Long Dark Night

by Janci Patterson

  Plus, I couldn’t go until nightfall.

  “Doctors could save him?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid not. The poison makes a delicate cocktail, mixed with his prescription. Thyroid, isn’t it?”

  If I’d had a heartbeat, it would have stopped.

  His records. His medical records. Those would be the easiest for Vance to access of all.

  Vance paused, either waiting for me to speak, or letting his revelation sink in. He knew about Jack’s prescriptions. Of course he did. Vance knew everything.

  A second later, he continued. “I’m afraid they won’t find the compound until his autopsy. On second thought, don’t go to the hospital. I wouldn’t want you to get yourself into trouble.”

  Vance was quiet for a moment, but I still didn’t speak. What could I say to him? Any protest I made would sound weak and futile.

  “You could have prevented this,” Vance said, “if you’d just worked with me instead of against me. I can come for you anytime, but I’ll wait until you’re ready.”

  He wasn’t in the house. There was no reason for him to be. Whatever it was he needed me for, he could simply keep this up, waiting for me to come to him.

  The call went dead in my hand, and I wished I’d been the one to hang up on him. I should have taken that little rebellion, at least. Running from Vance might be futile, but cooperating with him was no alternative. He was right. I should have known better.

  I walked back to the couch and stood over Jack. He was breathing like a man who’d just run a marathon. How long until it stopped forever?

  “April?” Jack asked. “Are you okay?”

  My face crumpled, and I wished I could cry—for Jack, for Zeke, for my parents, for all the people I’d killed by letting them stand in Vance’s way.

  “I can call 911,” I said. “But I don’t know if they’ll get here in time.”

  “For Leo?” he asked.

  “For you. You’re dying.”

  “No, I’m feeling better, really.”

  He coughed again.

  I ran over the options in my head again. The hospital, which for all I knew Vance owned. The car outside, which Vance or his goons might have sabotaged, or might be waiting by. The door, the windows, the sun.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I took his hand.

  Jack squeezed it. “You really think I’m dying?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Vance doesn’t bluff.”

  This time, he coughed up blood. “Then,” he said, “you have to help me.”

  That poem ran through my mind, my dad’s favorite. Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.

  I wouldn’t let myself die, either, not the thousand times I should have.

  He wanted to live, but at what cost?

  “Really,” Jack said. “Don’t let me die.”

  A coldness settled over me as I realized what he meant. Jack had done everything he could for me—fed me from his own veins. He only wanted me to trust him, and I’d walked him right to his death.

  He’d never asked me for anything. Until now.

  My skin crawled. I couldn’t do this, could I? I wasn’t sure I’d ever adjust to the idea of sex, and if Zeke was right, I didn’t have the drive for it anymore, not for any good reason. But if I let him die, when he wanted me to save him, when I’d brought Vance into his house—I’d as good as killed him myself.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  “I don’t care,” Jack said. “You don’t have to. I’d never make you. But I don’t want to die.”

  I couldn’t explain what he was asking for. There wasn’t time. And I remembered another Tennyson poem, one I memorized for my dad on his birthday, the year before he died. O, yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill.

  I knelt on the floor next to him, holding his hand to my forehead. “And every winter change to spring,” I said.

  “What?” Jack asked. But I didn’t answer.

  Had Vance planned this all along?

  It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to let Jack die. I took his face in my hands and looked him in the eyes. He stared back at me, terrified. “I like the winter,” he said.

  And while it wasn’t strictly necessary, I kissed him. He tasted like sugar-laced danger, like fear, but also like hope. And whatever Zeke meant about sex, whatever damage Vance had done to me, to my surprise, I found I still had one drive.

  The overpowering desire not to be alone.

  “This isn’t how I wanted this to happen,” Jack said.

  “Me, neither.” And though I was pretty sure that Jack meant sex while I meant him helping me, the sentiment was the same.

  “I’m sorry I came to you for help,” I said.

  “I’m not,” Jack said back. “If you hadn’t, where would you be?” He broke down in a fit of coughing.

  There wasn’t much time.

  He wiped his mouth, looking down at the trickle of blood. My monster purred—it knew what I was planning to do, and it knew that meant another meal of hot blood—if Jack was turning, it could take as much as it wanted.

  I hated it for that.

  I kissed Jack again, this time not because I was lonely or because he was dying but because he was wonderful and I’d put him in danger and I just wanted to make everything okay, wanted to pretend that I wasn’t about to kill him, even if it was in an effort to save his life.

  Jack kissed me back, and I was pretty sure that he meant it. And yet we trust, I thought. And yet we trust.

  And then I floated away, the way I had when Vance changed me.

  And I did what had to be done.

  Ten

  Afterward, I hid in Leo’s bedroom, wishing I could fall asleep and forget. The bedroom was no respite, of course. All around me lay reminders of another person who was dead because of me. Whatever I did, the trail of bodies just got longer and longer.

  Vance could be back for us at any time. I concentrated on that fear, stoking it like a fire to keep the cold terror of what I’d done to Jack from consuming me.

  Jack hadn’t resisted. He’d asked me to do it. But that didn’t change what I’d done to him.

  I’d killed him, even if it was to save him.

  Kissing him had been unexpected, like a spark of the living person I used to be. The rest was something different. I’d floated and watched while the monster took over, salivating over the nearness of his hot blood, like making out with a rotisserie chicken. She bit into his neck, tasting his blood, taking a meal from a dying man’s body. The monster receded, and then I’d been fully present, in full contact with his body as it stopped breathing. As his heart ceased to beat. As all the life went out of him.

  I shuddered now as I thought about it. The monster couldn’t get enough of it: the heat, the blood, or the death.

  I hated her for it.

  As Jack adjusted to his body, all heat draining out of him, I’d retreated, unable to lie there smelling the remnants of what I’d done. I wanted to shower, but the bathroom reeked of Leo’s fermenting blood. I didn’t want to move another body.

  So I’d retreated to Leo’s bedroom, waiting for the sun to go down. Waiting for Jack to come find me. Waiting for my guilt to ease, though I expected that would never happen.

  That was the benefit of being like Vance, I supposed. Once you were that far gone, there probably wasn’t any goodness left in you with which to feel guilt.

  I could feel the sun begin to set, but I couldn’t feel Jack, not yet. Vance wouldn’t leave us here for long. Not after dark. Our chance to escape would come in the next hour, or not at all.

  As the light at the edge of the curtains faded, I heard movement in the living room. Had Vance come back for us already? I thought for a moment about climbing out the bedroom window and running, but I couldn’t leave Jack there with Vance. I forced myself to the doorway, and pushed it open.

  I could see the couch from the end of the hall. Jack wasn’t lying wher
e I’d left him. The blanket he’d slept with last night lay crumpled in his place.

  The noise came from the kitchen again—a clicking. As I walked toward it, I found the front door still closed. I rounded the corner to find Jack sitting on the kitchen counter, his lighter under his hand, the flame burning his flesh on the bone like meat on a spit. He lifted his hand from the flame, watching as the flesh pulled itself back together. His hair hung in his eyes.

  Now it always would.

  “Awesome,” he said.

  I startled. “What?”

  His grin faded as he looked over at me. He shut the lighter. “April,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  Was I? It had been different than it had been with Vance. It was my choice; I was in control.

  But I’d let the monster kill the only living person who’d tried to help me, and I couldn’t get over the horror of that.

  “No,” I said. “And neither are you.”

  Jack’s hand healed back to normal. “I don’t know about—”

  “Your fingernails aren’t going to grow,” I said. “Or your hair. Your body won’t ever be warm again, no matter how many blankets you curl up under. And you’ll never sleep, which means no rest, no dreams.”

  “No being tired,” Jack said. “And no pain.” He reached for a butcher knife. “Watch this.” With a true magician’s flare, he lay his palm down on the counter and drove the knife right through the bones in the back of his hand.

  I winced, but he didn’t. He pulled the knife out again and lifted his hand, wiggling his fingers awkwardly as the bones first crackled, then grew back together.

  “Awesome, right?” he said.

  I felt sick. “Stop that,” I said.

  He looked up at me. “Says the girl who slashed her own throat.”

  He had a point. “At least I had a reason.”

  Jack shook his head. “Come on. Tell me you don’t do things that would have hurt when you were alive.”

  “I do,” I said. “But not for fun.”

  He looked up at me. “We’re indestructible. Like Wolverine, but without the pain. Tell me this wouldn’t make the best magic show ever. I could jump off a building. Cut off my own legs.”

  “Get murdered by Vance for exposing our kind.”

  Jack gave me a wry smile. “For an audience of one, then.”

  “Yourself,” I said. “I’ll pass. And make sure you keep your head attached and protect your heart. Or that area, anyway.”

  “Noted,” Jack said. “Really, though. Are we okay?”

  I bit my lip hard enough to break the skin.

  Okay, maybe Jack wasn’t the only one with a penchant for therapeutic self-mutilation. And now he was looking at me nervously, like I might hate him for what we’d done. Here we were, fully clothed, yet the memories of what had happened mere hours before were all around us.

  “Don’t you hate me?” I asked. “And if you tell me you’re thrilled I turned you into a super hero, I will punch you.”

  Jack gave me a sheepish smile. “But it won’t hurt.”

  Even I had to crack a smile at that.

  “No,” he said. “You saved me. Thank you.”

  I’d also put his life in danger in the first place, but I didn’t see the point of arguing. “Are you hungry?”

  “How would I know if I was?”

  “Believe me, you’d know.” I reached into the back of the fridge and pulled out the glass of Jack’s blood from that morning. I wasn’t hungry yet, so I’d need to bring it with me.

  “That looks better than it should,” Jack said. “But I’m not craving it.”

  “You’ve just turned,” I said. “You’ve probably got a while before the hunger kicks in.” I looked at the glass. I didn’t know if his own blood would satiate him anyway.

  I found an insulated water bottle in Leo’s dishwasher and poured the blood in. It would keep for a few hours, at least.

  Jack stayed in the kitchen, so I could see him, but I still couldn’t feel him. It wasn’t that I wanted the constant full-body image of him in my head, but until moments ago, there had only been one corpse in the world who could sneak up on me.

  Now there were two. That meant there might be more.

  When I turned around, Jack was occupied cutting off his finger and watching it grow back over and over. Identical severed index fingers piled up on the counter.

  “Ew,” I said. “Seriously, save it for later.”

  Jack’s smile was gone now that he was done experimenting with his super powers. “I guess I’m never going to see my mom again, yeah?”

  I shrugged. “We can’t go back to Salt Lake, but you could call.”

  “I meant because I called Leo last night,” Jack said. “I’m going to be a suspect in his murder.”

  I leaned against the counter. He was right. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We could try to get rid of the body, but I have no idea how to do that.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “They’d still be looking for us when he turned up missing. Plus his blood is all over the bathroom.”

  I cringed. “I’m sorry about that, too,” I said.

  “April,” Jack said. “Seriously, stop apologizing for things Vance did to you. You’re the victim here.”

  I nodded. “So are you.”

  Jack eyed the knife, and I wondered if he hadn’t been doing that to convince himself that being undead was awesome.

  I wished I hadn’t stopped him. “We have to move,” I said. I checked out the front window. Direct sunlight had passed. “In a couple of minutes it will be dark enough.”

  “I know,” Jack said. “I can feel it. How do you stand the sunlight? Even from in here, I felt like it was going to roast me alive.”

  I’d forgotten how the sunlight made me feel at first. Oppressive and claustrophobic, the way astronauts must feel in the vacuum of space. “I wish I could tell you it gets better,” I said. “But you do get used to it.”

  When I turned around, I found Jack driving the knife through his thigh. It left a lasting hole in his jeans.

  I guessed we all had our eccentricities. I reached over to Leo’s change jar and pulled out a penny.

  I’d save that for later.

  Jack slid the knife back in the knife block with finality. “We’d better get moving, then.”

  He still wanted to live, even if he didn’t have enough sense of self-preservation not to treat his body like it was made from self-healing rubber. That was a good sign.

  “Another minute or two.” Through the slats in the blinds, I could see Jack’s car across the parking lot from the window. I guessed Leo’s car was one of the ones under the carports, in the assigned parking.

  I pushed out with my senses, trying to find corpses in the area. I couldn’t feel any at all, which meant that if Vance was lurking outside, he was alone, or with others I couldn’t feel.

  That’s when I saw her. She sat a car across the parking lot. Even through the lightly tinted windshield I could see her, slouched low like she’d been there for a while. She was wearing sunglasses, and her dark hair hung in her face, but even so I could tell she was young. About my age, maybe a year older. Old enough to drive a car, but young enough to still be in high school.

  In fact, the more I watched her, the more I felt like we could have been sisters, she looked that much like me.

  I snapped the blinds shut again. “There’s a girl watching us,” I said.

  “A living girl?”

  “I don’t know.” If she was a corpse, I couldn’t sense her. But I couldn’t sense Vance or Jack or who knew how many others. This was not a great moment for me to discover that my stay-alive superpower wasn’t reliable.

  Jack cracked two slats in the blinds apart and looked.

  “Do you see her?” I asked.

  “Yes. Are you sure she’s watching us? She might just be sitting in the car.”

  “Doesn’t she look kind of young?”

>   “Sure,” Jack said. “But so do you.”

  My skin prickled. “Exactly. We need to go. Now.”

  “What do you want to do? Climb out a window and make a run for it?”

  We could do that. But if this girl was a corpse, and I couldn’t sense her, that might make her like Vance—able to sense me.

  “If she’s a corpse,” I said, “we could take her car.”

  “You mean steal it?”

  I did mean that. “Vance is murdering people,” I said. “He just murdered you, in fact. Are we really worried about car theft?”

  Jack swallowed, peeking out of the view hole in Leo’s door. I wondered if I’d been too blunt with him, but there wasn’t time to tiptoe around the issue.

  “We need to get closer,” I said. “If she’s living, we’ll be able to smell her. You’ll see what I mean.”

  As I reached for the door handle, I froze. Vance could be waiting outside this door. He could be lying down in the backseat of the car. He could be crouched behind it, just waiting for me to emerge. How could we make a run for it, without first knowing where he was?

  I forced deep breaths. If I waited to know where Vance was every time I made a move, I’d always be paralyzed. We needed to act on the information we had, and wish for the best.

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  “Okay.” Jack pushed open the door for me, and we both moved downstairs into the darkening lot.

  As we did, the girl in the sunglasses bent over, fiddling with something in her hand. A second later, I felt a carful of hunched corpses cruising down the block toward us.

  The girl stepped out of the car. In one hand, she held her keys and a phone. She’d alerted them. I forced myself to step closer, like I wanted to talk to her. As I did, a breeze blew between us. I couldn’t smell blood or flesh in the air.

  “She’s dead,” I whispered to Jack. “Get her keys.” If I shoved her down like I did the corpse in Vance’s compound, that might buy us enough time to get into the car. The other corpses were still driving up the block—just seconds away from the complex.

  Jack nodded.

  The girl kept advancing on us. “Hey,” she said.

  I looked sideways at Jack. “Now.”

  We both ran at her. Jack snatched both the keys and the phone from her. She spun on him, hitting him in the back of the neck with a blow that would have taken down most beaters. Jack stumbled a bit, but stayed on his feet and sprinted for the car.