“Gus, I think you can forget about that ever happening,” Tristan told her gently. “He’s practically a monk.”
She sighed. “But he’s so pretty.”
Branek’s voice was sly. “Augusta, if all you want is someone pretty …”
“Oh, shut up. I already said you were gross.”
“That’s not what this girl said last night. Didn’t say much of anything, really.” He raised his heavy brows and loudly whispered his punchline behind one hand. “She was dead. I killed her.”
“God, Branek, tell me you killed her after you fucked her.”
He wiggled his eyebrows, his hurt feelings completely forgotten, apparently. “I’ll never tell. And neither will she.”
“You people disgust me,” Tristan said.
“You love us,” Augusta corrected, smacking his arm playfully.
“You, maybe.” He stood up from his chair and backed toward the door. “Have fun with your bagged blood and corpses, you sick fucks.”
Out in the foyer, he debated whether to return to his room, to Dawn, or find something else to do until sunrise. His conflicted thoughts disappeared at the sight of a familiar figure by the front door. He stopped short and drank her in.
She stood before him in a tight lilac dress and nude heels, hands on her slim hips, legs in a wide stance. Her full, smirking lips blazed red. Long, caramel-blonde hair tumbled past her shoulders. Deep brown eyes glimmered at him. There was some indefinable stillness about her, something that suggested violence. The first time he’d seen her, this quality had instantly driven him wild. He’d wanted her.
“Nola,” he said now, his voice betraying a note of surprise.
“Lover,” she joked breathily.
There’d been women. Not many, but enough. He wasn’t like Jared, mourning a list of dead, reluctant lovers. Or Branek, with an insatiable desire to prove his misanthropy.
The women were mostly human, since there were more of them than vampires, and they hung out where they were easy to find. He met them in bars, at gas stations, libraries, grocery stores. Sometimes their interaction was little more than a sordid fuck against a back alley wall, but sometimes he took them home to play. Most of their names were lost to him now, if he’d ever bothered to learn them in the first place. Which he probably hadn’t.
Tristan wanted to be a lover, wanted to be loved, though he didn’t like to admit that. It felt weak and didn’t fit how he saw himself. Didn’t fit with the lifestyle. He’d been more tender with some than others, depending on what they wanted, but his behavior was always a lie. He’d never treated any of them fairly.
Not one of the women had mattered. Not until Nola.
Branek had met her at some music festival, where they’d both been draining groupies and drummers. Impressed by her bloodthirstiness, he’d brought her back to meet the rest of them. They’d probably fucked first, but Tristan didn’t mind. It wasn’t as if the group of them had never shared with each other before.
Just … he didn’t want to share Dawn.
He forced himself to stop thinking about her and let a smile tug up one corner of his mouth. “What,” he said, “are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Nola dropped her arms and walked toward him, hips swaying, heels clicking on the tile. “Augusta told me you’d been away. I wanted to be here to surprise you when you got back, but you beat me.” Reaching him, she pressed a kiss to his lips. She trailed a finger up and down his arm, teasing the skin beneath his sleeve, and glanced up at him coquettishly. “I’ve heard things about you,” she purred.
“Like what?”
“You got a new toy while I was gone. I might be jealous.”
He sighed. “It’s nothing.”
“Prove it to me.”
“Now?”
“Yeah. In the garden, like we used to. You want to?”
Fuck yes he did.
They went outside and found their old spot near the pool, in the shadow of velvet ash trees. Chemical smells from the pool on the other side of the trees tickled his nostrils. Nola lay on the grass and he leaned over her, pushing the dress up to her waist. He needed to feel himself inside her right fucking now.
She moaned as he ran his hands over her body. God, yes, she was always so wet and enthusiastic. But for the first time his own enthusiasm for her was strangely lacking. Her proportions felt all wrong to his hands. The texture of her skin was strangely unpleasant. She didn’t fit properly beneath him. Feelings of doubt and yearning assaulted him, unbidden.
What the fuck was wrong here.
“Shit,” he said.
“What is it?”
“I—uh, I can’t—”
“Oh, Tristan,” Nola said sympathetically. “Let me help.”
“No,” he growled.
He rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. She obligingly ground against him, fondling her breasts. Watching her ride him never failed to stir him up. But not tonight. Tonight he ached with disappointment and rage. He tried to manage the unwanted emotions by slamming himself up into her, but they only grew more powerful.
Though he finished, there was no satisfaction, and afterward he felt unaccountably bleak.
They parted and rose to their feet, an unusual tension between them. There were no words of affection tonight. They stood there in silence, she pulling down her dress and he zipping up his jeans.
With grass in her hair, Nola frowned at him. “What’s the matter?” she asked. He heard the concern and disappointment in her voice.
“Nothing. It’s not you,” he assured her. “I’m—I don’t know. I don’t feel right.”
“Let me know if I can help?”
“Of course.” He leaned down and gave her a soft, lingering kiss. “We’ll talk later.”
Augusta and Branek were no longer in the family room. Tristan had no idea where they’d gone. Jared was probably holed up in his room with Leila. Dawn’s friend, Tristan remembered. The thought was suddenly uncomfortable to him. He turned abruptly and went back outside to look for Nola, but she was no longer in their spot.
Alone, he wandered around for a few minutes, trying to pinpoint the source of his restlessness. There were things he didn’t want to think about. Misdeeds he didn’t want to remember. If you were going to be a sinner, it was better not to repent. He would be harsher on himself than any god ever would.
Across the lawn, the shadows shifted. Someone moved toward him. The pale, square-jawed face of a thin man with silver hair and lead-colored eyes appeared. His presence wasn’t unexpected. I watch, Loftus had informed them many times over the years. I know everything you do.
“Tristan,” Loftus said. “I would like to speak with you.”
Dryness scratched Tristan’s throat. “Of course.”
“Was your trip successful?”
“Yes. Fallon was in a town called Mineral Springs. I told him you needed him back here.”
“And yet he has not come to me. Did it not occur to you to bring him here by force?”
“I didn’t think it necessary to go that far.”
“I see.” Loftus turned his eyes to the moon and appeared thoughtful. From years of experience, Tristan knew the calm was a façade. “I cannot help but think your failure to act has something to do with this girl you’ve been dragging around with you. I did not imagine, when I sent you on the trip, you would bring her back with you.”
“Mm. She’s nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Of course not. And I cannot say you are the only one ever to have lost his head this way.” Loftus smiled. “I’ve had doubts about you in the past. At times I’ve thought you too soft for our lifestyle. Thankfully, you’ve nullified my concerns many times. You have proven yourself, Tristan, but I do not like this game you are playing. I must remind you toys are meant for your temporary amusement. They are not to sustain you.”
“Yes. I know.” Tristan’s stomach felt unpleasantly lumpish.
“I am aware you do, and I hope you come to your senses soon. All I require from you is commitment and obedience. Can you give those things to me?”
Tristan looked Loftus in the eyes. “Don’t doubt it.”
“Do not give me cause.”
And then Loftus receded into the shadows, returning to whatever voyeuristic control-freak hell he’d come from.
Alone, Tristan sat down by the pool, shaded by the ash trees, and decided for about the hundredth time in his life he didn’t give a fuck about anything Loftus said. Trapped at twenty-six, more and more years slipped by him, and there was no point keeping track. He wasn’t a child. Why the fuck would he answer to someone other than himself, or let another person define and run his life.
All their lives.
He felt lost, and maybe the others did too but were too afraid to say so. Maybe they’d let Loftus control them for so long none of them even knew the definition of self. Vampire was their identity. Loftus was their master. He’d broken them long before letting them discover that for themselves in a dark, damp passage in the earth.
Tristan’s mind wandered to Dawn. The thought of her both lifted his spirits and dragged them down. If he kept her, he would destroy her. Undoubtedly. If he did it right, she’d let him, and she wouldn’t even know it until too late.
Help me, he thought. Save me. I don’t know where I am.
Nine
In the morning, Dawn wasn’t sure whether she’d actually spoken with Leila sometime during the night before, but the memory stuck with her. She was alone in the room.
She went into the bathroom and filled a glass with water. She kept it beneath the faucet even after it was full, letting the water run over her hand in a smooth, continuous stream. It was sort of comforting in a small, mesmerizing way.
After a moment she shut off the water, drank from the glass, and dried her hand on a worn white towel.
“Are you all right?” Dawn whispered to her reflection.
I’m starting to … feel. Freak out. Break down. She didn’t know which one to choose. All of them, probably.
There was a bowl of fruit on the small end table by the teal chair. She pulled out an orange and ate it section by section. She left the rind on table.
With a sigh, she walked over to the door to try it, not thinking it would be unlocked. To her surprise, it was. She froze for a second, listening hard, but there were no sounds. Alone and apparently unobserved, she stepped cautiously into the foyer.
It was daytime. Maybe the vampires were sleeping, resting like corpses in coffins, though she knew better about the coffins. And if Tristan were any indication of a typical vampire, they wouldn’t be sleeping.
Walking along the wall, she came to another door. It was off in a corner, on the opposite side of the foyer from the purple-curtained room. Looking in, she saw a small office. A plain writing desk in the center of the room held a brass lamp, glowing softly. Every inch of wall space was devoted to shelves, most of them crammed with books.
Hello, Dawn thought with interest, temporarily forgetting she was a prisoner. The sight of books could do that to her, apparently.
She’d only look for a moment, just in case there was some kind of information she could make useful somehow. She drifted toward the shelves, letting her hand come up to hover over the spines of ancient texts. They were bound in cloth and leather, some relatively new and others disintegrating. Some of the books were swollen into wedges, the pages discolored with water damage. Some were just sheaves of yellowed parchment bound together with twine. They looked so rare and expensive she was afraid to touch them, yet she wanted to linger and browse them all, just for fun.
After circling the room once, she walked to the desk and glanced over the papers strewn across it. Most were covered in someone’s indecipherable scrawl. She saw intricate mathematical equations that made absolutely no sense to her and charts with pentacles and other weird symbols she didn’t recognize.
Shuffling lightly through the papers, she saw a small book bound in soft brown leather. A few sheets of paper fluttered to the ground as Dawn picked it up and let it fall open to a page in the middle. It was a diary, written in a quick, slanting hand.
We were in the car, heading nowhere into darkness. The headlights glowed upon a narrow strip of paved road. Stars stretched overhead in glittering infinity. Delphine leaned her forehead on the cool glass of the window. Her eyes could not see in the darkness as mine could, but I knew she must have felt our distance from civilization. She must have known this was just some anonymous road snaking through dry lake beds and endless mountains, the night cold enough for jackets and blankets and fires. She missed trees and greenery, but I found the desert suited me just fine.
I looked at her profile, the dashboard lights carving her delicate features with harsh lines. She made me angry and my foot pressed down hard on the gas. When I spoke, my voice broke the silence with a startling growl, bitter and biting.
“You’re mine, Delphine. I made you mine when I gave you my child. And now you refuse to let me give you this gift?”
She said nothing. Her reflection in the black window was passionless and uncaring. Her indifference gave rise to my anger. I glared at her, not bothering to watch the road. I hit the steering wheel several times, nearly cracking it. Delphine did not flinch.
She’d rejected my offer just days after losing my child. “It’s not a gift,” she’d said. “It’s a curse.” But I did not agree, and I knew she would soon see reason. Her body was still soft from pregnancy, her breasts heavy with useless milk, and she would only need time. She belonged to me and her will was not strong enough to resist me for long.
I switched off the headlights, plunging us into a darkness mitigated only by the inadequate glow of the dashboard. She did not blink, but I could see her chewing anxiously on her lower lip. Her heartbeat quickened.
“Tell me you’re mine,” I implored. “Tell me or I will kill us both.”
As soon as she saw the tiny pinpoints of light in the distance, I eased the car over into the left lane. My speed made the old car shake. She sat up, staring at the oncoming headlights, but I didn’t change lanes. If she said nothing, she wanted to die. I’d warned her. If she would not make the choice to join me as a vampire, I would make it for her.
Blinding whiteness filled the windshield. She reached for the wheel and I slammed on the brakes. Our bodies pulled forward. The car swerved around us, honking angrily, and Delphine cried out with crazed relief. But she’d pulled the wheel too sharply and our speed had changed too abruptly. We were rolling, glass was breaking. We were weightless.
Silence. I felt a trickle of blood on my forehead, but I was otherwise unharmed. I came carefully to my feet and saw her lying a few yards away in the dirt, bits of glass studding her forearms. The smells of blood and burning rubber drifted away on a breeze. There was a fire in the banged-up car.
She called my name and I was at her side in an instant. Her fine black hair was wet and thick. When I touched it, my hand came away soaked in blood.
“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” she said.
“I’ll save you.”
“No. Just get away from me.”
“I won’t lose you, Delphine. You are my love, the mother of my child. You are beautiful.”
“Your dead child! You don’t even know me!” she shrieked weakly. “I hate you.”
I knew it was only her pain speaking, so I had to take it away from her. She cried as I drank her blood, but soon the tears dried and her body stilled. I dripped my own blood down her throat. Her eyes were closed against the stinging, smoky air. My lungs burned.
Something had gone wrong, but I refused to believe she was truly dead. I lifted her body in my arms and walked into the night.
Dawn flipped through some more pages, not really reading but seeing enough to realize whoever had written this diary was no stranger to violence. With a shudder, she closed the book and put it back on the desk, covering it with loos
e sheets of paper. Strange words jumped off the pages at her: quintessence, chrysopoeia, henosis, prima materia.
Prima materia. Fallon had mentioned those words in Mineral Springs. They meant nothing to her, but she couldn’t deny the sudden fear this room and its contents inspired. Someone was messing with dark things and she didn’t want any part of it.
Though she wanted to leave the room right away, first she bent to pick up the papers that had dropped to the floor. She didn’t want anyone knowing she’d been here. Her fingers felt thick and clumsy as she tried to lift the thin sheets from the hard floor as quickly as possible.
And then she noticed it—a hand. A hand beneath the desk. It was pale and bloodless, severed just below the wrist. Dawn could see the bones and red gore congealed at the end. The fingers were curled in a loose fist.
The papers fluttered from her hands as she jumped to her feet. What did it matter if anyone knew she’d been there? A dead person’s hand was just lying on the floor. Maybe that was an everyday occurrence in this house, but she’d never seen a severed body part casually forgotten beneath a desk. The sight of it freaked her out and reminded her of the type of people who lived here.
Vampires. Bloodsucking, murderous vampires.
She turned to leave the room and jumped to see someone standing in the doorway. Pressing a hand flat over her rapidly beating heart, she realized it was only Leila.
“Jesus. You scared me. Oh my god, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Leila whispered.
Leila’s olive skin had lost much of its luster. Her black brows arched high above her amber eyes, which appeared huge in her hollow face. Dawn caught glimpses of her inner strength, but also the misery Leila was desperately trying to hide. She couldn’t, though. Not from her best friend.
“I meant to come rescue you,” Dawn said. “But … everything went wrong. I don’t know what I was thinking— God, I fucked this up so bad.”
“Like we stood a chance against these psychos anyway.”
Dreams for the Dead Page 11