Afterlife

“She’ll hold off if I tell her to,” Lucas insisted. “And what about you?” Balthazar said. His hands only clutched the steering wheel harder. “Who’s going to hold you off?”

Lucas glared at him. “I won’t attack my own mother.”

“You think that now. Wait until you get out there and smell fresh blood. You’ll be able to feel her pulse, almost—like a magnet, drawing you in.” Balthazar knew too well what he was talking about; his first act after being turned into a vampire had been to murder his own sister. Also, the hunters had begun paying attention to our car, moving closer. Balthazar continued, “If we’re going, we need to go now.”

“We’re not going.” Lucas’s jaw was set, his stare resolute. “I can handle it. I’ve got to. And—come on, it’s my mom.”

As he slid out of the backseat, Balthazar glanced at me in the rearview mirror, like I was suddenly going to take his side versus Lucas’s and run away. If Lucas trusted himself, then I would trust Lucas. I simply stepped out behind him. Balthazar could get out of the car to back us up or not; I didn’t care.

“Lucas?” Kate said. She jogged toward him, a smile lighting her face for the brief moment before she saw me. In the distance, I could see the hunters walking toward us and away from Vic’s house, and Vic slumping against his doorjamb in relief.

“Mom.” Lucas remained still, as if frozen to the spot. His features tightened, and I could tell that he was staring at her throat. What Balthazar had said was true. He could feel her pulse—sense her blood.

Kate’s eyes narrowed as she came closer to us. “Thought you were supposed to be sick,” she said. Distrust and contempt laced her every word. “So sick you couldn’t move.”

“I was,” I said. “But—not now.” I couldn’t exactly claim to have gotten better.

“No more reason for Lucas to stick around, then.” Kate held out her hand to her son. “You can come back. It’s okay. The people who would hold it against you—we don’t need them. All you have to do is realize you made a mistake.”

Lucas didn’t take her hand. “I didn’t make a mistake.” His voice was thin, his words forced. His eyes glittered brightly in the dim light, and I could sense the waves of killing madness washing over him. Yet he stood his ground. “I love Bianca. I made my choice. But . . . I’m glad you came.”

Movement in the farther distance caught my attention. My eyes widened when I recognized two of the hunters in this small group, standing at the far side of Vic’s lawn—a heavyset, dark-skinned woman with her hair in thick braids, and another with golden skin and hair sheared crazily short against her scalp: Dana and Raquel. Dana had been Lucas’s best friend since they were little kids, and when my true nature had been revealed, she was the one who had helped us escape. Raquel had been my best friend and junior-year roommate at Evernight Academy, and the victim of a terrible wraith haunting ever since childhood. She had run away with Lucas and me, joining us when we’d become part of Black Cross.

Raquel was also the one who had turned me in to Black Cross when she’d realized I was the child of vampires.

They loved each other. Would Raquel have come around to Dana’s way of thinking and stand with us now? Or would Dana side with Raquel instead of the old friend who had abandoned her?

I turned away from them, focusing entirely on Lucas. Kate stood only a couple of feet away from him. Although she radiated disapproval, I could tell that it was only me she loathed; for her son, she had an uncertain smile. “Lucas, think about this,” she said. “We’re not only your cell. We’re your family. Because family’s not just about blood—it’s about what you share, what you believe.”

Lucas winced when she said blood, but Kate didn’t seem to notice. She was too angry at me, and too worried about him.

“Bianca can’t have told you what she was at first,” Kate said. “She lied to you.”

Although Lucas and I had gotten past the fact that we’d kept so many secrets from each other at the start, the memory of our old mistakes stung.

Kate continued, “Are you going to forget your duty, forget everything else you learned, and throw away your whole life chasing after some girl who lied to you? I think you’re smarter than that.”

He had thrown his life away, literally dying in an attempt to avenge me. The reminder of what he’d lost to be by my side scalded me with shame. Lucas didn’t notice—he shook with the need to restrain himself. His need for blood had become so overpowering that I could tell he might break.

“I need to talk to you.” Lucas’s voice sounded ragged with strain. “Please, Mom, can the two of us just . . . talk for a while? I have a lot to tell you. A lot of stuff I need to make sense of.”

Concern made Kate stop trying to convert him and start listening. “Lucas, are you okay? You look pale, and you’ve obviously been in a fight—”

“I’m—” His throat choked off the word fine. “We have to talk. That’s it. I need you to come through for me on this.” His eyes met hers. “I really need you to do that.”

Kate’s expression softened. The mother had won out over the fighter. “Okay.”

She took another step toward him and held out her arms. Lucas paused only a moment before embracing her tightly. I saw him grimace as he took in the scent of her blood—but he didn’t break.

He’s done it, I thought with delight. Lucas can control the blood hunger.

Then Kate’s arms tensed, and her eyes went wide. I realized that, for the first time, she saw that the blood staining his T-shirt was his own—and she saw the wound at his neck. The wound obviously caused by a vampire’s bite.

If I had noticed how cold Lucas felt to the touch, then his mother could, too.

Kate jerked away from him, leaving Lucas to stumble back in confusion. Her hand went to her stake. “What did Bianca do to you?”

Lucas took a step toward her, eyes pleading. “It wasn’t Bianca. Mom, just listen.”

“Ask the others to leave,” I said. Maybe Kate had a chance to accept her son as whatever he had become, but I didn’t want to take my chances on the rest of the Black Cross hunters. “Let Lucas explain.”

“You’ve been killed.” Kate’s voice was almost a sob. “You’re a vampire.”

There was a ripple of gasps and whispered curses from the other hunters. Dana hid her face against Raquel’s arm for a moment. I glanced behind us at Balthazar, who remained behind the wheel with the car’s motor idling.

Lucas kept his eyes locked with his mother’s. “Yes. I am. It’s not like they told us, Mom; I’m different but I’m still me. At least, I think I’m still me. This is . . . weird and scary, and I need to find out if there’s any way for me to be the person I was before. Please help me do that.”

Kate straightened. She never looked away from him, her gaze as cool and hard as iron. “You’re the shell of what my son used to be. I loved him more than a monster like you can ever know—”

“Mom, no,” Lucas whispered.

She acted like she hadn’t heard. “And you can taunt me with his voice and his face only as long as I let you.” Though her voice trembled, Kate pulled out her stake, her grip sure. “All I can do for Lucas now is give him a decent burial. And that means ending you.”

“Lucas!” I grabbed his arm to pull him toward the car, but he twisted away from me, as if unable to believe that his mother could do this to him. Then she swung at him so fast that he stumbled as he dodged the blow.

Most of the other hunters began running toward us. Ranulf burst from Vic’s doorway, ax in hand, courageously jumping into the fray despite the likelihood that he’d be staked and beheaded. None of that scared me as much as what was happening to Lucas.

Wham! Kate’s fist hit his jaw, and his expression went blank.

Wham! Lucas blocked one of her blows, and he narrowed his eyes, baring his teeth in rage.

Wham! This time he hit her. His fangs extended. I knew then that the threat had pushed him over the edge. The blood madness gripped Lucas now. He was fighting to kill.

I pulled at the clasp of my coral bracelet, the one Lucas had given me for my birthday—and my tether to corporeal existence. When it fell onto Vic’s lawn, I felt myself become lighter, insubstantial.

One of the hunters came at me, swinging a stake. I simply turned to vapor, so that his hand passed right through me—a weird sensation, sort of like a stomach cramp. The hunter screamed, which would have been hilarious any other time.

Zooming above the fray, I tried to take in the scene. Ranulf single-handedly held off the three hunters closest to Vic’s house. Vic had run out onto the lawn, not to fight but apparently to yell at Raquel, which at least was keeping her out of the battle. Dana, too—she had remained by Raquel’s side, maybe to defend her, maybe because she couldn’t attack her best friend even if he’d become a vampire. Lucas and his mother stood in the heart of it, locked in combat. He answered every punch she landed and clawed at her every chance he got, while throwing off the two hunters trying to come to her aid. If he got the upper hand, I knew he would kill Kate. And if he did that, if he drank his own mother’s blood, there was no way Lucas would ever be able to forgive himself.

At first it looked like Balthazar was just going to sit in the car and watch, which infuriated me. Then the motor revved, and with the screech of burning rubber, Balthazar drove the car straight onto Vic’s lawn, making the hunters scatter. He didn’t hit anybody, but not for lack of trying.

I wanted to protect the people I could. Quickly I pulled myself together into a physical form on the ground, right by Raquel, Dana, and Vic. Though I remained half transparent, they were able to see me.

“What the hell?” Dana yelled, throwing her arms around Raquel like I was going to hurt her.

“Get out of here,” I said. “Dana, take Raquel and try to get the others to follow you. Please!”

“Do it.” Vic folded his arms. “You don’t know what kind of badass ghost mojo she’s capable of. Trust me, I’ve seen her in action. You don’t want to be around.”

“Ghost?” Raquel whispered. Her face went pale. “Bianca— you’re dead?”

“We’re leaving.” Dana dragged Raquel toward one of the trucks. Raquel’s eyes met mine for one tortured moment before she turned to follow.

“Um, Bianca?” Vic tried to tap my shoulder, but his hand went through. “Whoa. Okay, some of that badass ghost mojo wouldn’t be a bad idea right now.”

A couple of hunters ran toward us, but Balthazar tackled them, taking them both down with his outstretched arms. Ranulf held his own, but I wasn’t sure how much longer he could go. And two hunters already lay dazed on the ground near Lucas, who battled his mother in blind rage.

I did have ghostly powers that were useful in combat, but I’d only ever tried them on vampires. Would that kill a human? I wasn’t ready to do that, even if the humans in question seemed very ready to kill me.

“We don’t need powers,” I said quickly. “We need the police.”

“Police?”

“Vic, call 911! Tell them there’s a—like, a home invasion or an attempted robbery in progress, something!” Black Cross tried to steer clear of the law, because they wanted to stay off their radar. “When they hear the sirens, they’ll go.”

Vic took off for the house and his cell phone. I ran toward Lucas, not sure what I was going to do but desperate to keep him from either being killed or killing his mother.

Lucas’s wild-eyed gaze told me he was beyond reasoning with. So I cried, “Kate, don’t! You don’t want to do this!”

“Let me give my son some peace!” She never stopped circling her son; one of her eyes was already blackening from his fist. Lucas would never have done that to her, never, if anything of his spirit was in control.

I slipped between them—not like she could do anything to me, what with me being dead and everything. “You can’t kill him. You know you don’t want to.”

Her gaze went right through me, focusing only on the cloudy figure of her son behind my transparent form. “I can and I will.”

My desperation peaked. I looked at Kate, pleading with every part of my soul for her to stop and try to see that her son was still with her—to see him through my eyes—until it felt almost like my desperation had become a blade that could cut through her—

Then this bizarre tidal pull seized me, dragging me toward Kate in the blink of an eye. Before I could ask myself what was happening, I felt myself being drawn into her, absorbed by her. Everything went dark for an instant, and then when I could see again, I knew I was looking through Kate’s eyes. I could feel her body all around me, like a suit of armor, but one with warmth, breath, and a heartbeat.

Kate’s hand dropped the stake as her feet stumbled backward. The only thing I could think was, I’m possessing someone. I’ve possessed Kate. How did I do that? The sheer power of my desperation had acted almost like a battering ram, opening a portal into her very self. Could all wraiths do this? I had no idea. All that mattered was my ability to stop this fight.

Lucas charged at me, and I dodged him, but clumsily, because controlling Kate’s body was weird and unfamiliar, sort of like my first driving lesson. I shouted, “Everyone, let’s go!” Talking in Kate’s voice sounded odd, but I kept giving orders. “We’re getting out of here now!”

Then I felt an even stranger sensation—Kate’s spirit, struggling against me, trying to push me out. Could she do it? I decided to let her, if it was possible.

Instantly, I felt myself scattered and invisible, floating upward in a dreamlike haze. My reverie was broken when I heard Kate say, voice shaking with fear, “We have to leave.”

The hunters ran for their trucks and vans, responding either to her first order or her last. Lucas sprang after her, but Balthazar shoved him aside and took him down, keeping him back.

As their tail lights vanished down the road, Vic jogged out of his house, both hands in his sandy hair, like he was trying to hold his head together. “What, I just called the cops for nothing?”

“First be glad that Black Cross is gone,” Ranulf pointed out, brushing himself off and calm as ever.

“Well, the police are coming. So maybe get the car out of the yard.” Vic looked at the deep tire tracks in the grass and groaned. “There are not even words for how grounded I’m going to be. They’re gonna have to invent words for it. New words.”

I coalesced amid the guys. “Ranulf’s right, though. This could have been a lot worse.”

Lucas turned toward Vic. His eyes remained flat and blind, his fangs still extended. With horror I realized that Lucas hadn’t yet drunk blood—and the killing rage from the fight held him in its grasp.

He lunged at Vic. Ranulf managed to knock Vic out of the way, but Lucas tore at him with his whole strength, willing to shred Ranulf if that got him closer to the human, to the source of fresh blood.

Vic’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my God,” he said, standing in place out of shock instead of running for his life. “This isn’t happening.”

“Vic, run!” Balthazar said, pulling Lucas off Ranulf. Vic took a couple of shuffling steps, then finally accepted what was going on and ran like crazy toward his front door. Lucas elbowed Balthazar sharply, but Balthazar was able, with difficulty, to maintain his grip. He said to Ranulf, “Get him into the wine cellar. Keep him there until we can get him some blood. After I move the car, I’ll come help you.”

“Lucas?” I pleaded. “Lucas, can you hear me?”

It was like I didn’t exist. Lucas only wanted blood, and he didn’t care if he had to kill Vic to get it.

Ranulf dragged Lucas backward, struggling with him the whole way. All I could do was open the wine cellar door for them. In the distance, sirens blared, coming closer.

“Let me go!” Lucas raged, clawing Ranulf viciously in the side. Ranulf grimaced but held on. “Let me go!”

“You have to calm down,” I said. “Please, Lucas, get ahold of yourself.”

“He cannot—hear you—” Ranulf managed to say as he wrestled Lucas toward a corner. “I remember the madness.”

Lucas roared, a terrifyingly animal sound. Every muscle of his body was flexed in his desperate need to escape, to kill and drink blood. Ranulf could hold him off, because of his great age and power, but after that battle, Ranulf’s strength had to be taxed to the limit. Seeing Lucas like this, reduced to an insane shell of himself, here in the little makeshift apartment where we had loved each other so much, nearly destroyed me.

The sirens got louder. Lucas roared again and smashed Ranulf backward against the wall with such force that the wine bottles rattled and Ranulf lost his grip. He leaped toward the door, and I started after him—but Balthazar came through.

Thank God, I thought. Balthazar can stop him, I know he can!

But then I cried out in horror as Balthazar brandished a stake and swung it, hard, so that it slammed deep into Lucas’s chest.

Chapter Three

LUCAS COLLAPSED UPON THE FLOOR, A STAKE jutting out from his heart.

I fell to my knees by his side. “Balthazar, no! What are you doing?” Just as I grasped the stake to pull it out, Balthazar roughly towed me up to my feet, away from Lucas. I went vapory again, slipping out of his arms easily. “You can’t stop me from taking care of him.”

“Think,” Balthazar said. “We need him to remain quiet while the police are here, and make sure he doesn’t go after Vic. I can’t come up with any other way to make that happen. Can you?”

“There has to be some way better than staking him,” I insisted.

“He is essentially unharmed,” Ranulf said, shaking off the impact of Lucas’s last blows. “The stake through the heart only paralyzes; it does not kill. When the stake is removed, Lucas will be as he was, except for a scar.”

“I know—but—” The sight of him lying at my feet, crumpled and dead as he had been just a few hours ago, was too raw for me to bear.

Balthazar stepped closer. In the relative darkness of the wine cellar, his shadowy form seemed more imposing than usual, which made the contrast with his quiet voice especially striking. “Lucas staked me once to save me. I’m returning the favor.”

“You probably enjoyed it.” I turned away from him then, but already I’d realized we couldn’t unstake Lucas yet. As he was, he was uncontrollable.

“Until we have fresh blood for him to drink, leaving him unconscious is a kindness,” Balthazar said. Just when I might have softened toward him, he had to add, “When you calm down enough to act like an adult, you’ll see that.”

“Please do not force me to listen to romantic bickering,” Ranulf said.

Ranulf’s request was simple enough, but it was an uncomfortable reminder of everything that had happened between Balthazar and me—how much more he had wanted, and what I had been unable to give. Although I didn’t think jealousy drove Balthazar’s actions, I wondered if it allowed him to gain some satisfaction by staking Lucas.

Balthazar had insisted on going after Charity the day after my death, and he had brought Lucas along, knowing that Lucas was too grief-stricken to truly fight. Lucas, near suicidal, had plunged in unprepared. The aftermath of Balthazar’s mistake would be on Lucas forever. That outweighed everything that had happened between us before, good or bad.

This is what you get for hanging out with the wrong kind of dead people, a sardonic voice said.

That would be Maxie, the house ghost. The others couldn’t hear her. She’d been connected to Vic throughout his childhood but had never appeared to him or any other living creature— except me. Anticipating my transformation into a wraith, she’d begun appearing to me back when I was a student at Evernight Academy; now that I’d died, she wanted me to abandon the mortal world and join her in other, more mystical realms. The whole idea terrified me, and I’d never been less in the mood to talk to her about it.

An awkward silence filled the room. A dead body on the floor made casual conversation pretty much impossible. Balthazar studied the wine racks for a few minutes, in what I thought was just a distraction, until he pulled a bottle out. “Argentinean Malbec. Nice.”

“You’re going to sit here and drink wine?” I protested.

“We’ve got to sit here and do something.” Balthazar looked around for a corkscrew, failed to find one, and then simply smashed the neck of the bottle against the tiny sink. Spatters of red fell onto the floor. “It’s not a particularly expensive bottle. We can replace it.”

“That’s not the problem,” I said.

“What is the problem, Bianca?” He, too, had become frustrated. “Are you freaking out because I look underage? My face might be nineteen, but I’m legal plus four hundred years or so.”

He knew that wasn’t what I meant either. Before I could snap at him, Ranulf groaned. “Still there is bickering.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Truce.” I was too tired for any of this.

Although Balthazar looked like he might keep it up, he finally let it go. From his pocket he withdrew my bracelet. “Picked this up off the lawn,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said flatly. But I hastened to clasp it around my wrist again. Since my death a couple of days ago, I’d learned that only a handful of things I’d bonded to strongly in life had the ability to empower me to be fully corporeal again—this coral bracelet, and a jet brooch in Lucas’s pocket. Both of them were made out of material that had once been alive; it was something we had in common. As the bracelet enhanced my power, I felt gravity settle around me, and I no longer had to work at retaining a regular form.

Balthazar sighed heavily, grabbed two glasses from the rack beside the sink, and poured for himself and Ranulf. After a moment, he said, “Can you drink wine anymore? Drink anything?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t seem to need food or water.” The mere thought of chewing was faintly disgusting to me now, I realized—one more difference between me and the living world.

There are better things than eating and drinking, Maxie said. Increasingly her presence could be felt, a sort of cool spot right next to me, but Balthazar and Ranulf remained oblivious. Aren’t you curious about what they are?

I ignored her. I had eyes only for Lucas, so pale and broken upon the floor. A thin circle of bloodstains ringed the stake, no more: evidence that his heart had stopped beating forever. The strong features that had always captivated me—his firm jaw, his high cheekbones—were more sculpted now, his handsomeness as compelling as it was unnatural.

The makeshift apartment in the wine cellar was where we had lived for the final weeks of our lives, virtually the only time we’d ever had to just be together without rules to keep us apart. We’d tried to make spaghetti on the hot plate, watched old movies on the DVD player, and slept together in the bed. Sometimes our situation had seemed so desperate, but I realized now that it was the greatest joy we’d ever shared. Maybe the greatest we ever would share.

We’re together, I reminded myself. You have to believe that as long as that’s true, we can make it. That belief had never been more important, but it had never felt so fragile.

I heard car doors slamming; Vic had apparently managed to get rid of the police. Ranulf and Balthazar lifted glasses to each other, or to Vic. Within a few seconds, there was a rapping on the door, and Balthazar opened it to let Vic in.

“Those guys did not want to believe my home invasion story,” he said. Vic remained on the doorstop instead of coming in. “Apparently my neighbors called them even before I did and said it was a wild party, though how that looked like a party, I don’t know. They made me take a Breathalyzer—oh, man.” Vic saw Lucas on the floor. “What did you guys do?”

“The staking will not harm him,” Ranulf explained. “When it is removed, Lucas will revive. Do you require some wine?”