I felt his eyes on me. Look at me, they said. It wasn’t a voice this time, or even a compulsion, like the drag like a rope round my neck I had felt earlier. Not looking into his eyes felt like trying to prevent my heart from beating. But I didn’t look, and my heart continued to beat.
The dais was a tall one, and on the steps up to it lounged several more vampires. They were all watching us with interest. I could see the glitter of eyes. I wondered if vampire eyes really do glitter, or if it was something to do with the marsh-light, or with my dark vision, or with the fact that I’d gone crazy and hadn’t figured this out yet. So, okay, chances were I wasn’t going to stay alive long enough to do any figuring, but I was still alive at the moment, and I was…it seemed ridiculous even as it occurred to me, but I was angry. I’d had my life ruined by this disgusting, undead monster. I had nothing to lose. All the best stuff in the books—and sometimes in history too— gets done by people who have nothing left to lose and so aren’t always looking over their shoulders for the way out after it was over. I thought, wistfully, that I’d rather be looking over my shoulder for the way out. But I wasn’t. I was about to die. But if I could take him— the Bo-thing—with me, it would have been worth it.
The thought flamed up in me, like the sun coming up over the horizon. Yes. It will be worth it. I took my hand out of my pocket.
Now all I had to do was do it.
We reached the bottom of the dais. Those eyes were still pulling at me. Deliberately, consciously, voluntarily, I lifted my own eyes and met them.
Monster didn’t begin to cover it. Ironically the greeting we’d had from his guard corps had done me a service; I think if I hadn’t already been shocked beyond my capacity to handle it I wouldn’t have survived the initial blow of looking into the eyes of the master. Maybe it was a good thing I’d already lost my soul, that I was already half out of my body, my mind, my life. Because it meant I wasn’t there to meet the full force of Bo’s gaze.
It was bad enough anyway. The distillation of hundreds of years of evil shimmering in those eyes, and his enjoyment of my looking at it.
But he also expected me to crack, to disintegrate, immediately. He thought that as soon as I looked into his eyes it would be all over. Never mind that I could, apparently, look into ordinary vampires’ eyes. That had happened occasionally. (I saw this in his eyes too, and thought, it did? Remember this. The part of me that was looking forward to finishing dying said, What for?) Bo was a master vampire. He could destroy vampires with his glare. A mere human would incinerate on the spot.
Oh, and his eyes were colorless. Did I say that? I hadn’t thought of evil as being without color but it is. Once you get past plain everyday wickedness, the color is squeezed right out of it. Evil is a kind of oblivion, having destroyed everything on its way there.
I did go up in flames. But they weren’t the flames he had anticipated. The light-web blazed up, like a lit fuse running back to the detonator, the bomb, snaking along the ground as it had been laid out: a slender tongue of fire began in a curl on the back of each of my hands. They ran up my arms, licking along the lines of the lattice, across my breast—the chain around my neck flared—into my scalp; I could feel my hair rising, waving in the fire, or perhaps it became fire itself; running down my back, my belly, my legs. The lighting of that fuse was looking into Bo’s eyes.
I was on fire. I put one flaming foot on the first stair of the dais, and stepped up. I was still staring into Bo’s eyes.
I felt, rather than saw, the vampires on the dais slither together and descend on Con. I don’t know if they saw me burst into flames or not; I don’t know if they were the sort of flames that anyone sees, even vampires. If they did see the light-web ignite, presumably they thought it was to do with their master having me well in hand, and they could afford to concentrate on Con. But Bo gave me another gift, as I toiled up the dais stairs toward him, letting me see, briefly, out of his eyes, to the bottom of the dais, behind me. I saw the other vampires pull Con down. The vampires around Bo’s dais would be the elite, of course, as the welcoming committee had been the cannon fodder; and as I say, I’m not sure that vampires get tired, exactly, but they can come to the end of their strength. I thought now, as I flamed (I seemed to hear the roaring of flame too) that Con might have given me more of his remaining strength than I had realized, to get me this far. More than he could spare.
Which meant I had to…
I saw one of the vampires bend over him, as they pinned him down, its mouth open, fangs shining: it buried its face in his throat. I saw him jerk and heave, but they had him fast. I saw another vampire delicately unbutton the remains of his shirt, stroke his chest…
I saw its fingers reaching under Con’s breastbone for his heart.
It wasn’t anything so clear and noble as a decision that since I could do nothing for him I might as well get on with what I was doing. That Con was dying in a good cause if I could finish it before I died too. It wasn’t a meeting of my strength against Bo’s either, because Bo was still the stronger. He was going to stop me before I reached him.
I was two steps from the summit, the crown where Bo sat enthroned, and I couldn’t go any farther.
But I still couldn’t watch Con die. I couldn’t.
Think about cinnamon rolls. Think about the bakery at Charlie’s. Feel the dough under your hands and the heat of the ovens. Think about Charlie cranking down the awning, Mom going into the office and flicking on her combox before she takes off her coat. Think about Mel in the kitchen next door. Think about Pat and Jesse sitting at their table, eating everything that Mary puts in front of them; think about Mary pouring hot coffee.
Think about Mrs. Bialosky sitting at her table, and Maud sitting across from her.
…And for a moment I saw them, Mrs. B and Maud. They were holding hands across the table, and their faces looked haggard and strained and awful, as if they were waiting to hear the news of someone’s death. News they were expecting. And then Mrs. B looked up, straight at me, as she had the day I had been watching her from behind the counter, and Maud looked up too, over her shoulder, as Mrs. B was looking. Their eyes met mine.
Standing behind them I seemed to see Mel. He held out his arms toward me, and flames leaped from his skin, as if his tattoos were a light-web.
I took the last two steps. I was standing in front of Bo.
But I couldn’t bring myself to touch him—to try to touch him. I said that monster doesn’t cover it. There is no word for a several-hundred-year-old vampire who has performed every available wickedness over and over till he has to invent unavailable ones because he’d worn the others out. His flesh was not flesh; it was a viscous ooze, held together by malice. His voice was a manifestation of malignancy, for he had no tongue, no larynx; his eyes were the purest imagination of eviclass="underline" flawless in a way that flesh could never be.
I knew that if I touched him I would be re-created into such as he was.
The scar on my breast burst apart, and my poisoned blood ran down.
I stopped. I stopped trying.
But Bo made a mistake. He laughed.
I reached into my left-hand pocket, and took out the daylight charm. I didn’t look at it, but I felt the tiny sun spin and blaze, the tree shake its leaves—yesssss—the deer raise her head, acknowledging her own death, watching it come toward her. I felt the moving line of the water-barrier around its edge. As Bo laughed, I threw the charm down the noisome hole that indicated his mouth. A little tracery of fire followed it, like an arrow carrying a rope across a chasm. The mouth-hole closed with a sucking sound—something an ear could hear. What there was that was left of him in the real world wavered and became vulnerable to reality again, as the force and concentration of his will faltered in surprise.