A Dark-Adapted Eye (23 page)

My ears were starting to clear and I recognized a choppy, whirring sound: the blades of the helicopter circling far overhead, its bright light moving lazily. Somewhere to the right, a mechanical voice spoke in garbled tones.

“I believed,” I told Les, astonished. “For a second there . . .”

“So did I,” he replied, his bewilderment and contained exuberance somehow comforting to me.

“You there! Hands up!”

Both of us turned in the direction of the shout and found a soldier approaching us at a light jog. I threw my hands up automatically at the sight of his gun and Les’s came up because he had no choice.

“Don’t shoot!” he called to the soldier.

“Human?” the soldier demanded as he reached us, lowering his gun and shining a flashlight into our eyes.

“Ow! Yes!” I cried.

He finally noticed the bloodied ropes on our wrists. “Let’s take care of that. I’m Sams.”

“Please,” I begged, tears springing into my eyes. I wanted Palefinger’s blood off me. I was tired of having limited use of my arms and Les and I dragging each other around whenever we tried to move. I was . . .
tired
.

Sams, satisfied of our humanity, led us to one of the trucks and got the ropes removed. The relief from pain was instant. I swung my arms to work the stiff muscles, the night breeze chilly on my raw, red wrists. Les’s looked the same.

“Medic,” Sams said efficiently.

Without us even noticing, the soldiers had erected a camp of sorts. Officers ran around pr
oductively. There were tents and tables and tall spotlights illuminating the area. I’d almost have thought it was daytime except for the wall of darkness at the edges. The helicopter whir, which had provided a constant background noise, now faded into the unseen distance.

We weren’t the only ones getting medical treatment. Several humans had survived the ordeal, in fact. Falling into a daze as an officer treated and bandaged my wrists, I pieced together what had happened by listening to their tentative whispers.

The military had sent in a helicopter equipped with a high-powered UV light and blasted the thing at full force. This had stunned the vampires enough to allow the trucks to come in with their weapons. It had been easy, apparently, to distinguish the humans among the vampires because we were the ones cowering in the light while the vamps had tried to get away, twisting in pain.

They’d killed so many in such a short period of time. Our city was free and safe, or would be soon. Things were going to change again, only this time they’d get better.

It was all because of Ivory, I realized. Aleskie had told him where the vampires would be tonight, and
he
had told somebody important. Someone who didn’t like the way things were in Las Secas and saw a way to change them.

My brother hadn’t been lying when he’d threatened Palefinger that soon everyone would know what the vampires were doing. If it wasn’t already, I was sure this would be on the news later—humans, crazed and elated because they’d almost died, would relate conflicting accounts of the prophecy and the events of the night and no one would know what to believe.

I was sitting there in mute astonishment long after my bandages were in place. Les stood up and walked toward me, his own bandages peeking out of the sleeves of his jacket. He lifted his shirt and showed me where they’d dressed the wound on his side. They’d cut away some fabric from his jeans and fixed up his gunshot wound, too.

“New scars, huh?”

“Yeah. I was lucky these weren’t any deeper.”

“I wonder if we’ll have scars on our wrists too.”

“Maybe. It was pretty bad. The marks will take a while to fade, at the very least.”

“Ivory did this,” I said after a moment, shivering. I’d been doing that for several minutes without even realizing it. “He made it happen.”

“What a do-gooder.” He swung the jacket off and settled it heavily over my shoulders. One of his shirt sleeves was missing.

“This is heavy. You wear this all the time?”

“Pretty much.”

For another minute or two we sat there in silence until my brain finally kicked in. “Ivory,” I said, wondering why I hadn’t thought of it before. Somehow we’d gotten separated when the soldiers had come in. “We have to find him! He’s here somewhere. He’s probably looking for us!”

It didn’t take long to find him. There were only about thirty or forty humans in all, which was surprising considering the multitude of vampires. The soldiers had divided us into two groups, and Ivory was in the second one. I saw him sitting cross-legged on the ground on the other side of the medic tent, a blanket thrown over his shoulders, and I couldn’t contain myself. I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck, my weight sending him off balance.

“Whoa,” he said, but then he was squeezing me too.

“You’re alive,” I sobbed into his neck. “What he said—and then that guy—”

“Hey. It’s over now. Or nearly.” Ivory’s voice was smooth with the calm acceptance that everything had turned out all right and he’d known it would all along. It was as if he’d never worried at all, never been afraid. “Hey, Les.”

“Hey, Ivory.”

I could hear the restrained joy in Les’s voice because it was the very thing I was feeling, only I didn’t bother with self-control. The whole of the night was crashing into me all at once, making me limp. I was laughing and crying at the same time, not even caring how that must have looked with my bruised eyes. All that mattered was that we were alive, the three of us, and we were t
ogether.

“Is it over?” I kept asking. “Are they really gone?”

“Every vampire here tonight is dead. I saw what you guys did to Palefinger. I couldn’t believe it.”

Shivering despite Les’s jacket, I felt a twist of fear. This was what we’d wanted—to get rid of vampires—but suddenly it wasn’t so simple. “What about the others? In the city? What about Aleskie?”

“I don’t know,” Ivory said quietly.

“She’ll be fine.” I punctuated my words with an optimistic nod.

“It’s Mercer,” Les said. His voice wasn’t angry or even snide. Instead he sounded almost pitying.

Ivory and I followed his gaze and saw Mercer sitting to our right, near the outer edge of the light. He was crouched into himself, staring into nothing, a cigarette burning in one hand. Tears or sweat, long dried, had left streaks in his dirt-smudged face.

“Let’s just leave him alone.” My voice was soft. No one argued.

We lingered there contemplatively as military personnel bustled around us for what felt like hours. They took names and addresses and conducted informal interviews. At last they brought around a couple of buses to take everyone home.

Sams was standing by the door as we prepared to get on our bus. “You’ll be contacted for routine follow-up procedures,” he informed us.

“Routine?” I repeated with a giddy laugh. Les grinned.

I was feeling a little crazy when we boarded the bus. But as soon as I’d settled into a seat and made myself comfortable against Les, I started to wind down slowly. He wrapped an arm around me and rested his cheek on my head. I was tired to my bones and knew I’d sleep most of the way home.

As the bus pulled away, I looked out the window at the still-dark sky. The eclipse was long gone.

seventeen

escape velocity: the speed required for an object to escape the gravitational pull of a planet or other body

The bus had dropped everyone off as close to their homes as possible, so we’d ridden pract
ically all over the city by the time we reached the east side. It was just before sunrise. The bus had deposited us near the grocery store where we usually shopped and the three of us walked with a bounce in our step. The walk was a familiar one that Ivory and I had made countless times to get frozen drinks and chili cheese nachos from the convenience store whenever our parents had left us home alone. Sometimes Les had come too.

We’d all slept on the bus and were feeling gleeful and careless, like children. No one else was out walking through the cool, lightening morning and we didn’t bother to be quiet about teasing each other and recounting with ecstatic disbelief the ordeals of the night. We were past the points of sadness and rage. Now we were just glad to be alive. We were covered in dust and bloodstains and bruises, our clothing ripped, our hair wild, and we didn’t care.

“The eclipse was the scariest, most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” I enthused, practically jumping up and down. “It was
red
. The blood eclipse.”

“Blood eclipse,” Ivory repeated, glancing at me. He looked the worst of us all, having lost some weight and muscle tone during his days of captivity. His clothes hung loosely and his skin was sallow. “How’d the vamps know it was going to look like that, anyway?”

“I don’t know. You can’t really tell ahead of time how dark the color’s going to be.”

“Coincidence, then.”

“Prophecy,” I corrected mockingly.

Ivory shook his head. “Right. I can’t imagine how good old Paleface got anyone to fall for that Pater Loony crap.”

“They wanted to believe,” Les said, walking along with his jacket tucked under one arm, the other bare to his shoulder. “They wanted this guy to define their lives. Some people just need someone to tell them what to do. Something to believe in.”

“I didn’t know what was going on when that light came,” I said. “At first I thought it was s
elenelion.”

“What’s that?”

I explained it quickly and added, “But I also thought the Pater Luna thing was going to happen. Just for a second.”

“I thought we were getting abducted by aliens.”

“Alien space vampires?”

“Something like that.”

“But surely,” Ivory continued insistently, “
surely
there are other vampires somewhere in the world who didn’t fall for that cult stuff. I mean, it
was
cultish, wasn’t it? One of those apocalyptic deals. The world’s been ending since it began.”

“That’s what Aleskie said.”

“Maybe some stayed underground,” Les suggested.

“Which means we’ll be killing them later,” Ivory said. He shook his head. “And I thought those days were over.”

“Good thing they’re not. I was starting to worry about unemployment.”

“Ivory,” I said, “I’ve decided you can be Regulus.”

“What?”

“Instead of Arcturus.”

“Uh . . . thanks?”

“I assigned Arcturus to you sarcastically.”

“I’m ‘the bright one of the sword,’” Les boasted.

“I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”

I just smiled ambiguously and turned to Les with a thoughtful expression. “You know, that one-sleeved look is very becoming on you.”

He shot me an amused grin. “Well, Ash, I didn’t want to tell you before, but with those bruises on your face, you look like a bandit.”

Laughing, I took his hand and swung it between us. The sky over the mountains was turning orange and we were almost home.

“So, I see you two got together while I was gone,” Ivory said.

“Oh.” I blushed and Les squeezed my hand. “That’s right.”

“About time.”

“What do you mean,
about time
?”

“Come on,” my brother laughed. “You’ve been in love with each other for years. It’s just ne
ither of you were ever brave enough to admit it.”

Les and I looked at each other. He turned to Ivory. “You
knew
how I felt?”

“Uh, yeah. The tension between you two . . . I don’t even want to get into that.”

“You never let on that you knew,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to encourage it! You’re my sister!”

“And you’re my brother.” I smiled and gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “By the way, I never thanked you for the telescope. I love it. Maybe we can take it out to the desert sometime, now that . . . well, you know. Did you see how many stars were visible out there, just to the naked eye?”

“You’re welcome. And no, I didn’t notice. I kind of had other things on my mind.”

We were laughing again by the time we reached the house. Criseyde was asleep on the couch and we didn’t see Aleskie. We knew she was here because she’d hung blankets over the back door, the only window in the room, so she wouldn’t have to spend the day worrying about the sun. It looked as if we were going to have to buy some heavy curtains at some point if she was going to be spending any amount of time here.

When she heard the door, she ran out from the hallway with a tentatively hopeful expression that morphed into joy at the sight of Ivory. She rushed to wrap him in a hug.

“I knew they’d find you.” After hugging Les and I in turn, she shook Criseyde’s shoulder with violent enthusiasm. “They’re back!”

“Back?” Cris repeated groggily. She blinked at the three of us standing in a line before her and her eyes opened wide. “They’re back!”

She jumped off the couch to squeeze me and squeal at me. Les got a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. Stopping in front of Ivory, she pulled herself to her full five foot two and assumed a highly uncharacteristic formality.

“Ivory. So nice to see you.”

Then she grabbed his face between her hands and pulled him in for a noisy, theatrical smack on the lips.

“Criseyde!” Ivory cried, outraged. He moved quickly away from her, his face endearingly red.

“Oh, lighten up,” she laughed. “I’ve had guys beg for less than that. Men have scaled mountains for me. They’ve crossed oceans. They’ve broken the law!”

“Even if any of that were true, I’m not that kind of guy.”

“Don’t we all know that.”

This time I could see Ivory trying to hide a small grin. “Well. Anyway.” He looked around the living room, noticing the holes in the wall and the four chairs in the dining room. “Where the heck is the table? What happened while I was gone? This was from . . . the attack?”

Aleskie made us a pot of coffee and we spent the rest of the morning filling each other in. Ivory was reticent about the days he’d spent in capture and we didn’t press him for details. We told him about the attack on the house, the party, and some of the lengths I’d gone to trying to find him. Surprisingly, he said nothing about my nights spent among vampires, but the furrow of his brow told me he disapproved.

Fatigue soon made our eyes flat and hollow. After a while Ivory went to his room to rest and Les to take a shower. Though I was yawning, I hadn’t eaten since the evening before we’d left for the Market, so I munched on some dry cereal and finished telling Cris and Aleskie about ye
sterday’s events.

“And the soldiers were so organized,” I gushed between mouthfuls. “They took care of ev
eryone. They meant
business
.”

“It’s a good thing Aleskie didn’t go with you to help,” Cris said. “They’d have killed her.”

I nodded. “Every vampire who stood in that lakebed is dead. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. Those vampires weren’t the only ones in the world. Maybe the rest will have to go back into hiding.”

“But it was most of the ones in Las Secas who were there, right? So it’s safe here now. A
lmost.”

“I think so. Why else would they flock here if they didn’t plan on going to meet Pater Luna? I’m sure there are others who already lived here, like Rade, or ones who got made against their will, like Aleskie, or ones who came here for the eclipse but stopped believing, or . . . I don’t know.” I sighed and set the cereal box down. “It seems too convenient that they’d
all
be gone.”

And they
weren’t
all gone, of course. There was a tall, black-haired vampire with dead eyes still alive somewhere. Though maybe not for long if he really wanted to die. If he really wanted me to kill him.

“It’s a start,” Aleskie said in a small voice. “I bet you can go out at night without too much fear now.”

“That’s be nice, if only for getting Ivory off my back,” I joked. I pulled up a knee and rested my cheek against it. “Government people are supposed to come and interview us or something, but I don’t know when. I’m not looking forward to that if they’re going to try to kill you.”

Uncomfortably I imagined them shooting her on sight, or dragging her away to some facility like the Market, where they’d perform torturous experiments on her. I knew Ivory would never let that happen, though.
I
would never let that happen. She was one of us now.

“We’ll see what happens when the time comes,” she said.

“We’ll hide you. We’ll smuggle you out in my trunk,” Criseyde promised.

“That trunk thing . . . not a bad idea,” I said.

Aleskie was silent, but her eyes showed us she was grateful.

“You guys . . .” I smiled, but my expression felt fragile. “You . . . well . . . I love you. All right?” Slightly embarrassed at my bared emotions, I stood up without waiting for an answer. “I guess it’s time for me to get cleaned up, too.”

“Hopefully Les saved you some hot water,” Criseyde said with false innocence. “If not, I bet he can help you get it pretty steamy.”

“Oh my god! You’re horrible, you know that?”

“Of course I do.”

There was plenty of hot water and plenty of steam that had nothing to do with Les. Afte
rwards I got dressed in my room, wondering if he was waiting for me. If he wanted me to come to him or if he’d already fallen asleep. I was tired again too and a nap in his arms sounded like the world’s most perfect thing.

It had to wait, though, because Ivory came knocking on my door. “Hey,” he said. “Got a minute?”

“Sure.” I sat down on the edge of my bed and he stood in the doorway, hands shoved almost boyishly into the pockets of his jeans.

“The government was planning a raid all along, you know.”

“They were?” I said, taken off guard.

“Yeah. It’s just they needed to be able to get a lot of vampires at once, instead of a few at a time. They couldn’t just rush in here without even knowing where the vampires were. Too many humans would have died that way, and not enough vampires.” He shifted with a sigh and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “I found all this out by speaking with the National Guard, by the way. I called them after Aleskie told me about that pale guy’s plans. Once they had the loc
ation of hundreds of vampires at once, they knew they could take action and human casualties would be at a minimum.”

“And they just took your word for it?”

“They were coming anyway. I just gave them a date and a place.”

“Do-gooder,” I accused through a yawn. My eyes watered.

“I don’t know about that, but thanks.”

“Dad came by,” I said. “He wants us to come see him. Room two-six-two at the Value Suites.”

“Oh . . . Do you want to?”

“Not really. You?”

“No. But maybe we should . . .”

“Ugh. Let’s talk about it later. Sorry I brought it up.”

There was an extended pause, and Ivory met my eyes. “You know . . . I was thinking about some of the things you said earlier. About the times you went out while I was gone.”

I eyed him warily. “I figured you’d have something to say about that eventually. I was su
rprised when you didn’t attack me about it earlier.”

“I guess I can’t blame you, since that’s about all I’ve been doing for years.” He flashed a brief, self-deprecating smile. “Don’t worry, though—I’m not going to lecture you this time. You don’t have to tell me any details, but I just wanted to say that no matter what you did and no ma
tter who you did it with, I’d have done the same thing for you. I’d have made friends with every vampire in the damn county. I’d have sacrificed myself at every turn, Ash, and I know Les would have, too.”

Suddenly there were tears in my eyes. I blinked them back and smiled. “You’ve always taken care of me, you idiot. You’ve sacrificed yourself for years just by hunting vampires. And not just for me, but for everyone. Nobody could have done more than you.”

He shrugged modestly. “I wanted you to know I don’t hold any of it against you. Not a thing.”

“You forgive me?”