dark.
I was suddenly aware of the car seat, the seat belt across my chest, Nathaniel's body wrapped around my legs. The cross around my neck was glowing hot white even in sunlight, so that I had to look away from it, and still the white, white light blurred my vision. The cross wouldn't have still been burning if the danger had past. I waited for the Mother of all Darkness to make her next move.
The air in the Jeep was suddenly soft, sweet, like the perfect summer night, when you can smell every blade of grass, every leaf, every flower, like a scented blanket that wraps you in air softer than cashmere, lighter than silk, a sweet blanket of air.
My throat suddenly felt cooler, as if I'd taken a sip of cold water. I could feel it coating my throat, and there was a faint under-taste, like jasmine.
Nathaniel buried his face in my lap to protect his eyes from the light. It was like wearing a white sun around my neck.
"Shit," Jason said, "I'm having trouble seeing the road. Can you tone it down?"
The world was full of white halos, and I didn't dare turn my head to look at him. The scent of night was all I could smell as if everything else had vanished. I could almost redrink the cool, perfumed water that coated my throat. So real, so overwhelmingly real. I managed to whisper, "No."
I kept waiting for words in my head, but there was nothing but silence, and the smell of a summer night, the taste of cool water, and the growing sense that something large was drawing nearer. It was like standing on the train tracks, when you feel that first vibration down the metal lines, and you know you should get off, but you can't see anything. As far as you can look, the tracks are clear, there's only that metallic vibration, like a pulse beat against your feet, to let you know that several tons of steel are hurtling towards you. People die every year on train tracks, and often their dying words are I didn't see the train.I've always thought that trains must be magical that way, or otherwise people would see them, and get the fuck off the tracks. I could feel the vibration of her rushing towards me, and I would gladly have gotten off the tracks, but the tracks were inside my head, nailed across my body, and I couldn't figure out how to run from that.
Something rubbed against my skin, like some large animal pressing its body along the length of mine. I felt Nathaniel draw back, but I couldn't see him through the white light. His voice came, breathless, frightened, "What is that?"
I opened my mouth, not even sure what I'd say, when that roll of invisible animal hit my chest, and the cross. The cross flared so bright that most of us screamed, cried out. Jason had to hit the brakes and stop the jeep in the middle of the street, blinded by the light, unable to see to drive, I think.
The light began to dim. For a second I wondered if the brilliance had fried my retinas, then my vision began to clear through a veil of spots. I could still feel it, her, pressing against me, pinning me to the seat, pressing over the cross, as if she were eating the light.
Nathaniel stared up at me, his lavender eyes gone leopard, a deep, deep gray, that had a hint of blue in the sunlight. "She's a shifter," he whispered. And I knew why. Shape-shifters could not be vampires, or vice versa. The lycanthropy virus seemed to be proof against whatever made you a vampire. You could not be both. It was a rule. But whatever pressed against me now was animal not human. I couldn't get a sense of what kind of animal, but animal it was.
How the Mother of all Darkness happened to be both a vampire and a shape-shifter at the same time was a problem for another day. Right then, I didn't care what she was, I just wanted her to leave me the fuck alone.
The cross was still glowing, but only the metal itself, as if it were hollow and candles burned inside it. The light was white and flickering now. I'd never seen a cross look so much like fire before. But it was a cold fire. The shape pushed and rolled like it was trying to climb inside