The Watchtower

I couldn’t go yet . Not without Will.
    I forced myself to focus on the here and now: the grate of the metal door as it opened, the reek of pigeon droppings in the stairwell, the clank of my feet on the metal stairs. I made myself count all 147 steps as I made my way to the top to keep my mind clear of everything but the present moment. When I went through the trapdoor onto the top of the column, I didn’t have to battle my associations with the future. The metal structure was much more elaborate than the bare framework that had survived into the twenty-first century. Amid the iron framework were bright copper rings engraved with arcane symbols. Surrounding the perimeter of the column was a narrow metal catwalk. I moved gingerly out onto it and looked toward the west.
    The sun was balanced over the rooftops of the city beneath a sky of fierce, roiling clouds. It looked as if the clouds were trying to squash the sun down into the horizon, to stamp out its light forever. A wave of lightning moved through the clouds—a dense network of veins that looked like the metro map of Paris. The clouds were moving closer to the tower, carrying the lightning with them along with colder air that smelled like the sea. I shivered, wondering what would happen to me if lightning struck the tower while I was on top of it—which surely it would. That’s what it was built for. The whole thing was an enormous lightning rod.
    The wind blew harder out of the west and the copper rings creaked into life, slowly revolving in their interlocking orbits. I was standing outside them on the catwalk; I thought I would need to be inside to make the time travel work. I’d wait on the catwalk until I saw Will.
    No one was in the courtyard, unless you counted the stuffed crocodiles, who, in the murky green light of the approaching storm, appeared to be back in their native habitat of primordial swamp. I scanned the windows along the courtyard, walking around the catwalk, but there was no sign of life in any of them. What had happened to Octavia? Had she been able to kill Marduk? Should I have left her alone with him? But then I remembered how efficiently she had torn apart the second guard and figured she was probably able to deal with Marduk herself. It was too late to do anything but wait. The sun was about to disappear beneath the rooftops of Paris. Will would be on his way now. I knew from experience how fast he was.
    When I’d summoned him to Governors Island, he’d come in a heartbeat. When I’d been in danger in the tunnels approaching the High Water Tower in Manhattan, he’d saved me. He’d waited months for me in a cave in the Val sans Retour—and we’d come out of the Val sans Retour together, which was only supposed to be possible for faithful lovers. But was he a faithful lover? I wondered, staring into the stygian gloom of the courtyard as the faltering light in the sky started to vanish. After hundreds of years of carousing was he capable of loving one woman?
    A flash of lightning lit up the courtyard, bringing the white bits of broken marble statuary and underbellies of the crocodiles to ghoulish life, as ugly as the jealous thoughts that preyed on me. They would devour me, I suddenly saw, and devour whatever chance Will and I had of loving each other. I had to put them aside. I didn’t know what the future would bring for Will and me—didn’t even know if we’d be able to get back to our own time—but the only chance we had was to trust ourselves to that future and not dwell in the past. Whatever Will had done in the four hundred years that stretched from this time to ours, those things had helped make him the man—or vampire—I’d fallen in love with.
    At the next flash I saw him. He was coming through the same broken window I’d come through. He tilted his face up toward the tower, no doubt looking for me. I called his name, but my voice was drowned out by the rumble of thunder, which was followed by the sharp crackle of fresh lightning, this time directly above the courtyard. This flash lit Will midstride, just past one of the leering crocodiles, and at the window, another figure.
    “Will!” I screamed, trying to warn him that he was being followed, but of course he couldn’t hear me. The lightning was coming every few seconds now, each flash giving me the briefest, most frustrating glimpse of Will and the cloaked figure following him across the long courtyard. It was like watching the action through strobe