Ad Eternum (7 page)

The sideways glance she gave him was stricken. “You don’t mean it.”

“I don’t know,” he said. It occurred to him that with those words, he made himself more vulnerable to her than he had allowed himself to be to anyone in a millennium. Since he left Evie, his creator, or since Evie left him. He didn’t remember.

But he remembered her dark hair, and the flash of her Mediterranean eyes. And the cold strength of her arms’ embrace.

She’d chosen to burn. And such was the nature of things that he had not even known, until too much later.

Perhaps he could be so honest with Ruth because she was a monster too, and an equal, but not competition. And not something to be protected.

“You said, if I wanted to, I should have the courage to do it directly.”

“I did,” she admitted, after her mouth closed on the protest she was too honest to give voice to. “Do you want to?”

“I promised somebody I wouldn’t. As long as he remained.” He took a breath he didn’t need. “So he wouldn’t be alone.”

“And he’s remained?”

The wampyr shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since.”

“Ouch.” She took his hand and squeezed, a grip so strong he allowed himself to squeeze back. Her smooth nails curled against his palm. “You didn’t answer. Do you want to?”

He shrugged. The sky shimmered silver behind the lights. Faint trails of peach and gold glowed beyond the city, beyond the water. “If I go inside, I guess I don’t.”

“Well.” She turned away and slipped her hand from his. With a graceful jump, she rose to her feet on the parapet. “I’ve rented a room on the fourth floor. I’m sure you can find it. I’m not going to sit here and watch you die so you can prove to yourself how lonely you are.”

“Touché,” he said, rising too. He followed her across the roof, to a steel door she’d propped open.

They slipped inside with the draft. Opalescent eyeshine—oranges and golds—filled her wide-blown pupils. Her head jerked back.

“Violet,” she said, when he tilted his own in a question. “Your eyes. In the dark.”

“Yours are the color of fire opals…I said something wrong?”

“No.” She shook her head, smoothed her crumpled expression. Her intonation military, she continued, “Adele’s were green.”

“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“So’m I,” she said. “I’m acting like nobody else has ever lost anybody.”

He took her arm. “Show me your room,” he said. “And I’ll tell you about Evie.”

She had sense enough not to answer, but just to lead him in silence down the stairs. As they descended, in a lighter tone, he said, “This has proved a useful exercise in one way.”

“Oh?” she said.

“It’s proven to me that I’m not staying in this city because of a deathwish. If you can call it that, in one already dead.”

“They blew up your
house
—”

“So?” he interrupted. “One should refuse to do something worthwhile because it’s dangerous?”

Sturmwolfstaffel Hauptsturmführerin Grell had, as he had suspected, no answer for that.

At nightfall, the wampyr returned to the Aphatos. He meant to dress, perhaps dine, and find a way to spend the dark hours until another morning. He reckoned without Ruthanna and Damian, though, and the plainclothes policeman sitting beside them in the lobby, behind the screens and out of line of sight to the protestors—but where he would have to walk past them to reach the lifts.

He didn’t bother to avoid them. He was disheveled, he knew, and not nearly the picture of precision in dress and grooming he preferred to present. It didn’t matter. He lighted on the edge of the divan opposite and offered up his hand.

Even the detective shook it, with no more than an involuntary show of distaste. Damian introduced him as Detective Travis Young; the wampyr was struck most by his eyebrows, black and arched like a gull’s taut wing. “I’m sorry to ambush you like this, but, as you are probably aware, NAPD is investigating the firebombing of your house, Mr. Prior, and we were hoping you’d make yourself available to answer a few questions.”

“My night is yours,” the wampyr said. “Once I have a word with my friends.”

Detective Young shifted uncomfortably on the edge of the too-soft chair. “Mr. Thomas mentioned that you might have plans to leave town—”

“Actually,” the wampyr interrupted. “I have decided to accept a position that he and Dr. Wehrmeister had offered me. So no, I will be available to your inquiries.” He let his mouth twitch up into a smile. “Barring more successful assassination attempts.”

“You’ll stay?” Damian said, clasping his hands in his lap.

“I’ll stay.”

Ruthanna sighed as if released from pain. Had it really meant so much to her? “We’re glad you saw your way clear to join us. It’s an incredibly brave and selfless act, all things considered—”

“I’m not doing it for you,” the wampyr said, as kindly as he could.
I’m doing it because an old friend would have thought it was the right thing to do.
He looked at Detective Young, who was edging away. “It’s fine,” the wampyr said. “None of this is private.”

He caught Damian quietly beaming, though, and wondered if it was dishonest to let him think he was staying because it was the right thing to do. Maybe he was. Self-delusion was not a vice limited to the living.

He waited a few moments, to see if the mortals would speak, and when they did not, he continued, “I think I do not care to be remembered forever as Jack Prior.”

Ruthanna said, “How shall we list you on the charter, and as faculty, then? Not as Amédée Gosselin?”

Damian’s lips writhed into a grin.
Lopo Cantero?
He mouthed. The wampyr rolled his eyes, but made a note: apparently his new friend spoke some Spanish.

He answered, “I should like to be recorded as Sebastien de Ulloa.”

Ruthanna’s brow wrinkled with surprise. “That’s a notorious name.”

“Nevertheless,” said the wampyr. “I think I should like to be him. He had excellent friends.”