Trusting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 2

by Bridget Essex

  But the reason I clung to that thought was the too-painful one that was beginning to make my heart actually hurt:

  I’d have to go.

  “Well,” I said, glancing at the barista who was still making my latte. He was pumping the whipped cream on top, currently. “We don’t all have to go.”

  She pursed her lips, huffing out a small sigh. “You won’t come?”

  I ran my hand through my hair, taking a deep breath. “There’s no reason for me to show up,” I told her, taking the latte from the barista. Outside, it was beginning to darken, autumn storm clouds roiling along the edges of the horizon again. It was a stormy autumn that they had in Maine, but it seemed to be much worse, concentrated as it was around Eternal Cove.

  It matched my mood perfectly.

  “I mean, it’d be a great date for you and Tommie,” said Gwen innocently, raising her eyes as we both turned and made our way toward the coffee shop door. “Trust me,” she said with a slight eye roll,” you’re going to be very bored for good date spots pretty soon. In all of Eternal Cove, there’s this coffee shop, the tiny movie theater that gets one new movie every month, and an Italian diner. You’re going to be wishing for opportunities like this in about a month. And you know how far Portsmouth is.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to tire of Eternal Cove’s dating options,” I muttered, worrying my finger at the rim of the to-go lid. I traced the recycling symbol pressed there. “It’s just…the problem is Kane, Gwen. It’s really hard with Kane being there. And, I assume, since she owns the hotel that she’s going to be at the dance.” I took a deep breath and shook my head. “I don’t think I can be in the same room as her for a while.”

  My best friend gazed at me with raised eyebrows. “I thought it was all Tommie all the time now,” she said flatly.

  “God, you make me sound so flippant,” I muttered, feeling an ache roar through my bones. I wasn’t flippant. I was confused, and those were two very, very different things.

  “You’re not flippant,” said Gwen soothingly. “I just don’t think you know what you want.”

  “I want Kane,” I blurted out, “but I can’t have her.”

  We’d made our way out to the coffee shop steps, and Gwen paused now, staring at me with wide eyes.

  It was true, I realized as I took a deep breath.

  It was utterly true.

  “Rose,” said Gwen quietly, searching my eyes as she leaned forward and gripped my arm, “Kane has Melody now. You wouldn’t…you wouldn’t ask Kane to cheat on her?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper now.

  “That’s horrific,” I muttered, tears filling my eyes. “How can you even ask me that? No,” I replied, after a deep breath. “I would never do that.”

  “Then what are you going to do?” she asked me quietly, searching my gaze.

  “I mean, what choice do I have, Gwen?” I asked her, gripping my cup so tightly that the lid popped off. I pushed it back down all around the rim as we walked back to the car. I took an impulsive sip of my far-too-hot latte. “I’m going to be miserable, and I’m going to try to forget what I want, and I really like Tommie,” I told her too quickly, stumbling over the words. “And that’s enough to help me try and forget.” God, it sounded so terrible, saying those words out loud. But it was the truth, whether I wanted it to be or not. “I’m not using Tommie,” I said quickly, glancing sidelong at Gwen. “I mean…I feel like I’ve known Kane all my life, and I feel that way with Tommie, too. It’s different, but I still do care about her. I think I could grow to love her,” I said softly. “It’s just…it’s just not like it is with Kane.”

  Gwen unlocked Moochie’s doors and hopped up into her van. She shrugged a little, shoving the key into the ignition. “It doesn’t have to be this complicated, Rose. I understand that you had a thing for Kane, but you never actually did much with her, and now Tommie’s all over you. I don’t understand why you’re throwing something so good to the wind.”

  I climbed up into her van, too, feeling hurt. There was no way that I could possibly explain what I felt for Kane to Gwen. It’d sound too esoteric or gushy or weird. We have a connection really didn’t cover everything I felt for Kane. What Gwen said was true—but my feelings weren’t lying.

  “I’m not throwing anything away,” I said softly. “I know what I have with Tommie, and that’s why I’m going on dates with her, and…and…” I spluttered, working my hand in a circle as I tried to explain myself. I was frustrated at how I couldn’t articulate the connection I felt with Kane, and I was frustrated that I couldn’t properly convey to my best friend that I wasn’t taking advantage of Tommie. I did care about her, it just wasn’t how I cared about Kane.

  But I could get there with Tommie. Couldn’t I?

  Gwen started the engine and nosed the van out onto the rush-hour traffic of the main street of Eternal Cove. Which mostly consisted of three other vehicles idling at the stoplight with us and nothing else.

  It was already starting to get dark as we turned the nose of the van toward the Sullivan Hotel, beginning up the steep road toward the top of the hill.

  Gwen gritted her teeth and muttered an expletive under her breath. I glanced at her in surprise, but she was looking in her rearview mirror.

  “Some jackass is riding me,” she muttered, pushing Moochie’s gas pedal down as far as it could go. The van was a surprisingly good vehicle for how ancient it was, but it could only do so much, especially on such a steep incline. We were going twenty-five miles an hour, and the van’s engine was roaring. This was the absolute best it was capable of.

  I glanced in my side mirror. The vehicle behind us was a large Hummer. It was already too dark to make out the driver or the passenger, but then it no longer mattered, because the driver floored his Hummer (which was much better equipped to deal with sharp inclines than Gwen’s poor van), and swerved around us to pass us.

  “About time,” Gwen muttered, letting off on the gas a little to let the guy pass.

  But he didn’t pass.

  “Gwen,” I began, turning to look at her, intent on saying something else entirely, but I don’t remember what that was…

  Because, instead, I screamed as the Hummer broadsided us.

  Gwen had been driving with only her left hand on the wheel. With the weight—and force—of the Hummer, the wheel went spinning, and so did the van.

  We were at a hairpin turn in the road, and the van immediately tumbled off the side of it. Because Moochie is heavy, too, it didn’t go too far. We were only in the ditch, the seatbelts pinning us to the seats, Gwen staring at the ceiling in a daze. The driver’s side door was crushed inward, but Moochie had been built like a tank—Gwen must have hit her head, but there wasn’t any blood.

  I was fine.

  Pure instinct and adrenaline took over as I snapped out of my seatbelt. “Gwen?” I whispered, then said it a bit louder, shaking her arm just a little. Gwen blinked blearily and turned her head to glance at me.

  Down the road, the Hummer had pulled over. I could see both the driver’s side door and the passenger door opening and shutting, and two people running toward us in Moochie’s headlights.

  At least they have the decency to help, I thought, as I undid Gwen’s seatbelt. All I could think about was Moochie combusting into flames—through the windshield, I could see how badly pushed inwards Moochie’s hood was. We’d hit a tree, which is what had stopped our trajectory. If we’d been going faster, I don’t know what would have become of us.

  “Gwen, please, are you all right to move?” I asked her, panting as I twisted myself and rose to my knees in the passenger seat. My passenger side door was wedged against another tree, so there was no getting out that way. We’d have to take Moochie’s back door out, which meant Gwen needed to be able to get out of her seat. But what if she had a spinal injury?

  Another car passed us and the Hummer, driving slowly up the road. I glanced up in surprise, looking for the two people who had exited the Hummer…but I didn�
��t see them.

  My stomach turned at that. First off, there was no way that the Hummer hadn’t seen us when he was trying to merge back into the lane. Not unless he was drunk, and how was that possible so early in the afternoon/evening? And with such an expensive car, it would seem that you’d want to be careful.

  No, honestly…it had seemed deliberate.

  I tried to swallow my suspicions and I turned my entire attention onto Gwen, but my skin on the back of my neck was crawling.

  Things didn’t feel right. The Hummer’s hazard lights were flashing in the darkness—Moochie’s headlights had gone out.

  Which, effectively, had plunged me and Gwen into darkness.

  Because we weren’t up on the top of the hill yet, and because the sun didn’t set over the ocean, but over the land instead, we were in a pocket on the side of the hill that was much darker than it would have been elsewhere. This, also, gave me chills.

  It was like this had been planned.

  But what the hell for?

  “Gwen, please wake up,” I whispered, shaking her shoulder a little.

  “I’m up, I’m up,” she muttered, moaning a little as she reached up and brushed her fingertips against her forehead. “Oh, my God, what happened?” she asked, opening her eyes wide and taking in the damage. “Did I hit a deer?”

  She couldn’t remember. Maybe she hadn’t seen, but if she had seen, was the loss of memory a sign of shock? I had no idea. If she was in shock, did that mean she had other injuries?

  “No deer,” I muttered, glancing out the windshield again. The Hummer sat on the side of the road, flashing away. And there was no sign of its occupants.

  Something was very wrong.

  “Are you hurt? Can you wiggle your fingers for me, move your legs? I think we have to go,” I told her quickly, climbing over the center console of the van into the back where the groceries had spilled out of their paper bags, tomatoes and heads of lettuce rolling everywhere.

  “Of course I can wiggle my damn fingers and toes,” said Gwen testily. “What did we hit?”

  “That Hummer hit us,” I said, pointing out the windshield.

  She stared at it in surprise, reaching for her seatbelt—which I’d already unbuckled. “It sideswiped us?” she muttered.

  Okay, so this meant she probably wasn’t in shock, right? That she could remember the Hummer had tried to pass us? “Yeah,” I told her, biting my lip and glancing out the passenger side window of the van. “Look, Gwen, I think we really need to get out of here. In case…in case the engine explodes or something,” I told her quickly.

  I didn’t want to tell her that I thought something nefarious was going on. Because what if it wasn’t? Gwen had no idea currently that the Sullivan Hotel was full of, and run by, vampires, and I thought it best to keep it that way. If, at least, for a little while longer.

  And, frankly, was it really my place to tell her? Kane hadn’t seemed exactly eager to reveal that fact to me, either, and was forced to, only to save my life.

  “Okay, okay,” she wheezed, wincing as she climbed up onto her seat and then crawled over the center console to the back of the van with me. She slipped on a tomato and fell into me.

  That’s when I felt something wet against my hand when I reached out to steady her.

  “Gwen, are you hurt?” I whispered, but she grunted at me, shaking her head.

  “Dunno. Let’s get out of here.”

  I lifted up my hand, and—even in the meager light—I could tell my palm was slick with blood.

  “Gwen, I think you’re hurt,” I told her, my voice higher, but Gwen sighed at me and smiled a little tightly.

  “Won’t matter if Moochie explodes and turns us into hamburger,” she told me, jerking her thumb toward the back doors. “Can you get those open from the inside? Do you remember how?” She was pressing her hand to her side, where I’d reached out and touched her. Her cardigan was black, but I could still make out the darkening stain that was soaking through her t-shirt beneath the cardigan.

  “Um, um,” I muttered, clenching my teeth and running my hands—one blood-stained and one not—over the back panel of the doors. Moochie was an old van, and they weren’t exactly safety adept in the eighties, or whatever decade created Moochie. The back doors opened perfectly well from the outside, but inside there was a funky latch that you had to hold down while pressing outward.

  Something hit the side of the van.

  My heart leapt into my throat, and Gwen fell against me as the van rocked gently from side to side, the impact enough to have made two wheels on the left side leave the ground. There was only one small window in the rear of the van, and the two back doors had no windows. It was impossible to see what was outside, except through the windshield.

  Which only showed the Hummer blinking, its headlights beaming on the pavement as fog began to move eerily across the road.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Gwen, her voice high, too, as she gripped me tightly. “Are we stable? We’re not near the cliffs, are we?”

  We were, but we weren’t far enough off the road to be in danger of falling over them. With shaking hands, I managed to undo the back latch of the doors, and then they were falling open.

  We were in a ditch, and the wheels weren’t exactly flush with straight ground. It could have been anything that had made the van move, including earth falling against the side of the van, but as I helped Gwen out, I looked at the driver’s side of the van again.

  There was a huge indent, like a meteor had fallen against the metal.

  There was something out here with us.

  And I knew it was vampires.

  I’d been hunted once before, and that old fear merged with my new fear now, running together through my blood as it pounded in every vein of my body. I remembered the feeling of the teeth against my skin, remembered the feeling of the cold water covering my head as she dragged me down into the depths to drink me dry. How she had lured me out into the sea by faking that she was drowning. Because vampires were the most coldly intelligent predator of them all.

  They were practically human.

  “What’s happening?” asked Gwen, holding her hand against her side as she began to pale in the darkness. “Rose—”

  “We’ve got to go,” I managed, gripping her free hand tightly and pulling her up and out of the ditch. I was operating on pure adrenaline now, adrenaline that made heaving my taller best friend out of the ditch behind me something I didn’t even notice.

  We were still far from the hotel, and we were just far enough away from the town that if we screamed, there wouldn’t be a single soul who heard us.

  Again, something that made me think this was planned. A little farther up or down the road, and there might be the hope of safety.

  Well, we’d just have to get there then before we were caught. I turned to look over my shoulder, but all I saw was the Hummer’s hi-beams, and Moochie’s dead hulk practically on its side in the ditch.

  “I think we should head up,” I told Gwen, ignoring my instinct that downhill would be much easier.

  Downhill was humans. Who might be able to help us, admittedly, but uphill? Uphill was vampires who cared about us and wanted us alive. Vampires who would be very, very pissed that their treaty had been broken.

  If we could get to them, we’d be safe.

  But that was a pretty big if.

  I stared up and up and up that hill. Over the towering trees, the distant lights of the Sullivan Hotel were brightening the sky. But I couldn’t see the hotel itself. If we went up the road, we’d be perfectly vulnerable, but there was the chance that a passing motorist would go by, and then we’d be able to flag them down (hopefully). If we went up through the trees and forested areas, cutting across the roads when we absolutely had to, we’d be less vulnerable, but there’d be no hope for help until we got within earshot of the Sullivan Hotel.

  Gwen sagged against me just then, breathing out through her nose in a whoosh. I had to figure out what t
o do—and fast.

  I glanced around, holding Gwen tightly around the waist as we began to ascend the hill through the trees. There was so much tight underbrush and thorns and branches that hadn’t been cleared away probably since Eternal Cove had been settled. It was just light enough out that I could still make out the shapes of the trees. The encroaching fog from the ocean had already slunk into the woods, and everything kind of looked like a set of a horror movie.

  I’m certain that being hunted by a vampire wasn’t exactly helping my perception of the woods.

  I kept glancing back over my shoulder. Gwen was losing a lot of blood, and her earlier awareness was beginning to slip from her. She kept trying to walk, though, and she kept trying to lean against me as little as possible. We doggedly kept marching up the hill, even when my skirt got caught on a branch so hard that it ripped when I couldn’t untangle it, even when she fell against a tree and crumpled to the ground. I lifted her up, she tried to rise, and together, we kept going.

  There was a sound to my left. It was innocuous, at first—I thought it might be a raccoon or a deer, rustling around in the brush, but I was also hyper-aware, and turned to look.

  It was a human shadow I saw, moving away into the fog.

  A vampire.

  I hissed out my breath between my teeth and began limping farther to the right. I could hear the roar and crash of the ocean through the trees. Maybe it’d be easier out by the cliffs to try to make it up the hill anyway. At least I’d have a clearer view if someone came for us.

  I stumbled out of the woods with Gwen, and we began to trudge up through the grasses. Now I could see the Sullivan Hotel, at least its roof, but it was still so far away. I thought we were closer than that.

  I heard another sound of breaking branches in the woods. I figured that vampires could be pretty damn stealthy when they wanted to be.

  Were they breaking branches on purpose?

  To what end? To terrify us to death?

  It was almost working.

  I kept trying to keep my breath even, but it was difficult, carrying Gwen and also feeling the terror pump through me. What I was trying to concentrate on, holding it tightly in my heart, was my small spark of anger.