Afterlife

Chapter Twenty — two

I FLASHED MYSELF TO THE SMALL GROUP OF people huddled around Lucas’s fallen form. He lay motionless and bloodied on the snow, his chest and forehead sliced deeply by a weapon. Dana cradled his head in her hands, and Balthazar ran one finger along the edge of the chest wound and winced. Vic and Maxie, still holding on to each other, stood nearby, while Ranulf clutched his ax to his chest as if he were a child with a security blanket. Lucas appeared to be totally unconscious.

“What’s going on?” I knelt beside Lucas. “He’s wounded?”

“Badly,” Balthazar said. But in his voice I heard real dread.

I said, “As awful as it is, as much as I know he’s hurting.. he’ll be okay.” Nobody spoke. “Won’t he?”

Balthazar turned to me, expressionless. “The other vampire had laced his weapon with holy water. It’s a dangerous tactic for us, but — ” I held up a hand; I couldn’t bear to hear what came next, and besides, I already knew. Black Cross training had covered the technique, and it had been whispered by Erich in Lucas’s own dream — claiming that stakes soaked in holy water could paralyze and torture a vampire forever.

That it was like burning them alive, just from the inside out.

They’d never claimed to know for sure. Maybe it wasn’t so. But Lucas wasn’t moving. He was trapped deep in that terrible, unending fire.

I took his hand in mine; it was colder than usual, deeply chilled by the snow around us. His fingers were heavy, unresisting. “Lucas?” I whispered, but I knew he couldn’t hear.

The only release from his torment would be to behead him. To lose him forever. In the hours after Charity’s attack, I’d been faced with the decision of whether or not to kill Lucas; now I had to face it again. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

I squeezed his hand tighter. Dana, who had begun to sob, reached up with one hand to wipe her cheeks. Lucas’s head, free from its cradle, lolled to one side. Blood from the cut on his forehead had oozed down to his throat, pooling just beneath his Adam’s apple. It reminded me of how he had 232 looked the first time I bit him.

Vampire’s blood, I thought. During the ritual, it had attracted me powerfully. As powerfully as if the blood were life itself. Then everything came to me at once: How drinking Lucas’s blood had been part of what maintained my life as a vampire, how I had felt more alive then than at any other time.

How wraiths joined with vampires to create vampire children like me, because wraiths and vampires were the two halves of life, able together to kindle a flame.

How Mrs. Bethany’s ritual of resurrection had been designed to break me down and bring me into a vampire, to merge us into one. How wraith blood was poisonous to vampires, but their blood was life to us.

How Lucas and I had become a part of each other from the very first time I gave in to my desire and bit into his throat. I was Lucas, and he was me.

And I knew what to do.

“Move back,” I said. Everyone sort of stared, but they did what I asked, shuffling backward from Lucas’s sprawled body. Dana laid his head down gently before rising to her feet, where Raquel hugged her tightly from behind. Ranulf had bowed his head, and Vic, holding Maxie’s hand, sniffled like he was on the verge of tears. My parents stood slightly apart from the rest, but I could see that the concern in their faces for Lucas was real. A few others had gathered, too — just a handful of students, both vampire and human, unsure what to think. Skye stumbled toward us, dazed and weak from her ordeal but unwilling to leave Lucas if he was in trouble. When she swayed on her feet, Balthazar quickly rose to steady her against his shoulder.

The snow around Lucas was stained crimson with his blood. New flakes had begun to fall. A sharp, cold wind gusted past us, ruffling his hair. I held my hand out to Maxie; after a moment’s confusion, she understood and handed me my jet brooch, so that I could be wholly solid once more. I needed that now. The sharp edges of the flower’s carved petals cut into my palm.

I thought of how much I loved him, how badly I wanted him to be a part of me. I dreamed of the richness of his blood, and how it had made me feel alive. I remembered being a vampire — and felt my fangs emerge once more, sharp against my lips and tongue. My vampire self remained a part 233 of me, despite my death.

Then I bent low and bit into Lucas’s throat.

Blood. Cold, but still his blood, still him. Vampire’s blood carried knowledge, and so I felt everything that he had felt, knew everything that he had known. I felt his love for me, and his fear, as he had stood in the tower trying to rescue me. I saw the fight through his eyes, a whirl of blades, blows, and driving snow. I swallowed more deeply, drinking as much of his blood as I possibly could, more than I ever had as a vampire before. Around me, I could dimly hear some of the others protesting, but they were too distant to heed. And then I knew him — Lucas, his spirit, his soul, here at the center of his being.

Bianca. Where are we?

Together.

What’s happening?

I’m drinking your blood. Making it mine. Lucas — drink from me.

I pushed my hand against his mouth, so that the tender flesh between thumb and forefinger followed the curve of his lips.

Trust me. Drink.

He was paralyzed beyond the ability to bite down, so I pressed the soft skin against the sharpness of his teeth until they broke the skin. I felt the pain as sharply as I ever had any mortal injury, but I never flinched.

Blood flowed down his throat. What would have burned him before didn’t now, because I had mingled his blood and my own. Now the corrosive power of wraith’s blood couldn’t touch him any longer. He was free to drink it in. Free to take in life.

I felt myself growing dizzy as the link between us deepened. We were one system now, one being, each of us flowing into the other. As I gave in to it, I felt the outlines of his body as much as I did my own; the cuts on the forehead and chest burned, and the snow was cold underneath. And I knew his dawning wonder as he felt what it was like to be me — the angle of my limbs, the taste of his blood, the nearness of my spirit.

The blood I drank began to warm.

Is this what it means to die? Lucas thought. Because I’m not scared of it anymore. Not if it means I finally get this close to you.

I concentrated all my energy on him, directing myself into the very core of him, into the redness of his heart. This isn’t death. This is life.

Lucas gasped in a breath, and I sat up. His blood was sticky on my mouth, and he looked gorier than before, but his eyes were wide open. He took 234 another breath, and another.

“What did you do?” Balthazar said.

Raquel, leaning around Dana, said, “Yeah, was that vampire CPR or something?”

I never looked away from Lucas. The cuts on his face were knitting together, faster than vampire healing, part of his ultimate restoration. He stared up at me, obviously weak from his injuries, but with an incredulous smile spreading across his face. “It’s impossible.”

“It isn ‘t.” I started to laugh from pure joy. “It’s real.”

“You’re healing up, like, crazy fast, but you’re still bleeding, man.” Vic held out a scrap of cloth.

“Bleeding,” Balthazar said, his voice sharp and urgent. He’d seen it now, even if nobody else had. “Bianca, you did it.”

“Did what?” Dana said.

I hugged Lucas tightly. This time, when he embraced me in return. he was warm. “I’m alive,” Lucas whispered. “Bianca brought me back to life.”

Everyone around us started talking at once — in wonder or confusion or glee. Dana actually jumped into the air with her hands above her head, a victory leap.

I didn’t pay any attention. Time for explanations and celebrations later. All I wanted to do at tl1at moment was lie tilere in Lucas’s arms, my head against his chest, listening to the beating of his heart.

Within an hour, tile emergency vehicles began showing up — police cars, ambulances, and a couple of fire trucks, altilough there was nothing left of Mrs. Betilany’s carriage house but glowing cinders. My parents had found a landline inside that remained operational after the big freeze — and — thaw, and they made the 911 call.

“The school is dead now,” my mother had explained earlier, as Ranulf dragged a couple of vampire corpses into the fire to minimize tile awkwardness when tile law arrived. “Without Mrs. Bethany, there is no Evernight Academy. These students need to go home to their families.”

“What will this place become?” I said, looking at the massive stone towers silhouetted against tile snow — cloud sky.

“Some millionaire’s mansion, maybe. Or tile state might turn it into sometl1ing — a home for people in trouble. Another school.” Mom smiled 235 gently at Dad. “Good thing we never sold the Arrowwood place, huh?”

“We can’t go back there,” he corrected. “The people who remember us will know we look too young.”

“I know, dear. I’ve been doing this a while, too, remember?” She nudged him, fondly teasing. “But we can sell the house now, and use the money to go somewhere else.”

He put an arm around her shoulders. “Homesick for England?”

Mom brightened, and I suspected their new home would be somewhere near her beloved London. But she remained focused on me. “What about you, Bianca?”

“I’m staying with Lucas,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter now where I stay. I can be with you as quickly as blinking an eye. So we’ll visit as much as we want. There’s no such thing as being far away from you, not anymore.”

She drooped a little. “It’s so unfair. That you can give life to someone else, but you’re a wraith forever.”

“Mom, it’s okay.” I’d been turning this over in my mind for several days now, and after tonight’s astonishing events, I finally knew what I wanted to tell her. “Stop thinking that something terrible happened to me, okay? You guys, of all people, should realize that death’s not the end. Besides —! was meant to be a wraitil. I feel that now. These powers, these abilities — already I can ‘ t imagine not having them.This is my destiny. This is what I’m supposed to be.” After a moment’s pause, I added, “And it’s fun.”

My parents both started to laugh, and gatilered me into their arms for a ftong hug.

As the cops kept taking extremely confused statements from various students, and a very careful statement from Lucas, the red and blue lights from their vehicles beat raggedly, turning the snow crust on the ground different colors. Vic and Ranulf helped Skye down the front steps of Evernight; I could see that she continued to shake, and was clumsy as she tried to handle a duffle bag half as big as she was. When they walked past us, I heard her say, “Vampires and vampire hunters and ghosts — and they’ re all at war?”

“Present company excepted,” Vic said, with a grin over his shoulder. I could sense that Maxie hovered there, close by his side. “You know, if you 236 ask me, those shouldn’t be the sides. Instead, it should be the normal, awesome people versus the bug — nut crazy people. Plenty of people and vampires and ghosts on both sides of that equation, you know?”

“We are among the awesome,” Ranulf said gravely.

“Whatever you say.” Skye looked mostly like she wanted to get the hell away from anything supernatural and take a long nap. I couldn’t blame her, but I didn’t want to let her go without saying thanks.

“Skye, “I called as I walked up. She looked at me tiredly. “What you did up there — I’ll always be grateful. Me and Lucas both.”

“Lucas saved my life,” Skye said. “I wanted to help him, which meant helping you. And, like I said, I’d want somebody to do it for me.”

Her voice was so weary, and her eyes remained haunted. C hoosing my words with care, I said, “I possessed you for a pretty long time, and some intense supernatural things were happening. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Skye’s expression hardened. ““ll be okay the sooner I get away from here.” She took a deep breath. “Tell Lucas I’m happy for you guys. And. . tell him good — bye.” Then she marched through the snow to the police car without looking back.

In the distance, I saw Balthazar standing apart from everyone else. I walked through the snow to his side. My father’s coat hung so large on my shoulders that I felt as though I were wearing a cape. Balthazar didn’t turn as I approached, but when I reached him, he said, “Someone will have to take care of the stables.”

I followed his gaze to the school stables, where a few students had kept their prize horses for riding. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I’ll go down there tonight, make sure the horses are fed and warm,” he said quietly. “Their owners will come for them soon enough, probably, but I’ll keep checking. Oh, by the way, while we were looking for you today — I grabbed this.” From his pocket, Balthazar withdrew my silver and coral bracelet and dropped it into my hand. “It was under the beanbag chair. I guess Mrs. Bethany stashed it there when she replaced it with the trap.”

“Thank you,” I said, but it Wasn’t enough. Unspoken words hung between us, and I knew we had to deal with this immediately. Tve drunk your 237 blood, too,” I said. “What I did for Lucas — the return to life — it might work for you. If you want.”

Drinking somebody’s blood was a deeply intimate act, and for any other cause, I would never have offered; it would have been like cheating on Lucas. Yet I knew that Lucas would never begrudge Balthazar the chance to live again.

To my surprise, Balthazar shook his head. “No. There’s no guarantee it would work, and if it didn’t, I’d be poisoned.”

“It’s worth a shot.”

“It wouldn’t work.” His eyes narrowed as he stared at the horizon, as if he were blinded by the moonlight on the snow. “What happened tonight — that Wasn’t about blood. It was about the bond between you. The two of you are parts of one whole. That’s something you and I have never been.”

I laid my hand on his shoulder. “Balthazar, I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “I’m no worse off than I was before. And — I’m happy for Lucas. I mean it.”

Quickly I stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. Balthazar smiled at me, but I could tell he mostly wanted to be alone. So I went back to help with the cleanup, and hoped that the police believed our version of events.

They would, of course. It was going to be a lot easier for them to decide that a water main had flooded the school, creating some ice on a cold night and shorting out electricity in the carriage house to start the fire. Why would they ever believe some panicked teenagers babbling about ghosts?

There was no telling precisely how the final official reports would read, but I knew how they would end: with the confirmation that Evernight Academy existed no more.

Around dawn, Raquel and Dana drove all of us to the town where they lived. Although their motel was anything but elegant, it was clean and safe, and there were tons of vacancies. If the tired couple running the motel was confused to suddenly check in seven guests at two a.m., they said nothing.

My parents also said nothing when I went to Lucas’s room with him. My mom even checked Lucas’s bandage before we walked away and she told him she’d put some Neosporin on it in the morning. He swallowed hard as he nodded, and I could tell he was missing his mother, and the way she 238 had cared for him.

Mom and Dad probably thought we were just going to fall into each other’s arms. I liked the idea, but I knew that Lucas and I had to make a lot of decisions tonight — decisions that would shape our whole futures.

When we were alone in the room together, I helped him ease out of his jacket and shirt. Every mo·ve made him wince. I said, “You know.. now that you’re human again… if you wanted to call Kate — ”

“I don’t.” He looked up at me, and although his eyes were sad, I knew he truly meant what he said. “I still love Mom. I always will. But I know now, she has.. limitations. She can’t see past her own fear. There’s no way for her to be a part of our lives. Maybe someday, I might — I don’t know, let her know what happened. It would be a load off her mind, knowing I’ve been changed back. But I’ll never see her again.”

l sat on the hotel bed next to him. “Are you sad?”

“No. I’ve known we’d never be together again for a while now.” He brought his hand up to the curve of my jaw and smiled. “And how could I be sad today? God, Bianca, You’re a — miracle.”

I caught his hands in mine. “You’re alive again,” I said, my voice shaking. “You can have any kind of life you want. So I just want you to know that you’re free, okay? You’re free to make your own decisions. Even if — even if that means leaving me.”

“What?” Lucas stared at me like he couldn’t believe a word I’d said. “Why would I ever want to leave you?”

“You don’t have to fight vampires or wraiths anymore. You told me how much you always wanted a normal life, and now you can have one. Lucas, you could go to college, like you used to dream about. Meet some girl who’s alive and well and never — never had to attack anyone, or to learn how to kill.” I couldn’t quite meet his eyes anymore. “Someday you could get married. Have children. That’s something I can never give you.”

Lucas stared at me, shocked into silence. He had to be weighing what I’d just said. I didn’t expect him to agree right away, but he had to see the truth of it on some level. Given time, he would choose to fulfill his oldest dream: to live like other people lived. To have a house, a job, a family. To 239 set aside the old battles forever.

Then he said, “How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“That we can’t have children.”

It caught me up short. Honestly, I’d never thought I’d be able to have children; most vampires never did, with my mom and dad as a rare exception. Becoming a ghost had only confirmed its impossibility. “Lucas, I’m dead.”

“So were your parents.”

“I don’t have a body.”

He cupped my face in his hands, so tenderly it made me shiver. “Feels like it to me.”

I could have a body if I wanted one, couldn’t I? There didn’t seem to be any limit on how long I could keep it. “We don’t know that it’s possible,” I protested. “We can’t be sure.”

“That means we can ‘ t be sure what’s impossible, either.” Lucas smiled at me, his dark green eyes shining. “Bianca, before tonight, nobody ever dreamed that you would be able to bring me back to life like that. You made that happen. And now we’ll find a way. I’m not talking about kids, or at least not just about kids. I mean, no matter what’s ahead of us. We’II make it work. Because I love you too much to ever let you go.”

Joy rippled through me. “Are you sure?”

“Are you?” For a moment, hesitation flickered across his features. “You’re the most amazing supernatural creature in the world, and I’m just some guy who’s going to get old eventually.”

““ll make my hair gray to match yours,” I promised. “I’ll add wrinkles when you do.” I hadn’t known that I could feel like crying and laughing at the exact same moment. “But, Lucas — what about having a normal life?”

“Forget normal.” He grinned. “We’re going to be extraordinary.”

We kissed, and for the first time since he’d been changed, there was no barrier between us, no hesitation.

It turned out, with a little bit of concentration, I no longer had to take my clothes off. If l wanted them to be gone, they were, so that only my silver and coral bracelet shone on my wrist.

It felt different, being with him now that he was alive and I was not. Somehow, it felt even better. When we were together, I could sense 240 everything he sensed, be aware of his pleasure along with my own. And his touch was no longer a simple connection of nerves and neurons, no longer creating a merely physical response. Instead, I felt his touch as what it was — an expression of the love between us — and that excited me as nothing else ever had or could.

“Bianca,” Lucas whispered against my throat, his breath once again warm, the scent of his skin again all around me. “You’re my life.”

“And You’re mine.” It was true. His heartbeat, his muscles, everything that made him human resonated within me as strongly as my own life ever had. Within myself I held everything that was wonderful about being supernatural, and everything that had been wonderful about being alive. This was what it meant to be anchored — to be loved.

Afterward, as we lay tangled up in each other, Lucas combed through my hair with his fingers. As he stared up at the ceiling, he said, “Only one thing bothers me.”

“What’s that?”

“The only thing I don’t like about being mortal means — I have to leave you. Not until the end of my life, and trust me, I intend to live a good long time, but just the same. That’s where we’re headed, someday.”

A sharp pang made me hug him tighter. ‘Til face that when the time comes. If I’m able to have the next fifty or sixty years with you — if we can be together and happy for your whole life — then that’s what I want. I’d rather mourn when I lose you than not be with you at all.”

Lucas kissed me deeply, then folded me back into his arms. “So that’s what we’ll do.”

“What about you?” I whispered. “I know how happy you are to be alive, but.. you were going to live forever, and now you won’t. You lost your immortality. Does that feel weird?”

“I’ll never die,” he said. Before I could protest, Lucas put two fingers on my lips. His gentle smile seemed to fill the room with light. and I realized he was telling a deeper kind of truth than I’d ever known before. “You’ll live forever, and being remembered by you is the only immortality I’ll ever need. If I only live on as a part of you — Bianca, that’s my idea of heaven.”