For a while, she knew nothing else.
***
“What the hell?”
The crash jarred Seth Watkins from his daydreaming; it was probably too early for daydreams anyway, or else too late, depending on how he wanted to look at it. He had been at the tavern since midnight. All of the scum, weirdos, and vampires had cleared out a couple of hours ago, and he was left to clean up and close. The girl he had hired to help had already given up the ghost, so to speak—he found her two nights ago in the ladies’ room, bled as dry as a dead rose.
Fuckers—especially the new ones. Before, with the old ones, it was an unspoken rule that his staff were off-limits. Things had changed; the young vampires had no dignity. Shit, they were becoming more and more human by the night.
And here was one lying naked in his discarded boxes, next to his perpetually overflowing dumpster. The trash trucks seldom made a pass along the boulevard anymore. He paid the driver off once a month to get him to come by and clear away the rubbish enough to allow people to move up and down the alley.
The woman lay in a broken heap, half-buried in torn cardboard, nude and as bloodstained as a warrior. Her hair hung in heavy ropes, gummed together with congealed blood like dreadlocks. Smoke rose from her flesh where the sun had touched it.
A Deathwalker.
Seth stepped closer and then glanced upward. Had she been thrown, or had she jumped? It seemed a desperate thing, considering her condition.
“What the fuck?” he muttered again, kneeling beside the broken girl. She was so bloody and beaten that it was difficult to make out her features,. He pushed the cords of her hair back and fished a handkerchief from his pocket. When he was satisfied it was relatively free of anything too disgusting, he gently dabbed at the woman’s face.
“You poor thing,” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”
As much as he disliked the fledgling vampires, they kept food on his table. He served them, and in return, they left him and his old lady alone. His staff, obviously not so much, lately. But still, he had a soft spot for some of them.
He touched her face again, and she whimpered like a small child.
“Got to get you out of this sun, girl. Is there anyone I can call?”
Her mouth moved, but he didn’t hear anything. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t make that out. Who can I call?” He bent so low his ear brushed her swollen lips.
“John,” she rasped. “Moses.”
Inside, with the girl wrapped snug inside his coat and lying on the ratty sofa in his office, he dialed the number from memory. He knew the name well. John Moses was very much like him, obliged to the vampires. Plus, he had gone to Moses and Devin McCree a few times in the past for protection from the most brutish Deathwalkers.
“Moses? Seth Watkins, here. I think I’ve found one of your vampires.”
chapter forty-five
John carried Susan through the doors and into the foyer. He had her cradled in a thick, wool blanket to hide her tender flesh from the sting of daylight.
Devin, bleary-eyed, hair twisted in spikes, sprinted down the stairs. He had not slept, and it showed plainly on his face. Deep pockets had settled beneath his eyes like bruises, and he had not fed enough. He appeared gaunt and too pale.
“Here, let me have her,” he told John, effortlessly sweeping Susan’s limp form from the older man’s arms. John was hesitant to give her over, having been the one to first set eyes on her after this ordeal; he felt she was safer in his charge, at this point.
Devin pushed the cover from her face and looked down at her for a long moment. John watched his expression alter from relief to anguish and felt his heart break right along with the Deathwalker.
“Oh, no. Susan, it’s all right, now. You’re safe. You’re safe now,” he whispered. He kissed her bloody face and pressed his forehead to hers.
Devin’s broad shoulders shook, and John realized he was crying. He placed his hand on Devin’s back and stroked him as gently as a father might. He did not know what else to do, and what could he do, anyway? What could he do, now, but make her well?
“Let’s get her upstairs, Devin. We have a lot of work to do.”
***
Devin placed Susan on his bed so carefully she might have been made of glass. He then brought his wrist to his mouth, making ready to bite into it, but John grabbed his arm and stopped him.
“Don’t. You’re not in any condition for that. You must feed before you are any good to her.”
Devin slouched back, reluctant but without protest. After Watkins called, John had told Devin to anticipate Susan’s dire condition and had him set out his first aid supplies—antiseptic, gauze and bandages, a scalpel and a suture kit. John was not much of a nurse, most of what he knew, he had learned either from Lillian’s tender bedside care or in the years of patching up Devin’s battered body. Vampires, he had come to know, were autonomous creatures. Susan would live, whether he stepped in or not. How long she might live in her dreadful state was the question.
John doused his wrist with alcohol, and then snatched up the scalpel. The silver blade glinted in the white overhead lighting before he sank it into the soft flesh of his inner wrist. He hissed dryly through his clenched teeth. He hated this part. Still, he had done it before and knew what to expect, nausea and sick dizziness. He was a bit squeamish, even after all he had seen.
The blood welled as if surfacing to the light, fast and dark. It splattered on Susan’s chest and neck in great splotches.
He sat heavily on the bed next to her broken body and leaned close, offering his bleeding wrist to her. With the other hand, he stroked her tangled hair gently, aware of Devin’s eyes on both of them.
“Here, now, Susan,” he said softly, “you need to drink. To heal, you must take this.”
He pressed the dripping wound to her slack mouth. “Come, now, Susan.” His voice had taken on a pleading tone, and he supposed he was pleading with her to come around, to drink from him. She did not respond.
Blood smeared her mouth into a crimson frown, and John cursed himself for becoming discouraged so quickly. He cursed Devin for allowing Kasper to live; he cursed Michael for asking her to come to him, placing her squarely in danger. He glanced at Devin, wondering if he had picked those thoughts from his brain. He would not be able to conceal Michael’s presence much longer.
Devin seemed oblivious. He bit his bottom lip, and began, “What if she doesn’t—“
“She will,” John interrupted him.
Devin moved to the other side of the bed and lay down beside Susan’s still body. He pressed his lips to her ear and whispered to her, coaxing, gentle words that John could not quite make out. It did not matter. It worked.
The movement of her soft mouth was nearly imperceptible, but it sent a chill through John’s body. Her tongue, still cool and roughened from dehydration, pressed against the wound, pushed past the loose flaps of skin, and she began to drink from him.
He glanced at Devin, and Devin smiled with tears in his eyes.
Susan drew the blood from his vein until he began to feel lightheaded and dull, but he took a deep breath and fought the dizziness for another few moments. Finally, it was Susan who pushed his arm away.
She took a deep, choking breath and exhaled, the blood spraying from her cracked lips, and whispered, “Devin?”
She again fell unconscious. John took his bleeding wrist from her limp mouth and pressed a thick square of gauze to the wound to staunch the blood flow.
***
Devin had not fed in three nights, since Susan had first disappeared, and now the smell of the blood made him nearly inebriated with hunger. He wet his lips and centered his focus on Susan as he stroked her cool forehead. He fingered a smear of crimson from the side of her mouth and resisted tasting it. John’s thoughts bombarded him, needling, questioning.
Why did you let Kasper live?
Why will he not just let you go?
Why are you hiding?
Why did you bri
ng Susan here in the first place?
Why and why and why
He sighed and wished he could tell the old man to just shut the hell up, but he should not have been in John’s head in the first place. He would regret it later. They had been friends, companions, for far too long. Seventy years was a lifetime. Devin was positive he did not want to know everything John thought of him.
John slipped out of the room. When he returned, he had bandaged his wrist and was carrying a basin of water and several white hand towels.
“Here,” he said, giving Devin one of the towels. “Help me clean her up. She’ll rest more comfortably.”
Devin dabbed carefully at Susan’s battered and swollen face. In silence, it was nearly a ritualistic process, cleansing away the filth, the blood, the scent of Kasper Jacobsen.
It was John who discovered the trickle of blood between Susan’s thighs.
“Goddamn it,” he muttered. He parted her legs slightly. “Here, look.”
The flow was light, but the color was dark and heavy, as if she had been injured deep inside. And worse, Kasper had apparently fed on her at some point. Deep, angry bite marks stood out like slashes of red paint against her now clean inner thigh.
The world swirled in front of Devin’s eyes, and his legs became rubbery. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and squeezed his eyes closed. John grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him roughly.
“Are you going to allow him to get away with this? Devin?”
Devin had only heard this much anger in John’s voice once before, on the night Lillian died. But that was not all—John’s thoughts assaulted him like a fist to the skull. He could not stop himself from hearing them.
Your fucking fault
Did you love him?
I should take her away from here.
She would have been better off with Michael.
And how did John know Michael, anyway? He did not ask. What was the point? He clenched his fists again. He wanted instead to strike out at his oldest friend and pound him into a bloody pulp. Michael was nothing, scarcely a glimmer in Susan’s past.
“I-it’s not my fault.”
“That’s enough. You didn’t kill Kasper when you had the opportunity—Christ—opportunities. And now, look. Does she deserve this?”
“Do any of us deserve this pathetic excuse for life, John? I’ll handle this. She doesn’t belong to you.”
John turned away and bathed the lower part of Susan’s legs. “Take her away from here, Devin. I’ll take care of Kasper, if that is what’s needed. I should have done it after Lillian, anyway. He’s taken enough from both of us. I’ll do it, since you can’t.”
“You’re being irrational, John.”
“You’re not?”
Devin ignored him and concentrated on washing the grime away from Susan’s torso and breasts. Even with the advantage of being a day-dweller, John stood little chance against a creature like Kasper. “Let me handle it. Don’t do anything.”
“Bloody fantastic job you’ve done so far.”
Devin turned to return some cutting remark, but the look of despair on John’s face stopped him. Instead, he wanted to run from the room. To be the reason for so much pain was too much to bear.
He knew John’s feelings for Susan—that sad, unrequited love. John hid it as well as he could, but Devin did not need mind tricks to come across that knowledge. It came off of John in waves, broadcasted, not whispered.
“I don’t know what is between you and Kasper, but she should not have to suffer because of it,” John said. There. It was out, inviting some inane response.
John cleaned the gaping gunshot wound in Susan’s side and covered it with a heavy layer of gauze and tape. Then, he pulled the covers over her and dimmed the lamp. Devin knelt and kissed her soft, cool lips, then stepped out into the hall.
John was waiting for him.
“It’s complicated, this thing with Kasper,” Devin began. Then, the words began to pour from him. “There’s no other way I can describe it. I share a mark with Kasper—his mark. Like cattle, we were branded to signify to which tormentor we belonged.
“I never loved him. I never even liked him, but I wanted to live, and the only way I could figure to do that was to pretend that I did. I was like his little dog. A cowed, kicked dog, but at least he pulled his blows a little for me.”
“Is he still pulling his blows, Devin? Tell me. Look at Susan and tell me.”
chapter forty-six
No longer starving, Susan felt proper rest finally enfolding her. Even in her hazy, semi-conscious state, she knew something amazing was happening. The shattered bones, torn nerves, shredded tendons and muscles of her neck all itched. The bullet wound felt tighter, as if the skin had become dry.
Random thoughts raced through her mind. Smeared impressions of faces appeared. Devin. Michael. John. Even Kasper.
Michael spoke to her, a moment frozen in time, a memory she would carry until the end of the world, if she made it that long.
“I know about the baby.”
A bullet wound. The new one in almost the same spot as the one that had ended the life of her child six months ago.
A flash of skin, Devin’s lower belly and the raised scar there, the symbol of what was referred to as the “black sun,” a symbol of the Third Reich, just above the coarse patch of ginger pubic hair. The same as Kasper.
She thrashed outward, not seeing, and struck a firm, cotton clad body. A whisper, “It’s all right now, Susan. It’s all right, now, darling. It’s John. Only John.” Cool palm on her forehead and a warmer tickle of soft whiskers prickling against her skin.
She groaned, but inside her head, words formed, and she questioned the twin black suns.
***
“Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“I’m not looking for a session, John,” Susan said. She stepped out onto the veranda, and he followed, a glass of the coveted Cognac in his hand. The moon hit the shore of her face and the long curve of her neck where the robe had fallen away. Only days before, it had seemed she was on the verge of actually dying.
John followed her, amazed at the ease of her movements. In the past week, the marks Kasper had left were faded to a pale yellow. The nasty gunshot had drawn closed. All that was left was a puckered circle of scar tissue at the crest of her hip, a place he had seen and committed to memory, a memory that he recalled more often than he knew he should. Except in his mind, he planted light kisses there and allowed his lips to linger on her warm skin.
Susan turned and looked at him a moment, her head tilted slightly. John was well aware that she could read his thoughts—she no longer tried to avoid it as Devin did. He blushed and offered a sheepish grin.
“I was asking as a friend, not a psychologist,” he answered.
“Either way.” She shrugged and turned to him. “Listen. It was horrible, but so what? There are people who have been through worse.” She laughed bitterly and took his glass from him. She drank a sip and handed the glass back. “Besides, we’re not even people, Kasper and I.”
John hated to hear her being so disparaging. “Don’t say that—“
“Why not? It’s true. And it’s not such a bad thing. What are people, anyway, but shit?”
“Not all of us,” John offered, not sure if he should be offended or not.
They stood in silence for a while, watching the lights of some distant freighter glimmer like devil’s eyes on the black-glass water of the Atlantic beyond the city.
“I feel like Devin lied to us, John. I saw that mark, and then I knew why. That’s why Kasper is still alive,” she said.
“Do you want to go back home with Michael?” He did not want to ask, but he had to know. As long as Susan was with Devin, that was enough for him. Just having her near was enough. It was sad, but it was better than not having her at all.
She shook her head slowly. “No. No. It’s impossible now. I could never go back. I wouldn’t want to.”
&nb
sp; John took a deep breath and taking her soft hand, warmed it between his palms. “What then, Susan? I’ll do what I have to. I only want you to be happy.”
“I love Devin. And John, I love you. I can’t leave. Besides, my life can no longer include Michael.”
A single tear escaped the corner of her eye, and John wiped it away with the side of this thumb. He traced his finger along the silky bud of her bottom lip, hesitant to take his hand away. She stared up at him a moment.
Again, she was reading his mind, but she did not attempt to turn away. To his surprise, she instead stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.
As gently as a butterfly lighting on the back of his hand, but it took his breath away and his heart quickened.
Then she did pull back. She giggled softly and placed her hand on his chest.
“What?” he asked, struggling to stop his voice from wavering.
“You. Your thoughts—they were just racing.”
“That was the blood leaving my brain.”
She became serious. “Let me bring you, John. You know you’re no longer safe.”
John laughed, turning away from her. Reality was back, and he hated it. “Do you honestly think I would wish to spend eternity in the body of an old man?”
“It’s better than the alternative, isn’t it?”
“I’m not so sure. I can’t give up what little I have. The sunshine on my face. Knowing I can die, if I ever really want out.”
“Don’t be silly,” Susan said, frowning.
“It’s not being silly. Would you give up Devin for me?” He immediately felt like a fool. “Never mind. Forget I said that.”
“Age has nothing to do with my choosing Devin,” she whispered. “Think about it. Please.”
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