Infinite Days (25 page)

“Is my idiot brother still there?” he asked the person on the phone. At the parking lot, Curtis turned right. A collection of students were coming out of their cars and walking toward the Seeker pathway. If I knew any of them I didn’t know how I would explain my new appearance. The last thing I heard Curtis say was, “He’s there almost every night now.” I walked back into the shadows of the trees.

Back in town, the late night was my friend. It made it easy to walk on the periphery. I stayed on the outskirts of the crowds, mostly sliding along against the stone wall. I tried not to seem conspicuous. To anyone who saw me, I would look more ethereal than anything else. I had white skin now, and blue eyes that looked like marbles. I walked past the simple shops that I loved: the dress shop, the candy store, the public library, and finally at the end of the street, I came upon the tavern. I checked the street which, other than a few locals smoking cigarettes, was basically deserted. When they went back into the tavern, a rock song echoed out onto the silent street. Once the door closed, I moved from under the shadow of the trees and crossed the street.

I barely grasped the door handle when Justin exploded out onto the sidewalk. I backed away as Justin burst out of the door. I ran across the street and watched him from the dark protection of the stone wall.

I stayed hidden underneath the trees. There was a streetlamp to my right, far enough away that I was in the darkness. I continued to watch. He was even bigger than the last time I’d see him. His chest was more defined, but he wasn’t shaved and his hair wasn’t short and trim. Long strands fell askew and the style was kind of shaggy, so it fell into his eyes. Nowhere was the collected, happy boy I’d left that winter. He held his hand over his stomach, bent over, and threw up in a corner just shy of the doorway.

Justin sat down in front of the tavern with his legs stretched out in front of him. He spit once on the ground next to him and leaned his head back to rest on the brick wall of the building behind him. He closed his eyes. I stepped out of the shadow again and quickly crossed the street. He sniffed a bit, so his sleek nose scrunched up.

I squatted down directly in front of him. Justin opened his eyes, but the green pupils slid to the back of his head. He tried to lift his head and when he finally succeeded, his eyes looked forward. He locked eyes on me and narrowed his focus. His eyebrows furrowed. He jutted his chin out to really try and get a better look. His eyes went wide, and then he started to laugh—hysterically. “That’s funny.” He pointed at me, laughed, and pointed at me again.

We were inches apart; I could have licked his lips if I wanted to.

“What’s funny?” I cocked my head to the right. The connection between us felt like a gold beam of light connecting us like a hot string.

“You’re here. But I know you’re not.” He giggled and leaned his head back against the wall. He was laughing so hard his cheeks were bright red.

“All right. Come on,” I said, holding him from under his arms. In my vampire state, especially this state, I was considerably strong. Not superhuman, but strong. I got him up. He swayed, but I helped hold his balance.

“Roy. Dude. Thanks, man.” Justin could hardly walk, but I steadied him. “Dude. I’m gonna puke again.”

He stumbled to the street and vomited. He leaned a hand on a car and when he was finished he lowered himself to the ground. I leaned on the hood of the car and crossed my arms across my chest. It was late enough and I couldn’t care less now what anyone here thought of my new, vampire appearance. Justin was here with me and that was all that mattered.

Justin looked up and squinted.

“Dude, Roy—I can’t focus my eyes. But right now, you look just like Lenah.”

I lifted him from the ground again, and we trudged quite sloppily toward the Wickham campus.

Justin’s single dorm room looked the same. Lacrosse sticks were strewn around the room, the nicest still tucked away protectively in the back of his closet. Dozens of sneakers were scattered unmatched in the front of the closet. Team uniforms and helmets were grass stained and littered every possible available space. Somewhere on the first floor music played and echoed through an open window. I wondered where the dorm RAs were at this hour. I looked up: There was something new. Justin had stuck tiny glow-in-the-dark stars onto the ceiling. I looked down at the bed and watched him for a moment. He wasn’t sleeping yet, but he was still. He brought his hand to his head and groaned. I lay down next to him softly, quiet so he wouldn’t feel it. But he turned on his side and opened his eyes. I was shocked to see that they held tears. I knew he would be horrified for me to see him like this, so I said nothing. He examined my face, and the tears billowed over onto his cheeks. “I know you’re not here,” he said. “But I miss you.”

I reached out to hold his cheeks in my hands but quickly brought them back to my sides.

“Lenah—” he croaked in a drunken whisper. And then in the next second, he slept.

The way the sun filtered through the blinds in Quartz was completely different from Seeker. Quartz was set back in a meadow and not blocked by any tall buildings, so the light was strong and bright. I sat on a bay window seat, my knees close to my chest. I leaned my head back as the light trickled into the room. It felt
good.
Like endless meadows filled with grass. Like summer days on an apple orchard. Like Rhode’s voice in my ear. The light made me feel like I was home. I had no need to fear it anymore. Rhode said I would have gifts I didn’t have before and wielding light with my hands was one of them. An unlikely weapon but a welcome talent.

I kept watching the grounds, but there was no sign of the coven. I only had one day to explain everything to Justin and keep him out of harm’s way. There was no doubt in my mind that the coven was already in Lovers Bay. I just didn’t know where. They too were guarded in their minds. Just when I thought I would have to wake Justin myself, he stirred.

“Ugh,” he moaned, and grabbed his head. He swung his legs sluggishly to the side of the bed and rested his elbows on his knees. He looked at the floor.

“How much did you drink last night?” I said, not moving my eyes from him.

“Jesus!” Justin jumped up and threw himself against the wall. A horrific realization passed over his face.

His mouth dropped, he laughed for a few seconds, and then his face went completely blank. I hadn’t noticed before but on the night table was a tiny vial filled with a clear liquid. He pulled out the stopper and sent the liquid flying at me so it splashed with force onto the floor. The vial cracked, and glass exploded on the ground.

“Are you mad!?” I asked, looking at the cracked glass and then up at Justin. He ripped a cross necklace from around his neck and held it out in front of him. “Get back.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

It was like an onslaught of every vampire cliché. He leaned to his left and snapped the shade so the entire bedroom lit up and I was awash in sunlight. It felt like a warm bath after a cold morning. He threw a clove of garlic at me, which whizzed by and smashed on the opposite wall.

“Justin, stop!”

Justin was pressed against the wall, his palms spread and tight against the wood. He was panting. Justin fumbled with the night table drawer and pulled out another vial of clear liquid. With a shaky hand he pulled the cork out of the top of the bottle with the cross chain dangling through his fingers. He tossed the contents of the bottle again so it splashed in my face. I wiped it slowly with the back of my hand. I stepped back.

Justin was balancing on the tips of his toes. “Stay back,” he commanded.

“Was that holy water? None of that is going to work. Vampires are older than Christ.”

“You said if you were ever a vampire again you would be evil—reprehensible.”

Justin tiptoed sideways like a crab toward his bedroom door. “It’s true. I did say that. But, I’m different.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something happened in the transformation. I retained my humanity, my soul.”

Justin stopped moving but kept his hands raised, a crucifix extended in his grip.

“How?”

“I have no idea.”

Justin’s eyes narrowed, and he examined my face.

“I swear,” I said. “The only thing you can do is trust me.”

We were quiet. Voices of early risers echoed in the hall. Justin dropped his hands by his sides. “You look different,” he muttered. His eyes darted from the floor to me and then back at the floor.

“The pores seal during the transformation. Tear ducts, too. It gives us a glowing, waxy appearance.”

The way the light streamed into the room, a wash of morning shined over the wooden floor. All of Justin’s belongings felt suspended in time, frozen.

“We have limited time, and I must tell you why I’m here,” I said, and gestured to the bed.

Justin, still with his back against the wall, scooted until he reached his bed again and sat down. He leaned his back against the wall. I sat down a couple feet away from him, almost at the end of the bed. I didn’t speak just yet.

“I’ve thought about you coming back,” he said. “Thought maybe I dreamt the whole thing. But other people remembered you, and I knew all of Wickham hadn’t lost their minds. But I thought maybe I’d lost my mind, anyway.”

“You didn’t.”

“I wish I had.”

That stung.

“That night at winter prom—” I started to say.

“I just started to get my life back together,” Justin interrupted.

“I never meant to ruin your life,” I whispered.

“The absence of you ruined my life.” Hot shame oozed through my chest. “Where did you go?” Justin asked.

“Back to England.”

There was a beat of silence, but I continued.

“There is a reason I’m here. The fact that I retained my soul is a bit of a problem in the vampire world.”

I told Justin about Vicken, the coven, the whole lot. I told him of the young girl back in England and that once my true nature had been discovered by Vicken, I left straightaway.

“The bond between the coven magically binds Vicken to me. He cannot hurt me.”

“Because you loved each other a hundred years ago?”

“Yes.”

“But you can hurt him?”

I nodded. “Once I was made human, the bonds of love were broken. See,” I said, daring to rest my hand on the bed close to Justin’s foot. Justin didn’t jump away, so I left it there and continued. “Once a vampire falls in love, they are bound. For eternity.”

“Are you bound, to, um, humans?” Justin asked. The apples of his cheeks flushed red.

“No. Only vampires are cursed by that particular piece of magic.”

“So we’re not bound.”

“Not in that way, no,” I explained.

Justin pressed his fingertips to his temples and rubbed them in small circles.

“What a day for a hangover,” he said, and got up from the bed. He looked out the bay window at the sleepy campus.

“I’m here for your protection,” I explained.

“So they’re coming? For me?” Justin asked. His tone was factual, not afraid, almost a little glib.

“No. They’re coming for me.”

“I don’t get it. Why come here?”

“The night of winter prom, I’m quite certain I saved your life. Vicken said that if I didn’t go with him, you would die. A few days ago, the night my true nature was uncovered, he saw into my thoughts. At least I think he did. The first place I thought to come was here. Vicken knows I would do anything to protect you. If I didn’t come here, they’d come, anyway, just to check, and kill you in the process. It’s a catch-22.”

A look of panic swept over Justin’s face. He swallowed hard.

“Okay,” he said, grabbing a lacrosse stick from the back of the closet as he paced. Unconsciously, he was cradling it like there was a ball in the net. “So, we need a plan. How can we kill a vampire?” he said, looking more like the Justin I knew.

“You can kill a vampire by sunlight. The other classic ways are beheading, or a stake through the heart.”

“I never understood that. The sunlight.”

“Vampires cannot be in sunlight because they are not whole. As I told you, our pores are sealed to protect the magic inside. When white light hits our skin, little fires ignite. The sunlight burns our sealed pores open, exposing the dark magic to the bright day, snuffing it out, as if it never existed. We are cold as ice, preserved in the darkness. Sunlight breaks these bonds down.”

“It sounds so clinical.”

“We are all born from the earth. It only makes sense that something natural would kill vampires.”

“What about garlic cloves and sleeping in coffins?”

“Authors like to have fun with vampires,” I explained. “Only the natural elements can kill us. And we can kill one another.”

We were quiet again.

“So this is you as a vampire?” Justin sat down on the bed next to me, the lacrosse stick still in his hand. “Doesn’t seem so bad.”

Justin’s eyes did that twinkle that they did when he spoke softly. He reached his right hand out and placed it on my left knee. With his other hand he touched my cheek and turned my face toward him. We looked at each other, and I could feel through ESP as well as my heart that he wanted to kiss me. He leaned forward, and I did, too. Just when his lips parted, I pulled back. “We can’t,” I said, looking at the floor.

“Because you’re a vampire again?”

“That’s the long and short of it,” I said, and stood up. I turned. “There’s something else.” I was facing him. “Something else you need to know.”

I placed my palms together so the left side of my right hand was touching the right side of my left hand. If I had matched the life lines from the left to the right hand, they would have been perfectly connected. I tensed my palms so my fingers shook, like they were vibrating. Then, in a low hum, my pores opened and light came through. A white trickle of light then became a strong ray and shone up from my palms and onto the ceiling.

I watched goose bumps roll over Justin’s arms. He stood up and squinted down at my open hands. Without looking away from the light shining out from my palms he said, “Don’t all vampires die in the sunlight?”

I placed my hands by my side, breaking the connection and throwing the room back into the light of the early morning.

“This is a particularly unique gift.”

Justin swallowed and said nothing.

“During the day, you’re safe,” I explained, trying to calm him down. “Vicken is the only one strong enough to stand the sunlight. He wouldn’t risk exposure in a place he doesn’t know well. If for some reason we’re separated, around six o’clock make sure you are indoors in a locked room.”

I watched goose bumps roll over Justin’s arms again. His eyes darted to the window and the day breaking over the green trees that decorated his view. “It’s morning now,” he said. “Everything’s changed.”

And so it was.