slowly. Michael winced when it passed through his body, he had never felt such coldness before. “And we both know that unless you’re gone, you’ll never let me have my son,” Vaughan said. “You’ll never let Michael be mine.”
The sound of her son’s name sucked the fear out of Grace, leaving only strength behind. “And you’ll never have him!”
The laughter distorted Vaughan’s face even more and Michael had to look away, he was hideous. His features, his eyes especially, were just like Nakano’s when Michael unwittingly saw his true self. “Gracie, haven’t you learned by now that there’s nothing you can do to stop me? It’s the only way I can raise Michael the way I’ve wanted to all these years, in my image, without your interference.” So that was it, that was the only reason Vaughan wanted to bring Michael to Eden, to enroll him in Archangel Academy, so he could be one of Them. That’s why he so ridiculously suggested he should marry Brania. Well, too late, Dad. None of that’s ever going to happen!
Grace felt the same way. Standing up, she looked directly at her ex-husband, his misshapen face not frightening her any longer, and the fury that she had kept locked away inside her for years was unleashed. “No matter what you do, our son will never be yours! He will never become something as disgusting and vile as you!” she seethed. She took another step closer to him and looked directly into his blackened eyes. “Haven’t you learned that yet, Vaughan?”
For a moment, his father found it hard to breathe, his chest rising, expanding, his nostrils flaring wide. Michael watched his father’s face, and beyond the monstrous features, he recognized the emotion behind his expression. It was doubt. But Vaughan hadn’t come here to talk or discuss or negotiate Michael’s future, he had come here to end Grace’s.
Baring his fangs, he reached out for Grace, who made one last attempt to reach the door. This time she wasn’t even close. Vaughan grabbed both her arms at the same time and lifted her off the ground. Squirming, Grace tried to break free, her legs flailing, kicking, hitting Vaughan, but he didn’t feel her. The only sensation he felt was the sweet taste of her blood as his fangs bit through the bandages and tore open the flesh at her wrists.
A low, guttural moan seeped out of Grace, bled out of her every pore. Her body was weeping not because her blood was being taken from her, but because her child was. Looking out the window, up into the heavens, she began to whisper, “Dear God, please protect Michael from this man, please protect his soul and keep it safe.” She kept on praying, pleading as Vaughan kept on feeding, feeding, feeding, one wrist, then the next. All the while he was gulping, devouring her, Grace prayed, even when her legs no longer moved, when her eyesight was almost completely gone, she kept begging God to take action. “Do with me what you will, but please, please, send someone to protect my son.”
Raising Grace’s near-dead body high over his head, Vaughan screamed, “My son doesn’t need protection from his father!”
By the time Grace’s body hit the floor, Vaughan was gone, his deed done. He made it look like the unstable woman had finally succeeded at the task she’d attempted so many times before. He cleverly made it look like she slit her wrists and committed suicide, when she simply became another one of his victims.
Paralyzed, Michael realized his mother hadn’t abandoned him. Even facing death, she had tried to protect him, as Phaedra had said. That’s all she had ever done. And now all Michael could do was watch her gasp for breath. He knew that if he shouted, no one would hear him. He couldn’t alter the past, he could only become its witness. No! No, there had to be something he could do; he couldn’t just watch. Crawling to his mother, he tried to press on her wounds, but again his hand moved through hers. He was flesh while she was spirit. But she was also his mother; he couldn’t just leave her to die. “Imogene!” The girl still remained more interested in the stars. “Imogene! Please let me hold her,” Michael pleaded. “Let me hold my mother!”
Turning away from the night sky, Imogene looked at Michael and Grace, and she remembered how she felt when she died by herself and how Penry must have felt when he experienced the same fate. She understood the need for physical connection and the absolute horror of its absence. She understood what Michael was asking; she couldn’t deny the request and it seemed that neither could Edwige. After all, she got what she wanted, Michael saw the truth. What did she care what happened next?
This time when Michael reached out for his mother, he felt her flesh, cold and scared, and he let out a cry. This was not the way it was supposed to be. A son was not supposed to cradle his mother in his arms; it was supposed to be the other way around. And yet it felt right. Grace looked up at him, and Michael saw the love and pride in her eyes and he knew that she recognized him, she knew she was being held by her son, and they were both grateful. Because when Grace died a second time, she wasn’t alone.
chapter 17
The End of the Beginning
Outside, the earth was different. Inside, so was Michael.
“Michael.” No answer. “Mr. Howard,” Professor Willows clarified in a much louder voice. “Would you mind answering the question?”
Looking up from the blank page of his notebook, Michael saw his professor staring at him and was startled. He had actually forgotten he was in class. Glancing to the left, he saw some students looking in his direction as well. One of them was Fritz, his head leaning forward, eyebrows raised. Clearly, they were all waiting for him to speak.
“Shall I rephrase the question?” Willows asked. “Translate it into German? Perhaps Swahili?”
Michael’s surly growl of a response cut right through the students’ laughter. “I don’t know.”
Willows’s right hand moved with a mind of its own. His middle finger tapped against his thumb, quickly, repeatedly, his ring finger bouncing along with it, his pinky, not moving, but thrust outward. His nervous twitch didn’t reveal itself only when he was nervous, it also manifested when he was faced with an uncooperative pupil. He expected certain students to act like boors; Michael wasn’t one of them. Nevertheless, he had been a professor long enough to know that even the most scholarly teenager could sometimes act like his more loutish counterparts.
His lips clamped tightly, Willows exhaled slowly through his nose and clutched the edge of his desk to stop his hand from shaking. If the professor thought Michael was merely cranky because he didn’t study and couldn’t answer the simple question about the United States confederacy, he would have pressed the issue with him, but he recognized the look in his eyes. He was angry, and when a teenager was angry, Willows believed it was often best to ignore them until the feeling abated. “Amir,” Willows called out. “Name the three Southern states that stayed neutral and didn’t join the confederacy in an attempt to secede from the Union.”
“Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland,” Amir said, failing to restrain himself from tossing a smug smile Michael’s way, which everyone except Michael noticed. With his mind overcrowded with images of his parents, there really was little space for anything else to penetrate.
When the bell rang, Michael got to the door so quickly Fritz had to push another kid out of the way to catch up with him so he wouldn’t lose him in the crowd. “Hey, isn’t Nebraska, like, right next to Missouri?”
“Just ’cause I’m from the States doesn’t mean I know everything about them.” Michael hoped his comment would shut Fritz up, but quite the opposite.
“I know what’ll sweeten your pissy mood,” Fritz said. “Help me write the latest issue.”
Again with that stupid comic book, Michael thought. Why doesn’t he just let it die like Penry did.
“I got this great idea that all the profs get food poisoning at some special banquet honoring a former headmaster who’s now a zombie,” Fritz said, his voice brimming over with excitement. “But it’s not really food poisoning, the food’s been cooked in zombie blood, so now all the profs are zombies just like the headmaster.” When Michael didn’t respond, Fritz continued. “Picture it, mate. There are zombies everywhere and all the students lock themselves into St. Sebastian’s to hide out and then the profs break through the windows and then there’s this right gory war on the gym floor. Brilliant, I know. I just don’t know how to kill them all off, which is why I need your help.” Suddenly, Fritz looked very serious. “Have we established if Double P can kill a horde of
