Sunshine (53 page)

The thought flamed up in me, like the sun coming up over the horizon. Yes.
It will be worth it
. I took my hand out of my pocket.

Now all I had to do was
do
it.

We reached the bottom of the dais. Those eyes were still pulling at me. Deliberately, consciously, voluntarily, I lifted my own eyes and met them.

Monster didn't begin to cover it. Ironically the greeting we'd had from his guard corps had done me a service; I think if I hadn't already been shocked beyond my capacity to handle it I wouldn't have survived the initial blow of looking into the eyes of the master. Maybe it was a good thing I'd already lost my soul, that I was already half out of my body, my mind, my life. Because it meant I wasn't
there
to meet the full force of Bo's gaze.

It was bad enough anyway. The distillation of hundreds of years of evil shimmering in those eyes, and his enjoyment of my looking at it.

But he also expected me to crack, to disintegrate, immediately. He thought that as soon as I looked into his eyes it would be all over. Never mind that I could, apparently, look into ordinary vampires' eyes. That happened occasionally. (I saw this in his eyes too, and thought, it did? Remember this. The part of me that was looking forward to finishing dying said,
What for?)
Bo was a master vampire. He could destroy
vampires
with his glare. A mere human would incinerate on the spot.

Oh, and his eyes were colorless. Did I say that? I hadn't thought of evil as being without color but it is. Once you get past plain everyday wickedness, the color is squeezed right out of it. Evil is a kind of oblivion, having destroyed everything on its way there.

I did go up in flames. But they weren't the flames he had anticipated. The light-web blazed up, like a lit fuse running back to the detonator, the bomb, snaking along the ground as it had been laid out: a slender tongue of fire began in a curl on the back of each of my hands. They ran up my arms, licking along the lines of the lattice, across my breast—the chain around my neck flared—into my scalp; I could feel my hair rising, waving in the fire, or perhaps it became fire itself; running down my back, my belly, my legs. The lighting of that fuse was looking into Bo's eyes.

I was on fire. I put one flaming foot on the first stair of the dais, and stepped up. I was still staring into Bo's eyes.

I felt, rather than saw, the vampires on the dais slither together and descend on Con. I don't know if they saw me burst into flames or not; I don't know if they were the sort of flames that anyone sees, even vampires. If they did see the light-web ignite, presumably they thought it was to do with their master having me well in hand, and they could afford to concentrate on Con. But Bo gave me another gift, as I toiled up the dais stairs toward him, letting me see, briefly, out of his eyes, to the bottom of the dais, behind me. I saw the other vampires pull Con down. The vampires around Bo's dais would be the elite, of course, as the welcoming committee had been the cannon fodder; and as I say, I'm not sure that vampires get tired, exactly, but they can come to the end of their strength. I thought now, as I flamed (I seemed to hear the roaring of flame too) that Con might have given me more of his remaining strength than I had realized, to get me this far. More than he could spare.

Which meant I
had
to …

I saw one of the vampires bend over him, as they pinned him down, its mouth open, fangs shining: it buried its face in his throat. I saw him jerk and heave, but they had him fast. I saw another vampire delicately unbutton the remains of his shirt, stroke his chest.…

I saw its fingers reaching under Con's breastbone for his heart.

It wasn't anything so clear and noble as a decision that since I could do nothing for him I might as well get on with what I was doing. That Con was dying in a good cause if I could finish it before I died too. It wasn't a meeting of my strength against Bo's either, because Bo was still the stronger. He was going to stop me before I reached him.

I was two steps from the summit, the crown where Bo sat enthroned, and I couldn't go any farther.

But I still couldn't watch Con die. I
couldn't
.

Think about cinnamon rolls. Think about the bakery at Charlie's. Feel the dough under your hands and the heat of the ovens. Think about Charlie cranking down the awning, Mom going into the office and flicking on her combox before she takes off her coat. Think about Mel in the kitchen next door. Think about Pat and Jesse sitting at their table, eating everything that Mary puts in front of them; think about Mary pouring hot coffee.

Think about Mrs. Bialosky sitting at her table, and Maud sitting across from her.

… And for a moment I saw them, Mrs. B and Maud. They were holding hands across the table, and their faces looked haggard and strained and awful, as if they were waiting to hear the news of someone's death. News they were expecting. And then Mrs. B looked up, straight at me, as she had the day I had been watching her from behind the counter, and Maud looked up too, over her shoulder, as Mrs. B was looking. Their eyes met mine.

Standing behind them I seemed to see Mel. He held out his arms toward me, and flames leaped from his skin, as if his tattoos were a light-web.

I took the last two steps. I was standing in front of Bo.

But I couldn't bring myself to touch him—to try to touch him. I said that
monster
doesn't cover it. There is no word for a several-hundred-year-old vampire who has performed every available wickedness over and over till he has to invent unavailable ones because he'd worn the others out. His flesh was not flesh; it was a viscous ooze, held together by malice. His voice was a manifestation of malignancy, for he had no tongue, no larynx; his eyes were the purest
imagination
of evil: flawless in a way that flesh could never be.

I knew that if I touched him I would be re-created into such as he was.

The scar on my breast burst apart, and my poisoned blood ran down.

I stopped. I stopped
trying
.

But Bo made a mistake. He laughed.

I reached into my left-hand pocket, and took out the daylight charm. I didn't look at it, but I felt the tiny sun spin and blaze, the tree shake its leaves—
yesssss
—the deer raise her head, acknowledging her own death, watching it come toward her. I felt the moving line of the water-barrier around its edge. As Bo laughed, I threw the charm down the noisome hole that indicated his mouth. A little tracery of fire followed it, like an arrow carrying a rope across a chasm. The mouth-hole closed with a
sucking
sound—something an ear could hear. What there was that was left of him in the real world wavered and became vulnerable to reality again, as the force and concentration of his will faltered in surprise.

Surprise and pain. The fire—my fire—ran up his face; his eyes

No no I can't say

But he had been strong and evil and undead for such a long time, and I had been alive and human for such a short time. My little fire wavered, and began to ebb. His face writhed: he was about to speak.

Ssssssss

A hiss? I'd heard Con hiss—vampires did hiss. The giggler had hissed. It was a horrible noise even from a … an everyday, an every-night vampire. It was much worse from Bo, as everything about Bo was worse. But was it a hiss? Or was it his attempt to say my name?

I was back at the lake, where it all began. The sun flamed outside the house. The lake water lapped at the shore. For that first time I heard my tree:
Yesssss
. Perhaps there had been a doe standing in that forest, looking through the trees at the house, on her way home, to some dappled place where she would doze till sunset.

Beauregard!
I shouted.
I destroy you!

And I put my hands into the mire of his chest, and wrenched out his heart.

T
HE SKY WAS
falling. Ah. Okay. Skies don't fall; therefore I was dead. I'd kind of expected to be dead. I felt rather comfortable, really. Relieved. Did that mean I'd succeeded? Succeeded in what? There'd been something I'd been desperate to do before I checked out for the last time … couldn't quite remember …

Sunshine

Why can't you leave me alone? There is a lot of noise. Shouldn't be able to hear anyone saying my name. So, I'm not hearing someone saying my name. So go away, damn it.
I don't want to be here, shivering in this polluted body
. My hands … my hands … touched …
I won't remember
.

I'm not dead yet, I thought composedly, but I am dying. Good. I don't want to spend the rest of my life being careful not to remember.

I hope I did whatever it was I wanted to do first.

Maybe I could go back just long enough to find out.

Sunshine

Con, on his hands and knees, crouched over me. The floor shook under us, and there was a lot of … stuff … falling down and flying around. Not a good place to be, unless you were dying, which I was. Con, I wanted to say, don't bother. Let one of these flying chunks of something or other finish the job. I'm tired, and I don't want to hang around. My hands …

“Sunshine,” he said. “We have to get out of here. Listen to me. You have undone Bo; he cannot put himself back together. You have succeeded. This is your victory. But there is much of his—his animus—released by the final destruction of his body. This place is being pulled to pieces. I cannot carry you through this. Sunshine,
listen
to me.…”

I was drifting off again. I paused in the drift, momentarily caught by the sound of Con's voice. He sounded positively … emotional. I wanted to laugh, but I didn't have the energy. I began to drift again.

I felt him lift me up—I wanted to struggle; leave me
alone
—but I didn't have the energy for that either. He rearranged me, leaning against him, one arm around me, the other hand cradling my head, tipping it toward his body.…

Blood. Blood in my mouth.

Again.

No

I wanted to struggle: I did want to. I could have not swallowed. I could have let it run back out of my mouth again: Con's blood. This wasn't the blood of a deer, this time, a mortal creature, killed for me, killed because she was like me, more like me than a vampire. Less like me than a vampire, perhaps, by the fact of her death, by the fact that the recently life-warm blood of her had saved my life. That had been a long time ago. I hadn't known what was going on, that time. I knew well enough this time. This was Con's heart's blood. The heart's blood of a vampire.

When did I cross the irrevocable line: when I drove out to the lake, when I tucked my little knife into my bra, when I transmuted it into a key, when I unlocked my shackle, when I unlocked Con's?

When I took him into the daylight, and stopped it from burning him?

When he saved my life by the death of a doe?

When I discovered I could destroy a vampire with my hands?

When I destroyed Bo with those hands?

Or when I agreed to live, by drinking Con's heart's blood?

I don't know what happened at the foot of the dais, when Bo's crack troop set on Con while I was climbing the stairs. I don't know if what I saw was entirely some mirage of Bo's, to confound and weaken me, or whether something like it did happen. I would rather think that some of it did happen. That the wound in his chest was already there when he pressed my mouth against it. This was no mere flesh wound, this time, no tiny slash from a tiny blade. I did not want to think of him sinking his own fingers, tearing his own …

I lifted my head with a gasp, and began to struggle to my feet. He eeled up beside me: still that vampire fluency, even after everything that had happened. Even with that wound in his chest.

He took my hand again, and we ran.

It takes some coordination, running while holding someone's hand, but if you can get it right, every time your linked hands swing forward you get a little extra force for that stride. Some of that was the vampire cocktail I had just swallowed; it coursed through me, giving me a strength I knew didn't belong to me,
shouldn't
belong to me—shouldn't be letting me keep struggling, letting me run, letting me use my poisoned hands. Clinging to his hand too, or perhaps his clinging to mine, let me stop thinking about what my hands had recently been doing.

So, would it have been better to die?

Too much has happened since my last sunset. Con may be right that I cannot be turned, and that it won't be the daylight that kills me, but the touch of the real world will, whatever the sun is doing.

I missed the little hot lump of the seal against my leg. The chain swept back and forth across my breast in time with my running footsteps, but slowly, weighted by the thick poisoned blood of the reopened scar.

My sun-self, my tree-self, my deer-self. Don't they outweigh the dark self
?

Not any more
.

We ran, and a wind like the end of the world howled around us, and huge fragments of machinery, having crumbled apart and fallen, were yanked up again and tossed like bits of paper. I think the roof was caving in as well; it was a little hard to differentiate. There was no trail to follow, of dismembered vampire remains or anything else; I don't know how Con knew which way to run, but he seemed to, and I ran because he was running, because it seems like a good thing to do when hunks of flying metal the size of small buses are razoring through the air around you, even though I suppose you're as likely to run
into
the wrong place at the wrong time as you are to have lingered in the wrong place at the wrong time if you were moving more slowly.

For the moment, for just this moment of running, I seemed to be committed to the idea of trying to stay alive.

Then we were actually running down something that looked like a corridor, toward something that looked like double swinging doors. We put our unlinked hands forward to push through, and for a miracle the doors swung back, like normal doors in the real world are supposed to do. We were outside,
outside
, in No Town, under a night sky, breathing real air.