Dreams for the Dead (20 page)

“Like a defense mechanism?”

“Right.”

“But some things don’t heal as fast as a body.”

“No.”

Dawn wasn’t sure if she felt much different as a vampire than a human, like having a birthday and not feeling any older. Maybe she would see a change if she stood before the mirror again and allowed herself to look deeper into her own eyes. There would be no trace of the naïve, trusting inn
ocence of youth, and no cynicism. Because she was empty. She felt nothing. The vampires had made sure of that.

If she was still the same person she’d been as a human, she couldn’t tell that either. The empt
iness numbed her. She wondered if anyone who had loved her could love her still. She wondered if this detachment would wear off eventually, leaving her cowering in a state of horror.

She tried to grasp a shred of her old optimism.
I am home. I am undamaged. I am alive.

Mostly
, she added after a moment.

She decided she’d have to call Roy and tell him she was never coming back. First she would come up with a lie that didn’t involve her becoming a vampire. Few people were ever going to know about that.

Looking at Tristan, she felt her gut wrench as she suddenly recalled waking up in Mineral Springs to witness his silent, heartbroken sobs. She said, “Did you know I saw you crying? In the motel room, by the window. After Branek bit me the first time.”

He didn’t look at her. The light was changing through the window blinds, the soft gray turning yellow as morning arrived. “Oh,” he said.

“Tell me why.”

Their shoulders touched as he shifted slightly. “Oh, Dawn, you couldn’t understand the reasons for my tears. Even I don’t understand. Sometimes they come out of nowhere and I just let them take me over. There’s this burning pain somewhere inside me, and this pounding in my head, and I cry until they go away. Until I’m numb again.” He glanced at her. “Maybe I cried for dragging you down with me. For knowing nothing good would ever happen to you because of me.”

“I think I’d have gone almost anywhere with you,” she said. “I’d have done anything.”

“I manipulated you.”

“You were manipulating yourself, too.”

Dawn hadn’t really considered the possibility of forever with Tristan. She’d have had to consider whether she wanted to be a vampire with him. She didn’t want to be apart from him, but forever meant something different now. Being a vampire was no longer her choice to make, and forever r
emained in question.

She had ideas about love that came from reading books. She knew how she wanted someone to feel about her—or she thought she did. Real life wasn’t like fiction, she knew, but she was a dreamer at heart. Anyway, her life felt like a story now. She wanted to be grand with someone. They would destroy and remake each other. There would be support and caring, loyalty and laughter, but not without anger and sadness and sometimes cruelty. Because how could anyone really love if they didn’t also hate? How could anything be good if there wasn’t something bad to balance it?

Leila thought her ideas were quaint and hilariously unrealistic. Dawn had held on to them anyway. She didn’t know if Tristan was the one who’d fulfill her dreams and desires. All she knew was that he wasn’t good for her and she wanted him anyway. If she could have him, they’d burn together on equal ground, and she would jump happily into the fire.

“Could you lay down with me?” she asked. “I don’t want you to hold me. I just want you beside me while I sleep.”

“Aren’t you afraid of me anymore?”

“Why would I be afraid of you now? I might as well fear myself.”

“Sometimes the self is the scariest thing of all. You’ll learn that.”

She went to her bed and lay facing the wall. He settled himself behind her. Closing her eyes, she tried not to think about regret or lost ideals. If she started imagining all the things she could have done differently to avoid this fate, she would trap herself in a mire that would be difficult to escape.

Instead she decided she was transcendent, like a lotus flower blooming in muddy water. She had died and was not buried. Branek had not destroyed her, but awakened her into another life. If he had brought creation from destruction, then so could she. The two were intertwined, and she embodied them both. She would embrace them, life and death, and never regret either one.

~

Her sleep was dreamless. She slept all day, waking as the sun went down. Just like a vampire would, she thought.

Outside her window, the sky was electric blue in the spaces between full-bodied clouds that si
zzled with golden edges. The sun had fallen behind the dusky purple mountains, rendering them featureless and hazy. Its melting light made the clouds blaze with startling bursts of neon pink and vibrant swaths of peach. It cast the room in a warm, romantic glow.

Nothing felt urgent. Nothing. She and Tristan lay side by side in their own timeless world. Ever
ything outside it could wait.

“I haven’t kept count of the years since I became a vampire,” he told her. “It hasn’t been many, but it feels so long ago. I was the second Loftus made, years after he’d done Branek. It was … i
ntensely uncomfortable. Maybe you can imagine,” he said as she turned over to face him, listening earnestly. “Maybe you can imagine how deeply repulsive and demeaning it felt to have a person you don’t particularly like, or even hate, suck the blood from your neck. Or touch you at all. He drained me to the point of death, and fed me the blood of his own veins to revive me. I woke up alone in the grass at the back of the house. I had this craving that felt like a ragged gash up the middle of my body. I wanted to claw my own eyes out to relieve the misery of it.”

“What did you do?” Dawn whispered.

“I wasn’t alone after all. I saw a girl, lying on the grass right near where I’d been. She was unconscious. She was young, maybe fifteen. And I knew she had what I needed. I could hear her heartbeat. I could smell her blood.” Tristan shifted his eyes away from hers, showing the first signs of discomfort with his story. “I already knew what to do. I’d known about vampires for a long time, and I’d known I would become one. So it wasn’t scary to want to bite her, and drink from her. I did. I was so hungry I killed her.” He blinked slowly, his eyes drifting. He added, “But it wasn’t like I’d never killed before.”

Dawn was silent. She didn’t feel sympathy for him, yet she didn’t think less of him. She didn’t consider him a monster.

“Do you feel sorry for yourself?” she asked.

His lips thinned in a wry grin and his eyes were shuttered. “I have. I’ve hated myself. I’ve wanted not to kill myself, but just to die. Just to burn out. It’s been impossible to avoid feeling like that b
ecause sometimes things were just so fucking bleak.”

“I’ve killed a man now, too,” she said.

“Keep it up and you’ll lose count.”

After a moment she asked, “What makes you happy, Tristan?”

“Nothing much.” He considered for a moment, then added in a quiet voice that was equal parts confusion and disbelief, “Nothing but you.”

“How?” she demanded irately. “How do I make you happy?”

“I don’t know. I like being with you.”

She snorted lightly. “You have a funny way of showing it. Besides, you don’t make
me
happy.”

He pulled her close and kissed her neck, an earlobe. She let him do it, keeping one hand on his chest to push him away if necessary. “Tell me what to do,” he whispered as his lips moved in a hy
pnotic rhythm over her skin. “Tell me how to make you happy. I’ll do it.”

“Figure it out for yourself,” she scoffed.

She let him keep kissing her for several moments. From time to time she pushed him away, savoring his wordless protests before she let him move back. Though she enjoyed his caresses, scattered thoughts of Branek began to make her intensely uncomfortable. She found herself struggling against Tristan without even realizing it.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, pulling his body away from hers.

“It’s not you,” she whispered with a shake of her head. From the look in his eyes, she knew he understood.

She thought for a moment before rolling herself up to sit on top of him. In this position, she held the power. Pausing, she considered the m
echanics of her fangs and the possible damage they could do to a body part that was nowhere near the neck. They were sharp enough to draw blood, obviously, and long, but not too long to hide in a narrow smile.

A smile wasn’t exactly what she had in mind, though, as she undid Tristan’s jeans and tugged them down his narrow hips. A line of dark hair trailed down his stomach. She looked at his penis, already hard, then cut her eyes to his face. He lay there watching her, his hands hooked comfortably behind his head.

“Go ahead,” he invited.

With her fangs it was hard, she discovered, to put her mouth all the way around him. Impo
ssible, even, unless she really did want to draw blood. He curved a hand over the back of her head as she ran her lips up and down the shaft instead. Her tongue came out to circle the head and his hips undulated gently. Soft groans emitted from his throat.

It was unclear to her why she was doing this, but she didn’t stop. For her, the act was almost sc
ientific. Clinical. This wasn’t something she’d particularly enjoyed doing with Zach. He’d never returned the favor anyway, and she’d been too timid to ask. With Tristan she didn’t much mind, and she’d never had to ask for pleasure from him. It seemed he liked to give it as much as receive it.

Tristan had barely finished when she swung off him and went down the hall to the bathroom, where she rinsed out her mouth and let cold water run over her swollen red lips. She felt so freaking
alarmed
. What the hell was the matter with her?

Other than the obvious
, she thought bitterly.

The aftereffects of Branek’s rape were still fresh in her mind and body. His gross violation was prob
ably the worst thing that had ever happened to her. She didn’t know how to make herself feel better in the wake of it. He’d robbed her of control and getting it back seemed so far beyond her. The more she tried to reclaim it, the more it slipped through her fingers. She hated how weak and needy she felt. A blow job? Why had she done that? It wasn’t like she was juvenile enough to believe sucking a guy off would make him fall in love with her. Just a short while ago she hadn’t even wanted Tristan to touch her as they slept.

But she was in love with him and had been for some time. She was only now admitting it to he
rself. It frightened her—and made her angry—to feel that way for him and know he didn’t love her in return. Whenever they were together, she might let herself believe something wonderful would happen between them, something other than sex. Though she hated the way he’d treated her, she longed for him to prostrate himself before her and declare his undying love.

Of course that was a st
upid hope. In one way or another, he’d made it clear she meant little to him. How long before he shunted her off to the side, abandoning her for something or someone more interesting?

“Come on,” Tristan said when she emerged, his voice detached, as if nothing had happened at all. “Let’s get blood.”

Las Vegas wasn’t a city for walking. It was for driving. From the freeways, a person could see the entire inelegant sprawl of strip malls and stucco suburbs stretching off toward the mountains. Nevertheless, Tristan preferred to walk to find his prey rather than drive. He found it easier to go unnoticed on foot and easier to hide if necessary. This and other bits of vampiric wisdom he imparted as they prowled beyond the neighborhood. Don’t act in haste. Don’t lose your head. Make sure no one sees you. Get the fuck out. Basic rules, but necessary.

They passed over a group of young teenagers hanging out in front of a drugstore. “I don’t drink from children,” Tristan muttered.

Dawn allowed herself to picture how his life must have been, trapped under Loftus’s influence and driven by his own dark desires. He would have consumed blood heedlessly, wantonly, reveling in power, never disciplining himself beyond following his few rules. Was he the same now, or was this man showing her how to live a good guy? Did he want anything from her? What did she want from him? He was still a stranger to her.

Their prey this time was two retail workers who’d gone out behind their store to throw away trash and paused to socialize by the dumpster. Tristan drank from one while Dawn occupied the other, awkwardly, by asking for directions. When Tristan had finished, he held the other down so she could drink. She cried for what she did, and for how terribly she loved the blood. It tasted salty and wonderful.

They didn’t kill the two, much to Dawn’s relief, only left them unconscious. They would wake up confused but not permanently harmed.

It was disorienting how invigorated she felt. Almost intoxicated. She turned to Tristan on the street, suddenly ravenous for him. She grabbed him to her and luxuriated in a long, slow kiss beneath amber-tinged sodium lights. Her hands slid up into his thick silken hair. He curved one hand posse
ssively around the back of her neck and pressed in for a harder kiss, flavored with a devastating passion. Dawn didn’t care about the traffic and that anyone driving by could see them practically mauling each other. He was the fucking dark prince of her dreams.