Salvation of the Damned (5 page)

When Eva entered the vast ballroom, the first thing she did was search for Raphael’s face. But despite the hundreds of faces she saw, he wasn’t there.

Somehow that hurt even deeper than she’d thought possible. Had what they’d shared meant so little to him? The stiff brocade of her over gown felt suddenly too heavy and the room too cold.

The sea of faces crowded in, making her heartbeat stutter. They all seemed to press closer and Eva was afraid she might faint.

A firm hand grasped her arm, supportive, but hardly kind. She glanced at the red-eyed man with long white hair whose pale face was placid, almost devoid of emotion.

“I am Janus, the elder of those gathered here. This way, my lady.” He led her up the steps of the golden dais, ever closer to the mahogany casket with the strange skeleton. But when she was close enough to see inside, she noticed that the skeleton was gone.

She turned to the man. “Where is Raphael?”

“He is waiting for you on the other side, my lady.” He nodded toward the coffin.

Eva clasped her hands together tightly.

“It won’t hurt. I give you my word,” Janus encouraged.

Using the small step stool beside the coffin, she climbed inside, her heart frantic in her chest.

“God. This better work,” she muttered, and closed her eyes.

True to his word, nothing hurt. Almost like having a heavy quilt tossed over her, everything suddenly felt heavier and heavier and Eva grew warmer and warmer.

Instead of being dark, the light outside her eyelids intensified just like before until Eva was forced to open them. The room was white, if it was a room. She really couldn’t see any walls, or a ceiling. Just light, everywhere. And Raphael, standing there, waiting for her.

She rushed at him, flinging herself into his arms.

“You came,” he whispered into her hair.

“You’re here.” Her voice broke with a sob.

“I have only a moment before the others arrive, and I must tell you something.” He bent to one knee, and Eva found it all suddenly rather old fashioned and pulled on his hands, but he would not be moved.

“I love you, Eva. I always have and I always shall. You are my life, my breath, my very being. Will you come back to me?”

“Come back? Aren’t you staying here, with me?”

“I wish I could, but there is only a little time given to us on the other side of the veil separating life from death. You will meet each of my family in turn and they will ask the blessing of you, then they and I will return.”

“Will I?”

He closed his eyes, and when he did look at her, the anguish etched into the planes of his face said it all. “I can only hope.”

Then he kissed her fiercely, as if his entire being depended on it, and Eva held nothing back. But as she reached to lock her arms around him, he dissolved into nothingness.

Atom by atom, Raphael’s body exploded outward, knitting together, taking shape. The snap of an electric-like charge skittered over his skin as the transformation was complete, and his eyelids felt heavy as he forced himself to open them. Reluctantly, Raphael sat up, pulling himself upright. He used what little will he had left to climb out of the coffin. He stumbled down the steps of the dais into the now-empty room and wept. All the others were already transporting to the other side and would reemerge shortly. It took only mere seconds for the transformation to occur, and yet it was that brush with death, that moment they touched life, that kept them all safe for a thousand more years. All but the sacrifice. If she did not return from the other side of the veil, she would be lost to him.

The ache inside him was nearly unbearable. He’d sacrificed everything, and gained nothing but millennia to agonize about losing her again and ponder his destructive fate. Perhaps he should leave them all, and venture out alone. The last time, he’d lived in seclusion for nearly four hundred years. That would not nearly be enough this time. He’d realized that his desperate need for Eva, for Isabeau, was love.

Raphael pulled himself together, sensing that the next vampire was going to reappear. He leaned against the wall and watched as one by one they quickly rose from the coffin, their bodies reborn. Safe from the ravages of the plague, they filled the room, but there was utter silence. All eyes looked to the empty coffin, waiting for the sacred bones to emerge to complete the transformation ceremony.

Raphael stood next to the casket, waiting. In the precise place where he had lain, the bones of Siphidius began to reemerge, seeming to appear first like a thick mist that grew more and more dense.

The skeleton was now complete. Behind Raphael the gong sounded, ending the transformation ceremony that had been the salvation of his kind.

It was done.

Eva had not survived.

Why he had hoped this time, when it had not happened before, he wasn’t sure. He just had harbored the one small sliver of hope in his being.

He moved to turn away, already shielding his mind from the others. Only the briefest flicker of movement caught his eye. It was as if a thousand invisible spiders spun their silk wrapping the bones of Siphidius in a white shroud that grew and filled out, quickly becoming flesh. Raphael gripped the edge of the coffin, silently willing that something different, something impossible had happened this time.

A murmur rippled through the vampires as they crowded up, jostling each other to get a better look. Janus pushed his way through the crowd and stepped up on the dais, standing across from Raphael on the other side of the coffin.

Raphael caught his gaze. “What do you make of this?”

The elder vampire steepled his fingers, placing the tips to his mouth, then he shook his head. “It is nothing we have ever seen before. So there is no way to know what will happen. The virus has mutated, becoming more deadly. Perhaps the cure has changed, too, becoming stronger.”

If she had returned from death once, could she do so again? Slowly, a female form began to appear, and Raphael felt his granite heart begin to beat again. There was no mistaking the lips, the smooth curve of her cheek or the long lashes that lay in dark crescents on her pale cheeks. Eva had returned.

He waited for her to gasp, to take in a breath and wake. But nothing happened. The buzz of voices grew louder, like an angry hive of bees, disturbed and unsure of what to do next.

Raphael’s gaze flicked to Janus. “She’s come back, why isn’t she breathing, dammit?”

Janus’s mouth didn’t move as his red gaze bore into Raphael, but the words came through clearly.
Just because she has returned, does not mean she has survived the sacrifice.

Raphael tore his gaze away from the elder vampire and let it linger instead on the sweet form of the woman lying before him. He gathered together his powers and focused. Between his fingertips a perfect red rose materialized.

He placed it gently between her smooth hands, and realized with dread that there was no pulse. He closed his eyes, willing his acute hearing to pick up any trace of a heartbeat, any stir of movement within her body, but all was silent.

A suffocating blackness crowded in, drowning out the hushed conversations of the others around him. She was truly gone. Again.

He opened his eyes to gaze at her current form one last time. If he was lucky, extremely lucky, perhaps in a thousand years she might come back again in another form. But even as the invisible vise around his chest tightened further and his throat burned, he knew that the waiting would be hell.

The petals of the rose shivered slightly. Had it been the air currents in the room? Or was it something else? He stared, thankful that he didn’t need to draw a breath so he could focus. The room faded around him, all his attention riveted on her slender white hands. He saw her finger move, the movement so subtle no one else would have noticed.

Raphael’s knees gave way and he sank down beside the velvet edge of the coffin, his face near hers. The thin skin of her eyelids quivered. It was all the encouragement he needed. He bent down to her, stroking her cheek. “Eva, darling. It’s time to wake. Don’t be scared. Don’t try to breathe. You don’t need to. Just open your eyes for me.”

Eva could hear the hot silk of his voice, could feel the heat radiating off him beside her, but she felt like she was bound in a block of cold wax, unable to move, unable to speak, and she realized with a growing panic, unable to breathe.

What was odder still was that even though she felt the heightened tension in every cell in her body, her heart wasn’t beating faster.

In fact it wasn’t beating at all.

Eva put every ounce of strength she had into opening her eyelids. They barely opened. But it was enough. She could see his face beside hers.

Then she felt the crush of his mouth on hers, far hotter than it had been before. But somehow the kiss was different, more intense, flowing through her, setting off sparks in every fiber of her being. The cold wax-like sensation that bound her began to melt, making movement possible.

Eva sat up slowly, and Raphael’s strong arms wrapped around her. Her ears heard each audible gasp of the others in duplicate, once in the room, another time in her head, like some strange echo.

A strange sweet liquid that tasted vaguely like almonds swirled in her mouth.

Eva.

Raphael’s voice echoed in her head.

Smile for me.

It was impossible that she could hear his thoughts, yet somehow she knew that’s precisely what was happening.

She spread her lips into a smile, noticing the strange sensation of longer teeth pressing at the edges of her lips. His eyes widened, and she felt him shake beneath her hands. He crushed her to his warm, solid chest, and it felt like coming home.

“Darling Eva. You’ve done it. I don’t know how, but you’ve done what no one else ever has. You’ve returned as one of us.”

I’m a vampire?

He pulled back a fraction, his face radiant as he stroked her cheek with infinite tenderness. “Yes.”

This time, she crushed herself to his chest, a fierce joy filling her. She was going to have forever with him. And somehow, in sacrificing it all, she’d been given everything she’d ever wanted.

She pulled back gazing in his eyes. “What about the plague? Are you safe?”

“You’ve broken it, my love. I don’t know how, but you’ve done it.”

Eva cocked her head to one side. “I think I finally understand.”

“What happened?”

“They sent me back.”

“Who?”

“The voices on the other side. They told me I still had something important to do and I couldn’t stay. And this time they told me what it was.”

He smiled, and it lit the entire room, making her feel more alive than she ever had before. “And what was it?”

“To love you forever.”

ISBN: 978-1-4268-2837-9

Salvation of the Damned

Copyright © 2009 by Theresa Meyers

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