Christa remained unfazed. “If you were lonely, why didn’t you just join a book club or something?”
He laughed again. “There’s a lot to be said for the company of those who understand the night. Who understand that not all monsters exist solely in fairy stories.”
She began to say something else, but Dylan stopped her. “Officially, you just asked me two questions. My turn.”
Christa sat back in her chair, fingers flexing in her lap. “Okay. Go for it.”
“What, exactly, are you?”
“I wish I knew.” Now that she had resigned herself to answering Dylan’s questions, she seemed almost relieved. He suspected she hadn’t told many people about her origins.
“Well, you’re not like me,” Dylan said. “But then, you’re not like other mortals, either.”
“I’ve always been able to do these things,” she said, unable to meet his eyes. “As far as I know, my parents were normal. I was just born different. The jinn don’t scare me because I know they can’t hurt me.” She looked up at Dylan. “Neither can you.”
Dylan held his hands up. “I wasn’t planning to, believe me.” He turned in his seat, towards the counter. “Hey, where’s this pie?”
The old man dutifully sprang to attention and lifted the plate he’d already prepared from the counter. He crossed the floor and set it in front of Christa, still mute, still slack-mouthed. Christa waited for him to disappear once more before reaching for a fork and eagerly attacking the pie. Dylan felt slightly queasy as he watched her. His own stomach growled, but he knew it wouldn’t be satisfied with a stale hunk of chocolate pie.
“So is that it?” he asked Christa. “Is that your answer?”
Christa shrugged, her mouth full of pastry. “That’s all I know. Maybe I’m just a random freak of nature.”
“Fine,” Dylan relented. “How did you end up in Arizona?”
Christa shook her head, her face lit with an impish smile. She was obviously starting to enjoy their game. “That’s a different question. You have to wait your turn.” She took another mouthful and swallowed, barely pausing long enough to chew. “How did you end up in Arizona?”
“US Airways.”
“Very funny.” Christa tapped her fork on the side of her plate in mock agitation. “You know what I mean. What were you doing hanging out at The Starlight Lodge?”
“Well, besides their pedestrian selection of beverages and world class karaoke, it’s a well known jinn bar. I was after companionship, remember? Not that there was much in the way of scintillating conversation. Most of them thought a night that passed without a fight was a classy one. Or a boring one. Same question to you, lady.”
The smile briefly left Christa’s face and her eyes flared with a secretive, haunted glare. “I wanted to be where no one knew me. I told you I’d known jinn before.” Dylan nodded. “Well, I met them in London. Two of them had a flat and they let me sleep on the sofa. I don’t think they felt sorry for me, they probably thought they could use me. They thought I was stupid, you see. But I was really the one using them.” She smiled again. “I persuaded landlords and shop staff to give them all their drinks and smokes for free, and they kept me off the streets.”
“So you had no problem dazzling people for smokes, but it never occurred to you to use it on an estate agent? You were happier sleeping on a jinn’s filthy sofa?”
“It was like you said. Companionship.”
Dylan sat back in his chair, motioned for Christa to continue.
“Plus, they were different,” she said. “Like me. I didn’t fit in with normal people. I didn’t fit in with the jinn either, but at least they understood the world. The humans all around us worry about their mortgages, about eating a low-cholesterol diet. They don’t understand anything. They don’t know what happens in their own streets at night.”
Dylan waited while Christa finished her pie. She scraped the last crumbs from the plate into her mouth and laid the fork down reverently.
“You still haven’t answered the question,” he said when she was finished. “How did you get here?”
“The jinn got tired of London. They said they wanted to go to America, maybe California. See if it was like the movies.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I went with them and ditched them in Phoenix. They were starting to bore me.”
“And The Starlight Lodge? How did you even find it?”
“The desert tells you things if you listen hard enough.”
Dylan decided her answer was good enough. He glanced at the old man. He was still behind the counter, rocking slightly on leaden feet. “One more question each,” he said, turning back to Christa.
“I’d better make it a good one then.” She thought for a moment, her lips pursed. “Okay, it’s a two-parter. How old are you and where do you come from?”
“I don’t know if two-parters are allowed.” Christa pouted, fine hair falling across her eyes. “But seeing as this is your last question, I’ll allow it. Promise not to be shocked?”
She nodded eagerly.
“I’m two hundred and twenty years old.”
He paused, expecting an exclamation of surprise. Even dismay. Christa remained silent, her face registering intense interest instead of shock. He shrugged and continued. “I was born in Hungary, in Budapest. You ever been there?” Christa shook her head. “It’s a beautiful city. Or it was until the Russians got their hands on it.” He sighed. “We were poor back then, my family and I. I grew up with an unhealthy appetite for women and alcohol but no money to fund it. I suppose if I hadn’t been turned vampire, I would have found myself in an early grave. As it happens, I did find a grave of sorts. It just wasn’t the kind I had to lie in.”
“You don’t speak like a Hungarian.”
“How should a Hungarian speak?”
“I don’t know. Not like you.”
“Well, Budapest and all its dark splendour was a long time ago. I’ve traversed the globe many times since then. I’ve spent a lot of time in Holland, Spain, England. Even a decade in Australia. But that was back before they had any decent sanitation. You can’t imagine the horrors of intense heat and unwashed immigrants.” He wrinkled his nose and Christa laughed. “It’s a beautiful place now, of course. Still hot as hell, but Sydney has considerable charm.”
“I’d love to go there.”
“Maybe I’ll take you.” His stomach growled again and he frowned. “I’ll save my last question for another time, I want to get out of here. I need to eat and I don’t fancy the look of your zombie guy.” He cocked his head towards the old man behind the counter. “Will he stay that way forever?”
“No, it usually wears off. He’ll come to and wonder who’s been eating all his holiday pie.”
They left The Blue Mesa Trading Post and Coffee Shop hand in hand, carefully stepping around the displays of wooden beads and curling postcards. As they crossed the car park and climbed back into the RV, the old man continued to gape behind the counter, thin wrinkled hands opening and closing at his sides.
Five
The days spent crossing the Colorado plains had been calm and quiet. Dylan watched the landscape change with some satisfaction, noting how the dry earth petered out to dense grasslands, how the wind became cooler and fresher. Christa spent her time learning the words to the songs on the radio. She sang them high and loud in her child’s voice while Dylan followed the road and smiled. He drew the line at joining in.
They stopped sporadically, only pausing at gas stations long enough to fill up the RV and eat. Christa developed a taste for microwave burritos, while Dylan dined on the equally greasy teenagers he found behind the shop counters.
Christa didn’t mind rinsing her clothes in the RV’s sink but by the time Kansas lurched into view, Dylan was sick of wearing the same shirt and jeans. He had travelled light since Texas, only taking what he could fit into the pockets of his jacket. He was used to finer things. He followed signs pointing to the city of Fairwood, hoping to find some decent
shops.
Christa sat up when she noticed they had left the highway. “Where are we going?”
“To the fine and, God willing, metropolitan city of Fairwood.”
“Is it nice?”
“How the hell would I know? I’ve never been there.”
She lapsed back into silence and Dylan glanced at her, afraid he had spoken too harshly. “We’re overdue a shopping trip. It’s time to put your freakish mental powers to work.”
Christa grinned. “See, bringing me with you wasn’t such a bad idea.”
“I never said it was. Just sorting out my pains made you worth your weight in gold.”
The gut-wrenching waves of pain that had seized and controlled him for the best part of a year before he met Christa were now a fading memory. Dylan felt a deep gratitude for their annihilation every time he remembered how difficult it had been to plan his life around the attacks. He’d had to make sure he was in a safe place each night so he could scream in peace. He also had to arrange for food to be nearby. He usually phoned for call girls, even takeaway pizza, dragging his hapless callers from the doorsteps of various motel rooms before they even had a chance to knock and announce themselves. By that point, he was so strung out and ravenous he could have smelt the blood moving in their veins from a mile away. Very rarely did he have to resort to crawling to the motel’s reception desk to feed on the staff. He couldn’t always be sure there would be someone there. The whole experience had been unexpected and degrading. Dylan had hated himself for his weakness. For the ugliness that was sweat-soaked agony.
Now he barely had to plan ahead at all. He ate when he was hungry and took what he wanted with a smile on his face. It almost rivalled the freedom of the old days. Days when his vampire allies ruled over all and drank entire villages dry in a matter of nights.
Christa seemed immensely pleased by his praise. She settled back in her seat and began humming with the radio once more, her voice rising and falling in line with the deep vocals of an Elvis song.
***
Fairwood was smaller than Dylan had hoped but the shops were open, which was an improvement on the ghostly silence of Blue Mesa. They parked on the outer edges of the city centre and took to the streets on foot, pausing before a shop called Fairwood Urban. Dylan pulled Christa to his side.
“This is the place.”
“This is a woman’s clothes store.”
“Exactly. If I have to look at that ugly T-shirt of yours one more time, I just might lose the will to live.”
“But you’re not alive.”
“Just go in, would you?”
Christa giggled, but did as she was asked. The shop was bright and modern, though devoid of other customers. Dylan decided it was just as well, because the beaming blonde clerk was too choice to leave un-tasted.
“Welcome to Fairwood Urban,” the clerk trilled. “How may I help you today?”
“I think the first thing you should do is close the shop,” Dylan said. “We’re going to be leaving with a lot of your merchandise, we don’t want to be disturbed.”
The clerk smiled wider. “Are you British? I just love British accents, but I can’t close up, hun’. It’s against store policy.”
She watched Dylan as he prowled the shop, his hand running along the rails of clothes. He knew she didn’t suspect him of shoplifting, she was merely appraising him. He smiled furtively. In different circumstances, he would have played with the clerk a little before killing her. Would have made her weep and moan even as she pleaded for him not to stop. Now though, he glanced at Christa to gauge her reaction to the clerk’s attention. She was staring at a dress in the window, her back half-turned to them, completely oblivious to the sudden tension in the room. Dylan wanted to laugh but stopped himself.
“Christa, Love,” he said. “Would you do the honours?”
Christa turned away from the dress, her eyes full of enthusiasm when she gathered Dylan’s meaning. “Close the shop,” she told the clerk.
The clerk immediately walked to the front doors and pulled them shut, locking them with a key hanging from her belt.
“There’s a good girl,” Dylan said. “Now, whatever my Christa wants, my Christa gets. Just promise me no sodding T-shirts.”
***
Christa was an admirably fast shopper, though Dylan suspected that was because she would have been just as happy to keep her worn T-shirt. Still, she took to the task with some gusto, treating it like an experiment.
“Would you wear this?” she asked the clerk, holding up a bulky woollen cardigan. “It doesn’t look very fashionable.”
“Knitted statement pieces are very on trend this season,” the clerk replied, her voice flat and monotone.
Christa turned to Dylan. “What do you think?”
“Ugly as hell. Next.”
Christa nodded, discarded the cardigan on the floor and resumed leafing through the rails. She selected two shirts and a floor length black skirt, adding them to the pile of clothes on the counter.
“Okay, I’m finished. I just want to go and put these ones on,” she said, picking out a black turtleneck jumper and a pair of dark, navy jeans.
Dylan waited while Christa changed, assessing the clerk standing obediently beside the counter. Her name tag read, ‘Hi, I’m Candice’.
“So, do you like working at Fairwood Urban, Candice?” he asked her. Candice remained mute. She was pretty beneath her heavy make-up. Her lips gleamed with a thick layer of sticky gloss and her eyelids were painted in soft browns, accentuating her wide eyes and long eyelashes. Dylan’s stomach growled.
“So, what do you think?”
When Dylan turned and saw Christa emerge from the dressing room, all thoughts of the clerk were momentarily lost.
“You’re a woman transformed.”
Now that the oversized T-shirt had been cast aside, Christa’s figure was svelte and trim. Her childlike innocence seemed to have been swept away in one stroke. Dylan walked towards her and took her in his arms, making her laugh as he leant to kiss her. The clerk stood like a sentinel beside them, her hands at her sides and her eyes clouded and unseeing. Dylan almost forgot about her as he kissed Christa, but when he drew away the scent of her spicy blood flared through his senses once more.
“Do you mind?” he asked Christa, indicating the clerk.
“Not at all.” Christa hopped up to sit on the counter and began packing her new clothes into the plastic carrier bags hanging beside the till.
Dylan turned to the clerk, felt his front incisors elongate and sharpen, his mouth fill with saliva. “Time to ring this up, Candice,” he breathed.
Behind him on the counter, Christa was giggling again. “Oh Jesus. That was terrible.”
Dylan ignored her and reached for the smooth-skinned Candice. He wrapped his long fingers tight around her upper arms, luxuriating in the creamy texture of her. The passivity ingrained on her face was off-putting. He closed his eyes and leant in for the kill, for the breathless seconds as his teeth closed down and pierced skin and tissue, the mounting joy when his questing tongue found blood. He could never tire of this feeling. He swept an arm around Candice’s back to steady her, nearly lifting her from her feet as he drained her, crushing her to his chest. She quivered once, and was still.
He kept his eyes closed as he let the spent body fall to the floor, unwilling to relinquish the satisfied, full feeling. Candice’s blood warmed his skin and quickened his withered organs. The jinn stones in his gut sighed as they absorbed it, spinning delicious strands of heat along the walls of his stomach. Finally, he opened his eyes. Just in time to see the face at the window, stricken with horror. The girl outside realised she had been seen and turned to sprint away up the empty street, arms flailing wildly.
“Shit.”
Christa looked up from her bags. “What?”
“We’ve been seen.” He bent and ripped Candice’s key from her belt. It took scant seconds to cross the shop and unlock the doors, but by then the unwelcome v
oyeur was already at the end of the street. Dylan began to run after her, pushing his legs to move at an unnatural pace. A pace he wouldn’t normally display in broad daylight. He reached the girl, a thick-set teen with braces and thin, flyaway hair, just as she was about to turn into a deserted coffee shop. She yelped when his hand closed on her shoulder, too afraid to turn around, too uncertain to cry out for help. Dylan silently breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked her.
The sound of pounding feet on the pavement announced Christa’s arrival. She stopped beside them, out of breath. “That was close.”
“No shit.” Dylan dragged the girl back by her shoulder, forcing her to turn around. A thin line of foamy saliva had escaped her mouth and was beginning to gather beneath her lower lip. “People have no bloody manners,” he said. “Spying, sneaking around. That would have been a hanging offence in my time.”
The girl began to visibly shake, her eyes huge and misted with tears. “I didn’t see anything. Let me go, I won’t say anything. I promise.”
“If you didn’t see anything, why would you have anything to say?” Dylan said. He stared into the girl’s face, his grip on her shoulder tightening.
The girl looked about ready to lose control, to scream or try to run. Christa stepped forward and gently laid a hand on her arm. “Be calm,” she told her. The shaking stopped, the tears dried up. “Now, follow us.”
As they made their way back to Fairwood Urban, Dylan scanned the street and the shops lining both sides. He was certain someone must have heard them, must have noticed a sinister exchange between a young couple and a teenage girl. The town remained blessedly silent.
***
“That was too close. I’ve become sloppy, careless. What the hell was I thinking, feeding from that woman in full view of the street? This will not do, I can’t continue this way. Mistakes such as this are what finally put my brethren in the ground.”
Jinn Nation Page 5