5. Five
Five
W hen Ryker slid his key card over the reader and let himself into his hotel room, the clock had passed four in the morning. He hadn’t seen a single human on his way from the lobby doors to his room. He shut the door behind him and pocketed the key card. His eyes darted to the mini-fridge as though by a magnet.
He had forgotten to slake.
As always, the realization seemed to unmute his body’s demands. His left hand latched onto his throat as he darted across the room and opened the fridge. The hotel staff had done their job, filled the fridge with enough blood packs to last him a week. The rich, salty scent was like a sucker punch. His thirst increased almost to the level of pain. He snatched up one of the bags and popped the seal so fast he nearly tore the bag. He brought the little nozzle to his lips and drank. It tasted like heaven. His fangs descended in response. Unobserved, he guzzled. He groaned as the thirst lingered for a moment, punishment for ignoring his needs, but as he finished draining the blood bag, his body gave him a break. The thirst faded.
Ryker sprawled across the stuffed chair in the corner. The thirst was no big deal for him, never had been even as a young adult—until he failed to notice it thanks to some task or interest that absorbed his attention too long. His hands shook a little as he dug his phone from his pocket, but he’d be fine in a minute. Ingested blood hit a vampire’s system in anywhere from thirty seconds to five minutes; and in addition to his ability to ignore the thirst for hours at a time, he’d always had an extra-quick metabolism. His fangs retracted as he dialed his best friend and set the phone on the table. Out of curiosity he’d once tried to hold it to his ear the way humans did. He’d nearly blacked out from the unbearable volume that pierced his head.
“Well? Did you meet her?”
“Yeah,” Ryker said.
“What’s wrong with—? Right. You forgot to slake. Again.”
Ryker rolled his eyes. It was one of the few things a vampire couldn’t hear over a phone line. “I was preoccupied.”
“Uh-huh. Have you taken care of it?”
“Yeah, hotel room’s stocked.”
“Good. Now tell me about her.”
“Leslie. She’s…stunning.”
“How progressive of you to comment on her looks first,” Tai said, and an eye roll doubtlessly accompanied those words too.
“I mean all of her, not just her looks. Her personality. Her laugh. She gets along with wolves. She really gets into what she loves—art, food.” He perched on the edge of the bed while elation hummed in his blood. He wished he had somewhere else to be. Somewhere with Leslie. “I can’t explain her, Tai. She’s extraordinary. One of us, perfectly content in a small mountainside town despite having all this artistic talent and a college degree and…”
“Careful. Your snobbery’s showing.”
Ryker snorted. “I’m not a snob.”
“You’re one-hundred-percent a city snob and a vampire snob.” Tai was laughing now, the pure music that was the laughter of their kind. “Why shouldn’t one of us live on the side of a mountain with her art and her college degree? What makes a city inherently better than a mountain?”
“It’s just a fact. That’s all.”
“It’s snobbery and nonsense.”
“Says the guy who lives in a penthouse.”
“Because I like it, Ryker. Not because it’s a superior lifestyle.”
Tai’s opinion was a clear preference, not a settled fact. But that implied Ryker’s was too. He wrestled for a rebuttal and settled for a sharp hiss.
Tai only laughed at him some more, then quickly sobered. “Look, do me a favor, will you?”
Of course he would. Always. “Sure.”
“Check in with yourself every once in a while. Make sure you’re into her because of her and not because of the stupid test results.”
“Did you not hear a thing I just said about her? I said nothing about the test.”
“Forgive my skepticism.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re disturbingly skilled at self-persuasion.”
“You think I’ll…what? Regret coming? Get bored?”
“No,” Tai said. Not a trace of mirth in his voice now. “But don’t tell me you’ve never convinced yourself you’re happy with something that turned out not to be good for you.”
Ouch. Ryker pushed his fingers through his hair and fought the reflex to hunch his shoulders. “This is…different.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“You’re the smartest guy I know, and your decisions are solid most of the time. But with Jacqueline, I couldn’t…” Tai gave a soft hiss. “I couldn’t say the thing to make you see it, see her clearly.”
“Leslie isn’t Jacqueline.”
“I believe that much.”
Ryker propped his head in his hand and closed his eyes, which did nothing to stem the tide of everything he didn’t allow himself to wallow in. Confusion and pain, mostly. Her eyes, that arresting shade of magenta he’d never seen before or since. The night they turned ruby-red as she sneered and sliced his heart into ever smaller pieces.
“Ryker.”
“Sorry.” He sprang to his feet and walked it off. Put it away. “You were saying.”
“Look, we don’t have to talk about Jacqueline. I didn’t mean to bring her up, but I can’t have this conversation honestly and ignore what she did to you.”
“My own fault. Won’t happen again.”
Another soft hiss.
“What?” Ryker said.
“It wasn’t your fault, man. She was pathological, and you happened to be there.”
Now it was Ryker’s turn to hiss. He lengthened the sound, a first and final warning. Not even Tai got to tell him he wasn’t responsible for letting Jacqueline deceive him for ten freaking months, flatter and promise and convince him she cared. That he meant something to her beyond his substantial paycheck, beyond the Maddox name. That when he let her see his deepest vulnerabilities, she would guard them as he had committed to guarding hers.
Turned out her vulnerabilities were all fake. And he hadn’t seen it for ten months. Despite the vampire ability to perceive a person’s every micro-expression, Ryker hadn’t seen Jacqueline using him, hadn’t seen the signs of cheating until the night she paraded every sign in front of his stupid face.
“She really enjoyed it.” The words were a dry whisper he hadn’t planned to let out.
“Like I said. Pathological.”
“Leslie isn’t.”
“I want that to be true, man,” Tai said. “And I know it probably is. But—look, if you watched a woman rip my guts out, wouldn’t you worry a little the next time I tried dating? Maybe tell me to be careful?”
He would. Of course he would, because Tai was his best friend. But Ryker wasn’t Tai.
Tai Kristiansen was an outstanding blend of confidence and benevolence that Ryker had admired for years. He was also sometimes plagued by his own nature in ways Ryker couldn’t comprehend. Certain odors drove him to distraction, and the thirst… The irony of such a deeply caring man thirsting so hard for blood was a cruel trick of the universe, if you asked Ryker.
So of course he would act to defend his friend. Tai fought enough battles. Ryker would never let him fight one alone that he could step into and help his friend win.
But Ryker didn’t need the same sort of guarding. Ryker wasn’t overly kind. Ryker wasn’t overly reactive. Ryker was an achiever, a puzzle solver, steel at the core where Tai was secretly cotton.
“I hear you,” he said despite all the ways they were different, all the ways he didn’t need help.
“Sure you do.” Definitely an eye roll there.
“No, Tai, I mean it,” and this time he did. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Okay. Well. Good.”
A comfortable silence spread between them. Ryker had planned to stay in his room until sunup, nothing open and nowhere to be at four in the morning in a town run by humans for humans. But freshly slaked and still buzzing with the thrill of the last few hours, he suddenly couldn’t stand the confinement of four puny hotel walls. He snatched his keys, wallet, and phone from the table and walked out of the room, pocketing the phone carefully to avoid hanging up.
From his pocket Tai said, “Where are you going?”
“Twenty-minute drive back to Harmony Ridge, then thought I’d walk the town.”
“Good call. Keep an open mind. Treat it like a forensic case, try to solve the mystery: what do people love about living in a Tennessee mountain town?”
“Hmm.”
Ryker shut the door and jogged silently down the hall. The exit gave him two options—a small balcony outside and a stairwell to the main floor exit. He stepped out onto the balcony, and the humid night air was like a caress.
“You want to get to know her, right? Apart from a ten-year-old questionnaire. If she grew up there and chose to come back, she’s got reasons.”
Shoot. Tai was right again. “Yeah, okay, that’s not a bad point. Talk later.”
“Yep.”
Tai hung up first. Ryker secured his phone deep in the pocket of his jeans, sprang up onto the balcony railing, and leaped two stories to the ground. He landed in the manner of cats and vampires—easy, assured, lighter than his body weight should permit. His knees bent reflexively to absorb the slight shock, and then he was back up like a spring and bounding to his rental car.
He loved being what he was. Most of his kind did, at least the ones he’d met so far. He watched humans stumble and shuffle through life and couldn’t imagine being trapped in such a graceless body. Human gymnasts had to train for hours a day to flip through the air half as high, half as fluidly as Ryker could do with a mere thought.
Yes, he’d shrivel and eventually die without the sustenance of human blood. No, he couldn’t abstain via willpower, couldn’t survive on animal blood despite human speculation to the contrary. He couldn’t sunbathe. He couldn’t enjoy the sensory overload that humans daily inflicted on themselves, which he experienced secondhand in their public spaces—perfume, room spray, scented detergents and lotions, stereos with sub-woofers in tiny sports cars, earbuds shouting audiobooks and podcasts into their heads.
But there were vampire public spaces too in his city. Vampire clubs, bars, restaurants. They kept the music down, the air scent-free, the AC off at the height of summer and the heat cranked to 80 in winter. As he drove to Harmony Ridge in the pre-dawn, the mountainous horizon ahead of him darker than the sky, he wondered how Leslie coped without these spaces. Maybe he wasn’t only a snob. Maybe he was a little spoiled.
He parked at the brown-brick library, the only car in view every direction he looked. Chirping crickets and rasping katydids serenaded him from all directions. The field past the old building was alive with creatures: field mice scampering through dry brush, two or three owls hunting, an opossum or raccoon within a dozen yards of where he stood. It lumbered along as both species tended to do, and its odor made him wrinkle his nose.
Ryker set out along Main Street. At first he kept to the red-dirt shoulder, but as the minutes ticked on and not a single car drove by, he shrugged and strolled down the middle of the street. The only traffic light he passed blinked yellow on two sides, red on the other two.
When he reached the diner Leslie had chosen above pricier Italian fare, he stopped and leaned backward until his shoulder blades touched the rough wood siding. The red paint was in need of refreshment but far from run-down. The window boxes held sweet-smelling red and pink flowers. The sign was hand-painted with care: harmony ridge diner in broad cursive, and below that in block print, est. 1957 .
He stayed still for a moment and tried to follow Tai’s instructions, but the empty diner held no answers. He kept walking and soon hit the end of the street. Literally. His flawless directional sense told him the wide strip of blacktop leading away from downtown would take him deeper into the foothills. He made an about-face and strolled for a while longer, past the blinking yellow light again, past his rental car in the library lot, until Main Street ended again, this time branching off into various residential neighborhoods. One of those was Leslie’s. This was her home. A mile or two from where he stood, she was probably asleep in her bed after nine days of wakefulness.
The first car of the morning coasted toward him, past him, and pulled over ahead of him onto the shoulder. It was at least ten years old, beige and topped with a light bar, marked with an official green seal on the side along with the words harmony ridge police .
The officer stepped out, a lit flashlight in one hand that he kept pointed at the ground between them, out of Ryker’s eyes. Ryker approached him slowly, kept about eight feet of distance between them for the human’s sake. The officer cocked his head and studied Ryker, utterly calm yet cautious.
“Do you need assistance?”
“No, sir,” Ryker said. “I’m in town visiting a friend, and I felt like wandering for a while.”
“At this hour?”
“I don’t sleep much.”
“Huh.” He took a few steps closer, then froze. “You’re a vampire?”
“That’s right. Do you know the Snows?”
“Sure. Good people.”
“I’m a friend of Leslie’s.”
“In that case, welcome to Harmony Ridge.” The man didn’t drop the professional persona lent by his badge, but his voice warmed. “I’d advise you not to walk in the street, but I guess you could dodge a speeding car if you needed to.”
“Sure thing.”
“Will you be here long enough to appreciate our town when it’s awake?”
“Yeah, for a few days. I’m Ryker Maddox, by the way.”
“Officer Dave West. Good to meet you.”
“Thanks for the welcome.”
They didn’t shake hands. For one thing, Officer West was on duty. For another, Ryker had never met a human who voluntarily touched him, and he preferred it that way. Their warmth, their soft skin…no, thanks. He had no idea how the occasional vampire/human couple made it work.
With a single wave of his hand, West got back into his squad car and pulled away. Ryker wandered halfway down a residential street, then turned around. Someone might happen to be awake, spot him from a window, report a prowler. He’d prefer not to scare anyone while visiting Leslie’s home.
And hang it all, Tai was right. The puzzle had taken hold of Ryker’s brain, and like every case he’d ever worked, it wouldn’t let go now until he solved it. Until he could explain for himself exactly why a talented, beautiful vampire had chosen to come home to Harmony Ridge, Tennessee.