He was about thirteen or fourteen when he first heard the word bastard. By then, he was already struggling to prove he was a man. The bastard label made him work all the harder to prove he was man enough not to care.
He mastered poker. He mastered the guitar. He mastered the bookkeeping it took to keep the saloon running smoothly. He mastered the art of loving a woman until she couldn’t see straight.
Once he hit twenty, he’d known it was time to head out. He needed something new. That’s when he’d discovered horses and cattle and the saddle and the rope. He’d discovered the open range with its limitless opportunities to challenge himself.
It was the perfect fit.
Still, it was nice to walk into the cool, shadowy interior of a saloon after a long drive. It was nice to down a mug of beer or two or three to wash the dust from his palate. It was better than nice to sit with a soft, eager woman on his knee and win at cards. He doubled his money in two hours. After five, he had women on both knees and one of his opponents in tears.
Apparently down to his last dime, the polished, city gent smacked a steam boat ticket on the table. Dillon had nodded his acceptance of the pot. He had time on his hands and he was always willing to try something new. In the fortnight it would take to travel to New Orleans and back, he would gamble a little and hopefully love a lot and he’d be ready to head back into the dust when he was through.
A floating palace, The River Queen, was about as far from the dust and wide, open prairie as a fella could get. A lush, velvet carpet covered the floor of his cabin and elaborate wooden filigree decked the walls, but he dumped his gear and headed up onto the deck as quickly as he could. He didn’t much care for the tiny room or the narrow corridors even lit as they were with cut-glass chandeliers.
Now, the saloon was more to his liking. Graced with large windows that opened up onto the deck, the huge room was dotted with tables for gaming. Everywhere he looked, men in white suits circulated and served and women in colorful swathes of silk and ribbons and lace sashayed.
He stood for long moments in the doorway, taking in the swirl of femininity. Curls and soft laughter and curves…slight curves, hidden curves, lush curves, displayed curves… He could have stood forever simply to enjoy the many different womanly figures moving about the room.
He didn’t.
It was too tempting to step into the room and become surrounded by women. He breathed deep to take in the different fragrances…lemon verbena, lily-of-the-valley, rose water… It was the last, more heady fragrance that drew his attention. The scent of roses and the feel of eyes on his back.
He had turned toward a table in the corner. He had seen jet black curls, a red bow of a mouth and bright blue eyes whose gaze seemed to burn through him.
She had smiled and he had smiled back.
The calliope had played in the distance, a loud and festive call for passengers to board, but its sound had faded as he lost himself in her eyes.
A bold woman in a low-cut gown had reached to touch his hand, but he barely felt her fingers as he was drawn to the lady in the corner.
She was older than him, but still had the dew-kissed skin of youth. Her gown was one only the wealthiest of women could have afforded. It shimmered with fine, golden-colored silk. The respectable cut of her bodice didn’t match the look in her eyes.
Her smile was slight, it seemed to hide all the mysteries he’d ever pondered, and it grew as he approached.
Her eyes widened in appreciation as he asked permission to take a seat before he did so and, all the while, he was lost, completely lost in her eyes.
They deepened and darkened when he took a seat across from her. He couldn’t remember if they had played cards or if he had simply sat and looked for hours.
He did know there was very little talk. When she rose, he followed. When she led him to her cabin, he flushed in anticipation.
But, he’d known nothing.
He hadn’t reacquainted himself with the female curves he’d admired in the saloon. He hadn’t spent a lazy afternoon getting to know a willing new friend.
He’d found pain and blood and tears.
He’d discovered a new thirst, one more powerful than any he’d ever known.
Now, don’t get him wrong. There were times when he didn’t give a care for who he used to be. The 1960s for instance. Sex, drugs and rock and roll had been a lifestyle custom-made for a vampire. He’d enjoyed his fair share of flower children and by “fair share” he meant as many as he could drain.
Then there were times when he seemed to wake from a dark dream and he’d realize he had the queen’s power like a lasso around his neck and he’d find dead bodies at his feet with no memory of how they got there. Those were the times he used the blood to ease his confusion and pain.
It was better, really, when he did forget who he had been. It was better to surrender himself to the queen and to the blood. But, Holly sobered him up. Her delicate strength and determined eyes brought out the man in him. Her unwillingness to give in to powerful temptation made him feel moments of…remorse? Or even shame? It had been so long since he’d felt those kinds of feelings he could hardly label them. ’Course, her trying so hard not to give in also made him feel moments of blood lust so strong he thought he’d explode. He was still a vampire, even if he was beginning to chafe under the queen’s saddle.
He was a vampire. There was no denying it after all these years and there was no denying he had enjoyed the blood more often than not. Still, Holly had brought the man in him up for air for the first time since Prohibition. He was back to thinking about the prairie night after night. And for the first time he was thinking about the future as if the queen wouldn’t always be calling the shots.
As the sun rose outside the forgotten tomb, Dillon dreamed of a mustang with blue eyes and a blond mane. It galloped full tilt toward the western plains. It tempted him toward the prairie.
***
Holly had never ridden a horse in her life. Sure, she visited the Hollins University stables. Who didn’t? But horses were huge and mysterious and much prettier from a distance than they were close up and stomping.
Strange to dream of horses.
Stranger still to dream she was one.
It was vivid too. Grass tickled her belly while she ran and the wind filled her hair—or mane or whatever—and for some reason, as a horse, she was obsessed with finding the sunrise. Only it was always over the next hill, over the next hill, over the next hill.
Holly woke tired from galloping, surrounded by the scent of a pine thicket in winter.
“The road trip from hell continues,” she muttered as she rose from another hotel bed. At least it beat the trunk of an ancient Ford Fairlane.
She jumped under the spray of the shower before it was even warm. The imagined pine scent disappeared, thank God. She did not want Dillon’s scent in her dreams. Nightmares, okay, but not dreams. The pine scent was replaced by coconut because apparently the drugstore in Roaring Gap, North Carolina, did not carry strawberry shampoo.
Holly kind of liked it. She was reminded of days spent slathering on oil in the sun and at least a night or two of Piña coladas ’til dawn. It wasn’t depressing. It was warm, sweet remembered fun. She held onto the nostalgic glow all the way through a quick towel drying and slipping into fresh clothes. She was almost happy ’til Winters came in without knocking. It was kind of hard—as in all-but-impossible—to hold on to warm memories in his chilly company.
“Time to go.”
“Good morning to you too. I smell like cream pie.” Holly was still groggy or she never would have playfully stuck the underside of her bare arm up to Winters’ nose. It was the old alive Holly rearing her perky head. It was the way she would have teased a grumpy friend into a better mood…several weeks and when-I-wasn’t-dead ago.
She froze, awkwardly holding her arm in the air, while Winters froze, awkwardly holding his breath.
They would never be comfortable together. Especially if she ke
pt forgetting to go around hissing at crosses and misplacing her Transylvanian accent. If she remembered to act like a monster, he might not find it necessary to remind her she was one, again and again.
Still, she left the vulnerable underside of her forearm under his stubborn ole nose because she refused to lower it and slink away.
Winters lifted one hand to hold her arm in place—such a warm hand. He tilted his face and his nose brushed her wrist as he took a brief whiff. Oh, it wasn’t a Boris and Natasha sweep up her arm, but it did dispel the awkwardness to leave surprise and sudden warmth in its place.
“It was coconut or an expensive bottle with something called ‘pantenol’ in it.”
Holly laughed, but turned quickly away as he released her arm before she could see him not even smile in response. If he’d been a friend and she had still been sleepy enough to forget she wasn’t her old self, she would have accused him of penny pinching. Since he was a killer intent on her annihilation, she’d take the store brand and leave it at that.
“Pie’s good. I miss pie,” she said. Though in retrospect, as they took their meager belongings out to the car in marked silence, she could have said something less inclined to make him think she was peckish.
He got behind the wheel and she sank into the sun-warmed vinyl with a sigh. Soon enough it would be as icy as she was so she reached to crank up the heat.
If he noticed, he didn’t say.
“Still south?”
“Yes. South.”
Holly looked out the window as they left another hotel behind. She was awake now. The perky Holly was put firmly back in her place. She didn’t say anything about toasted coconut as the hot air from the vents somehow warmed the shampoo’s scent on her skin, but not her skin itself.
She was cold like snowy pines on a dream prairie without a sunrise in sight. She shivered. It had been a nightmare and Dillon had been there. Watching her run and run and run.
***
What would she have done if he had tasted that coconut scent on her skin? He had wanted to. For an insane second he had wanted to cop an Addams Family moment from her delicate wrist all the way up to her collarbone. What would she have done?
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? She probably wouldn’t have stood there like Morticia. There was a very good chance he would have needed a mortician afterwards from loss of blood if she’d reacted like a vampire and from a heart attack if she’d reacted like a woman.
How many times a night now was he fantasizing about Holly as a woman? He could too easily imagine the laughter and joy and zest that must have characterized her life. When she had those little moments like with the arm under his nose back at the hotel, it was torture…because he was starting to want her as a woman so badly. He saw the woman in her often, too often for his own good.
She was a shadow of her former self, but that former self must have rocked because it still held on so stubbornly, so strongly.
There was always the chance that he was under some kind of spell. There was no doubt he shouldn’t have given her his blood. Trouble was, his reactions to her were so similar to what he would feel for a human woman he was falling for. It was clouding his judgment. She had good qualities. She had horrifying qualities. She was flat out adorable at times. At other times, she scared the hell out of him.
One thing he couldn’t deny, he was in trouble. There was a vampire sitting beside him and all he could think about was taking her in his arms.
Chapter Twelve
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church was built of mountain stone and nestled on the side of rural hill as if it remembered its origins well. Bright red arched doors stood out amidst the natural earth-tone hues of its walls. They were a welcome and also a reminder of Passover.
Holly couldn’t resist reaching out to touch the doors, but the paint was only paint and her hand came away clean. Nice that her fingers didn’t smoke or burst into flame. Her families’ faith had run deeper than could be made manifest by pretty outfits on Sundays. Oh, they had always attended Midnight Mass at Christmas and Easter services and baptisms and weddings, but they weren’t regular churchgoers. Belief was simply a part of their everyday lives. Holly had prayed that Trey Martin would ask her to prom in high school. She had prayed to get into Hollins. She had prayed and lit a candle and prayed more and more and more when her father had been in the hospital after his accident.
She had never stopped to think what it would mean to her if she could never step foot into a church again.
While Winters went ahead to check things out, determined not to be taken by surprise again, Holly waited at the door of the chapel.
She smelled lemon oil and dried flowers and candle wax. She remembered “The Lord’s Prayer”, “The Nicene Creed” and “The Doxology” and said them all in her head, a kind of test.
Again, no smoke.
She wanted to walk inside and approach the altar. She didn’t feel threatened or endangered. She didn’t feel like an unholy monster that didn’t belong. She felt, as she always had, a sense of quiet peace waiting for her should she need it.
And there had never been a time when she needed it more.
Holly stepped inside.
Her footsteps echoed on the wooden floor until she reached the carpet runner spread down the center aisle between the pews. The windows in the chapel weren’t stained glass. Instead, they were clear to frame the simple majesty of God’s creation outside. Midnight mountains and star-kissed sky and the bright, full moon shining down.
Winters stood silhouetted against one window. He looked out at the night with his hand beneath his coat.
“Not here,” she thought. It wasn’t the place for battle. Although, it might be the perfect place to prepare for battle.
She continued to walk forward. It was a plain chapel, but it held her in awe with its simplicity. Here were no frills beyond what God himself had created. Wood, stone, beeswax. Plain fat candles sat on the altar where a white cloth gleamed and, above it all, high in the peak of a pitched wood-beamed roof was the only stained glass. It was a perfect circle and in its center was a cross and Holly smiled.
Because it didn’t scare her.
“Are you sure about this?” Winters asked.
For a second, Holly thought he was concerned about her safety as a vampire entering a church. She didn’t know whether to be touched or indignant. Then she realized he meant to ask if she was sure Dillon was nearby.
Funny how he could doubt her humanity and doubt the tie with her Maker all at once. Funny how he could believe in vampire mojo only so far. He could blame it for the attraction between them, but he couldn’t trust it to lead them to Dillon.
“Yes, I’m sure.” And she was. The tie had pulled her here.
She didn’t want Dillon in this chapel. It would be wrong. It would be a corruption. But not because he was a vampire. She was a vampire and she was here and every bit of faith she possessed said it was okay. All were welcome.
But that didn’t mean Dillon. The monster who had killed her sister and father and taken her mother didn’t belong here.
“I think we should go outside,” Holly suggested. She hated to think of an ugly fight to the death waged between the lemony pews.
“Toes starting to burn?”
Holly clenched her fingers into fists and reminded herself that she didn’t want a fight in the chapel.
“Not mine. Yours?” She was sick of him treating her like a monster when he was the one who was the practiced killer.
Winters grunted, but he watched when she approached the altar. He watched when she crossed herself. He watched when she let the moonlight shining through the glass cross touch her upturned face.
She didn’t do it to prove anything to him, but it still felt good to prove to herself that she wasn’t a lost cause.
He turned and walked out. Probably to prove that he didn’t care.
Holly followed. She didn’t want Dillon in the chapel. She felt warm and accepted and recharged. She didn�
��t want her faith shaken if Dillon could walk in those doors without bursting into flames. He was a monster and right now she needed to believe that, vampire or not, she wasn’t…yet.
Beside the church on a neighboring hillside were rows of gravestones. Some were so old that the dates had already worn away to nothing. Holly remembered her mother making rubbings while she and Jayne tried not to feel creeped out by the very idea that a tombstone rubbing could be a keepsake.
There were about a dozen Raveneaux grave sites. Her mother had danced up and down like she’d hit the jackpot. Weird, true, but kind of sweet when you realized millions of Americans couldn’t even tell you their grandmother’s maiden name.
Holly had a new appreciation for family and a much broader definition of “creepy”. Much.
Winters walked around the graves. Holly didn’t. She was still uncomfortable in cemeteries, even now as an official member of the I’m-dead-too club. She couldn’t bring herself to walk up and down the crooked rows because it seemed rude. The same way playing loud music at six a.m. in a dormitory was rude. So, she kind of hovered, not certain where she could put her feet without messing up the whole rest-in-peace vibe of the place.
Winters didn’t seem to care about peace. He went to the farthest edge of the cemetery near the trees and stood. His whole body looked tense as if peace was the last thing on his mind.
Holly couldn’t help thinking about her mother and sister. She wondered how much longer she could withstand the bombardment of memories triggered by every stop along this crazy hunt-slash-be-hunted journey. Flashes of remembered laughter haunted her. She missed her mother and her sister and it was like missing a part of herself.
Why was Dillon retracing their steps from last summer? Why had he called her Holly Raveneaux? Did he have some centuries-old grievance with an ancestor she’d never met?
As Winters worked the perimeter of the graveyard, Holly struggled to make sense of the senseless. It didn’t feel like Dillon was after revenge. He had called her Raveneaux and his voice had held reverence. Besides, he acted as if he’d given her a gift by making her a vampire. He didn’t see it as punishment. So, if he didn’t have a grudge against the Raveneaux family, what was his interest in them and in her?
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