The moment her head dipped into the icy ocean, her heart stopped beating, shocked to a dead halt. The warmth disappeared and so did the pain. The frost normally encasing her soul slid back into place—the numbness being a vampire provided. And sometimes she hated it, but sometimes, rare times like this, she savored the escape from her humanity, from the emotions and the raw pain of being alive. Instead, she wrapped the frozen shell of death around her, detaching herself completely from the girl she'd once been and the memories that for just a moment had threatened to seep through. As Pandora sank deeper into the water, she sank deeper into the void, running, always running, and never looking back.
An engine revved overhead, the boat surging to life.
Pandora looked up, opening her eyes despite the salty sting, and gazed through the depths, pausing for a moment to notice how much the color of the sun streaming through the water reminded her of Jax's warm irises. And then she shoved that thought away, pumping her legs, and broke through the surface, reborn.
"Get back in the boat and talk to me," Jax said the moment she emerged.
"No," she replied simply, voice empty.
"Dory, get—"
"You know what's great about being a vampire?" she interrupted, meeting his worried expression with an utterly blank one. "I can't get hypothermia. And I can't drown. And if a shark tried to bite me, his teeth would break before they'd be able to sink into my skin."
"What's your point?" He sighed, tired.
"My point," she answered sharply, "is that I have superspeed and superstrength and superstamina, and I don't need a boat to take me to shore, even if it is miles away. My point is that I don’t need to sit up there and listen to you lecture me or tease me or tell me things I don't want to hear when I'm perfectly fine down here. My point is that being around you is exasperating, and I get hungry when I'm angry, and right now you're the only thing that's close enough to eat, but I won’t give you the satisfaction."
Pandora paused.
"My point," she finished softly, "is try to keep up."
And then she dipped beneath the water, pumped her legs and arms, and swam as fast as she could for the shore, grinning as the sound of the engine grew quieter and quieter as she sped faster and faster away.
Chapter Ten
When she got close to the shore, Pandora slid back up to the surface, bobbing in the waves. Jax was following only a few minutes behind, so she took one last minute to enjoy herself before the inevitable bickering began anew. Eying the swells, she waited for a large one to roll in before pumping her arms, grinning as the water crashed over her, carrying her body with the force, so she flew toward the shore, weightless. With a sigh, she swam the rest of the way to the beach and flopped against the sand, staring up into the sun, nostalgic for the days when its warm caress felt soothing instead of painful.
Her peace was completely destroyed when a motorboat crashed through the shallow waves and slid up and onto the beach, spewing sand in every direction before the engine came to a thunderous stop.
"Subtle," she whispered, rolling her eyes as she flipped onto her stomach to scan for witnesses. Since it was already September, she hadn't expected the beach to be too crowded, but the few people walking along the boardwalk and resting on the sand were watching them, wide-eyed and utterly shocked.
Could she blame them?
It was sort of hard to miss a boat crashing into the beach, manned by a man wearing only his boxers. And, well, it was probably also hard to miss a girl lying in the wet sand while wearing a leather jacket, black tights, and combat boots.
No.
Inconspicuous they were not.
"Put a shirt on, will you?" Pandora muttered, jumping to her feet and turning to tug Jax from the boat. "We're drawing too much attention. We have to leave. Now."
As if realizing for the first time that they had an audience, Jax jolted, looking around before quickly throwing his wet shirt back over his head and stumbling back into his pants. Then he catapulted himself over the edge of the boat and landed easily against the sand. "Let's go."
Quickly, they scurried up the beach toward a long wooden boardwalk running parallel to the water's edge, keeping their eyes averted from any unwanted glances.
"We've got to get some new clothes," Jax said under his breath.
Pandora looked around, surveying the shoreline. Her gaze rolled over the beachfront homes stacked one after the other, and she noticed hotels in the distance. "There," she murmured, jutting out her chin. "There's got to be a store or something."
"Do you have any idea where we are?" he asked, glancing around.
Pandora searched the landscape for clues, taking in the long boardwalk, the piers stretching out into the water, the big homes on small lots, and the many staggered grid-like streets before turning once more to the hotels in the distance, trying to read the names in big letters stretched across their facades. For some reason, she recognized this place. Somehow, the whole scene was familiar, even though she could swear she’d never been there before. "I think we might be in Atlantic City. Don't those look like casinos to you?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I think you're right."
"So we go there, steal some clothes, maybe some cash too, and then what?"
"Whoa, whoa, slow down," Jax butted in, looking at her. "Steal? Why do we have to steal anything?"
God, you're so straightlaced, Pandora thought, eying him pointedly. "Do you have any money?"
"Well, no, but—"
"Do I have any money?"
He raised an eyebrow at her. "By your tone, I'm guessing no."
"Right." She nodded. "But what do we have?"
"A girl with the ability to disappear who's apparently become a kleptomaniac since the last time I saw her…" he muttered under his breath.
Pandora chose to ignore him. "We have a master thief."
"Who just recently was caught and almost killed," he retorted.
She sneered. "I would have been fine if you hadn't shown up at the graveyard. I only got caught trying to save your sorry ass."
He stopped dead, widening his eyes and placing his hand over his heart. "I'm touched."
Great, well at least we're back to normal, she thought as her hands clenched. I want to kill him again.
Taking a deep breath, Pandora tried to calm down. "Look, if I'm stuck with you for a week, I just want to know what the plan is. We grab some clothes, some money, maybe hijack a car, and then what? What do you want with me for seven whole days? When can I get back to my life?"
"Your oh-so-important life of being alone all the time and charging head first into idiotic life-or-death situations?"
Pandora looked up at him. "And your point is…?"
Jax sighed, walking faster down the boardwalk, annoyed. "I was thinking maybe a road trip—"
"I always have wanted to see the world’s largest rubber-band ball…" Pandora interrupted, teasing.
Jax plowed through the rest of his sentence. "To Florida."
She stopped walking and gaped at him. "You better mean Disney World."
"I don't."
"You better not be thinking about trying to take me to the top secret—but actually very well-known—conduit base in Florida where they're curing vampires left and right, because I explicitly told you over and over again that I have no intention of ever going back to the girl I was before."
"Dory." Jax sighed, reaching for her. But she stepped back, stepped away, and his hand dropped heavily to his side. "I just want you to see it for yourself, with your own two eyes, before you make a decision."
"There is no decision." She shook her head. "No."
He turned away and kept walking. "We'll talk about it more later. For now, let's just go one step at a time. First clothes. Then money."
"Then food," she added quietly, keeping her gaze on the ocean, unable to look at him. "I need to find a blood bar or something."
He swallowed loud enough that her vampire senses could actually hear the way his throat constricted, tight and te
nse. "Okay. Clothes. Money. Then…food."
They walked the rest of the way without speaking, letting the sun dry their clothes and the waves soothe their troubled minds. They'd spent so many hours together, in conversation and in comfortable silence, that they didn’t need words to communicate anyway. Where Pandora stepped, Jax was already walking. When he opened a door, she was already charging through it. So, without saying a word, they made their way into a clothing store right off the boardwalk, grabbed a few things off the racks, and made their way to a changing room in the back left corner. Pandora took the shirt and shorts from Jax's hands and brought his clothes with her into the changing room while he walked out the front door of the shop, pretending to be a bored boyfriend waiting for his girlfriend to finish shopping.
After he left, Pandora stared into the mirror.
Aren't these stupid things supposed to be superficially flattering?
But all she saw looking back at her was a sad, lonely girl with pristine pale skin and completely empty blue eyes. Pallid. Plain. Worn out. And, well, pathetic.
She glanced away, then turned around and stripped off her clothes from the day before, noticing that the swim hadn't completely removed the blood and grime—evidence of her short, yet impossibly long stay with Tatsuya. When she glanced at her forearm, she could still see his name carved into her skin, could still see the beads of blood sliding down her arm and dropping to the floor.
He'd deserved to die.
He had.
But she still flinched when she stared at her shaking hands, remembering just how frighteningly easy it had been to rip his head right off his shoulders, to snap a man, even a vampire, in two. The girl from four years ago? The girl who Jax remembered? That was something she would have never been able to do.
I've got to get out of here, Pandora thought, suddenly claustrophobic. So she tossed a tank top over her shoulders, ripped off the tag, and slipped into a pair of jeans.
Just keep going.
That's what she always told herself.
Just keep going, and don't pause to look back.
So she left, wrapping the shadows around her and turning invisible as she clutched Jax's change of clothes to her chest, taking it into the darkness with her. The sales girl at the register didn't notice as she walked right on by, quickly grabbing a pair of sunglasses, flip-flops, and a cute leather purse on her way out.
Not too loudly, she knocked against the glass door to signal Jax. He opened it, pretending to search for his girlfriend while Pandora snuck by. Still invisible, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and dragged him down the boardwalk a little, not stopping until she found a nook out of sight where she could reappear.
"Here," she said, shoving the T-shirt and shorts he'd selected into his arms, then adding the pair of sneakers she'd grabbed to the top of the pile. "Go change, and I'll wait."
He eyed her for a moment, as if unsure she'd really be there when he got back, but in the end, he walked away without saying a word, searching for a place to change.
Pandora retreated into the shadows, leaning against the side of the building, staying out of sight as she watched the waves crash against the shore. Again, a sense of déjà vu washed over her. Something about this boardwalk, this hotel, this image, was uncomfortably familiar. A nagging sense pricked at her mind, as though there was something she needed to remember. But her thoughts whirled in circles, going nowhere, so she turned her gaze from the beach, instead eying the people walking by on the boardwalk. A mom with a baby stroller. Two men out for a light jog. A security guard rolling by on a Segway. An old man whose small white dog was barking at seagulls as they picked at breadcrumbs in the trash cans. Everyone was in his or her own world. The beach did that to a person. The calm undulation of the waves crashing, the fresh air blowing quickly by, the constant thud of feet on the wooden planks, a meditative sort of pitter-patter.
But Pandora didn't want to get lulled into a daydream.
It was dangerous.
Because she had no idea where her mind might wander.
So instead, she focused on the second part of the plan—money—starting with the security guard on the Segway who was practically screaming to get robbed. Like, hello, it was a gorgeous sunny day. Use those legs. Breathe in some fresh air. Get that blood pumping. Though with one whiff, Pandora grimaced. Whatever was pumping through his veins reeked of vodka and whiskey and something else—she didn’t even want to know what, but it wasn't appetizing in the slightest.
But that bulge in his back pocket?
That piqued her interest.
With nimble hands, she casually walked up behind him and slipped the wallet from his pants, then pulled it out of sight and into the shadows with her before she counted the bills. Sixty bucks. Not bad. She stuffed the cash into her purse and put his wallet back, leaving him none the wiser.
Glancing around, she chewed on her lip, searching for another target. But she couldn't steal from a brand-new mom out for a morning walk with her peacefully sleeping (and ridiculously adorable) baby. There was a little pink bow stuck to the girl's bald head—a bow! She couldn't ruin their day.
And that left who? The adorable old man eating a sandwich on a bench while he looked out at the water and ripped off pieces of bread to feed his fluffy miniature pooch? Sure, she was a vampire, but she had a heart, even if it was an icy, shattered mess.
No.
They could make sixty bucks last for a few hours. Buy some snacks. Lunch at a diner. And they could break into a hotel for the night, stow away in an empty room, and leave before housekeeping found them.
Sixty bucks was totally fine.
It wasn't, well, the hundred thousand dollars or so she'd stashed in her apartment in New York a few days before. But it would do.
Freaking Jax.
She sighed, glancing around to see if he'd come back.
I mean, really, how long can it take to throw on shorts and a pair of shoes? This is absurd.
But she paused midspin, stopping as an ominous little tingle tickled the back of her neck, the sort of feeling she always got right before something very bad was about to happen. And, of course, Jax chose that same moment to reappear.
Hurrying back to their meeting spot, Pandora stepped out of the shadows.
"We have to go," she said quickly, glancing around.
Something was wrong.
Something she just couldn't place.
Something creeping and crawling across her nerves in an unsettling sort of way, a memory she should recall but for some reason couldn’t grasp.
"Jeez." Jax jumped, startled by her sudden reappearance at his side. "I know, I know. Clothes, then money, then food."
"No," Pandora said, shaking her head. "I grabbed some money. Food can wait. Let's go find a car, now."
His dark brows furrowed as he eyed her with concern, suddenly dead serious. "Why? What happened? What's wrong?"
"I don't know," she said, reaching up to rub the back of her neck, trying to wipe the unnerving sensation away. Why did this hotel seem so familiar? Why did this beach? "Something's not right. I can just sense it. We've got to get out of here. We've—"
And then she stopped midsentence, eyes widening as she turned around and stared straight into the face of a vampire she knew without a doubt wanted to kill her. He was a hundred feet away, maybe a little more, dressed in a dark suit that was so out of place on the boardwalk and surrounded by three other vampires also in suits, also looking oddly formal for the beach.
He paused, staring at her.
Even from a distance, she noticed his eyes switch to the icy, glowing blue of a vampire on the hunt, saw the sinister smile creep across his lips.
And in that moment, she remembered. She hadn’t been here before, but she’d seen photos of this hotel, blueprints and mock-ups and a dozen images taken from every angle—the boardwalk, the beach, the street. She’d heard him talk about his new business venture with the head vamp of Philadelphia, heard him boast about a new
age where vamps would unite together, heard him promise this was the first step toward a new future. A hotel for vampires, but so much more than that. A spot free from regulations. A place they could let their true nature take over. A place to start a revolution against the secrecy the rest of the supernatural world held in such high regard.
Pandora could see it all so clearly as she stared at him from across the boardwalk, met the evil gleam in his eyes with defiance.
The men around him turned, eyes just as bright as the cloudless sky.
"Jax, run," she whispered, stepping back, stepping away.
"What? Who is that?" he asked, not understanding.
But there was no time to explain.
No time at all.
"Jax, run!" she shouted and then spun, pumping her feet into swift motion as Jax followed, right by her side, listening despite his ignorance.
"Who is that?" he asked again between deep breaths.
Pandora glanced over her shoulder. They were gaining. She wasn't fast enough. Jax wasn't fast enough. They'd have to dodge, try to run in circles, try to lose the vamps in the streets. The boardwalk was too open, too exposed.
"Claude," she spat, turning back around. "The completely deranged head vampire of Washington, DC."
"And let me guess," Jax said, somehow still managing to fill his voice with annoyance in the middle of a full-on sprint. "He wants to kill you?"
At the next opening, Pandora cut left, ignoring Jax and swerving off the boardwalk, hopping the railing to land in the delivery entrance to a hotel. The main street was a block ahead, and once they were into the grid, they'd have a chance to shake the vampires currently chasing them.
"Are there any vampires left on the East Coast that you haven't pissed off?" Jax questioned as he landed next to her, not missing a beat.
Pandora spared one moment to raise a brow and meet his heated gaze. "One or two, I'm sure."
But the moment cost her.
Dearly.
By the time she turned her eyes back to the front, it was too late. A car came barreling toward them at full speed, too close to dodge, and it slammed into them like a bowling ball, sending them each flying.
Frost (Midnight Ice Book One) Page 12
