Bring On the Night (23 page)

I fingered the car’s electric window switch, longing for a whiff of night air. The switch clicked, but the window didn’t budge.

I looked at Shane, sitting beside me in the backseat. He shook his head and tightened his grip on my wrist.

Regina glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “You’re lucky we let you come with us at all.”

I sighed and turned back to the window. The thought of drinking from a willing donor like Jeremy still made me feel gross and subservient. But the thought of tracking, hunting, and bringing down my own prey made the tips of my fingers and tongue tingle.

I pressed my nose to the cool glass. Sherwood might as well have been a ghost town—Sunday night plus a chicken pox scare meant there was nothing to see, move along now. But surely someone yummy would be walking a dog. Maybe my superstrength could force open the car door. Regina and Shane would catch up to me, but not before I had a taste.

Oh, who was I kidding? I didn’t even have fangs.

When I entered our apartment, my melancholy returned along with the last memories of my life as a human.

I slipped into the bedroom alone, leaving the door open. I set my open suitcase on the bed, where the sheets were still rumpled from sex and sleep. I wondered if I’d ever again feel like doing the former and would ever stop wanting to do the latter. Even now I wanted to sink onto the bed and let the dark steal my consciousness.

I wanted to be alone, something I would never truly be again.

On my nightstand lay two of the books I’d been using for my Eastern European History term paper. I slipped them into my suitcase, determined to finish the assignment. Even if I never graduated, I needed to do it for Aaron.

I turned away from the bed and went to the dresser. Shane entered the room as I was giving my underwear drawer a dull, unseeing stare.

“Need some help?” His voice and posture were one of a calculated calm, the way one acts around someone on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I ran my hands through the silk nightgowns and lace teddies. My hypersensitive skin tingled at the feel, awakening memories of the material sliding between me and Shane. “Should I bring any of this?”

“Only for private viewing, right?”

“Of course. You think I’m going to turn all horndog on the other vampires?”

“It’s part of the process.”

“Clearly I’m not following the process.” I rested my forehead on the edge of the drawer. “I still feel so human, but only in the bad ways. And I only have the bad parts of being a vampire—the need for blood, the over-the-top angst.”

“It happens slower for some than others. Be patient.” He kissed my temple. “And leave the hot stuff here, for my sanity’s sake.”

“But what about us?”

“When you’re ready, we can make love without the help of Victoria’s Secret.” His hand slipped under the back of my shirt.

I jumped at his touch. “Your hands are hot.”

“I grabbed a snack from our fridge, so my core temperature is probably higher than yours now.” He stroked the curve of my lower back. “You used to feel this way to me sometimes.”

My heart grew heavy, as if injected with liquid lead. “Will you still want me now that I’m chilly?”

He gave a thorough sigh, then tugged me gently to rest against his chest. “Do I need to sing that song again?”

“Which song?”

“The one I wrote for you. I said I’d be with you when you were old, so why wouldn’t I be with you when you’re cold?” He winced with his breath. “I swear I didn’t mean that
to rhyme.”

I felt the heat of his muscles pulse through his shirt. “So much has changed.”

“But not us.” He held me at arm’s length and stared into my eyes. “Right?”

“I betrayed you. I didn’t trust you to save my life.” The tears came again, blurring his face. “Can you forgive me?”

He brushed his thumbs over my eyes, so hot I expected my tears to turn to steam.

“If you need me to forgive you,” he whispered, “then I forgive you.”

He kissed me, and the sick sensation in my gut broke apart. For a moment I felt worse, like I would spew all over Shane’s battered Chuck Taylors. Then it dissipated, floating away through my veins, diluting until I couldn’t feel it anymore.

I slid my arms around Shane’s neck and kissed him back, shoving aside the fears of a forever future.

We hurried down the sidewalk, Shane holding my suitcase and my left hand. Regina flanked me on the right. They swiveled their heads in a continuous scan for humans.

Though the streets were empty, a thousand scents lingered in the humid, pollen-thick spring air. A woman with a talcum-coated baby, a man with a sharp aftershave that clashed with the natural sweetness of his skin. My neighbor’s shih tzu, having taken a dump on the sidewalk.

Our car was parked across the street from St. Michael’s, the tiny old Catholic Church. Most Catholics in Sherwood
went to the enormous St. Luke’s on the outside of town, where they could always find a seat and a parking space. St. Michael’s parishioners were mostly elderly ladies who still covered their heads when they entered. I’d heard that they even did a Mass in Latin once a week.

As I stared at the front door with the smoky glass window, something in my gut screamed at me to
Run
! Not away from the church, like I’d expected. Toward it.

I checked the street. No traffic.

Shane dug the keys out of his pocket, then let go of my hand to force open the trunk, which always stuck.

I ran.

Regina and Shane released panicked shouts, but I couldn’t stop until I reached the front door, where Shane caught up to me. Regina stopped at the bottom of the porch’s brick stairs.

“Are you mental?” she hissed. “You can’t go in there.”

“I have to. I can’t explain it.”

“No.” Shane seized my wrists before I could touch the doorknob. “Churches get consecrated after they’re built. The building could burn you.”

“This place is over two hundred years old. It must have worn off by now.” My eyes pleaded with him. “I need to go in there.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just trust me, okay?” It was a lot to ask, considering I hadn’t shown him that same trust yesterday.

Shane didn’t let go, but his grip loosened a fraction. Using a Control self-defense maneuver, I rotated my arms, twisting my wrists out of his hands.

“Hey!”

Before he could stop me again, I grabbed the iron doorknob. Shane and Regina shared a strangled gasp.

The knob was cool to the touch. “See?” I opened the door.

“Ciara, please.” Shane reached for me, but stopped, as if my body could conduct holiness like electricity. “Don’t do this.”

I swung the door open wide enough that he could get through without touching the frame. “Are you coming or not?”

He folded his arms, shoving his bare hands into the crooks of his elbows, and inched sideways through the doorway, sparing me a killer glare as he passed.

“I’ll wait in the car,” Regina said.

I followed Shane through the vestibule, which contained a coat rack and two confessional booths, and through a set of open doors into the darkened sanctuary, which was no larger than the common room of the vampires’ apartment. The rough wooden pews looked like they could seat maybe two hundred people. The wall sconces were dimmed to a minimum, but my eyes adjusted easily.

“I’m surprised it’s open,” I whispered to Shane. “They could get robbed.”

“It’s Church policy. These places are refuges for those in need.”

I felt a stab of guilt, then realized that I was, in fact, in need. But of what? What had drawn me here?

I looked for a clue in my surroundings—the crucifix beyond the altar, the statue of Mary in a cubbyhole to its left, and a series of small wooden dioramas placed at intervals on the walls.

I pointed to the closest of the dioramas, which showed Jesus’ crucified body lying in a woman’s arms.

“What are those?” I asked Shane.

“The Stations of the Cross. Don’t touch them.”

“I won’t,” I said, though I very much wanted to. “They’re so sad.”

“Yeah, well…” Shane shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his denim jacket. “Life is sad.”

In the far corner of the sanctuary, to the right of the altar, the floor became an open space, maybe a staircase leading down to a lower level. Its darkness drew me forward. I took a few steps down the center aisle, then stopped when an astonishing sight caught my eyes.

Looming over the sanctuary was a huge stained glass window. A wrathful angel with golden wings stood atop the throat of a writhing red dragon. His wooden spear pierced the monster through the heart.

“St. Michael the Archangel defeating Satan,” Shane said.

“What are the words on his sash?”

“
Quis ut deus
. ‘Who is like God?’ It’s what the name Michael means. But I’ve heard it’s also supposed to be a rhetorical question that St. Michael is asking the dragon as he defeats him. ‘Who is like God?’ The answer is obviously ‘no one,’ except God himself.”

“So it’s Latin for ‘Who’s your daddy?’”

Shane smirked. “I guess.”

A homework flashback hit me. “Dracula means ‘son of the dragon.’ Dracula’s dad was part of the Order of the Dragon, so he took the name for himself. Aaron told us that in modern Romanian,
dracul
just means ‘devil.’”

“Well, there you have it.”

“What?”

“If a picture’s worth a thousand words, a stained glass is worth a million. Dracula, devils, vampires, St. Michael the righteous warrior.” He cast a mournful glance around us.
“We don’t belong here. We never will.”

The rational part of my brain reminded me that the Romanian prince Vlad “the Impaler” Dracula wasn’t really a vampire, but rather a power-hungry ruler who put the “evil” in “medieval.” Bram Stoker just recycled the name because it sounded cool. So this image had nothing to do with us.

But my gaze fixed on the thwarted dragon struggling beneath the angel’s boot. The bright light from St. Michael’s halo seemed to blind the creature. Light like the sun, something Shane and I would never see again except as a pale, cold reflection in the face of the moon. Or just after our last breath, when the world became too much for us.

Banished from the sun. Burned by holy objects. Filled with the urge to kill.

Maybe we
were
evil.

I backed up, fast enough to stumble, unable to tear my gaze from the pain and rage in the dragon’s eyes. Dizziness swamped my head. Thirst cramped my stomach. At that moment, I was little more than a mindless monster.

My heel hit something solid. I jerked my chin down to see a marble pedestal. The sudden motion spiked my vertigo.

“Whoa.” I wavered, hands splayed for balance.

I reached out to grasp the pedestal’s reassuring solidness. My left hand slid forward over a slick shiny surface and down into—

“Ciara, no!”

The hiss of singed flesh mingled with Shane’s shout. Steam rose from the steel bowl atop the pedestal.

Under the clear water, my hand turned black.

Shane yanked my elbow, pulling my hand from the holy water. Drops flew in all directions, singeing my face. He howled my name again.

I stared at my hand. My teeth gnashed as my lungs seized, trapping my scream of agony.

Impossible.
Holy water had no power over me. I wouldn’t let it—not then as a human, not now as a vampire.

Not ever.

“Ciara…” Shane’s words came in gasps. “Oh God… what have you done?”

“It’s only water. It’s not real.” I clutched my wrist and focused my mind on the charred skin and twisted fingers. By now it had stopped hurting. My hand was permanently dead.

No
. I gritted my teeth and tried again. “It’s. Only. Water.”

The healing began at the edges of the burn. Pink crawled over my flesh, obliterating the black. Like a leather glove disintegrating to reveal the hand beneath, the burn shrank as I coaxed my mind and body to deny centuries of vampire truth.

In less than half a minute, my fingers were whole and clean and smooth.

“It worked.” I touched my cheek, where I’d felt the water hit me, then turned to Shane. “Is it gone from my—”

My breath stopped when I saw his face. He was staring at my hand with one eye open.

The other eye was welded shut. Melted black flesh formed an oozing patch over his left socket.

“Shane…” I took a step forward, stumbling. “What did I do?”

He touched his eye. “Uh-oh.”

I shoved up my sleeve. “Drink from me.” I’d healed his holy-water burns before, as a human. I didn’t know if my blood still worked that way, but we had to try.

“Not here,” he said.

We dashed out of the church’s front door. Regina was in the driver’s seat, in getaway position, so she couldn’t see us until we got in the car.

“I’ll handle her,” Shane told me as he opened the back door and pushed me in.

“What the fuck were you thinking, Ciara?” She turned to Shane. “And what was all the— Holy shit!”

“Just drive,” he said. “You can freak out when we’re home safe.”

She pointed a long black nail at me. “You’d better fix this.”

I strapped on my seat belt (habit) and kept silent all the way to the station, afraid to look at Shane. He didn’t reach for my hand—in fact, he sat as far away from me as he could.

My thoughts ran in a circle. If I could heal myself, maybe I could heal Shane. Maybe my blood hadn’t changed when I died.

But when I was human, holy water hadn’t turned my fingers into matchsticks. Standing in that church, looking at the angel and the dragon, had I let myself believe the hype? Was I finally ready to see vampires as evil, now that I was one?

Maybe the anti-holy wasn’t in my blood anymore. Maybe it was only in my mind. And what lurked in the depths of that mind? Years of sitting primly in an itchy white dress while my father preached fire and brimstone. It didn’t matter that I’d grown up to figure out the scam. That fear would always be a part of me.

You can take the girl out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the girl.

Regina skidded to a halt in the middle of the station parking lot, sending a spray of gravel onto the grass.