“Sweetheart?” His voice was low. Shaky.
“Daddy!” Tori was grinning, laughing, crying. She flung her arms around him, and Jim began to weep as well, holding his daughter in a tight embrace. Mona encircled them both with her arms, husband and daughter, and the three of them stood there on the doorstep, clinging to each other and crying.
* * *
Later there were introductions, explanations, excuses. Tori the victim of a cruel abduction. She remembered being forced to take some sort of drug, and then nothing. Amnesia. No understanding of what had happened or why she hadn’t aged. Two fed out the tale as she and Tori had devised it, sitting in the motel room in Columbus. She had found Tori wandering the streets of Manhattan, and had helped Tori to slowly regain her memories from before the event.
It was spotty at best, transparent at worst, but Tori’s parents bought it completely. It didn’t matter to them. Tori was home with them at last, and that was more than enough.
Invitations were offered to Two without hesitation. Room, board, as long as she might want to stay. Two accepted with thanks, knowing that it would not be long before she felt the desire to return to New York. For now, though, it was enough to be with Tori and her parents, and to be a part of the amazement, and laughter, and love.
Two thought often of Theroen, thought of love, thought of redemption. She wondered what might lie ahead, where life in New York might take her. For the time being, she was content to leave these questions unanswered. For years she had lived in darkness and though now she wanted nothing else, she could stand for a time in the light, and find it good.
* * *
Epilogue
Fort Shawnee, Ohio. The dead of night.
The girl with the blonde hair wakes from a dream she can’t remember, and looks out the window at the moon rising full in the sky. Stars like she’s never seen, no lights of a great city to obscure them, glitter back at her like diamonds cast against a mat of soft black velvet. They reflect in her eyes, large and green.
She hears the soft breathing of the young lady in the twin bed on the other side of the room, and sighs. She thinks of breathing in the dark with her lover. She thinks of the time they shared together.
Sleep does not come easily for the girl, even now, in safety and warmth, and she crawls from the bed and pulls jeans on below her nightgown. A winter coat, a pair of socks, her shoes. She wants a cigarette. She wants to think.
If the woman in the bed hears her leave, then she lets the girl go. There are times when it is best not to disturb. There are times when it is best to feign sleep and hope, hope that a friend will find the answers that she’s looking for. Hope that all will be well.
The girl sits on the front porch, and smokes, and smiles through her tears, calls herself silly. The moon makes everything blue-black, and she remembers the woods, and how they seemed lit as if by daylight, to vampire eyes.
Two sits, and smokes, and smiles through her tears, and thinks about Theroen. She thinks about the future, and about the past. She knows there are other vampires. Even had Theroen not told her so, she would have guessed it anyway. Surely he could not be the last of his kind. She knows there are others, and she knows from his stories that some of them, at least, are like him. Decent. Honest. Good. They are untainted by the evil that infested Abraham. They are out there; awake like her, under the same moon, under the same stars.
The decision is made between the flare of the match, and the cigarette’s last dying ember. Two could learn to love the light, perhaps. She could learn to be human, to pursue again those human dreams, human ambitions. A husband, maybe. A child. A life like any other.
She doesn’t want it.
Under the moon and the stars, it’s so much harder to lie to herself than it is under the sun. She wants what once was offered. What once she had. There are others, and they are out there, living the life she wants, knowing the power of the blood as they move their way through immortality.
Two sits, and smokes, and smiles through her tears. There are others. They are out there, and she knows it.
* * *
The End
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