Sunshine (9 page)

“This alcohol is still strong enough. And, as you might say … self-regenerating.”

His eyes were not so murky as they had been last night. Presumably it was the water. Diluting something … else. “Please do not look in my eyes. It is coming night again, and … I still do not want Bo to win.”

I jerked my gaze away. Bad sign that he'd had to tell me. Good sign that he still wanted Bo to lose. Good sign for what? Bo still had us. It's not as though this was some kind of trial, challenge, that when we got to the end if we'd survived they'd let us go free. This was it. It was only a question of really soon or slightly less soon. I wondered what Mom and Charlie and Mel and the rest were thinking; if Aimil knew yet. I hadn't not showed up on time to make cinnamon rolls in seven years. I'd never missed a morning till today. I never got around to taking holidays, and I was never ill. (Charlie, who never got sick either, used to say, “Clean living,” which infuriated Mom, who had flu every winter.) Would they have told the police I was missing? Probably. But the police would have said that I was free and over twenty-one and to tell them again in a few days if I still hadn't turned up. Pat or Jesse might be able to make them look harder once they were looking at all, but I wasn't going to be alive in a few days. And our local cops were nice guys but not exactly rocket scientists. Not that rocket science would help me either.

There would be no reason to think SOF should get involved.

Who else would Mom or Mel ask? Yolande. But she wouldn't know anything either. They'd figure out that my car was missing. Would anyone think to go out to the lake and look at the old cabin? Not likely. Nobody else went out there but me, and I hadn't been there in years. I'd never even taken Mel there when we went hiking. I didn't think there were any regular patrols out there either; there wasn't any known reason the lake needed patrolling. And there were the bad spots. But if someone had gone out to the cabin and found my car, then what? I wasn't there, and I doubted vampires left clues. You heard about vampire trouble on the news when people started finding bloodless bodies with fang marks. And this house was very well guarded by the bad spot behind us.

I drank the rest of the water. I didn't wipe the mouth first. I thought, is my arm or my dress likely to be any more sanitary?

I turned toward the window. I felt the vampire watching me. “I have to pee,” I said irritably. “I'm going to do it out the window. Will you please not watch? I will tell you when I'm done.” Since I'd never heard him move before, he must have made a noise so I could hear it. I looked, and he'd turned his back. I had my pee, feeling ridiculous. “Okay,” I said. He turned around and returned to watching me, his face as expressionless as before.

As he had seemed to grow smaller as the sun rose he seemed to grow larger as the sun set.

The last light waned and so did I. I was cold as well as sick and frightened, and my headache felt bigger than my head. I wrapped myself in the blanket and huddled as near to the corner as my chain would let me. I remembered the other loaf of bread, and pulled it out and began to eat it, thinking it might help, but it sat in my stomach like a lump of stone, and I didn't eat very much. Then I hunched down and curled up. And waited.

It was full dark. The moon would be up later but at the moment I could see almost nothing. On a clear night it is never quite dark outside, but we were inside. The windows left gray rectangles on the floor, but I could not see beyond them. I knew he could see in the dark; I knew vampires can smell live blood.… No, I thought. That hardly matters. He isn't going to forget about me any more than I am going to forget about him, even if I can't see or hear him—even if I've got so used to the vampire smell I'm not noticing it any more. Which just made it worse. I thought I would have to see him
cross
the gray rectangle between him and me—I was pretty sure his chain wasn't long enough to let him go round—I knew I wouldn't hear him. But … I hadn't seen him drink either. I bit down on my lips. I wasn't going to cry, and I wasn't going to scream.…

I almost screamed when I heard his voice out of the darkness. “They are coming now. Listen. Stand up. Fold your blanket and lay it neatly down. Shake your dress out. Comb your hair with your fingers. Sit again if you wish, but sit a little distance from the corner—yes, nearer me. Remember that three feet more or less makes no difference to me: you might as well. Sit up straight. Perhaps cross your ankles. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I croaked, or squeaked. I folded the blanket and laid it down. I wrapped the sack tidily around the remains of the bread. I put the empty water bottle with it. I shook my dress out. It was probably a mess, but there was nothing I could do about it. My hair actually looks a bit better if it doesn't get combed too often, so I tried to pull my fingers through it the way I would have if I were in front of the mirror at home. I wiped my face on my hem again. I felt unspeakably grubby and grimy—ironically perhaps, since I was still whole, I felt defiled. I certainly did not feel attractive. But I smoothed my skirt before I sat down again, just inside the darkness on my side of the gray rectangle, a good six feet from my corner. My chain lay slack, lazily curved.

“Good,” he said from the darkness.

A for effort, I thought. June Yanovsky would be proud of me.

“They are coming” is perhaps a relative term. It seemed to me, my nerves shrieking with strain, that it was a very long time before the chandelier suddenly rattled ferociously—and then burst into light. The candles were all new and tall again. My gran had told me that setting fire to things from a distance was a comparatively easy trick, which helped explain why so many houses got burned down during the Wars; but the houses were already there, you didn't build them first. That two-second rattle had given me enough warning to swallow any cry, to force myself to remain as I was, ankles crossed, hands lying loosely one in the other, palms upturned and open. I doubted I was fooling anyone, but at least I was trying.

There were a dozen of them. I hadn't counted last night, so I didn't know if there had been more or less. I recognized Bo's lieutenant, and the one who had been my other guard. There are some people who say that all vampires look alike, but they don't, any more than all humans look alike. How many live people outside the staff in those asylums have seen a lot of vampires anyway? These twelve were all thin and whippy-looking and that was about the only clear similarity among them. And of course that they were vampires, and they moved like vampires, and smelled like vampires, and were motionless like vampires when they weren't moving.

“Bo said you'd hold out just to be annoying,” said Bo's lieutenant. “Bo understands you.”

I thought, he's
frightened
. That was supposed to be an insult, Bo's understanding, and he can't pull it off. And then I thought, I must be imagining things. Vampire voices are as weird as vampire motion and as unreadable as vampire faces. Hell, I can't even tell the boy vampires from the girl vampires. How do I know what vampire fear sounds like? If vampires feel fear. But the thought repeated: he's frightened. I remembered how reluctant they'd seemed last night, bringing me here. “Let's get it over with,” Bo's lieutenant had said. I remembered how they didn't want to get too close to their “guest,” and how they did most of their talking from near the door, farther than his chain would stretch; how the vampire who'd held me had dropped me and run, when he realized his friends were leaving him behind.

“Is she still sane, though, Connie? It's harder if you keep them till they've gone mad, you know, and the blood's not as sweet. Bo finds this very disappointing as I'm sure you do, but that's the way humans are. You wouldn't want to waste what we brought you, would you?”

They were all standing just beyond the chandelier, so not quite halfway across the room. They had fanned out into a ragged semicircle. As Bo's lieutenant spoke, he took an ambling step toward us. The others fanned out a little more. My poor weary heart was beating desperately, hopelessly, in my throat again. This reminded me of any human gang cornering its victim; and however wary they were of Bo's “guest,” they were still twelve to one, and the one was chained to the wall with ward signs stamped all over the shackle. I couldn't help myself. I curled my stretched-out legs under me. I wanted to cross my arms in front of my breast, but I reminded myself that this was useless—just as curling my legs up was useless—so I compromised, and leaned on one hand, and left the other one in my lap. I managed not to squeeze it into a fist, although this wasn't easy. The vampires—all except the one sitting against the wall next to me—took another slow, floating, apparently aimless step forward. I was pressing my back so hard against the wall my spine hurt.

I wished I knew what was going on—why were Bo and his guest old enemies? But then, even if I did know what was going on, how would that help me? What I wanted—to get out alive—didn't seem one of the options. So I might as well distract myself with wanting to know what was going on.

They didn't want to get too close, but they were still moving closer. I couldn't think of any reason this could be good news.

I never saw it coming this time either. They were vampires. I heard Bo's lieutenant saying, as if his words were coming from some other universe, “Perhaps you just need a little encouragement, Connie.” The words happened—seemed to happen—at human speed. Presumably that was because he wanted me to hear them. In the universe where my body was, I was picked up, and something sharp sliced high across my breast, just below the collarbones, above the neckline of my dress, and I was then thrown down, and my face banged into something hard, and I felt my lip split.

I heard: “Since you don't seem to like feet,” and the goblin giggle from last night.

And then they were gone.

And I was lying across my fellow captive's lap. The cut in my breast had been so quick that it was only starting to hurt. The
cut
… I was bleeding, bleeding, fresh warm red blood, all over a half-starved vampire. I felt his hands on my bare shoulders.…

I snatched myself away, at what was no doubt good speed for a human. He let me go. I slid backward on my knees, skidding on my slippery red skirt, clutching at my front, feeling the blood sliding through my fingers, dripping on the floor, leaving a blood trail, a pool; more blood oozing from my lip, leaking down my chin.

He still hadn't
moved
. But this time, when I felt him looking at me, I had to look back. I had to look into his eyes, into eyes green as emeralds, as green as the stones in my grandmother's awful ring.…

You can stop me or any vampire if your will is strong enough
.

I felt my hands fall—tumble—from my breast. I leaned forward. I was going to crawl toward him. I was kneeling in my own blood, smearing it across the floor as I crept toward him. My blood was spattered on his naked chest, across one arm, the arm with the weal on it. Don't look. Look. Look into his eyes. Vampire eyes.

…
if your will is strong enough
.

Desperately I tried to think of anything—anything—my grandmother's ring, which was the color of these eyes. My grandmother.
Sunlight is your element
. But it was darkness here, darkness barely lessened by candlelight. The candlelight was only there so that my weak human eyes could be more easily drawn by mesmeric vampire eyes. But I remember light, real light, daylight, sunlight.
Hey, Sunshine
. I am Sunshine. Sunshine is my name.

I remembered a song Charlie used to sing:

You are my sunshine

My only sunshine

I heard him singing it. No, I heard
me
singing it. Thin, wavering, with no discernable tune. But it was my voice.

The light in the green eyes snapped off, and I
fell
backward as if I'd been dropped. I turned, and scuttled for my corner. I burrowed under my blanket, and I stayed there.

I
MUST HAVE
slept again. Silly thing to do. Was there a sensible thing to do? Perhaps I fainted. I woke suddenly, knowing it was four
A.M.,
and time to go make cinnamon rolls. But this time when I woke I knew at once where I was. I was still in that ballroom, still chained to that wall.

I was still alive.

I was so tired.

I sat up. It would be dawn soon. The candles had burned out while I slept, but there was dim gray light coming through the windows. I could see some pink starting on the horizon. I sighed. I didn't want to turn around and look at him. I knew he was still sitting in the middle of the wall; I knew he hadn't moved. I knew it as I knew that Bo's gang had been frightened. The blood from my split lip had stuck my mouth together and when I licked it unstuck and yawned it split again, with a sharp rip of pain that made my eyes water. Damn. I touched my breast dubiously. It was clotted and sticky. The slash had been high, where it was only skin over bone; I hadn't, after all, lost much blood, although it was a long gash, and messy. I didn't want to turn around. He had let me go, last night. He had remembered that he didn't want Bo to win. Perhaps my singing had sounded like the singing of a “rational creature.” But the sight of my blood had almost been too much for him. I didn't want to show him my front again; maybe the scab would be too much of a come-on. I sucked at my lip.

With my back to him, wrapped in my blanket, I watched the sun rise. It was going to be another brilliant day. Good. I needed sunlight now, but I also needed as many hours as possible before sunset. How long could I afford to wait?

Charlie would be brewing the coffee by now. The sun was bright on the water of the lake. This would have to do.

I stood up and dropped my blanket. If the vampire had been telling the truth, I was safe from him now till sunset. I turned around and looked at the sunlight coming in the two windows I had to choose from. For no explicable reason I preferred the window nearer him. I avoided looking at him. I stepped into the block of friendly sunlight, and knelt down. I pulled my little jackknife from my bra, and held it between my two hands, fingers extended, palms together as if I was praying. I suppose I was.