Companions of the Night

by Vivian Vande Velde

  "Kerry," Ethan called.

  The sky was turning pink. It had to be a matter of seconds now.

  She pulled the drape shut and headed for the living-room windows.

  Ethan clutched her ankle as she passed, making her stumble and fall to her knees.

  "What are you doing?" she screamed at him.

  "The drapes aren't thick enough."

  "Just let me..." She tried to wriggle free, but she could see that the drapes were an open weave, almost lace, all of them, and at the most they'd soften the sunlight. She could see the marks of fading on the carpet and furniture.

  "Get the gun," Ethan told her.

  She started to ask why, but she knew.

  "I can't," she whispered.

  Ethan released her ankle. "Kerry, I got caught by the dawn once before. It was only for a second, before I could bar the window." He looked at her desperately. "Please," he whispered, "a bullet through the brain will be much faster and less painful."

  The gun had fallen out of Marsala's hand halfway down the stairs, so she didn't have to go all the way down, didn't have to look at the body of the man she had killed. She stood there, considering going the rest of the way down, considering going out, closing the door behind her, leaving nature to take its course without demanding any more of her. She probably wouldn't even be able to hear Ethan's screams as he began to die. Kerry picked the gun up, and it felt even colder and heavier than it had in the Student Union.

  "Kerry," he called, which meant, Hurry.

  She came back up to the top of the stairs, where she knelt because her legs couldn't carry her any farther. Her hand shook so that she had to hold the gun in both hands, and even then she thought she was going to miss entirely, or just inflict more damage, more pain, without killing him.

  "It's all right," he assured her, closing his eyes, bracing himself.

  But she hesitated, and he took in his next breath in a hiss of pain.

  "Kerry!" he cried, a plea for her to be merciful. Then, as the soft glow of sunlight touched him: "God!"

  She threw the gun into the kitchen. She was on her feet before it stopped skittering across the linoleum floor.

  He'd flung his arms up, instinct to protect his face from the scorching rays of the sun.

  Grabbing his wrists, she dragged him across the rug. She wasn't strong enough—she knew she wasn't; she'd get him only so far and then he'd die agonizingly—but she got him down the hall to the master bedroom and—mistrusting the looks of those drapes, too—into the closet. She pulled the doors shut, enclosing them in a space about five feet long and three wide.

  But it was blissfully without sunlight.

  She groped for the string she'd glimpsed, and the light came on.

  Ethan was hunched over, breathing hard and ragged. Could vampires go into shock? she wondered.

  She yanked one of Marsala's shirts off its hanger to use as a bandage around his leg.

  "Not necessary," Ethan whispered, and—in fact—she saw that he was no longer bleeding.

  She sat down, sliding her back down the wall, afraid of hitting the door and accidentally opening it on to the killing sunlight. "Lean against me," she told him.

  He looked up at her with eyes made wide by pain and possibly mistrust, but he leaned against her—there was nothing else he could do.

  She could feel the beating of his heart, brought to an almost human rate by fear and exertion.

  "Don't be afraid," she said, though he had no reason to trust her. "I'll guard your sleep."

  He closed his eyes.

  He took one more breath...

  ...which he didn't exhale.

  Chapter Nineteen

  EVENTUALLY MARSALA'S Madame Butterfly tape ended. Kerry could hear the sounds of traffic, very faintly, from outside. What if the police came to question Marsala again? What if a neighbor came to complain about all the noise in the earliest hours of the morning? Kerry was determined that she would protect Ethan, even if she had to hold the door closed with her fingernails against prying intruders.

  Her arm became numb from his never-stirring position and she shifted him as gently as she could, even knowing that in all probability she couldn't wake him up, even if she wanted.

  She began to think of how hungry she was, which made her think of how hungry he was likely to be, come rousing at sunset, which made her think that the most sensible thing to do was to kick open the closet door.

  Anyone he kills after this, she thought, it'll he like I killed them. It was an unsettling thought.

  But still she couldn't open the door.

  Eventually she fell asleep, and when she did, she had another vampire dream.

  It started, like the previous one, with Ethan's story of Regina making him into a vampire, except this time it was Kerry herself who lay by the side of the road, and when she looked up at the sound of footsteps approaching on the gravel, it was Ethan who stood there.

  She looked up at him, afraid and expectant at the same time, and he knelt beside her, then sat, putting her head on his lap. She had lost so much blood from her vague and unspecified wounds that for once she felt cold and his touch was warm. Warm and gentle and sensuous, although all he touched was her face.

  He leaned over her. "I won't hurt you," he whispered, so softly she couldn't make out the words, but she knew them by feeling the breath of them on her throat.

  And then he bit her.

  There was a moment of pain but, as he had promised, it felt very, very good. She was aware of her heart slowing as her life's blood drained out of her, and of his heart beating faster as her blood filled his veins; but still hers was faster than his.

  Finally—she tried to pull him back—he straightened. Then he lifted his own wrist to his mouth and ran it across his teeth. Blood welled up, as it had done in the laundry when she'd accidentally cut him with the razor blade. His and mine together this time, she thought as it ran over the white cuff of his shirt and dripped onto the ground. He held his arm out to her. "Choices," she remembered him saying, as he put his wrist to her mouth. At first she recoiled from the taste, but it filled her mouth and she had to spit it out or swallow. She swallowed. And a second time: she hesitated and the warm, coppery blood filled her mouth again. But then she began sucking on his wrist, drawing the blood from his arteries, unable to stop. He had his eyes closed, his head thrown back. She could feel his emotions running through her veins, sense his very thoughts as though they were her own. There were no more lies possible. There were no lies necessary.

  She tugged on his arm till he was lying down with her, holding her against him so that she felt their hearts at last—at long last—beating in unison. He bit her neck again and began to drink back the blood she had just taken. Kerry realized there had to be more to it than this, that they couldn't survive forever on just each other's blood, but—What the heck, she thought, it's just a dream, it doesn't have to make sense.

  But with that thought she woke up.

  Ethan, of course, hadn't moved. Kerry, however, figured she'd better.

  She stood, leaning him against the side wall, but the closet wasn't big enough for her to get as far away as she wanted. She glanced at her watch. Another two hours till sunset. Surely he'd be all right for two hours But she didn't dare leave him, didn't dare open the door a crack for fear of the trickle of sunlight that would kill him.

  Miserably, she sat back down on the floor at the greatest distance she could in this cramped space, a distance that was still so close she could touch him if she wanted, and she tried to convince herself she didn't want to.

  Choices, she thought again. She had to make her own, and those were the only ones she was responsible for. Not his. Not—this was a new thought—her mother's. Let go of those, she told herself.

  It was the first time since her mother left that she felt free.

  ETHAN GROANED AT 4:35 and woke with a shuddering breath.

  "Welcome back," Kerry said.

  Ethan looked at her warily. Hi
s hair had grown longer yet during the day's sleep, so that it hung loose in the ponytail holder she'd loaned him, giving him a rumpled look that his motionless sleep wouldn't have. He brushed the hair away from his face with the back of his hand. "I assumed you'd change your mind," he said softly.

  "I told you I would watch over you." She didn't say that she had thought about it, but she imagined he probably knew that.

  He sat up from his undignified slump, awkwardly, wincing with pain, as she pushed open the closet door. His face, especially on his cheeks below his eyes, was sunburned. When his shirt gaped at his neck, she could see that he was burned even where his clothes had covered his skin; he looked sunburned, like someone who had sat outside too long on the first sunny day of summer.

  His arms, exposed where his sleeves had been rolled back, were blistered and raw.

  "Will you recover?" she asked.

  He nodded, grimacing as he evaluated the damage. "Much slower than from any other kind of injury," he said. "Slower even than it would take a human to heal ... but eventually." He still hadn't gotten over his surprise at being alive, she could tell. "Thank you," he said.

  She nodded "I'm going home now," she told him. "I owed you this one day's protection, but my father doesn't even know yet whether I'm alive."

  He got to his feet seconds after she did, slowed down by his injuries. "Kerry." He took her hands lightly in his own. He was warm, finally, the effect of the burns.

  Which was too much like her dream.

  "Why didn't you tell me they were all right?" she demanded, pulling her anger back up around her. "You knew how frantic I was. You knew."

  "I also knew you wouldn't help me unless you thought your family was still in danger," he admitted.

  What could she answer, when he was right? "Couldn't you think how crazy it'd make me to see it there in the paper and realize you'd known and hidden it from me?"

  "He had a newspaper." Ethan groaned, finally putting things together. He shook his head. "I overlooked that possibility. I assumed Marsala would tell you, and that you'd think he was lying. I never stopped to think what would happen if he had proof."

  She looked up into his eyes and tried not to let herself be distracted because he was so very attractive. Not: I was wrong to lie, but. I was wrong to get caught. "How would you have felt if our positions had been reversed?" she demanded. "If it was someone you loved? If I knew Regina was safe when you thought she was dead—"

  "First of all," Ethan interrupted, reaching to touch her hair, "I already told you, Regina and I were not lovers—"

  "No," Kerry interrupted him, "first of all, that is not the point. Second of all"—she punched his arm as hard as she could. He looked surprised, but didn't protest—"can't you say two sentences without lying? Every single time Regina's name comes up, you get all crazy, and you have the nerve to tell me you weren't lovers?" She turned her back on him and shrugged off the hand he put on her shoulder. "And third of all, I don't care if you were lovers or not."

  "Kerry," Ethan said.

  She refused to turn around.

  "We were both vampires, sharing for a time the same small town. We were temporary companions of the night. Never lovers in any sense of the word. But I thought I'd led them to her. I thought I'd done something, and they'd found me out, and followed me, and killed her because of me. I thought it was my fault."

  The idea that he, too, had been blaming himself for someone else's actions caused Kerry to turn around, and she made the mistake of looking into his eyes She let him draw her in closer, let him kiss her—finally—on the lips. She put her arms around him, gently, so as not to hurt him, and for a few sweet moments let herself pretend that it could stay this way forever.

  Which was a dangerous thought, considering.

  "Ethan," she asked, remembering how he had made her fall asleep the night they had fled together so that she couldn't see how to get into the Rochester subway system, "can vampires affect people's dreams?"

  "No," he said. He'd lied so often, about so many things, there was no reason to believe him now, except that she very much wanted to. And he did, she thought, sound puzzled by her question.

  She could feel the strong but incredibly slow beating of his heart and knew that her own was going faster than it should have. He ran his hands over her back and shoulders, and she truly, truly didn't want to stop.

  His kisses went lower, to her throat, which felt incredibly good. I just want to know what it feels like, she thought. I'll stop him before it goes too far. But then she thought that it had already gone too far. That it was already going to be the most difficult thing she had ever done to say—

  "Ethan."

  He kissed her lips again, perhaps to prevent her from speaking anymore.

  She returned that kiss, then tipped her face away.

  He resumed kissing her neck.

  "Ethan."

  He didn't stop, so she spoke even as he kissed her.

  "Ethan, I just want you to know—not that anybody can ever truly know exactly how they're going to react to any given situation until they've actually been in that situation, and then it's too late because then you're saying how you did react instead of how you're going to react, so you can only guess. Which is what I'm doing, even though I don't have all the information, so you might think I'm being terribly naive, which I probably am. But I don't want you thinking I'm implying any sort of criticism of anybody who may or may not have been in the same situation, which is obviously impossible anyway because every situation is different...."

  He had pulled back and was frowning, probably from concentration as he tried to follow what she was saying, and she couldn't fault him because she'd lost track herself.

  Taking a deep breath, she said, "I just want to let you know that I don't intend to become a vampire."

  He was studying her face, his blue eyes wide, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking, and it occurred to her that perhaps he had never intended to make her a vampire, that perhaps he was just going to get rid of the last witness in as kind and gentle a way as he could.

  "In case the question ever comes up," she finished lamely.

  He was startled, for he said, "Then why did you help me?"

  "Because..." She looked away so he wouldn't see her eyes, which were suddenly filled with tears. "Because—stupid as it is—I love you."

  He caressed her face and she threw her arms around him once again, sobbing into his chest before she remembered his burns and that she was probably hurting him. She pulled away and he leaned to kiss her, and she repeated, frantically, forcefully, "I don't intend to become a vampire."

  She braced herself for the bite.

  He hugged her, but without the intensity of before, and he rested his chin on her head as he rocked her slightly, more a comforting movement than anything else.

  I could still change my mind, she thought, both wanting to and not.

  And, because it was the last thing she wanted to do, she pulled away from him.

  "If you aren't going to kill me," she said, "I need to know what to tell the police. What do I claim happened?"

  Ethan studied her face. Then he sighed, looking away.

  Kerry stared at the toes of her sneakers.

  "Your father didn't come to pick you up," he said softly, calmly, with years and years' worth of experience, "so you accepted a ride home from Ethan Bryne, a customer at the store whom you'd chatted with before."

  "Did I like him?" Kerry asked.

  Ethan smiled. "Not all that much, but you were desperate for a ride."

  "I don't think I like this story."

  "It gets worse," Ethan assured her "As the two of you walked out to his car, a man you did not then recognize, but who will turn out to be Gilbert Marsala, came out of the shadows. He had a gun and threatened to shoot unless Ethan drove where he was instructed, which turned out to be here, Marsala's home. Marsala put you in the sauna room in the basement, moving something heavy in front of the door so that you coul
dn't get out. You yelled for help, but apparently nobody heard you. After a long time—you had the impression it was the next night—Marsala came to get you out. You demanded to know what had happened to poor Ethan Bryne, but all Marsala would talk about was Satan and vampires."

  "In favor or against?" Kerry interrupted.

  "In favor of Satan but not vampires" Ethan stooped to touch a singed area on the rug where he had bled last night and where the sun had burned through.

  She crouched across from him.

  "I'll pour lighter fluid on these," he said, "and burn them even more. You can say Marsala raved about burning out all the vampire blood, including yours, which is when you shoved him, and he fell down the stairs. You were sure he was hurt but didn't realize he was dead; you just figured he'd be more furious than ever. You were sure that if you tried to go down those stairs, he'd grab you. You ran into the library and jammed the desk chair under the doorknob, certain he'd come banging on it any moment. You waited and waited. Eventually, you fell asleep. Finally, when you couldn't stand it anymore, you pulled the chair away and peeked down the stairs. It was only when you saw him in the same position that you realized he'd been dead all along. Unfortunately, because of your ordeal, you weren't thinking straight, so instead of calling the police from here, you walked home. Which will give me time to ... arrange things here."

  "What about Ethan Bryne?"

  "Never to be seen again, I'm afraid."

  "Are you really going to let me go?" she asked.

  Ethan, still crouched by the burned bloodstain, held his hands up to indicate he wasn't going to stop her "How can you ask that?" he said with what sounded like sincere hurt and amazement.

  Which still might have meant either yes or no.

  She made it to the door of the room before he stopped her.

  He called, "Is there any chance you'd ever change your mind?"

  She turned back. It was tempting. Faced with the prospect of never seeing him again, it was very tempting. But her only hope was not to let him see that "Is there any chance you'd change yours?" she countered.