Carole looked down at her trembling hands. How things had changed. Early last evening she'd been ready to drive a stake through his heart. And now she wanted him to survive.
For as the three of them had talked during the dark hours, Carole had begun to sense a plan. Not her plan . . . the Lord's. She thought about all the twists and turns of the past thirty-six hours.
After leaving her partially demolished house, why had she turned left instead of right? If she'd turned the other way she never would have run into Lacey. It was because of Lacey that she'd returned to the church and the convent. And it was there that she'd been staring out her convent room window just at the instant a winged vampire had flown away from the rectory. There were so many other things she could have been doing at that moment, yet she'd been standing at the window, watching the night. She'd been holding Father—no, he doesn't want to be called "Father" anymore ... a hard habit to break—Joseph's cross at that moment. Had that inspired her?
Imagine if she hadn't seen the departing vampire. She wouldn't have searched the rectory basement and found Joseph's body. But what had inspired her to bring him to the beach? At the time she'd thought it a good place because it was deserted and they could dig more quickly in the sand.
But had Divine Inspiration been at work? For if they'd tried to bury Joseph somewhere besides the beach, he wouldn't have been exposed to the first rays of the morning sun. That brief exposure seemed to have partially undone the vampires' work. The purifying rays had healed his wound and burned away some of the undead taint. Not all—a few more minutes in the light surely would have burned away too much, leaving him truly dead—but enough so that he remained Joseph instead of something foul and evil. What had inspired Carole to pull him into the shadows of his grave just in time to save him?
Yes... save him. For what?
The only answer that made any sense was that Joseph had been chosen to become the mailed fist of God, a divine weapon against the undead.
But the poor man was going through the tortures of the damned to become that weapon. Pain, disfigurement, self-loathing, the debasement of blood hunger—why did it have to be this way? Why did he have to suffer so? Were these trials a fire through which he had to pass to be tempered as a weapon?
The thought of fire brought her back to the sun . . .
"How long was Joseph in the sunlight this morning?"
Lacey shrugged. "I don't know. An hour maybe? It's hard to say. Certainly no more than that."
"An hour," Carole mused. "Not much. That's an hour longer than any true vampire can stand, but maybe it's enough."
"Enough for what?"
"For the war the three of us are going to wage."
She placed her hand over the spot where Joseph had touched her shoulder at sunrise. More than an hour ago but her skin still tingled, as if his hand were still resting there. That single touch, that gentle weight of his hand on her shoulder, meant more to her than his embrace outside the church when they'd been reunited a few nights ago.
Despite what had been done to him and how the sun had disfigured him, despite what he had become, she sensed the desperate struggle within him against the undead taint in his flesh, in his mind, in his being, and she admired him more than ever for that refusal to be dominated. He'd win, she knew he would win.
God help her, she still loved him. More than ever.
- 9 -
JOE . . .
He awoke in a snap. No lingering drowsiness, no stretching or yawning. Asleep, then awake, with tentacles of a dream still clinging to him.
The dream . . . more like a nightmare—or in this case, a daymare. He remembered clinging to the lip of a rocky precipice, his feet dangling and kicking over an infinity of swirling darkness. But not empty darkness. This seemed alive, and it had been beckoning him, calling to him all day . . .
The worst thing was that a part of him had longed to answer, tried to convince the rest of him to let go and tumble into that living abyss.
He shook off the memory and pushed at the fabric enshrouding him. After an instant of panicked deja-vu—had he been buried again?—he remembered rolling himself in the bedspread this morning. He pulled his way free and found himself on the floor of the rear bedroom. The room was hot, stuffy, and dusty, but not dark. He lifted his head. Over the naked top of the double box spring he saw its mattress tilted against the west window. Orange sunlight leaked around its edges. The sun was setting but not down yet.
Not down yet...
A sudden surge of excitement pushed him to his feet. He stepped closer to the mattress, surprised at not feeling stiff and sore after a whole day on wooden flooring. A ray of sunlight, dust motes swirling like fireflies along its path, was poking past the right edge to light up a square on the room's east wall. Hesitantly, Joe edged his hand toward the ray. This could hurt. This could be like sticking his hand into a pot of boiling water.
He gritted his teeth. Hell, what was he waiting for? Fast or slow, if he was going to burn, he was going to burn.
He shot his hand forward and back, in and out of the ray. It felt hot but nothing like boiling water. He looked at his palm where the sun had licked it. No blisters. Not even red.
He tried it again, this time holding his hand in the light. Hot, but bearable. Definitely bearable.
Taking a breath, he tipped the mattress back, letting the light flood into the room and bathe him. He gasped at the sudden blast of heat and squinted in the brightness, but held his ground. He could do this. Yeah, he could do this.
With jubilation spurring him, he hurried out into the front room where he found Carole asleep on the couch. He stopped and stared down at her, captivated. Her face in sleep had relaxed into a soft, gentle innocence, as if the last few months had never happened. This was the Carole he'd known. He wanted to wake her but couldn't bring himself to break the spell.
He stepped back to the alcove and peeked in the front bedroom. Lacey lay huddled under the covers.
Okay, let them both sleep.
Back to the front room where he slipped as quietly as possible through the broken door and out into the light. He walked a few steps north to where sunlight gushed between the bungalow and its neighbor. He bathed in its flow, spread his arms and dared it to harm him.
"Joseph? Are you all right?"
Carole's voice. He turned and saw her approaching across the boards. Her features hadn't yet fully recomposed themselves into their harder, waking look. He wanted to throw his arms around her but knew that would be a mistake.
"Yes. Fine. At least for now. How long till sunset do you think?"
She glanced at her watch. "It set at 7:11 yesterday, so—"
"Are you sure? I seem to remember the sun setting later than that in May."
Carole shrugged. "I guess I never got around to switching to Daylight Savings Time. Not much point, is there."
"I guess not. So you keep a log?"
"In my head. It's very important to know when the sun is going to be around and when it's not."
Of course it was. And he should have known that a former science teacher like Sister Carole would be methodical as all hell about it.
"When does it set tonight?"
"About a minute later. Around forty-five minutes from now." She looked up from her watch. "You seem to be able to tolerate the first and last hours of sunlight."
"Why is that, do you think?"
"It may be due to your sun exposure before you turned. Maybe it burned some of the undead taint out of you, leaving you tolerant to the more attenuated rays of the sun."
"Attenuated?"
"As it nears the horizon, the sun's rays have to travel through more layers of atmosphere to reach you. Those extra layers absorb and refract the light. It's that same refraction that causes the sun and moon to look darker and larger when they're low in the sky."
"Well, thank you, God, for refraction." He was glad he didn't have to face the prospect of never seeing the sun again.