by Mysti Parker
“I said, that’s enough!” He withdrew forcefully that time, darting to the other side of the van. He wrapped the fingers of his other hand tight around his wrist, staring at me as though he was caged with a starving lion.
“What’s going on back there?” Zac asked. “Wren, you okay?”
Wren, not Melody. He must’ve overheard me when I told Ashe.
I drew my knees to my chest and covered my face. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what the shit came over me.”
“It’s fine. We’re all fine,” Ashe said. “Wren’s just tired and needs a decent meal. I suggest we find a suitable place for her to eat so she won’t have to chew off that chin dimple of yours. Uh, what’s your name anyway?”
I’d failed to introduce the two of them, my human guide and vampire insta-boyfriend. A minor infraction compared to me trying to feast on Ashe and my cluelessness about my own kind.
“Palmer. Zac Palmer.”
Was it just my imagination, or had Zac lowered his voice and applied a British accent?
Ashe must have noticed, too, considering the way he imitated Zac. “A real life James Bond in our midst, eh? Must be our bloody fucking jolly good luck. How’s about a spot of tea, govna?”
I lifted my head. “That was a terrible impression.”
“Hey, he started it,” Ashe said, tilting his head toward Zac. “But at least you’re smiling now.”
He was right. I was smiling. For a moment, it felt oddly comfortable here in the midst of these two guys who I didn’t even know forty-eight hours ago. The feeling was even stronger with Ashe, like I’d known him my whole life, even though I didn’t know him from Vampire Adam.
Zac consulted his phone screen again. “Stay down. I’m pulling out onto the bypass. The sun might be a little bright.”
Ashe gestured me back to him, so I scooted up close. He turned me so I sat with my back facing him, right up against his chest between his legs. He held the sunshade over us like a tent. There didn’t seem to be any hesitation on his part, even though I’d attempted to juice him like a lime a minute ago.
Fatigue and the comforting closeness of his body made my eyelids heavy. I sank back onto his shoulder. He turned his face so he supported my lolling head. His cheek rested against my forehead.
I closed my eyes, felt his lips part, felt their soft coolness press against my skin. His hardening dick pressed into my lower back. Desire throbbed where my legs converged. I thought I had to be dreaming. I’d never felt this level of need for anyone before.
“What is this?” I asked groggily, tilting my head to allow his lips to settle onto my temple.
“This what?” he whispered.
“This thing between us?”
His gentle kisses migrated to the top of my ear, their gentle suction drawing a quiet groan from me.
“I don’t know for sure.” His whisper caressed my face. I let my head fall farther to the side so his lips could play along my neck. “But if my suspicions are right, we won’t be alone for long.”
I didn’t understand what he meant, but I didn’t really give a fuck, with his lips resting at the corner of my mouth.
“All I know is,” he said, “if I don’t kiss you right now, I might go insane.”
You know those parts in movies where the hero and heroine are about to share their first kiss? The parts where your eyes go wide and you’re sitting on the edge of a saggy motel bed ready to cheer because they’re finally getting together?
Yeah, well, that didn’t happen here.
What happened was Zac slammed on the brakes and screamed, “Mother fucking alligators!”
Our bodies smashed against the wheel well. Ashe’s head klunked into mine like two coconuts colliding.
“Sorry!” Zac called over his shoulder. “I didn’t hit it. Probably should have.”
I peeked at the rearview mirror. He was looking right at me, but quickly averted his eyes and put the van in reverse, which jerked our bodies in the other direction.
“Hey! We may be undead, but we’re still alive back here,” Ashe said, wincing as he sat up and rubbed his head.
“Huh?”
“You know what I mean. Any sign of the helicopter?”
“It turned east. We’re heading west, so we should be able to avoid it.”
Ashe sniffed the air. “I smell barbeque and cigars. Where are we?”
“We’re about five miles from Rent-a-Van.”
“If you see a little shack off the road called Edna’s Itchen, can we stop there first?” Ashe asked.
“Itching? That sounds contagious.” I ran my fingers through my hair and scooted back to the other side of the van.
The cool feel from his lips still lingered on my face. If I didn’t keep my distance, I wasn’t sure what I might do. I wanted to bite him and fuck him at the same time. Was this normal vampire attraction? If so, it’s probably a good thing that I hadn’t encountered any others until now.
Ashe’s shoulders sank a bit as his eyes followed me with a longing look. He shook his head and scrubbed a hand over his face. “It used to be Edna’s Kitchen, but the K got swept away in a tornado about ten years ago. She never bothered putting it back, so Edna’s Itchen it is. She hated the locals calling it that at first, but it stuck like any good nickname and actually helped draw in customers.”
“I really don’t feel like eating a greasy piece of fried chicken,” I said with a grimace.
“You’re in luck. She has something just perfect for you.” He grinned and slipped into his bad British accent. “Palmer, Zac Palmer can have the greasy chicken.”
Zac chuckled. “I like mine extra greasy. I see it up ahead. Where can we park? There’s really no shade there in the parking lot.”
“Drive around back. Special parking.”
I crouched and crept behind the front passenger seat, peeking out carefully in case the sun decided to reflect off a bad chrome bumper. Zac pulled off the road, where sure enough, a wood-sided building sat with a sagging roof and white block letters above the door that read Edna’s itchen. The front parking lot was full of cars and over-compensating dually pickups. He drove around on a narrow, paved drive to the back of the restaurant. There was a temporary storage facility with several units. Zac pulled up to a drive-up keypad on a white painted steel post.
Ashe joined me, crouching behind the passenger seat. “Key in this code – 80085.”
“Okay.” Zac sounded skeptical. “Wait a minute, doesn’t that spell boobs on a calculator?”
“Yeah, so?” Ashe grinned at me.
Zac rolled his eyes. His right hand rested on his holstered gun while he typed the code in with his left. I sincerely hoped Ashe wasn’t leading us into some vampire ambush, where the main course would be Zac. I didn’t have the strength to protect him.
The overhead door lifted, and inside lay an empty storage space.
“Drive on in,” Ashe said.
“If this is a trap, I’m killing you first.”
“Why would I want to kill strangers who sprung me from jail? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.” Ashe glanced at me and chuckled.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny,” I said.
Zac drove the van into the storage unit. As soon as the rear bumper cleared, the door lowered, effectively plunging the once bright interior into darkness. Zac killed the engine but left the key on so he had the advantage of the parking lights.
Gun drawn, he slowly got out of the van, prepared for an ambush. Ashe didn’t seem to have any reservations about the situation. He sprang to the back of the van, opened the double doors, and hopped out, turning to offer his hand to help me down.
I took it gladly. My head was swimming from hunger, fatigue, and probably a concussion from Zac’s reckless driving. When my feet hit the concrete floor, I wobbled. Ashe steadied me with his strong hands and body. If I hadn’t been ready to chew my own arm off from hunger, I’d have asked Zac to give us a couple minutes in the back of the van. Not exactly romantic, and I had no idea why I felt this
way, except that I knew Ashe wanted it as much as I did.
With this level of horniness, I could only assume that vampire life involved prison breaks, bloodletting, and orgies twenty-four seven.
“So, what now?” Zac asked, circling the van like a caged beast. He slid a narrow-eyed warning glare at Ashe as he passed us.
“You just leave that to me,” Ashe said.
Holding my hand, he led me to the rear corner of the storage unit and typed a number into another keypad beside a door with a wire glass window. The lock disengaged. Ashe opened the door, and we entered a stairwell illuminated with dim fluorescent lights.
I hesitated. The last time I’d seen a stairway like this, I’d had to fight off a herd of vampires.
Ashe drew me close and stroked my cheek. “It’s okay, I promise.”
The aroma of smoky barbeque wafted up the stairwell. “Tell me they’re not barbequing vampires down there.”
“You like yours rare or well done?”
My eyes went wide.
He laughed and squeezed my hand. “I’m kidding. Come on. Zac can come, too, if that makes you feel better, but he probably won’t find the menu to his liking.”
****
At the bottom of the stairs was a small wood-paneled hallway. A coat rack stood right at the bottom that held miscellaneous ball caps, a white apron streaked with dried blood, and a crooked umbrella. Open Sysco boxes sat on the worn linoleum floor, one of which was half full of disposable plastic cups like you’d find in any bathroom. Another held napkins.
We walked down the hallway past stainless steel shelves containing peanut oil, lard, and industrial-sized cans of green beans. Below that were bottles of rubbing alcohol, boxes of sterile gauze, and large bottles of raspberry-flavored liquid iron supplements.
It looked like a typical basement storage area of any ratty diner except for the medical supplies and iron supplements. Surely they didn’t add that to the food, or maybe they did. I was quickly discovering how little I knew about both the human and vampire world. My mother had sheltered me to protect me, but in the process had not told me much about our kind or humankind, and after her death, my sole focus had been revenge and surviving long enough to make that happen.
Ashe strode confidently through the place, holding my hand. Zac followed so close behind me, I could feel his warmth radiating on my back. He still held his gun in front of him with both hands, pointing it at the floor.
My mind reeled. How much could I really trust either of them? A sinking feeling chilled my already cold blood as Ashe led us through a set of swinging doors. What if they already knew each other and had teamed up to capture me?
Stupid, thy name is Wren. They had made sure I would be too hungry and exhausted to fight back. I was completely trapped. Nowhere to run, because I had no idea how to get out except for the way we came. Even weakened, though, my speed would far surpass Zac’s. I just had to knock him down, take out Ashe, and get out of the line of fire and back up the stairs…
“Well, if it ain’t Ashe Jensen!”
A woman’s loud voice snapped me out of forming my escape plan. I blinked and realized we had entered what looked like a dingy basement diner, with battery-powered lamps and black tablecloths on a dozen or so round tables. The woman standing in front of us was plump with a head of gray hair pulled back into a bun. She wore a flowered dress and a red, ruffled apron.
She could have easily masqueraded as Mrs. Claus, except she didn’t hold a plate of cookies for Santa. Instead she wore blue latex gloves and carried a tray, on which lay a bloody scalpel and a couple of bloody gauze pads.
The smell of blood hit me hard, and my fangs emerged, though I tried to keep my mouth closed to hide them.
“Where you been, darlin’? Haven’t seen you in ages. And who’s this pretty little thing?” She smiled at me and then peered behind me at Zac, who had just holstered his gun. “We don’t allow weapons in here.”
“It’s okay, Edna,” Ashe said. “They’re with me. This is Wren, and the human is Zac.”
“You a DBD, Zac? I’ll have to see your paperwork.”
“No, just a regular human. Wren’s bodyguard.”
With one eyebrow arched, I slid him a look. He shrugged.
“Well, we got plenty of human food upstairs.” She focused on me again. “You look really familiar, though I can’t place the name.”
I tore my eyes from the bloody gauze and focused on Edna’s grandmotherly face. “My mother was—”
Ashe squeezed my hand firmly, which I took for a shut-up signal. “Long story, best left for after lunch,” he said.
“Not a lot of DBDs to choose from right now. We don’t get many diners down here this time of day. But there’s always an oddball or two.” She winked at Ashe then scanned us from head to toe. “Y’all look plumb awful.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“What happened?”
“Edna…”
“Sorry, I know better than to ask questions. Anyway, I have showers and a couple of rooms y’all can snooze in. Now what will it be? I got a nice O neg here right now.”
“I don’t know. Sounds pricey,” Ashe said, rubbing his chin like he was trying to decide between a sirloin and filet mignon.
“Lunch special. Half off.”
“Sounds good. Let’s get Wren a sample.”
Edna nodded and called out to a woman seated across the room who was sipping a drink and flipping through a magazine. “Harriet, lunch special and a sample, please. Table six.”
Harriet was tall and muscular, with bright red hair and pale skin turned nearly brown from freckles. She wore jean shorts, flip flops, and a long-sleeved plaid flannel shirt with a tank top underneath, all a size too small. She tossed the magazine on the table and put down her drink – it looked purplish like the iron supplement in the back hallway, and smelled like fake raspberry too.
Edna ushered us to a table, where Ashe and I sat close to each other. Zac sat on the edge of his seat at a nearby table, his chair facing us, still looking around with those intense dark eyes as though Dracula might emerge at any moment.
Harriet sat opposite us at our table, smiled, and nodded at me and Ashe in turn. “I assume your girlfriend here’s getting the sample.”
“Yes, please,” Ashe said. “If that’s okay with you, Wren?”
I nodded, not certain what I was okay with, but if it involved a fresh meal of blood, I was totally down with that.
Edna returned to the table carrying a tray. On the tray sat an empty clear plastic cup, along with a clean scalpel and gauze pads, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Harriet removed her flannel shirt and draped it over the back of her chair. Edna soaked a gauze pad with alcohol and wiped Harriet’s wrist. Then she held the woman’s wrist over the cup and made a small slice across an artery with the scalpel. Fresh, bright-red blood flowed from the wound. Edna set the scalpel on the tray and flipped Harriet’s wrist upside down. Blood poured into the cup. Steam condensed on the inside of the cup as the blood level rose.
All this time, Harriet was casually looking off in the distance as though it didn’t bother her in the least.
My mouth watered as I watched the hot blood pour into the cup. I could hear Harriet’s pulse, calm and steady, saw how the tiny area of skin at her wrist above the cut rose and fell with every heartbeat. I didn’t know how long I could control the urge to sink my fangs into her arm.
“You got your papers, ma’am?” Harriet asked.
“What?” I forced my eyes to leave the visual feast of her fresh blood and met Harriet’s calm gaze.
“Your papers. You can drink from prepackaged, but you need papers to get a meal from the source.”
Ashe put his hand on my thigh as if to calm me down, but it sent electrical pulses straight to my core. At least it was enough to snap me out of beast mode for a moment. I turned to meet his copper-eyed gaze. His eyes were even more beautiful in this light. I wouldn’t feel the least bit uncomfortable staring right into those gems
while he fucked me.
“Wren, papers mean you’re free of communicable diseases. Have you got anything like that?”
I shook my head, mesmerized by the way his lips slid over his slightly emerged fangs as he spoke.
“Your doctor could print them for you.”
“What doctor?” I blinked, averting my gaze to somewhere less dangerous, like Zac’s crotch. Shit, no. Uh, where to look? There, by a door across the room – a framed quote from Marilyn Monroe: Dogs never bite me, just humans. Weirdly appropriate, but better.
“You don’t have a doctor?”
I slumped in the seat, laughing sarcastically. “Oh, sure, I’ve had lots of them. They’re delicious.”
He squeezed his eyes shut with a half smile. “Seriously, Wren?”
I sat up straight and rested my hand on his thigh. His whole body tensed. Good. Served him right. “Yeah, seriously. I don’t even know what a DBD is.”
Edna answered without looking up from the bloodletting. “Designated Blood Donor.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever. None of this – the DBDs, the prison, my mother being a queen of something. I don’t know shit from shinola.”
Edna and Harriet both snapped to attention, wide-eyed.
“It’s from an old movie,” I added. “The Jerk. Steve Martin. No?” Apparently my area of expertise lay in old music, movies, and TV shows. Yeah, that’d be a real help.
Ashe squeezed my thigh, glancing at them before he held me in a cold copper stare. “Listen, I know you want answers, and you will get them, but not here, not now. Priorities first. We get you fed, rested, and somewhere we’ll both be safe. Just be patient.”
“She’s hungry. Be patient with her,” Zac said.
Ashe sat back in his chair, removed his hand from my thigh, and held up both hands in brief surrender. “Sorry.”
“Okay, hon. Try this.” Edna set the cup of fresh blood in front of me. She held gauze over Harriet’s wrist.
Ashe wiped his thumb with alcohol and bit the tip of it. Edna removed the gauze from Harriet’s wrist as Ashe smeared his blood onto the wound. It closed almost immediately.
Edna quickly wiped the leftover blood from Harriet’s skin then looked at me. “Drink it before it gets cold, hon.”