by R. A. Nelson
Sagan grunted in pain and arched his back sharply; a look came over his face that I had never seen before. The realization that this was it, everything was finished. It felt as if my insides were collapsing.
Wirtz remained attached to his neck, drinking deeply.
Lilli licked her lips as she watched, probably waiting her turn along with the others. They were going to drain him. They were going to drain him right down into death. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I fought with all my strength against the three vampires holding me.
Wirtz pulled back from Sagan’s throat and looked at me, smiling broadly. His face was slick with Sagan’s blood. There was even a little bit on the tip of his long nose.
“Sie werden wie ein Schwein sterben,” he said. And sank his teeth in again.
Then I saw it: Sagan gave up. Stopped fighting. Went so completely limp that I think the vampire could have finished the job without anyone even holding him.
“Sagan!” I screamed.
I managed to break free for just a moment, digging my fingers into the face of one of the dark-skinned brothers and smashing the other in the jaw with my forearm. But the huge third Verloren clung to me stubbornly, wrapping his giant arms around my chest before I could even touch the conference table.
Sagan’s hand started to twitch. It was the only part of him that was still moving. As if his hand had a separate little mind that realized it was dying too.
I couldn’t believe how quickly it was all happening.… Sagan was so alive, so fresh in my memory—and now he was becoming a thing in a dream that I didn’t even know anymore. His flailing arm stretched out farther and farther, as if it were losing its muscular ability to even hold itself taut.
I closed my eyes.
What was it Lena had said? About the Call?
That it wasn’t something you did out loud, it was something you did down deep in your throat.
Help us, I said, feeling the vibration as I spoke the words on the inside. The giant vampire smiled at me stupidly. The noise I was making must have sounded like a groan.
Please, Lena. Please come to me and help us. We need you. Lena. Donne. Anton. Please come help us or we will die!
I opened my eyes.
It was still true. Sagan was on the table, dying.
Please please please!
Something Sagan had once said when I was barely listening now flared in my mind:
Stars … some of them are already dead when we get to see them.
My eyes clouded up again. I blinked furiously to clear them.… Stars. See them.
“Sagan!” I yelled. “Sagan, can you hear me? Please, Sagan!”
His hand stopped flopping for a moment, then the fingers straightened, went still. Wirtz lifted his head from the wound in Sagan’s neck and smiled sweetly at me. Enjoying this so much.
“Josey Wales!” I screamed the name as loudly as I could. “Remember … remember Josey Wales, Sagan! What did he say? Remember! What did he say! Josey Wales! You gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?”
Sagan snarled deep in his throat and lunged. Wirtz had temporarily been thrown off guard by all my shouting. Sagan got his hand on it, the computer mouse. Clicked the button. I closed my eyes.
The room exploded with light.
I could see it, hideously intense, even behind my closed eyelids: the huge, enormous, gigantic, blazing 3-D ball of the sun. Sonnen.
The same image Sagan had shown me that very first time, only this time it was blaring full force in real color. A smothering, double-barreled volcanic assault of blinding illumination.
The vampires in the room screamed, a sound so monstrously anguished, it was almost alien to my ears. I felt the hands grasping me fall away as the young Verloren sank to the floor, crying out in pain as digitized sunlight blasted over them. The light was so intense, I was afraid to open my own eyes but had to stumble sightlessly forward to the conference table, where I threw myself on my stomach and slid across, hoping I was aiming in the right direction.
I slammed into something that felt almost inert and I realized at once it was the slumped body of the stocky vampire with the scar across his nose. The one Wirtz had called Bastien. I heaved him out of the way and dared open my eyes a slit; sunlight lanced my brain, forcing me to clamp my eyelids shut again. But I had seen enough: Wirtz was crawling away from the table, in obvious pain. Only the female seemed to be groping with some sense of purpose, reaching where she thought Sagan would be.
But I got to him first. I tugged hard and his long body slid away from her clutching fingers. Lilli shrieked with rage. I started to sling Sagan over my shoulder but he said, “No, I can see. Let me lead.”
I peeked again and, bracing my hands against the table, lifted off the ground and gave the female vampire a brutal kick in the neck that sent her sprawling against some computer monitors. Sagan caught my hand and guided me past the chaos of writhing Verloren bodies and out into the hall, where I could open my eyes again.
He staggered on the long run up the hall and I caught him. Blood was running down his neck, leeching into the top of his shirt, a little red starburst blossoming on his collar.
“Let me carry you!” I threw an arm around his waist, lifted him up. We were moving much faster now.
“How long do you think it will last?” I said as we rushed through the air lock.
“Not long,” Sagan said. “Not … the same stuff at all. Not natural light.”
I shoved him in the passenger seat of his Jeep.
“No, let me, you don’t even—” he started.
I ignored him and jumped in the driver’s seat.
“Keys!”
My heart plunged into my stomach as I watched the front door of the observatory while Sagan fumbled in his jeans. Come on, come on! Nothing yet. I grabbed the keys and slammed the Jeep into gear, turning off the driveway and smashing into the woods.
“What?” Sagan said.
“Lights! Where’s the lights?”
I ran my hand frantically over the dashboard. I didn’t need the lights to see, but to be seen. I wanted the Verloren to see.
“Here.” Sagan took my hand and guided me.
The lights flamed on, but now the forest was too bright; I had to throw my arm partly across my eyes to cut the glare. We bounced and rocked on the uneven ground, the cones of the lights bouncing too, little saplings disappearing under the beams.
As we raced toward the secret meadow and the tower, Sagan coughed and his cough sounded liquid. I wondered with fresh horror if he was bleeding deep inside.… Had his jugular been severed? Oh God.
I pulled at his shirt, trying to see, but it didn’t look like the bloody flower at the top of his collar had spread much farther.
“Hey, get your hand on that,” I said, trying not to panic. “Compress it.”
I pushed his hand to his neck and drove on. I came to the edge of the forbidden meadow with the buried munitions and skirted around it, driving as fast as I dared, branches whisking by on either side.
“Hang on.”
We jounced crazily on the long downslope to the bunker and I jammed the brakes, fishtailing on the gravel at the bottom. I leapt out and hauled Sagan inside.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he kept saying. “They’ll figure out where we went.… They’ll be coming soon.”
“I know, I know.”
Sagan undid the hidden padlock at the back of the bunker and I hurried to haul open the steel mesh. He got to his feet and lurched toward me but not fast enough to satisfy my vampire reflexes. I took hold of him and shot through the small opening, dragging him behind me. Then I started scrabbling in the boxes we had stowed there, swearing.
“I can’t believe we didn’t put the first aid kit on top!”
I tore his shirt open. The bleeding had mostly stopped, but a clear fluid was leaking from the wound. I swiped it away with cotton balls and splashed the cuts with hydrogen peroxide.
“Ouch! Hey!”
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br /> “Sit still.”
Sagan grimaced as the bite marks foamed. Then I swathed his throat with gauze, going round and round his neck.
“You were so brave,” I said, tying the gauze and trying not to cry. “I couldn’t believe how brave you were. Were you thinking about that the whole time? The STEREO image?”
“Not at first. I remembered it when I saw the red light glowing on the bottom of the mouse.… That’s the only way I could find it. But I knew if I tried to grab it, he would be too fast for me. I thought if I let my body go limp, played dead, I could bluff him into letting me go. Then you gave me the perfect chance when you started yelling.” He swore and touched his neck.
I kissed him on the forehead. “Are you okay? Please tell me you are okay.”
He took a deep breath. “Yeah. I was mostly faking it, I told you. But they’re coming,” he said weakly.
“We’re ready for this, remember?” I said. “They’re not. It ends right now. You got your radio thingy?” I pulled my own headset out and put it on.
Sagan patted his pocket. “Yeah. Emma, I don’t know.…”
“I don’t know either. I trust your plan. I trust you.”
He looked a little better now, not so pale. I got him some water, but he pushed it away after only a couple of swigs and scrounged through a box, pulling out long red highway flares and a set of night vision goggles.
“No flashlight?” I said.
“Too risky.” Sagan pulled on the goggles. “These have infrared illumination. Even if I have to go where there is no ambient light, like deeper into the cave, I’ll still be able to see.”
He fired up his laptop.
“What kind of battery life do you have?” I said.
“Max of about four hours with heavy video use.” As soon as the computer booted up, the five Webcams appeared on the screen as individual greenish squares. “Okay, we’re good to go.” He looked at me, squeezing my hand. “Be careful.”
I kissed him again.
“You too.”
I closed and locked the steel mesh behind me as we had planned and ran out of the bunker. Rushed to the top of the tower and took a 360-degree walk around the roof. What Sagan called position one. The only point higher was the steel spike with the blinking red airplane beacon that rose about thirty feet above my head.
I waved into the Webcam.
“Can you see me?”
“Yeah.” Sagan’s voice came through sounding scratchy. “Anything out there?”
“Nothing yet.”
I looked for the bunker but couldn’t see him.… He was too far inside.
“I’m looking at the cams,” Sagan said. “So far just a lot of greenish-looking metal and trees.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Just took an Advil. I’ll live. Remember, don’t let them catch you in a place where all of them can get at you at once. Do what we talked about to keep them separated. Don’t forget if they come from the—”
“I remember, I remember.”
I reached down and yanked the pull cord and the generator roared to life. The pockata pockata rhythm was kind of comforting. I didn’t really need it anymore—everything had a full charge—but I wanted to do two things—confuse the vampires’ sensitive ears, but mostly send a message:
Here I am. Come and get me.
I strapped on a carpenter’s belt full of tool caddies and Velcro pouches. We had figured it was best to travel light, so the biggest weapon I carried in it was the handheld angle grinder with the diamond cutting wheel.
I ran to the edge of the roof and threw my body out into space. I landed on the long iron arm that once held rocket engines over the blast shield far below. Sagan called the arm a gantry. This was position two.
I ran to the middle of the gantry and grabbed the chain saw and cranked it—it took several pulls, then finally caught. I gave the trigger a bunch of angry squeezes, filling the forest with a hostile ripping sound.
I lowered the idling chain saw over the railing on its nylon rope, leaving it dangling in midair. I touched the rope to stop the chain saw swinging, then ran back to the tower.
“Okay,” I said into the headset mike. “Everything’s ready.”
Sagan swore.
“What! What is it?”
“Thought I saw something. But now I don’t see it.”
I started breathing again. “Hey … Sagan … if we get through this …”
“When we get through this.”
“I want to …”
I paused. Squinted into the gloom. My heart fluttered. Yes. Six balls of lavender light were moving through the woods, coming fast, one a little ways out in front of the others.
“Emma!” Sagan said. “You there?”
“I can see them!” I said. “I can see them coming! They’ve taken the bait. They’re moving in a straight line from the observatory.”
“Be ready to move. What are they doing now?”
“Heading right for the meadow.”
Now the vampires were beginning to spread out. I wondered if Wirtz was the one out in front, but something told me it could be the girl, Lilli. She had been the least affected by the solar image.
The first lavender ball paused at the edge of the meadow as if expecting something nasty.
“Where are they?” Sagan said.
“They’re … they’re at the edge of the minefield … but now they’re stopping,” I said. “Almost like they know it’s dangerous. Come on. Come on! What’s holding you up!”
Two of the lavender figures came up behind the first, while the others spread wide, as if looking for a way around.
No! Come on, do it. Do it. Please.
Suddenly they were moving forward again, really flying, running straight across the secret meadow.
“They’re running through it!” I said into the mike. “But nothing … nothing’s happening! It’s not even slowing them down!”
The headset crackled over Sagan’s swearing.
“Get out of there, Emma! Get out of there now!”
The Verloren were taking shape as they left the clearing and came down the long slope toward the bunker. I could see them as distinct figures now. I was pretty sure it was the female up front; she was moving more gracefully than the others. Seemed to have more purpose.
I felt my teeth come together with a click, my face tightening. This was it. It was real.
I thought of Papi lying in his hospital bed. One of the few things he ever said about war.
In war there is only the fear and what it does to you, Enkelin. If you cannot do this brutal thing, then it will be done to you. It’s not fair. There is no fair. It is only who is still standing at the end. Time for fair … that is later.
I crouched behind a stanchion, trying to block as much of my own feeble glow as possible.
You can do this, I told myself.
The glowing figures broke through the last of the trees and approached the bunker. They paused near the entrance and stood as a group as if debating something. Wanting to look inside.
“What is it?” Sagan said.
I touched the headset. “Shhh! They’ll hear you!”
I could see the figures gesturing, pointing. Something there. They crowded around the entrance to the bunker, looking. My heart pinged in my ears.
I lowered myself to a little platform at the edge of the feral room with the desk, ready to drop to the next catwalk, thirty feet below.…
The vampires moved away from the bunker, swarming toward the base of the test stand. I pulled myself back up to the gantry, breathing rapidly.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said into the mike. “They were at the entrance to the bunker. Now they’re coming toward the tower.”
I could hear voices: the Verloren calling out to one another; I couldn’t understand the words. It was German, some kind of signal.
“I can see them!” Sagan said. “Clustered around the eastern side of the tower, but still on the ground. Pointing up.�
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I heard Wirtz’s deep voice: “Links. Rechts. Ausschwaermen.” Three of the figures peeled away to my left, two of the others to my right.
“Whisper if you have to,” I said. “It looks like they’re splitting up, each taking a section of the tower.”
“Maybe,” Sagan said. “One of them … yeah, he’s starting to climb the east face!”
“Is it the stocky guy? Bastien?”
“Can’t tell.”
I heard the climber curse. He had just gotten tangled in some of the noisemakers I had strung at odd angles all around the tower. I could hear him angrily tearing at them, then the noise stopped.
I ran back to the main body of the tower and launched myself over the edge, dropping to one of the smaller catwalks, landing as lightly as I could.
I touched the mike on the headset. “Position three. Where is he?”
“Climbing again,” Sagan said. “About a quarter of the way up but coming at an angle …”
“I see him.”
It was Bastien, all right. Rather than leaping, the burly vampire was climbing hand over hand, grabbing anything he could hold on to and throwing himself higher. A chill shot through my chest. If he managed to get those big mitts on me … I shook away the thought and reminded myself that I knew the tower a lot better than he did.
“This way!” Bastien shouted.
I swung over the edge of the catwalk and clung beneath it as the vampire scrambled up the side of the tower like an enormous crab. He got closer and closer while I felt my heart pound, waiting for the best moment to let go. The Verloren passed not thirty feet away, scuttling toward the top of the tower. I waited a few more seconds to be sure he was gone, then climbed back up onto the catwalk.
Sagan buzzed in my ear. “Two more.”
I looked down. The two other vampires below were on the move now: it was the guys who looked like brothers. They called back and forth to one another, almost appearing to run in midair as they jumped from the ground and started bounding up the tower in the same general direction the stocky Verloren had taken.
“I see them,” I said.
“And there are two others coming up the opposite side,” Sagan said. “Except they’re using the stairs.”
“Where is Wirtz?” I said.