Hourglass

The shapes in the brush all rustled as one, moving closer. Lucas tensed, and I realized he could see them in the dark as well as I could. Ever since I’d first drunk his blood, he’d developed the first stirrings of vampiric power. That meant he knew what I knew: We didn’t have much time. Minutes, maybe.

“Raquel, come on,” Lucas said, but she stubbornly remained by Dana’s side, shaking her head.

“This isn’t safe,” I tried. “Please, Raquel, you could be killed.”

Her voice trembled as she answered, but she said only, “I’m done with running.”

Dana set aside the crossbow she’d been loading and faced Raquel. Her entire body seemed to vibrate with energy. She had been the one to spot the vampires, the one who had known about the danger longest—and she was already in battle mode. Yet she spoke gently to Raquel. “Packing up our stuff isn’t running. Okay? It’s something we need to do, because we’re going to have to get out of here, either after the fight or during it.”

“Not if we win,” Raquel began, but stopped when she saw Dana’s expression.

“They know our location now,” Lucas said. “More vampires will come. We’ve got to run. Help us get ready to run. That’s the best thing you can do right now.”

Raquel never looked away from Dana as her face shifted from determination to resignation. “Next time,” she said. “Next time I’ll know how to fight.”

“We’ll be in this together next time,” Dana agreed. Her gaze shifted to the brush and the pursuers. Nobody needed vampire senses to know how close they were now. “Get your butt out of here.”

I grabbed Raquel’s hand and pulled her back into the warehouse. After a few days being confined here, always with dozens of people around, I felt weird seeing it almost empty. The blankets were disheveled, and some of the cots had been tipped over in the rush. Still in shock, I started folding a blanket.

“Screw the blankets.” Lucas headed toward the weapons lockers. Almost everything had been taken by the hunters, but there were still a few stakes, arrows, and canisters of holy water. “We get the ammo ready. The rest we can replace.”

“Of course.” I should have thought of that. But how could I? My brain was stuck, like when the needle of Dad’s record player caught in the scratches of his old jazz records: Are my parents outside? Is Balthazar? Will Black Cross kill people that I care about, people who are probably only trying to rescue me?

Outside I heard a shout—then a scream.

All three of us froze. The noise swelled outside from a few cries to a roar, and the metal wall of the warehouse thudded. It wasn’t a body—a rock, maybe, or a misfired arrow—but Raquel and I jumped.

Lucas shook it off fastest. “Pack this stuff up. When they call for us, we’re gonna have about two minutes to get our gear into the vans. That’s it.”

We got to work. It was difficult to concentrate. The cacophony outside frightened me, not only because of my fear for the others but also because it reminded me powerfully of the last Black Cross battle I’d witnessed: the burning of Evernight. My back still ached from the fall I’d taken while running across the flaming roof, and I imagined I could still taste smoke and ash. Before, I’d been able to comfort myself by thinking that it was all over—but it wasn’t. As long as Lucas and I were stuck with Black Cross, the battles would always follow us. Danger would always be near.

With every shout, every thud, Lucas seemed to get more worked up. He wasn’t used to staying out of fights; he was more likely to start them.

Trunk shut, locked, moving on. Do they want to take the wood that hasn’t been carved into stakes yet? Surely not—they can get wood anywhere, right? I kept trying to figure it out, working as fast as I could. Next to me, Raquel was simply grabbing armfuls of junk and dumping it into boxes without even checking to see what it was. She probably had the right idea.

Something slammed hard into the metal wall again, and I gasped. Lucas didn’t tell me it was going to be all right; instead, he grabbed a stake.

At that moment, two sprawling figures burst through one of the side doors. Even my vampire senses couldn’t tell me which was my own kind and which was the Black Cross hunter, because they were too tangled together—a blur of motion, sweat, and snarled curses. They staggered toward us, oblivious to our presence, only to their life-and-death struggle. The half-open door behind them showed a sliver of light, and let the screams come through even louder.

“Do something,” Raquel whispered. “Lucas, you know what to do, right?”

Lucas leaped forward, farther and faster than a mere human should’ve been able to, and swung his stake into the fray. Instantly one of the figures froze; the stake had paralyzed the vampire. I looked at his still face—green eyes, fair hair, features frozen in horror—and felt a flash of sympathy for him in the instant before the Black Cross hunter slid a long, broad blade from his belt and severed his opponent’s head with a single stroke. The vampire shuddered once, then crumbled to oily dust upon the floor.

The vampire had been an old one, then; there was very little left of the mortal man he’d been. As the others stood there, looking down at the remains, I could only wonder if this had been one of my parents’ friends. I hadn’t recognized him, but whoever he’d been, he’d come here in the belief he was helping me.

“How did you even do that?” Raquel said. “That was, like, superhuman.” She meant it only as a compliment, and luckily the Black Cross hunter was too exhausted and relieved to notice that Lucas had just called upon vampire power.

My eyes sought Lucas’s. I was relieved to see no triumph there, only a plea for understanding. When he’d been forced to choose, he had to protect his fellow hunter. I got that. What I didn’t get was what would have happened if this vampire had been my mother or father.

Eduardo leaned in through the open doorway, panting but somehow exhilarated by the fight. “We’ve pushed them back. Won’t have long before they return, though. We’ve got to load up now.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Someplace we can do real training. Get you new recruits into shape.” Eduardo glanced at me as he spoke, and although he didn’t look friendly, he looked—well, like possibly he hated me less. Now that I was a potential soldier, maybe he finally saw me as useful. But then his grin changed, becoming more cynical as he turned toward Lucas. “You won’t have any more excuses to run from a fight next time.”

Lucas looked like he might punch Eduardo in the jaw, so I grabbed his hand. His temper sometimes threatened to get the better of him.

“Come on, people!” Kate called from outside the warehouse. “Let’s move!”

Chapter Three

WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES, EVERYONE HAD PILED into Black Cross’s ramshackle armada of old trucks, vans, and cars. Lucas and I made sure to get into the van Dana was driving, and Raquel took the shotgun seat. With the rest of the van piled high with the group’s gear, we were on our own for the trip.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I shouted to Dana, over the wailing on the radio.

Dana pulled out, to join the caravan. “Ever been to New York City?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Nobody was kidding. Lucas gave me a confused look, like he couldn’t understand why I thought that was weird. I tried to explain. “You guys carry around all these weapons and go out to attack vampires. In a big city like that, don’t people—you know—notice?”

“Nope,” Dana said. “She’s never been to New York before.”

Raquel laughed as she thumped on the dashboard in sync with the song. “You’re gonna love it, Bianca,” she promised. “My sister Frida used to take me to Manhattan once a year. There are all these crazy galleries, art so bizarre you can’t believe anybody ever dreamed it up.”

“We’re not going to have a lot of time to spend in museums,” Dana said. Raquel’s drumming faltered, but only for a moment; as soon as the chorus started over, she was pounding the dash as hard as ever.

“It still seems weird,” I said to Lucas. “How are we even supposed to find space there?”

He said, “We have friends in New York. It’s home to one of the biggest Black Cross cells in the world, and they have a pretty extensive support network.”

“In other words,” Dana called over the music, “those guys are rolling in dough.”

I joked, “What, do they live in penthouses?”

“Not hardly,” Lucas said, “but you ought to check out their arsenal. I think there are some armies that don’t have the firepower the New York cell’s got.”

“How come the New York cell is so big?” I asked. Despite the seriousness of our situation, I could feel my spirits rising with every mile we drove. It felt so good to be on the move. “Why aren’t they like all the rest of you?”

“Because New York is a city with a serious vampire problem.” Lucas looked grim. “The vampires got there almost as soon as the Dutch did, back in the 1600s. They’re entrenched in that area—massive power, major influence. That Black Cross cell needs all the resources it can get to stand up against them. Actually, that was our first cell in the New World. At least, that’s what they tell us. It’s not like we show up in the history books.”

I thought about vampires in old New Amsterdam, and then I thought about Balthazar and Charity, who had been alive then. When Balthazar had told me about growing up in Colonial America, I had thought it sounded so unfathomably old, so mysterious and impressive. It was weird to think that Black Cross went that far back, too.

Raquel must have been thinking along similar lines, because she asked, “Is that when Black Cross was founded? The sixteen hundreds?”

Dana laughed at her. “Try a thousand years before that.”

“Get out,” I said. “Really?”

“Started in the Byzantine Empire,” Lucas said. I tried hard to remember who the Byzantines were—I thought maybe they were what came after the Roman Empire, but I wasn’t sure. I imagined Mom’s disgust if she knew how vague I was about this: some history teacher’s daughter I made. “At first, Black Cross was the guard for Constantinople. But soon it spread throughout Europe, then into Asia. Went to the Americas and Australia along with the explorers. Apparently the kings and queens used to insist on at least one hunter traveling on every expedition.”

That last bit especially caught my attention. “Kings and queens? You mean—like, the government knows about you guys?” I tried to imagine Lucas as a sort of paranormal Secret Service agent. It wasn’t that much of a stretch.

“Not so much, anymore.” Lucas leaned his forehead against the window on his side. The highway rippled by, so fast the side of the road was a blur. “You guys—I mean, you guys know that vampires basically went underground not long after the Middle Ages.”

I gave Lucas the wide-eyed look that means, Shut up, will you? He looked appropriately apologetic. Obviously, he’d nearly said you guys went underground—in other words, he had come close to referring to me as a vampire in front of Dana and Raquel. It had been only a slip of the tongue, but that was all it would take.

Luckily, neither Dana nor Raquel had caught it. Raquel said, “So vampires fooled everybody into not believing in them. That meant they could move more freely—and that Black Cross wouldn’t be as powerful anymore. Right?”

“You got it, smarty-pants.” Dana frowned at the road ahead of us. “Damn, but Kate’s got a lead foot. Does she want us all to get speeding tickets? We can’t break formation!”

Lucas pretended he didn’t hear her bitching about his mother. “Anyway, we don’t get big grants from the crown anymore. There are people who know what we do. Some of those people have money. They keep us afloat. That’s pretty much how it is.”

I imagined Lucas as the figure he might have been in the Middle Ages—resplendent in a suit of armor, honored for his hard work and bravery with feasts in the greatest courts in the land. Then I realized how much he would’ve hated that, dressing up and making nice at fancy parties.

No, I decided, he belongs right here, right now. With me.

“Hey,” Dana said. “At eleven o’clock. Check it out.”

Then I saw what she was calling our attention to: the shape of Evernight Academy on the horizon.

We weren’t that close. Evernight was far from any highway, and Kate and Eduardo weren’t foolhardy enough to drag us onto Mrs. Bethany’s turf again. But Evernight had a distinctive silhouette, since it was an enormous Gothic building with towers high up in the hills of Massachusetts. Even at this distance, with the school no more than a craggy outline, we recognized it. We were far enough away that the damage from the fire was invisible. It was as if Black Cross had failed to touch the school at all.

“Still standing,” Dana said. “Dammit.”

“We’ll get it someday.” Raquel flattened one hand against her window, like she wanted to punch through the glass and knock the school down herself.

I thought of my mother and father, and it occurred to me that maybe they were nearby. This moment, right now, was possibly as close as I would ever be to my parents again.

I’d become so angry with them during my last days at Evernight. They had never told me that the wraiths played a role in my birth, or that they might be coming for me someday because of that. For a year I’d been literally haunted by ghosts that seemed to think they owned me, and I still didn’t know what that might mean. My parents had also refused to tell me if I had any choice other than becoming a full vampire someday. After meeting some of the vampires who truly were insane killers, I’d decided to try to find out whether it was possible for me to live out a normal life as a human being.

I still don’t know the truth. What’s going to happen to me? Not having any answers was so terrifying that I tried not to think about it, but dark uncertainty tugged at me nearly all the time now.

Yet as I looked up at the school, both my fear and my anger faded. I remembered only how loving Mom and Dad were and how close we’d been not that long ago. So many things had happened to me just in the past couple of days, and none of it seemed entirely real if I couldn’t tell my parents about it. I felt a powerful, almost overwhelming urge to leap out of the van and run toward Evernight, calling for them.

But I knew I could never go back to the ways things were before. So much had changed. I’d been forced to choose a side, and I’d chosen humanity, life—and Lucas.

Lucas caught a lock of my hair between his fingers, gently testing whether or not I needed comfort. I leaned my head against his shoulder, and for a while we rode on without anybody talking, only the music playing. Every mile marker we passed reminded me of how far we had come from the last home I’d had and the person I used to be.

We stopped to get gasoline and take bathroom breaks occasionally, but we took a longer rest only once during the drive, for lunch.

While Dana and Raquel joined the horde of people crowding into a fast-food Mexican place, Lucas and I begged off to walk to a diner down the street. Of course we wanted a few minutes alone, but even more than I needed to be with Lucas, I needed to eat—more specifically, to drink.

The first thing Lucas said when we were walking away from the crowd along the side of the road, sort of alone at last, was, “How hungry are you?”

“So hungry I can hear your heart beating.” And it seemed to me I could taste Lucas’s blood on my tongue. Probably better not to mention that. The sunlight bore down on me hard, harsh now that I’d been without blood for several days. I’d never done without for so long before.

“You think the diner—maybe the raw meat would have some blood, we could sneak back there—”

“That wouldn’t be enough. Besides, I know what to do.” I stood still, watching the swaying grass beside the highway, which lashed back and forth in the currents of passing cars. A robin pecked at the dirt, searching for worms amid the bottle caps and cigarette butts.

“Bianca?”

I could see nothing but the robin and think of nothing but its blood. Bird’s blood is thin, but it’s hot.

“Don’t watch,” I whispered. My jaw ached. My fangs slid into my mouth, sharp points scraping against my lips and tongue. Though we stood in the brilliant sunshine, everything around me seemed to go dark, as though the robin were in a spotlight, moving in slow motion.

Vampire quick, I pounced. The bird fluttered in my hands for only a moment before I bit into its flesh.

Yes, that’s it, blood! I drank the few sips of blood the robin had to offer, eyes shut in delight. When it was shriveled and dead in my hands, I let it drop as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Only then did I realize I had just done that right in front of Lucas. Shame hit me as I thought how savage I must have looked, and how disgusted Lucas must be.

But when I hesitantly raised my eyes to him, Lucas had turned away—just like I’d asked him to. He hadn’t seen. Sensing that I was done, he turned back around and smiled at me gently. When he saw the fear I felt, he shook his head.

“I love you,” he murmured. “That means I’m not just here for the pretty parts. I’m here no matter what.”

Alight with relief, I took his hand and walked with him to the diner. We were broke, and I wore clothes that didn’t fit me, and we were on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere—but in that moment I felt more beautiful than any princess or supermodel or anything. I had Lucas, who loved me no matter what. That was all I needed.

We ate fast at the diner. Lucas was starving, and I needed regular food, too. Between mouthfuls of French fries, we tried to work out what else we might do with our precious few moments of free time.

“Can we find an Internet café, maybe? I could e-mail my parents.”

“No. N. O. First of all, there’s no way we’d find an Internet café out in the sticks. Second, you’re not e-mailing them. You can call once you know where they are, but not from a cell, or anything else that can be traced back to us. You can send a letter. But no e-mail. That’s another Black Cross order we’re not disobeying.”

Lucas claimed there was a difference between disobeying orders and breaking stupid rules, but right that second, I couldn’t see it. Whatever. I knew another way to find out what had gone down the night Evernight burned.

At first I wanted to use Lucas’s cell phone, but he pointed out that Black Cross would then be able to track the call. Luckily, once we were done eating, we found a bank of pay phones at the side of the diner. The first two I picked up had no dial tone, and the third’s cord had been cut, but the fourth worked okay. I smiled in relief as soon as I heard the dial tone. O for operator. “Collect,” I said, reading off the number I wanted from Lucas’s cell phone contacts list. “Say that it’s Bianca Olivier.”

Silence followed. “Did she hang up?” I said.

“There’s a pause with collect calls.” Lucas stood next to me, leaning against the plastic hood of the pay phone. “They don’t want you to yell your message at the other person before they’ve accepted the charges.”

The phone line clicked, and I heard a sleepy voice say, “Bianca?”

“Vic!” I bounced up and down on my heels, and Lucas and I shared a huge smile. “Vic, you’re okay!”

“Yeah, yeah. Whoa, wait a second—I’m still kinda waking up here.” I could imagine Vic clutching his cell phone to his face, with bad bed-head, in the middle of an extremely messy bedroom, surrounded by his posters. Probably he had crazy sheets, plaid or polka-dotted. He yawned, then, more alertly, asked, “Am I dreaming again?”

“No dream. It’s me. You weren’t injured in the fire?”

“No. Nobody got hurt very badly, which was, like, crazy good luck. Lost my pith helmet, though.” Vic obviously considered this a grave tragedy. “What about you? Are you okay? After they put out the fire, we were going nuts trying to find you. A couple people said they saw you on the grounds, so we knew you got out of the school, but we couldn’t figure where you ran off to.”

“I’m fine. I’m with Lucas.”

“Lucas?” No wonder Vic sounded astonished. As far as he knew, Lucas and I had broken up months ago. We’d had to keep our relationship a secret since then. “This is getting totally surreal. If this is just a dream, I’m gonna be so mad.”

“You’re not dreaming,” Lucas called. His hearing was sharp enough to listen in on the call, even though he was standing a foot from the receiver. “Pull it together, man. What are you doing asleep at eleven A.M.?”

“As you should recall, I am the proverbial night owl. Sleeping until noon is not only my right but my responsibility,” Vic said. “Besides, as the old song goes, school’s out for summer, school’s out forever.”

I gasped. “Forever? Does that mean Evernight Academy was destroyed?”

“Destroyed, no. Mrs. Bethany swears they’ll open for business in the fall, though I don’t see how. I mean, that place was torched.”

The harder questions came next. I gripped the receiver tightly, willing my voice not to shake. “Were my parents hurt? Did you see them?”

“They’re okay. I told you—everybody got out all right. Your mom and dad didn’t get caught in the fire. In fact, they were helping us look for you.” Vic paused. “They were pretty freaked out, Bianca.”

That was as close as Vic got to a guilt trip. I couldn’t really feel the impact, though; I was too elated to know that my parents had survived the Black Cross attack.

“Do you know where they are?” I didn’t think they would go far from Evernight Academy. My parents would stay close to the grounds—mostly because they would be hoping I’d return. I knew I couldn’t, but I hated the thought of them waiting for me there.

“They were sticking around the school last I saw,” Vic said. So much for calling them—my parents tried hard to adapt to modern life, but they hadn’t quite gotten as far as having cell phones.

“What about Balthazar?”

Lucas frowned. He had some problems with Balthazar, first because Balthazar was a vampire, and second because he and I had some history. It was over between us—it hardly even got started, honestly—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still worried about him.

“Balty’s A-OK,” Vic replied. “He was totally upset after the fire, though. I think it must’ve been because you were missing. The guy was crushed.”

“It wasn’t because of me,” I said quietly. My mood darkened as the weight of everything I’d lost settled over me, and I slumped against the pay phone, suddenly tired.

“Okay, okay. Backing off.”

What Vic didn’t and couldn’t know was that Balthazar’s misery was due to his sister, Charity, who had arranged the Black Cross attack. Charity was the most important person in the world to Balthazar, and, weirdly, I thought he was just as important to her. That wouldn’t stop her from trying to hurt him, or anyone who got close to him, including me.

Vic, who was becoming more alert by the minute, said, “What about Raquel? She was the only other one we couldn’t find. Is she with you, maybe?”

“She is, actually. She’s fine. Doing great.”

“Excellent! That means we all got out okay. Total miracle.”

“Where did Ranulf end up?” I asked.

“He’s crashed out in our guest room right now. You want me to grab him?”

“That’s okay. I’m just glad he’s all right.” Lucas and I shared surprised smiles. If Vic knew he’d invited a vampire to come stay in his house, he probably wouldn’t be sleeping so late—if at all. Fortunately Ranulf was too mild to cause anyone harm. “Listen, we have to go. I’ll be in touch, though.”

“Oh, man, I cannot deal with people being cryptic first thing in the morning.” Vic sighed, then said, very quietly, “Call your parents. Just—you need to, all right?”

A lump rose in my throat. “Good-bye, Vic.”

After I hung up, Lucas took my hand. “Like I said, there are ways for you to get in touch if you want to.”