A Dark-Adapted Eye (24 page)

“What’s there to forgive?”

~

It was nearly noon by the time we were all done showering and talking about things we now wanted to put behind us. Ivory was stretched out on the couch because Aleskie had overtaken his bed. Criseyde was in mine, dead to the world. Apparently neither of them had slept the night before while waiting for us.

Les was napping too, but I’d found myself unable to sleep more than twenty minutes. As I busily pored over the depressingly barren cabinets for some kind of lunch, the doorbell rang. Ivory didn’t stir. I answered it expecting uniforms but saw Sarai instead, smiling winningly at me, as if we were long lost friends.

“I heard what happened,” she said in a low voice.

“What do you mean?” I asked carefully. I automatically assumed she’d somehow heard Les and I had gotten together.

She raised her voice to an incredulous pitch. “Didn’t you hear? It’s been all over the news. The government came in and killed a bunch of vampires. It happened last night. They’re still searching for them all over the place, too. I just wanted to make sure you all were okay.”

“Oh. That.” We hadn’t once turned on the news all morning, but it made sense everyone else was hearing about it now.

“Is Les here?”

“Yeah . . .”

He appeared behind me just as I turned to get him. “It’s Sarai,” I said uselessly.

“I’m glad you’re both okay,” she said with genuine feeling. “Is Ivory all right too? And your friend, Asha? I forgot her name.”

“We’re all fine,” Les said. He shot me a quick glance without meeting my eyes. “I’ll be just a minute.”

He stepped outside with her and left the door open a couple inches. In order not to eavesdrop, I moved back into the kitchen. It was the only place in the house for me to go, really, since there were no other empty rooms besides Les’s. And I couldn’t go in there in case he brought Sarai inside. Not that he would.

A sudden thought troubled me, some stupid insecurity that had never even occurred to me until now. I knew he had gone to talk to her after they’d broken up, and now she’d come here for him. What if he still wanted her? He’d never gone back to a girl once he’d dated her, but maybe he would with Sarai because she was both pretty and nice. And now that we had Ivory back, and so many vampires were dead, and the government was involved . . .

Our lives were going to be different. What if, now that the worst was over, he was done with
me
? The only reason we’d gotten together was because we’d practically been thrown into it. If the worst were over, maybe we’d be over too.

And even if Sarai had nothing to do with it, maybe he wouldn’t want me after I told him what I planned to do tonight.

No matter how idiotic my concerns might have been, I couldn’t seem to get rid of them.

After a few minutes Les met me in the kitchen. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, looking worn and deflated but more untroubled than I’d seen him in years.

“How’d it go?” I asked, turning back to the pantry.

“Fine. She went home.”

I felt incredibly nervous, as if my anxieties had already become the truth. Mouth dry, I tried to choose my words carefully. “I was afraid everything would be different now. With us, I mean.”

“Why would you think that?” His voice behind me was cool and remote. It was the same voice he’d used with me for years—the one, I feared, that tried to tell me he didn’t care about me.

“I don’t know,” I said into the pantry. “We only happened because of all this. And now that it’s over . . . I thought we might be over, too.”

Silence behind me. Oh god. With a lump in my throat, I finally turned to face him. He was looking at the blanket over the back door rather than at me, so he couldn’t even see the anguish on my face. Maybe that was better.

“Les?”

“Is that what you want?” he asked, everything about him tense yet unreadable.

I braced myself for hurt. “No. I don’t want to lose you.”

His translucent green eyes snapped quizzically to mine. “Then why are we even talking about this?”

His words made me sag with immediate relief. “I don’t know!” I cried, unable to contain a sudden bubble of laughter. “Because of Sarai, I guess. It was—stupid. I thought since you never stayed with anyone very long . . . And everything you’ve said to me, maybe you’ve said to someone before . . .”

“Never.”

“So we’re all right? This wasn’t just a passing thing for you?”

His expression sober, he came to stand in front of me. He touched my face lightly with the fingers of one hand, then let it fall to his side. “I don’t think vampires are gone by a long shot. It’s not over, no matter what anyone thinks. Maybe it will never be over. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not going anywhere. This isn’t even close to being a passing thing.”

I flung my arms around him. “You don’t know how good it feels to hear you say that.”

“Yeah, I do. I feel the same, knowing you’re planning to stick around for a while.”

“Sorry I was such an idiot.”

“You weren’t.”

I let a moment of silence pass before I pulled away and looked at him with hesitant eyes. “But . . . there’s something else. I was really afraid you wouldn’t want to be with me anymore because of this. There’s something I have to do. You won’t like it,” I said. “It’s just . . . one last thing. For Rade.”

His face was a little tight, a little indecisive as he considered my words. “No, I don’t like that,” he finally said, “but I won’t ask you not to do it. Not that you’d listen to me anyway.” He attempted a grin.

“It’s really the last thing,” I stressed, trying to let Les know he was so much more important to me than Rade, because I feared he didn’t know. So many times, like right now, I had placed the vampire in a position of importance, making myself look as if my loyalties were divided. But they weren’t. No matter the conflict inside me, they really weren’t.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Les said. “I know what it is.”

“What? How do you know?”

He shrugged. “I know you.”

“Well, I promise I’ll be all right.”

The slow shake of his head and subtle twist of his lips lent him a melancholic expression. “You know you can’t promise something like that, Asha.”

“You and Ivory did,” I pointed out. “After I found out you hunted vampires, I asked you to promise you wouldn’t get killed, remember?”

“He promised. I didn’t.”

“Well, whatever.
I’m
promising now. And I’m glad you’re alive, even if you
didn’t
promise.”

One side of his mouth lifted slyly. “Oh yeah? How glad?”

“You just . . . you don’t know what you do to me, you jerk.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Oh, come
on
,” Ivory groaned from the couch. “It’s not going to be like this all the time, is it?”

“It’ll be worse,” I called back to him. I grinned at Les, and he leaned down to kiss me.

~

I didn’t expect to find Rade or any other vampire at Shiver that night, so I biked to his apar
tment in the dark. It was closing in on midnight when I arrived, and I felt only a little afraid of the late hour.

There was darkness behind him when he opened the door and stared down at me without a word of greeting. I knew he knew why I’d come.

“If you want me to do it,” I said, “it has to be tonight.”

“Fine. I’m ready.”

He stuck my bike in the back of the ink-black El Camino and drove.

Witcher Park was a great place for seeing stars, far as it was from the center of town. I felt privileged to be able to take advantage of its isolation for the first time. Rade and I would sit t
ogether all night, so I would be safe until dawn.

The car rested in the parking lot. I led the way along the familiar trails until we were walking parallel to the natural wash. This was the place, I decided. Trees were to the south of us, the wash to the north, and to the east nothing but scrubby undeveloped land and distant mountains over which the sun would rise.

“Here,” I said.

We stood side by side on the cement trail, not looking at each other. After a few minutes I took a few steps into the dirt, closer to the water. The edge of the drop was hard to see so I didn’t stray far.
My
death wasn’t tonight’s goal.

“I thought this place would be ruined for me,” I said, listening to the roar of the water below us. “But it isn’t.”

He just shrugged, unmoved, and stared into the dark. It was so frustrating talking to someone who just didn’t care because I
did
, despite everything.

“Do you finally feel sorry for all the things you’ve done?” I asked him, a slight edge to my voice.

“It would be nice,” he said blankly, “to feel something. I almost did, with you. I don’t know why. Maybe because you were the only one I ever saw again. I felt . . . as if I created you somehow.”

“You didn’t,” I said sharply, then softened my voice as I went on. “But I wondered about that before. If what you did played a part in who I am. I decided it didn’t. There are people I love, who love me, who did more to shape me than you ever did. And ultimately
I
decided how I’d be.”

“You’re strong, you know. I could tell from that very first moment.”

I lowered myself to sit on the dry dirt and tried so hard not to look at him. Not to cry. I wanted to appear fierce and fearless, both to him and to myself.

“I wish I’d never found out about you,” I said tightly. “I felt such compulsion to see you, but I hated myself every time I was with you. I never
wanted
to go to you, Rade. I
had
to. It was like you’d left something behind when you bit me and it never went away.” I sighed, gazing at the stars with hot eyes. “I don’t just blame you. I could have stayed away, if I’d really tried. But I didn’t.”

Rade sat down, a quiet specter beside me, nearly invisible in his black clothes. I could see only a slice of his white face and the pale line of one arm.

“Have you ever heard of a binary system?” I asked after a moment.

“No.”

“It’s a system of two stars that revolve around a common center of gravity. Sometimes one of the stars sucks hydrogen from the other to get bigger and brighter, and look younger. It’s called a blue straggler. It lives longer than it ever should by making a victim of its companion.” I dragged a finger through the dirt in front of my shins. “Sometimes they become a single star because the one has taken so much from the other. So,” I finished, “it’s a pretty bad relationship. Violent. Not healthy.”

“I see,” he said.

His voice actually sounded sad, or maybe I only wanted it to. When I looked at him he had his head down, hair hiding the pale shape of his face.

“When the blue straggler finally dies, though,” I told him carefully, “it’s really beautiful. It’s a big, bright explosion and it can be seen from almost anywhere in the universe.”

“I think I could have loved you,” he said then, the words barely more than a whisper, “if I’d had enough time. But maybe not. There’s no love in me that I’ve ever known.”

“I wouldn’t want you to love me, Rade. And I would never have loved you back.”

There wasn’t much to say after that. Whatever had been or could have been between us was dwindling with each hour the dawn drew near. I didn’t owe it to him to sit here, I reminded myself several times in the night. I didn’t even owe him the mercy of a quick kill. But there I was anyway, trying to decide which was more fitting for him: a slow, peaceful death or a supernova blast.

The sky took on a tinge of pink so gradually I hardly even noticed it at first. “Morning’s coming.”

“I know,” Rade said listlessly.

“What does the sun do to vampires?”

“You’ll be able to answer that soon, won’t you.”

“I think I already know, actually. It won’t kill you, will it? Not for a while, anyway. But you’ll be in pain. You won’t be able to move.” He didn’t respond even when I stared hard at him. “Aren’t you afraid?” I asked.

“Afraid to die? No. But I should be, I suppose. Everyone I ever touched was afraid.”

I rose to my feet and waited for him to do the same. When he stood facing me, I slipped Les’s knife out of my pocket and carefully flicked it open.

“I’ve never used one of these before.”

“I won’t resist you.”

He wouldn’t. His slackened posture, his solemn mouth, his tone of voice, his eyes—everything about him conveyed a weary willingness to die. It made me strangely sad to think that soon he would no longer be in the world, yet the thought also brought with it a kind of selfish relief.

“If you were a star,” I said, “you’d be Algol.”

Holding the knife was unfamiliar and awkward, but I put it against Rade’s throat as gracefully as possible. I pressed in with revulsion and followed the line of his finger as he drew it across his skin. He didn’t flinch or show any sign he felt pain, but the bright blood flowed freely past his collar and a gleaming wetness appeared on the front of his black shirt. After a moment, he collapsed slowly to his knees.