by Lynsay Sands
“What the hell,” Divine breathed into her motorcycle helmet, automatically letting up on the motorcycle’s throttle as she spotted the huge bonfire that had once been her RV at the end of the midway. She noted the silhouettes of people against it next, and at first wasn’t sure what they were doing, but then realized several were rushing around throwing pails of water at the conflagration while others shot fire extinguishers at it. Still others were frantically screaming her name. They thought she was inside, Divine realized, and then remembered that while she wasn’t, Marcus was.
Cursing, she sent the motorcycle racing forward, quickly crossing the distance to what had once been her home. At the edge of the group she didn’t so much stop and dismount as step off as she let the motorcycle fall. The tires were still moving as it crashed onto its side. Divine undid and tugged her helmet off, dropping it by the bike as she hurried forward.
“Oh Divine! Thank God!” Madge cried, spotting her and rushing to her side.
“What happened?” she asked grimly, moving along the RV, checking the windows for movement and a way in.
“Nobody knows. It just went up like tinder,” Madge said anxiously, following along behind her. “We’ve called the fire department, but weren’t sure if you were inside. The men have been trying to beat the fire back from the door so someone could run in and try to get you out if you were in there.”
“Tell them not to bother with the RV, but to start watering down or moving the nearby stalls and trailers,” Divine said quietly, and then turned to peer at the woman, giving her a little mental nudge to ensure she did that, before turning and continuing around the RV.
She walked around the front of the vehicle. There was a door behind the driver and passenger’s door that led into the closet in her bedroom, and she’d hoped she might get through to the living area that way, but the fire was worse here than anywhere else. Divine continued around the RV, pausing when she spotted the smashed window in the lounge area. The smell of burnt flesh surrounded her there. Divine ground her teeth together and started toward the window with some vague intention of jumping through it and inside. But the moment she moved toward the RV the scent began to fade.
Pausing, she turned slowly, following her nose as the smell grew stronger. Firelight gleaming off of blood and burnt skin on the side of the cotton candy trailer caught her eye, and then she noticed that the padlock was broken. She was just stepping toward it when three men hurried around the burning RV toward her.
“The fire trucks just started up the midway.”
“We’re moving the cotton candy stand further away.”
“Everyone else is watering down the Tilter to make sure it doesn’t catch fire.”
Divine blinked as each man contributed a comment, but they weren’t done.
“We were going to back Roch’s truck up to the cotton candy trailer, hook it up and pull it further away, but can’t get it through the back lot.”
“We’d have to move about a dozen other vehicles to get it here.”
“No time for that, so the three of us are going to haul it. If we can.”
The last man, a wiry little guy who was somewhat lacking in muscle, sounded pretty dubious about achieving that feat and Divine didn’t blame him. While the stand was on wheels and Bevy was one of the men and a big brute, Mac and the thin kid she didn’t know were the other two. She didn’t think they’d be able to move it either.
“I’ll help,” she announced, moving up to the end where the trailer hitch was. “You guys push and I’ll steer.”
The men nodded and rushed around to the other end of the small trailer.
“Ready?” she asked, bending to slip one hand under the hitch to lift it off the bricks it rested on.
Grunts and groans answered her as the men put their backs into moving the trailer. She wasn’t terribly surprised when it barely inched forward, in fact she was prepared for it and simply lifted the hitch upward and moved away from the RV, pulling the trailer behind her. Divine tugged it past the RV, weaved between a couple of other vehicles and into the center of the back lot before stopping and setting it down.
Walking back around the trailer, she grimaced to herself when she saw the three men standing a good twenty feet back, gaping at her and the trailer. Sighing, she moved toward them, quickly slipping into first one man’s mind and then each of the other’s and rearranging their memories a bit so that they recalled the hard, gut-wrenching, grunting work of pushing the trailer away from the RV.
“Good work,” Divine praised them quietly when she was done. “Perhaps you should go see if they need help with the Tilt-A-Whirl.”
The words were accompanied by a mental nudge that had them nodding, turning toward the RV, and heading away to find the others.
Shaking her head, Divine turned back to the trailer. The door was stuck, or appeared to be at first. After a moment, though, she got it open enough to realize that Marcus was lying in front of it. She called his name, but when he didn’t respond, she forced the door open, pushing his body across the metal floor inside as she did. Once she could slip in, she did, and then let the door slide closed and bent to examine Marcus.
The smell of burnt flesh was overwhelming in the small space and Divine had to hold her breath as she examined him. Fire was one of the few things that could kill one of their kind, although it took special circumstances to succeed with it. Trapping someone inside a burning building or vehicle was special enough . . . so long as that someone didn’t manage to escape before combusting. Marcus had managed to escape, badly burned but before the temperature had got so hot that he combusted.
Divine shook him gently, not really wanting to wake him to the pain he was no doubt in, but needing to know how bad he was. When he didn’t rouse at all, she shifted him away from the door, straightened, and peered out. The night sky was lit up not just by the fire, but by both red flashing lights and bright white ones, and she could see water arcing into the air around her RV. The firemen were hard at work.
“Blood.”
Divine glanced down at that word as Marcus suddenly caught her ankle in a hard grip. Easing the door closed, she knelt next to him again. “How bad is it?”
“Blood,” Marcus repeated.
Divine sighed, but nodded. “I’ll find someone.”
“No.” His hand tightened on her ankle. “My SUV.”
“What about it?” she asked with confusion.
“Blood . . . there,” he gasped.
Divine frowned, her confusion only deepening, and then she recalled the bags he’d carried into her RV and that he had even slapped one to his mouth and drained it. She asked with amazement, “You mean that bagged stuff?”
He grunted and Divine shook her head.
“We can’t survive on that, Marco. The nutrients die the moment it leaves the body. You need—”
“No,” he hissed. “Bagged.”
“Your bagged blood is in the refrigerator in my RV,” she said, and then added dryly, “And I am not going in there to get it.”
“More,” he gasped. “SUV.”
Divine clucked impatiently. Bagged blood would not help him through this. He needed live blood to give him strength and help him heal. However, she knew without question that the man was stubborn enough to refuse to feed from a mortal if she brought him one of the carnies. Besides, the trailer was tiny and hot and stank of burnt flesh. Getting him out of there and to his SUV was rather attractive just then. And once she had him in the SUV she could take him elsewhere to find donors to feed from. It was never a good idea to feed where you lived. Divine avoided that as a rule.
Decision made, she bent and scooped him up.
“What . . . doing?” he almost moaned the unfinished question, but Divine got his drift.
“Taking you to your SUV,” she said grimly, turning to the door and cracking it open with the fingers of the hand at his shoulders so that she could peer out.
“Bring . . . here,” he gasped.
Divine sn
orted at the very suggestion. “I’m not bringing anything here. You need blood to heal, but once you get it, you’re going to scream your head off and thrash like a landed fish. I’m getting you the hell out of here and somewhere you can’t alert the whole town to the agony you’re going through.”
Marcus groaned but didn’t protest further so she supposed he thought that was the right decision. It didn’t matter if he did or not, though; it was what she was doing, Divine thought grimly and slipped out of the trailer once she saw that the way was clear.
The first problem Divine encountered was that she had no idea where his SUV was. It took some hunting to find it and then she only knew she had the right vehicle because it had Canadian plates. That should have raised a lot of questions with the carnies. The only way it couldn’t have was if Marcus had controlled some minds and such, she thought as she finally paused beside the vehicle.
“Keys?” she asked, glancing to the man in her arms.
“Pocket,” he said, or at least she thought that was what he mumbled. Using the back of the SUV to help hold him up, she quickly patted him down until she found the keys in his pocket, his jeans pocket of course. Rolling her eyes, she slid her hand into the tight space to snatch the keys out, doing her best not to feel anything but the contents of his pockets. Dear God, she was an old woman, she shouldn’t be shy about digging around inside a man’s pocket . . . should she?
Shaking that worry away, Divine eyed the key fob on the chain with other keys and then pressed the broken lock symbol twice and heard the clicking as the locks were released. She then immediately slid the keys into her pocket, debated how to open the door she had leaned the man against, and then sighed to herself. There was nothing else she could do; she hefted him over her shoulder, wincing at his cry of pain, and then used her free hand to open the back door. She leaned forward then, easing him off her shoulder and onto the SUV floor, then shifted his legs inside and followed to close the door behind them.
There was a small refrigerator built into one corner of the back of the SUV. It was locked and she searched briefly through his keys until she found the right one and opened it, but then simply stared at the contents. Six bags of blood, almost ice-cold. Divine grimaced at the sight. Junk food for immortals. It held little in the way of nutrients, but it was what he wanted and she supposed at this point, even a small amount of nutrients were better than none.
Shaking her head, she grabbed a bag and turned to Marcus. He was still conscious and his fangs slid out as soon as he spotted the bag in her hand so Divine popped it to his mouth, waited for it to empty, and then replaced it with another. There were six bags in the refrigerator and Marcus went through them in maybe a little more than six minutes. He began to thrash and groan even before he finished the last bag. The healing was starting and it was obviously going to be nasty.
Divine peered at him with concern for a moment and then cursed under her breath and began to shift over the backseats to the driver’s seat, his keys still clutched in her hand. They couldn’t stay here. She had to get him the hell away from the carnies and anybody else if she didn’t want him drawing attention to them.
That thought uppermost in her mind, she started the engine and managed to maneuver them out of the back lot and onto the road. Marcus began thrashing and shrieking in the back almost the moment she got the tires on blacktop.
Divine ground her teeth and did her best to ignore the tortured sounds, as well as the way the vehicle rocked with his wild thrashing. She needed to concentrate. She needed to find someplace secluded enough that his screams wouldn’t be overheard.
Marcus was suffering. His entire body felt like it was on fire, from the tips of his toes to the ends of the hairs on his head. Everything seemed to be screaming in agony. He’d taken enough damage that the six bags in the truck hadn’t been enough. He needed more.
“Divine,” he croaked, writhing on whatever it was he lay on. He really had no idea, and didn’t care. All he cared about in this world was making the pain stop. He’d give her Bastien’s number and have her order more blood brought at once. He needed it. That was the only thing that would end this agony.
“Divine,” he gasped, rolling his head back and around looking for her. He was in the SUV, he saw. Alone. Groaning, he curled into a ball on the vehicle floor and wept helplessly, overwhelmed by the pain thrashing him. But then he forced himself to drag himself closer to the door and reach for it. He needed blood.
Before he could even try to open it himself, the door was pulled open from outside, revealing Divine and a young mortal woman in a nightgown. He stared blankly for a moment, overwhelmed once again, this time by the smells and sounds coming from the blank-faced mortal woman. He could actually smell and hear the blood pumping through her body, and it was beautiful, he thought briefly and then lunged at the mortal, his fangs sliding out.
Eight
Divine tugged the leather jacket she’d donned a little tighter around herself and shifted uncomfortably in the front seat, and then opened her eyes on a little groan and rolled her head. She had a crick in her neck from sleeping upright in the driver’s seat. Nice. That was something immortals didn’t get if they had enough blood in their system, but then she already knew she didn’t. She needed to feed.
Suddenly aware that the moaning and groaning that had been coming from the back of the SUV for what had seemed like hours had now died off, Divine twisted in the seat to peer back at Marcus. He was sleeping soundly, lying in the back amid the flakes of burnt flesh that his body had shed as he’d healed.
The truck would need to be hosed out, she thought with a grimace. It probably wouldn’t help though. Divine suspected the smell of burnt flesh would linger in the vehicle for a long time to come.
Turning back, she opened the driver’s side door and slid out. Divine took a moment to stretch and crack a few bones before moving toward the door at the back of the SUV. Once there, she peered in at Marcus briefly, and then caught his legs and started to drag him toward her, but dropped them and quickly stepped back when he suddenly sat upright, his expression half asleep and half alarmed.
“Divine.” He sighed her name with relief, lowering the fists he’d instinctively raised. Marcus slumped where he sat, letting his hands drop to the floor, only to raise them again and grimace with disgust as he peered at the ruined skin now clinging to his hands. “Gross.”
“Yeah,” Divine agreed with amusement. “I was going to get you settled next to a tree or something and sweep out the worst of it, then head into town and find somewhere to hose it out. Maybe hose you down too.”
“I wouldn’t say no to either suggestion,” Marcus said dryly, sliding forward on the vehicle floor until he could get out of the SUV. Moving a few steps away from the vehicle, he then tried to shake off the worst of the flakes clinging to him. “I don’t suppose there is a lake or anything near here?”
“Actually, we’re about half an hour or forty-five minutes from the ocean,” she admitted, and when he glanced at her in surprise, she shrugged. “I needed to take you somewhere no one would hear you screaming. I know the people who own this property. It’s about forty minutes from San Bernardino, spans hundreds of acres, and they’re out of town. I figured this was our safest bet.”
Marcus glanced around then. They were parked on a dirt path near a copse of trees. He couldn’t see the lights of civilization in any direction, although the copse could be blocking some.
“So you parked me here and went for a walk while I screamed my head off?” he asked with amusement.
“Actually I went for five or six walks,” Divine informed him dryly, and then added, “But not here, on the edge of the nearest town, and each time to find you a host.”
Marcus tilted his head uncertainly. “A host?”
“Someone to feed on,” she said succinctly. “You needed blood to heal.”
“You let me bite someone?” he asked, and she suspected he was having some memories of his feedings, because he looked horrifie
d. She could understand that. The man had been in agony and out of control. If she hadn’t been there, helping to control the situation, he probably would have killed every one of the mortals she’d brought to him. But she had been there.
“They are all alive and fine and back at home,” Divine assured him solemnly. “I realized when you launched yourself at the first one that you weren’t fully in your head. I controlled her mind while you fed, forced you to stop when you’d had enough, and then returned her to her bed and fetched another,” she assured him, neglecting to mention that she hadn’t been able to slip into his thoughts and stop him by controlling him, so had had to get physical with him.
“Hosts to feed on,” Marcus muttered unhappily.
Divine didn’t comment. Even after all these centuries, she disliked using the word blood. She didn’t know if it was the need to hide what she was from the mortals she’d lived with over the years that made her avoid use of the word, but she found herself reluctant to say the word. Hosts to feed on just sounded less nasty to her.
Marcus turned back to the vehicle. Leaning in, he grabbed his duffel bag and straightened. He carried the bag around to the back passenger door, set it inside, and then turned to peer at her solemnly. “Thank you for getting me to the SUV and taking care of me.”
Divine shrugged uncomfortably. “I couldn’t just leave you in the stand for someone to find. You’d have attacked the first person who came along and drained them dry. Maybe the second person who came too.”
“Yes,” he agreed, sounding both weary and ashamed at once. Straightening his shoulders, he added, “Still, some would have left me anyway.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said firmly.
“No,” Marcus agreed quietly. “I know you wouldn’t. You might be a ball buster—”
Divine glanced at him sharply, surprised when he grinned.
“But you’re also the woman who does her best to help the mortals who come to you, as well as the carnies you travel with. You would not have left me screaming in a cotton candy stand at the carnival,” he said with certainty.