Eternal Dawn (31 page)

‘I used my heart to see,’ I said. ‘You told me to and I did.’

The photograph of all the people Justin loved had been his undoing. Laertes was right, love
was
the thing.

‘I wanted to help you,’ I added. ‘Bring you back.’

‘Stop,’ he yelled, screaming until it was a cough. ‘Stop lying!’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, still kneeling next to him. ‘That I didn’t get to you before you removed your ability to love.’

I didn’t know what else to say. That the onyx made him a vampire? That Laertes said it was impossible to get it back once love was removed. Perhaps I should say: thank you for once trying
to save me. But he was gone.
That
Justin didn’t exist any more.

‘I should have killed you the night of your birthday. The night in the tent. When Odette was still alive,’ he said. He sputtered, ‘I hate . . . I hate . . .’ He grimaced,
and looked as if he was gathering all his strength.

‘I hate you,’ he pushed out. He gasped once more and his mouth finally slackened.

He stared up at the ceiling, motionless.

There was no long escape of air. No last heaving breaths. He didn’t soften or say I love you. He died angry. Defeated.

He was gone.

In a flash of memories:

Justin walks down his parents’ hallway towards me. It is night and the moon coming through the window illuminates his toned stomach muscles
.
He loves life. He wants to
love
. . .
us.

His sweaty kiss after a game. His warm body under the sheets, and the tip of his chin to the air when he laughs at something I say.

His eyes plead with me not to perform the ritual.

I blinked away the memories and focused on the vacant eyes instead. Jealousy. Hate. As a vampire, he had been motivated by all of his human insecurities. He would be one of the most horrific
tragedies of my life.

I grabbed the hilt of the sword and pulled it all the way out. The blood on the end of the blade was the darkest red, almost black. And momentarily I thought of Fire and if this was what she
truly wanted for me. To kill Justin. I couldn’t imagine anyone would have wanted
this.

My eyes travelled from his cropped hair to his broad shoulders and down to the Italian leather shoes. The sneakers were gone. Frayed jeans, gone. Sports uniforms smelling of grass and sweat.
Gone.

I took his hands and placed them across his chest. I tucked the longsword underneath his arms so he lay like a soldier. Wasn’t he a soldier? Hadn’t he in some way been fighting my
war? Only recently had he switched to the opposing side. And even that could be said to be my fault.

Justin Enos was gone.

To where all souls go – wherever that might be.

I reached inside the satchel; the bottle and book were safe. Next and most important on my list was Rhode.

This was clearly the beginning of my life. A life with a young man who would have no passion, no love, no excitement. Justin had removed his ability to love? Fine. Rhode was my Anam Cara and I
would have enough love for both of us.

I turned to the doorway. Rhode had passed out again. He was weak and depleted of blood, as he had been in Justin’s house on Warwick Avenue.

I glanced back at Justin’s body. It was still. Through the immense window that faced the grounds, the sunrise made the sky a dark pink.

I would need to get Rhode somewhere safe, and as soon as possible. I walked into the room where he was being held and knelt in front of him. I reached out, my fingers shaking, and touched his
hand. His eyelids flickered and his vampire eyes met mine. They were bluer than I ever remembered seeing them before. He looked at me like a scientist examining an insect.

Rhode reached out his hands, but they were restrained by the great chains that held him to the wall. I unhooked the chains and the metal fell to the ground. Rhode collapsed immediately. I met
him on the floor and when I reached for his hand, his fingers trailed gently over my palm. I shuddered.

‘You . . .’ His voice cracked, weak from lack of use or from torture, I couldn’t tell. ‘You’re here,’ he said. ‘I dreamed of you.’

‘I’ll always find you.’

With a tug on my wrist, Rhode pulled me to him and kissed me so deeply that my body reacted before my mind. I kissed my Rhode back. Our mouths were hot and he kissed me deep. Rhode
loved
me. He did. I felt it in the touch of his hands over my body and the grip of his arms as he pulled me close. I let him.

I pulled away, my tears making both of our faces wet.

‘It didn’t work!’ I bowed my head for a split second. More tears dripped down my nose and cheeks and on to the floor. ‘He said he took your ability to love.’

‘He couldn’t,’ he said, and the morning sun broke through the doorway. ‘Every time he tried, it failed. He kept saying, “Not without your
soulmate.”’

That was what Justin had meant in the hallway. To make the new Vereselum he needed us both.

Rhode kissed me again.

‘Come, we have to go,’ I said, throwing the metal to the ground. ‘Can you walk?’

Rhode shrugged and stretched out his arms to see how his body was feeling.

‘Actually . . .’ he said, and stood up from the floor on his own, ‘I’m weak but I’m OK.’ Just as he said it, his knees buckled. I took hold of his hand and
squeezed. He stood back up using his own strength. ‘I’m better with you,’ he said.

Rhode
was
weak, but not nearly as bad as he had been during the eclipse. Justin had to have fed Rhode a little to keep him alive, but he needed my help as we walked. He could, for the
most part, support his own weight. As we passed through the doorway and back into the library, Justin’s body lay unmoving. The sun had edged across the carpet and on to the Oriental rug.

‘Wait,’ Rhode said, touching my wrist. He pointed at the ground.

The sun pierced a cloud and a shaft of light ran over Justin’s foot, then his leg, his beautiful torso, and finally his face.

With a soft hush, he turned to ash.

‘But he was human when he died,’ I said. ‘I saw it.’

‘Some magic is beyond our comprehension,’ Rhode whispered. He almost sounded like the old Rhode.

‘But . . .’ I said.

Perhaps the body could not withstand sunlight after the soul had touched such darkness. With no love in our hearts, we might as well be ash.

You can’t hide from the sun for the rest of your life. Right?
Justin’s ghost whispered to me.
You gotta let go
. . .

Justin died as he lived.

Fast and dangerous.

Someone would have to come back to this house and catalogue the Hollow Ones’ items. There was much in here that could be used for good. Spells, books, perhaps the house
itself.

I pushed open the door to the darkened hallway. There were the same dark blue wallpaper and sconces, though the candles were now extinguished. But the problem was there were . . .

Endless wall sconces again. I sneered at the onyx ceiling.

I reached into my bag across my chest and drew out the amaranth sand. I threw it ahead of me and begged:
Find the way out of this house.
The amaranth illuminated a clear pink path that
led through the first door to our right.

‘That’s convenient,’ Rhode said.

‘Not convenient, deliberate. And when we get out of here, the first thing we’re going to do is get you some blood. There is some at Cassius’s house.’

We walked through the door and found ourselves in the entrance hall. I exhaled, relieved to see that we were not in that same blasted bedroom.

‘Care to explain . . .’ Rhode leaned against the wall. He drew a deep breath to get the sentence out. ‘Care to explain this place?’ he said.

When I approached the front door, the doorknob materialized.

But there was one thing I had to check before we left.

In the onyx ceiling above Rhode and me, one white orb hovered between both of our chests, right near our hearts. It was larger than the little one I had seen before.

A single orb for a single soul.

‘Come on,’ I said.

We opened the door, finding ourselves not stepping down on to the driveway but into a large garage. There were a dozen luxury cars parked in it, different models, all with tinted windows. A
corkboard held seven or eight sets of keys.

‘This one seems comfortable,’ Rhode said, and slipped into the nearest car, which was unlocked. It was some kind of SUV like Tracy had.
Tracy
.

I would make a call once we returned to Cassius’s house.

Justin once had a car like that too. In a different life.

I paused at a memory of all of us – Tracy, Kate, Claudia and me – driving in Justin’s car to a bungee jump. We sang at the top of our lungs and danced to songs on the radio. It
was a lifetime ago. I looked for the right set of keys. My fingers set off tinkling sounds as I brushed over the metal.

Finding them, I got into the driver’s seat beside Rhode and started the car, and with a press of a garage clicker Rhode and I were out and back on the driveway. My hand rested on top of
the gearshift and Rhode slid his hand over mine. I didn’t look back; there was no need.

The only way ahead now was out.

We went via Cassius’s house. There was no one in, but Rhode drank from a container of blood immediately. It was no shock to me, but he turned away to drink. Once sunset
hit, and I knew Rhode would be safe from the sun, we were on the road again and parking in front of Wickham Boarding School.

Before getting out of the car I opened the satchel. I just wanted to make sure the book and antidote were still there and safe. I did see that they were still together. But what kept them in
place was Rhode’s journal.

‘Wait,’ I said, lightly touching Rhode’s cold skin, and pulled out the notebook. I handed it to him, and for a second it seemed we weren’t going through those gates and
we didn’t have a powerful serum in our hands.

‘
Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom
. I love those words,’ I said.

‘Keats,’ he said. ‘And it’s true. Your love has changed me. Forever.’

‘You dreamed of me?’ I asked.

‘For three years. And when you walked on to campus that day, I didn’t know what to do. I had no memory of you, yet I spoke to you in my dreams, held you, and even . . .’ He
didn’t finish. ‘You were so familiar to me, and yet I felt so guilty whenever I was around you.’

‘I’ll tell you about your life once we get settled.’

‘Besides, if that antidote is going to work, maybe my memory will come with it.’

I had been assured in ten different ways that restoring Rhode’s memory was impossible. Fire had explained it first, and Justin had confirmed it.

‘I can feel your doubt,’ he said.

‘I’m too worried to dare to hope,’ I replied.

Rhode slipped on a baseball hat from Justin’s back seat. It must have been Justin’s at one time. Rhode’s warm hand reached for mine.

Even though the evening clouds shrouded the moon, the clear blue of his eyes shone out at me.

We walked through the gates.

The guard did a double take at Rhode and stepped out from the booth. On the campus, students were packing cars and moving big boxes out of the dorms. Even at night, the campus was continuing to
empty out – no time to waste, apparently, after a massive vampire attack. No one wanted to stay at school after what had happened. Who could blame them? Across the campus, the smashed windows
of the auditorium remained ruined.

The guard held on to the booth door frame.

‘Rhode?’ His mouth opened a little and he jumped back into the booth. He checked something off on a clipboard and called someone on a walkie-talkie. Rhode adjusted the baseball cap
further down over his eyes.

‘Rhode, we need to call the police. I – yes, Lenny, yes, he’s here. Tell Ms Williams,’ He smiled into the radio. Perhaps we were the best bit of news he had received all
year.

‘You need to see your RA, and then the administration in the morning. The cops might want to speak to you too. I don’t know if you heard, but the school is closing until next
fall.’

‘When?’ Rhode asked.

‘Two days. What with the missing students and what happened in assembly yesterday, the board and the town think . . . well, your RA will explain everything,’ the guard said.

He stepped into the booth again. I had no interest in seeing Tina, our resident advisor, and neither did Rhode. We needed to get the Vereselum to Cassius, and now. We said goodbye to the guard
and walked up the pathway. As previously arranged with Cassius, we went directly to the chapel.

At night it was easier to avoid the last trickle of students walking to and from the union. Only the salad bar and sandwich stand seemed to be open. We were able to slip into the chapel
unseen.

Cheers exploded around us as Rhode and I stepped into the building. As we walked towards the altar at the front of the room Tony attacked me with a giant hug.

‘See? I knew you could do it,’ he said.

He affectionately tackled Rhode, nearly bringing him to the ground.

‘Man, it’s good to see you.’

Cassius stood against the wall beneath a stained-glass window with Esteban and Micah. He met my eyes and I walked the rest of the long aisle to the front of the room. He held out his hand to
shake, but I pulled him to me and we embraced.

The ring is destroyed
, I said in my mind.
And when it cracked in two, breaking apart the magic, Justin turned human. Just for a moment.

I’m sorry
, Micah and Cassius said in unison.

He turned to dust when the sun hit his body though. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s because his very substance was riddled with too much borrowed magic.

‘You did what you had to do,’ Cassius said aloud. ‘What we knew you could.’

Cassius pulled away and nodded to the corner of the room, where Tracy stood. I gasped. Esteban stood by her side like a guard. Tracy stepped out of the shadowed corner and held me. The chill
from her cold body enveloped me as we embraced.