had been only devastation and despair. He’d put it there, that hope.
And now he was determined to fulfill it.
“We have to go back and end this madness. It’s time to find Utanapishtim. It’s time I fulfilled my life’s purpose.”
15
“Back in a Manhattan hotel room,” Lucy said softly. “I sure have come full circle. I was in a room just like this only—what? Less than a week ago? And yet my entire life has changed since then.”
James backed away from the window, letting the curtain fall back into place. The hotel had a direct line of sight to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Lucy thought Utanapishtim’s ashes were secreted in an old and unremarkable statue. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from looking out at the museum every time he walked past the window. Talk about lives changing… Now that he knew his purpose, it was burning in him, driving him. But he knew she was going through as much as he was. Her life, too, had been turned upside down. And unlike him, it wasn’t her destiny.
He looked at her then. She had been on the computer they’d managed to borrow from the concierge, with a little power of suggestion. Just like they’d checked in with a nonexistent credit card and phony names. Lucy had also been on the phone, though he thought that was a very bad idea. She was on hold now, the cordless receiver anchored between her ear and her shoulder. The television set was on, the volume low. It was showing continuous footage of various conflagrations, weeping family members, burned bodies—human ones. Vampire bodies turned to ash when they burst into flames. They burned hot and fast. It was a miracle the girl on the island—Ellie—hadn’t just exploded in a flash when her skin had begun to burn. Her boyfriend, Jeremy, must have dumped her into the water almost instantly, or there would have been nothing left of her.
And she was young. Vampires’ weaknesses, their vulnerabilities, grew larger with age, just as their powers and strengths did. For most, fire would end them. There would be no remains for hype-hungry reporters to parade in front of a national audience. None to be confiscated for study by government scientists, either. No “alien autopsy” video, with a vampire playing the role of the little green man, would be showing up online anytime soon. Thank God.
And he was thinking all of that because it kept him from thinking about what was front and center in his mind. Lucy. Himself and Lucy.
He had no business focusing on that when his people were on the brink of extinction.
“I still think we should just break into the Met tonight and take the statue,” he said, hoping to distract himself. But it did little good. She was wearing clothes she’d found on the yacht. A pair of skinny black jeans, with high-heeled black boots that covered them all the way to her knees. A tank top that hugged her slender body closely. A button-down shirt of army green, heavy with military insignia on the breast pocket, over that. Her hair was in a ponytail that rode high on her head, and her tortoiseshell glasses were perched on her nose as she stared at the computer screen.
His bookish professor had taken a turn toward Tomb Raider, and he could barely keep himself from acting on the impulses that were burning through his body every time he looked at her. So he looked over her shoulder at the computer instead and saw what she was examining so closely: a live satellite shot of the Met. She was scrolling up and down, left and right, noticing windows, exits and the landscaping around the museum.
“They have state-of-the-art security. We’d never get away with it. We need to come up with some fake credentials, and then you can use your powers to get them to hand it to us.”
“Can we at least go look at the statue?”
“Statues. There are three. But I’m ninety-nine percent certain I’ll know which it is as soon as I see it.
And we’ll go soon,” she said. “James, this is my area.
Museums, collections, artifacts. These are my people, curators and translators. You need to trust me on this.
I’ll get us in there. Okay?”
He met her eyes, beyond those glasses of hers, and nodded. “I know you will.”
She looked at him again, and there was worry in her eyes this time. “You look like a wreck. You didn’t sleep last night, or all day