Infinite Days (28 page)

“Lenah, we can’t just leave him here.”

“We have to,” I replied. I was already out the doorway and descending the winding staircase. I stepped off the stairs and started down the massive hallway, away from the art tower. The coven was close; I could feel it.

“What’s gonna happen? Lenah?” Justin asked.

I stopped walking in the middle of the stairs. “Shhh,” I said to Justin gently and then took a breath so I could project my voice. “Killing a teenage boy,” I called into the darkness of the hallway. “He was alone and unprepared. My, my, how we have lost our edge.” I taunted them on purpose. I could sense it, see their movements. They were on their way to me. I still couldn’t accurately sense if they were in Hopper building. The thoughts were abstract. I knew they wanted to find me, track me. And they would.

“Let’s go,” I said to Justin, gripping his hand, needing his warmth more than ever before.

“But what about an enclosed space?” Justin asked, reminding me of my plan. But I didn’t need reminding. The gymnasium was at the end of the hall and to my advantage; the gymnasium was the perfect place. I looked back behind us at the long hallway. It was empty, but they were close—or I was close to them. I opened the gym doors, looked inside, and pushed Justin in first.

“Go to the middle.” I pointed at the center of the gymnasium floor. The gym was dark except for a line of track lighting along the top of the ceiling. It cast the gym in a dull glow. The gymnasium was a large square room, with bleachers on opposite sides of a basketball court. A line of windows faced the Wickham beach. On the left and right side of the walls, behind the bleachers, were walls of mirrors. Whenever there wasn’t a game, the dance team used the mirrors for their practices. It was exactly what I needed.

“Place your back against mine,” I commanded.

We stood back to back, my hands on his waist, his on mine. Our eyes searched, waiting for the chase to ensue.

“Promise me: No matter what I do—you’ll listen to what I say,” I said, still scanning the gym.

“I promise,” Justin said, though I couldn’t help but notice the quiver in his voice. “Lenah,” Justin said, and we turned to face each other. “I have to say this. I love you more than anything in this world. If I don’t make it tonight. If one of us dies—”

Justin grabbed me into an embrace. Our mouths met, and his lips pressed against mine. Justin’s tongue eased into my mouth and our kiss was rhythmic and perfect. It tasted like tears and sweat and blood and all of it was a momentary relief from the grief. I would see Tony’s face in my eyes for the rest of my days on earth. Yet in that moment, there was just Justin and me and how he had saved me. How he had showed me how to live. Then there was a hushing sound, followed by silence, and I knew…

“Justin?” I whispered. Our lips still grazed each other’s.

“Yeah?” he answered, his eyes still closed. It was silent.

“They’re here.”

Justin whipped around, and we were back to back again.

Vicken, Gavin, Heath, and Song stood in the shape of a crescent moon. They had come in from the windows. How or why, I would never know. They were dressed in black, some leather, some button-down shirts. Yet there they were, my mighty coven. Gavin, with his black hair and green eyes; Song, with his stout body and massive muscular build; Heath, blond and beautiful, standing with his arms crossed. He hissed something at me in Latin. Vicken stood all the way to the left, by the gym rafters.

“Fool,” Gavin said, and threw a knife past my head. The blade had just been sharpened and I watched its pointed end come flying past my eyes. It was done so quickly that it stuck in the door behind Justin and wobbled in the wood.

“You knew this would happen,” Vicken said, leaning a hand on the rafters. “Bound to your fate, we had to come for you. You knew this. The magic of this coven is sacred.”

Song took a step forward, but this was it. The time had come. As I had taught them to do, they took very slow steps forward and soon before we knew it, we would be backed against a corner. I needed the mirrors on the right and left side of the wall. I couldn’t let them back me into a corner. I needed to stay in the center of the room.

“Malus sit ille qui maligne putet,”
said Heath. What he said was “the tattoo on my back.”

Gavin cackled, and Song crouched in a spider position. This was it, the moment before the attack. Justin was panicking; I felt his fear.

“Give it up, Highness,” Gavin whispered.

“Give up all this?” I said sarcastically, though I was stoic in my resolve. I had to concentrate, bring the power from within. Bring on the light.

We were surrounded, and the moments were escaping.

“Hook your arm around my waist,” I whispered, though I knew the coven heard every word.

“Oh, is she planning something?” Gavin teased.

“Quid consilium capis, domina?”
Heath hissed.

Vicken took a step forward, and I stepped back, with Justin behind me. I held my palms up in front of me and sunlight emitted, beaming out from every pore. The rays reflected onto the coven’s faces; each one retracted, shielding their eyes and holding their arms close to their bodies.

Vicken’s eyes rounded. “What dark magic is this?” he spat. He shook one of his hands, seemingly burned.

“Sunlight,” I said. My eyes darted back and forth from Vicken to Gavin to Heath and Song and back again.

“How?” Vicken hissed.

Song propelled himself forward, jumping high into the air at Justin and me. His hands were like claws, and his fangs were bared. I raised my hands again and pressed the light out. The beam was so strong that Song was thrown back against the line of windows. But, unexpectedly, the beam dulled.

Heath and Gavin took another step forward; I pressed the heat through my hands. The sun beamed from my hands once more, causing them to back up, but again, it waned, like the wick of a candle at its end—flickering, then burning out.

“You can only keep that up so long, Lenah,” said Vicken.

Song cocked his head to the side. He was going to pounce again. Gavin reached his right hand ever so slightly into his pocket. A knife wouldn’t kill me, but his precision would murder Justin in an instant. I needed the sunlight to come in a blast. I closed my eyes and concentrated, just as I had done all those nights in Hathersage.

I took deep breaths, the white-hot heat building inside me. Images came to my mind in a flurry: the first day at Wickham, the deer grazing out in the fields. Tony’s smile when he scooped his ice cream. Then Vicken’s words came to me and I felt the heat start to make my palms shake.

Use the ritual. Make me human
. Then the images came back, and my palms began to emit light. I could feel the burn on the sides of my thighs.

I looked into Vicken’s eyes. The surprise and anger on his face was a mix of emotion I knew all too well.

I deserve it, Lenah. Don’t I?

I closed my eyes to Vicken concentrating on the moment, what I needed to do in order to gain the strength. Rhode’s face illuminated the darkness in my mind.

Rhode on the hill in the dreamlike meadow, his top hat. His death.

I felt Justin’s hands on my hips and my love for him surged through my body. I was almost there…the power vibrated through me.

“Lenah,” Justin said, warning me. The coven was so close. I opened my eyes, focusing on Gavin’s hand.

He pulled back his hand, knife at the ready….

I looked up and locked my gaze with Vicken again and said, “I suggest you duck.”

I raised my arms from my sides and brought them above my head with such a deafening clap that when my palms hit, an explosive blast of white light reverberated throughout the room. Ripple effects caused the gym floor to crack in thousands of places; the windows imploded, and a dust cloud mushroomed.

And then, for one moment, there was silence.

“Lenah!?” Justin’s voice cracked.

“I’m here,” I said.

The room was filled with smoke. I was lying stomach down on the floor. When I raised my head, I could see that the smoke was actually dust. Thousands of particles of dust that filled the room, so I could hardly see in front of me. The windows at the back of the room had been blown out, and the dust was moving around in circles from the air rushing in.

A man in the corner groaned. I looked left.

I saw a pair of black boots, ankle on top of ankle, coming out from behind the bleachers. Vicken Clough had survived.

I waved a hand in front of my face, brushing dust particles away so I could see. An alarm started to echo and once I cocked my head to the side to listen, I realized that it was coming from Hopper.

Then I noticed what was in the middle of the room.

“Help Vicken,” I said to Justin.

“Vicken? What? I thought you were going to kill—”

“Please, just do it,” I begged. Justin ran to the bleachers.

The alarm blared on. Soon students would wake and the authorities would come. I took long strides to the middle of the room and looked down. There were three distinct piles of dust in the places where Heath, Gavin, and Song had been standing. Except, they weren’t glittering like Rhode’s dust did. They were just dust, like fire place ash. And then I heard a voice….

HATHERSAGE, ENGLAND
OCTOBER 31, 1899

“Lenah!” Song called to me from the front entrance. The sun just tipped below the horizon. From the long hallway I could see my coven congregating on the front step. Song was dressed in all black, and Vicken looked dapper in his black dress pants, heather-gray vest, and black top hat. It was fashion at the end of the nineteenth century. And we had the money to prove it.

A photographer stood in front of the open door. He readied a camera, which was shaped like a box on three long legs. The man with a camera waited for us to get into position for the photograph. He held the camera in the palm of both hands, and looked through a tube at the top, a view finder. I sauntered out of the front hallway into the doorway entrance. Next to me Song, Heath, Gavin, and, of course, Vicken, waited.

Vicken held a goblet. The red contents inside swished in the glass as he handed it to me. “A fine English red,” he said with a smile.

My eyes darted to the cameraman. “Ready now?” he asked me. “While we still have the light?”

I raised my goblet in the air….

Lenah!” Justin’s voice broke my memory and my eyes focused on the piles of dust. “We have to go!” I turned to see that Justin was holding up Vicken. The blast had knocked Vicken silly, and his knees kept giving out. I had never seen this happen to a vampire before. The alarm shrieked on.

Somewhere in the not so far distance there were police sirens.

We started for the broken windows.

I took a swig from the goblet, swirling it in my mouth. Gavin, Heath, Vicken, and Song stood in a circle around me.

“This photograph will commemorate our bond. It will represent all of the lonely-hearted, pathetic souls who will lie at our feet.” I moved so that I stood between Vicken and Song. Heath and Gavin took position on the other side of me. We draped over one another like snakes in the heat, dangling over branches.

I wrapped my arm around Song’s back as the photographer readied the camera. I held the goblet in my left hand, lifted it into the air, and then took one more sip before placing it down so I could take the picture. With a film of blood running down my front teeth, I repositioned myself between Vicken and Song.

“Evil be he who thinketh evil?” I said, lifting my chin to the air. “Let them remember this.”

“Go! Go!” Justin called once we were out of the gym. As I climbed out, I glanced one more time at the ashy piles of dust in the middle of the floor. The coven, my brothers, were gone. I held Vicken under his shoulder, with Justin holding him up on the other side. We ran into the woods that separated the beach from the campus. Vicken tried to lift his feet, but every time he took a step his legs would wobble. He kept looking at the ground as though he didn’t have the strength to lift his head.

“Not the boat!” Justin said.

“Why not? We have to get out of here,” I said, while trying to hold Vicken up.

“No, we have to stay on campus. If we go on the boat, the cops will hear the motors. Just leave it. People park at the dock all the time.”

I could see the beach, but Justin was right.

“Seeker,” I said, and we moved toward the pathway. Through the trees, back on campus, there were people swarming out of their dorms. I knew we would have to carefully sneak back to Seeker.

“Lenah,” Vicken whispered. “There’s something wrong. My chest.”

“Stop,” I said to Justin.

“We can’t. Look,” Justin said, and pointed. Police cars screamed to a stop in front of the gymnasium. Lights flickered on in the nearby dorms, and campus security were already getting out of their cars. “We have to get back to Seeker as fast as possible.”

I suddenly felt a tugging, something making my stomach feel as though it were turning in on itself, and I had to let go of Vicken. But we had to keep going and I knew what was wrong. I grabbed at my stomach for an instant.

It was the loss. The loss of the coven. The magic was breaking apart.

“You okay?” Justin asked as he held Vicken.

“Yeah,” I said, retaking my position to carry half of Vicken’s weight.

Then I looked far into the woods, down near where the chapel stood. Suleen stood in the darkness in his traditional Indian garb. He raised a palm to me and then brought it to his heart.

“Lenah, are you still here?” Vicken whispered.

I looked down at Vicken for just an instant. When I looked back to Suleen, he had gone. I didn’t have time to wonder how and why he was there. I wanted to ask him so many questions, but there was no sign of the vampire in white.

Justin started walking, and we crossed over a pathway. We headed behind the science buildings back toward Seeker.

“Lenah?” Vicken said.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m still here.”

Once we were far enough up the path, I looked back at Hopper. The rhythmic red and blue lights from ambulances and police cars filled the darkness.

Someone had to have found Tony by now. I wondered who would call his family.

My heart hurt.

After we broke into the delivery entrance of Seeker, I helped Justin carry Vicken up to my room. As we lifted him stair by stair, I knew why I had saved him. He was just like me. A victim, bound to love someone who was no longer available. He lived in an eternity of hell and I wasn’t going to allow that to happen anymore. Justin grabbed glances at me as he reached out for my left hand. He held it tight. We stood in front of my bedroom door.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he whispered.

Vicken groaned. Both of our eyes darted to him. We could hear students running down the stairs below us, eager to find out what all the commotion was about.

“Lenah,” Justin said, and squeezed my hand to regain my attention. “I have to know what you’re thinking.”

I looked up at Justin’s caring eyes and said, “How would you feel if you’d just killed your family?”

We laid Vicken down on my bed.

“Lenah…,” he called, but put his arm over his eyes. I closed the door behind me, and Justin and I sat down on the couch. I put my head in my hands. Soon, Justin’s strong palm was running up and down my back. I looked up at him, and he smiled gently. I leaned over and rested my head on his chest. It was at least two or three in the morning.

As Justin sipped a glass of water, I stared at the curtain pulled over the sliding-porch door. With my head still against his shoulder, I thought of the morning that Rhode died and how the curtain billowed in and out. That it had looked as though it were breathing.

“What should we do? About Vicken?” Justin asked.

I shook my head. “I’m all he has. He wants the ritual so badly,” I said.

“But you already said you needed to be five hundred or older for it to work. And it killed Rhode.”

“It’s really the intent of the ritual that is the most powerful aspect.”

“What do you mean? About the intent?”

“I mean,” I said, twisting the onyx ring on my ring finger, “that I would want Vicken to live as a human. And I in turn would want to have to die.”