Afterlife (18 page)

I traced a shaky word in lines of frost across their window:
Sorry!

Lucas scowled. “When were you two joking about her showering
with you?”

Balthazar, trying to get his bathrobe on without dropping
the pillow, scowled right back. “I’m going to the communal bathrooms for
privacy. Which is pathetic, but that’s what we’re stuck with.” He grabbed his
pajamas and hurried out.

Into Lucas’s ear, I whispered, “I wasn’t talking about
showering with Balthazar.”

“I know,” he said, flopping back onto the bed. “I trust you.
I just like giving him hell sometimes. It’s fun.”

“Ready?”

He nodded, taking a deep breath, as if already trying to
calm himself toward sleep. “Yeah. Let’s try it.”

Within half an hour, Lucas was sound asleep, and Balthazar
was apparently taking the world’s longest shower. I waited for the rapid
movements of Lucas’s eyelids and thick lashes before gathering myself together
and taking the long.
deep
dive into what I hoped would
be the world of his dreams.

That world took substance around me. However, my triumph
faded as I realized where we were: in the shabby, abandoned movie theater where
118 Lucas had been killed. He stood several steps ahead of me in the lobby. One
hand clutched a stake, and the other covered his nose and mouth. I didn’t
understand why until I smelled smoke and realized that was the reason for the
haze around us.

From the movie screen came a warm flickering that I knew
wasn’t a movie — it was a fire.

Yeah, it’s another nightmare, I realized. Now to see if I
can wake him up.

Before I could speak, Lucas said, “Charity.”

“Hello, baby.” Charity emerged from the shadows. She didn’t
say baby like it meant honey or sweetheart, more like she was talking about an
actual infant. The firelight danced in her pale curls. Her long, lacy dress was
clean for once — only in dreams. “How is my dear baby tonight?”

“Let me go,” he said. His voice broke on the words.

“Cuuldu ‘l ifl wauted lu.” Site wiled liiuwpltautly. “Aud I
duu ‘l wautlu.”

“Lucas,” I said. “It’s okay. Don’t look at her. She’s just a
dream. Look at me.”

But he didn’t look at me. I stepped between him and Charity,
hoping to break the dream spell that kept him from fully recognizing me, but it
did no good. He only looked through me, as ifl weren’t even there.

“Are you searching for Bianca?” Charity’s concern would have
sounded genuine to anyone who didn’t actually know her. “She might be trapped
in the fire. You must save her!”

Lucas ran from her, straight toward the flames. As I whirled
to go after him, Charity said, “He’s mine now, Bianca. You’ll never have him
again.”

How was it possible for Charity to see me when Lucas hadn’1
been aware of my presence, when she was only part of his nightmare?

Her eyes locked with mine. Her smile changed character until
it was less defiant, more conspiratorial. Almost as if we were in on a joke
together. How could that happen in Lucas’s dream?

It couldn’t.

I realized she Wasn’t part of his nightmare. She was the
cause. This wasn’t a dream of Charity; this was the real thing. Here. In Lucas’s
mind. She must have seen the realization on my face, because her grin widened,
showing her fangs. “I told you. Lucas is mine.”

“HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS?” I SHOUTED OVER the crackling of
the fire. “How are you in Lucas’s head?”

“I created Lucas.” Charity twirled her finger through one of
her pale blond curls as though she were flirting. Having died at fourteen, she
looked too young to be so evil, baby softness in her cheeks. “I sired him. That
means his mind and all the rest of him belong to me now, and forever.”

Nobody had ever mentioned this to me before. It would never
have applied in my case; as the child of t\vo vampires, I would never have
required a “sire” to turn me. Although I’d always known the relationship
carried with it a powerful bond, I’d never realized it extended so far.

“Don’t make him dream about this.” I hated to beg her, but I
didn’t know what else to do. “He has enough to deal with.”

Charity cocked her head to one side as she came closer to
me, creepy and threatening even in the realm of imagination. “I didn’t create
this nightmare. Lucas did. Or was it you? You’re the one he keeps trying to
save.”

From deep within the burning theater, I heard my own scream.

“Over and over, they threaten you,” Charity said. “Over and
over, they kill you. Some vampires dream about their murders; others about
their remorse. But not Lucas. The phantoms of his mind, the thousands of
nightmares he endures, they’re all about one thing — losing you time and
again.”

And in waking. Lucas didn’t have the comfort of knowing that
it was only a dream. I really had died. Being with him as a ghost couldn’t entirely
heal that wound. By making him experience that moment over and over, Charity
kept Lucas on the verge of losing it and turning into a killer.

“They’re his dreams, “she whispered into my ear. “I just
make them worse. I make the fire burn hotter and the blood flow faster, so he
can be even more afraid for you. Instead of drinking his blood, now I drink his
pain.”

“I hate you.”

“His pain, and yours.”

I ran from her into the theater. It would ‘ve been faster to
just think myself to Lucas’s side, but quickly I remembered that, in dream
worlds, I 12o didn’t have ghostly powers. The old human limitations held me
fast.

As I ran, I heard Lucas calling, “Hang on, Bianca! I’m
coming!”

The scene in the theater horrified me. The movie screen
itself was on fire, falling away from the wall in blackening strips that
writhed and curled in the heat. Plastic cornices on the walls were melting into
bubbling streaks. And in the seats, which had been empty on that night, were
dead bodies, lying crumpled and bloody. Every one of their throats had been
torn out.

They’re the victims of vampires, I realized. The ones Lucas
has seen. The ones he’s scared he’ll create. Some of the corpses were on fire,
too.

Disgusted and nauseated, I stumbled away from the corpses
and
fell !backward
. As I hit the ground, I felt the
sharp lash of fire across my calf. With a gasp I pushed myself up again to see
a red, blistering weal just under my knee; a piece of still — smoldering wood
on the ground must have burned me.

The danger was becoming more real. I had to get us out of
here. “Lucas
!
” I shouted.

Once again, I heard my own voice — yet not mine — calling
his name as well.

Pushing my way through the smoke, eyes itching and throat raw,
I finally caught a glimpse of Lucas. He was at the very front of the theater,
where part of the ceiling had collapsed into a jumble of metal and timbers.
Beneath the timbers, face creased in pain,
lay …
me.
Or Lucas’s dream version of me, anyway. My long red hair was splayed out on the
floor, mirroring the blood pooling around my abdomen. The dream me was even
more badly burned and blistered than I was. It was hard even to look at her.

“Lucas, no
!
I’m over here!” I came
closer, willing him to hear me.

And he did, turning to see me. But his expression remained
desperate, and he said only, “It’s okay, Bianca. I’m going to get you out.”

Still he hadn’t broken through the powerful spell of the
dream, but now I understood why Lucas believed in his illusions so desperately:
Charity made sure that he would. Determined to get through to him, I started
forward, but a cold hand closed fast around my wrist.

“He has to learn that he can’t save you,” Charity said. Her
blond curls were the color of the firelight. “And you have to learn that you
can’t save 121 him, because he’s mine.”

A searing jolt of power arced through me, like electrocution
times a thousand. I screamed harder than I’d known I could scream — and the
pain stopped.

I opened my eyes to see that I was once again hovering in
Lucas’s and Balthazar’s dorm room. Charity had flung me out of the dream.

“What the
— ”
Balthazar pushed
himself upright just as Lucas’s eyes opened wide. I must have screamed in this
world as well as in the dream. Lucas saw me and blinked hard. “Bianca?”

“I’m here!” I flung myself into his arms and hugged him
tightly, willing myself to be as solid as possible. ‘Tm okay!”

“In the dream, you were — That didn’t happen to you, did it?
You didrn ‘t have to go through that?”

“No,” I said, thinking only of the broken, burned version of
me he had glimpsed. But as my leg brushed against the side of his bed, I
winced, and Lucas looked down in concern. Silvery blood oozed through the
pajama bottoms, revealing the long line of the burn against my calf.

“Bianca!” Lucas slid off the bed to look more closely. He
peeled the pajamas upward, which stung — but made him wince harder. Of course;
my wraith’s blood was burning him. He just didn’t care. Wisps of smoke drifted
up from his singed fingers as he examined the wound. “This really happened.
Things that happen in my dreams have the power to hurt you.”

“It’ll heal. It’s not anything major. Once I’ve faded out
once, the worst will be over.” Although I tried to sound reassuring, my voice
shook despite myself. The burn hurt worse than I’d thought I could hurt, after
death.

Balthazar, rubbing his head sleepily, wandered over to our
side of the room. His eyes widened as he saw my burn. “How did that happen?” I
turned to him, fear instantly transmuted into anger. “Why didn’t you tell us
about a vampire’s sire
?
”

“What are you talking about?” Taken aback by my shift in
mood, Balthazar didn’t seem to know how to answer. “You both know what a sire
is, right? I don’t see how you could not know.”

“I mean, the part about the sire coming into your dreams.” I
rose from Lucas’s bed and stepped closer to Balthazar, close enough to make him
m straighten up. My leg ached, but I ignored it. “Why didn’t you tell us that?”

Balthazar’s face fell, and he sagged backward as he realized
what I was saying. “Damn it,” he swore. “Charity.” Lucas went pale. “Wait — in
my dreams — Charity’s reaR”

“Did you assume your sainted little sister Wouldn’t do
that?” I demanded. “Or was it just more fun to let us figure it out for ourselves?”
Balthazar’s mood shifted so fast it startled me. He got right in my face, his
expression twisted in anger darker than I’d ever seen from him before. “First,
nothing about this is fun. Not for you, not for Lucas, and not for me.”

“Then why didn’t you
— ”

“Shut. Up.” Balthazar said. Lucas rose from his knees at
that, maybe ready to get into the argument and defend me, but Balthazar never
glanced toward him. Our eyes remained locked. “Second, I didn’t warn you guys
because it doesn’t happen often. The sire has to really want to mess with
somebody like that, and besides, doing that — it weakens a vampire for days.
Maybe weeks. That’s why nobody does it. If she’s taking over Lucas’s dreams
every night. Charity would have to
be .
..
beyond
obsessed.”

“In other words, Charity,” I retorted.

Lucas wasn’t part of the argument, but what we were saying
had its own effect on him. “Charity’s really in my head,” he murmured. “She’s
the one making me so crazy.”

Balthazar grimaced. “Yeah, she is. It’s sick and twisted — and
yes, I understand by now that Charity’s sick. Even when I miss her, even when I
think I can fix her
— ”
His voice broke, but he kept
going. “I always know she’s broken.”

“Balthazar
— ”
I said, more softly.
trying
to give him an out.

“God, you cannot be quiet and let anyone else talk, can
you?” He got closer to me — closer than he’d been at any moment other than the
times we’d kissed. “Third, and last, I want you to get one thing straight.
Whatever mistakes I made after you died, I’m not the one who turned Lucas.

Charity did. And I didn’t force you to let Lucas rise from
the dead. So stop blaming me for it.”

With that, Balthazar turned, grabbed his bathrobe and
cigarettes, and went for the door. I wanted to protest but knew it would just
drive him 122 over the edge. But Lucas said, “Hey. Balthazar.” He paused with
his hand on the knob. “What?”

“You shouldn’t have yelled.” Lucas winced and then said,
“But You’re not wrong.”

Balthazar simply stalked out, slamming the door behind him.
Down the hall, I could hear a couple of people muttering about the noise.
Lucas, hearing it, too, said, “Hope nobody recognized your name when he was
shouting.”

“I can’t believe you took his side.”

“I’m on your side. No matter what.” Lucas put his hands on
my shoulders, which were solid enough to bear the touch. “But you’ve been
giving him attitude at the slightest excuse ever since — ever since we died, I
guess. That is never going to stop sounding weird.”

“He shouldn’t have taken you along that night!”

“I shouldn’t have gone with him. But it was my choice, my
call. Besides
— ”
Lucas clearly didn’t like admitting
this, but he went ahead. “Losing you hit him almost as hard as it did me. If I
wasn’t responsible for my actions that day.
neither
was he.”

I drifted slightly farther from Lucas, allowing myself to
float to the windowsill, where I could tuck my knees against my chest. Hugging
myself like a child, I realized, a kind of comfort I hadn’t outgrown. At the
moment, I felt like there were way too many things I should
‘
ve
outgrown, but hadn’t.

“I know how badly you want someone to blame,” Lucas said.
“Someone who’s here, now, so you can give him hell. But Balthazar’s our friend,
Bianca. He’s done a lot for us.”