Riding Rifts (Vampire's Elixir Series Book 2)

by Pippa Amberwine

  “John. Suzy,” I said as they both looked at the floor. “We’ve decided to give you something that will help you control your hunger.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a spray. You just spray the back of your throat.”

  “What’s it made from? I’m not spraying any old crap down my throat on your say-so.”

  I could see he was raging inside at the idea that I beat him fair and square and in short order.

  “I can’t tell you, John.”

  “Show me.”

  I nodded. “Nova, can you get a couple of sprays?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say to John, who was already going a long way toward proving he was an asshole all over again.

  Nova came back with two spray bottles and handed them to me.

  “Okay, to prove this isn’t poison, I’ll spray some into my mouth first. All right?”

  “Let me,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Let me spray it so I know it goes in there.”

  I shrugged. He was being careful, and I didn’t blame him for that, but I was worried he might, given his attitude, do something crazy.

  “Nope. You stand there. I’ll come to you. You can watch. I don’t want you to do something that might result in you getting hurt. You understand?”

  John glared at me for a long time, but I didn’t mind that. I had all the time in the world since there was no threat from him and his gun.

  “Okay,” he said eventually, so I took a few steps over with one of the sprays and stood sideways so he could see as I squeezed the trigger on the bottle. I felt the cold droplets hit the back of my throat and the almost immediate boost to my energy and general feeling of good health. I didn’t need to boost myself up, but I still felt better than I had.

  “You happy? See, no ill-effects.”

  “Give it a few minutes.”

  “Seriously, John. You think I would poison myself just to get you to poison yourself? There are a million ways we could have done this, including just kicking you out on your ass after pulling a gun on us, but I’m trying to help you here, buddy. If you don’t want it, the door out is up those stairs.” I pointed at the stairs and flicked a glance at Jevyn. He had one eyebrow raised quizzically. Maybe he hadn’t thought I could be the badass around here, but when someone threatened me or my friends, they’d better have good defenses. Maybe the extra dose of spray might have revved me up a little too. Just maybe.

  I held out the spray bottle to him and one to Suzy and then took a step back to give them some space.

  Suzy went first. Her pale lips and sallow skin wrinkled as she opened her mouth and gave herself a spray. I watched as she swallowed and then as her eyes widened as the plasma got to work. She seemed to be almost struggling to breathe, and it only took a few moments before some hint of color returned to her face. Her lips became a much brighter pink, and her sunken eyes seemed brighter and sharper.

  “Bugger me,” she said in a British accent and promptly sat down on the sofa, looking around the room as if it were the first time she had seen everybody. She went to lift the spray to her mouth again, but Frankie reached over and held down her hand.

  “You only need a little. Once you’ve recovered properly, you’ll only need one spray a month,” he said gently.

  Suzy nodded, seemingly unaware that Frankie had been sitting next to her.

  “Is it that good?” John asked his wife.

  She nodded, smiling enthusiastically.

  “Okay, my turn.” John looked around the room at everyone as if he was scared someone was going to take the bottle away from him and then lifted the bottle, opened his mouth, and sprayed. He stumbled backward almost as soon as he swallowed and ended up on his ass on the floor next to Derek. Derek took one look at him, rolled his eyes, and looked back at this screen.

  “W-what is that stuff?” John asked. Already his skin tone had started to improve. Within ten minutes, he would look ten years younger.

  I shook my head.

  “I can’t tell you. It’s come about from our search for a cure. That’s all I can tell you. Like Frankie said, the amount you sprayed should keep you good for a month or so. Don’t go crazy with it. Don’t give it to your kids. Let them recover. I know the world is crazy out there, but they’re your kids. You should be looking after them, not feeding from them.”

  John looked downcast for a few moments. “I know, but we had no choice. For us to stay alive, we had to feed. They were the only ones we knew with pure blood. To look after them, we had to stay alive. You see what position that put us in? Now, we can concentrate on getting them well again.”

  “Great. Now, I don’t want to seem uncaring or anything, but you need to go. But listen. Do not tell anyone about those sprays. When you need to use it, be out of sight of everyone. Anything you can do to get people to leave us alone so we can find this cure will help you in the long run.”

  “Might be too late for that. Rumors about you guys run far and wide. I’ve spoken to a few vamps who’ve heard about you guys. We were lucky. We spotted one of your people out scavenging and followed them because they looked so healthy. It’s a dead giveaway. We thought we might be able to get a feed, and then we came across Frankie here. Everyone knows Frankie. As soon as we saw him, we knew we’d found you.”

  I looked at Frankie.

  “What can I say? I was a popular guy before all this.” He shrugged it off with his usual nonchalance.

  “Okay, John. You caught a lucky break. Now you need to go and leave us alone.”

  “What happens when the spray runs out?”

  “There’s enough in each spray to last you months.”

  “What happens when it runs out?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “I’ll come looking for you.” He pushed himself to his feet. He looked like he’d grown a couple of inches. “And I will find you.”

  I stepped forward until I was right in his face. “If you do, make sure you’ve got some bullets in those guns, because this is it. One helping hand. No more after that. You gotta make your own way now.”

  We stared each other down for a few moments. I could feel Jevyn edging around in case John decided to do something even more stupid than last time, but I wouldn’t move until he backed down. I had to have him go with me having the upper hand, or he would probably be back in a couple of days with a dozen of his buddies.

  After a tense few seconds, John broke his stare and stepped back, turning to pick up his pack.

  “Suzy? Let’s go. Josh, Brian. Come on, kids. Let’s go see if we can find some food.”

  John brushed his shoulder past mine on his way to the stairs. Suzy followed him up, and the kids, tired and weary, shuffled after them. When the smallest one of the boys reached me at the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and looked up at me with the saddest eyes I think I had ever seen on any child.

  He reached up with his tiny cold, pale hand and took mine.

  “Thank you,” he said and then wrapped his thin arms around my waist and hugged me.

  I didn’t know what to do. Other than cry of course. I mean, I’d kicked his old man’s ass and showed him up in front of his family, but I’d also saved his life and his family’s.

  John hadn’t seemed grateful, but I took this little flaxen-haired boy’s thanks as coming from the whole family. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and gently squeezed, frightened that if I hugged him too hard, the bones I could feel around his shoulders would just snap clean in two. He seemed so fragile.

  After a while, he let go and trudged slowly up the stairs to join his family. Jevyn and Penny followed them to make sure they got out okay.

  Once they shut the door at the top of the stairs, I collapsed onto the sofa.

  “You did great,” Nova said, putting a hand on my shoulder as he walked past. I was grateful for that.

  “Those kids wouldn’t have lasted long, would they?” I said.

  “Kids are tough.” Frankie was leaning ba
ck on the sofa, eyes closed.

  “He was skin and bone, Frankie. I just hope they find some food.”

  Jevyn came back down the stairs, and feeling a little overwhelmed with emotion, I stood and ran over to him, wrapping my arms around him and pressing my lips to his.

  It was only after we broke the kiss that I found everyone but Nova gawking. Even Derek and Sparks.

  “What?” I asked, looking around myself to see what it was. Then I realized it was me they were looking at.

  Well, they’d just have to get used to it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jevyn

  The road to Nindock’s town

  Outside Nampa, Idaho, Earth

  “YOU SURE THIS is the right thing to do?” Katie asked while she steered the bus along the straight road she and I had taken a few days before, when we first realized Nindock had set up camp near Boise.

  “I hope so.” I wanted to be more positive, but in my heart of hearts, I didn’t know if what had been decided was the right thing to do or not.

  “You don’t think us all turning up without any advance warning will upset Nindock?”

  “I hope not,” I said, looking out at the Idaho countryside blurring past the window.

  “Great. Well, I’m glad you’re selling this so well. I’m convinced.”

  Katie rewarded me with a glance and a wink before she settled her eyes back out front.

  “I don’t see what choice we have,” I said, repeating the argument I’d used back at Lynnette’s shop when we had all sat around Derek’s den trying to work out what to do in the aftermath of John’s little visit. “We couldn’t stay at Lynnette’s place anymore. My gut feeling is that word will spread like wildfire, and we’d have been besieged in a matter of days.”

  Katie nodded. She’d been easy to persuade. She’d been to Nindock’s town and knew exactly what to expect there. None of the rest of the crew did, and they had wanted to stay put, especially Derek, but in the end, Katie and I had made the point that we were likely to be hunted down in Boise. When we said that we couldn’t stay at Lynnette’s for much longer, they had reluctantly agreed that we should shift camp to the one place we knew that might offer some protection. Never did I think I would be going hat in hand to Nindock for any help, but circumstances make strange bedfellows at times, and Nindock’s town offered some protection.

  When John had pulled his gun, it had made me realize just how defenseless Katie’s little group was. It was time to change that. I knew Nindock from way back, and my guess was that he had a stash of weapons tucked away somewhere in camp.

  Derek had been the last one to agree to come. Although I thought he could probably just about work out how to put his pants on each morning and how to use the microwave to cook his food, I wasn’t sure he would do so well against a ravaging mob of hungry, desperate vampires looking to find a solution to their situation. Given that he was uninfected, he would probably have been torn to pieces, and I couldn’t let that happen to him. He might have been a bit socially unwieldy, but he had almost been adopted by the group as one of them, so looking after him had become yet another thing Katie had made herself responsible for.

  Once I suggested he might be ripped to shreds, he hurriedly acquiesced and agreed to come. As long as he had broadband and power, he’d be fine, or so he said. I told him both were available at Nindock’s, although I had no idea if they actually were. It would be too late by then. A fait accompli was the only way to get him out of Lynnette’s.

  He was first on the minibus once Katie got back from scrounging up the vehicle.

  I looked over my shoulder at the little group, wondering if being in one place for a few days had softened them up any, made them forget what the real world was like and the people in it. If they had, they were in for a rude awakening, that was for sure, but there wasn’t anything I could do to temper that. They’d just have to roll with it and try to avoid getting into fights at Nindock’s. I was pretty sure the dragons at Nindock’s weren’t going to change their way of life to accommodate Katie’s group.

  The journey over there went smoothly enough, no signs of any patrolling SCAR agents or the strange group of helicopters we’d seen the other day. Images of the explosion scene flashed through my mind, and I shook them away with a flick of the head. Remembering the sight of torn-apart bodies wasn’t how I intended to spend my day. Too much else to do and the possibility of Kam getting all worked up again to consider.

  All in all, I really wasn’t sure the eight of us showing up uninvited might work out, and I couldn’t honestly say I was looking forward to finding out.

  Katie rolled the minibus to a halt in the same place we had stopped before, in front of the big buildings and barns that masked the town from the highway.

  I leapt out and helped unload the people and packs and bags and laptop case for Derek off the bus and then led the group between the buildings toward the saloon where I hoped we might find Nindock holding court, even if it was only mid-morning. I’d warned everyone about the Srisfoot blooms, as I didn’t want them all rendered insensible by them the minute we walked inside.

  Just as we approached the saloon, big Oscar stepped outside onto the wraparound deck that surrounded the saloon on three sides.

  “Let me and Katie handle this,” I said and turned back to the saloon. Katie joined me, and we headed off, leaving the others huddled together looking like a group of lost kids on their first day at school.

  “Oscar,” I said as we climbed the steps onto the stoop.

  “Jevyn. What can I do for you?”

  “Need to speak to Nindock.”

  “About?” He was a man of few words, big Oscar was.

  “It’s private.”

  Oscar looked at me for a moment and then nodded. “Just you two. Who’re the sheep?”

  I must have looked confused at the question because Oscar rolled his eyes under his wide forehead. “They were following you like sheep. Who are they?”

  “They’re my friends, Oscar,” Katie said sharply.

  He switched his not very keen gaze to her.

  “What are they doing here?”

  “That’s what we want to talk to Nindock about.” Katie held the big man’s gaze for as long as it took for Oscar to get bored.

  He nodded again and then laid a great huge paw on my shoulder as I walked past him to go inside.

  “They’d better not be trouble,” he grumbled, almost to himself.

  “Leave them alone, and they’ll be fine,” Katie said as she walked past both of us and into the saloon.

  I shrugged off Oscar’s mitt and walked inside. I was sure I heard him say something along the lines of “They’d better be” as I walked away, but I couldn’t honestly swear to it.

  It took a moment to acclimate my eyes to the dingy interior of the saloon after being out in the bright sunshine, but once I had, I could see the familiar figure of Nindock waving us over. I was immediately suspicious because he was smiling and looked genuinely happy. That was not the Nindock I knew of old.

  “Jevyn, my old friend and the beautiful Katie, what an almost unexpected pleasure. I’ve got great news. We got our first couple of volunteers to donate dragon blood. Should have the first batch ready for you this very day.”

  I’d almost forgotten about the deal we’d made with Nindock back at Lynnette’s shop, but Katie obviously hadn’t.

  “Are you treating those people right, Nindock? You’d better be.”

  “They have volunteered, Katie. I put out a message asking for volunteers, and they came forward. They’ll be paid and looked after, don’t you worry. The only problem is that the blood won’t be ready for a few hours yet, so you’re in for a long wait. Maybe you’d like a drink?” He raised his arm and clicked his fingers at the sullen bartender who finished polishing the glass he had just started on and slung the cloth on his shoulder before heading off toward us.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” I said.

  Katie said the same so Nindock
raised his arm again and waved the barkeep away, much to the man’s obvious, eye-rolling displeasure.

  “So, what brought you here?” Nindock asked. “I don’t remember setting anything up for you to come today?”

  “Well, that’s the thing,” I said and proceeded to relate the story of John and Suzy and everything that had happened in Derek’s den and the decision we had all come to as a group.

  Nindock picked up his glass, took a long draft of his beer, and then carefully set the glass back on the table.

  “So, let me get this straight. You and your little band of desperadoes want to set up camp here away from all the other vampires who think you’re the only ones who know what eases the vampires’ hunger.”

  I nodded.

  “And after everything you and I have been through, Jevyn, you expect me to welcome you and your little gang with open arms?”

  Katie nodded this time, but I could see she was getting irritated by Nindock playing out his advantage.

  “Listen, Nindock. We have a deal to supply the blood. I need to know if that’s still good, because if it isn’t or if the dragons supplying it aren’t being looked after—”

  “Katie,” I said loudly. “Could you and I have a chat for a moment, please?” I grabbed her arm, hauled her out of her chair, and then walked her to a quiet corner of the saloon bar.

  “What’s going on, Jevyn?”

  “Look, I know Nindock is pissing you off, and I know you’re concerned about the dragons and the deal and your group and about a million other things, but if you lose your cool here, Nindock is quite likely to call off the deal and kick us out of here.”

  I stared at her angry eyes for a moment.

  “But—”

  “No buts, Katie. I know you feel as though everything is your responsibility, that you need to take control, but you need to stay calm and back off a little. Let me handle Nindock, at least long enough for me to get him to agree we can stay here.”