Vampire Miami (30 page)

Selah’s eyes locked on the cage. Cloud was
within, down on one knee, his black hair hanging thick with sweat
across his face. Blood smeared across his pale skin. She could see
him with perfect, crystalline clarity. One of his eyes had already
swollen shut. Blood flowed from both nostrils. He cradled an arm
awkwardly to his naked chest, and claw marks lacerated the long
slope of his back.

He was alive. Nothing else mattered. He was
alive, and she was here, and now they would all pay. Selah leaped
into the air, bringing her knees to her chest. She sailed over the
last ring of people, and landed beside the cage’s door. She reached
out and opened it, twisting and breaking the lock as she did so.
The door swung open, and she stepped inside.

Anthrax was approaching Cloud, and had only now
registered the new entrant. He was tall, and had a lean, whipcord
look to him. Broad shoulders and powerful hands, gold hair furring
his chest, his jaw. He looked like a leopard in man form. His smile
slowly disappeared as he turned, his reflexes that good. He
actually saw her and looked surprised. Had the time to look
surprised. But oh, his eyes were normal eyes, human eyes, and no
matter how talented he was, no matter how good he was with his
hands, at breaking other people, he was only a human, and he never
had a chance.

Selah wasn’t thinking, not any more. Her moment
of euphoria at seeing Cloud alive had been folded into resplendent
anger. It was the selfsame fury she’d always felt when picked on by
an older kid, a teacher, a cop. It was the same resentment she’d
borne when the whole world had conspired against her, and she’d
been unable to act. To set things straight.

She hit Anthrax square in the sternum. His eyes
widened and his arms shot forward as he lifted off the ground. His
legs extended before him as he flew back, still in slow motion,
eyes rolling up, to collide with the cage wall. He hit the ground
hard enough to bounce, and lay still, twitching.

Selah stood still, frozen in place, arm still
held out in her punch. She became aware of a great vacuum of
silence, of a great intake of breath as thousands paused, confused,
unsure. Countless eyes stared at her, and the booming voice of the
announcer silenced. She straightened in that great collective hush,
and turned to look at Cloud. He forced himself to his feet, one of
his knees clearly unable to take his weight. He rose, and looked at
her gravely, and then, despite it all, he gave her a wry smile, and
tentatively, almost shyly, she smiled back.

Sound crashed down upon them with the fury of a
mob denied. People rose to their feet to shriek and howl, and
everywhere men in security uniforms converged. Time moved faster
now, suddenly far too fast, and everywhere Selah looked, she saw
faces creased with anger and fear moving in on them. People on
walkie-talkies. People drawing guns. People pointing. She moved
over to Cloud, who slipped his arm over her shoulder.

“Hello, Selah,” he said, voice rough. “Good to
see you.”

She looked up at him, saw how much pain clouded
his eyes, and felt tears burn in her own. It seemed she still had
the capacity to cry. He reached up with one hand and lifted her
chin, and his lips touched hers, briefly, the softest of pressures,
and then the first gunshot sounded.

Selah wrapped her arm around his waist and ran.
It felt like carrying a small child, barely any weight to him at
all. She was less graceful for carrying him, but still able to
bunch her legs and leap high, arc out over the heads of the men who
waved their electrified batons as they turned and tracked her
passage. She landed and took off, moving fast and low, heading back
to the door. The crowd screamed, the sound a slurry of bad
emotions, but Selah felt as if she were shielded from the world.
She had him. They would escape now. They would escape and she would
find Mama, and nobody would stop them. If they tried, she would
simply brush them aside.

Out the doors, bowling over surprised guards who
opened their mouths comically as they registered her presence
moments after they were already falling. Out into the lobby where
people still didn’t know what was going on. Out the door, knocking
over more people who were trying to get inside to watch someone
die. Out into the glorious night air.

Hope died in Selah’s chest. Why did it bother to
persist? Why did she still fool herself into thinking there was
ever going to be a chance in this foul world for her to win? She
slowed, stopped on the first step. Set Cloud down carefully, her
eyes locked on the man who stood below. Who looked up at her with
eyes as old as sin, with eyes that might have seen the Sky Mother
die, with eyes that brooked no other way but his own, for he was
the first and the most powerful, and he had come for her.

“What’s going on?” asked Cloud, but she ignored
him, and began to walk down the steps toward Sawiskera.

“You have risked your life for love,” he said.
His English was strange, as if each word were recollected before
spoken.

Selah took a deep breath, released it. Fought
for calm. How did you find such a force as this?

“I needed to know that you would. I am
pleased.”

She didn’t even try to understand him. He looked
almost small, a slight man, his skin bronze in a manner that no
human skin could ever be. The kind of man you might lose sight of
in a crowd were it not for his world-devouring eyes. She began to
move faster, skipping down the steps, picking up speed. Ever
faster, allowing her pain and despair to propel her forward,
forward into oblivion.

He never moved, not that she saw. One moment he
stood solid, the next his fingers gently closed around her outflung
fist and he was at her side, his arm guiding her forward momentum
down and then
up
so that she lost her balance, her footing,
and flipped into the air. The world spun crazily, and she fought to
right herself even as she fell, headlong, onto the pavement below.
She hit hard. Didn’t bounce, but rather slid, flipped midslide, and
came up into a crouch, one hand down on the pavement to arrest her
momentum, heart sinking as she saw the vampire king begin to ascend
the steps toward Cloud. Who forced himself to stand, who faced the
monster as he came, and did not run.

One last time. One last chance. She threw
herself forward, raced up the steps so quickly, she could’ve run
across water. Right at Sawiskera’s back. Leaped at him, seeking him
with both hands, but once again he wasn’t there. He was beside her,
his elbow buried so deeply into her spine that she went from moving
forward to slamming straight down onto the steps, chin cracking on
stone, back wrenching into utter agony and fire, thoughts broken
and unable to reform.

Selah lay still, groaning. Watched, unable to
move, as Sawiskera stepped up to where Cloud stood, and looked up
at the taller youth. She tried to stand. Her back felt broken. She
couldn’t move her legs. The pain was coming for her like a red
tide, sweeping up the reaches of her mind, seeking to drown her.
She gritted her teeth. Reached out with shaking hands and pulled
herself up a step. The effort caused her to cry out in sheer
torture. It was too much. She fought, fought as hard as she could,
but the pain was a growing coruscation and it took her mind and
drowned it in an infinity of fire.

Selah fought for consciousness, to emerge from
the dark fist by fist, as if a rope hung from the land of the
living down into the black pit in which she had fallen. Fought for
thought, for perception, for an awareness of self. Dimly became
aware that she was hanging from her arms, her shoulders in agony
from taking her weight, hands numb from where the circulation had
been cut off. She managed to get her feet under her and stood,
taking the pressure off. Straightened and forced her eyes open.

A large room. Caramel marble floors,
floor-to-ceiling windows along one side. She recognized this place.
Where she had first spoken with Karl and Charles. The penthouse
apartment. She was tied to a marble column, and tied firmly. She
was about to test her bonds when she saw Cloud seated in an
armchair, head hanging down before his chest, clearly
unconscious.

“Cloud!” she cried. He didn’t respond. He was
still alive, though. Why else would they put him in a chair? She
struggled against the wires that bit into her wrists, but couldn’t
snap them. Most of Theo’s vigor had left her. She cried out in
frustration and put all her strength into snapping her bonds, but
succeeded only in drawing blood.

Selah subsided. Looked out the window, and saw
that the moon was low in the sky. It had to be around—three or four
in the morning? Sunrise wasn’t far off. Her passive acceptance was
gone, it seemed, and now she was a snarl of anger, the sight of
Cloud inciting her to fight on. She looked about her feet. Nothing
but smooth marble. She shook her bonds once more, and then sank
back against the pillar.

The door opened, and Sawiskera stepped inside.
He was bare-chested, his physique compact and without an ounce of
fat. Skin burnished as if by ancient suns, his braids pushed behind
his shoulders. He walked in a wide circle about the room, and then
came to a stop before Selah to examine her with those damned eyes
of his.

She wasn’t afraid. Not anymore. She didn’t
speak, but did the only thing she could in this situation—she
raised her chin, and looked at him with complete disdain.

“You are a rare gift, Selah Brown.” His voice
was strange, the sentence disjointed as if the words fit poorly
together. “One that I have waited centuries for.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “You’ve no idea how happy
that makes me.”

Sawiskera seemed unperturbed by the venom in her
voice. “When last I came across one such as you, I did not want the
gift he had to offer. Now, however, I am ready.”

“Gift?” She stopped. “What are you talking
about? You mean, my blood?”

“No.” He stood still. No pacing, no moving of
his arms, his head. There was a preternatural discipline in how
immobile he was, how divorced he was from normal human body
language. “Your ignorance is not surprising. Few who walk these
nights know what your heritage is, and your consequent potential.
What you can offer a vampire such as myself. I was surprised and
pleased when Karl Plessy approached me. It is rare for one as young
as he to have absorbed so much lore in so short a time.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“My brother’s blood flows through your veins.
You are a child of Teharonhiawako, and though his blood has been
diluted by countless generations, it still protects you from the
dark. We are family, you and I.” Selah heard the words, but they
were meaningless. It couldn’t be. She wanted to rub her face, to
laugh, but all she could do was shake her head mutely. Sawiskera’s
lips pulled back from his teeth in what could have been an attempt
at a smile. “If one such as myself drinks of your blood, then I
can, for a few hours, partake of your humanity. Teharonhiawako’s
goodness can redeem even those as fallen as my children. You, in
turn, enjoy the powers of my kind, and then the exchange fades and
we return to our normal state. There is, however, a means to
permanently effect this exchange. For one who knows the correct
ritual, it is possible to take your humanity, to become human.
Forever.”

Selah’s heart stuttered. She stared at him.
“What are you saying? You’re going to steal my … humanity?”

Sawiskera smiled then, and it was a horrible
expression. There was foolishness in it, inhuman happiness. No,
that wasn’t quite it: rather that it was a smile that a child might
give, without self-consciousness, without guile. Sawiskera smiled
at her, and nodded.

“I grow tired. I long to see the sun with my own
eyes. My feud with my brother has grown so old that it no longer
sustains me. For centuries I have contented myself with possessing
the spirits of animals and riding their bodies by day. Seeing the
blue sky and the yellow sun through their eyes. And for a while,
that was sufficient. Then you humans invented the television, a
means to capture the very rays of the sun itself so that one can
watch it forever. I thought that might suffice, but it has only
quickened my desire. I want to feel its warmth on my skin. To see
the world lit in bright colors. I want to laugh in the light of my
brother, to raise my hands to him and call him down in peace. I
want the day. You will make that possible.”

“No,” said Selah, voice trembling, quiet. Then
it spiked up into a shout, “No! You can’t do that! You can’t—you
can’t—”

“But I can,” said Sawiskera, stepping forward,
“and I will. Once Karl told me of what you were, our fates became
intertwined. I only needed you to fulfill the one condition that
the rite requires for us to proceed, and tonight, you have shown
yourself willing.”

“What condition?” Selah tried to guess it,
thinking desperately through what had happened. Wondering if she
could foil it, even now.

“For the rite to work, you have to willingly
undergo it. Teharonhiawako was a creature of good; you have to
agree to the exchange out of love.”

Selah laughed. “Then you’re out of luck. Here’s
an update you might’ve missed: I don’t love you, I don’t want to
give you my humanity, so sorry. You got it all wrong.”

“You don’t have to love me.” He was
infuriatingly patient, calm. “You have to agree to the exchange out
of love. You risked your life for this man. What is that if not
love? I will compel you by threatening him. If you do not agree to
this, then I will hurt him until you do.” Sawiskera smiled at her
again, that smile of a child. “I am good at making pain, at making
it last. I can break his spirit slowly, so that by the end, he will
not be the man you know. So that by the end, you will cry and be
broken in turn for having allowed it to happen, and beg for me to
end his torment. You will even agree to kill him yourself to grant
him peace. Know that this is true: I have done this before, many,
many times.”