Theo seemed unmoved. “Everything comes to an end.”
“Great,” said Selah. “That’s what I need right now. Some Zen fucking philosophy.”
“Everything comes to an end,” said Theo, ignoring her. “I have walked this earth for a long time. In my memory, the nights bleed into each other. There have been few moments of joy, and almost none of happiness. Just pain and base pleasure. It has grown … exhausting. Endless nights on the hunt, with nothing to look forward to beyond the thrill of feeding. Even that has grown stale. Even that.” He looked over at her. “Have you ever wondered why there are so few elder vampires? Why few live past several hundred years?”
Selah hadn’t. “I didn’t know most didn’t.”
“They don’t. Most die before they reach a hundred. Foolishness, feuds, accidents. Those that pass a century have displayed a rare will to exist. Not to live, but to persist. A denial of death, of an end. Some persist out of fear, others out of a greed for life, and a few because of some long-standing goal. But it doesn’t last. By the time you reach your second century, the nights have grown thin. There is little that thrills. All is but a case of repetition. An endless series of moons that gaze down on the same sordid pleasure plays.”
Theo shook his head. “Few have the will to exist past their second century. The world grows too strange. Humans show the same passions and weaknesses, but they no longer speak to your culture, your understanding of the world. You grow alone. You grow tired. You grow weary. I grow weary. All things come to an end, and perhaps this shall be mine. I can’t say I don’t welcome it.”
Selah stared bleakly at him. He stared at the far wall. “And Sawiskera? How has he survived, then? For not centuries, but thousands of years?”
Theo laughed, and it was a mirthless, unnatural sound, a husking bark of amusement steeped in his own bitterness. “He claims to have never been a man. Claims to have been a Native American god, one of two twins born of the Sky Mother. He’s had many names. Hahgwehdaetgan is another.” Theo shook his head. “I’ve gone through moments where I believe him. When I’ve understood the scope of his ego, the sheer inhumanity of his mind, and wondered. Maybe he is a god. I’ve never heard of another vampire that’s lived for so long.”
“Oh,” said Selah. “Great. I’m being given to a god.”
“Perhaps. Sometimes I’ve thought that, but most times I think he was just a man. An ancient man of amazing willpower. He definitely had a brother, and I think it’s his hatred for him that’s kept him going for so long. That thought has arrested me time and again. That a hatred could fuel a life for millennia. In the legends I’ve studied, his brother was the good one. Blessed and full of creative energy. His brother made all life from the body of the Sky Mother, brought goodness into the world. Sawiskera was the dark brother, full of jealousy. He tried to copy his brother, and failed. His creations were mockeries, dark things. They fought. In the tales, the good brother banishes Sawiskera into the night, and bids him leave all men alone. There are some frightening … similarities.”
Selah digested this. “You said you reminded him of his brother. Was it because you were also … a good man?”
Theo laughed again, but this time quieter, more bitter than the first. “He may have thought so. I don’t even remember. It was so long ago. Sometimes I think my memories of my real life are now just memories of memories. Stories I’ve told myself that have replaced my actual memories. Shadows on the wall.”
“Your wife, Sethe?” Selah went forward carefully, tentatively. “How can you be sure I look like her?”
Theo turned and stared at her, and there was a sudden and naked vulnerability to his face. He shook his head, and looked away. “In that, I have no doubt.”
Selah swallowed, looked down. Silence again. She found that she didn’t want silence. Not yet. Soon perhaps, when her end came. But not now. “He was wearing a Superman shirt when I saw him. Sawiskera. And watching a sunrise on TV.”
“Yes,” said Theo. “He is strange. I don’t pretend to understand him. Or guess what he makes of modern culture. But I know he’s always looked for his brother, for his brother’s reflection in things. As if he believed that his brother’s spirit yet can be found in certain people, certain objects, traveling down through time, haunting him. It seemed absurd to me, but he decided back when Superman got big that he was a modern incarnation of his brother. The good man who fell from the sky. So he mocks him by wearing his shirt, and in other ways. You would think it foolish, but then you see that hatred in his eyes, see how solemn his desire to desecrate his brother’s memory is, and it’s just chilling.”
The door to the room opened. Selah turned and saw Hector step inside. He looked nervous, glanced back outside before pulling it closed behind him.
“If you’ve come to gloat, you can skip it,” said Selah, looking away. He was about the last person other than Karl she wanted to see.
“I, well …” He sounded strange. Selah looked back. He was sweating. He was holding something in his hand. “I’ve been thinking. A lot. Since I’ve met you. About—whatever, it doesn’t matter. And I was just talking to Mr. Plessy. And he told me in great detail about what was going to happen to you.” He was turning something over and over in his hand, shaking his head. “He told me that it was thanks to me. I mean, I was in the helicopter. When you were taken. I was leading the mission. I was the one who convinced Angelo—Maria Elena’s boyfriend—to keep an eye on her, and let me know where and when she went places. He said this was all my responsibility.”
Selah didn’t know whether to spit or hold her breath. Something was happening. She rose to her feet and moved to the front. Hector glanced up at her, looked away.
“I didn’t realize, I mean, I did, in abstract, but when Mr. Plessy told me, I mean, when he went over the details of what was going to happen, I finally understood what I’d done. I don’t know. It snapped me out of it, like I’d been in a daze. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t let it happen.”
“Hector, what are you saying?”
“I’m going to quit. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, but I can’t do this anymore. So I’m done, and I’m going to unlock this door, and leave the keys, and I’m gone.”
He glanced at her and looked away again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Then he unlocked her cell door and stepped away and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
Selah was out of the cell before she realized she was moving, and took the keys from the lock. Theo was also standing. “We can go,” she said. She hurried to his door, and it was as simple as unlocking it. His door swung open. They were free. “We can leave!”
His momentary elation dissipated. He shook his head. “I can’t. It wasn’t the bars that held me here. It was my resignation. Sawiskera’s judgment.”
“But if your unlife is ‘over,’ then do whatever you want! Come with me! Come help me, even if you think you’ll get caught. How can it get worse?”
“You don’t understand,” said Theo. “I can’t go against my sire’s wishes. It’s more than just my desire. His orders weigh upon me like shackles. They constrain me. I can’t leave.”
Selah shook her head, not understanding. “You mean, they compel you? Magically?”
He looked about to argue with her words, but instead nodded. “A vampire’s sire can command him. His blood gives him authority. I can’t go, as much as I wish I could.”
Selah felt her wave of hope come crashing down. Together they could’ve rescued Cloud, made for the embassy. Alone, what could she do? She couldn’t break into the Arena alone. Couldn’t save him. Unless.
“Drink from me.”
Theo stepped back.
“Drink from me. If you won’t come with me, then you can lend me your power. Drink from me.”
Theo shook his head. “I can’t.”
Selah slammed her hand on the cell door’s frame. “Why not? Why can’t you?”
Theo couldn’t meet her gaze. He turned and looked aw
ay. “I can’t. I can’t face the pain.”
“The pain? Of what, being human?”
“No. Of having left my wife to die. Of having abandoned her. I can’t do it.”
Selah stepped into his cell. Stared up at him, his handsome, brutal, alien face. Then she punched him in the chest. It was like hitting a massive punching bag filled with sand. He looked at her in surprise. She punched him again. “You coward!” She hit him in the stomach, knowing it did no good, but furious, furious at him. “You won’t help because you’re scared to feel pain for your wife? Doesn’t she deserve better? Don’t I? Is that really how you’re going to end your existence, like a coward, afraid to take responsibility for your actions?”
He caught her wrists, trapped her, but she carried on, staring him in the eyes. “I’ve taken responsibility for mine, and you think I like it? My friends are dead. One of my friends is about to die because of me. My grandmother is who-knows-where and probably in more pain than I can imagine. Because of me. And now I’m going to die, sold down the river to Sawiskera for his pleasure, and you think you can get away with being scared? Grow up! Quit being a coward, and act like a man!”
Theo stared down at her, and then his lips pulled back from his teeth. From his fangs. She felt herself falling into his eyes, drowning in them, so compelling and deep they were, and her words died in her throat and he was growling, growling from the core of his soul, a sound of fear and desperation, and then he closed his eyes and lowered his lips to her neck.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Selah ran. Her feet barely touched the ground. She was a zephyr, a spirit of the wind. She ran toward an image that hovered in her mind, summoned from memory: Cloud. His eyes, amused, intelligent, caring. His mobile mouth, his hair always spiked in strange and crazy ways. She ran, and the world seemed to move in slow motion around her, seemed to glide past without effort as she soared through it. She was out of the parking garage and heading up Biscayne. Running down the center of the street. No matter that cars slowly swerved to avoid her. The wind tore lovingly at her clothing, sought to restrain her. Nothing could. Please, she asked, please let me be in time.
Up ahead and to the right was the ivory curvature of the Arena, the vast LED screen that covered its front, glittering and glowing as it promoted that night’s event. She could read the words easily from here: CLOUD vs. ANTHRAX. It flashed away, was replaced by Cloud’s iconic masked face, and then by that of a half-barbarian thug who had to be his opponent. The crowd was sparse. Easy to run through, to knife past. She crossed into the right lane. No matter that cars were speeding toward her. A white Mercedes slammed on the brakes. It moved at a glacial pace. Selah leaped. She raised her knees, flew up and drifted over its roof, covering twenty feet before she touched down on the pavement, light as a feather. People turned to stare at her, mouths open, but she was already gone.
She was up the broad, sweeping steps leading to the Arena’s glass doors in a heartbeat. A line of stragglers still tried to get in, tickets in hand. She thought of Cloud’s smile. Of the rifleman in the SUV lining up his sights on Cloud’s back. She ghosted past the line, slipped past the ticket registrar before he could turn to look at her. The rifleman’s finger on the trigger. She had been screaming, endlessly screaming, and it had done no good.
Across the open space of the lobby that circumnavigated the ground floor of the Arena. Ignored the escalators, the vendors’ stalls, not daring to look at the TV screens that showed a fight going on in the center of the arena. Please. Please let it not be too late.
Two huge doors sat open before her. She floated through. Guards turned to look in the direction she’d just come as she passed, their reflexes lagging behind. The stands rose up on both sides, seats high above, so that she ran down a brief hallway between them and out onto the main floor.
A cage had been set up in the arena’s center. A cube thirty feet a side. Overhead the massive telecaster showed the assembled crowd what was taking place within with terrible detail. Selah pushed past all manner of people, knocking them aside as if they were made of paper. A vague sense of the how vast the arena was, how far back and high the stadium seats receded in every direction. Only the lower levels were filled. Not enough sick fanatics in Miami to fill it completely.
Selah’s eyes locked on the cage. Cloud was within, down on one knee, his black hair hanging thick with sweat across his face. Blood smeared across his pale skin. She could see him with perfect, crystalline clarity. One of his eyes had already swollen shut. Blood flowed from both nostrils. He cradled an arm awkwardly to his naked chest, and claw marks lacerated the long slope of his back.
He was alive. Nothing else mattered. He was alive, and she was here, and now they would all pay. Selah leaped into the air, bringing her knees to her chest. She sailed over the last ring of people, and landed beside the cage’s door. She reached out and opened it, twisting and breaking the lock as she did so. The door swung open, and she stepped inside.
Anthrax was approaching Cloud, and had only now registered the new entrant. He was tall, and had a lean, whipcord look to him. Broad shoulders and powerful hands, gold hair furring his chest, his jaw. He looked like a leopard in man form. His smile slowly disappeared as he turned, his reflexes that good. He actually saw her and looked surprised. Had the time to look surprised. But oh, his eyes were normal eyes, human eyes, and no matter how talented he was, no matter how good he was with his hands, at breaking other people, he was only a human, and he never had a chance.
Selah wasn’t thinking, not any more. Her moment of euphoria at seeing Cloud alive had been folded into resplendent anger. It was the selfsame fury she’d always felt when picked on by an older kid, a teacher, a cop. It was the same resentment she’d borne when the whole world had conspired against her, and she’d been unable to act. To set things straight.
She hit Anthrax square in the sternum. His eyes widened and his arms shot forward as he lifted off the ground. His legs extended before him as he flew back, still in slow motion, eyes rolling up, to collide with the cage wall. He hit the ground hard enough to bounce, and lay still, twitching.
Selah stood still, frozen in place, arm still held out in her punch. She became aware of a great vacuum of silence, of a great intake of breath as thousands paused, confused, unsure. Countless eyes stared at her, and the booming voice of the announcer silenced. She straightened in that great collective hush, and turned to look at Cloud. He forced himself to his feet, one of his knees clearly unable to take his weight. He rose, and looked at her gravely, and then, despite it all, he gave her a wry smile, and tentatively, almost shyly, she smiled back.
Sound crashed down upon them with the fury of a mob denied. People rose to their feet to shriek and howl, and everywhere men in security uniforms converged. Time moved faster now, suddenly far too fast, and everywhere Selah looked, she saw faces creased with anger and fear moving in on them. People on walkie-talkies. People drawing guns. People pointing. She moved over to Cloud, who slipped his arm over her shoulder.
“Hello, Selah,” he said, voice rough. “Good to see you.”
She looked up at him, saw how much pain clouded his eyes, and felt tears burn in her own. It seemed she still had the capacity to cry. He reached up with one hand and lifted her chin, and his lips touched hers, briefly, the softest of pressures, and then the first gunshot sounded.
Selah wrapped her arm around his waist and ran. It felt like carrying a small child, barely any weight to him at all. She was less graceful for carrying him, but still able to bunch her legs and leap high, arc out over the heads of the men who waved their electrified batons as they turned and tracked her passage. She landed and took off, moving fast and low, heading back to the door. The crowd screamed, the sound a slurry of bad emotions, but Selah felt as if she were shielded from the world. She had him. They would escape now. They would escape and she would find Mama, and nobody would stop them. If they tried, she would simply brush them aside.
Out the doors, bowling over su
rprised guards who opened their mouths comically as they registered her presence moments after they were already falling. Out into the lobby where people still didn’t know what was going on. Out the door, knocking over more people who were trying to get inside to watch someone die. Out into the glorious night air.
Hope died in Selah’s chest. Why did it bother to persist? Why did she still fool herself into thinking there was ever going to be a chance in this foul world for her to win? She slowed, stopped on the first step. Set Cloud down carefully, her eyes locked on the man who stood below. Who looked up at her with eyes as old as sin, with eyes that might have seen the Sky Mother die, with eyes that brooked no other way but his own, for he was the first and the most powerful, and he had come for her.
“What’s going on?” asked Cloud, but she ignored him, and began to walk down the steps toward Sawiskera.
“You have risked your life for love,” he said. His English was strange, as if each word were recollected before spoken.
Selah took a deep breath, released it. Fought for calm. How did you find such a force as this?
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