Stargazer

I was impressed that she’d managed to figure that out so swiftly, given that most vampires never met a vampire like me, one born rather than made. “Yeah. I mean, yes, that’s what I am, and, yes, you can walk with me for a bit.”

“Thank you.” She slipped her arm into mine as though we were lifelong pals. Her body trembled, and I wasn’t sure whether it was from fear or cold. “This fellow won’t leave me alone tonight. Perhaps I’ll have better luck if he thinks I’ve run into a friend.”

“I’m actually going to meet somebody.” No sooner had I said the words than her smile wavered, revealing a glimpse of loneliness beneath. I remembered Ranulf and the handful of other lost ones at Evernight Academy, and I took pity on her. “But I can get you out of the town square, at least.”

“Oh, could you? Thank you so much. What a relief. Did I startle you? I didn’t mean to. If I did, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” There was something genuinely childlike about her, so much so that it was surprising to realize she was several inches taller than I was, nearly as tall as Balthazar. “Are you all right? Is there somebody we could call?”

“Fine. I’m fine. I’m alone tonight.”

I looked down at my forearm, where her hand rested. Her threadbare sweater was long enough that the only part of her hands visible beneath the sleeves were her fingers. Her nails were filthy and jagged—almost as though she’d been digging through dirt. All at once, I knew that this girl was the single loneliest person I’d ever met.

At first she simply followed me without comment or, apparently, will of her own. We pushed our way through a huge crowd of students that had congregated outside a pizza place. It must have been the most popular place to grab a slice, because more than a hundred kids jostled around outside, holding cardboard pizza boxes and plastic cups of beer. A couple of guys stared at us—at the fair-haired vampire more than me. Despite her youth and disheveled appearance, she had an ethereal, innocent kind of beauty, and her brown eyes searched the crowds as if longing for someone, anyone, to take care of her. I could see how some guys might find that appealing.

Only after we emerged from that crowd did she say, “Where are you going?”

“To the train station.”

“That’s only a few blocks away.” The vampire cast a worried glance over her shoulder. How she could make out anything in that throng of people, I didn’t know, but she tensed up. “I think he’s still back there. Let me walk with you to the train station. Won’t you, please? It’s darker around there, and I can slip away, I just know it.”

Selfishly, I wanted to refuse; Lucas would be coming any second, and I didn’t want any company around for our reunion. Lucas wouldn’t exactly be thrilled to see another vampire, because I was the only one he trusted. There was a chance he wouldn’t recognize her as a vampire, but given his Black Cross training, I doubted it. Yet she looked so timid that I didn’t have the heart to refuse. “Okay, sure. Let’s go.”

We continued through the square, arm in arm. Music blared from each bar so loudly that the various drumbeats seemed to crash into one another.

“Let me guess.” She cast a shy glance in my direction. “Evernight, right?”

“Yeah. Did you go there?”

“I tried once. But the headmistress—oh, she didn’t like me. Mrs. Bethany was her name. Is she still there?”

“Like she would ever leave her kingdom,” I muttered.

“So true. Well, she didn’t care for me a bit. It made things very unpleasant.”

“Mrs. Bethany doesn’t care for me either. I think she hates most people who aren’t—well, her.”

“Have you run away from school, too? That’s what I did.”

I smiled. “Only for the weekend.”

“I could never go back, I don’t think. Not unless—” Her gaze became distant, but then she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

As we walked away from the main square toward the train station, a breeze gusted past us and I could smell a definite whiff of body odor. That alone didn’t gross me out—I guessed everybody got sweaty sometimes—but along with everything else, it made me feel sorry for her. She hardly seemed able to take care of herself. How terrible it would have to be, living forever alone like this, getting more and more out of sync with civilization.

For the first time, I understood—really understood—why vampires needed an Evernight Academy. I’d always known that we had a tendency to lose track of the ever-changing now, and my parents had cautioned me about how easy it was to look up and realize your clothes were a couple decades out of date, or that you not only didn’t know what was happening in the world but also didn’t care. But I’d never really comprehended how that would look—how it would feel, being so alienated. Looking at this girl, I finally got it.

The train station lay only a few blocks away from the main square, but the walk seemed longer. It had something to do with the contrast between the noise and bustle of the student-filled square and the dead silence of the nearby neighborhood. With fewer streetlights around, it was darker, too. My new companion had nothing else to say. She apparently was content just to hang on to me.

I checked my watch. 11:55.

The fair-haired vampire pulled open the train station’s door with trepidation, like it might be booby-trapped. Hardly likely for a one-room train station that was basically a hut beside the tracks. “Nobody’s home. Your young man hasn’t arrived yet.”

“I don’t guess so.” I peered at the station in dismay. I’d hoped it would be pretty or at least cozy; I knew a train station couldn’t possibly be romantic enough for our reunion, but it could’ve been better than this. Scuffed linoleum floor, dim fluorescent lights hanging from above, and a few hard wooden benches bolted to the walls: not exactly my dream setting.

Then again, what did that matter? What would any of it matter? I knew that I would be with Lucas again soon—within minutes—and once we saw each other, I knew I wouldn’t be able to pay attention to anything else.

What if it’s not the same for him? His letter was so amazing, but, still, we haven’t seen each other in months. What if things have changed between us? What if it’s awkward? What if he doesn’t feel the way he used to?

“You must be so very happy.” The vampire was curled up on a bench, her knees hugged to her chest. She drummed her jagged fingernails against the pale flesh of her calves. The sole was peeling away from the bottom of one of her shoes. “So very happy not to be alone anymore. Sometimes I think I’d die if I had to be alone all the time.”

Now I felt awkward saying this, but I had to: “If you don’t mind, I’d sort of like some privacy. We haven’t seen each other in a while.”

“Private time.” Her smile was shy and a little bit sad. I wanted to apologize for leaving her so alone, but what else could I do? The only alternative I could offer was her coming with me back to Evernight, and she’d made her feelings about that plain. Who could blame her for loathing Mrs. Bethany? As if she sensed my guilt, she said, “I understand, I do. I’d meant to wait awhile, see if he wouldn’t move on, but—okay.”

I heard footsteps on the gravel outside and whirled toward the door as Lucas walked in.

He wore a denim jacket, black T-shirt, and jeans. His dark-gold hair had grown slightly longer, but other than that he was the same. Looking at him felt like diving into a sun-warmed pool, filled with light.

“Lucas?” I took one step forward. I wanted to throw myself into his arms, and yet it felt like I could hardly move. “You made it. We both made it.”

But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me—at the vampire.

“Get the hell away from Bianca,” he growled.

“Oh, no.” The vampire began scrambling backward, trying to wedge herself into a corner. “No, no, no—”

“Lucas, it’s okay. She’s harmless.”

“The hell she is.”

The vampire cried, “I told you, I told you, he’s after me, he’s after us both!”

This was who she’d been afraid of. She’d been running from Lucas.

Lucas’s hand closed around mine—the first touch in so long. He was trying to tug me toward the door. “Bianca, you gotta get out of here.”

“Wait, stop. Both of you.” I looked from one to the other, but they weren’t listening to me. They were both shifting into battle mode, ready to fight.

I didn’t know what to do or what to think, not for that first split second—and that was one second too long. The vampire launched herself at us, pouncing like a tiger, and Lucas shoved me out of the way so hard that I stumbled and fell on my hands and knees, smacking into the concrete floor. Behind me I heard the sound of shattering wood.

Scrambling back to my feet, hands stinging, I saw to my horror that the vampire had knocked Lucas through the door of the train station. Despite her girlish behavior and appearance, she was obviously a powerful vampire—more powerful than I’d realized. She and Lucas grappled in the doorway for a second, their desperate struggle silhouetted by the glare of the nearby streetlight. Then the vampire threw Lucas into the railing of the station porch. He fell onto the railroad tracks.

“Lucas!” I shouted. He didn’t rise to his feet, and he blinked like he couldn’t make sense of what he saw. Clearly, being tossed through the door had stunned him.

“You shouldn’t be allowed to scare young girls.” The vampire tugged at the curls of her hair that had escaped from her bun, just like a nervous child. “You should be stopped. I should stop you.”

She’s scared enough to kill him, I realized. I had to help Lucas, but how? I was stronger than any human being, but not nearly as strong as a full vampire, no matter how childlike she might appear. Then I realized that when the door had splintered, pieces of wood had been scattered all over the train station’s floor. One next to me was the perfect size and shape to be used as a stake.

Staking doesn’t kill vampires, not permanently anyway. If the stake goes through the heart, the vampire falls down as if dead—but if the stake is pulled out, then it’s just like it never happened. So I should’ve slammed the stake into the vampire’s back without hesitation.

But staking that poor girl—I couldn’t do it.

I grabbed a much larger piece of wood from the floor, something almost like a two-by-four, and inched forward, one foot, then the other.

“You shouldn’t have followed me.” She leaned over Lucas, every muscle in her skinny body tense and her hands curved so that her fingernails seemed like claws. “You’ll be sorry.”

With all my strength, I swung the board into her head. The vampire went flying a few feet from us—I’d gotten stronger than I realized—and rolled along the ground, over and over. Before she stopped, I dropped the board and grabbed Lucas’s hand. “Can you run?”

“Gonna find out.” He panted, struggling to his feet.

I pulled him in the direction of the town square, thinking that we’d stand a better chance of losing her in a crowd. But Lucas tugged back to steer us in the opposite direction, so that we were running into the quiet residential section nearby. “Nobody’s around, Lucas. We’ll be all alone!”

“That means nobody else gets hurt!”

“But—”

“I’ve got you, Bianca. Trust me.”

We ran onto a small street lined with large, classic New England houses. Comfortable family cars and SUVs were parked in every driveway, and front windows glowed and flickered with the lights from television screens. With every step, I longed to scream for help, but I knew doing that would only put the people inside at risk. If they came outside to investigate, there was every chance they would get caught up in a dangerous fight that now seemed inevitable. Lucas and I were on our own.

“He’s not who you think!” a thin, quivering voice called, not nearly far enough behind us. “He’s Black Cross! You’ve got to get away!”

Oh, crap. I realized, She’s chasing us to try and save me.

“Lucas, we don’t have to do this!” I could hardly breathe. We could both run almost supernaturally fast, and farther than most humans could, but the vampire was faster. “Just let me talk to her!”

“She’s not going to stop at talking!”

Lucas still assumed all vampires were dangerous—but in this case, he might be right. This vampire was powerful; worse, she was scared. People could do terrible things when they were scared. If she hurt Lucas on my behalf, I knew I’d never forgive myself.

We veered around a corner as Lucas pulled me to the right, and I figured he was trying to lose the vampire. It didn’t work; her footsteps pounded behind us on the pavement, closer and closer. Sweat rolled down my back.

“I’m going to draw her off.” Lucas squeezed my hand tighter. “Count of three, you’re going to dive behind the nearest car. Got it?”

“Lucas, I’m not leaving you!”

“I can get help. You have to be safe. One, two—”

No time to argue. He swung his arm around, flinging me toward the side of the road; I dived for cover. Skidding to the ground scraped my palms and knees, but I was able to roll behind a large truck and curl beside one of the tires.

For a few seconds, there was only silence. Get help, I remembered Lucas saying. Black Cross was here on a hunt. That meant he had plenty of support nearby. Without me, he stood a chance. I began to calm down and take comfort in the knowledge that he was safe—until the vampire dived behind the truck, too.

Maybe I should’ve screamed for Lucas, but I didn’t want to give her away.

She didn’t attack; I’d known she wouldn’t. Instead she held out her hand with its jagged, dirty nails. “We have to go,” she said. “You don’t know what he is.”

“I know he’s Black Cross. He won’t hurt me, but he’s coming back with others. Get out of here!”

She shook her head at me in horror. “You’re mad. He’s the enemy.”

“I’m fine!” I insisted. “You’re the one in danger!”

She let her hand drop and stared at me, head tilted to one side. In that pose, she looked like a broken toy, and I had the weird but undeniable sense that I’d hurt her feelings. After one long, strange second, she leaped up and ran, vanishing so quickly that I didn’t hear even a footstep.

As soon as I was sure she was gone, I called out, “Lucas?” No response. “Lucas?”

I heard footsteps farther down the road. Rising to my feet, I saw Lucas running toward me. He motioned for me to duck down again, but I ignored that.

“She’s gone,” I promised. “We’re safe, okay?”

Lucas slowed to a walk, then took another couple of heavy steps and leaned forward, bracing his hands against his knees. I still felt shaky myself, and I’d had a couple of minutes to get my breath. “You sure?”

“Pretty sure. Are you all right?”

“As long as you are.” Lucas straightened up again and brushed back his sweaty hair with the back of one hand. “God, Bianca—if she had come after you—”

“She wasn’t dangerous. Not until she got scared.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” It hit me: For the first time in more than six months, Lucas and I were alone together. I threw my arms around him, and he held me so tightly that I could hardly breathe.

“I missed you,” I whispered into his hair. “I missed you so much.”

“Me, too.” He laughed softly. “I can hardly believe this is real.”

“I’ll convince you.” I took his face in my hands, and we leaned closer to kiss—until headlights swept over us and made us both jump.

The van sped toward us, screeching to a halt only a few feet away. In the brilliant light, I could barely make out that there were apparently several people crowded inside.

Lucas groaned, “Oh, no.” When one of the van doors opened, he yelled, “Crisis over. Way to take too long, guys.”

“It hasn’t been five minutes since your page.” The woman emerging from the van sounded familiar. Even before I could see her features, I realized it was Kate, Lucas’s mother.

Then the passenger door swung open to reveal a tall, heavyset black girl with braided hair. I searched my memory for her name: Dana. As we looked up at her, Dana’s expression shifted from concern to a broad smile.

“Look who we have here.” She leaned against the hood and gestured toward us with a crossbow she apparently no longer intended to use. “Lucas, didn’t anyone tell you the emergency number isn’t to alert us to your booty calls?”

Kate folded her arms. “Now I see why you insisted on joining the Amherst hunt.”

“Okay, you found me out,” he said lightly, refusing to be cowed. “Can we get Bianca someplace safe? The vampire just scared the hell out of her.”

“I realize that,” Kate said, more kindly. She liked me, mostly because she believed I’d saved Lucas’s life once. The people in the van were nodding and murmuring welcome. “Come on and get yourself cleaned up. Don’t worry; you’re safe now.”

Safe with Black Cross? I was safe only as long as they didn’t realize I was “the enemy.” Just the thought of turning myself over to a gang of vampire hunters made me feel cold and frightened inside. They’d been kind to me last time we’d met—but the last time had nearly ended in disaster. This time, if they learned the truth, it could get a lot worse.

Lucas and I shared a look, and I knew he understood how I felt. But there was nothing to do but smile, say thanks, and climb in the van.

Chapter Six

LUCAS’S HAND CLOSED AROUND MINE AS THE VAN drove into an industrial park—one that had seen better days, to judge by the fact that half the buildings seemed to be vacant. My head still whirled from the suddenness of the vampire’s attack and our escape; I don’t think I’d even fully processed the fact that Lucas and I were together again.

Or maybe, I thought as we stole sideways glances at each other, it’s just that it feels like we’ve never really been apart.

“I don’t guess you kids met up at random.” Kate glanced toward us, and her eyes narrowed as she glared at Lucas. She wore olive cargo pants and a black shirt with a lot of pockets; her dark-gold hair was slicked back into a no-nonsense ponytail. “Lucas, don’t tell me you went back to that place.”

“I didn’t go to Evernight,” Lucas said. “I asked Bianca to meet me here. But if I have to return to the school again to see her, I will.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Can you tell me where in the world we aren’t in danger, Mom? Because I just had a closer call than I ever had at Evernight Academy.”

Lucas was exaggerating somewhat, given how my father and Balthazar had pursued him last year, but I didn’t want to undermine him while he was defending his decision to meet up with me.

Kate sighed, then shook her head. She looked at me next—not gently, because nothing about her was gentle, but in a way that made it clear she didn’t blame me for the danger Lucas and I had been in. “Glad to see you’re okay, Bianca. I didn’t trust the bloodsuckers to keep their word last year.”

Those bloodsuckers are my parents, I wanted to retort, but instead I replied, “They did. I’m back in school and we all sort of—pretend it didn’t happen.”

Lucas helped me out. “Probably they figure even if you did tell, nobody would believe you.” I hoped our explanation sounded convincing.

“That was a brave thing you did, giving yourself up to save us from the fire,” said an elderly man who sat in the back beside Dana. He’d told me his name—Mr. Watanabe, I remembered. “I think you saved us all.”

“Yeah, Bianca, that was pretty badass of you.” Dana slapped her hands on my shoulders and gave them a hearty squeeze. “Seriously, you’ve got guts.”

“It wasn’t badass. I don’t really do badass.” That made the half-dozen or so people in the van laugh, even though I hadn’t actually been making a joke. Still, my tension eased a little.

Last year, when Lucas had been discovered as a member of Black Cross, he’d been forced to escape from Evernight Academy; I’d fled with him. Together we’d reached Kate and Eduardo’s cell, and safety—at least as long as Black Cross remained ignorant that I was a sort of vampire, too. But Mrs. Bethany, my parents, and several other vampires had tracked us down. When I’d gone back with my parents, I’d not only escaped that confrontation, I’d gotten away before Black Cross found out what I really was. They still believed me to be a human child kidnapped and raised by vampire parents—something I needed them to keep on believing.

We drove to one of the abandoned buildings around back. Kate flicked the van’s headlights: off, on; bright, off, bright. A metal door, like for a loading dock, started to open, revealing a driveway that sloped down sharply. We drove into an underground parking garage that looked pretty much like any other, except that it was illuminated by lanterns hung on the walls or the concrete pillars. As Kate pulled around a corner into a spot, I saw that a few partitions had been set up—walls of boxes or just tarps hanging over a stretched cord—to carve rooms out of this dank space.

I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice as I said, “This is Black Cross headquarters?”

Everyone laughed. Lucas squeezed my hand, reassuring me that the laughter wasn’t meant to be unkind. “We don’t have an HQ. We go where we need to go, find places to crash. This is secure. We’re safe here.”

To me it looked incredibly bleak. Had Lucas grown up in miserable places like this? The air still smelled like exhaust and oil.

As our crew got out of the van, another half-dozen people walked up to us, including a tall, forbidding man with twin scars across one cheek. I recognized Eduardo, Lucas’s stepfather and quite possibly his least favorite person. His dark gaze embodied everything that frightened me about Black Cross. “I see this is the big emergency,” he said, staring at me.

“You’d prefer another kind of emergency?” Kate said it like she was teasing, but she wasn’t. I could hear the real message in her words: Lay off my kid.

Either Eduardo didn’t hear that message, or he didn’t care. “The vampire got away? Again?”

Lucas’s jaw clenched at that again, but he said only, “Yeah. She’s fast.”

“Did you see her gang?” Kate shook her head, and I thought, What gang? I knew the lonely girl I’d seen tonight didn’t have any friends, much less a gang.

“You go to school with vampires for a year and can’t figure out why they’ve admitted humans, then you luck into a shot at this vampire and completely lose her while you’re hanging out with your girlfriend.” In the lantern’s light, Eduardo seemed to have been roughly carved from weathered wood. “This isn’t what we trained you for, Lucas.”

“What did you train me for? To shut up and follow your orders no matter what?”

“Discipline matters. You’ve never understood that.”

“So does having a life.”

“That’s enough,” Kate interjected, stepping between her husband and her son. “Maybe you two aren’t sick of this argument yet, but the rest of us are.”

They’re still freaking out about the human students at Evernight, I thought. If I figure that out and tell Lucas, we’d show Eduardo. Seeing how dismissively he treated Lucas made me want to take Eduardo down a notch or two. Or ten.

“Bianca looks really winded,” Dana said. “Lucas, you better get her to the first aid room and make sure she’s all right.”

“Oh, I feel—” I realized what Dana was doing and stopped myself. “That might be a good idea.”

Kate didn’t say Kids, but I knew she was thinking it. She waved us off. Eduardo looked as if he might object, but he didn’t.

The murmur of conversation welled up behind us as Lucas led me toward a side door. I realized that this led to the room the parking lot attendant had sat in when this was a garage. “Are they talking about us?” I murmured.

“Probably talking about that damn vampire. But as soon as they get done with that, yeah, they’ll start talking about us.”