That’s when the falling brick smashed into the back of my head.
I didn’t feel myself fall. At that second I couldn’t feel much of anything. I could hear the screams and the heavy thud of my body against the ground. It hurt—I knew that it hurt—but it was a very abstract sort of sensation, as though the pain were something I was remembering. Whatever connection I’d forged with Lucas was instantaneously severed. For a while there was nothing but sound. I couldn’t say whether that went on for ten seconds or ten minutes.
Basically, I didn’t know much of anything until I felt a strong hand clutch the top of my arm and hoist me to my feet. I couldn’t stand upright, not without swaying, but the hand wouldn’t let me fall.
“Open your eyes,” Mrs. Bethany said.
I obeyed. The tunnel had gone completely quiet, save the rattle of small stones and dust still raining down. The blinding swirl of grit had cleared, but just slightly. Only my vampire’s vision let me see Mrs. Bethany in the dark, in shadows of inky blue on black.
My throat stung from inhaling dust. I rasped, “Are you going to kill me?”
She tilted her head, as if I’d said something amusing. “You can serve a better purpose, I think.”
“Did you come for revenge against Black Cross? Or just against me?”
“How important you think you are.” Mrs. Bethany started, towing me with her. Off-balance, I could only stumble along, coughing and wincing from the viselike grip she had on my arm. “My business with Black Cross began long before you were born, Miss Olivier. I suspect it will endure long after your death.”
Although fear clutched at me (Where’s Lucas? What about Raquel?), I knew Mrs. Bethany wasn’t planning my death. If she were, she would’ve murdered me already.
Mrs. Bethany continued, “I do owe you a certain debt, however. You made this possible, after all.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“Not every vampire is a fool about technology, evidence from Mr. Yee’s class notwithstanding.” She was leading us over the rubble that now lined the tunnel. “When you e-mailed your parents at their Evernight account, tracking the ISP to New York was a fairly simple matter. We had recently learned where Black Cross was headquartered in this city, so you might as well have drawn us a map.”
Oh, no. This attack was my fault. Lucas had explained how tightly Black Cross regulated Internet use, but I’d always thought it was just more of their stupid restrictive rules. Too late, I saw the reasons behind it.
“They said you wouldn’t come here,” I said, dazed. “That vampires wouldn’t dare attack their headquarters—that it happened only once and they killed the leader—”
“Until very recently, that was true.” The uneven stones rolled beneath my feet, and I twisted my ankle. I cried out, and to my surprise, Mrs. Bethany stopped. “But after the attack on Evernight, many of our kind are more willing to band together and take action than they were before. We are united again. Your ill-advised romance has at least served a purpose. For me, that is. For you—well.”
“You don’t know anything about Lucas.” Then I wondered if she did know, and for one horror-struck second, I thought she might tell me that he was dead.
Instead Mrs. Bethany said, “In recognition of the good you have so unknowingly and unwillingly done me, I offer you a far better choice than you deserve. If you like, you may come home.”
“W-what?”
“As quick-witted as ever, I see. Miss Olivier, you may return to Evernight. Although the main building is uninhabitable at this time, we have set up temporary housing for the duration of the repairs, which will only take two or three months. Your parents are there, leading the rebuilding efforts. They wished to come along tonight, of course, but they were overemotional. Their recklessness would have hindered our efforts. How pleased they would be if you returned along with the rest of us.”
She wasn’t playing fair. The thought of my parents waiting back at Evernight, hoping that I would come in the door, tugged at me so hard that it felt like a sob was being torn from my body. “I won’t. I can’t.”
Mrs. Bethany’s severe, beautiful face seemed to have been etched into the darkness in lines of steel. “Love isn’t worth it, you know.”
“It isn’t only Lucas.” And it wasn’t, though I knew I could never leave him. My parents had told me too many lies. I could forgive them for that, but I needed to know the truth about what I could be—whether there was any choice for me besides becoming a full vampire. My parents wouldn’t help me learn that truth.
“Let me go.”
I thought for sure she would fight me, and I was in no state to put up any resistance. Instead her eyes lit up, like she was glad I’d said it. Somehow making her happy seemed even more dangerous than making her mad.
“We’ll meet again, Miss Olivier,” she said. “By that time, I think you may have very different priorities. And so shall I.”
What was that supposed to mean? I didn’t get a chance to ask. In what seemed like an instant, Mrs. Bethany had vanished into the darkness, and I was alone again.
Oh, God, now what? I blinked and tried to clear my fuzzy head. The swirling dust had finally begun to settle, and I saw a small sliver of light in the distance—not much, but enough to tell me it was one of the emergency lamps hung near the exit routes. That one, at least, wasn’t cut off.
They’d told us, during our Black Cross training, that if something ever did go wrong, we were all to meet at a supply shed at the far edge of the nearby park, over by the Hudson River.
But what if Lucas had been hurt or, even worse—no, I couldn’t even think it. All the same, the thought that he might be lying in the rubble around me was horrifying, and part of me wanted to remain, to turn over every last stone, if that was what it took to find him.
Yet after a few weeks of training, I understood Lucas better. I knew what he would say if he were here, so vividly that I could imagine him saying it: You’re too banged up to do any good right now. Get some help and get a game plan. That’s the only way to deal with this.
I staggered toward the light, determined to follow instructions. Maybe I was becoming a soldier, too.
This park wasn’t so large or lush a green space as Central Park; it was a ridge of stone clinging to the edge of the island, steeper even than the mountains around Evernight. My body shook from exhaustion and adrenaline overload as I stumbled over the rocks. Outside it was dark—a darker night than I’d experienced before in New York, the first time we’d been away from the omnipresent electric lights. It seemed like so long since I’d had time to really look at the sky.
When I made it to the shed, a few hunters stood outside. They tensed until they recognized me, and one of them called, “Lucas? She’s here.”
I expected him to rush out at once, but it took a few seconds. When Lucas emerged, he walked toward me slowly, as though every step were weighed down. “Are you all right?” I said.
“I—they didn’t hurt me.” His expression was strange.
My hands found his. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“The vampires killed seven people,” he said. He seemed to want to say more, but couldn’t. I realized that I already knew what was hurting him so much.
I whispered, “Eduardo. I know.” Lucas’s eyes met mine. I thought he would ask me how I knew, and I dreaded having to tell him I’d seen Eduardo’s murder. “Your mother—how is she?”
“She’s taking it hard.” He stared into the distance, where the horizon would have been if we’d had any light.
Shock left me numb to the full weight of my guilt. I was sorry Eduardo had been killed, but that was about all I could feel for him. Lucas had liked Eduardo even less than I, yet he was almost bowed over from the weight of the loss. It wasn’t his grief that hurt him; it was Kate’s. His mother had lost the man she loved, and compared to that, what we felt about Eduardo didn’t matter as much.
I hugged him tightly. “Go back to your mom,” I whispered. “She needs you.”
Lucas put his hands on either side of my head and kissed my hair. “Thank God you’re okay. I thought they’d come for you.”
It was my fault they’d attacked. I would have to confess that to him eventually, but this wasn’t the time. “I’m fine.”
He combed his fingers through my hair, then hugged me once more and turned back toward the shed where Kate was. As I stood there, Raquel came up to me. “You made it.”
“You, too.” I winced as I looked at her face. “You’re getting a black eye.”
“I really fought this time,” Raquel said. Despite the depression of nearly everyone around us, there was a wild sort of energy in her eyes. “I struck back. It felt—amazing.”
“I’m glad.”
“And you don’t look so pretty yourself, you know.”
I must have been covered in dust from head to toe. Not that it mattered. “Dana must be okay, too, right?”
“Yeah. She’s with some of the others, helping bring in the prisoner.”
“Prisoner?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
Just then one of the Black Cross vans came roaring up to us, headlights almost blindingly bright. Raquel and I both held up our hands to shield our eyes. I muttered, “I guess the parking garage didn’t get hit.”
Dana hung her head out of the back of the van. “Where are we going to take him?”
“Better ask Eliza,” Raquel said, before running off to do just that.
I walked toward Dana. “You mean—you’ve got the prisoner?”
“Yeah, I’m the long arm of the law today.” She tried to smile, but there was no spirit in it. I thought Dana felt as weird about the captive vampire as I did. “He’s out cold right now, but when he wakes up, he’s got a big surprise in store.”
She half turned to the side, so I could look. My eyes went wide. The crumpled figure of a man on the floor of the van, his hands bound tightly behind his back, was too familiar. I leaned closer, and horror washed over me as I recognized him.
Balthazar.
Chapter Eight
BALTHAZAR—MY DATE FOR THE AUTUMN BALL, the guy who had driven me to see Lucas countless times, my friend and very nearly my lover—lay unconscious, a captive of Black Cross. Chains bound his feet and wrists. Even his vampire’s strength wouldn’t allow him to escape, not wounded and exhausted as he was. I doubted Black Cross would give him any chance to recuperate. He was at their mercy.
Sometimes, over the past month, I’d thought of myself as a prisoner, but only now did I see how much worse it could get.
“Where—” My voice cracked. “Where are you taking him?”
“Milos says they’ve got some spaces in town they can use for backup. We’ll haul him off to one of them.” A crescent-shaped cut near the center of Dana’s forehead testified to the fact that she’d just fought for her life. “The group’s going to have to splinter up for a while—no other place for us all to stay together. The bloodsuckers didn’t kill that many of us, but they made damn sure we’d be spread thin for a while.”
“I’ll come along,” I said. I didn’t know what else to do. I desperately wanted to consult Lucas, but I couldn’t interrupt him and Kate now. At least if I made sure that we ended up in the same space that Balthazar would be kept, we’d have a chance to take action later.
Dana nodded. “Suit yourself. Normally I’d want stronger backup for vampire transport. No offense, Bianca, you know you’re still a newbie—”
“No arguments here.”
“—but pretty boy here looks like he’s asleep for a while.”
I didn’t feel myself fall. At that second I couldn’t feel much of anything. I could hear the screams and the heavy thud of my body against the ground. It hurt—I knew that it hurt—but it was a very abstract sort of sensation, as though the pain were something I was remembering. Whatever connection I’d forged with Lucas was instantaneously severed. For a while there was nothing but sound. I couldn’t say whether that went on for ten seconds or ten minutes.
Basically, I didn’t know much of anything until I felt a strong hand clutch the top of my arm and hoist me to my feet. I couldn’t stand upright, not without swaying, but the hand wouldn’t let me fall.
“Open your eyes,” Mrs. Bethany said.
I obeyed. The tunnel had gone completely quiet, save the rattle of small stones and dust still raining down. The blinding swirl of grit had cleared, but just slightly. Only my vampire’s vision let me see Mrs. Bethany in the dark, in shadows of inky blue on black.
My throat stung from inhaling dust. I rasped, “Are you going to kill me?”
She tilted her head, as if I’d said something amusing. “You can serve a better purpose, I think.”
“Did you come for revenge against Black Cross? Or just against me?”
“How important you think you are.” Mrs. Bethany started, towing me with her. Off-balance, I could only stumble along, coughing and wincing from the viselike grip she had on my arm. “My business with Black Cross began long before you were born, Miss Olivier. I suspect it will endure long after your death.”
Although fear clutched at me (Where’s Lucas? What about Raquel?), I knew Mrs. Bethany wasn’t planning my death. If she were, she would’ve murdered me already.
Mrs. Bethany continued, “I do owe you a certain debt, however. You made this possible, after all.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“Not every vampire is a fool about technology, evidence from Mr. Yee’s class notwithstanding.” She was leading us over the rubble that now lined the tunnel. “When you e-mailed your parents at their Evernight account, tracking the ISP to New York was a fairly simple matter. We had recently learned where Black Cross was headquartered in this city, so you might as well have drawn us a map.”
Oh, no. This attack was my fault. Lucas had explained how tightly Black Cross regulated Internet use, but I’d always thought it was just more of their stupid restrictive rules. Too late, I saw the reasons behind it.
“They said you wouldn’t come here,” I said, dazed. “That vampires wouldn’t dare attack their headquarters—that it happened only once and they killed the leader—”
“Until very recently, that was true.” The uneven stones rolled beneath my feet, and I twisted my ankle. I cried out, and to my surprise, Mrs. Bethany stopped. “But after the attack on Evernight, many of our kind are more willing to band together and take action than they were before. We are united again. Your ill-advised romance has at least served a purpose. For me, that is. For you—well.”
“You don’t know anything about Lucas.” Then I wondered if she did know, and for one horror-struck second, I thought she might tell me that he was dead.
Instead Mrs. Bethany said, “In recognition of the good you have so unknowingly and unwillingly done me, I offer you a far better choice than you deserve. If you like, you may come home.”
“W-what?”
“As quick-witted as ever, I see. Miss Olivier, you may return to Evernight. Although the main building is uninhabitable at this time, we have set up temporary housing for the duration of the repairs, which will only take two or three months. Your parents are there, leading the rebuilding efforts. They wished to come along tonight, of course, but they were overemotional. Their recklessness would have hindered our efforts. How pleased they would be if you returned along with the rest of us.”
She wasn’t playing fair. The thought of my parents waiting back at Evernight, hoping that I would come in the door, tugged at me so hard that it felt like a sob was being torn from my body. “I won’t. I can’t.”
Mrs. Bethany’s severe, beautiful face seemed to have been etched into the darkness in lines of steel. “Love isn’t worth it, you know.”
“It isn’t only Lucas.” And it wasn’t, though I knew I could never leave him. My parents had told me too many lies. I could forgive them for that, but I needed to know the truth about what I could be—whether there was any choice for me besides becoming a full vampire. My parents wouldn’t help me learn that truth.
“Let me go.”
I thought for sure she would fight me, and I was in no state to put up any resistance. Instead her eyes lit up, like she was glad I’d said it. Somehow making her happy seemed even more dangerous than making her mad.
“We’ll meet again, Miss Olivier,” she said. “By that time, I think you may have very different priorities. And so shall I.”
What was that supposed to mean? I didn’t get a chance to ask. In what seemed like an instant, Mrs. Bethany had vanished into the darkness, and I was alone again.
Oh, God, now what? I blinked and tried to clear my fuzzy head. The swirling dust had finally begun to settle, and I saw a small sliver of light in the distance—not much, but enough to tell me it was one of the emergency lamps hung near the exit routes. That one, at least, wasn’t cut off.
They’d told us, during our Black Cross training, that if something ever did go wrong, we were all to meet at a supply shed at the far edge of the nearby park, over by the Hudson River.
But what if Lucas had been hurt or, even worse—no, I couldn’t even think it. All the same, the thought that he might be lying in the rubble around me was horrifying, and part of me wanted to remain, to turn over every last stone, if that was what it took to find him.
Yet after a few weeks of training, I understood Lucas better. I knew what he would say if he were here, so vividly that I could imagine him saying it: You’re too banged up to do any good right now. Get some help and get a game plan. That’s the only way to deal with this.
I staggered toward the light, determined to follow instructions. Maybe I was becoming a soldier, too.
This park wasn’t so large or lush a green space as Central Park; it was a ridge of stone clinging to the edge of the island, steeper even than the mountains around Evernight. My body shook from exhaustion and adrenaline overload as I stumbled over the rocks. Outside it was dark—a darker night than I’d experienced before in New York, the first time we’d been away from the omnipresent electric lights. It seemed like so long since I’d had time to really look at the sky.
When I made it to the shed, a few hunters stood outside. They tensed until they recognized me, and one of them called, “Lucas? She’s here.”
I expected him to rush out at once, but it took a few seconds. When Lucas emerged, he walked toward me slowly, as though every step were weighed down. “Are you all right?” I said.
“I—they didn’t hurt me.” His expression was strange.
My hands found his. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“The vampires killed seven people,” he said. He seemed to want to say more, but couldn’t. I realized that I already knew what was hurting him so much.
I whispered, “Eduardo. I know.” Lucas’s eyes met mine. I thought he would ask me how I knew, and I dreaded having to tell him I’d seen Eduardo’s murder. “Your mother—how is she?”
“She’s taking it hard.” He stared into the distance, where the horizon would have been if we’d had any light.
Shock left me numb to the full weight of my guilt. I was sorry Eduardo had been killed, but that was about all I could feel for him. Lucas had liked Eduardo even less than I, yet he was almost bowed over from the weight of the loss. It wasn’t his grief that hurt him; it was Kate’s. His mother had lost the man she loved, and compared to that, what we felt about Eduardo didn’t matter as much.
I hugged him tightly. “Go back to your mom,” I whispered. “She needs you.”
Lucas put his hands on either side of my head and kissed my hair. “Thank God you’re okay. I thought they’d come for you.”
It was my fault they’d attacked. I would have to confess that to him eventually, but this wasn’t the time. “I’m fine.”
He combed his fingers through my hair, then hugged me once more and turned back toward the shed where Kate was. As I stood there, Raquel came up to me. “You made it.”
“You, too.” I winced as I looked at her face. “You’re getting a black eye.”
“I really fought this time,” Raquel said. Despite the depression of nearly everyone around us, there was a wild sort of energy in her eyes. “I struck back. It felt—amazing.”
“I’m glad.”
“And you don’t look so pretty yourself, you know.”
I must have been covered in dust from head to toe. Not that it mattered. “Dana must be okay, too, right?”
“Yeah. She’s with some of the others, helping bring in the prisoner.”
“Prisoner?” I didn’t like the sound of that.
Just then one of the Black Cross vans came roaring up to us, headlights almost blindingly bright. Raquel and I both held up our hands to shield our eyes. I muttered, “I guess the parking garage didn’t get hit.”
Dana hung her head out of the back of the van. “Where are we going to take him?”
“Better ask Eliza,” Raquel said, before running off to do just that.
I walked toward Dana. “You mean—you’ve got the prisoner?”
“Yeah, I’m the long arm of the law today.” She tried to smile, but there was no spirit in it. I thought Dana felt as weird about the captive vampire as I did. “He’s out cold right now, but when he wakes up, he’s got a big surprise in store.”
She half turned to the side, so I could look. My eyes went wide. The crumpled figure of a man on the floor of the van, his hands bound tightly behind his back, was too familiar. I leaned closer, and horror washed over me as I recognized him.
Balthazar.
Chapter Eight
BALTHAZAR—MY DATE FOR THE AUTUMN BALL, the guy who had driven me to see Lucas countless times, my friend and very nearly my lover—lay unconscious, a captive of Black Cross. Chains bound his feet and wrists. Even his vampire’s strength wouldn’t allow him to escape, not wounded and exhausted as he was. I doubted Black Cross would give him any chance to recuperate. He was at their mercy.
Sometimes, over the past month, I’d thought of myself as a prisoner, but only now did I see how much worse it could get.
“Where—” My voice cracked. “Where are you taking him?”
“Milos says they’ve got some spaces in town they can use for backup. We’ll haul him off to one of them.” A crescent-shaped cut near the center of Dana’s forehead testified to the fact that she’d just fought for her life. “The group’s going to have to splinter up for a while—no other place for us all to stay together. The bloodsuckers didn’t kill that many of us, but they made damn sure we’d be spread thin for a while.”
“I’ll come along,” I said. I didn’t know what else to do. I desperately wanted to consult Lucas, but I couldn’t interrupt him and Kate now. At least if I made sure that we ended up in the same space that Balthazar would be kept, we’d have a chance to take action later.
Dana nodded. “Suit yourself. Normally I’d want stronger backup for vampire transport. No offense, Bianca, you know you’re still a newbie—”
“No arguments here.”
“—but pretty boy here looks like he’s asleep for a while.”
