Evernight

  "Lucas?"

  No answer.

  "Lucas, I know that you're here." Still no reply, but I could tell now that I was being watched. "I'm alone. They aren't far behind. If you have anything to say to me, you'd better say it now."

  "Bianca."

  Lucas said it as a sigh, like he was too tired to hold it back any longer. I peered through the darkness but couldn't see him; I knew only that his voice came from someplace ahead.

  "Is it true? What they're saying about you?"

  "Depends on what they're saying." I heard footsteps now, coming slowly toward me.

  I laid one shaking hand on the nearest thing I could use to steady myself, a chair slipcovered in threadbare velvet. "They said that you're a member of some group called Black Cross. Vampire hunters. That you've been lying to m—lying to us all along."

  "All true." Lucas sounded wearier than I'd ever heard him. "Were you telling the truth when you said you were alone? Won't blame you if you weren't."

  "I only ever lied to you once. I'm not doing that again now."

  "Once? I can think of a lot of times you just 'neglected' to mention you were a vampire."

  "Like you didn't say you were a vampire hunter!" I could've slapped him.

  My fury didn't seem to move him at all. "I guess so. I guess it's the same kind of thing, in the end."

  "I told you the whole truth in that e-mail! I didn't hold anything back!"

  "Because you got caught. Doesn't count, and you know it."

  Why did he keep pretending we were the same? "I didn't choose to be what I am. You—you people plot to hunt down my family, my friends—"

  "I didn't choose this either, Bianca." His voice was rough, as if he were choking up, and my anger dissolved into another emotion, one I couldn't name. Lucas took another couple of steps forward. When I squinted into the dark, I glimpsed his outline several feet away. "Not who or what I am, not even coming to Evernight."

  "You chose to be with me." Though he'd tried to talk me out of it, hadn't he? Only now did I understand why.

  "Yeah, I did. And I know I've hurt you. I'm sorry for that. You're the last person in the world I ever wanted to hurt."

  He sounded completely sincere. I wanted to believe him as badly as I'd ever wanted anything in my life. After the night's revelations, though, I was done taking anything on faith. "Can you just tell me why?"

  "It would take a long time to explain, and we don't have much time left."

  The 8:08 bus to Boston. I glanced down at my watch; the hands, phosphorescent, told me we had no more than five minutes left.

  I walked toward Lucas, my hands in front of me to feel my way. My fingers brushed against ostrich feathers, dusty with age, and something slender, hard and cool, perhaps a brass bed frame. Lucas dodged to the left, behind a panel—but no, I could see through that a little. As I got closer to him, I realized that the panel was a stained glass window.

  This was the front room of the antiques store, and it was both less crowded and slightly brighter. Greenish watery light from the streetlamps trickled through to us. Lucas remained behind the stained glass window. Was he afraid of me? Ashamed to face me? Instead of circling around the panel, I walked to the opposite side of it, so that we saw each other through the tinted panes of glass. Lucas's face was cut into four squares of color, and his eyes were dark and haunted.

  For a moment, neither of us knew what to say. Then Lucas gave me a sad smile. "Hey."

  "Hey." I smiled, too, then nearly started to cry.

  "Please, don't."

  "I won't." One sob escaped me, but then I swallowed hard and bit down on the side of my tongue. As always, the taste of blood gave me strength. "Am I in danger?"

  Lucas shook his head. Through the glass his face was the color of jewels—topaz, sapphire, and amethyst. "Not from me. Never from me."

  "Tell it to Erich."

  "So you found him." Lucas didn't sound even slightly sorry. "Erich was stalking Raquel. Remember? When I heard her talking about her lost bracelet, I knew she'd run out of time. Stealing possessions is a classic sign of a vampire stalker getting ready to strike. Erich wanted to kill her, and, given a chance, he would have done it. Deep down, I think you realize that."

  It scared me that I believed him. If I hadn't tasted Erich's blood and felt his malevolence for myself, maybe I wouldn't have. But I had seen the evil in Erich's mind, and I suspected that Lucas was telling the truth, at least about this. "It's still hard to think about."

  "I realize that. I know it's got to be tough for you to understand."

  "Tell me what I need to know."

  Lucas was quiet for a while, and I wasn't sure that he would answer me. At the moment when I was ready to give up, though, he began to speak. "At the start I lied to you for the same reason you lied to me. Black Cross is a secret I've kept all my life, something my mother signed me up for when I was born." Lucas's voice was distant now, lost in his own memories. "They taught me to fight. Taught me discipline. Sent me on missions as soon as I was old enough to hold a stake."

  I remembered what Lucas had told me in the past about his mother being hard core, and about how he sometimes felt he didn't get to make decisions for himself. At long last, I understood what he'd really meant. Even when he was five years old, running away from home, he had brought a weapon.

  "At first I thought you were one of the other human students at the school. When you told me about your parents, I thought that they'd killed your real parents and adopted you. I figured you didn't know what they really were." His eyes met mine through the stained glass, and his smile was sad. "I told myself to stay away for your sake, but I couldn't. It was like you were a part of me almost from the second we met. Black Cross would've told me to push you away, but I was tired of pushing everyone away. Once in my life I wanted to be with someone without worrying about what it meant for Black Cross. To live like a regular person for a little while. After that first conversation we had—would you believe I thought you were such a nice, normal girl?"

  That was both the funniest and the saddest thing I'd ever heard. "You know better now."

  "What you are—it doesn't matter to me. I told you that already, and I was telling the truth when I said it." He turned toward the window, so that I could see his profile and the worry deeply etched there. "There's more to say, but the bus is about to go—Dammit, maybe I can catch a later one—"

  "No!" I pressed one of my hands against the stained glass. Although I still didn't know if I could ever trust Lucas again, I knew now that I could never hurt him, much less stand by while Mrs. Bethany and my parents tried to kill him. "Lucas, the others aren't far behind me. Don't wait. Go quickly."

  Lucas should've run out of there that instant. Instead he stared at me through the glass and slowly unfolded his hand opposite mine so that our hands were pressed against the same pane of glass, finger to finger, palm to palm. We each moved closer, so that our faces were only a few inches apart. Even with the stained glass window between us, it felt as intimate as any kiss we'd shared.

  Quietly he said, "Come with me."

  "What?" I blinked, unable to grasp what he was asking me to do. "You mean—run away from home? For real? Like you told me to do on that first day?"

  "Just so I can talk to you about everything that's happened and—and so we can say good-bye like we should instead of—" Lucas swallowed, and I realized for the first time that he was just as upset and scared as I was. "I've got enough money to buy us both tickets out of town. Later I can get more money to send you home again if you want. We can go right this second. Run across the street, hop on the bus. We'll get out of here together."

  "Are you going to turn me over to Black Cross?"

  "What? No!" Lucas honestly sounded like he'd never considered that. "As far as any human can tell, you're human. I'll take care of you if you'll just come with me."

  Slowly I said, "Tell me one thing before I answer."

  Lucas looked wary. "Okay. Ask."

&nbsp
; "You said you loved me. Were you telling the truth?"

  If he'd lied about everything else, even his name, I thought I could handle it, as long as I knew this.

  He breathed out, not quite a laugh or a sob. "God, yes. Bianca, I love you so much. Even if I never see you again, even if we walk out of here into an ambush you set up with your parents, I am always going to love you."

  In the midst of all the lies, at last I had one thing that was true.

  "I love you, too," I said. "We have to run."

  Chapter Seventeen

  As I sank onto the seat of the bus, trembling with exhaustion, I said, "We made it."

  Lucas shook his head. "Not yet."

  The bus jerked into motion, rolling slowly onto the road. We had been the last passengers to board; another three minutes, and we would have lost our chance to escape. "I know my parents are fast, but I don't think they can catch a bus on the highway."

  An older lady a few rows ahead of us glanced backward, obviously wondering what the hell we were talking about. Lucas gave her his most charming smile, which made her dimple up and turn back to her novel. Then he took my hand and led me to the very back of the near-empty bus, where we could speak freely without any of the other passengers overhearing talk about vampires.

  Lucas slid into the seat next to the window. I thought he might take me in his arms, but he remained tense, staring at the water-blurred glass. "We haven't made it out of here until we make it past that overpass. The one three miles out of town."

  I didn't know what he was talking about. Obviously Lucas had made a more thorough tactical survey of the area than I had. "What do you think they would do? Stand in the middle of the road and make the bus stop?"

  "Mrs. Bethany's not stupid." He never took his eyes from the window. Passing streetlights illuminated him in soft blue, then dimmed as we passed them, casting us back into shadow. "Yeah, they might've followed me into town. But she might've figured out that I was going to take the bus. If she did, her hunting party is going be to waiting on that overpass. They'll jump down on the bus, snatch me out, let the cops try to explain it to the passengers later."

  "They wouldn't!"

  "To stop a Black Cross hunter? You bet your ass they would."

  "If you're with this Black Cross, why did you come to Evernight Academy?"

  "I was sent to infiltrate the school. It was my assignment. You don't refuse Black Cross assignments. You get them done or die trying."

  The dull certainty with which Lucas said this frightened me as much as anything about vampires ever had. "Did you guys just now learn about the school?"

  "Black Cross has known what Evernight was almost since it was founded. Those places, where the vampires stay—"

  "Where we stay."

  "Whatever. That's where vampires do the least damage. Nobody wants to create a scene or make people nearby suspicious; vampires always control themselves in those areas. They don't hunt, don't cause trouble. If vampires acted like that all the time, there would be no need for Black Cross."

  "Most vampires don't hunt," I insisted.

  The bus hit a pothole, jarring us all, and fear made me gasp out loud. Lucas put one hand on my knee to steady me, but he turned his eyes back toward the window. We were almost out of Riverton at this point, getting closer to the overpass every second. "Remember what you said to me at the antique shop?" he muttered. "Tell it to Erich. He was damn sure hunting Raquel."

  How could I make him understand? I cast around for an example I could use. "You like hamburgers, right?"

  "We have seriously got to go over the right and wrong times for small talk. Dinner party, yes. Five minutes from a vampire ambush, no."

  "Hear me out. Would you eat a hamburger if there was any chance it could punch you in the face?"

  "How is a hamburger supposed to punch me in the face?"

  "Just say that it can." This was no time to bicker about metaphors. "Would you bother? Or would you eat something else?"

  Lucas considered this for a couple of seconds. "Leaving aside the weirdness of a hamburger that can attack—which is a lot of weirdness to leave aside—no, I guess I wouldn't."

  "And this is why most vampires don't attack humans. Humans hit back. They scream. They throw up. They call nine-one-one on their cell phones. One way or another, humans cause more trouble than they're worth. It's a lot easier to buy blood from butcher shops or eat small animals. Most people always take the easy way, Lucas. I know you're cynical enough to understand that much at least."

  "Nice and practical. I bet you told me just the way your parents told you. But you never said that killing people is wrong."

  I hated that he'd recognized the explanation as my parents' and not my own. I hated that I only had their word to go on. "That goes without saying."

  "Not for a lot of vampires, no, it doesn't. What you say makes sense, but it's not as reassuring as you think. One of us is wrong about how many vampires kill people, but I know that a lot of people get killed. I've seen it happen. Have you?"

  "No, never. My parents—they're not like that. They'd never hurt anyone."

  "Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it's not real."

  "Have you seen it?" I challenged him.

  My stomach sank as he nodded. Then he said the worst thing he could've said. "They got my father."

  "Oh, my God."

  Lucas stared at the window, even more tense than he had been before. We had to be very close to the overpass now. "I wasn't there for that. I was just a little kid. Hardly even remember him. But I've seen vampires attack other people, and I've seen the bodies they've left behind. It's horrible, Bianca. More horrible than I think you realize, maybe even more than you can imagine. Your parents only ever showed you the pretty side. There's an ugly side, too."

  "Maybe you've only seen the ugly side. Maybe you're the one who doesn't understand the real balance." My stomach was churning, and my fingers tightened on the back of the empty bus seat in front of me. Were we about to have to fight for our lives? "If my parents hid the full truth from me, maybe your mother hid the full truth from you."

  "Mom doesn't pretty things up. Trust me on this." Lucas breathed out. "Get ready."

  The bus took a sharp turn, shaking the few passengers from side to side. Through the blur of rain, I could see the overpass lights coming up. I squinted at the darkness, trying to make out shapes or movement, some hint that Mrs. Bethany might be waiting there for us.

  Lucas took a deep breath. "Love you."

  "Love you, too."

  Two more seconds, and the bus rumbled beneath the overpass. Nothing happened. Mrs. Bethany had led the group into town after all.

  "We made it," I whispered.

  He folded me in his embrace. As Lucas sagged against my shoulder, I realized for the first time how exhausted he was and how frightened he had really been. I combed through his wet hair with my fingers to soothe him. There was time to have arguments later, to talk about Evernight and Black Cross and everything else that divided us. For now, all that mattered was that we were safe.

  * * *

  I hadn't been to Boston since I was very small. Dimly I remembered what it was like to be in a city rather than the countryside—noise and trash, asphalt and traffic signs instead of earth and trees, and lights everywhere, bright enough to hide the stars forever. Though I braced myself for a seemingly inevitable panic attack, by the time we got to our destination—an area on the outskirts of town, and so far as I could tell one of the skeevy neighborhoods—it was late, and we were exhausted. I wasn't scared; I was only numb.

  "We should figure out what we're going to do tonight." Those were the first words Lucas had spoken to me since we got off the bus. Our hands still tightly clasped, we wove our way through the shifty-looking characters. They wore clothes that were too large, laughed too loud, and stared sharply at every car that rounded the street corners. "It's going to be morning before anybody picks us up."

  "Picks us up? Who's picking us
up?"

  "Somebody from Black Cross will come. Once I broke in the antique store, I used their phone, left a message that I was headed here. I'll call back and tell them where to pick us up, once we know ourselves."

  "I don't want to walk around this neighborhood for too long." I cast a suspicious glance at a broken-out window.

  "Bianca, think." Lucas stopped in his tracks and, for the first time all night, looked like his old snarky self. "Who should be afraid here? Us or them?"

  Why would these people be scared of me? Then it hit me, the punch line to the joke of my life: I'm a vampire.

  I started to giggle, and Lucas joined in. When I lost control, tears welling in my eyes, he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight.