Sunshine

I didn’t know what I was supposed to do: note to myself, in my next life, get some martial arts training—get a lot of martial arts training—just in case. Again, as with the first vampire who attacked us, something happened—quicker than I could follow—quicker than I wanted to follow, and I yanked my gaze away, afraid of what my dark vision might make out for me. There was blood, again, but there was also at least one vampire left over while Con was otherwise engaged, and he was looking at me. I looked at him, not thinking about anything but my own terror, my eyes wide open, open so wide that they hurt. He met that gaze—hey, he knew a human when he saw one, and he knew he was a vampire—and I saw him falter, and then Con had turned from whatever he was doing and…took care of that one too, too fast for me to look away. I think I probably cried out. Jesse wasn’t going to rescue me, this time. I wasn’t going to come to myself with human arms around me and a human voice shouting in my ear, It’s all over. You’re all right.

There was now quite a lot of blood, and…bits and pieces. I had blood on me too. Con seized my hand again, and said sharply, Come. I didn’t dare look in his face. There would be no comfort, no reassurance, in the face of any vampire. When I took a running step to keep up with him, my shoes slipped. In the blood. There was so much blood on our hands that as it dried, our fingers stuck together. The meaty smell was a miasma, a poison gas.

We didn’t duck back into the chaos-space. I had half-forgotten my alignment, but it was now as if it was tied to me—or I was tied to it. It was pulling us along, through these dark broken streets where the shadows lay twisted and crumpled like dead bodies, pulling as if we were on a leash. I wanted to untie it, but I couldn’t, I mustn’t— I wanted to—no, it was too late; even if I had funked it now, at the last minute, after the last minute, all it would do now is get us killed. Sooner.

I could hear them—someone—keeping pace with us—why didn’t they close in, cut us off, attack us? Con said quietly, as if there was no urgency whatsoever, “Bo will not be able to say your name. Either of your names.”

What? Sunshine. Rae. Daylight names. Old vampires can’t say daylight words either? The very old vampires that can’t go out in the moonlight that is only faint reflected sunlight? The academics would have said Con counted as very old, and he didn’t even wait for full dark: twilight was good enough for him. And he called me Sunshine. There are different ways of being what we are. Apparently Bo hadn’t aged so well. Something to talk to the academics about. Variability of Aging Among Vampires. Usage of Certain Words Pertaining to Daylight by Aged Vampires. Maybe I could get my pass into the Other Museum’s library after all. No, wait. I was about to die.

I didn’t immediately see what good Bo’s not being able to say my name was going to do me. Bo wasn’t going to need to say—or know— my name to kill me.

Okay. Names are power. We’d had that back at the lake. Big deal. Fangs are more power. We’d had that at the lake too. Con had chosen to let me go. Bo wasn’t going to.

Why had I agreed to this anyway?

“You feel the pull strongly?” Con went on in that infuriatingly calm voice. “Bo has connected to our presence here. If we are separated, go on. Follow that connection to its end. Leave me. I will catch up with you when I can.”

Oh good. I was so glad he would make the effort to catch up with me later. Although I wished he’d used the word goal or aim rather than end.

“I recommend—” he added, dispassionate as ever—I was trying to remind myself that he always sounded unbothered, not to say dead. Or maybe that it was a good sign he sounded so unflapped now, as if this was still all part of the normal range of vampire activities. I almost didn’t hear the rest of what he was saying: “—you do not attempt to retreat into any Other-space, including the way I have brought us both. You would only draw some of Bo’s creatures after you, and their advantage there would be greater than yours.”

Right. Like it wasn’t greater than mine everywhere.

I realized that while we were no longer in the chaos-space, we weren’t exactly in No Town either. Or at least I hoped it wasn’t No Town, because if it was, our human world was in even more trouble than most of us knew about…than I knew about…again the thought came to me: What did I know? Pat said a hundred years, tops, before…And the people who came to No Town for thrills weren’t likely to notice that the whole scene was sliding over the edge of normal reality into…