Twilight Fulfilled (15 page)

“I believe we are two of the most powerful people in your world today, Brigit. I believe there is no force in existence that we two, together, cannot overcome.”

She blinked and lowered her head, as if his words had elicited some strong emotion within her. “Well, we were. Now…
you
are. And I…”

“You are far more than you know, Brigit Poe.” As he said it, he reached out with one hand to push her blond locks behind one ear, the better to see her face.

Her cheeks warmed, pinkened, at his touch.

“Will you give me back my power, then?” she asked.

He considered his answer for a long moment. The building they had been examining was far behind them now. The countryside rolled out before them as they continued to drive northward. Hills of lush
green rose higher toward bluish mountain peaks that stabbed into the sky.

Would she return to her original plan to kill him if he told her the truth?

He looked around him, accustomed to finding a means of escape before entering any dangerous situation. It was the soldier in him, he supposed. A king must lead armies, and he had learned to lead them well.

As he weighed his chances, he felt a smile tugging at his lips. She would not blast him to bits—at least not while he resided inside her precious car. He was safe—for the moment.

“I asked you a question, Utana. Will you give me back my power?”

“I already—”

Brigit halted the car so dramatically that he stopped in midsentence. She pressed her temples, closed her eyes tight.

“Brigit?” They were in the center of the road, and not entirely within the boundaries of the correct lane. “Brigit, are you all right? What is it?”

She blinked her eyes open and stared directly forward. “It's J.W.,” she whispered.

Utana tore his concerned eyes from hers and looked instead to where she was focused. Brigit's twin brother, James of the Vahmpeers—the very man who had raised Utana from ashes—stood far ahead in front of the car. And as Utana looked on,
he strode closer, down the center of their lane, and stopped there, placing one hand on the vehicle's hood. His broad shoulders blocked out the afternoon sun, and the gathering winds tossed his golden hair like ocean waves. But it was his eyes that held Utana's attention. His eyes carried the message of his fury. Could he have blasted Utana with a beam from them, he surely would have done so.

And now that he was here, perhaps his sister would feel the same. It was a very good thing, Utana thought, that he had not had time to complete the words he had begun to speak to her.

 

A horn blasted behind them, and Brigit jumped, then shook herself free of her momentary shock and began easing the car forward. J.W. backed out of the way, walking to the shoulder, where his own vehicle, an old pickup truck, was parked. Brigit drove past it, then pulled onto the shoulder a solid fifty yards ahead. She wanted there to be some distance between J.W. and Utana. For J.W.'s sake.

As she reached for her door handle, she felt Utana's hand on her upper arm. Warm. Strong but gentle. When she looked at him, there was a question in his ebony eyes.

“I don't know what he wants. Probably he was on his way to check out St. Dymphna's, like we were just doing ourselves. Or maybe they sent him to find out why I haven't done what I was sent to do.”

Utana held her eyes. “To destroy my body, and return my soul to a dark and timeless prison.”

“Yeah. That.” She had to avert her eyes when she said it. “Don't worry. I'll talk to him, okay? Just wait here. I'll be right back.”

His eyes asked her not to go, but it wasn't as if she had a choice here. He was her brother. She opened her mouth to say something more, but then closed it again, not even sure what words were so eager to escape. She gave Utana a reassuring smile instead. “I'll be right back. Promise.”

He said nothing, just held her eyes, making it very hard for her to turn away, to open her door and exit the vehicle. She did it, though, and then walked back toward her brother's truck. Two-tone, red on top, cream on the bottom. It was an older model, late seventies, but rather than a restored classic, it bore the look of a tired-out ride. A little attention, though, and it could be something special.

She patted its hood as she approached her brother, who was standing in front of the bumper. “She needs tires, J.W. And there's some rust starting up around the gas cap. You don't get on that soon, it'll be too deep, and you'll have to—”

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” he asked, firmly cutting her off in mid chatter.

Brigit lowered her eyes, nodding slowly. “Not even going to say hi? Just straight to the condemnation?”

“What are you doing, Brigit? Why is that monster still alive? And why the hell—”

“He's not a monster. He's a man, J.W. And I think he—”

“Not a monster?” J.W. gaped at her, seemed to have to fight for the ability to speak again. “Are you forgetting how many of our people he murdered?”

“Not for a minute,” she whispered. “And neither is he. It's eating him up inside. But the man was half out of his mind when he did what he did. He'd been trapped in a living death for thousands of years, resurrected into a world he didn't understand, shown a race he created and told by others that he would be returned to the eternal prison you pulled him out of, unless he destroyed it. He believed he was told these things by the gods themselves. He
believed
it, J.W.”

“I don't give a damn what he believed.”

“He'd been lied to, both by Folsom's piece of shit book full of propaganda and by that DPI bastard, Nash Gravenham-Bail.”

“Who the hell is—”

“Scarface,” she snapped. “Remember? I had him prisoner, thinking he was one of the vigilantes? As we made our way to the yacht, he managed to get Utana's attention. He fed him a pile of bull, and Utana let him go. Remember, J.W.?”

“It's James,” he said.

You would think by now he would have given up on that constant refrain, she thought.

“And yes, I remember,” he added.

“He was DPI, J.W. He was laying the groundwork to use Utana against us. And it almost worked.”

“It did work, sis. He blew away dozens of us. And you were supposed to kill him, Brigit. You were supposed to kill him before he could kill any more of us.”

“Well, I haven't, so deal.”

They stood there, face-to-face in a stare-down that Brigit eventually lost when J.W. said, “He took my power. And he hurt my Lucy.”

“That was an accident, and you know it.”

“Yeah, I do. He was trying to kill me, and she got in the way. That doesn't exactly make it all right, Bridge.”

She had to look away. “The first thing he asked me when I found him was whether Lucy was all right. He was mortified for having hurt her. He likes her.”

“I don't fucking care if he likes her!” He tipped his head back, shoved both hands through his hair in frustration, then looked her in the eye again. “Brigit, what's going on with you? Has he brainwashed you, put some kind of mind control vibe on your brain, or what?”

She paced away from him, pretending to examine the truck but actually searching for words in
stead. She ran her hands down the side panels. The paint was still good under all the dirt. Just a little touch up, a little sanding and body putty, fresh paint and maybe a layer of clear coat, and it could be a classic.

Traffic flew past, sending mini-blasts of air at her over and over.

When she circled back around to the nose of the truck, J.W. met her eyes again. “What are you going to do?” he asked her softly.

“I think he deserves another chance, J.W.”

He lowered his head, shaking it slowly. “That's not your call. You were sent to take him out, Brigit. If you won't do it, the elders are just going to send someone else. You know that.”

She released a puff of air that could have been a laugh, had she let it mature. “They won't succeed. He's too strong. I've been looking for a vulnerability, a weakness, all this time, and I haven't found one yet.”

Her brother's brows rose, a spark of hope coming to life in his eyes. “Is that why you're with him? Looking for a weakness?”

“That
was
why. In the beginning.”

“And now?”

She nodded toward the stretch of road behind them, the direction from whence she and Utana had come. “You knew the Chosen have been vanishing for a while now. We've all suspected the gov
ernment was rounding them up. Utana and I have learned where they're being held.”

“We already know,” James told her. “They're at St. Dymphna.”

“Well, aren't you all just way ahead of us, then? I suppose you also know they're nothing more than bait for a great big DPI vampire trap?”

Her brother blinked, his eyes telling her that he hadn't known that at all.

“They're going to do something to them, J.W. They're going to hurt them, scare them, something to put them into a state of anguish or pain or fear.”

“So the vampires will feel their need and come to their aid,” he said, putting the pieces together at last.

“Now you're getting it. They figure they'll lure out every vampire left alive, so they must be planning to really put the screws to the captives. And then they intend to kill you all.”

“How?” J.W. asked.

“They intended to use Utana to do it.” She put her hands on J.W.'s shoulders and stared forcibly into his eyes. “But he refused. He came with me instead.”

“Yeah. To do what? Blast us all on his own time-line?”

Throwing her hands in the air, Brigit turned away in exasperation. “I wanted to come to you all, to warn you. He didn't want to do that. He wanted
to rescue the Chosen on our own, to keep everyone else far from danger.”

“Oh, so he's looking out for us now.” J.W. threw his own hands in the air and walked in a small circle. “Am I supposed to believe he's decided to thumb his nose at the supposed dictates of his gods and not kill us after all?”

She shrugged. “Not yet.”

Her brother's eyes widened, brows arching high. “Are you kidding me? He hasn't decided yet, and you're
still
taking his side?”

“Believe me, the second he seems inclined to harm a hair on any of your heads, I'll take him out.” She didn't tell her brother that she no longer had any idea just how she would manage to do that, now that her powers were gone. She wasn't going to give him any more reason to hate Utana than he already had. He didn't know the man—not like she did.

“Great. That's just great.”

“Now that you're here, we have a far better chance, though,” she said. “The three of us can free the Chosen before the DPI does whatever horrible thing they have planned for them.”

Her brother looked at her, searching her eyes as if for some explanation that would make him understand the change in her. But she knew he wouldn't find one. She didn't even know what had changed in her, so how could he? All she knew was that return
ing Utana to an endless existence of being buried alive was beyond her. She couldn't do it, couldn't kill him, knowing that would be the result. Nor could she allow him to harm her people. She was being torn to pieces by the conflict that would only be resolved if Utana chose to betray his gods for her, and her people chose to forgive the man who had decimated them.

Odds didn't look very good for either event.

With a frustrated, furious sigh, J.W. shook his head. “No. I don't want any help from that murderer. And if you're with him, Brigit, then I don't want any help from
you,
either. And you can trust me when I tell you, our family will feel the same way.”

“No.” Brigit felt hot tears burning in her eyes. “Don't say shit like that, J.W., not to me.”

“You need to choose—right now. You either come with me now, or you take off with him and let us handle our own problems. Make your choice, Brigit. Us or him?”

“I want you to talk to him,” she said. “Just talk to him. Please, James.”

“No.” As he said it, he looked past her toward her car. And then his eyes narrowed, and he went on, “Looks like he's made the choice for you. Though it pisses me off to think he had to.”

“What the hell are you talking abou—” She turned as she spoke, then stopped when she saw her car speeding away without her.

“I
take it you taught him to drive?”

Brigit nodded, still staring into the empty space, now that the T-Bird was out of sight.

“Bad idea. I guess you're stuck with me now, sis.” J.W. slammed her shoulder from behind as only a brother would do. “Only question is, would you rather storm the castle, just the two of us, or head back to face Rhiannon and explain to her just exactly why it is you went soft?”

She glared at her brother and said, “Neither.” Stomping to the passenger door of his pickup, she yanked it open and said, “Get in and start driving, J.W. We're going after him.”

“We'll never catch up,” he argued, but he went around the truck and climbed in. “He's got way more horsepower than we do.”

“Horsepower, yes. Gas? Not so much.” She climbed in and shut the door, as her brother started
the engine and pulled the truck into motion. “We've been on E for the past twenty miles. I was about to stop for gas when he started picking up vibes from the Chosen.”

“And I take it you didn't teach him the finer points of pumping gas while you were supposed to be blowing him away?”

“No, I never quite got around to that.”

“What
did
you get around to?”

She felt her brother's eyes on her, heard the question he was really asking. If she looked him in the eye just then he would see the answer she wasn't ready to give. So she stared straight ahead and said, “He'll run out in another ten miles, give or take. If we hurry, he'll still be with the car.”

J.W. sighed, and she supposed her nonanswer was all the answer he needed. He was her twin, after all. The person closest to her in all the world.

And his lack of faith in her had been like a blade to her heart. She wasn't sure she could ever forgive him, even when he finally came around to realizing that she was right. He'd put a rift between them, and she didn't think he even realized it.

But this wasn't the time to address it. Not now.

 

Utana drove Brigit's car, his skills increasing exponentially with each passing mile. The process was not difficult for him, and that wasn't something he was particularly proud of. It wasn't as if he were
somehow responsible for the superior intellect with which he'd been born. Nor for the gift of immortality given him by the gods, nor for the centuries upon centuries of life that had enhanced his mind even further. None of it was his doing.

Driving this machine, however, filled him with pleasure. If there had not been so many problems on his mind, the experience would have been one of pure bliss, he thought. Much like the experience of possessing Brigit's beautiful body had been, although not nearly as powerful. In that case, even the worries plaguing him had been unable to interfere.

They were interfering now.

His pleasure in the power of the automobile, its instantaneous response to his every command, was diminished by the questions tormenting him.

And there were many.

Utana had tuned in to the mind of his beautiful Brigit while she'd spoken with her brother. Her twin. He had heard the words they exchanged, yes. But, too, he had felt the emotions. James's anger. Brigit's heartache.

Her brother, the person she loved most in all the world, had bade her choose—between him and his family and Utana himself.

Utana had opted not to force such a difficult choice upon her. And perhaps that was only partly an unselfish act on his part. It was true that he did wish to spare her a difficult decision. Partly,
though, he feared which choice she would have made. Surely she would not alienate her family any further by consorting with
him
. Not when protecting her family had been her reason for remaining with him all along.

She hadn't killed him. Perhaps it would have been better for them both if she had. Truly, his feelings for her were mixed up in his mind—and heart—and he knew not how to make sense of them, nor sort them out.

He knew one thing, however. He had not lied when he told Brigit he could not murder her. He knew that without any doubt, and if the gods insisted that her life be taken, then he was doomed to return to the living death he'd suffered.

Nor did he want to take the lives of those she loved. And if he were honest, he no longer believed himself capable of doing so—of causing her that kind of pain. So if the gods instructed him to spare her, but to immolate the rest—well, he did not think he could do that, either.

Hell, he wasn't sure he was able, now, to take any of their lives. The vahmpeers. The race he had unintentionally created. And perhaps his mind would be easier if he just admitted as much to himself and gave up struggling with the decision. For deep down, he knew, the decision was already made.

Blinking slowly as he drove, he heard himself whisper, “Yes. The decision is already made. I
cannot kill them. I
cannot
.” He looked at the distant horizon. “And I
will
not.”

Drawing a deep breath that expanded his chest and filled his lungs, then releasing it slowly in a long, long sigh, he realized that he felt a sense of relief. As if the weight of the very world had been lifted from his shoulders. A weight that dangled now, menacing and ominous, overhead. He knew the decision he had finally made was the right one. But he feared that in the making of it, he had doomed himself to return to an inescapable and unbearable hell.

“Only when I die,” he told himself. “And so I will simply find a way to remain alive. For as long as I possibly can.”

A smile tugged at his lips as that heavy weight dangling above him seemed to evaporate and float away. Temporarily, at least.

And then the car spat and bucked a little. It sputtered and coughed, and then its engine died entirely. He depressed the clutch to let it coast off onto the side of the road as Brigit had done when she had stopped to talk to her brother, seeing now the logic in doing so.

But once he brought the vehicle to a safe halt, out of the way of other cars that might come speeding past, he could not start the engine again, no matter what he did.

In only a moment, he knew the reason, felt it through his hands on the steering wheel. The liquid
called gasoline, on which the vehicle fed, had run dry. It needed more.

Utana got out, feeling lighter, despite the setback of being on foot. It was good, having made this choice. He was almost eager to tell Brigit about it. But he knew, too, that his troubles would not end there. Her people—
his
people—would not easily forgive him for what he had done. Perhaps he could make it right, however, by rescuing the Chosens and protecting the vahmpeers from the trap being set for them. Surely Brigit had told James about that by now. Surely the vahmpeers would not attempt to go there tonight. They would wish to take time to form a plan.

Therefore,
he
would go tonight. He would free the Chosens. And when it was done, he would seek the forgiveness of the Undead.

And after that, regardless of the results his effort reaped, he would try to live this life with as much pleasure and bliss as he could manage, knowing that when it was over, the wrath of the gods might very well await him.

“So be it, then,” he said softly. “So be it.”

He walked away from the car, leaving it there, keys inside. Then he trudged off the highway and across a weed-strewn lot, heading back in the direction he'd come, but trying to do so off the beaten path and out of sight.

When he reached his destination, the hospital called St. Dymphna, where the Chosens were being held, he went into the woodlot to the building's left. He crouched amid the trees, concealed by the vines that had twined themselves around the fence. Making himself as comfortable as was possible, he waited, and he watched, and he listened. And most importantly, he
felt
.

This, he thought, was going to be easy.

 

Brigit stood beside the T-Bird, turning in a slow circle as the wind blew her hair into a tangled mess. “Where the hell is he?”

“Probably gone back to Scarface to report in,” J.W. said. “He was probably working for him all along, Bridge. Just playing you, so that you'd lead him to the rest of us.”

“You're wrong.”
She knew better.

Didn't she?

“I am? That's what you were doing, though, right? Bringing Utana, the guy who's supposed to annihilate us, straight to our door?”

She closed her eyes, lowered her head. “You keep pushing me, bro, and I'm going to have to knock you on your ass.”

He moved closer to where she stood. “Let me take you home, Brigit. Just let me take you home.”

“We don't have a home. Or are you forgetting that just about every safe house in vampiredom has been torched by vigilantes?”

“Home is where your family is, sis. They're all waiting for you. And they'll forgive you for not blasting him into a thousand pieces. Hell, they'll probably be relieved to find out you have a heart after all, even if you did choose a damn poor time to start using it.”

“Fuck you, J.W.”

“James. I keep telling you, it's James.”

She sent him a look. Then she pursed her lips and shook her head. “We can't go all the way back to Maine. The Chosen don't have time, and I don't think Utana does, either.”

“Scarface won't kill him until he has what he wants from him. No worries on that score,” her brother said. He opened the T-Bird's door, reached in to remove the keys, then closed it and hit the lock button.

“He won't go back to Gravenham-Bail, anyway,” Brigit insisted. “He'll try to free the Chosen all on his own, and he's going to get into trouble if he does. He has no idea the kind of security or the weapons the DPI will have waiting for him in that place.”

J.W. shrugged, turning to face her. “Maybe that's not a bad thing, Bridge. Maybe they'll manage to do the job for us that you couldn't bring yourself to do. Maybe they'll send him back to the grave, where he belongs.”

She slapped him. She slapped him so hard that he
rocked backward, catching himself against her precious car and probably scuffing up the paint. And then she stood there, her eyes beginning to glow with vampiric fervor and rage. Her fangs had elongated automatically with her anger, and her heart was pounding in her chest. There was an urge inside her to tear her brother apart. She'd never felt that way before—not about him. Her twin. And it frightened her.

“My God,” J.W. said, staring at her as if seeing her for the very first time. “You love him.”

“You don't know shit about what I feel. Or who or what he is, for that matter. But I'll tell you one thing—
James
. You wouldn't exist without him. None of us would. He's our creator, and neither you nor anyone else has the right to judge the man. Much less return him to an endless existence of darkness, of paralysis, of sensory deprivation. It's a living death—the most cruel and inhuman punishment anyone could imagine. No one deserves that.
No one!
”

She turned and stomped back toward his truck. “I'm going to the nearest gas station to get a can of high test and a funnel. You can ride along with me or wait on your ass here. I could care less either way.”

“And then?” he asked, hurrying after her. He caught up just as she reached for the driver's door and gave her a shove she wasn't expecting. Then,
as she stumbled out of the way, he climbed behind the wheel.

She raced around to get in the other side. “And then I'm going after Utana, to try to keep him from getting himself killed,” she said, as she got in.

J.W. started the truck and put it into gear. In a moody silence, her brother drove to the nearest gas station. Neither of them spoke a word the entire time. He went inside to buy the gas can, then returned to fill it up and stow it in the truck bed. She waited in the cab. She was angry. Furious, far more so than she had ever been with him before.

As he started the engine and pulled onto the highway again, she said, “I do not like being this angry with you, J.W.”

His jaw twitched. He didn't meet her eyes. “I don't like it, either.”

“I'm sorry I hit you,” she said.

He was silent for a long moment as she watched his face, saw the struggle there, and the way his Adam's apple swelled and receded like a wave as he swallowed. “I'm sorry I said what I did. And that I forgot for a minute that…you're my sister. My twin. And that we're the only two of our kind. And that no matter what else happens…we're supposed to stick together.”

She felt hot tears stinging her eyes and thought how stupid it was to cry like a girl over something she should have known was coming. She and J.W. always had each other's backs.

“So?” she asked.

“So let's go find Utana. And then we'll bring him to meet the family—the elders. Let him have his day in court, so to speak. He's got a lot to answer for, but maybe—”

“We can't take him to Maine, J.W. We have to get the Chosen out of government hands before the DPI and Scarface do something awful to them. You know they'll want to make them scream—the louder the better—to lure the vampires to come to their aid.”

“I know. But we don't have to go to Maine.”

She lifted her brows and stared at him. “I don't understand.”

“Everyone was worried about you. And feeling the energy of the Chosen, too. They're already here—in Virginia. At the plantation.”

 

Utana crouched in a woodlot just beyond the chain-link fence that surrounded the place they called St. Dymphna. He hadn't yet learned who this particular saint was, but he understood what saints were in general: enlightened beings who no longer lived, favored by the god of this time. Demigods, in a way. Humans prayed to them, and they were said to intercede on behalf of the faithful.

If this Dymphna were looking down on what was being done in her name—and he presumed this saint was female, as the statue in front of the
hospital named for her was a woman—he thought she would surely send bolts of lightning down upon the place. Which must mean she wasn't watching. Or maybe the gods of this world were false. He'd seen no evidence of their existence so far. In his day, the gods had been everywhere. Interacting with man in every moment of every day of his lifetime. The Anunaki were involved in every aspect of life. The singular god of today seemed all but invisible. Present in name only, like a figurehead. As if there were no more life to him than to the statues that represented his saints.