Someone asked her once why she had gone into the line of work she had chosen. "Maybe I can help someone find their way," she had told them. It sounded noble, but she had been drunk when she said it.
The late morning sun rained dusty through the window over her desk. She removed a stack of photographs from a drawer and slowly thumbed through them. All of them were of her, Peter, or the two of them together. She had taken them and little else when she had left her childhood home for the last time, after her parents had died. Little quarterback and little cheerleader, ten years old. She examined others—she and Peter in front of the old Beemer, all packed up and ready to leave for college. The two of them thirteen, arm-in-arm at the beach. All she had left were those photographs. Over the years, those images had become so ingrained in her mind that she could draw them from memory, capturing every angle of shadow across their young faces, every fold in their clothes, if she had still had the desire to draw. Both she and Peter had been majoring in art—Peter had aspirations of becoming a commercial artist; she had wanted to teach.
Memories of Peter’s death had staked claim to her dreams lately. She knew the recent loss of her baby had probably triggered them. Long ago, sitting alone under the roof of her family home with her parents blaming her for her brother’s death, she had decided that shame was her burden. She would live up to the name her mother had saddled her with—Susan the Lost.
Besides, she had done worse things since. Like keeping her pregnancy a secret from her lover, all the while wondering if she even wanted the child at all. Nevertheless, barely two months along, she had already started thinking of the fetus as a child—her child. liked the idea. But still, she had not wanted to share the news with Michael, yet.
There would be time, she thought. She would surprise him with it. At eight weeks along, she began buying things here and there—a hand-knitted onesie, a small blue dolphin made of terrycloth. A pair of dainty booties. All of these things she had hidden away in a box deep in the back of their closet, behind a stack of Michael’s old medical textbooks. The excitement had already taken hold early.
Last night had been a parade of memories in the form of nightmares that were surreal, twisted in time and place. Hateful, confusing things. A beautiful, fair-haired stranger. He took her virginity and then her brother’s life. Oddly, in the dreams, she was always the age she was now—staring at forty and not particularly happy about it. An adult, not a teenager, and everything even more sordid and rotten than it actually had been, if that was possible. Susan had woken with the taste of blood on her tongue. She had bitten the inside of her lip in her sleep.
Later, she stood before the bathroom mirror, as she did almost every morning, studying her face, searching for her brother there. What would he look like now? Would he still be as beautiful? She tried to imagine him on the downside of youth, with fine lines around his eyes and smile lines at the corners of his mouth. Would he still be an artist? Successful? Would he be a father? Would they still be close?
She then tried to not only see her brother in the mirror, but the girl she had been. Her face was strangely still much the same; the lines had not encroached at all. However, her body was not as colt-thin and delicate. She had been a distance runner in high school. Back then, her strength had been in her stamina. But, things changed on that Halloween night years ago. Determined to never again be powerless, she had become fixated with self-defense and cross-training, and her body grew curvy, but strong. She had lost some of that muscle tone while recovering from the gunshot wound.
Susan quickly stacked the photos and shoved them into her purse, hiding them among various scraps of paper and notes. She slipped out before anyone even realized she had been there.
chapter three
Susan lay propped up on one elbow, looking at the same stack of photos she had sorted through earlier at her desk.
"Are you reading?” Michael asked. He removed his glasses, climbed into bed, and snuggled against her warm body. He pressed his chin into the soft curve of her neck and peered over her shoulder.
"No." She held up one of the pictures—the one of her and Peter just before they made their drive to college. "Do you think we looked alike?"
Michael laughed softly. "Are you kidding?” Amazingly, she had changed very little. He teased her about it sometimes, the fact she had barely aged in twenty years. In the genes, she always told him with a shrug.
She smiled sadly. "Good. I'm glad." She put the photos aside, and her mood instantly brightened. "Now, I'm going to get some cake."
"Sounds good to me."
She got out of bed. Shivering, she reached for the robe lying at the foot of the bed and pulled it on over the t-shirt she was wearing, one of Michael’s.
"But don't wear that," Michael said. He went to her and pushed the soft velvet back down off of her shoulders.
"Well, why on Earth not?" she asked demurely.
“Because you look really good when you’re cold,” he said. Her nipples stood out hard through the thin cotton of the t-shirt. He traced his fingers over each of them.
She let the robe fall to the floor, and, giggling like kids ,they groped their way down the hallway in the darkness. Downstairs, Susan took a small desert plate from the cupboard and cut an enormous wedge of the chocolate cake that one of Michael's patients had brought him. Michael poured a tall glass of milk and, together, they headed back to the bedroom.
Michael stretched out on his belly next to Susan. Through the big bedroom window, a thunderstorm approached over the angry waters of the bay. Sometimes, living this close to the Atlantic, the rain came so hard and fast that they could see it moving across the water like a gray veil. Between bites, Susan prattled about her day and about how when she was small, her grandmother used to make a wicked German chocolate cake. Michael was relived she had moved on from her memories of Peter. He wished she would put all those photos out of sight for good.
He nodded and responded when he should as she went on, his mind more on how much her brother’s murder was affecting her recently. The anniversary of Peter’s death loomed like a corpse in the bedroom, although neither of them mentioned it. The shooting and subsequent suspension went the same way—no mention of it. Was holding so much inside harming her mentally? She was tough, but nobody was that .
When they finished the cake and milk, Michael took the dishes and placed them on the nightstand. Then, he pulled Susan into his arms and nuzzled her neck. Slowly, he slipped her t-shirt up and over her head, then kissed his way down her breasts, awash in the sweet, soapy scent of her skin. His mouth lingered on one nipple, then the other, until they were as hard as little stones against his tongue.
For a moment, something strange and a bit ugly popped into his head. Had there been more between Susan and her brother? Was there something deeper and uglier that went on that night? Something had sealed her emotions off long before he met her. Mystery painted everything surrounding the murder—to the point that she suggested she might have experienced some sort of memory loss. He forced the idea from his mind. This was the woman he loved, after all.
Susan unbuttoned his shirt and then untied the drawstring of his pajama pants. Her warm hand slipped inside and found him already hard. He pressed hungrily against her hand, and she encircled him, stroking until he groaned. Michael's impatient mouth traced the line of her body from her neck to the soft triangle of hair between her legs. He nipped her thighs, and she giggled and tugged his hair gently.
"Stop!" she cried, but he ignored her and pushed her legs apart. He tasted her until her body grew tense, at the threshold of her climax.
He moved back on top of her then and slid inside her with one easy, practiced motion. How he loved feeling her come against him. He remained perfectly motionless on top of her, only his lips moving against her lips, as she trembled in his arms. The contractions of her orgasm drove him quickly toward his own, and he could stay still no longer.
***
The blaring sun yanked Michael from a
deep sleep as it peeked through the curtains. Outside, it dried the world from last night’s storms. Susan mumbled softly—"Peter, no.” Her hand moved and shot forward, as if she were reaching for something. Michael sat up in the too-bright room and rubbed his eyes.
He touched Susan's warm shoulder. "Susan? Wake up."
She did not respond. But for him, sleep was over. He got up, pulled on his pajamas and trotted downstairs. Thanks to the harsh sunshine and the cold wood floor against his bare feet, he was already fully awake. Whistling softly, he made his way to the kitchen. Something told him to just hang in there, and everything would eventually be all right.
chapter four
From the shadows of the oaks, Devin McCree watched the couple through the window of their kitchen as they prepared a meal. It was the very picture of domestic bliss—something he had missed since his life with Evie and the children. The man—Michael—sliced mushrooms as Susan poured two glasses of red wine. Her laugh was like the tinkle of bells. How Devin wished he could trade places with that man.
One of the better parts of becoming something beyond human was the ability to hear others’ thoughts. Of course, this neat trick only worked on mere humans of the living . Those who straddled the line of life and death seemed to be shielded from thought-stealing. Tonight, he plucked Michael’s thoughts cleanly from the air. It was as if they were amplified through a radio receiver.
Devin wanted so much to hate Michael for being there, with her, but he couldn’t. The man adored Susan. And Susan loved him, although her feelings appeared darker and laced with more random ideas. Anger. Paranoia. If ideas could be colored, Susan’s were crimson, brown and grey, in contrast to Michael’s brilliant yellows, blues and pinks.
Ah, Susan, beautiful Susan! Not a girl, but a woman now, so confident and strong. There was not a trace of the innocence Devin had once thought her most dominant trait.
So many years of waiting for her. Of wanting her. He had fled Charlestowne, so distraught was he over killing the boy, but the time away was brief. He could not stay away from Susan. After only weeks, he found himself in Reading. He became her shadow, her protector, waiting like a specter for her to become a woman. Now he watched her, ready to make her what he had been for nearly seventy years.
Of course, it sounded easier than it would actually be. There was a time when Susan had dwelled in her hatred of him, but that had softened with the passing years. What remained was her terror of him. That was the one thought that came through clearly, time and again. She had tried to kill him before, out of fear. It stung, knowing she was frightened of him. Convincing her to go with him would be one hell of a trick.
Still, if she became like him, she would have to relent. She would have no other option.
Susan had killed someone recently, but she did not hold any sorrow for that, at least not outwardly. had eavesdropped on the sorrow she held for her lost child, however. It was an emptiness inside of her that was as cold as a winter’s night. Occasionally, she fretted over what would become of the dead man’s child, but she had tried to disown that responsibility.
She was hard now, her mind and her body like stone. She trained herself as if she were a fighter. He watched her run sometimes in the falling dusk, her legs pumping fast, and face lost in concentration. During those runs, her mind became nearly clean of thought, her breath a steady, whispered song. Other times, Devin watched her sprint as if she were running from something until she had to stop and lean against a tree to keep from collapsing, her breathing like agonized gasps and her thoughts like storm clouds, churning and scary as hell. Kill myself. Better if I had died . . .
It was those thoughts that had made him decide it was time to come to her. Perhaps he should have approached her one of those times, but he was too afraid of her reaction. Again and again, he told himself she might now be strong enough to resist him, but he still doubted that. Strength against a weak-minded criminal was one thing, but against a creature of his abilities was something else entirely. The decades had taught him one very important thing—he got what he wanted, no matter the cost.
So many years had passed, yet she still looked like the girl she had been when he had first set eyes on her. She had seen so many ugly things, things that would have left lines on the face of a mortal woman. Because of his bloody kiss, she would never age like a mortal woman. Her aging process had slowed drastically. She was a Halfling—part-mortal, part-Deathwalker—but she did not realize it. She would remain a Halfling until she drank from him or one like him. First, he would again need to take her to the cusp of death.
It was her auburn hair that had first drawn his attention. When she had turned, the resemblance had been startling. The first time he had looked into Susan’s eyes, he had experienced a flood of old memories and he had wanted to weep. Instead, he had hugged her to him, and the girl had laughed against his shoulder. He had made her uncomfortable, perhaps a little afraid of him, but he had not allowed himself to care. All that mattered was feeling good, even if it was just for a little while. She could have been Evie at twenty, the summer they met. Quickly, it had become clear that she was nothing like Evie, but by then, he knew he loved her, so it made no difference.
After so many decades of loneliness, he wanted only to possess this exquisite creature, to take her back to his home.
To make her like him.
But that was two decades ago. And things had fallen to pieces, went straight to hell. Now, here he was in the shadows like some phantom, planning to attack the woman he loved.
He would have her, finally.
chapter five
London, November 1940.
They had only been in the city for a year, since Devin had returned from fighting. He was a lucky one—injured, but not gravely. A bullet with his name on it, part of which was still embedded in the muscle and flesh of his thigh, was enough to bring him home for good. That injury and his father-in-law’s pocketbook. Evangeline’s father was wealthy and knew the right people. And, he wanted Devin to come to work at his construction firm. Devin didn’t know much about numbers and books, but he did know how to run a construction crew. Besides, they couldn’t pass up the money when it was theirs for the taking. But now, the bombing had been going on for over a month. His work had become a trickle, and the city was in shambles. If only they were back in Lincolnshire, in the safety of the countryside. He mentioned sending the children away, only for a while, but Evangeline wept at the thought of it. The children were small, David only three and Anna eight, and she could not bear it. Devin could scarcely bear it himself, but he had to think of their well-being.
“How about you go, also. Work is not a factor now. We could all go,” he suggested.
But no. She would not consider the move until “Daddy” said it was all right. “When this is over, you will need the work. And there’ll be plenty to go around.”
“Let’s just get through this, first,” he said.
She was as stubborn as her old man, so Devin let it go. It didn’t matter, as long as they were together. Together, huddled under the kitchen table, the four of them. Devin remembered that moment more than any other with Evie—her face in shadow, mouth drawn in worry, shouting over the sirens, her auburn hair falling across her cheek. They had only gotten two gas masks, and they used them on the children, pushing them onto their faces despite their protests. David had wept beneath his, his sobs sounding as if they were coming from inside a coffin. How Devin had grown to hate the city.
“It’s okay,” he told them, although he wondered if it really would be. He stroked the boy’s soft hair.
Anna had her hand on his leg, her tiny fingers pinching him in time with the explosions. David pressed his tiny hands to his ears, Evie’s hands over his. Devin kissed her.
“We’ll be fine.”
chapter six
Susan liked Yeoman’s Seafood Shack despite its raggedy appearance. It was a cramped bar and grill down on the waterfront. It was decorated in fishermen’s net, old ship
s’ wheels and shark jaws. It was definitely tacky, but the seafood came right off the boats and was cooked to perfection. The smell of fried oysters and shrimp filled the tiny place and even permeated the cool air outside. The music was always good, the beer always cold and best of all, it was only a short stroll from home. She and Michael could walk there and enjoy the cool of the evening.
They met Gerald and his wife Joanne there this evening, just as they did almost every Friday night. Michael and Gerald Cotton had hit it off from the beginning, just as Susan and Joanne had, despite an age difference of almost a decade between the two couples. On Friday nights, Gerald was not Susan’s supervisor, but her friend. Still, it was getting late, and football had been the subject of discussion for most of the past hour. Joanne, who was pretty in a motherly way, pretended to doze. She propped her elbow on the table and rested her face in her hand, her eyes closed. After a while, Susan slipped her hand under the table and up the inside of Michael's thigh, a not-so-subtle sign that she was also ready to head home. It worked like a charm.
"Can't get enough, can you?" Michael whispered into her ear. A sleepy, goofy smile spread across his face.
"I suppose I can't,” she agreed. Then, she moved her hand even higher, her fingers dancing across his crotch. He jumped a little, and shortly afterward, paid the tab.
Darklands: a vampire's tale Page 3
