Sunshine

I didn’t know vampires were ever clumsy. I thought grace came with the territory, like fangs and a complexion that looks really bad in daylight. They’re always oilily supple in the books. But he staggered back into the shadow, leaned against the wall with a thump, dropped my hands, dropped his own hands to thud against the wall next to him. “What in creation are you?” he said. “That is no small stuff-changer trick. It is not possible. It is not possible. I have been standing in sunlight and I know it is not possible.”

It was nice to know I wasn’t the only one of us feeling demented. I knelt to get at his shackle. I was relieved when the key worked for his cuff too; I guessed I was going to have to be pretty careful of my strength to be a successful sun-parasol for the undead for the next twelve hours. I was not thinking about any more of the implications of my offer than I had to. The main thing—the only thing—was: I couldn’t leave him behind. I didn’t care who or what he was. I couldn’t walk out of this cage and leave some caged thing behind me. If I could help it. And, for better or worse, I could. Apparently.

The skin of his ankle looked terrible. I couldn’t tell if the…peeling…was anything more than just chafing. I was careful not to touch it. My ankle didn’t seem any the worse for wear, but there hadn’t been any antihuman wards on my shackle that I’d noticed. Oh yes: they exist. They’re not a lot talked about among humans, but they exist.

“What are you? Who are you?” he repeated. “What family are you from?”

I broke the cuff open. “My name is Rae Seddon, but what you’re looking for is Raven Blaise. Seddon is Charlie’s name—my stepfather’s name—but my mother stopped me using Raven or Blaise as soon as we left my dad.”

“You’re a Blaise,” he said, still leaning against the wall, but staring down at me as I knelt at his feet. “Which Blaise?”

“My father is Onyx Blaise,” I said.

“Onyx Blaise had no children,” barked the vampire.

“Had?” I said, just as sharply. “Do you know he is dead?”

The vampire shook his head, impatiently, but then went on shaking it again and again, as if bothered by gnats. Gnats might like vampires: they go for blood. But I didn’t think that was the problem here. “I don’t know. I don’t know. He disappeared—”

“Fifteen years ago,” I said.

The vampire looked at me. “Onyx Blaise had—has—no children.”

How do you know? I wanted to say. Is my dad another of your old enemies? Or…your old friends? No. No. I hadn’t seen him since I was six, but I couldn’t believe that of my gran’s son. “He has at least one,” I said.

The vampire slid slowly down the wall to sit on the floor next to me. He started to laugh. Vampires don’t laugh very well, or at least this one didn’t. He half looked—sounded—like something out of a bad horror film—the sort of horror film that isn’t scary because you don’t believe it, it’s so crude, where was their special effects budget?—and half didn’t. The second half was like the worst horror film you’d ever seen, the one that made you think about things you’d never imagined, the one that scared you so much you threw up. This was worse than the goblin giggler, my second guard, from Bo’s gang. I clamped my hands around the empty shackle and waited for him to stop.

“A Blaise,” he said. “Bo’s lot brought me a Blaise. And not just a third cousin who can do card tricks and maybe write a ward sign that almost works, but Onyx Blaise’s daughter.” He stopped laughing. Then I decided maybe silence was worse after all, at least when it followed that laughter.

“Your father didn’t educate you very well. If I had killed you and had your blood, the blood of Onyx Blaise’s daughter, the blood of someone who can do what you just did, I could have snapped that shackle as if the steel were paper and the marks on it no more than a—a recipe for cinnamon rolls, and taken the odds against me with Bo’s gang, even after the weeks I’ve been here, even against all the others you haven’t seen, silent in the woods, watching. And I would have won. That’s what the blood of someone from one of the families can do, and a Blaise…The effect doesn’t last—a week at the most—but a lot can be done in a few nights.” He sounded almost dreamy. “On Onyx Blaise’s daughter’s blood I could get rid of Bo for good. I still could. All I would have to do is keep you here one more day, and wait till sunset. I’m weak and sick and I see double in this damned daylight, but I’m still stronger than a human. All I would have to do is keep you here…” His voice trailed off.

I didn’t move. There was a small wispy thought in the back of my mind. It seemed to be something like: oh, well. A little closer to consciousness there was a slightly more definite thought, and it said, well, we’ve been here before, several times, in the last couple of days. We’re either going to lose for good now, or we aren’t.

I sat very still, as if I were trying to discourage a cobra from striking.