooding out the fear and giving her strength. “I gave you a gift. You had power. Nobody could hurt you, ever again, because of what I gave you! And you...” Esme laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was just all so absurd. “You just threw it all away for... for what? The chance to grow old and die? To be subject to disease and decay? To be weak and afraid like you were when I found you?”
“To be human, Esme,” said Alek. “Something you haven’t been in so long that you’ve forgotten what it means.”
Still laughing, she hook her head. “Oh, I remember. I remember everything. That’s my curse—I can’t forget things. Like the way it felt the first time my mother pushed me into her customer’s bed and warned me to save my crying until he was done with me. I remember wishing I could be strong, strong enough to fight him off, to kill him, to kill them all! It was Balthazar who made my wish come true. And now you expect me to just line up to throw it all away?”
“Esme—“
“Shoot him,” she ordered. “Shoot them both.”
Behind her, she heard the hiss of the tranquilizer gun; but somehow, Alek and his pet remained standing. Esme turned to see what had gone wrong, and found herself face to face with the barrel of an air rifle. Two of her guards lay unconscious on the ground with darts sticking out of their chests. The third peeled off the mask that concealed her face and shook out her flaming red hair.
“Is it true, Doctor?” Celine asked Alek without taking her eyes, or the rifle, off of Esme. “Is it really a cure?”
“Just look at me,” he told her. “You saw me walk through the sun just now.”
She nodded. “Then I’d like to line up for it, if that’s all right.”
Esme couldn’t believe it. “You traitorous...” Without another word, she grabbed the barrel of the rifle and slammed the butt into Celine’s face, sending the other vampire reeling. Esme hit her again, knocking her unconscious before turning the gun around and spinning toward Alek.
But another hand grabbed the gun barrel and wrenched it from her grip with more strength than she would have believed.
“Alek,” said the girl as she flung the rifle into the sunlight, far out of Esme’s reach, “take the baby.”
FIFTY-ONE
Alek grabbed Noah and ducked into the sunlight, out of Esme’s reach, just as she met Hannah with a backhand that sent her flying. She slammed into the wall of the stable hard enough to splinter the wood, and fell in a heap, just a few feet from where the red-headed vampire had landed. Hannah shouldn’t have been able to recover from such a blow, but to her surprise, she was able to climb to her feet.
Esme was still laughing that infuriating, bitchy laugh of hers as she stalked toward Hannah. “I guess that’s some special juice he’s got you hopped up on,” she said. “But if you think that’s enough to beat me, little girl—”
Before Esme could finish her threat, Hannah got a running start and leapt into the air, delivering a flying kick to Esme’s chest. It sent her stumbling backward, but she managed to catch her balance before falling into the sunlight. At least it shut her up. Hannah landed on her back, but quickly jumped back to her feet. Esme might still be faster and stronger, but Hannah had training. Granted, she hadn’t been practicing since the Apocalypse happened, but years of Krav Maga lessons were coming back, aided by her newfound super-strength.
Esme approached more carefully this time. “What are you?” she asked. “What did he make you into? Some sort of… hybrid?”
Hannah wanted to know the answer to that question herself. But instead of admitting her confusion, she said, “I’m the future of the human race, bitch. Get used to it.” Hannah closed the gap between them in two steps and aimed a roundhouse kick at Esme’s knee. As the vampire lost her balance and doubled over in pain, Hannah brought her knee up to her face.
Esme shot upright again and reeled back. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, and it came away bloody. She stared at the blood in disbelief, then at Hannah. Then rage took over her features as she barreled into Hannah, ramming her shoulder into Hannah’s stomach and driving her back against a support beam.
It knocked the wind out of Hannah, but she didn’t let it stop her. She slammed her elbow down between Esme’s shoulder blades, causing her to release her grip. As soon as Hannah was free, she swung and landed a right cross on Esme’s mouth, cutting her knuckles on the vampire’s extended fangs. Esme’s head snapped back, but when she righted it again, she was smiling. She licked Hannah’s blood from her teeth.
And then her claws came out. Literally.
She swiped at Hannah’s face, but Hannah got her arm up in time to block the attack. It sliced deep into Han
nah’s forearm, causing her to cry out in pain. “Hannah!” she heard Alek cry out in alarm, and the baby started to cry. But they sounded far enough away that she knew they were safe. Esme took another swipe at Hannah. This time her block was better, stopping Esme in mid-swing and avoiding her claws. She stiffened her free hand and aimed a chop at Esme’s throat, then planted a hard front kick in the center of her chest, knocking her back as she gasped for air. Again, she stumbled to the edge of the stable’s shelter without crossing into the light.
Hannah’s instinct was to tackle her and knock her into the light, but as she started forward she stumbled, her head feeling light and woozy. She looked down at her arm and saw that she was bleeding heavily.
“Give it up,” said Esme. “Clearly, you’ve got your limits, but I don’t. I can do this all day.”
Hannah forced herself to take another step forward. “I don’t need all day,” she said, but she didn’t feel nearly as confident as she tried to sound. “I told you I’d kill you if you touched my brother again. People have died because of you. My friend, Phyllis, and Abby’s father, the man I saw you murder, and who knows how many more. And I’m not going to let you shut us down. It’s over, Esme. You don’t get to be in charge anymore.”
Esme’s response surprised her. “Why you?” she asked. “Why did he choose you, after all I’ve done for him?” She looked out at Alek, who stood watching them in helpless frustration as he held the baby out of harm’s way. “Why couldn’t he love me the way I loved him?”
Hannah felt a sudden, inexplicable stab of pity for the creature in front of her. She could see fear in the vampire’s eyes. Not fear of Hannah, but of the future. Of the unknown. Hannah knew that kind of fear well. “Because you never really loved him,” she said. “You’ve forgotten what it means to love someone.” Hannah shook her head, and the motion made her dizzier. “Maybe you never really knew.”
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