Throat (24 page)

We didn’t walk far. The trail circled around to a place that brought us down in front of the little waterfall. A few feet away
there was a long, overhanging ledge. Lena and the others ducked beneath the ledge. It went farther back under the lip of the mountain than I realized. It wasn’t exactly a cave.…

“I would not live in a large cave,” Lena said. “Not with the possibility of missing the next
Sonneneruption.
”

A long shoulder of stone protruded from the wall. Lena lifted her dress above her knees as we crawled forward on hand and foot. We came to a place where a stone was wedged into an opening—moving it would be way beyond human strength. It looked like a dead end. Lena and the others dug their fingers into the dirt beneath the stone and hauled it out, revealing another low opening just wide enough to get our bodies through.

They replaced the boulder behind us. I thought about spiders and cave crickets, but the low ceiling quickly opened into a broad room with a ceiling tall enough to stand. At the far end of the room I could plainly see a long notch like a natural window opening onto the rest of the forest. To my super-eyes the light was nearly as bright as day, though I knew from checking my watch that sunrise was still at least an hour or so away.

“You can’t see the notch in the wall from the outside,” Anton said, walking over to it. “It’s too high up, and it curves into the stone face of the mountain, right? It’s our lookout place.”

“Doesn’t the sun ever shine through?” I said.

“No.” He pulled a cord next to the opening and a thick rug unrolled down the wall, blocking out the night. The room filled with the lavender glow of the vampires’ bodies. “We always leave it open after dark,” Anton said, rolling the blanket back up. “We don’t want to miss the next
Sonneneruption.
”

“We live our lives outdoors as much as possible,” Lena said. “It is another part of the
Sonnen
way of life. Besides, where else could
we stay? The
Verloren
, always on the move, must constantly find new living quarters, most often in abandoned buildings lost in the wilderness—a blanket of fresh earth covering most of their bodies—or deep in the bowels of the city. Underground. Below concrete structures, whatever they can find. You will find shelter is one of the most difficult parts of our predicament, Emma.”

“But in books and movies, vampires—I mean, people like us—they’re always showing them in huge old houses or castles,” I said. “Lots of times they’re rich.”

“Impossible,” Lena said. “Think about it, Emma. We cannot own homes or land because we have no history.”

“No social security numbers, no birth certificates, work records, fixed addresses, none of that, hey?” Anton said. “Even if we had those things, imagine trying to carry out all your business transactions after dark?”

“What they’re trying to say is, Emma, that stuff you see in the movies, read in the books … the glamour, the romance, fabulous clothes …” Donne’s voice trailed away. She stuck three fingers through a hole in her jeans and gave a nasty little laugh. “I had to steal these, and it’s not getting any easier.”

“No clotheslines anymore, huh?” Anton said, touching Donne’s arm affectionately.

“I’ve got a social security number,” I said.

“Sure you do,” Donne said. “It’s useless to you now.”

I felt a tinge of sadness in her words and thought of all the things I had always taken for granted: cooked food, shelter, utensils, hot water for bathing.… The list went on and on.

“We do not mix with them often,” Lena said. “The ones down … below.” She lifted the hem of her tattered dress. “Anywhere we go, there is a constant danger of exposure. Here at least
we have a warning because it is so easy to detect someone advancing on our home.”

Home
.

Lena lit an oil lamp. “I like it for the memory of the sun,” she explained.

I looked more closely at the room. There were three mismatched chairs, all sitting at awkward angles because of the unevenness of the floor, and a small wooden table. Several battered cardboard boxes were grouped in a corner; the one on top was open and a threadbare sweatshirt and some white socks that had gone gray were spilling out. There was a smaller plastic bin that contained things like hand sanitizer, more gauze and antiseptics, baby shampoo, soap, and little metal tools that I couldn’t identify. A large jug of water sat against one wall. Three sleeping pallets were arranged on raised frames of saplings with cushions for pillows. And against one wall flat planks served as shelves for … 
books?

I stooped to look, interested to know what a vampire would read.

“
Anthony Adverse?
”

“Don’t look at me,” Donne said, nodding at Lena. “She’s the bookworm.” She yawned again, pointedly. “I’d rather be … sleeping.”

The books were thick and old, with white Dewey decimal stickers on their spines.

“So they give out library cards to vampires?” I said.

“Easiest to steal,” Donne said, looking slightly offended.

“I deny this!” Anton said. “I’m no thief. They wanted to give me a library card. But only if I signed my name … in blood.” He burst into peals of stupid laughter.

“Nobody else thinks you’re a bit funny,” Donne said. She crooked her arm around his neck. “But we love him anyway, don’t we?” She kissed him briefly on the mouth.

I felt like an intruder watching them. Did they share a bed? I couldn’t help thinking of Sagan.

“So how long have you been here?” I said to break the awkwardness.

Donne and Lena exchanged glances. “I honestly do not know,” Lena said. “Perhaps three or four years? That is why I prefer the longer books. What else am I to do? When time is relatively … meaningless … you stop marking it.”

“Except for sunup,” Donne said. “Cutting it a little close, aren’t you, Emma? Where are you staying? Don’t you have somewhere to go?”

Lena looked at me. “You are welcome to share our home for the day, if you like. You are welcome to my bed. I was going to do some reading anyhow.”

Donne frowned.

“Thanks, but I’ve got a place,” I said, taking the hint. “It’s … not real far away. It won’t take me long to get there.” I turned to Anton and Donne. “Thanks so much for taking me on my first … what did you call it?”

“
Blutjagd,
” Anton said. “You’re welcome. It was fun. Thank you for not getting too angry at us, huh?” He kissed Donne again as if trying to shut her mouth before she said something snarky.

I knew I should go, but so many questions were broiling in my mind.

“Why do you use so many German words?” I said.

“It depends on the region,” Lena said. “If you travel farther south, down into Florida, the words tend to be Spanish. In Louisiana and parts of Mississippi, French. It just so happens that
German tended to predominate here. I myself have a French background, but it all depends on what was being spoken in your area at the time of the last
Sonneneruption
. The last Cleansing. I would think that many of the old words would go away following the next one. Except among the
Verloren
, of course.”

Lena settled into one of the chairs with a book, kicking her shoes off and folding her legs beneath her.

“Can I … can I come back? Can I see you again?” I said.

She lifted her emerald eyes from the book and smiled. “I will leave that up to you. But I am hoping so much that you will! It has been … a very long time for us.”

“There are so many things I want to ask,” I said. “The war. How you live. What you have been doing all this time.”
Oh please, God. Especially that
.

“Good. Then I am hopeful you will join us,” Lena said, and went back to her book.

Join us? Come live with them?
I thought. And then I understood.

She wants me to become one of the
Sonnen
.

On the way down the mountain, my thoughts were racing almost as fast as my legs. Mostly about how much I wanted Sagan to be able to meet my new friends. Which was completely insane.
Hi, this is Sagan, please don’t eat him
, I thought, laughing to myself. He didn’t even know about me yet. And I wondered, how would the
Sonnen
react? Was it even possible for vampires to be friends with someone who basically represented a midnight snack to them? Someone … normal?

Donne wouldn’t like it if she heard me say that. I was hardly normal myself. I felt an overpowering sadness about how they were forced to live. Like animals.
No, insects
. Insects that came out at night to bite you and suck your blood. And how could anyone spend years in that grungy little room?

I was blazing around a hard, sloping curve, turning it all over in my mind, when a possible answer to both problems came to me:
Hey, that’s the perfect idea
, I thought. Maybe Sagan could come up with a better place for the
Sonnen
to live? Somewhere out on the Space Center! We could help them, earn their trust, really get to know them. Then …

Oh God
.

I didn’t see that there was something in the road ahead because the long turn vanished into the trees. A police car was angled across one lane of traffic, its blue strobes flashing crazily. Another cop car was parked farther down. In between the two was a small
green Honda that was missing a big chunk of its front end. A young guy in a T-shirt and shorts was sitting on the shoulder, head between his knees.

I say I didn’t see it, but suddenly I did. I saw all of it in an instant of bright photographic detail, a microsecond before I hit the first car.

Spzzzt! Spzzzt!

Even before I opened my eyes, I knew I was in pain. A strange hissing noise was coming from somewhere close by. I was lying on something hard—I could tell that much too. Where?

I was under a scratchy blanket that had been pulled up to my shoulders. Something lumpy was beneath my head. I finally managed to turn slightly and felt my heart thump: I was stretched out on the pavement not too far away from the first cop car. The driver’s door was heavily dented and skid marks showed where the car had bucked sideways several feet. But at least it was still resting on all four tires. My vampire reflexes must’ve kicked in at the last moment—as fast as I had been traveling, it’s a wonder I hadn’t rolled the vehicle over.

I could see the legs of people coming and going, could hear the wail of an ambulance in the distance. A police radio kept spraying out little bursts of crackly voices.

Spzzzt!
“Monte Sano Boulevard.”
Spzzzt!
“Two vehicles. EMTs en route.”
Spzzzt! Spzzzt!

The first cop, the one whose car I had rocked, was sitting in the front seat, hunched over something, arms moving. Probably writing on one of those steel clipboards. I could see his face clearly, head tilted in concentration. Above that I could see the blue strobes of the bubble gum lights cycling back and forth.

I ran my hands over myself under the blanket. I felt pretty much
okay, except for a sharp twinge in my right elbow. I must’ve thrown my forearm up at the last moment to shield myself from the crash. I tried sitting up, then lay right back down: the inside of my skull felt like an oily lump of pizza dough sliding around in a ceramic bowl.

Okay, rest a minute, let your head settle
, I told myself.

My eyes focused on the flashing lights, the angry blue roaming back and forth like a neon finger on piano keys. I stared at the lights, feeling their intensity pounding the backs of my eyes. But instead of causing pain, they were making me feel … 
Comfortable. So comfortable. Just rest
, I told myself.
Rest a minute. Then you can run
.…

Wirtz was standing next to me.

“
Sehr gut,
” the vampire said in his earthquake voice. “Very good.”

At first I couldn’t look at him, it was so hard to tear my eyes from the comfort of the blue lights. But then I did, and now I was looking up the length of his body at his awful smirking mouth. But he was staring at something else. One of the cop cars.

“Huntsville city police,” Wirtz said. “So you ran away from home. I expected it.” His shoulders rose as he heaved a heavy sigh. “You ran because you would rather save her, the little one, than save yourself.”

Manda, he’s talking about Manda
, I thought.

“And now you are hiding somewhere in Huntsville, Ala-ba-ma. You have made quite a mistake, wouldn’t you say,
Mädchen
?”

Can’t you see him!
I wanted to yell at the cops.
He’s standing right there!

I tried to move, but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed again. The air around my body felt like foam rubber, encasing me within its grip. I wanted to cry out, to accuse him. “I know what you are!
Verloren.
”

“Oh, do not worry,” Wirtz said. “No speeches tonight. I am not in the mood to implore. It is beyond that. It is plain you will not come to my Call. I have what I need. For now.” He gestured at the police car. “Please go with them, if you like. It would make it so much easier for me to find you. But truly I don’t care one way or the other. I’m coming, and I will so much enjoy the end of it, either way you choose.”