Afterlight

Compelled by previous experiences to listen to Preacher, I gave Eligius one final hard stare, climbed the steps, and moved past my surrogate grandfather into the foyer wordlessly, but I didn’t miss the look he gave Eligius before following me in. I’d seen it hundreds of times before. It was a warning look, with the threat of retribution in his dark eyes. And that just didn’t make sense to me, even as I did as he asked. I entered the gathering room, hopefully for the last effing time, and was surprised to see everyone pretty much exactly where I’d left them.

Gilles came forward. “My apologies, chère. I know this is much to take in. But please”—he gestured to the chair with his hand—“sit. There are things of which you must know.”

I glanced at Preacher, who gave a short nod. I crossed the room and eased into the chair. Josie stood close, and she regarded me with an amused look. I sought out the other two Dupré boys, and their expressions were much the same as their sister’s.

“As you can see, we’re not what you’d call . . . ordinary,” Gilles said, pacing slowly now before me. I crossed my legs, folded my arms over my chest, and kept my gaze trained on the older man: his pricey suit, his manicured nails, his aristocratic profile. In my peripheral I noted Eligius by the door, probably blocking any further escapes from me. My mind was a jumbled mess of doubts and panic; I’d do anything to help find Seth. But this was seriously wicked crazy.

“Anything?” asked Gilles. He stopped and looked me in the eye. “Sincerely, chère?”

My skin turned to ice; it seemed as if the old man had read my mind, or had I said it out loud? “Yes,” I responded in a sure, confident voice, calling off all earlier agreements I’d made with Preacher to keep quiet. And I was a little irritated. “Anything.”

Gilles nodded. “Bon. Very good to hear.” He drew closer, stopped, and inclined his head. “But in order for you to help your brother, you must stay, and listen with an open mind and heart.”

“I will,” I responded, recalling Preacher’s nearly exact same words.

“Children?” he said to his family.

Everything that happened next happened so freaking fast, I could barely keep up. I’d turned my head slightly to glance at Preacher, and when I looked back at Gilles, he wasn’t there. Jean-Luc was in his place. I searched out Josie, and while she’d just been standing beside her mother, she was now where Eligius had been, and he was now standing near the hearth. I stood, spun around, confused, only to notice that Gilles and Elise had traded places. No one stood where they once had, and they’d moved right before my eyes. I looked around, unsure, and felt myself beginning to shake nervously. “What’s . . . going on?” I asked quietly. What was this, some sort of freakish effing Cirque du Soleil family? French illusionists? Was I losing my mind?

In the amount of time it took me to blink, Gilles stood once again before me. His smile was warm; his eyes gleamed . . . something else entirely different. Then a throat cleared loudly, and I glanced up to see Séraphin perched on the top of a tall bookcase in the corner. He jumped down with complete ease and was at my side in less than—swear to God—a second. I squelched a scream.

“We are creatures of the afterlight,” said Gilles quietly. He reached down, grasped my hand, and continued to speak as he drew me across the room. I’m not sure why, but I willingly went as my mind spun wildly, trying to figure out exactly what a creature of the afterlight was. “Nearly two centuries ago I was taken one night by another—an Arcos—and to this very day I know not why.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I left while my quickening took place, and once I was fully turned, I realized I couldn’t bear to be without my beloved family, so I selfishly took them, one by one, as they slept in their beds. I forced them to drink my tainted blood, and they, too, became like me. It was a hellish month of quickening that followed.”

“Gilles, non,” said Elise quietly, and in the blink of an eye she was beside him, her arm linked through his. She laid her head on his shoulder. “Not selfish, mon bienaimé .”

Now I shook my head, in complete and utter confusion. “Took them—creatures of the afterlight? Quickening? What does all that mean?” I asked. “And what’s it got to do with my brother and me?” Afterlight—what the Gullah called dusk—I got that; but the Arcos brothers, vicious killers, creatures of the afterlight? None of it made sense.

Eligius was immediately at my side, and his eyes bored hard into mine. “The Arcoses are vampiric descendants of the strigoi,” he said, his voice seemingly inside my head once more. It was weird to finally see a face to match the voice, and I felt as though my gaze was fixed to his. His lips moved, and I couldn’t quite take my eyes off them, so he must have been speaking out loud. He gripped my arm, and just that fast, my reflexes kicked in. Only, they didn’t work. His grip was like a steel vise, and I couldn’t budge him. He drew closer, and from the corner of my eye I saw the Gullah men take a step forward. “A bloodline rarely heard of outside of Romanian tales and folklore. We are all considered members of the Kindred, all with a vein of strigoi blood, but there are differences. We are immortal and crave human blood, but our hunger has been satisfied in other ways—humane ways—by the Preacher, and his ancestors before him. The Arcoses have been entombed for over a hundred and fifty years, and now they’re out, and they’re not humane. They’re hunting.” His face was so close to mine, I could see the various flecks of color in his angry eyes. “They have no mercy, no remorse; they cannot be satiated. And they will not stop.”

My thoughts jumped to the dead man in the alley, the distorted way his lifeless body lay, the way his flesh had been ripped open, the blood, and Eligius didn’t let go of my arm. He held it, steady, his gaze not once leaving mine. My heart slammed into my rib cage, and my skin tingled where he touched. At once, the entire room didn’t exist; only us. He’d been the one to give me straight answers, so I asked one more straight question. “What are you?” I said, my voice strong but shaky. I kept my eyes boldly trained on his as I awaited an answer, and I vaguely noticed the flinch in his expression at the word what.

“We are vampiric, but not like them,” he said heatedly, under his breath, and it was the first time I realized the slightest trace of an accent was French. The muscles in his jaws tensed, and again my eyes were drawn to his full lips. “As my father said, we made a contract with your brethren. They have sustained our lives, and we have protected the city against rogue vampires.” With his head lowered, his eyes searched mine, and his voice lowered. “But the Arcoses have been freed, and now we have a major fucking problem, ma chère.”

“Son, that’s enough,” said Elise, her voice sweet and strong at the same time. A slight shift in the air brushed across my face and made me wince, and when I opened my eyes, Eligius was across the room, leaning against the wall as though he’d never moved.

I looked directly at Gilles. “How does any of this help my brother?” I asked, then sought out Preacher, who stood quietly against the door. “How?” Suddenly, the weight of what couldn’t possibly be happening hit me full force in the chest, and I sagged where I stood, unable to breathe. “Seth,” I choked my brother’s name out, and the lining in my throat burned.

Preacher was immediately at my side, and while he didn’t say anything, his reassuring hands on my shoulders put me at as much ease as I could be.

“Your brother is in the quickening,” said Gilles, and I didn’t miss the sympathetic note in his voice. “And it takes a moon’s full cycle for transformation to complete. We feel that he and his friends, because of their unintentional aid to the Arcoses, are safe for now. Had the brothers wanted to kill them, they indeed would be dead already, I assure you.”

It was too much, even for me, to take in. My mind reeled at everything I’d been told, at what I’d seen, and no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I knew of Preacher and his beliefs, I had a hell of a time believing I was standing in one of Savannah’s prominent historic buildings with a loving family claiming to be vampires descended from France and Romania; that there were two dangerous, bloodthirsty rogue vampires loose in the city; and that my baby brother was running with them.

That he was going to become one of them. My stomach felt sick.

Everything that had happened that night at Bonaventure washed over me in a heavy, suffocating wave: the uneasy feeling I’d gotten, the absence of cicadas, and Seth’s slow transformation from sweet, lovable brother to the cold, detached boy I barely recognized. Chaz had noticed it, too, and suddenly all of the symptoms made sense. Seth slept all the time, had hypersensitivity to light and no appetite. At first fevered, he’d grown . . . cooler. Not cold, but notably cooler in temperature. He’d almost attacked me. He’d thrown Chaz across the room. I closed my eyes tightly and tried to breathe. “Oh, God,” I muttered, a pain so fierce lodging deep in the pit of my stomach that it nearly made me double over. I wrapped my arms around my middle. “How can it be true?” I turned to Preacher. “How?”

“There are many things in this world of which most mortals haven’t a clue exist,” said Gilles, directly by my side now. “Until it’s too late, of course.”

I turned my gaze on him, unable to do little more than stare. I then took in the room, the Dupré family, my Gullah friends. My brain was in overload and could take not another second more. I turned to Preacher. “I’ve got to get out of here.” He simply kept his gaze trained on me, wordless.

“We thought it may be too much at once,” said Gilles, his hands folded behind his back. The weighty expression on his face didn’t sit so well with me. “But there’s one more thing you should know.”

I looked at him. “What’s that?”

“You’ve a rare blood type, Riley Poe. Only the second mortal I’ve ever encountered with it in my entire existence.”