A Dark-Adapted Eye (18 page)

“Oh, girl, you already
are
.” The doorman lifted his eyebrows once, quickly, then turned and went into the club.

“I guess he’s getting Rade,” Aleskie said.

“And I thought guarding the door was so important.” I rubbed at my wrist where he’d touched me and looked at her. “If Rade wants to take me somewhere to get Ivory, I’m going with him.”

“Okay. Fine. That’s why I’m here.”

“And you can’t judge me.”

“I’m not. I won’t.” She studied me silently, but I couldn’t meet her eyes. I shifted nervously and she said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, Asha, and I don’t care. I like you, but it was Ivory and Les who got me out of that alley and let me stay at the house. And they care about you, so I’m not going to abandon you.”

I was about to point out that Les had subsequently kicked her out, and that by being here with me she was an accomplice to my crimes, but just then the club door opened. Rade came out and headed toward me, his lifeless eyes giving nothing away. The doorman resumed his post and lit a cigarette.

Rade’s face bore no trace of last night’s fight. It was my first impulse to apologize for Les hitting him, but I wasn’t sorry and I seriously doubted Les was either. The vampire deserved no apologies from me or anyone I held dear. Anyway, he’d allowed Les to hit him; I was sure he could have gotten away if he’d wanted to. Instead, he’d let himself be punished.

“I still need help finding my brother,” I declared. “I’m sick of all this running around.
Someone
knows
something
, and if one more person tells me they don’t—”

He held up a hand to silence me. “You’ll find him.”

“Okay, but—”

“There’s another place I’d like to take you tonight.”

“Another secret vampire hideout?” I asked, my voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Not exactly. But this should bring us closer to your brother.”

Of course I had to go, with a hook like that. I’d look for my brother anywhere, do anything to get him back, and Rade knew it.

“Aleskie is going to drive us,” I said. “She’s coming in with us, wherever we go.”

“Fine.”

I hadn’t expected resistance from him. He’d done little to resist me, actually, since I’d co
nfronted him in his apartment for the first time. Maybe he was too lazy to argue back about anything. Maybe he was too tired, or too sad. It was hard to tell what, if anything, lay behind his unnaturally desolate eyes.

Rade sat in front with Aleskie, quietly directing her to our destination. I stared unseeingly out the window as we drove until the blurred shapes before my eyes sharpened into the dark silho
uette of a familiar building. Aleskie pulled the car to a stop in a small parking lot and I looked around in confusion. We were in front of the visitor center at Witcher Park, though this late at night it was closed.

“This is the nature preserve,” I said. It was eerie at nighttime, starlight turning everything monochromatic. The bosque was a dark, impenetrable mass.

“Yes,” Rade said. “I want to show you something.” He slipped out of the car and began walking in the opposite direction of the visitor center, toward the trails.

“Gee, I can’t wait.”

Aleskie gave me a look somewhere between a grimace and a sympathetic smile. We followed Rade, both of us uneasy. It was too dark here. Too lonely. I moved closer to Aleskie and watched Rade’s back as he stopped between two large trees just off the path.

“So . . . what are you showing me?” I asked, visions of another dead body filling me with dread.

He turned to me. I felt more apprehensive now than I had at the hotel, or even with vampires surrounding me at Shiver. Something was wrong. I could see it in his eyes, though in the dark they were nothing more than shadows against his white skin.

“Rade.” I made my trembling voice stern. “What’s going on?”

“Vampires came to Las Secas because of a prophecy,” he said.

I was caught off guard. “What prophecy?”

“Pater Luna will return during the blood eclipse. He will raze the world to begin a new one where vampire and human become master and slave. There will be blood aplenty. There will be joy and righteousness. There will be life after death . . . Or so I’m told.”

Aghast at his words, I had no time to work out his meaning before I noticed movement b
ehind him. A figure appeared from behind one of the trees. I blinked, trying to bring it into focus. It was the platinum-haired female vampire Rade had talked to at the dinner club. I moved closer to Aleskie, unsure if she meant to harm us. Rade didn’t move.

“Asha,” he said, “this is Jordana. She’s going to try to kill you.”

The blood drained from my face. Rade had arranged this meeting for reasons unknown to me. I looked at him, eyes full of hatred but also resignation. Because I had known he would betray me eventually, hadn’t I? I’d grown too comfortable with him. I’d let him lead me among vampires and all the time he’d been grooming my trust.

Tonight he’d set me up to die.

“Aleskie,” I said earnestly. I tugged at her, wanting to run yet unwilling to leave her behind, even though I knew I couldn’t make it far before Jordana caught me.

But Jordana wasn’t going to let me even try. She slammed into me, and Aleskie and I broke apart. I hit the ground, my bare left arm skidding on tiny bits of red gravel. One of Jordana’s hands shoved my head back, baring my throat. I screamed—a hollow, scraping sound—and twisted halfway out from under her. With her weight on my legs, I flailed violently and managed to shake her off enough to get to my feet. She reached for my ankle but caught the hem of my jeans instead. Stumbling, I shook my leg free and ran.

I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t stop to look for Aleskie, hoping she would have enough sense to get into Criseyde’s car and leave. I would have done so myself, but I had no idea where the keys were. At that point I wasn’t even sure in which direction the parking lot lay, and until I figured it out I couldn’t even run home.

Suddenly I blundered into a spiky bush on an unpaved secondary trail, losing valuable se
conds. I cried out, thorns snagging my clothes and skin. Frantic thoughts of the party ran through my mind as I tried to remember how to kill a vampire. Burning, shooting, stabbing, cutting off the head. There was no way for me to do anything of those things. Any weapon you can get your hands on, Ethan had said. Unfortunately, my hands were occupied with getting me out of the bush.

Jordana stopped a few feet away and looked pityingly at me as I tried to yank my shirt free from the thorns. “You should just stop running,” she said, her thin red lips smiling cruelly. “I a
lways get my prey.”

At last I managed to get myself free and then I was off, lumbering into the heavy shadows of the bosque, though my muscles burned and I gasped for breath. Sobs escaped my throat because I could hear her coming after me and I knew she was only toying with me. Any minute now she would grab me and suck me dry.

My feet splashed in shallow water, one ankle turning awkwardly. As I fell, Jordana grabbed hold of my ponytail and tugged. She tumbled down with me into the mossy stream. Trying to crawl away, I banged my knees on stones and broken branches. The stream grew unexpectedly deeper, up to my neck when I was on all fours.

She grabbed my hair again. I strained to see her over my shoulder and got an eyeful of an open mouth with sharp fangs. As she leaned down to bite, I ducked under the untreated water. She drew back in surprise, but I grabbed her shirt and pulled her down with me. I’d caught her off guard enough that I was able to whack her forehead against a large stone. In the few seconds it took her to recover, I rolled up onto my knees and positioned myself above her. Summoning up the last vestiges of my strength, I put both hands on the back of her head and held her down.

Her legs kicked and her arms flailed wildly, nails scratching at me, but I was past the point of feeling pain. I just kept holding her, looking up at trees laced above me because I couldn’t bear to see what I was doing.

Finally Jordana stopped moving. Chest heaving with uncontrollable gasps, I continued to hold her hard against the bottom, just to be sure she was dead. I wasn’t sure how long it had been when I finally hauled myself off her and slogged through the water until I reached the bank. There, I glanced back to see her pale form facedown in the slow, shallow stream. The vampire was dead and I had killed her.

“I knew you could do it,” a soft voice said.

Enraged despite my exhaustion, or perhaps because of it, I whirled around to face Rade. He hadn’t tried to help me or hinder me. He’d just stood there observing as I ran for my life. Now, he calmly regarded Jordana’s body before resting his eyes on me.

“You knew I could
do it
?” I repeated savagely. “You set this up to get me killed!”

“No. I set this up so you could kill her.”

I sucked in a deep breath through my nostrils. “Why the
hell
would you do that? I’d have been dead if it wasn’t for that stupid stream! I wasn’t even sure drowning a vampire would work!”

“We do breathe,” he said, “but even without the stream, you would have found another way. I’m sure of it. I did this because I wanted you to see you’re capable of killing a vampire. I wanted you to have that confidence.”

“I was better off without it!”

“Asha!” Aleskie ran up behind Rade. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine!” I shouted. Shaking my head in mute apology at her, I focused again on Rade. I could have murdered
him
.

Once he saw he had my attention, he leaned forward a little, eyes intent on my face. “Asha. I want you to do me a favor.”

“Why the hell would I do
anything
for you now?”

“I want you to kill me.”

My mouth went dry. I’d expected almost anything but that. “I-I’m sorry . . . You want me to
kill
you?”

“Yes. It’s time.”

I stared into his eyes, baffled and waiting for the catch. His gaze was as serious as I’d ever seen it, a few shades shy of ardent but no longer dead. It even seemed to hold a touch of sadness, buried so deep you almost couldn’t see it.

It was clear to me, suddenly, he was living with the guilt—as much as he was capable of fee
ling—of having hurt so many people, people who were already hurting. People who were lost and low. When he caught the scent of some lonely human’s blood, he couldn’t help himself. He would always hurt someone.

Now he wanted freedom from his torment. And he wanted me to give it to him.

“You’re sad,” I said, my rage leaking away. “You feel guilty, don’t you?”

“I’m so numb I can hardly feel a thing. I know I should regret hurting people, but vampires are different than humans. Blood is how we stay alive, so how can I regret drinking it? The only thing I feel is some pale approximation of sorrow—yours, and every other person’s whose blood I ever tasted. It drags me down. I think I should die for what I’ve done to them.”

I swallowed. “Does every vampire feel sorrow like that?”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Well,” I said. “Well, I . . .”

“Asha,” he said, my name like soot in his mouth, “I will never hurt you. But I will hurt other people as long as I live. I will hurt the ones you love.”

He hadn’t the faintest idea, I realized then, about loved ones. Perhaps he was incapable of understanding what people could mean to one another. His dead eyes were the clues to his heart, his soul, and I had failed to read them properly. Nothing in this vampire was salvageable. It would be a mercy to kill him.

My mouth shaped into a soft, pitying smile. “Rade,” I said gently. “You
will
hurt me.”

I nodded to Aleskie, and we left. My heart felt as cold as ice.

~

The house was still when we returned. Aleskie veered off into the living room and settled onto the couch without a word. I made my way half blindly through the dark, one quiet careful step at a time, touching my hand lightly to the wall for guidance. When I reached the door to the room where I’d abandoned Les, I opened it as soundlessly as I could.

Moonlight sliced through the gap between the curtains of the single window, allowing me to see his form on the bed. He slept with his back to the door, to me. For a moment I felt woefully alone.

But then he rolled over and came to his feet wearing nothing but jeans. I lowered my eyes, shamefaced, as came toward me, but he passed without touching. Turning slowly, I looked at him leaning one bare shoulder against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was impassive. I opened my mouth but couldn’t find any words. Facing him like this was so intimidating. In that moment, I couldn’t believe he had to fight vampires; they should have just run from the frighte
ning sight of him.

He deserved his anger, I told myself. I had lied, and it was up to me to apologize to him. If he would even accept an apology.

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “You’ve said that before. It’s not good enough anymore.”