Anne Brontë Nightwalker

Chapter 56

The night sky is brighter than I've ever seen it. Stars illuminate the heavens like a trillion brilliant flames. The universe brims with life. It pulses down at me, filling the void with its howling song. The wild unsayable. The moon is ripe and the air is tinged with heat. Winter is passing and spring is being born.

I stand with Emily and Atticus by O. Henry's modest grave in historic Riverside Cemetery. This boneyard seems the only place in town Emily is truly comfortable. She likes it here. Her leg is healing and she is clad in new black jeans and a thin t-shirt. Santos stands beside her, eyes shining like a wolf. They search the night incessantly, looking for threats or a way out. Since the night of the turning, he has fallen unusually quiet.

He has secured a leave of absence from the sheriff's department, claiming he needs a mental health break. No one was really surprised. The murders, he told them, on top of a decade of war, had taken their toll.

Officially cleared of suspicion, Lucien has assumed Dana's place as my partner at work. I'm glad for his company and this way I can more easily protect him. Though investigators have assigned blame for the murders of the two girls, and the disappearances of Dana and Savannah, to the vanished Dr. Webb, not everyone is convinced.

Mr. Granger, especially. He's unable to accept that a respected white doctor took his daughter and not the young black man who openly desired one of the victims. Others are unsure as well and Lucien walked a hard road until detectives discovered mementos of Webb's other victims in his home on Whisper Mountain. Delicate locks of hair in wisps of gold and amber, jet and flame, were tied with silken thread, kept under glass like specimens of butterfly. Las Mariposas, Santos calls them. Webb even had a lock of Savannah's, which he might have snipped the night I brought her to the hospital. I can easily imagine him sliding a scalpel out of his white coat and slashing free a tendril of her hair when she and her father weren't looking.

They trusted us.

Mr. Granger is on the hunt, armed with a rifle and moonshine. His kin dust these mountains like blue smoke and have come forth to search for Savannah. Law enforcement is looking as well, but no one will find her. With my sun-strength, I buried her three fathoms deep on a high bluff looking down upon the Grangers' valley. I wanted to get her closer to home, but with the bloodhound noses of her kin, it wasn't wise.

No one must ever find her. No one will ever find Webb. I incinerated him where he fell, and I will confess that I took alarming satisfaction in it. All it took was one little match and his sun-ravaged corpse erupted in ash.

In the cemetery, Santos now shifts uneasily on his feet. While it soothes Emily, the setting seems to unsettle him. He does not know how familiar Emily and I are with graveyards. We grew up with one right outside our parsonage window. For us, they are a comforting reminder that the dead are never far.

His skin is a shade paler, but the darkness still remains. It glows more blackly in his eyes, shining. How will he adjust to constant killing without losing his soul?

Emily and I won't let him.

"You're his maker," I say to my sister. "Don't run from this." Don't slip into fantasy and hide. "Teach him. Contain him. Show him how to survive. If anyone is strong enough, Emily, it is you."

She looks at me with a wide, deep gaze. There is an anguished look to her I haven't seen since Branwell died. Her eyes are a sea-grey storm, crashing with frightening currents. I have never known a male and female Night Walker to live as equals, but Emily will be subjugated by no one.