Alex sat down in the living room. “Let me try to explain.”
“That would be nice,” I said, and we all trooped in to see if he could make it right. He damn well better.
“I’ve been a vampire for three hundred and seventy-eight years.” He said it quietly, without a lot of fanfare, as if announcing that he liked the curly fries at Redrum Burger. Like it was just another not-so-interesting personal tidbit of information.
I wasn’t particularly surprised. I’d figured he’d been around about that long. I knew he wasn’t a new vampire and the guys who’d been around for five or six hundred years had some odd airs about them. Alex was gentlemanly but not courtly, if you know what I mean.
“When I was first . . . made”—he stumbled a bit, but then went on—“I was horrified. I was supposed to be a man of healing, a physician, instead I’d become a monster, a thing whose very existence depended on sucking the lifeblood out of another human being. I disgusted myself.”
“Why didn’t you just . . . I don’t know, walk out into the sunlight?” Norah asked. Her face stayed grim.
I started to protest. Alex held up his hand to shush me. I bit my tongue. It was a rude question, which was unlike Norah. I supposed she’d been pushed to it, though.
“I considered it. Here’s one of my many problems with living as . . . what I am. Most days, most times, I hate it. The idea of taking humans as my prey, even when I dress it up in a pretty, seductive package”—he smiled a little—“it sickens me. But the pleasure I get from it? You have no idea, no clue, the intensity of the gratification. Nothing I ever experienced as a human can touch it. Except . . .”
“Except what?” Norah asked.
We’d all leaned forward. I was pretty sure Alex wasn’t using even a shade of his command voice on us, but it almost felt like that, as if we were drawn to him despite knowing so much better.
“Except the pleasure of being fed upon.” He stared right at her.
She backed away.
“You’re a smart girl, Norah. That is the correct reaction to me and to all things like me. You figured that out when you saw the
kiang shi
in action, didn’t you?” Alex leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, one ankle carelessly resting on the opposite knee. He looked relaxed, but I could feel the tension in him. It thrummed through the room.
Norah nodded. “They were monsters.”
“Like me,” he said flatly.
“Like you,” she agreed.
“I saw it that night in your eyes. I saw reflected back at me what I’d felt about myself all those years ago. I’d pushed those feelings so far down, I’d almost forgotten they existed. Seeing your fear and disgust brought it rushing back like a tidal wave.” He shook his head. “It was almost unbearable.”
“And now?” she asked. “How do you feel now?”
“Not much different. I’ve been trying a different way to feed. I found a . . . source for blood, enough of it to keep me going, but it’s not the same. It can sustain me, but it does not . . . nourish me.” He rubbed a hand over his face.
“So?” Norah asked, still hard-jawed but now leaning toward Alex.
“So nothing. I’ll be able to go on this way for a while. Eventually, the hunger, the desire for more than being sustained, will become too strong for me to ignore.” He put his hand back on his thigh and looked right at her.
“And what will happen then?” She was relentless.
He stared her right in the eye. “I’ll find someone. Either willing or unwilling, and I will feed from them. I will do my best not to drain them and leave them dead or, worse yet, undead like me. It will be a struggle, though.”
“And it’s always been like this? All three hundred and seventy-eight years of it?” Norah had moved even closer to him. He could have her throat in less than a second. For as much as she was frightened of Alex, I didn’t think she still fully appreciated the danger she was in. I started to stand, to move between her and Alex, but he held up his hand and gestured for me to sit back down. Again, it wasn’t a command, but something in his face made me obey.
“No. No, there was a respite. Now it seems impossibly brief, but at the time, it seemed like it could be like that forever.” He smiled for a moment, but it faded quickly.
“How did you get that respite?” Norah inched even closer to him.
Alex didn’t move, but his gaze did not leave Norah’s face. “I found respite because of a woman.”
I had the disturbing impression that as far as Norah and Alex were concerned, there was no one else in the room. I stayed as still as I could. I glanced over at Ted. He was like a statue, but his eyes were bright and alert.
“How did she give you respite?” Norah ran her tongue over her lips, as if her mouth were suddenly dry.
“By seeing me, seeing the monster I was and accepting me, all the same.”
I saw Norah swallow and watched Alex watch the movement of her throat. “Did you feed from her?”
He nodded. “I did.”
“She allowed it?” Norah’s heart was beating so fast, I could see the faint pulse in her neck.
“She welcomed it.” Alex steepled his hands in front of himself and leaned toward Norah now.
She didn’t draw back. “Only one woman was ever able to be like that with you?”
He smiled gently. “I have had many lovers. I have fed from all of them. But she was special. There was a light in her. A glow, if you will.”
“She was good.” Norah nodded.
“As good as I was evil.”
“And her goodness made you less evil?” She cocked her head to one side, as if considering the information carefully.
“I think it did. It at least allowed me to live with my evil and keep it in check.”
“Have you ever met anyone else like her?”
He reached out and caressed her jaw. I saw her stiffen the tiniest bit and then relax against his hand. “Not until very recently.”
“She wanted you. For yourself. Not because you made her want you.” It wasn’t a question.
Alex answered her anyway. “Yes.”
“The way that I want you.” Again. There was no question asked. This time, Alex merely nodded.
“You’re not making me feel this way with some kind of special vampire power?” Finally! An actual question!
“No. And trust me, if I could make myself stop feeling this way, I would. It has not been . . . pleasant.”
“If I do this,” she said, and it took all my willpower not to gasp out loud. “If I do this, we need to set some ground rules.”
Alex tilted his head. A smile quirked at the edge of his lips. “Of course.”
“No more sneaking into my room and watching me sleep. That’s creepy, stalker-type behavior and it’s not okay.”
“Got it.”
“No bite marks where they’re going to show. I don’t want to have to wear a turtleneck when its one hundred degrees here.”
“A reasonable request. Not a problem.”
“You let me drive the Porsche some time.”
He did laugh then. “Of course.”
Norah reached up and took Alex’s hand. She turned and walked toward her bedroom, leading him behind her. I heard the door to her bedroom open and then, as if in case there were any doubt in anyone’s mind what she intended, she said, “Please come in.”
I heard the door click shut behind them.
TED AND I WENT TO BED A LITTLE BIT LATER. WE WAITED A bit. I am not proud to admit that I got a stake I just happen to keep on my closet floor—behind a pair of red ankle boots, which Aunt Kitty talked me into buying, that I can never get up the nerve to wear, despite the fact that they’re fabulous—and waited outside Norah’s bedroom door for a little bit of that time.
I trust Alex. I really do. Except when I don’t.
This was one of the times that I didn’t. I’d seen the hunger glittering in his eyes, but that was nothing new. What I wasn’t sure I’d seen was the desire. Oh, sure, I’d seen him turn on the charm and seduce pretty young residents into the supply closets, but that had seemed almost more of a game. Nothing of Alex had truly been invested in that.
Whatever was happening in that room was silent. I couldn’t hear a peep. After about a half hour, Ted, just as silent as Alex and Norah, led me down the hall.
He shut the door behind us and backed me up against it. I didn’t fight back. With his gaze locked on mine, he started to unbutton my blouse, one agonizing button at a time. He slid it off my shoulders and I let it drop to the floor.
A cold heat swept through me, making my knees feel unsteady as he traced his fingers along the lace edge of my bra. He undid my jeans and peeled them down my legs, gliding his hands back up my inner thighs as he stood backup. I almost toppled over, desire surged through me with such strength.
Then I froze. “Stop,” I whispered.
“Are you sure?” he murmured into my ear, making me shiver. “I’m pretty sure you’re liking this.”
“I am,” I said. “Maybe a little too much.”
He stopped then. “I’m not sure there is such a thing as liking this too much.”
“I am. When it’s not just us.”
He looked around him. “What’s there? Is there something there I don’t see?”
Ted can see Alex just fine and Paul, for that matter. He can’t always see everything that’s out there, though. The first time he kissed me, a goblin bit my leg. Ted never saw a thing.
“No. At least, nothing I can see either.”
“Then what is it?” He relaxed. His fingers now trailed along the edge of my panties.
I could barely control my breathing. “I think we’re catching some of the, uh, spill-off.”
“Spill-off? From what?” He nuzzled my neck.
“Not what. Whom. I think we’re catching vibes from Norah and Alex.” I pushed him away, pulled my jeans back on and grabbed my shirt.
Ted backed away. “So I’m only horny right now because of what they’re doing in the other room.”
“I’d like to think there might be some other factors,” I said a little angrily, as I wrapped my shirt back around myself.
Ted sat down on my bed. “You know I think you’re beautiful.” He grabbed me around my waist and pulled me to him so that I stood between his spread legs.
“But not that beautiful.” I braced my hands on his shoulders and pushed away from him, although every fiber of me wanted to plaster my bare skin against his. My shirt fell open.
He didn’t let me move away. Instead, he nuzzled my bare midriff. “Every bit that beautiful. Let me show you how beautiful.” He started kissing his way south toward the top of my panties.
“Ted, this isn’t just us.”
He stopped kissing and looked up at me, the calm steady blue of his eyes nearly eclipsed by his pupils. “Melina, I wanted you last night and the night before and the night before that. Alex was nowhere near here. I will want you tomorrow in the morning, at noon and at night regardless of what’s happening in any other room of any other apartment on the planet. Now shut up and take off the rest of your clothes so I can prove it to you.”
How is a girl supposed to argue with that?
I CREPT OUT OF BED INSANELY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, sore in all the right places. Ted had left well before dawn. He’d needed to get home and get his uniform before heading into work. I made my way quietly down the hallway. Norah’s door was ajar.
I stood outside and listened. All I heard was a faint snore. Not a big snore, just a little snuffle. I sniffed the air. No blood. I smelled a lot of other things: sex, incense, more sex. But no blood.
I took a deep breath and opened the door a little more. Norah was sound asleep, facedown on her mattress, sprawled and peaceful.
I walked down to the kitchen. By the coffeemaker—where I’d be sure to see it first thing—was a note from Alex. It read, “She’s fine. I’m not a monster.”
I folded it up and put it in my pocket. We’d see about that.
SOMETIMES I WONDERED WHY I EVEN HAD A JOB. THINGS ended up finding their way to where they were supposed to be. It happened all the time. Because I had a vested interest, I decided to wait and watch to see how this one would work out.
My phone rang while I was still on the road. It was Meredith. “He made it back to the Pack.”
I felt my load lighten a little. “Is he okay?”
“He sounded . . . fine.” She sounded unsure.
“What does that mean?”
“He wasn’t hurt. He was clear on that. He’s taking a break from McClannigan’s for a while. He’ll be sticking close to home for a bit.”
“Meredith, is he in trouble?”
She sighed. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know how serious it is yet. I don’t know if I can even find out. I’ll get back to you when and if I know anything, okay?”
“I’ll see what I can find out, too.” Nice offer considering that Paul was my favorite source of information. “Are you okay?”
There was a pause. “A little sad. I’ll be fine.” She didn’t really sound like she believed it, though. I wasn’t sure I did either. About either of them.
We hung up.
John Littlefield’s garbage pickup day was Tuesday. At the risk of pissing off Chief Murdock, I went back to Elmville to see how that was going to go. I figured the best way to blend in would be to show up before it was light, so I found my spot on the street freakishly early. I figured I could doze in the car. I’d be hard-pressed not to be woken by the racket of the garbage truck.
When they came for Littlefield’s Dumpster, the street was still pretty empty, although a couple of people had left for work. Mainly it was still gray and quiet. The truck rumbled as it came down the street, then let out its piercing beep as it backed into the parking lot. One man jumped down from the truck and directed the driver so that he backed directly up to the Dumpster. The big metal forks lowered down, slid under the Dumpster then lifted the whole thing up to be dumped into the back of the truck.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the doll would end up in the landfill and rot away harmlessly. Maybe unicorns would fly, too. Anything was possible.