Afterlife

by Claudia Gray

  “That thing had to be stopped.”

  “That thing? Thing?’ Maxie looked like she might slap me. “I guess you might as well help Mrs. Bethany set the traps.”

  A third voice interrupted our argument. “There’s a difference between what Bianca has done and Mrs. Bethany’s efforts.”

  We turned to see Christopher. So I was in the land of lost things again — brought here, this time, against my will. Maxie had told me he was powerful, but this was my first evidence of exactly how much stronger Christopher was than the average wraith.

  And yet it didn’t frighten me, because now I knew I had the power to defend myself. Any power Christopher now had, I might gain for myself in time — probably less time than it had taken him to learn.

  The sunlight brightened Christopher’s dark brown hair, and his old — fashioned long coat was a deep bottle green. We were at the foot of a 161 building that looked like some sort of pagoda, except that a rattling elevate,d train straight out of the 191Os was rushing along behind it.

  “I got her out of there before she could do anything worse,” Maxie said. So it was her, and not Christopher, who had intervened. “You shouldn’t have let her go back, anyway.”

  “Maxine, calm yourself.” Christopher put his hands on her shoulders. “It is not my role to allow or disallow Bianca’s travels. She is freer than the rest of us. She does not share our limitations. l realize that is hard for you to accept, but you must.”

  Maxie snapped, “I don’t see the difference between what Mrs. Bethany’s doing and what Bianca did. She’s turned against her fellow wraiths. That doesn’t matter?”

  I said, “That thing — “

  “Thing again!”

  “It hurt people, Maxie,” I continued. “Nobody has the right to do that.”

  Christopher nodded. “It is one matter to act in defense of others. Another to act from selfish desires — no matter how understandable those desires may be.”

  He seemed so sad that I hated to ask more. And yet his sadness itself drew my attention more than anything else. It was like whatever Mrs. Bethany was doing wounded him personally, deeply. Did he care so deeply about the wraiths — all the wraiths? No, this was something that affected him, not as the leader of this ghostly world or whatever else he’d become, but as the man he had been.

  A laughably bizarre idea occurred to me, and yet I couldn’t shake it. Christopher watched me closely, able to see that I was struggling with something. Even his smile was sad.

  “You know. now.” he said. “Trust your insight. You will see many things here that would be hidden to you elsewhere.”

  This world’s clarity had worked its magic on me again — or had it? Still, I couldn’t quite believe. I asked the less direct question, in case I was wrong: “Christopher … what anchors you to the world? Or .. . who?”

  “My beloved wife, though I have not spoken to her in nearly two hundred years.·• Was he saying what I thought he was saying? “Then You’re — ”

  “Christopher Bethany,” he said. “Of course, you already know my wife.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “MRS. BETHANY IS YOUR WIFE,” I REPEATED. Although I’d guessed it myself, I couldn’t fully wrap my mind around the information. The leader of the wraiths, married to one of the most powerful, ruthless vampires in existence? “Then why does she hate the wraiths so much?” Surely if she was married to a wraith, she’d have to like them a little. But maybe not. Maybe they’d broken up or something. A divorce would probably be extra — nasty after two hundred years of marriage.

  But Christopher shook his head. “I have not spoken to her since my death.”

  “Why not? Is it because she became a vampire? Did she — was she the one who killed you?” I corrected myself. “No, of course not. You said she was the only person loyal to you.”

  “This is my history, mine alone,” Christopher said, and his voice held a sharpness I hadn’t heard since his first frightening manifestations at Evernight. Sensing my tension, though, he visibly calmed himself. “And yet, it concerns you now, and those close to you. It is not wrong for you to ask.”

  Maxie gaped at him, her earlier outrage at my special treatment forgotten. “Are you going to tell us where you come from?” I got the impression this was a closely guarded secret.

  Christopher glared at her. “I shall tell Bianca, as it relates to her existence,” he said. “It does not relate to yours.”

  With a huff, Maxie stomped away, her shiny heels loud on the pavement. She disappeared into a crowd of people who seemed mostly to be dressed in feathers and paint. I turned back to Christopher. “If you don’t want to talk about it.” I said, “honestly, that’s okay. It’s your business.” I wanted answers, but that Wasn’t the same as wanting to pry.

  “You will soon see how our paths intersected. These events are becoming part of your history as well.”

  He swept his hand across the sky, turning it instantly black — as though, instead of being outside, we stood in a kind of planetarium. Instead of the flowing, chaotic land of lost things around us, we were entirely alone, in a sort of void. I understood, without being told, that this was beyond most wraiths’ power, including my own; this uncanny ability was something Christopher had forged from his long centuries trapped between 163 worlds.

  “Wow,” I said. “What is this?”

  “We are traveling to see the past.”

  “We’re going back in time?” After everything else that had happened, it was weird that this had the power to surprise me. Like something out of a science — fiction movie; Vic would think this was extremely cool.

  But Christopher shook his head. “Traveling to see,” he said. “The past is unreachable by any power, mortal or immortal.”

  I Wasn’t sure what the difference was, but there was no time to ask. Taking shape around us was a forest, through which wound a narrow dirt road, striped with tracks from wheels and horses. A carriage came toward us, pulled by two pale gray horses and lit by actual lanterns on each side. It seemed romantic to me, something out of a novel by one of the Brontes.

  At least, it seemed that way until figures jumped out of the dark — out of nowhere, it seemed — and sprang upon the carriage. The horses whinnied and snorted as one of the figures grabbed their harness, bringing everything to a halt.

  I gasped, but nobody seemed able to hear me — the difference. maybe, between seeing the past and being there. Christopher stood quiet beside me as we saw the highway bandits or whatever they were pull open the doors of the carriage. In the lantern light, I could see their faces, their wicked grins, and their fangs: vampires on the attack. “Well, well. What have we here?” one of them snarled. “Guests for dinner?”

  “I shall tell you what you have.” Mrs. Bethany — in Regency costume, her hair piled high upon her head — leaned out of the door, completely unfazed by the attack. Was this the moment she was changed?

  Then she hoisted a crossbow. “You have to run,” she said.

  The vampires scattered, but not fast enough. Mrs. Bethany shot one straight through, the wooden shaft staking it in the heart. In a flash, the carriage driver and liverymen leaped into action, each of them armed, each of them sure and detem1ined as they ran into the forest after the vampires.

  “Quickly!” Mrs. Bethany cried, jumping from tl1e carriage so that her skirts fluttered. Already she had reloaded the crossbow, and despite the darkness, she took aim and brought another vampire down in a single stroke. Her smile was brilliant in the night. ;;We have them now!”

  She laughed out loud as she pulled a broadsword from within her cloak. As she lifted it high, I turned away: I’d seen one vampire being beheaded, and that was enough for a lifetime. As I heard the sick wet thud,l winced — and then my eyes opened wide.

  “The way they’re fighting .. . the way she throws herself into it…” I’d seen this before.

  “Trained well, don’t you think?” Christopher never looked away from Mrs. Bethany.


  “If she was hunting vampires, and if she knew just what to do, then she was — she had to be — Mrs. Bethany was in Black Cross?”

  I had to look at her again now. The fight was over, the vampires dust at her feet. In the moonlight, her smile softened and became warm as she rushed forward toward one of the liverymen — who, I now realized, was a slightly younger Christopher. They embraced each other, her arms tight around his neck, and kissed so passionately that I felt my cheeks flush.

  “We were both raised among Black Cross hunters,” Christopher said as he watched his long — ago happiness with his wife. “When I emigrated to America in the first years of its independence, I connected with the first Boston cell. There we met. Few women hunted in those days, but nobody questioned her. She was the best fighter among us. And the vampires — they always underestimated her l!lntil it was too late. There sprang up a legend amorng them of a huntress both beautiful and deadly, which they disbelieved at their peril. Sometimes it was the last thing they said, even as the stake sank into them. ‘It is her.’”

  The forest had darkened into indistinct gloom, but now shapes began to form anew. I saw a small house, simple, with one large room that seemed to be both kitchen and parlor. The fireplace was enormous, deep enough to walk into, tall as a person and as long as the house itself. A teakettle hung near the flames as Mrs. Bethany busied herself cutting cake; at the table, Christopher sat with a few men dressed as he was, with long coats and white kerchiefs tied at their throats. They had large metal cups filled with something that looked like beer, and they were laughing loudly.

  Was it tbe clarity of this place that showed me the others weren’t as happy as they pretended to be? That their eyes watched Christopher cagily tss as he took another drink?

  “Business associates.” Christopher’s face was illuminated by the long — ago fire. We seemed to be standing at the very edge of the room, in deep shadow. “Friends, or so I thought. We joined in a shipping venture. Trade between Europe and America, in fine goods — a growing industry in that time, and therefore a likely bet to increase my family’s wealth. But I was accustomed only to the company of Black Cross hunters; say what you will of Black Cross, but they do not engage in such gross trickery. I had been brought up to think that all evil was embodied by vampires. I did not look for it in men who called themselves my friends.”

  “What did they do?” 1 whispered, though I knew by now the figures before us couldn’t hear.

  “They did not want to establish a shipping business. They only wanted to steal the family money I gave them as investment.” He still sounded slightly bewildered — like after a couple hundred years, Christopher hadn’t yet wrapped his mind around the fact of his betrayal. “After some months, I began to press them for returns. Profits. To examine the books. They had countless excuses and nothing to show me. One night I swore I would take them to court. As I walked home that night, they attacked me. I was unarmed, and recovering from a winter illness. My Black Cross training was to no avail. They left me dying in a ditch. The last sound I heard was their laughter as they walked away.”

  “I’m sorry.” Before us remained the happy scene with everyone being friendly. Maybe he preferred this to remembering his death; I wouldn ‘ t blame him. I didn’t like remembering my death either, and at least I’d been in my bed, with Lucas by my side. “That’s awful.”

  Christopher stared hard at his killers, who were at that moment laughing at one of his jokes. Mrs. Bethany set the slices of cake in front of them; she didn’t seem to be in as good spirits as the others. In fact, her expression was wary. She’d picked up on trouble even if her husband hadn’t.

  Then the room shifted again, with Mrs. Bethany remaining motionless at the center of it, her dress flowing from one color to another and her expression changing from unease to rage. “What do you mean, you cannot act?”

  The scene in front of us was now some kind of meetinghouse or storeroom. Black Cross, I realized, seeing the weaponry mounted on the walls. 166 A man with his hair tied in a tail sat on a slightly raised platform, obviously in charge. He shook his head.. “Mrs. Bethany, as lamentable as your husband’s death is, it was not the work of any supernatural agency. Therefore it does not concern Black Cross.”

  “The magistrate will not listen,” Mrs. Bethany said. “He believes it was the work of bandits and says lam a foolish woman, doubting two such ‘fine gentlemen.’ “She spat those two words, as if she thought they could poison her. “I could kill them myself, but they are gone to the Caribbean. His family’s money is lost, because of their deceit. At least give me the funds to travel there, to see justice done.”

  The Black Cross leader looked at Mrs. Bethany pityingly — the same look, I realized, that Kate had worn when she refused to give back Lucas’s coffee can full of cash. “Our funds are used for our struggle, and every penny is needed. You know this as well as I. Your grief has brought you to the point of hysteria.”

  Mrs. Bethany’s proud face never changed, but I saw something I’d never expected to see: her eyes filling with tears. Yet she spoke steadily. “After everything I have done, everything I have given, this is your answer.”

  “What other answer could there be?”

  She stepped back slightly, cocking her head in that familiar gesture of contemplation and contempt. Li.ke she’s seeing him for the first time, I thought.

  Christopher said, “In that instant, her dedication to Black Cross turned to hate. We can always hate that which we loved, and with a fire as great as our love once was.”

  The room vanished, replaced by the same forest pathway we had seen first. But the scene had changed to winter; the naked tree branches glittered with ice, and the ground was thick with snow. Mrs. Bethany rode alone on horseback, sidesaddle, with a heavy cape of dark furs around her. Her eyes searched her surroundings despite the deepening shadows — it was dusk, the sky a piercing cobalt blue. Then she sat up a little straighter; she’d spotted something.

  A vampire stepped from behind one of the larger trees, obviously uneasy. “Whatever trap you set, huntress, it’s a dangerous one for you. Your 167 help is too far away.”

  “I set no trap,” Mrs. Bethany said. She dismounted from her horse and walked slowly toward him in the snow. “I bear no weapons.”

  “Then I suppose you have come to die, huntress.”

  It was a taunt, but Mrs. Bethany lifted her head. “Yes.”

  The vampire appeared as shocked as I was. He didn’t say anything at first, didn’t rush at her or run away.

  She held up her hands, gloved in dark green, to show that she had no weapons. A gust of wind ruffled her hair and sent down a shower of snow from the branches above, scattering white on her dark hair and cape. “I was bitten once. Did you know? Do they tell the story?”

  “Many claim it,” the vampire said. “Many lie.”

  “One tells the truth,” she said. A quick tug at the neck of her cape revealed an old scar upon her throat. “I was rescued, then. But I have always known that I am prepared. If a vampire were to bite me, and kill me, I would rise again, undead.”

  The vampire took a step closer, disbelieving. “This is a trick.”

  “No trick.”

  “You hate our kind. Why would you become one of us?”

  “I need to be free of human ties, human cares.” Mrs. Bethany’s expression faltered, but only for a moment. “I — I need to travel beyond the reach of my mortal means.”

  That won her a burst of laughter from the vampire. “Mad. You’ve gone mad.” She said, “Change me and see.”

  The vampire sprang at her, taking both of them down to the ground in one pounce. Mrs. Bethany didn’t resist and didn’t scream, not even when her blood spurted onto the white snow, steaming.

  “Revenge,” Christopher said, “is a powerful motivator.”

  The next place he showed me was obviously someplace a lot warmer. A palm frond brushed against the window and tropical flowers were piled high in vases. We seemed to be
in an island villa, one that might have been very nice before it had been trashed. Furniture was upended, mirrors broken. Two dead bodies lay on the floor, and Mrs. Bethany stood in one corner, taking in the scene with some satisfaction. She wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “She got them back,” I said. Despite the horror of the murder scene before us, I couldn’t help feeling like those guys had it coming.

  Christopher nodded. “But at what cost? Her life. Perhaps more important, her mission. Her soul.”

  “Where were you during all this?” I said. “Why didn’t you appear to her? If she’d known you were a ghost, that she could maybe talk to you — ”

  “I could not yet appear to her.” The Caribbean scene with Mrs. Bethany faded, and we were once again in the land of lost things. Were we in the same location? Our surroundings had changed; instead of the city, we stood out in the open, in a desert too stark to be beautiful. Sunlight beat down hotly, and I noticed a scorpion scuttling across the ground. Christopher sat on a low, flat rock; his handsome profile was outlined against the dark stone, and for the ftrst time, I recognized him as the silhouette on Mrs. Bethany’s desk. “As you know, learning to use wraith powers takes some time — and far more time for most than it did for you. By the point when I could have appeared to my wife, she had learned to hate the wraiths as the natural enemy of the vampire. She had shown me, through her actions, that her hate was stronger than her love.”

  I wanted to argue with him, but I remembered how hard it had been for me to appear to my parents. That fear of rejection was powerful. And as Lucas’s situation showed, not every person was strong enough to love despite the change.

  Lucas, I thought. Of course Mrs. Bethany had been sympathetic to Lucas. Of course she reached out to him and understood him. She had been exacdywhere he was. But that didn’t make her generous and good. It just made her somebody who hated Black Cross a lot. He needed to realize that. and the sooner the better.

  “I have to go,” I said. “I’ll come back, okay?”