Throat (35 page)

“Yeah.”

“But you would be so scared of telling them, because it’s too crazy, it’s impossible.… It’s for the kind of people who believe in bigfoots and UFOs.…”

“I believe in UFOs.…”

“There you go,” I said, letting go of his arms and smiling. “So you’re telling me you can believe in little green men …”

“Gray, they’re usually gray.…”

“Okay, little gray men with heads shaped like gigantic light-bulbs and big black footballs for eyes … how they come and abduct people, etc.…”

“I didn’t say I believed in that,” he said.

“Okay, they are real, anyhow. You can believe in that, but you
can’t believe that there might be another kind of human being out there? Human beings just like us, for the most part, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got infected …”

“Infected? So now you know what causes vampirism?”

Whoops
. I wasn’t sure he was ready to hear about the
Sonnen
. “Just throwing some possibilities out there,” I said. “But imagine those people.… They didn’t ask to be made into vampires, but they were. And so now they have to live and somehow keep away from the rest of the world.… Think of what that would be like.”

“And feed off regular people.”

“Exactly.”

“It doesn’t sound like a disease; it sounds like a curse,” Sagan said. “A nightmare.”

“Not a real glamorous way to live, huh?” I said. “Hiding in dark dank places by day, stalking other human beings just to stay alive.”

“And you’re telling me you’re one of those … people.”

“Yeah. Except for the drinking blood thing and the sunlight thing. Everything else about me is full vampire.”

“But that would mean … you have …”

“Superpowers, basically. Like the way I’ve been getting in and out of the Space Center. It’s not all that tough, really. I just jump over the fence.”

“Ten feet high with razor wire, and you jump over it?”

“Pretty regularly.”

“So that’s what you never wanted me to see, huh?”

“Well … of course.”

Sagan shook his head and then ran his fingers through his hair. “But that’s the thing; you’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? You can explain anything by these powers, can’t you?”

“I’m just telling you the truth. Like the mall. You want to know how I got those clothes? I ripped a few doors off their hinges. And when the cops came …”

“Cops?”

“They would have caught me if not for my … skills. They even shot me with a Taser and it didn’t stop me.”

“This is nuts, Emma, nuts!”

“I can show you the holes where it stuck in my shoe. See?”

Sagan rubbed his eyes and walked in a little circle that came right back to me.

“So basically, you have a choice,” I said. “You can believe me and … maybe have the biggest adventure of your life. Or … you can think I’m just some chick who got off her meds, ran away from high school … and lose me for good.”

“Meds. You must be taking something for your … condition,” Sagan said.

“I was,” I said. “It’s a prescription drug called Dilantin. I haven’t taken it for a while, and I had a seizure and fell off the tower last night. And I saw him here.”

“Him?”

“Wirtz. The vampire who turned me.”

“Turned you. God, Emma. Do you know how that sounds?”

“Yeah.”

“And you saw him here?”

“Well … a projection of him.” I explained about Wirtz and the
Feld
without giving specifics about the other vampires.

“So … you think … this vampire, Wirtz … you think he is using the
Feld
to get inside your mind?” Sagan said.

“Yeah. But only when I’m experiencing some kind of seizure, apparently. That’s the only time I ever see him.”

“And he can see the things around him when he’s here?”

“He seems just as solid as you sitting there. But I’ve been experimenting some. If I can tap into his
Feld
first, then I have control. Well, as long as I don’t have a tonic-clonic. But time is running out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wirtz is getting close, that’s what I mean. He’s seen my tower now. It’s going to get really dangerous around here very soon. I need to be ready.”

“So … you’re really going to fight this … Wirtz guy.…”

“Yeah. And I came here to do it.” I pointed up at the test stand. “This is basically … my siege castle. And there’s something else.… He won’t stop. I know that. He won’t stop until … one of us is dead.”

“So you’re saying you’ve got to … you’ve got to kill him. And you actually think you can.”

I took his hand. “Look. Let’s make this easy. Let’s not even call it proof. How about a demonstration?”

I led him to the most private place I could find—the secret glade in the woods.

“But you’re hurt,” he said. “That’s the most gruesome bruise I ever—”

I tugged my shirt up where Sagan could see. The bruise was already going away.

“Did I tell you I also heal incredibly fast?”

Sagan shook his head. “Okay, so what next? You’re not going to bite me, are you?”

I laughed. “Maybe later. But I had something a little different in mind.”

We stopped in front of the sign I had found before.

“Not cool,” he said. “We really shouldn’t be here, Emma.”

“I know we shouldn’t, you goofball. I shouldn’t even be on the base. Would you believe I ran through this meadow the first day I was here and came through without a scratch?”

Sagan swore. “So you really are Superman, huh. Nothing can hurt you?”

“Oh, I can be hurt. You should have seen me last night. I was just lucky. Extremely lucky. So what’s a GPR?”

“Ground-penetrating radar. They use it to locate buried objects. Chemicals. Bombs. Canisters of mustard gas.”

“Mustard gas!”

“Before NASA, this place was an army base,” Sagan said. “Still is. Going back to World War II. So why are we here? You mentioned something about a demonstration.”

“Okay. But not here. I’m never setting foot in that field again. Take me someplace safe—preferably a forest.”

It was only a short distance away, so we walked. Sagan was still holding my hand, and that made me feel better.
He still wants to touch me
.

“How’s this?” he said.

“No mustard gas?”

“Just trees.”

“Okay.” Now that I was going to do it, I was suddenly nervous. How would he react? “Look, this is hard.…”

“I thought it was going to be easy?”

“I don’t mean physically hard. Just … please don’t freak. It’s going to be kind of crazy.”

Sagan smiled. “I won’t. Why would I? It’s going to be interesting.”

“You promise?”

“Sure.”

I let go of his hand and picked him up. Tucked him against my side like a six-foot-long football.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Sagan yelled, struggling to get free.

I was off, bounding through the trees like before. I was hardly aware that I was even holding him, except that my balance was off.

“Oh shiiiiiiiiiiii …!” Sagan yelled, his words whipped away by the wind.

I was using my left hand to grab tree branches, flinging myself from one tree to the next like a monkey, then dropping to the ground and bounding upward again. It felt the way it always did: exhilarating. I shifted Sagan around to my shoulders, carrying him fireman style. It didn’t slow me down a bit.

At last I came to a stop and put him down. He fell over and lay on his back.

“God. God.” He said it over and over as he struggled to catch his breath.

“What are you breathing hard for?” I said, grinning. “I’m the one doing all the work.”

I squatted next to him, not winded at all, and waited for his head to catch up to his body. At last he blinked and rubbed his eyes.

“I can’t believe … you just did that,” he said.

“Okay. How about this?”

I found a dead tree and shoved hard. It fell with a huge jolt I could feel all through my legs, the tree looking rubbery as it
bounced like a pencil you twiddle between your fingers. I glanced at Sagan, pleased to see that his eyes were bugging out.

I tried to pick the tree up, but it was like trying to palm a basketball.… My hand was too small. I had to get both arms around the trunk to hoist it into the air.

“Where do you want it?” I said.

“What else would you like to know?” I said when we were back at the tower.

I had to admit, after the shock of finally being caught, I was enjoying this. I had always been a show-off.

“I don’t even know what to ask,” he said. “Well, technically that’s not true. I have about three million questions. But I’m not sure where to start. All I know is stuff from TV shows and movies. Can you be seen in a mirror?”

“Yep. I’m solid. Physical. That would be defying the laws of physics.”
Thanks, Anton
.

“Okay, you said you don’t drink blood.… How?”

“I haven’t figured that one out yet. When I was attacked, I had a seizure while he was still … feeding … and somehow I figure it scrambled my transformation. So I only got part of the total package. Same thing for sunlight. Except that I have to wear these.” I tapped my sunglasses. “I’m pretty much blind in regular daylight.”

“So …”

“As far as I can tell, all of the good, none of the bad. If you don’t count the fact that I’m homeless and a crazy vampire is out to kill me.”

“But why?”

“Who knows. It hurt his ego that I got away the first time? Or maybe he’s just bitter.… He definitely wants to know my ‘secret.’
So all I have to do is tell him, no problem, just be born with epilepsy and you’re halfway there.”

Sagan turned and looked up at the tower in the distance. “You really think this is the best place to fight him?”

“It’s pretty much the only place,” I said. “Think about it.… Would you want to fight somebody like Wirtz out in the open?”

“I wouldn’t want to fight him at all.”

“You assume I have a choice.”

“Well, at least I can see why you didn’t want to go back home. You would draw him right to your family. But what if … what if I got us a little place somewhere, an apartment! Wouldn’t you be safer there?”

“I would feel cornered. Here at least I can see. I can move around, maybe get some advance warning, slow him down.”

“But what’s to stop him from just climbing up there and killing you?”

“You want to see?” I said.

So I took him up the tower and showed him my defenses. The trip wires, deadly garden tools, chemicals, all of it.

“A hoe,” Sagan said. “You’re going to kill this … monster … with a hoe.”

“That’s basically for good luck,” I said. “A hoe is my all-time favorite tool from working in Papi’s garden. Besides, in a pinch …” I slipped the hoe out of its hiding spot, spun 180 degrees, screaming, “Yahhhhh!” The corner of the hoe was embedded in the tower’s metal hide. Sagan’s face went pale and he softly swore.

“I didn’t even see that, Emma. No joke. How did you move that fast?”

I pulled the hoe out and set it back into position. “I don’t know. Just part of the deal, I guess. I figure it’s like this.… If you’re a slug
and you’re turned into a vampire, you’re going to be a sluglike vampire. But if you’re a top-notch athlete … well, it’s multiplied.”

“Don’t get cocky.”

“Sagan, I have to be cocky. Haven’t you ever played sports? You can’t go into something like this without being cocky. You’d be dead before you got your hands on your first weapon.”

He shook his head. “I feel like any minute some guy with a camera is going to step out from hiding and tell me I’ve been punked. If I hadn’t seen what you did in the woods …”

“Now do you see why the cops could do nothing to protect me? My family? Nobody but another vampire can stop this guy. He’s too fast. Too strong.”

“A bazooka.”

“You’d die trying to load the thing. How do you think they’ve kept hidden for thousands of years?”

“They? So there’s more than just the two of you?”

“Oh no. You make us sound like a couple. Yeah, there’s lots more.”

“How do you know?”

I stood there gazing at him, realizing my mistake and trying to decide whether to lie my way out of it or tell him everything.
Everything. Tell him all
.

“I’ve … I’ve met some of them,” I said, waiting for Sagan to react. This time his face didn’t change.

“Real vampires. You’ve met them. Here, like locally?”

“Yeah.”

“Blood-sucking, coffin-dragging—”

“They aren’t like that. They’re … good people.”

“Good people who run around in the streets at night, killing—”

“But they don’t kill anybody,” I said.

I told him about Lena, Donne, and Anton, along with the warring vampire factions. Sagan caught on quickly—it’s not that I was afraid he wouldn’t, but more concerned that he might blow a circuit somewhere in his head because of the all-out strangeness of everything he had to absorb. So I fed it to him in manageable chunks.

Sagan took a long inhale and let it out slowly. “Any more stuff like this, and I’m liable to lift off,” he said.