For perhaps the first time, Shane pulls himself up to his full height, towering over his maker. “What did you call her?”
Regina wavers under his simmering stare. “I’m trying to protect you. That’s a hell of a lot more than she’ll do.”
“This isn’t about me.” I step forward and hold up Jolene’s business card, the one Shane found in Travis’s wallet. “I have a better idea, one that doesn’t involve bloodshed.”
“As if that’s a plus,” Regina says. “Come on, Noah.”
“Can’t we at least discuss it?” I fight to keep the panic out of my voice.
“If we let him go,” says Noah, who hasn’t moved from the couch, “Skywave will know the truth about us.” He folds his arms tighter and hunches his shoulders. “But to kill him, it’s wrong.”
“It’s not even necessary.” I hold up Travis’s camera. “I can delete the pictures.”
“There could be others,” Spencer points out.
“None of it is proof you guys are really vampires. We could say Shane put on plastic fangs for fun.”
“It doesn’t explain why he’s so fast and strong,” Jim says, “or why he had to knock this guy out to hide fake fangs.”
Shane bristles. “So I overreacted. You would’ve done the same thing.”
Jim shrugs. “No, I would’ve just killed him.”
“Right.” Regina shoves Shane aside with astounding ease. “Time to finish your half-assed job.” She reaches for the door.
I open the credenza drawer and grab Franklin’s box of sharpened pencils. I rip open the box and advance on Regina.
Before the others leap to defend her unlife, I fling the pencils, dozens of them, onto the floor. They spin and scatter across the rug and under the furniture.
Regina freezes. She stares at the pencils, then at me, with more hostility than I thought a Canadian could possess. A strangled cry escapes her throat as she fights the compulsion. Her hand tightens on the doorknob, then lets it go with a jerk.
She falls to her knees and crawls across the floor, gathering pencils and counting under her breath. Noah looks on, immobilized with indecision. Spencer and Jim shake their heads in sympathy and move toward the door.
“Don’t you dare go without me!” Regina clutches the pencils so hard, most of them snap in two. “Bugger all! Where was I? Twenty-seven or twenty-six?” Her hands shake with rage as she drops the broken pencils and sifts through them again.
I turn to the others. “Listen. If we play our cards right, we can use this guy Travis to our advantage.”
“Stop talking!” Regina is almost in tears. “I can’t concentrate.”
“If we can outwit Skywave,” Shane says, “beat them at their own game, I say let’s do it.”
The others eye him, then Regina, as if trying to determine who’s in charge.
Finally Jim shakes his head. “Too big an ‘if.’ Let’s waste the bastard.”
“Not without me!” Regina crawls under the table to retrieve the rest of the pencils. “Thirty-three, thirty-four— I’m almost done. Thirty-five—”
Jim opens the door. “What the hell?”
The detective is slumped on the bottom stairs, his head against the banister.
I step back. “It’s Travis.”
Regina blurs past me and pounces, grabbing the detective by the front of his shirt. Without waiting for him to scream or beg, she plunges her fangs into his throat. Shane moves to stop her, but before he gets there, she hurls Travis to the floor and starts to gag and cough like a cat with a hairball.
“He’s already dead.” She swabs the inside of her mouth with her finger. “Yecch. It’s like biting Jell-O.”
“No way.” Shane kneels beside Travis. “He hasn’t had time to get cold, unless he was—” He turns Travis on his side, revealing two other puncture wounds in his neck. “—drained.”
“You said you didn’t kill him,” Spencer says.
“I didn’t. I definitely didn’t bite him.” Shane looks at me. “You were there.”
True. But in the dark I might not have seen Travis’s wound.
Shane catches my dubious expression and stands to face me. “Ciara, I couldn’t have done this. There wasn’t time, and besides, I don’t kill people.”
I back away, hands out, trying to speak in a soothing voice. “You felt threatened. He fought back, right?”
“How can you believe I’d do this and then lie to you about it? Don’t you know me better than that?”
“Guys? He’s not dead.” Jim is examining Travis’s face. “Unless we stick an ‘un’ in front of it.”
He turns the man’s head to reveal a mouth full of blood. The teeth and gums are stained red like in a denture commercial.
I take a step closer. “Couldn’t that just be from—”
Travis’s eyes pop open. We all jump, but I’m the only one who screams when his fangs appear.
He starts to twitch and flop, shrieking with what sounds like pain. Jim tightens his hold on his shoulders. “Shh, don’t freak out, man. We’re here to help.”
Travis breaks out of Jim’s grip with the ease of a bat from a spiderweb. He leaps at me. I have time for one step backward before he knocks me to the ground.
“No!” My heels pedal the thin rug as I try to scramble out of his hands, one of which tightens around my waist while the other flattens my shoulder against the hard floor. Quick as a snake, his mouth slashes forward. I use my last breath to scream.
Shane’s face appears above us, his arm looped around Travis’s neck, barely holding him off me. I shove against the detective’s chest, but Shane and I together can’t match the strength of such a desperate hunger. In Travis’s watery
green eyes I see that it’s a struggle for his survival against mine.
“Someone help me!” Shane shouts, but no one responds. “For fuck’s sake, she’s our friend!”
“And he’s one of us now.” Regina appears in my field of vision, arms crossed. “He needs blood.”
“He’ll kill her!” Shane’s face is red from the strain. Travis is drooling now, bloody saliva dripping onto my neck.
“Maybe not,” Spencer says. “And he’ll die if he doesn’t drink.”
“Man, that is not cool,” Jim observes, “turning someone, then leaving them to starve.”
I hurl pleading gibberish through a gurgle of tears.
“I swear,” Shane gasps, “if one of you doesn’t pull him off right now, I’ll—”
Suddenly Travis is jerked away from me. I hear a crash against the far wall, then lift my head to see Travis collapsed on the sofa, stunned.
Monroe stands next to us, looking down at Shane. He puts his hands in his pockets. “You’ll what?”
Travis lunges again, but Monroe grabs him with a deft gesture and suspends him off the ground, feet kicking. For the first time, WVMP’s oldest DJ looks straight at me.
“Run.”
I stumble to my feet and launch myself up the stairs.
At the top, I freeze, staring at the front door. Whatever killed Travis is out there.
I lock the door, grab another stash of sharpened pencils from Franklin’s desk, then scramble into David’s office.
The lock’s not enough. I slide two chairs and the small table against the door, then huddle beneath the desk.
For a minute or maybe longer, I hear nothing but my own unsteady breath. I clutch the pencils and take a few practice stabs at the air.
Footsteps approach the door. I hold my breath.
“Ciara?”
Shane. My voice sticks in my throat. He’s one of them.
“Ciara, I know you’re in there. I followed your scent. I’m alone, I swear.”
“Where is he?”
“They took him to our apartment to give him some bank blood, just to take the edge off. Then they’ll go visit a donor, one of the experienced ones.”
“Brilliant idea.” I spit out my words through the tears clogging my throat. “Why didn’t they think of that before, instead of waiting for him to eat me like he was their pet python?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitates. “But I think they feel bad about it now.”
A scoff is all I have to say about that.
“Can I come in?”
I shrink farther under the desk. “I don’t think I like vampires anymore.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
He waits in silence, though he could easily pick the lock and shove aside the furniture to get to me.
Finally I go to the door and listen hard against its wooden surface for other presences. Nothing. I pull back the table and chairs and open the door.
Shane moves slowly, as if I’ll spook and run away again, then puts his arms around me. I tremble, teeth chattering so hard it brings on an instant headache. The feeling reminds
me of our first night together, when he nearly took my life. I should push him away, go home, pack my bags, and drive far out of the range of his perky, super-sensitive nose. Instead I pull him closer and let what little warmth he has seep into my skin and soothe the shivers.
We stay like that for a long time, saying nothing, until I state the obvious. “You saved my life.”
“Monroe saved your life. And Noah, who went to get him.”
“But you started it.”
“Then I guess you owe me.”
My knees go weak, literally. The adrenaline of the attack has worn off, and so has the triple mocha with organic two percent milk and a pump-and-a-half of coconut syrup. I need to lie down, but. ..
“Come home with me,” I tell Shane.
He eases me out of his embrace far enough to look into my eyes. “You don’t owe me that much.”
“I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
He lets out a deep sigh, then brushes the hair from my forehead to kiss it. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been so sure of anything. But then again, I’m suffering from shock and sleep deprivation.” I blink at him. “Which actually shrinks the list of things I’m sure of, so this seems like a safe bet.”
“It is safe. I promise.”
He takes my hand and leads me home.
By the time we arrive at my apartment door, my mind has cleverly locked away the terror of the recent past to focus on that of the immediate future, on what awaits us at the top of these stairs.
I avoid Shane’s eyes as we ascend side by side. Sex was probably implied in my invitation, but after what just happened, I’m not sure I’m ready. I wish I had wine, but one drink would snag my last scrap of consciousness. Even now it’s just nervous energy keeping me awake.
I stop outside my room and turn to Shane. “Why don’t you get something to drink while I—I mean, not drink. Yes, drink—from the fridge. I’ll have iced tea.” I step back into my bedroom, trying to muster a seductive gaze. “Give me a minute to put on something a little less Almost Got Killed In.” I start to close the door.
“Ciara?”
“Yes?”
He rubs his face and hesitates a moment. “Nothing red, okay?”
Ah. I see. Deirdre wore red the night he drank from her. He told her on the phone,
Red is good.
Good, as in, thirst-inducing.
I shut the door.
Damn his feral instincts, I look hot in red. I sift through my lingerie drawer. Tiger stripes? Leopard spots? Definitely not—should probably downplay the wild-animal aspects considering I was almost eaten alive less than a half hour ago. If only I’d had a bridal shower—without a wedding, of course—I’d have a collection of demure yet alluring white teddies.
My mind and my eye arrive together at the solution. I slip into said solution, then light a few candles and turn off the lamp before lying on the bed. When Shane knocks, I invite him in.
He opens the door and sees me. The force of his laughter sends him halfway out into the hall.
“Thanks,” I tell him. “That really sets the mood.”
He approaches, all caution and tension gone, and sits next to me on the bed. “You’re like a warrior, wearing the mantle of her fallen enemy.”
“Jolene’s far from fallen.”
“You’ll take care of that soon.” He traces the edge of the letters on the white tank top. “I can’t imagine you as anyone’s ‘Bride 2B.’”
“Because I’d look ridiculous in virginal white?”
He takes his hand away and sets my tea on the night-stand. “Because you don’t like to be tied down.”
I’m too tired for that discussion. “But hey, if I ever do
get engaged, I’ll already have the shirt. They say that’s half the battle.” I rest my increasingly heavy head on the pillow. “Come here.”
He stretches out on his side facing me. “I’ve dreamed of this, your hair spread across a pillow.” He strokes it, making my scalp tingle. “I wish I could see it in the sun-light.”
“I’ll get you a picture. You can put it next to the one of my alphabetized CD shelves. Have your very own Ciara Griffin gallery.”
This remark seems to spark a thought. “Is Griffin your real last name?”
“You think I made it up? Playing on the word ‘grift’ to laugh at the world?”
“Did you?”
“Pretty much. Hold still.” I reach out and ski-jump my finger off the end of his nose. “I’ve been dying to do that ever since we met.”
He snorts. “You’re a very kinky girl.”
“I’m a very tired girl.”
“So what’s your real last name?”
My goofy smile fades. “It’s not important. I’m not that person anymore.”
“It’s exhausting, isn’t it? Trying to outrun the past?”
I don’t answer, hoping this thought will lead to his story of how he became a vampire. Yet I’m not sure how long I could stay awake listening to his soothing voice.
When he doesn’t continue, I say, “What were you like when you were alive?”
“Probably not your ideal mate.” His fingers trickle down my neck to my shoulder. “I had depression. Pretty bad at times.”
“Did it go away when you turned?”
“It’s part of who I am, so not entirely. Becoming a vampire doesn’t give you a personality transplant. But it helped the chemical part. It ended the medical causes, the same way it would cure me if I’d had diabetes or a drug addiction.” His voice stays nonchalant. “Which I did.”
“Wow. That’s rough.”
“The way I treated myself, it was a miracle I made it to twenty-seven with all my extremities intact.” He gives a wry smile. “If I hadn’t died, I would’ve died by now.”
“I’m glad you didn’t die. I mean, I’m glad you did. I mean, I’m glad you’re here.” I touch his chest. “Really glad.”
“I think we’re done talking.” He draws his finger down the neckline of the tank top, between my breasts. I close my eyes to savor the sensation, and suddenly feel like I’m plummeting, then tipping over like at the bottom of a carnival ride.