Chapter 2
My hotel was in Cromere, and I knew how to get to my hotel.
Other than that, Cromere was a busy place, and there were no abandoned buildings there that I wanted to capture, so I hadn’t explored.
I didn’t know my way around the place at all.
The city lights felt warm and safe, but the night had felt safe right up until I had entered the church and found a vampire there, bound to a cross.
Auris parked the car on a cobblestoned street. It was quiet here, and there were few pedestrians around. He got out and opened my door for me when I didn’t, then stood outside patiently waiting. When I still didn’t move, he held out his hand.
“Come on, Ethan.”
Once more I was struck by…something. How much I wanted to admire him, maybe. I remembered all too well what he had done, but at the same time, he looked unique in such a way that I wanted to take my camera out and snap a few pictures.
He was also attractive, which was what really threw me.
He wasn’t my type when I went for guys at all.
I liked older guys, maybe with a beard, who liked to tell me what to do, and he just…
wasn’t that at all. And how was I even thinking about that when I’d seen what he could do? What he was capable of?
I got out of the car in the end. I left my bag there, and the moment the door fell shut behind me, I cursed myself for it.
I didn’t know what good it would do me, because I only had my wallet, my journal, and a bottle of water in there.
I would have liked my camera bag with me though. Having my camera always grounded me.
I glanced at Auris. He’d gone from beaten and bloody to beautiful after feeding on blood.
He looked like he should take a modeling job, move to Paris, and have both women and men lining up to date him.
I wasn’t going to hit him over the head with my water bottle, but I wanted to get him in front of my camera. At least, some part of me did.
He closed the car door and hit the fob to lock it, then in a fluid motion, he put his arm around me, his hand settling on my hip.
I stiffened, and he looked at me. He was so close, and my spine tingled, though not with fear. Not only with fear, anyway. I had another mind-bogglingly strong moment of déjà vu.
“Do you mind it?” His voice was calm.
“What?”
“A man’s arm around you. Do you mind it?”
Of all the things to talk about, of all the things that had happened tonight, a vampire asking me how gay I was took the cake, and I started giggling.
“I don’t mind it, but just for your information, I’m bi. Not going through a phase on my way to realizing I was gay all along, just bi, okay?”
He cocked his head. “Okay.” He sounded amused, not like someone who’d just been crucified in a church.
My giggles—nervous, desperate, a little out of it—ebbed before long, and Auris led me down the street, not a word spoken between us, his arm firm and steady around me.
I could hear my footsteps on the cobblestones, but he made no sound at all.
Wind caught my hair. I had a hair tie in my bag for when it got very windy, and I felt like I wanted it, felt like I needed the strands out of my face, but this was a breeze at best. Nerves, it was all nerves.
We turned right, followed a short bend in the road, then crossed beneath a skyway that looked like it had grown naturally with the city, the weather-beaten stone illuminated by light set into the facades of the buildings it connected.
Past that, there were pedestrians, some masked and walking briskly like they had places to be, others just out for a stroll and enjoying what might be their first vacation in close to two years.
I tried to look at people, tell them that I needed help with just my eyes.
The funny thing was, if they looked at all, they gave me only a brief glance that quickly shifted to Auris because he was tall and beautiful.
But for the most part, people looked at their phones or talked with the people at their sides.
They didn’t care about anything else, certainly not a stranger.
“Don’t be frustrated.” Auris drew me just a fraction closer. His voice warmed me, and I couldn’t help liking it. “It’s one part herd mentality and one part self-absorption, I think. I could be wrong.”
That felt hurtful. People were better than that; they had to be, even if this person, this vampire, didn’t see it.
“I helped you.” I looked at the cobblestones, smoothed by centuries of people walking over them. “I could have run, but I didn’t.”
He turned his head to look at me. I didn’t meet his gaze. We walked for long enough that I thought he wouldn’t bother answering.
At last, he said, “You’re different, Ethan.”
But I wasn’t, not really. People had helped each other out a lot over the past year and a half. Not all, of course, but most.
I thought about pulling free, running up to someone, telling them he was abducting me, but almost as soon as the thought came, Auris put his other hand on my arm.
The touch wasn’t painful or even threatening.
In fact, I knew that while he held me, no one else would lay a hand on me unless he allowed it.
“Can you read my mind?” I asked him, my desire to run just barely curbed.
“Not like this, no. A little, when I entranced you earlier.” I felt him shrug. “Your body gives you away. People never realize how loudly the body speaks.”
He led me down another street. This one was quieter, and my footfalls once more echoed off the cobblestones while his were like a ghost’s.
Geraniums sat out in planters along the street, and the red of the petals pulled me right back to the church, to what had happened there. To the noises and to the screams.
Once more, Auris put his free hand on my arm, although this time it wasn’t to hold me closer, but instead to comfort me. It felt like that.
He tugged me left, down a staircase and toward a big wooden door with a notice that announced masks were required inside. It was a restaurant, of all places. He held the heavy door open and pushed me inside.
Once he was next to me and the door had closed behind us, I was surprised to see that the place was almost empty.
Still, I thought—hoped—they’d kick us out on account of neither of us wearing masks.
It seemed like a very nice restaurant with the white tablecloths and the servers dressed in matching black jackets and white shirts.
This was the kind of place the locals went for a special night out; a place the tourists would only find if they went looking for it or happened upon it by sheer luck.
I moved to take a step forward, but Auris held me back by the arm. Every eye in the place seemed to turn to him. Even the cooks came out of the kitchen to stare.
After moments of them looking at Auris, their expressions either completely blank or rapt, they went back to what they had been doing.
They returned to cooking or cutting vegetables, to pouring wine at the dark wooden counter, to talking to one another and enjoying their respective meals.
It was the strangest thing. None of the serving staff raised an eyebrow at our unmasked states.
“Come.” Auris led me through the room to the back part of the restaurant.
There was no one else there, just three empty tables.
This would have been a perfect spot for a date, for quiet conversation.
I wondered if I was the first person Auris had ever brought here or if this was the vampire version of a last meal for his meals.
He pulled out a chair for me. I sat, and he took the chair opposite mine.
One of the servers brought a bottle and two glasses to our table.
The server put the glasses down, then opened the bottle, and poured.
It was the kind of place that should have let you taste the wine before filling both glasses, but there was none of that.
In fact, the server didn’t say a word to either of us, just left the bottle and went back to whatever he had been doing.
“Have some wine,” Auris said in that smooth, warm voice.
“I don’t want to have wine right now. What is this?” I gestured at the table and the wine between us.
Auris shrugged. “It’s just a conversation. Or we can make it something else. How would you like to play an adapted version of Twenty Questions?”
“Are you joking? Is this funny to you?”
“Not in the slightest. You ask me something, and I answer truthfully, then I do the same, and you answer truthfully. Would you like to start?”
I stared, dumbfounded. That was a word I’d never had cause to use, but it described me pretty well right about then. I took a swig of the wine. It was good, but perhaps anything would have tasted good in that moment.
On top of being at a restaurant with a vampire, I’d somehow ended up in a nice restaurant in my old Schrodinger’s kitty T-shirt, which made me underdressed as well as terrified.
And confused. I was likely more confused than terrified at this point, and Auris wasn’t helping. He was stunning and so freakishly calm.
I looked down at the white tablecloth and shook my head. I’d play if he wanted me to play. Maybe if I did, he’d just let me go, and I could get back to my hotel where I could just sleep and forget this ever happened.
I looked back up at him. “What happened in the church?”
“They dragged me there. The idea was that consecrated ground would weaken me so they could banish the evil from my flesh before they beheaded me and burned my body. They went to fetch their exorcist to do the banishing and possibly the beheading. Then you showed up out of nowhere. I saw your flashlight and wasn’t sure whether I was hallucinating or not.
I think what followed was just bad timing on their part. ”
I tapped my feet under the table. That was… They’d meant to cut his head off?
“What happened when you…moved?”