I buried my face in my hands, taking a breath so deep and large it stretched my chest enough to pull at the scabs. We'd done it. We'd restored the balance.
"There remains," she said with a careful edge that brought my head up. "The issue of Lucien Dubois."
"He brought the nightwalkers to heel," Eleanor said. "We all felt it."
"Then he fed them to the void," Julian said. He caught my eye and grimaced, looking down. "Sorry, but it's true. Seamus got the camera feed."
Emeline spoke very carefully, "The Sun Guard will continue to monitor the situation with the shadow being to ensure that it has retreated for good, and as such we must watch Mr. Dubois as well. It is our job to protect humanity."
"The Sun Guard has no protocols to deal with beings of the shadow," Talia said, jabbing a finger at the computer she'd scanned the guard's library into. "We all saw clearly enough what he became. He's.... outside our jurisdiction?" She looked hopefully at DeShawn, who shrugged.
"It's all beyond me," DeShawn said. "All I know is I don't feel like the damn shadows are watching me anymore."
"You know more than that," Seamus said. "You saw the same thing I did."
DeShawn fingered the golden cross that lurked beneath his t-shirt. "I did at that, but hell if I know what it means."
"What," I grated out the words, "did you see?"
Seamus dragged a hand through his hair and met my eyes. "DeShawn and I were first off the helicopter. We saw what went down via the cameras and knew you'd both need blood, and Maeve insisted mine could do the most good."
I stared. He knew damn well what could have happened if my hunger had overcome me. I'd almost drained him dry once already, when the hunger was too much and his blood too sweet. Seamus did not flinch from my stare. He only smiled, a tiny bit.
"I know. Regardless, I was a step behind DeShawn. Lucien watched over you both, and nearly ran us off before DeShawn identified us. He did not speak, but he nodded to us and left."
"He was solid? He was whole?"
Seamus nodded. "I saw no sign of the... fading... we witnessed on the cameras. He was healthy, as much as any vampire can be, and his eyes were blue."
Seamus was not joking. He held my gaze, steady as the stone of the island his people hailed from, and a shock ran through me, electric and dizzying. Claudette's had been hazel, before she turned to ash.
"You are certain he survived?"
Seamus blinked. He did not know of Ragnar's experiment, of my sire's final moments, and I didn't have it in me to explain.
"We followed him for a while. He used his powers easily enough. I do not think he was hurting, or on the verge of death, when we lost track of him."
"Do you know what you did to restore him? What exactly?" Emeline asked. I forced myself to look away from Seamus, and found Emeline's hand trembled upon Talia's shoulder.
"No..." I frowned, struggling to remember those final moments. "I felt some power in my blood awaken, and I recalled what Padhi had said about basing his cure off of my blood, and so I channeled all of my strength into that feeling. It was strange, and I can't feel that power now."
"Mr. Dubois's transformation is not the only strange part, Magdalene," Emeline said.
From her pocket, Emeline produced a slim enameled compact, the same one she'd handed to me when my eye had first taken the mote of silver, and passed it to me. Unable to hide my shaking hands, I held it up and flipped the lid open. A ghost stared back.
"Lucien Dubois's eyes are blue," Emeline said. "And so are yours."
We Begin, Again
London heals. It lies beneath a blanket of snow, pristine and glittering white, and I am told this is unusual, but I find nothing strange about the cold. Maeve and Emeline eye that gentle cloak of ice, muttering under their breath about forces outside of this world. The memory of the shadow being haunts them still, and though I understand their wariness, I do not share it.
London sleeps. She will be reborn again, come the spring, and if this snow never falls again it will be a blessing, for I believe it a bandage, a balm to the mortals who live here. All they can talk about is the cold, the strangeness of the winter white, and they no longer speak of blood in the streets, of friends and family ravenous for the night.
Cold dampens the sense of smell, and even we vampires are not immune to its effects, and so the snow soothes our ancient hearts, for the stains of old blood run deep on these streets. The snow takes their scent away. For now.
But it is not cold enough to take the scent of the sun from me. The tires of my bike crunch icy pavement, an impossible ride at impossible speeds for anyone not of my kind, but the winter will not slow me. I have slept too long for hibernation, and need not wait until the spring to harvest the hay.
He teases me, dancing through the city, making use of powers that we once thought the gift of the sun and the moon but now know are born of our own blood. At least, that is our best theory. Every time I broach the subject with Maeve she grumbles and flutters her hands at me. Her eyes are bloodshot most days, now, stained by the dust of the library she claws through in search of answers.
She won't find those answers in any library of the Sun Guard. Some days I think I should lead her to DeShawn's storage shed, show her the wealth of secrets and lies crabbed out in Ragnar's stiff, formal hand—he was so ancient that the invention of writing came late to him in life—and my own flowing script.
Some days I think such secrets aren't for mortal kind, and those are the days that win out.
For we were bound, we vampires. Split in twain and set against one another in a past so distant none are left alive to tell that tale. Whatever the reasons are, they tell a clear enough story. Mortals suffered us to live if only they have the illusion of control.
To learn the real reasons would rip open a wound too old, push into danger everything I've learned to love. Whatever I am, whatever I was meant to be, mortal life remains precious to me—fleeting and bright and terrible.
And I am too selfishly happy to start that battle.
The scent of hay warms the frigid winds and I bank around a tight turn, following my nose, letting my hair stream out behind me with no helmet. Lucien flits across the rooftops, no longer a nightwalker, free of the Sun Guard's hunt, but not free of mine.
I hunt my lover through the night, and laugh with joy, because while we play, I know that he wants me to find him. And I will. Over and over again.
[END]
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Shadow Redeemed Page 24