THE NIGHT THE VAMPIRES CAME

Chapter 35

I watched the rain pelt the airport windows in Rome as we waited for our flight back home. Sitting there with my duffle bag and beat-up high-tops, I thought of a story that my grandmother used to tell me.

Do you know where the rain comes from, xiao hai? There is a well at the top of that mountain. Ten thousand years ago, a dragon once cried and cried until it was full of tears. They say that he was once a boy who was transformed into a dragon by a spell. Because of his cursed form, he had to leave behind all those whom he loved. When the wind blows over the mountains, it carries the waters from the well with it. The rain that falls here are the tears of that ancient dragon.

Now, after everything that had happened, I learned that there was a grain of truth within the myths. Who was the Reaper? Or was his real identity that of The Weeper?

Jaduerial was only a harbinger of things to come. As long as the Reaper lay in the core of the earth, filling the underground waterways with his tears, this calamity will never end, even after it ceases to fall from the skies.

The incoming aircraft and night sky disappeared as the slanted shards of rain painted the windows. As I stared into the darkness, I felt like I was looking through a portal into an undersea storm.

Rain can't hurt us anymore.

All the same, sitting here with my father and Holly, in the safety of my family and friends, I felt the fear swelling inside the walls of my heart. It was rain, just innocent water that fell from the sky. It wouldn't turn us into monsters, not anymore.

I couldn't shake the sense of impending doom. Jaduerial had brought the Blight Rain to us, but he wasn't the source of it.

Deep inside the earth, I knew the black rivers still ran. As surely as the hole in Manna City had devoured that avenging spirit back into its depths, the darkness would return another day.

It wasn't over. It was just over for now.

No, Ailith, focus on the present. Focus on what you can control, like going home.

About two days ago, after a meeting with the Levanti leaders, my father decided to bring us back to Windflower Springs. It was about time, considering the world was returning to normal. We had been trapped on an island in the Mediterranean for the past week. The medical professionals there monitored our labs and vitals daily to ensure we hadn't been infected. My only knowledge of what was happening outside of that medical facility came from the television.

There were sporadic televised miracles of loved ones brought back from their vampiric state. These were few and far between. There weren't enough Lumins to go around for everyone, even those still within the 72-hour window of effectiveness. Holly and I both knew that the hope of ever seeing our friends and family back home was dwindling with each passing day.

Dr. Lemeris gave me a sleeping tonic to take as the plane took off. We flew back due west to Florida. I hadn't been able to sleep for days as I contemplated what could have become of my home. Sleeping in a medicated coma seemed like a good idea. The plane was sparsely populated, but it was busy enough that I could use all the help I could get to nod off.

As the jet took off, I drifted off into warm and fuzzy dreams even though my forehead was plastered against the hard airplane window. The medicine was so effective that soon enough, the sterile white shell of the passenger jet window became the knotted roots of an old willow tree. I suddenly became very conscious of my every heartbeat. It was as though my heart remembered this place even before my eyes opened. Even though it was a dream, I could smell the dirt and the woody roots. I opened my eyes and I saw tobacco-colored bark laced with lichen.  

The mossy hollow was wet with the morning dew. Ants were skirting across my knees, and a shadfly crawled across my nose. I jumped up with a start. Didn't I take off on a plane just seconds ago? How did I end up sleeping in the dirt? Did we crash?

Why was I lying there entangled around the roots of an ancient tree? I stood up and brushed myself off. No, not a plane crash. Just a dream. I wasn't dead — not yet, at least.

My sneakers sank into the muddy banks of the lake as I left my muddy bed behind. The nearby water glittered in the sun and shimmered so brightly it burned my pupils to look in its direction. Still, I stared because I didn't know where else to go or to look. To my wincing eyes, the waves seemed to ripple black. Yet it wasn't Dark Waters, it just looked that way because my mind couldn't leave my trauma behind. Blackness, the absence of all color. Not because the water was damned but because the glare just about took my sight from me. I knew this was a dream, and this wasn't a real lake. Yet, all the same, I could feel the fiery midday sunlight on my bare arms, as though I was there.

"I buried you among the roses, just behind that old tree," a voice appeared from the edge of my visual field. Thanks to the glare of the sunlight, I saw only swirls of reflected light everywhere I looked. "I always believed it was where you were happiest."

I didn't need to see to know who spoke those words. It seemed like a part of me recognized that voice even if my consciousness did not.

"And I buried you in that abysmal place in Manna City," I whispered the last part. I didn't know what it meant even when I said it. "Among the Black Waters."

"Yes." He answered and left it at that. The boy appeared in my field of vision, not the middle-aged man who I barely caught a glimpse of that rainy night in Manna City, but a boy of eleven years of age. He had curls of blond hair obscuring his eyes. I remembered that I could never bear to cut those curls. It made him look angelic like he was something of another world.

I reached for him, but I caught only air. Try as I might, my fingertips couldn't reach him. He wasn't here anymore, not even in my dreams. He was dead and gone. This thing beside me was a fragmented memory, a figment of a desperate mind, a phantom from another lifetime. 

How could I ever forget you, Blake?

~*~

I woke up as the plane touched down in Florida. The sun's glaring rays made me wince. I rubbed the imprint of the oval window on my forehead. There were about twenty people on this flight, and yet Holly managed to find a way to get into an argument with a fellow passenger about tossing his used coffee cup into the aisle.

The tension in the air was palpable. I didn't know what I would see when the plane landed at Miami International Airport. A couple of weeks ago, armed guards were shooting into crowds of fleeing refugees when we left here. Now, we were arguing over the proper way of disposing of styrofoam cups.

With some pleading from Dr. Lemeris and some mummers of encouragement from my father, Holly helped me gather our luggage, and we exited the plane. As Dr. Lemeris and my father exchanged glances and rolls of their eyes, I thought they were probably regretting putting two deeply traumatized young women on a commercial flight. Maybe private would have been the way to go. Either way, there was no way to prepare us for what we were going to find back home if we found anything at all.

As we exited through the gate, I didn't expect to see anyone waiting for us. But I was wrong. I couldn't believe my eyes. My mother was there, standing right outside the luggage claim. How could this be possible? Was this a vision from another damned dream?

She turned to me and raised her welcoming arms. I dropped my duffle bag at my father's feet and ran.

"Maw!" I squealed like a toddler. I didn't care at that moment how ridiculous I sounded. She was alive! And she was human!

My mother's eyes were red, and she wasn't wearing any of her usual make-up. Without it, she had no eyebrows, and the bags under her eyes were especially pronounced. She probably hadn't slept in days. She was wearing a light green sweater, her favorite color, the color of jade. That choice wasn't accidental — she was also wearing her beloved jade pendent around a red silk string on her neck. As she held me, my collarbone pressed against that unyielding stone and left an imprint.

It was said that jade was supposed to bring health and good fortune. But I also knew that it was worn to protect both living and dead souls. I wondered if she wore it to protect Grace, wherever she was.

"You're home," my mother said when I detangled myself from her body. "I knew you would come home, my brave girl."

"Maw, I t-tried my best. Grace—she—."

"I know, I know, your father already told me." my mother said and placed her finger over my lips to keep me from explaining further. Although that was a calming action, I noticed that her small petite figure shook with emotion. "I know you did everything you could. The doctors who helped me said that everyone had lost someone in this — this natural disaster. I'm so glad that one of my girls came home."

She and my father spoke on the phone before we got on that plane? Why hadn't he told me? Didn't he think I would want to know that my mother was awaiting us back in Florida? Before my sadness could turn into anger, my father came up behind us and embraced the two of us in a tight hug. This surprised me because my father was far from the hugging type. I don't think I ever remembered him showing any affection aside from the curt pat on the head when I brought home a good report card.

"Thank God they brought you those Sylvirua Lumins in time," my dad muttered as he flicked a tear out of his left eye. It was extra hard to hear what he was saying as he had grown a beard since we left home. These days, when he spoke, it was like his lips barely moved. I saw him lead my mother away from me and whisper into her ear. Her bottom lip trembling, she offered a tiny nod to his words. I saw tears welled up in her eyes. She hugged herself with her right arm and buried her face into her free hand by the time my father finished.

I wondered what he had to say to her that I couldn't overhear. I suspected I didn't want to know.

He could have told her about some other friend or family member who had been lost to the Blight Rain. Or perhaps he was informing her that our house in Windflower was irreparably lost and the insurance company was going to stick us with the bill. Or perhaps, just perhaps, he was whispering to her that neither of her daughters had made it home — not truly.