It was a relief to shift, to heal.
But when I did, the smell of the bloodhound filled my nostrils. The bloodhound was close. And that scent, I knew that scent.
I shifted back immediately. “Landon!”
His voice came from the woods. “You going to put some clothes on?”
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“Look, I’ll keep my distance, but I can’t let you be out here all on your own. You might need me.”
“You said that I would never see you again.”
“Well, you still haven’t, have you? I’m out of your view.”
“I thought you meant you were leaving.”
“I’m still averting my eyes. Are you dressed?”
“I don’t see the point. I’m getting read to shift back and run back to the train station.”
“So, do that,” he said. “Forget you saw me. Pretend I’m not here.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. I sighed. “I’m going to shift back and wait for you. We’ll run together. Come scale the fence, okay?”
He did. He jumped down and scooped up my bag. Then he gestured for me to go ahead of him. “Ladies first.”
I growled at him, but it was hard to argue in wolf form, so I just started running.
He was right behind me.
First, I sprinted across the tracks so that I could get to the other side, the side where people disembarked from the train. I’d have to sneak in on that side, since I didn’t have a ticket. Well, we would have to, I guessed, since Landon was here. I wasn’t angry with him, actually. It was nice not to be alone. I was kind of glad he’d come along.
We ran inside the fence all the way back up to the train station. When we were close enough that we could get there in a couple of minutes walking, but not so close that we were conspicuous—just outside the reach of the station’s floodlights—I stopped.
Landon stopped too. He looked at me. “You going to shift?”
I nodded.
He dropped my bag and turned his back.
I shifted, pulled out my clothes, and dressed. “Okay,” I said.
He turned back around.
We huddled up against the fence to wait. The train we wanted to board would be coming into the station at 5:45. We’d get on then, hide somewhere, and then it would depart around 6:15.
I talked about this with Landon.
“Where are we going to hide?” he said.
“These train cars have closets at the back of the first car for the train staff to put their coats and belongings,” I said. “I looked up the plans online and found them. I was thinking I would hide there. I guess we should both be able to fit. The staff shouldn’t come and open the closet until the end of their shift.”
“And you know when that is?”
“Not really, but I guess I just assumed end of the day. Of course, it is the end of the day.”
“Or the beginning, depending on your perspective,” he said.
“True,” I said.
We didn’t talk about how it was a change of plans for him to be with me. We didn’t talk about how it was smarter for us not to be around each other anymore. I suppose he’d said it before, when he said that I made him stupid. He made me stupid, too.
* * *
I awoke to an alarm I’d set on my phone. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but I’d set it just in case when I’d huddled up against the fence and felt my eyes starting to close.
Landon, who was lying on the ground in front of me, sat up straight. “What?” he said in a sharp voice.
“We fell asleep,” I said. “We need to get up to the platform so that we can get on the train.”
“Right,” he said.
I got to my feet, stretched, and blinked away the sleep. I felt worse than I’d felt before that little catnap, since it had only been about an hour. I’d lost my whole night’s sleep.
When we got to the platform, it was empty, but then it should be, because this was the side where people disembarked, not where they boarded.
We could see people on the other side of the tracks, sitting on benches, waiting for the train. There were only two of them, and it looked as though they were asleep. Landon pulled the hood of his jacket up over his face and we both faded into the shadows to wait.
The train rushed into the station only a few minutes late. We hung back as people poured out of the open doors and clambered down the steps that would take them back to the main terminal. When the front car—the one with the closet—was empty, we hurried inside. I knew where the closet was, and I dashed there and opened the door.
Man.
It was going to be a tight fit.
I climbed inside.
Landon looked at the space that would be left to him. “We’ll be on top of each other.” The bottom had gone out of his voice.
I licked my lips. “Maybe you should just get off the train and let me do this.”
“I…” He hesitated, looking at the doors we’d come out of.
They slid closed.
“In a few minutes, the doors on that side will open.” I pointed. “So that people can board. You can go out then.”
He climbed into the closet. His shoulder collided with my shoulder and his hips and thigh with my hips and thigh. I felt a funny little tremor go through me. He sucked in a breath.
Then he pulled the door to the closet closed, sealing us inside.
“Landon, this is stupid,” I said. “If you lose control in here and rage out, there are all those people out there.”
“I can handle it.” His voice was strangled.
“Look, you don’t know what you can handle,” I said. “You thought you could handle being chained up on my bed—”
“You climbed on top of me and started dry humping me,” he said in a fierce whisper. “I was not expecting that.”
“I did not,” I scoffed. “I was only trying to see if you’d be able to reach—”
“Maybe we should stop talking about it,” he interrupted stiffly.
“Why? Are you—”
“I’m fine.”
“If you kill me, I will haunt you,” I said.
“I’m not going to—” He broke off. A beat. “Do you really want me to go?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, but what came out was, “No, I want you to stay.” Damn it.
He gulped, and I could hear it, because we were so close.
“You should go, though.” There. That was the intelligent thing to say.
“I know,” he said.
The doors to the train opened and people began to enter. We could hear the sound of them moving, and a few conversations from people traveling together. Landon didn’t leave.
We stayed next to each other, shoulder to shoulder.
It was uncomfortable. I didn’t have enough room. I kept thinking that if we could just stand sideways, with our bodies pressed against each other—
But that was too stupid to even consider.
Maybe if I put my back to him—
No, that wasn’t really better.
I squirmed.
“Can you not?” he breathed.
“Sorry.”
Neither of us moved.
Eventually, the train started moving.
We were so jammed into the closet that the movement didn’t affect us too much. The train took off. Still, we didn’t move.
Time passed. The train sped through the kingdom.
I wanted to get to my phone to see what time it was. I reached into my pocket and drove my elbow into Landon.
“Ouch,” he said. “Geez.”
“Shh,” I whispered. “They might hear you out there.”
“Sorry,” he whispered back.
I wriggled around, trying to get my phone out of my pocket.
“Camber.” Landon’s breath was hot on my ear. “What the hell are you trying to do?”
“I just want to see what time it is,” I said. “My phone’s in my pocket.” I tried again, but i
t was hard to maneuver.
“Hold on,” he said, and then he shifted position, moving his arm, and then—suddenly—we were facing each other, his front pressed into my front. He was warm. He was firm.
I gasped.
He blew out air.
I got out my phone and checked the time. We’d been in here for an hour. Only an hour. I showed him. Then I said, “We can move back now.”
“This way makes much better sense,” he said. “We have more room.”
“I know, but we’re…”
“I’m okay,” he murmured. “I promise.”
Well, it was more comfortable this way. Maybe we could just try it, I supposed..
We stayed that way, silent, for some time longer.
“Camber?” said Landon.
“Yeah?” I whispered.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”
“For what?”
“For almost killing you.” There was a hitch in his voice.
Impulsively, I hugged him. Then I realized what I was doing and released him.
But then he was hugging me too, holding me close against him, and his face was in my hair. “You don’t have to forgive me.”
“Landon…” I tightened my arms around him. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
* * *
A few hours later, the train stopped at our final destination. We had to wait to get out of the closet because we didn’t want anyone to see us coming out of it. But we made it off the train without incident. Landon walked with his hood up, and we moved through the station.
There were signs overhead. We could go to Elleria, which was part of the kingdom, or there was a processing area for people going to Pattos. Though the city was an exile city, it wasn’t necessarily off limits to people from the kingdom. People could apply for passes to go and visit other exiles who were there, and vampires went there just for fun sometimes, because there were no rules there.
We didn’t have passes, and we weren’t vampires.
We weren’t going to get through the processing line.
We also didn’t want to spend too much time deliberating in the station, because people might notice Landon at any time, and that was never going to go well.
Trying our luck, we went through a door marked Employees Only, thinking there might be a way out to Pattos that avoided processing for people who worked for the train system.
We were right.
We could see the door to the outside. It had a long window cut out of the middle, and we could see the city street on the other side, the cars that people used in Pattos, which were all old cars from fifty years ago that had been fixed up to run. They didn’t get new cars there.
“What the hell is a bloodhound doing in here?” said a voice.
We whirled and there were two security officers in uniforms. One was going for his gun.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I threw off my bag and shifted, not bothering to take off my clothes. My shirt and pants ripped as I leaped into the air.
The guard was quick. He got off several shots, but he’d been aiming for my human body, not my wolf form, and he missed.
I collided with him, my teeth closing over his wrist.
He dropped the gun.
It went off.
Landon tackled the other guy, who was struggling to get his gun out.
I snarled in the face of the guard I’d taken down, unsure of what to do now. I’d disarmed him, so that was good. I didn’t really want to kill him. But I couldn’t figure out how to incapacitate him without shifting, and then I would lose the advantage of my strength.
Another gunshot.
Landon cried out.
I looked over at him, worried.
Landon clutched his arm, stumbling backwards.
The guard he’d tackled leveled his gun to shoot again.
I leaped off the guard I was on and onto the other, biting his gun hand.
That guard dropped his gun too.
Landon recovered, sweeping one of the guns off the floor. “Let me see your hands,” he snapped.
Both of the guards raised their hands, both looking shaken. It was probably at the sight of a werewolf, because humans were led to believe we were more dangerous than we were.
Landon herded the guards into the mens’ restroom, where we used their own cuffs to cuff them to the rail in the handicapped stall. We took their guns and all their cash. Then we left the station, out onto the streets of Pattos.
* * *
We couldn’t walk openly on the streets of Pattos, because Landon was a bloodhound, and he would stand out like a sore thumb. They didn’t exile bloodhounds, after all. Bloodhounds just got killed if they were in trouble.
I used some of the guards’ money to attempt to bribe someone to tell me where Ondine Gammon lived, but the guy waved the money away, saying everyone knew about Ondine’s place. He rattled off the address. “The party tonight is a costume party. They open the doors at 7:00, but nobody ever shows up until at least 9:00.”
Party, huh?
Well, Landon had a built-in costume. We might as well crash. It was barely noon, though. We’d have some time to kill. We found a burger joint, which was much like any similar place in the kingdom except there were human girls on the street in front with signs that read things like, Blood from the vein, inquire about pricing!
I didn’t get it. Would vampires really pay to drink blood from humans when they all had blood slaves back home?
Landon and I chatted about it over food. We sat in a corner to eat, but no one was really looking at him anyway.
“Maybe it’s like the guy who can’t be faithful to his wife,” said Landon.
“I’m not following,” I said.
“Well, of course they can drink from their blood slaves, but they get bored of the same blood. Coming here, drinking blood from other humans, it’s exciting.”
“Maybe,” I allowed, eating some french fries. “I also don’t understand these humans. Don’t they get bonded to the vamps that drink from them?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Probably. But if there’s a new vampire drinking from them every day, then the bond just gets cut off. And it does fade for humans, just like wolves. It’s only that it takes longer.”
“So, how long would a human have to go without getting bitten for it to fade?” I said.
“Uh, about a week,” said Landon. “At least that’s about how long it was for me.”
Right. I forgot that he’d gone through this. I changed the subject after that, asking about what I should do for a costume. I figured it was best not to dwell on the past.
After we finished our food, we left the restaurant, avoiding the humans with signs and the vampires prowling. We went to a drug store and bought some makeup and cheap costume jewelry. Before the party, I painted my face garishly.
If anyone asked, I would not be able to say what I was dressed as. But I looked like I was in costume.
Even though the man we’d talked to before told us that everyone arrived fashionably late, we showed up right at 7:00.
Landon kept his hood up and grinned at the person at the door.
But whoever was there was obviously already drunk. He didn’t care. He told us the party was five dollars a head.
Ah, well, that made a little more sense. Maybe Ondine Gammon threw parties for money. It seemed odd that she would be throwing parties and just admitting anyone. But if there was money involved, it seemed less strange.
We paid the man, and we were now officially running low on the cash we’d stolen from the guards.
The doorman put orange paper bracelets on our wrists so that we could leave and come back without paying again. Then he let us inside.
The door opened onto a vast, white room. There was a white statue of a naked man dancing in the center of the room. Above him, a dazzling four-tiered chandelier glittered down on the white tile floor. Behind him, a white marble staircase rose several stories.
>
In the distance, we could hear the sound of bass heavy dance music.
Landon offered me his arm. “Shall we?”
I nodded.
We ascended the steps. As we did, the music grew louder and louder. When we reached the top, it was positively deafening. We emerged at the top of the staircase into a large, dark room lit with roaming strobe lights. There were quite a few people there already, but the room was so big that it looked as if no one was there. I wondered if the place was packed by 9:00.
There were women wandering around in tube tops and mini-skirts carrying trays with shots on them that reacted with the black lights in the room, making them seem to glow.
A few people were dancing in the middle of the floor. One had glow sticks for necklaces and bracelets and anklets. As she spun around, she was a rainbow of day-glo colors.
Well, this seemed like a party, all right, but where was Ondine Gammon? That was who we had come to see, after all.
Landon and I walked the perimeter of the room, looking at the guests who were in attendance. But none of them were Ondine.
We stepped out onto a hallway that led to the bathrooms, but we walked past the bathrooms and began trying doors.
Most of them were locked.
A few weren’t. One led to a storage closet. Another led to another bathroom, this one at the other end of the hallway.
Discouraged, we headed back to the party.
And there she was.
She was in the middle of the room, surrounded by a flock of people. She had a glowing drink in one hand, and she was wearing a tight leotard with a tail attached. She had whiskers painted on her cheeks and a headband with ears on her head. She was dressed as a cat. She was laughing and gesturing widely with her drink.
Landon and I hurried over to her.
“…so, he says to his son, ‘That’s the woman I’ve been telling you about,’” Ondine was saying. “And then he points to her across the room.”
A collective groan echoed through the people gathered around.
Ondine laughed. “Well, as you can imagine, his son was not pleased. I never saw a man’s face get so red. I thought the father and son were going to come to blows. They might have if my bouncers hadn’t interceded.”
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