Afterlife

  “Go help them,” I said. “I promise, I’ll be back soon.”

  With one last look at Patrice, who finally seemed to be sitting up under her own power, Lucas took off running toward Mrs. Bethany’s carriage house.

  I let go of my physical self and floated upward, pure energy now. Evernight was below me, less something I could see and more something I could feel as the collection of so many lost, desperate spirits, no longer able to feel anything but fear. Before, when I had never been trapped, I couldn’t understand what they felt. I hadn’t been able to communicate with them. Now I knew what to do.

  Remembering my time in the trap, I created around me the memory of that dark, fathomless void. As strongly as I could, I sent that downward, so that the wraiths would recognize it for what it was. just as I felt them react in pain and panic, I opened up that brilliant circle of light — the way out.

  And past that circle, I envisioned the land of lost things in all its beauty and ugliness and chaos. It seemed to take shape in miniature, like the magical castles at the center of a snow globe: an old Tudor mansion, a mobile home, a brown horse with knobby knees and friendly eyes, a twisty dirt road — not things I had seen there before, but the things these spirits were bringing along with them.

  The energy beneath me changed from fear into something like hope.

  I took hold of them. Every one of them. I couldn’t say how I did it, but the power must have been within me from the beginning. In that instant, I knew each of them, could envision their faces, their personalities, sense fragments of the lives they must have led. They were as familiar to me, in both their virtues and flaws, as my dearest friends, and I felt them recognize me in return. More importantly, I felt them recognize themselves — the people they had been before darkness and fear had taken them over. Then I lifted us together, soaring upward into that sphere of light.

  Then there was laughter, and cheering, and embraces. I stood in a patch of sunlight near what looked like a version of the Taj Mahal, though it was black instead of white, and even more beautiful. A crowd of perhaps a hundred people milled around me, wearing clothes that varied from T shirts and jeans to one woman in a full, hoop — skirted dress who carried a parasol.

  “Thank you,” she whispered as she hugged me tightly. “You got us out. You brought us here.”

  I hugged her back, but I remained vividly aware of how quickly time could pass here, and how badly I needed to return.

  Christopher seemed to appear in the middle of us — no puffs of smoke or bursts of light, but one minute he Wasn’t there, and the next he was. His smile transformed him into the younger, happier man he had been in his memories of his life. “Bianca. I knew you could do it.”

  “Yes, and it’s awesome and tremendous and all of that, but we have a situation,” I said. “Mrs. Bethany’s captured Maxie. She’s going to destroy her. Is there anything we can do?” E His smile faded. “That poor child. She must be terrified.”

  “What can we do? Your wife — I know you love her, but we can’t let her do this!” Beyond my fear for Maxie, I was also terrified for Lucas, as well as for Balthazar, my parents, Vic — everyone I’d left back at Evernight. She had fighters around her who knew she was their only chance to live again. The battle going on now would be desperate. and for some. fatal.

  “No, we cannot.” Christopher squared his shoulders. “We shall return to the world below, together.”

  “Can you get Maxie out of the trap?” I asked, though I felt sure it must be impossible. “There is one way,” he said, surprising me. “Only one way.”

  He vanished. Apparently explanations would have to wait. I thought of my brooch, the beautiful black flower from my dreams, and tried to fold myself into the heart of it.

  [ took form — then fell bodily into the snow, Lucas toppling beside me. Blood marred his face, streaking his skin and making his green eyes seem unearthly. He glanced at me only for a moment before raising his crossbow just in time to deflect an ax. One of Mrs. Bethany’s loyalists was swinging at him, repeatedly, and from the looks of things, he’d landed a few blows.

  My brooch had tumbled out when Lucas fell, apparently; it lay on the ground, stark against the snow. I grabbed it, grateful for the ability to do so, and put it in my pocket. Now embodied, I tried to take in the scene.

  A battle raged around me. My vampire friends were locked in combat with other vampires loyal to Mrs. Bethany. Across the grounds, Evernight Academy was melting — or, at least, the ice that had encased it was vanishing. Half — frozen students were already stumbling back inside for shelter and to get away from the fighting. I couldn’t find Vic, and nobody seemed to have breached Mrs. Bethany’s carriage house.

  The roaring of an engine pierced the night. and I turned to see a pair of headlights fast approaching the school. With a rush of relief and hope, I recognized the van. I ran through the snow, crying out, “Raquel! Dana!”

  They skidded to a stop. Dana leaped from the vehicle and took in the scene. “I told you guys not to start the party without us.”

  “They’re all vampires,” Raquel said, clutching her stake. “Which ones do we go after?”

  “If they’re attacking a vampire you know, take them out! Tell Dana who’s who!” I looked for a weapon for myself and grabbed a small hand ax.

  “Raquel!” Vic ran toward the truck. He must have been in the woods — probably looking for something to use to smash into Mrs. Bethany’s house. “Give me something! Anything!”

  [ left them behind, running through the snow, determined to help Lucas and the others. AsI saw how well armed Mrs. Bethany’s crew seemed to be, I reached up and pulled off my brooch. My body remained solid.

  The closest people to me were my father and the tallest vampire in school, a guy almost as broad as he was high. He was pounding my dad with one hand; the other held a knife certainly big enough for a beheading. Dad had already gone down on one knee, unable to defend himself. I shouted, “Hey!”

  The vampire turned. With a lazy grin, he swung the knife toward me — — as I dropped the brooch and became vapory. The knife went directly through me, and I felt nothing. The ax I’d been carrying kept swinging through the air at the same speed, undeflected, to bury itself in the guy’s back.

  He fell to the ground, obviously not permanently taken out but dazed and in pain. Quickly I grabbed my brooch again and took Dad’s hand.

  “Come on! We have to get in there!”

  “We have to get out of here,” Dad protested.

  I shook my head. “This fight doesn’t end until Mrs. Bethany’s stopped, and we won’t be out of danger until the fight ends.”

  Mrs. Bethany’s cottage was only a few steps away. But Vic beat me to it, and when I saw what he was carrying, my eyes went wide. I never thought they’d give him the flamethrower.

  Vic pointed the weapon at one wall — and a plume of fire set the place ablaze. I realized, Vic doesn’t know that fire could kill Maxie forever.

  I ran toward the cottage, unsure what to do or how to help. Then I saw a faint outline of a figure against the snow — Maxie, drifting in a daze away from the flames.

  “Maxie!” I shouted. Vic reached her at the same moment I did, and I pressed my brooch into her hand. Although she hardly had any substance, she was able to hang on to it; the magic within the jet solidified her and seemed to give her some strength. “Are you okay?” Vice smoothed her golden brown hair away from her forehead.

  She shook her head no. “Christopher,” she managed to say.

  “What about him?” I said. “Did he get you out?”

  “Yes, but he — ” Maxie stared back at the fire consuming the carriage house. “He took my place.” Suddenly undone by grief and exhaustion, Maxie slumped against Vic’s shoulder; he let the flamethrower drop and held her tightly.

  I left them alone and rushed toward the blaze. Though I knew it was dangerous to be so near fire or a trap, I couldn ‘ t let Christopher perish if there was any way to save him.


  But as I remembered his sad expression as we prepared to come here, I knew immediately that there Wasn’t. Christopher had done this knowing he would be lost forever. He had sacrificed himself for Maxie.

  I peered into the very heart of the flames. There, I could see Mrs. Bethany, her long hair tumbling down loose around her shoulders. Soot stained her face, and she looked very young. “Christopher!” she cried out. She must have seen him, in the instant that he had taken Maxie’s place. “Christopher, I’m here, I’m here!”

  Despite the fact that she was on the verge of burning to death, Mrs. Bethany was — smiling. I realized then that Christopher had been wrong: her love for him really had been stronger than her hate. But they’d both found out too late.

  Maxie had been freed before Mrs. Bethany could transform herself. Mrs. Bethany had enough time, maybe — to sacrifice Christopher and live again. She had to know that. But she wouldn’t do it. “We can get out of here,” she gasped, reaching through smoldering woodwork despite the risk to herself. I realized she was trying to retrieve the trap that held him. “We’ll be together, I promise you.”

  I heard Christopher’s voice, hardly a whisper amid the crackling of the flames, “My dearest Charlotte.”

  Then a surge of sparks drove me back, and I gaped as the roof of the carriage house crumbled. Nothing remained but glowing embers, and flame, and smoke. Sure death for any vampire, or any wraith. The Bethanys were gone, forever.

  Shaken, I turned to see the battle — or what had been the battle. The vampires fighting my friends had been subdued, either by Dana and Raquel as reinforcements or by surrender when they saw that their leader, and the resurrection magic she alone knew, had perished. I could see my mother helping my father to his feet, Raquel and Patrice herding the enemy vampires farther away from the rest of us, and most of the others gathered around a fallen figure in the snow — Around Lucas.

  Chapter Twenty — two

  I FLASHED MYSELF TO THE SMALL GROUP OF people huddled around Lucas’s fallen form. He lay motionless and bloodied on the snow, his chest and forehead sliced deeply by a weapon. Dana cradled his head in her hands, and Balthazar ran one finger along the edge of the chest wound and winced. Vic and Maxie, still holding on to each other, stood nearby, while Ranulf clutched his ax to his chest as if he were a child with a security blanket. Lucas appeared to be totally unconscious.

  “What’s going on?” I knelt beside Lucas. “He’s wounded?”

  “Badly,” Balthazar said. But in his voice I heard real dread.

  I said, “As awful as it is, as much as I know he’s hurting .. . he’ll be okay.” Nobody spoke. “Won’t he?”

  Balthazar turned to me, expressionless. “The other vampire had laced his weapon with holy water. It’s a dangerous tactic for us, but — ”

  I held up a hand; I couldn’t bear to hear what came next, and besides, I already knew. Black Cross training had covered the technique, and it had been whispered by Erich in Lucas’s own dream — claiming that stakes soaked in holy water could paralyze and torture a vampire forever.

  That it was like burning them alive, just from the inside out.

  They’d never claimed to know for sure. Maybe it wasn’t so. But Lucas wasn’t moving. He was trapped deep in that terrible, unending fire.

  I took his hand in mine; it was colder than usual, deeply chilled by the snow around us. His fingers were heavy, unresisting. “Lucas?” I whispered, but I knew he couldn’t hear.

  The only release from his torment would be to behead him. To lose him forever. In the hours after Charity’s attack, I’d been faced with the decision of whether or not to kill Lucas; now I had to face it again. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  I squeezed his hand tighter. Dana, who had begun to sob, reached up with one hand to wipe her cheeks. Lucas’s head, free from its cradle, lolled to one side. Blood from the cut on his forehead had oozed down to his throat, pooling just beneath his Adam’s apple. It reminded me of how he had 232 looked the first time I bit him.

  Vampire’s blood, I thought. During the ritual, it had attracted me powerfully. As powerfully as if the blood were life itself. Then everything came to me at once: How drinking Lucas’s blood had been part of what maintained my life as a vampire, how I had felt more alive then than at any other time.

  How wraiths joined with vampires to create vampire children like me, because wraiths and vampires were the two halves of life, able together to kindle a flame.

  How Mrs. Bethany’s ritual of resurrection had been designed to break me down and bring me into a vampire, to merge us into one. How wraith blood was poisonous to vampires, but their blood was life to us.

  How Lucas and I had become a part of each other from the very first time I gave in to my desire and bit into his throat. I was Lucas, and he was me.

  And I knew what to do.

  “Move back,” I said. Everyone sort of stared, but they did what I asked, shuffling backward from Lucas’s sprawled body. Dana laid his head down gently before rising to her feet, where Raquel hugged her tightly from behind. Ranulf had bowed his head, and Vic, holding Maxie’s hand, sniffled like he was on the verge of tears. My parents stood slightly apart from the rest, but I could see that the concern in their faces for Lucas was real. A few others had gathered, too — just a handful of students, both vampire and human, unsure what to think. Skye stumbled toward us, dazed and weak from her ordeal but unwilling to leave Lucas if he was in trouble. When she swayed on her feet, Balthazar quickly rose to steady her against his shoulder.

  The snow around Lucas was stained crimson with his blood. New flakes had begun to fall. A sharp, cold wind gusted past us, ruffling his hair. I held my hand out to Maxie; after a moment’s confusion, she understood and handed me my jet brooch, so that I could be wholly solid once more. I needed that now. The sharp edges of the flower’s carved petals cut into my palm.

  I thought of how much I loved him, how badly I wanted him to be a part of me. I dreamed of the richness of his blood, and how it had made me feel alive. I remembered being a vampire — and felt my fangs emerge once more, sharp against my lips and tongue. My vampire self remained a part 233 of me, despite my death.

  Then I bent low and bit into Lucas’s throat.

  Blood. Cold, but still his blood, still him. Vampire’s blood carried knowledge, and so I felt everything that he had felt, knew everything that he had known. I felt his love for me, and his fear, as he had stood in the tower trying to rescue me. I saw the fight through his eyes, a whirl of blades, blows, and driving snow. I swallowed more deeply, drinking as much of his blood as I possibly could, more than I ever had as a vampire before. Around me, I could dimly hear some of the others protesting, but they were too distant to heed. And then I knew him — Lucas, his spirit, his soul, here at the center of his being.

  Bianca. Where are we?

  Together.

  What’s happening?

  I’m drinking your blood. Making it mine. Lucas — drink from me.

  I pushed my hand against his mouth, so that the tender flesh between thumb and forefinger followed the curve of his lips.

  Trust me. Drink.

  He was paralyzed beyond the ability to bite down, so I pressed the soft skin against the sharpness of his teeth until they broke the skin. I felt the pain as sharply as I ever had any mortal injury, but I never flinched.

  Blood flowed down his throat. What would have burned him before didn’t now, because I had mingled his blood and my own. Now the corrosive power of wraith’s blood couldn’t touch him any longer. He was free to drink it in. Free to take in life.

  I felt myself growing dizzy as the link between us deepened. We were one system now, one being, each of us flowing into the other. As I gave in to it, I felt the outlines of his body as much as I did my own; the cuts on the forehead and chest burned, and the snow was cold underneath. And I knew his dawning wonder as he felt what it was like to be me — the angle of my limbs, the taste of his blood, the nearness of my sp
irit.

  The blood I drank began to warm.

  Is this what it means to die? Lucas thought. Because I’m not scared of it anymore. Not if it means I finally get this close to you.

  I concentrated all my energy on him, directing myself into the very core of him, into the redness of his heart. This isn’t death. This is life.

  Lucas gasped in a breath, and I sat up. His blood was sticky on my mouth, and he looked gorier than before, but his eyes were wide open. He took 234 another breath, and another.

  “What did you do?” Balthazar said.

  Raquel, leaning around Dana, said, “Yeah, was that vampire CPR or something?”

  I never looked away from Lucas. The cuts on his face were knitting together, faster than vampire healing, part of his ultimate restoration. He stared up at me, obviously weak from his injuries, but with an incredulous smile spreading across his face. “It’s impossible.”

  “It isn ‘t.” I started to laugh from pure joy. “It’s real.”

  “You’re healing up, like, crazy fast, but you’re still bleeding, man.” Vic held out a scrap of cloth.

  “Bleeding,” Balthazar said, his voice sharp and urgent. He’d seen it now, even if nobody else had. “Bianca, you did it.”

  “Did what?” Dana said.

  I hugged Lucas tightly. This time, when he embraced me in return. he was warm. “I’m alive,” Lucas whispered. “Bianca brought me back to life.”

  Everyone around us started talking at once — in wonder or confusion or glee. Dana actually jumped into the air with her hands above her head, a victory leap.

  I didn’t pay any attention. Time for explanations and celebrations later. All I wanted to do at tl1at moment was lie tilere in Lucas’s arms, my head against his chest, listening to the beating of his heart.

  Within an hour, tile emergency vehicles began showing up — police cars, ambulances, and a couple of fire trucks, altilough there was nothing left of Mrs. Betilany’s carriage house but glowing cinders. My parents had found a landline inside that remained operational after the big freeze — and — thaw, and they made the 911 call.