Anna nonchalantly dropped her bag to the floor and walked into the bathroom to wash her face without a word. I moved nervously over to the other bed closest to the window and dropped my bag down near the obligatory hotel chair. I quickly tore off my clothes and put on an undershirt and clean boxers before she could come back into the room. I was not sure what protocol called for here, so I erred on the side of caution and changed with her in the other room while I also checked how light resistant the hotel blackout curtains were. With everything secure, I slipped under the cool sheets and tried to relax into the pillow. Why was I worried? I had shared a hotel room with Anna before in a completely platonic way. The same rules applied here, right?
The tired state I was in begged me to sleep, but my nervous anticipation of sharing a room with Anna kept my eyes open and my limbs wired. She stepped out of the bathroom still dressed as she was in the car with a towel in her hand, drying her face.
Anna smiled at me, and those blue eyes worked my nerves up all over again. It was then that she began to undress in front of me. It seemed at first like she was unaware of the intimacy of this act. Soon, I realized as I watched her slowly pull her shirt over her head, allowing me a full picture of her torso in only her bra, that she was doing this on purpose. She had to be.
Everything inside and outside of me stiffened with anticipation, and I do mean everything stiffened. I blushed again and felt my face get feverishly hot when she removed her jeans with her back to me, showing me her black panties that contrasted so drastically against her white skin. I tried not to gape, and I also tried not to jump up from my bed and grab her in my arms. I had to remember Anna was different and much, much stronger than me. What if this was not an enticement? The last thing I wanted to do was insult her. Insulting a vampire could be dangerous.
Seeing Anna walk over to her bed in her matching black underwear made me think this could be nothing else but an invitation. Then, much to my chagrin, she daintily lifted the covers and tucked herself into bed. She bade me good night before she turned out the light.
I laid my head down on my pillow and rolled over on my side, facing away from Anna’s bed. How could I have been misreading that whole thing? A woman had just undressed in front of me while I watched. She’d seen me watching. Surely that was an invitation? I had to remind myself Anna was not a woman, she was a vampire. Anna was a vampire. Undressing in front of others must not be a big deal to her. She was different. I released a frustrated and quiet sigh while I tried to calm my mind and body, even though my boxers had begun to feel a bit tight.
I didn’t hear a thing in the room except for the room’s air conditioner humming away. I was just beginning to relax when I felt the slightest movement in my sheets. I rolled over, alarmed to find Anna in my bed and under the covers with me. She was so damn quiet when she moved. It was dark, but I could make out her basic features, and her eyes shone like blue beacons in the darkness. I knew she could probably see every minute detail of me, and as my eyes adjusted, I could see more and more of her. Anna was nude.
“Anna. What are you doing? You scared me.”
“Did my undressing not work?” She asked this so frankly that only the little, sly smile at the end of her sentence showed me the true meaning of her question.
“No. It did. It really did.”
“Then why did you not kiss me, Grant?” she asked simply with a small edge of hurt in her voice.
She scooted a little closer to me in a small, fluid motion and put her hand on my chest delicately. I gazed at her lovely face only inches from mine and placed my hand on her hip, trying not to squeeze.
“I was worried that was not for me. I didn’t want to insult you.”
“I like you, Grant. I don’t like people in this way, but I like you,” she said abruptly as she looked down. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Anna was nervous.
“I like you too, Anna.”
A pregnant pause passed between us as I pondered how to proceed.
“So the undressing worked?”
She asked this coyly as she crept even closer to me on the bed. Coy was not a tone I could remember Anna using before, so the look seemed alien to me. I could feel her hot breath, which smelled like the mint of her toothpaste, on my face as she leaned closer to me. Her blond hair brushed my flushed cheek in a way that both tickled me and sent shocks to all of my nerve endings. I lost my control and my timidity as I closed the gap between us and kissed the sweet, frightening angel in the dark of our hotel room.
Fireworks ignited inside the room or inside of me. I couldn’t tell. Either way, I deepened the kiss and grabbed for Anna’s body. I pressed myself against her and squeezed her body in desperation. All of the pent-up anxiety of the past days exploded through my fingers.
She kissed me back with a passion that was only matched by my own as she maneuvered herself on top of me and kicked the blankets off with a supernatural force that sent them across the room to drape roughly over the television. Her breath was ragged with desire, and so was mine. We embraced one another and wound our limbs together for support against the overwhelming and desperate fear of being separated. I flipped her over so that I was on top of her, and our exertions slid the mattress from the box springs as we went crashing to the floor. Neither of us noticed.
We just could not seem to get close enough to one another. She was wine. She was oxygen. She was food and water on a desert island. We fell into a sweet, blissful rhythm that was raw and gorgeous and made for no one else but the two of us.
Chapter Nineteen
Anna
He awoke before I did, obviously. Being a vampire normally meant sleeping throughout most of the daytime hours, if not all of them. Sure there was the rare time when I had to be out during the day, trying to do any sort of banking after dark is ridiculous, but mostly we were confined to a nocturnal existence.
The sun did not fry us like the movies suggested or cause our skin to peel off and burn away, but it did wreak havoc on our retinas. The scientist’s files I had stolen from the prison’s laboratory had observed this purely accidental vampire trait, and the scientists had blamed the phenomenon on our overly heightened night vision. The infected blood that now coursed through my veins had left me with a supernatural ability to see perfectly well in pitch blackness, but it had also somehow given my eyes a severe sensitivity to UV light, particularly sunlight. We were nocturnal, like most hunters.
Like I said, he was awake first, and he was eating a large plate of food on the other bed nearest to the television. The smell of the food wafted into my nostrils, and it left me feeling neither disgusted nor hungry. It just was. I couldn’t remember what eating felt like or what foods I used to enjoy. Watching him devour the meal left me with an ache to be like him for a moment, even for one short moment. What must the satisfying feeling of eating a much needed meal feel like to him?
He was watching some program and looked positively happy and content. I could tell he was doing his best to be silent. Well, he was being as silent as he could be. To us, every miniscule shuffle of fabric or light breath of air could be as loud as someone screaming at the top of their lungs if we so inclined to listen that intently. He had the volume on the television turned down so he could barely hear it, and I noticed he was making a visible effort to chew quietly. I smiled at the effort because he thought I was still asleep and did not wish to disturb me. Humans might call this gesture thoughtful, and I understood its allure now that I saw it up close and personal.
I let him finish his meal in peace as I watched him silently without letting him know I was awake. Last night had been an unusual night for me, and I suspected it had been for him as well. I did not initially have the intention of doing that with Grant when I had selected the one room for the two of us. My original concern had been for Grant’s safety. Lea had called a truce and had vowed to leave him alone, but I knew her very well. Her temper tended to get the better of her in heated situations. She suspected I wanted to change Grant over,
but no matter what Lea’s barbaric manners might show, she felt just as sick about condemning someone to a life like this as I did. But she had had his blood, and I could tell she craved it still.
So in the beginning, I had booked this room for us as a way for Grant to have protection, and I had booked all of the rooms for a two-night stay so that we could check out in the evening instead of being pushed out by housekeeping at eleven. However, I had not anticipated how much the energy between us would grow and pulsate the more we were around one another. I didn’t know what it was about him, but he fascinated and aroused me in an exciting and completely baffling way.
Even driving here in the car together while he asked so many silly questions had made me tense with the electricity between us. I had tried not to speak too much because when I spoke, the attraction seemed to double and throb between us. I had not known this sort of chemistry before, especially not with a human.
Lulu and Marshall had fallen in love, even though their love spawned from a primal attachment formed while we were in that barbaric situation at the prison. No one sought out any sort of physical satisfaction in the prison. It was not really a place where you would feel comfortable enough at any given moment, and you were never ever alone. But after the escape, I had watched a sweet love blossom between them, and they had been inseparable ever since. The physical chemistry between them was obvious and visible.
Cat had been much like me. For decades, we neither took a lover, nor did we have any interest to do so. Physical attraction was just not something we felt towards humans or vampires. I had thought that maybe the human feelings of attraction and desire only transferred to some of us after the change. Some seemed prone to it while others felt nothing at all.
Then Cat had found Gabriel. He’d been a poor human soul ravaged by the savagery of other humans. She had confided in me that she had spotted him at a bar that very night and she had been so intrigued by him that she followed his scent through the streets after he left. She had never found someone else so attractive, and it had awakened something new inside of her. Unfortunately, she caught up to him too late, and poor Gabriel had already been beaten, mugged and left for dead. The decision had been hard, but she’d simply been unable to let that poor creature die when she felt so differently about him. We helped her turn him, and we were pleased he loved her right back the very first time his eyes met hers. He remembered nothing about his human life before her.
My attention and thoughts turned away from my memories and back to Grant who had finished his food and was now drinking a glass of iced tea. He was shirtless with only a pair of boxers on as he sat on the bed. I watched the muscles and tendons in his neck intently as they moved when he gulped down swallow after swallow. My eyes traced his neck down to his shoulders, and that is when I saw the bruises. I was up and beside him in a quick and urgent movement that seemed to startle him to no end. I had moved too fast and quietly for him to detect until I was right next to him.
“Anna, you scared me. I didn’t know you were up.”
I ignored his exclamations as I examined the small fingerprint bruises on his shoulders. Fear filled my body and mind. How had he gotten these?
“Are you okay? Where did these come from?”
“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” he said with a little laugh in his smile as he bent to kiss me.
I kissed him back but could not take my eyes off the bruises. Why was he acting so nonchalant? Had Lea gotten to him while I was asleep?
“Really, Grant, what happened?” I asked.
He looked at his shoulder and shrugged. “Don’t know. I think it must have happened last night. You did get a little intense once or twice,” he said with another sheepish grin.
He kissed me again.
Horror and understanding washed over me. I had done that to him last night. I had squeezed his shoulder in a fit of passion. Passion I was not used to feeling. I had hurt him. Suddenly I felt a little sick. Grant must have noticed the change in me, because he immediately started talking in circles.
“No, Anna, I don’t mind. It didn’t even hurt. They are little bruises. I didn’t even notice them until I looked in the mirror when I woke up, not that they are noticeable or anything. You won’t even see them if I have a shirt on. Please, it’s really not a big deal. I’ve had worse after a baseball game.”
I looked into his sweet face, and he gave me a reassuring smile while he put his warm hands on my shoulders.
“Last night was the greatest night of my life, and I don’t want you to regret any of it. Really. Please, Anna.”
I smiled back at him. I obviously had not meant to do this to Grant, and I would try to not beat myself up over it. It had been the greatest night for me too, and I would not dare ruin it this morning. I put my hand gingerly on his shoulder.
“I’ll just have to be more careful next time.”
I smiled my newly found coy smile at him, and he returned it with interest. He wrapped me in his arms, picked me up and kissed me in a way that suggested more was to come. Sure enough, we fell back into bed together again.
“You had better not.”
Chapter Twenty
Anna
I always rose before the others. In fact, Lea and I were the ones who always rose first. The explanation for this was the way we were made. Lea and I were made from a more potent dose of the infected blood, and the others were made from a slightly diluted form of our blood mixed with their blood. Consequently, Lea and I were a tiny bit faster, stronger and more agile than the others. While Lea was a slightly better fighter than me, I was a slightly better strategist than she was. Together, we would have made a perfect team.
The others also required more sleep to rejuvenate, so when Grant said he wanted to take me somewhere before the others rose, I knew I would not be missed for some time. It was still a good four hours before the sun set, so I doubted if even Lea was awake and moving about in her room. I slipped three notes under each door with the same message.
Grant and I went to do some research before sundown. Should be back soon. I will call you when we are returning.
I searched in my bag to find one of my pairs of extremely tinted sunglasses, and then I walked outside to find Grant waiting for me. He had gotten the Honda and pulled it around to the front entrance to pick me up. I smiled a little at him, still unsure as to what this was all about. He told me he had something special to share with me, but he had insisted it remain a secret for now.
I felt a little tense leaving the other vampires at the hotel alone, but Grant assured me we wouldn’t be long. Besides, I did have Marshall there. He was the strongest one in my group, and I was certain that with Lulu, Cat and Gabriel backing him up, he could subdue any sudden changes of heart on Lea’s part.
So I slipped into the passenger seat of the car, and we exited the parking lot of the little east Dallas hotel to hop back on I20 going eastbound.
“Why are we going back the way we came?”
“Because what I want to show you is about an hour in this direction,” he answered.
“An hour? Grant, really? What is this all about? We have to reach Midland by morning, you know.”
“And the others won’t be up until sunset at least. We can’t move until they are all awake. Please just trust me on this, Anna. Be patient.”
He put his hand on my hand and smiled a warm smile at me. I could feel his pulse through his touch, and it sang to me. Passion throbbed inside me again, but I held it at bay as much as I could. Even so, I felt it burn through my eyes when I looked at him.
I resigned to go along with this plan, no matter what reservations I was feeling. Once during the drive, I saw him pull out a printout of an internet map, and he studied the location where the little red star was placed. He kept checking his phone, but the signal wasn’t great near the pine curtain of east Texas. The car’s navigation system had never worked, which had made it more affordable. I leaned slightly to get a glimpse of where we were headed, and he jerked
the map away as soon as he saw me move.
“Hey now. None of that.”
It was too late though. I had seen that the little star, which indicated our destination was placed over a small town northwest of Tyler called Swan, Texas. What on earth was in Swan, Texas? I did not let on that I had seen the destination, and I played along in somewhat faked frustration. I had learned to fake many normal human reactions from observing them for so long. Even though our nature leaned more towards the direct side of things, we had to learn these little human nuances in order to blend into their society as much as possible. I was pretty good at it.
It was not long before we exited I20 and Grant pulled out the internet map again. We followed a few paved roads before he turned right onto a graveled one. We were really going in the country. The car puttered along the gravel road for a little while before we came upon a faded-blue ranch-style house with a grey roof and wide front yard. Grant parked the car just on the edge of where the gravel met the grass next to a maroon Dodge truck before he killed the engine. I surveyed the house, wondering what on earth this little house in the middle of nowhere had to do with Grant’s surprise. He turned to me and took my hand.
“Anna, I took the liberty of doing something for you.”
The severity in his voice startled me, and I looked into his face. I felt his pulse begin to thud harder and faster through his hand. Nervousness filled me, and I looked around us for any sign of trouble.
“What have you done?”
“Here, I’ll show you.”
He reached into his bag and retrieved some more internet printouts. He handed me the papers and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Anna, this was your house when you were human.”
I looked down at the papers he had placed in my hand and saw an old photograph of a girl that looked just like me with longer hair. The young girl stared up at me from the page with normal blue eyes and blond hair that went past her shoulders. She smiled in a way that both showed her innocence and her willingness to go out in the world to make a place for herself. These were the looks of promise and hope that you could only find existing in the young and hopeful. The headline read Tyler Teens Missing Since Friday. I stared at the photograph hard and realized this girl did not just look a lot like me, this was me. This was the human me at the tender age of nineteen without the vampire eyes and the hardness of torture.
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