Throat (31 page)

Back in the parking lot, I leaned against the Jeep. Sagan put his arm around my waist.

“You know, you keep giving me the best days of my life,” I said. “I’ve never been on a date before.”

“I kind of guessed that.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. You just kind of reminded me of myself a year or two ago. I didn’t really date much in high school. Mostly a little bit of ‘friend’ stuff, you know? Hanging out with the editor in chief of our school newspaper because I was managing editor. Or a girl from the chess team. That kind of thing.”

“You were on the chess team?”

“Yeah.” He puffed up his chest. “Wanna make something of it?”

I swore. “Probably in the band too. Don’t tell me. You played the tuba, didn’t you? No! You dragged around one of those portable xylophones and—”

He kissed me.

“Mmmm. You don’t kiss like a xylophone guy.”

Sagan wrapped me in his arms from behind. I could feel his mouth in my hair. Every sensation was heightened to the point where I could barely stand it. Was this because I was a vampire?
Or something else
.

“You’re a huge distraction, you know?” I said.

“That’s my job.”

I put my hand on his arm. “Just keep telling me that.”

We sat in his Jeep a very long time, talking and making out. I didn’t want to go. Finally the parking lot was empty except for us and a street sweeper that was zipping closer and closer to the Jeep, trying to give us a hint.

“Sagan,” I said.

“What?”

“If you could live forever, would you want to?”

He put his hand on his chin and leaned away from me. “Well … geneticists say we’re only about fifteen or twenty years away from basically beating all diseases, extending the life span indefinitely. Sure, who wouldn’t want that? There are so many things I want to see, want to do.”

“But really think about it,” I said. “Forever. It never ends, okay? I know that sounds stupid, but think about what that means. Isn’t it kind of scary? If you take it literally? To keep on going and going.”

“You mean like, what will we finally come to? What will we become?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“I don’t know. I like what we are.”

I was definitely becoming a night owl. After Sagan dropped me off, I wasn’t remotely sleepy. Being with him was like taking a drug that left me burning and alive. After lying on the air mattress for over an hour, thinking about nothing but him, I cursed and dropped down into the grungy little room, looking for something to do to pass the time.

My mind screamed for a laptop—I couldn’t remember ever feeling so disconnected from the world.

I sat at the moldy desk and took Manda’s picture out, looking at it. After a while I put my hands on an imaginary keyboard. Started typing in keystroke combinations that were so familiar to me, they didn’t even feel like a memory. This felt more like patterns I had been born with, patterns built into my fingers before birth.

Patterns
.

The desktop felt spongy, almost wet, but my moving fingers barely noticed. I kept up my imaginary typing. And then I didn’t notice anything at all.

When I looked up again, the vampire was standing in the doorway, framed by his lavender glow. My heart jumped out of rhythm. He was watching me, one corner of his jagged mouth turned up in a pleased little smile.

I had no weapons in here. Only things like batteries and bags of clothes.

I watched him, reflexes screaming. If I rushed him, hit him hard enough, maybe I could knock him off the tower—I tried to stand, but I couldn’t move.

My hands were still lying on top of the desk.
It’s happening again
, I thought. Another seizure. I struggled inside the cushiony prison of my mind, curses rattling through my head. Wirtz came closer, filling the room. He studied the walls, the desk, the furniture. My eyes were the only thing alive in my body; I swiveled them left and right, doing my best to follow him, see what the vampire was looking at.

Wirtz reached for the filing cabinet drawers, fingers stopping just short of touching the handles. “You wouldn’t want to open
this for me, would you,
Mädchen
? So that I may see what is inside?” He laughed, an awful sound, like stones laughing. “I didn’t think so.”

The vampire suddenly leaned across the desk, the raw-looking wound on his scalp right in my face. My breathing stopped. I knew he was only an image, but my body didn’t know.

“And what are you doing here?” He straightened up and my breathing started again. “A … room,” the vampire said. “Industrial. Old. No
Verzierung
 … ornamentation. I would say this is somewhere in a … business? Am I guessing correctly? An abandoned business in Huntsville, Ala-ba-ma, where you have chosen to hide. With bags from … let me see, what is this … U-ni-ted Outfitters and
Nord
Creek. Interesting.”

Now something else caught his attention. Manda’s picture on the desk.

No
, I thought.
Leave her alone. I’ll kill you
.

The vampire looked at the picture a long time, smiling. At last he backed away from the desk and sat down in midair.… Wherever his physical body was, there was something to sit on.

“I want to tell you a story,
Mädchen
. A story about
Zubehöre—
attachments. One of the first of my children I ever … turned … was a young girl named Ava. Not very many years older than yourself. She answered my Call, even though at the time I did not know how to give it properly. I had stumbled upon this myself. My skill was simple,
rudimentär
. But Ava came, in spite of this.

“I took her on her first
Blutjagd
. We shared our private spaces during the long days underground. Time became meaningless to us. There was only the time I spent with her.

“One night I awoke and Ava was gone. I could not understand this. Had someone come and stolen her away? She would no longer answer my Call.

“I searched for years, but I was too … 
unerfahren
 … inexperienced … to find her. Decades passed. I fathered many more children until at last I became weary of the practice … only wishing to be alone. I came to find myself in the place you would call … 
Nord
Carolina … in the mountains. I have always preferred mountains. More isolated; again, my preference.”

The vampire’s face changed. I couldn’t read his expression.

“One spring, by the most extreme chance, I came across Ava again. She was standing beside the old colonial ferry landing on the Neuse River. Watching across the water as if waiting for someone. I watched too. Her golden hair,
jugendlich
appearance. I felt something I had not felt for … a very long time.

“Ava recognized me at once, called out my name in a kind of gasp when I approached. We came together in an embrace. I held her close. This way, you know?” The vampire crossed his arms over his large chest, hugging himself. “Close in such a way to never let her go again. Closer still,
Mädchen.
”

The vampire drew his arms tighter and tighter around his broad chest. His pale face began to turn red and his jaw bulged with the effort.

“Harder still. Her eyes … were very large. Harder and harder I squeezed. Until … at last … her bones … began to crack.…”

The vampire let himself go and his long arms dropped to his sides. He took several breaths, dark eyes lowered to the floor.

“That is what I came to tell you tonight,” he said. “This is the memory I have to share as a gift for you. All I care for … attachments.”

Wirtz stood up from the invisible chair. The pale color slowly returned to his face.

“
Bis später.
”

He evaporated into the dark.

Bis später
. I knew what that meant. Papi said it all the time.

See you later
.

The room was still vibrating with the vampire’s presence. I climbed up to the roof and collapsed on the air mattress, taking hold of the ax. Wirtz had come through so easily this time. Did that mean he was closer? At least he hadn’t picked up any new clues.

Oh no
. The bags. The vampire had seen my shopping bags from the mall. The mall that was only a couple of miles away.
He’s tightening the noose
.

I lay there unable to sleep, alternating between terror that he might come back tonight and fury that he was only coming through in images, pictures. This was turning into psychological warfare.

I ached to take the vampire on in the flesh. I had passed the point of wanting only to survive. I was tired of his games. Wanted to ruin Wirtz, destroy him, crumble him into bits. I had to know more about where he was and what he was doing.

I found them sitting on the stone wall. From a distance, their lavender glow made them look like Japanese lanterns hanging in the forest.

“Well, Fresh,” Donne said. “Just can’t keep away from our range, can you?”

“Bite me,” I said. I didn’t have patience for her crap tonight.

“I might, but who knows how you will taste?” Donne said. Anton responded with his goofiest laugh.

“Good evening, Emma,” Lena said.

“I’ve come to ask you something important,” I said. “Your story about Valentin—you mentioned he once came to you when he wasn’t in bodily form. It started with a
W
.”

“
Wesentliche,
” Lena said. “That is the word you are searching for. What we call the essence.”

“Yeah, that’s it. I really need to know more about this.… Like how’s it done?”

Donne snorted. “Oh, is that all?”

Lena smiled. “Knowledge of the
Wesentliche
is acquired over time, requiring great patience.”

“Oh. But what if I needed to know right away? Couldn’t you give me the Cliffs Notes version?”

Lena gave me a knowing look. “All right. The best way to start is with the
Feld.
”

“
Feld
. That’s another German word, right?” I came over and sat down next to her. “It means ‘field,’ doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Lena said. “But not like a field of clover …” She looked at Anton. “You are better at explaining it.”

Anton hopped down from the wall and drew a stick figure in the dirt with his index finger.

“Here, Emma. Let’s say this is you, all right?”

“Okay.”

He drew a circle around the stick figure. “This circle is your
Feld
. But it’s not really a circle because … it’s everywhere, you know?”

“All around me? Like a sphere?”

“More than that. Around you, inside you, throughout you …”

“So the
Feld
is some kind of … invisible force that is all around me, inside me, etc.?”

Anton snapped his fingers. “Exactly! Only a force acts upon something else. The
Feld
just … is. Understand? It doesn’t do anything; it’s just there. All the time. Wherever you go. Your
Feld
, mine, Donne’s, Lena’s, on and on.”

“What about the
Verloren
?” I said.

“Sure,” Anton said. “Everything has a
Feld
, even stones.” He patted the Bear. “So there are trillions of individual
Felder
—or, as you might say in English,
Felds
. Even much more than that. Yet there is only one
Feld
. Stay with me, okay? Your
Feld
is also all
Felds
at once, all right? They are all connected, making up one giant
Feld
that goes all over and touches everything.”

“So we each make up a part of this gigantic
Feld,
” I said.

“Yes and no,” Anton said. “Each part also contains the whole, okay? In each of the small
Felds
there is a … picture … of the whole, you know?”

“Sounds like a hologram,” I said, remembering something we had talked about recently in science.

“A what?”

“A hologram is a … picture, like you said. Only you can cut it up into smaller pieces, and the whole picture is always still there. No matter how small you slice it.”

“Perfect!” Anton said. “That’s really very good. Hologram. I will have to remember that. So—all
Felds
are connected, becoming one big
Feld
. So our actions ripple through everything. Once you learn how to tune into it … you can sense the approach of others by these … ripples. Their
Feld
announces them.”

“Like Spider-Man’s tingle,” I said.

“Huh?” Anton said.

“Never mind.”

“We use it to communicate.
Feld
is like a telephone wire.… You can speak through it when you know how.” Anton’s eyes brightened. “But
Feld
is also … health! You balance it and it takes care of you. The infection—when a
Verloren
attacks someone, they are really attacking that person’s
Feld
. Understand?”

I nodded. “I guess so.”

Anton jabbed his finger on the circle he had just drawn. “The
infection is not in the blood. A doctor couldn’t find it. The infection is not an infection of the body; it’s an infection of the body’s
Feld.
”

“Wow. Okay, but how about the
Wesentliche
?”

“I’m getting there. When you’re drinking from someone, your two
Felds
are temporarily joined,” Anton said. “Mixed. Blended. If you drink long enough, they become permanently bonded, see?”

“Okay,” I said. “But when we went on the Blood Hunt and … drank from those people … why weren’t they turned into vampires?”

Anton held up a finger. “If you stop drinking soon enough, the
Felds
separate. Become two again. Unchanged.”

I thought of Wirtz. How long had my
Feld
been hooked to his?
Long enough
. But why hadn’t it changed me completely?
The seizure
, I thought. Something about my tonic-clonic must have screwed up the bonding process. Scrambled it. I shuddered.

“So … how do you know when to stop feeding?” I said.

Lena jumped in here. “It is instinctual. You know when you are approaching the boundary where the bond is forged. I hate to tell you this, Emma, but … once that boundary is reached, it creates a bond between your
Feld
and your attacker’s
Feld
. This bond will extend through time without lessening.”