Ephemeral (The Countenance) (50 page)

“The beach won’t be so bad,” Coop says, maneuvering out onto the highway. “The dunes act as a windbreak, and I brought blankets.” He glances in the rearview mirror at Carter and Jackson, a basketball player whose head touches the roof of Coop’s double cab truck. He’s quiet in general and has a sweet spirit. It’s heartbreaking knowing Carter is going to eat him for breakfast. But for now they’re so wrapped up in one another, giggling and moaning, he’s hardly aware of his surroundings, let alone the fact he’s on the cusp of a relationship blowout.

I reach over and lay my hand over Coop’s.

Sharpened my fangs for you.
I bite down over my lips to reveal my newly chiseled features thanks to my date with the nail file.

“Nice work.” He looks mildly perplexed by my efforts. “You didn’t need to do that.”

The sizzle of a zipper emits from the back, and I’m afraid to turn around—afraid I’ll expose myself to unnecessary flesh from either Carter or Jackson or God forbid any forensic evidence they’re about to spew forth.

Leave it to Carter to get it on in front of an audience—twice.

Coop pulls into the parking lot, and the two of them scamper out so fast it’s like the race to the tree on Christmas morning.

Coop and I grab the blankets and head over to the dunes. The salty ocean livens the air. The eelgrass lends its dank stench as an afterthought to the breeze, polluting the atmosphere with its offensive odor. A thick mist baptizes us, kisses my lips with a layer of salty brine.

“So weird,” I say, trying to ignore the punishing wind.

“What’s that?” Cooper holds my gaze longer than necessary as if our eyes were having an entirely different conversation.

“Just that you were the first person I remember seeing.” It was him I saw in the forest that day. It was Coop who saved me.

Cooper pauses, taking in the black expanse of the ocean with its smooth white tide rolling high over the sand like a lover. It caresses her tan skin, covers her like a sheath with its foaming affection. It pulls back as it races into the sea, sucks her in as if it’s trying to take her with him.

“Whoever brought you here must have wanted it that way.” He wraps an arm around my waist and leads us to a valley in the sand, equipped with a fire pit.

“Sounds like a wise move on their part.” I place my hand over his shoulders, take in his features washed a pale blue from the moonlight. It feels natural like this. Like we’ve done this a thousand times, just the two of us. “I don’t know who put me in that forest. I don’t know what I’m doing here. But at the end of the day, I’m glad I got to know you. I’m glad they put you in my life.” Hell, I’m more than a little grateful. Without Cooper this entire psychotic experience would be just that—psychotic.

“I’m glad, too,” he says it without a smile, and without affect, as though having me in his life were as serious as death itself.

Cooper starts a fire while I spread out the blankets. In every way it feels like a date. I bat the idea away because Wes will be here in less than two hours, and I refuse to entertain the idea of dating anyone but him.

I have no clue where Carter and Jackson ended up. So much for me protecting her from an impending chainsaw massacre. Between the battering wind and the roar of the ocean, there’s no chance of hearing their wild piercing screams on the off chance they should get dismembered.

“Maybe the powers that be didn’t plan for us to meet.” I get back to the topic of Coop and I. “Maybe it was just a coincidence.” I pat a seat next to me as he falls onto the blanket.

He bumps his shoulder playfully into mine. “Are we back to coincidences?” His eyes light up like crystal flames. The fire accentuates his sharp features, and my cheeks fill with heat at the thought of being near him like this.

“You’re right,” I say. “They don’t exist. Someone wanted you in the forest that day. Unless of course you spend all your free time scouring for zombies.”

“Nope.” He ticks his head. “Spectator patrol called—said I had a pick up.” He gives a little laugh as if he were teasing.

“Spectator patrol? That must be who did this. They must have known I was there. There was no pick up. You killed him.”

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t work that way. They’re usually never dead when I get there. If I can’t bring them back alive, I have to kill them. It’s not really a challenge. They’re slow, disorganized in general—like Wes,” he quips.

“Very funny.” I rock into him. “So you killed it. That’s why it evaporated?”

“That’s why it evaporated.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said they were biodegradable.” I glance over at Coop in this new light. “So you’re like a bounty hunter—a
zombie
bounty hunter. How do you get them back?”

“Dart gun—Count issued.”

“The bastardized Ruger.” I blink at the thought. “I almost killed Jones with one of those poisoned arrows. What’s the deal with the gun?”

“Paralyzes them long enough for me to get them to the Transfer. I put them in the holding tank, and I don’t know what they do to them after. I have no idea where they’re being holed up to begin with.”

“How do you get into the Transfer, Coop?”

He turns his gaze toward the fire. “It involves, strength, speed and a whole lot of faith.”

He doesn’t add anything to it. I’m not sure what I was expecting, for sure not a roadmap.

“So, who called to report the Spectator the day I arrived?” Why do I get the feeling Coop is evading the question. “Obviously they’re the mastermind of this posthumous matchmaking.”

Cooper shakes his head with certainty and stokes the fire before falling back on his elbows. “Doubtful.” He licks his lips quick as an afterthought, drinks me down as the purple hues from the flames dance over my skin. “It was Wes.”

“Wes?” I mouth his name. “How did Wes know about the Spectator? God—did he know I was in the forest?”

“Wes always seems to know. He’s got Spectator radar.” Coop averts his eyes. It’s obvious he thinks Wes is a joke or a threat.

“Do you think Wes did this?” I flick a finger between the two of us.

“No.” It depresses out of him. “I thought maybe at first, then I realized he was into you. Why would he want to push you in my direction? It doesn’t make sense.”

“But he called you about the Spectator. What the hell is that about?”

“He’s a major player in the Counts’ secret circle. Wes knows things none of the regular drones are privy to. As for me, I guess if you had to label his role, he’d be my boss.”

“Boss?” This new version of Wesley is multilayered, so far and so deep that stripping an onion with my teeth would be an easier and a more appealing task. There may never be enough tomorrows to get to the core, to figure out this new unimproved rendition once and for all. “How did you get involved in this mess?”

“Spectator patrol? My dad passed the baton—my grandfather did it before him. The story goes, my grandfather had captured a few of them and was conducting experiments. Soon as the Counts got wind, they freaked out, thought he might expose their dirty little secret to the world and offered him incentives to keep his mouth shut.”

“Such as?”

“Free rides—any school any family member. My grandfather had them build the psychiatric institute, even got them to name it after him.”

“Nice work.” An iced breeze snakes between the two of us and I scoot in closer to Coop. “So you can go to any school.” My heart sinks into the pit of my stomach at the thought of losing Cooper to some nebulous university. “Are you going to Trinity?”

“I don’t know.” He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me in, rubbing his hand up and down my arm to warm me. “Where do you want to go?”

“I want to go home.” I burrow my face in his neck for a moment before using his shoulder as a pillow.

He presses his lips against the top of my head, breathes into my hair, warm and soft. “I want to be wherever you are, Laken.”

I glance out at the dark unknowable water, the white gloss of a wave barreling toward shore. It detonates in a spectacular crash, pounds the sand with its carnal fury.

 Cooper pulls me in with a dark gaze. I can feel his lust for me, his palpable desire to lay the memory of Wesley Parker to rest once and for all, bury him in the sand right here between us.

“You ready?” There’s a gleam in his eye as if he’s been counting down the minutes.

A strangled silence crops up and enunciates the snap of the fire, the rush of the ocean. I have to remind myself I’m doing this to save Wes and me—to save those poor Celestra souls who are being held against their will. I need Wes to tell me things he wouldn’t dare say out loud in hopes of finding a solution to all this madness.

“I’m ready.” I pick up his hands, and my heart pounds erratically. It rivals the surf in both fervor and intensity. Everything in me is far too willing to love on Cooper’s neck—begging me to move my efforts elsewhere, his teeth, his lips—feast off the hot of his mouth until we’re both delirious from the effort, but I won’t. I can never do that.  

I lay back and pull him over me, press my lips against the smooth skin of his neck. He’s healed amazingly, not one blood vessel displaced from the last time I decimated him, not a hint of affliction. I roll my tongue over flesh and pull up the capillaries. Cooper interlaces our fingers, links his leg around mine like they belong there, like we’ve done this a thousand times before.

If you were walking down the beach and stumbled upon us, you would think we were in the throes of passion, that this was the honeymoon of our desire.

I graze over his flesh before creating incisions with my newly sharpened canines.

Coop takes in a quick breath and writhes over me, lets out a moan that spells out ecstasy more than it does pain.

The first drop of blood trickles over my tongue, and I give another puncture. It comes quick, smooth as velvet. I swallow Cooper down until he permeates my cellular structure, becomes a part of me in every good way.

His thoughts appear like a movie out of synch—I can see our limbs entangled, nothing but bare flesh on a tropical beach not much different than this one. Me with my hands pinned high over my head while Coop showers me with an assault of impassioned kisses. My body mimics the motions he dictates through his fantasy. He gives my hands a squeeze and brushes my face with his.

A violent spray of sand falls over us, and we bolt up to attention.

We’ve got company.

51

Field Sport

“
Shit
.” I hiss, trying to rub the sand out of my eyes.

Coop jumps off me like a spring.

Just my freaking luck to have Wes show up and see me sucking on Cooper Flanders’ neck like I mean it.

“Laken!” Cooper shouts.

I force my eyes open long enough to make out a shadowed figure approaching from the other side of the fire, and judging by the exceptionally long, thick tail, it’s not Wes.

“We need to get Carter and get the hell out of here,” I yell, snatching a stick off the ground.

“Run!” Cooper barks. I look back to see him wielding the long blade of a pocketknife in an attempt to stave off the creature.

An arm reaches over and lifts me off the ground. I let out a scream that loses itself in the wind, kicking my legs into the rubbery flesh beneath me until I manage to break free.

I try to get my bearings, falling three times before I right myself. An avalanche of sand caves in the dune from my forced erosion.

“
Cooper
.” His name comes out a shrill cry.

I glance over and find him high in the creature’s arms. The beast launches Cooper through the air and lands him face-first into the fire. The flames embrace his body like a pair loving arms. Cooper rolls into the sand and spikes to his feet. His face is bloodied, his sweatshirt dark with soot.

Shit.

Arms pick me up from behind. It’s not until I start in on a slow spin that I catch a glimpse of the creature that has me captive. An unrecognizable being, a dragon, a snake, it’s all there. I can’t look, breathe or scream. I’m paralyzed from the visual. A loud clap detonates from behind, explosive as a cannon going off in the night.

A dark figure comes forward. A blast of light and sound bursts from his hand as he makes his way over.

Wesley.

His dark hair gleams in the moonlight. It sends a wild surge of relief through me as if Wes himself were a one-man cavalry.

“
Wes
!”

I fall to the ground and roll along a sloping hillside. A choir of primal grunting erupts. I scamper back over the dune in time to see Cooper delivering a quick succession of fatal blows to the Fem that threw him into the fire. Wes holds up the disembodied head of the snakelike creature that took me for a ride and tosses it into the flames with morbid finality. I turn my head toward the ocean. The last thing I want is to memorize its features as they melt in the blaze.

“Laken,” Wes gives it in a heated whisper. He wraps his arms around me and presses a quick kiss over my temple. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say before running over to Coop. “You’re hurt.” I pant, inspecting his scalded cheek, his arms covered with sand and blood.