We were pouring through the gateway, the motorcycles going down the small tunnel that opened on to the courtyard and the wooden walkways that went around the three stories.
I searched each Rider for a sign of Ballard. He was nowhere to be found.
I hoped he got out; I didn’t blame him for running. It was for Lennox and all of us that I was chiefly concerned. Instead of studying magic, I had spent the whole summer trying to get to the bottom of the symbols in the magic book, and forgot that it also contained spells.
Charms, workings.
I felt like such a fool. There must be something in there about how to deal with a horde of invading zombies.
I could’ve stopped the Apocalypse; instead I was trying to date somebody. I felt like my hormones had betrayed me. Worse, that I had betrayed myself. And now we were all going to pay for it. Maybe my landlady was right, with all of her gesticulating and nonsense. Maybe I was going to end up dead. But I didn’t have to take other people with me!
Lennox clicked the device to close the gate; it rattled and stuck. A pair of arms was trying to force it open. I could see the sinews and bones through the torn skin of the zombie. Its eyes burned into mine.
And I thought, “There’s someone controlling it. Someone is after me.”
An army was gathering outside. It looked at Marek and then Lennox, the zombie––the rest of us were safely inside.
When it spoke, the zombie’s voice was cruel and metallic.
“We want her,” it said.
Lennox grabbed one of Marek’s firebombs.
“Send her out, blood knight, or everyone dies.”
He threw it and it exploded, washing the zombie away in fire and flames. The gate closed with a resounding thud.
We were trapped inside. They were out.
* * *
It would be sunrise in four hours. A slew of zombies had tried to scale the gate, but it curved outward, and there were spikes on top. They were impaled as reminders not to try again.
The zombies were smart. Whoever controlled them, knew what he was doing. He didn’t needlessly throw away his remaining troops on the gate. Even if they got across it, or somehow took it down, the design of the building was such that they would create a natural bottleneck, and come at us only a few at a time––like ants escaping from an anthill. Likewise, if we tried to escape, it would be easy for them to kill us. Or worse. Turn us into the undead.
The decision to hole up here was either a very wise or fatal one.
In four hours, Romans would be out and about. Marek was going on and on about the rules. “I tell you, we have to do something quick,” he said. “This risks everyone finding out about us.”
Some of us wondered if the boker would make an appearance, or else be content to stay far away––as no doubt he was. I didn’t know how far spells could travel, but something told me this guy was a master––he could probably conjure over great distances. There was no telling how far away he was.
I wish Genevieve was here, I thought. My old headmistress would know what to do. Stories of her crafting were whispered throughout St. Martley’s with the same frequency as tales of girls’ first times––and with equal embellishments.
I had no sense of Magic’s size or scope, what it could or could not do. There was still so much to learn. I thought sourly of all my time wasted. If I get through this, I told myself, I’m going to start finding things out. I promise.
Around us, I Gatti was preparing for combat. I heard Lia whispering to Gaven. “We knew this was coming,” she said. “It was only a matter of time.”
“But are we ready?” he asked. “What will we do if it gets out too early?”
“If my brother were here––” said Lia. They started kissing one another. I left them before they saw me.
It was at this point that I noticed a lot of the members of the motorcycle gang included females, women––mostly a few years older than I was. I had never given them much thought. It seemed like they all had boyfriends, too. Make out sessions were going on left, right, and center. They were all in their early to late twenties.
Gaven was leader. He made sure the weapons were divided properly. Groups occupied every room. Lennox explained to them about the crawling.
“The building is covered with ivy. Plus, their fingertips are strong enough to pierce rock. The zombies can get in through the windows,” he said. “Or else over the top.”
We fortified where we could. It was imperative Lennox and Marek break out responsibilities. “We are the only two vampires here,” he said.
Marek nodded.
“I’ll take the third floor,” he said. “The library. It has the highest ceilings. If I have to crawl...” He did not elaborate.
“What can I do?” I asked, watching Marek disappear. Inwardly, I hoped for my own little make out session.
“I have to protect you. I won’t lose you, Halsey Rookmaaker,” said Lennox. I nearly melted.
He wanted me to stay put, in the center of the courtyard. “It’s the safest place,” he said. The walkways surrounded us. There was I Gatti. I saw them patrolling with Infester’s nets. “If the zombies break through,” said Lennox, “this is the centermost point.”
“Like a keep in a castle.”
“Exactly,” he said. He was determined to stay by my side.
Had there been any word from the zombies? I asked.
“If they want to speak to us, they can,” he said, and pointed to the gate. Gaven was going there now. I tried to imagine him feral, snarling, claws outstretched. He moved like a panther.
Lia watched him from the second level. Our eyes met briefly. Hers registered nothing. She disappeared inside.
“Do we have... enough?” I asked.
Lennox’s mind was elsewhere. “If I die,” he said.
“You won’t.”
“Remember what I said about the Agonies?” he said.
How could I forget. “They’re some test, right? If you don’t pass, you die.”
I didn’t want to think about it. If he got through this, Lennox could still be taken from me.
“That never bothered me before today,” he said. “It wasn’t until I met you, I even wanted to live. I was... sired... against my wishes. I don’t even know by whom. I roamed in the early years, taking life. I never appreciated it until now.”
“What about me?” I said. “I never had anything else to lose, either. My parents were taken from me. Before I even knew them, they were gone. My life is here, now. With you. I’ve wanted to be close to you for a long time.”
I was pleading with him, trying to get him to see reason. I couldn’t help it.
“So long as we are together, I know we can beat this thing,” I said, “because we have to. It’s on me, to start being honest. I haven’t told you everything about me that there is.”
“Only because I ignored you,” he said. For too long he had been like an island.
“I am like a boat, a ship, lost at sea. I can see you,” I said, “in the distance. Shore. After all these years. Finally, someone for me. And I want it. I want us. I’m a––”
But at that precise moment, the crystalline moment shattered like an exquisite mistake.
I heard shouts, screams, windows smashing, people fighting. Bodies struggling against one another in the dark.
The creatures had broken through! I Gatti was no match for the zombies, not alone, single-handed. They had to work in teams. It was a wonder they hadn’t all been turned already. Then I realized––they had been training for this. Not exactly zombies, per se.
Vampires.
And weren’t vampires supposedly bigger? Meaner? But could something that I was so in love with be that bad?
I looked at Lennox. He looked torn between defending me and helping all of them.
“Go,” I said. If he didn’t help them––now––there would not be an us.
* * *
He sprang into action. I saw him leap to the first level, not bother
ing to take the stairs. Two Six Nine Guys were fighting back to back against a pair of blood-hungry zombies. Lennox smashed the first one’s skull in with his fist.
I worried about the blood mixing with his own, but then I remembered he was made out of stone. It was porcelain and beautiful, but stone nonetheless.
He was utterly beautiful as he demolished the first of several Fast Walkers. I hoped Marek was having equal success. For my part, I felt so helpless and ashamed. I didn’t know why they were after me. But these people, Lia, Ballard’s family, they shouldn’t have to die on my account.
Not for me.
There’s always something you can do, I told myself. If you wait, it will be too late. They’re after you. Think. If I can draw them... I need fire....
I thought about that.
Marek was the only one with any fire left. He still had that firebomb. The library! I needed to get to it.
Maybe I could burn them or something. I didn’t know what I was going to do. But I was certain about one thing. I wasn’t going to let anyone else pay the price, just because I was a witch, or at least a potential witch––
Could any of this have anything to do with the fact that I was? That I had come to Rome in the first place? I couldn’t see how, as I ascended the flight of zigzagging stone stairs.
Suddenly, a zombie reached out for me and grabbed me by the throat. It was how vampires probably took their prey.
It was not the first time I had thought of a connection between the two supernatural beings. After all, weren’t vampires also revenants?
I was helpless against it.
It could’ve ripped me limb from limb. Instead, it bent to bite my throat. And then it howled in agony. I watched as fire raced up its arm. I yanked myself back. It still held on to the locket around my neck. The fire raced through its body, consuming it.
It couldn’t touch the locket or me.
Deep cinders flared and it fell to dust, to nothingness, there in my presence. I stomped past it, heading for the library.
“Halsey!”
Someone shouted my name. I turned to see who it was. Lia’s eyes flashed in the dark. A hulking shape was between the two of us, lurching my way. “Get down!” she shouted.
I did as she said. A sound like wump, and the Fast Walker lifted off its feet, crashing through the railing. It fell all the way to the stones below with a sickening crunch, wrapped in the netting Lia had shot at it.
“Are you all right?” she asked, helping me up.
“You saved my life,” I said.
She chewed on her gum––I heard it snap and pop. “What are friends for?” she said.
Somebody screamed and she had to go––but it was a moment for us.
I watched as more zombies penetrated the building to the courtyard. I Gatti used their momentum against the zombies. The creatures continued to fall and break themselves on the stones below.
It gave me an idea.
We could turn them to ash, right there in the courtyard. A bonfire. But for that, we needed fire. I had to get to Marek. I continued up to the third floor, to the library.
When I got there, the stacks were all broken, the books scattered across the floor. The windows had all been smashed out. There was no sign of Marek.
“Marek... Marek...” I hissed.
I felt exposed. Like a zombie could come out at any time. What had been up with that one that had burned?
Nobody was in here. I saw the remains of a giant fight. Marek hadn’t used the last firebomb, had he?
No. The zombies’ bodies were all torn, ripped apart. Pools of thick glutinous blood stained the floor. I stepped across it, searching for Marek. He was nowhere to be found.
Instead, I headed back to the walkway, and headed down it, searching room after room. There hadn’t been enough people to man it properly. Lennox figured––and Gaven had agreed––that the zombies would find the first opening that they could get at, regardless of who protected it, farther down below, like gas escaping.
I stumbled past gashes in the wood and other signs of violence. The sun would be up soon. Maybe the zombie’s body had ignited because of all the gas it produced––it was a rotting corpse, after all. They produced methane.
We didn’t just need to win. We needed to prevent Rome from finding out. I was beginning to get a sense of the Lenoir, that they would abide no threats to their Eternalness.
Somehow that word seemed like it had to be capitalized. Like they had been here forever. I had just never seen them before. No one had.
That was the whole point. They didn’t let humans in on their secret.
Why, if my parents had lived in Rome, had I been taken away? Ballard’s uncle, Risky, wanted each of us to know. It was to Ballard he bequeathed the book, which Ballard then gave to me. Why? He must’ve wanted us both in on the secret, whatever it was. That vampires existed? That my parents had known them?
I heard moaning.
When the dead rose, they truly sucked.
I looked for a weapon, finding none. I entered, anyway.
It was the cathedral-like room with the stained glass window. The moaning was louder now. It sounded like somebody was hurt. I could barely see, it was so dark.
But I looked at the stained glass window––how even in the dark, light broke through it. It was like the story I had heard at Club Change.
You couldn’t have one without the other. Darkness and Light.
I followed the beams of moonlight as they pierced the panes of ancient glass, and made my way past the cobwebs, to a figure who was kneeling in the middle of the floor.
Pale blue moonlight bathed him. He was very tall. Even kneeling, he came to my height. And then he looked up.
It was Marek. His eyes burned a ravenous blood-red. I could see the suck mark on his arm like some grotesque hickey. Even now, the tracery of fine veins was darkening, the metallic black poison spreading up his arm. A revenant lay at his side, dead.
The poison continued to Marek’s neck, crawling up it, like fine webs of feelers, racing to his brain.
“It bit you,” I said.
Despite every warning, despite the dangerousness in his eyes, I took a step toward Marek. He raised a hand, stopping me. It was a warning I didn’t want to listen to.
“We need to help you. I’ll get Lennox,” I said.
“No.”
“Marek, it may not be too late. We can stop the spread. We’ll... find a way.”
Even in my head it sounded lame.
The sounds of the other battles going on faded to the background. He was staring at me. The firebomb he held dropped and rolled away. If only he had just used it, I told him. He got to his feet.
“I suppose you probably think I’m a good vampire?” He said. “So innocent. He drinks his little blood cups. Well, I’m not good. Far from it.”
He was backing me up. I hit against a pile of boxes and dust fell on top of my head. “This isn’t you. It’s him,” I said, pointing to the thing behind his eyes––the necromancer who for some reason was trying to kill me.
“NO!” said Marek. It was important I understood this. “The newspapers. The killings,” he said. “All those young women dying. It was me. I took them.”
He towered over me.
“You?”
“You can say it.”
“You’re Peter Panico?”
“He crawls into windows,” said Marek. “Flies, more like.”
“You’re a vampire. You’re the one exsanguinating all those dead girls...”
“We’re allowed a few murders,” said Marek, “now and then. Otherwise, what good would it do to be a vampire? All these immortals have lost their fangs, don’t you think? Including your precious boyfriend. I enjoy what I do.”
“You’re sick. Infected.”
“No,” said Marek.
“And we never settled on ‘boyfriend’, ‘girlfriend,’ all those labels,” I jabbered unnecessarily.
“The Lenoir kicked me out,” said
Marek. “They have a death warrant out on me. Did you know that?”
“What will you do?” I asked. I had to keep him talking. I needed Lennox to get here. Anything. Marek looked like he wanted to bite me.
“Something’s happening to me,” he said. He grimaced.
“It’s not too late,” I said. “Please.”
His hands were on me, rough, tender, rough.
“You think we’re beautiful, don’t you? That you can tempt us? Tempt me?” said Marek. “I have been watching you for weeks, Halsey Rookmaaker. While Lennox and the police toyed with finding me, I have been watching you. Your friend Ballard caught a whiff of me in Trastevere. But you were always my target. I wanted to know what it was that attracted Lennox to you so much, what attracts me. So I decided to get close to you.”
He was only inches from me. “That’s close enough,” I said.
We both knew I was in a helpless position. He could take me at will.
“Why didn’t you just fly up to my window and kill me, if you were so hungry?” I said.
“Lennox was never far from you,” said Marek. “At night, he stalked you worse than I did. He’s not the gentleman that you think. I watched him watch you. You truly have thrown him off his game. Before now, some would consider him to be a potentially great vampire. But he’s so smitten it’s pathetic. I won’t make the same mistake. I’m going to take you tonight. And just to show you that I can....”
He bit into the flesh of my neck. I was powerless to resist.
I felt this surge––I moaned in spite of my peril. He took me strongly in his arms. I felt the force of the vampire.
Before I knew it, I was on the verge of passing out. The blood that should have run to my brain, ran into his mouth. He drank from me, pulling strongly from my neck.
I felt him remove himself from the two gaping holes he had made, withdrawing each inch of his fangs. And my head lolled back.
He looked, Marek, within the very throes of ecstasy. “You taste delicious,” he said, licking his lips. “Mmm.”
His head rolled back on his powerful neck, the curtain of dark hair which usually obscured his face, revealing strong features.