Chapter 15
Eerie as hell to see a vampire lay one hand against the door of a brown Toyota Celica with license tags three months out of date, hear the power locks chuck up and the engine start—choppily, since it had clearly been left down here by someone who didn’t care to renew their registration.
No need to mess with the steering column’s innards, either, since apparently he could unlock the wheel as well.
Even more thought-provoking was him leaning nearly into her lap from the passenger seat, staring fixedly at the payment terminal, and the credit card reader blinking in semaphore.
She didn’t even need to produce the discarded paper ticket clinging to the dashboard.
The machine’s LED display scrolled THANK YOU as it emitted a soft, happy beep, and the mechanical arm across the exit lifted by stagger-degrees.
That close, the old vampire’s body heat brushed against her right arm.
He smelled like dusk, fresh grasslands wind, and male, a peculiarly clean musk triggering recent memory.
In fact, Simone had to squeeze her knees together, her entire body threatening to turn liquid, and concentrating enough to pull out of the parking garage was momentarily difficult.
Especially with what felt like a toasty, pulsing pool of his blood settled behind her breastbone, sending out waves of relaxation.
She hadn’t felt this calmly zen about the world in…
well, ever. Relaxed yet alert, trying not to think that her own perceptions could be hopelessly altered at the moment.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to roll more than a city block without finding a sign for I-25; she hoped she wasn’t doing the vamp equivalent of DUI.
A few more blocks, a left-hand turn—the green arrow popping up almost as soon as they approached the stop line—and traffic at this hour wasn’t bad at all, even this close to downtown.
Merging was no trouble, and there was even a big friendly green sign announcing the miles to Denver with conspiratorial glee.
He hadn’t even asked where they were going. For Chrissake, she was in a dirt-colored, probably abandoned Toyota with an old, freakishly powerful vampire, the engine chopping along but doing its best, and instead of making plans to shake the bloodsucker, she was… what?
What exactly was her goal, here? Sure, she had to make the meet with Barry’s billionaire, but what then? The payment was walking-away money, fuck-you money, the best kind of money—if it was real.
What about the idea of a cure for the infection? It was a good thing she was driving; she needed time to think, and there was nothing better than freeway piloting for that particular activity. Some of her best ideas had come during long road trips.
Of course, there had been some real howlers as well. Hard to tell the two apart when an idea struck.
“So,” she said, settling more comfortably now that cruising speed had been achieved in the far right lane—good practice, especially since even the big rigs would probably want to pass this poor rinkydink car as soon as the city fell away on either side.
At least the gas tank was full. “Do I get to know your name, Mr. Vampire?”
He was silent for a few moments, one hand resting on his knee, fingers twitching as if following a private, internal beat. Maybe he suspected she was going to try to blow him up with this car, too.
If she was thinking rationally, she probably should. What had happened to her commitment, the burning focus on bounties, on making the world a marginally safer place? A few rounds of athletic sex, coming almost despite herself each time, and she was suddenly… what? Driven insane by hormones?
“I don’t remember,” he said, finally. “Call me what you like. I’ll answer.”
How is that possible? Was it the numbness he talked about, or leftover emotional damage from that fire he kept skipping over, barely giving details? “How can you not remember? It’s your name.”
“I must have had one as a mortal, yes. No doubt I had several after the Dark Gift, for camouflage or… other reasons. After the… the misfortune, it simply didn’t occur to me.” He shifted, settled into that eerie motionlessness. “Choose a name you like; I shall wear it.”
“What if I pick one you don’t like?” How on earth was she even having this conversation?
The freeway lifted over a slight rise and dropped, still running ruler-straight under the headlights’ white cone.
No need to touch the brake if she kept her following distance nice and ample, but that was an invitation for assholes to cut into her lane.
As usual.
“I doubt you will.” Calmly, as if he’d thought the whole matter over at length. The words were far more fluid now; only a ghost of the drawl remained. “And it does not matter; I will accept any gift from my leman.”
This whole lee-mun thing was getting weirder. Still… it was sad to think of someone wandering around without a name, even a vampire. How deep was the trauma if it erased something so basic?
Are you actually feeling sorry for a bloodsucking killing machine? The power of hormones, maybe. But they were stuck in the car for at least another hour and a half, so she might as well play nice.
She had a contender in the name game already, too. “How about John? It’s simple, doesn’t go out of style. You can be Johnny if you’re feeling frisky, and Jonathan if you’re formal.”
“Jonathan. John.” Testing the word. No excitement in his tone, but no disgust, either.
Simone couldn’t sneak a peek at his expression, needing all her attention for the road.
A low-slung red sports car roared past to the left, weaving slightly, no doubt fueled by both cocaine and hi-test unleaded. “Very well.”
Lord, give me something to work with here. I’m trying to be nice to a vampire. She freed her right hand from the wheel, extended tentatively across the armrest. “Hi, John. I’m Simone.” Crap.
She’d meant to use Jane Smith, keeping it professional.
But her real name slipped out, polite as you please—maybe because she was fairly relaxed from gorging on old-vampire blood, or from lingering post-orgasmic endorphins.
She expected confusion on his part, or a businesslike shake, but instead his fingers closed around hers and he bent, leaned slightly forward.
A soft pressure against her knuckles, a zinging thrill all the way up her arm.
He literally kissed her hand.
“An honor and a pleasure to know your name, my lady Simone.” A faint brush of breath branded the words to her skin before he let go; she retreated to her side of the car, suddenly aware of blushing—again—in the darkness.
Given vamp senses, he could probably see. Which was embarrassing as fuck.
Her tough-girl image might never recover. “Wow, you really are old.” Oh, hell. That sounded way better inside my head. “I mean…”
“I am.” Quiet agreement, no hint of anger or wounded ego. “Yet I’m learnin’, and I have the most beautiful of teachers.”
Maybe he’s just practicing his small talk. And he hadn’t asked where they were going, either. Which was entirely for the best, sure, but also concerning. Darkness stretched to either side, waves of grassland lit up to vampire eyes, breathing in billows under the night wind.
“Can I ask you something, Jonathan?” She might as well try. “Without all the lee-mun stuff—why do they call it that, anyway? No, never mind. Can I?”
“Leman is an old, old word; to the sanguinant, it means beloved one. Ask me anything, darlin’.”
Nobody had ever called her darling before, and certainly not this frequently. Curt’s deepest endearment was babe and sometimes honey—neither were bad, but didn’t have quite the same ring. “If you could be cured, would you?”
“Cured?” For once, the old vampire sounded honestly baffled.
“Of the infection. Vampirism. Of being… sanguinant.” Where did that word come from?
It sounded vaguely French, but accented weirdly.
Did vampires have a secret language? She had the whole time to Denver for getting information; he couldn’t very well attempt any canoodling while she was driving—or so Simone hoped.
She really wouldn’t put it past this guy.
“A curious way to put it.” His stillness had returned, almost as if he forgot to move while concentrating on her questions.
The shoulder rolled by outside his window, reflectors popping up at precisely measured intervals.
“There is no return to mortality, ever. It is endurance or true-death. That’s all. ”
“But what if it’s possible?” she persisted—carefully, quietly, knowing how much men hated to be challenged or disagreed with. “Would you?”
“Give up the Gift?” Now he sounded faintly shocked, though she couldn’t peek over to tell for sure, and a thread of unease invaded the warm haze. “No. Of course not.”
Well, that’s pretty definitive. If Barry’s billionaire had a line on a possible cure, she might have to do some quick thinking, not to mention fancy footwork, and hope she could keep this vampire away from all the humans involved. “I was just asking.”
Lights arched over the road, each patch of glow merging companionably with the next. It used to be gaslights, Simone thought, and before that, torches, lamps, and candles. Darkness was ancient, and a few recent, puny bulbs wouldn’t drive it back completely, or for good.
It lurked between stars, too. Ever ready, endless bleak black emptiness.
“Would you?” He was watching her; she felt the gaze of the vampire she had just named, a heavy weight against her right side, pressing against her cheek, sinking into her hair. “If it were possible?”
Yes. In a heartbeat. The words got caught up in her throat, dammed behind the grimy, stuck-rock feeling of a possible lie. Why can’t I say so?
That was far more frightening than a vampire appearing from thin air in her RV, than waking up naked and vulnerable, than being spread out and nailed under a creature who probably had more anniversaries under his belt than quite a few modern nation-states.
The vast impersonal glitter of Cheyenne receded into the rearview mirror, even its suburbs becoming an orange smear on the night horizon, and the plains spread to either side of a thin concrete stream.
Were there vampires still alive from before Rome was built?
Before Babylon? Before humans crossed the land bridge from Siberia?
If they could walk around in sunlight, what else could they do?
Simone prided herself on being relatively blasé nowadays when it came to the world’s hidden, carnivorous weirdness, but…
So much for conversation. The silence thickened, the car rumbled unhappily, and Simone suspected it would be an uncomfortable ride to Denver.
She was right.