He was here with her. It was enough for now. He’d worry about tomorrow later.
At the end of the movie, two bats flew off into the sunrise and Tally picked up the remote once more, watching the screen. She wasn’t smiling any more.
She looked at him. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to keep on pretending like this? Do you think there’ll ever be a place where we will be able to be ourselves?”
“You can be yourself with me,” he said, more gruffly than he had intended.
“I mean, with humans.”
“What, tell all of them?” He shook his head. “It will never happen. Real vampires instead of these tricked-out Hollywood ones would scare them and you know what humans do when they’re afraid. How did your Kyle take it when you told him?”
“He didn’t believe me.”
“After you made him believe, then what?”
Tally grimaced. “It didn’t go well. Not for a long while. But he came around, in the end.”
“Imagine that, multiplied across the earth, with not just good men like your Kyle, but with power-holders like generals and presidents, world leaders and activists, and every street gang ever formed.”
Tally sighed.
* * * * *
Tally asked Christian to wait for her in the lobby, while she went back to her room to change and pack for the flight. He had agreed with some reluctance, the heavy mood he had fallen into since she had told him about Kyle making him glower.
They had both taken rooms at the Waldorf Astoria, and the coincidence had surprised neither of them.
She dressed carefully but quickly. These days she had to take greater pains over her appearance – not to look as young as possible, but to look the age she was supposed to be. Kyle had turned fifty-four last month. She had to look like a matching wife.
Nervously, she packed her bag and headed down to the lobby. It was fully daylight now, although the light was dim and the clouds were heavy and low, promising more snow. There were still plenty of people about, even though this was New Year’s Day and a holiday.
She looked about the lobby, searching for Christian. He was straightening up from his lean against one of the big columns, his eyes widening. Her appearance had shocked him.
He walked over to where she stood waiting and took the handle of the case from her. “You look….” He shook his head. “It’s very effective.”
She touched her hand to the silver grey wig, which was styled in a chin length bob. She wore makeup that subtly shaded her skin to make it look like it was the fine, thin flesh of an older woman, downplayed the accentuation of her eyes and wore no lipstick. She also wore mommy jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers, underneath her sensible fur-lined parka. “Thanks,” she told Christian. “But you must have dozens of strategies for this sort of thing, too.”
“Nothing like what you’re doing.” He pulled out his phone, flipped it open and thumbed the buttons. “Do you have an email address, Tally?”
“I…um…yes.”
He looked at her and raised a brow.
“The family has an address…but I also opened up my own Hotmail account.”
Christian waited.
“Kyle doesn’t know about it. No one does, except those I give the address to.” She told him the address and he loaded it into his contacts and closed the phone.
“I have a Hotmail account, too,” he told her. “Who is it you talk to that you don’t want your husband to know about?”
Tally smiled. “Others like us,” she said, mindful of the people standing nearby that could overhear them. “Just like you do, too, I imagine.” She pulled a notepad out of her bag and scribbled down the address he gave her and stuffed the sheet into her jeans pocket.
“You’re getting a cab to the airport?”
She nodded.
Christian caught her arm with his hand and guided her toward the big glass doors. “You’ll email, won’t you?”
“When I can.”
He pushed the doors open and the wheels of the case crunched across grit and slush. He had his arm up, ready to push the outer doors open, but it was suddenly going too fast. The moment was here and she didn’t want to move into it yet.
She halted, pulling him back from the door. The doormen in their huge greatcoats were standing on the other side of the doors, watching them curiously, and waiting for them to emerge outside so they could do their jobs.
Christian looked down at her expectantly.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “About the timing. About, well, all of it.”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.” He reached for the door again.
“No, wait,” she begged.
He turned back with a soft curse and kissed her. Tally caught her breath as his lips met hers and his tongue swept into her mouth. She was moving backwards – he was pushing her back, until her back pressed up against the sidewall of the foyer. She heard the metal handle of the case bounce against the tiles. He had let it go. His arms were around her, inside the parker, under her sweater, sliding across her flesh like he was trying to taste it.
Her breath shuddered out of her, into his mouth. She began to tremble. Her reaction to Christian was so strong! So immediate. She had never felt anything like this, yet this was her reaction to him every time.
“Christian…” she began, when he finally let her go.
He rested his head against hers. “God, you smell so good.” He took in a slow, controlling breath. “Call me Lee.”
“Lee?”
“I’m taking my name back from you. But only you get to call me that.” His lips pressed against her forehead. “Only you,” he repeated.
She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Where will you go, now?”
“I’ll email. I promise you that, Tally. No matter where I am, you’ll hear from me.” His voice was rough.
A couple came in through the outer doors, stomping their feet to remove snow, laughing, and bringing a swirl of chilled air with them. Christian straightened up, releasing her.
“I have to go,” she whispered.
He bent and picked up the case once more, and pushed the door open with the heel of his hand and strode out into the cold. Tally followed, moving stiffly. She felt shell-shocked. Her thoughts were scattered.
Christian – Lee – had waved over a cab, and was opening the back door for her, and sliding the case along the seat. She walked over to the cab and looked up at him one last time.
He gave her a small smile, his green eyes glittering with some emotion she couldn’t name.
“I’ll … see you,” she said. There was nothing else she could say. Even vampires did not have a vocabulary to cover such partings.
“I hope so.” He shut the door on her, and patted the roof.
Tally twisted around to look at him out the back window as the cab pulled out from the hotel. He had shoved his hands into his coat pockets and turned the collar up, the perfect imitation of a man who was feeling the cold.
Already, she missed him.
Chapter Five
Piraeus, Athens, Greece, 2076 – 76 years later
Tally moved as fast as she could along the dark road, running silently through the warm night air. Somewhere behind her, the gang was losing ground. Their calls and jeers followed her, though, echoing off the white walls of houses that rose from the very edge of the narrow road, glowing softly in the moonlight. Between the moonlight and the walls, Tally needed no other light, but the humans chasing her would.
Then, as she passed an even narrower road that turned off this one, a man stepped out, making her shriek in shock. He grabbed at her as she passed, but she evaded his grip and kept running. Harder.
“Freaking fanger!” he cried, in Greek.
That confirmed he was with the original pack. They had called in reinforcements.
Tally leaned forward as the road twisted around and headed uphill, working her legs to deal with the slope. This was the upper section of Piraeus – every
thing was built on a hill. Everything was old and small. The roads were not much more than cart-width and were built around houses and other buildings, unlike America, where the roads were laid out first.
She was relatively happy, even with the single human only a few steps behind her. She could out-pace all of them, and her breath and energy would last a lot longer than theirs. If she kept running, they would eventually tire of the game and go back to the cantina where they had first spotted her.
Tally didn’t know what had given her away. Since vampires had been outed two years ago because of the time wave that two of them had created, humans had become very good at identifying them. A lot of that effectiveness came about because they would leap upon anyone they even suspected might be vampire, and it was up to the poor victim to prove he or she was not of the blood, or else suffer the consequences. The consequences depended on the mood of the humans at the time. Cops failed to step in when a vampire was being attacked. Emergency calls and cries for help raised no response.
They were calling these the Censure years. They would be better off calling them the Pogrom years.
A gun fired, sounding shockingly loud in the narrow street. A bullet cracked the stone at her feet and whined away with a sour note, making Tally jump sideways. Bullets wouldn’t hurt her permanently, not even the silver coated ones many humans mistakenly believed would incapacitate a vampire. But a bullet wound would slow her down and that was the last thing she could afford.
“Bitch, I will tear your fucking heart out!” came the yell from behind her. He was sounding breathless. Another shot fired and she dodged and hauled herself around a sharp corner, diving into another intersecting street.
There was a flutter of something large, above her, and she risked a glance upwards. A dark shadow was leaping from the roof of the house on one side right across the street to the flat balcony on a house there.
Only a vampire could make that leap.
She risked a glance behind her. The man with the gun was just stepping around the corner now. The original gang was so far behind she could no longer hear them.
The dark shadow dropped down in front of the running man. Their figures merged in the moonlight. There was a grunt and the taller shadow stepped away while the man slid to the ground.
Tally turned to face her rescuer. Now that she was able to take a full look, she had time to notice the way the moonlight made his hair glow, just like the walls. He seemed like a dark shadow because he was wearing black.
Lee strode toward her, the pistol hanging from his hand.
“You have miraculous timing,” Tally said. It was an understatement. “What are you doing here, Lee? I thought you were in Florida at that broadcast symposium.”
He reached her, still without replying, and wrapped his arms around her. Tally closed her eyes and hugged back.
“I was there,” he said, his voice reverberating against her in a way that made her feel warm and soft inside. “I was outed.”
“Oh my god,” she breathed, pulling away from him so she could look up at his face. “Someone exposed you?”
“Right there on the megatron screen. Now the world knows the head of the biggest broadcasting company, the people who are trying to keep humans informed about the vampire menace, is a vampire himself. I was forced onto the next plane out of the States.”
“Did they hurt you?”
He smiled. “They didn’t get close enough to sniff. Once I knew it was up, I got out of there fast. I landed in Rome a day ago, and saw all the footage on the gang riots in Greece and came straight here. I’ve been tracking you for a day.”
“Tracking me how?” She didn’t have body heat to generate scent and nothing left an impression on these stony roads.
“Your perfume,” he told her. “By the way, your apartment has been trashed. I think your neighbors are the ones that outed you. They tried to lynch me when I arrived there.”
She stared at him. “And you just…tracked my perfume?”
“It’s very distinct. I’d know it anywhere.” He stepped away from her. “Don’t ever change it.” He picked up her hand. “I’ve got a private jet waiting on the runway at the airport. We can work our way around the bay to Nea Smirni and catch a cab from there. You won’t mind the walk?”
“As long as I don’t have to run.”
Twenty minutes later, they relaxed on the back seat of a taxi after circling the bay in a slow jog-trot that nevertheless ate up the yards faster than a human would manage it.
“I guess I’m never going to see my apartment again, am I?” Tally asked, watching the concrete buildings and business blocks flash by.
“I don’t think I’m going to get to see the inside of my office in New York ever again, either. I’m going to have to sue them for settlement. They took my company.” He picked up her hand. “We’re both free and clear, Tally.”
Her heart jumped. “But it’s not like we can just roll over into a new life anymore, is it? That’s all done with now.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Not for you. You didn’t get outed on global television. You could start up another human life, if you really wanted to.”
“Just not with you.”
He grimaced. “I’m radioactive now. Anyone close to me is about to be examined under an atomic microscope. You don’t have time to set up a human life that would pass the sort of inspection you’d go through. Then you’d be outed as publically as me.” He reached over and brushed stray hairs from her face. “What do you want, Tally?”
Tally drew in a breath. “These last couple of years, watching vampires come out, and the riots and the…massacres. It’s made me realize something. You and I, Lee – we’ve been wearing all these lives, and in between, we’ve been trying to find a way to have a life together. Do you see the pattern? Do you see what I see?”
He gave her a small smile. “Tell me.”
“We’ve been looking for somewhere to belong. Somewhere where we can be ourselves and belong at the same time.” She pressed her lips together. “That’s never going to happen now. Not now humans know about us. They don’t accept us as ourselves and while we pretend to be human, we’re not being ourselves.”
He was silent for a long moment, frowning down at the seat between his knees. “So…what now? If you don’t want to be human, and you don’t like how you’re treated as a vampire, what will you do?”
“I don’t know,” Tally said flatly. “Up until dinner tonight, I thought I was comfortable and happy…sort of.”
He examined her. “You’re going back, aren’t you? You’re going to stay human.”
Tally bit her lip. “I think it might be safest, that way. Until this mess sorts itself out.”
He considered her for another long moment. “Where can I drop you?”
“Drop me?”
“I have a jet and two pilots waiting for orders and a destination. I wouldn’t consider anything in Europe or Asia. As you’ve found out, anti-vampire sentiment is particularly strong here. The Greeks were decimated by Constantine’s Curse and they feel like victims. They’re taking their revenge.”
“Didn’t those two…I don’t remember their names. Ryan something. Didn’t they stop the curse?”
“Vampires started it, is all the humans remember.” Lee shrugged. “South America?”
She frowned.
“Australia?”
“Ugh. No thanks.”
“New Zealand. Quiet, tucked away.”
“For how much longer?” she asked reasonably. “These new neural nets that they’re building on top of the internet … they’re going to hook people into the web in a way that you can’t hide who you really are. It’s your brain signals and they can’t be faked. What if vampires look different on the nets to humans? What if I can’t get an ID that passes? Do you know how much a good forger costs?”
“I have a general idea. Look, you need to think about this. But you can’t stay with me while you do it. My infamy will infect you if you do. But
I have a house in Georgia, north of Atlanta in the middle of practically nowhere. No one knows it’s mine because I bought it through shell companies and bribed as necessary to make the paper trail disappear. You could hole up there for a while until you make up your mind what you’re going to do.”
She gave him a smile. “That’s perfect. Thank you. But I’m going to have to stop in Zurich first. I need to refund and move accounts around.”
“There’s a good forger there. He’s vampire and he’s been honing his craft for a few centuries. I’ll introduce you to him.”
“And then what?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”
He squeezed her hand. “One step at a time, Tally. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years. No one knows enough to predict how this is all going to shake out. So we take it a step at a time, and stop to test waters and take temperatures every step.”
“Georgia, then,” she said. “Just for a while.”
* * * * *
Jasper, Georgia. 2200 – 124 years later
Tally checked the room one last time, then pulled out her new reading board. The board reminded her of the personal computing tablets that had been popular last century, except these boards were so much more than just mini computers. They were a window on the nets, and a full service communications device, as well as a full function reader that stored, culled, filed and annotated anything she read or wanted to read, as well as crawling the nets to find related material and make suggestions. She had only been training hers for a week or so, but it was already proving useful.
She looked down at the screen, where Lee’s face looked back at her patiently. “Okay, it’s clear,” she told him.
“Let me look at it again,” he asked.
She held up the board so he could see the room.
“Okay, now stand back by the door,” he told her. “And wait.”
“Wait for what? Lee, this is all super mysterious and just like you—” But he had disappeared from the screen.
Wait (Beloved Bloody Time) Page 7