Sunshine

Standing behind them I seemed to see Mel. He held out his arms toward me, and flames leaped from his skin, as if his tattoos were a light-web.

I took the last two steps. I was standing in front of Bo.

But I couldn’t bring myself to touch him—to try to touch him. I said that monster doesn’t cover it. There is no word for a several-hundred-year-old vampire who has performed every available wickedness over and over till he has to invent unavailable ones because he’d worn the others out. His flesh was not flesh; it was a viscous ooze, held together by malice. His voice was a manifestation of malignancy, for he had no tongue, no larynx; his eyes were the purest imagination of evil: flawless in a way that flesh could never be.

I knew that if I touched him I would be re-created into such as he was.

The scar on my breast burst apart, and my poisoned blood ran down.

I stopped. I stopped trying.

But Bo made a mistake. He laughed.

I reached into my left-hand pocket, and took out the daylight charm. I didn’t look at it, but I felt the tiny sun spin and blaze, the tree shake its leaves—yesssss—the deer raise her head, acknowledging her own death, watching it come toward her. I felt the moving line of the water-barrier around its edge. As Bo laughed, I threw the charm down the noisome hole that indicated his mouth. A little tracery of fire followed it, like an arrow carrying a rope across a chasm. The mouth-hole closed with a sucking sound—something an ear could hear. What there was that was left of him in the real world wavered and became vulnerable to reality again, as the force and concentration of his will faltered in surprise.

Surprise and pain. The fire—my fire—ran up his face; his eyes

No no I can’t say

But he had been strong and evil and undead for such a long time, and I had been alive and human for such a short time. My little fire wavered, and began to ebb. His face writhed: he was about to speak.

Ssssssss

A hiss? I’d heard Con hiss—vampires did hiss. The giggler had hissed. It was a horrible noise even from a…an everyday, an every-night vampire. It was much worse from Bo, as everything about Bo was worse. But was it a hiss? Or was it his attempt to say my name?

I was back at the lake, where it all began. The sun flamed outside the house. The lake water lapped at the shore. For that first time I heard my tree: Yesssss. Perhaps there had been a doe standing in that forest, looking through the trees at the house, on her way home, to some dappled place where she would doze till sunset.

Beauregard! I shouted. I destroy you!

And I put my hands into the mire of his chest, and wrenched out his heart.

The sky was falling. Ah. Okay. Skies don’t fall; therefore I was dead. I’d kind of expected to be dead. I felt rather comfortable, really. Relieved. Did that mean I’d succeeded? Succeeded in what? There’d been something I’d been desperate to do before I checked out for the last time…couldn’t quite remember…

Sunshine

Why can’t you leave me alone? There is a lot of noise. Shouldn’t be able to hear anyone saying my name. So, I’m not hearing someone saying my name. So go away, damn it. I don’t want to be here, shivering in this polluted body. My hands…my hands…touched…I won’t remember.

I’m not dead yet, I thought composedly, but I am dying. Good. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being careful not to remember.

I hope I did whatever it was I wanted to do first.

Maybe I could go back just long enough to find out.

Sunshine

Con, on his hands and knees, crouched over me. The floor shook under us, and there was a lot of…stuff…falling down and flying around. Not a good place to be, unless you were dying, which I was. Con, I wanted to say, don’t bother. Let one of these flying chunks of something or other finish the job. I’m tired, and I don’t want to hang around. My hands…

“Sunshine,” he said. “We have to get out of here. Listen to me. You have undone Bo; he cannot put himself back together. You have succeeded. This is your victory. But there is much of his—his animus—released by the final destruction of his body. This place is being pulled to pieces. I cannot carry you through this. Sunshine, listen to me…”

I was drifting off again. I paused in the drift, momentarily caught by the sound of Con’s voice. He sounded positively…emotional. I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t have the energy. I began to drift again.

I felt him lift me up—I wanted to struggle; leave me alone—but I didn’t have the energy for that either. He rearranged me, leaning against him, one arm around me, the other hand cradling my head, tipping it toward his body…

Blood. Blood in my mouth.

Again.

No