Far below, down on the road, the cops were dragging themselves to their feet. As they found their bearings, they pointed at the line of his footprints in the virgin snow.
What in the hell are you doing? The voice in his head didn't sound so much like his own as his brother Gregor's. Get off the ground!
He made a running leap at the nearest tree, a tall pine. He clung to its rough, sappy bark like a goddamn Koala bear. Breathe. Move. He leapt from it to the next tree, and the next and the next. Goddamn suburbs. It wasn't even a real forest, just a piece of land that had not been built on yet. It was too close to the road, too close to houses, and seriously lacking in caves and ravines. He dropped down on an outcropping of rock and ran along it, leaping from boulder to boulder, putting distance between himself and his tracks.
Once his mind wasn't in the way, his body reveled in action. Every movement flowed from instinct and he ate up ground.
The first searching fingers of the light streamed out over the distant plains. He'd only seen it on TV. The white light was cruelly beautiful. It burned blue trails across his retinas. He reeled to a halt. There was no more time. There were no more options. Dropping down to the ground, he began to dig with two hands like a dog. There was only about a foot of snow, and under that a layer of pine needles. He clawed through that, making a shallow…pit. Pit, not grave. Pit.
He shook the space blanket out of its wrapper. The morning breeze caught it and made it crackle and flap horizontal to the ground. It weighed nothing at all. It was meant for brief use, a dash from building to building, for instance, not as all-day protection. There was no telling how long he could last beneath it. He tucked it around himself and sat down in his…pit…and started to bury his legs in a mixture of dirt and snow.
As he did, the sun cut through the trees and hit his face. The burning began. His eyes watered with the pain, but he kept scraping up snow, piling it over himself, leaning back bit by bit, making an insulating layer of snow over the blanket that might make the difference between life and slow cremation. The skin on his hands broke out in blisters. Finally he was flat on his back, the blanket over his face a faint shield. He shoved snow over his head, scraping it against his sides with his arms. When he could do no more, he wiggled his arms into the blanket. His hands throbbed as they defrosted and his face felt even worse.
It's going to be okay. After a couple of calming breaths, he managed to cast a weak warding charm over his hiding place. Hopefully it would hold. The sun was enough of an enemy for one day.
He heard more sirens and voices in the distance. In a few minutes more, the sounds and vibrations of feet passed back and forth near his hiding spot. All the while, the sun grew stronger and stronger. It was hard not to groan, not to cry with the pain of it. It passed through the snow and burned through his shoes, which were not beneath the blanket. It beat against the aluminum, seeking entry, the heat blistering. It was not even seven yet. What would it be like at noon?
Goddamn sunny Colorado. Where else would it be so bright in January? Paris, London—they'd be socked in with a gloom so thick he could almost walk around by daylight. New York was rich with shadows no matter what time of year. Somehow he would have to convince Helena to come to New York. Boulder was not his city. He shifted uneasily under his heavy blanket of snow. Everything hurt. Yes, she'd move to New York, just as soon as she'd finished disemboweling him.
The footsteps and voices faded away. He heard one, two, three engines start, and the crunch of tires on gravel. The search moved on.
This exact scenario was his worst nightmare. It was every vamp's nightmare, but it was his special fear, the one that made him scream for his mother night after night as a child.
The phone in his pocket buzzed. The phone! It could be his way out. Cursing through the pain, he eased his crisped hand under his coat and brought the phone up along the side of his face and strained to see the number out of his peripheral vision.
It was his parents' number, which meant it was his mother, because his father never initiated a phone call. The phone had to be thrust into his hand, and then he always regarded it with suspicion, like it was a weasel or something.
"Ma?"
"Sasha! Sashka maia. Thank God I hear your voice. Are you hurt? What is this bad feeling that wakes me?"
What a horrible thing to have to tell your mother. I'm on the gallows. I'm strapped to the electric chair. "I'm caught out, Ma." It was hard to talk—his lips felt funny, misshapen. Maybe they were blistering.
"Oh, my baby! Where are you?"
"Under a space blanket and a few inches of snow. Do we have any friends in Colorado?"
"Colorado? No, who among us would live in a cowboy state up high next to the sun? I will send your brothers, but when? They can't move for hours."
Something changed outside. A sudden ratcheting up of the heat. Nothing blocked the sun any longer, not a tree branch, not a cloud, not a shadow. Every fiber of his body screamed to run away from the pain—to sprint for shelter or greet oblivion. But intellectually he knew he had a slim chance to survive if he stayed still and waited it out. It took every ounce of will not to move. Jesus fuck it hurt. How would he survive this day?
"Sasha? Sasha!"
His mother's voice cut through the fog of pain. "Ma?"
"Don't scare me so! Are you on the plain or in hills?"
"Hills." Pain folding in on itself, thickening.
"Good. Then it will pass over you soon enough, go behind the hill, take the heat off. If you were on the plain…" She made a clicking noise with her tongue. "Do you hear me, Sasha? The sun will not be on you all day."
"I hear," he gasped.
Her voice turned silken with power. "Open your mind."
Obeying her, his mind followed hers home, to their house in Brooklyn. To their living room. His mother sat curled up in her favorite chair, the one with the worn pink chintz. She wore one of her tattered silk kimonos and a scarf around her head to keep her long, skunk-striped hair out of her face while she slept. With shaky hands, she lit a cigarette. Great, she had stopped smoking a year ago.
"You're brave, like your father." A long thin stream of smoke curled out of her lips while she studied him. Her shining eyes did not tell him what she saw when she looked at him. "He too was caught out once, and he survived with no space blanket, even. They did not have them then."
That made him suspicious, because his father had a set stock of stories that Alex and his brothers knew all too well. "Pop never told us that story."
"It is true, though." She flicked the ash from her cigarette a little too casually. "He survived and so will you."
"Ma, are you making that up? Are you lying to me? Holy shit! I am fucked!"
"Hush. Don't swear at your mother. I don't know if you are…fucked." A little smile crossed her lips as she said «fucked». She never swore. With her little finger, she lifted a piece of tobacco off the end of her tongue. Such a familiar gesture. A loved gesture. "You will be your own worst enemy today, you know that. You will want to give in to the sun."
"I know." Already a quick death was looking like a reasonable alternative to slow roasting.
"Live today. I will send Mikhail. Knyaz blood will heal you fast, no? Now listen close. I can't keep you here for long. You need to sleep. Go inside where the sun can't find you." Her voice wound around him like tendrils of water weed. "Your back is against mother earth. Imagine you are sinking into her. Underground you seek hidden water and cool mud. Now you are swimming through an underground stream, the water cold and black as sin. Further and further underground you go, until you surface in a cavern of great beauty, surrounded by sparkling stones and blind fish…"