by R. A. Nelson
“Almost there,” Sagan said, panting a little. “You just have to get to the lake and then follow the shore to the north until the ceiling cramps down.”
I could smell the water and then just over a rise I could see it. The lake was even bigger than I remembered but just as alien. The floor was rounded and smooth. I could see the dusky mounds leading down to water. The whole grotto was throbbing with dim, greenish light. It was almost impossible to believe this was the same place where I had first kissed Sagan.
“This way,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me along. “You’re going to have to help me.… Even with these goggles, it’s gonna be close to impossible for me to see it. The shore turns back north, and there’s this wall that sticks out a little ways, and you circle around it where the ceiling suddenly gets really low, and—”
“And … what?”
The voice came from behind me. A growling rasp of a voice.
I turned and he was there, Wirtz. Not thirty feet away.
The vampire seemed to have brought his own light with him. Beyond the usual lavender, there was a faint halo around his body, and I realized the glow was coming from the embers of his own burning. His hair was gone; smoke was rising from the scorched bump of his head. His clothes were in smoldering tatters, hanging from his body like burned flags in some places, stitched to his blackened skin in others. He stank of char.
“Well,” the Verloren said. “Look at … what you have managed to do to me, Mädchen.” He touched his arms, then dropped them by his sides. There was a painful catch in his voice. “It has been interesting, which is a better day than so many thousands and thousands of others. But even an interesting day comes to an end.”
Sagan moved closer to me, taking my hand and squeezing it speechlessly. I didn’t have to look at his face to know what he was telling me. I’m sorry.
“It’s not your fault,” I whispered to him.
“I agree,” Wirtz went on. That stupid hearing of his. “You know, you both gave it a good try. But now you will never leave this cave alive. Oh, there might be a way for you, Mädchen. You are fast. Perhaps fast enough to outrun me? But you’ll never do it carrying him. So. There is something interesting left for us. It is Ihre Wahl. Your choice. Are you of the Sonnen or the Verloren? Do you make the sacrifice or try to save yourself?”
He waited. I didn’t speak. I knew nothing I could say would help anything now. Sagan knew. He knew I would never leave him here to face Wirtz alone. There was no reason to even say it.
“Ah.” The vampire took a step toward us.
Sagan got in front of me, putting himself between Wirtz and me. I swore because I started to cry. Because I wasn’t crying for the obvious reason … I was crying because of what Sagan did. Because of how stupidly brave he was.
I thought Wirtz was going to laugh, but he didn’t. “So. You are going to let the Vollmensch make the choice for you? But I have to tell you. This is not really a choice. If he stays where he is and you stay where you are, I will have euch beiden. Both. Which is fine with me, if that is what you want.”
Sagan still hadn’t said a word. He stayed in front of me and fished in the pocket of his jeans. Pulled out his cell phone and opened it up.
“Oh.” Now Wirtz did laugh. A laugh full of razor blades and rust. “So you want to make a call? Do you think you will get any bars down here, Vollmensch? Maybe to your friends. Get them to come help you. No? Then call 911; I insist.”
Sagan didn’t dial. He closed the phone and put it back in his pocket. Then he slowly turned to look at me.
“I wish I could see you better,” he said. “But you’re mostly just outlines and shapes.” He pulled off the night vision headgear and dropped it at our feet. Then he took me in his arms and pressed me close to him, his lips next to my ear.
“You know, Emma … this is where I’m supposed to say, ‘Save yourself.’ ”
He let go of me and straightened.
“Save me,” Sagan said. “Save me.”
He took two running steps and jumped and landed in the lake.
Sagan disappeared beneath the silky black water. Gone.
My knees were weak. My heart … It was under the water with him. No. No!
I stared at Wirtz and he stared back. Then he lunged.
And I knew, even as I saw Wirtz coming, moving almost like a night cloud, my mind was so clear in that moment … I knew what Sagan meant. I turned and dove in the black water after him.
The water was cold, jerking my breath up in my chest. I plunged in deep. Immediately I felt a surging current take my body, pulling me under, deeper, farther away. Toward the river.
I could see in browns and blacks: long, fluted humps of stone, washed smooth as marbles by the movement of the water over eons. I pinwheeled my arms trying to keep from striking the sides. Too many thoughts pouring in. Sagan. Drowning. Wirtz.
Then I saw him, up ahead in the tube we were thundering through: Sagan, looking like a tangled shape that couldn’t possibly be human, but was. He was jerking and kicking, miserably probing with his arms to find anything, but at the same time not finding anything, because that anything could kill him.
We were totally submerged. How long could he hold his breath?
I stroked hard after him, rushing with the current, and swimming was better because at least I had some control. But I didn’t know what to do once I reached him. I did my best to grab him gently, but even that contact was more like a collision.
Bubbles flew out of Sagan’s mouth. I could see his eyes. I wanted to put my mouth on his, give him some of my air. But it was impossible. We were moving too fast; it was too dark, the current too strong. I could only grab onto him and stroke for the river, hoping it wasn’t much farther.…
Something changed. We were still underwater, but the smooth rock walls of the tunnel fell away. The current was rushing hard as ever, but it had joined a bigger, more sluggish one. The river. We had made it outside.
I had my hand on Sagan’s belt loops, tugging him backward against the slower current. The water was warmer. I could make out little details on the bottom: plants, submerged objects, the wooden legs of—
A dock. I could see a long wooden dock that protruded out into the deeper water. The bottom was rising now. Soon we’d be able to stand. I kicked hard for the surface and used one arm to blast Sagan up and out of the water.
Breathe. Breathe.
He was coughing. I had thrown him so far, when I came to the surface, he was on his knees in the muddy silt not far from the slope of the riverbank. I broke the surface and stroked toward him, watching him try to stand, then fall over, catching himself with both hands. But we were out. We were out and safe and …
The water behind me exploded.
He must’ve followed me the instant I jumped. Wirtz. I was still half turned toward Sagan, watching him crawling up on the bank to lie in the grass, then the vampire was there, crashing into me.
I was driven down in the silt, floundering with my back on the muddy bottom. Nothing around me but the thrashing of the sea-green water and millions of bubbles and the shocking sight of the vampire’s face, half scraped away by Sagan’s Jeep.
I fought the vampire’s hands, working to keep them off me, trying to come up again and again, getting pushed back down. And then …
I felt Wirtz pulling away, and my head came up out of the water. Sagan was screaming something at me, running into the water and screaming.
“Stop him! Stop him, Emma! We have to …” He plunged past me, heading straight for Wirtz. “Help! Help me, come on!”
The sun had risen. During that time in the cave. It was just a low orange ball peering through a finger of cloud and trees on the horizon. But the sun had come up.
I could barely see—my sunglasses were in my tool belt—had to nearly close my eyes as I pushed off and flew past Sagan, tackling Wirtz around his stomach and locking my arms. He went under, but the water was too shallow. He was so buoyant, I lifted him up into th
e light again.
The vampire fought against my grip, tearing desperately at my fingers and kicking. We both went under again. It was harder to bring him up this time as he fought to get to deeper water. My heels were skidding on the silty bottom. My face was plastered against his back, my eyes closed against the dimly burning sun.
Sagan must’ve gotten to us then, because I felt him grab Wirtz’s legs. Wirtz kicked hard and Sagan was thrown out of the water. But the kick caused the vampire to lose momentum. I lifted him into the sunlight again and worked to keep from losing ground, hauling his body toward the shore.
I could feel the vampire’s strength waning as mine grew. Now he began to shake all over, vibrating in my arms. I raised him higher. I was afraid to try to throw him on the shore, afraid he would get away with one last effort. He took me under one last time, but the water was so shallow here, parts of his body were still exposed.
Sagan took hold again.
The vampire gave up trying to kick us loose and started stroking for deeper water. Trying to find his way back to the cave, his only hope. We hauled back against him. Wirtz’s body was jerking manically and he was moving, but not making much headway.
Then he gave that up and fought his last fight. I clung tightly as he rained blows on my head and shoulders and back and then tried his teeth. Then his fingernails. Sagan kept losing his hold and grabbing back on. We pulled Wirtz back to the surface. The sun was getting higher and higher. Wirtz’s body began to shake, and it was nothing that he was doing. The sun was shaking him.
His body began to vibrate in our arms like a washing machine that had been thrown off balance. He vibrated faster and faster, arching his back. His hands lost their grip on me and fell back over his head. We had him in the shallows, both of us on our knees pulling him farther and farther into the light until we had the Verloren on the weedy grass at the edge of the river.
He never stopped shaking, only vibrated faster and faster, every muscle tensing, the toes of his half-burnt boots pointing and lifting, fingers spreading and flexing.
I squinted my eyes open just enough to see his eyes wide, his mouth wide, tongue protruding. He was trying to say something. Wanted us to hear it. His voice was so far gone, I would have had to put my head closer to understand the words, but I didn’t dare, figured it was one last trick. One last chance to taste my throat. And then I knew it wasn’t a trick because in his eyes I could tell that he was seeing something that wasn’t me. So I bent to listen, and the vampire spoke.
“So … after all … it is, isn’t it? Would you … look … at that. I knew you could. I knew. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you …”
His eyes closed. His body began to shake itself to pieces. Burnt clothing fell away, long ragged fissures opened up in his skin, his teeth came loose, one after another, and passed into the blackness of his throat. Then his tongue. Then the muscles and tissues under the skin, and it was too much, we had to let go, and the powerful Verloren turned to smaller and smaller bits before our eyes. Finally just cells and particles of cells. And he was gone just as if he had never been.
I let myself fall back and blindly crawled backward up the bank with Sagan. I don’t know how long we lay there. I was touching his hand, not holding it. That’s all the energy I had left. Our heads were turned toward one another and we didn’t speak. My eyes were mostly closed, just feeling the river water trickle down the side of my face.
“Over,” Sagan said finally. “Over.”
I think maybe we slept a little. I don’t know.
“So why did you come out of the bunker?” I said.
I had my sunglasses on. Sagan was looking at the sky. The sun was all the way up now.
“I lost the signal for the Webcams and couldn’t hear you anymore on the headset,” he said. “Maybe it was damaged when you …”
“I know. Maybe so.”
“So I came out. I wanted to help. I couldn’t find you. I put my laptop on the wall and climbed up the stairs. I ran into the Sonnen coming down. I thought it was all over. I thought they were Verloren. They had been looking for you. Then we saw what Wirtz was doing. The …”
“The Verlust.”
“Yeah. So I thought of the Jeep. I know, stupid, right? But it was right there. I just needed a couple of distractions. Something to cover up the sound. And something to temporarily blind him. I had the sound cube back on my desk and the firework was in the Jeep. I let Anton do it. He threw them out there. I was scared to death the cube would get damaged and not work. Thank God for Bose.”
I actually laughed a little. “And you got them to push it so you wouldn’t have to crank the engine.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you know it was close to sunrise?”
“I didn’t think about it,” Sagan said. “I guess that’s why the Sonnen cut out when they did. I realized it when we were in the cave. Something Wirtz said about the end of the day.”
“So you took your cell out—”
“To check the time. Yeah. So I knew the sun was coming up. You remember what I said about being down in a cave? How it messes with your sense of time? I finally felt like I had Wirtz at a disadvantage. He was on my turf. I was one step ahead of him. I didn’t know if he would follow us but figured either way he was dead or we were safe.…”
I wriggled my hand into my wet jeans and found my pocket watch. I couldn’t get it to open. Somewhere along the line it had been crushed.
“Oh God, I’m sorry. It’s destroyed,” I said, holding it up for Sagan to see.
He frowned, and then we laughed. Laughed so hard, I started crying and then I couldn’t stop crying until Sagan held me a very long time.
* * *
Sometime later, when I could finally speak again, and he could let me go without me feeling like I was falling off the earth, I said, “You know, when we jumped in—that channel—it could have gone anywhere. It could have squeezed down into some kind of pipe that was too tight for our bodies to fit through. We would’ve been stuck there. Drowning.”
Sagan smiled, but it was a shaky smile. “Yeah. But I figured there was too much flow. It had to be something wide going to the river. The thing that scared me the most was hitting a rock.”
Now I smiled. “I saw your eyes.”
“Not funny.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“What you were going to do?”
Sagan rolled over. “Oh. I knew Wirtz would hear it. He would know. But I thought you could figure it out.”
I touched his fingers. “What if I hadn’t?”
“But you did.”
I thought about it a little while. “There are so many other things.… What do you think he was talking about? Wirtz? The last thing he said.”
“I’m tired,” Sagan said. “I can’t think anymore. If I don’t get up now, I just might lie here forever.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“Come on. We’ve got a Jeep to flip over.”
I wasn’t ready to go home yet. We drove into town and spent the day in a hotel room that was so cheap, it had no phone. We lay on the bed and talked a long time about what I should tell my mother. What lies would she believe. But the more we talked, the more we understood that nothing I could say was going to be good enough. I would have to be good enough. Just me.
I lay on top of the covers and wondered if I would ever see the Sonnen again. I had to. Had to thank them. I wanted to learn more. Most of all, I wanted to know them because I wanted to know people who were going through a curse that forces you to be alone and had found a way to not be alone anyhow.
Would it ever really come, the Sonneneruption? Sagan said we had entered a period of historic solar activity. If the sun did explode, would they still be on their mountain, my Lena, Anton, and Donne? Did I want to be there too? Would I let the cure sink into my skin, carry me all the way back to where I used to be?
Some of this stuff I said out loud, some just to myself.
Sagan lay beside me, listening and not listening. He tried holding me, but I couldn’t stand it. It was too much. So we lay there not touching and the shades were drawn, but I couldn’t sleep. Then I slept for ten hours. All my dreams were of the outdoors. Nothing was in color.
That night, after a shower and some fresh clothes, I was ready. Almost.
I remembered the number of his room, 332, so we didn’t even have to stop at the desk. Sagan waited outside watching the TV that never noticed when no one was there.
“Enkelin!”
My heart swelled. Papi was sitting up, and for a little while I fell apart completely; he looked so much better. It was easier to hug him, and for a long time that’s all I did. I told him some things and didn’t tell him others. I had Sagan smuggle in a jamocha milk shake for him. Other than my grandmother’s strudel, jamocha shakes were Papi’s favorite sweet thing in the world.
I sat the milk shake on the little rollaway table in his room. Water condensed on the side of the cup. The water began to form little beads. When the beads got heavy enough, they ran down and collected around the base. By the time I left, the water was spilling onto the floor in a tiny trickle and the shake was past drinking. Neither of us cared.
The parking lot hadn’t changed a bit. Our building was just as seedy. All except for one window that looked brand new. We sat in Sagan’s Jeep staring at the steps that led up to my door.
“Just tell them … that you will tell them … someday,” Sagan said.
I blew out a heavy sigh. “You don’t know my mom. She will kill me, then raise me from the dead again for an explanation. She might not even let me through the door.”
“She’ll let you in.”
“She’ll never let me see you.” I started to cry, and he dried my tears with his shirt.
“I’ll see you. I’ll never stop seeing you.”