by Matt Haig
She fights the taste and the memories and most of al she fights him, pul ing the knife away and pushing him back down.
It is then, midstruggle, that she sees her daughter flying up toward them, through the rain.
“Grab the knife,” Helen cal s at her.
And Clara reaches them and prises the weapon out of her uncle’s hand. But he elbows her away, and the knife fal s onto the Felts’ roof.
This is it, Helen thinks, as she contends with Wil ’s unrelenting strength. He is finally going to win.
The house is just another tiny black square on Orchard Lane, which itself is just becoming a thin scratch in the darkness beneath them.
“Please, Wil , just let me go,” she begs him. “Let me be with my family.”
“No, Helen. I’m sorry. It’s just not you.”
“Please—”
The vil age is nothing now. It’s just a piece of reverse sky, a dark space with white dots, moving fast away.
I love Peter, she realizes. I have always loved Peter. That is what is real. She remembers walking hand in hand with her future husband on Clapham High Street, giddy with love on a gray day as he helped her shop for art supplies.
“If you’d prefer somewhere else,” Wil shouts into her ear above the roar of air, “you know, just shout. Valencia, Dubrovnik, Rome, New York. Seattle’s got a good scene. I’m up for a long haul . .
. Hey, we never did Venice, did we? We could go and check out some Veronese . . .”
“Wil , we can’t be together.”
“You’re right. We can’t. But we can have a night, Helen. And then, in the morning, it wil pain me greatly to have to cut your—”
Before the threat is finished, Helen hears a noise. A voice she recognizes, roaring toward them.
Suddenly her body is being thrust into a different direction. Fol owing this, things go quiet, and she realizes she is fal ing. The vil age, the lane, and their house are moving toward her at great speed, but then she hears her daughter’s voice shouting at her.
“Fly, Mum! You can fly!”
Yes, she thinks. Yes, I really can.
She slows in the air and stops believing in gravity, as her daughter floats closer.
“It’s Rowan,” says Clara, pointing to the silhouettes of distant figures grappling far above their heads. “He’s fighting Wil .”
His Father’s Face
Rowan had heard his mother’s scream.
Its sound had woken him out of his despair and he had been able to see a shape in the sky he knew to be his mother and Wil . He converted his despair into rage and flew to her rescue. And now, as he pushes Wil closer and closer back to earth, he realizes he is capable of anything.
“Why Eve?” He is shouting, pushing down with increasing ease. “Why?”
Wil says nothing. His eyes are fil ed with a sad kind of pride.
Down and down and down.
“Look, Rowan,” Wil says, his raincoat flapping like a loose sail in front of them. “You’re like me.
Don’t you see that? You’re my son. You’re my blood. We could travel the world together. I could show you everything. I could show you how to real y fucking live.”
Rowan ignores him, as he heads over their roof, Wil ’s back scraping and loosening the top tiles. A blink later and they are above their garden, and Rowan pushes down hard, causing a fast descent toward the pond.
Once there, he holds Wil under the cold water, pushing with both hands. One against his face, the other against his neck. But he is using al his anger and al his strength to keep him there, on the pond bed, and to stop the relentless force inside Wil which is trying to rise up.
He won’t have long, he realizes. A whole lifetime of unrepressed blood drinking gives his father a power and stamina Rowan doesn’t possess. Al he has right now is anger, but it won’t be enough.
He closes his eyes. Tries to keep the hatred alive, even as Wil ’s hands press harder and harder against him, the force increasing relentlessly until Wil bursts up with a terrible, volcanic energy that throws Rowan backward into the pond. He puts his hand on the pond bed, to push himself back up. Feels something.
Not fish. Not plant.
Metal.
Wil is over him, ready to shove his son back under.
Rowan clutches at the metal, desperate.
Pain.
Cut just by touching the sharp edge.
“Takes a while to drown a vampire,” Wil says, fangs out, hands forcing Rowan back under, “but the night is young.”
“Get off him!” It is Clara and her mother, soaring fast down through the air toward the garden.
Wil looks up, as Rowan grabs something below the metal. Something wooden. A handle.
Wil laughs a maniac’s laugh. The laugh of the damned. He switches his attention back to Rowan, but not in time to see the dripping axe blade sweep fast as a dolphin’s tail out of the water and into his throat with such velocity he barely registers Rowan’s primal, life-grasping roar as the balance tilts one last time in the son’s favor. Wil , clutching the waterfal of blood spil ing out of his neck and over the axe, is thrust back into the water. Rowan holds him down, severing membranes, as black clouds of blood blossom in the water.
Just as his mother and sister land on the grass, he feels Wil ’s head gain strength and start to rise up, but Rowan has both hands on the axe now and keeps firm. As Wil lifts his head, the blade gristles through the rest of his neck, and his body final y eases out of life. Rowan can just about see the shadowy face—his father’s face—staring up at him. Calm. Thankful, even. As though this has been the only way he could find peace, with the eternal separation of the wanting body from the thinking mind, submerged in the liquid fog of his own blood.
Rowan stays beside him for a moment, watching the raindrops on the water. It takes a while for him to remember his sister and his mother are there, silent witnesses a few meters away.
“Are you al right?” he asks.
Helen stares at the pond. “Yes,” she says. Her voice sounds calmer and somehow more natural than usual. “We’re al fine.”
Rowan, senses heightened, hears footsteps coming from the house. His father—or the man he always thought was his father—steps out onto the patio. He has his coat on and car keys in his hand, having just returned. He looks at them al . Final y, his eyes settle on the pond, and as he moves closer to it, Rowan watches his face freeze as he realizes what has happened.
“Oh my God,” says Peter, leaning over the water. His voice is barely audible. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God . . .”
“He was going to kil Mum,” Clara explains. “Rowan saved her.”
Peter eventual y stops murmuring and stares at his brother amidst the dark, blood-fogged water.
As Rowan climbs off Wil ’s body, he remembers Eve, and panic surges through him again.
“Where’s Eve?” he says, to Clara and his mother. “What’s he done to her?”
They shake their heads.
And Rowan crumbles inside as he imagines Eve’s limp corpse sinking in the sea.
Change
Al the way to Bishopthorpe, Jared keeps talking to his daughter and watches her in the rearview mirror. She is lying on the back seat with his sweater tucked tight around her. The wind is blasting through her hair, and rain spots her skin and merges with her blood as he pushes ninety miles an hour on the winding roads.
“Eve,” he tel s her, almost shouting to be heard above the wind and rain. “Eve, please, stay awake.” He thinks of her scorn earlier that evening, of the frustration and anger that he’s seen in her eyes for two years. “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to change. Everything’s going to change. I promise you.”
Eve’s eyes stay closed, and he’s sure it is too late. Trees and unread road signs hurtle by the window. Only a few minutes after leaving Thirsk he speeds into Bishopthorpe and down the main street. The entrance to Lowfield Close speeds by on his right but he keeps going. A man leaving the Plow stops to watch this Corol a with its
smashed window flying by at more than double the speed limit. The fish-and-chip restaurant, the drugstore, the deli, al whip by like fleeting thoughts.
He only slows when he nears Orchard Lane.
When he reaches the Radleys’ house, he waits in the car a few seconds, to make absolutely sure he knows what he is doing. He tries again to speak to Eve. “Eve? Please. Can you hear me?”
The blood is stil leaking out of her. His sweater is now dark and damp with it, and he knows he doesn’t have long to make up his mind. A minute, maybe. Maybe less. Outside, al the other expensive houses sit calm and unknowing, and he feels their cal ous indifference to his daughter’s life.
Time pushes forward, making the decision more and more urgent. Have Eve live as something else, something hideous, something that could kil , or just let her slip away and become as harmless as al the other dead?
“Eve?”
Her eyes flicker slightly but don’t open.
He gets out of the car and opens the back door. As gently as he can manage, he lifts his daughter off the back seat and carries her across the street.
No, he tel s himself. No. What are you doing? You can’t . . .
He imagines his wife is somewhere. Watching. Judging as only ghosts can judge. “I’m sorry, Tess. I’m so sorry.”
He walks up the Radleys’ driveway with Eve hanging limp in his arms. Eventual y he kicks, firmly but not too hard, against the door. “Help,” he says clearly. Then louder. “Help!”
It is Peter who answers the door. He looks at Jared, then at Eve in his arms. And al the blood that is over both of them.
Jared swal ows back and then says what he now knows he must. “Save her. Please. I know what you are, but please, save her.”
Into the Dark
They al stand around, watching like shepherds in a macabre nativity scene. Rowan is stil soaked with pond water, but he is trembling from the sight rather than the cold: Eve, on their sofa, her blood oozing into the fabric as Peter checks her pulse.
“It’s okay,” Clara tel s her brother, squeezing his hand. “Dad knows what he’s doing.”
Jared is kneeling at the end of the sofa, gently caressing his daughter’s head as she slips in and out of consciousness. When Eve’s eyes next open, they meet Rowan’s.
“Help me,” she says.
Rowan is powerless. “It’s okay, Eve . . . Dad, give her blood. Save her.”
At the same time, Helen is urgently explaining to Jared something he already knows. “If we give her blood, she wil be a vampire. Do you understand? She’s likely to have very strong feelings toward whoever’s blood we use to convert her.”
Eve’s eyes are stil on Rowan. She understands enough of what is going on. She understands that he wants to save her, more than anything in the world. She understands what he understands, that if only he could save her, he could save himself. She understands also that she loves him, and as she stays inside his helpless stare, she knows that fate is something she has to steer herself.
She tries to speak. The words stay anchored inside her, weighing too much, but she keeps trying. “Yours” she says, but he can’t quite understand. A moment later and he is there, inches away, straining to hear. Her eyes close, defeated. It takes every single grain of energy left in her to say, “Your blood.”
And down she sinks.
Down and down into the dark.
Womb
She is aware of a taste.
It is a taste so complete that it isn’t confined to a single sense but is something she can feel in its warmth and see, as if the black ocean she is at the bottom of is suddenly colored a luminous, glorious red.
And she rises up, back into life.
She opens her eyes and sees Rowan. He is bleeding. There is an open cut on his palm, on the flesh below his thumb, and the blood is dripping down into her throat. He looks troubled, but the worry is melting slowly into relief. There are tears in his eyes, and she realizes he is saving her, right now.
As the blood keeps dripping, she realizes she truly knows him. She doesn’t know al the trivial details of his life, al the meaningless statistics that other people could know, but something deeper. It is the knowledge a baby has of its mother in the warm redness of a womb.
A total, pulsing, life-feeding knowledge.
And because she knows him this wel , she loves him, and she knows it is the love he feels for her, love contained in his blood, reflected like a mutual prayer back toward him.
I love you.
You are me and I am you.
I will protect you as you will protect me.
Forever.
Always.
She smiles and he smiles back.
She is reborn.
She is in love.
And after two years of darkness she is ready to embrace the true glory of the world.
“You’re okay,” Rowan tel s her. “You’re here. It’s al over. He’s gone.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For stil being alive.”
Eve slowly becomes aware of the other people in the room. Clara. Mr. and Mrs. Radley. Her dad.
He is watching her, with a conflict of relief and fear doing battle on his face.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
He shakes his head and smiles but in the intensity of the moment can’t quite bring himself to say anything at al .
A Few Nights Later
A Question for the Tempted
You may, in moments of temptation, decide you will abstain from killing but drink the blood of other vampires.
If you drink VB, the effects on your personality can never be predicted and your future can never be known. And as an abstainer, you want to know your future. You want to know that each day will be as predictable and monotonous as the last, because only then will you know that you can get through life in control of your instincts and free from selfish desire.
If you weaken, if you choose pleasure over principle, and open yourself to thousands of dangerous possibilities, then you will never be able to know tomorrow.
At any moment you could be overwhelmed with a sudden and uncontrollable desire, which could have devastating consequences. Yes, it is true that this might not happen. You might be able to live on a regular supply of VB and have a fulfilling life full of pleasure and free from pain, without causing any harm to yourself or others.
But ask yourself, is it really worth rolling the dice?
Well, is it?
Only you can answer that question.
The Abstainer’s Handbook (second edition), pp. 207–8
Raphael
Love is quite sick-inducing, Clara can’t help but think, especialy when it’s sitting next to you on the back seat holding hands and reading poetry. Of course, she is happy for her brother, and for Eve too, now that they are so blissful y content with each other, but having sat next to them for the whole journey, she could do with a breather. She looks in disgust as Eve nuzzles her head onto Rowan’s shoulder.
“I never realized vampires were so soppy,” she grumbles and stares out the window instead.
“Says the girl who used to cry about polar bears,” says Rowan.
“I stil do cry about polar bears.”
“What, so you’re going to go vegan again?” asks Eve.
“I’m thinking about it. I mean, now we’re going to be on vampire blood, it shouldn’t be a problem healthwise. I’m going to try and keep hold of my principles this time though.”
Eve taps a hand on Clara’s knee. “What we need to do is find you a nice boy to convert.”
Clara sighs. “Double-dating vampires,” she says, with some disdain. “Pleeease.”
It is five past midnight and they are parked on a dimly lit side street near the center of Manchester. Clara can just about see her mum and dad from here, negotiating with the doorman as young vamps and wannabes wait in line behind them.
Speaking of love, she’s also notic
ed how much better her parents seem to have been since Wil died. Sure, her dad was upset about his brother, but he’d seemed far more thankful that Helen was alive. It’s her mum though who has changed the most. She is so relaxed now, as if a weight has been lifted off her, and she doesn’t shrug off Peter’s arm when it attempts to go around her shoulders.
“So your dad was okay?” Clara asks Eve once her parents disappear inside the Black Narcissus.
“I wouldn’t say okay,” says Eve. “I mean it was good he was there when that policewoman spoke to you. But I think he’s stil finding it hard. Even though he understands that you guys are different from your uncle.”
Clara notices a group of young boys walk by. The youngest one is attractive, maybe even her own age. He has a pale, cute, pixielike face and as he stares straight at her she recognizes him from somewhere. Then she remembers. It’s the boy whose picture she liked the look of when she went on Neckbook. Seeing her smile at him, he taps on the glass and Eve nudges her as Clara rol s down the window. “So, you guys going to the Black Narcissus?”
“No,” Clara says. “My pa . . . Our friends are just picking up some bottles for us.”
The boy nods and smiles, then holds up a bottle with a handwritten label. “You can have some of this if you want.”
“I’m okay for now,” Clara says. “But thank you.”
“Wel , if you’re ever on Neckbook, send me a message. My name is Raphael. Raphael Child.”
Clara nods. “Okay, I wil .”
The boy walks away.
Double-dating vampires, Clara thinks to herself.
Maybe it’s not such a bad idea, after all.
Next to her, Rowan watches the entrance to the nightclub for his parents to reappear. He feels Eve’s head against his shoulder and knows they are doing the right thing. After al , he can’t see himself as a monster anymore. Eve is only in this world because of who he is, and whatever happens in the future, it wil be impossible to regret having the power that brought her back to life.