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Vivian and Michael hiked back to the campsite after they’d fed and laid their prey next to one another, encircled by a halo of aluminum beer cans. Surrounded by the vivid autumn leaves and brisk air, Michael realized how much he enjoyed the time of year in northern climates. His senses, primed with fresh blood, now picked up the clarity of the night sky, the crispness of the air, the smell of the vegetation that had fallen and lay, crunchy and fragrant, under their feet. The sound of each bird, insect, and animal roaming the surrounding forest seemed to present itself to his ears alone.
They rejoined their friends around the campfire. Michael scanned the circle. Something was off. “Where’s Harmony?”
Crystal sniffed and wiped her nose with a crumpled tissue pulled from a denim pocket.
“She was called?” he ventured.
Crystal responded with a slight nod.
Michael didn’t know how to react, so he said the first words that came to mind. “I’m sorry.”
Crystal’s grateful, glassy eyes told him that his instinct had been a good one.
Vivian excused herself, mumbling hasty words about going back to the solitude of a small clearing in the woods. Michael agreed. He took a seat on a flattened stump in silence alongside Crystal, Blu, and Lukas. They stared at the campfire, each lost in their own thoughts, their faces blank with fatigue.
An hour of arduous waiting passed with no word from Vivian, only the sounds of the woods at night and the crackle of the fire to break the stillness. Unable to stand it any longer, Michael sought her out and found her slumped in a circle of moonlight.
He crouched by her side, but she made no move toward him. “I can’t do it, Michael,” she sobbed. “I don’t understand. The Source—it’s like it has cut me off!”
Vivian, the most remarkable being he knew, had lost her ability to touch the Source. The sound of her anguished voice tore at him like claw hooks, striking him dumb. What could he, a member of the undead a mere twenty years, do to help?
What if this severance was more than temporary? How much of a chance did Lukas—did any of them stand against Charles without Vivian’s most significant asset?
Patting her on the hand, an action that struck him as trite as he did it, he stood. “Be right back. I’m going to check on the others. Keep trying.”
Feeling like a useless putz, he made his way back to the campground where their fire now lay dying. Blu, Lukas, and Crystal stared at the fading embers as if enraptured.
Michael froze. Where’s Harmony? He closed his eyes as the reason for Vivian’s barrier became clear—Harmony was keeping her away. How on earth did she have the power to do that? But why, if Charles was so far ahead of them? None of this made any sense. Charles had hurt Lukas, possibly beyond healing, and had killed hundreds—maybe thousands—of vampires who resisted him. What did the Balance hope to accomplish by taking Vivian’s contact away? Why had it led them to Blu, allowed Megan to die?
No sense dwelling. Noting the drop in temperature and how Crystal had wrapped herself into a ball to conserve body heat, Michael gathered a few pieces of wood from the edge of the forest and placed them on top of the embers. He grabbed a seat on the log next to his son and turned his way, but remained quiet, respecting Lukas’s grief. Finally, Michael’s steady gaze stirred Lukas from his false slumber.
“What?” Lukas barked.
“It’s me,” Michael said, keeping his voice from sounding confrontational. “We’ve always been able to talk before. Why can’t you talk to me now?”
“What would I talk about?” Lukas said.
“About what happened? What you’ve been thinking about? About the skirmishes in the Middle East, or the World Cup, or skyrocketing cost of American education? Hell, I don’t care. Just say something.”
“Like how the Source is as useless as... as...” Lukas waved his hands as if swatting insects as he spoke. “Oh, hell. You know what I mean. What’s the fucking Source done since we’ve left Savannah? Led us on a wild goose chase? Gave you vague directions to D.C. where Charles had Megan and me kidnapped instead of leading you to where you might help? Hell, it took the Balance—one of ’em—to step in to tell you to get him,” he waved at Blu. “And for what? So we could have another stopover in Virginia while the Source gets its shit in one bag?”
Michael searched for the right words to say. Platitudes were useless. Telling Lukas that things happened because they were meant to hardly sounded reassuring, regardless of how true it was, and telling him he’d get over it in time was worse. Time was all they had right then.
“You have every right to be angry,” he said.
“Damn right I do,” Lukas said, directing his words at a tree to his left.
“I’m angry, too. Lukas. We all loved Megan. You’re not alone in your grief.”
Lukas stuck his jaw out. Although he remained quiet, Michael knew he listened, waiting for the philosophical answers his father was so well-known for. Unfortunately, this time, he had nothing to offer. “Lukas, I can’t say why it happened. It seems as pointless to me as it does to you, believe it or not. And I’m confused, too.”
“I just—I—” Lukas stammered as tears ran down his face. “Do you understand what it’s like to have someone you love die in front of you while you sit there, helpless?”
The tears Michael had held back until that moment broke now. “Yes,” he said, “I do.”
Lukas turned away from the darkness as understanding set in. “Mom,” he said, his face draining of color. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Dad, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. That was really shitty of me.”
Michael’s head bobbed. “I had to lie there on the ground, drained of blood and about to die, while they killed your mother.” He sniffed, looked unsuccessfully for his handkerchief, and finally wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. “All the while, you’re sitting there with this unsuspecting look on your two-year-old face. Like it was all a game, and you were ready to play.” The tears burned, and his son was lost in a fuzzy sea of saltwater. “You said, ‘Wake up, Mommy...’” he choked, stopped. Lukas leaned in, his blue eyes huge and shedding tears.
“They nearly took you, too, only they were too gorged to bother. One looked at the other, saw that I was still alive, and asked his friend what to do with me. That was when they turned me. They turned me so that I’d—” he swallowed hard.
Lukas recalled the hunger that had overwhelmed him after waking the first time as a vampire. “They thought you’d kill me. That you’d become one of them.”
“They thought I’d kill you,” Michael agreed.
“My god,” Lukas whispered. “But you didn’t. How did you manage?”
“I’d die before I hurt you.”
Lukas’s mouth turned down as he thought about his father’s story. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said, scooting as close to Michael as he could without falling off his log.
“And I’m sorry you had to endure what you did today,” Michael said. “But I made it, and you will too.”
A moment of awkwardness arose; an adult son encompassed in grief, a father still grieving but trying to help, both wanting to comfort one another. Lukas leaned forward and embraced his father with arms so powerful they forced the air from Michael’s lungs. Michael returned the hug.
“Thanks, Dad,” Lukas said. “For everything.”
It took a cosmic wave of power to leave Vivian without as much as a finger on the pulse of the Source. At the height of Vivian’s effort, Eoghan sprawled on the forest floor, praying that she hadn’t heard him collapse in her zeal to touch that power she relied on to guide her. Harmony knelt beside him, took one hand, then the other, and together strength flowed between them that dwarfed even Vivian’s. Their combined efforts built a wall around her that encapsulated her power.
Breathless and weakened, Eoghan rose, again with Harmony’s help. His eyes met her green ones, and to his astonishment, he noticed her tanned skin, her oval face, her cheekbones. The way her hair fell, tawny brown and smooth, along her back. She was pretty, and he knew it. He’d have thought himself too callous to discern beauty.
Emotions. From another Balance. That was new. The entire job was new, and every hour seemed to hold a new lesson in how to handle the change.
He brushed the leaves from his denim slacks. “Well, they’re talking. Michael’s getting a brilliant idea while Vivian is distracted. I hope that’s what you had in mind. Are we in this together, or—?”
“That depends,” Harmony said, her voice professional. “What are your plans? From here?”
“Plans?” Eoghan stammered. “I’ve been following the flow.”
“Me, too. But it’s come to my attention, and yours, I guess, that the Darkness is gaining ground way too fast.”
Though he hadn’t heard it called the Darkness before, Eoghan understood. “Are you thinking we should work together?”
“It felt pretty good.” She colored; the shade that rose in her cheeks was visible in the twilight. “Strong, I mean. When we worked together a second ago.”
He hesitated. Why was he waiting?
“About these emotions,” Harmony said. She crossed her arms, seemed to recognize her posture was unfriendly, and untangled her arms. “I have a theory.”
“I’d be glad to hear it.”
She gave him a wan smile, and his heart galloped.
“I’ve only been at this job for maybe five or six years, but I’ve never come across another one of us. I’ve had to intervene for the Source with one or two like Vivian—what I call ‘fountains,’ and I’ve had to deal with other hosts of the Maleficence, but I’ve never seen another Harmony—a Balance.”
“Aye, go on.”
“It makes sense to me that maybe the fact that the Universe brought us together is significant.”
Eoghan frowned as he tried to make the leap of logic she had. What had their meeting to do with emotion?
“Maybe,” she said, “the universe has a default for us. Maybe if we meet, it’s a bad sign for the world. Like it’s about to end, or get heavily out of whack.”
“That’s bad, but I don’t see where emotions—”
“Maybe, when a Harmony meets another, the Universe is driving home the urgency of our jobs.”
There was a certain logic to her argument, but he hoped she wasn’t right.
It was disturbing, not getting a bead on her thoughts the way he had every other being he’d encountered, but she must have the same vacant spot on her mental radar with him.
Did she have hidden motives? Not if she handles her portion of the Balance the way you do.
He took a second to travel the distance to her sister’s mind and paged through the memories where Harmony dwelled. Love. Trust. Faith. No suspicion or deceit.
Eoghan nodded and offered his hand, this time in partnership. Harmony swallowed. Was that reluctance he saw on her face? If it was, she hid it well.
Eoghan put his mind in the place where the Balance lay as their hands touched, and lightning struck. Eoghan vanished unto himself and traveled the current of the Balance with Harmony, together as spirit-bound Gemini twins riding a roller coaster down a track careening down a sharp spiral. He’d thought the information he’d held before was vast; this was as if God had handed him the keys to the universe.
Michael. He’s the weakest member. Leafing through the infinite files, they located what he believed to be the correct means to the desired end.
Will Michael go along if it means discovering his worst fears about his child?
Eoghan and Harmony scanned together. Michael, though not powerful in the conventional sense, was a formidable being. Maybe there was their answer.
