Daylighters

The ground kept shifting around them, around their little island of misfits, and Claire couldn’t help but feel this terrible sense, again, that what she was doing in helping the vampires . . . might all be wrong. But what was right? Fallon? The Daylighters? She couldn’t believe that. She wouldn’t.

Fallon was shaking his head. “Refuse to accept the facts, cling to this fantasy of loving a creature that cannot love you in return. . . . Well, then you’ll end up in a cell, and we’ll have to treat you for this mental illness you suffer from until you’re cured of it.”

“Listen to yourself. You’re going to put me in an asylum?” Eve said. “For loving someone?”

“You don’t love Michael. Michael died. You love a thing that once was him, and loving a corpse has always been a thing of horror to anyone with a shred of decency in them. So, yes. Call it an asylum if you wish, but that’s what faces you if you won’t renounce him. I’m not unkind; I’m giving you a chance to avoid that fate. Take off the ring and throw it away. Show them that you stand with me. With humanity. Become a Daylighter, Eve.”

Eve took a step forward, right into his face, and looked him straight in the eyes to say, “Screw you, Fallon. If you want my wedding ring, I’ll mash it into your face deep enough to leave a permanent tattoo.”

Fallon didn’t flinch. He just . . . smiled.

“Take her,” he said, and one of the Daylighters grabbed Eve by the shoulder.

She spun into it, moving with limber grace, and slammed the heel of her right hand into his nose, jammed her shoulder into his chest, and knocked him right off his feet into a sprawl on the dirty tile. She still looked dazed and vulnerable, and she might have wavered a little on her feet, but Claire’s heart swelled to about twice its normal size, because in that moment she was so proud of Eve she wanted to let out a war cry. “Who’s next?” Eve yelled it for her, and pointed at another of the Daylighter guards. “You. Come on, sunshine, let’s do it!”

At Fallon’s nod, that guard stepped forward—but he wasn’t caught by surprise, and he was more than a match for Eve, who landed a couple of punches but ended up off balance, which was all the man needed to sweep her feet out from under her and send her crashing to the floor, facedown. In the next second he had his knee in the small of her back and was twisting her hands behind her.

Eve was screaming, but not in pain. That was pure rage boiling out of her, and now Claire tried to move forward to help—but Myrnin put a heavy, strong hand on her shoulder to keep her in place, and she couldn’t twist free.

“Get her ring off,” Fallon said to the guard, and the man nodded, wrenched Eve’s left hand up, and slid her wedding band off to hold it up for Fallon’s inspection. “Now throw it away.”

“No!” Eve screamed, but it was too late. The man pitched it through the air, and for a second it caught the diffused light from above and a red glint shone from the ruby in its center, and then it was heading for the shadows.

A pale hand caught it.

Michael Glass stepped out of the crowd and into the open space.

“No, you fool.” It was just a soft, angry whisper from Oliver, but Claire felt Myrnin’s fingers close tight on her skin, and she knew things had just shifted in a way she couldn’t really define.

Michael stood there, staring at Fallon with the ring in his hand, and said, “Let her go. It isn’t her you want. It’s me.”

“Amelie’s child,” Fallon agreed. “Yes. It’s you I need, Michael, because you’re a symbol. You’re Amelie’s weakness. And I know you need this girl just as much as she needs you. I can give her back to you—and you to her, in ways that neither of you have ever imagined possible. All you need do is agree to take the cure.”

The cure. Of course. Fallon’s salvation hadn’t been some religious allegory; he’d been offering the vampires humanity. A change back to a regular, breathing, mortal life. And isn’t that a good thing? Shouldn’t it be?

He’d needed a volunteer, and here was Michael, standing in front of him with Eve’s wedding ring clutched in his fist, looking at his wife with so much love and desperation that Claire felt a little faint from it. There was a kind of restless whisper that moved through the vampires . . . something beneath her hearing, beneath even her vision, but a sensation like nothing she’d ever felt before.

“No,” Oliver whispered again. There was anger in that word, and there was also fear. If there was ever a moment when events were turning, when something monumental was happening, this was it. She could feel it, and so could they.

From the look on Fallon’s face, he knew it, too. He was waiting for his triumph.

“I never wanted to be a vampire,” Michael said. “You know that, Eve. I never asked for it.”

The guard had let her get up to her knees now, but he held one wrist behind her back tight enough that it must have been painful. She didn’t make a sound. Her gaze was locked on Michael’s, breathlessly waiting.

“I love you,” he said. “I always did, even when I was an idiot too stupid to admit it. By the time I could, it was too late, and I was . . . something else. I never had the chance to be with you when I was human. And I’m sorry for that. You deserve better.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Eve said. Her voice was shaking, but she managed to smile. “It’s not like I’m Jane Normal in the first place. Love you, too, Mike. Always and forever, no matter what you are.”

Michael nodded to her, just a little, and his smile was heartbreakingly lovely. Something personal and private, just between the two of them. Then he turned to look directly at Fallon. Unafraid.

He opened his hand and let Eve’s ring fall from his fingers.

It tumbled through the air, wobbling and spinning, and hit the tile with a sound like breaking hearts. It rolled to a stop at Fallon’s feet.

“Do what you want,” Michael said. “But with or without the ring, with or without the law, Eve’s my wife, and there’s nothing you or anybody else can do about it. I’m not volunteering. If you want to give me your cure, you’ll have to force me, just like the vampire who ripped my throat out in the first place.”

“That’s a grave mistake,” Fallon said. “It will greatly diminish your chances of survival if you fight the therapy. Take it willingly. Please.”

“You heard my wife. Go fuck yourself.”

Fallon’s face . . . changed. It went from a mask of calm friendliness to something so twisted with rage that it was very nearly demonic, and Claire felt terror bolt through her—not for herself but for her friends, so alone and vulnerable and brave.

Fallon rounded on the guard holding Eve. “Take this deviant to the hospital. Tell Dr. Anderson that I want her given a complete course of aversion therapy until she loathes the very sight of vampires. Don’t be gentle about it.”

Michael lunged, but Fallon was faster—he had the remote control to the collars, and it must have been turned up to bone-splitting levels of pain because it knocked Michael out of the air in a graceless heap, his back arched as he convulsed against the current.

And not just him. All of them. The vampires dropped like bags of cement, and Claire realized in that single clear instant that if she didn’t go with them, she’d be as obvious as a bug on a wedding cake—the only one left standing in the middle of the captives. Luckily, Myrnin helped with that, even if it was unintentional; his hand crushed down on her, shoving her toward the floor, and she let herself drop. His weight fell on top of her, hiding her almost completely from sight. She managed to squirm just a little and gain some air, and a sightline toward Fallon.

He turned down the intensity of the collars, but Claire could still feel the current running through Myrnin’s body—enough to make his whole body twitch uncontrollably in pain. She was lucky that it wasn’t transmitting through to her, except as a slight tingle.

Fallon obviously wanted his audience to see, but he also wanted them quiet.

Compliant.

Eve was pulled to her feet and hustled toward the door, screaming Michael’s name. Fallon put a toe of his shoe under Michael’s body and rolled him over on his back, then leaned down to stare at him. That horrible smile was still firmly in place.

“I did warn you. You’ll be cured, whether you want it or not. I’ll have you changed or I’ll have you dead. As for your girl’s unfortunately painful future, you brought that on her, Michael. I want you to remember that when the cure is coursing through your veins and everything you are is stripped away, never to return. I want you to remember who remade you in their image this time. Not Amelie. Me.”