The truck was a dark, metallic blue, and a few years old, and the bed was empty but uncovered. The windows were tinted so darkly that Siobhan could hardly see into them from the outside. Other than some grime on the mud flaps, it looked like it had been immaculately cared for.
Still, there was just something a bit odd about a noted vampire having a reasonably recent, unadorned vehicle. Maybe she had been watching too many movies, though she supposed nothing could actually prepare her for meeting actual vampires.
“What?” Jack asked, nonplussed, as Siobhan stared at the truck in bemusement. He sounded almost defensive, like he was already getting ready to defend his truck out of habit.
“I was expecting something different,” she answered, scratching behind one ear. “An old sports car or something like that.” She shrugged, her palms raised. “I don’t know why.”
“I like to be practical,” he returned blandly, with a roll of his eyes. Yeah, he was definitely a little defensive over the truck.
(She felt a bit defensive herself, actually, but once again, it was a slow and far-off feeling, like she was observing it through a pane of glass. She ignored it. It had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. It made sense that she might be a bit on edge.)
*
It was a largely silent ride to Siobhan’s cabin, so she could pack her own bag for the unexpected journey ahead of her. Jack followed her inside once they arrived. Most of his irritation had fled by then, so she suspected it had more to do with having the situation thrust upon him than it had to do with her.
Siobhan supposed she had misjudged him and Regina. She hadn’t expected her dog to be allowed to tag along without an argument. She hadn’t expected to be allowed to go back to her cabin to get any of her things. She had expected…monsters. Not people.
Barton trotted ahead of them, and as soon as he was inside, he pounced onto his favorite toy. It slid across the floor, and he lunged after it, snatching it in his jaws and tumbling over onto his side. Siobhan couldn’t help but to smile as she watched, but only for a moment before she grabbed an old backpack and started emptying random odds and ends out of it.
“This is nice,” Jack observed, turning in a circle in the center of the room to get a look at everything. “Small,” he added, “but nice.”
Her cabin was, in fact, small. Counting the bathroom, it was really only three rooms, as the kitchen, the living room, and the office were all combined into one great room. The bedroom was a loft at the top of a ladder, which at least made it look a bit bigger than it was.
Siobhan climbed up the ladder with her backpack, leaving Jack on the floor below to poke around.
“Didn’t you get lonely all the way out here?” he asked, looking around pointedly, as if he was trying to look around at the entire, isolated situation all at once.
Siobhan peered over the loft’s railing to look down at him. “That’s what Barton’s for,” she answered simply, before she ducked back over the railing and resumed shoving things into the backpack. “He’s great company. Loads better than anyone back in Baltimore was.”
“Maybe I’m just too used to being around other people at the manor,” he mused as he took a seat at the small kitchen table, settling in to wait for her.
“What do you do there, anyway?” Siobhan called down to him. “I mean, it kind of sounded like Regina was implying you were her fledgling, so are you just there to keep her company, or do you have a role there, or what?”
Jack snorted. “Well, yes, I’m her fledgling, and I like to think she enjoys my company, but I was also sort of her…personal assistant? Something like that.”
“And after that?” Siobhan dropped her backpack over the railing, and Barton sniffed it cautiously once it landed on the floor below.
“I didn’t set out to try to become the angel expert,” he replied blandly. “It just sort of accumulated, so I fell into the roll. So now, it’s my primary shtick. It doesn’t leave a lot of time to act as her PA.”
Siobhan made her way down the ladder, absentmindedly scratching Barton’s ears as he greeted her, as if she had been gone for so long. “Will you go back to doing that when everything with the angels is cleared up?” she wondered.
Jack cocked his head to the side, his eyebrows lowering in confusion. “You say that like it’s just going to take a bit of soap and a mop, and poof, the mess is gone.” He rubbed the back of his head with one hand, until his hand went limp to curl around the back of his neck. “People are dying, and with the seraphim getting involved, it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.”
Siobhan wrinkled her nose. “You don’t like optimism, do you?” she groused, and she picked up her backpack to sling it over one shoulder. She grabbed the purse that she had left on her kitchen table, pausing to sort through it and make sure her wallet, her keys, and her phone were in it before she tucked it under her arm.
Jack heaved himself back to his feet from the chair and began leading the way back out the door. “Optimism is not actually the opposite of being realistic,” he replied bluntly. “I can hope for the best and still be aware that bad things are coming.”
Siobhan followed him out the door, stopping on the front step to lock it before she followed him back to the car. She hauled open the car’s back door to let Barton in, and he made himself comfortable on the seat with his toy while Siobhan stuffed her bag and her purse under one of the seats. By the time she made it to the passenger side door and slid onto the seat, Jack was already behind the wheel.
“You know, you didn’t actually say why you wound up all the way out here,” Jack pointed out after a moment, as the car pulled out of the driveway.
“The sky,” Siobhan answered simply, looking out the window at the stars as they passed overhead. “I moved out here for the stars. I couldn’t see them in the city.”
CHAPTER THREE
The car ride was long. Siobhan slept for two hours and then woke up. Not because she was uncomfortable—sleeping in cars was a skill she had acquired years ago—but because she simply couldn’t sleep any more. Jack slid her a sidelong glance and informed her wryly, “You’ll get used to not needing to sleep much.”
They switched places not long after that, Siobhan sitting in the driver’s seat so Jack could have the passenger seat. “Just keep following this road until the end of time,” he informed her before he closed his eyes. It wasn’t a particularly eventful drive, though Barton stuck his head through the gap between the seats to rest his muzzle on the center console and keep her company.
They switched back once again once Jack woke up a couple of hours later, and Siobhan got the impression that he was rather possessive of the truck. She was content to let him do the majority of the driving, though.
She stared out the window silently until Jack pulled the truck over onto the side of the road and hopped out. She blinked at him as he let Barton out of the car. With the driver’s door still hanging open, Jack asked, “Does he do his business on command?”
“Cop a squat!” Siobhan hollered from the passenger seat. Looking back through the cab’s rear window, she could see Barton begin sniffing about to do his business.
She waited until both man and dog were back in the car before she asked, “What was that about?”
“It’s going to be a while before we can stop again,” Jack replied as he steered the truck back onto the road. Behind the seats, Barton yawned and laid down, his head resting protectively on his toy.
“Why not?” Siobhan asked, baffled. In response, Jack simply tapped the clock on the dashboard. It was approaching dawn, and when Siobhan looked out the window and saw the sun beginning to creep up, painting the horizon line a glowing, molten gold, the realization clicked into place.
“Is it a sunlight thing?” she asked, still looking out the window at the horizon. “Do vampires have problems with sunlight?”
“Got it in one,” Jack confirmed, nodding once, though he kept his eyes forward and looking out of the windshield.
Siobhan’s eyes narrowed slightly. “How does being in the car help us?” she asked slowly as she rapped her knuckles pointedly against the windshield. “It’s a little transparent.”
He eyed her sharply at the tap, as if she was going to break the windshield just like that. (Granted, she recalled the way the mattress had threatened to give under her hold before, and she found herself thinking that maybe she could break the windshield just like that.)
“The windows are custom made,” Jack answered easily, relaxing once her hands were in her lap. She recalled how dark the tint of the windows had seemed from the outside. “They’re about as close to UV proof as you’re going to get. It…itches a bit, I guess, for vampires who are especially sensitive, but it’s safe.”
“So, then, what normally happens if a vampire is in the sun?” she asked, turning to face him and leaning one shoulder against the passenger window once she was sure it wasn’t going to kill her to do so. “Do they just burst into flames?”
“Nothing quite that dramatic,” Jack answered wryly. “Don’t get me wrong, it can still be fatal, but it takes time. So, it’s…more like rapid-onset sunburn,” he settled on. “Red, painful, flaky, and then it starts progressing from there with blisters until you start shedding like a lizard. Eventually, you basically cook, but it takes a few hours.”
He shot her a sideways glance, and his eyes widened slightly at the look of alarm on her face. “I probably shouldn’t have to remind you that vampires can heal from basically anything short of limb loss,” he pointed out quickly. “And we can basically come back from anything that isn’t immediately fatal. So, yeah, a few hours of direct sunlight is fatal, but sunlight is rarely direct, uninterrupted, for that long in one go, and once you find shelter, you can just bunker down and heal.”
Siobhan relaxed as she pondered that, recalling her broken spine and cracked skull, and how both were now little more than unpleasant memories. Regardless, a shiver chased itself down her back. “I guess it’s good I’ve always been more of a night owl,” she mused dryly. After a moment, she asked, “So, we just stay in the car and keep driving until the sun goes down again?”
“Pretty much,” he answered. “If we really have to stop, we can just make a mad dash into whatever building we’re stopped at, but considering how far we need to go, it’s probably best if we just drive for as long as we possibly can before stopping.”
“How far are we going, anyway?” Siobhan asked.
“Washington,” he answered, pasting a saccharinely bright smile into place. “Yes, I do mean the state.”
Siobhan groaned and let her head thump back against the window. “And I can’t even sleep half the ride away,” she whined, covering her face with one hand. “Am I being hazed? Do vampires haze the…what did you call me, a fledgling? Do vampires haze the fledglings?”
(She felt amusement, but fuzzy and hazy and indistinct, like she was having someone describe the feeling to her, rather than truly feeling it. It was getting a bit bothersome, the sporadic feelings that were only half there.)
“Only sometimes,” he replied innocently. “But in this case, no. We really do need to get all the way to Washington.”
“To Washington. From Maryland,” Siobhan repeated glumly, as if the answer would change if she was just displeased enough with it.
“It’ll go by in a heartbeat,” he assured her, and he sounded far too cheerful as he said it. “After all, we can keep driving way longer than any ordinary human can safely keep driving.”
Siobhan grumbled to herself and folded her arms to slump down against the passenger side door.
Fifteen minutes passed in silence, and eventually, Siobhan asked, “What about food?”
Jack glanced at her briefly. “What about it?”
“Do we need it?” she asked, her eyebrows rising. “I mean, you gave me coffee back at the manor, so I’m guess I can still eat regular food and I’m not going to implode or explode or whatever it is vampires might do.”
“I’ve already said that gory, messy deaths aren’t inherently a vampire trait,” he groused in return before he shook his head minutely. “But yeah, we need to eat, just…not anything we would be able to find in a restaurant or a rest stop.”
“Blood,” Siobhan sighed, thinking back to every vampire movie she had ever seen, every vampire book she had ever read, and to the much more recent memory of her own shoulder being pierced in the woods. “I’m guessing my new diet consists of blood.”
“Right,” Jack confirmed. “I mean, we can eat regular food. It won’t hurt us, and most of us still enjoy the things we liked before we were turned. But we also don’t really get anything out of it. The entire food pyramid is now candy.”
“I’m just glad I can still eat candy,” Siobhan replied dryly. “I think I might have cried otherwise.” A beat. “Can I still cry? Can vampires cry?”
“Vampires can cry. You already cried,” he reminded her, sounding slightly world-weary. “I’m not sure why you would want to, but you still can, if the urge arises.”
“It’s an important emotional response,” she informed him primly, folding her arms over her chest and straightening up slightly so she could actually look as proper as her tone demanded she look. “I would need to find another emotional outpouring to replace it, and I would probably just resort to shrieking whenever I would ordinarily cry. No one wants that.”
“No one wants you to cry, either,” he pointed out reasonably, “but if it’s that important to you, congrats. You can still do it.”
“But what will I not have to do anymore, other than eating real food?” Siobhan asked. “Has my entire digestive tract become extraneous?”
“You still need to go to the bathroom, if that’s what you’re asking,” Jack replied, glancing away from the windshield just long enough to roll his eyes at her. “You still need to eat, after all. Your dietary needs have just changed. But you won’t need to go nearly as often, and you don’t need to feed that often, either.”
There was a moment of hesitation, and Siobhan asked quietly, “How does feeding work, anyway?” She picked at one of her nails. “Will I just have to snag random people and bite them? Does it have to be human blood?”
“It doesn’t,” Jack confirmed, his tone delicate, “but it’s a little complicated. You can go longer between feedings if you drink human blood, but animal blood will work just fine. It’s just…less filling. Like eating an apple to tide you over when you want a three-course meal.”
She supposed that made sense. It was a feeling she could imagine easily enough, at any rate.
*
Siobhan stared out the window blankly, watching the world pass by until around midday when Jack at last had to pull into a gas station. He shoved a pair of sunglasses onto his face and a hat onto his head, and he tugged open one of the back doors to let Barton out to do his business. The dog returned quickly as Jack hurried through the process of putting gas in the truck. Even so, his hands were already red and his knuckles looked chapped by the time he climbed back into the driver’s seat.
As he steered the car back onto the road and guided it back to the interstate, Siobhan asked slowly, “So, what was Regina talking about back at the manor? What was it that you need to tell me about?”
Jack drove one-handed for a moment, pulling off his sunglasses and tucking them into the glove compartment and tossing his hat onto the dashboard. “Becoming a vampire comes with more than just a diet change and some rapid healing,” he replied as he curled both hands around the steering wheel again. “There are certain abilities that all vampires have, and certain side effects.”
“What kind of abilities?” Siobhan asked quickly, perking up in excitement. “Do I get super strength? Is that one of the abilities?”
Jack huffed out a laugh. “Yes, it is,” he replied. “It…takes some getting used to. Some fledglings have trouble turning it off at first. Some have trouble turning it on. And some fluctuate between both options. On a rare occasion, a
fledgling just intuitively knows how to handle it. You,” he slid her a contemplative glance, “are either the second option or the third option. We’ll need to do a bit of testing first in order to figure it out, and I’m not willing to do that testing in my truck.”
Siobhan batted her eyelashes at him, even if he wasn’t actually looking at her. “Don’t you trust my self-control?” she crooned, one hand to her chest.
“No,” he answered blandly. “Do I get to finish explaining things now?”
Siobhan stayed quiet, looking at him expectantly. He waited a moment to make sure she was actually going to stay quiet before he carried on.
“There’s also enhanced speed. It’s not teleportation or anything like that, and regular people can still track where we’re going, but they would never be able to catch up. It’d be like trying to race a sports car down a straight stretch of road.” He paused for a moment, like he thought he was forgetting something. “Oh!” He smacked one palm against the edge of the steering wheel as he remembered. “And you’re an omniglot now. Languages just…make sense, suddenly.”
The Vampire's Bond Trilogy: The Complete Vampire Romance Series Page 4
