Chapter 21 #2
That spark behind her eyes was back again, but her voice still came out quaking, and she watched me with the same old wariness. She was shaken by the nightmare, I could see it, and she was masking it under a mouthful of snapping teeth.
I quieted the grin and let my face settle into something somber. “Do you often get nightmares like that?”
Rather than offer an answer she groaned, then flopped face down on the mattress, dragging a pillow over her head. Her reply emerged muffled and petulant. “That’s none of your business.”
“Fair.” I adjusted my perch on the edge of the bed. “But if you ever want to trade horror stories, I’ve got plenty to share.”
Silence. A faint, watery sniff from under the pillow.
“Or… maybe we can start with something a little lighter.” I tipped my head back, working at maintaining a soothing aura to counter her simmering energy.
“When I first came to New York, years ago, I had this building commissioned—secret passages and all.” I glanced over my shoulder with a wry smile she couldn’t see.
“They weren’t built solely for sneaking into the guestroom. ”
Again, silence. And then, a muttered response from under the pillow. “All right, I’ll bite. Why did you build them?”
“Safe passage.” I scooted back slightly to tug the blanket over her. “I built this home to be a safe haven for people like me.”
“Vampires?” Laurie murmured under the mound.
“Not exclusively. Think… outsiders of every flavor. We threw outrageous parties down on the sub-basement level—music, dancing, the works. All the tunnels eventually converge at that floor, where people could love who they wanted outside of societal expectations.”
An incredulous grunt floated through the pillow stuffing. “Are you telling me you ran a secret gay club in your basement?”
I snorted out a chuckle. “Yep, pretty much.”
“But this place is ancient…” Another long pause from the pillow princess. “Exactly how old are you?”
“You know, after the first few decades I kinda stopped counting.” I picked at a stray thread on the bed sheet, taking a merry stroll down memory lane while my aura unfurled, silently soothing out the wrinkles in her psyche.
“I was alone for most of it. I spent a lot of my long life wandering about, moving from place to place. Never thought I’d fit in a coven. ”
Laurie’s voice was faint now, tinged with tendrils of sleep. “Why?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I am a little bit strange.
Too strange even for most vampires.” It had been long enough that I could laugh at myself now, at my complete inability to fit the mold the world demanded of me.
“I actually avoided New York because I’d foreseen a coven starting here—knew they’d welcome me with open arms. But the vision looked too good to be true, so naturally I ran the other way. ”
“What changed?”
“Took the wrong train in Prague.” I sighed, huffing out a small chuckle.
“Ended up at Grand Central, decided I liked the smell of pretzels. Fast-forward a few decades: met Jordan before she was bumped up to leader of the Leyore coven, got dragged along to a party, and the next thing I knew, I’d been adopted. ”
“And you stayed.” That statement was delivered with a yawn.
“I stayed.” I smiled at the memory, at the roots that had finally grounded me after years of wandering alone. “Turns out the vision was right. Jordan and her crew got their hooks in me and our family has been growing ever since.”
At the sound of light pattering outside, my eyes drifted toward the window.
Beads of water had begun to freckle the glass, soft at first, tentative taps that soon grew into a gentle percussion. The room dimmed to a deeper blue. I sat perfectly still, listening to the shush of Laurie’s steady breaths and the rain picking up outside.
Under the pillow, her voice slurred in deeper drowsiness. “I love the rain.”
“Yeah?” I murmured, keeping my eyes on the stream trickling down the glass.
“It’s my favorite sound. The night I got free…it was pouring. Loud enough to drown out everything else. Thought it was the most beautiful sound in the world.”
I didn’t dare so much as whisper a response. Anything uttered aloud would shatter the moment.
I stared out the window, taking in the pitter patter from her point of view, savoring what that sound must have meant to her. I barely noticed the weight rolling off my shoulders, the last gasp of her frantic aura melting away under mine.
After a long while, I risked leaning over and gently lifted the pillow.
Laurie was out cold, head turned against the mattress.
The hard lines of tension had melted from her face, and her dark lashes rested soft on hollow cheeks.
In sleep she looked younger. Peaceful. Not ground down by the world around her.
Her features were still sharp as cliff edges, everything from her nose to the slice of her jaw, but she no longer looked so… angry. Afraid.
This was who she could have been, had she been dealt a different hand in life.
I decided it was probably time to make my exit, so I tucked the blanket a little tighter around her shoulder and quietly slipped off the bed. Laurie didn’t stir, deep in a dreamless sleep that I suspected she desperately needed.
I was halfway to the door before I paused. Looked back.
She lay like Sleeping Beauty now, but the nightmares would return. One night of casual conversation wasn’t enough to chase them away for good.
And so, instead of walking myself back to my own bed like I probably should have done, I untangled one of the blankets from her booby trap and settled down in the chair near the foot of the bed.
I pulled the blanket over my legs and got comfortable, keeping one eye on the sleeping figure and conscious of any ripples in her otherwise peaceful aura. Just for the rest of the night, was what I told myself. Guard duty—nothing more.
Laurie murmured something inaudible before her breaths came easy again. Raindrops tapped the window and I clutched my proverbial sword, ready and waiting to fend off whatever nightmares dared come for her.