Part eighteen
Time drifted away from them, their connection strengthening, purifying, the pull turning into a single clear line of communication. Words came but they were secondary, the thoughts read almost before they were formed.
How long?
Long, as they see it. My end comes.
No, sister, no. Let me help.
No help, child. Too long, too much. But you are here. And now I may do what must be done.
Sister, please, there has to be another way.
This path was seen long before I found you. At least, with you, it serves greater purpose.
I-I can't. This – it is wrong.
Wrong? There is no word for it. It simply is.
I don't believe that.
Oh child, it exists whether you believe it or not.
Please, just – just give me some time. I can fix this. I know I can. And you won't – there has to be another way.
Yes, there is. Let them continue, let them feed. And more shall fall.
…
Help me let go. Please.
…
It is all right. Just hold me.
…
…
All right.
The connection drew them together, so close, intimate, a depth of being indescribable, until they merged, became one for a single shining moment.
Then she died.
And the world was nothing but light.
***
Meryl thought she'd been very patient up until now. She'd stayed put, as ordered. She'd let the males run off like the idiots they were and do whatever it was that they thought was so damn important. In fact, she thought she'd handled herself with quite a bit more restraint than usual, in fact.
But enough was enough already.
She allowed her vision to clear up before ever so gingerly rising. The room wavered but stopped moving after a minute. With this minor victory under her belt, she made it to her feet in the same, careful fashion. Feeling much more in control now that she was standing, she retrieved her cloak and threw it over shoulders, exacerbating her headache but the world stayed firmly in place and she decided this meant she was ready to tackle the challenge of chasing down Vash.
She put off her plan for a moment to look around for anything resembling water or an aspirin but recognized just about nothing of the so-called med bay. Just how Liam had known what to use to treat her was a mystery she'd have to wait to solve until she found him.
Grabbing the cross and slipping a derringer into her palm, she headed for the door.
But before she could even take a step out of the room, the hallway flooded with light, blinding her.
***
It was inevitable that the vampires would cross their defensive perimeter. Which they finally did.
Millie was a crack shot but hardly a hand-to-hand combatant. While Alexis concentrated on actually killing their attackers, Millie mostly just hit them and ran away until she encountered another one and executed the same tactic all over. Her one advantage lay in her own innate strength, something the vampires generally chose to ignore.
But there were a lot more of them than there were of her.
She slammed the butt of her stungun into a vampire's stomach, retreating until she backed into Alexis, the two girls automatically forming a tighter unit. The Slayer's stamina was finally giving out on her, her breaths coming out shorter and harder. Sensing their exhaustion, the vampires circled up and closed in.
"Just remember," Alexis panted, hefting stakes in both hands. "We're not gonna die here."
"We aren't?"
"Nope. I refuse to die in such a stupid way."
Millie spared her a small, tight smile.
"What the hell-?"
One of the vampires looked past them, gaping at something over her shoulder. Millie turned and found her own jaw dropping.
A single beam of light shot straight up from the ground in the distance, faintly pulsing with energy. For a moment it remained there, straight, unwavering, lighting up the night sky. Then it started expanding.
Rapidly.
"Get down!"
Alexis threw herself at Millie, knocking both of them to the ground. They rolled together, coming to a rest on their stomachs, eyes closed as the light washed over them, leaving behind a palpable sense of its passing in harsh wind, desert grit and the howls of the undead.
***
In a period of no more than thirty seconds that felt like an eternity, the desert planet stood in awe of a third sun emanating from a small town that almost no one had heard of and even less cared about. Years later, when Salem was nothing more than a ghost town, physicists and Plant engineers would still argue over how it happened, that a Plant could die and yet not destroy everything in its wake.
But not one of them would come close to the truth.
The light vanished and night took over once more.
End part eighteen