Hunger

by Barbara J. Hancock

  Realistically, she was down to a last-guy-on-earth scenario. They had been thrown together under intense circumstances. Us against the vampire fiend created a false sense of intimacy. Her hunger and loneliness only added to the problem. Winters was sexy. A brooding, rumpled, dangerous sexy. She figured if they’d met under different circumstances she would have been tempted to try like crazy to make him smile. She tried for a moment to imagine herself as a hairdresser and Winters as an accountant.

  She failed.

  Winters came slowly out of the diner and toward the car. He moved in a tight-shouldered, purposeful stride. An accountant? He looked like a Marine trying to remember how to stroll. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had begun an out-of-tune whistle…something Do or Die-ish…only to casually fling his blade at her chest.

  Okay, so she was developing a melodramatic imagination. She figured a lot of people did when they knew they were on top of someone’s hit list.

  When Winters simply sank down behind the wheel and turned the key, Holly sighed. Not in relief, because he still looked as if he could ash her with one hand and pop the brake with the other. Nonchalant and lethal was a very unpleasant combination. No, Holly sighed as she reevaluated her feelings.

  She wasn’t falling for Winters. She didn’t even like him. And his current state led her to think there was no way her lips had ever touched his. It must have been a hallucination.

  She was still a little tipsy, but even if she’d been sober she didn’t think this mood the vampire killer was in would have boded well.

  “So, GPS me. Which way did he go?”

  The man was insufferable. Not only was he an expert at saying flip words in a deadly serious voice, he was also an expert at sprawling back on worn vinyl upholstery while still giving the impression he could and would move in an instant to knife her if the whim hit him.

  She wanted to confront him about it. She wanted to shout and rail and fume. Instead, she smiled her nicest smile. Her mother’s maiden name was Raveneaux and that meant Holly had been raised in the fine Southern tradition of couching anger in velvet. Sure, it was passive aggressive, but it was also handy. You could use it to avoid embarrassing displays in public. You could use it to avoid an unpleasant confrontation with an annoying relative. Or, as in this case, you could use it because you weren’t up for a fight to the death with an experienced killer. Not yet.

  It wasn’t that she was backing down from the rattlesnake in her path. She just didn’t want to step right on it if she could avoid it.

  “He went south.”

  Winters blinked at her smile and his fingers twitched on the wheel. Her muscles tensed as if she somehow sensed the smile had been as bad as a step on a viper’s back.

  He was an experienced killer. The cold flood of adrenaline down her back made her feel weak in the knees. Would being a vampire be enough? Would, heaven forbid, Dillon’s blood give her the edge?

  She hated the idea that she could be indebted to Dillon for anything. She didn’t want strength if it came from him. She didn’t want speed or cunning or the ability to take Winters down if she had to thank her father’s killer for it. She didn’t want this gift she’d been given and she definitely didn’t want it to grow stronger or reach deeper or change her.

  Too late.

  She was changed.

  And each and every time she had a run-in with her Maker it was proof of the change. Every time Winters looked at her as if she was two seconds away from morphing into the bride of Dracula it was proof.

  She didn’t need a mirror. She had the vampire hunter’s eyes.

  In the end, she would have to wait for another moment to find out if she had changed enough to meet him and beat him because Winters simply pushed his foot down on the gas and maneuvered the car onto the road.

  They headed south.

  ***

  She smiled like a beauty contestant onstage before the judges. It should have been annoying, but it was actually poignant…if you sort of ignored the way her white little fangs indented her lower lip. Poignant? Where had that thought come from?

  Jarvis figured he was being played. She wasn’t happy and he wasn’t fooled. The smile was window dressing like his walking, sitting, breathing and driving were window dressings. The fangs in her mouth were reality. The knife under his coat was reality. Everything else was a show of normalcy in a world gone mad.

  He had decided to play along with the plan. She was his best bet to hunt Dillon. As long as he acknowledged she might be falling further and further under her Maker’s control, he would stay vigilant. He would watch for the monster in her to rear its ugly head. He’d known she would sooner or later degenerate into a beast. If later made it harder for him to do what he had to do, so be it.

  He also had to acknowledge he might be falling further and further under her control. Again, he would stay vigilant. He would watch for the moment when there was no turning back because before then was when he’d have to kill her.

  She smiled and he drove and somewhere in the night, winging his way south, was a vampire he had to stop.

  For the right reasons.

  Not for Holly Spinnaker. He was no knight in shining armor. And not to avenge Jim’s death. He wasn’t a superhero. Simply and cleanly, monsters couldn’t be allowed to live.

  It had been a year of living Hell, but that was the one truth that had kept him going. He couldn’t lose sight of it now.

  Horrible things happened. Good people died. But, every time he ashed a monster, it gave others a chance to live. It was a half-assed flicker of hope and it only served to make Holly’s hope glow like a Pollyanna-fueled nuclear reactor.

  If it bothered him to write off the woman at his side, it only proved he still had a flicker of his old self left. It didn’t mean he was losing his grip on this new reality, did it? Killing monsters was reality. Saving monsters? He didn’t even begin to know how.

  Chapter Nine

  Newton, Virginia’s historic courthouse was a brick federal-style building with peeling white columns. It sat on a sleepy main street in a town that had been by-passed by Interstate 81. There was very little traffic on a Tuesday after sunset.

  There had been efforts made to manicure the lawn. Though it was patchy in places and in bad need of fertilizer, it had been cut and the weeds trimmed down before winter. Old-fashioned park benches dotted the walkways. They had been painted so many times the iron scrollwork on their backs was thick and distorted, but they were bright and white and inviting.

  The lawn also boasted a bronze sculpture of a Civil War soldier seated on the back of horse. The soldier and the horse had acquired a greenish patina—not to mention pigeon-provided polka dots.

  Holly followed Winters as they walked by the spotted soldier, up the entry stairs and into the foyer. Their footsteps echoed on polished wood. All municipal offices in Newton were housed in a new complex east of town that looked like a strip mall without the colorful window displays. The outdated courthouse had been taken over by the local historical society.

  Thankfully, the sun went down early enough in February for the building to still be open. She stifled a yawn. To her it felt like three a.m. She missed coffee. She really did.

  There was a ’50’s era desk dominating the front room, out of place and ugly against the restored wainscoting. It was surrounded by glass cases along the walls. They were polished to a luster so visitors could look in at local artifacts. Arranged with carefully typed labels were musket balls dug from barn walls, medals on frayed ribbons, farming implements and faded quilts.

  If the desk was out of place, so was the young woman behind it. Holly would have expected a matronly type with a beehive hairdo and sensible shoes, not someone her own age with ironed hair and bright yellow foam clogs.

  She yawned again behind her hand.

  Her mom had never guessed the good manners she’d insisted upon teaching her daughters would one day be used to hide fangs.

  Winters signed the visitor’s book.<
br />
  Her mother had signed the book for them last summer while she and Jayne waited patiently, in no hurry to begin a long, dusty afternoon looking for records of great-great-great-great cousin Ed or Eugenia or John. They had enjoyed an exasperated camaraderie. Their mother had loved filling in the little rectangles on the Raveneaux family tree and they’d been happy to humor her. Even Jayne hadn’t grumbled. Not really.

  Suddenly, Holly was wide-awake. You couldn’t grieve and yawn at the same time. She didn’t even notice the woman behind the desk batting her eyelashes at Winters.

  Really. She didn’t.

  The flirty woman directed them to the elevator.

  A lot of places they’d visited last summer had blended together in her memories. There were many soldiers, sometimes on horseback or sometimes standing. There were places with relaxed procedures like there were here. Other places had ridiculously complicated rules as if you were trying to steal government secrets. They’d encountered everything from metal detectors to moths, but Holly hadn’t forgotten Newton’s elevator.

  She remembered squeezing into it with her mother and sister. They had joked about their lunch, wondering if one french-fry too many was going to plunge them to their doom.

  It was old. It creaked. And it was all of three feet squared.

  Holly noted Winters was a big guy. She pretended it was the first time she’d noticed. His shoulders, alone, took up all of his allotted space and half of hers.

  The elevator had the odor of mildew and age and oil and dust, but it also very quickly began to fill with Winters’ scent.

  When did a vampire killer who rarely shaved find time to dab on cologne? A hint of spice followed him wherever he went. Just a hint. She wondered if a normal person like the woman behind the desk noticed it. It was subtle even to her heightened senses. Subtle and very, very intriguing. The teasing waft of fragrance made her want to follow it to its source. His jaw? His neck? His chest? The very idea made her close her eyes and swallow as Winters fought with the ancient, retractable gate that served as the elevator’s door.

  She tried not to think of Winters as the last guy on earth. She tried not to imagine how most woman would enjoy him as the star in that scenario.

  Finally, he managed to slide the stubborn woven metal from the top of the elevator’s opening to their feet. A bar latch automatically scraped into place.

  They were closed in together.

  Thank God the courthouse wasn’t ten stories tall. Still, Holly knew it would take longer than it should to reach the basement records room. This wasn’t a modern mechanism that swooshed you to the floor you wanted with barely enough time to feel the butterflies in your stomach.

  The hundred-year-old gears or cables or pulleys or whatever above their heads creaked into motion like molasses in January.

  And she felt butterflies anyway because Winters brushed all along her left side.

  Subtle? Subtle as a heart attack.

  His scent filled her nose. She tried shallow breathing. His body heat began to warm the space they shared. She tried not to bask in it.

  Inch by inch, the elevator crept to the basement. Second by second, Holly reminded herself that more than a quarter of inch separated them. Much more. There was an endless, bottomless chasm between them.

  It would be easy to forget it. So easy. Especially when she could detect his reactions to their forced proximity. His pulse had quickened. His chest rose and fell a little faster than it should. He was growing warmer by the minute.

  It was one thing to ignore her reaction to him. She could do it if she brought every ounce of willpower she possessed into play. His reaction to her wasn’t so easy to dismiss.

  Every ounce of willpower wasn’t enough.

  Holly had been studiously staring at her feet.

  Now, she looked up at Winters only to find him looking down at her. The elevator was starkly lit by a bare bulb in the ceiling. She knew she looked like death not warmed over. She’d seen her reflection last night in the diner’s restroom. It was too bad the myth about vampires and mirrors wasn’t true. She could have done without the glimpse of her sunken cheeks, lank hair and circled eyes.

  Of course, she had probably improved since her run in with Dillon, but she didn’t like to think of that.

  She was not at her best, for sure.

  Some part of her refused to lower her gaze.

  There had been a time or two in the past when she had ditched a class because she was having a bad hair day, and yet she met Winters’ gaze without flinching.

  Funny how dying could make you less shallow.

  Winters had copper-penny eyes and full lips and a jaw any movie star would die for. He also had his own dark circles and frown lines and a twitching muscle in his left cheek. His lovely jaw was set, clenched. Did it illustrate his own battle with self-control?

  Holly refused to go there. She bit her lip and tried not to go there. Biting her lip was a nervous habit she’d had for as long as she could remember. Her dad had used it to gauge her state of mind. Winters’ gaze slipped from her eyes to her lips.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself,” he warned.

  Before Holly could react or reply, he lifted his hand to touch her face. She almost did flinch then, but his gentle fingers made her freeze instead. They delicately pulled her lower lip out from under a pointed canine. She held her breath as the rough pad of his thumb soothed over the threatened skin.

  It was a soft gesture. It was gentle and thoughtful and Holly nearly shattered. She didn’t think she had an ounce of self-control left. Not even a pinch.

  She wanted to throw herself in his arms. She wanted to hold and be held and pretend the world was a brighter place. She wanted to weep for her sister and father, her mother and herself. And even for Winters.

  She wanted to weep for the man he would have been if monsters didn’t exist.

  She did none of those things because the elevator came to rest on the basement level with a clank and wheezing sigh.

  Winters withdrew his hand as if he’d flicked a piece of lint off of a stranger’s jacket. He bent over to jerk on the gate and wrench it open. He stepped out first, leaving her to clear her thoughts and gather her emotions. She coughed once, choking on it, but she squared her shoulders and stepped out after him as if she hadn’t had to rebuild her whole nervous system in three seconds flat.

  She was not a stray puppy hungry for affection. She would not pine for his touch or beg for his attention. Even monsters had their pride, didn’t they? Was the last guy on earth allowed to be picky?

  Winters was flanked on either side by rows of filing cabinets. Holly knew from experience they held copies of birth records and rubbings from tombstones and lots and lots of newspaper clippings. Even with an army of volunteers and oodles of time, every piece of paper couldn’t be scanned to computer disk and some people preferred hard copies anyway. There was something to be said for holding a piece of your family’s history in your hands.

  She wasn’t an expert on Raveneaux family history like her mother. No matter how hard you tried to be a great daughter who was interested in your mother’s hobby, there was a point when conversations on the subject had turned to blah, blah, blah.

  Parts of the Raveneaux family had moved from Louisiana to Charleston before the Civil War. They had dispersed to many other cities across America after the war ended. Supposedly, there had been a Raveneaux plantation, but her mom hadn’t been able to uncover exactly where it had been. Following the Civil War, the Raveneaux folk had turned into merchants, bankers, or for all she knew, doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs. When you were talking a couple of hundred years, it was hard to sum it all up.

  Winters was looking at her again. It was a pause, that look, a where-do-we-go-from-here stare.

  She wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel like a dead end. The connection she had with her Maker wasn’t magical, no more so than geese flying south or salmon swimming upstream. It just…was. She hadn’t followed memories to this to
wn. She had followed Dillon.

  Simple, plain oysters made beautiful pearls…but it wasn’t magic. Bloodhounds could find a lost child in the wilderness…but it wasn’t magic. The link she shared with Dillon didn’t feel mystical. It was real and solid and physical. Okay, so yeah, there was that flying-without-wings trick, but she wasn’t ready to start believing in fairy sparkles and abracadabra yet.

  If she donated her body to science, the answer would be found in her blood, in her brain, or in her cells. Only, she didn’t have the time to be dissected right now.

  Besides, it wasn’t the nature of the tie she shared with Dillon or its reliability that frightened her.

  It was the calculated creation of it.

  Dillon had shared his blood so she would have a trail to follow. There had been a vague sense of connectedness before he’d taken her to the clouds, but it was nothing compared to this…knowing…she felt now.

  She was like a dog on a leash.

  No, she refused to look at it that way. She wouldn’t. She had a choice. Dillon couldn’t take that away, not with his blood or his wicked grin or his promises. Winters couldn’t take that away, not with his knife or his frowns or his intent to kill her.

  She chose to follow Dillon. She chose to lead the way for Winters. She told herself that even though she had few alternatives.

  Her mother needed her. She had to believe it. And if some small part of her was doing this because she needed her mom, then so be it. She couldn’t need Winters. She wouldn’t need Dillon. Family was all that was left.

  As they hovered, uncertain of what to do next, Holly breathed in the musty, plug-a-dehumidifier-in-stat smell. One ground-level window had been left open to air the place out and someone had forgotten to close it. It was black outside. The courthouse would close soon.