Afterlife (36 page)

The roaring of an engine pierced the night.
and
I turned to see a pair of headlights fast approaching
the school. With a rush of relief and hope, I recognized the van. I ran through
the snow, crying out, “Raquel
!
Dana
!
”

They skidded to a stop. Dana leaped from the vehicle and
took in the scene. “I told you guys not to start the party without us.”

“They’re all vampires,” Raquel said, clutching her stake.
“Which ones do we go after?”

“If they’re attacking a vampire you know, take them out!
Tell Dana who’s who!” I looked for a weapon for myself and grabbed a small hand
ax.

“Raquel
!
” Vic ran toward the truck.
He must have been in the woods — probably looking for something to use to smash
into Mrs. Bethany’s house. “Give me something! Anything!”

[
left
them behind, running through
the snow, determined to help Lucas and the others. AsI saw how well armed Mrs.
Bethany’s crew seemed to be, I reached up and pulled off my brooch. My body
remained solid.

The closest people to me were my father and the tallest
vampire in school, a guy almost as broad as he was high. He was pounding my dad
with one hand; the other held a knife certainly big enough for a beheading. Dad
had already gone down on one knee, unable to defend himself. I shouted, “Hey!”

The vampire turned. With a lazy grin, he swung the knife
toward me —
 
— as I dropped the brooch
and became vapory. The knife went directly through me, and I felt nothing. The
ax I’d been carrying kept swinging through the air at the same speed,
undeflected, to bury itself in the guy’s back.

He fell to the ground, obviously not permanently taken out
but dazed and in pain. Quickly I grabbed my brooch again and took Dad’s hand.

“Come on! We have to get in there!”

“We have to get out of here,” Dad protested.

I shook my head. “This fight doesn’t end until Mrs. Bethany’s
stopped, and we won’t be out of danger until the fight ends.”

Mrs. Bethany’s cottage was only a few steps away. But Vic
beat me to it, and when I saw what he was carrying, my eyes went wide. I never
thought they’d give him the flamethrower.

Vic pointed the weapon at one wall — and a plume of fire set
the place ablaze. I realized, Vic doesn’t know that fire could kill Maxie
forever.

I ran toward the cottage, unsure what to do or how to help.
Then I saw a faint outline of a figure against the snow — Maxie, drifting in a
daze away from the flames.

“Maxie!” I shouted. Vic reached her at the same moment I
did, and I pressed my brooch into her hand. Although she hardly had any
substance, she was able to hang on to it; the magic within the jet solidified
her and seemed to give her some strength. “Are you okay?” Vice smoothed her
golden brown hair away from her forehead.

She shook her head no. “Christopher,” she managed to say.

“What about him?” I said. “Did he get you out?”

“Yes, but he
— ”
Maxie stared back
at the fire consuming the carriage house. “He took my place.” Suddenly undone
by grief and exhaustion, Maxie slumped against Vic’s shoulder; he let the
flamethrower drop and held her tightly.

I left them alone and rushed toward the blaze. Though I knew
it was dangerous to be so near fire or a trap, I couldn
‘ t
let Christopher perish if there was any way to save him.

But as I remembered his sad expression as we prepared to
come here, I knew immediately that there Wasn’t. Christopher had done this knowing
he would be lost forever. He had sacrificed himself for Maxie.

I peered into the very heart of the flames. There, I could
see Mrs. Bethany, her long hair tumbling down loose around her shoulders. Soot
stained her face, and she looked very young. “Christopher
!
”
she cried out. She must have seen him, in the instant that he had taken Maxie’s
place. “Christopher, I’m here, I’m here!”

Despite the fact that she was on the verge of burning to
death, Mrs. Bethany was — smiling. I realized then that Christopher had been
wrong: her love for him really had been stronger than her hate. But they’d both
found out too late.

Maxie had been freed before Mrs. Bethany could transform
herself. Mrs. Bethany had enough time, maybe — to sacrifice Christopher and
live again. She had to know that. But she wouldn’t do it. “We can get out of
here,” she gasped, reaching through smoldering woodwork despite the risk to
herself. I realized she was trying to retrieve the trap that held him. “We’ll
be together, I promise you.”

I heard Christopher’s voice, hardly a whisper amid the
crackling of the flames, “My dearest Charlotte.”

Then a surge of sparks drove me back, and I gaped as the
roof of the carriage house crumbled. Nothing remained but glowing embers, and
flame, and smoke. Sure death for any vampire, or any wraith. The Bethanys were
gone, forever.

Shaken, I turned to see the battle — or what had been the
battle. The vampires fighting my friends had been subdued, either by Dana and
Raquel as reinforcements or by surrender when they saw that their leader, and
the resurrection magic she alone knew, had perished. I could see my mother
helping my father to his feet, Raquel and Patrice herding the enemy vampires
farther away from the rest of us, and most of the others gathered around a fallen
figure in the snow — Around Lucas.

I FLASHED MYSELF TO THE SMALL GROUP OF people huddled around
Lucas’s fallen form. He lay motionless and bloodied on the snow, his chest and
forehead sliced deeply by a weapon. Dana cradled his head in her hands, and
Balthazar ran one finger along the edge of the chest wound and winced. Vic and
Maxie, still holding on to each other, stood nearby, while Ranulf clutched his
ax to his chest as if he were a child with a security blanket. Lucas appeared
to be totally unconscious.

“What’s going on?” I knelt beside Lucas. “He’s wounded?”

“Badly,” Balthazar said. But in his voice I heard real
dread.

I said, “As awful as it is, as much as I know he’s hurting
.. .
he’ll
be okay.” Nobody spoke.
“Won’t he
?
”

Balthazar turned to me, expressionless. “The other vampire
had laced his weapon with holy water. It’s a dangerous tactic for us, but
— ”

I held up a hand; I couldn’t bear to hear what came next,
and besides, I already knew. Black Cross training had covered the technique,
and it had been whispered by Erich in Lucas’s own dream — claiming that stakes
soaked in holy water could paralyze and torture a vampire forever.

That it was like burning them alive, just from the inside
out.

They’d never claimed to know for sure. Maybe it wasn’t so.
But Lucas wasn’t moving. He was trapped deep in that terrible, unending fire.

I took his hand in mine; it was colder than usual, deeply
chilled by the snow around us. His fingers were heavy, unresisting. “Lucas
?
” I whispered, but I knew he couldn’t hear.

The only release from his torment would be to behead him. To
lose him forever. In the hours after Charity’s attack, I’d been faced with the
decision of whether or not to kill Lucas; now I had to face it again. But I couldn’t.
I just couldn’t.

I squeezed his hand tighter. Dana, who had begun to sob,
reached up with one hand to wipe her cheeks. Lucas’s head, free from its
cradle, lolled to one side. Blood from the cut on his forehead had oozed down
to his throat, pooling just beneath his Adam’s apple. It reminded me of how he
had 232 looked the first time I bit him.

Vampire’s blood, I thought. During the ritual, it had
attracted me powerfully. As powerfully as if the blood were life itself. Then
everything came to me at once: How drinking Lucas’s blood had been part of what
maintained my life as a vampire, how I had felt more alive then than at any
other time.

How wraiths joined with vampires to create vampire children like
me, because wraiths and vampires were the two halves of life, able together to
kindle a flame.

How Mrs. Bethany’s ritual of resurrection had been designed
to break me down and bring me into a vampire, to merge us into one. How wraith
blood was poisonous to vampires, but their blood was life to us.

How Lucas and I had become a part of each other from the
very first time I gave in to my desire and bit into his throat. I was Lucas,
and he was me.

 And I knew what to do.

“Move back,” I said. Everyone sort of stared, but they did
what I asked, shuffling backward from Lucas’s sprawled body. Dana laid his head
down gently before rising to her feet, where Raquel hugged her tightly from
behind. Ranulf had bowed his head, and Vic, holding Maxie’s hand, sniffled like
he was on the verge of tears. My parents stood slightly apart from the rest,
but I could see that the concern in their faces for Lucas was real. A few
others had gathered, too — just a handful of students, both vampire and human,
unsure what to think. Skye stumbled toward us, dazed and weak from her ordeal
but unwilling to leave Lucas if he was in trouble. When she swayed on her feet,
Balthazar quickly rose to steady her against his shoulder.

The snow around Lucas was stained crimson with his blood. New
flakes had begun to fall. A sharp, cold wind gusted past us, ruffling his hair.
I held my hand out to Maxie; after a moment’s confusion, she understood and
handed me my jet brooch, so that I could be wholly solid once more. I needed
that now. The sharp edges of the flower’s carved petals cut into my palm.

I thought of how much I loved him, how badly I wanted him to
be a part of me. I dreamed of the richness of his blood, and how it had made me
feel alive. I remembered being a vampire — and felt my fangs emerge once more,
sharp against my lips and tongue. My vampire self remained a part 233 of me,
despite my death.

Then I bent low and bit into Lucas’s throat.

Blood. Cold, but still his blood, still him. Vampire’s blood
carried knowledge, and so I felt everything that he had felt, knew everything
that he had known. I felt his love for me, and his fear, as he had stood in the
tower trying to rescue me. I saw the fight through his eyes, a whirl of blades,
blows, and driving snow. I swallowed more deeply, drinking as much of his blood
as I possibly could, more than I ever had as a vampire before. Around me, I
could dimly hear some of the others protesting, but they were too distant to
heed. And then I knew him — Lucas, his spirit, his soul, here at the center of
his being.

Bianca. Where are we?

Together.

What’s happening?

I’m drinking your blood. Making it mine. Lucas — drink from
me.

I pushed my hand against his mouth, so that the tender flesh
between thumb and forefinger followed the curve of his lips.

Trust me. Drink.

He was paralyzed beyond the ability to bite down, so I
pressed the soft skin against the sharpness of his teeth until they broke the
skin. I felt the pain as sharply as I ever had any mortal injury, but I never
flinched.

Blood flowed down his throat. What would have burned him
before didn’t now, because I had mingled his blood and my own. Now the
corrosive power of wraith’s blood couldn’t touch him any longer. He was free to
drink it in. Free to take in life.

I felt myself growing dizzy as the link between us deepened.
We were one system now, one being, each of us flowing into the other. As I gave
in to it, I felt the outlines of his body as much as I did my own; the cuts on
the forehead and chest burned, and the snow was cold underneath. And I knew his
dawning wonder as he felt what it was like to be me — the angle of my limbs,
the taste of his blood, the nearness of my spirit.

The blood I drank began to warm.

Is this what it means to die? Lucas thought. Because I’m not
scared of it anymore. Not if it means I finally get this close to you.

I concentrated all my energy on him, directing myself into
the very core of him, into the redness of his heart. This isn’t death. This is
life.

Lucas gasped in a breath, and I sat up. His blood was sticky
on my mouth, and he looked gorier than before, but his eyes were wide open. He
took 234 another breath, and another.

“What did you do
?
” Balthazar said.

Raquel, leaning around Dana, said, “Yeah, was that vampire
CPR or something?”

I never looked away from Lucas. The cuts on his face were
knitting together, faster than vampire healing, part of his ultimate
restoration. He stared up at me, obviously weak from his injuries, but with an
incredulous smile spreading across his face. “It’s impossible.”

“It isn ‘t.” I started to laugh from pure joy. “It’s real.”

“You’re healing up, like, crazy fast, but you’re still
bleeding, man.” Vic held out a scrap of cloth.

“Bleeding,” Balthazar said, his voice sharp and urgent. He’d
seen it now, even if nobody else had. “Bianca, you did it.”

“Did what?” Dana said.

I hugged Lucas tightly. This time, when he embraced me in
return.
he
was warm. “I’m alive,” Lucas whispered. “Bianca
brought me back to life.”

Everyone around us started talking at once — in wonder or confusion
or glee. Dana actually jumped into the air with her hands above her head, a
victory leap.

I didn’t pay any attention. Time for explanations and
celebrations later. All I wanted to do at tl1at moment was lie tilere in Lucas’s
arms, my head against his chest, listening to the beating of his heart.

 Within an hour, tile emergency vehicles began showing
up — police cars, ambulances, and a couple of fire trucks, altilough there was
nothing left of Mrs. Betilany’s carriage house but glowing cinders. My parents
had found a landline inside that remained operational after the big freeze — and
— thaw, and they made the 911 call.