Hourglass
Claudia Gray

For Adair and Margaret Blake,

who heard the stories first

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Also by Claudia Gray

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

“GET OUT,” I PLEADED. “GET OUT OF TOWN FOR good. That way we don’t have to kill you.”

The vampire snarled, “What makes you think you could?”

Lucas tackled him, and they fell to the pavement. Those were bad odds for Lucas; short-range fighting always worked to a vampire’s advantage, because a vampire’s best weapons were his fangs. I ran forward, determined to help.

“You’re stronger”—the vampire gasped—“than a human.”

Lucas said, “I’m human enough.”

The vampire grinned, a smile that had nothing to do with the desperate situation he was in and was therefore even scarier. “I heard somebody was looking for one of our babies,” he crooned to Lucas. “One of the powerful ones in my tribe. Lady named Charity. Heard of her?”

Charity’s tribe. A jolt of panic shivered through me.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of Charity. In fact, I staked her,” Lucas said as he tried to twist the vampire’s hand around his back. “Think I can’t stake you, too? You’re about to learn different.” Yet Lucas couldn’t gain the advantage. They were too evenly matched. He wasn’t even going to have a chance to go for his stakes. The vampire could turn the tables on him at any second.

That meant it was up to me to save him—by killing another vampire.

Chapter One

I GASPED FOR AIR SO HARD THAT MY CHEST ACHED. My face felt hot, and strands of my hair stuck to the sweaty back of my neck. Every single muscle hurt.

In front of me was Eduardo, one of the leaders of this Black Cross cell, with a stake in his hand. All around us, his vampire hunters, a ragtag army in denim and flannel, watched in silence. None of them would help me. We stood apart from them in the center of the room. Harsh overhead light painted him in stark shadows.

“Come on, Bianca. Get in the game.” His voice could sound like a growl when he chose, and every word echoed off the concrete floor and metal walls of the abandoned warehouse. “This is a fight to the death. Aren’t you even going to try to stop me?”

If I sprang at him in an effort to grab his weapon or knock him down, he’d be able to throw me to the floor. Eduardo was faster, and he’d been hunting for years. He’d probably killed hundreds of vampires—all of them older and more powerful than me.

Lucas, what can I do?

But I didn’t dare look around for Lucas. I knew that if I took my eyes away from Eduardo for a second, the battle would be over.

I took a couple of steps backward, but I stumbled. The borrowed shoes I wore were too big for me, and one of them slipped off my foot.

“Clumsy,” Eduardo said. He turned the stake between his fingers, as if imagining different angles at which to strike. His smile was so satisfied—so smug—that I stopped being scared and started being mad.

I grabbed up the shoe and flung it at Eduardo’s face as hard as I could.

It smacked into his nose, and our audience burst out laughing. A few of them clapped. The tension had disappeared in an instant, and I was once more part of the gang, or so they thought.

“Nice,” Lucas said as he emerged from the circle of watchers and put his hands on my shoulders. “Very nice.”

“I’m not exactly a black belt.” I couldn’t catch my breath. Sparring practice always wore me out; this was the first time it hadn’t ended with me flat on my back.

“You’ve got good instincts.” Lucas’s fingers kneaded the sore muscles at the base of my neck.

Eduardo didn’t think having a shoe thrown in his face was funny. He glared at me, an expression that would’ve been more fearsome if his nose weren’t bright red. “Cute—in sparring practice. But if you think a stunt like that will save you in the real world—”

“It will if her opponent takes her for granted,” said Kate, “like you did.”

That shut Eduardo up, and he smiled ruefully. Officially, he and Kate were co-leaders of this Black Cross cell, but after only four days with them, I knew most people looked to Kate for the final word. Eduardo didn’t seem to mind. As touchy and prickly as he was with everyone else, Lucas’s stepfather apparently thought Kate could do no wrong.

“Doesn’t matter how you knock them down as long as they fall,” said Dana. “Now, can we eat already? Bianca’s got to be starving.”

I thought of blood—rich and red and hot, more delicious than any food could ever be—and a small shiver passed through me. Lucas saw it and put his arm around my waist to draw me close, as if for a hug. He whispered, “You okay?”

“Just hungry.”

His dark green eyes met mine. If there was unease about my need for blood, there was understanding, too.

But Lucas couldn’t help me any more than I could help myself. For the time being, we were trapped.

Four days earlier, my school, Evernight Academy, had been raided and burned by Black Cross. The hunters knew the secret of Evernight: that it was a refuge for vampires, a place to teach them about the modern world. That made it a target for Black Cross—a band of deadly vampire hunters, all of whom were trained to kill.

What they didn’t know was that I wasn’t one of the many human students who studied alongside the vampires at Ever-night, unaware. I was a vampire.

Well, not a full vampire. If I had my way, that was something I would never become. But I had been born to two vampires, and despite the fact that I was a living person, I had some of the powers of a vampire and some of the needs.

Like, for instance, the need for blood.

Ever since the attack on Evernight Academy, this Black Cross cell was in lockdown. This meant that we were hiding in one secure location—namely this warehouse, which smelled like old tires and had cots for us to sleep on and oil stains on the concrete floor. People could go outside only if they were patrolling for vampires who might come after us in revenge for the attack on the school. We had to spend virtually every waking second in preparation for battles to come. I’d learned to sharpen knives, for instance, and had the very weird experience of whittling a stake. And now they’d started teaching me how to fight.

Privacy? Forget about it. I was lucky there was a door in front of the toilet. That meant that Lucas and I had almost no chance to be alone—and, even worse, that I hadn’t drunk blood in four days.

Without blood, I became weak. I became hungry. The craving controlled me more and more, and if this went on much longer, I wasn’t sure what I would do.

No matter what, I couldn’t drink blood in front of anybody in Black Cross, save Lucas. When he had seen me bite another vampire during his year at Evernight Academy, I’d thought he would reject me forever; instead, he had overcome his Black Cross indoctrination and remained in love with me. I doubted many other vampire hunters would be capable of the same change of heart. If anyone else in the room with us right now saw me drink blood and realized the truth, I knew exactly what would happen. They would all turn on me in an instant.

Even Dana, one of Lucas’s best friends, who was still cackling about my small victory over Eduardo. Even Kate, who credited me with saving Lucas’s life. Even Raquel, my roommate from school who had joined me in Black Cross. Every time I looked at any of them, I had to remember: They’d kill me if they knew.

“Peanut butter again,” Dana said as a few of us sat on the floor by our cots with our scanty dinner. “You know, seems like I remember enjoying peanut butter, once upon a long ago.”

“Beats noodles with butter,” Lucas said. Dana groaned. In reply to my curious glance, he added, “Last year, for a while, that was pretty much all we could afford. Seriously, every meal for a month, spaghetti noodles with butter. If I never eat that again, it’ll be too soon.”

“Who cares?” Raquel spread peanut butter on her bread like it was caviar. She hadn’t stopped smiling for four days, ever since Black Cross first announced they’d take us in. “So we aren’t dining out at fancy restaurants every night. What does it matter? We’re actually doing something important. Something real.”

I pointed out, “Right now, we’re mostly hiding in a warehouse, eating peanut butter sandwiches without jelly three meals a day.”

That didn’t faze Raquel in the slightest. “It’s just part of the sacrifice we have to make. It’s worth it.”

Dana ruffled Raquel’s short black hair affectionately. “Spoken like a true newbie. We’ll see what you say in year five.” Raquel beamed. She loved the idea of being with Black Cross for five years, for ten, her whole life. After being stalked by vampires at school and haunted by ghosts at home, Raquel wanted nothing more than to kick some supernatural butt. As strange and hungry as the past four days had been, I’d never seen Raquel happier.

“Lights out in one hour!” yelled Kate. “Do what you’ve gotta.”

As one, Dana and Raquel stuffed the last crusts of their sandwiches in their mouths and took off toward the makeshift shower that had been set up in the back. Only the first few people in line would have time to wash tonight, and only one or two would get warm water. Were they planning on fighting each other for a spot in line? The only alternative would probably be to share.

I felt too exhausted to think about taking my clothes off, sweaty though I was. “In the morning,” I said, half to Lucas and half to myself. “I’ll have time to wash in the morning.”

“Hey.” His hand rested on my forearm, comfortingly warm and strong. “You’re trembling.”

“I guess I am.”

Lucas shifted until he sat next to me. His tall frame, well-muscled but wiry, made me feel small and delicate, and his dark gold hair looked brilliant even in these dingy surroundings. His warmth made me imagine that I was in front of a fireplace in winter. As he put one arm around my shoulders, I rested my aching head against him and closed my eyes. That way I could pretend that there weren’t a couple dozen people around us, talking and laughing. That we weren’t in some gray, ugly warehouse that smelled like rubber. That there was nobody in the world but Lucas and me.

Into my ear, he murmured, “I’m worried about you.”

“I’m worried about me, too.”

“Lockdown’s not going to go on much longer. Then we can get you some—something to eat, I mean—and you and I can figure out what to do next.”

I understood what he meant. We were going to run away, the way we’d planned before the attack on Evernight. Lucas wanted to get away from Black Cross almost as badly as I did. But in order to do that, we’d need money, our freedom, and a chance to make plans together in private. Right now, all we could do was hang on.

When I looked at Lucas, I saw the concern in his dark green eyes. I put my hand to his cheek and felt the rough scrub of beard stubble. “We’ll make it. I know we will.”

“I’m supposed to be the one taking care of you.” He kept studying me, as if he could somehow find the answer to our problems in my face. “Not the other way around.”

“We can take care of each other.”

Lucas embraced me tightly, and for a few seconds, I didn’t have to pretend we were anywhere else.

“Lucas!” Eduardo’s voice echoed against the concrete and metal. We looked up to see him nearby, arms folded across his chest. Sweat made a dark V on the front of his T-shirt. Lucas and I drew away from each other. It wasn’t that we were ashamed, but nobody could kill a romantic mood faster than Eduardo. “I want you to walk the perimeter on the first shift tonight.”

“I went two nights ago,” Lucas protested. “It’s not my turn yet.”

This only made Eduardo’s scowl blacker. “Since when do you start whining about turns, like a kid on the playground who wants the swings?”

“Since you stopped even pretending to be fair. Back off, okay?”

“Or what? You’ll run to your mommy? Because Kate wants to see some proof of your dedication, Lucas. We all do.”

He meant, because of me. Lucas had broken Black Cross rules many times so that we could be together—more than the others in this cell knew.

Lucas wasn’t backing down. “I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since the fire. I’m not spending another night in the drainage ditch outside, waiting for nothing.”

Eduardo’s dark eyes narrowed. “At any second, we could have a vampire tribe on our trail—”

“And whose fault would that be? After your stunt at Ever-night Academy—”

“Stunt?”

“Time out!” Dana, fresh from her shower and smelling strongly of cheap soap, held her hands in a T between Lucas and Eduardo. Her long braids fell over the thin, damp towel looped around her neck. “Chill, okay? In case you lost count, Eduardo, it’s actually my turn to take a shift tonight. I don’t feel so tired anyway.”

Eduardo never liked being vetoed, but he couldn’t refuse a willing volunteer. “Suit yourself, Dana.”

“Why don’t I bring Raquel out with me?” she suggested, smoothly steering the conversation away from Lucas. “My girl’s chomping at the bit to do more.”

“Raquel’s too new. Forget it.” Apparently Eduardo felt better for having been able to put his foot down. He stalked off.

“Thanks,” I said to Dana. “Are you sure you aren’t too tired?”

She grinned. “What, do you think I’m going to be dragging butt tomorrow like Lucas did today? No way.”

Lucas pretended to punch her arm, and she mock-sneered at him. They pretty much gave each other hell all the time without meaning a word of it. I thought that Dana might be Lucas’s best friend. Certainly only a real friend would take a perimeter-search shift, which involved—as Lucas put it—a whole lot of stooping, a whole lot of mud, and almost no sleep.

Soon everyone around us was preparing for bed. The only privacy any of us had was the “wall”—actually a bunch of old sheets hung over a clothesline—between the men’s half of the room and the women’s. Lucas and I were both right up against the sheet, separated only by a few inches and one thin cotton cloth. Sometimes I was reassured by the fact that he was so close; other times, the frustration made me want to scream.

It’s not forever, I reminded myself as I changed into the borrowed T-shirt I slept in. The pajamas I’d escaped in had been ruined in the fire; the only thing I wore that belonged to me was the obsidian pendant I’d gotten from my parents that hung around my neck at all times, even when I was in the shower. The jet brooch Lucas had given me while we were first dating was tucked into the small bag they’d given me. I didn’t think of myself as especially materialistic, but losing nearly everything I’d ever owned had been a blow. So I treasured the few things I had left.

When Kate called “Lights out,” somebody flipped the switch almost that instant. I burrowed under the thin, army-style blanket over my folding cot. It wasn’t soft, and it definitely wasn’t comfortable—cots suck—but I was so exhausted that any chance to rest was welcome.

To my left, Raquel was already asleep. She slept better here than she ever had at Evernight.

To my right, invisible behind the slowly rippling white sheet, was Lucas.

I imagined the outline of his body, what he looked like lying down on his cot. I fantasized about tiptoeing to his side and sliding in next to him. But we’d be seen. I sighed, giving up the idea.

This was the fourth night I’d done that. And, just as I’d done the other four nights, once I stopped being frustrated about my inability to be with Lucas, I started worrying.

Mom and Dad have to be okay, I told myself. I remembered the blaze too well—the way the flames had leaped up around me and the thickness of the smoke. It would’ve been easy to get lost, to get trapped. Fire was one of the only ways to truly kill a vampire. They have centuries of experience. They’ve been in worse trouble before. Remember what Mom told you about the Great Fire of London? If she made it through that, she could make it out of Evernight.

But Mom hadn’t made it out of the Great Fire. She’d been terribly injured and near death; my father had “rescued” her by turning her into a vampire like himself.

I hadn’t exactly been on great terms with my parents lately. That didn’t mean I wanted them to be hurt. Just the thought of them weak and injured—or worse—made me sick to my stomach.

They weren’t the only ones I was worried about. Had Vic been able to get out of the burning school? What about Balthazar? As a vampire, he might have been targeted by Black Cross—or by his psychotic, vengeful sister, Charity, who had nearly prevented me, Lucas, and Raquel from escaping. Or what about poor Ranulf? He was a vampire, but one so gentle and unworldly that it was easy to imagine the hunters of Black Cross wiping him out.

I didn’t know how any of them were. I might never know. When I chose to leave with Lucas, I’d known that was a risk I’d have to take. That didn’t mean I liked it.

My stomach growled, hungry for blood.

Groaning, I turned over in my cot and prayed for sleep. That was the only way to silence the fears and hungers inside—at least for a few hours.

I reached out for the flower, but even as my fingertip touched the petal, it blackened and withered.

“Not for me,” I whispered.

“No. Something better,” said the ghost.

How long had she been there? It seemed as though she’d always been by my side. We stood together on the grounds of Evernight Academy as dark clouds roiled overhead. Gargoyles glared down at us from the imposing stone towers. The wind blew strands of my dark red hair across my face. A few leaves, caught in the gale, blew through the aquamarine shadow of the ghost. She flinched.

“Where’s Lucas?” Somehow he was supposed to be here, but I couldn’t remember why.

“Inside.”

“I can’t go in there.” It wasn’t that I was afraid. For some reason, it seemed impossible for me to walk inside the school. Then I realized why it was impossible. “This can’t be real. Evernight Academy was burned in a fire. It doesn’t exist now.”

The ghost cocked her head. “When you say ‘now,’ when do you mean?”

“Feet on the floor!”

The shout awakened us every morning. Even as I blinked my eyes, groggily trying to recall the dream that already had begun to slip away, Raquel bounded from her cot, strangely energized. “Come on, Bianca.”

“It’s just breakfast,” I grumbled. Peanut butter on toast wasn’t worth rushing for, in my opinion.

“No, something’s happening.”

Bleary and confused, I stumbled to my feet to see that the Black Cross hunters around me were already on guard. My exhaustion told me that it couldn’t possibly be morning yet. Why had they hauled us out of bed in the middle of the night?

Oh, no.

Dana ran in and yelled, “Confirmed! Arm up, now!”

“The vampires,” Raquel whispered. “They’ve come.”

Chapter Two

INSTANTLY THE ENTIRE ROOM SPRANG INTO action. All around me, Black Cross hunters were grabbing crossbows, stakes, and knives. I slid into my jeans, my whole body tense.

There was no way I was joining this fight. None. I might have decided never to become a vampire, but that didn’t mean I was ready to join a crew of vampire-slaughtering zealots. Besides, the vampires coming after us now wouldn’t be the mad killers who gave the undead a bad name. They would be from Ever-night Academy, seeking only what they saw as justice for what happened to the school—and, possibly, trying to save me.

But what if they tried to hurt Lucas? Could I stand by while they attacked the man I loved?

Next to me, Raquel took up a stake with shaky hands. “This is it. We have to be ready.”

“I’m not—I can’t—” How could I explain this to her? I couldn’t.

Lucas emerged from the men’s half of the room, his shirt untucked and his dark gold hair still mussed from sleep. “You two are not getting involved in this,” he said. “You’re not trained.” His eyes met mine, and I knew he understood the other reasons I couldn’t take part.

Raquel looked furious. “What are you talking about? I can fight! Just give me a chance!”

Ignoring her, Lucas grabbed our arms and started towing us toward the back of the warehouse. “You’re both coming with me.”

“The hell I am.” Raquel broke free and ran to the metal door, which banged as she pushed her way through. Lucas swore under his breath as he started after her. I followed them, more in shock than anything else.

Outside, the sky was the flat gray that preceded dawn. Hunters in various states of undress shouted to one another to take position. Knives gleamed in the moonlight, and I heard the creaking and clicking of crossbows being loaded. Kate crouched on the gravel, her arms in front of her like a runner and her head cocked in a way that told me she was relying on her hearing to gauge the risk. I looked out over the field surrounding us—high and unkempt with uncut brush. To most humans, it would have looked entirely still. With my sharper vision, I could see flickers of movement coming closer. We were being surrounded.

“Mom,” Lucas said softly, “somebody should guard Bianca and Raquel in the warehouse. They can’t fight yet, and they’ll be looked at as—traitors, something like that. The vampires would target them.”

From his place at the corner of the lot, a crossbow in his hands, Eduardo said, “Running away now?”

Lucas’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t say I should be the one. But somebody ought to be with them just in case.”

“Just in case the vampires get through? Best way to prevent that is by having all our fighters at the front,” Eduardo shot back. “Unless you’re simply looking for an excuse.”

One of Lucas’s hands balled into a fist, and for a moment I thought he might hit Eduardo. Calling Lucas a coward was manifestly unfair, but this wasn’t the time to argue about it. I put a hand on his arm, trying to calm him.

It was Kate who intervened, though. “Eduardo, can it. Lucas, get them in the warehouse.” She never looked away from the horizon, from the attackers she knew were coming. “We need all three of you to start packing our supplies. Fast as you can.”

Eduardo turned to her. “No way are we running from this, Kate.”

“You like fighting more than you like staying alive,” Kate said, never meeting his eyes. “But I try to think like Patton. I don’t run this group so everyone can die for the cause. I run it so the vampires have to die for theirs.”

The shapes in the brush all rustled as one, moving closer. Lucas tensed, and I realized he could see them in the dark as well as I could. Ever since I’d first drunk his blood, he’d developed the first stirrings of vampiric power. That meant he knew what I knew: We didn’t have much time. Minutes, maybe.

“Raquel, come on,” Lucas said, but she stubbornly remained by Dana’s side, shaking her head.

“This isn’t safe,” I tried. “Please, Raquel, you could be killed.”

Her voice trembled as she answered, but she said only, “I’m done with running.”

Dana set aside the crossbow she’d been loading and faced Raquel. Her entire body seemed to vibrate with energy. She had been the one to spot the vampires, the one who had known about the danger longest—and she was already in battle mode. Yet she spoke gently to Raquel. “Packing up our stuff isn’t running. Okay? It’s something we need to do, because we’re going to have to get out of here, either after the fight or during it.”

“Not if we win,” Raquel began, but stopped when she saw Dana’s expression.

“They know our location now,” Lucas said. “More vampires will come. We’ve got to run. Help us get ready to run. That’s the best thing you can do right now.”

Raquel never looked away from Dana as her face shifted from determination to resignation. “Next time,” she said. “Next time I’ll know how to fight.”

“We’ll be in this together next time,” Dana agreed. Her gaze shifted to the brush and the pursuers. Nobody needed vampire senses to know how close they were now. “Get your butt out of here.”

I grabbed Raquel’s hand and pulled her back into the warehouse. After a few days being confined here, always with dozens of people around, I felt weird seeing it almost empty. The blankets were disheveled, and some of the cots had been tipped over in the rush. Still in shock, I started folding a blanket.

“Screw the blankets.” Lucas headed toward the weapons lockers. Almost everything had been taken by the hunters, but there were still a few stakes, arrows, and canisters of holy water. “We get the ammo ready. The rest we can replace.”

“Of course.” I should have thought of that. But how could I? My brain was stuck, like when the needle of Dad’s record player caught in the scratches of his old jazz records: Are my parents outside? Is Balthazar? Will Black Cross kill people that I care about, people who are probably only trying to rescue me?

Outside I heard a shout—then a scream.

All three of us froze. The noise swelled outside from a few cries to a roar, and the metal wall of the warehouse thudded. It wasn’t a body—a rock, maybe, or a misfired arrow—but Raquel and I jumped.

Lucas shook it off fastest. “Pack this stuff up. When they call for us, we’re gonna have about two minutes to get our gear into the vans. That’s it.”

We got to work. It was difficult to concentrate. The cacophony outside frightened me, not only because of my fear for the others but also because it reminded me powerfully of the last Black Cross battle I’d witnessed: the burning of Evernight. My back still ached from the fall I’d taken while running across the flaming roof, and I imagined I could still taste smoke and ash. Before, I’d been able to comfort myself by thinking that it was all over—but it wasn’t. As long as Lucas and I were stuck with Black Cross, the battles would always follow us. Danger would always be near.

With every shout, every thud, Lucas seemed to get more worked up. He wasn’t used to staying out of fights; he was more likely to start them.

Trunk shut, locked, moving on. Do they want to take the wood that hasn’t been carved into stakes yet? Surely not—they can get wood anywhere, right? I kept trying to figure it out, working as fast as I could. Next to me, Raquel was simply grabbing armfuls of junk and dumping it into boxes without even checking to see what it was. She probably had the right idea.

Something slammed hard into the metal wall again, and I gasped. Lucas didn’t tell me it was going to be all right; instead, he grabbed a stake.

At that moment, two sprawling figures burst through one of the side doors. Even my vampire senses couldn’t tell me which was my own kind and which was the Black Cross hunter, because they were too tangled together—a blur of motion, sweat, and snarled curses. They staggered toward us, oblivious to our presence, only to their life-and-death struggle. The half-open door behind them showed a sliver of light, and let the screams come through even louder.

“Do something,” Raquel whispered. “Lucas, you know what to do, right?”

Lucas leaped forward, farther and faster than a mere human should’ve been able to, and swung his stake into the fray. Instantly one of the figures froze; the stake had paralyzed the vampire. I looked at his still face—green eyes, fair hair, features frozen in horror—and felt a flash of sympathy for him in the instant before the Black Cross hunter slid a long, broad blade from his belt and severed his opponent’s head with a single stroke. The vampire shuddered once, then crumbled to oily dust upon the floor.

The vampire had been an old one, then; there was very little left of the mortal man he’d been. As the others stood there, looking down at the remains, I could only wonder if this had been one of my parents’ friends. I hadn’t recognized him, but whoever he’d been, he’d come here in the belief he was helping me.

“How did you even do that?” Raquel said. “That was, like, superhuman.” She meant it only as a compliment, and luckily the Black Cross hunter was too exhausted and relieved to notice that Lucas had just called upon vampire power.

My eyes sought Lucas’s. I was relieved to see no triumph there, only a plea for understanding. When he’d been forced to choose, he had to protect his fellow hunter. I got that. What I didn’t get was what would have happened if this vampire had been my mother or father.

Eduardo leaned in through the open doorway, panting but somehow exhilarated by the fight. “We’ve pushed them back. Won’t have long before they return, though. We’ve got to load up now.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Someplace we can do real training. Get you new recruits into shape.” Eduardo glanced at me as he spoke, and although he didn’t look friendly, he looked—well, like possibly he hated me less. Now that I was a potential soldier, maybe he finally saw me as useful. But then his grin changed, becoming more cynical as he turned toward Lucas. “You won’t have any more excuses to run from a fight next time.”

Lucas looked like he might punch Eduardo in the jaw, so I grabbed his hand. His temper sometimes threatened to get the better of him.

“Come on, people!” Kate called from outside the warehouse. “Let’s move!”

Chapter Three

WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES, EVERYONE HAD PILED into Black Cross’s ramshackle armada of old trucks, vans, and cars. Lucas and I made sure to get into the van Dana was driving, and Raquel took the shotgun seat. With the rest of the van piled high with the group’s gear, we were on our own for the trip.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I shouted to Dana, over the wailing on the radio.

Dana pulled out, to join the caravan. “Ever been to New York City?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Nobody was kidding. Lucas gave me a confused look, like he couldn’t understand why I thought that was weird. I tried to explain. “You guys carry around all these weapons and go out to attack vampires. In a big city like that, don’t people—you know—notice?”

“Nope,” Dana said. “She’s never been to New York before.”

Raquel laughed as she thumped on the dashboard in sync with the song. “You’re gonna love it, Bianca,” she promised. “My sister Frida used to take me to Manhattan once a year. There are all these crazy galleries, art so bizarre you can’t believe anybody ever dreamed it up.”

“We’re not going to have a lot of time to spend in museums,” Dana said. Raquel’s drumming faltered, but only for a moment; as soon as the chorus started over, she was pounding the dash as hard as ever.

“It still seems weird,” I said to Lucas. “How are we even supposed to find space there?”

He said, “We have friends in New York. It’s home to one of the biggest Black Cross cells in the world, and they have a pretty extensive support network.”

“In other words,” Dana called over the music, “those guys are rolling in dough.”

I joked, “What, do they live in penthouses?”

“Not hardly,” Lucas said, “but you ought to check out their arsenal. I think there are some armies that don’t have the firepower the New York cell’s got.”

“How come the New York cell is so big?” I asked. Despite the seriousness of our situation, I could feel my spirits rising with every mile we drove. It felt so good to be on the move. “Why aren’t they like all the rest of you?”

“Because New York is a city with a serious vampire problem.” Lucas looked grim. “The vampires got there almost as soon as the Dutch did, back in the 1600s. They’re entrenched in that area—massive power, major influence. That Black Cross cell needs all the resources it can get to stand up against them. Actually, that was our first cell in the New World. At least, that’s what they tell us. It’s not like we show up in the history books.”

I thought about vampires in old New Amsterdam, and then I thought about Balthazar and Charity, who had been alive then. When Balthazar had told me about growing up in Colonial America, I had thought it sounded so unfathomably old, so mysterious and impressive. It was weird to think that Black Cross went that far back, too.

Raquel must have been thinking along similar lines, because she asked, “Is that when Black Cross was founded? The sixteen hundreds?”

Dana laughed at her. “Try a thousand years before that.”

“Get out,” I said. “Really?”

“Started in the Byzantine Empire,” Lucas said. I tried hard to remember who the Byzantines were—I thought maybe they were what came after the Roman Empire, but I wasn’t sure. I imagined Mom’s disgust if she knew how vague I was about this: some history teacher’s daughter I made. “At first, Black Cross was the guard for Constantinople. But soon it spread throughout Europe, then into Asia. Went to the Americas and Australia along with the explorers. Apparently the kings and queens used to insist on at least one hunter traveling on every expedition.”

That last bit especially caught my attention. “Kings and queens? You mean—like, the government knows about you guys?” I tried to imagine Lucas as a sort of paranormal Secret Service agent. It wasn’t that much of a stretch.

“Not so much, anymore.” Lucas leaned his forehead against the window on his side. The highway rippled by, so fast the side of the road was a blur. “You guys—I mean, you guys know that vampires basically went underground not long after the Middle Ages.”

I gave Lucas the wide-eyed look that means, Shut up, will you? He looked appropriately apologetic. Obviously, he’d nearly said you guys went underground—in other words, he had come close to referring to me as a vampire in front of Dana and Raquel. It had been only a slip of the tongue, but that was all it would take.

Luckily, neither Dana nor Raquel had caught it. Raquel said, “So vampires fooled everybody into not believing in them. That meant they could move more freely—and that Black Cross wouldn’t be as powerful anymore. Right?”

“You got it, smarty-pants.” Dana frowned at the road ahead of us. “Damn, but Kate’s got a lead foot. Does she want us all to get speeding tickets? We can’t break formation!”

Lucas pretended he didn’t hear her bitching about his mother. “Anyway, we don’t get big grants from the crown anymore. There are people who know what we do. Some of those people have money. They keep us afloat. That’s pretty much how it is.”

I imagined Lucas as the figure he might have been in the Middle Ages—resplendent in a suit of armor, honored for his hard work and bravery with feasts in the greatest courts in the land. Then I realized how much he would’ve hated that, dressing up and making nice at fancy parties.

No, I decided, he belongs right here, right now. With me.

“Hey,” Dana said. “At eleven o’clock. Check it out.”

Then I saw what she was calling our attention to: the shape of Evernight Academy on the horizon.

We weren’t that close. Evernight was far from any highway, and Kate and Eduardo weren’t foolhardy enough to drag us onto Mrs. Bethany’s turf again. But Evernight had a distinctive silhouette, since it was an enormous Gothic building with towers high up in the hills of Massachusetts. Even at this distance, with the school no more than a craggy outline, we recognized it. We were far enough away that the damage from the fire was invisible. It was as if Black Cross had failed to touch the school at all.

“Still standing,” Dana said. “Dammit.”

“We’ll get it someday.” Raquel flattened one hand against her window, like she wanted to punch through the glass and knock the school down herself.

I thought of my mother and father, and it occurred to me that maybe they were nearby. This moment, right now, was possibly as close as I would ever be to my parents again.

I’d become so angry with them during my last days at Evernight. They had never told me that the wraiths played a role in my birth, or that they might be coming for me someday because of that. For a year I’d been literally haunted by ghosts that seemed to think they owned me, and I still didn’t know what that might mean. My parents had also refused to tell me if I had any choice other than becoming a full vampire someday. After meeting some of the vampires who truly were insane killers, I’d decided to try to find out whether it was possible for me to live out a normal life as a human being.

I still don’t know the truth. What’s going to happen to me? Not having any answers was so terrifying that I tried not to think about it, but dark uncertainty tugged at me nearly all the time now.

Yet as I looked up at the school, both my fear and my anger faded. I remembered only how loving Mom and Dad were and how close we’d been not that long ago. So many things had happened to me just in the past couple of days, and none of it seemed entirely real if I couldn’t tell my parents about it. I felt a powerful, almost overwhelming urge to leap out of the van and run toward Evernight, calling for them.

But I knew I could never go back to the ways things were before. So much had changed. I’d been forced to choose a side, and I’d chosen humanity, life—and Lucas.

Lucas caught a lock of my hair between his fingers, gently testing whether or not I needed comfort. I leaned my head against his shoulder, and for a while we rode on without anybody talking, only the music playing. Every mile marker we passed reminded me of how far we had come from the last home I’d had and the person I used to be.

We stopped to get gasoline and take bathroom breaks occasionally, but we took a longer rest only once during the drive, for lunch.

While Dana and Raquel joined the horde of people crowding into a fast-food Mexican place, Lucas and I begged off to walk to a diner down the street. Of course we wanted a few minutes alone, but even more than I needed to be with Lucas, I needed to eat—more specifically, to drink.

The first thing Lucas said when we were walking away from the crowd along the side of the road, sort of alone at last, was, “How hungry are you?”

“So hungry I can hear your heart beating.” And it seemed to me I could taste Lucas’s blood on my tongue. Probably better not to mention that. The sunlight bore down on me hard, harsh now that I’d been without blood for several days. I’d never done without for so long before.

“You think the diner—maybe the raw meat would have some blood, we could sneak back there—”

“That wouldn’t be enough. Besides, I know what to do.” I stood still, watching the swaying grass beside the highway, which lashed back and forth in the currents of passing cars. A robin pecked at the dirt, searching for worms amid the bottle caps and cigarette butts.

“Bianca?”

I could see nothing but the robin and think of nothing but its blood. Bird’s blood is thin, but it’s hot.

“Don’t watch,” I whispered. My jaw ached. My fangs slid into my mouth, sharp points scraping against my lips and tongue. Though we stood in the brilliant sunshine, everything around me seemed to go dark, as though the robin were in a spotlight, moving in slow motion.

Vampire quick, I pounced. The bird fluttered in my hands for only a moment before I bit into its flesh.

Yes, that’s it, blood! I drank the few sips of blood the robin had to offer, eyes shut in delight. When it was shriveled and dead in my hands, I let it drop as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Only then did I realize I had just done that right in front of Lucas. Shame hit me as I thought how savage I must have looked, and how disgusted Lucas must be.

But when I hesitantly raised my eyes to him, Lucas had turned away—just like I’d asked him to. He hadn’t seen. Sensing that I was done, he turned back around and smiled at me gently. When he saw the fear I felt, he shook his head.

“I love you,” he murmured. “That means I’m not just here for the pretty parts. I’m here no matter what.”

Alight with relief, I took his hand and walked with him to the diner. We were broke, and I wore clothes that didn’t fit me, and we were on the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere—but in that moment I felt more beautiful than any princess or supermodel or anything. I had Lucas, who loved me no matter what. That was all I needed.

We ate fast at the diner. Lucas was starving, and I needed regular food, too. Between mouthfuls of French fries, we tried to work out what else we might do with our precious few moments of free time.

“Can we find an Internet café, maybe? I could e-mail my parents.”

“No. N. O. First of all, there’s no way we’d find an Internet café out in the sticks. Second, you’re not e-mailing them. You can call once you know where they are, but not from a cell, or anything else that can be traced back to us. You can send a letter. But no e-mail. That’s another Black Cross order we’re not disobeying.”

Lucas claimed there was a difference between disobeying orders and breaking stupid rules, but right that second, I couldn’t see it. Whatever. I knew another way to find out what had gone down the night Evernight burned.

At first I wanted to use Lucas’s cell phone, but he pointed out that Black Cross would then be able to track the call. Luckily, once we were done eating, we found a bank of pay phones at the side of the diner. The first two I picked up had no dial tone, and the third’s cord had been cut, but the fourth worked okay. I smiled in relief as soon as I heard the dial tone. O for operator. “Collect,” I said, reading off the number I wanted from Lucas’s cell phone contacts list. “Say that it’s Bianca Olivier.”

Silence followed. “Did she hang up?” I said.

“There’s a pause with collect calls.” Lucas stood next to me, leaning against the plastic hood of the pay phone. “They don’t want you to yell your message at the other person before they’ve accepted the charges.”

The phone line clicked, and I heard a sleepy voice say, “Bianca?”

“Vic!” I bounced up and down on my heels, and Lucas and I shared a huge smile. “Vic, you’re okay!”

“Yeah, yeah. Whoa, wait a second—I’m still kinda waking up here.” I could imagine Vic clutching his cell phone to his face, with bad bed-head, in the middle of an extremely messy bedroom, surrounded by his posters. Probably he had crazy sheets, plaid or polka-dotted. He yawned, then, more alertly, asked, “Am I dreaming again?”

“No dream. It’s me. You weren’t injured in the fire?”

“No. Nobody got hurt very badly, which was, like, crazy good luck. Lost my pith helmet, though.” Vic obviously considered this a grave tragedy. “What about you? Are you okay? After they put out the fire, we were going nuts trying to find you. A couple people said they saw you on the grounds, so we knew you got out of the school, but we couldn’t figure where you ran off to.”

“I’m fine. I’m with Lucas.”

“Lucas?” No wonder Vic sounded astonished. As far as he knew, Lucas and I had broken up months ago. We’d had to keep our relationship a secret since then. “This is getting totally surreal. If this is just a dream, I’m gonna be so mad.”

“You’re not dreaming,” Lucas called. His hearing was sharp enough to listen in on the call, even though he was standing a foot from the receiver. “Pull it together, man. What are you doing asleep at eleven A.M.?”

“As you should recall, I am the proverbial night owl. Sleeping until noon is not only my right but my responsibility,” Vic said. “Besides, as the old song goes, school’s out for summer, school’s out forever.”

I gasped. “Forever? Does that mean Evernight Academy was destroyed?”

“Destroyed, no. Mrs. Bethany swears they’ll open for business in the fall, though I don’t see how. I mean, that place was torched.”

The harder questions came next. I gripped the receiver tightly, willing my voice not to shake. “Were my parents hurt? Did you see them?”

“They’re okay. I told you—everybody got out all right. Your mom and dad didn’t get caught in the fire. In fact, they were helping us look for you.” Vic paused. “They were pretty freaked out, Bianca.”

That was as close as Vic got to a guilt trip. I couldn’t really feel the impact, though; I was too elated to know that my parents had survived the Black Cross attack.

“Do you know where they are?” I didn’t think they would go far from Evernight Academy. My parents would stay close to the grounds—mostly because they would be hoping I’d return. I knew I couldn’t, but I hated the thought of them waiting for me there.

“They were sticking around the school last I saw,” Vic said. So much for calling them—my parents tried hard to adapt to modern life, but they hadn’t quite gotten as far as having cell phones.

“What about Balthazar?”

Lucas frowned. He had some problems with Balthazar, first because Balthazar was a vampire, and second because he and I had some history. It was over between us—it hardly even got started, honestly—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still worried about him.

“Balty’s A-OK,” Vic replied. “He was totally upset after the fire, though. I think it must’ve been because you were missing. The guy was crushed.”

“It wasn’t because of me,” I said quietly. My mood darkened as the weight of everything I’d lost settled over me, and I slumped against the pay phone, suddenly tired.

“Okay, okay. Backing off.”

What Vic didn’t and couldn’t know was that Balthazar’s misery was due to his sister, Charity, who had arranged the Black Cross attack. Charity was the most important person in the world to Balthazar, and, weirdly, I thought he was just as important to her. That wouldn’t stop her from trying to hurt him, or anyone who got close to him, including me.

Vic, who was becoming more alert by the minute, said, “What about Raquel? She was the only other one we couldn’t find. Is she with you, maybe?”

“She is, actually. She’s fine. Doing great.”

“Excellent! That means we all got out okay. Total miracle.”

“Where did Ranulf end up?” I asked.

“He’s crashed out in our guest room right now. You want me to grab him?”

“That’s okay. I’m just glad he’s all right.” Lucas and I shared surprised smiles. If Vic knew he’d invited a vampire to come stay in his house, he probably wouldn’t be sleeping so late—if at all. Fortunately Ranulf was too mild to cause anyone harm. “Listen, we have to go. I’ll be in touch, though.”

“Oh, man, I cannot deal with people being cryptic first thing in the morning.” Vic sighed, then said, very quietly, “Call your parents. Just—you need to, all right?”

A lump rose in my throat. “Good-bye, Vic.”

After I hung up, Lucas took my hand. “Like I said, there are ways for you to get in touch if you want to.”

I’d been so frightened for Mom and Dad that I hadn’t stopped to consider how frightened they must’ve been for me.

I must have looked stricken, because Lucas gave me a quick hug. “We’ll get through to them soon. You can write them or something. See, it’s going to be okay.”

“I know. It’s just hard.”

“Yeah.” We kissed—a simple kiss, but the first one we’d shared in any privacy in far too long. In that moment, our exhaustion and worry didn’t hold us back; we were together again, alone again, remembering everything we’d given up to be together—and reveling in it. His arms wrapped tightly around me as he leaned me backward. The whole world felt off balance except him. If I held on to him, I’d never go wrong.

Lucas is mine, I thought. Mine. Nobody can take this away from me.

By the time we reached New York, it was nighttime. When we first saw the Manhattan skyline in the distance, we all whooped and cheered. It looked pretty spectacular. To me, New York was almost more like a mythological place than a real one—it was where all the movies and TV shows happened, and the street names we were supposed to look for as we drove had a magical ring to them: 42nd Street. Broadway.

Then it occurred to me that Manhattan is an island, and I shivered at the thought of having to cross a river again. But instead we drove in through a tunnel, which was fine. For some reason, going beneath the water made a difference. I wished I’d asked my parents why.

We came out of the tunnel practically right in Times Square, which glittered and shone so much that I was dazzled. The others laughed at me, but I could tell they were kind of caught up in the excitement, too.

But it turned out that after a few dozen blocks, Broadway wasn’t so ritzy any longer. The bright lights dimmed, and we drove past apartment building after apartment building, stacks of them looming up around us like walls. The stores changed from posh cosmetics boutiques or family restaurants to 99-cent stores and fast-food joints.

Finally, the caravan turned into a parking garage, one that posted its incredibly expensive prices outside. The attendant waved us through, so we didn’t have to pay. The garage was definitely dirty and out of the way, so its rates were far too high—and sure enough, no other cars seemed to be parked inside.

I glanced at Lucas, who said, “Welcome to New York’s HQ.”

Everyone climbed out of the vans and trucks sort of sluggishly; we hadn’t stopped to stretch our legs on the trip, just a couple of very brief gasoline-and-bathroom breaks after lunch. We were herded into an enormous industrial elevator, which sank downward. The elevator’s walls were dull, scratched steel, and the light overhead flickered fitfully.

Feeling nervous, I took Lucas’s hand. He squeezed my fingers between his. “This part is going to be okay,” he said. “I promise.”

It’s not forever, I reminded myself. This is just until Lucas and I have a chance to make some plans. Soon we’ll be off on our own, and everything will be all right again.

The elevator doors opened to reveal a cavern, and I gasped. The high, curved ceiling was illuminated by strings of those plastic-encased lights construction guys use at worksites. Voices echoed throughout the arched space. I blinked as I made out the silhouettes of people farther away from us. They all seemed to be in a sort of trench that ran throughout the cave—

My eyes adjusted to the gloom, and I realized that this wasn’t a cavern. We were in a subway tunnel.

This tunnel had to have been abandoned for a long time. Flooring of planks or slabs of concrete sat over where the tracks must have been, and I could see a few small footbridges that connected the two platforms on either side of the tunnel. A cracked tile sign on one wall read, in old-fashioned type, Sherman Ave.

At first I was so amazed by our new hideout that I didn’t notice how quiet the rest of the group had become. All of them were standing still, saying nothing. I wasn’t the only one unsure of my welcome, apparently.

A trim Asian woman, a few years older than Kate, walked up to us with two brawny guys—I wanted to call them guards—on either side. Her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled tightly back into a long braid, and every muscle in her arms and legs was cut. “Kate,” she said. “Eduardo. You guys made it, I see.”

“Some greeting,” Eduardo said. “Is everybody else too busy to say hello?”

“Everyone’s too busy to hear your excuse for that ridiculous raid on Evernight,” she snapped. I realized that the people milling about in the distance were deliberately ignoring us.

Eduardo’s eyes blazed. “We had word that the human students were in immediate danger.”

“You had one vampire’s word against two centuries of experience that says the Evernight vampires don’t kill while they’re there. And you used that as an excuse to lead an attack that could’ve cost the lives of as many kids as vampires. The only reason it didn’t is because you got lucky.”

Kate looked like she wanted to defend her husband, but she said only, “For those who haven’t met her, this is Eliza Pang. She runs this cell, and she’s welcomed us for a short stay.”

We’re here on charity, I realized. I didn’t much care—this wasn’t something I’d chosen, or anything I was going to have to deal with for long—but I knew Lucas would hate that. Sure enough, he had clenched his jaw and was staring stonily at the concrete beneath his feet. I wondered if he hated it more for his or his mother’s sake. We’d have to talk about it later.

No sooner had I thought that than Eliza said, “Eduardo said you had two new recruits. Who are they?”

Raquel stepped forward right away. “Raquel Vargas. I’m from Boston. Anything you guys can teach me, I want to learn.”

“Good.” Eliza didn’t smile, exactly—already I found it hard to imagine her ever smiling—but she seemed pleased. “Who else?”

I didn’t want to step forward, but there wasn’t really any way around it. “Bianca Olivier. I’m from Arrowwood, Massachusetts. I—um—” What was I supposed to say? “Thanks for having us.”

“You’re the one Kate told us about,” Eliza said. “The one who was raised by vampires.”

Great. “That’s me.”

“I bet we can learn a lot from you.” Eliza clapped her hands together. “Okay, the rest of you guys, we’ve set up bunks at the far end of the track. They’ll do for now. Newbies, follow me.”

Follow her where? I shot Lucas a worried glance, but he obviously didn’t know any more about it than I did. When Eliza stalked off, Raquel went with her, and I didn’t have much choice but to go along.

“Are we starting our training already?” Raquel said, as the three of us walked farther along the subway platform.

“Eager, aren’t you?” From the sound of her voice, Eliza apparently didn’t think Raquel would be so eager once she saw what was in store. “Nah, you’ve had a big day. You can start in the morning.”

We got to the end of the platform, and Eliza led us into what had obviously been a service corridor. It smelled of mud and rust, and I could hear water dripping in the distance. A small yellow sign informed me this place could serve as a nuclear fallout shelter. Good to know.

I asked, “So where are we going? Why aren’t we with the others?”

“We have some permanent cabins set up in here. They’re not luxurious, but they beat the hell out of the bunks the rest of your cell is taking. You’ll be living with us, twenty-four/ seven.”

“Why do we get those?” I nearly stumbled over the broken, uneven cement beneath us, but Raquel caught my elbow. “Why aren’t those for Kate and Eduardo?” I wondered if it was because Eduardo was in the doghouse and their shoddy housing was punishment. It was unfair to punish Lucas, Dana, and the others for Eduardo’s mistake.

Instead, Eliza said, “You guys are new to the routine. You don’t know the life, and we don’t know you. Living in close quarters is a good way to make sure you learn all about us, and we learn all about you.”

Finding opportunities to drink blood would be even harder in this environment. If I didn’t drink blood often enough, I’d react more strongly to sunlight, to running water, to churches—and every reaction had the potential to mark me as a vampire.

How was I supposed to keep my secret?

Chapter Four

THAT NIGHT AFTER LIGHTS OUT, RAQUEL WHISpered, “The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?”

I knew what she meant. A week ago, she and I had been roommates at Evernight Academy. Now everything else in our life had been transformed, but we were still sleeping in beds that were side by side. And I guess this counted as a bed.

We’d been given a room like no other I had ever seen. Apparently, when the engineers had abandoned this subway tunnel, they’d also abandoned a few old train cars. The Black Cross cell had refitted those to serve as cabins. Our bunks sat on top of what had once been the seats, and steel poles ran from the floor to the ceiling, like we were at stripper boot camp or something. Raquel and I had about a third of a car to ourselves, with a makeshift metal wall to give us privacy on one end and the back of the car on the other.

“I miss having your collages on the walls,” I said. The windows on the sides of the car had been whitewashed, but they were blank and cold. “And my telescope. And our books and our clothes—”

“That’s just stuff.” Raquel propped herself up on one elbow. Her short dark hair stuck out in all directions, and if I’d been feeling any less forlorn, I might’ve teased her about it. “What matters is that we’re finally doing something important. Vampires have screwed up both our lives, and ghosts—I’m not even going there. Now we can strike back. That’s worth the sacrifice.”

I knew I didn’t dare trust Raquel with the truth, but I wanted her to understand a little of what I was really feeling. In a small voice, I said, “My parents took good care of me.”

Raquel said nothing. I’d caught her off guard, and I could tell she didn’t know what to think.

“And Balthazar—he was kind to me. To both of us.” I thought that might help convince her.

Instead, she sat up straight, energized by anger so immediate that it shocked me. “Listen, Bianca. I won’t pretend to understand what you’ve been through. I thought I’d had it rough, but finding out the people you thought were your parents were really vampires—that’s the worst.”

I had to let her go on believing that, so I remained silent.

She continued, “They kind of brainwashed you, okay? You’re going to keep making excuses for them for a long time. But the fact is, they screwed you over. Balthazar played their mind games right along with the rest of them. So wake up. Get your head straight. We aren’t kids anymore. We discovered that there’s a war on, and our place is here with the soldiers.”

Raquel was so absolute. So sure. I could only nod mutely.

“Okay,” she said. When she burrowed under her blanket, I figured our conversation was over for the night. It’s not like there was anything else I could share with her anyway. Then, very softly, she added, “I’ll make us a collage sometime soon.”

I smiled and hugged my pillow. “Something pretty. This place could use some pretty.”

“I was thinking more fearsome and wicked,” she said. “We’ll see.”

During the next couple of weeks, every day seemed to be exactly like the one before it and the next to come.

Lights came on at some crazy early hour of the morning. I didn’t know what time it was exactly, because we didn’t have clocks or cell phones. But I could tell from the way my whole body protested that it was too early for me.

Everybody got ready superfast. Basically, I hardly had time to do more than rinse myself off in the showers. And these were communal showers, too—like my worst gym class nightmare—but everybody was so businesslike and quick that I didn’t have much chance to feel self-conscious. Then we changed into our workout clothes and headed to their makeshift exercise area.

And stayed there. For hours.

Not everybody had to stay put, of course. The Black Cross people from New York, whose names were hardly more than a blur (ZackElenaReneeHawkinsAnjuliNathan), trained in the mornings, then set out on patrols after the night shift came in. They had maps of New York City up in the patrol area, with different routes marked out. Somebody was watching virtually every neighborhood of the city day and night. I knew that Lucas, Dana, and the others from our group were sometimes on those patrols, but not me and Raquel. No, we were expected to become fighters or die trying.

Me, I might’ve been happy to die trying. Dying seemed easier than trying to do a chin-up, much less five of them like they wanted.

“Come on, Olivier.” My trainer for the day, a red-haired woman named Colleen, held my feet as I struggled through my sit-ups. “Go for sixty.”

“Sixty?” My face was flushed, and I felt like I might vomit at any second. I’d just done forty. “I can’t.”

“You can’t until you can. Push for it.”

Sure enough, within a couple weeks, I could do sixty, though the last ten felt like raging hot death. Sadly I was still way short of having six-pack abs, which I felt like I was entitled to.

Other times, we were on the climbing wall, which was scary as hell—no, it wasn’t a cliff, but you could fall five or six feet, and that would definitely hurt. Or we ran—not laps, because there wasn’t a track—but up and down the long path they’d created on the old railway line. That I was better at, because I could get in the groove, shut down my worries, and sort of tap into the vampire side of myself—the unearthly strength and power that lurked down deep inside. I didn’t run superfast, because I didn’t want them to ask themselves how I could do that, but I could go and keep going, and that was usually enough to keep my trainer off my back.

This wasn’t just fitness camp. That I could’ve dealt with. Only mornings were for exercise. Afternoons were for something else.

Afternoons were about learning to kill vampires.

“The stake paralyzes,” Eliza said. She stood in the center of the room they called the sparring chamber, but I thought of as the Murder Zone. Raquel and I sat together near the front, while about ten others gathered around us. This kind of training apparently never stopped for the hunters. “You all know that. But a lot of hunters have been killed because they thought they’d staked a vampire, when all they’d done was get that vampire really mad. Tell me, Bianca, what did those hunters do wrong?”

I shrank, as if I could somehow duck the question. It didn’t work—Eliza fixed me with her stare, and I had to reply. My voice sounded strange to me as I said, “They—they didn’t pierce the heart.”

“Exactly. If you want to hit the heart, you have to know the right angle. Miss by a millimeter, the vampire is fine—and you’re dead.”

The other way, the vampire’s dead, I thought.

I wasn’t the naive girl I’d been a couple years ago, before Lucas entered my life. I no longer believed that all vampires refrained from killing humans, the way my parents and Balthazar did. Since meeting Charity, and seeing Mrs. Bethany in action, I’d been forced to learn that many vampires were deadly, even uncontrollable. That was part of why I’d decided never to make that first kill and become a full vampire.

But some vampires didn’t cause any trouble for humans. A lot of them, actually. They just wanted to be left alone.

Lucas had learned that truth; I trusted him not to fight any vampire who didn’t need to be fought. The rest of the people in this room believed that all vampires were pure evil and would kill them on sight—no questions asked.

Not that Black Cross hunters didn’t know anything about vampires, because they understood a lot, so much that it shocked me. They not only knew about Evernight Academy but also about other vampire sanctuaries around the globe. They knew about our sensitivity to churches and consecrated ground of any faith. They even knew some facts that many vampires believed to be legend—for instance, that holy water burned us. (Most vampires who had been doused with holy water were just fine, but it turned out that was only because most holy men weren’t committed enough to their god to transform the water. Black Cross had found true believers, who could make true holy water that seared vampire skin like acid.)

But for every fact Black Cross had, there was another bit of misinformation. They thought all vampires were evil. They believed that all vampires belonged to violent, marauding tribes; although tribes were real, only a small minority of vampires ever joined one. They thought our consciences died along with our bodies. So they had no problems with the idea of killing us. It was beyond strange to watch them practicing: stabbing the dummies with the stakes at different angles, with different holds.

What was even weirder was practicing the moves myself.

I tried imagining that my assailant was Charity—that she was attacking Lucas again, and I was the only one who could stop her—and then I could shove the stake straight into the target, earning a puff of sawdust and applause from the other hunters. That didn’t make it any less creepy.

The best part of the day was the evenings right before night patrol set out, because that was when I learned about loading and repairing weapons—and was the only time I was able to spend with Lucas.

“It’s like we’re prisoners,” I whispered as he showed me how to reload a crossbow. “Do you get out?”

“Only on patrol.” Lucas handed me the crossbow, so I could try for myself. After a quick glance around the room to make sure nobody was listening, he said, “Are you okay for—well, for food?”

“I could use a big meal—seriously use one—but I’m hanging on.”

“How?”

I sighed. “They let us hang out on the rooftop of the parking garage sometimes, for breaks. Most days I can grab a couple minutes alone.”

Lucas didn’t get it. “And?”

“All I’m going to say is that there are tons of pigeons in New York, and they’re not very fast. Okay?”

He grimaced, but in a way that made a joke of his disgust, and I giggled. The laugh echoed back from the curved ceiling of the tunnel. Lucas’s expression softened. “There’s that smile. God, have I missed seeing you happy.”

“I just miss you.” I put one hand over his, so that they were both folded over the crossbow. “I see even less of you than I did when we were forbidden to be together. How long do we have to put up with this?”

“I’m working on it, I promise. Coming by the money is hard, but I’ve set aside a little over the past few months. Not enough to get us started, but I’m close. Once I pay my dues and get more free time, I can pick up some work around town. Odd jobs for cash under the table.”

“What does that mean, cash under the table?”

“It means they pay less than minimum wage, but in return, neither you nor the boss reports it on your taxes.”

That would be hard work, then. Dirty work, like hauling boxes or garbage. I hated that Lucas had to do that—but I kind of loved that he would do that for us.

“This doesn’t look much like practice to me,” Kate said, strolling in our direction.

“Give us a break, Mom,” Lucas said. “Bianca and I hardly get to talk anymore.”

“I know it’s hard.” Her voice sounded softer than I’d heard it before. “When your father and I first met, it was in the New Orleans cell. They were such tight-asses they made this place look like a free-for-all. If I saw him five minutes a day, that was a good day.”

Lucas was very still. I knew that Kate didn’t talk about his real father much. With barely concealed eagerness, he asked, “So you guys—you went on patrol together sometimes?”

“Sometimes.” Kate half turned from us, stern again, and the moment seemed to have passed too soon. “Eliza says you’re shaping up, Bianca. How about you join us on patrol soon?”

“Really?” Lucas looked psyched, because we’d finally have a few minutes to be alone. I wanted to be as excited as he was—I missed him so much most nights I felt crazed—but the thought of joining a vampire-hunting patrol scared me.

Kate didn’t notice our reactions. She simply said, “How about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Lucas repeated.

I hugged him quickly, but I didn’t shut my eyes. Instead I watched the hunters around us, sharpening their knives.

It wasn’t like I didn’t have any way out of it. I could’ve claimed I had a headache or felt nauseated or something like that. But I needed fresh blood, and, even more than that, I needed to spend some time with Lucas.

So that meant I pretty much had to begin my career as the world’s first-and-only vampire vampire hunter.

Eliza said our first time out should be a standard patrol, someplace all the regulars already knew by heart. Given my movie-based knowledge of New York, which owed a lot to romantic comedies, our patrol location made no sense to me. “Vampires in Central Park? The place with all the carriage rides?”

Lucas smiled a little. “It’s a bigger place than you think. And the farther north you go, the wilder it gets.”

We got off our transport (a repurposed tour bus) and spread out in the park. The summer night felt warm, but comfortably so, a slight breeze stirring the air like a sigh. I looked up hopefully for a glimpse of the stars, but the city lights completely obliterated them.

“I’m with Bianca,” Lucas said as everyone started to scatter.

Eduardo frowned. “This is not an excuse for you two to sneak off.”

For once, Eliza and Eduardo seemed to be on the same page. “Is this going to be a problem with you two?”

Lucas’s temper flared, making his eyes blaze. “If you think I’d distract Bianca while we’re in a known vampire hunting zone, you’re crazy. I wouldn’t put her in danger. Period.”

Kate cut in, “Let them go. Come, we need to move—it’s getting late.”

Raquel gave me an excited wave as she and Dana headed south, disappearing into the park. The rest of the team mostly headed in that direction, too, but Lucas and I remained just within the park.

We stood quietly, using our enhanced hearing to judge how far away everyone else was and when we were really and truly alone. Then we looked at each other, and the rush of exhilaration hit me. These were the moments I hung on for, the ones that made all the hard work and loneliness worthwhile.

Lucas embraced me as he kissed my hair, then my forehead, then my lips. His warm scent made me feel as if we weren’t in a park but in the center of a vast forest, as alone as if we were the only people in the world. I opened my mouth beneath his, eager to deepen the kiss, but he pulled back. “Hey. What I said to Eduardo and Eliza—I wasn’t kidding. We can’t afford to get distracted around here.”

I breathed out in frustration. “Are we ever going to ‘get distracted’ again?”

“God, I hope so.”

A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “Because I could really, really use some distraction around now.”

Lucas’s hands tightened around my shoulders, and he got this incredible look on his face, like he could eat me up that second. I knew the danger was real, but that only intensified the thrill.

His voice rough, he said, “Soon.” Then he let go of me, jaw clenched, like he had to force himself to do it.

Sighing, I took a few steps back. I was more elated than let down; as badly as I missed being alone with Lucas, we’d been forced to learn a lot of self-control. Seeing how much he wanted me was exhilaration enough.

Well, not quite. But close.

“So, how do we start looking for vampires?” I asked. I could hear that there were others in the park, not all that far from us, but the footsteps sounded normal. Were we waiting for a scream?

Lucas pulled out one of his stakes, but lazily, and he simply turned it around in his hand. “This is a place where new vampires come to hunt. People who come to the park long after dark—especially up here, this far from the carriage rides or the zoo or the track—usually do it for stupid reasons.”

“What do you mean, stupid?”

“Drug dealers. Prostitutes. Guys getting drunk. Or people trying to rob all of the above.” Lucas shrugged. “Occasionally it’s more innocent than that. It might be some homeless man looking for a place to lay his head or a couple on a stroll. Or a guy who thinks he can save on cab fare by cutting through the park. Regardless, they all make pretty easy pickings for bloodsuckers.”

I looked up at the ring of tall buildings around the park, like a ring of light that seemed to hover above the border of trees. It was weird to think that there could be a vampire hunting ground in the middle of so much activity and noise. “So why is it only new vampires who come here?”

“Because the ones with any experience know Black Cross will be on patrol.”

That made sense. “So how do we start?”

“We follow the humans.” Lucas started walking along the edge of the park, his eyes scanning the horizon. “Keep ’em safe. See if anybody of the undead persuasion takes an interest.”

Any vampires we find here really will be trying to attack people, I thought uncomfortably. There wouldn’t be much chance for me to warn the innocent, or much reason either.

I wished I could’ve talked to my parents about all this. Really talked, not the half-truths we’d too often told each other. Their lies still hurt me deeply, but I couldn’t be as angry with them any longer. I missed them too much.

Then an idea hit me, sudden and—in my opinion—brilliant.

At first I opened my mouth to blurt it out to Lucas; I felt certain he would approve. But I also knew that what I was about to suggest was against the rules. Better not to make Lucas break his promises. I’d take this responsibility myself. Luckily, I had a few bucks on hand, not much, but enough for what I needed to do.

Casually, I said, “I’m hungry.”

“Oh. Okay.” Lucas looked uncertain. “Well, I guess there’s squirrels and stuff around here.”

“Yeah.” I honestly did need more blood than I’d been getting, and my mouth watered a bit at the thought of it. But that was secondary to what I really had on my mind. “I’ll just grab something, I guess. If it’s okay for me to leave you for a second—”

“We’re gonna be on patrol until about two A.M.,” Lucas said. “We can take quick breaks if we have to.”

“Be right back.”

On tiptoe, I kissed his cheek, then walked away. Once I knew I was out of sight, I left the park and walked into the city itself. The crush of traffic—honking horns and car alarms—was slightly overwhelming, but I had a mission. I’d thought I might not be able to find what I sought, but New York was a city big enough to supply any need. Sure enough, within a couple of blocks, I saw the sign I was looking for: INTERNET CAFÉ.

Once I was inside, I signed into my e-mail account. The dozens of boldface new messages at the top of the screen startled me, and the names of the senders seemed to lash me, one by one: Dad. Mom. Vic. Balthazar. Ranulf, who had apparently figured out enough about modern life to get a gmail account. Even Patrice, my sophomore-year roommate, the one I thought didn’t care about anybody but herself, had reached out to check on me.

If I began reading those e-mails, I knew I’d start to cry. Instead I opened up a new message, addressing it to my parents at their Evernight Academy account, the only one they had.

Mom and Dad,

I’m sorry it took me so long to get in touch with you. This is honestly the first chance I’ve had to tell you that I’m okay. I know my running off like that had to scare you, and I wish there had been another way.

Had there been another way? Could I have chosen something else? I didn’t know anymore.

I’m with Lucas. The people in Black Cross don’t know the truth about me, so I’m safe for now. Soon we’ll leave and set out on our own. He loves me and will take care of me no matter what.

I know things weren’t right with us before we left. For however much of that was my fault, I’m sorry. And if we could talk sometime soon—really talk, without more lies and secrets—I’d be so happy. I miss you guys more than I ever knew I could.

Now I was in danger of crying anyway. Blinking fast, I concluded:

Please let Balthazar and Patrice know that I’m all right. I’ll write again sometime soon.

I love you both.

That wasn’t all that needed to be said, not by a long shot, but I knew this wasn’t the time to say it.

Blinking fast, I hit Send.

After I logged out and left, I wanted to run straight to Lucas’s arms. Instead, I decided to grab a couple of pigeons first. In the darkness of the park, nobody would see me.

Besides, I thought, you have one advantage. You’ll be the only vampire there who knows where all the hunters are.

It wasn’t that comforting.

But the night passed without incident. Other hunters kept coming by to check on Lucas and me, so we didn’t get much privacy; that was disappointing. Still, I’d finally had plenty to eat, so I felt more reassured as we went back to HQ at three in the morning, exhausted despite not having seen another vampire the whole time. But as soon as we walked in, we learned that the Black Cross cell was on alert.

“That’s not lockdown, is it?” I asked Lucas.

“No, but they’ll be watching us.” He clasped my hand as we walked deeper into the tunnel. Everyone seemed to be awake, and the lights remained on. The lieutenants on watch that night were talking animatedly to Eliza, who didn’t look thrilled.

“What is it?” Raquel asked, nervously fiddling with the tawny leather bracelet she always wore. “Did something go wrong with our hunt?”

“Five boring hours in the park? That’s not the crisis.” Dana’s eyes were narrow as she studied the uneasy crowd. She had a crossbow slung over one shoulder, and she rubbed Raquel’s back absently, trying to settle her down. “Sure would like to know what it is.”

Eliza overheard our whispers and turned toward us. Traffic overhead made the ceiling shiver a bit, and the strings of lights swayed back and forth, casting her lined face in shadow, then in light. “We might have vampires staking this place out.”

Raquel brightened—like that was good news, not reason to freak. “You think they’re going to try to come down here and take us on?”

“They wouldn’t dare,” Eliza replied, with a proud toss of her braid. “But somebody might be watching.”

Mrs. Bethany, I thought with a shiver. She would get revenge for the damage to Evernight Academy if there were any way possible. “Why do you think that?”

“We keep finding dead birds near the building. Like something’s killing them. At first we were making jokes about bird flu, but today Milos checked out the corpses, and sure enough, they’d been drained of blood. We’ve got a vamp around here, and we’ll all be watching the roof and the nearby area to get a glimpse of our visitor. Then we’ll ask a few questions of our own.”

Lucas and I shared a glance. No vampires were watching the HQ; I had left the birds. Why hadn’t I thrown them away more carefully? I had tried, but there hadn’t been many options.

From this moment on, my blood supply was cut off—and that meant our time to plan our escape was running out.

Chapter Five

THAT NIGHT, AS I TRIED TO GO TO SLEEP, I KEPT telling myself, You have five days. You were able to last that long without blood when you first left Evernight Academy. That means you can last that long again.

Besides, Black Cross has put me on patrols. I’ll be able to get out, nearly every day, and surely I’ll have chances to eat then. Everything will be okay.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

First of all, my hunger for blood had grown. I’d spent only a month in Black Cross, but my body was continuing to change. The vampire inside me was growing stronger as the human grew weaker.

After I had drunk Lucas’s blood for the first time, my mother had warned me: You’ve turned over the hourglass. What she meant was that my vampire nature had been awakened by the taste of living human blood. Where, before, I’d been a mostly normal teenage girl—albeit one who drank a glass of O positive with her dinner—I wasn’t so normal anymore.

My hearing had become so acute that I could hear people whispering several car cabins down from mine and Raquel’s. My skin had become so pale that a couple of people had remarked on it, though mostly jokingly, like Dana saying that this was what happened when white people tried to live underground. Occasionally the Black Cross patrols crossed the East River bridges to guard areas in Brooklyn or Queens; the mere thought of crossing running water made me nauseated. I felt grateful that the makeshift bathroom in Black Cross headquarters had no mirror, because I suspected my reflection was beginning to fade.

My parents had warned me what happened to vampires who didn’t drink blood. Their appearances continued to change, warping until they looked like the monsters of legend: white, bony creatures whose fingernails jutted out almost like claws. Their hair fell out. Constant hunger caused their fangs to show at all times. Worst of all was the madness; when vampires truly hit the point of blood starvation, their minds went. Instead of behaving more or less like human beings, they became like wild animals, immune to conscience or restraint. Even a good vampire could become a killer if deprived of blood for that long.

Yeah, this is how your parents get you to clean your plate when you’re a baby vampire. The old stories were definitely scary enough to get me to drink my whole glass of O positive back in the day. Now that childhood horror had returned as I wondered every day, Can that happen to me, even though I’m not a full vampire yet? How am I different? How am I the same? How am I supposed to go on, not knowing?

Even while out on the Black Cross patrols I didn’t have a chance to eat. Time and again, I was partnered with people other than Lucas; night after night, we went to locations that offered me no chance to hunt for food. I was never forced to see a vampire being murdered, which was a small mercy, but by this time I was hungry enough to become selfish. I only wanted to drink, and I couldn’t.

Within five days I was desperate. That was the night Lucas and I finally got to patrol together again.

“We have got to come back here once we get some free time again,” Dana said as our group began patrol. The June heat radiated up from the streets, even though it was twilight; sweat beaded the small of my back. “Because this looks like a good place to party.”

All around us were nightclubs and bars—some of which looked seedy to me, while the others looked sleek and expensive. There didn’t seem to be much middle ground. “I think I’d get carded.”

“Slap some makeup on you and Raquel, and y’all would be set,” Dana insisted. “Hey, are you all right?”

“Just tired. They had me do the climbing wall twice today.”

Dana thumped my shoulder. “They’re making you tough.”

Lucas glanced at our leader for the night—it was Milos, one of Eliza’s lieutenants, a rangy guy with white-blond hair and beard. He said to Milos, “I’d like to take Bianca along the east side of our zone. Okay?”

Please say yes, please say yes. Lucas can help me get something to eat, I know he can—

“Suit yourselves,” Milos said. His smile had a knowing quality—almost a smirk—but I didn’t care. Let him think we were sneaking off to make out. I only wished we had that kind of luxury.

Some of the others murmured and giggled, but nobody stopped us as I took Lucas’s hand and we walked together into the dark.

As soon as we were alone, Lucas said, “You look like hell.”

“Maybe I ought to be mad at you for saying that, but I know you’re right.” He was towing me along the sidewalk, beneath a few small trees that had been planted in open squares in the pavement. From the apartments around us, I could hear snatches of salsa music at different tempos, like competing heartbeats. “I have to get something to eat. It’s making me crazy.”

“There’s a hospital not far from the HQ. I was thinking I could break into the blood bank, almost like we did last year, remember?”

It was a good idea for the future, but I needed a faster solution. “Lucas, I can’t wait any longer. I mean it. I have to have blood tonight.”

He stopped, and for a few seconds we simply stared at each other on the sidewalk. Sweat marked the collar of his white T-shirt, and his bronze hair had darkened to the color of night. His thumb brushed my cheek. I was startled by how much warmer his flesh was than mine.

Haltingly, Lucas said, “I’m going to take care of you.”

“I know you will.” My trust in him was absolute. “But how? Is there a place around here we could hunt?”

“Come on.”

Faster, driven by purpose, Lucas towed me along the sidewalk. After a couple of blocks, the neighborhood quieted down a little—we were far from any of the main streets now, closer to the water.

We reached a storefront with windows newspapered over from the inside, and signs that read FOR RENT. Lucas stopped there. “I’m guessing this is bone empty,” he said, pulling a thin metal lock pick from his jeans pocket. “Which means there’s probably no alarm system activated either.”

“Why are we breaking in?”

“Privacy.”

Lucas jimmied the lock in about four seconds flat. I remembered my own feeble attempt at burglary, almost a year ago, and envied him his sure touch.

We ducked into the store, and Lucas immediately shut the door behind us. Streetlights shone through the newsprint, casting a muted golden light. The hardwood floors beneath us were old and unpolished, and an abandoned bar lined one wall. A mottled mirror hung behind the bar, and I stood in front of it to see myself. I was only a shadow—a pale silvery outline of myself. Like a ghost.

This is how Patrice used to look when she wouldn’t drink blood for a while, I thought. I never believed this could happen to me. Why didn’t I understand what it meant to be a vampire?

“Okay,” Lucas said. He seemed nervous. “We’re alone.”

I smiled at him, though I felt sad. “I wish we could do something with this chance besides feed me,” I said. His kisses were so far away; they were a memory almost too beautiful to belong to my real life any longer. “What are we going to do? Do you have a plan?”

“Yeah. You’re going to drink from me.”

At first I couldn’t believe I’d heard him correctly. Of course, I had drunk Lucas’s blood before—twice, so far. Both times, the experience had been intense, to say the least. Drinking blood was sensual, even sexual. I’d only ever drunk the blood of one other guy, Balthazar, and that was the closest I’d ever come to making love. But what happened between Balthazar and me was purely physical. With Lucas, the emotion made it more powerful.

So I should’ve leaped at the chance, right? Wrong.

Before, when this had happened between us, I’d been well fed. My loss of control with Lucas had been because of my passion for him, not because of hunger. The same love that drove me to bite him had also compelled me to stop before I hurt him. Now that I was governed by this wild craving, the one that clawed at me from within—I wasn’t so sure I could stop.

“It’s dangerous,” I said. “We should try another way.”

“There isn’t any other way.” Lucas slowly lifted up the edge of his T-shirt and peeled it off. I knew he did that because he didn’t want to get blood on his clothes, but the nearness of his half-undressed body hit me like a blow. The golden light behind us outlined his firm, muscled form. “I trust you.”

“Lucas—”

“Come on.” He stepped closer to me. “This is the only way I have to take care of you. Let me take care of you.”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand. It’s different now. I’m so much hungrier.”

“You only bite me when you’re not hungry?”

I remembered the two times I’d fed from him—once, after the Autumn Ball, when we’d been kissing passionately for the first time, and again when we were alone together in one of the high towers of Evernight, lying in each other’s arms. “That was different.”

“Doesn’t have to be.” He took me in his arms and kissed me.

It wasn’t like any of our other kisses. This was rougher, almost demanding. Lucas opened my lips with his and pulled my body against him. I couldn’t push him away; I couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but kiss him back. I’d missed this so much—the taste of his mouth, the scent of his skin, and the feel of his broad hands.

When he moved down to my throat, kissing me along the line of my jugular, I whispered, “You’re going to make me lose control.”

“That’s the whole idea.”

“Lucas—don’t—”

“If you have to get carried away to bite me, then I’m gonna make you get carried away.” His hand cupped the curve of my breast. “How far do I have to go?”

My instincts took over. I pulled him to the floor, the old wooden boards creaking gently beneath our weight. Lucas lay beneath me, pressing kisses on my forehead and cheeks as I raked my hands through his hair and breathed in the scent of him. I could hear his heart beating faster. I could smell his blood. More animal than human, I arched my body against his, so that I could feel his warmth all over me.

“Come on, Bianca,” he whispered into my ear. “Come on. I know you want to. I want you to.”

Stop, stop, stop. I’ll have to stop in time, I don’t know if I can stop, I don’t want him to let go of me, not ever, I don’t want this to stop—”

I bit down on his shoulder, and blood rushed in.

Yes. This was what I had needed, what I had craved. I heard Lucas groan, and I didn’t know if that was from pain or pleasure. My body quaked as I sucked in harder, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of his blood. It was hot and sweet, purer than anything else in the world. It was life. I could feel my body transforming, gaining strength, as Lucas’s life flowed into me.

My hands pressed his against the floor, and our fingers intertwined. “Bianca,” he whispered, his voice shaky.

I drank even deeper. This was perfection—hunger and satisfaction at once, inseparable. How could anyone want anything else?

“Bianca—”

Stop, stop, stop!

I pulled away just as Lucas’s head lolled to one side. Shocked into sanity, I shifted off him and patted his cheek. “Lucas? Are you okay?”

“Just give me—a sec—”

“Lucas!”

He tried to prop himself up on one elbow but ended up flopping back down beside me. His breaths were coming too quickly, and his skin was now more pallid than mine. Of course, I had become rosy and flushed with the life I’d stolen from the guy I loved.

Guilt descended on me. “Oh, no. I should never have done this.”

“Don’t say that.” His voice was slurred. “We had to—save you.”

I sat up and pressed two fingers to his throat. His heartbeat was steady, if rapid. I hadn’t gone too far, but I could have. I knew the danger even if he didn’t.

“We can’t do this again,” I said, as I cradled his head in my lap. His shoulder oozed a few trickles of blood, but I resisted the urge to lick his skin. “We’re going to find another solution, and soon. Right?”

“Wasn’t too bad.” Lucas’s lopsided smile made my stomach flip-flop in the best possible way. “Kinda nice, actually.”

There was a time when it would have thrilled me to hear him say that. But I knew more about Lucas now, and about his priorities, which meant that I was obligated to warn him: “Remember—if I ever go too far, I could kill you. And because you’ve been bitten by a vampire multiple times, you’d become a vampire yourself.”

Lucas went very still. Although I, too, no longer wanted to become a full vampire, Lucas’s revulsion to the idea was absolute. Death would have been preferable to him.

“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll see about the hospital blood bank. Or something. But you’re better, right?”

“Yeah.” And now that I had drunk human blood, I felt sure I would be sustained for a while—but not forever. He had risked his life to buy me just a few days’ time. Or did he have other reasons, too? Quietly, I asked, “Do you crave it now? Being bitten? Is this something you wanted for yourself?”

I wouldn’t blame him if it were. Balthazar had drunk my blood a couple of months ago, and I remembered the exhilaration of it. But if Lucas was getting as hooked on my bite as I was on biting him, we were really going to have to work on the self-control.

Lucas thought over the question. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Part of it—most of it—is about taking care of you. And then there’s the fact that it’s one hell of a turn-on.”

Smiling, I brushed a last trickle of blood from his shoulder. “Yeah, there’s that.”

“Every time we do this, I get stronger.” Lucas’s eyes met mine. “I get closer to being—to being what you are. To understanding, maybe. Without having to turn into a vampire myself.”

Each bite gave Lucas a little more vampire strength. His hearing had sharpened and his strength had increased—but he neither healed faster nor craved blood. The mystery of what it meant to be prepared for vampirism but not yet a vampire: That was one way in which we were truly and fully the same.

Well, not the only way.

I bent low and whispered, “I love you, Lucas.”

“Love you, too.” Tiredly he clasped my hand in his, and for a while we simply sat together, wordless, needing nobody else in the world.

Once Lucas felt reasonably steady and the bite mark on his shoulder had stopped bleeding, he put his T-shirt on again and we joined the others. We must have looked rumpled—a couple people snickered, and Dana waggled her eyebrows at us. I didn’t care if they thought we’d sneaked off to have sex. What we felt for each other was too pure to be turned into anything tacky or cheap.

Besides, I felt better than I’d felt in weeks. Lucas seemed a little bleary, and his skin was definitely pale, but he could walk steadily. He put his arm around my shoulders for support initially, but kept it there all during our long ride home.

We’ll be all right, I thought as he rested his head against mine. Taking a deep breath, I could smell the cedar scent of his skin, tinged slightly with the delicious saltiness of blood. It’s going to be okay soon.

After we returned to HQ and stowed our gear, we walked in to see that someone was waiting for us—Eduardo, who leaned against one of the cement pillars. In his hands he held a coffee can. I didn’t think anything of it, except that it was kind of weird to be making coffee so late at night. But the moment Lucas saw it, he stopped in his tracks. “That’s mine,” he said.

“You have an interesting definition of what’s yours.” Edu-ardo tossed the can upward, caught it lazily. The scars on his cheeks looked harsh in the overhead lights. “Because the way I see it, in Black Cross we have a rule. Everything we do is for the good of the group.”

Eduardo then peeled back the plastic lid of the coffee can to reveal a roll of cash.

“Hoarding money,” he said. “How is that for the good of the group?”

Oh, no, I thought. Lucas’s savings. The money he was going to use to get us out of here.

“How is going through my private stuff for the good of the group?” Lucas’s eyes blazed as he stalked up to Eduardo. As his voice got louder, it echoed off the concrete walls. “What, were you going to steal from me?”

Eduardo shook his head. “It’s not stealing if it’s not rightfully yours to begin with. And it isn’t. Money like this should be used for Black Cross purposes. Not to—take your girlfriend out on Saturday nights.”

“Since when do I ever get to take Bianca out? Since when do you guys let us spend more than ten minutes alone together?”

“Free time is something you don’t have. You’re a soldier, Lucas. Have you forgotten that?”

“Hey!” Kate came hurrying toward them, her hair wet from the shower and her blouse buttoned up wrong. Apparently some body had come to fetch her to break it up. A small crowd had gathered—obviously interested but not taking sides. “What’s going on?”

Lucas’s fists were clenched at his sides. “Eduardo’s stealing from me.”

“Lucas is hoarding cash.”

“You went through his stuff? Jesus, Eduardo.” Kate snatched the coffee can of cash from him, and for the first time I saw Eduardo looking really embarrassed. “I don’t expect you to be a father to Lucas, but I also don’t expect you to act like his jealous kid brother.”

“I’m not the one being immature here!”

“Yes, you are,” Kate snapped back. “You know why? You’re both acting like adolescent jackasses, but at least Lucas actually is an adolescent. Is it too much to ask for you to be the adult?”

“Thanks, Mom.” Flushed with vindication, Lucas held out his hand to reclaim what was his.

Kate simply closed the lid. “We can’t allow people to hoard money, Lucas. You know that.”

“It’s mine! We don’t have to give up everything—we never have before—”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t yours.” More quietly, Kate added, “If and when you need it, you come to me. If Black Cross can spare it at that time, I promise, I’ll give it back to you. And I know you wouldn’t want to spend it if Black Cross doesn’t have cash to spare. Right?”

Lucas and I exchanged one despairing glance. There wasn’t anything else we could do or say. Already I knew that Black Cross wasn’t like a job you could quit. It was more like a cult you had to flee.

And the money we needed to escape had just been stolen, which meant we were trapped.

Chapter Six

MAYBE IT WAS THE CRUSHING BLOW OF LOSING our saved money. Maybe it was the exhilaration of having been so close to Lucas after we’d been kept apart so long. Or maybe it was the rush of blood and the sweet relief of being full after weeks of hunger.

Whatever it was that distracted me so much that night kept me from remembering that drinking blood had consequences.

“Bianca?”

Raquel flipped on the small flashlight she kept beside her bed. The beam seemed almost unbearably brilliant, and I rolled away from her. “Turn that thing off, would you?”

“Were you having a bad dream or something? You kept groaning.”

“It wasn’t a nightmare exactly—just kind of overwhelming, you know?” Luckily, Raquel didn’t pry further, and I had a moment to myself to think.

The real reason I’d been groaning was because I was in complete sensory overload. I could hear every footstep or cough along the belt of old subway cars the Black Cross hunters slept in. I could hear water dripping farther down the tunnel and the light, quick scurrying of mice.

I’ll have to remember where to find them later, if I need them—

“Bianca?”

“I wasn’t having a bad dream,” I mumbled, bringing my forearm over my eyes to block out the light. In the long run, drinking blood made me more able to deal with bright light or sunshine. But just after, it seemed almost blindingly bright. “These bunks are really uncomfortable, you know?” I could feel the plastic ridges of the old seats against my back, even through the pallet I lay on.

Any criticism of Black Cross was usually Raquel’s cue to insist that everything was totally great. This time, she simply sighed. “It would be nice to have a real bed again. Dana and I were saying, maybe, we could save up and get a hotel room sometime—oh. That’s what you and Lucas were trying to do, wasn’t it?”

“Basically.” That was close enough to the truth.

“I’m sorry Eduardo got up in Lucas’s stuff. That was really unfair.”

“Lucas worked so hard for that money.”

“It sucks.” Raquel sighed.

I was grateful for proof that Raquel hadn’t chugged the Black Cross Kool-Aid, but mostly I longed for darkness and quiet. “I just want to go back to sleep and forget about it for a while.”

“No point now.” The flashlight stayed on; I could tell, just by the faint glow around the edges of my vision, even through my closed eyelids and the forearm across my face. “They’ll turn the lights on soon. It’s morning.”

I groaned again.

If drinking blood again had affected me powerfully, that was nothing compared to what it had done to Lucas.

“Stop sulking,” Kate said to him as we loaded the transport bus for our afternoon patrol later that day. “Or do you want to argue some more about hoarding cash?”

“I’m not sulking.” Lucas winced as he spoke. The light in the parking garage was dim, but it hurt my eyes—and, I could tell, his, too. “I just don’t feel so hot.”

At first Kate looked skeptical, but then she held her palm to his forehead. The heavy men’s sport watch she wore made her wrist look almost fragile. She frowned. “You feel a little clammy. Is your stomach bothering you?”

“Sorta.”

I sought Lucas’s eyes; when our gazes met, he gave me a small, awkward smile. Obviously we were both thinking the same thing: We should have expected this.

Human bodies simply weren’t meant to endure the demands of vampire power.

Kate paused for a few long seconds, and I wondered if she’d tell him to go on patrol regardless. Most of the time, she acted more like his commander than his mother. But then she shrugged. “Head back to the bunks. Get some rest. Bianca, you go out with Milos’s team. You and Raquel can partner up.”

“Okay,” Lucas said. Although I knew he would hate being stuck at headquarters for an entire day, I thought he sounded sort of happy. Maybe he didn’t get much evidence that Kate really wanted to take care of him, and he liked what little he got.

We went out on patrol in one of the fancier neighborhoods in the city, where the lowest buildings were twenty stories high, and all the facades were cool steel or white stone. Doormen in uniforms stood every thirty feet or so along streets lined with the kind of expensive cars I’d seen Lucas admire in magazines. At first I thought this area seemed too secure to be a big vampire hangout—but then I realized that the elegant surroundings reminded me of the vampires of Evernight. This was the kind of existence those vampires tried to claim; maybe this was the kind of place they’d stake their turf.

“We used to have a base down here,” Milos said as he strolled along the sidewalk with me and Raquel. He sounded almost friendly, which was more weird than encouraging. “Those were the days, man. We had a deal with a couple of the fancy restaurants in the area—they’d give us some of what they had left over at the end of the night. I almost got sick of shrimp bisque. I’d about kill my grandmother for rich food like that now.”

“What happened?” Raquel said, squinting against the summer sunshine.

“Vampires blew our hideout.” Milos’s hand stole toward the place on his belt where he’d tucked his stake. “Normally they don’t come after our main cells—they don’t have the troops. Tons of vampires out there, but they haven’t got enough sense to work together.”

That was offensive, and stupid, too. How had vampires managed to keep Evernight Academy going for more than two hundred years if we didn’t have “enough sense” to cooperate toward longtime goals? The truth, I figured, probably had more to do with fighting among vampire groups. There was no one established vampire society, and that gave a tightly organized force like Black Cross an edge.

Raquel asked Milos, “What was different that time?”

“There was this one vampire—Stigand, he called himself—who got them riled up. Made them band together. That one was dangerous.” A cold smile stole across Milos’s face. He had a different attitude toward danger than most people. “He brought ’em in after us. Killed a lot of good fighters that day and totally ruined our old HQ. Eliza took him out, though—hit him with a spray of gasoline and the flamethrower.” Chuckling, he added, “You should’ve heard him scream.”

Nauseated, I turned my head away from Milos and Raquel. I didn’t know whether I was hiding my disgust or keeping myself from seeing their pleasure in a vampire’s death. At first I wasn’t even looking at what was before my eyes, but then Black Cross training took over, forcing me to evaluate the scene and every person we passed.

Then quickly, I realized that I knew the man across the street. I knew him from my dream the night before.

It came back to me now in more detail: I’d been with Lucas in a movie theater, the kind of dream that’s half a memory—in this case, of our first date. But the theater wasn’t rich and plush any longer. It was run-down and littered, the seat upholstery ripped and the screen empty of any image. I had been looking around wildly for Lucas, and instead I had seen this man, the one with the reddish-brown dreadlocks.

The wraith, floating next to me, had whispered, The two of you have mutual friends.

In the dream I hadn’t known him. But I recognized him now.

“There,” I whispered. “Is that—is he—?”

“You mean, a vampire?” Raquel peered at him with interest, as did Milos.

My heart sank. Had I just identified a vampire to the hunters? A vampire who was passing by without their notice? Had I just gotten him killed?

The dreadlocked vampire was in his element, though. He strolled beneath one building’s dark-green canopy, nodded at the doorman, and went on in—safe at home.

I breathed out in relief, too loudly. Milos shot me a look. “You don’t want to fight? You’re with the wrong group.”

“Give her a break,” Raquel said. “It’s still scary for us, okay? We’ll get tough in time.”

“Maybe you will at that.” Milos kept staring at the apartment door. “We’ll have to do a stakeout here sometime—no pun intended. For now we check the back alleys. See who else is roaming around here and not nearly ready to go home.”

We continued searching the neighborhood, and to my immense relief, Raquel and I were able to split off from Milos. Raquel kept gushing on and on about how smart I was to spot a vampire like that, when he wasn’t up to anything and didn’t have any of the signs. It just made me feel like more of a traitor.

I cast around for something else to talk about and, almost at random, said, “Hey, where were you guys when we came back last night? You didn’t respond to Eliza’s call.”

“Oh. Dana and I were…”

“Were what?”

Raquel paused. It wasn’t like her to avoid a simple question. Ducking around a lady on the sidewalk who carried three big shopping bags in each hand, I repeated, “Were what?”

“We were off together on our own. Alone. So we’d have some—you know—some space.”

I shrugged. What was the big deal?

Then I saw the hesitation on Raquel’s face, and the hopeful light in her eyes, and I realized that I was just about the blindest person on the face of the earth. “You and Dana are—”

“Me and Dana.” Raquel grinned, the brightest smile I’d ever seen on her face, just for a split second, like she couldn’t hold it in any longer. But her uncertainty returned quickly. “That doesn’t make you feel weird, does it?”

“Some,” I confessed, “but only because you never said anything. After all the stuff we’ve told each other, you could’ve told me this.”

“You never know who’s going to be strange about it. Besides, you kept trying to fix me up with guys.”

“I tried to fix you up with Vic. One guy. Not plural.” My head was spinning a little. At least talking about her love life had distracted Raquel—and me. “I just never guessed.”

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