Aftermath
R. 08/09/2003.

I keep him here, inside. It's all I have left.

Vampires don't come back. When they die they go out like candles, blown out by unseen breath.

I've seen it happen. I've felt it in my soul.

I know.

I remember when it seemed like the whole world was scrambling to find four special people: The Wild Powers, who could save or doom humanity. I helped them look, as much as I could. He wouldn't let me do a whole lot. He'd say, "I can't lose you now. You need to be safe." And I'd pace through our home, anxious, restless, so often alone--and try to remember that it was for my own good.

Well, the millenium, as everyone reckoned, passed. We hadn't even found the Fourth. Nothing changed. I guess we all let our guards back down again. The prophecies could have all been wrong, right?

I was the one who discovered the truth, but it took a while for he and I to get them to listen. It's understandable. They wanted to go back to their normal lives, and what we were saying...if it was true, they couldn't.

But when Signs started appearing, they believed. The Maiden had a vision that confirmed it, but she wouldn't give any more details than that. She just...faded, and didn't survive the year. That was 2009, by the way.

Later, I understood.

Sometimes I remember things. Old things. In the summer of 2008 I had a flash of my father--one from centuries ago. He was an astronomer for the Mayan court. And he'd found quite a different date for the end of the world.

Four years from that day.

That's all the time we had, with only three Powers accounted for, and so much wasted time behind us. But we worked hard to catch up, and for a while we had an advantage: the Enemy didn't know.

That didn't last long. Hunter became aware of our recent activity, and abducted Gillian Lennox from her very bed to get information. Her human soulmate was no match at all for him.

We don't know what he did to her. We don't want to know. But eventually, word filtered through that she'd confessed.

Two years went by, with no trace of the Fourth. We started stockpiling weapons, and kept looking.

Long story short: We never found them. We still don't know who they were, or why they were so hard to find, or even if they're still alive.

But the Final Battle wasn't about to wait for them. It happened at the appointed time. We had three Powers fighting for us, at least, but Hunter and the rest had old creatures and dark magics at their command. Their people were much more eager to kill, and unlike us, didn't generally mind bringing civilians into the mix.

Most of the big cities of the world fell within months. Someone on our side discovered the location of a nest of dragons, in Uganda. They nuked the place without asking what Daybreak would think. And since the dragons didn't live, we didn't raise a big fuss. Sacrifices had to be made.

Once the dragons were gone, the tide turned in our favor. We got the darkness pushed back, but they wouldn't admit defeat. So then the real slaughter began.

Where the cities had once thrived like beehives, we hunted the other side down. The streets became killing fields, bodies in stacks along the roadsides as tanks and armored cars trolled by. At first we segregated the dead, so our people might be united once more on the Other Side, but after a while everything blurred. One corpse was the same as another.

With the roads closed to humans, fresh meat became scarce, and we had all those shapeshifters and vampires to feed. So then disposal of the dead ceased to be a concern.

When Rashel Jordan died in my arms, not of a wound but of some simple human illness we no longer had the means to cure, I called for Thierry. She was the first real meal he'd had in weeks.

I thought, afterward, that if Quinn were still alive he would have changed her. But he wasn't, and our side needed the blood. It wasn't an option then.

Another year, and the fires died. It seemed that we had hunted down everyone who posed a threat. We started to rebuild.

Daybreak knew that someday, it might happen again, if certain measures weren't taken. So we told the humans. Most of them knew by now anyway, but we had to make it clear that now, we were all on their side. We gave them all the information we had, about us, our world, our history. We helped them get things running again, repaired much of the damage we'd caused. And then we gave them back their world.

We thought they understood, accepted. We thought a lot of things.

We were fools.

Within two years' time they'd invented tests to weed out Night People. They were like airborne viruses that didn't attach to humans. The humans released them in the air, and we...well, we had no warning. There was nothing to do but watch.

He and I were in our room, in what used to be my mother's house. We were looking over plans for a new mansion, now that the old one was gone. I remember telling him we should make sure to have human guards out in front, for a good public face. He smiled and he reached out his hand toward me, and I felt--a change in the room. A new, chemical smell.

Then his skin turned black, rot-black like milk solids left in the sun. His eyes filled with blood, and he started moaning.

Soon it progressed to crying, weeping, sobbing. He was down on the floor, curled up, rolling and rocking on the carpet.

I wouldn't come close to him, even when he begged.

What did I know? I didn't know what it was, or why. It could have been contageous. Goddess, for all I could tell it was some trick of the Enemy. Maybe that wasn't even him, just some clever spell, or a 'shifter. Maybe the dragons weren't gone after all.

I called Poppy North but she didn't answer. Next I tried Ash Redfern's house, and his soulmate picked up. She was crying. The same thing was happening there, with him. She said the TV had flashed a bulletin about it. It said that it was something from a private lab, accidentally released, and only Night People could get it. But they had a cure. Take the afflicted to the nearest hospital, it told us.

I couldn't carry him, and the guards were all vampires, so they were just as bad off as he. I made them all drag themselves into the back of our armored van, left over from the War, and set off.

When I pulled up in front of the ER, I knew something was wrong. But by then, it was too late.

There were human militia all over. I pushed the button to unlock the doors, thinking they were only there to help, and before I knew it they were grabbing me, pulling me out of the car. They cuffed me and held me still.

I got a brief glimpse of them picking the vampires up like they were luggage, like sacks of supplies. They carried them inside. Thierry was unconscious, so I couldn't tell him anything. Not that I didn't try.

They sent me home, and posted soldiers at all the exits. They cut the phone lines. I watched the TV, with nothing else to do, and I saw what became of them all.

The humans transported all the vampires and 'shifters they found to Washington, D.C. All that was left of the White House were a few pillars, but that was where the assembly ended.

They sold tickets to the executions, like they used to do for concerts, back when I was young.

One by one, they led them up. The TV had lied, of course, when it said there was a cure, so most of our people were doubled over, or passed out from pain. But the humans wouldn't carry them. If they couldn't walk, they were dragged. And one by one, with one stake to share between them, reused over and over again, the vampires died. A silver knife was next, for the others. And the crowd applauded.

When it was all over, the guards left me alone. I guess they didn't figure a grief-stricken 46-year-old woman on the losing side could do a whole lot of damage.

They were right.

I haven't seen anyone from Daybreak for years. It's just me and Thierry and our memories, here in this little house.

He lives in me, you see.

During the day I plant in the garden. I go down to the store and buy women's magazines and I don't read the headlines.

I smashed in the TV with a pickax, and then I buried all my archaeology stuff in the back yard. I don't want to dig up any more bones.

I find things to do. I cook. I've started quilting. Sometimes I think about going out and getting myself knocked up--you can do that at my age now, you know. I could pick a donor with white-blonde hair and dark eyes and pretend it was him. But then I remember I'm not too fond of humans any more--just lonely. I'd probably strangle the brat the first time it said it was scared of the dark.

At night there's no escaping him. He's in my head, all the time, and he's just as lonely as I am. Sometimes we talk for hours. I'll lay in my bed and stare up at the ceiling, and I can almost feel him there, next to me, one leg resting over mine, eyes watching intently.

"I know it's selfish," he'll say, "but sometimes I wish you were dead too."

"So do I."

"It's not so bad, not really. It hurts in the leaving, but afterward, you don't feel anything at all." He'll smile, act like he's giving good news. "When you're not around, I don't even miss you."

I wasn't wounded once, not during all those years of fighting. There were dead people all around me, and I lived like I...well, like I never had before. But it doesn't really feel like life, not any more. Sometimes one of the others will leave a message on my phone--I stopped answering years ago. They all say basically the same thing: Life isn't the same now. The scientists would say it is, but it's not.

I guess we all died a little in that damned war.

Even when we lived.

END

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