good, you can’t turn your back on your own moral code. Believe me, I know.”
“My goodness has cost countless vampires their lives. Maybe even my own family. I’m through being good.” James took the ax from Damien’s hand.
“I want you to let this go, James. I want you to go to the university and find your Lucy,” Damien said.
“You’ve delivered your warning. You’ve done all you can. But you have to know that there are more important things than the greater good.”
“What could possibly be more important than saving our people, Damien?” James asked softly.
“Love, James. Love is more important. I’ve lived longer than anyone on this planet—other than Utanapishtim himself—and I’m telling you, that is the one thing I know for sure. Love is…it’s everything, James. It’s everything.”
James felt those words sink into his heart like hot arrows, and they stayed there while he bled from the wounds. “Brigit went after the refugees on the island. She intended to find them, help them and then catch up with me. This will be her first stop. When she arrives, she’ll have news of Shannon for you. Give her another couple of hours, all right?”
“All right.”
James looked at the ax. “You sure you don’t need this?”
“I have others. If he comes for me, I’ll be ready. Go. Find the solution for this if you can, but remember what I said. Solve this first,” he said, with a hand to his heart.
22
Lucy left her bike beyond the nearly empty parking lot nearest the Archaeology/Anthropology building and walked past the handful of cars, hoping no one would recognize her. Passing a parked VW Bug, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in a window and stumbled to a clumsy stop as she stood there, staring. No, no one would recognize her, she realized. She barely recognized herself.
But it was her own reflection staring back at her. Not the old one, though. Not the bookish, shy, introverted and usually nervous professor. This woman was an adventurer, an avenger, a woman who ran with vampires and their kin.
And now she was trying to save their whole race, just the way James had been trying to do. Who the hell had she become? Had she bitten off a chunk of his delusions of grandeur? Had his cause been infectious somehow?
Or was it just her tendency to root for the underdog and sympathize with anyone persecuted for being different? After all, she’d always been different, too.
Right now she only knew she had to try to make up for the wrong she’d done to James, and the wrench she’d thrown into his plans. Hell, into his destiny.
She walked on, leaving her reflections—both literal and figurative—behind.
The building was closed for the summer, but she had a key. All the professors in the department did, so they could come and go if they needed to, though use of the offices during the summer months was discouraged. It was when the maintenance crews had the run of the place, giving it a summer scrubbing, painting where it was needed and adding new coats of shellac to the hardwood floors.
She went around to the back, rather than entering through the front doors, then skirted the loading dock with its big overhead door and overall-wearing handymen wandering in and out. The side entrance would be fine. It was a simple door in a solid brick wall, and you could walk past it without even noticing it was there. She slid her key card into the slot, the lock clicked, and just like that she was inside, with no one the wiser.
She avoided the workers easily as she made her way to the stairwell, and tried to be quiet as she opened that door and headed down to the sublevel. The basement. Her real domain.
She had to use her key card again to enter the work and storage room that held all the untranslated fragments of ancient stone. When she stepped inside, she was holding her breath, though she didn’t realize that until she finally let it out with a whoosh. She’d half expected that same alien feeling to overtake her here as it had at home. The feeling that she’d outgrown the place, that she no longer belonged here.
But no. This place still fit. It fit like her father’s old worn-out fedora had fit his head. She’d never felt worthy to wear it, but it hung in her home, over the mantel, above a photo of her and her parents, the three