Yes, I would.”
The beautiful night colors were gone, but of course he’d known
they would be. In their place was just darkness. The night seemed too
quiet, as well. It took him some time to realize what was missing. There’d
always been a sort of whispering undercurrent of thought, nothing discernible,
but a sort of half-sensed, white noise that was as close as
he’d ever come to telepathy. He’d barely realized it was there last
night, but now he noticed its absence.
And the blood lust was gone. He could walk among the people on
the streets without thinking of them as a potential meal. He couldn’t
hear their hearts beating or see their heat in a nimbus around them.
They were only people. For the first time in a long time the odors of
skin and perfumes, soap, cotton, wool, and leather, were not drowned
out by the smell of blood.
“It’s incredible,” he breathed.
“You’re okay?” the doctor asked.
“Yes. It’s even better than I remembered it.”
Dr. Greene nodded. “I thought it might be overwhelming at first.”
“No. It’s just . . .” He trailed off. “I don’t know how to describe
it.” He sniffed, feeling tears gather yet again. Maybe the doctor could
give him something for that.
Dr. Greene clapped him gently on the shoulder. “It’s all right.”
“So,” Rafael ventured, “where’s a good place to see the sunrise?”
Sasha careered blindly through the night, anger and despair searing
her throat. She didn’t know how to make them go away. She didn’t
know why they were there.
She thought about Brendan and Vince, who had never come back
from Atlantic City, but it was only a fleeting thought. Manhattan reeked
of Julian’s wards. She was surprised the humans couldn’t smell it, the
air was so thick.
Besides, at that moment, she didn’t give a shit about Ialdaboth’s
minions. Let them come. She would rip them to pieces with her bare
hands.
Darkness was her realm. She knew how to move silently through
it but didn’t bother to try, half-running through the crowds with no awareness
of where she was going. Mortals bounced off her, swearing. She
made no effort to hide herself.
Finally she stopped, in a dark place not far from Central Park.
She could see the park, the people in it even in the night, most of them
not on honest business. Not at two a.m. She looked at her watch.
Make that four a.m. She’d have to be careful. Dawn was far too close,
and she wasn’t sure where the nearest entrance to the Underground
was.
Clumsy. Why had she let herself get so distracted that she’d lost
her bearings? She wasn’t even sure why the rage of emotion had overtaken
her.
Or maybe she was sure. Maybe she was damned sure but refused
to admit it, even to herself.
He had done it. The stupid bastard. He was mortal now, and there
was no turning back for either of them. He certainly couldn’t become
a vampire again—or could he? Dr. Greene hadn’t addressed that question.
Did it matter? Would it matter to Rafael?
Probably it wouldn’t. He simply had no desire to be anything other
than a boring, ridiculous, fragile, death-doomed mortal.
And she still loved him.
There was no getting around that, no matter how hard she tried.
She loved the pathetic bastard, and he’d made it impossible for either
of them to do anything about it.
If she didn’t love him, if she just enjoyed rolling around naked with
him once in a while, it wouldn’t be such a problem. She could have
dealt with his mortality, somehow managed that scenario. They would
have seen each other now and then, enjoyed the sex. And one day she
would have come by and found he was too old. She would have sat
next to him and chatted, perhaps, and that would have been the last
time she saw him. Or perhaps she would have come by his house,
looking for him, only to find it empty of all but his spirit, knocking around
inside the four walls, waiting for her to come say goodbye.
But even that was overly romantic. Even when she tried to summon
true emotions leaked through. She loved him, and there was no way
she could stay with him, now that he’d given up his immortality.
Except it was beginning to look as if there was no way she could
go on without him.
How many times had she been in love in her life? She couldn’t
remember. Not because her memory had gone bad, like Lucien’s, but
because, in most cases, she’d simply chosen to forget. But each carefully
constructed hole in her memory masked a hole in her heart that
had never been allowed to heal. She was riddled with them.
A person could fall in love any number of times in three hundred
years. A heart could be shattered to pieces equally as many times.
She couldn’t let it happen again. She couldn’t bear it. Not with
Rafael.
Yet, she thought as she curled up next to a brick wall in the alley,
there seemed to be no way around it. No matter what she did, she was
doomed to hurt over this one.
She sat there for a long time, head pillowed on her knees, trying
not to think but thinking anyway, about Rafael—and about Gaelin and
Alexei and Walks-with-the-Wind-at-his-Back. The memories were too
much to handle all at once—too much even one at a time—and she
wept into her folded arms. No one noticed her, as she huddled in a
shadow. People walked by her on the sidewalk, many of them two-by-
two. She couldn’t bear to look.
Much later, when she did finally lift her head, her heartache was
swallowed by cold fear.
The sky was blue.
Not cerulean, but indigo. Not quite daylight but so close it made
her breath come fast. Lost in the awful surge of her emotions, she’d
also lost her awareness of the creeping nearness of the Sleep. She
could feel it now, dragging at her eyelids, slowing her limbs. She forced
herself onto the sidewalk, forced herself to run.
But she couldn’t remember where to find the nearest entrance to
the Underground. It had to be close—in that alley? Or that one?—but
her frantic search seemed to take her in circles.
Finally, as the shadows around her began to fade, she felt it. The
crazed hammering of her heart slowed and she honed her senses toward
the soft hum. The doorway wasn’t far.
And then she sensed something else. Mortals. They were following
her. At least it wasn’t vampires, Dark Children come to follow her
to the Underground or torture the knowledge of its whereabouts out of
her.
She had been so careless. Where had her three hundred years of
experience gotten her tonight?
Into deep shit, apparently.
A group of five mortals passed and surrounded her. It was too
late to slip by them in the near-invisibility she could have mustered had
she been paying attention. There were too many to put compulsion on.
She could have overpowered
them one by one, but she simply didn’t
have time.
She ran. Preternatural speed gave her an advantage, and she
reached the door to the Underground before they did. But the light was
coming too fast. She could feel it on her skin. A hot itch had begun on
the back of her hands.
She found the door and pulled at it. It wouldn’t open.
“No,” she breathed, too shocked to produce much more than a
whisper. She grabbed the handle, jerked it, hauled against it with her
full weight, but it wouldn’t budge. Had she come too late? Had they
locked this access door already? Or was it an abandoned entrance, no
longer accessible?
Breathing fast and hard with panic, she turned, putting her back to
the door. Her five would-be assailants made a line in front of her. Kids.
Stinking asshole kids. Why couldn’t the damned humans raise their
offspring better? These little shits should have been home eating oatmeal
or something, not lurking in the alleys trying to mug vampires.
One of them drew a knife and held it up, letting the pale dawn
glint off the silver blade. A beam of light had entered the alley and lay
on the ground at her feet. She stared at it, barely interested in the punk
and his knife. Her skin was burning.
The kid with the knife took a step toward her. “You got a purse,
bitch?”
“Do I look like I got a fucking purse?” Sasha spat back.
“That’s too bad for you.” He took another step forward, reaching
for her. His friends, laughing, egged him on.
Her face hurt. She was going to die. Railing against the inevitable,
she lashed out, hissing, spittle flying. In a snarl worthy of the most
vicious of carnivores, she let them watch her fangs spring free.
“Beat it, you little punk,” she said, her voice thin and laced with
compulsion. “I’ll rip your throat out.”
The boy’s expression changed from haughty to frightened in the
space of a breath. He took a step back, the knife lowering.
“Shit,” said one of the other kids. “She’s got fangs!”
“Forget that,” one of the others put in, also stepping away from
Sasha. “Look at her face.”
The kid with the knife squinted at her. Sasha could feel the heat
on her face, the sun touching her even though she stood in a shadow.
“Shit!” said the kid, stumbling backward, his eyes now round with
terror. “Is that smallpox?”
The kid scrubbed his hand on his jacket, then turned and ran, his
cohorts pounding after him. Sasha let her head loll against the wall. A
sign of the times, she thought, that her fangs only startled them a little,
while the threat of biological havoc sent them running to their mommies.
She closed her eyes. The sun was almost up. Just a few more
minutes and she would go up like a torch. She tried the door handle
again, thinking perhaps she’d been unable to open it out of sheer panic.
It still refused to budge.
Her fear had fled, leaving behind a stoic, resolute calm. She looked
around for possible shelter. Had she not been facing the daylight, she
could have kicked the door down, but without full dark around her she
lacked the strength.
She saw another door. Not a door to the Underground but to a
deserted warehouse. It was open. She staggered that way, keeping to
the shrinking border of shadow along the sides of the buildings. She
made her way through the doorway, into a dark corner, where she
pulled slabs of abandoned plywood over her head. An instant later,
Sleep swallowed her.
Six
The doctor took Rafael to Central Park. He’d never been there
before—had, in fact, never been to New York City at all. The place
intrigued him, once he got over his fascination with the changes in his
vision, his hearing, his sense of smell. It was a great deal to assimilate.
They sat together on a park bench waiting for the sun to come up.
Here, in the middle of the city, it was nearly impossible to see the stars,
but he could see the slight changes in the color of the sky. The black
became paler, then took on a blue tinge. He felt his heart speed up, felt
a surge of panic. He took a deep, quick breath to quell it.
“It’s okay,” said Dr. Greene, his voice soothing.
“Are you sure?”
“I hope so.”
Rafael shook his head, scowling. “You really need to work on that
confident bedside manner, Doc.”
Dr. Greene only chuckled.
But he stayed right there next to him. Under normal conditions
Rafael would have felt the older man was too close, their thighs and
shoulders brushing, but at that moment, the contact steadied him. He
watched the sky turn from blue-black to indigo, from indigo to purple,
from purple to deep blue.
“Getting close,” Dr. Greene said quietly.
Rafael could only nod. He was too busy fighting the urge to run,
to find a darkened house or at least a shadow of some kind. Every
previously dead molecule in his body told him it was time to get up off
his sorry ass and run like hell.
Then another aspect of the situation struck him. He wasn’t sleepy.
In his vampiric state, he would have been dragging with exhaustion
right now, barely able to keep his eyes open as the Sleep overtook him.
But he was awake and alert, full of adrenaline and ready to jump up
and greet his first sunrise in four years. Actually, he couldn’t remember
how long it had been since he’d seen a sunrise. As a mortal teenager
he’d rarely gotten up early enough to see it.
And it came. Slowly, then faster, until suddenly the sky was blue
with pink clouds streaking through it. Beams of sunlight laid golden
stripes across the grass in front of him. Birds sang in the trees. The
park’s sidewalks began to fill with people.
He could only stare, marveling at the beauty. The doctor had picked
a bench that proved to be in the shadow of a large oak tree, so the sun
didn’t quite fall on his face, but the light filled his eyes with beauty the
likes of which he had forgotten existed.
“You gonna cry again?” Dr. Greene asked.
Blinking quickly, Rafael gave the doctor a dark look. “Watch it,”
he growled.
Dr. Greene only smiled.
Rafael just sat for a time, absorbing the brilliant green of the grass,
the pale, clear blue of the sky. Then he stood, giving the doctor a sideways
glance. “I want to walk,” he said, his voice still shaky. “I want to
take a walk in the sun.”
Even after he’d said it he was almost afraid to do it. If his skin had
still been afflicted with the vampiric sensitivity to the sun, he knew he
would have been dead already. The mere shade of a large tree wouldn’t
have saved him. But to step out, right into the direct sunlight . . . For a
few breaths, he wasn’t certain he had the courage.
The doctor poked him. “Just go. Get it over with.”
Rafael went. Out from under the tree’s shadow, out onto the sunlit
grass, where the still-thin dawn light was brightest. He felt the warmth
on his hands, his hair,
his face. He stopped, turning his hands over,
looking at his palms, at the backs of his hands. “It’s beautiful,” he
breathed.
“It’s sunlight. Get used to it. You’ll be seeing plenty of it, I can
guarantee you.” He clapped Rafael’s shoulder gently. “We should head
back. I don’t want you out here too long. There’s no telling how your
skin will respond after so many years out of the sun.”
Rafael nodded. “All right.”
They made their way to the sidewalk not far from where they’d
been sitting, the doctor leading the way. A few joggers joined them, out
for their early morning exercise. Rafael stared at them as they went
past. Humans looked so much different in the daylight.
Humans. He was one now, too. He was going to have to get used
to that.
“The Underground’s sealed off through the day, isn’t it?” he asked
suddenly.
“Yes, but I can get in through one of the back ways. The Senior
gave me access several years ago. There are times when I need to be
out during the day, and I needed consistent and reliable access.”
“Good. I was afraid for a minute we were stuck out here.”
Dr. Greene grinned. “What? You don’t want to go out for breakfast?”
Rafael’s brain froze around the idea for a moment. Pancakes.
Eggs. Bacon. Biscuits and muffins and syrup and jelly and toast. Oatmeal.
Milk. “Could we?”
The doctor laughed. “Not just yet. Give your system some time to
adjust before you start piling things into it.”
He was right, of course. “What about toast? I could have toast.”
“I can get you toast at home. And tea. And not much else, if you
follow my advice.”
Rafael really wanted pancakes. He thought about them as they
headed up the sidewalk, conjuring the flavor from his memory. Sweetness,
the fluffy texture, sticky syrup. “Pancakes tomorrow,” he said
stubbornly. “And pizza.”
Dr. Greene shrugged. “Fine. Just go puke in your own toilet.”
Rafael frowned. “I don’t have a toilet.”
“Ah. Yet another wrinkle.”
“This is going to take some getting used to.”
He was trying to remember what it felt like to have to go to the
bathroom when frantic shouting suddenly broke the relative calm of