Throat (50 page)

I went blind.

Whatever hit me, it felt as if a concrete wall had collapsed on my head. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. I only knew I was awake before my eyes were open.

A vampire can see through her eyelids. Not clearly, but enough to make out shapes, lights and darks. That’s what I was seeing now. As if my head were crammed with wads of cotton soaked in gray and black paint.

I opened my eyes; the world was blurry and slow. But this wasn’t the aftermath of a seizure. I could immediately tell where I was. Above me I could see the iron skeleton of the test tower on one side and the low cement walls of the bunker on the other.

I was lying on my back and could feel a trickle of blood running down my temple. I raised my head unsteadily; it ached terribly. I tried to sit up and discovered my arms and feet were bound with heavy chains. The chains were anchored in the gravelly soil with four long iron spikes as big around as baseball bats.

Someone stepped into my field of view.

The vampire’s lavender glow shifted and flowed over his body
like fog moving around a living statue. His expression was almost sad.

“I must admit I am … disappointed,” Wirtz said. “You will never be a
Kriegerin
. You have no honor.” He gestured at the tower. “I gave them to you, those four … 
Verloren
. They were yours to release … but you could not finish them in an honorable way, could you?”

I started to twitch and jerk uncontrollably, pulling against the spikes, but my arms were spread out as far as they could reach like da Vinci’s famous drawing of the man inside a circle. I couldn’t get enough leverage to use my strength to pull them out.

I had failed. Failed. Was dead, gone, finished. And Sagan with me.

I wished I had enough liquid in my mouth to spit out the dryness. I didn’t know if I could speak. I felt as if I was about to start hyperventilating. My eyes flitted around the clearing frantically. It was over. Everything was over.

No. Think, Emma
.

I forced myself to focus on the vampire’s long face, concentrating as hard as I could. Took several long, deep breaths. Willing everything to slow down.

“Where is he?” I said, speaking softly so maybe he wouldn’t hear the terror there. “Tell me what you did with him. What did you—”

Wirtz dropped something hard and metallic on my stomach.

Sagan’s laptop
.

It was still warm. I closed my eyes, feeling tears on my cheeks. Wirtz took the laptop away. I heard him take in a long, resigned breath. In some weird way I felt almost comforted. Ready for it all to be over. The dumbest little pictures came into my head. Walking through our apartment, nobody at home. Dishes in the sink.
Manda’s little shoes with the flowers on them sitting on the kitchen counter …

“It is truly too bad, all of this,” the vampire said. “If only—”

I opened my eyes and cursed. “Shut up. I don’t have to listen to this. Just do it. If you’re not going to tell me where he is, what you did with him … just get it over with.”

Wirtz didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes were focused on something else.
My tool belt
. He bent and touched the little metal vial containing the acid.

“And what is this?”

I couldn’t believe he thought he had the right to keep asking me questions. I was about to curse him again when an idea came to me.

“It’s the drug I use to induce a seizure,” I said. “You asked about my secret; that’s the way I do it. I make myself have a seizure.”

The vampire fumbled with my belt and slipped the vial out of its pouch. “Drug. Are you saying this is some kind of … 
Pharmazeutik
?”

“Yeah, it’s from a pharmacy. It’s a seizure medicine. But I discovered by accident, if I take too much, it induces a seizure instead. That’s what gives me my powers.”

Wirtz’s eyes narrowed as he held it out in front of him. “A
Vollmensch Droge
?”

“A human drug, yeah.”

He unscrewed the cap, letting it fall at his feet. Put the vial beneath his nose and sniffed the acrid aroma, making a face.

Take it. Take it
.

“Oh, you want me to take some?” Wirtz said. “Test it out on myself? Drink this acid? Perhaps I should just pour it on your face.”

Oh no
.

The vampire held the open vial over my face, tipping it slightly. He tipped it farther and farther. I held my breath.

“No, I think not,” Wirtz said.

He put the vial to his lips and drank it down in one long gulp. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing.

The vampire grimaced horribly and made a sound like something was caught in his throat. He turned away from me, staggered a few steps toward the bunker, and doubled over and vomited. At last he straightened up, wiping his mouth, and flung the vial away.

He got down on his knees, close to my face, eyes flaring. I could smell the searing stink of the acid on his breath. His lips were bleeding.

“You think I care about life in this world?” Wirtz said, breathing into my face. His voice had a terrible ragged edge as if his insides had been ground into hamburger. “You need to understand this,
Mädchen
. I care about nothing. I told you, after this many years, the only thing I have is … curiosity.”

I turned my head away so I wouldn’t have to look at him and struggled to find my voice. “I know … I know about … your son,” I said.

The vampire pushed away from me and stood. He took a grungy handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweating face. Returned it to his pocket and swallowed several more times, coughing. He took a step toward me.

“That person no longer exists,” he rasped. “He never existed.”

Wirtz lifted his arms, spreading them out wide. “You know,
Mädchen
, there is a dream that there is a life beyond this one. But you know what the truth is? This life … it is the dream. It is the thing that is not real. Lilli.”

My heartbeat quickened. The female vampire appeared at his
side just as if she had been standing there all along. She looked down at me with that same expression.
Dead. Used up
.

“The time has come,” Wirtz said in his shredded voice. “We are going to do what should have been done before.
Der Verlust.
”

“What …”

Then I remembered.
Der Verlust
. The Loss.

He was going to cut me off from my
Feld
.

Lilli knelt beside me. She turned her face away and draped her body over mine, lying on her back at an angle across my chest, so that the skin of our bare throats was touching. She was heavier than I had expected. Her flesh was warm. I twisted my head, trying to look into her face.

“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered into her ear. “You don’t have to do what he says.”

Lilli turned her blank eyes to me, our lips so close, we could have kissed.

“You are right,” she said in a quiet, controlled voice. “I don’t have to do what he says.” She paused a long time. “I
am
what he says.”

I suddenly realized what it was—this thing she was doing. What had the
Sonnen
called it?
Fütterung
. The Feeding.
She’s sacrificing herself
.

Wirtz knelt beside us and looked at Lilli almost tenderly, then tore her shirt open at the collar. He lowered his teeth gently to her soft skin. I watched, heart pounding, as the vampire lingered there almost playfully; then his teeth fastened hold.

The bite made me flinch in surprise. It was nothing like what the vampire had done to Sagan in the observatory. Instead of ripping her open, Wirtz’s teeth pulled and tugged slowly at the soft skin of Lilli’s neck, stretching the flesh agonizingly back and forth,
tighter and tighter. The skin didn’t tear right away. I couldn’t stand it, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Torturing her
. Wirtz was torturing her.

The sound of the vampire’s teeth pulling slowly at her skin made me think of the way a cat would pull apart a mouse. It seemed to take forever for Lilli’s skin to finally break. I wanted to scream. At last I could hear the flesh of her throat pulling free with a sound like thick wet cloth ripping; a terrible little cry escaped from Lilli’s mouth straight into my ear. The blood instantly spurted and spilled over her neck, pooling down my own neck and shoulders. It was very warm.

Lilli gasped sharply as Wirtz made the opening larger and began to feed. I could feel her heart speeding up all the way through her back, could feel the twittery lurching rhythm through my own chest, joining with the beating of my heart as our
Felds
slowly came together as one.

Wirtz drank a long time. My mind felt like a room that had no door or windows and all the air had been sucked out. He drank so long, I thought,
Surely she is gone now. Lilli can’t still be alive
. But she was. I felt the dull thump of her heart getting weaker and weaker, the beats further and further apart. He was killing her. That’s all it could be. He wanted Lilli dead for some insane reason.

“And now,” Wirtz said, lifting his bloody mouth from the steamy wound at Lilli’s throat and looking at me again, “I am giving you another chance.”

“You …”

“Oh no. I’m not letting you go. I am giving you one last chance to regain your honor.”

My throat … he meant he was going to take me at the throat this time, assuming I behaved myself. I jerked against my restraints.

“You must remain still,” Wirtz said, bending forward. “In
order for the
Verlust
to come, I must be able to drink from both at once.”

I tried to use my head as a weapon, striking at him. The vampire took my head in one hand and pinned it to the side. He lowered his mouth and tore at my neck with his hot, wet teeth.

The pain was so intense.… Even with the chains holding me down, I lifted up in the air, arching my back. It was so awful, I couldn’t make a sound, had to use every ounce of my energy to focus on surviving his tearing bite.

Wirtz made the tear in my neck right next to the tear he had made in Lilli’s throat. He fastened his wide mouth between us, still pulling at the dying Lilli’s blood while beginning to take in some of mine. And I knew … somehow I knew what he intended to do. What the
Verlust
was.

My
Feld.
He’s going to join my
Feld
to hers
. Then he was going to suck Lilli to death while I was still alive. And my
Feld
 … It would die with Lilli.

“No!” I screamed.

Already I could feel Lilli’s dying seeping into me, even while I was so alive. A frosty, spongy numbness pushed its way under my skin, filling my veins.… My fingers straightened as the cool tide of her leaving poured down my arms all the way to my fingertips.

That’s exactly what it was.
A leaving
. Everything was leaving me. Even anger, hate, bitterness.
My soul
.

The noise Wirtz made as he drank was almost a cooing sound, the obscene flip side of the noise you made to lull babies to sleep. I tried to think of Manda. I tried to think of Sagan.… They were receding further and further into the gloom of some other night. Until I didn’t care. Not anymore.

Everything was slowing down. It was so quiet now, I could hear individual leaves fluttering in the forest. Water rippling on the river.
The air above my head filled with billowing lavender light. I could feel Lilli leaving her body even as her deadweight was settling on top of my chest. I was going too. She was taking me with her.

A seizure. If I could only have a seizure
, I thought. But why? Who cared? Who would remember me? I was just this angry, mistrustful girl who felt cursed and hated everybody and everything. It was good that I was going. The world would be better off. Whatever was inside me, whatever spark of uniqueness I contained, it deserved to be snuffed out. I only wanted everything to stop so I could dream myself into a wall of lavender oblivion.…

The very last thing was a sound.

I had always thought there would be something surprising about death. Something so unexpected, it would make the bad parts not quite so bad because I would be filled with wonder. But I never knew the surprising thing would be a sound. But then, this wasn’t death, was it? The
Verlust?
And the sound wasn’t so much surprising as it was incredibly annoying, invasive. A shrill, screaming blast of noise that made tears come to my eyes because I couldn’t clap my hands to my vampire ears to shut it out.

Then something incredible happened. Wirtz pulled away. I could feel the unbelievable relief of his mouth leaving my neck, the pressure of his hand leaving the side of my head.

I wasn’t gone. I felt really weak, but I was still here. I tried lifting my head, but Lilli’s body was still there too. But even though I could barely move, when I opened my eyes, I could see Wirtz kneeling, then standing, looking somewhere past me, his features showing a murderous irritation.

It had to be the sound. So infuriating and painfully shrill, it was destroying his concentration. Wirtz stepped over us and walked into the big open space between the bunker and the tower.