them, even Brigit, still clutching her middle as if in pain. Across the rocks that guarded the island, racing along paths through the woods and on toward the ruins, where the refugees had been encamped. But when they got there they saw only wreckage and ruin. Burned-out campsites and vaguely familiar shapes burned into the grass—people-shapes. Utanapishtim had turned a mighty power against his own people. Smoldering ash was all that remained.
“Some of them got away,” Brigit whispered, moving up beside James, clutching at his arm.
Lucy was on his other side, trembling, tears flowing like rivers down her face. He was constantly aware of her there, of everything she felt. And yet he was furious with her for this.
Brigit nodded, pointing toward the far side of the island, the thickly wooded end. “They went that way.”
“He didn’t, though.” James tried to pick up a sign of the man, to sense him. “God, why did he do this?”
“We have to go after the survivors,” Lucy said.
“James, they may need help.”
“I have to go after Utanapishtim,” he told her, his tone low, his heart as much an ashen ruin as the vampires Utanapishtim had destroyed. “I did this.” His throat closed up on the words. “I did this.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Lucy told him. “If he…absorbed all the information in that book, then he might assume that what it says about vampires is the truth. Hell, that’s even the title. The Truth. How can he be expected to distinguish the difference? He’d believe everything he read, believe he’d spawned an evil, bloodthirsty race of undead demons. That’s what he’d believe, because that’s what the book said about them—about you.”
James tilted his head sideways, searching Lucy’s eyes. “And yet you kept it. In spite of my warnings, you kept it—and you didn’t even tell me.”
“I knew you’d destroy it,” she whispered. “I wanted to finish reading it first. I thought there might be information that could…”
He stared at her in disbelief, wondering how he had let himself believe there might be something between them. How could he not have been aware that she considered him a different species? Something inhuman. She didn’t even trust him enough to tell him the truth. And that had gotten people killed.
“How could you betray me—and my people—this way, Lucy? I thought you were on our side.”
“I am.” The hurt flashed in her eyes; he saw it and felt a spasm of remorse ripple through him. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said, eyes lowering, tears glimmering on her lashes.
They’d been moving rapidly as they talked, but they paused now, as Brigit said, “There!” She was pointing dead ahead, and they all looked that way just as Utanapishtim stepped from the shadows and sent a blast of white-hot energy beaming from his eyes into a clump of brush.
The brush exploded, but James felt no pain in its wake. Thank God.
“‘May all praise him duly when he lifts his eyes, and his glance flashes like lightning,’” Lucy quoted. “It was part of his prayer that first day on the ship.”
“He’s just like me,” Brigit whispered. “That’s what he meant when he said he knew of one other person who shared my particular power. He was talking about himself. God, he’s just like me.”
And as she said it, Utanapishtim turned, spotted them and ran back toward the shore. He sprinted up the gangplank and boarded the yacht. Within seconds he was at the helm and powering up the ship as if he were an expert, backing the yacht straight out from the harbor.
“We can’t let him get away!” James shouted. “He’s completely out of his mind!”
“We have to know what else he read,” Lucy said. “We have to know what set him off.”
As she spoke, she was tapping the screen of her phone.
“What we have to do is find the survivors. God, my parents were on this island,” Brigit shouted.
“It’s all here,” Lucy said slowly. “I didn’t know, because I never finished reading the damn book. But it’s in here.” She lifted her eyes to James. “The missing segments of my tablet, and someone translated them. James, Utanapishtim isn’t only the one who can save your people. He’s the only one who can destroy them.”
She shook her head slowly, staring at the phone. “It’s all right here. According to Folsom, the government removed those segments of the tablet back in the fifties, when it was first recovered. They must have had teams of translators. They read the whole