Tokala took the back and she sat in the passenger seat, her fingers curled around the steel bar.
Lees?
We’re coming, Jeremiah. She glanced at Mal, his stern profile illuminated only by the Jeep headlights and dashboard. “Is he at the enclosure?”
“No, he’s where he wants to be for this. That’s where we’re going.”
She knew the location. Though not as elevated as the knoll in her dream, it had a profound view of a long rolling plain that passed through the blue line of the African portal, and beyond that, the sea. Three different possible worlds to visit.
Jeremiah had made sure he wasn’t near the other fledglings during his end, but she was sure they knew where he’d gone. She wondered what kind of good-byes he’d said to them.
They didn’t speak again. She held that lack of feeling to her like a shield until they pulled up and stopped, just twenty feet away from where Jeremiah was sitting. He had his knees drawn up and hands linked around them, rocking on the point of his buttocks as he looked up at the vast sky, the spray of stars across them.
Dear God, give me courage. I can’t do this. I can’t.
She looked toward Mal then, her eyes pleading. “Say something to help me do this.”
“I don’t want you to do it. I want to take you home right now, and protect you from this. I don’t want you to feel one more moment of pain in your life.”
Mal’s quiet words were so fierce, the heat blasted over her chilled skin. What she’d taken for stoic acceptance was hiding a great deal more. She nodded. He knew what she needed to hear. He didn’t want her to do this, but she had to do it. She knew she had to do it.
She got out of the Jeep, Tokala with her, and turned to look at Mal. “Do you need to . . .”
He shook his head. “He and I have said our good-byes. You’re sure you want me to go?”
She fought an ache in her throat that threatened to become another flood of tears. “No, but I need you to go. Need you to be there.”
“All right, then.” He held her gaze. “I’ll be in your mind, Irish flower. You can do this. He needs you, and you are better at being needed than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.”
He slid out of the Jeep, because he’d use his vampire speed to return to the house, but as he moved a few steps away he turned, gave her a last intent look. A wave of pure feeling came from him, spreading out inside her like an amorphous blanket she could wrap around the chill. A moment later, he’d disappeared into the forest.
When she looked up at Tokala, the man nodded, passing a hand over her hair. “I’ll be right close.” He nodded to the tree a stone’s short throw from Jeremiah. “When he’s ready, you just motion to me, and I’ll come closer.”
Her throat too dry to respond, she started walking.
Jeremiah watched her come to him, those gray-green eyes now crimson-free. When she got there, she spread her skirt, lowered herself to the ground next to him and gave him a sidelong glance. “So here we are,” she said softly. “Sure I can’t interest you in a game of cricket instead? Riding a bicycle? Mal bought a bicycle for me when we were on the mainland.”
“Not enough players for cricket.” The blood flow from his tooth extraction had stopped, so now, for the first time since she’d met him, he was speaking almost normally, the fangs no longer an impediment. Noticing his palms had healed, she wondered what he’d done with his fangs, if they would also turn to ash at sun’s first light. He’d cleaned himself up, perhaps wading in the nearby lagoon, and had gotten rid of the shirt. He was clad in just the trousers she’d made him. Reaching out, she stroked his hair away from his forehead, the first time she’d ever done it without caution or calculation. That hardly seemed to matter now, did it?
He leaned into the touch, staring at her face. “It’s thirty minutes until dawn.”
“I know.” Her voice quavered, but she quelled it, pressing her fingers into his flesh as she dropped her hand to his shoulder. “I know you’re not a little boy, Jeremiah, but can I hold you? Would you like that?”
In answer, he shifted so he was underneath her arm, crooking his legs over her lap so she could pull him close to her side. He laid his head on her shoulder, his hair brushing her neck, his lips pressed close to it, making her feel that always-present vampire awareness of her humanity, the blood pumping beneath her skin.
“I won’t bite you,” he murmured.
“I wasn’t worried about that.”
He was quiet a moment, the two of them looking out at the spectacular view. “I saw your dream that night,” he continued after a moment. “The one on the knoll with the cougar. It was a good dream.”“It was, wasn’t it? It’s amazing . . .” When her voice quavered, she stopped, steadied it. “It’s amazing how our minds can take us places we can’t go. Doesn’t matter if we’re rich or poor; nothing can take away the ability to dream. There’s a part of us inside that always goes where it wants to go, not where anyone tells us we’re allowed.”
“Yeah. Nobody can take it away, even when we think they have.”
“Exactly like that.” She tightened her arm around him. “Oh, Jeremiah. I wish . . .”
“I know. Don’t.” His hand landed on her forearm, squeezed a little too hard, but when she drew in an involuntary breath, he eased it. “You know, I’ve thought a lot about it. You remember what you said about being Catholic?”
“Yes.”
“When I was little, before I was turned, my mother had my sister. She was deformed. She died after three days.”
His fingers stroked her arm, drawing things on it, random circles. His body was warming, she could tell, and wondered if it was a bloodlust attack. Then she remembered how Mal’s skin got hotter if he stayed outside too close to dawn, a warning. She repeated her chant in her mind. Dear God, please help me do this.
“I’m sorry that happened, Jeremiah.”
“Before my mother died and I had to go to the orphanage, she told me my sister was so special that God wanted her back. When I think of things like that . . .” He paused, and she felt a wetness against her neck. Cupping his face, she let her fingers whisper over a single tear track. “I think . . . maybe, if I’m lucky, I’m something that God wants back. It’s just taken me longer to get there.”
Elisa tightened her arms around him then, holding him as close as she could. “I can’t imagine God not wanting you back, Jeremiah. You remember what you said, about wanting to be a man like any other?”
He lifted a shoulder, an acknowledgment, and she pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. “You are a man, but not like any other. You’re better than most. You’ve taken care of your siblings, for that’s what the others are. You reached out to me, saved my life in more than one way. If anything, you’ll be an angel, a mighty angel like Michael, watching over all of us.”
He nodded. “I’d like that. Though I might like just being . . . me for a while. Do you think they play cricket in Heaven? And football?”
“Of course they do. I know they do.”
His other arm slipped around her back so they were holding each other. She saw the sky lightening, felt it in her bones. No, no, no . . .
It’s all right, Elisa. Then he lifted his face to look right at her, eye to eye. Thank you for being this strong for me. For all of us. And thanks for that bear.
It was such a simple, absurd thing to say. As if he knew it, a tremulous smile curved his lips, a sweet, gentle gesture, entirely at odds with the hand that closed around her arm with a man’s decisiveness and a vampire’s strength. When it’s time . . . you help me.
She looked down. Drawing her arm from his waist, he closed her hand around the wooden stake he’d had hidden under his leg. Now he notched it in the right place between his ribs.
If Tokala does it, I’ll have to let go of you. Don’t make me do that, Elisa. Please. When the first shaft of sunlight hits us.
He laid his head back down on her shoulder, putting his arms back around her, so that stake was pressed between them. With her third-mark strength, it would take one thrust. She wrapped her other arm around his back again, stroking his head, and began to sing to him, that soft lullaby that he’d sung to her, to give her comfort in the midst of nightmares.
So much flashed through her mind. The first time Danny had introduced them to the fledglings, the day Jeremiah took the bear from outside the bars. His serious, thoughtful expression, the savagery in his face when he’d killed Leonidas, his friend, rather than let him harm Elisa. Then she imagined his mother, the one who’d given birth to a sick daughter but a beautiful, healthy son, one she’d never anticipated having to leave because she herself had died. His mother waited for him. She would be there for him, with wide-open arms, because a mother had to love a son like this. She just had to.
It gave her the courage she needed. The rose and gold of the sky increased, the split second before the sun emerged. Then the first ray lanced across the plains. Her third-mark senses were so developed now she could see it track its way across the terrain, the marshes, the dense foliage, all those habitats suitable for the different cats, the different creatures that made this their home.
What was your name, Jeremiah? Do you remember?
He nodded against her neck, his body already starting to tense from pain. Her eyes closed at his answer, tears free-falling down her cheeks onto his head.
Jeremy. You knew, Elisa. You always knew me. Please . . . It’s starting to hurt.
Keeping her eyes closed, she pushed the stake home, a simple, unremarkable movement. It went through his heart at the same moment that first ray of light touched his heated flesh. Quick and painless, as Mal had said. Or at least quick. As the heart ruptured before that sharp point, she thought she’d staked her own.
I love you, Jeremy. May God bless you in death the way He couldn’t in life.
She lowered him to the ground when he became too hot and his body began to burn from the inside, but she kept light fingertips on his forehead. She teased that lock of longish blond hair until even it was consumed and she was sitting next to a Jeremy-shaped form of ash. The looser pieces fluttered like tiny curled and dry gray autumn leaves. Tokala stood close now, staring at the stake she still held clasped in her hand. She put it aside and placed her hand on the boy’s chest, applying slight pressure. As she suspected, it crumbled, the ashes spinning free as the morning breeze from the ocean picked up in strength.