17
Famous Last Words
I’d wanted to see the vampires’ apartment ever since I met them, but they enforced a strict No Humans Allowed policy. Even Jeremy, their fellow DJ, had never been admitted.
“Huh,” he said behind me as we entered through the heavy steel door. “Not what I expected.”
In Regina’s arms, I could see nothing but her cascade of black hair—and beyond it, the dropped ceiling’s white tiles. I tried to turn my head to look around, but the motion had become impossible. My headache was now more of a me-ache. The only parts that didn’t hurt were the parts I could no longer feel.
“It’s all ready,” I heard Spencer say in his calm, steady drawl.
Regina laid me on a bed in the middle of what I assumed was the common room, since we hadn’t gone through any other doors. The mattress felt thin and creaky, like that of a pullout couch.
Spencer appeared in my dimming vision with a large sippy cup. “Here, darlin’, try to drink something. Being hydrated makes you easier to bite.”
Regina rolled me so I could put my lips around the end of the straw. It tasted like blue Gatorade, the world’s coldest drink. I whimpered in gratitude.
“Easy. Go slow.” Spencer sat on the edge of the bed and wiped my forehead with a cool wet cloth. I wondered if I’d made a mistake in not choosing him to turn me—his maternal qualities would have been comforting.
Then I saw Monroe standing behind him, and I knew we were right. Like my blood already called to him, and his to mine.
He passed a clipboard to Spencer, who held it out to me. On it was a sheet of paper with the Control sun logo in the top left corner.
The infamous VBC form. Vampire by Choice.
By signing it I was consenting to be killed and (hopefully) resurrected. Without a VBC, the Control could prosecute Monroe for murder.
I scanned the form, though it hurt to move my eyeballs. The others must have known I didn’t want to be a vampire, that I just didn’t want to be dead. But they were willing to create a monster to keep me around. I could never repay them.
“Regina, it’s quarter to nine,” Jeremy said. “If you want, I can do your show. I’m doing Shane’s as it is.”
“If you spend nine hours straight on the air, OSHA will be on our ass for worker abuse.” She pointed to the end of the bed. “Stay there. You need to see this.”
I gripped the pen so hard my knuckles cracked. Regina wanted Jeremy to witness the horror of vamping, so he would stop wanting it so much for himself. He needed to see that no one with a choice would ever do this.
I signed the form and slipped into darkness.
“Open your eyes, ma’am.”
I wrenched my lids apart to see Monroe, his body stretched out next to mine.
“You ready?” he said.
“Where’s Shane?”
Spencer spoke from my right. “He’ll be here any minute, sweetheart.” He rested a light hand on my forehead.
“Lori just called,” Jeremy said from the end of the bed. “David got pulled over for speeding. She managed to convince Shane not to eat the cop, so they’re on their way.”
I looked at Monroe, wanting to ask if we could wait for Shane. I wanted my lover’s face to be my last sight.
But Monroe’s ink-black eyes were the ones I fell into.
It was like soaring into another galaxy, like those movie shots where they enter hyperspace and the stars around them stretch and shimmer. My pain faded, and even the itch felt like it belonged to someone else’s body.
Then my fever spiked, the heat spreading over my scalp and through my skull until it seemed like my brain would roast. The tunnel of my vision constricted to a point.
From a distance, I heard Spencer draw in a sharp breath. Then Noah asked him, “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer, only said, “Monroe, you better start now.”
I felt them all draw closer but saw nothing except the eternity in my maker’s eyes. Caught between freezing and burning, I reached out.
Monroe took my hand, touching me for the first time ever. “Say your prayers if you got ’em.”
I closed my eyes and sent a mind-whispered message out to whatever force in the universe had brought me to this moment: Please end this pain. (Either way, it would soon, so I was hedging my bets, prayerwise.)
Monroe’s lips touched my throat, as soft and cold as dry ice. They parted, and I felt his tongue flick against my skin, searching for the heat of my pulse.
A familiar hand slipped against my empty palm. “I’m here,” Shane said. “I love you.”
The same words were on my lips when Monroe’s fangs sank into my flesh, his teeth like twin hot pokers.
I let out a strangled shriek. My muscles seized as I fought the instinct to shove him away. Every cell in my body screamed No! and if I’d been anything but near comatose I’d have pounded Monroe’s face until my fists shattered.
“Ciara, breathe,” Shane whispered, his thumb caressing the side of my hand. I focused on the pressure of his warm skin, and on the rhythm of my breath.
In, one, two, three, four. Out, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. A distant yoga class memory told me the exhale should be twice as long as the inhale. Was my life flashing before my eyes? If so, why not any of the fun parts?
The stabbing pain subsided as Monroe withdrew his fangs.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“No, I’m sorry,” I told him. “You’re doing fine.”
Everyone seemed to find this funny, or maybe they just really needed a laugh.
“Shh.” Monroe motioned to the rest of them, who silenced instantly. Then he wrapped his arm around my waist and raised my torso. His other hand slid behind my head, supporting my neck, and just like that, I was suspended in his embrace. He lowered his mouth to my neck, where the blood flowed in a hot, steady trickle.
He drank. I closed my eyes and dropped Shane’s hand.
The room fell silent, and my world shrank to nothing but me and Monroe. I clutched his back until I had no more strength, then let my hands fall where they would, onto his right hip and the crook of his left arm.
The pain in my neck was a pinprick next to the bellowing agony of my swelling brain. The virus had stepped up its attack, as if realizing something else might have the privilege of stealing my life. It felt like my carcass was being tugged in half by two wild beasts, and I had to choose which would win.
You won’t take me, you itchy little bastard. I tried to bleed harder.
But Monroe’s swallows were slowing. Blood was escaping his lips and running down to the back of my hairline.
Finally he let out an exhale and pulled his mouth away, holding me in the same position, head below my heart.
“Why y’stop?” I slurred.
“A belly can only take so much. You have to do the rest on your own.” His thumb grazed the wound, making me hiss with pain. “It’ll come.”
So I wait to bleed to death, I thought. This is happening. It’s happening now. My heartbeat and breath slowed as my body tried to delay its decline. “When?”
“Not long, child.”
Shane choked back a sob. Under his breath, he began to recite a Hail Mary, the words tumbling over one another. In a far corner I heard Noah praying, too. Their faith felt like a shield between me and permanent death.
I let Shane get through a few more Hail Marys, a couple of Kyrie Eleisons, and an Our Father before using my last bit of strength to touch his hand.
“Play for me,” I whispered. “Anything.”
He cleared his throat as if struggling to speak. “My guitar’s back at the apartment.”
“Use mine,” Monroe said.
I heard a collective gasp around me. No one ever touched Monroe’s guitar.
Shane didn’t wait for a second invitation. “Thank you.”
A few moments later he was back at my side. I heard the rich wooden echo of the guitar as he sat down. I could picture the
instrument’s polished crimson surface.
Shane took a few tentative strums, then let out a breath of quiet admiration. He started with my favorite song: Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Otherside,” then moved on to “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead. Finally he played my song: Luka Bloom’s “Ciara,” the first thing he’d ever played for me on the guitar, on our first date, which seemed like a pile of eternities ago.
By the end of the song, my vision had turned black, and the room was filled with weeping. Monroe’s tears fell hot on my neck as he held me.
I drifted for minutes that seemed like hours. My body felt warm in its core but cold on the surface. With each passing moment, the surface thickened.
At the end of the dark tunnel of my vision, I glimpsed a bright white light.
Well, I’ll be damned, I thought. Or not. Peace swept aside the feeling of foolishness. It was nice to be wrong, or at least wrongish. All in all, this whole dying thing hadn’t been too bad.
Until the convulsions.
They started in my lungs, gripped by a sudden icy fist. Then the shudders spread all over, seizing every muscle. I bit my tongue and tasted blood.
“This ain’t right,” Monroe said.
Shane dropped the guitar with a hollow dong! “What’s happening to her?”
A palm splayed across my chest. “She’s dying,” Spencer said in a shaky voice, “but not the way we want her to.”
Inhale, one, two, three, four. It wasn’t happening. The words “respiratory arrest” bounced around my brain, fed by the tale of Aaron’s death.
An arrest, for sure. Cop, kneeling on my chest, shoving a nightstick against my windpipe. Tasing the ever-living breath out of me.
My hands flopped and my fingers stretched, as if they could grasp the air and suck it into my body through the skin of my palms.
“Feed her!” Shane’s voice rang out above me. “Feed her now.”
“Shane, listen.” Spencer’s hand lay on my quaking form, rattling his words. “She ain’t dead yet. We don’t know what bringing her back will do, what she’ll become.”
“It’s the only chance she has. Feed her!”
The beam of white light, which had been sauntering toward me with the leisure of a Sunday driver, suddenly surged forward like a charging lion. It devoured the blackness until the light was all I could see. My mind shrieked one last defiance.
Everything stopped.
No screaming, no crying, no singing. No breathing, no choking, no thumping heart. No white, no black, no color in between.
It was just… over.
18
Dust in the Wind
I waited. I thought of nothing.
No one came to greet me—no St. Peter or Satan’s minion with a pen and clipboard to declare my eternal fate. For one long moment, I was alone.
And then, I was with everything and everybody who had ever lived. We were all held together in… something. Something good.
I reached out so It could gather me into Its eternal embrace.
Then the nape of my neck began to tickle, and I realized I had a neck with a nape to tickle. But by what? Not a finger or other solid object.
It was the music. From another world a melody curled out and called to the one within me, a song I didn’t even know I had. Half alive, they reached for each other, blocked by the walls of this realm I’d entered.
I had to go back, unite the two melodies into one harmony. I grasped for the other’s music, but it was as thin as a thread and just as fragile. It couldn’t hold me, it could only lead me—if I found the strength to follow.
I let the song within guide me, but the journey back was like walking through chunky peanut butter. The… something… wanted me to stay forever. It offered one last chance at this thing called peace.
I turned away.
Darkness wrapped around me again. Pain spiked my neck as someone rolled me onto my side. A hot substance filled my mouth, a liquid thick as cotton.
To keep from smothering, I swallowed.
Light and heat flared inside me, as if I’d swallowed the sun. The space blazed out, filling my bones and muscles with life. I remembered who I was and where I belonged. Here. Basement, WVMP Radio, Highway 97, Sherwood, Maryland, United States, North America.
Earth.
The pain vanished, and I became thirst.
My hand locked around Monroe’s forearm. My tongue sucked and lapped, and my teeth ground into his flesh, urging the blood from his veins. I was pure instinct, an instinct I had no strength to fight.
Under the noise of my harsh gulps and needy moans came the sound of a single guitar. As the chaotic roar in my ears quieted to a steady thrum, I discerned the lilting melody.
Shane was singing the song he wrote for me, the song that convinced me to marry him, the song that had now called me back to life. I had followed his voice straight out of… heaven? Hell? Didn’t matter. I only wanted to be here, drinking, listening, feeling. Living.
Monroe’s essence flowed into me, ancient and cold and silent, but with a glimmer of the Ciara I had been. It was like finding a better, stronger version of myself and taking it deep, making me a part of me again.
Just as the song ended, I hit my last swallow. No one told me to stop, but I knew it was enough.
I let go of Monroe and opened my eyes. My vision was blurry, as if my corneas were coated in Vaseline. Was I going to be the world’s first visually impaired vampire?
“You’re not done yet, child.” Monroe stroked my cheek, filling my nose with the heady scent of his blood. “But we’ll be here. Don’t you forget—”
My scream sliced his words.
My bones were stretching. Bones. Stretching! Impossible. True. Every muscle, tendon, ligament was twisting, hardening, fusing, all grinding against the frayed ends of my pain nerves.
Imagine every weapon at the Inquisition’s fingertips: the rack, hot pokers, thumbscrews, the iron maiden. Then imagine enduring them all at once. Multiply by twenty.
I writhed on the bed, shrieking and cursing, begging for death, despising the Ciara (fool!) of ten minutes ago, the one who had turned down eternal peace and painlessness.
The vampires took turns holding me so I didn’t shatter myself or the furniture. I’m pretty sure I broke Shane’s arm, but he didn’t let go.
Finally a slow flood of relief started in my gut and oozed out into my limbs. My fingers and toes were the last to stop twitching.
I opened my eyes. The room had brightened, but not because someone had turned on more lights. I lay curled in the fetal position on the torn, bloodstained sheets.
“Ciara?” Shane said. “Can you hear me?”
I blinked twice for yes, then realized we’d never established an unspoken code. “That sucked.”
Relieved laughter echoed throughout the room. Noah said, “Praise Jah!”
“You ain’t kidding,” Jim added. “This calls for a party.”
My breath was still coming hard and fast, like I’d finished a triathlon. My muscles felt limp as string cheese.
I rolled onto my back. Shane was lying beside me, his gaze traveling over my broken, mended body. His hand reached out—tentatively, as if it might go straight through me, as if I were a hologram.
He touched my face, and a shiver passed between us.
“I need to explain,” I whispered. “I need to tell you why I did this without you.”
“You tried to ask me, I realize that now. But I couldn’t hear you. I wouldn’t listen.”
“I thought you’d say no.”
His eyes turned sad. “I gave you a million reasons to believe that. And maybe you were right.”
My heartbeat stuttered. Did he hate what I’d become? Had I gained my life only to lose the best part of it?
“Maybe I would’ve said no.” His whisper softened. “But then I would’ve said yes. Even if I hated myself forever for it, I couldn’t have watched you die.”
My fingers curled into the front of his shirt. Whatever happen
ed, I’d never let him go.
“Folks, she needs some quiet time,” Spencer said. “And you’d better go, son.”
“Is she going to be okay?” came another voice, one that sounded thicker than the others. Juicier.
“You need to leave now.” Spencer’s tone was urgent. “Please.”
My new muscles tensed, jolting into tight cords. I waited for Jeremy to pass the bed on his way to the door. Then I sprang.
I was halfway through the air, launching myself over the back of the couch, on a direct trajectory with Jeremy’s neck, when a great weight tackled me. My body slammed to the ground.
Jeremy screamed as he ran. I snarled and kicked under Spencer’s weight. The steel door opened, then slammed shut.
“Ain’t no doubt now the change worked.” Spencer got off me, then helped me to my feet, where I swayed, unsteady.
“I was just playing.” The gob of drool on my chin made me a liar. “When’s he coming back?”
“Judging by the look on his face?” Shane came up behind me. “Never.”
“Ciara, we thought we had lost you.” Noah stripped the bloody sheets off the bed. “We thought we were too late.”
“Almost.” I leaned against Shane’s solid frame. “The virus was definitely catching up to Monroe in, well, killing me.” I looked at my maker, who stood at the foot of the bed, hands in pockets, already wearing a clean shirt. “I was in the light.”
They stared at me.
“What do you mean,” Spencer said, “in the light? You saw the white light from far away, right?”
“At first, but then it swallowed me up.” I looked at their shocked faces. “Did I do it wrong?”
They exchanged worried glances, but then Jim spoke up.
“Doesn’t mean anything. Everyone has a different experience.” He grinned at me. “So was it a trip or was it a trip?”
“It was something.”
He put on a wistful look. “I wish I could do it all over again.”
I would never understand him.
“How do you feel?” Shane asked me.
“Alive.” My voice resonated, as if my head were an arena. “What time is it? Can we go out? I want to hunt and drive fast and hurdle cars.”
Bring On the Night Page 15
