In the Dark (21 page)

I tried to think
of something, anything. My brain wouldn’t stop screaming.

Let her go,
let her go.

But he wouldn’t.
Not unless I stopped him.

And I couldn’t
move.

Tears welled up
and spilled over my cheeks. I shook so hard I thought for sure he’d
hear me.

Josephine’s
tight, tense body went slowly limp, relaxing little by little. Her
eyes didn’t see me anymore.

She was going to
die. I had to do something. But I didn’t know what.

“Ian!
Josephine!”

Sebastian!

I opened my
mouth to scream, but my voice caught in my throat. Didn’t even
wheeze. The monster smiled around Josephine’s neck.

I kicked a foot,
aiming for the door. Missed. I kicked again harder, a jerk of a
motion. My foot whumped against the door, harder than I’d
thought. With the hinges already crooked and broken, the door came
right off and crashed to the floor. The stranger’s eyes landed
on me over the broken door. He grinned around Josephine’s white
skin. I slunk back, my middle an ice ball. Sebastian’s
footsteps pounded through the apartment.

The strange man
let go of Josephine. She tumbled to the floor like a doll.

“So you
do
know that trick,” he said, licking his bloody lips. I just
stared at him.

He lunged. Fast
as a cat, fast as a snake, he had me. One hand around my throat,
shoving me to the wall while the other pressed between my breasts,
pushing into my ribcage. I grabbed at his hand, clawing at it, trying
to stop his reach, and did absolutely nothing. My sternum cracked. I
heard the sound in my head, felt the sharp stab of pain in my chest.
He pressed in, reaching for my heart, I knew because he’d
pulled out Kent’s heart and now mine too, and it hurt and I
screamed but nothing came out. My lungs had folded entirely.

My skin started
tearing. I felt it stretching away from my bones – like a
wrecking ball slammed into me. His fingers moved inside my chest,
wet, sliding deeper, the pain so bad I almost couldn’t see . .
.

He stopped.

Mouth open, I
looked up, staring like an idiot because I didn’t know what
else to do. His face – it was wide with surprise. Sebastian
stood behind him, his own face a gargoyle’s mask of hate. A
killer.

For one second
that hand stayed pressed against my chest, inside me, unmoving. And
then he toppled, pulling his fingers out and away with him.

The second time
Sebastian cut into him, I heard it. Metal on bone.

Shing.

I squeezed my
eyes shut, pressed my back to the wall, and shook.

I heard the wet
sound of liquid in a throat. I opened my eyes. Saw Sebastian hunkered
down over a shape I couldn’t see. Josephine still lay tossed to
one side. I shut my eyes again. The sound of Sebastian drinking
filled my ears, drowning me. The horrible sound of him swallowing
from that dead man, until I heard him sucking hard, not getting any
more, finally stopping.

I didn’t
open my eyes. If he’d stopped, he’d stood up. If he’d
stood up, the dead man would be right there. Turning into dust maybe,
or maybe not yet, but still right where I could see.

“Josephine,”
Sebastian said, his voice soft for once. Young. “Josephine.
Drink. Here.”

I listened to
Josephine feed from him, greedy gulps.

I hadn’t
done anything.

I whimpered, a
gurgling noise in my throat.

“Ian,”
Sebastian said in my direction. Asking if I was all right, what had
happened, if there were more, all in just my name.

I couldn’t
say “what.” I couldn’t tell him I hadn’t done
a damn thing. That I was supposed to help and I’d frozen up. I
wanted to confess, but my throat didn’t work.

“He’s
dead, Ian. It’s over.”

My stomach
jerked.

“Ian?”
Sebastian didn’t move, only spoke.

I dropped onto
my belly and dry-heaved.

I hadn’t
done a damn thing.

“Ian?”
That was Josephine’s voice, raspy, weak, but there.

A trickle of
blood worked up from my throat and gagged me. My body jerked with my
stomach, trying to force more up. Hard, so it ached after each jerk,
so that every cut and bruise and broken bone in my body grated and
burned and throbbed.

Slowly the
spasms got weaker, then less frequent. Finally stopped. My stomach
grumbled, yawning hungry, but so sick the thought of eating brought
on more spasms. I hid my broken face in my arms and cried.

Hands on me.
They rolled me onto my back, lifted me. My entire body protested the
movement. I should have been dead. Or in a coma.

Instead, I
couldn’t even moan while someone picked me up, all too aware of
how alive I was. It had to be Sebastian lifting me. I didn’t
dare open my eyes to check.

He carried me
out of the library and down a bit, through a door. I felt myself
being lowered, felt the bed sink under my weight. I kept my eyes
shut, didn’t move. Unsure if I even could move.

“Get some
rest,” he said.

I heard him
leave. Heard the door click shut.

No way I could
relax even a little. I could hear movement in the apartment, told
myself I knew it was only Sebastian and Josephine. Couldn’t
help worrying that maybe it wasn’t.

Only a few
minutes later, my bedroom door opened again. My stomach clenched as I
turned to look, unable to move even to hide.

Sebastian
stepped in again, carrying Josephine. He set her on the bed beside
me, gently, her body pressing the mattress down. Without a word, he
settled himself into the huge stuffed chair in the corner of the
room. Josephine sighed and set one hand on my arm.

When the sun
came up some undetermined time later, I fell deeply, deeply asleep.

W
hen
I opened my eyes, I was alone. My body had entirely healed overnight.
My muscles were stiff. It felt like I had worked out too hard the day
before. Nothing worse than that.

I groaned. My
throat felt a little gritty and sore, but the sound came out like it
should. I got up and stripped out of my slacks and my cute little
wrap-around – with the blood stains all over it. I left my
clothes on the floor and got in the shower.

To what delight
I had left, Sebastian’s system had excellent water pressure and
heat. I cranked up the hot and let the water pound my neck and
shoulders until my fingers wrinkled. I stared at the shrivels on my
fingers. Funny how that was what convinced me to wait up for the sun
one morning. I didn’t know much about corpses. I didn’t
know they absorbed water and wrinkled. I had thought that might mean
I was still alive, even though I drank blood. So I’d waited up.
To see.

The sun had
hurt, like being dropped in boiling water. I’d screamed. When
Kent came running, he’d gotten burned too, though not as bad as
me. I felt guilty about that, but kind of honored, too. He’d
risked himself to save me, coming within seconds of my scream,
rescuing me when I couldn’t run.

When I told him
why I did it, he just shook his head and started explaining. That had
been my Anatomy 101. Kent told me about being dead and some of what
our bodies did because of the blood. When I’d asked why he
hadn’t told me that before, he said he thought he had time. He
was getting around to explaining.

He always did
that. Put anything important or serious off until he had to deal with
it. He could always find something fun to do instead of taking care
of boring business.

With a small
streak of anger, I wondered when he’d planned on telling me
anything.

The anger faded
fast. He hadn’t planned on getting killed. He would have told
me, in his own time. I couldn’t be mad at my best friend for
not seeing the future.

I wasn’t
really relaxing under the spray, so I turned off the water and got
out.

Steam rolled out
of the bathroom with me. Josephine lay across the bed, trying to
entice an uncertain Gypsy to sniff her fingers. I startled when I saw
a person in the room, recognizing Josephine before I could shriek.
That should have relaxed me, but instead a different tension grabbed
me when I recognized her. She wasn’t a threat, no, but maybe –
maybe she hated me.

If
she
was actually Josephine.

I tried to tell
myself I was being paranoid. I wished I could believe it.

She gave up on
Gypsy and sat up when I came into the room. Smiled. I tried to smile
back, then busied myself digging through my travel bag for clean
clothes. My bloodied clothes from yesterday I kicked under the bed. I
never wanted to see them again.

While I dressed,
Josephine sighed and smoothed her white dress over her knees.

“I thought
we should talk.”

For a second, I
was so caught up in wondering if she was Josephine that I wondered
what we should talk about. Then I remembered. Last night. Me pressed
into a corner helplessly while she was nearly killed. She wanted to
offer me forgiveness. Or if she thought I deserved honesty, she’d
tell me how I’d disappointed her.

She met my face
again. “You must have a lot of questions about him.”

Oh. Kent.
I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “Yeah. I do.”

She folded her
hands on her knees and waited. I bit my lip, then shrugged and opened
my mouth.

Shut it again.

“I don’t
know what to ask.” I shrugged expansively. “I mean,
obviously he didn’t tell me everything, but I never felt like
it. You know?” I shook my head. “It’s like I didn’t
even know him.” That had been my worst fear this whole time. It
hurt worse once I said it.

I looked away
and clenched my jaw while Josephine waited in silence for me to sort
my head out. Not easy. Finally I shrugged. “Tell me
everything.”

Josephine lifted
one eyebrow, then nodded. “I suppose you probably know his
general history?” When I shrugged again, she went on. “He
was born in England two hundred and forty odd year ago, the fourth or
fifth son of a minor noble. He was changed at around twenty-three or
so, by a man he was having an affair with behind his family’s
back. After a while they split up and he traveled. He came to Seattle
when the music here began to take off.”

“I knew
about how old he was. I didn’t know any of the rest.” I
folded myself to sit with my knees to my chest in the fat armchair in
the corner.

Josephine
nodded. “The first thing he did when he arrived here was visit
others in town – it’s sort of a tradition, if our kind
has any. We tend to be a paranoid, territorial group, and finding
other vampires on your feeding grounds can be rather upsetting. So he
came to ask if I minded if he stayed.”

“I take it
you didn’t?”

Josephine
laughed. “Goodness, no. It actually surprised me there weren’t
a few more in town . . . I suppose Sebastian has something to do with
that. But no, once I got to know him, I didn’t mind Kent
staying. And we actually hit it off fairly quickly.”

“So you
knew him before he knew me?”

“Quite a
while, yes. He told me he wanted a child, but that he wanted to wait
until the right person came along.”

If she’d
wanted to make me smile, it worked. I ducked my head.

“We talked
often,” Josephine went on. “He didn’t tell me all
the places he’d been, or everything he’d done, but he
told me some. He had so many stories –”

“Oh, I
know! He’d just pull one out of thin air,
voila.
‘When
I was in Germany . . .’ ‘A Zen Master once told me . . .’
And he never told the same story twice.”

Josephine
laughed. “That was Kent. But here. Did you know he was
psychic?”

My eyebrows
jumped. “Psychic? Like, reading minds?”

Josephine
nodded. “He was actually quite good. I get hunches, what will
happen in the next few seconds or minutes. Sometimes I can change it,
sometimes I can’t. But Kent could look right inside a person’s
mind.”

Psychic. That
was a biggy.

“Why
didn’t he –” I stopped. There was no answer to that
question.

“He said
he wanted to wait and see if you had the same ability,”
Josephine said, like that might explain. “He said it skipped
generations, and he didn’t know if you’d inherited it or
not. His own father couldn’t read minds, but passed the ability
to Kent when he made him.”

That still
didn’t explain – to me, anyhow – why he’d
kept it to himself. He could have said that to me.

“I think .
. .” Josephine leaned forward on her knees, her face soft and
serious. About to deliver bad news. “I think he worried about
you. His own father . . . Kent’s father killed the one who made
him,
because
he didn’t inherit this psychic ability.
Apparently, Kent’s grandfather was rather proud of it, and he
picked on Kent’s father for not having it. Eventually, the
torment drove Kent’s father to murder. I think Kent wanted to
avoid upsetting you.”

“He
thought I might kill him?” It came out a squeak. As soon as I
said it, I knew it was stupid. Kent knew me better than that.

“No.”
Josephine shook her head. “No, no. Kent loved you and trusted
you, I know that more than anything else. I don’t believe he
thought that at all. I think he saw what feeling so inadequate did to
his own father, and he didn’t want you to go through that if it
turned out his ability skipped you. That’s all.”

I nodded as if
that made me feel better. But I was gnawing on another worry. Kent’s
maker had murdered his own maker. And Kent had loved that man, at
least for a while.

What a lovely
family. We must have a reunion.

“That was
why I asked you what you felt when –” Josephine stopped
short, a pained look on her face.

What I felt
when he died.

I shrugged. If I
didn’t start talking about it now, I might not ever.