Darkness Before Dawn (17 page)

“Before I was turned, I saw all vampires as monsters,” Martha says quietly. “Funny, now I think it’s the humans. I laugh and cry and feel just the same as they do. I’d never hurt a soul, but if I walked these streets openly, I’d be staked. If the Night Watchmen ever find us, they’ll kill us. And the next day, in the papers, there would be a small column written in praise of the slayings. My son and I would just become numbers, notches on their belt.”

“How did your son get so weak?”

She rubs her hands up and down her arms. “My husband, Robert, works for Valentine, beyond the wall. Valentine doesn’t give rations to those of us who live in the city. To do that would be to acknowledge that there are vampires in the city.” I hear the loathing in her voice. “And that would be against VampHu. He’s supposed to be our lord, but he doesn’t care about us. Robert brings us what he can, but it’s never enough, and it’s difficult for him to get into the city. It’s been three weeks since I saw him.”

I can tell that she’s worried about him. He could have run into a patrol, Night Watchmen, or a vigilant citizen. He could have even run into that creature from the other night.

“All the while, Justin has been wasting away,” she says. “Slowly at first, but now his cries echo through the night, and I can’t do anything except hold him close and tell him it’ll be better tomorrow. In another week, he’d just be an empty shell, alive inside, but unable to move until he feeds. My fear is that before then, he would have left the apartment out of desperation and killed somebody. I’ve tried to teach him that all life is precious and that he can’t take blood from people’s necks, but I know the pain he’s feeling, and how quickly those lessons are forgotten.”

“What’s it like?” I ask. “To be without blood?”

“Horrible. You spend so much time trying to keep the monster under control, but when you are starving for blood, everything just goes. It’s like a temporary insanity. Nothing else matters until you feed. It’s absolutely terrible. And now my son is suffering it.”

But not for long. Within an hour, Justin is running around the apartment. His mother takes her share of the blood Victor brought.

When Victor and I are back outside, I ask, “Why didn’t you tell me what you needed the blood for?”

“You didn’t give me a chance. And you weren’t exactly receptive to believing me anyway.”

“Can you blame me? From the moment we met, you’ve lied—”

“I’ve never lied to you, Dawn. I may not have told you everything—”

“You deceived me. You made me think you were hu—”

Without warning, he pushes me into a crevice, backing me up against a brick wall, his body pressed against mine.

“What—” I begin.

“Shh. Watchmen.” Victor’s voice is soft in my ear, his cheek touching mine.

I hear them then. The scuff of boots. The low murmurs.

One of my palms is flattened against Victor’s chest, and I can feel the hard thudding of his heart. It matches mine.

“Stupid,” he says, his voice so low that if his lips weren’t brushing over my ear, I wouldn’t catch his words at all. “To bring you with me, to put you in danger. I just wanted you to understand that not all vampires are monsters.”

We hear a crash, someone turning something over. Victor goes so very still, as still as death.

“Because I’m the delegate, right? So I’ll be more sympathetic to the vampires?”

“That’s not the only reason.” He pauses; a silence stretches between us as I wait for him to explain. “I’ve known humans,” he finally says, “but I’ve never known anyone like you, Dawn Montgomery. You’re so passionate in your beliefs. We live forever and have started to take so much for granted. You appreciate everything.”

I don’t know why he’s telling me these things. Maybe he’s trying to distract me from how very close we are to each other.

“I’m going to try to draw them away,” he whispers. “If I don’t come back for you, stay here until the sun comes up.”

“No.” I realize I’m clutching his T-shirt. Silly of me to think that I have the strength to hold him here. “Just wait.”

And he stays. He doesn’t say anything else. Our hearts slow. The long, interminable minutes pass. The night air seems to be growing cooler, but Victor’s body radiates warmth. I know the Watchmen wouldn’t kill me—if they recognized me. But they wouldn’t expect me to be in this part of town, at this time of night. And if they find the bags of blood Victor still has, too many questions would be raised.

Everything grows quiet. No more footsteps. No distant voices. Then I hear the sounds of tiny creatures starting to stir once again.

“They’ve moved on,” Victor says. “Thank you for not calling out to them.”

He eases back then, and I’m hit with the realization that he never covered my mouth. That I could have yelled to the Watchmen, could have turned Victor over to them. And not once did it cross my mind to do so. I tell myself that it’s only because I was taken by surprise. That I didn’t shove him away or draw attention to us because if the Night Watchmen found us, I’d have a lot of explaining to do to the Agency. I was just protecting myself. That makes much more sense than me worrying about Victor getting killed.

Taking my hand, he guides me out of the crevice. Carefully we make our way over the debris and hurry on. We make two more stops, but we don’t go inside either place. He just slips the blood through the narrow crack when the door opens to his knock.

As we’re walking away from the last one, I say, “You’ve never stolen from the blood sites before, have you?”

“No. I usually steal from my father’s stash, but these vampires couldn’t wait. They don’t die, Dawn. They just suffer, withering away until all they can do is sit in a corner, unable to move, waiting to be staked by a wandering Watchman or for the sun to pierce them through a window. A vampire can spend an eternity like that, alone with his thoughts.”

I shiver. Tonight I was given an uncomfortable view of vampires as a … family. And seeing Victor as some sort of Robin Hood, stealing game from the king’s forest in order to deliver food to the poor. Only in his case, it’s taking from the blood bank to give to the vampires in the city, those neglected by Lord Murdoch Valentine.

It’s also strange to realize that he’s holding my hand again. Yes, we’re in the dark; yes, he’s guiding me. Yet somehow I can’t help but believe that it’s more than that. Something changed between us while we were in that stupid crevice, and I feel guilty when I remember Michael.

“How many are in the city?” I ask, trying to regain my original intent of using this as an intelligence-gathering mission.

“What does it matter, Dawn? If they’re not hurting anyone, why can’t they live here in peace?”

It doesn’t escape me that he avoided answering my question. “But they know to come to you if they need anything?”

“I do what I can.”

“Does your father know about all this? Know what you do?”

“Does Rachel know everything you do?” he asks.

“I hate when someone answers a question with a question.”

“Then stop asking questions.”

I know that he’s holding back secrets. In spite of everything that happened tonight, he doesn’t trust me any more than I trust him. The realization saddens me.

Still, I can’t help wanting to know more, to test whether he has any trust in me at all. “So why does your father insist that I dress in Victorian garb? It’s like he’s obsessed with that era.”

“We were at our height during that time. We understood the world. And then all the technology came, and suddenly humans knew more than we did. We’re not creative. We can’t envision possibilities like you can. We have very little imagination.”

“I never knew that.”

“Painting, writing stories, poems, or plays … it all eludes us. But what I
can
imagine is a world in which humans and vampires coexist. Where humans willingly donate blood so we’re not forced to suffer. Where we serve as the protectors against evil, instead of being viewed as monsters.”

I try to picture this world he’s describing. I want to, but it seems impossible, and I wonder when I became such a pessimist.

“Speaking of evil … did you discover anything when you saw the vampire at the morgue?” I ask him.

“I didn’t know him. All I know is that he was attacked by something rabid.”

As soon as we get to a section of the city with some light, I work my hand free of Victor’s. I’m not sure exactly where we are, but eventually we reach trolley tracks.

“I can get home fine from here,” I say, not looking at him.

“I’m not letting you travel through the city alone. It’s almost ten.”

I release a little groan. “Rachel is going to kill me.” I pull out my phone. Sure enough, missed calls and text messages. I’d muted it when I was going into the theater because I didn’t want it to go off and wake Victor before I was in place.

“She’ll forgive you once you’re home safe,” he says.

“I doubt that.” Part of me wants him to take my hand again, wants to feel his touch. So instead, I cross my arms over my chest, just to make sure that my hand isn’t within easy reach of his. “Doesn’t it bother your father? You living here? I mean, an Old Family vampire, subjecting himself to a human city. It isn’t exactly … proper.”

Victor smiles. “You know him pretty well. That’s exactly what he said. But I don’t care.”

“I thought it was a son’s duty to obey his father.”

“You’re quoting stuff straight out of Old Family textbooks.” I see the frustration in his face.

“I’m sorry,” I say automatically.

He waves it away casually. “No, it’s a testament to how much you learned from your father, how much you’ve studied us. There aren’t many people in this city who know as much about vampires. I mean, it’s one thing to read textbooks; it’s another to see vampires in the flesh. Only a handful of humans have ever talked to my father and lived. It’s given you a unique perspective, experiences few people have.”

“My parents had them,” I say. I’m not sure why. But I think I want Victor to talk about them. He must’ve known them. Their death opens up a chasm inside me, like a wound that’s suddenly bleeding uncontrollably.

A long, drawn-out silence follows. Our eyes catch from time to time, neither of us wanting to speak.

“Did you know them?” I ask finally.

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Dawn. I was in the city during their tenure. On the few trips I ever made to the manor, I never saw them.”

I nod, accepting it. For some reason, I thought Victor could heal that wound better than anyone else. It’s strange to think that this vampire, the embodiment of all my hatred, could act like a suture.

Thank goodness, the trolley finally arrives. Only a couple of people are on it. We climb aboard and sit down on the back bench. Victor’s thigh touches mine. I think of a time when I would have been repulsed. Now I draw comfort from his nearness. Or at least a feeling of safety—the prince of the night is escorting me home.

We don’t talk during the ride. Or when we disembark. Or when we walk toward my apartment building. Only when we stop across the street does our silence end.

“I should give you back your key,” I say, reaching into my pocket.

“Keep it. You never know when you might want to stop by and watch a movie.”

“You really have movies?”

“It would be kind of pointless to have a movie theater with no movies.”

“Yeah, I guess. Where do you get them?”

“I have a friend in Los Angeles who sends them to me whenever he runs across one.”

I never really thought of vampires as having friends, as doing small, special favors for one another. Victor’s becoming more and more human all the time.

“A Carrollton?” I ask. They’re the Old Family that rules the vamps in that part of the country.

“That’s right. I guess you know all the Old Families by name—and their territories. His name’s Richard. You’d like him, I think.”

“Not if he’s a vampire.”

“You don’t say that with as much conviction anymore.”

It’s true; I don’t. Since meeting Victor, everything that I’ve ever thought about vampires is being turned inside out. I feel like I should thank him, but I’m not sure for what. “Okay, then. I’d better go.”

I start to cross the street, stop, turn back. “You’re not what I thought.”

He smiles. A devastatingly beautiful smile.

I race across the street to my apartment building, to home and safety. Because that smile scares me for reasons I can’t explain. I only know that it makes me want to see him smile again.

Chapter 17

R
achel’s glare when I walk into the apartment is almost as fierce as Valentine’s was when I told him there was no additional blood.

“I know, I know,” I cut her off before she can say anything. “I’ve been sitting in the stairwell thinking.”

Both her eyebrows shoot up at my lie. “Why? Did something happen?”

I plop onto the couch and draw my legs beneath me. “I don’t feel like I’m making any contribution as a delegate.”

“You spoke with Valentine. His vamps aren’t storming the walls.”

“But being a delegate is more than that. My parents used to do blood drives.” All these thoughts bombarded me as I rode the elevator. “They had that five-
K
blood run—”

“Which garnered zero pints, as I recall.”

“What was the reward? A T-shirt? No one’s going to come for that.”

She joins me on the couch, tucking her legs up against her chest and wrapping her arms around them. It makes her look young. It’s easy to forget that she’s not even ten years older than me. We all have to grow up fast these days. “So, you want to start paying for blood?”

“No, but … we take blood from anyone who is at least seventeen. But I don’t know anyone at school who gives blood. So teens are an untapped resource. How do we get them to donate blood?”

She presses a well-manicured finger against her chin. I can see that she’s seriously considering what I’m saying.

“I mean, most of the posters around the city are focused on parents giving blood to protect their children,” I point out.

“Because that’s who we’ve always thought was most likely to give. But you’re right. If we can get the teens into the habit of donating, they’ll carry it into adulthood. So do you have some ideas for how we do that?”