7. Seven
Seven
L ast time Leslie had shared this favorite spot with someone else, she hadn’t felt anywhere near as free. She’d found the place on her own while exploring at full speed along a mountain trail. When she brought Hannah to take in the glorious view, she’d needed to warn her of the steepness and be careful not to endanger her human bestie, whose balance was, well, human.
But she didn’t need to warn Ryker. He wasn’t in danger at all. His excellent sense of balance, his night vision, his ability to course-correct with ease even at top speed—he was a vampire like her. She could surprise him, see his full reaction, have fun, and never have to pause to consider his safety.
“It’s a waterfall,” he guessed as they ran together along the park trail in the monochrome night.
“Nope.”
“But there are waterfalls around here, right?”
“There’s a really tall one on wolf land, or so I’ve heard. I’ve never seen it, of course. I think I’ve visited all the rest within a few miles of town.”
“We should visit one.”
Together they leaped rocks and roots, never slowed their pace, and Leslie’s heart felt like a rising balloon. She didn’t have to check her speed with him. She didn’t have to conceal her ease of movement with him. She could be a vampire.
She could be herself.
“Okay, here it is,” she whispered ten feet from the edge, then skidded to a perfect stop as Ryker did the same.
“I was running full out like this the first time I came here.” The words poured out of her like one of the nearby waterfalls. “I wanted you to experience it the same way I did. Isn’t it gorgeous?”
For a long moment, she enjoyed the view she had returned to countless times. The sheer drop, the distant mountain slopes, the gently waving treetops far below their feet, and the far slope back up to the road that eventually took drivers away from town and toward the highway. Ryker was so quiet, he must be equally taken with this place. She turned toward him. “So what do you…?”
He stood stiff and motionless. His eyes were too wide, fixed and almost frightening, as if only the predatory part of his nature was looking out of his eyes, instead of the full Ryker. He wasn’t blinking. At all.
“Ryker?”
Nothing. He could have been a wax figure of himself.
“Ryker, what’s wrong?”
She took a step toward him, but his eyes didn’t track her. He continued to stare at the vista in front of them, arms stiff at his sides. He still had not blinked. Leslie set her hand on his arm. No response. What was happening to him? Should she call Mom?
No. No, she had to figure this out for herself. For Ryker.
Leslie slid into the space between him and the ledge. No response. Hoping he would take a step back from the edge, she nudged him with the flat of her hand.
Ryker fell like a tree.
Leslie dropped to her knees beside him. He continued staring, now up at the inky sky. Leslie waved a hand in front of his face. Nothing. She put a hand on his chest and waited for his heart to beat. When she thought it had stopped altogether, that somehow he had just died although that was scientifically impossible—unless this was one more thing she didn’t know about her own kind?—his heart gave a single thump against her hand.
“Okay, good,” she said as tears welled up. “Ryker, can you hear me? Please come back. Please say something. Please move.”
Nothing.
“Ryker, I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know how to help. Please.”
His heart thumped again. Then, as swiftly as they’d been running, he sprang up and leaped backward five feet into the air. He landed in a crouch over a hundred feet back from the drop. Leslie darted to him in a split second and grabbed hold of his hand.
“Ryker?”
“Sorry,” he said. The velvet of his voice was shredded, and his eyes still looked half-feral. “Crap. I’m sorry, Leslie.”
“For what?”
“Going away like that.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“I’d rather not.”
She put an arm around him, unsure how she knew he needed it. He flinched, but he didn’t pull away. “Do you think it’s fair not to tell me?”
He scrubbed his palm up and down his hair until the style was beyond ruined, dark-blond strands now spiked in every direction. At last he said, “No. It just sucks that this happened now, while…while I’m still trying to prove I’m worth your time.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing the last two days?”
He blinked. Finally. His eyes lost their wide, wild stare. After a few more seconds, he shrugged. “Part of the gig, since I showed up here uninvited.”
“In that case, you’re officially invited.”
“Oh. Good to know.” There it was, the crooked smile and the crinkle between his eyes.
“But don’t think you can distract me from an explanation.”
He ignored the levity in her words; instead his smile flattened. “I know.”
Leslie tugged the hand she was still holding, led him back along the trail until trees sheltered them from any hint of a long-distance view or drop. They sat side-by-side on two boulders that seemed to have been placed off the path for this purpose. Ryker’s fingers wove between hers, and his grip was strong. She ran her thumb along his knuckles, and he watched their linked hands with fixed attention.
At last he looked up and met her eyes. His face was nearly blank, but she focused on every tiny movement, and she saw past the blankness to the humiliation and…shame.
“You can tell me,” she said.
He nodded, but another few seconds passed before he spoke. “Have you ever seen a catatonic vampire before?”
“Definitely not.”
Another nod. “You know how humans do the fight-flight-or-freeze thing?”
“Sure.”
“Our version looks like…um, like what I just did. Statue mode. Playing dead. One or both depending on the situation. I came to flat on my back, so I guess I did both this time.”
“I touched you,” she said. “I nudged you back from the edge, and you toppled.”
He shut his eyes and gave a soft groan.
Gently she said, “You’re afraid of heights.”
“No. I’m afraid of falling.”
She had set him up for the worst possible shock and terror. Her heart throbbed with an extra-hard beat. “I know I couldn’t have known about this, but still—I’m really sorry.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her as if she were speaking Latin. “I’m the one who should be sorry, Leslie. It’s a stupid, stupid fear.”
“Why would it be stupid?”
“Are you serious? I’m a vampire. Last night I jumped off the second-story hotel balcony to the parking lot when I could’ve taken the stairs. So it’s not heights. It’s a height that’s too high. When I know I wouldn’t land on my feet. Even if there’s a guardrail—crap, even if there’s a window or a perfectly sturdy glass floor for tourists—my brain and my body start screaming at me that I’m going to fall and die. It’s so stupid. But I can’t not freak out, no matter how hard I try.”
The gush of words ended, and he closed his eyes again, as if he couldn’t look at her now that she knew. Leslie used her free hand to cup the side of his face, and his eyes fluttered open, surprise layering over the shame.
“Leslie,” he said, and her name was like a song when he said it this way.
She wanted him to hear the song from her too. She unfurled the lure in her voice as she rarely did, even with her parents. Habit had nearly made her forget how—but only nearly. She said, “Ryker.”
He gave a single shiver, and a strange sort of triumph hummed in her veins.
“No shame,” she said. “Not with me.”
His mouth thinned. “It’s stupid.”
“It’s part of you, and you are not stupid.”
“I’m a vampire who’s afraid of falling.”
She squeezed his hand. He was still clinging hard to hers. “It’s just fear, Ryker. No one’s immune to it. Listen to me,” she said when he shook his head. “I’m here with you. I’m here for you. And there is no shame with me.”
He closed his eyes. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, so slowly, over the course of a full minute. At last, sounding almost childlike, he said, “I’m not stupid?”
“Not in the slightest,” Leslie said. “In fact you’re so impressive it’s annoying. Annoyingly attractive too. I’m telling you right now—I don’t want to hear any more about ‘stupid.’”
A slow smile lifted one side of his mouth. “Annoyingly attractive?”
Leslie gave an exaggerated sigh. “Let’s be real here. You belong in a magazine. Or a romcom—and not as the guy who doesn’t get the girl.”
When they kissed, it was the most mutual decision Leslie had ever made with another person. They leaned in at the same time. Her thumb stroked the line of his cheekbone. He wrapped a hand around the back of her head, and his fingers sank into her hair. Their lips met, and he was delicious, and Leslie wanted to go on tasting him, grazing her fingers over the muscles of his back, savoring the press of his fingers against her scalp, tasting and tasting his kiss.
Minutes passed. They didn’t breathe. They held each other and went on kissing.
Then it ended, the same mutual choice to pull back.
“One more thing you’re good at,” Leslie said, and the melody in her own voice sent another surge of triumph through her. Kissing Ryker had unmuted the parts of her nature she kept from humans.
“You’re better.” Ryker’s voice sang too, and the beauty of it sent gooseflesh down her arms. “You’re perfect.”
Hardly, but right now, her body fizzing with joy like champagne, she’d take it. “That was…”
“Perfect,” Ryker said.
“Okay, sure, it was perfect.”
She kissed him again, initiating this time. This kiss was brief, and then she nestled into his chest while he wrapped her in his arms. He was solid but careful, not as if Leslie were fragile but rather as if she were something too precious to take chances with. She hummed against his chest, and her voice still resonated in her ears.
“I wish I was better at sounding like this,” she said. “You know, um…lusty.”
His fingers went still in the act of stroking her hair. “Better? What do you mean?”
“Muting myself is such a habit, you know. Letting go of that…cloak or mask or whatever you want to call it…isn’t natural.”
His fingers tightened in her hair, then relaxed again. “If it makes me a snob, so be it, but I’m sorry you’ve spent so much of your life hiding yourself.”
“I don’t mind, Ryker. Well, not usually, but…do you think it makes me less of a vampire?”
“Absolutely not.” He tucked her closer to him, and she leaned in, scooting halfway off her boulder onto his. “And if I gave you that impression, I’m sorry.”
She gave herself a moment to think that through, knowing she was safe to mull and decide and just be in Ryker’s arms. “It might not have been you. It might have been me.”
Around them, the trees rustled and sighed. Crickets, frogs, katydids, cicadas, and a random insomniac mockingbird made a lively chorus.
“The whole forest is serenading us,” she said.
Ryker gave a soft, satisfied hiss. “Apex dating ritual. They’re duly impressed.”
“You’re something else.”
“I thought I was annoyingly attractive.”
She gave a little hum. “At the moment, less annoying.”
“More attractive?” he whispered against her ear, and a delightful shiver swept her body.
“Let’s find out,” she said.
Their lips met again, but this kiss lasted only a few moments. She wanted to talk. She sensed he did too. He tugged her to her feet, and she followed him back along the trail, toward town. As they walked, he kept hold of her hand. He no longer seemed to need contact, as he had when he’d first come out of his catatonic freeze. Instead he swung their hands between them as if he felt somehow lighter. She did too.
“Ryker, who’s the oldest vampire you know?”
He glanced at her as they walked. “Random.”
“I’ve been thinking about what your life must be like. In the city. Surrounded by our kind. You must know plenty of relics.”
“I worked with one on a case once. She was three-hundred-sixteen years old, and she loved to tell people, even humans. Quite the character and really good at her job. I learned a lot from her.”
Over three hundred. Wow. She shook her head. “The oldest vampire I’ve met is my dad’s great-grandfather at Snow family Christmas. I think he’s about a hundred and fifty. Shows up once a decade or so.”
“Typical relic, aloof and proud of it.”
“Any still in touch with your family?” This was fascinating, a conversation she’d never had before.
“Oldest relative I’ve met is a cousin somewhere on my mom’s side. He’s like…four hundred something? I was just a kid though, the last time he came around. My mom has a great-great-aunt who still keeps in touch—Aunt Donna, she’s a hundred and thirty-three. I see her a couple times a year. Outside my family, everybody in my social circle is a looker.” He darted another glance her way. “You know that term, right?”
Leslie shot him a side-eye.
He lifted his free hand. “Sorry. But I keep assuming you do know something about us, and then you don’t.”
Fair enough. Leslie cleared her throat in dramatic fashion, sounding very like a human, and recited. “Looker: colloquialism for a vampire whose true age matches their looks. Exhibit A: Leslie Snow.” She gestured to herself. “Exhibit B: Ryker Maddox. Or should I say Laurence Ryker Gould Maddox?”
Ryker’s laugh was louder than usual, and he threw his head back to indulge it. “You did look me up. You got out the old test results.”
Leslie couldn’t help grinning back. “I might have.”
“I’m taking the liberty of being encouraged by this.”
“Go ahead.” She shrugged. “Not going to lie, though, I’m a little disappointed you haven’t met dozens of centuries-old vampires.”
“Maybe I have. Martha—the woman I worked with—was an exception to every rule in the book. Most of them don’t advertise their age, and it’s terrible manners to ask.”
“So mysterious,” Leslie said.
“Maybe that’s why they do it. They get a kick out of the mystery. Or maybe it’s just too much life to explain unless you’re super trusted, in their inner circle. But when I’m three hundred years old with this face”—he pointed with a smirk—“I’ll probably be straightforward like Martha. The reactions could be fun.”
She laughed. Even at a thousand years old, she’d never want that kind of attention, but she could picture Ryker having fun with it. They kept talking, kept walking, for another half-hour—well past downtown, now along the blacktop that led to the highway, past a few red-dirt roads.
“I have to warn you,” Leslie said. “If we keep walking, eventually we’re going to pass Lunar Lane.”
“Lunar…? Oh—as in the moon, as in wolves. Got it. Do you want to turn back?”
“That’s up to you. I just didn’t want you to be startled by the odor of the pack.”
He gave her a side-eye not unlike the few she’d shot at him tonight. “Think I’ll play dead again, huh?”
“Oh—no, of course not.”
“I’m not fragile, Leslie.”
“I know that.” She shouldn’t have said anything.
He was quiet for a minute as they continued walking, but then he shook his head. “Sorry. You were showing care, and…and it’s kind of you.”
She ran her thumb across his knuckles. “But it’s hard to take kindness, sometimes.”
“Yeah. When it’s something you despise in yourself… Yeah.”
“This has nothing to do with your fear of falling. And I know you were fine meeting Ezra yesterday. But you’d never met a wolf before this week, and I’m telling you, the collective scent of a whole pack is a lot.”
“For you too?”
“We all get along fine in town, on neutral ground; but passing their land on foot puts me on edge. I kind of want to run, because I know I’m outnumbered. But I kind of want to…fight them? Like, all of them? At one time? It’s weird.”
“Another new experience for me,” Ryker said with a broad grin that caught the light of the waxing moon.
“It’s not exactly an old experience for me. I’ve only walked by Lunar Lane a handful of times, and always in broad daylight.”
The grin wasn’t letting up. “Okay, so…about turning back. When I was a kid, there was this empty rundown house on my block. The human kids said a vampire lived there, and he was five thousand years old.”
“ Five thousand?”
“In fourth grade, even I didn’t question that detail. Pretty sure at that age I really did expect to live forever. You know, I still feel basically immortal.”
“Same,” Leslie said. “I can’t fully get my head around what it means, living for a millennium. I think thirty is too young to get it.”
“Exactly.” He shrugged. “So anyway about this house—I ask my dad, and he explains how property seizure works via the U.S. Marshals Service. How the house then went through multiple auctions and sales but no one ever occupied it again. Naturally, I try to pass this info on to my buddies, but they’re not having it. Way too dull to be believed.”
Wherever he was going with this story, she relished the peek into his childhood. No surprise Ryker was the kid trying to fact-check suburban legends. “What did you do next?”
Because surely he’d done something.
He nodded as they kept walking, ever closer to Lunar Lane. “One day we’re proving our courage, running up onto the porch and punching the doorbell and dashing back to the group. When it’s my turn, I’m about to hit the doorbell when a few things click in my brain.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“First,” he said as if uninterrupted, “I knew relics don’t tell their age, especially to humans. So these kids who’ve never met this alleged relic—they can’t possibly know how old he is. Not even their parents can possibly know. And second, adult vampires have super-human hearing, so if any vampire lives here—never mind a relic—he already knows I’m standing on his porch before I ring the doorbell.”
“Sharp thinking for a little kid.” She could see him in her mind’s eye, tousled blond hair and magnetic blue eyes, bouncing with mischief and studying the world around him with a mind that already sped along faster than most.
“The third thing I realized—this entire game was stupid. I wasn’t scared of any vampire, however old he was. But I did want to know for sure, was the house unoccupied or not? And it was way more important to solve that puzzle than to obey my peers on a dare.”
“Brilliant. What did you do?”
“I didn’t punch the doorbell and run. In fact I didn’t punch the doorbell at all. I knocked on the door and waited.”
Aha. “And now you’re game to knock on the metaphorical door of Lunar Lane?”
“Life’s pretty bland if you spend it avoiding the unknown.”
He sounded game to march straight into wolf territory. He didn’t intend any harm or offense, she knew. But he didn’t know what he didn’t know, so it was up to Leslie to make sure he didn’t accidentally disrespect her neighbors. “Was your dad right about the house being vacant?”
“Yep.”
“Okay, well, keep in mind that Lunar Lane isn’t.”
“Obviously.”
“In other words, we’re not going to trespass, Ryker. Not one step onto their territory under any circumstances, including their private road. It’s a wolf thing, and they’re extremely serious about it.”
He stopped walking for a moment, seemed to absorb what she’d said. He really hadn’t known. At last he nodded. “Thanks for making sure I didn’t do something stupid.”
“Part of my duty as a local.”
Ryker nodded again. Then he kept walking, and Leslie kept pace beside him.