Throat (51 page)

There was a fire there that had not been there before.… No, it
was too bright for a fire—more like an exploding shower of sparks. Then I realized what it was, some kind of fireworks going off. One of those cone-shaped gadgets you light on the ground on the Fourth of July.

Only the cone was lying on its side. It was throwing out a huge shower of horizontal sparks, and every once in a while a big ball of colored light shot straight across toward the woods like an overturned Roman candle. The whole effect lit the gravel clearing as bright as day to my sensitive eyes. I had to squint to look at it directly.

Next to the fallen cone was a small black cube. Even with my mind gone bleary, I somehow knew that’s where the sound was coming from.

Now Wirtz was moving toward the cube, shielding his eyes with his upturned hand. The sight was so bright, I could only see the vampire in a long black silhouette. The silhouette moved toward the cube at an angle that kept Wirtz from being pelted with the gushing sparks.

He was only a few feet away when he stooped and started to crab-walk closer, still shielding his eyes, the cube shrieking so loud, it had to be pure torture on his ears. I tried lifting myself as he bent to examine the black box.… I had barely enough strength to arch my back. Lilli’s inert body made me feel as if I were trying to climb up through the dirt in a grave.

Her head lolled against my cheek and saliva from her open mouth ran along my jaw. I glanced at Wirtz—he was still looking at the cube. Reaching his hand out to touch it, then pulling his fingers back. I would never have another chance.

I flexed my arms and instead of trying to lift the iron spikes up out of the ground, I started pulling them toward me. I could feel them move just slightly; I was weak. I couldn’t tell if the movement
was from the iron bending or the spikes leaning sideways through the dirt. I tried again. The spikes barely budged. I slumped under Lilli’s weight, my back flattening against the ground again. I tried flexing my legs. I couldn’t do it.
I’m sorry
, I wanted to say. I didn’t know who I was saying it to.
I’m so sorry
.

Wirtz was right. The only thing left was curiosity. I watched his silhouette from my sideways position. He was reaching for the black cube again.

I felt the Jeep before I saw it … felt it underneath my back as the vibrations radiated through the ground and up into my bones. It wasn’t making a sound—it couldn’t, the shrieking of the black cube was demolishing every other sound—but I could still feel the motion of the Jeep’s tires as it crunched across the clearing.

What was this? I turned my head slightly … could see the Jeep angling across the big open circle, headlights off, one figure in the driver’s seat, three other figures behind it, pushing. Pushing the Jeep forward … gathering speed.

Oh my God
.

Sagan was driving the Jeep and the three
Sonnen
, Lena, Anton, and Donne, were pushing on the back bumper, running hard into the clearing, the Jeep gaining soundless, stealthy speed, moving so fast it looked as if it just might take off.

Wirtz touched the cube and the shrieking sound cut out; in the same instant the huge bulk of the Jeep crossed into the shower of sparks, hurtling straight at the vampire, the hood bursting through the sparks like the prow of a square ship lifting up in the air over a cresting wave.…

The grille of the Jeep smashed into the vampire head-on, ramming him viciously backward. Wirtz sprawled grotesquely across the clearing, arms and legs flying in jerky bent angles to his body. He landed again twenty or thirty feet away, but the Jeep didn’t even
slow down as it trucked him a second time, smashing his face to the ground with a heavy, crunching thud that bounced through my skin.

Sagan slammed on the brakes and the Jeep skidded to a stop on top of Wirtz. Sagan had already jumped from the door, leaving it hanging open, and was running toward me.

The mist in my head cleared. I bucked in the air again, and this time Lilli’s body slipped off me and fell away. I retracted every limb like a dying spider pulling its legs in, feeling the resistance of the iron spikes starting to give. I jerked the chains taut at least three more times before Sagan had even reached me. Each time gaining a little bit of slack, but it was still so hard. I was still feeling the effects of the
Verlust
.

Sagan bent over me, the night goggles pushed up on his forehead. A trickle of blood was running down his neck from where I had tied off the gauze on his wound, what seemed like a century ago. I was yelling things at him and he was making shushing noises back to me, working at the chains without getting any closer to getting me loose. I watched helplessly as the Jeep lurched slightly, Wirtz pinned beneath it but moving. Still moving.

“Come on!” I screamed at Sagan.

The
Sonnen
were there now, pulling and tugging at the iron spikes as I jerked and strained. Donne got her spike loose first, then went to help Sagan with his. Slowly the four of them drew out the spikes one by one until there was enough slack to unknot the chains wrapped around my ankles and wrists.

The light from the fireworks was dying as the last of the sparks frittered out from the cone. The front end of the Jeep began to lift, higher and higher, the vampire beneath it getting his back into it now.

I tried to stand but fell. Sagan and Lena caught me. I twined
my arms around their necks and we started to run, Anton and Donne leading the way.

The Jeep was rocking and trembling now and suddenly the whole mass came off the ground, the hood rising almost vertically.

“Go! Come on!” Sagan said.

“This is all we can do!” Lena said to him. “You must hurry! We will take care of the others. You have to go now!”

The three
Sonnen
ran toward the base of the tower. Sagan helped me stumble toward the bunker. We were out of weapons, and both of us knew there was no way we could make it through the forest before Wirtz caught us. The Jeep suddenly lifted off and was now doing a slow barrel roll in midair. It landed on its side with a huge crash, then fell over upside down.

We stumbled through the bunker entrance clinging to one another. When we reached the steel net at the back, Sagan fumbled to get the padlock open.

“Hurry, hurry!” I said.

We fell through on the other side, Sagan landing on top of me, jamming the lock closed behind us. He helped me stagger across the concrete pad to the oil drums lining the far wall.

“Quick!” he said.

He let go of me and grabbed the top of one of the drums, swinging it around in a little circle. “Help me!”

I was dizzy and didn’t know what he wanted at first. Sagan started rolling the drum on its edge toward the metal curtain. “Wait!” I said, understanding.

I was still wobbly, but my strength was returning. I grabbed the first drum and heaved it off the ground; it came down hard on the concrete next to the steel curtain and split open, spilling the gas. Grabbed another and threw it. Another. Another.

Wirtz was limping toward the mesh curtain. His clothes were
bloody and torn and his face was one big scuff mark. He fell to his knees in front of the curtain and got his fingers under the mesh and began to lift.

At first nothing happened, then the steel curtain started to bend and buckle. I kept hurling oil drums—gasoline splashed all around the vampire and the fumes started to choke me. Wirtz was only inches away from getting the curtain high enough to slip under.

“Stop!” Sagan yelled, pulling back on my arm.

He was holding one of the red highway flares we had stashed in his box. He yanked the cap off, turned it over, and feverishly scratched the flare against the striking surface until it burst into flame. Sagan threw the flare at the gasoline drums and we ran deeper into the cave, stumbling and falling and running again.

It took longer for something to happen than I expected, then a feeling of air pressure came rushing over us, making my ears pop, followed by an enormous flash of light. A big, concussive
whoosh
of air beat against our backs with the sound coming right after it, a roaring explosion of fire that filled every space behind us. We both fell to our knees. I looked back, and the entrance to the cavern had been filled by a gigantic fireball that was rushing toward us.

We helped each other up and ran. I could feel my legs coming back and we started to pick up speed. I tugged at Sagan’s hand and plunged straight into the main channel.

“Do you think he’s …?” Sagan yelled.

“I don’t know. I don’t know! Just keep running.”

The passage was wide, but the ceiling was low. Even with my vampire eyes and Sagan’s night vision, we had to be careful not to hit one of the stalactites hanging overhead. Every part of me had become sensory, all focused on one thing: finding a place where we could survive.

“What about a side tunnel; shouldn’t we—”

“No, too easy, he’d find us,” Sagan said. “The King’s Chamber! We’ve got to make it to the King’s Chamber. The opening is just about impossible to spot if you don’t know where to look.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, then I remembered—the hidden crack in the wall we had slithered through where he had shown me the collapsing ceiling and the blind crayfish.

I kept running, letting him be my guide. Nothing seemed familiar. The crazy flowstone walls and columns had morphed into shapes not recognizable as landmarks. I thought about carrying Sagan but was too afraid of stumbling and dropping him on the rocks. The hole in my foot felt as if the nail were still there.

We stopped once and listened.… Nothing but the distant roar of the flames. We kept going.

At the end of the first long hall, the ceiling shot up a good thirty feet or more, but the floor was no longer smooth. It was covered with huge pieces of breakdown.

The brokenness of the landscape slowed us down. I clambered and leapt over one rubble pile after another, hoisting Sagan over the worst places. It felt as if at any moment Wirtz would be right there, flying at us from a side passage, dropping from a crevice in the ceiling, reaching up from a pit to grab our legs.

We moved deeper and deeper into the earth until I was near sobbing from fear and disorientation. I heard rocks tumble somewhere. There for a mini-second, then gone. The acoustics of the cave made it practically impossible to judge the direction. We dashed down a long slope, tripping over football-sized chunks of stone, then the ground became more rippling and smooth.

“Almost there,” Sagan said, panting a little. “You just have to get to the lake and then follow the shore to the north until the ceiling cramps down.”

I could smell the water and then just over a rise I could see it.
The lake was even bigger than I remembered but just as alien. The floor was rounded and smooth. I could see the dusky mounds leading down to water. The whole grotto was throbbing with dim, greenish light. It was almost impossible to believe this was the same place where I had first kissed Sagan.

“This way,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me along. “You’re going to have to help me.… Even with these goggles, it’s gonna be close to impossible for me to see it. The shore turns back north, and there’s this wall that sticks out a little ways, and you circle around it where the ceiling suddenly gets really low, and—”

“And … what?”

The voice came from behind me. A growling rasp of a voice.

I turned and he was there, Wirtz. Not thirty feet away.

The vampire seemed to have brought his own light with him. Beyond the usual lavender, there was a faint halo around his body, and I realized the glow was coming from the embers of his own burning. His hair was gone; smoke was rising from the scorched bump of his head. His clothes were in smoldering tatters, hanging from his body like burned flags in some places, stitched to his blackened skin in others. He stank of char.

“Well,” the
Verloren
said. “Look at … what you have managed to do to me,
Mädchen.
” He touched his arms, then dropped them by his sides. There was a painful catch in his voice. “It has been interesting, which is a better day than so many thousands and thousands of others. But even an interesting day comes to an end.”

Sagan moved closer to me, taking my hand and squeezing it speechlessly. I didn’t have to look at his face to know what he was telling me.
I’m sorry
.

“It’s not your fault,” I whispered to him.

“I agree,” Wirtz went on.
That stupid hearing of his
. “You know,
you both gave it a good try. But now you will never leave this cave alive. Oh, there might be a way for you,
Mädchen
. You are fast. Perhaps fast enough to outrun me? But you’ll never do it carrying him. So. There is something interesting left for us. It is
Ihre Wahl
. Your choice. Are you of the
Sonnen
or the
Verloren
? Do you make the sacrifice or try to save yourself?”

He waited. I didn’t speak. I knew nothing I could say would help anything now. Sagan knew. He knew I would never leave him here to face Wirtz alone. There was no reason to even say it.

“Ah.” The vampire took a step toward us.

Sagan got in front of me, putting himself between Wirtz and me. I swore because I started to cry. Because I wasn’t crying for the obvious reason … I was crying because of what Sagan did. Because of how stupidly brave he was.

I thought Wirtz was going to laugh, but he didn’t. “So. You are going to let the
Vollmensch
make the choice for you? But I have to tell you. This is not really a choice. If he stays where he is and you stay where you are, I will have
euch beiden
. Both. Which is fine with me, if that is what you want.”

Sagan still hadn’t said a word. He stayed in front of me and fished in the pocket of his jeans. Pulled out his cell phone and opened it up.

“Oh.” Now Wirtz did laugh. A laugh full of razor blades and rust. “So you want to make a call? Do you think you will get any bars down here,
Vollmensch
? Maybe to your friends. Get them to come help you. No? Then call 911; I insist.”