Lust for Life (26 page)

“Yeah, sorry.” He stares at the sky. “I probably deserve to just lie here forever.”

I look around at the Isle of Wight’s hills and valleys.
Unlike the rooms where the dying Ciara and Shane lay, the walls of Jim’s turning place
appear far away, a gray mist near the English Channel. “Could be worse.”

“You can stay if you want. The Who is up next. You like them.”

“We can’t stay.” Shane is already getting to his feet. “But you can come with us.”

With some effort, Jim turns his head to me. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.” I reach over his body to take Shane’s hand. “But I’m going with him.”

“Cool.” Jim focuses on the sky beyond us. “I like it here.”

I look up and gasp. The stars are every color, close enough to touch. The black velvet
tapestry they dance upon rotates like a sped-up film of the night sky, with the Milky
Way stretching and rippling purple and white. It’s almost like being on another planet,
but it doesn’t need to be. This one is beautiful enough, especially through Jim’s
eyes.

I join Shane and lean back against his chest. Together the three of us watch the sky
and listen to the Doors. It’s not heaven, but it’s damn close.

And it’s not for us. “We have to go,” I tell Shane. “Now.”

“Last chance, man.” Shane’s voice is close to breaking. “I put you here, but she can
get you out. I think.”

“Nah. This is good. When I get sick of it, I’ll go there.” He points to the brightest
part of the Milky Way’s arm, where a blinding white light pulses. “If Kashmir asks,
tell him everything is groovy with me.”

“I doubt he’ll believe us.”

“Then tell him I found Lemuria. He’ll know what that means.”

Jim is still laughing when I take Shane’s hand. But as we step away, Jim closes his
eyes, stealing the light.

•  •  •

I am nowhere.

I am nothing.

I reach out with formless hands, call out with a silent voice, but Shane is gone.

What have I done?

I teeter on the edge of despair, doubting every choice of my life, my unlife, and
both brief, foolish afterlives. It would take just one step to fall into that comforting
eternity of regret.

And then I hear . . . a voice? Music?

It grows louder, until I can hear the raw, aching tones I’d recognize anywhere.

Shane is singing my song. The one he wrote for me as an engagement gift, even though
vampires supposedly can’t write songs, can’t create anything new. He did it for me.

He’s still here.

Unless it’s a cruel trick. If I’m actually in hell, there’d be no worse torment than
to hear my lover’s voice only to lose it. I think of Orpheus, the Greek hero Lori
told me about, who sang his beloved wife Eurydice out of the underworld.

Well, almost. At the last second, he disobeyed Hades’s terms of release and looked
back at Eurydice, either in fear or joy. She fell back into the land of death, this
time for good.

I’m not Eurydice, and I don’t believe in hell.

•  •  •

“Ciara!”

I see nothing but black. “Shane, where are you? Where are we?”

“Just follow me. This way.” He starts to sing again, this time the second verse.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve been here before.”

He continues the song, and suddenly I
see
his voice, streaming out in bright, dancing dots, guiding my way like airport runway
lights at night.

But I’m falling behind. Shane is on the third verse, the one that talks about our
future. He wrote it when I was still human, so it speaks of me growing old and him
staying by my side until I die.

What happens if I don’t find him before the end of the song? I want to call to him
to wait for me, but what if that means dragging him back into the darkness? I can’t
do that to him. If he can find a way out without me—

“Almost there.” His voice is so close now, like it’s coming from inside my head. “Can
you feel this?”

A hand slips around mine, warm and solid. I gasp.

“How . . .”

“I don’t know. I don’t know where we are, but I know one thing.” Shane moves closer,
and now his entire body is against mine. He pulls me into his arms. “No place without
you should have the balls to call itself heaven.”

I burrow my face into his chest, afraid to speak and break the spell. Soon death will
part us. Nothing lasts forever, not even this.

Suddenly I feel heavy as a sandbag. I fall to my knees
(I have knees!), which meet something that feels like the ground (there’s ground!).
I reach down to feel dirt and a few sprigs of cold, dry grass.

If these are the Elysian fields, they’ve been oversold.

“Shane?”

“Shh. Do you hear that?”

I shut my mouth and listen. Voices are screaming in terror. Oh, crap, we
are
on our way to hell. Sucks that I was wrong about that.

His whisper is taut with fear. “It’s coming.”

“
What’s
coming?”

“The sun. Ciara, get down!” Shane throws his body on top of mine as the world turns
white.

26

Now We’re Getting Somewhere

I scream at the searing heat on my arms and scalp and feet, the only parts Shane isn’t
covering. The sun must’ve burned out my lungs, because I can’t breathe.

Is this what we have to look forward to for an eternity? Burning again and again?
I promise, next time I’ll stay on the Isle of Wight with the Milky Way and the Doors.

The morning sun pierces my eyes, so I shut them and wait to catch fire.

And then, I don’t. The sun is warm, but only compared to the hard ground beneath me.
The hard ground my hand is on. Totally not burning.

“Ciara!” Shane’s voice rasps in my ear. He grabs my hand, trying to cover it. He’s
also not on fire.

Lori is screaming—that’s who I heard in the other place. A thick black blanket is
thrown over us. I cough from the heavy coating of dust.

“Your foot!” Lori yanks the blanket to cover my toes. “Ciara, Shane. Where were you?
Where’d you come from?”

Shane and I stare at each other under the blanket. I can see him because one of the
edges is lifted slightly, letting
in the morning sun. Which, again, is not burning us.

“Where were we?” he whispers, echoing Lori’s question. “And what are we?”

My body feels different yet familiar. It’s the way I felt seven months ago. Warm.
Weak. “Alive.”

“Human?” He cups my face with one hand. “How?”

“Who cares?” I whip off the blanket, making Lori shriek. “See?”

David gapes at us, and I realize we’re both naked. I pull the blanket back over us
and tug it up to my armpits. Lori hands Shane one of the other blackout curtains.
It wafts a strong scent of smoke.

David points to the scorched grass beneath us. “You guys went up in flames. You disappeared.”

“How long were we gone?” I ask him.

“Half an hour at least.”

I look at Lori’s face, soaked with tears. “I’m alive.”

“It’s a miracle.” She drops to her knees and hugs me hard. “I thought I’d lost you
forever this time, but instead you’re back. You’re back for good.”

“I thought you were at home.”

“David called and told me. I came right away. So did Franklin.” She tightens her grip.
“Now you can have babies, too!”

“Whoa, whoa, we don’t know that.” I disentangle myself from her embrace and send Shane
a nervous glance. But he’s not looking my way.

He’s looking at the world. Turning his head slowly, he sets his gaze on one mundane
object after another: the Dumpster, Lori’s compact sedan pasted with wet leaves, the
radio tower reaching for the clear blue sky.

After six months without sunlight, I have to admit it
looks amazing—everything in full color, nothing a shade of gray.

But for Shane it’s been sixteen years of night.

We stand up together, still wrapped in the curtains. I touch his hand, speak his name.
He lowers his chin and gazes at me.

“Your hair,” he whispers. He pulls it forward in front of my shoulder. “Look.”

The sunlight glimmers on the golden strands. I have to admit, it’s gorgeous. I gasp
and look at my right hand. It has every finger
and
a thumb.

His eyes meet mine. “You know what I want to do? More than anything in the world?”

I give him a wicked grin. “What?”

“Eat pancakes.”

I laugh long and obnoxiously loud, then throw myself into his arms. Our future just
got shorter but potentially much, much sweeter.

Shane cries out in pain suddenly, dropping me. I stumble back. “What’s wrong?”

Lori and David shout as he bends in half, grasping for the ground. His knees buckle
and he collapses.

“Shane!” I reach for him, then feel something twist and stretch inside me. “Ow!” I
put a hand to my temple.

Lori turns from Shane to me. “Ciara, you okay?”

“Yeah. Nasty headache for a few seconds.” I look at David kneeling beside Shane. “What’s
wrong with him?”

“No idea.”

I take Shane’s shuddering body into my arms. He gasps and writhes, clutching at me.
Did we come all the way back from death and beyond just to disintegrate in agony?

Shane stops convulsing, then goes limp in my arms for a moment, his heart pounding.
He sucks in a quick, deep breath and lets out another grunt of pain.

“What’s happening?” He puts a hand to his chest. “Am I dying? It feels like I’m dying.”

I put my fingers under his chin and examine his face. Tiny wrinkles have formed outside
each eye, and—are those gray hairs?

“Oh, wow.”

“What? What’s wrong with me? Am I sick?”

“No.” I try not to laugh. “You’re forty-two.”

His grimace fades. He puts a hand to his face, then looks at his arm. All of the hair
there is still light brown. No age spots, naturally, since he hasn’t been in the sun
in sixteen years.

“Amazing,” David whispers.

“Understatement of the universe!” Lori bounces on her toes. “Not only are they not
dead, they’re alive.” She points at me. “Next summer you’ll be tan.”

David gets to his feet and brushes the dust off his knees. “You should both have a
physical exam, make sure everything’s in working order. The Control’s physicians can
take care of that.”

“Shit. The Control.” Shane looks around. “What happened to Captain Henley and Agent
Rosso?”

David shakes his head. “They didn’t make it. Jeremy and I put the blankets on them,
but they burned up just like you did.”

Shane’s face turns hard with anguish. “Son of a bitch.”

“Elijah’s already notified Colonel Lanham. We got the license plates off the security
camera and a pretty good look at the guys who blocked your way.”

Thinking of the driveway reminds me of the last time I was on it, and who I was with.

“Mom!”

I turn for the front door, tripping over the blackout curtain but regaining my balance,
even with my new/old human lack of coordination.

The stairs are trickier. I let out a frustrated grunt as I lift the hem of the curtain.
Finally I get to the top step.

The door opens and my mother’s standing there, looking like a bedraggled angel. Her
red-blond hair is mussed, and her face is streaked with mascara, making her look even
worse than when she was a hostage. She’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever
seen.

She puts a hand to her mouth, fingertips barely touching her lower lip. “You . . .”

“Mom.”

I fall into her arms, home at last.

•  •  •

Once we’re all inside, with the door safely shut, the main office floods with joyous
vampires. They were watching it all on the security monitors downstairs. They raged
as we burned, then mourned after we disappeared. Most of the DJs went back to their
apartment to weep and drink. Only Adrian and Franklin remained in the lounge, watching
the monitors in silent vigil, though they had no reason to hope.

All six DJs gather around us now, hugging and cheering, their faces tearstained and
their breath reeking of booze. I hold my elbows tight against my sides to keep my
blackout curtain from falling.

Jeremy pinches the skin on my forearm. “You’re
totally human.” He examines Shane’s face. “And you’re old!”

“Gee, thanks,” Shane says with a laugh.

“I mean, you’re older. How the hell did this happen?”

“If we ever figure it out,” Shane says, “we’ll let you know. Thanks for trying to
save Captain Henley.”

“I’m sorry we were too late.” Jeremy folds his arms and winces, and I realize they’re
burned, as is his neck. He still smells of smoke.

“You should go to the hospital,” I tell him.

“I was just about to take him,” David says, “and your mom, to get that ankle checked
out.”

I look at my mother’s foot, which is turning a nasty shade of purple. “I want to come
with you.”

“Are you kidding?” she says. “Someone just tried to kill you. You’re not going out
in public and letting them know they failed.”

She’s right. I want to be out in the sunshine and go to all the places I used to go.
But we have to hole up for our own safety.

I turn to Adrian. “Has Kashmir called?”

“No, but when he does, I’ll tell him you’re dead. Those two guys who cut you off ran
after Shane and the Control agents. They may have seen you burn.”

“Good,” Shane says, “so he won’t just be taking your word for it.” He turns to the
rest of them, looking like a badass Roman in his thick black toga. “As far as everyone
here is concerned, Ciara and I are dead.”

“We can fake tears pretty well,” Regina says. “And we’ll put the word out to the other
vampires in the area.”

“This might be outta line”—Monroe puts his hands
in his pockets—“but could we give y’all a funeral, too? Maybe with Jim’s Monday night?”

My jubilation fades, replaced by something calmer and purer, as I remember Jim lying
on his back at the Isle of Wight. At peace.

“That’s a brilliant idea,” I tell Monroe. “Did I give you some of my con-artist savvy
when you made me?” I start toward him to give him a hug, but he takes a step back.
Right. I
am
almost naked.