Companions of the Night (22 page)

"And what about you?" Marsala said, turning what Kerry was now sure was his mad gaze on her.

"I'm very sorry I helped you," Kerry admitted, which she knew wasn't a smart thing to say, but she couldn't help it.

The worst part was, she didn't think that had anything to do with what he said next: "How shall I kill you? I wish I knew if there was a way to reverse the vampire process."

"She's not a vampire," Ethan said, his first words since this had all begun.

Marsala held up his hands helplessly as though he hadn't even heard. "But who is there to ask whose answer I would trust?"

"
She's not a vampire,
" Ethan repeated more emphatically. "Either someone's a vampire or not. There isn't any transitional stage—"

"Obviously the sunlight doesn't affect you," Marsala continued to Kerry. "And in any case, I'd offer you an easier death since this condition isn't your fault."

"S
HE'S NOT A VAMPIRE!
" Ethan yelled at him.

"You just let yourself get seduced by evil," Marsala said. "Just like Joey did. I wish there had been someone around to offer him an easy death." Marsala picked up one of the stakes and the mallet.

Kerry, keeping her back against the hallway wall, slid away in the direction of the bedrooms.

Marsala came after her.

Behind him, Ethan tried to get to his feet, but his right leg buckled under him.

Marsala whirled around, dropping the mallet as he reached for the gun in his belt.

"No!" Kerry screamed as he shot Ethan yet again in the leg.

Ethan dropped heavily to the floor.

She came running up behind Marsala, with no other plan than to make him stop hurting Ethan.

Marsala turned, and she found herself facing the gun in his right hand and the pointy stake in his left. Furious, she shoved him away from her.

She heard the gun go off yet again. She was sure she'd been hit—how could he have missed at such a distance?—but so far nothing hurt, and he was tipping over backward: He had flung his arms wide for balance, and the first thing she thought was that he had missed after all. And the second thing she thought was that he'd walked backward into his toolbox. And after that there was no time for thought as he fell down the stairs, hitting his head at least three different times before the final crack on the slate floor of the entryway.

It was no use going to check for a pulse. Kerry wasn't that familiar with dead people—Ethan and Regina excepted—but she knew Marsala was dead.

My fault,
she thought. Though she'd only intended to push him away from her, she
had
pushed him, not realizing how close to the stairs they were. She spared a thought to think that she was sorry she'd killed him, but she couldn't be sorry he was dead. She spared another thought to think that she was glad she was alive, and then she was scrambling in the kitchen to drag the drape in front of the sliding-glass door.

"Kerry," Ethan called.

The sky was turning pink. It had to be a matter of seconds now.

She pulled the drape shut and headed for the living-room windows.

Ethan clutched her ankle as she passed, making her stumble and fall to her knees.

"What are you doing?" she screamed at him.

"The drapes aren't thick enough."

"Just let me..." She tried to wriggle free, but she could see that the drapes were an open weave, almost lace, all of them, and at the most they'd soften the sunlight. She could see the marks of fading on the carpet and furniture.

"Get the gun," Ethan told her.

She started to ask why, but she knew.

"I can't," she whispered.

Ethan released her ankle. "Kerry, I got caught by the dawn once before. It was only for a second, before I could bar the window." He looked at her desperately. "Please," he whispered, "a bullet through the brain will be much faster and less painful."

The gun had fallen out of Marsala's hand halfway down the stairs, so she didn't have to go all the way down, didn't have to look at the body of the man she had killed. She stood there, considering going the rest of the way down, considering going out, closing the door behind her, leaving nature to take its course without demanding any more of her. She probably wouldn't even be able to hear Ethan's screams as he began to die. Kerry picked the gun up, and it felt even colder and heavier than it had in the Student Union.

"Kerry," he called, which meant,
Hurry.

She came back up to the top of the stairs, where she knelt because her legs couldn't carry her any farther. Her hand shook so that she had to hold the gun in both hands, and even then she thought she was going to miss entirely, or just inflict more damage, more pain, without killing him.

"It's all right," he assured her, closing his eyes, bracing himself.

But she hesitated, and he took in his next breath in a hiss of pain.

"Kerry!" he cried, a plea for her to be merciful. Then, as the soft glow of sunlight touched him: "God!"

She threw the gun into the kitchen. She was on her feet before it stopped skittering across the linoleum floor.

He'd flung his arms up, instinct to protect his face from the scorching rays of the sun.

Grabbing his wrists, she dragged him across the rug. She wasn't strong enough—she knew she wasn't; she'd get him only so far and then he'd die agonizingly—but she got him down the hall to the master bedroom and—mistrusting the looks of those drapes, too—into the closet. She pulled the doors shut, enclosing them in a space about five feet long and three wide.

But it was blissfully without sunlight.

She groped for the string she'd glimpsed, and the light came on.

Ethan was hunched over, breathing hard and ragged. Could vampires go into shock? she wondered.

She yanked one of Marsala's shirts off its hanger to use as a bandage around his leg.

"Not necessary," Ethan whispered, and—in fact—she saw that he was no longer bleeding.

She sat down, sliding her back down the wall, afraid of hitting the door and accidentally opening it on to the killing sunlight. "Lean against me," she told him.

He looked up at her with eyes made wide by pain and possibly mistrust, but he leaned against her—there was nothing else he could do.

She could feel the beating of his heart, brought to an almost human rate by fear and exertion.

"Don't be afraid," she said, though he had no reason to trust her. "I'll guard your sleep."

He closed his eyes.

He took one more breath...

...which he didn't exhale.

E
VENTUALLY
M
ARSALA'S
Madame Butterfly
tape ended. Kerry could hear the sounds of traffic, very faintly, from outside. What if the police came to question Marsala again? What if a neighbor came to complain about all the noise in the earliest hours of the morning? Kerry was determined that she would protect Ethan, even if she had to hold the door closed with her fingernails against prying intruders.

Her arm became numb from his never-stirring position and she shifted him as gently as she could, even knowing that in all probability she
couldn't
wake him up, even if she wanted.

She began to think of how hungry she was, which made her think of how hungry he was likely to be, come rousing at sunset, which made her think that the most sensible thing to do was to kick open the closet door.

Anyone he kills after this,
she thought,
it'll he like I killed them.
It was an unsettling thought.

But still she couldn't open the door.

Eventually she fell asleep, and when she did, she had another vampire dream.

It started, like the previous one, with Ethan's story of Regina making him into a vampire, except this time it was Kerry herself who lay by the side of the road, and when she looked up at the sound of footsteps approaching on the gravel, it was Ethan who stood there.

She looked up at him, afraid and expectant at the same time, and he knelt beside her, then sat, putting her head on his lap. She had lost so much blood from her vague and unspecified wounds that for once she felt cold and his touch was warm. Warm and gentle and sensuous, although all he touched was her face.

He leaned over her. "I won't hurt you," he whispered, so softly she couldn't make out the words, but she knew them by feeling the breath of them on her throat.

And then he bit her.

There was a moment of pain but, as he had promised, it felt very, very good. She was aware of her heart slowing as her life's blood drained out of her, and of his heart beating faster as her blood filled his veins; but still hers was faster than his.

Finally—she tried to pull him back—he straightened. Then he lifted his own wrist to his mouth and ran it across his teeth. Blood welled up, as it had done in the laundry when she'd accidentally cut him with the razor blade.
His and mine together this time,
she thought as it ran over the white cuff of his shirt and dripped onto the ground. He held his arm out to her. "
Choices,
" she remembered him saying, as he put his wrist to her mouth. At first she recoiled from the taste, but it filled her mouth and she had to spit it out or swallow. She swallowed. And a second time: she hesitated and the warm, coppery blood filled her mouth again. But then she began sucking on his wrist, drawing the blood from his arteries, unable to stop. He had his eyes closed, his head thrown back. She could feel his emotions running through her veins, sense his very thoughts as though they were her own. There were no more lies possible. There were no lies necessary.

She tugged on his arm till he was lying down with her, holding her against him so that she felt their hearts at last—at long last—beating in unison. He bit her neck again and began to drink back the blood she had just taken. Kerry realized there had to be more to it than this, that they couldn't survive forever on just each other's blood, but—
What the heck,
she thought,
it's just a dream, it doesn't have to make sense.

But with that thought she woke up.

Ethan, of course, hadn't moved. Kerry, however, figured she'd better.

She stood, leaning him against the side wall, but the closet wasn't big enough for her to get as far away as she wanted. She glanced at her watch. Another two hours till sunset. Surely he'd be all right for two hours But she didn't dare leave him, didn't dare open the door a crack for fear of the trickle of sunlight that would kill him.

Miserably, she sat back down on the floor at the greatest distance she could in this cramped space, a distance that was still so close she could touch him if she wanted, and she tried to convince herself she didn't want to.

Choices,
she thought again. She had to make her own, and those were the only ones she was responsible for. Not his. Not—this was a new thought—her mother's.
Let go of those,
she told herself.

It was the first time since her mother left that she felt free.

E
THAN GROANED
AT 4:35 and woke with a shuddering breath.

"Welcome back," Kerry said.

Ethan looked at her warily. His hair had grown longer yet during the day's sleep, so that it hung loose in the ponytail holder she'd loaned him, giving him a rumpled look that his motionless sleep wouldn't have. He brushed the hair away from his face with the back of his hand. "I assumed you'd change your mind," he said softly.

"I told you I would watch over you." She didn't say that she had thought about it, but she imagined he probably knew that.

He sat up from his undignified slump, awkwardly, wincing with pain, as she pushed open the closet door. His face, especially on his cheeks below his eyes, was sunburned. When his shirt gaped at his neck, she could see that he was burned even where his clothes had covered his skin; he looked sunburned, like someone who had sat outside too long on the first sunny day of summer.

His arms, exposed where his sleeves had been rolled back, were blistered and raw.

"Will you recover?" she asked.

He nodded, grimacing as he evaluated the damage. "Much slower than from any other kind of injury," he said. "Slower even than it would take a human to heal ... but eventually." He still hadn't gotten over his surprise at being alive, she could tell. "Thank you," he said.

She nodded "I'm going home now," she told him. "I owed you this one day's protection, but my father doesn't even know yet whether I'm alive."

He got to his feet seconds after she did, slowed down by his injuries. "Kerry." He took her hands lightly in his own. He was warm, finally, the effect of the burns.

Which was too much like her dream.

"Why didn't you tell me they were all right?" she demanded, pulling her anger back up around her. "You knew how frantic I was. You
knew.
"

"I also knew you wouldn't help me unless you thought your family was still in danger," he admitted.

What could she answer, when he was right? "Couldn't you think how crazy it'd make me to see it there in the paper and realize you'd known and hidden it from me?"

"He had a newspaper." Ethan groaned, finally putting things together. He shook his head. "I overlooked that possibility. I assumed Marsala would tell you, and that you'd think he was lying. I never stopped to think what would happen if he had proof."

She looked up into his eyes and tried not to let herself be distracted because he was so very attractive. Not:
I was wrong to lie, but. I was wrong to get caught.
"How would you have felt if our positions had been reversed?" she demanded. "If it was someone you loved? If I knew Regina was safe when you thought she was dead—"

"First of all," Ethan interrupted, reaching to touch her hair, "I already told you, Regina and I were not lovers—"

"No," Kerry interrupted him, "
first of all,
that is not the point. Second of all"—she punched his arm as hard as she could. He looked surprised, but didn't protest—"can't you say two sentences without lying? Every single time Regina's name comes up, you get all crazy, and you have the nerve to tell me you weren't lovers?" She turned her back on him and shrugged off the hand he put on her shoulder. "And third of all, I don't care if you were lovers or not."