Ephemeral (The Countenance) (22 page)

I close my eyes and sift through a litany of ideas before taking up his hand.

The Counts—I wish I was a Count like Wesley. I wish I knew the things he knew, understood his world.

“You know what I was thinking?” he offers. “We should set up a blood bonding for you.”

“A what?” Forget my sanity, plasma is clearly at stake.

“It’s a ceremony.” His eyes widen with pleasure. “It formalizes your commitment to the Countenance. I’ll catch a small animal, and you’ll sacrifice it.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It doesn’t need to die, just bleed. It’s a symbol of the old you dying and the new you coming into your own as a Count.”

“Like a baptism.” Sounds perfectly satanic.

“Something like that. Trust me, it’s painless. You just have to memorize the allegiance, and that’s the extent of it.”

“Sounds easy.” I tighten my grip around his fingers.

I can’t wait to enter into this new world. Not only will it bring me closer to Wes, but I’ll be a part of something bigger than me. I’ll finally belong.

I look up at him to gauge his reaction.

“The Countenance are stronger than family. Once you’re affirmed, every Count is your mother, your brother, your sister. There’s nothing they won’t do for you.”

“That’s what I’ve always wanted.” I swallow hard trying to hide my discomfort.

Family is great, but I want something more, something that would make me special, set me apart from the rest of the world.

I look to Wes and wait to see if takes the bait. So far he’s two for two, but those could have easily been coincidences—or at least that’s what I’d like to believe.

“You know, Laken…” He loses his friendly demeanor—serious as though he knows something isn’t right. “There is something more to the Counts, something that sets us apart from the rest of the world.”

“Tell me.” I rise up on my elbows and pull back my hand. I’m seriously considering bolting into the lake and drowning as a viable way out of the situation.

“I can’t. I’d have to show you,” he whispers, interlacing our fingers again.

“How soon?” I glance down at our conjoined hands and what it might mean.

“After the blood bonding, there’s a probationary period.”

“Can’t wait.”
But it’s almost like being a Count won’t be enough. There’s something in me carved out for something more with Wesley—I can feel it.

The whites of his eyes glint over at me.

He takes in a satisfied lungful of air as he pulls me in. Wesley is spellbound by my every thought.

I want to say something sincere like I’m lucky that I found him, that I have him in my life, but I’m afraid it’ll come out cheesy and ruin the moment.

He gives a wayward grin before it dissipates into something far more serious. “I’m lucky that I have you, Laken. I really mean it.”

And there it is.

Wes pulls me into a sea of hungry kisses. He runs his hands up the back of my sweater blazing tracks over my flesh in his wake. I’m mesmerized by the fire coming from his mouth—captivated by his viral lust for me, and it makes me forget all about the questions and accusations I have. Instead, I bathe in his sweetness, the sultry dripping kisses that singe every part of my existence.

It takes everything in me to push random thoughts out of my mind. All of the questions that might rattle our relationship, they enwreathe us like a thorny vine— threaten to choke us thick as smoke.

God, I missed Wes. The sweet way about him, the tender ache in me that stretches for miles when he’s around. I try to memorize the way his fingers feel tracing over my rib cage, the way his tongue pushes and retracts in rhythm. I reach down and unbuckle his jeans, jab my hands into the back of boxers, and clasp onto his bare flesh.

A loud bang erupts over by the car, and we sit up with a jolt.

“What the hell was that?” I pant, scooting into him.

A shadow staggers forward, then another, and one behind that.

A loud crash explodes to our left. We turn in time to see a body extricating its fist from the passenger-side window of Wesley’s car.

“Crap.” I hiss in a panic.

Wes helps me to my feet and backs me into the trunk of the tree with an unnatural calm. “We’ve got company.”

“Who are they?”

“Spectators.”

“What do they want?”

“To kill us.”

21

A Spectator Sport

Okay, I’m no expert, but I know a freaking zombie when I see one, usually around Halloween or on TV, but I digress.

Wes reaches into his pocket and pulls out his keys, wields them like an impotent switchblade.

“What the hell are you going to do with
those
? We need a knife or a stick.” I reach down and pick up a branch. My feet elevate off the ground, and it’s not until a wild stench hits me that I realize I’m being lifted into the air by one of the grotesque creatures. “Wes!” I punctuate his name with a viral scream.

Trees move by, the world blurs. I swing from side to side, upside down, as it carries me by the legs—my arms dangling to the ground. I snatch at branches, grab onto rocks, and drag my hands across the grass in an effort to slow it down. A sharp pain ignites over my shin.

Shit! It freaking
bit
me!

Wesley knocks it off its feet before I can scream, landing me square on my head. The world warbles, fades in an out a moment before I catch my bearings. The creature dislodges me, and I snatch at the ground in an effort to crawl away, raking up enough dirt to furnish a landfill.

“Run, Laken!” Wes lands hard on the creature’s chest. It looks like an old man with a strip of flesh missing from the entire left side of his face, his open mouth a dark gaping hole. I pat the ground until I come upon a stick and snap it in two.

The hell I’m going to run.

I head over to Wes. A ribbon of moonlight crests from up above and sheds its lamplight over the scene. This creature, this thing, looks like he could be anybody’s grandfather—a slightly decrepit grandfather, but still.

Wes snatches the stick from my hand and dives it into the Spectator’s ocular region. He digs it in over and over with an abnormal show of strength.

The urge to vomit bubbles up and I don’t fight it. I stagger to a bush and ring out my insides until regurgitating my intestines feels like a real possibility. A pair of bloodied legs appear in my line of vision, and I bolt over to Wes without hesitating.

“Get me the hell out of here!” I drill the words into the unblemished night. “You can’t tell me I’m crazy, and
you’re
freaking sane, when zombies exist in your world!”

Wes doesn’t stop to carry on a conversation. He merely pulls me over to the car.

“It’s locked.” He panics, slapping down his jeans. “The blanket.” He pushes me over to the passenger side and reaches through the busted window, unlocking the door before shoving me inside. A trail of blood decorates the broken glass, and I’m not sure if it’s the creature’s or Wesley’s.

I track Wes through the shadows as he runs over and shakes out the blanket, pats it down like a criminal before retrieving the keys.

The car starts to gyrate in spasms from side to side.

“Wes!” The sound of my voice fills the interior—rings through my ears like a chainsaw on fire.

The rear window explodes in a powerful blast.

I shut my eyes, hoping it will all magically stop, that this is the final blow that will send me on the first mental flight back to Kansas. I throw my hands up over my face and hide from this hideous world. I’d rather wake up in traction, find out I’ve lost all four limbs than deal with the prospect of having my brain sucked out of my skull.

The driver’s side door opens, and the engine ignites. I look through slotted fingers to find Wes seated beside me, and all of my fear releases.

The car swings wild.

“Get your seatbelt on,” Wes shouts over the roaring groans emitting from outside.

My fingers fumble for the buckle until it snaps into place.

The car sways and rocks unsteady. Bodies line the driver’s side. They push the vehicle with abnormal strength, and it pauses lateral just shy of tipping. It gyrates once again, and we sail soft through the air landing flat on the passenger side—my head thumps against the broken glass with a good strong knock.

“Laken!” Wes snatches for my hand.

“I’m okay!”

The car moves, slides, tilts, until it flips once again, and we land upside down—leaving us suspended like a bad ride at the amusement park. It rolls once more, then again, until we find ourselves upright in this intensely insane world.

The windows are reduced to spider webs but Wes doesn’t hesitate to gun it. He mows over an entire herd of disheveled people like they were nothing more than heaps of dirt—moguls on a racetrack.

A tall man with a loose smile, no teeth, struts forward. Wes veers around him and onto the road.

One of the headlights is out, leaving a narrow path of light tracking over the highway.  My head spins as I stare out at the miles of dizzying branches up ahead, the rocks that litter our path.

Wes drives like a demon until we’re back out in civilization, nothing but traffic lights in either direction.

Other cars slow down to leer at our noticeably rearranged bodywork—the windows reduced to a pebbled mosaic in the back.

Wes pulls off at a gas station and whips out his cell, sends a text to someone fast and furious.

“Are you calling the police?” I highly suspect he’s not because that would be rational, and people around here are rampant enthusiasts of all things irrational.

“Clean-up committee.”     

“We need to find Cooper and warn him.” I pant, my voice threadbare from screaming myself into a near aneurism. “His sister, she’s just a baby.”

“Already on it.” He waves the phone in my direction. “Road kill is his specialty.”

We hobble back to Ephemeral with Wesley’s beat-up vehicle on the verge of quickly becoming defunct. I asked at least a dozen different questions about Cooper’s road kill removal skills, and Wes was artfully evasive.  

“Don’t tell Jen.” He groans. Wes is about as physically disheveled as the Range Rover.

“Does she know about them?” I can’t imagine Jen out there tonight. She seems like she might have a coronary in the event she breaks a heel, let alone someone eating the shoe right off her foot.

“Jen lives in a bubble. She knows she’s a Count but not much else. Spectators are folklore to her.”

“Will she be at the ceremony?”

“Yes, of course. She loves you. We’ll do it next week, soon as we get back from your uncle’s.” He runs his thumb soft against my cheek. His face is cut, his arm covered in blood.

“You’re hurt,” I say, patting him above the temple.

“I just need a hot shower.” Wes digs into me with his smiling eyes as if what just happened were somehow eclipsed by sitting here, being with me in the same vicinity.

“So, they bit me.” That’s one thing for sure I don’t want to think about. “Am I going to—?”

“Turn into one?” He gives an exhausted sigh and shakes his head.

“Where’d they come from?”

“I don’t know.” He loses his gaze out the window and gets lost in the blank of night. “Something’s happening, they’ve been appearing.”

“Do you believe me now—that they took Casper? Either them or those Fems, one or the other.”

“If she was in the forest, then yes. If not, she could have run away like my mother seems to think.” He relaxes against the headrest and gives a disapproving glance past my shoulder. Wes looks forlorn as though the whole world has gone to shit.

“Was it always like this?” I ask.

“With the Spectators? We’d get one—two a year at the most.”

“This was far more than two. It was a whole freaking herd. What do you think it means?” I’m not quite sure I want the answer.

“It means they know how to get out of wherever the hell they’re holed up. We need to destroy them before they destroy us.”

“Good thing they can’t multiply.” The thought of millions of those things roaming the earth sends a chill through me.