What Kills Me (16 page)

***

“Are you sure this friend of yours is
still here?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

Even in the dark, the theater was
opulent and grand, with hundreds of burgundy seats, gilded
balconies, and a thick velvet curtain over the stage.

“In primary school, I
played Dorothy in a production of
The
Wizard of Oz
,” I said as we walked down
the carpeted aisle. “I ran off the stage crying when the house fell
on the witch. That marked the beginning and the end of my theater
career.”

He hopped down into the orchestra pit
in front of the stage. I followed him, maneuvering around chairs
and music stands.

“Your friend lives under a theater
stage? Like the Phantom of the Opera?”

“Schoolgirl?”

“Yeah?” I stopped close behind him and
looked around. “What?”

“You talk too much.”

“Maybe you talk too
little.”

“You’re going to live forever. Pace
yourself.”

He walked into a large storage closet,
and I followed. There he pulled a shelf unit filled with cardboard
boxes toward him as if it was a door, then tapped his fingers
against the wooden wall behind it. I felt dust settle on my skin
and on my eyeballs.

“Your friend,” I said, blinking.
“You’re sure that he’s not in league with the Monarchy?”

“She
is an anarchist,” he said. “She hates the Monarchy. They’re
at war.”

A portion of the wall pushed out like
an unstuck puzzle piece. Lucas took it away and leaned it against
the back of the shelf. In the opening stood a tall young woman with
vivid violet, shoulder-length hair. Her rich chocolate eyes were
half covered by her straight bangs. She had on white fishnet
pantyhose under her black shorts, and her long legs disappeared
into construction boots. The sleeves of her plaid shirt were rolled
up to her elbows. She examined me, her hands on her hips, a smirk
on her pretty olive-toned face, and she spoke in a husky,
accent-inflected voice.

“So this is what all the fuss is
about,” she said. “I am Samira.”

“I’m Axelia.”

“I assumed,” she said. She put her
arms around Lucas’s neck and drew him to her.

“Hello my dear,” she said, embracing
him. “It’s been a long time.”

She pulled back and cupped his face in
her hands. I averted my eyes. I felt as if I was intruding on a
private moment. We followed her down a flight of stairs into a
vast, open room. The place looked like an antique market. Round
paper lanterns hung from the low ceiling. Intricate rugs were
spread across the floor. Paintings, portraits, scrolls, stuffed
animal heads, and mounted weapons covered every space on the
wall.

“Still collecting things, I see,”
Lucas said.

“I can’t help myself,” she
said.

I stopped to examine a six-foot-tall
clay statue of a mustached man wearing armor.

“I picked that one up in China,”
Samira told me.

Lucas walked in between the tables
littered with books, vases, and sculptures and sat down on a slate
blue couch. He leaned his head back, his swords in his lap, and
closed his eyes. I had never seen him look worn out. For the first
time he appeared almost human. Samira dropped next to him and
draped her lithe arm over the couch, her hand behind his neck, her
knee touching his leg. Seeing them so close I was struck with a
strange pang of jealousy. I shook my head to clear the
feeling.

“I heard about Noel and Jerome,” she
said. “I am so sorry.”

Lucas didn’t look at her. He just
stared at his swords.

“We need to get out of Italy,” he
said.

“I know. I also heard about the
bounty.”

“Can you help?”

“Of course.”

I loitered beside the clay statue,
pretending to look at a pile of rusty parking meters.

“What is her story?” Samira asked,
nodding to me.

“Well, what are they saying about
her?”

“That her creation is forbidden, that
any vampire that returns her to the Monarchy will be rewarded
beyond their imagination.”

Did they have to talk about me as if I
wasn’t here?

Samira went on: “They say that you are
abetting her illegal existence.”

“Noel found her. He wanted to protect
her.”

“He was always so noble. Did he die
fighting?”

“Yes.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted it any other
way,” she said.

I maneuvered around a desk topped with
granite busts of pharaohs and golden sculptures of Roman gods. I
turned and stood face to face with a creature baring a mouthful of
fangs. I yelped and sprang back, bumping a table. A stone bust fell
from the edge, crushing a violin on an adjacent
pedestal.

Lucas sat up but Samira put her hand
on his shoulder. I squinted at the creature on the shelf. It was a
dinosaur skull.

“That’s my whale fossil,” Samira said
nonchalantly.

“Shouldn’t this be in a museum?” I
said to hide my embarrassment.

“This is my museum,” she
said.

“I’m sorry about this,” I said,
picking up the violin, which had snapped at the neck.

She rose from the couch. “That was a
gift from Bach,” she said.

“What?” I coughed. I looked at Lucas.
“She’s joking, right?”

Samira moved like a meandering shark
through her piles of junk. She approached me with a relaxed
expression and took the instrument from my hands, her fingers
grazing mine.

“I’m sorry…” I started.

“Don’t worry,” she said, tossing the
violin into a corner. “It’s just stuff. Stuff breaks. And we move
on.”

I sank down onto a chair.

“Don’t sit there, hon,” she
said.

I popped up as if I had sat on a pin.
I turned to examine the chair; attached to the wooden beam that
served as the back of the seat was what looked like a metal
collar.

“That I got in Spain,” she
said.

“What is it?”

“It’s a garrote. Humans used it to
execute people. See the crank at the back? You turn it and it
tightens this metal collar, strangling its victim.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Humans are so creative, aren’t
they?”

She tilted her head and inspected me.
Her eyelashes were as thick as mustaches spreading across her big
eyes. She brushed a strand of hair from my face and then tapped her
fingers against her lips. The beaded bracelet on her wrist matched
the colors of a peacock feather.

“Aren’t you an interesting creation,”
she said. She pointed her chin toward her shoulder but kept her
eyes on me. “I assume that she’s going with you?” she said to
Lucas.

“Yes.”

“Lucky,” she said with a smile. I
didn’t know if she was referring to me or him. “Where do you want
to go? I have friends that I trust in Austria but that may be too
close to the fighting.”

What fighting?

“We also have an underground
contingent in Johannesburg that could offer you refuge,” she
said.

Lucas hesitated. “I want to try to
find my obaia.”

For a second Samira appeared stunned.
She parted her pink lips but no sound came out. She regained her
composure and turned to face him.

“But it’s been centuries,” she
said.

“I never looked for her out of respect
for Noel but I need to find her now. If there is anyone who can
protect us from the Monarchy, it’s her. She will hide
us.”

“Do you even know where Nuwa
is?”

He didn’t say anything and Samira
nodded. “You want me to help you find her.”

“Who is Nuwa?” I asked.

Samira walked around me and sat down
on the garrote.

“She is Lucas’s sire. The one who
created him.”

Samira lit a few candles in her
bedroom and everything in it shimmered. The hundreds of necklaces,
rings, and bracelets on her shelves. The rhinestone-studded lamps
on her vanity table. The beaded, colorful scarves that hung on a
ladder propped against the wall. The gold and silver threads in her
bedspread.

She opened a chest at the foot of her
bed and took out some clothing. Turning to me she
smiled.

“Here,” she said. “These should fit
you better than Jerome’s clothing.”

“Thanks.”

She stood staring at me.

“Uh, Samira. I don’t mean to be rude
but is there somewhere I can change?”

“Why? You don’t have anything I
haven’t seen,” she said. “Or do you?”

“No, I don’t have a tail or anything
like that.”

“I’ve seen that.”

“Really?”

She sighed. “How about I just turn
around?”

I laid the clothing on her bed and
turned my back to her to remove Jerome’s T-shirt. I wriggled into
her fitted, V-neck black shirt and tugged at the hem to straighten
it over my chest. It smelled like flowers. I glanced over my
shoulder—she was gone—and stripped off my shorts. I jumped into the
dark denim, stretchy jeans. They hung over my heels so I bent down
to roll the cuffs into capris.

“What size shoe are you?” she said
from out of the room.

“Six.”

Samira returned with her hands behind
her back.

“My clothing looks good on you,” she
said.

“Thanks.”

“Et voilà, la pièce de
résistance
,” she intoned. She revealed two
low-top sneakers in black-and-white floral damask.

I clasped my hands and grinned. “Wow!
These are great!”

“I hope they fit.”

“I’ll make them fit.”

I hesitated before removing Jerome’s
runners.

“Sit,” she said. I sat on her bed and
Samira knelt to untie my shoelaces.

“So how are the two of you getting
along?” she asked, slipping my feet out.

“We’re not.”

She smiled. “Actually, you
are.”

“How so?”

“If Lucas is speaking to you, then
you’re getting along.”

“He only speaks to me to scold
me.”

“That sounds about right. He can be a
little harsh with his friends.”

“Well, in that case, we’re best
friends.”

“He is a good friend to have. He is
fiercely loyal.”

“I am grateful to him.”

“I can see why he likes you,” she
said, leaning in close. “You’re young, you’re vibrant. You’re
not…tainted. World-weary and jaded like the rest of us.”

“You don’t look weary.”

“Oh, I do. We all do. We look tired.
Or bored. But not you. You have that freshness that I always see in
humans. How I envy that. How I envy that starry-eyed look of
wonderment on your face.”

“That look on my face is actually
vomit-inducing terror.”

She smiled. “You should be scared.
Fear is the human instinct to survive. You need it.”

“Well, I have no shortage of
it.”

She double-knotted my sneakers. My
toes had ample wiggle room, but otherwise the shoes fit. I stood
and knocked my heels together. “There’s no place like home,” I
said. “There’s no place like home.”

Samira shook her head. “Sorry, dear.
This isn’t a fairy tale. There’s no happily ever after. Just…ever
after.”

***

Lucas turned off the engine of his
motorcycle and leaned to one side so I could step off. Samira
parked her bike beside us. She was wearing fingerless gloves the
color of eggplant and a short leather jacket. We surveyed the
shipping yard, a field of red, yellow, and blue containers stacked
like Lego blocks.

I adjusted my top, which had snuck up
during the ride. My skin tingled from chugging a jug of blood
before leaving the theater. I felt wild and alert. The glittering
night lights, the keening wind, the traffic—it all assailed my
senses. I heard everything but nothing because I could not focus.
Far away, a car honked. Insects cackled. Lucas and Samira were
talking about the trip, about finding the right cargo
container.

“My friend will oversee the
shipping…”

“…
in the morning, they will
truck your cargo container to the air terminal…”

That’s when I heard whispers through
the din.

“It’s them,” the voice said. “We need
to take them now.”

I spun around, scanning the
yard.
Did I imagine that? Who said
that?
Lucas saw my frantic search and
stopped talking. He listened and then turned to face a stack of
blue containers.

“Show yourself,” Samira
said.