Throat (21 page)

“I really should leave,” I said, standing up. “I’m sorry I stumbled onto your … your
Strecke
. I won’t come up here after dark anymore.”
After dark … careful. Don’t let them know your secret
.

“Wait,” Lena said. “Please, sit with us awhile longer. It would mean very much to us if you were to stay.”

Was it some kind of trap? I wondered. Were they working with Wirtz? They didn’t seem dangerous, but …

“Why? So you can throw another blanket over me?” I said.

“I told you. We were frightened,” Lena said. “You never know
who may be
Verloren
. Your color is blue, so it is plain you are a
neues Blut
, a Freshblood, perhaps even an
Unschuldig
, as Anton so rudely put it. It is just that it has been … so long … only the three of us. We will not hurt you, as long as you promise not to hurt us. We are … isolated. We can observe the world of … people … down below, but that only gets one so far.… Could you stay for a little while? Tell us something about yourself?”

“I don’t really know if I should,” I said. “To be honest, I feel like you guys are okay. But there is someone else … who can’t find me.”

“Who?” Anton said.

I wanted to bite my tongue. “I’d rather not talk about it. I’ve said too much already.”

“Let her go, Lena,” Donne said. She hadn’t smiled once. “I don’t care if we are isolated. I don’t trust her. She’s so fresh.… She could go down into the city and tell someone we are here.”

“What could she tell?” Anton said. “Three … vampires … are living at the state park? I’m sure that would bring the policemen running.”

“You know what I mean. Maybe she wants to claim this place for herself?” Donne said.

“I have my own place,” I said, glaring back at Donne. “I told you, I came here because of my grandfather.”

“Does he live here?” Anton said.

“No. But this—this was our favorite place to visit. He helped to build it.” I pointed at the stones. “It’s always meant a lot to us … and I was feeling … alone. So I just came up here to see it. Impulsively.”

I couldn’t quite believe I was sitting there in front of Papi’s beloved
Steinhaus
talking to three vampires. But I was so curious, so desperate to have my questions answered.

“Okay … what if I do stay a little while,” I said. “Do you promise to let me go when I’m ready?”

Lena smiled warmly. “Yes. You have my word on it. But I will leave it up to them. Anton?”

“Sure! I’d love to talk with her some more.”

Donne shook her head. “I don’t want to take the chance. But I can see you two have already decided to trust her. As usual, I’m outvoted. She can stay.”

“Wow, thanks a lot,” I said sarcastically.

Lena looked at the younger vampire without saying anything.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” Donne said. “It’s just that we have to be so careful. We don’t want to lose this place.”

I wanted to dislike her, but I could see some of myself in Donne. “Hey, I like your name,” I said, working hard to smile at her. “Where did you get it?”

“My mother,” Donne said. “She was … how would you say it … you’re so fresh—a fan. My mother was a big fan of the poet John Donne.”

“
Paradise Lost
, huh?” I said.

“That’s Milton,” Donne said. “Donne is the guy who wrote ‘No man is an island, entire of itself.…’ ”

“Right, right.” I remembered, feeling a little embarrassed.

“You still haven’t told us your name?” Anton said. Almost everything he said sounded like a question.

“I don’t know …,” I said.

“We told you ours.”

“Okay. It’s Emma.”

“How old are you, Emma?” Lena said.

“Seventeen,” I said.

Lena pulled at her lip. “I was your age, Emma, in … let me think … 1859.”

“Oh my God.” Just thinking about it made me start feeling a little dizzy.

Lena’s laugh was high and musical. “Wait just one minute! I’m not even two hundred years old yet.”

Anton got going again. “At least Donne and I are from the same century, only about twenty years apart. I was my last human age in … 1918. Donne in 1938. She is the youngest. We try not to let her forget it, right?” He laughed and nudged Donne with an elbow. She glowered at him. I was struck with the feeling that they were a couple.

“Can I … ask you some questions?” I said, feeling a little bolder. “I’ve tried to read about it … a lot of things in books and on the Internet.”

“What would you like to know?” Anton said.

“Most of what I have read doesn’t seem real. It’s just people guessing who don’t know what they’re talking about. Like, I know we don’t disappear in mirrors, for instance. I’ve seen myself.”

“We are physical,” Anton said. “So that’s purely logical, right? A physical thing reflects light, or you wouldn’t be able to see us, correct?”

“And so many other things,” I said. “So many inconsistencies. I’m so new to all this and there hasn’t been anyone … anyone who could tell me anything about it.”

They all looked at one another, but didn’t say what they were thinking.

“What would you like to know?” Lena said. “We will do our best.”

“Um. Do we really … live forever?”

“Ah, that would be first,” Anton said. “Of course not. We are physical, like I said. We have to stop sometime, don’t we?”

“So vampires die of old age?”

Lena turned to look at Anton. “Have you ever heard it?” she said. “A vampire dying of old age?”

“No,” Anton said. “That’s true. But logic …”

“We don’t know,” Donne said. “That’s what they’re trying to say. It’s something we’ve all wondered about for generations. If we do age, it’s very, very slow. That much is certain.”

“We are hopeful,” Lena said.

“Hopeful that you’ll live forever?” I said.

She shook her head. “Hopeful that we will live long enough.”

“Live long enough for what?” I said.

“To experience the
Sonneneruption,
” Lena said.

A feeling seemed to pass through the three of them at once, as if they were all in one body. Ripples moving across a pond.

“
Sonneneruption?
” I said.

“It is a very old word,” Lena said. “It describes for us an experience that is the … most holy, I suppose you could say it that way. It has been a very long time … years, perhaps, since I have even spoken this word out loud.
Sonneneruption
is the holiest word we have.”

“What does it mean?” I said. “My grandfather is German. It’s another German word, isn’t it? I know what
Sonnen
is.
Sonnen
means ‘sun,’ doesn’t it?”

“That is correct,” Lena said. “Therefore
Sonneneruption
is exactly what it says … an eruption of the sun.”

“Like an … explosion?”

“You could call it that, though we would say
explosion
would be much too small a word and too …”

“Physical,” Anton said.

“But … an eruption of the sun? How could that not be physical?” I said.

“It is,” Lena said. “But it is so much more than that. It is … what is the best word?” she said, turning to Donne.

“Spiritual,” Donne said. “I would call it spiritual.”

“A spiritual event?” I said.

“Yeah,” Donne said.

“So what’s supposed to happen?” I said. “The sun blows up?”

They all looked at each other as if they were humoring a child.

“The
Sonneneruption
has nothing to do with destruction,” Lena said. “It is all about … cleansing. That is what you could say about it. Healing, perhaps. It is a glorious time for vampires—as you would call us—all over the world … a time of rejoicing. A time we wait for. A time when … our agony is over.”

“I’m not sure I’m catching all of this,” I said. “So … this kind of spiritual eruption happens on the sun, and somehow this is a cause for rejoicing for … vampires?”

“Well, not all of them,” Anton said. “There are some. Quite a few, actually, who are not spiritual, okay? Most of them don’t believe in the
Sonneneruption
. Some of them believe in it but feel they are cursed for all eternity.”

“There is a madness to many of their kind,” Lena said. “We call them the
Verloren.
”

“Lost,” I said, my sketchy memory of Papi’s German kicking in. “
Verloren
means ‘lost,’ doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Lena said. “It is not so much a physical losing as … a loss that is …” She couldn’t seem to find the word, so she touched her heart.

“Spirit? Are you talking about a loss of the spirit?” I said, trying to help.

Lena nodded. “An absence. Loss. Most of the
Verloren
no longer have faith in the
Sonneneruption
. If they ever did. They are the ones we think of as the vampires. The monsters. Many have a malevolence that is bordering on pure evil.”

Wirtz
, I thought instantly.
They’re talking about Wirtz. He’s one of the Verloren
.

*    *    *

I wondered if I should tell them about Wirtz.
No. Not yet
.

Lena seemed to go all somber. “Emma, I have not seen the sun in … over a century and a half. You can still recall its warmth, the way it felt on your bare shoulders, the way it filled your eyes. The way it made water sparkle. Do you feel it yet, Emma? The eternal loss of the sun? Do you know what that is like? You will.”

“So you miss it?” I said. “Miss the sun … even though it can kill you?”

“
Sonnen
is the healer,” Lena said. “That is what is so misunderstood. We could step out into the sunlight tomorrow, and the healing would begin.”

I gulped a little, thinking of Wirtz. “So, that’s just a myth? About the sun killing us?”

“Oh, it’s true,” Donne said. “It’ll kill you, all right. Surely you’re smart enough to know that. Just try it sometime.”

I tried it just today
, I thought. But something told me to hold back on that information too.

“
Sonnen
 … it is a two-edged sword,” Lena said. “If you go out into the daylight, yes, you will die. Not because it is harmful—but because it is not enough. What is in regular sunlight, the healing within it … it comes too slowly, in too small amounts to be of any use. Too small a dose is damaging.”

“It’s too gradual,” Donne said. “Some of the good stuff is in the sunlight, but … it’s not enough. Not fast enough. So that there’s no protection from the bad. The bad parts of the sun eat away at you much more rapidly than the good repairs you. In normal daylight.”

“But during the
Sonneneruption
, it comes all at once, okay?” Anton said. “The healing. There’s something more in the sun than just ordinary light.”

“It is a substance all its own,” Lena said. “But only during the
Sonneneruption
does it come quickly enough to perform the Cleansing. Cleansing the body of the … 
Infektion
 …”

“Infection?” I said. “So you mean … there’s a cure for vampirism?” All three of them flinched when I said it.

“The
Sonneneruption
is the Cleansing,” Lena said. “It drives the infection away.”

I felt a pulse of pure cold electricity in my chest.
A cure. Sagan …
“So there’s a chance we can be … human again?”

“That is how we believe,” Lena said. “The
Verloren
, on the other hand …”

“But … the
Sonneneruption
 … wouldn’t it cure them too?” I said. “Wouldn’t it cure vampires everywhere?”

“Yes,” Anton said. “Do the math. Vampires, as you call us, would have long ago overrun the earth if not for periodic
Sonneneruptions.
”

“How often do they happen?” I said.

“The frequency is difficult to predict,” Lena said. “They do not come at regular intervals. The last occurred when I was about your age, which was, as I said, in 1859. I was still human then. It came during the night in my part of the world. All were cured except for those who remained belowground for the duration. The
Verloren
. I was turned three years after the
Sonneneruption
by one of them.”

I got up and stood away from the wall, facing them. “So you’re saying the bad ones … the
Verloren
 … they missed the boat, so they’re bitter? And they take it out on the rest of us.”

“Who knows what they think?” Donne said angrily. “They think about themselves and no one else.”

“The only way they were ever able to confederate was briefly through their collective anger,” Lena said.

“Was that the war?” I said.

Lena glanced at Anton, who looked as if he was about to speak. “The war,” she said. She smiled a sad little smile. “If it could even be called that.”

All of them were quiet for a little while. Then Donne spoke up.

“Why don’t we just build a campfire and roast marshmallows?” she said. “Sitting here talking like this … is wasting time.”

“Time is running out for you?” Lena said, smiling.

“Not running out for me, running out for the
Unschuldig,
” Donne said, pointing at me. “She needs to feed.”

“Well,” Lena said. “I thought you were being impatient, Donne, and instead you were being wise. Please forgive me. And thank you.” She turned to me. “Emma. Donne is exactly right. My manners … You should feed right away. You are not yet experienced enough to fast.”