by M. A. Grant
“How long until we’re in the next county?” he asked, looking out the windshield.
“I’m not sure,” Cristian admitted. “The mountains could easily be the dividing line, but it’s been too long since I last visited to know for certain. Hopefully Emil calls us back soon.”
“We’ve bought ourselves a few hours,” Atlas grumbled as he resettled. He wedged his shoulder against the window and twisted a little so he could sleep sitting mostly upright, with a view of the windshield. And of Cristian, if Atlas ever dared to look at him. “If we sleep for a few hours now, we can drive farther in the daylight. That should keep most of Grigore’s people from coming after us, right?”
“Probably,” Cristian said. “The Council has cars like ours though. Are you sure you don’t want me to drive? You probably need more than a few hours of sleep—”
“Being out in the daylight hurts your eyes. Makes your head ache,” Atlas said.
“How... When did you notice that?”
“You squinted the entire drive to Mihai’s nest.”
“I’m not used to it,” Cristian admitted.
“Why doesn’t your father use the glass?”
It shouldn’t have been a surprise to learn Atlas had been observing him and adjusting based on what he saw, but it still left Cristian quietly delighted. Rather than admit it, he tapped the window. “Father can’t afford it. Very few of the elders can, outside of the oldest, most established families. Costs a small fortune and most of the plants that produce it are over here. We could import it, but there’d be more questions and people would start getting curious about the patents...” He shrugged. “Father decided it’s easier to do business at night. America worships at the altar of capitalism, so no one really thinks twice about the odd hours. But I can handle it for a day or two if it would help you.”
“I may take you up on it later,” Atlas said, clearly lying through his teeth, “but for now I don’t mind. Makes me feeling like I’m doing my job.”
Cristian made a face and pointedly stared out the windshield. Across the valley, a light blinked on in one of the houses. Bedroom, perhaps? Maybe bathroom? Another light clicked on, this one on the ground floor. The lights in another house lit up a few moments later, challenging the hold of the hazy blue predawn darkness. Morning had arrived.
“I wonder what they’ll have for breakfast,” Atlas mused, clearly watching the same scene Cristian was.
“More than you, obviously,” Cristian said. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you skipping meals.”
“It’s funny hearing you lecture me about not taking care of myself when you haven’t been feeding,” Atlas said drily. He turned to actually look at Cristian and said, far more seriously, “You need to feed, Mr. Slava.”
“We’ve been a little busy.”
A furrow appeared in Atlas’s brow. “We’ve got time now. As long as you don’t go into my head, I’m willing to help.”
“Tell you what,” Cristian said, stretching out luxuriously in his seat, “I’ll feed after you get some sleep that isn’t haunted with nightmares.”
The silence between them lingered, brittle in the face of Cristian’s less than subtle reminder of Atlas’s struggles.
“Why won’t you let me—”
“Because I will not be another obligation on you,” Cristian said hotly. The truth hung there on his tongue, that there should be something between a donor and the vampire they were feeding, that he was a selfish bastard who craved that connection and who would rather go without than feed from someone who didn’t want a tie to him. But they were parked in a dilapidated barn in the northern Romanian countryside, and it was not the time to hurl those kinds of bombshells at a man who was already on edge. So Cristian swallowed his confession and told a different truth instead. “You need to be able to function while we’re here. There is no reason to make you sort through new trauma while you face this place.”
He forced himself to turn on his side, giving Atlas his back, and tried to sound less frustrated when he added, “Get some sleep, Mr. Kinkaid.”
* * *
He dreamed he was running to Atlas across blood-soaked earth. The puddles he splashed through threatened to suck his feet down into the muck, but he fought and kept moving forward. Atlas stood before him, his shirt gone and his scars gleaming gold across his skin. He smiled at Cristian, raised his arms, and burst into a blinding light. Cristian screamed against the pain. His skin sloughed away, his bones seared, and his scream cut off as the heat stole his breath—
Even when he jerked awake from the dream, still curled up on his side in the passenger seat, he couldn’t escape the phantom sensation of his body peeling apart. He shuddered and pressed a hand to his sternum, rubbing hard enough that he could focus on that pain instead.
The sun had passed its zenith and was beginning to fall toward the horizon outside. Somehow, he’d slept through almost the whole day. Hopefully Atlas had been able to rest as well. Slowly, in case he was still sleeping, Cristian turned, first onto his back, then onto his other side so he could look at his bodyguard.
Atlas had tilted his head back to rest against the car’s pillar and crossed his arms over his chest, but otherwise appeared to not have moved at all. His shirt was rumpled and partially rucked up at his waist, showing a tantalizing sliver of skin Cristian hadn’t been fortunate enough to examine from close-up yet. Whenever they got away from Grigore and the Council and found an actual bed, he’d celebrate by taking the time to lay Atlas out and map out the full extent of his body. He just wanted one night to indulge. One night without deadly attacks or desperate escapes. One night to worship Atlas’s body as he deserved—
“You’re staring,” Atlas mumbled without opening his eyes.
“Sorry.” He didn’t mean it at all. He must have sounded like a liar too, since Atlas deigned to glance at him from under his lashes.
“What’s on your mind?”
In all his centuries of life, Cristian had never found himself tongue-tied as often as he was with Atlas. Something about the man—his voice, his unflappable calm, his quiet rebellion—stole the words before he could stitch them together. Cristian wanted desperately to impress, to earn the admiration of a man who’d somehow outwitted Theo Wharram and Grigore at the same time and secured their safety. Honesty beat his vanity and pride to the punch though.
“I wish I could see you in the sunlight,” he whispered, and instantly flushed.
It was a horrible, painfully naked admission. One Atlas understood, because his slightly rumpled sleepiness faded when he turned his head and pierced Cristian with a thoughtful stare.
“Sun’s out now,” he remarked.
A coward would have changed the subject. Cristian was no coward. He was a fool though, because now that the words had started to come, he couldn’t stop them. “It’s different,” he said. “The glass changes the way the light falls. Father tried to explain it once to Mother and me, but we didn’t understand.”
“He’s seen real sunlight before?”
“He’s a made vampire. Mihai was his sire. Yet another reason some members of the Council aren’t fond of him. So, yes, he remembers daylight. No matter how hard he tried, he could never put it into words. Said it was something we’d have to see to understand.”
“Daylight won’t change this for the better,” Atlas warned, waving a hand toward his face and neck. “You’re not missing much.”
“No?” Cristian let his gaze sweep over Atlas, taking inventory as he spoke. “I only ever get half of you. I want to learn what other colors are in your hair. The way the flecks in your eyes catch the light. I want to see your scars and how the shadows collect on your skin.”
He smiled at Atlas’s wide eyes, his quick breathing, and sat up a bit. He did it slowly, to give Atlas time to adjust or stop him, but the man didn’t. He continued to watch Cristian as he went on, moving cl
oser with every hope he uttered. “I want to see your cheeks flush with the warmth of the summer sun overhead and I want to count your freckles, trace them with my tongue. You’re so beautiful when the moonlight turns the world to shades of silver, you can stop me in my tracks.”
He was pressed against the console now, close enough to see the flutter of Atlas’s eyelashes as he waited for the end of his speech. “Atlas,” he whispered, “the sight of you in the day would kill me long before the sun’s light ever could.”
Atlas gave a shuddery breath. “You can’t say things like that,” he whispered. “I can’t—”
Cristian braced himself for a dismissal, for another self-deprecating excuse. Instead, Atlas leaned forward. His lips crashed into Cristian’s with messy desperation, a jarring, ungainly claiming, and Cristian moaned into the kiss, wondering if he could crawl any closer. Atlas must have had the same thought. He clutched at Cristian’s shoulders and neck, drawing him halfway over the console, forcing him to balance with a hand to Atlas’s pec and another clutching his hip.
There wasn’t enough space to finish crawling into his lap, not for lack of trying. Cristian couldn’t get a leg around and Atlas fumbled with the seat controls, trying to adjust them, before giving up and returning his whole focus to Cristian’s mouth. He nipped at his lower lip. Cristian gasped and Atlas’s tongue smoothed over the sting, coaxing him to open up more, to allow himself to be consumed by Atlas’s passion.
His cock was painfully hard, and he could feel the stretch of Atlas’s pants under his hand. He drew back from the kisses long enough to pant, “We have an entire backseat—”
Atlas huffed, slid his hand around the base of Cristian’s skull, and dragged him back down. “Need a bed for what I want to do to you,” Atlas whispered against his swollen lips.
He whined at the thought, a desperate, pleading sound, and was rewarded with another kiss. This one was tender, slower, and Atlas’s thumb glided along his hairline, soothing instead of scorching.
“Soon,” Atlas promised him when they split apart to breathe. “Soon.”
He would have protested, if not for how ragged the man sounded. They were equals in this desire, and even if it physically pained him, he could wait.
“We should head out then,” he rasped.
“Probably should,” Atlas agreed. His grip didn’t loosen.
“Atlas—”
The man groaned and buried his face against Cristian’s neck. “I know,” he mumbled. Slowly, as if every movement took a concentrated effort of will, he released his hold on Cristian and let him slide back into his seat. They sat facing each other, unable or unwilling to look away, and some of the urgency between them faded, replaced with a sense of profound agreement. They wouldn’t run from their desires again.
“Drive, Mr. Kinkaid,” Cristian said softly.
* * *
They didn’t get far. Atlas stopped in the next village to fill up on gas and see if there was any food they could purchase. The sun was too high for Cristian to join him, and he cursed his vampirism as Atlas headed toward the small building near the filling station. He turned on the radio and idly scanned through the stations as he watched the entrance of the filling station’s store. There wasn’t much on offer; the mountains left most of the stations in static, and the few that he found were playing music, but not providing any news. He sighed and switched it off before settling in to wait.
Atlas returned sooner than he expected, with some water and prepackaged sandwiches. He’d also bought a local newspaper, which he tossed to Cristian as he carefully got back into the car. “I couldn’t understand a word of what the guy in there was saying, but he kept pointing at the article on the front page, so I figured you should see it,” he explained as he got buckled and stowed their change in the console for Cristian to go through later. “Heard from Emil yet?”
“Nope,” Cristian said and unfolded the paper to take in the headlines. Lots of small-town news, with some articles about national issues. Then he read the headline of the article Atlas was referring to and his breath caught.
Bear Attacks Rising!
“Atlas,” he murmured, quickly skimming the article and feeling his gut sink with every sentence read, “I think I know where we have to go.”
Atlas snagged a bottle of water from Cristian’s lap and twisted off the top. “Oh?” he asked before taking a long drink.
“Remember how Emil warned that the recent attacks in Grigore’s territory were animalistic?” When Atlas nodded, Cristian went on, “There are a few villages northeast of here that have been hit with bear attacks.”
“Bear attacks?” Atlas asked, his voice rougher than normal. “Is that a thing here?”
“According to this article it is,” Cristian said. He translated, “Victims’ houses were broken into, and their mauled remains found. Several ministers have promised to send officials to investigate.”
Atlas shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I’ve never heard of a bear breaking into someone’s home and mauling them to death there.”
“Me neither.” He read a little farther. “Or of multiple bears breaking into someone’s home, killing them, and getting scared off before they could ransack the kitchen.”
Atlas gripped the steering wheel and forced himself to take a breath. “You think it’s strigoi.”
“I’m fairly certain we both think it’s strigoi,” Cristian pointed out. When Atlas didn’t argue, he continued slowly, “I don’t think we need to wait for Emil to tell us where to go. We may learn something in this village the article mentions. What do you think?”
“The Council won’t be looking for us there. Could be a very good place to lie low,” Atlas said. He started the car with a shaking hand, and glanced at Cristian. “So, how do we get there?”
Chapter Eight
They ended up backtracking over the same road they’d traversed to turn north onto a winding country road. What they planned to drive in an hour or two took longer. Sections of the asphalt were damaged or gave way to dirt before returning to pavement, and the speed limit dropped as they wove in and out of small towns.
“Should have taken the train,” Atlas griped as they carefully drove over a set of tracks. The wooden planks that helped create the makeshift crossing creaked under their car’s weight and Atlas flinched.
Cristian doubted it was because he feared their car would get stuck. The farther north they traveled, the tenser Atlas became. He routinely checked his mirrors when he drove Cristian anywhere, but now he kept darting furtive glances to the landscape beyond their car, as if he expected something to jump out at them at any moment.
“Too expensive to outfit with the UV glass,” Cristian said, hoping to distract Atlas. He eyed the thick trees surrounding them, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Atlas’s worries were starting to weigh on him too. “Besides, train schedules are more fluid than other forms of transportation. There was a particularly nasty incident in Belgium once when the night trains got held up and ended up running into the daylight hours. It was a nightmare for the Council to clean up.”
Atlas grunted and drove on. If this were a normal drive, he would have asked for more information. He would have fixated and interrogated Cristian about some detail he wanted to know. His silence warned just how stressed and distracted he was.
The trees opened up on Cristian’s side of the car, revealing a series of green fields with old, squat silos watching over the land. Clouds gathered overhead, funneled by the mountains, and the windshield was soon speckled with the first sprinkles of raindrops. Atlas turned on the wipers.
They drove on, through small towns with Orthodox churches whose spires and peaks and domes soared above the rooflines of the village houses, and where villagers walked or biked with the steady conviction of those lost to a daily routine. Farther, the road narrowed again as the mountainside closed in on them. Cliffs of ra
in-darkened rock had been cut away for the road and rose up on Cristian’s side of the car, so high he couldn’t see the top even when he craned his neck to look out the window. A turbulent, blue-brown river flowed alongside the road, its whitecaps cresting over rocks as it hurried on its way.
“It looks different in the daylight,” Atlas mumbled as they came around a tight curve in the road that headed into the next village. “I didn’t remember—”
Cristian gave him a moment, but when he didn’t finish the thought, he reached out and brushed his fingers along Atlas’s thigh, asking quietly, “Didn’t remember what?”
Atlas swallowed hard and reached down to clasp Cristian’s hand in his. “Didn’t remember how much I enjoyed seeing it for the first time,” he admitted gruffly. “It’d be worse being back here alone.”
Cristian squeezed his hand and forced himself to refocus on the road. He didn’t want to make Atlas feel self-conscious, but he couldn’t fight down his burst of pleasure from Atlas’s comment. Atlas felt safe here in his presence and he wouldn’t take that for granted. “Not much farther till we reach the village.”
“And what’s our plan once we arrive there? Do you know whose territory this is?”
“No idea. I don’t know if there’ll even be another vampire in town I can ask. Living in rural places like this is more difficult. We may be on our own. And as for my plan... Well, just make sure you stay at my side and let me do all the talking, okay?”
“Wonderful,” Atlas muttered.
It was after sunset when they pulled into their destination. The village was bigger than Cristian had expected and its lights illuminated its narrow valley. Red-roofed houses lined its main street, all worn, but lovingly maintained. The streets were crisscrossed with railroad tracks, a reminder of the area’s logging history. Far down the road, following a dirt track back up the hills, a stocky horse pulled a wooden wagon driven by a hunched man in a light tracksuit jacket, which did nothing to protect him from the rain.
