The Last Vampire Box Set

by R. A. Steffan

  I shivered, remembering the carnage in the parking lot. “I doubt the TSA is going to let you stroll past with a giant freaking sword strapped to your back, you know.”

  He snorted. “It probably wouldn’t be worth the hassle, true. Happily, swords are on the list of rather unlikely things that can be checked in luggage. Also, throwing stars, believe it or not. Americans, eh? Sometimes I really wonder about you lot.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. Huh. Maybe cosplayers had a political lobbying group I’d never heard about.

  Rans shrugged without lifting his elbows from the counter he was leaning on. I slid off the bar stool and took my plate and silverware to the stainless steel double sink. After giving everything a quick wash and setting it in the basin to dry, I wiped down the counter and threw my napkin in the trash.

  “I’ll meet you back here in forty-five minutes,” I said, feeling fatigue start to creep back in after my brief reprieve of not feeling like shit.

  He nodded, and made no move to follow me as I left the kitchen, retracing my steps to the elegant bathroom. Forty-five minutes of sleep wouldn’t make much of a dent, assuming I could get to sleep at all. I eyed the claw-foot tub and made an executive decision.

  After locking the door behind me, I stripped down and used the sink and some hand soap to scrub my panties, which had borne the unfortunate brunt of my slutty horn-dog routine earlier. The towel bar was heated… of course it was. I laid the damp underwear over it, trying to get as much of the fabric in contact with the warm metal as I could. It would help dry them, at least a little.

  There wasn’t much to be done for the rest of my clothing—it was all I had to wear now. But, hey. Maybe JoAnne Reynolds hated doing laundry, okay? That would be my story, and I was sticking to it.

  The tub was as luxuriously indulgent as it appeared, and I soaked in the hot water scented with lavender bath beads for as long as I dared before giving myself a quick scrub and rinsing off.

  I arrived in the kitchen at three a.m. sharp, wearing panties that didn’t stink of stale sex and were only slightly wet from being washed in a stranger’s bathroom sink. Rans was waiting for me, having exchanged his bad-boy biker vibe for something more in line with what he’d worn to the restaurant the other day—casual, but still put together.

  “You keep spare clothes here?” I asked dryly. “What is this… Guthrie’s Penthouse Apartment and Safehouse?”

  “Be prepared, that’s my motto,” he said, unperturbed.

  I couldn’t hold in a snort. “Don’t try to tell me you were ever a boy scout. Because I won’t believe you.”

  “I’m afraid my boyhood predates that particular institution by a few hundred years,” he replied easily. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t borrow their motto, now does it? Are you ready?”

  I filed that throwaway line for future consideration and gestured at myself—slightly rumpled clothing, boots, and raincoat with fake ID and a couple of burner phones in the pockets. “What can I say? I like to travel light.”

  He spared me a quick smile. “Low maintenance, eh? Give me that dagger from yesterday. I’ll box it up and put it in the checked luggage with the sword.”

  “What, no throwing stars?” I asked, feigning disappointment.

  He huffed. “Sadly not.”

  I carefully drew the unfamiliar hard length from my boot and held it out. He gave the blade a sour look. “Hilt first, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  I flushed and quickly turned the knife in my hand, pinching the silver blade between my thumb and forefinger. He took it by the wooden handle and placed it in a flat box padded with newspaper.

  “So… silver, huh?” I asked. “I thought that was werewolves.”

  “No such thing as werewolves,” he said. “And as metals go, it’s not my favorite thing, no.”

  He stuffed the sealed box in a suitcase that was sitting in the corner. I eyed the large piece of luggage.

  “So, if we’re not taking the motorcycle…?” I trailed off.

  “There’s an Uber on its way,” he informed me. “Come on—it’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  I followed him out of the apartment after leaving a quick thank-you note scribbled on a napkin for Guthrie. We entered the elevator and headed down to street level rather than the underground parking garage.

  “Why is Guthrie so sad all the time?” I asked. “I mean… he seems to have a pretty sweet life, except the part where vampires show up at his door in the middle of the night. But sadness hangs over him like a cloud.”

  “He made an unfortunate decision, and his wife died,” Rans said without looking at me.

  My face fell. “Oh,” I said quietly, wondering if he’d driven drunk and gotten into a fatal accident or something. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He didn’t volunteer anything else, and a few moments later we were leaving the lobby of the grand old building. A white SUV pulled up to the curb as though choreographed, and the passenger side window rolled down.

  “John Reynolds?” the driver asked.

  “That’s right,” Rans said without a hint of irony. The almost-convincing Midwest accent was back. If I didn’t know what he was supposed to sound like, I’m sure I would have bought it completely. As it was, something about it grated.

  There was no denying my tension at leaving the perceived safety of Guthrie’s apartment, but the drive to Lambert was free of incidents. Rans printed out boarding passes at a kiosk and checked in the Suitcase of Pointy Doom. It felt odd not to have anything with me but the clothes on my back—no purse, no backpack, not even a proper wallet.

  I was no fan of airports, mostly because airports implied planes. And I really wasn’t a fan of planes. Not once they got off the ground, anyway. Though to be fair, it wasn’t as though buses had proven to be a much safer option for me in the end.

  The security line snaked around a long series of barriers, full of unhappy people with heavy carry-ons shuffling forward a few steps at a time. Children cried. Men in suits checked their watches. Considering it was currently around four a.m., I could only imagine how bad the line would be later in the day.

  By the time we reached the TSA agent at her little podium, my back was starting to ache. I realized with a start that I was facing life without NSAIDS… my trusty bottle of ibuprofen consigned to whatever fate had befallen my backpack the previous night. Given that fact, I was doing surprisingly well. My almost giddy feeling of healthy normalcy was slowly fading, but I was still miles ahead of where I’d been over the past few weeks.

  The TSA woman accepted my boarding pass and ID, scrutinizing it for a moment before looking closely at my face. I tried not to react—not to let my shoulders stiffen or my face betray worry.

  “She’s just got one of those faces,” Rans said in a low, compelling voice. The American accent still sounded wrong, but something about his tone made gooseflesh prickle across my skin.

  The TSA agent’s eyes flew to his and caught fast. She blinked rapidly, a look of mild confusion sliding across her features before they smoothed. She returned to processing my ticket.

  “You’ve got one of those faces,” she said as she handed everything back to me.

  I had to suppress a shiver. “Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it?” I said in a determinedly light tone. “My husband tells people that all the time.”

  She smiled absently and I continued through the checkpoint to the conveyor belt. Boots off, raincoat and cell phones into a gray bin. Belatedly, it occurred to me that having two cheap cell phones with me might look suspicious. I should have stuck one of them in the suitcase. There was nothing for it, though, so I moved to the creepy full-body scanner thing and assumed the proper position, feeling both ridiculous and nervous as hell.

  The operator completed the scan and waved me through, and I relaxed incrementally. With my boots back on and my raincoat slung over my arm, I waited for Rans to join me and we headed to the gate. After the line at the baggage check-in and the security line, there wasn’t
much of a wait before boarding. I spent it staring at the lights outside the floor-to-ceiling windows with unfocused eyes.

  It wasn’t until we were called to board that I realized where our seats were. “First class, dear?” I couldn’t help asking. “Isn’t that… kind of expensive?” I felt ridiculous in the spacious airline seat, sitting there with my rumpled clothes smelling faintly of yesterday’s body odor.

  Rans looked coolly amused. “Only the best for you, pet,” he said, and damn it, I was growing to hate that fake accent more each time I heard it. “Window seat?”

  My body went cold. “Er… no. I’m good with the aisle seat, thanks.”

  His blue gaze swept over me. “Fair enough.”

  When we were settled, I fiddled with a snag in the fabric of my jeans. The denim was dark enough to hide the stains where I’d been pushed to my knees in the wet parking lot, fortunately, but I was still going to have to figure out how to acquire some more clothes soon.

  The cabin attendant was droning on about safety measures, and I did my best to tune out the discussion of water landings and flotation devices. When the plane rolled away from the gate umbilical with a lurch, my hands clamped around the armrests and my heart beat faster.

  “All right over there?” Rans asked, and I swear if there’d been a hint of smugness or amusement in those words I would have smacked him there and then, powerful undead creature or no.

  “Never better,” I gritted out. “I live for days like this.”

  A pause, and I heard the sound of the window cover being pulled down, cutting off the view of the moving scenery outside. He was silent as the plane taxied along the maze of runways, stopping and starting while I tried to distract myself from what was about to happen.

  Then it was time to take off. My eyes closed, and my fingernails dug furrows into the cushy upholstery of the first class seat as the engines powered up, the whine becoming a roar that propelled us down the runway and into the air with a sickening lurch.

  SIXTEEN

  GOD, I HATED THIS part of flying so much. No one would ever be able to convince my mind that this was a real thing that humans could actually do with relative safety. There were dozens of us crammed into a metal tube with wings that had been painted to look like a giant Tylenol. Stick a few internal combustion engines on the wings—ones that would catch on fire if a sparrow got sucked into them—and… why were we doing this again?

  My ears hurt, and I’d left my stomach floating somewhere along the Mississippi River, far below us. I jerked in surprise when cool skin touched mine, easing my right hand free of its death grip on the seat arm. My eyes flew open as Rans tangled our fingers together. He wasn’t looking at me, and he didn’t say a word.

  The unexpectedness of the gesture jarred me out of my spiraling anxiety. I wasn’t at all sure what to do with it, or even what to make of it, so I did nothing. Well… nothing except cling to that preternaturally strong grip. After a small eternity, the airplane leveled out. I let out a slow breath, hopeful that there wouldn’t be too many course changes or bouts of turbulence, and that I’d be able to pretend for a while that we weren’t hurtling through the sky at insane speeds.

  “Drink?” Rans suggested dryly as I released my death grip.

  I opened my eyes to find the attendant wheeling his drinks cart down the narrow aisle. “Tempting,” I said, “but probably a bad idea.”

  The last thing I needed was another reason for my stomach to rebel if things got rough during the flight. I ordered spring water, while my seatmate waved off the attendant’s polite, “And for you, sir?”

  “Thought you enjoyed a good vintage of red,” I muttered once the airline employee had moved on.

  “I do,” he said, clearly amused. “And I had a particularly fine one just a few hours ago.”

  There wasn’t much to say to that, so I changed the subject. “Tell me more about where we’re going. You said Atlantic City, but our tickets are for Philadelphia.”

  “There are no direct flights out of St. Louis. With layovers, it was faster to fly into the City of Brotherly Love and have our host send a car for us. It’s only about sixty miles away.”

  I nodded. “And your friend? Tell me more about him. Is he a… person who also enjoys a good vintage of red?” I’d almost said vampire, but realized before it slipped out that talking about supernatural creatures in a public setting like this was maybe not the best plan. Oddly, that strange tension I’d noticed in Rans earlier returned at my words.

  “Actually,” he said mildly, “he’s more of a whiskey drinker, when he drinks at all. I’ve known him for… a long time. I expect he’ll have better insight into your situation than I do.”

  His voice was low enough to be relatively private, and he spoke in his natural accent. I pondered the rather vague words, trying to fit them against his obvious discomfort with my question. Unless I wanted to get drawn into a morass of double entendres relating to drinking blood, I wasn’t likely to solve the little puzzle without more information.

  Still, I filed away the fact that Rans didn’t like being asked questions about other vampires, or about the supposed war that Caspian and his people had apparently won. The plane lurched a bit, and I caught my breath, steadying the plastic cup of water.

  “This is a ridiculous way to travel,” I said. “I mean… seriously. Who thought this was a good idea?”

  He huffed a breath of silent amusement. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about, luv. I was once involved in a biplane crash. Very nasty. But you don’t hear me whingeing about it, now do you?”

  I glowered, but kept my voice low. “Unless it was a biplane stuffed full of garlic, I don’t guess you had much to worry about, Mister Shotgun-Blast-Through-the-Chest.”

  “Nonsense,” he retorted. “I imagine things could’ve been quite ugly if they hadn’t put the fire out quickly enough. Whatever the case, this is still the safest form of travel. Crashes are rare, and I’ve already been in one, so I like to think I’m statistically crash-proof at this point.”

  “Biplane,” I muttered. “You know, I can wake up from this dream anytime.”

  Another snort, this one less amused. “Best of luck with that. I’ve been trying for centuries; no joy so far.”

  I let the conversation fade into silence on that faintly bitter note. The flight was only two hours, and there was an entertainment screen built into the back of the seat in front of me. I poked through the menu until I found something mindless to watch, and pretended to focus on the screen. Rans lifted the window cover, revealing an expanse of Technicolor blue above a carpet of rolling white clouds.

  My eyes kept straying sideways to his profile as he gazed absently out at the view beyond the cabin. Sharp planes, softened here and there by a serious furrow or a faint hint of crow’s feet. Male beauty bordering on the unearthly, accentuated by those eyes that now seemed to reflect the blue of the sky he was gazing at.

  Was I really ready to believe this madness I’d been thrust into? I was Alice—crashing through the looking glass, wondering what was real and what wasn’t. But unless I’d truly gone as mad as a hatter, the fact remained that I’d seen this man with a hole blown through his chest. I’d seen him drink blood, and I’d seen him tear through three armed men with a sword. I’d pulled a silver knife out of his shoulder, and seen that same expanse of skin pale and unblemished an hour later.

  I’d seen my life torn down and burned in the space of little more than a day. If there wasn’t something more to the world… if there wasn’t another reality hidden beneath the one I’d known, then I had nothing left.

  * * *

  After I’d white-knuckled my way through an uneventful landing, we disembarked into a larger and busier airport than the one we’d left behind in St. Louis. I had a flash of paranoia that we would exit the gate to find a group of too-perfect blonde men waiting to jump us and drag me away. In reality, no one paid us much mind.

  It took a bit of time for the Suitcase of Stabbiness
to catch up to us at the baggage claim. Eventually, it rolled around, showing no sign of having been a victim of any overzealous security screeners. Rans checked his phone and fired off a quick text, then gestured me to follow him toward one of the exits.

  A black Escalade was waiting a short distance away, the windows tinted too heavily to catch any sort of glimpse of the interior. As we approached, though, the driver’s door opened and the most striking man I’d ever seen in my life stepped out.

  He was tall—easily six-foot-three. Ageless, in the way that distinguished men in their late forties sometimes are. His dark hair—cut short—was just beginning to recede at the temples, where streaks of silver stood out from the shiny black. His face had too much character to be called classically handsome, but it was sure as hell arresting.

  Deep-set brown eyes took both of us in with a single quick sweep. He moved with a sort of spare grace—unhurried yet purposeful.

  “Ransley,” he greeted, surprising me by pulling my companion into a brief, almost paternal embrace. His voice was not so much deep as resonant. The single word sent a small shiver up my spine.

  Rans returned the hug with evident sincerity, patting the newcomer on the back before they parted. “Nigellus,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to play chauffeur for us personally. We could have rented a car and saved you the drive.”

  “Nonsense, my dear boy,” Nigellus said, as though offended by the very idea. “I would hardly have delayed the opportunity to meet you and your companion—not after getting such an intriguing message from you.”

  I hung back, trying to get a better read on this newcomer who gave off a decided whiff of danger despite his easy urbanity. The fact that I felt drawn to him on some unconscious level was a bit worrying. It wasn’t sexual attraction—though his charisma was undeniable, he just didn’t strike me that way. Honestly, the best way I could describe it was as the opposite of the effect Caspian Werther had on me.

  With Golden Boy, as Rans insisted on calling him, I had the overwhelming urge to get out of Dodge as fast as humanly possible. With Nigellus, I was almost desperate to know more about him. And that bothered me, because it implied that my reaction wasn’t natural.