Tana could feel her eyes bulging, her limbs kicking. He raised her higher, his smile cruel as she scrambled for the dagger at her thigh, her hand closing around the hilt.
Lucien was watching Gavriel with great satisfaction. “Take your people and get out of my house. All of you, if you want this mewling creature back. Get out!”
“We’ll leave,” Gavriel said, waving to his gray-clad Corps. They began moving toward the double doors. “But put her down. She’s human. Their throats are fragile, and if she dies, you won’t have much to bargain with.”
Lucien set Tana’s feet against the floor, his hand still at her neck. She only had the one chance. He didn’t know how much vampire blood was inside her. He didn’t know how fast she was or how strong.
Tana sucked in a single breath of air at the same moment she shoved the knife in through his chest, up under his rib. It made a sound going in, like ripping paper.
Lucien’s eyes went wide. “Please,” he said, the word so soft that it felt more like breath. “Stop. I can feel the point at the edge of my heart.” In that moment, he sounded like the young man he must have been once. Just a little older than her and afraid. “Please. I will give you anything.”
“Tell them what you did,” Tana said, nodding with her chin toward the cameras. “Tell the world what you’ve done.”
Lucien closed his eyes and spoke. “Caspar Morales. It was me. I turned him.” Then he opened his ruby eyes and fixed his gaze on her. He looked at her as though she was the only thing that mattered in all the world, the only thing he’d ever loved. “Forgive me and I will make every single impossible dream you’ve ever had come true. You think no one can know what you want, but I know it already. There are those you love that you’re afraid for. There are those who you love who are undeserving. And no one has seen how incredibly special you are, how you glow like a bright flame.”
She felt as though her hand were on the knob of the cellar door, her feet ready to descend dusty steps again. She thought of Gavriel, driving her car through the warm summer night, wind in his hair as she told him that mercy could never be evil and his saying: This is the world I remade with my terrible mercy. She thought of her father lifting a shovel.
She thought of all those things as she drove the wooden knife into Lucien Moreau’s heart.
Black fissures appeared on his face, spreading over him, and a moment later, his skin cracked apart like wet stone.
CHAPTER 38
*This will be the last blog post on Bill Story’s journal. He was drained by two newborn vampires only hours after this went up. Because I’m his friend, he trusted me with his password in the eventuality that he didn’t make it back one day. He’d never intended to be a war zone journalist, but he took up the mantle with enthusiasm and dedication after he was trapped inside Springfield’s Coldtown. And although his death is a terrible tragedy, I believe he would have been glad that he died as he lived—in pursuit of a story. Bill will truly be missed by his friends, by the community of truth-seekers to which he belonged, and by the world.—MG
Tomorrow I should have some really interesting footage to post. One of my neighbors, a young woman going by the name Christobel (perhaps for Coleridge’s poem, Christabel, although the different spelling makes me doubt she knows it) asked to borrow some equipment. She has some new guests staying with her, including another young woman, calling herself Midnight, who wants to record her own transformation into a vampire. If I loan her what she needs and show her how to set everything up, she has promised that I can be one of the witnesses and even tape some footage myself. It’s a rare opportunity—one that I’m surprised to find dropped in my lap after years of trying to find someone willing to let me record this very thing.
Why do I want to do it? For one thing, because there’s very little footage of the change in the public sphere—although I am sure there are reels and reels hidden away in government labs. And, of course, it’s likely to get this blog a lot of traffic. But I have to admit to myself (and to you, because I am a confessional sort of journalist) that what I am eager to try to see is the exact moment of change—the spark, if you will, of transformation. And I am eager to see it with my own eyes.