Bring On the Night (7 page)

She nodded solemnly. “Ciara maintenance is my most important job.”

“Funny, mine, too.”

A loud double clap snapped the stuffy air. “Ladies and gentlemen—” Regina gestured toward Jeremy, who had gotten over his snit and was now manning the projector—“time to honor our boy before his big day ends.” She squeezed Shane’s arm and smiled at his inscrutable face. “Glad you made it through another year alive.”

Someone switched off the ancient halogen lamp in the corner as the projection screen slowly faded up on a photo of Shane.

He was alive, but not. His eyes were more sunken than in his worst blood hunger. With gaunt cheeks and sallow skin, he looked ten years older than he did as we stood there.

But sunlight glinted off his light brown hair, something I’d never seen in real life. And never would.

Canned applause sounded as glittery red block letters scrolled across the bottom of the screen:
THIS IS YOUR UNLIFE.
The non-Shane vampires and David laughed.

“I don’t get it,” Lori whispered.

“It was a TV show back in the old days,” David told us. “
This Is Your Life
.”

A song played, a cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” but not the Bob Dylan version I knew. A new photo showed Shane in a tux, standing at a sound board. Tiny lights like those of a disco ball played over his face.

The photo slid to the left; on the right half of the screen,
a video appeared, of Regina at her vampiest.

“Welcome. This is my tribute to the guy who means more to me than the rest of the world put together. Shane McAllister.”

She raised her fists, and the room broke into whistles and catcalls. The real-life Regina hugged Shane around the waist in a way that once would have made me burn with jealousy, before I (sort of) came to understand the maker-progeny bond.

On the screen, Regina pointed her thumb to her right, toward the picture. “That was you the night we met. Not as happy as you looked.”

I felt Shane tense beside me. “She wouldn’t…”

The next photo shifted to the center, dark, and slowly came up in light. Shane sat at a table, writing on a piece of paper, balled-up pages scattered around him, his hand crumpling his hair and his eyes filled with agony.

“That stupid note,” he said under his breath. I realized this was the last picture taken of him alive.

“Turn it off,” he told Regina.

Her fingers dug into his arm. “Just watch the whole thing before you judge.”

“Jeremy, turn it off, or I’ll put your laptop through the wall.”

Jeremy shrugged. “It’s station property, not mine.”

Shane heaved a tight sigh and crossed his arms, his face a study in silent simmering.

The photo faded, and the song crescendoed in the last verse. The black screen held nothing but a white caption:
THE FOLLOWING NIGHT.

We gasped at the transformation. Shane wore the same clothes as in the previous shot, but his gaze had sharpened
to an animal stare. His muscles now bulged his T-shirt in smooth lines. His body was no longer an enemy.

The photo shifted to the left again, and Regina’s face reappeared.

“Foxy dude, huh?” She blew on her nails and rubbed them against her collar. “But things didn’t go so well, and you ended up here.”

A long, squat brick building appeared—a Control nursing home, where vampires go when their frozen minds can no longer handle this world. A place where they can live out their many years in “peace.”

Peace for humans, that is. A confused vampire is an unstable vampire, a danger to the living. I wondered how long before Jim would end up in Control custody, assuming he let them take him alive.

Some nursing homes had rehab units for infant vampires who had trouble accepting their new “life.” They’d be trapped there on suicide watch until deemed sufficiently stable. Shane had spent months in one.

The onscreen Regina continued. “But then came our savior.”

A photo of David replaced the building. Unlike vampires, we humans age a lot in ten years.

Lori whistled. “Wow, David, you were hot!”

“Gee, thanks for the past tense.” He ran a self-conscious hand over his stomach.

“You look better now,” I told him. David gave me a grateful smile, which wasn’t worth Lori’s jealous glare. I had so little experience with truth telling, sometimes I let it out at inappropriate times.

“Enough of that guy,” Regina continued in a voice-over. “Once we came here to WVMP, Shane’s popularity
skyrocketed, as demonstrated by this montage.”

A series of photos flashed on the screen, all of beautiful young women. Shane shifted his weight uncomfortably, and I could’ve sworn he was blushing, but that could’ve just been the red light of the exit sign.

As the hot-chick montage continued, I asked him, “Are those all vampires?”

“Um, mostly. Well, not that one. Or that one. That one’s a vampire.”

“And they were your girlfriends?”

“Uh.” He rubbed the back of his ear. “Not exactly. A couple of them.” He looked at Regina. “Where’d you get all these pictures?”

“Various places.” She tugged his shirt. “I can get you copies.”

“No.” He glanced at me, then at the screen. “When does this stop?”

She signaled to Jeremy, who hit a key to advance to a blank screen. “In keeping with
This Is Your Life
’s format, we have a special blast-from-the-past guest.”

The music changed to a Ramones tune I couldn’t place (they all sounded the same to me, frankly).

“No,” Shane said. “No way.”

A disembodied female voice said, “June 1998. Midnight. A Denny’s outside Hagerstown. We were fattening up our donors before the feast. The moment our eyes met over our humans’ Grand Slam breakfasts, we knew.”

“Sheena,” he whispered, just as the Ramones started to sing about the eponymous punk rocker.

“Sadly,” Regina said, “Sheena was not a punk rocker, and to this day is still the dippy hippie we all know and love.”

A tall, pale woman glided out of the hallway’s shadows.
Her hair cascaded past her waist in blood-red ringlets. Beside me, Lori let out a squeak.

“Shane!” The vampire was in his arms in a flash, straddling his waist with her gypsy-skirted legs. She planted a hard, tonguey kiss on his resistant lips.

With a heroic effort, he extracted himself from her embrace. “I can’t believe it’s you.” Over her head he staked Regina through the heart with his eyes.

“Remember my VW microbus?” Sheena dragged her nails down his chest. “How many donors did we do in that little pink sweetheart?”

“Wow. I’d forgotten all about, uh…”

“Althea. Her name was Althea, after the Grateful Dead song.” Sheena pouted. “Her carburetor gave out last year. Now I drive a 1970 Chevelle named Bertha.” She grabbed his hand. “She’s so cherry. You want to see?”

“No. Thanks.” He pulled his hand away and put his arm around me. “Sheena, this is Ciara.”

She gave my body an appreciative once-over. “Yummy. Is she your new favorite donor?”

“She’s my girlfriend.”

“His
live-in
girlfriend,” Lori added.

“But… you’re human,” Sheena informed me.

“And loving it,” I said with a smile. I would
not
let her get to me. Shane was mine now. Besides, this girl didn’t have nearly the, uh… well, okay, she had everything I had, and more. Possibly I was a better speller.

Jeremy saved me by switching to the next tune. Regina looked startled, then said, “Okay, next guest! It turns out, Shane didn’t spend all his time spinning records and shagging babes. He saved lives.”

Shane reflected my bewilderment, until the man’s voice
came over the ceiling speaker. “When I called the suicide hotline that night, I thought I didn’t want help. I thought I just wanted some company while I checked out, you know?”

“Whoa.” Shane put a hand to his head. “Luis?”

“But you talked me down, man. I mean, literally talked me down off that roof. I can never repay you,
hermano
.”

A man in his forties with close-cropped black hair stepped from the hallway. This time, Shane leaped forward to greet his guest. They shared a giant, backslapping embrace.

“Come here, I want you to meet my girlfriend.” Shane dragged Luis over and introduced us.

Luis pointed at Shane. “This guy risked his life to save me, and I didn’t even know it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“I swore if Shane called the cops, I would jump. So he found where I was, got up on the roof with me, and we talked.” He shook his head at Shane. “Almost until sunrise.”

I stared at the man I thought I knew. “You never told me you worked a suicide hotline.”

Shane looked away. “Then you would’ve asked why I stopped. Besides, what I did for Luis was totally against protocol. We weren’t supposed to contact clients.” He turned to Luis. “So how
are
you?”

As the guys caught up on the last five years, Sheena took my arm and steered me into a corner, her ankle bracelets jangling with every step.

“Is this for real?” Her sharp voice nearly sliced my eardrum. “You and Shane are serious? How serious?”

“We have an apartment. And a dog.”

“Wowsers.” She chewed her lip. “So I probably can’t borrow him for the night.”

“You’d have to kill me first.” I immediately wished I
hadn’t said that.

Sheena examined me some more, hands on her hips, then peered around the lounge. “Where’s Jim? I saw his car outside. I used to love that Janis. Now there was a carburetor.”

“I think he’s actually sitting in Janis right now. Why don’t you two go for a ride? I think you’re just what he needs.”

“Cool!” Her green eyes practically glowed. “If I’m not back in twenty, tell Shane I said happy death day, okeydokey?” She took a lock of my hair and sniffed it hard.

“Okey.” I leaned away from her. “Dokey. Bye.”

“Hmm, I like it.” She yanked out a strand. My teeth rattled from the pain, but I held back a cry.

When she was gone, Lori handed me a glass of wine. “Can I make a BFF request? No matter which milestone birthday I reach, you will never do this for me.”

I held out my hand. “Mutual request.” We shook on it.

At midnight Shane returned to me and whispered, “We have to be somewhere soon.”

“We definitely do.” I thought he meant bed, and I was glad to go. Watching Sheena’s and Luis’s testimonies made me realize, for completely different reasons, how lucky I was to have Shane.

The others were watching the closing chapters of his Unlife So Far when we snuck out. But as I closed the door, I saw David cast his gaze our way, then lift it toward the ceiling in the direction of his office.

Shane took the stairs three at a time. “Now for the real celebration.” He tugged me toward the front door.

“First, I need you to work your magic for me.” I led him into David’s office.

He wrapped his hands around my waist. “Hmm, we’ve never done it on his desk.”

“Your other magic.” I pointed at the filing cabinet’s bottom drawer.

“I don’t have my lock-picking tools.”

“You can’t use a paper clip?”

Shane tweaked my nose. “You watch too many movies, but I’ll try.” He knelt before the bottom drawer, thumbed the switch, and pulled the handle. The drawer slid out with a squeak. “Ooh, magic.”

David had left it unlocked. Ha—I knew he wanted me to read this stuff.

Halfway back—protruding above the other folders, no less—was a file labeled “Immanence Corps.” He might as well have left it on my desk.

“What is that?” Shane whispered.

I tucked the folder under my arm and slid the drawer shut. “Hopefully not my future.”

Sign Your Name

“Where are we going?” I asked Shane when I noticed our car speeding out of town instead of toward our apartment. I’d been trying to read the contents of the IC folder by the light of my cell phone screen, but it was making me carsick.

“We’re going away. Take a nap.” He softened the volume on Monroe’s current song, a peppy little Asie Payton number called “Back to the Bridge.”

“Away where?”

“Don’t question.”

“You know that’s impossible.”

He glanced at me, his face tense in the blue glow of the dashboard. “I can be stubborn a lot longer than you can be curious.”

Outmatched, I frowned and looked out the window into pure black. We were heading due west, toward the mountains. Toward nothing.

As I drifted into a doze, the darkness gave way to a bright afternoon sun shining on a grassy field.
I recognized it as Sherwood College’s football stadium, where the Baltimore Ravens had their summer training camp.

In front of me stood a row of tackle dummies. To the left
and right, my Control cohorts were doing jumping jacks with stakes in their hands. I held one, too, but kept my feet on the ground and my sights on the dummies. Each had a red heart painted on its chest.

A whistle blew. My fellow agents and I assumed fighting stances. My muscles moved with such natural grace, I knew it must be a dream.

The tackle dummies morphed into human forms as they lumbered toward us on mechanical tracks. I struck.

The dummy lurched back and my blow fell short. While I was off balance, it surged again and knocked me down. I held onto the stake, jamming my finger against the wood when my hands broke my fall.

The dummy paused, then clickety-clacked forward, shuddering on its track. This time I feigned injury until it was almost upon me. Then I rolled to my feet and slammed the stake deep into its heart.

I screamed without sound. Not
its
heart.
His
heart.

The last thing I saw was the sun shining on Shane’s hair. The last thing I heard was his sigh of relief as he pulled out the stake.

I woke when the car stopped. Rubbing my face, I peered through the windshield at a wide rustic porch lit by a warm yellow lamp near the door. In the gleam of Shane’s headlights, a blue-and-white sign read I
NTO THE
N
IGHT
B
ED
AND
B
REAKFAST
.