Immortal Kiss

by J. K. Coi

  “How do you know that for sure?”

  “Because her best friend—my brother—is dying, and she wants to be with him.”

  “Your brother? Man, I’m sorry. We didn’t know.”

  Baron clenched his jaw and shook his head, dismissing Roland’s expression of sympathy. He started down the hall back toward the garage. The twins followed close behind. “Yeah, well that’s where I think she’s going. And I’m going after her myself. You shouldn’t leave Alric and Diana alone with Devon still hanging around.”

  Baron grabbed a set of keys from a console on the wall and headed toward a large black Yukon. He stopped and closed his eyes against the guilt that rose thick in his throat. “Alric might need the backup if Devon decides to take advantage of another opportunity like the one he created tonight. And be careful. He gets off by fucking around with other people’s heads.”

  It would probably be a good idea to take at least one of the warriors along with him, but Baron still wasn’t going to do it. If he had to go home, it was something he was going to have to do on his own.

  He got in the car and punched a code into the custom console to open the large bay doors. Kane and Roland watched as he drove out, their faces showing identical expressions of concern and not a little bit of wariness, but they hadn’t tried to stop Baron from going.

  He stomped on the gas. A feeling of urgency had his heart beating at a fast clip. His eyes strayed to the horizon, which was still dark for the moment, but Baron knew it would soon begin to lighten with the start of a new day.

  He hoped to God Max didn’t let her impatience to get home—or her eagerness to run from him—tempt her into staying on the road any longer than was safe.

  The only consolation he had was the knowledge that if Devon had decided to follow her—as the sickly, foreboding sense of doom inside his racing heart told him he had—at least the vampire would be stuck in the daylight, out of commission for just as long as Max was, while Baron had the advantage of being able to travel all day.

  He knew where she was going. He just hoped to hell he got to her before someone else did.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Max flicked down the tinted face shield of Baron’s motorcycle helmet, covering her sensitive eyes. Through the protection of the thick plastic shade, she eyed the horizon line ahead of her, searching the sky for the slightest evidence that it had started to turn a lighter shade.

  The sun was there—she could feel it. It was sitting under the horizon, just beyond the point where its rays could start to stretch across the land. Thankfully, darkness still reigned on this part of the Earth—but only for another hour at most.

  Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to leave Chandler tonight. Perhaps she should have waited—but Max just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stand the thought of another moment in that place, not after what she’d admitted to Baron, followed by the horror of what she’d done to him. And especially not after the danger she had brought to Diana and Alric.

  It meant a long drive with a stopover somewhere safe to escape the sun, but Max had been certain she was making the right choice—at least she had been then.

  Now, with the sunrise imminent and her eyes already stinging, she wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Pulling over to the side of the road, she stopped to check her map. Realizing the ghastly déja vu factor of that, she took several deep breaths. Then she laughed. It started with an acrid, vitriolic snort which turned into uncontrollable cackles that had her gasping for air and fighting off hysteria.

  When Max regained control, she didn’t feel any better for having wasted the few precious moments that were left of the night.

  With an anxious sense of urgency, she turned her efforts back to finding a safe place to buckle down for the long hours of the day.

  Max kicked the motorcycle into gear and revved the engine, listening to it roar with life, feeling the power of every one of the 1000 ccs at her beck and call in the aggressive vibrations that caused her thighs to pulse. Pulling back onto the road, she went fast. Her speed was dangerous, but her control of the bike was total. Leaning into the wind, she was as one with the top-of-the-line piece of motorized equipment, utilizing the steel, fiberglass, engine fluids and mechanical functions as she would her own body parts—arms, legs, heart and lungs.

  With the cool, biting wind rushing past her face and the black tarmac rolling beneath her feet, Max had to wonder if she was any different than the motorcycle—a machine. It was a perfectly built, harmonious coexistence of parts that had been carefully put together so as to work to its maximum potential on as little energy as possible.

  Machines were theoretically error free, while humanity was lousy with imperfections and wasted potential. Max had already found that, as a vampire, her body now utilized so much more of that innate potential. She was able to exploit so much more of the precision, strength, and natural fluidity of her body’s incredible architecture than ever before, without the hassle of limited energy and aging cells to hamper her.

  It almost made her wonder why she bothered to mourn her lost humanity. She had never really gotten anything special out of it, after all. Just expectations dashed, disappointments up the wazoo and dreams she had never realized, followed by a horrific, violent death.

  But then, to be human was more than just shattered dreams and decaying faculties. It meant choices and it meant love. Close friends and sunshine. And it meant growing old as your children grew tall. It was life, and yes, it was death.

  Where did that leave her now? She’d already proven that most of these essentially human strengths and failings, rights and assurances, didn’t apply to her anymore. She was vampire whether she liked it or not. There would be no more sunshine for her, no more friends, no chance for children. And as for choice—well, she definitely hadn’t chosen any of this.

  Because her choices had been taken from her, she was no longer alive, although not really dead, either.

  Ah, but she wasn’t exactly a machine, not like the bike was a machine. She still breathed, she still…wanted…and loved…and perhaps she would still die.

  Let’s not have it be today, though. Okay? She shot another nervous glance toward the now grayish horizon line ahead of her.

  The sun was coming fast. She could smell the morning’s dew on the grass, that fresh, light scent. And even though she couldn’t hear much past the muffling effect of the spongy head protection of her helmet and the consistent drone of the bike, Max imagined that a few early birds were already singing good morning to some very unlucky worms.

  A few minutes later, she had almost come to the conclusion that she would be forced to drive off the road and find a dark place to bed down in the woods, when she caught sight of a slightly worse-for-wear billboard advertising a cozy, family-run hotel called the Sleepy Time Inn off I-94. Thank goodness she’d had the presence of mind to take a look through Baron’s coat and “borrow” the sixty bucks in his pocket. Otherwise, she’d be screwed worse than she already was right now.

  Hoping to God she didn’t get pulled over by a trooper looking to meet the last of his ticket quota for the night, Max gunned the engine and raced for the next exit.

  Thank God.

  Sure enough, with maybe fifteen minutes to spare before full-fledged sunshine started streaming into the sky in long, soon-to-be-hot rays, Max was ensconced in a ratty, flea-infested hole of a hotel room that made her mother’s old trailer look like a suite at the Hilton.

  Choices. And yet again, she had been left with none.

  She set her helmet and keys—Baron’s helmet and keys—down on the scarred surface of the cheap bedroom dresser, a rickety piece of particle-board furniture that had been laminated long ago with a barely wood-colored veneer that was now rubbed down to almost nothing. She was afraid of what she would find living inside if she were to actually slide open any of the drawers, but that wouldn’t be a problem since she had no clothes to unpack and wouldn’t be staying any longer than sunset.

/>   However, the rest of the room might be a problem. The double bed had been positioned on the side wall of the room, perpendicular to the door and the one window—a window covered not with reassuring blackout curtains that fell nicely to the floor, but with a set of mini-blinds. A dozen or so rows of bent and broken vinyl strips wouldn’t keep the deadly daytime sun from streaming right across the bed.

  Her safest option was going to be the bathroom. She might not get any sleep, but at least she wouldn’t have to spend the day nervously tracking the motion of light as it moved across the room, or watch dust motes dancing on sunbeams as she contemplated the pathetic circumstances that had brought her to this pass.

  She walked to the bed and reached for the sheets and blankets and dragged them into the tiny bathroom with her. She didn’t hold out hope they would make the cramped space any more comfortable, but it couldn’t hurt.

  Sitting cross-legged in the doorway on the cracked tile floor, she watched the sun slowly making its way inside the room. Watched until her eyes burned beyond what she could stand and her skin had started to redden.

  Finally, she shut the door and placed a wadded-up towel against the shaft of light that still tried to sneak in by way of the space underneath.

  A long while later, Max finally started to relax.

  With no other place to rest, she set her back against the rusty porcelain tub. She tried stretching out her legs, but was hampered by the sweaty, yellowed toilet at the other end of the pocket-sized room.

  With a crabby groan, Max swore and stuffed a pillow on the edge of the tub behind her neck. If she had thought her muscles were going to be sore after riding hunched over the bars of a motorcycle all night, she was already dreading the discomfort she would feel when it was time to get back on it after a long day spent cooped up on the hard floor.

  Still, she had made progress. Some. She was on her way home. Taking back some control over her wretched circumstances.

  Then why did she want nothing more than to let loose the sloppy tears that sat annoyingly close behind her closed eyes?

  She couldn’t get Baron’s face out of her head. And she couldn’t get his scent out of her clothes. And she couldn’t get his blood out of her veins. Whether she liked it or not, and despite all her efforts to erase him from her past, Baron was more a part of her now than ever before. She had fallen in love with him. Harder than before. And she feared there was no getting over it this time.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jackson opened his eyes, or tried to, since his lids were glued shut with crusty bits of eye gunk. His face was angled away from the door, but when he could focus he noticed three things. First, it was dark. Both inside his room and outside the window, which meant he must have been out for the whole day. The last thing he remembered was Nurse Betty trying to shovel oatmeal down his gullet at breakfast like he was a two-year-old.

  The second thing Jackson saw was Maxine’s slender form reflected in the darkened window. He immediately started fighting back tears. Not that he minded if she saw him crying, ‘cause hell, she’d seen that often enough over the years, but he didn’t want her to know just how much he needed her to be here. He didn’t want her to feel guilty because she hadn’t been here—especially when he’d asked her to leave in the first place.

  And of course, he couldn’t help but notice that she was alone. That caused a sharp pain in his chest, a twinge of regret. But he was so glad to see her that he pushed the other feeling down to deal with later.

  From the reflection in the window, he knew that she stood just inside his door. It looked like she was just staring out the window into the darkness. She hadn’t yet noticed he was awake. Her face was shadowed by the light coming in behind her from the hallway, but Jackson knew his friend. There was something wrong. Something different about her. Something in her posture.

  She looked sad.

  Fuck. If his stupider-than-dirt brother had hurt her…

  What? What could I do about it even if he had?

  It wouldn’t even be Baron’s fault. Baron had made his wishes clear enough when he’d taken off without a second glance. No, it was his fault for sending Max to Baron in the first place. For pushing them together not once, but twice. Obviously with the same disastrous results.

  But he’d been so sure he knew what he was doing.

  Jackson might be sick, but it wasn’t blindness he suffered from. He knew Baron and Maxine better than any other two people on the planet, and he knew how they really felt about each other. When he’d sent Max looking for his errant brother, it had been with two goals in mind. He wanted to force them to come face to face without Jackson’s presence to muddy the waters, hoping they wouldn’t be able to resist the longing that had always been painfully evident whenever they were in the same room together.

  And secondly, he had wanted Max far away from this hospital room.

  He hadn’t wanted her to be here during the chemo treatments, especially the spinal tap and the radiation. The last time he’d gone through it had been bad enough for the both of them, but Jackson had known this time would be worse. And holy hell in a hand basket, had it ever been.

  He didn’t yet try to turn his body around to face her. He would need a lot more strength for that than he had right now. But he did open his mouth to urge her to come closer, around the bed.

  “Hey.” His voice was barely a croak and made him wince. He could tell her it just sounded so bad from misuse because there was no one to talk to in this sterile purgatory of torture, but Max would see right through him to the pain beneath, so he didn’t bother.

  Maxine Deveraux was the best friend anyone could have. The thing was, she was too good a friend. She was so attentive. He felt guilty for still being alive, because every extra moment he lingered on was one more that Max spent wasting her life away caring for him and worrying about him.

  He watched her reflection as she made her way around the bed. “Hey, Jacky,” she said, settling down in the chair beside him, her voice soft with concern as her gaze took in every new line in his pale face. “How are you doing?”

  With a smile, he summoned all his strength and reached for her, glad that his hand remained steady. Surprisingly, she hesitated before taking it, as if she didn’t want to touch him.

  Her skin felt cool against his, but that could just be his fever building again. He cleared his throat, hoping to get some force behind his voice, pretend to be more substantial than a feather on the wind.

  “I’m fine,” he lied. “So, I guess…no luck with Baron, huh?”

  Her eyes went dark, almost black in her pale face. “I’m sorry, Jackson.”

  He didn’t doubt that she’d found him but apparently his brother was going to be stubborn and pigheaded. With a slow shake of his head, he said, “Doesn’t matter. I’m just glad you’re back.” He sighed. “Even though you look like hell.”

  Max laughed and glanced down at her baggy men’s clothes. She looked like she’d slept in them. Tugging at the front of the sweater, she shrugged her shoulders. “That’s a long story,” she said. She shook her head, her expression turning sad once more. “I’m so sorry, Jacky. I didn’t mean to be gone so long.”

  He smiled, his chest tight. “Oh, honey, don’t apologize. Truth be told, I had hoped you would be gone at least this long.” Straightening his legs beneath the sheets, he groaned. Sitting up was going to be a bitch, especially the rolling over onto his back part, but he planned to give it a shot.

  Before he could even begin to struggle into a sitting position, Max was there with an arm around his back, as if she’d read his mind. She supported his weight until he could push the button that lifted the head of the bed.

  “Jackson.” Max sat back down in the chair, eyeing him with what seemed like careful consideration, almost as if she were seeing something in his face that hadn’t been there before.

  Did he look that bad, then?

  “You look fine, Jacky,” she said with an absent shake of her head and a tigh
t frown on her face. “I’m trying to decide how to kick your ass without the nurses running in here.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but she kept going.

  “You know, I understand where you’re coming from.” Max rearranged the pillow behind his head so that his neck was supported, before she continued. “But did you ever stop to think how I would feel, knowing you didn’t want me here with you? Knowing you didn’t think I was strong enough to help you through this?”

  “Hey, Max. Hold up sweetie. Before you rake a dying man over the coals, let me explain.” Jackson squeezed her hand and smiled. “Trust me, it isn’t that I didn’t want you with me, or didn’t think you could handle…this. But is it so bad to wish that you didn’t have to? To wish you could remember me as I was before and not as a shriveled husk of a human being?”

  He sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. I love you more than anything, but the last thing I need is for you to change my bedpan and watch me yakking up my insides into a stainless steel salad bowl. And the last thing I wanted was for you to see me wasting away, transformed into this barely alive skeleton. I don’t want you sitting there watching me die.”

  She was silent, but her eyes were piercing. Jackson felt like she was digging into his brain, reading him like a book. A thin, transparent book with lots of helpful illustrations.

  “I’m sorry that he isn’t coming,” she said at last.

  He wasn’t the only one who was an open book. It didn’t take a psychic to be able to see from her face that something monumental had happened between her and Baron.

  “What did he say?” he asked.

  She shook her head and looked away, out through the window again. Finally, she shook her head. “Maybe he would have come,” she said, although the tone of her voice suggested she doubted her own words. “But something happened, and I…well, I kind of took off without him.”

  She was scaring him now. He held her gaze. “What happened, Max?”

  “I think she would say that I happened,” laughed a deep, masculine voice from the open doorway.