She nodded earnestly and leaned against the tub as though it were his living flesh. “Nineteen.”
“Nineteen, and you’re—” He’d meant to comment on her purity, then realized the comment would be crude. It wouldn’t have bothered him with anyone else, another dangerous distinction he chose to ignore. “You’re nineteen?”
“How old are you?” She looked up at him with terrifyingly earnest eyes.
He knew the look in them, and withdrew his hand. “I don’t know. I think I may have been twenty-seven when I became a vampire. I didn’t keep track of the years after that. There were seven centuries, if that helps.”
“Seven—” She choked on the word. “I thought I was old.”
He laughed out loud at the absurdity of her innocent statement. “Hardly.”
With a sigh, she dropped her hand over the side of the tub, sliding it gracefully through the water at his side. Her fingers came mere centimeters from his flesh, and for a moment he thought she would touch him. She never did. He stared at her face to try and gauge her intent, but there was no sign of sly seduction or nervous timidity there. She gazed at the cinder block wall, but it was obvious she saw nothing.
“How can you forget how old you are? Don’t you look forward to your birthday?” She rested her head on the rolled edge of the bathtub, still twisting her fingers through the water.
One slender digit brushed against his ribs. It took all his willpower not to shudder. “I don’t know when my birthday is. My mother died a few days after I was born. From a fever. My father took a new wife, but she didn’t know what day I’d been born and my father hadn’t kept track.”
Mouse turned to him, looking very close to tears. “That’s so sad.”
“Not really,” he assured her. “Birthdays didn’t matter much then. There wasn’t as much emphasis on them as there is now.”
“You could still have one,” she offered. “Just keep track from the day they brought you back. Or the day they—”
“Let’s not talk about that.” He didn’t want her to have any knowledge of his vampire world. Didn’t want to hear their sordid terminology cross her lips. Forcing a smile, he said, “I have good news.”
He could tell she didn’t want to believe him. To get her hopes up would only serve to see them dashed again. She couldn’t seem to resist temptation, though. “What is it?”
“When I talked to the vampire woman last night, she said they’d bring us more food.” He glanced worriedly at his lean stomach. He’d have to watch his intake, or he’d grow fat. That was something he’d never had to think of before.
“Where are they getting it?” Mouse’s expression became troubled.
Whatever could be the matter with her? Did she want to starve to death? “I don’t know. Maybe they have some here. It is a church. Don’t they give out alms for the poor?”
“The food pantry is for the low-income families of the parish.”
“Yes, and they believe it has burned to the ground.” He frowned. “Mouse, we don’t have much left.”
“Mouse?” A hesitant smile crossed her lips. “Why did you call me that?”
Damn. He’d never addressed her with anything more than “You there,” before. “Because you remind me of a mouse.”
She looked deeply offended, and he rushed to correct himself. “Not physically. But you’re so quiet. If you want me to call you—”
“No. Call me Mouse. I’ve never had a nickname before.” Her smile widened, as if she knew a secret he did not. “It’s a good birthday present.”
They sat in silence, the only sound the occasional drip of water from the faucet.
“I won’t feel right taking that food.” She looked him in the eye. Something new sparked there, an inner flame that burned to banish the hopelessness she’d succumbed to before. “But I’ll take it, because now it’s every man for himself.”
“Or herself, as the case may be.” Cyrus picked up the soap. “But I’m glad to see you’ve developed some reason.”
She shrugged. “You promised nothing would happen to me. You’re the closest thing to a protector I have, so I believe you.”
His heart ached with the shameful memories of what he’d done to her, but he wouldn’t apologize. Conscience or not, he still had some pride, and he wouldn’t live with regret.
He finished his bath and gave Mouse a warning before he stood, so she could modestly turn her back. She went into the other room to change, and when she’d finished she brought him clean clothes, as well. When he emerged from the bathroom, she stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up with a worried expression.
“What’s the matter?” He touched her arm. He wasn’t sure why.
She jumped, then nodded with an apologetic look. It hadn’t been him that had startled her. “Are they…I mean, will they come out? If we went up there?”
“They can’t go into the light. They’ll burn up. If we were in the light, we’d be fine.”
She chewed her lip. “So, once we got outside, then…we’d be fine?”
“In theory.” What was she insinuating?
Mouse started up the steps, but took them slowly. He caught her arm. “What are you doing?”
She lifted a finger to her lips to signal quiet. He didn’t want to follow her, but her single-minded concentration drew him in. He stayed close behind her, one hand on the railing, the other on her wrist. A few times, she stopped. He thought she would change her mind and turn around, but then she moved forward as though she’d screwed up her courage and forced herself on.
Once they entered the vestibule and closed the basement door behind them, her courage deserted her. She stared in terror at the sanctuary doors. A chalk sigil marred the wood. Cyrus could only guess at its purpose.
“They can’t come out,” he reminded her, pointing to the sunlight slanting across the carpet. How that sight used to terrify him, and now it seemed so harmless. No wonder she doubted its effectiveness in protecting her.
She paused before the exterior doors, bracketed on both sides by long, thin windows. And then he knew why she’d brought him here. Her shoulders, usually slumped in defeat, rose. Her face appeared less tired and sad, and a gleeful smile appeared as she surveyed the bleak landscape outside.
“We can escape.” He reached for the handle.
She grabbed his wrist, stopping him. Her shoulders slumped again, and her face regained the sad, haunted look he recognized far better than hope. “We can’t.”
“Of course we can. Look! We can go out of these doors and go find help.” His hands shook as he laid them on the metal push bar. He prayed no alarm would sound. There was a faint click and a screech of hinges, then freedom lay before him in the form of a barren, desert road. His heart fell a little, but he made a desperate attempt to bolster it. “It can’t be that far to the nearest town.”
She shook her head. “Five miles.”
“Five miles? Is that all?” He could easily walk five miles, even as a human. Five miles. He could carry her five miles! “Let’s not waste any more time!”
“No.” She shook her head sadly.
“Why not?” He felt the old violence rising in him, tempting him to break her neck and save himself.
“We’re in Death Valley. You’d never survive. Five miles through burning desert. You’ll be dead within half an hour.” Her eyes drifted shut; her head drooped on her neck. “It’s hopeless.”
“No.” Panic rose in his chest. They were so close. “What about hitchhiking? What if we…” As he watched the road, he realized that in the entire time they’d stood there, no vehicle had passed. He didn’t need to look at her to see her silent denial.
Her eyes filled with tears. “You’d never make it during the day. And at night—”
“At night, they would find us.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Well, it was a fine plan, for a moment.”
She stood uselessly in place. “If you tried to escape, would you take me with you?”
“Of cou
rse I would,” he said, and believed it to his bones. The why of it, however, was something he didn’t want to admit.
She looked at him for a painfully intense moment. What would her next action be? Would she cry? Would she kiss him? It looked as though she was leaning toward the latter when the doors to the sanctuary rattled, angry voices rising on the other side. Angry voices, and a woman’s scream.
Before they could move, the doors burst open and a woman, naked but for a torn scrap of a bra, lunged across the threshold. Bite marks marred every inch of her skin. Her lips were blue, her limbs mottled. These were her dying struggles.
Mouse stiffened at his side, her eyes wide with horror. The woman reached for them, her face twisting in a rictus of pain as she crashed to the floor. From the shadows between the sanctuary doors, the Fangs glared at them.
“They can’t come out here,” Cyrus reminded Mouse, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward the basement door. He hoped they hadn’t found a way to circumvent that law of vampire physiology. If they had, he and Mouse were truly doomed.
A gaunt vampire with hollow eyes and thick stubble on his jaw grabbed the nearly dead woman’s ankle and tugged. She raised her head, turning wide, tear-filled eyes upward. Her cracked lips formed a single, soundless “Please,” and she dug her fingers into the carpet as the Fang pulled her, screaming, back into the sanctuary.
“Get back downstairs!” another vampire growled at them. Then the doors slammed shut and they were left alone.
“Wh-what—” Mouse stammered, then sagged against Cyrus. She was fainting, he realized, and he was still not strong enough to hold up her weight. He tried for the basement door, but they slipped to the carpet, falling where the dead woman had landed in her ill-fated escape attempt. He glanced at the carpet. Fingernails. They had ripped from her hands, tangled in the fibers as she’d tried desperately to keep the Fangs from pulling her back.
Mouse raised her head, and her gasp told him she saw them, as well. “Were you…When you were…”
“No.” Cyrus couldn’t look at her, at her horrified face. “No, I was much worse. They looked up to me, even if it affords me no currency with them now.”
She pulled away, trembling. “We should go downstairs. Eventually, the sun will go down, and they’ll be angry.”
Sunlight or not, they were doomed anyway, Cyrus realized as they returned to their basement prison. The Fangs showed a horrible sense of invention, holding them here. Of course they would choose a place like this, where the climate would confine their captives during the daylight, when they themselves were most vulnerable.
Cyrus and Mouse were well and truly trapped. The danger of the situation, which had until now seemed a trivial annoyance, finally dawned on him. Mouse, the flimsy life raft he’d been clinging to, might not live through this. The thought was unfathomable. He, who’d killed with such sadistic pleasure in the past, would be spared out of necessity. Because his father willed it. But she, who’d retained her purity, body and soul, would die as a victim of circumstance.
He wouldn’t allow it. Though the realization shocked him, it was, unfortunately, the truth. When he’d told Angie that Mouse’s death would be the cause of his own, it had been the truth. And though he realized their situation had greatly influenced and intensified his emotions toward her, he couldn’t deny that the thought of losing her terrified him.
And maybe that was more frightening than the Fangs and his father combined.
Chapter 9
And thou art dead,
as young and fair
I pulled into a truck stop on the other side of Cheyenne. It wasn’t dawn yet, but I needed a chance to get out of the van and stretch my legs.
The place was small, with diesel pumps behind it and a dusty lot adjacent, where truckers could park for a night’s sleep. With more than a little trepidation, I pulled the van to the end of the dirt lot and headed to the tiny restaurant.
Because of the late hour, there weren’t many customers at Arlene’s Grit Stop and Five Dollar Showers. I assumed most weary travelers stopping at this particular exit would find themselves across the badly patched asphalt road, at the Happy Ending Health Spa.
The cracked pavement of Arlene’s parking lot held only two motorcycles and a rusty Cavalier. At least the van wouldn’t look out of place.
The restaurant was a narrow room that ran along the front of the building. No tables, just seven or eight plastic booths against each wall. Currently, only one such booth was taken by a grizzled biker with a long, gray beard, and a young man in a leather jacket who looked like he’d just stepped from a Calvin Klein ad.
The latter wore a big smile the moment he spotted me. Considering my limp, greasy hair and bedraggled appearance, his behavior became immediately suspect.
“Come, sit with us,” he invited. The bearded one didn’t look enthused about it, working the toothpick he gnawed on from one corner of his hairy mouth to the other.
I shook my head as I slid into another booth. “I think I’ll let you boys have your privacy.”
A waitress, apparently just as pleased with my presence, sighed deeply as she approached my table. I had the distinct feeling there was a neglected Nora Roberts novel behind the counter she’d been leaning on.
“Just coffee,” I assured her with a friendly smile.
“Uh-huh.” She clicked her pen derisively and put her order pad back in her apron. “This must be my lucky night.”
I glanced over at my fellows in late-night dining and saw that they, too, only had coffee. The waitress, Ruby, by her nametag, scratched her backside as she retrieved a brown, ceramic mug and filled it with coffee. She brought it and the pot to my table, setting the mug before me with little ceremony.
“Another refill, gentlemen?” she asked in long-suffering sarcasm.
The bearded one said nothing, but put his hand palm down over the rim of his cup. Calvin Klein pushed his mug toward her. “Absolutely. And put the pretty lady’s drink on my check, as well.”
Ruby rolled her eyes as she left them. “Seventy-five cents. You’re a real big spender.”
Without invitation or permission, Calvin Klein got up and came to my table. “Don’t mind her. She’s been a real bitch all night.”
I didn’t cover my weary annoyance. “I don’t use that word when referring to waitresses.”
“I’ve made a bad first impression, haven’t I?” His Cheshire Cat grin reminded me of the way Max had looked at the flight attendant. That day seemed so far away now. In solitude I lived in my own time, which functioned with a marked chronological difference from the one everyone else inhabited. An hour felt like a day, a day felt like a lifetime.
Yet, with as long as time seemed, I didn’t feel like wasting mine on a cheesy, clean-cut biker in a brokendown rest stop diner. “Better hurry back, before your boyfriend gets lonely.”
C.K. seemed amused by this. “If you are insinuating that this gentleman and I are in any way intimate, I’ll have you know I am one-hundred-percent heterosexual. And available.”
“I’ll take note of that.” I hadn’t noticed his strange accent until I’d heard him speak more than a few words at a time, but now it set off an alarm in my head. “Are you British, by any chance?”
“Guilty as charged,” he said with a laugh, this time putting his accent on full display. “I’m a writer. Seeing America for the first time. I hope to find a novel in it somewhere.”
“Try Borders. I’ve seen a few in there from time to time.” Still, something about him struck me as odd. “Why do you cover up your accent?”
This question seemed to catch him off guard. In the split second he hesitated before answering, I knew whatever came from his mouth would be a lie. “I suppose I just do it automatically. Probably picked up the Yank accent from him.”
I eyed C.K.’s companion, who sat with arms folded across his chest, mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes.
“He doesn’t look very talkative,” I observed casually. “How lon
g have you been in the country?”
Now he grew visibly suspicious about my line of questioning. “About three weeks.”
“Doesn’t seem long enough for a Brit to completely drop his accent.” I reached across the table faster than he could move, and grabbed his wrist.
Ice cold.
“You liar,” I rasped, dropping his arm. “You’re a vampire.”
He shot a panicked glance at the waitress. She hadn’t looked up from her paperback.
Lowering his voice to a barely audible whisper, he leaned in. “How the hell did you know that?”
I forced my transformation, letting him view my true face for just a second. Before the waitress could notice, I shook it off.
“Holy Christ, you’re not Movement, are you?” He reached into his jacket.
“No, I’m not, so leave that stake where it is.” I looked up to make sure his friend wasn’t prepping for a slaughter, either. “But you should be ashamed of yourself!”
His eyes bugged. “Why?”
“I know what you were doing! You were going to try and charm your way into my pants, and then you were going to eat me. It’s disgusting!” I smacked my palm down on the table, and my coffee cup jumped.
This time, the waitress did look up. “Don’t let him bother you, honey. He’s been trying his same tired act on every gal what come in here tonight. And I do mean all night, Mr. Free Refill.”
“Thank you, Ruby,” C.K. muttered through clenched teeth. “For your flawless critique of my wooing style.”
She cracked her gum. “Whatever.”
I grabbed him by the front of his T-shirt and pulled him forward. “So, what’s your game? Why are you really out here?”
With a look of pure disgust, he wrenched his clothing from my grasp. “For your information, I wasn’t lying. I am a writer.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, really. Perhaps you’ve heard of me. George Gordon. More commonly referred to as Lord Byron?” He puffed up his chest like an ostrich doing a mating dance.
“Bullshit.” I leaned back in the booth and gave him the glare I used to reserve for kids in the E.R. who swore they hadn’t seen their overdosing friend using recreational drugs.
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