He sighs. “I know the dream wasn’t about Gideon. I heard you on the phone to Lori.”
My jaw clenches around my pie morsel. It feels like it’s going to stay in my mouth forever, because my throat is too tight for swallowing. A wave of heat starts at my nose and spreads over my face.
I wish Jim had eaten me dead. Anything would be better than this.
“How?” I choke out.
“The heating vents.” He points to a small metal grate on the dining room floor. “The storeroom is under my bedroom. You can hear everything from one floor to the next if the house is quiet.”
I set my fork down slowly. “Glad I moved out.”
“Ciara.” David sits at the table, which doesn’t get me to look at him. “We never talked about the kiss.”
“Why start now?”
“It put tension between us that hasn’t been resolved.”
“It doesn’t have to be resolved.” I finally swallow my bite of pie. “Some things in life are like the end of a European movie, where they just sort of fizzle out, you know, instead of some grand Hollywood climax.” Oh, bad word choice. “I mean, some fight - to - the - death car - chase sequence.”
David holds up his hands in a time - out configuration. “Can I just say something?”
“Depends on the something.”
“Even before Elizabeth died, I had thoughts about you. Dreams not far from what you described to Lori.” When my eyes widen, he adds, “But in my version Shane has no cameo.”
The heat spreads from my neck down my chest and arms. I don’t believe he’s telling me this. The moment feels more dangerous than when Jim had his mouth to my throat. If David came around the table, took my face in his hands and kissed me, I’m not sure I’d pull away.
“But Shane is there in real life,” David says, “and because of that, I would never act on these thoughts.”
“Unless I asked you to.”
He looks at me for a long moment, and in that stretch of time I can see a parallel universe, where the man I love walks in the sunshine, and eats pumpkin pie, and will someday have gray hair.
But even in that Never Never Land, where my fiercest wishes all come true, the man in the sunshine is the same as the man in the moonlight.
16
Gimme Shelter
When I enter the hallway to the studio, I see Shane through the soundproof glass window, doing a crossword puzzle and nodding his head to the end of a Dinosaur Jr. song. Though his back is turned, he spins in his chair when I press my hand against the booth, as if he senses me.
He smiles and waves me inside. I slip into the studio and stand with my back to the door. Shane’s gaze turns smoky, heavy - lidded as he absorbs my black lace camisole, high -heeled boots, and red silk miniskirt.
“Whoa.” The song fades, and he pulls the microphone to his mouth. “Three forty a.m. at 94.3 WVMP - FM, the Lifeblood of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Mild night for this time of year. Fifty - four degrees”—he looks at the sky - high hem of my skirt—”and getting warmer. A lot like the weather in Manchester, England, where this band hails from.”
He hits a switch to play “Fools Gold” by the Stone Roses, then glides over to greet me. “Yes, miss. Did you have a request?”
I run my finger down the zipper of his faded jeans. “I’d like you to play the longest song in your arsenal.”
“You’re in luck.” He pulls me into his arms. “This is the extended version.”
In the few square feet of floor space, we dance in half - time to the funky rhythm, his left arm around my waist and his right hand entwined with my left. I press my cheek to his lean, solid chest and feel his heart beat against the pulse of my temple. His fingers lie warm against mine as his thumb caresses the tender spot inside my wrist.
He feels as human as I need right now. Maybe as human as I’ll ever need.
His lips graze my forehead where it meets my hairline. His hand slips down my waist, fingernails gliding over my backbone, right to the base of my spine. The same nails he uses to strum the guitar.
My body responds in perfect tune. I lift my chin, searching for a kiss. It comes, deep but soft, exploring instead of insisting. I strain toward him with an urgent lust, but he pulls back—not enough to break the kiss, but enough to control our pace.
I came here for a simple fuck, but with Shane there’s no such thing. He always has to seduce me, make me crave him so much it hurts.
I eschew subtlety and slide my hand over the front of his jeans, thrilled to discover him fully aroused despite his façade of self - control. He groans, and his grip on me tightens.
“God, Ciara.” Both hands slip around my waist, pulling me tight against him. “I need every inch of you.”
I smile against his neck. “When?”
“Now.” Without letting go of me, he sits in his chair and tugs me onto his lap. Straddling him, I place my hands on either side of his head and give him a deep, hard kiss. He threads the fingers of one hand through my hair while the other travels up my bare thigh, then underneath my skirt. He discovers I’m not wearing any underwear and gives an appreciative sigh.
“I love my job.” He shifts my skirt up a few inches and kneads the muscles of my ass. “And the fact that we’re the only ones in the building.”
“Would you care if we weren’t?”
“No.” He slides down the strap of my camisole and bites my shoulder with human teeth as his fingers slip between my legs.
“Me neither.” With shaky hands, I undo his jeans to release him. “Swear you’ve never done this before.”
“I swear I’ve never done this before.” Shane guides us together and pauses, gazing up into my eyes. “But I’ll try to get it right the first time.”
He fills me, exhaling hard, and speaks no more.
Because of a loose spring, the chair rocks, and my boot heels just reach the floor, giving me control over our rhythm. I grind against him, greedy for that blinding moment when I’ll think nothing but one white - hot thought, when everything will become simple again.
Suddenly, Shane holds me still. I draw in a hard breath, ready to scream in frustration.
“Sorry.” He slides the chair to his left and swings the microphone near his mouth as the song fades out. “94.3 WVMP, it’s 3:51 a.m.” As he continues to speak, imparting some fascinating fact about the band, he reaches around, adjusting my angle and bringing me close to the edge. I bite my lower lip hard to keep from crying out as the blood pounds in my ears.
“Let’s take a few calls,” he says. I try to smack his chest, but he catches my wrist and mouths the words “Don’t stop.” He hits another key. “Hello, you’re on the air.”
“Yeah, can you play some Foo Fighters?”
Shane traces the lace at the neckline of my camisole. “Are you a regular listener?”
“Uh - huh.”
“Then you know I don’t like Foo Fighters.” His fingertips continue down to circle my nipples, then close in to caress them. “Why must you plague me?”
I fight to keep silent as my spine zings with the electric jolt of his touch.
“You don’t like Pearl Jam either, but you still play them.”
“That’s different. Pearl Jam is from my time.” He shifts his hips under me. I clutch the back of the chair. “Besides, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for them.”
“You don’t respect the Foos?”
Unable to stop, I move again, stroking his full length. He blinks fast, his concentration wavering.
“Damn.” Shane’s next breath comes hard, but he covers it with a light laugh. “Dude, it’s just a thing with me, okay? Clearly you missed the sign on my door that says ‘Absolutely No Foo Fighters.’ “
There’s an actual sign on the studio door that says that. Written in blood.
I close my eyes and focus on the feel of him sliding in and out of me, hard and hot.
The caller hesitates. “I can’t see your door. This is radio. Maybe you should, like, announce
it or something.”
“Consider it announced.” He peels up my top. “And I’m glad you can’t see what I see right now. Next caller.” He reaches over and punches a button. “You’re on the air.”
A deep, earnest voice comes out of the speaker. “God is watching you, young man.”
My jaw drops, but Shane doesn’t even blink.
“He is?” he says. “By all means, explain.” He mutes his microphone and tells me, “I’ve gotten at least one call like this every night my entire career. Best to let them get it out of their system.” He wraps his arms around me. “Don’t let it distract you.”
Right now, Bigfoot riding by on a unicorn couldn’t distract me.
“God sees everything you do,” the caller continues. “He hears every vile piece of depravity you play on the air. He knows how you corrupt our children.”
I move against Shane again as he flicks the mike back on and speaks, his voice steady as ever.
“Sir, I’m sure He’s got better things to watch than me. All I do is sit in a booth and push buttons.”
His hands make him a liar. I close my eyes and let the red -orange haze of my imminent orgasm sweep over me.
“Except for the blood drinking,” the caller says.
“Right. I keep forgetting I’m a vampire.” He laces the last word with irony. “Now that you mention it, I am a little thirsty.” He brings my breast to his mouth and slides my nipple inside. I arch my back and bite my lip again to keep from screaming. From the corner of my eye I see our reflection in the studio window, the light glinting off our hair as it shimmers with our movements.
“It’s bad enough that you play that noise you call music, but to glorify demonic possession and blood drinking—”
“Whoa.” Shane turns his head to the mike. “First of all, sir, I’m not possessed by a demon. I’m just a regular guy resurrected by magic.” He holds up a finger to tell me to stop. I clench my fists, wanting to punch the console.
“And second,” Shane continues, “Jesus asked his disciples to drink his blood to sustain their spirits, so how can it be wrong to do it to sustain our lives?”
I wrap my legs around the back of the chair, sinking him deeper inside me. His mouth opens, and his hand clutches the edge of the table.
The caller grunts. “He told them to drink wine, not blood. It was symbolic.”
“Not according to the Catholic Church.” Shane holds me still, then tugs me to rest my head against his shoulder. “We believe in transubstantiation, in which the Eucharist becomes the body and blood of our Lord and Savior.” He strokes my hair, soothing my impatience. “Thirteen years of parochial school equipped me to argue the point with the most fervent but misguided Protestant.” He tugs down my shirt to cover me and starts massaging my back, edging his thumbs into the tight spot inside my shoulder blade. “Care to try, sir, just for yuks?”
“ ‘Just for yuks’? The nature of the Christ is not a laughing matter, even for Romanists like you.”
Shane snorts. “Romanist, now that’s a word I haven’t heard in a long time.” Dragging the mike with him, he wheels us over to his CD shelf and grabs a new disc. “You’re hard - core, aren’t you, sir?”
“I don’t know what that means, but I am here to challenge you and all your bloodsucking friends. You’ll see us soon.”
Shane’s hand freezes in the middle of opening the CD. I sit up, wisps of fear leaking through my gut.
After a moment’s hesitation, Shane speaks again, his tone the same as before. “I look forward to that. When and where will I have the pleasure?”
“There’ll be no warning, and trust me, it won’t be a pleasure.”
Shane’s gaze turns cold with anger. His voice comes clipped and fast, his lips nearly brushing the microphone. “Sir, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt because I realize you might not understand the context. This station has received numerous threats in recent weeks. The authorities are currently conducting an investigation.” He pauses to let that return threat sink in. “I’ll give you one chance. Would you like to retract your previous statement?”
The man scoffs. “I won’t be retracting anything but a stake from your heart. I look forward to watching you shrivel up like a slug.”
My shoulders relax a bit. This guy’s a faker; he doesn’t know that vampires don’t shrivel up when they’re staked. Well, they do, but that’s before they get sucked through their own bodies.
The caller continues. “Guess where vampires end up after they go through the hole?”
Cold slithers over my neck. The true nature of a vampire’s death isn’t part of our marketing campaign.
Shane speaks low and somehow calm as he inserts the CD in the player. “Sir, I think our conversation is—”
“They go to hell, that’s where. That’s where you’re going.”
A sharp breath seizes my lungs at the sound of that phrase, at the memory of it slathered in red paint.
“Thank you for your comments, sir,” Shane says, “and may I suggest calling your pharmacy and getting those prescriptions refilled. Your family and friends will thank you.”
He strikes a key on the computer, and the music rumbles forth, the understated synthesized menace of Nine Inch Nails’ “Heresy.” As the relentless drum machine kicks in, Shane switches the telephone to play in the studio only.
“We’re off the air,” he growls at the phone speaker. “Now who the fuck are you?”
The man chuckles. “Someone who cares.”
“What do you want?”
“To save the world from the likes of you.”
“We just want to be left alone.” He pulls me closer, as if to protect me. “We just want to play our music.”
“In the past, maybe. Your anonymity kept you safe all these years, not worth our time. But you’ve brought yourselves into the light.”
“It’s just a marketing gimmick. We’re not really vampires. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You’ve made more humans want to be vampires. Before long, your virus will spread.”
“But no one believes—”
“You must be stopped.”
A loud click, then the dial tone fills the studio, shrouding the sound of Trent Reznor screaming that God is dead.
Shane touches the button to hang up the phone, then eases me carefully off his lap and onto my feet. We reassemble our clothes in silence.
“You were right.” I sit in the other chair. “All those months ago, when you warned us this Lifeblood of Rock ‘n’ Roll thing would put you in danger.” I look at the phone. “Gideon was right.”
“It doesn’t matter who was right.” Shane leans back, arms folded over his chest. “That guy said, ‘You’ll see us soon.’ Who’s ‘us’?”
“The Fortress? If they’re antivampire crusaders, they’d know how you die.”
He reaches out and takes my hand. “These people say they’re after vampires, but I worry about you, too. I wish you could live here where it’s safe.”
“Oh.” My stomach flips over as I remember the other reason why I came here tonight. “I thought maybe we could, uh . . .’’ I swallow hard. This came out a lot easier when I rehearsed it in the car.
He cocks his head and squeezes my hand. “We could what?”
I pull in a deep breath, then take the leap of my life.
17
Bring It On Home
Shane unpacks quickly and decisively; he must have spent the last eighteen hours planning where he would put everything.
He hangs his clothes on the left side of Elizabeth’s—I mean our—closet, then heads back out to the car for another box of stuff. The moment he’s gone, I step into the walk - in closet and turn on the light.
His clothes are sorted systematically, the shirts by color and sleeve length, the jeans in descending order of fadedness. I hastily reshuffle my own shirts, skirts, and pants to create a semblance of order.
Before leaving the closet, I run my hand through hi
s shirts, some flannel and some just plain cotton. I remember the way his shoulders and chest and arms feel beneath them, the soft material slipping over his muscles as he moves.
Then I imagine coming home to these clothes knowing he would never fill them again. My pulse leaps, and I want to rewind our entire relationship, back to the moment before I cared whether he lived or died.
I press my face into one shirt after another and breathe deep, searching for proof of life. He rarely sweats, except during sex, and even then only when he’s recently drunk blood. Finally, on the fifth shirt, I find and revel in the faint, clean scent I recognize as Shane’s.
I step back, then a weird impulse makes me pull out one of his sleeves and stretch it toward that of one of my blouses. Their cuffs barely meet at the center of the closet.
“Aw, that’s cute.”
I drop the sleeves and turn to see Shane. “Oh God.” I put a hand to my face, which is warming rapidly. “You did not just see that.”
“Careful with the blushing.” He smiles and touches my cheek. “You know red makes me thirsty.” Then his gaze trips past me to my clothes on the rack. “You don’t have to sort your stuff on my account, but thanks.” He angles a glance at me. “What’d you think of my 5:54 a.m. choice?”
I scour my memory for today’s song secretly dedicated to me. “Nirvana’s ‘Breed.’ Perfect moving - in - together song.”
I follow him into the living room, where we stuff one of our empty boxes full of Elizabeth’s CDs—mostly Broadway musical soundtracks and light jazz. Then Shane sets to work unpacking my CDs—which I finally took out of storage, along with my summer clothes, so I could save money on the rental—and putting them on the shelves in alphabetical order. His contentment is palpable—he’s practically purring.
He left all his own CDs at the station, since he needs them for work. Instead, he’s brought a box of mix tapes.
I sit on the floor, examining the edges of the plastic cassette boxes without touching them. They seem to be in chronological order, based on the cases’ wear and tear. They’re labeled in many different handwritings, and some are elaborately decorated in faded colored pen inks.
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