“Yeah, I did. And I know I’ve hurt you. I’m sorry for that. You’re the last person in the world I ever wanted to hurt.”
He sounded completely sincere. I wanted to believe him as badly as I’d ever wanted anything in my life. After the night’s revelations, though, I was done taking anything on faith. “Can you just tell me why?”
“It would take a long time to explain, and we don’t have much time left.”
The 8:08 bus to Boston. I glanced down at my watch; the hands, phosphorescent, told me we had no more than five minutes left.
I walked toward Lucas, my hands in front of me to feel my way. My fingers brushed against ostrich feathers, dusty with age, and something slender, hard and cool, perhaps a brass bed frame. Lucas dodged to the left, behind a panel—but no, I could see through that a little. As I got closer to him, I realized that the panel was a stained glass window.
This was the front room of the antiques store, and it was both less crowded and slightly brighter. Greenish watery light from the streetlamps trickled through to us. Lucas remained behind the stained glass window. Was he afraid of me? Ashamed to face me? Instead of circling around the panel, I walked to the opposite side of it, so that we saw each other through the tinted panes of glass. Lucas’s face was cut into four squares of color, and his eyes were dark and haunted.
For a moment, neither of us knew what to say. Then Lucas gave me a sad smile. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I smiled, too, then nearly started to cry.
“Please, don’t.”
“I won’t.” One sob escaped me, but then I swallowed hard and bit down on the side of my tongue. As always, the taste of blood gave me strength. “Am I in danger?”
Lucas shook his head. Through the glass his face was the color of jewels—topaz, sapphire, and amethyst. “Not from me. Never from me.”
“Tell it to Erich.”
“So you found him.” Lucas didn’t sound even slightly sorry. “Erich was stalking Raquel. Remember? When I heard her talking about her lost bracelet, I knew she’d run out of time. Stealing possessions is a classic sign of a vampire stalker getting ready to strike. Erich wanted to kill her, and, given a chance, he would have done it. Deep down, I think you realize that.”
It scared me that I believed him. If I hadn’t tasted Erich’s blood and felt his malevolence for myself, maybe I wouldn’t have. But I had seen the evil in Erich’s mind, and I suspected that Lucas was telling the truth, at least about this. “It’s still hard to think about.”
“I realize that. I know it’s got to be tough for you to understand.”
“Tell me what I need to know.”
Lucas was quiet for a while, and I wasn’t sure that he would answer me. At the moment when I was ready to give up, though, he began to speak. “At the start I lied to you for the same reason you lied to me. Black Cross is a secret I’ve kept all my life, something my mother signed me up for when I was born.” Lucas’s voice was distant now, lost in his own memories. “They taught me to fight. Taught me discipline. Sent me on missions as soon as I was old enough to hold a stake.”
I remembered what Lucas had told me in the past about his mother being hard core, and about how he sometimes felt he didn’t get to make decisions for himself. At long last, I understood what he’d really meant. Even when he was five years old, running away from home, he had brought a weapon.
“At first I thought you were one of the other human students at the school. When you told me about your parents, I thought that they’d killed your real parents and adopted you. I figured you didn’t know what they really were.” His eyes met mine through the stained glass, and his smile was sad. “I told myself to stay away for your sake, but I couldn’t. It was like you were a part of me almost from the second we met. Black Cross would’ve told me to push you away, but I was tired of pushing everyone away. Once in my life I wanted to be with someone without worrying about what it meant for Black Cross. To live like a regular person for a little while. After that first conversation we had—would you believe I thought you were such a nice, normal girl?”
That was both the funniest and the saddest thing I’d ever heard. “You know better now.”
“What you are—it doesn’t matter to me. I told you that already, and I was telling the truth when I said it.” He turned toward the window, so that I could see his profile and the worry deeply etched there. “There’s more to say, but the bus is about to go—Dammit, maybe I can catch a later one—”
“No!” I pressed one of my hands against the stained glass. Although I still didn’t know if I could ever trust Lucas again, I knew now that I could never hurt him, much less stand by while Mrs. Bethany and my parents tried to kill him. “Lucas, the others aren’t far behind me. Don’t wait. Go quickly.”
Lucas should’ve run out of there that instant. Instead he stared at me through the glass and slowly unfolded his hand opposite mine so that our hands were pressed against the same pane of glass, finger to finger, palm to palm. We each moved closer, so that our faces were only a few inches apart. Even with the stained glass window between us, it felt as intimate as any kiss we’d shared.
Quietly he said, “Come with me.”
“What?” I blinked, unable to grasp what he was asking me to do. “You mean—run away from home? For real? Like you told me to do on that first day?”
“Just so I can talk to you about everything that’s happened and—and so we can say good-bye like we should instead of—” Lucas swallowed, and I realized for the first time that he was just as upset and scared as I was. “I’ve got enough money to buy us both tickets out of town. Later I can get more money to send you home again if you want. We can go right this second. Run across the street, hop on the bus. We’ll get out of here together.”
“Are you going to turn me over to Black Cross?”
“What? No!” Lucas honestly sounded like he’d never considered that. “As far as any human can tell, you’re human. I’ll take care of you if you’ll just come with me.”
Slowly I said, “Tell me one thing before I answer.”
Lucas looked wary. “Okay. Ask.”
“You said you loved me. Were you telling the truth?”
If he’d lied about everything else, even his name, I thought I could handle it, as long as I knew this.
He breathed out, not quite a laugh or a sob. “God, yes. Bianca, I love you so much. Even if I never see you again, even if we walk out of here into an ambush you set up with your parents, I am always going to love you.”
In the midst of all the lies, at last I had one thing that was true.
“I love you, too,” I said. “We have to run.”
Chapter Seventeen
AS I SANK ONTO THE SEAT OF THE BUS, TREMBLING with exhaustion, I said, “We made it.”
Lucas shook his head. “Not yet.”
The bus jerked into motion, rolling slowly onto the road. We had been the last passengers to board; another three minutes, and we would have lost our chance to escape. “I know my parents are fast, but I don’t think they can catch a bus on the highway.”