Afterlife (2 page)

When Lucas had first learned that I was born to two
vampires, he had to overcome his revulsion of the undead in order to hold true
to his love for me. If he could remember what it had meant for him to accept me
for what I was, maybe he could begin to face what he, too, had become.

Haltingly, I spoke his words as they came back to me: “Even
though you’re a vampire — it doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t change how I feel
about you.”

Lucas blinked, and for the first time since he had risen
from the dead, his eyes seemed to fully focus. I realized that his fangs had
retracted, leaving only the unearthly pallor and beauty of the vampire. In
every other way, he looked human. He looked like himself.

He whispered, “Bianca?”

“It’s me. Oh, Lucas, it’s me.”

Lucas clutched me to him in an impossibly tight embrace, and
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. I felt hot tears against my shoulder; I
wished I could cry, too. Our legs gave out at the same time, and we sank to the
floor together.

I glanced over my shoulder to tell Balthazar and Ranulf to
leave us, but they were already halfway out the door.

Once we were alone, I ran my hands through Lucas’s hair,
stroked his back, and kissed his cheek. “You made it back,” I said. “We’re
together. We’ll be okay.”

“I never thought I’d see you again. I thought you were dead.”

“I am. We both are.”

“Then how — how is this real
?
”

“I’ve become a wraith. Only, wraiths like me who were born
to it, born to two vampires — we have powers the others don’t. I can have a
body if I want, at least for a while. If I’d realized
before
…
if I could have told you…
this
would
never have had to happen.”

“Don’t say it.” His voice was strangled.

We rested our foreheads against each other, and the contact
should have been comforting, but we were both so cold.

“My body feels heavy. Wrong. Dead.” Lucas’s hands tightened
on my shoulders. “And yet there’s this hunger making me wild. Driving me
insane. You’re back in my arms — I’d lost you forever, and here you are — but
the only thing I can think about, the only thing I want
— ”
He couldn’t finish; he didn’t have to. I knew all he wanted was blood.

“It will get better.” My parents had always told me so, and
weren’t most of the vampires of Evernight proof of that?

Lucas didn’t seem to believe me, but he said, dutifully, “Gotta
hang on.”

“Right.”

For a few moments, we simply held each other. The faded film-star
faces on the tattered movie posters around us seemed to be watching us, an
audience of dark, soulless eyes. When I leaned against Lucas’s shoulder, I
tried to breathe in the familiar scent of his skin, but that was gone. Either
his scent had been lost when he died, or I no longer had a sense of smell like
I had before, or both. So many things had been taken from us.

But not each other, I reminded myself. We have to remember
that.

First I had to get him out of this place, where he had been
murdered. We needed to go someplace better, more familiar. Vic’s house, I
decided. We’d hidden out there for the past month or so this summer, while Vic’s
family vacationed in Italy. Our little makeshift apartment in the wine cellar Wouldn’t
be that much more comforting — it was where I had died just the day before — but
maybe we could remain there until we figured out what to do.

“Come on.” I took one of his hands in mine. The coral
bracelet he’d given me for my last birthday jangled at my wrist. “They’re
waiting for us outside.”

“Who’s waiting for us?” Lucas couldn’t seem to focus; it was
like he was listening to a cell phone at the same time he was trying to listen
to me. Not in a rude way; he just couldn’t help it, which was worse.

“Balthazar — and Vic and Ranulf, too. They came back from
Italy after you e-mailed them. Remember?”

Lucas nodded. His hand tightened around mine, so hard it nearly
hurt. Lucas didn’t seem to have any way to judge his new strength — and this
despite the fact that he already had enhanced power from having been bitten. He
worked his jaw, as if practicing biting down, over and over.

If he needed me to be the steady one, I would be. Of course
I was better at being dead, I decided; I’d had a whole day’s practice. It had
taken me a few hours to get the hang of being noncorporeal. So no wonder it
would take him a while to deal with becoming a vampire.

We left the projection room and walked out through the
abandoned theater. The scene in the lobby wasn’t pretty: Beheaded vampires lay
crumpled on the floor, and I tried not to look at any of the abandoned heads.
Vampires didn’t bleed much after death — no heartbeat to pump out the blood — but
I noticed Lucas looking hungrily at the few droplets on the floor.

“I know You’re hungry,” I said, trying to comfort him.

“You don’t know. You can’t know. There’s nothing like this.”
Lucas’s grimace revealed his fangs. Just the sight of blood had brought them
out again. When I had been alive, part vampire, I had experienced the desperate
yearning for blood, but I suspected Lucas was right: The craving he felt now
had intensified beyond anything I’d ever known.

We walked outside to see Balthazar, alone, leaning on his
car in the otherwise empty parking lot. His shadow stretched out, long and
broad, in the beam of the nearby streetlamp. Balthazar spoke to me first. “Vic
was hanging around out front. The only way Ranulf could get him to leave was to
go along.”

“Okay,” I said as we reached him. “Let’s just get out of
here. I never want to see this place again.”

Balthazar didn’t move; he and Lucas just stared at each
other. For years, they’d loathed one another; only in the aftermath of my death
had they been able to work together. Now, though, what I saw between them was
total understanding.

“I’m sorry.” Lucas’s voice was rough. “Some of the stuff I said
to you — about choices, being a vampire, and everything like that — Jesus. I
get it now.”

“I wish you didn’t. I wish you’d never had to understand.”
Balthazar closed his eyes for a second, maybe remembering his own
transformation centuries ago. “Come on. We’ll get you something to drink.”

With a pang, I realized that Lucas and Balthazar understood
each other now on a level that I would never fully grasp. For some reason, it
felt like a loss. Or maybe in that moment, with Lucas seemingly so far from me
in spirit, everything felt like a loss.

Balthazar drove us back toward the nicer neighborhood in
Philadelphia where Vic lived. Lucas and l sat together in the backseat, his
hand gripping mine tightly, his gaze focused in the distance beyond the
windshield. Sometimes he frowned and closed his eyes like a person in the
throes of a migraine; his feet moved restlessly against the floorboards, as
though he were pushing back, or attempting to push through. He didn’t want to
be here, to be contained — everything around him now was just one more thing
between him and the blood he needed. I knew better than to try to get him to
talk. After he’d had something to drink, then he would be okay. He had to be.

Balthazar broke the wretched silence by turning on the
radio, classic jazz, the kind of thing my dad used to listen to around the
house. As Billie Holiday crooned about foolish things, I wondered what my
parents would say now, and whether there was any advice they could have given
us. We’d parted badly before I ran off with Lucas at the beginning of the
summer; at the moment, I missed them so much it hurt. What would they think of
everything that had happened in the past couple of days?

I glanced at Lucas — the pale cool stillness of his flesh,
the way that death had brightened his eyes and carved out his cheekbones — and
thought bleakly, Well, they always wanted me to end up with a nice vampire boy.

The car turned onto the road where Vic lived, an upscale
area with broad yards separating the palatial homes. As every house had a four —
car garage, we rarely saw other cars out on the street, but there were three
right in front of Vic’s house. Not the usual kinds of Mercedes or Jaguars that
drove around here either — these were beat — up trucks and station wagons.
Something about this began to feel familiar.

Then I realized nearly a dozen people were standing in the
street and in Vic’s yard. When I glimpsed a stake in one man’s hands, I
realized at least that some of them were armed.

“Is this Charity’s tribe?” Balthazar said. “Is she still
after Lucas
?
”

I remembered the e-mails Lucas had sent out just before my death,
when he’d been so desperate that he’d asked anyone and everyone for help, even
people we had every reason to expect to turn against us. His messages had been
answered.

“It’s not Charity,” I whispered. “It’s Black Cross.”

“BLACK CROSS,” BALTHAZAR REPEATED. IF I HADN’T been there
when Black Cross captured Balthazar — and tortured him — I might have thought
he was being very calm about the fact that a band of vampire hunters had showed
up. Instead, I could see the hints of fear and anger submerged in his gaze. His
fists tightened around the steering wheel. “We should get out of here.”

“We can’t just leave Vic and Ranulf!” I said.

Then Lucas leaned forward and whispered, “Mom?”

I saw her, too: Kate, a Black Cross cell leader and Lucas’s
mother. Her honey gold hair, so like her son’s, shone beneath the streetlamp’s
light; shadows etched the firm muscles of her arms and the stake she wore at
her belt. When Black Cross had learned of my true nature and cast us out of
their cell, they’d kept her away. I’d always believed this was because of Kate’s
fierce love for her son, which was often hidden beneath her discipline and duty
but was undeniable. Was it strong enough to sustain them now?

“It’s okay,” I said to Balthazar. “She brought some friends
and came here to help Lucas, not to hunt. See?” Pointing, I showed him where
another Black Cross hunter was at the front door, apparently asking Vic a lot
of questions while Vic did a bad job of looking casual.

“These ‘friends’ are some of the hunters who captured me and
discovered you, Bianca,” Balthazar said. “They might have come here to help,
but once they see us, all bets are off.”

“I need to talk to her,” Lucas said. “If you guys want to
go, go.”

I wasn’t afraid for myself; these hunters knew little about
the wraith and would be unable to hurt me. That didn’t mean I Wasn’t afraid.
“Do you think Kate can protect you from them? And Balthazar?”

“She’ll hold off if I tell her to,” Lucas insisted.

“And what about you?” Balthazar said. His hands only
clutched the steering wheel harder. “Who’s going to hold you off?”

Lucas glared at him. “I won’t attack my own mother.”

“You think that now. Wait until you get out there and smell
fresh blood. You’ll be able to feel her pulse, almost — like a magnet, drawing
you in.” Balthazar knew too well what he was talking about; his first act after
being turned into a vampire had been to murder his own sister. Also, the
hunters had begun paying attention to our car, moving closer. Balthazar
continued, “If we’re going, we need to go now.”

“We’re not going.” Lucas’s jaw was set, his stare resolute.
“I can handle it. I’ve got to. And — come on, it’s my mom.”

As he slid out of the back seat, Balthazar glanced at me in
the rearview mirror, like I was suddenly going to take his side versus Lucas’s
and run away. If Lucas trusted himself, then I would trust Lucas. I simply
stepped out behind him. Balthazar could get out of the car to back us up or
not; I didn’t care.

“Lucas
?
” Kate said. She jogged
toward him, a smile lighting her face for the brief moment before she saw me.
In the distance, I could see the hunters walking toward us and away from Vic’s
house, and Vic slumping against his doorjamb in relief.

“Mom.” Lucas remained still, as if frozen to the spot. His
features tightened, and I could tell that he was staring at her throat. What
Balthazar had said was true. He could feel her pulse — sense her blood.

Kate’s eyes narrowed as she came closer to us and saw at me.
“Thought you were supposed to be sick,” she said. Distrust and contempt laced
her every word. “So sick you couldn’t move.”

“I was,” I said. “But — not now.” I couldn’t exactly claim
to have gotten better.

“No more reason for Lucas to stick around, then.” Kate held
out her hand to her son. “You can come back. It’s okay. The people who would
hold it against you — we don’t need them. All you have to do is realize you
made a mistake.”

Lucas didn’t take her hand. “I didn’t make a mistake.” His
voice was thin, his words forced. His eyes glittered brightly in the dim light,
and I could sense the waves of killing madness washing over him. Yet he stood
his ground. “I love Bianca. I made my choice.
But .
.
. I’m glad you came.”

Movement in the farther distance caught my attention. My
eyes widened when I recognized two of the hunters in this small group, standing
at the far side of Vic’s lawn — a heavyset, dark — skinned woman with her hair
in thick braids, and another with golden skin and hair sheared crazily short
against her scalp: Dana and Raquel. Dana had been Lucas’s best friend since
they were little kids, and when my true nature had been revealed, she was the
one who had helped us escape. Raquel had been my best friend and junior — year
roommate at Evernight Academy, and the victim of a terrible wraith haunting
ever since childhood. She had run away with Lucas and me, joining us when we’d
become part of Black Cross.

Raquel was also the one who had turned me in to Black Cross
when she’d realized I was the child of vampires.

They loved each other. Would Raquel have come around to Dana’s
way of thinking and stand with us now? Or would Dana side with Raquel instead
of the old friend who had abandoned her?