None of his henchmen speak up with advice or insights. He’s surrounded himself with yes-men. If he turns me, will I be another blind disciple?
He continues to mumble, his grip on my neck pulsing. I can feel the anger building in him with every step, every incoherent word. His movements get jerkier, his pace faster as he hauls me with him, until I have to run to keep my head attached to my body.
He stops suddenly and looks at me. No, not
at
me—
inside
me. His black gaze starts at my temple and slides down my neck to my heart, the way Regina’s fingernail traced Lori’s blood vessel. My veins seem to constrict under his cold glare, as if they know they’re under assault.
I am prey.
Gideon sways a little to the rhythm of my pulse. Slowly he pulls me closer, his huge hand tilting my head, fingers threading through my hair and exposing my neck. My dry lips emit a soft, “No.”
“Shh.” When he speaks, I can see his fangs. “It hurts less if you don’t struggle.”
His lips graze the skin just below my ear. Instinct takes over, and I push against him, but it’s like trying to shove
a Clydesdale. Gideon’s other hand slides up my waist and tightens around my lower rib cage.
“Be still,” he whispers again.
My body obeys, even as my mind screams a thousand protests. I’m going to die now. I think of Shane, and my parents, and Lori. A tear slips out of each eye.
“Don’t!” Jim shouts, and I hear a struggle behind me.
“Another move,” Lawrence growls at him, “and you’re staked.”
Gideon’s tongue flicks over my neck, like a snake smelling its food. Halfway down, it stops. The heat of his breath and the heat of my blood strain for each other, burning my flesh between them. Against my skin I feel his mouth open wide.
“Uh, sir?” comes a small, clear voice behind me.
Gideon’s grip tightens on the back of my neck. “Yes, Ned?” he hisses.
“Feel free to correct me, but it might help to consider the big picture here. Keep our eyes on the prize, as they say.”
Gideon goes still as a stone. “Explain. Carefully.”
“Think about what’s most important to you, how you plan to accomplish it, and how killing the girl might complicate those means and, ultimately, hinder those ends.”
Gideon’s fingers twitch and tremble, squeezing me tighter. I wince as my flesh bruises between our bones. My ribs feel ready to snap.
He gives a feral grunt and shoves me to the floor. My hands barely rise in time to keep my face from hitting the rug. I scramble to crawl away, even though there’s nowhere to go.
Someone grabs me. My hand lashes out, but Jim
catches it. He helps me to my feet and puts himself between me and the other vampires.
Gideon advances on Ned, who, instead of backing down, beams at the vampire’s approach as if it’s a visit from the pope.
“Get me another,” Gideon growls. “Now.”
Ned reaches inside his shirt and pulls out his cross. Gideon pauses. Ned yanks the cross’s chain to break it. Gideon nods, then seizes his shoulder and drags him toward the stairs.
Before he descends, the vampire turns to me. “You think you want answers.” He gives me a blood-freezing glare. “You don’t want these answers.”
As Ned’s taken away, a beatific look on his face, he tosses the cross in my direction. On reflex, I reach forward and grab it before it hits Jim.
After a few moments, the others follow Ned and Gideon, except for Lawrence, who sits on the couch and opens an old edition of
Life
magazine.
“Why did Gideon let me go?” I ask him, my mouth drier than ever.
“You heard what he said.” Lawrence flips a page. “Better not to know some truths.”
I can believe that, and I’m not about to look this gift life in the mouth. I open my hand to see Ned’s gold cross with its broken chain. Should I keep it? Maybe it would be rude not to. The man did save my life.
I think back to the moment I almost died, and everything that passed through my mind. The people I loved, the things I never got to do.
Jim heaves a relieved sigh and moves for the closest chair. I tread behind him and hold out the cross like a
weapon. When he turns to sit down, he starts a little at the sight of the symbol, then relaxes.
“Man, you scared me there for a second.” With a nervous laugh, he takes my wrist and draws my outstretched hand to the hollow of his neck, where the T-shirt ends. The cross presses his skin with no effect.
I drop the necklace on a bookshelf, realizing there was one thing that never joined the memories and regrets in my panicky, verge-of-death brain.
A prayer.
Franklin, of all people, picks me up. Lawrence waves goodbye to me and Jim from the porch, with a subtle smile that says he’ll be seeing us again sooner than we’d like.
“I’m going back to the station.” Jim gestures to his car. “Got a show at three.” He fumbles in his jeans pocket for his keys.
“Thanks for staying with me,” I tell him. “I think.”
Jim shrugs, then turns and slouches back to his Charger. He glides his hand over Janis’s roof, as if to reassure her that everything’s okay, Daddy’s home now.
Franklin watches him leave, then turns to me. “You all right?”
I shake my head. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Good, because I don’t want to hear about it.” He opens the truck door and points to a plastic shopping bag on the floor of the passenger’s seat. “Thought you might be hungry and thirsty.”
I tear open the bag and find two bottles of water, a turkey
sandwich, and half a convenience-store aisle’s worth of snacks.
Let no one speak evil of Franklin in front of me. Ever.
He places a short call to David to let him know I’m out of danger, yet not quite ready for a full debriefing. After several miles and several minutes’ worth of face stuffing, my mind finally turns from the trauma of the recent past to the dread of the near future.
“What’s going to happen to the station?”
Franklin frowns. “Elizabeth didn’t have a will in her office. Tomorrow night David wants to search her apartment in Rockville.”
“Why not during the day?”
“If there’s a safe, he’ll need Shane to crack it. Hopefully it’ll contain papers that’ll help us keep the station in the event of her death.”
“But she was already dead.”
“It wasn’t so long ago that she had to get a new identity. As far as the IRS is concerned, she’s still alive. Sooner or later, some business contact or creditor—someone other than us, in other words—will report her missing.”
“Then come the cops.”
“The first place they’ll look for her is the station.”
“Including the vampires’ apartment.” I wipe my hand over my face. “And we can’t report her missing without losing the station. It’ll be sold for parts, like Jim said.”
Thinking of Jim reminds me of Gideon’s visit to our room. I suck in a sharp breath, almost choking on a corn chip.
“I need to call David back. Now.”
Franklin flips open his cell phone, hits a speed-dial number, and hands it to me.
Halfway through David’s hello, I blurt, “Antoine was Gideon’s son.”
Franklin curses, swerving the truck almost across the broken yellow highway line.
David, on the other hand, is silent. I pull the phone away from my ear to check the reception. Three out of four bars. “David, you there?”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Not just his son. His progeny, too.”
Another long silence. “I don’t believe this.”
“I don’t think he knows you killed Antoine, or that Elizabeth was connected to him.”
“He wouldn’t have staked her if he’d known. They don’t hurt their own blood.”
“He didn’t mind hurting Travis.”
David ignores this point. “What else did Gideon say about Antoine?”
I repeat everything the ancient vampire told me, about Antoine’s spaz attacks and the Control’s double cross.
“They knew.” David’s voice goes cold. “The Control knew all along who Gideon was and didn’t tell us.” He breathes hard. “If we’d known, we wouldn’t have gone there, and Elizabeth would still exist.”
I have no response except, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“If I hadn’t mouthed off—”
“He wanted an excuse to kill her, to declare war against the Control. So what else happened?”
I tell him about my almost-death at the fangs of Gideon, and the calmness of my voice shocks me. It’s like it happened to someone else.
“Sorry about the interview,” he says. “I panicked
when that reporter wanted to bring the DJs out into the sun.”
“You do need some thinking-on-your-feet lessons, but Gideon’s so irrational, he might have bitten me no matter what you said.” We enter another valley. The connection crackles. “David, we’re about to get cut off. Call Shane and tell him I’m okay.”
The phone goes dead. I hand it back to Franklin.
He gives me a bitter grin. “I can’t wait to see how this could get worse.”
It’s past ten thirty when Franklin drops me off at my apartment. I grab my convenience-store feast, wave good-bye, and turn toward my door.
Shit. I left my purse—with my keys and phone—in Elizabeth’s car two nights ago.
“Wait!” I run down the block after Franklin’s truck, flailing my arms. But it’s too late.
Groaning, I turn back to my apartment. Maybe by some miracle I left the door unlocked, or maybe my landlord is working late at the pawnshop.
Someone opens my door from the inside and steps onto the sidewalk.
“Ciara.”
Shane says it softly, perfectly.
I drop my precious cargo and sprint down the block into his arms. He lifts me off my feet and holds me tight, and for a long time we say nothing.
Finally he whispers, “I thought I’d never see you again.”
I pull back to take in his face in the glow of the streetlight. “You will.”
Without putting me down, he opens my door and slides inside, then locks it behind us. He carries me up the dark stairwell.
I tighten my arms around his neck. “I know this sounds incredibly dorky, but I missed you.”
“Then you should’ve sent a postcard.”
It feels good to laugh. It feels good to hold him. It feels good to—
To do anything we’re about to do.
Shane brings me into my bedroom, where one soft lamp is lit and my stereo plays disc two of
The Essential Leonard Cohen,
an album whose apocalyptic melancholy usually shreds my soul, but tonight feels right somehow.
He lays me on the bed and stretches out beside me. His hand strokes my neck and arm, then passes over my waist and hip, his gaze following it like he can’t believe I’m really here.
Finally his hand and eyes return to my face, which he studies for several moments. I wait for him to ask if I’m too tired or scared or traumatized, but he seems to find the answer he’s looking for.
He grasps my face and kisses me, and it’s my turn to reach and touch all of him, everything I thought I’d lost.
I unbutton his shirt. Beneath it the smooth flesh of his chest is hot. I try not to speculate which donor he visited tonight.
“I raided our fridge,” he whispers, “if you’re wondering why I’m warm.”
I smile against his skin. “I hadn’t noticed.” The muscles of his stomach tense when my lips pass over them. No surprise that he’s ticklish.
We undress each other as slowly as we can stand it.
Naked, Shane looks and smells and sounds and tastes like a man. Like a human.
Limbs tangling and twining, we lie on the bed together as the room fills with notes of doubt and longing. I trace the spot on his chest that covers his heart. A vision of Elizabeth’s death crashes my mind like an unwanted party guest.
I push Shane onto his back and crawl on top of him, shielding him from all the world’s bad guys. They’ll have to go through me first.
He slides his hands through my hair and lets it cascade over his face and neck. “I’ve dreamed of this, too, your hair falling down as you lie on top of me.”
“What else did you dream about? Besides my hair.”
“This.” One of his hands cups my ass, fingertips venturing around and between my legs. “And this.” His other hand fills with my breast, bringing it to his mouth.
I moan at the electric shock of his tongue. Before my mind can blur too far for speech, I say, “But you’d seen it all before. You got me naked that first night, remember?”
He lays his head back on the bed. “I saw you, but it was through a red haze of bloodlust.” His thumb traces my nipple. “Now I see you clearly.”
My muscles tense. I want to tell him that no one ever does, that if he did see past my layers, he wouldn’t want me. But he knows what I was, knows what I did, and he doesn’t care.
Or maybe he just doesn’t want to care. Maybe he’s lying to himself. He’s never really seen that part of me, after all, the part that reduces everyone to a playing piece, a token to move however I need to win.
The bliss drops from his eyes. “What’s wrong? And don’t say ‘nothing.’“
“Nothing’s wrong.” I tilt my hips to guide just the barest tip of him inside me. His chin lifts and his mouth opens in anticipation. I take his lower lip between my teeth, pause for one moment, then take him deep within.
His breath catches so hard, for a second I worry that the whole thing is about to end. But then he arches his back and plunges farther inside me, making us both cry out. My control shatters, and I grind against him, greedily, as his hips roll under me in perfect rhythm. For the first time since I’ve known him, Shane breaks a sweat.
Suddenly he turns his head to the side, covering his mouth with his arm. But it’s too late.
“Don’t hide them.” I put a hand to his cheek and coax his mouth open with a thumb. “I want to see, up close.”
“Careful.” He breathes hard. “They’re sharp.”
His two fangs curve like rapiers, ending in thin, sharp points. “They’re not what I imagined. They’re not like dog fangs.”
“I’m not a werewolf.”
“Are there such things?”
He smirks and squeezes my thighs. “Now you’re being silly.”
“They’re more like cat fangs.” I run my thumb over the front edge of the left one. “That makes sense. Dogs take their prey by tearing it apart. Cats puncture the spinal cord nice and neat.”