Sunshine (24 page)

“We ought to put all this in our report, and pass it on up the line, and then you'd get a horde of SOF experts down on you like nothing you've ever imagined, and, speaking of shackles, you'd probably spend the rest of your life chained to the goddess of pain's desk. She'd
love
you.

“But we don't want to. Because we
need
you. We need you in the field. Dear frigging gods and angels, do we ever need you in the field. We need anything we can get because, frankly, we're losing. You didn't know that, did you? At the moment we still got the news nailed shut. But it isn't going to stay nailed shut. Another hundred years, tops, and the suckers are going to be running our show. The Wars were just a distraction. We think we won. Well, maybe we did, but we skegged our future doing it. It blows, but it's the way it is. So little grubby guys like me and Jesse feel we need you in the field a hell of a lot more than we need you disappeared into some study program while they try to figure out how you've done what you've done and how they could make a lot of other people do it too. Which they wouldn't be able to because it's gonna turn out not to work that way. And we guess you don't want to be disappeared either?”

I shook my head on a suddenly stiff neck.

“Yeah. So, anyway, if you can off suckers with common household utensils, we want you out there doing it. We'll even lie to the goddess of pain about you to keep you to ourselves, and babe, that takes balls.”

Would they still want me out there doing what I could do if they knew what else I could do? If they knew the truth about the second shackle?

Were the vampires really going to win within the next hundred years?

W
HEN WE GOT
back to the car it started the first time. There wasn't much conversation. We were most of the way back to town when Pat said, “Hey, Sunshine, talk to us. What are you thinking?”

“I'm trying not to think. I'm—” I stopped. I didn't know if I could say it aloud, even to make my point. “I'm trying not to think about those stains on the walls in the alley, last night.”

There was a pause. “I'm sorry,” said Jesse. “We do have some idea what we're asking you. Don't let Pat's pleasure in his own rhetoric get to you.”

“Hey,” said Pat.

“I haven't been your age in a long time,” Jesse went on, “and I grew up wanting to join SOF. I knew it was going to be bad, what I was going to be doing, if I stayed a field agent, which I wanted to be. And it is bad, a lot of it, a lot of the time. You get used to it because you have to. And SOF doesn't throw you in like you've been thrown in. Last night was rough even for a grizzled old vet like me.

“Rae, we aren't asking you to make a decision to save the world tomorrow. But please think about what Pat said. Think about the fact that we really, really need you. And think, for what it's worth, that we'll back you up to the last gasp, if you want us there. If last-gasp stuff turns out to be necessary.”

“And just by the way, kiddo,” said Pat in his mildest voice, “I'm not accusing you of anything, okay? But it must be fifty miles from here back to where you live with that weird siddhartha type. I ain't saying it's not possible, Sunshine, but that's a hell of a hike for anyone, let alone someone who's spent two days chained to a wall expecting to die. I'm thinking your last gasp is pretty worth having.”

I stared out the window, thinking about the second shackle.

I
GOT THROUGH
dessert shift that night on autopilot. Nobody asked me how my afternoon had gone and I didn't volunteer anything. The atmosphere of Repressed Anxiety was thick enough to cut chunks out of and fry, however. I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Cole slaw? Potato-strychnine mash? Things were so fraught that Kenny came into the bakery long enough to say “Hey big sis” and give me a hug. He hadn't called me Big Sis since the time he was eight and I was eighteen and I'd caught him spying on my then-boyfriend Raoul and me and he went around the house yelling Big Sissy Kissy Kissy and I sent Raoul home and went into my brothers' room and destroyed the backup discs to every one of their combox games that I could find. Which was a lot. You might think this was overreacting (Mom, Charlie, and Billy did), but I was lucky he'd only caught us kissing, and I wanted to be sure I'd been discouraging enough about this sort of fraternal behavior. Anyway neither Kenny nor Billy spoke to me at all for about six months, by which time I'd graduated, the Big Sis era was over, and shortly after that I'd moved into my own apartment.

Mary took her break in the bakery again, and told me the latest Mr. Cagney story, but her heart wasn't in it.

“I'm okay,” I said. “Really.”

“I know you are,” she said, but she hugged me anyway, and got streaks of flour and cinnamon all down her front.

I was due to stay till closing but they packed me off an hour early. I didn't argue. I fetched the Wreck and drove home slowly. I was so tired—bone tired, marrow tired, what comes after that? Life tired? That's the kind of tired I was. It wasn't just lack of sleep tired, though I did have a few fuzzy cobwebs at the corners of my vision.

I could hear some of Mom's charms moving around in the glove compartment. Once a charm has been given someone's name, if that someone doesn't snap it and let it go live, it may pop itself, and try to come after you. When I opened the glove compartment to put a new one in now, half a dozen of the old ones tried to climb up my arm. They were probably all totally cracked from driving around in a car though.

It had been dark for two hours. The moon was rising. I thought about trying to talk Charlie into keeping the coffeehouse open twenty-four hours, drive those inferior Prime Time brownies right out of town. Then I could never leave the coffeehouse again, for the rest of my life. Pat and Jesse would be disappointed, of course, and we'd have to gear hard after the insomniac market, to keep the customer flow up, all night long, since you can't ward a restaurant. But these were mere practical problems. The thing that really bothered me was that I'd have to tell everyone why.

That there was a vampire—a master vampire, and his gang—after me. Specifically the ones I'd got away from two months ago, and it turns out suckers are poor losers. And persistent bastards.

That maybe I was the first bad-magic wuss in history. The lab-coat brigade would probably want to do exhaustive research on my mother's child-rearing techniques as well as on my blood chemistry. Academic prunes would write papers. If they knew.

If I lost it and they found out.

There was a light on in Yolande's part of the house, spilling across the porch and toward the drive. I still went up my own stairs in the dark; there was a hall light, but electric light in that narrow windowless way made me feel claustrophobic. When I got upstairs, and bolted the door behind me, I still didn't turn the light on. I had another cup of chamomile tea on the dark balcony. Moonlight was beginning to glimmer through the trees at the edge of the garden. And I turned off thinking. I sat there, listening to the almost-silence. There were tiny rustling noises, the hoot of an owl, the soft stirring of the wind through leaves. External leaves. Internal leaves.

A tree? It shouldn't be a tree. My immaterial mentor should be one of those things in one of my brothers' combox games that you zapped on sight, all teeth and turpitude.

And nothing at all like you, Sunshine
…
we
need
you
.

I was so tired. At least tonight I had the option to go to bed early. I put my cup in the sink, put my nightgown on. Like last night, I was out as soon as I lay down.

B
UT
I
WOKE
again only a few hours later, knowing he was there. I lay curled up, facing the wall; the window, and the rest of the room, were behind me. I didn't hear him, of course. But I knew he was there.

I turned over. There was a bright rectangle of moonlight on the floor, and a dark shape sitting motionless in the chair beyond it. He raised his head a little, in acknowledgment, I think, of my waking. He'd been watching me.

I thought about being in the same room with a vampire. I thought about the fact that he'd come in, however he'd come in, through some charmed and warded door (or window). I thought about the fact that I had, of course, invited him in, when he had brought me home, two months ago. I hadn't thought about inviting him in, but I'd been beyond that kind of thinking then anyway, and he'd been doing me the small service of saving my life at the time. I shouldn't now object to the idea that once I'd invited him over my threshold the welcome was, apparently, permanent.

You can kind of feel the barrier your wards are making for you, feel if there are any big drafts flowing through any big holes. There weren't any drafts. None of my wards were reacting to his presence.

I assumed the invitation was particular to him. That I hadn't thrown the way open for vampires in general. Not a nice thought.

Maybe I'd invited him over my threshold a second time when I stood on the edge of the darkness two nights ago and said,
What do I do now
?

There were things I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten the
wrongness
. What was new was the fact that, despite my heart doing its fight-or-flight, help-we're-prey-and-HEY-STUPID-THAT'S-A-VAMPIRE number, I was glad to see him. Ridiculous but true. Scary but true.

The one person—creature—whatever of my acquaintance who wouldn't be in any danger if I snapped. Even a criminally deranged almost-human berserker is no match for a vampire.

The one whatever of my acquaintance who probably would still make me look virtuous and morally upstanding if I did snap.

I didn't find this very comforting.

“You came,” I said.

“I was here last night,” he said. “But you slept deeply, and I did not wish to disturb you.”

I'd also forgotten how uncanny his voice was. Sinister. Not human.

“That was nice of you,” I said, listening to myself and thinking
you pathetic numbskull
. “I had three hours of sleep last night and it—it's been a long couple of days.”

“Yes,” he said.

Silence fell. Some things hadn't changed.

“Bo is looking for me,” I said at last.

“Yes,” he said.

“I'm sorry,” I said humbly, “I don't know what to do. I … I … All I did was drive out to the lake, that night, and everything else … I'm sorry,” I said again, a little wildly, and only too aware of the irony: “I don't want to
die
, you know?”

“Yes,” he said again.

This time I heard the pause as one of those “you're not going to like this” pauses.

“Bo is looking for me too,” he said. “When he finds me, he will be careful to destroy me. Last time was theatrics. This time he will take no chances.”

Well, that was the most cheering news I'd heard all week. Even better than ghastly revelations about the possible truth of my genetic composition. No one really understands genetics any more than anyone really understands world economics, and what I'd been guessing might not be true. I could just
worry
about it for the rest of my life. If I was going to
have
a rest of my life. As guaranteed bad news, vampires are a much surer bet. Great. Spartan. Let's have a party. “Oh,” I said carefully.

I looked into what was probably a short, bleak future, and realized that one of the reasons I'd been glad to see that dark shape in the chair was that with him here, for the first time since I'd come home after those nights at the lake I'd felt maybe … not totally clueless and overwhelmed. Yes, he'd been the one shackled to the ballroom wall with me, but they'd been
afraid
of him. Twelve against one, and him chained to the wall, and they were afraid. The fact that they'd caught him could have been some kind of trick. It happened. Presumably among vampires too.

And now he was saying that he was out of his depth too. That it
was
hopeless. I wanted some nice human equivocation and denial. No, no, it'll be all right! The table knife was an ugly accident! And by the way you're not going to morph into an axe murderer!

Rescuing the odd vampire from destruction had already fulfilled my bad-gene quota of antisocial behavior. Please.

“Why does he hate you so much?” I said.

The silence went on for a while, but I could wait. What else was there to do? Walk outside and shout, “Here I am”? I might be due for a short, squalid future, but as a basic principle I was going to hold on to what there was of it.

He hadn't refused to answer yet.

“It's a long story,” he said at last. “We are nearly the same age. There are different ways of being what we are. Mine is one way. His is another. Mine, it turns out, has certain advantages. If others perhaps thought the implications through, some things might be different. Bo does not wish anyone to think those implications through. Destroying me is a way to erase the evidence. Plus that he does not care for me to have advantages no longer available to him.”

This was interesting, and under other circumstances would have made me curious. Constantine couldn't be very old—by vampire standards—only young vampires can go out in strong moonlight, like tonight. Middle-aged ones can go out when the moon is young or old enough. Later middle-aged ones can only go outdoors when there is no moon. Really old ones can't be outdoors under the open sky at all, with any possibility of the dimmest reflected sunlight touching them. That was one of the reasons older ones began running gangs.

If they survived to be old they'd also developed other powers.

“He has another urgent reason, now. If he does not destroy me, he will lose control of his gang. Bo likes ruling. It is also necessary to him that he rule—to do with those advantages I possess and he does not. And while as the leader of his gang he is much more powerful than I am, alone, I am the stronger.”