Lust for Life

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  The phone rings and vibrates in Shane’s hands, making him jump and almost drop it. He hits the Answer button.

  Deirdre screams his name, then “Please help me. Oh God, it’s coming. The sun is coming.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. They put me in a trunk and then on one of those things that goes through the woods.”

  “Who did?” he blurts.

  “Kashmir and Billy, and two other blood brothers. Bruce and Leon, I think they’re called.” She takes in a shaky breath. “They tied me to—I don’t know what it is. Cold and metal. Then they put my phone in my shirt pocket and dialed your number.”

  “Are they still there?”

  In the background comes the whine of what sounds like all-terrain vehicle engines. Gears grind and the engine noise fades quickly.

  “Not anymore,” she says softly.

  Shane starts to pace, two of his long strides covering the tiny room. “Describe where you are. Take a breath—listen, look, smell, everything.”

  “Um . . . trees. Grass.”

  “Is there a road nearby? Can you hear cars?”

  She pauses while I dare to hope.

  “No. Just birds.”

  I cover my mouth with both hands, holding back a groan of dismay. Shane takes his makeshift rosary beads from the closet doorknob. He crosses slowly to the bed, then sinks to his knees on the floor.

  “I didn’t know birds sang before dawn this time of year.” Deirdre’s voice sounds far away now, like she’s realized we can’t help her if she’s not even near a road. “It’s pretty here. Ben would love it.”

  I look over to see Regina has joined Noah. One hand grips his while the other clutches the doorjamb.

  Shane shakes his head hard. “Deirdre, what else do you hear and see and smell? Tell me everything.”

  “There’s a hum. Power lines, maybe?” Her voice goes tight like her head is turning. “Yeah, I can see them over my shoulder. Those big high-tension lines with the giant towers. Does that help?”

  No. No one lives near high-tension power lines. People think they cause cancer.

  But there must be a safe place to hide somewhere close. Kashmir and the others would be headed there. If Deirdre can get free and follow their tracks . . .

  “What about my cell phone?” she says. “Can you trace my location from it if I stay on the line? My GPS should be on.”

  “Give me her number,” I tell him. “I’ll call the Control.”

  He scribbles it on a sheet of paper. I grab it and run out of Shane’s room, heading for the landline near the kitchen. There I dial 777, the Control version of 911. The dispatcher answers.

  “Yes, what is your emergency?”

  “This is Agent Griffin.”

  “Yes?”

  “From Immanence Corps.”

  “Oh! Good evening, Agent Griffin.”

  Huh. Anca was right. I need to name-drop my division more often.

  “There’s a vampire somewhere about to burn up at sunrise. Can we put a trace on her cell phone number? She says her GPS locator is on.”

  “Oh dear, I’m sorry, that’ll take hours.”

  “Hours? Why?”

  “The signal would have to be triangulated and even once we find it, unless she’s near one of our agents with a vampire safe van . . .”

  My heart sinks. “She’s being murdered. Her killers are holed up close by. If we can locate the phone with her GPS, maybe they can be found.”

  “We’ll do our best. What’s the number?”

  I rattle it off, then have her read it back to me.

  “I’ll put this through to Enforcement immediately. Can I be of any other assistance, Agent Griffin?”

  “No.” Her obsequiousness is a little creepy. Now I see why all the IC agents I’ve known are so full of themselves. “Thank you.”

  I hurry back to the room, pushing past Regina and Noah.

  Shane is trying to keep Deirdre calm. “They’re doing everything they can. Just hang in there.”

  I sit next to him on the bed and listen to her voice from the speaker.

  “What time is it, Shane?” she whispers. “How long do I have?”

  “Let me check the clock. I think you’ve got—”

  “Don’t bullshit me. I want the truth. You owe me that much.”

  Elbow on his knee, Shane rests his forehead against his fingertips, like an agonized version of Rodin’s Thinker. “Twelve minutes until twilight. Forty-two minutes until sunrise.”

  Deirdre is silent. “I won’t see the sunrise, will I?”

  I wrap my arms around myself. The indirect light will turn her to ash long before the golden orb peeks over the horizon.

  “I can feel it coming,” she says. “Starting to get tingly under my skin.” Her voice is detached now. “Will it be quick?”

  Shane closes his eyes. “I don’t know. But I’ll be here until the end. I promise.”

  “Thanks,” she whispers. Then she clears her throat. “Can you do a few things for me when I’m gone?”

  Still holding the paper with her phone number, I click on the pen. From the corner of my eye I see Adrian appear behind Regina and Noah.

  “Of course,” Shane says. “Go ahead.”

  “I don’t want my son, Ben, to spend the rest of his life thinking I abandoned him. Can you find a way to tell him, someday, what happened? He won’t understand now, but maybe when he’s older. Please tell him I love him so very much.”

  “I will.”

  “Then there’s my house. If people go in there, they’ll wonder why I have blood in the fridge and why I was sleeping in the storeroom.”

  “We’ll take care of it.”

  Under Tell Ben, I write: Code White Deirdre’s House, my handwriting shaky.

  “I was way behind in my mortgage, so you better hurry. The bank people’ll be coming soon.”

  “I promise, we’ll take care of it all.”

  “Shane, I’m sorry I told Kashmir who killed Jim. I might end up getting you and Ciara killed.”

  “I forgive you.”

  I don’t, I think, but stay quiet. Forgiveness is a big deal to Shane. Maybe to Deirdre, too.

  I wave my hand to get his attention. “Ask her if she can tell us anything about Kashmir. What he looks like now, what kind of car he drives, anything he said to her.”

  “I can hear you, Ciara, you can ask me directly.” Her breath is coming faster now. “He’s got dark hair, straight, silky, past his shoulder. Eyes like amber. Eyes that’ll make you do anything. It’s why I let him into my house. Stupid, stupid.”

  Sounds like he hasn’t changed his appearance much since that photo of him and Jim was taken.

  “What else, Deirdre?” I don’t mean to snap, but we’re running out of time.

  “He’s got a holy-water scar, just one drop’s worth, on his right cheek. He tells people it’s a birthmark or a tattoo. It looks like a teardrop, so—augh!”

  Her yelp of pain jolts me, and I almost ask, by reflex, if she’s all right. But of course she’s not. Noah and Regina huddle together, as if they’re in the line of the sun’s fire themselves.

  “What about his car?” Shane asks. “New, old, what?”

  “Old. Black. Some kind of sports car, big engine, but I don’t know what kind. Couldn’t tell from the inside of the trunk.” She whimpers. “Oh God, the sun’s getting closer. Shane, will you pray for me?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Two doors or four?” I ask. When he looks up at me incredulously, I continue. “A sedan or coupe?”

  “She said it’s a sports car,” he says through gritted teeth. “So two doors.”

  “Sorry.” I lower my voice to the softest whisper. “Ask her if he said anything else. Anything. Save our lives, then pray.”

  “Shane, are you there?”

  He angles his shoulder away from me. “I’m here, Deirdre. Are you ready?”

  “No.” She’s sobbing now, almost hiccuping, bu
t her voice is dry, with no tears. She’s in pure fear mode. “I don’t want to die. Please, please help me.”

  “Just breathe, okay? Focus on my voice.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Is there something nearby that’s beautiful? A tree, a rock, anything?”

  “There’s a tree. Still has leaves. Orange at the top, yellow at the . . . at the bottom . . . of the tree.”

  David has a tree like that in his backyard. A red maple, I think he said it was.

  “That sounds pretty,” Shane whispers.

  “Everything’s pretty here. Shane . . .”

  “Deirdre, look at the tree. Don’t take your eyes off it, okay? Don’t look at the sky. Just watch the tree while I talk.”

  She sniffles. “ ’Kay.”

  He bows his head and starts to recite the novena for the souls of the departed, the same he said for me when I died and came back to life. He was praying for my soul, and for those who’d helped make me a vampire, and for his own soul, because he was happy they did.

  For the first minute or two, Deirdre is silent except for her quickening breath. Even here beneath the earth, with no windows or doors, I can feel the sun coming. At the doorway, Regina and Noah have their eyes squeezed shut, but Adrian stares at Shane hard, as if he can pull Deirdre through the phone itself into safety.

  Shane is now halfway through the novena for the second time, his magic voice lulling my mind again. Like Orpheus, he once pulled me back from the realm of death. But now his role is different—he’s leading Deirdre into that realm, and she’ll never return.

  Just as I close my own eyes, Deirdre starts to scream.

  Shane goes rigid, pausing for three seconds. Then he keeps going. She needs him.

  And he needs me. I kneel beside him and wrap my arms around his chest from behind. I lay my head on his shoulder and feel his body quake as he prays.

  Her last words are “I’m sorry.” She screams them again and again as she burns.

  Why does the sun hate vampires? Are we so, so wrong that light itself wants to crush us into nothing?

  My tears flow onto Shane’s shirt, every blink releasing another flood. Could we have saved her if we’d gotten the call in time? Would I have saved her if it meant risking our lives? I’ll never know.

  Deirdre’s screams streak into my brain, down my neck into my body, where they wrap around every organ, sending lightning bolts through every vessel. I’m shot through with her pain as if it’s my own.

  A crackling sound begins. Her flesh is dissolving. It’s almost over. Her voice pitches up, and she draws in a breath for one last—

  No. Not one last scream.

  Silence.

  Shane keeps whispering, faster now, racing to reach the end of the novena. I hold him tighter, letting him know he’s not alone.

  “Amen.” The word echoes, though it’s just a whisper.

  Shane stays as still as the silence itself, then turns and lets me take him in my arms. Behind me, I hear the other three DJs retreat into the common room. One of them—Adrian?—is crying.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper to Shane.

  He holds me so hard, even my vampire ribs threaten to crack and crumble. “Why didn’t I answer? Why didn’t I answer?”

  Shane repeats this line again and again, until I pull away.

  “Because she was a traitor and you didn’t trust her, that’s why. It would’ve been a trap, anyway. If we’d gone to rescue her, Kashmir would’ve killed us, too.”

  “I’m the one who killed Jim.” Shane’s eyes are a cloudy blue sky. “It’s me Kashmir wants, not us. Maybe if I give myself up, he’ll leave you alone.”

  I snatch Shane’s shirt in my fists so fast, it even startles him. “No! You are not sacrificing yourself for me.”

  He moves to swipe my hands off his shirt, then changes his mind and folds his fingers around them. “I can’t listen to him do that to you, too. I can’t let you die.”

  I shake Shane hard. “And I can’t live without you.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it.” He strokes his palms over the backs of my hands. “Ciara, my first death was meaningless. I want my final one to be for something.”

  I shove him away. “Why? So you can go to heaven? You think you can martyr your way into God’s arms?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “If you leave me on purpose,” I choke out, “I hope you burn in hell.”

  He stares at me, and it’s like I can see his soul die. The light in his eyes goes dim.

  “No. I’m sorry.” I reach for him, but he slips away, rocking back on his heels. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I don’t even believe in hell. Why would I wish anyone would go there?”

  “You didn’t mean that exactly, but you meant something low and vicious.”

  “What do you expect? You’re saying you want to leave me.”

  “I don’t want to leave you, I want to save you!”

  “Then stay with me.” Tears pour down my cheeks as I force myself into his arms. “We’ll find another way, all of us together. Please.”

  He buries his face in my neck, his body shuddering with tearless sobs. I cling to his back and wish I could watch Kashmir himself writhe and burn for what he’s done to Deirdre, and what he might do to us.

  Shane finally pulls away and wipes his dry cheeks, then his forehead. “Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “We stick with the plan. Hold Jim’s wake on Monday and hope his progeny can’t resist coming.”

  I return to logic mode, where I’m happiest. “Until then, we should hunker down here. They probably know by now that Deirdre warned us about their Thanksgiving attack.”

  “Assuming that was ever their real plan to begin with.”

  “Somehow they found out she told us. Either she confessed or they saw us preparing.”

  “Or both.”

  “So we can assume they won’t wait until Thanksgiving to attack.” An unpleasant tingle worms up my spine. “They might not even wait for Jim’s funeral.”

  “They will,” says a voice from the doorway. Adrian.

  He steps inside the room and shuts the door behind him. His face is red from crying, and his hands twist around each other. “It should’ve been me out there in the sunrise.”

  “Why?” Shane asks him.

  “Deirdre was a good kid. She wasn’t the only one who betrayed Kashmir.” He meets my eyes. “I did, too.”

  20

  You Don’t Know Me

  Shane gets to his feet, slowly, as if Adrian’s a wild animal he might scare away. “What do you mean, you betrayed Kashmir?”

  “I called the police the night of the bombing. You can check the 911 tapes—they’re public record.” He clutches his hands together. “I didn’t want revenge. I just wanted Jim’s freedom. Ciara, I didn’t know what he’d done to you. I thought the Control captured him because he was too much of a free spirit. I’m so naïve.”

  I shake my head hard, trying to dispel the confusion. It feels like time is tying itself in a knot. “Wait, wait, wait. Start from the beginning.”

  Shane steps closer to Adrian. “Yeah, like, who the hell are you?”

  “These days I’m Adrian Donovan. But when I was alive, I went by Carl Keller.”

  I remember the name from Jim’s box of progeny paraphernalia. He went to a Dead show in San Francisco with Carl and Bonnie. But that was, what, the mid-seventies? “How could Jim be your maker when you were turned in 1965? He didn’t even turn until 1970.”

  “My turning wasn’t until 1975.” He gestures to his wool poncho. “I prefer the early sixties, though.”

  His ease with seventies music makes sense now. He didn’t have to learn it to survive at a classic rock station. He’d lived through it, with Jim as his maker.

  “You lying sack of shit.” Shane grabs the front of Adrian’s poncho, opens the door, and drags him out into the common room. I follow quickly, worried that in his rag
e, Shane will toss Adrian out into the sunlight, which he can’t do without burning up himself.

  Regina and Noah are on the couch together. Her tear-soaked face is pressed against his chest. I remember that her other progeny, Shane’s blood sister Sara, died the same way as Deirdre, though by accident instead of murder.

  Shane shoves Adrian into the armchair and turns to them. “He’s one of Jim’s. All this time and he didn’t tell us. He’s Carl Keller.”

  They sit stunned for a moment, then Noah simply says, “You shaved your beard.”

  “A spy for Kashmir? Motherfucker!” Regina leaps up, claws out, and Noah barely grabs her in time. “We let you stay under our own roof, and you sold us out!” She twists and writhes in Noah’s grip. “Let me go, I need to kill him.”

  Adrian watches her carefully. Despite his peace-loving demeanor, he’d surely defend himself with lethal means. Vampires don’t live almost fifty years—crap, I mean forty years—without learning how to fight.

  “Regina.” I almost step between them, but my own sense of self-preservation keeps me out of the way. “If you kill him, he can’t answer our questions.”

  “If I kill him, he can’t betray us again.”

  “I haven’t betrayed you!” Adrian raises his hands. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say. I didn’t come here to spy on you. I came here because this is a dream job. Living with other vampires, having fans who adore us, getting to sit in the same chair, sleep in the same bed, as one of my idols—”

  “That idol of yours killed my cousins.” This new fact shuts Adrian up. “You already know he nearly killed me. So stop romanticizing him.”

  “I stopped romanticizing him about a day after I turned. I’ve seen him do more nasty things than you can possibly imagine. But the blood bond can never be broken, not even by death.”

  Shane and Regina share a look, and in the brief silence Noah speaks.

  “I know what you mean.” His voice is soft but commanding. “My maker was a monster by any standard. He abandoned me when I refused to kill. But I know that when his death comes, I will feel the same tear in my heart as I would if we were best friends.”

  Regina goes limp in his arms. After a moment he lets her go, and she stalks back to the couch. “Start talking, you bastard.” Noah sits beside her, and I sit on his other side.