Stolen Night (34 page)

News of Justin spread like hundreds of feathers fluttering through the air.

What happened to him?

Did he join a gang?

Who was he with?

All kinds of questions carried over the quiet campus, massing together like a thousand whispers. How? What? Why? Who? The questions of victims. Questions that would never be answered.

Vicken, Rhode and I sat at the base of a tree, waiting for what? I wasn’t sure. Rhode reached for my hand. It surprised me for a moment; I wasn’t used to him touching me. Vicken held
a bloody T-shirt to his head. We hadn’t said much.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ a firefighter said gently. ‘It’ll be all right.’ She was consoling a group of crying girls who sat huddled near Hopper Building. Other
firefighters and police officers ran past us in and out of the gymnasium. They went with axes and a hose, guns and stretchers and body bags in their hands. I didn’t want to think about it,
didn’t want to know. The great clock on Hopper Building said it was four thirty in the morning. Only two hours left until sunrise.

I overheard a snippet of a conversation between Ms Williams and a police officer.

‘You’re sure he is in a gang?’ the officer asked, writing in a small notebook.

‘Yes. He is most definitely in a gang. A violent gang,’ Ms Williams said.

‘We’re going to need to get these kids inside. Start calling parents,’ another officer said, walking by me.

Vicken, Rhode and I met eyes and maintained our silence. A paramedic with a medical bag approached us. He bent over and squinted, examining Vicken’s head wound.

‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘That needs to be stitched up.’ He removed the T-shirt and a little line of blood ran from Vicken’s head down towards his top lip. When it
curled over, for the first time in our long history he didn’t lick it away.

‘Do you mind explaining to me the shape of this head wound, sir?’ Vicken asked as he walked after the paramedic.

Rhode and I sat, backs against the tree, our daggers, bow and arrows, and sword hidden around the side of Hopper Building. I leaned my head back against the trunk and looked at Rhode. He was out
of his costume now, the only remnant of it the black T-shirt. He was back in his jeans. So modern. And it hit me then . . . he too was ageing. Though I would never see it.

He squeezed my hand and it sent my heart racing.
How right
, I thought as the chaos ensued around us,
that now, after all this, he can make my heart pump so solidly.

I had waited for it for so long.

‘What you did was very brave,’ he said. I exhaled, losing myself in the softness of his blue eyes.

‘It didn’t feel brave. It felt like . . .’ I searched for the words. ‘The end.’

‘How many were there?’ The police officer’s voice pulled my attention away. He was still interviewing Ms Williams.

‘I think four or five,’ she answered.

‘Do you think, at sunrise,’ I whispered, ‘that Justin will still be a vampire? I mean, when I go back to the fifteenth century?

‘I think Fire will keep her promise,’ Rhode replied. He lazily rolled his head to look at me. ‘He’ll be Justin, I suppose.’

‘Where do you think he went?’ I asked.

‘To find other vampires. It won’t take him very long.’ Rhode sighed, then said, ‘Perhaps your plan is in fact the best thing for everyone.’

He didn’t meet my eyes when he said this. He then broke our hands apart to reach into his pocket. He held the broken rune out to me. I did not take it. I didn’t want to play the
guessing game as to when Odette got to Justin.

‘Hey . . .’ Rhode said, his eyebrows narrowing. ‘Where is your ring?’

I held my hands out before me and spread my fingers wide.

My onyx ring – it was gone.

‘It must have fallen off during the fight,’ I said in disbelief. I glanced at Hopper Building. ‘I’ll go and look for it.’ I pushed against the tree trunk to stand
up.

‘Ah, let it go. It’s a cursed stone anyway. It makes people linger. Souls too. Connects people to their pasts in a world that may not want them any more.’

I nodded and sat back down, knowing that somewhere on the gym floor my ring, the one that had linked me from life to life, human to vampire to human, was discarded under Halloween decorations
and party punch.

Rhode offered me the broken rune again. This time I took it and let the pieces lie in the palm of my hand, cool against my skin. And it came to me then. How easily I had taken Justin’s
word for it. How easily I had listened to him when he’d said that he wore the rune because he worried for me, because he wanted to understand me. Every time he got me alone, he asked about
the ritual. He was so eager to come to watch me do the summoning spell. So interested in power.

‘You couldn’t have known,’ Rhode said.

‘When . . . When he and I . . .’ I stopped, choosing my words. ‘That night. Of my birthday. He told me in the gym . . . he wasn’t in his right mind.’

‘He was probably captured early. I don’t think he did any of this of his own accord.’ Rhode sighed. ‘Either way, it’s over now,’ he said quietly.

He leaned forward and tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear. Justin had done that to me, but when Rhode did it, and his fingers grazed my skin, my pulse thudded.

‘Remember the story you told? About the Anam Cara?’

Rhode nodded and lovingly held my cheek with his hand.

‘Do you think we’re like that?’ I asked. ‘Or is it only reserved for really powerful vampires like Suleen?’

‘I think Suleen would say the love between us is even stronger than the love he felt for that woman.’

He didn’t remove his hand from my face, and its warmth reminded me of all the cold moments in my life. During those long years his touch had brought comfort to me. Yes, I was human now and
the touch was different; there were nerve endings and senses now involved.

But the love was the same.

‘Lenah?’ A feeble voice called me.

I twisted to see who was calling my name. Everyone was still in their costumes, their eyes lined in sparkly glitter, lips and noses painted or furry. Beyond the groups of students huddling
together on their way to Quartz dorm, two paramedics carried someone on a stretcher. As the stretcher passed by, Tracy turned her head slowly to me.

‘Lenah!’ She said my name again.

I jumped up from the grass but stopped and groaned as a shooting pain travelled along my arm. I reached up to hold on to my right shoulder; I hadn’t needed such arm strength the last time
I’d wielded a sword.

I walked past students talking about Justin and his changed appearance. There were dozens of excuses: drugs, an adrenaline junkie, maybe he’d joined a gang. All words and phrases I had
learned over this human year. They were just excuses people made to explain what they could not understand.

‘Can you wait one moment?’ I asked as I approached Tracy, and the paramedics stopped.

A tear rolled over Tracy’s cheek. She wiped it away and looked at me.

‘I tried,’ she said. ‘I brought a small knife but she just kicked it away.’

‘I couldn’t get to you,’ I replied, squatting down to her eye level.

‘Is everyone I love going to die?’ she asked, and her voice was so shaky. ‘I don’t want to go home, Lenah, but they’re closing the school.’

‘Not forever,’ I replied.

‘Is he going to come back and kill us all?’

‘He’s a vampire,’ I said softly, so only she could hear. ‘But I don’t think you have to worry about him any more.’

She wiped her eyes.

‘What you did. Tonight. It was amazing,’ she said.

‘It’s because of me that you had to see that at all.’

Under the moonlight, I could see her pain so clearly.

I reached out and took her hand. I was so used to embracing Justin or Vicken, young men with strong shoulders and wide backs. But Tracy was just a young woman – like I should have been.
She felt frail to me, as if I was holding the hand of a small child.

‘I can’t believe they’re cancelling school,’ she said, and let go of my hand to wipe tears from her cheeks again. The men who carried the stretcher started walking again
towards a collection of ambulances in the centre of the green. In front of those ambulances were six bodies. Four vampires including Odette, and two students. Just when I turned away, someone
behind me said, ‘The news crews are coming.’

‘See you soon, Lenah,’ Tracy said, and she was carried away into the fray of emergency workers and flashing lights.

‘Sure,’ I said, though I knew I would not, in fact, see her ever again.

When I turned back to face the chaos on campus, the police were corralling students by class. Everyone was on their cell phones. Ms Williams pointed some students towards the dorms.

I met Rhode’s eyes as he joined Vicken by the great oak tree. Vicken had a white bandage wrapped around his head and they talked with quiet confidence. It had been hours since Justin had
run off to the woods and only now, with midnight long past, did the police officers and firefighters usher the students back to their dorms. Statements had been made, notes taken – it was
time to go inside and try to rest for whatever was left of the night.

I exhaled as a cool wind swept through the campus, making the leaves shiver. I knew that a shiver was a sign. A familiar knowing feeling swept over me.

I looked past the students, up the archery hill, where at the top finally,
finally
, stood Suleen.

I walked towards Vicken and Rhode. On my way Ms Williams stepped before me. Her mouse nose had worn off. All that was left of her costume were some smears of whiskers over her cheeks.

‘I’ve been waiting to get you alone,’ she said.

Her eyes, a blue-grey colour, penetrated mine in that pre-dawn.

‘What did you do?’ she asked. ‘How did you know? You, Vicken and Rhode?’

‘Ms Williams, I have to go.’

‘Those men. And Justin . . .’ she started to say.

I touched her on the shoulder, as she would have done me, like a parent to a child. Because really I was so much older than she would ever be.

‘It’s over now,’ I said, repeating the words Rhode had said to me, and I walked towards the tree.

As I went, I ignored her calls.

‘Lenah, wait. I don’t understand. I don’t . . .’

When I reached the tree, I saw that Vicken’s bandage stretched from his eyebrows to his hairline.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

‘Nothing but a scratch, love,’ he said, and we shared an exhausted smile. At the top of the hill behind him was the white garb of Suleen. He reminded me of the grey orb that hung
over my heart in the onyx ceiling at the house of the Hollow Ones.

I looked back to the crowds of people behind us. No one turned in our direction; no one demanded we go inside. I knew this was Suleen’s doing. He made us invisible, to allow us a clear
getaway.

It also gave me time for one last look. And I did. I swept over the campus, stopping, of course, on Seeker dorm in the distance. Its brick structure was framed by trees bursting with orange and
yellow leaves. My heart pained me.

‘It’s time to go,’ I said to Vicken, and started walking up the hill.

‘Go?’ Vicken asked. ‘Go where?’

‘Come on,’ I said gently, and took his hand in mine. He looked down at it and then up at me.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked. We climbed the hill. Rhode squeezed my other hand hard as we ascended. He was on one side of me and Vicken on the other. Three generations of
murderers walked to their rectification. The reckoning was by my own doing this time. When we crested the top of the hill, Suleen stood ethereal and silent.

I wanted to be angry with him. Wanted to know why he hadn’t come after I’d called him with the summoning spells.

The truth was that I already knew the answer. He didn’t come because I didn’t deserve it. Because coming to save Rhode wouldn’t have solved anything. I would have just found
another way to try to break the decree, to do magic that I was specifically asked
not
to do.

As we walked towards Suleen, I drew a breath. The fall was finally upon Wickham campus. As we made it to the top of the hill, huffing and puffing, we could see our breath in the air.

‘Suleen,’ Vicken said in a breathless wonder. He had never seen the vampire before – not in the flesh. ‘You came,’ Vicken said. ‘We didn’t even have to
burn any appendages.’

Suleen smiled kindly but then turned his gaze to me.

‘I am proud of you,’ he said. Rhode stood by my side. Suleen looked to him next. ‘And even prouder of what
you
could not give up.’

Rhode nodded once.

‘Now for a proper introduction,’ Suleen said, and turned away from Rhode and me. ‘Vicken Clough of the Twenty-first Regiment,’ he said, and Vicken puffed out his chest.
Suleen reached out and held Vicken’s forearm. Vicken held his in return, a common way for vampires to greet one another; it was a shake that protected the wrist. Vicken’s eyes lit up,
more than I had ever seen as a mortal. This must have been a very important moment for him.

‘He doesn’t know,’ I said to Suleen.

Suleen stepped back, and it was only then that I realized the sky was no longer black but grey, soon to be lavender, and then the burning orange of the day. The sun – the harbinger of
change. The reminder, though this time my chariot.

‘Tell me what? What’s happening?’ Vicken asked.

I threw a glance at Suleen, ‘How long do I have?’

‘Just a few minutes,’ he said softly.

I turned to Vicken and put my hands on his cheeks. I met his look with mine and held it. It seemed hard for him to keep my gaze; his nostrils flared a little. He would cry, though I was not sure
if he knew it yet. Or if he was fighting it. I watched his eyes slowly remembering the human reaction when the body cries. I met his brown eyes and said, ‘Do you know why I saved you last
summer in the gymnasium?’

He shook his head.

‘Because when I met you, you danced and sang on tables. You
loved
the world, and I had made you a spectator in it.’

‘Lenah?’ he said gently.

‘You’ll be a spectator no more.’