“Vampires. Not people. Don’t mistake them for what they’re not. You, of all people, should know better.”
My skin burned. I could feel it shrinking around my bones, which felt brittle. I’d connected to all of those bad guys by the song, and he’d ripped me away before I could feed. I was dying. I crumpled onto the pavement. Why did I feel like I was dying? “What do you mean, they won’t make it on time?” My voice came out a thready whisper.
“You are starving
now
. They won’t make it down the hill before you are nothing more than a husk.”
“You brought me here to die?” He knelt in front of me and cocked his head, a curious but not a good sort of wondering expression. It was the kind of curiosity an ant might see if it could see the face of the boy on the other side of the magnifying glass burning ants. My siren vision still worked, so I couldn’t even keep looking right at him, though, because of all the light bursting from him.
It was funny. Here I was dying because I needed light and had a veritable smorgasbord right here, and I couldn’t sing him into submission. It was like dying of thirst with the ocean at your feet.
But my vision was going, everything happening so fast. Gray dots danced in my eyes, my skin felt like it was drying up. I couldn’t think straight.
“I could save you…” Chance appeared almost bored as he spoke.
“What in the hell
are
you?” Memory flickered and I remembered asking almost the same question about Vance.
“Life, if you choose it. Do you want to live, magic one?” He pulled me up and his glass green eyes looked so friendly.
“Vance,” I got out. My tongue was not moving as I wanted it to, so hard to think.
“Ahh, you want to live for the vampire?” I shook my head, unable to form words. No, that wasn’t right. I didn’t want to live my life for someone else. I wanted to live my life for me, for Vickie. “Mmm-mm, so she has a spine after all. Look, I will save you. Know this though, as you must pretend to be what you aren’t to survive, so must I in my way. Tell no one what I do for you this night. This is between you and I.”
I nodded, almost past caring. It hurt so very bad, and I was tired.
If I just go to sleep…
He closed his lips over mine and blew light into me.
I screamed at the feeling. Light was supposed to be cooling to my flesh, make me feel alive and whole. This was the equivalent of swallowing a lightning bolt. It charred everything it touched. I was being burnt alive and yet it was more like he burnt off the old and dead and left behind anything living.
After the initial shock, I could feel the pleasure of it. Waves of tingling washed over my skin. Without thought, I curled around him. He cradled me as if I were no more than a child and pushed more and more of the light down my throat. Nothing in his mouth touched mine. It wasn’t so much a kiss as him regurgitating power I then drank down.
He closed his mouth and the flow stopped. I blinked and tried to open my eyes. He still held me. He looked at me. “You saved me,” I whispered. I coughed. “Not that I would have needed saved if you hadn’t done…whatever you did. I could have—”
“Your voice was bringing down the walls. Anything that stayed in there would have been crushed and I don’t think even you, amazing though you are, would have fared well with a boulder embedded in your head.”
“Mia, Vance.” I tried to get up, and he helped me. I was having a hard time standing.
“They are fine. I told you, they got out, but they wouldn’t have gotten here in time.”
“Why was the museum caving in?” I felt funny, like I was made of light rather than flesh and bone. I looked down at my arm.
“Spells. The place was built on spells. The sound of your song broke the spells and the rock was doing what rock does when not spellbound…allowing gravity to take over.”
“They should have used mortar. It’s so much more reliable.” I giggled. I felt really funny.
“Maybe I gave you too much.” He looked at me doubtfully.
“I feel wonderful.” I stretched and spread my wings.
And then I thought about that. “I have freaking wings?” I spun like a dog chasing its tail to see.
“Ethereal wings. They will wear off.”
“Can I fly?”
“Yeah, well, I gotta go before Vance gets back down here,” he began.
I stopped spinning to see the wings and rounded on him. “You aren’t a bad guy, are you?”
“Not precisely,” he allowed.
“What are you?”
“Chance.” He glanced back up the hill.
“Thank you.” I touched his arm.
“Was it worth a kiss?”
“What?”
He leaned down and placed his lips carefully over mine. I stood, still and unsure what to do. On one hand, it seemed wrong because of Vance. On another, he had just saved my life and it seemed a small price to pay. “Wait—” I got out, and then his lips met mine.
They are so smooth,
I thought.
And it feels nice, but—
When his tongue touched mine, my soul came up my throat. His was on his tongue, and they touched, souls brushing in the kiss. He was as close to my equal as I had ever recognized, the embrace not something of passion, or need, or love, or any other soft emotion. It was knowledge. Like my soul said,
I know you
, and his said,
I know you, too.
I stilled. That knowing wrapped around me and a bell rang somewhere in the distance. I had this gut hunch my destiny snapped into place, sealed—as if before I had choices, but with the one kiss, I made my choice. I shoved off him and wiped my mouth on my arm.
He looked at me, green eyes glittering in the moonlight. “I had a bad feeling that was going to happen.”
“What was—why would you do that then?” I sputtered.
“The same reason you let me. Curiosity.”
“It wasn’t, I mean, it doesn’t—”
“Yeah, okay. Must be off.” And he vanished.
~
Mia and Vance eventually got back to the car. Both appeared confused, and Mia’s lips showed a blue tinge.
“Ha-Ha-Have Ya-Ya-Ya-you ga-ga-ga“
“She wants some warmer clothes than her submissive porn wear,” filled in Vance, tugging her by one arm. I went to the back of the car and pulled out my bag and passed Mia a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans.
“Do you know you have wings?” Vance pointed. “Was that from draining vampires?”
“Kind of. They don’t seem to be solid. I think they are more for looks than anything else.”
“Will they stay?” He tilted his head in a feline movement at me.
“No, they are going to fade.”
“How do you know?” I looked at him and felt a chasm opening up under my feet. The more things I kept from him, the wider that chasm was going to yawn.
But I had promised Chance I wouldn’t tell anyone what he had done, so I lied. “I just know. I think it is some instinctual thing.”
“They’re pretty.” He put out a hand and it went through one of the wings with a shimmer.
“Yeah, they are great. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
He nodded and regarded me strangely. I got in the car and slouched into the front seat. I wanted away. Away from the falls, away from the wax museum, away—
I had a bad feeling I wanted to get away from my thoughts, but I knew I had little chance of pulling off that feat. Mia got into the backseat, Vance got behind the wheel, and we started out.
“How did you get away?” Mia spoke from behind me. I swiveled in my seat to look at her. She looked tiny and battered in my clothes, and I bit my lip in sympathy.
“How did you guys get away?”
“We ran like hell. I thought you were still down there, but I knew we had to get out and Old Mother said it would all work out, so I trusted her and we ran.”
“Old Mother?” My sharp tone made me cringe. “When did you talk to her?”
“While I was on the run, I went to her, and she said I would get kidnapped. She said to try to avoid it as long as possible, but when it happened you and Vance would come and get me. She said we were all going to make it out okay, and we did.”
I didn’t feel okay, but I didn’t feel the need to share that one, so I asked instead, “And what was with that last spell you cast? Nothing even happened.”
“No, it was a Fate spell. Old Mother said we would get out okay, so that was our fate. I just let fate take over. It was weird though…” She paused and nibbled one finger thoughtfully.
“What was weird?” Vance plucked at his sleeves.
“Usually when a spell closes and Fate has been put on track, there is a sound like the ringing of a bell. Did you hear a bell, Vance?”
“Nope.” He shrugged. “Then again, we were wearing earplugs and there was a lot of noise, what with the siren song and rocks falling. We just must have missed it.”
I shifted in my seat. So, Mia’s spell made Fate happen. That must have been it closing when I heard the bell while Chance kissed me. How was him kissing me Fate? It wasn’t even a good kiss, just the sharing of knowing. I knew him on some deep level.
So what? Big deal. So, I know him.
What difference could that have in the broad spectrum of things?
I shifted again in my seat. “Vance, will everyone be able to see the wings?”
“Don’t know that on an instinctual level?” His voice was level. I knew then that he doubted my story and the chasm yawned a little bigger and deeper because I still couldn’t tell him anything.
“Come on.” I muttered it.
“If they are translucent to us, they should be invisible to humans.”
“Good. I have a feeling getting through Customs would be hard with six foot wings.”
“Yes…I noticed you were paying a lot of attention to Chance. Why?”
I looked at him, dead in the eye, and lied. “He resisted the song, and I worried I would lose my hold on him if I didn’t. What is he, anyway?”
“No one knows.” Mia burrowed into her seat. “All I know is he isn’t actually evil and that he is a crappy boyfriend.”
“You dated Chance?”
“Yeah, and the bozo cheated on me with Max.”
“What a jerk!”
“I don’t know.” Mia tilted her head thoughtfully. “He just seems really easy to bore.”
“And you’re okay with that?” I sputtered.
“There is an agelessness to Chance, like he has seen it all and been bored by every bit. He steps in every once in a while and flips things around, switching sides faster than you can flip a light switch. Then he’s gone and no one hears from him for a couple of years. Then he pops back up and creates chaos again. I knew that when I dated him. He said he was attracted to my light, that I was one of the few truly good people in this world. I was attracted back. He made no promises of a future—actually, he promised there
wouldn’t
be a future for our relationship. How
did
he word that?” She pondered it for a minute. “Oh, yeah, I remember. He said he had made the
One
years ago and was waiting to see if he succeeded. I asked how do you go about making someone? He said that people are pawns, and he had been rearranging them for centuries.” Mia lounged back on the seat.
“I thought that was hilarious,” she continued after a moment. “But he told me at the get-go that there was no future for us and that his Ms. Right was out there. I said, that was fine by me, as I knew he wasn’t it for me either. When it fizzled, we parted amicably.”
Oh, no.
I was not this cretin’s Ms. Right. It was one thing to know someone on that level and another to do something about it.
I put my hand out, insecure, and Vance took it.
I clung to it as if it were a life line and watched Canada go by in a blur.
CHAPTER Fourteen
At the Canadian/American border, we pulled up to the toll booth-looking building and passed our licenses dutifully to the Canadian border patrol who asked us if we were carrying anything living, drugs, ammo, things of that ilk. They let us through.
The problems started when we tried to enter our own country.
They put dogs in the car, standard procedure, and we stood in the building next to the border watching. The dogs came away with nothing. I felt very visible and nervous. I still had wings, ethereal or not, sticking out of my back. On top of the wings making me feel like we were going to get busted—I could imagine their cries of, “kill the freak!”—and shot down in a hail of friendly fire, the wings also seemed to make me very aware it was January and really freaking cold. Maybe because they were naked? I mean, they didn’t have a shot of fitting into my coat. Although they weren’t flesh and blood wings, apparently no one had told the wings that—they felt very real to me.
I kept looking nervously back and forth to Mia and Vance, sure that any moment we would hear a cry of,
what in the—?
followed by our deaths. My nervous twitching must have looked suspicious, especially when we crossed the border at almost twelve in the morning on a Friday night, because one of the border officers told us to wait while he took a look around the PT Cruiser.
I shrugged this off. I mean there was nothing in the car beyond reproach… Except for Mia’s cuffs from her stint as a bad porn star.
And a purple child’s backpack full of what to
us
were witch tools…but to the nice border officers were suspicious looking herbs.
Basically, they thought we were hauling drugs into America.
If you’ve never been held up by an American border for suspicion of drug smuggling, there is barely any way to describe the fun of it. I mean, I can explain doing the nasty on a skylight. I can describe draining the very electricity that makes people’s brains capable of function. I cannot explain, though, to any degree of accuracy the fun we had at that border.
To make matters worse, I fumbled my version of why we were hauling suspicious herbs to begin with. Apparently, both Vance and Mia gave the same story—
homeopathic remedies.