Outside, Michael and Jeff are waiting by the car. Dr. Jameson and George are on the porch.

"Here's some food for your trip," Dr. Jameson says, handing me a box. Inside, I can see some fruits and vegetables. And a bag of blood.

"Thank you," I say. "We really appreciate your kindness."

"Well, you certainly brought some excitement to our town," George says.

"Sin might bring more," I warn them. "Day Walkers, the Infected."

"We're already preparing," he a.s.sures me, gesturing with his head toward the edge of town. I turn to see several men laying down the first boulders of what will become a wall.

Sadness sweeps through me. I long for a world that needs no walls.

"Thank you so much for everything," I say again, not certain I can ever thank them enough. "I'll think about you often."

"Oh, don't get mushy now and say things you don't mean."

"But I do mean it," I say with conviction. "More than you'll ever realize. This place . . . it's the beginning."

"Of what?" Dr. Jameson asks.

"Of a new world."

Chapter 5.

We head off into twilight, Victor confident at the wheel. With a vampire's reflexes, Victor is able to push the speed until it climbs over a hundred miles an hour. Jeff and Michael are sleeping in the back. Every now and then I can hear one of them snore.

"You're awfully quiet," Victor says. "What are you thinking about?"

"The darkness," I say. "And how I used to be so afraid of it." Because it brought out the monsters.

"And now?"

I shake my head. "Now I feel safe in it. I was trapped in that closet for so long, hearing Brady's screams when he was taken from me. He didn't want me to be afraid of the dark. It took years, but now I'm not."

Victor puts his hand on my leg and I feel his warmth.

"I've been thinking about your brother a lot," Victor says, and it catches me off guard. Sin turned Brady into a vampire, but he refused to drink human blood. He became infected with the Thirst. Is he going to talk about the monster that Brady became, how Brady attacked him and we had to kill him? "All I see are his eyes, and that little sparkle of humanity still in them."

My throat tightens with unshed tears.

"That tiny part of Brady was the one that saw you, Dawn. It was the part that gives you strength to this day. And it was the part that finally surrendered, knowing it was all so that you could carry on and make this world a better place."

I remember my hands, and Victor's, holding the stake over Brady's heart. Pressing down was the hardest thing I ever did. But it was the only way to free him. He hated what he'd become.

I turn to the landscape pa.s.sing by almost as a blur. Yellow desert made gray by the moonlight, patches of blackened craters where the bombs fell years ago, our attempts to eradicate the vampires from above, to do what the sun hadn't. Now they're simply reminders of our failings, our reliance on technology and its inability to defeat the creatures older than us, creatures who were already at their prime during our infancy.

No one knows, not even the vampires themselves I imagine, how they came to be. But they've always drawn power from their immortality. What would take generations of mortals to learn and remember could be done so easily by their fanged counterparts.

The desert stretches forever, low-lying hills and mountains far off in the distance, so far they seem completely unreachable. I imagine walking toward them, only to always find them out of reach, just over the next ridge, just beyond the horizon, always just far enough away to hold their majesty.

So much like the vampire next to me. Victor. How far away you always seem. Even when we're close, parts of your heart are shielded, secrets held that were never meant to be revealed. Will you ever give in to me totally? Is that even possible with a vampire, with an Old Family who has seen the world change for hundreds of years?

After an hour of driving I sense Victor looking out suspiciously, his eyes darting back and forth, perhaps guided not only by sights but sounds I can't detect.

"What is it?" I ask.

"The Infected. In the distance over there," he says slowly, pointing across the desert.

I see sharp movements, violent and quick, running and bounding across the dunes. Gray and brown figures, wrapped in tattered cloth.

"I can't believe they're so far out," I say.

"I didn't know it was this bad," Victor confesses. "I thought we had more time."

It's like a tsunami that started in Los Angeles years ago, finally toppling Lord Carrollton, and is now moving across the country, heading east.

"Richard's father, Lord Carrollton, he's dead," I say quietly.

Victor curses beneath his breath.

"We went to his mansion. It was falling apart, but inside were so many Infected. They came after us. Richard drove like a demon out of h.e.l.l and we barely escaped."

"Richard loved Los Angeles. He must hate what Sin has done to it."

"They should be in Denver by now, shouldn't they?"

He wraps his hand around mine. "They're fine. I would know if Faith was dead."

"How?"

"I'd sense it, but I don't."

"Speaking of sensing things, how did you know where to look for me in the mountains? How did you know I was in danger?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know. I just knew. It was like you were calling to me. Maybe I saw your dreams of the mountain through my own eyes one night, and I'd simply forgotten. But when I was there, I traced my hands along the wall, just as you told me you had, and I knew exactly where I was going."

"There's so much about the vampire world I don't understand."

"Even we don't understand it all."

Looking back out the window, I try not to think about my possible vampire heritage and howa"if it's truea"it will change everything, like a ma.s.sive earthquake centered beneath my life. What will remain standing once it pa.s.ses? Will it even be recognizable?

Even though Victor pushes the car as fast as he can, he can't outrun the sun. The car's windows are tinted, so the sunrise doesn't hurt him, but he's noticeably uncomfortable and has slowed down considerably. His vampire eyesight must be diminished even in the gentle predawn light.

As the sky begins to lighten, I can see the ma.s.sive wall that surrounds Denver in the distance. I know we won't get there ahead of daybreak.

The gates into Denver are closed. They used to open when the sun rose, but that was before we knew about Day Walkers, before Sin came to our city at the behest of his father, Lord Murdoch Valentine. We thought he was a new student at our school. We befriended him.

"Jeff, are you close enough to get cell reception?" Victor asks. "I'd rather not lower these windows at the guard station to go through an inspection."

The city has one cell tower, located in its center. Its range is limited, its service sporadic.

"I'll give it a shot," Jeff says, pulling out his cell phone. He presses a b.u.t.ton, waitsa"

"Clive, hey. We're about two minutes from the gatea"yes, we've got Dawn and Michael. They're safe. . . . Great! I'll let them know." He moves the phone away from his ear. "The others arrived safely on the Night Train last night."

"Oh, thank G.o.d!" I feel like I'm floating up as a heavy weight lifts from my chest.

"Yeah, so listen," Jeff continues into the phone. "Victor's driving. Need you to alert the guards to wave us through . . . Okay, good. We'll see you soon." He hangs up. "We should be good to go."

The gate rises and a guard lets us pa.s.s without any trouble. Victor continues on to the more populated part of Denver. The center of the city. The rebuilding efforts began there, and they haven't quite reached the wall yet. Ten years since the war ended, and recovery is slow. But then with Murdoch Valentine ruling over us, we had little optimism or hope. Life under Victor will be different. Having seen Crimson Sands, I think by working together we can right all the wrongs of his father.

Jeff makes another call. "Hey, Rachel. We're back in the city. Dawn's with me, babe. She's okay. So is Michael. We're going to the Agency first and then I'll bring her to the apartment. . . . Yeah, okay. Hold on." He extends the phone to me. "Rachel wants a word."

"A word? I bet she wants more than that."

Jeff grins.

I take the phone and press it to my ear. "Hey, Rachel."

"Dawn, oh G.o.d, it's so good to hear your voice."

"Yours too."

"I'm going to head to the Agencya""

"No, wait. I don't think we'll be there that long. I'm really dirty, tired, and hungry. I just want to come home. But I want to see Tegan. Can you track her down?"

"I'll take care of it."

"Thanks, Rachel."

"Just know that you are never again leaving this city."

"I hear you." But I can't promise her that I won't leave. I don't know where fighting Sin might take us, and I still feel Crimson Sands calling to me.

We say goodbye and I hand the phone back to Jeff.

Victor slows the car to a crawl, not hindered by other vehicles but by people walking the streets, heading to work and school. I realize how little I've thought about my homework and tests and a.s.signments. I'm not even sure if I'm still enrolled. Although it hardly matters. I've learned plenty of lessons out here.

In Los Angeles everything sparkled, but it was all fake. Here the buildings are drab, but I can see the sweat that was poured into each brick laid. Store windows display merchandise and signs written by hand. There's an authenticity to it and evidence of creativity. Michael eases up from the back.

"I didn't think anything would ever look so welcoming," he says.

"I'll be glad to be home."

"Words I never thought I'd agree with. I wanted to leave so bad." He thought things would be better away from Denver.

"We always think life will have more to offer somewhere else," Jeff says. "Sometimes leaving is the only way to appreciate what we have."

We pa.s.s by the ma.s.sive Works, a series of buildings and generators that provide lights to the city but also give it a dark foreboding feel as the smoke from the burning coal coats everything in soot. Then I see the Agency building with its gla.s.s and steel. It's the tallest and most pristine element in the city.

Victor enters the underground parking garage and pulls quickly into a vacant spot. The Agency has cars, but few others do. Gas is scarce. And there are no longer automobile factories. We just have to keep repairing what we havea"which is the way of a lot of things these days.

We step out of the car into the well-lit concrete structure. We all walk to the elevator and ride it straight to the top. When the doors open, we're quickly whisked past the single receptionist and into the director's office. The large window that encompa.s.ses an entire wall, normally providing a perfect view of the city, is covered by thick blinds. No sunlight peeks througha"in preparation for our arrival.

A few dim lights on the walls allow me to see the director. Clive looks as if he's aged ten years since I last saw him. He has less hair, his wrinkles have deepened, his tweed jacket drapes over his torso as though he's lost weight. He's always looked like a man who shouldered responsibility until it bent him physically, but now it looks like his back is broken.

"I'm so glad you're safe," he says. "You have no ideaa""

"I do," I say. "It looks like you haven't slept since I left."

"Not a lot, no. I started second guessing my decision to send you, but when the others got back last night and told me what was going on in Los Angeles . . ." He shakes his head. "I fought alongside Matheson during the war, comrades in arms. I can't believe he'd allow himself to be turned by Sin."

Matheson was the Agency director in Los Angeles.

"I don't know if I can blame him," I tell Clive. "The alternative wasn't very pretty. The humans along the outer wall live a miserable existence."

"Given the choice between a miserable existence as a human or becoming a vampire, which would you choose?" he asks.

I don't say anything. The choice may no longer be mine. I may already be a vampire.

"That's what I thought," Clive says, misreading my silence. "Nothing would cause you to be turned. So I can blame him." He clears his throat, and I can tell that while he might not understand Matheson's choice, he still mourns his friend. "Although losing the Night Train in Los Angeles has been a blow, I have to admit I'm grateful that Ian is in Denver to offer his unique perspective on things."

The Night Train is the only ma.s.s mode of transportation allowed by VampHu. One train that services all the cities.

I glance over as Ian Hightower approaches. A legendary vampire hunter, he guards the Night Train. Or at least he did before everything except its engine got left in Los Angeles. Much like Clive, he seems to have aged years overnight. He's wearing different clothes, his others surely covered in ash from the furnace of the engine as it howled across the lonely stretches of isolated desert. But his eyes hold the same scars of a hunter's life, maybe even a few more after what happened in Los Angeles.

"I thought you were a goner," he says.

"Me too."

"I would've stopped the train and gone back, but I had to think about the others, and I thought you'd want me to protect them."

"You did the right thing," I say, meaning every word of it.

I hug him. He's resistant at first, upright and tight, his body stiff and cold, like it hasn't felt a soft touch in years. After a moment, he puts his arms around me. They are strong. Like my father's were.

When he releases me, Jeff and Michael move in to shake his hand. I glance over to the corner. Huddling together like the cool clique at school are the vampires: Victor, Richard, and Faith. Even when we're all together, there's a distance, a knowledge that they are different from the others. They look the same, more polished and beautiful maybe, but still human in appearance. Their hearts beat, blood runs through them, but that blood is so different, and they need our blood to sustain them.