The Radleys (34 page)

Wil .

There is a smear of blood around his mouth, curving down as if he’d painted a tragedy mask onto his face.

“Very good, Pinocchio,” Wil says, stil clapping. “You’ve got the soul of a real human boy.”

He hadn’t seen Wil in the air. Had he been watching the whole time? Rowan wonders about the blood on his face.

Wil steps forward. “Except I have to say, your conscience took a right turn back in the camper van.”

He is close enough for Rowan to catch the scent of his breath, although it takes a moment for him to realize what exactly he is smel ing.

“
Stealing
,” Wil says. “That’s a big cross in the box. But don’t worry, I leveled things out. See, you stole my blood, I stole yours. It’s yin and yang, my son.” Wil ’s eyes are wild. A monster’s eyes.

“I’m not like you. I stopped listening to my conscience quite a while ago. It was just noise. Just a buzzing cricket in my ear.”

Rowan is trying to make sense of what he is saying. He realizes whose blood he is smel ing, and the knowledge is a punch in his gut.

“I only did what you wanted to,” says Wil , reading his son’s thoughts. “I took her and I bit her and I tasted her blood. And then . . .” He smiles, saying anything he can to coax violence out of Rowan.

“I kil ed her. I kil ed Eve.”

Rowan thinks of Eve passing him the note in English class earlier. He thinks of the little smile she gave him and the memory makes him even weaker, almost knocks him out. This is his fault.

He left Eve and let this happen.

A cool breeze caresses his face. The breath of ghosts.

“Where . . . is . . .”

Wil shrugs, as if he’s just been asked the time. “Oh, I don’t know. About seven nautical miles out at sea,” he lies. “Somewhere near the bottom by now, I should think, scaring the fish. Although red is the first color to disappear underwater. Did you know that? It’s interesting, isn’t it? Those poor dul fish. Trapped in a world of blue.”

Rowan can’t think straight. The devastation going on in his mind is so immediate and total that he can do nothing except crouch in a fetal bal on the ground.
Eve is dead.

Wil , on the other hand, has never felt less weakened by morality than he does now, with his son crouched there like a stringless puppet. A pathetic, disgusting sight.

He leans toward him and gives him a piece of pure truth. “That wasn’t simply your mother’s blood, Rowan. That was a dream of how things could have been if you’d never been born. See, the truth is, I never wanted you. I am
allergic
to responsibility. Just the idea tastes putrid. Like garlic. Seriously, it gives me a rash, and you know al about rashes. They make you uncomfortable in your own skin.” He pauses, breathes deeply, then spel s out his point. “I wanted Helen, but not with al that extra
baggage
.”

Rowan gets his weakness from his mother
, Wil deduces, as he watches the boy mumbling to himself.
She made him like this. All those lies all that time. How could the boy get his priorities
straight amid all that bullshit?

“She’s forgotten who she is,” Wil tel s him. “She’s forgotten how much she wants me. But I’m not like her and I’m not like you. I fight for what I want. And if it’s not given to me, I just take it.”

Wil nods to himself. It is so clear to him now, knowing there is no morality or weakness left to stop him.
I am pure. I am a higher breed. I am above all those unbloods and abstainers and
timid, lying souls out there.

Yes
, he thinks, laughing.

I am Lord Byron.

I am Caravaggio.

I am Jimi Hendrix.

I am every bloodsucking descendant of Cain who ever breathed this planet’s air.

I am the truth.

“Yeah, I just take it.”

He leaves his son on the ground, bowing to gravity and al its associated forces. He flies fast and low across a field, seeing the earth at the speed it real y travels.

A breath later and he is at the door to number 17 Orchard Lane. He pul s out his knife from the inside pocket of his raincoat. His finger on his other hand makes a little circle in the air, hovering above the doorbel like a fencer’s sword waiting to thrust forward. Then it descends, and he presses the bel four times in fast succession.

I.

Just.

Take.

It.

Out of the Wet, Dark Air

Clara has been online for hours now. She started off trawling Wikipedia for facts about vampire culture but she didn’t get very far, as contributing to online encyclopedias is general y a hobby unique to unbloods.

She did, however, somewhere deep, deep down in the Google search listings, come across an interesting Facebook clone cal ed Neckbook. It seemed ful of rather intel igent, artistic, good-looking, if very pale-faced teenagers who spoke almost exclusively in a language made up of obscure slang, acronyms, and smileys she had never seen in any text or online message before.

She had seen a particularly gorgeous boy, with a mischievous pixie smile and hair so black it almost seemed bright. On his profile, underneath his picture, she had read: Midnight boy—ful -time Vera Pim, seeks nonsirking vert/longhaul chica/o for lovebites, b-cruising, plus gal ons of BVA.

Clara felt frustrated. She was a vampire, but the whole bloodsucking community seemed alien to her. She decided to give up and mosey over to YouTube to watch clips from some of the films Will had told her about. Bits from
Les Vampires, Dracula
(the 1931 version—“It’s the only one directed by an
actual
vampire,” Wil said),
Near Dark, The Hunger
, and, best by miles,
The Lost
Boys
. Yet suddenly, right now, just as noodles turn into maggots on the screen, she senses something is wrong. It’s a strange sensation in her stomach and on her skin, as if her body knows it before her mind.

And then it happens.

The doorbel goes and her mother answers.

Clara hears her uncle’s voice but not what he is saying.

Her mother screams.

Clara runs downstairs to find Wil pressing a knife against her mother’s throat in the hal way.

“What are you doing?”

He gestures to the watercolor on the wal . “Turns out the apple tree has poisoned roots. Time to chop it down.”

Clara has no fear. None at al . She thinks of nothing but the knife. “Get off her.” She steps forward.

“Uh-uh,” he says, shaking his head and pushing the blade down onto Helen’s skin. “No can do.”

Helen’s stare presses into her daughter. “Clara, don’t. Just get away.”

Wil nods. “Your mother’s right. Just get away.” There is an absolute madness in his eyes which says he could go anywhere, do anything.

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re nothing, Clara. You’re just a naïve little girl. Do you think I came here to help you out?

Don’t be stupid. I don’t care about you. Open. Your. Eyes.”

“Please, Wil ,” says Helen, as the blade brushes against her chin. “It was the police. They made me—”

Wil ignores her and carries on talking to Clara in the same venomous tone. “You’re a mistake,”

he tel s her. “The sad little product of two people who were too weak to realize they shouldn’t be together. The result of your parents’ thwarted instincts and self-hatred . . . Go, little girl. Go back to saving the whales.”

He pul s Helen backward out of the open door. Then, in a fast and frantic blur, they are gone.

Clara gasps, realizing what has just happened. He has flown away with her mother.

Clara runs upstairs, opens her bedroom window, and leans out into the rain. She can see them flying farther and farther away, directly above her, slowly dissolving into the night. She tries to think how to solve this. As only one idea comes to her, she grabs the empty bottle of VB lying under her bed and angles it back against her lips. A drop reaches her mouth, but she has no idea if it wil be enough.

Knowing this is the last moment she can save her mother, she pul s herself out onto her windowsil , bends her knees, and dives forward into the rain-streaked air.

“Let’s go to Paris, Helen. Let’s go and relive the magic . . . Or let’s just aim for the moon.”

He drags her upward in a near-vertical line. Helen watches with fear as the house shrinks below her. She presses her neck against the knife blade, just enough to bleed.

She touches the blood.

Tastes it. Her and him together.

And then she fights.

She fights the taste and the memories and most of al she fights him, pul ing the knife away and pushing him back down.

It is then, midstruggle, that she sees her daughter flying up toward them, through the rain.

“Grab the knife,” Helen cal s at her.

And Clara reaches them and prises the weapon out of her uncle’s hand. But he elbows her away, and the knife fal s onto the Felts’ roof.

This is it
, Helen thinks, as she contends with Wil ’s unrelenting strength.
He is finally going to
win.

The house is just another tiny black square on Orchard Lane, which itself is just becoming a thin scratch in the darkness beneath them.

“Please, Wil , just let me go,” she begs him. “Let me be with my family.”

“No, Helen. I’m sorry. It’s just not
you
.”

“Please—”

The vil age is nothing now. It’s just a piece of reverse sky, a dark space with white dots, moving fast away.

I love Peter
, she realizes.
I have always loved Peter. That is what is real.
She remembers walking hand in hand with her future husband on Clapham High Street, giddy with love on a gray day as he helped her shop for art supplies.

“If you’d prefer somewhere else,” Wil shouts into her ear above the roar of air, “you know, just shout. Valencia, Dubrovnik, Rome, New York. Seattle’s got a good scene. I’m up for a long haul . .

. Hey, we never did Venice, did we? We could go and check out some Veronese . . .”

“Wil , we can’t be together.”

“You’re right. We can’t. But we can have a night, Helen. And then, in the morning, it wil pain me greatly to have to cut your—”

Before the threat is finished, Helen hears a noise. A voice she recognizes, roaring toward them.

Suddenly her body is being thrust into a different direction. Fol owing this, things go quiet, and she realizes she is fal ing. The vil age, the lane, and their house are moving toward her at great speed, but then she hears her daughter’s voice shouting at her.

“Fly, Mum! You can fly!”

Yes
, she thinks.
Yes, I really can.

She slows in the air and stops believing in gravity, as her daughter floats closer.

“It’s Rowan,” says Clara, pointing to the silhouettes of distant figures grappling far above their heads. “He’s fighting Wil .”

His Father’s Face

Rowan had heard his mother’s scream.

Its sound had woken him out of his despair and he had been able to see a shape in the sky he knew to be his mother and Wil . He converted his despair into rage and flew to her rescue. And now, as he pushes Wil closer and closer back to earth, he realizes he is capable of anything.

“Why Eve?” He is shouting, pushing down with increasing ease. “Why?”

Wil says nothing. His eyes are fil ed with a sad kind of pride.

Down and down and down.

“Look, Rowan,” Wil says, his raincoat flapping like a loose sail in front of them. “You’re like me.

Don’t you see that? You’re my son. You’re my blood. We could travel the world together. I could show you everything. I could show you how to real y fucking
live
.”

Rowan ignores him, as he heads over their roof, Wil ’s back scraping and loosening the top tiles. A blink later and they are above their garden, and Rowan pushes down hard, causing a fast descent toward the pond.

Once there, he holds Wil under the cold water, pushing with both hands. One against his face, the other against his neck. But he is using al his anger and al his strength to keep him there, on the pond bed, and to stop the relentless force inside Wil which is trying to rise up.

He won’t have long, he realizes. A whole lifetime of unrepressed blood drinking gives his father a power and stamina Rowan doesn’t possess. Al he has right now is anger, but it won’t be enough.

He closes his eyes. Tries to keep the hatred alive, even as Wil ’s hands press harder and harder against him, the force increasing relentlessly until Wil bursts up with a terrible, volcanic energy that throws Rowan backward into the pond. He puts his hand on the pond bed, to push himself back up. Feels something.

Not fish. Not plant.

Metal.

Wil is over him, ready to shove his son back under.

Rowan clutches at the metal, desperate.

Pain.

Cut just by touching the sharp edge.

“Takes a while to drown a vampire,” Wil says, fangs out, hands forcing Rowan back under, “but the night is young.”

“Get off him!” It is Clara and her mother, soaring fast down through the air toward the garden.

Wil looks up, as Rowan grabs something below the metal. Something wooden. A handle.

Wil laughs a maniac’s laugh. The laugh of the damned. He switches his attention back to Rowan, but not in time to see the dripping axe blade sweep fast as a dolphin’s tail out of the water and into his throat with such velocity he barely registers Rowan’s primal, life-grasping roar as the balance tilts one last time in the son’s favor. Wil , clutching the waterfal of blood spil ing out of his neck and over the axe, is thrust back into the water. Rowan holds him down, severing membranes, as black clouds of blood blossom in the water.

Just as his mother and sister land on the grass, he feels Wil ’s head gain strength and start to rise up, but Rowan has both hands on the axe now and keeps firm. As Wil lifts his head, the blade gristles through the rest of his neck, and his body final y eases out of life. Rowan can just about see the shadowy face—his father’s face—staring up at him. Calm. Thankful, even. As though this has been the only way he could find peace, with the eternal separation of the wanting body from the thinking mind, submerged in the liquid fog of his own blood.