Someone was out here. The birds could see them even if I couldn’t.
I slid my gun out of its holster and held it by my side, hand wrapped firmly around the grip, index finger curled lightly around the trigger. I’d clicked off the safety before I had gotten halfway across the first soccer field. Better to be safe than sorry, right? Even though marching out into the woods to meet a possible serial killer wasn’t exactly safe. It was stupid, one of the stupidest things I’d done since this had all started. I should have turned back then and there but for some reason I couldn’t explain I held my ground even as the sunlight filtering down through the trees started to weaken and dim.
With every breath I took I was pushing my luck. But I had to know who had written the note. If it was just someone playing games with me I was seriously considering shooting them out of spite, but if it wasn’t…
My heart gave an extra thump inside my chest as I began to slowly edge towards the warped plank bridge. It was ten, maybe twelve feet long and scarred by the cleats of the countless cross-country runners who had sprinted across it.
“Getting bored here.” My voice echoed in the eerie silence. Ignoring the pain in my knee I shifted my weight onto my toes. If it came down to it I was ready to fight. Part of me was even eager for it. I’d been waiting to do something ever since I found out the drinkers might be keeping my dad prisoner. This something may not have been the best idea, but it was all I had.
Lola, why are you meeting a stranger in the woods at dusk?
Because I can.
My shoulders tensed. I was ready. Ready for whoever stepped out of the woods.
Except I wasn’t.
I really, really wasn’t.
He appeared like a ghost out of the gathering shadows which I supposed was pretty fitting seeing as I saw him die.
“You.” My hand convulsed around the gun. I was so stunned I almost forgot what to do with it before my training kicked in and I point it straight at his chest. “You’re supposed to dead.”
He smiled. He actually freakin’ smiled. “It’s good to see you again too, Lola.”
Head spinning, heart racing, I found myself caught between two extreme reactions. Half of me wanted to spring across the bridge and jump into his arms. The other half wanted to shoot and keep shooting until my gun clicked empty. Because I knew that even though it looked like him and it sounded like him, it wasn’t really him.
Then again, it never had been.
“What the hell do you want?” Despite the erratic beating of my pulse I was proud that my voice remained steady. At least I sounded strong and confident even though I didn’t feel like it.
A black curl tumbled across his forehead as his head tilted to the side. With his tousled mane of inky black hair, piercing gray eyes, and solemn expression he looked exactly the same as I remembered. Now that I knew what he was, I couldn’t help but wonder for how long he had looked exactly the same. Twenty years? Forty? One hundred?
The corners of my mouth pulled back in a grimace. Did it really even matter? An age would only humanize him. I needed to be able to stare into his eyes and see him for what he truly was: a monster.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” I snorted in incredulous disbelief. Of all the things he could have said, that’s what he chose to go with? I was calling complete and utter bullshit. “I’ve heard that before. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.”
“I’m serious, Lola.” He stared at me intently, his gray eyes swirling with emotions I didn’t even want to begin to comprehend. I didn’t want to understand him. I didn’t want to hear his excuses. I didn’t want to listen to his side of the story. I didn’t even want to hear him speak.
My index finger tightened around the trigger of the gun. If I had to shoot him again then I would do it without thinking twice. Because even though the pain of my loss was no longer vicious and raw, I still remembered what it felt like. Just like I remembered who he had taken from me.
Someone who could never be replaced.
Someone who never deserved to die covered in his own blood.
Someone who still needed to be avenged.
“So am I…Maximus.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Back From the Dead
“LOLA, I DIDN’T COME HERE to hurt you.” Spreading his hands apart and turning his palms towards me, Maximus stepped onto the bridge. “I came here to warn you.”
“You came here to warn me?” I snorted again. “I think you’re a little late. Now give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow your head off.” I knew I should have shot him then and there, but it was one thing to kill someone in the heat of the moment. It was something else entirely to stare into their eyes and make the cold, calculated decision to end their life.
Even if it was for the second time.
One corner of Maximus’ mouth lifted in a half grin that didn’t reach his eyes. Eyes that were watching me with all the intensity of a hawk. “Still the Lola I remember.”
“I’m counting to three,” I warned him. “One. Two. Th–”
“I know about the farmhouse.”
My initial surge of surprise was replaced immediately with disgust. “Of course you do. Why wouldn’t you? You’re one of them. A drinker.”
There was no flicker of reaction on Maximus’ face. “I also know you’re planning a rescue mission. I came here to warn you that it won’t work.”
Did he think I was an idiot?
“And why’s that? Oh, wait – I know. Because you brought me out here to kill me just like you killed Travis, is that it? Well?” I demanded when a muscle bulged in his jaw. “Am I close?”
“Not very. Lola, they know you’re coming.”
“That’s impossible.”
“No it isn’t. They have a leader. A leader stronger and older and far more dangerous than any drinker you’ve ever faced. He is waiting for you and your friends to attack so he can butcher every last one of you. It won’t be a rescue mission,” Maximus said flatly. “It will be a slaughter.”
My stomach twisted. Why was Maximus telling me this? What could he possibly gain? I wanted to believe him. Before he revealed himself for what he truly was I would have, without question. But things were different now.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” he challenged. “If I was lying, why would I risk leaving you a note? Why would I even bother telling you all this in the first place? What would I possibly have to gain?”
“Because you wanted to lure me out into the woods and torture me to death?” I suggested.
Duh.
Anger flashed across his face in a dark rippling wave. “I would never hurt you.”
Refusing to acknowledge the tiny twinge in my heart that his words had caused I readjusted my grip on the gun to keep it level with his chest. My arm was starting to ache but there was no way I was lowering the gun and leaving myself defenseless. Maximus could talk until he was blue in the face and I still wouldn’t believe him. He was a liar and a traitor and a murderer. Nothing he could say would change that.
“You already have hurt me,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Because I lied to you. Lola, I–”
“Because you killed Travis!” My shout startled a pair of crows out of a nearby tree. They cawed down at us in disapproval as they flew away, the flapping of their black wings echoing in the tense silence that followed my outburst.
Maximus stared at me without blinking. I stared back, desperately trying to keep the conflicting emotions I was feeling from showing on my face. They were swirling around inside my head like a black storm cloud, growing bigger and more overwhelming with every passing second. Anger, fear, hatred…and hope. The teeniest, tiniest sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, Maximus was telling the truth. Except that would be the sort of happy ending you read about in fairy-tales and this wasn’t a fairy-tale.
It was a nightmare.
“Lola, I swear to you that
I did not kill Travis.”
“Maximus, I saw you. I saw – I saw your silver fangs.” I swallowed hard, forcing saliva down a throat that had suddenly gone dry as dust. “And I saw the blood.”
Just thinking about all of that thick red blood pooling around the body of my best friend was enough to strengthen my reserve. Maximus wasn’t my ally. He wasn’t a hero in disguise. He was the villain, plain and simple.
“I know you saw me.” His eyes narrowed. “You shot me.”
“Evidently not well enough,” I snapped.
“You forgot the golden rule, Lola. One in the heart.” He tapped his chest before pressing a finger against the side of his temple. “And one in the head.”
I opened my mouth to object, only to swallow the words back at the last possible second. I knew I’d shot him in the chest. I had watched him fall. Watched the blood spurt from the wound. Watched his eyes slowly dim. I had watched him die. Except he hadn’t died. Not really.
Because I had forgotten the goddamned double-tap.
“Fine. Whatever. I still know what you are, Maximus. You can drop the act. There’s no point in lying anymore.”
“What I am doesn’t change anything.”
“Are you kidding me?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “It changes everything, Maximus. Everything. You’re one of them. A drinker. Which makes you the enemy. I never should have trusted you. I never should have…” My throat convulsed, trapping the rest of my ‘never should haves’ deep inside.
I never should have believed you.
I never should have held your hand.
I never should have wished you would kiss me.
“I am not your enemy, Lola.” The bridge creaked beneath his weight as he took a step towards me. “I know why you think I am, but you did not see what you thought you did. I didn’t kill Travis.”
“Stop saying that!” I cried. My index finger trembled on the trigger. “You can say it a hundred times and it won’t make it true. Do you think I’m an idiot? I know what I saw Maximus, and it was you, covered in blood, standing over Travis’ body.”
His jaw tightened. “You’re right. I was covered in blood. And I did go to the basement to kill Travis.”
“So you admit it.” I should have been happy that I’d finally gotten a confession out of him. Instead I felt nothing but an overwhelming sense of sorrow.
“I’m Lola.” I didn’t offer my last name and Maximus didn’t ask for it.
“Sorrows,” he said instead.
I blinked at him in confusion, certain I’d misheard. “What?”
“That’s what the name Lola means. Sorrows.” Those stormy gray eyes studied me intently. “Are you sad, Lola?”
Was I sad that the boy I’d been falling for had just admitted to murdering my best friend in cold blood?
Yeah.
You could say I was sad.
I didn’t want Maximus to be the bad guy. I didn’t want to hate him. I didn’t want to be standing here with a gun in between us while I tried to gather the courage to pull the trigger.
But since when had I ever gotten what I wanted?
“I admit that was my intention,” he said quietly, his gray eyes intent on mine. “But I did not kill him.”
A frustrated hiss of breath escaped between my teeth. Why couldn’t he give me this? After everything he’d taken, why couldn’t he give me one small piece of satisfaction and finally tell me the truth? “You’re a real asshole, you know that? A real freakin’ asshole.”
His stony expression didn’t waver. “I did not kill him because he was already dead. I was trying to get to him before the process began, but I was too late.”
“The process?” I repeated. “What process? What the hell are you talking about?”
Maximus’ sigh was heavy. “I don’t know when he was bitten. I suspect early on. I should have seen the symptoms sooner, but I was…distracted.” His mouth curved in a faint smile as his gaze fell and then lifted. “By the time I got to the hotel basement it was too late. He was already turned.”
Bitten? Turned? My forehead creased in confusion. Nothing Maximus was saying made any sense. It almost sounded like he was trying to say that Travis was a–
“There was nothing I could do. I’m sorry.” His eyes flashed with regret even as a muscle pulsed high in his cheek. “I hoped he wouldn’t survive the resurrection. It would have been better – kinder – if he didn’t. But he’s strong. Stronger than even I could have anticipated.”
The gun trembled in my hand as it all clicked together. What Maximus was trying to say.
And what he wasn’t.
“No,” I whispered. “You’re wrong. Do you hear me? You’re wrong and you’re sick and I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you.”
“I know this must be hard–” he began.
“Hard? Hard? Try impossible. Travis is not a drinker.” I spat the word out like it was a dirty curse which for me it was. Especially when I used it in the same sentence as my dead best friend. Travis as a drinker made about as much sense as Travis as a circus performer or an astronaut or a guy who could speak in complete sentences when talking to a girl. “I don’t know what kind of twisted game you’re trying to play this time, but it’s not going to work. Now back the hell up!” Sunlight reflected dimly off the barrel of the gun as I waved it in the air, reminding me of what precious little time I had left before the darkness came and the hunter became the hunted.
“Are you going to shoot me again, Lola?” Maximus asked in a soft, soft voice that prickled the tiny black hairs hairs on the nape of my neck. Instead of stepping off the bridge he stepped further onto it and every muscle in my body tightened as adrenaline poured through my veins.
“Stop,” I warned. “I’m not kidding, Maximus.”
“I don’t think you will.” His gray eyes steady on mine, he took another step. “Not again.”
Wouldn’t I? I might have fallen for the bad boy once, but I wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, I blow your damn head off.
I might have still felt a connection to Maximus, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do what needed to be done. It would have been nice to be able to turn my feelings on and off like a light switch but the heart didn’t work like that. Well, unless you were a serial killer. It was because of my lingering feelings that I hadn’t pulled the trigger already. But when it came down to it – when it came down to me or him – I was going to choose me every single time.
No questions asked.
“Turn around,” I said evenly. “Turn around and walk away and I’ll forget this ever happened.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Lola.”
“Why?” Frustration raised my voice an entire octave. Maximus was more than halfway across the bridge now. I had seen how fast drinkers could move. One leap and his hands would be wrapped around my throat. One mistake and I was as good as dead.
“Why?” he echoed. “Because the only way I’m leaving you is if you put a bullet in my heart and another in my head.”
“You don’t think I’ll do it?”
“No. I don’t think you can.” He took another step.
“Then you really don’t know what I’m capable of.” For the second time I closed my eyes and I pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Maximus
THE BULLET WENT HIGH AND to the right, just like I’d intended. But it was still close enough to cause Maximus to flinch and duck into a crouching position, fingers splaying across the bridge. When he stood back up there was a hint of temper in his stormy, tumultuous gaze that hadn’t been there before.
“You could have shot me,” he growled.
“Trust me, if I wanted to shoot you I would have.” Lowering my arm – but still keeping my hand wrapped firmly around the grip – I rolled my shoulder to ease the ache in my muscles as the knot of tension in my stomach slowly began to unravel.
&
nbsp; I knew I was gambling with my life and the odds were definitely not in my favor, but if there was a chance – no matter how small – that what Maximus had said about Travis being a drinker was actually true then I needed to see it for myself. It was the only way I would be able to believe him. The only way I could start to trust him again.
Yes, Maximus had lied about what and who he was. But if he really wanted to kill me he’d already had a thousand opportunities to do it. Instead he’d risked his own life again and again to protect mine, including killing one of his own kind to save me. I didn’t think he was innocent – I wasn’t that naïve – but maybe he wasn’t quite as guilty as I thought.
“I want you to take me to Travis.”
Still sulking like the big baby that he was, Maximus crossed his arms. “No.”
“This isn’t up for negotiation. I still have three bullets left. That’s one more than I need to drop you.”
One dark eyebrow shot up. “Are you threatening me?”
“Yep.”
“I do not know why I would expect anything less from you.” He walked to the edge of the bridge and stopped on the last wooden plank, bicep muscles rippling beneath his black t-shirt as he braced his arms on the railings. I couldn’t help but sneak a peek. Now that I knew what he was I should have been repulsed by him, but apparently no one had gotten the ‘Maximus is a Drinker’ memo to my hormones yet. “Unfortunately – for you – I don’t respond well to threats. The answer is still no, Lola. It’s too dangerous.”
“Well that’s just too damn bad because the only way I am ever going to believe a word you’re saying is if I see Travis for myself. I buried him, Maximus.” Tears, as unexpected as they were unwanted, burned the corners of my eyes. With one hand on my gun and the other in a sling I was helpless to wipe them away. “How can he be a drinker when I buried him?”
“Lola I…” Jaw clenching, he averted his gaze. “I know this is difficult for you to understand.”
“Then help me!” I stomped my foot on the ground like an angry toddler. “Take me to Travis. After all the lies you told me, you owe me this much and–”
The Lola Chronicles (Book 2): A Day Without Dawn Page 12
