Not long after Carl drives off, Paul arrives to pick me up. "Have you noticed anything unusual around the house over the past few days," I ask him as we're on our way home.
"No," he says. "You asked us to let you know if we ever caught anybody in the yard or loitering around on the road, but we haven't seen anything."
It's only a very small reassurance. If there's a Negre in the area now looking for me, if that's what had unsettled Carl so much, it would be way too careful for a couple of freewheeling artistic types like Paul and Carol to notice it.
I also have to consider that the other vampire may not be hunting me at all, but, as I told Carl, may be drawn to Ivy. That could be why my sense told me that they'd find Ivy through Carl, but gave me no sign of what my immediate fate might be. Finding me here would just be an added bonus.
A hundred years alive, and I'm in love with somebody – genuinely and truly in love – for the first time ever, and now I’m feeling pushed to hurry the relationship along instead of giving it time to grow on its own. This is why I do not believe in fate, regardless of Carl’s accusation. If Ivy and I were fated to be together, I wouldn't be wondering if my old clan were at this very moment stalking one or both of us. I would be savoring every moment between now and prom night, deliciously anticipating our first time together, on a night that I could make perfect for her.
Now I just want Paul to drive faster because I need to have a conversation with Ivy that he does not need to overhear.
As soon as we get home, I dash up to my room, barely remembering to thank Paul for coming to get me, and I call Ivy.
"Hey, Ben. How's the bike?"
"Nothing wrong with it that a couple of days waiting for parts and an insurance check won't fix. I should be back on it by this time next week. Plenty of time for you to ride to prom with me," I say.
"I don't think you know very much about how much prom dresses cost, or low long the skirt on mine is going to be. There's no way I'm getting it anywhere near the motorcycle. If my dress doesn't snag in it and kill me, I'm sure it'll get filthy."
"I'll buy you a new one."
"Ben," Ivy says, mostly joking, but with a bit of a stern reminder that we've had this conversation. "I will buy my own dress, and we're going halfsies on dinner and anything else that may cost money that night. You agreed."
"I did," I say. I love that she is strong willed in that regard, but also wish that she were willing to just let me make the night for her. It's our senior year, and the only year she's got a date for prom. I want to make it magical for her.
More than anything, though, I need to make sure she is under my protection before then. The Negre are horrid beasts, but even they cannot violate another vampire's claim on a mortal. Not while that vampire still lives. That is why they forbid anybody in the clan from making a claim without permission from the head of the clan. It is too powerful even for them to undo. Still, the protection has its limits. No other vampire will be able to physically harm her, feed on her, or turn her as long as I live, but there are ways to torture somebody without ever touching their body. The Negre are very good at those twisted arts.
What I say next is a gamble, a huge risk that would be foolish of me to take if I hadn't seen the way she's acted around me since our first kiss. "Can I treat you to a special evening tonight, instead? A night where I get to completely spoil you."
"What do you have in mind?" she asks. It seems like she's receptive of the idea.
"I want to get out of town tonight. I know that I've had a hard time of fitting in here, and it's just getting to me a bit, especially since you and I are now a thing. There's a place up at the top of Harker's Pass that I see when I'm out riding that looks like it has really nice rooms. It's Friday, so neither of us has school tomorrow. We can have a night together, just us, without being in a big room full of people that are judging us first."
Ivy pauses, then asks, "You, uh, want me. Tonight?"
"I’ve wanted you for quite some time now."
"I know. And I want you, too."
"But?"
"But. On the one hand, I don't want to rush things," she says.
"On the other hand?"
"You've lit a fire in me, Ben."
"You've lit one in me, too. Like nobody has ever lit me up before."
"Grandma just got home, and I'm making dinner for us now. I really hate to mention his name to you right now, but I really need to tell her about what happened between Carl and me. Can I call you back at seven, and let you know how I'm feeling? I really want you. Like, you would not believe how much I want you right now, but I also want my first time to be at the right time. Just let me have my dinner and unpleasant conversation with Grandma, and if it's still feeling right, we’ll do this tonight. Ok?"
It is very easy for me to agree to the delay. Her having dinner before meeting me means I don't have to fake my way through it. It gives me time to feed so my body will be warm. "That is fine," I tell her. "I'll call the inn and see if they can pencil us in for tonight. I hope everything goes well with your grandmother this evening."
"Thank you," she says.
Fortunately, the Harker's Pass Inn has room, being in the small low season between the winter tourists that come for the skiing, and the summer ones that come to hike and camp the mountains. I book the deluxe suite with the whirlpool tub.
I rush out as quick as I can and find prey in the hills above my house. It gives me enough fresh blood in my system to have a strong pulse and some color for at least a day. I clean up, brush my teeth, and try to find an outfit that looks nice without seeming out of place for a couple of young people renting a room in a rural hotel. I settle on a pair of classic black dress trousers with a leather belt, royal blue button-down shirt, and a simple tone on tone black necktie.
At seven, precisely, Ivy calls. "I'm yours tonight," she says. By quarter to eight, we are showing the desk clerk at the inn our IDs to prove we are both old enough to be spending the night in a room together.
We go up to the room, and I don't think Ivy notices anything about it. As soon as I close the door behind me, her overnight bag is on the floor, and her lips are on mine.
Chapter Twelve
Nathan Marsh
“What was that about?” I ask Kate, as she comes back from Carl’s car.
“I told her about Ben taking Ivy to prom. He wasn’t happy about it, but seemed less angry than I thought he might be. Found out she’s completely shoved him out of her life, too, so it’s doubly surprising he didn’t lose it.”
“Poor guy,” I say. This thing with her and Ben has really cost him a lot.”
“Yeah.” She sighs. “I don’t really feel proud of this, but I asked, since he can’t make things any worse, if he could maybe push at Ben harder. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t imagine that making anything better for anybody.”
“Was he smart enough to turn you down?” I ask.
“Yes, actually. Took that pretty calm, too. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it was kind of a dumb thing to ask, so I’m glad he didn’t just jump me.”
“Who would have thought that this kind of adversity would bring out a new maturity in our Carl?”
Kate nervously chuckles at that.
“Where is he going now?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Didn’t say.”
“Nothing stupid, I hope, since you are no longer with him.”
“You think he might have just been putting on a calm face until I got out of the car?”
“He did take off quite quickly after you got out,” I say.
Kate frowns. “Nah. I’ve seen him try to hide his temper before. This was different. He was thinking a lot, distracted. Something else was on his mind.”
Now it is my turn to think, to turn things over in my mind. What new piece of information has Carl gained during his day off from school? Where is he headed off to?
“Let’s go,” Kate says, breaking me out of my distraction.
&nbs
p; Whatever Carl is up to, I will not figure it out sitting in the school parking lot, and I cannot pursue any ideas with Kate in the car.
“Right,” I say, and drive us home. As I start to pull out of the parking lot, I see Kate looking up and down the road, looking for something. Wherever Carl went, there is no chance she would still be able to see his car, but I know that she is looking for it. Methinks she wants to know where he is as well, but for much different reasons than I do.
By the time I get us home, spend enough social time with the family to be polite, and get out of the house again, at least an hour has passed. I get back into my car and decide that Carl will need to get himself home sooner or later. Whether I choose to talk to him or not will depend on what mood he looks like he is in when I see him.
I park a good distance from his house and make my way over there on foot, through the woods that run behind the properties along his road. When I get up to his back fence, I see that his car is still gone, and there is no lingering scent or sense of him around the place. I carefully sneak into his yard. Coming up to his back door, I pick up the reek of a night in the cage in his canning cellar. So he had let the wolf out for a while last night. That could be part of why he was so calm while talking to Kate, but I know him. Letting the wolf out provides only very temporary relief, especially so close to a full moon. It must have been whatever he had learned during that day that kept him more curious than furious.
Almost as if to answer my question, I hear the throaty exhaust of a big single. I duck down behind Carl’s trash bins, and I see an orange and black motorcycle come up the road. I am completely unsurprised to see the bike, after my recent jaunt up to Wyoming. It slows and stops, just two doors down from Carl’s house. The rider dismounts and pulls her helmet off, and I finally catch my first actual look at the vampire hunter I’ve been hunting. She has mid-length, full, dark hair, just a little bit wavy. Her eyes are piercing and sharp. I can tell this even at a distance in the very brief time it takes her to pull a pair of sunglasses out of a pocket in her jacket. Her skin pale like all vampires, but not as severe as most. She is probably Latina, if I had to guess. She looks like she was older than most when she was turned, possibly forty or so, but it is only the face that gives her away. The rest of her body moves with the kind of youthful grace that most vampires develop from their long years of living without aging.
The hunter takes her phone from its handlebar mount and digs a paper map out of her tank bag. She wants to look like she is verifying the two against each other, but she spends way too much time leaning her head back a little bit back and tilting it, using some of her vampiric senses, and looking at Carl’s house.
As she stands there, I can see her getting increasingly agitated. One of her hands constantly goes to her right thigh. Whether it is a knife or a gun she has tucked inside of her riding pants, I do not know, but her constant need to reassure herself the weapon is there is a big tell. She very clearly does not like this new knowledge that there is a werewolf in Stokers Mill.
Finally, she puts her phone up to her ear. I have very acute hearing by mortal standards, but not sharp enough to eavesdrop on someone speaking quietly at the distance between us, especially with her hand carefully placed in front of her mouth. What few syllables I do catch seem Romanian, which does not surprise me at all. The Negre use it almost exclusively when speaking with each other.
She calms some while talking to whomever is on the other end of the call, but she is still unhappy by the time she finishes. With one last look at Carl’s house, she starts folding up her map. I want to follow her to see where she goes next. My car is a good quarter of a mile down, pulled off the road into a tree-lined drive to an empty vacation home. There’s no way I’ll be able to get to it before she gets the bike started and takes off. Even if I were to shed my mortal form, I would never make it.
Likewise, I am fast when not burdened by this body, but not fast enough to keep up with a motorcycle. Especially not something like she drives. I am quite sure she would be able to take these curvy mountain roads at quite a respectable clip on that Duke. I could take to the air and go straight line where she cannot, but it is full daylight. The power required to remain unseen and the physical strength needed to fly would rapidly exhaust me.
I need to slow her down somehow. By letting go of the mortal coil just a little bit, I gain some access to my more useful powers. As the vampire hops into the saddle and starts the machine, I let my eyes become more raptor-like, able to focus on small objects at a distance. I home in on the valve stem of her front tire. As she drops the bike into gear, I use my telekinesis to give it a very sharp yank sideways, enough to split the rubber. With a loud popping sound, the air in the tire bursts free just as the bike starts rolling. The sudden sponginess of the front tire as it deflates throws her handling off, but as I had suspected, she is a very skilled rider and effortlessly regains control.
To her credit, she manages to keep her temper under control at this sudden turn of events. She squats down beside the front tire to take a look at the problem. This gives me time to return to my completely mortal form, sneak out of Carl’s backyard, and sprint for my car. By the time I catch up to her, she is pulling something out of one of her metal saddlebags. I pull in behind her.
“Need a hand with anything?” I ask, walking up to her. I see that she has a small electric air pump in her hand. Sitting next to the front wheel is a little tire repair kit, and the broken valve stem.
“Nope. Had to make a quick fix, now I just need to pump up and roll,” she says, giving me only the quickest glance, but one that clearly gave me a head-to-toe assessment.
“Need me to follow you a bit, make sure the fix takes?” I ask.
While she plugs the pump into a socket near the motorcycle’s engine, she gives me another appraising look. “I’ll be fine. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to do this – I ride some pretty rough trails on this beast.”
I let myself take another look at the motorcycle. The crash bars guarding the engine are scratched and scored, and there are dents on the muffler. Her riding pants look like they have seen more than their share of thorns and brush, and the shift lever looks almost brand new, as if replaced recently. A little bit of greenery is stuck in the latch of one of her saddlebags, and the seat is discolored by plenty of worn-in dirt. There is clearly no false bravado in her words.
“Well, I hope the rest of your ride is without incident. However, you will lose mobile signal entirely just after you start down that slope there,” I say, pointing to where the road starts switching back down toward the river. “Watch for a house in the most unpleasant shade of green you have ever seen. If something happens and you need to call for assistance, if you are above that house, it will be much easier to walk up here to get signal. Otherwise, make your way downhill until you can see the river.”
“Thank you much,” she says, attaching the air hose to the new valve stem. Then, she turns on some serious charm. Some unnatural charm. “This is why I live out in the country, not the city. People think about things like that. Have yourself a wonderful day, my friend.”
I know when a vampire is trying to dismiss me. I know how to pretend it worked. Something in the walk while turning away.
As I drive off, I find myself reformulating a plan. Until I saw the air pump in her hand, I did not realize one could replace a broken valve stem right on the side of the road without any tools: just the right supplies and some skill. Now I will need to find some other way to track her. She has seen my car, and if she is any good at all – and if she is a Negre hunter, she is very good – she will recognize it immediately if she sees it again today.
The best thing for me to do now is to find out if she is narrowing in on Ivy. She will either do that by discovering where Ivy lives, or by finding Ben. As I roll down the road, I wait until I see the river so I can call Ivy’s grandmother.
“Emily, good evening.”
“What’s up?” she asks. I can hear the c
oncern in her voice. I despise electronic communications and only use them when absolutely necessary.
I tell her about the Negre hunter I just saw by Carl’s house, and that I made the mistake of showing myself to her.
“Bad choice,” Emily says. “You know how paranoid they are. Once is happenstance, twice is enemy action.”
“She would find herself sorely outmatched,” I remind her.
“Don’t feel like hiding a body today, though?”
“The body is the easy part,” I tell her. As long as there is sunlight available, getting rid of a dead vampire is a problem that solves itself. For as much as a technophobe as I am, the Negre have learned to embrace all sorts of technology and the bureaucracy of daily existence. They have the serial numbers of any property their hunter owns flagged in any database they can get into. Her phone sends its GPS data to them, and she checks in regularly using a complex set of signals to indicate whether she is safe, concerned, or in distress. There are not enough Negre to be constantly monitoring all of their hunters in real time, but if she were to miss a check in, they would immediately start reconstructing her motions and actions and send other hunters to investigate.
After I dispatched the other Negre in the area, just outside of Ivy’s yard back in January, I spent the better part of the next six weeks constructing a fiction to make it look like it was a completely random encounter. For the most part, my kind kill vampires on sight, so I needed to do nothing to obscure the act itself. It was creating a false trail afterwards, to create the illusion of a transient that just happened to come across a vampire that took a lot of effort and creativity. If the Negre knew that I lived in Stokers Mill, they would come for me in numbers that would significantly tilt the odds in any violent encounter to their favor, and would certainly learn of the existence of both Ben and Ivy in the process.
A Witch's Fate_A Reverse Harem Romance Page 10