Throat (25 page)

At last I managed to get my arm out from under the blanket. Swung my fist at him. My hand passed through his leg. The vampire had dissolved.

I sloughed off the blanket and sat up. This time my head was feeling better. One of the cops noticed and came over. He had a thick porn ’stache and his eyes were blue. Square jaw. Almost no hair on his head.

“Whoa, you need to take it easy, darling,” the cop said. He took hold of my hurt arm, making me wince, trying to get me to lie down again. “EMTs are on the way. Can you tell me the car you were riding in? Make and model? Who was driving?”

I pulled away from his grasp, grimacing at the pain. “I … I wasn’t in a car.…”

He grinned like I was delirious or on drugs and nodded over his shoulder. “Well, sugar, something hit this officer’s vehicle at a high rate of speed. I’m not trying to get your friends in trouble, but leaving the scene of an accident is a serious offense … so if you’ll just tell me who was driving, maybe we can …”

I struggled to my feet. “I can’t stay here. I need to go.”

“Darling, you need to listen to me. You’re going to be okay.” The cop was trying to force me down, but I wasn’t letting him. He had a surprised look on his face. “You’ve been in a car accident. The emergency folks need to check you out before you can go anywhere.…”

Other people were starting to come over, and I could hear the honking screech of a fire engine siren. The young guy I had seen sitting on the shoulder was now leaning against the smashed green car. An ambulance had pulled up next to him, and several guys were hustling out either door.

I couldn’t go down the road now, too many people. I looked over the edge of the mountain at the lights of Huntsville twinkling below. The officer’s grip on my arm went slack a moment. I tore loose from him, took a couple of long running strides and flung myself over the embankment.

I landed harder than I expected but was able to keep my balance. I barreled through thickets of vines and small, twisted trees and leapt over bush-choked gullies. Finally, after a lot of jouncy running, the ground started to even out again. I could still hear the cops’ shocked voices calling from far above. The blue lights I could see for miles after that.

I was pretty scratched up by the time I found my way home. I got a drink at the faucet in the bunker and washed a little, then wearily climbed the rocket tower. The sun was starting to rise when I stretched out on the air mattress, cradling my injured arm.…

He knows I’m in Huntsville
, I thought.

I wrapped myself in the tarp, shivering at the thought.
Okay, got to do something, Emma. Figure this out
. From what I remembered, there were a quarter-million people in this town. Besides, I wasn’t technically in Huntsville at all, was I? The Space Center was its own little world, like the Vatican. With any luck, Wirtz wouldn’t know to look for me here.

I had slipped up, let myself get distracted by all the crazy stuff that had happened with the
Sonnen
. I never would have run into that cop car otherwise. Couldn’t let anything like that happen again.
If I was really careful, I could still make myself a very small needle in a pretty large haystack. And hey, if it came down to it, what was stopping me from just keeping on running? Moving from city to city, finding new places to hide each time? Then maybe, just maybe … I could—

No
.

I swore and kicked the stupid tarp off. That’s what the vampire was after, trying to get me out in the open. Wirtz had me going at this whole thing backward.
That’s not me
, I thought. Not anymore. I had run away three times in my life, and I was sick of it. I never ran away from trouble on the soccer field, did I? What happened to that warrior chick who had stood on top of the chimney at the Stone House and shouted at the darkness? How had I forgotten so quickly?

I want the monster to come
.

I needed him to come. I couldn’t spend the rest of eternity jumping at shadows. A showdown with the vampire … it was the only way I could ever be free. The only way my family would finally be safe. I remembered something Coach Kline liked to say.

You’re best when you’re bold
.

I lay back down and plunged into a dreamless sleep.

I don’t know how long I had been out of it when something close to my ear screeched. I jumped up, my hand on the ax, but the sun was well up in the sky. I didn’t know what was making the sound until I remembered the headset Sagan had given me. I fumbled for it in my bag.

It took me a second to remember how to work it. At last I flicked it on and thumbed the mike.

“Hey …”

The headset hissed in my ear. “You sound tired,” Sagan said.

“Ow! Deaf is more like it. This thing is loud.” I adjusted the volume, yawning.

“Are you getting enough sleep, Emma?”

If you only knew
, I thought. “You sound like my mom.”

“So, whatcha want to do? Are you hungry?”

I tested my elbow. It was sore, but not too bad. The whole strange night flooded into my head. I suddenly realized I was not only hungry, but—after last night—desperate for his company. “Starving,” I said. “Bring me something.”

“You’re getting spoiled, you know that?” Sagan said.

“Yeah. Hurry before I get grouchy and kill a rabbit.”

“Ha. Okay … just to conserve the wildlife.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “I’ll bring Schlotzsky’s.”

“Huh?”

“You’ll love it.”

I did. Schlotzsky’s turned out to be big round sandwiches on black rye bread. “How’d you know I liked corned beef and mustard?” I said, taking a huge bite. It seemed like days since I had eaten.
Well, food that is
. My body squirmed involuntarily.

“Lucky guess,” Sagan said.

We were sitting on the little picnic bench out behind the Solar Observatory. The day was turning hotter than yesterday, and the cicadas were starting to whine in the trees. Which of course made me think about summer and wonder what it would be like living out here during the other end of the spectrum.
Winter
. The thought of being homeless that long was depressing. Sagan was asking me a question.

“What?” I said.

He pushed a little strand of hair out of my face and waved his
hand in front of my eyes. “You were looking right at me,” he said. “But even through your sunglasses I could tell you had that thousand-yard stare you get sometimes.”

“Oh. Sorry. My mom used to complain about that too.”
Used to
. Now I was talking about her in the past tense. I needed to call her. Papi too.

“It’s like you’re so completely gone, when you get like that,” Sagan said. “I don’t even know where you are. How to bring you back.”

I took another bite, wanting to change the subject. “God, this is really good. Thank you.”

I could still taste that college guy’s beery blood in my mouth, if only in memory. I was dying to tell Sagan about my first Blood Hunt. But it was all so totally nuts. I wondered if I was changing in some important way, beyond the physical. When I first met the
Sonnen
, they had seemed strange to me, otherworldly. Now, just a few hours later, it was Sagan who was new and different with his white-blond locks and penetrating blue eyes. I almost felt as if we were a different species. I wondered if he could sense it.

“You’re really quiet today,” he said. “Anything happen last night?”

“No, not really.”
Only the weirdest night of my life
, I thought. And there had been a lot of those lately. “Just kind of strange out here after dark.”

“We need to talk about that,” he said. “Changing your situation.”

“Only that’s not up to you.”

“I know. But you can’t keep living out here. Somebody’s going to catch you sooner or later, Emma. Or you’ll get hurt and won’t even be able to call for help.”

“Haven’t we had this conversation before?” I said, looking away.

“Hey, don’t zone out on me again.”

“I’m not. I just get tired of having to explain myself.”

Sagan put down his sandwich and got up from the table. “But that’s the thing. You never explain. You just expect me to understand. What would you do if things were reversed? Say if I were living out here, homeless, sleeping in the woods, who knows where? How would you like it?”

I popped the last bite in my mouth and chewed. Made him wait while I drank some Mountain Dew. I thought about something Lena had said.

“Hey, the other day you told me about CMEs,” I said.

“You keep trying to change the subject.”

“I know. Please tell me again. About coronus massive—you know. There’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

“Coronal mass ejections. What about them?”

“What are they, exactly?”

“I told you. A violent ejection of material from the sun.”

“So … you could almost call it … an eruption of the sun?”

“Sure. What are you driving at? I thought this solar stuff bores you.”

“It does. Okay, so there is an eruption on the sun that violently throws material out. What kind of material?”

Sagan looked away, thinking. “It’s a gigantic bubble of gas, mostly. Plasma, to be more specific. The plasma is made up of electrons and protons.”

“Anything else?”

“Well.” He tapped his fingers against his head. “Small amounts of other elements, like helium, oxygen, iron. Plus there’s the coronal magnetic field to deal with.…”

“So when this solar flare—”

“CME,” Sagan corrected. “There’s a difference. A solar flare is
an explosion too, but it’s mostly associated with sunspots, emitting X-rays and UV radiation.”

“And all of this stuff showers the earth?”

“If it’s aimed in our direction. It affects the earth, yeah. Some is intercepted by the earth’s magnetic field. The rest makes it all the way through.”

“Radiation, protons, et cetera?”

“Sure.”

“So how long does it take for the stuff to get here?” I said.

“With CMEs it can take as long as five days. But the effects of solar flares can reach us much faster. One erupted back in 2005 that hit the earth in fifteen minutes. That’s one-half the speed of light.”

“So what happened?”

“Not much. Disrupted satellite communications for a little while, that kind of thing.”

“Oh.”

He looked at me. “You sound disappointed.”

“Well, I guess I was just thinking … that they were so much more powerful than that. That they really could affect things on earth.”

“Oh, they can. But the real danger is for astronauts in space at the time of the eruption—”

“But I’m thinking about something really strong from the sun,” I said. “Not just stuff that knocks out your Sunday NFL Ticket, but an explosion to end all explosions. Totally drenches us in particles or whatever …”

“The strongest are when they both happen at the same time,” Sagan said. “A massive CME combined with a humongous solar flare.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Maybe every few hundred years. We don’t really know. People
have been studying the sun for centuries, but real scientific data doesn’t go back very far. So we don’t have many long-range samples. Best we can do to figure out what might have happened back then is by analyzing stuff like particles found in ice core samples from places like Greenland—”

“So what’s the biggest?”

“The biggest in recorded history?”

“I guess, yeah.”

Sagan smiled. “That’s easy. Carrington. It’s called the Carrington Event because it was first seen by a guy over in England, an astronomer named Richard Carrington. It was a phenomenal solar flare that came out of a sunspot and pushed a monster CME straight at us. The CME got here in eighteen hours instead of the usual three or four days. So strong, you could call it a solar storm. When it hit, it set telegraphs on fire all over North America and Europe. Auroras were seen as far south as the Caribbean. In the Rocky Mountains the sky was so bright, miners woke up, thinking it was morning, and started cooking breakfast—”

“But when did it happen?”

“September 1859.”

A chill rushed through me.
1859
. The exact same year Lena had mentioned. The date of the last
Sonneneruption
. So it was true! That was the last time vampires all over the world were cured. And the vampire population had been building back up ever since. Ready to pop unless another
Sonneneruption
came along soon.

I got up from the table and walked around in a slow circle, thinking.

“Why are you so interested all of a sudden?” Sagan said.

“What?” I was still inside my head, trying to process it all.

“CMEs. Why did you want to know about them?

“It’s a secret,” I said.

“Oh. Another one.”

I didn’t like being frowned at. “What’s wrong with secrets?”

“I mean, when are you going to start trusting me, Emma? I thought after yesterday …”

He stood and tried to take my face in his hands.

“Stop.” I pushed his hands away.

“What’s wrong? It’s almost like you’ve … been away somewhere or something.”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing’s wrong. I just don’t like you doing that when I’m trying to think.”