My skull was fractured.
I felt every bit of the agony, but I refused to die. Couldn’t.
I said a man’s name. Begged it, as if he might appear, finally, and after all this, save me.
Not yet. Not tonight.
With a strength I never imagined I could have, I rolled, ignoring the further damage I was doing to my body. I had to get that metal out. I grabbed it and pulled but it was thicker at the bottom than the top. I had to push the other way, shove it out through my back. It cut my palms. I don’t know how I was even holding it with my broken arms, but I lay on my side and in three great pushes like giving birth to a chunk of scrap metal, I pushed it out of my back, then flopped down.
Sunrise. The sun was going to come up.
I was behind the casino, in one of the places too hidden and obscured to bother with landscaping, grass, palm trees that don’t belong. Just dirt and scrub and enormous air conditioning condensers. There used to be six of them. Now there was five. I’d landed smack in the middle of one, and trashed it. It had some give. I think I might have died if I hit the ground itself, just smashed to pieces. Or maybe not, and I’d lay there feeling all the wounds until the sun got me. I dragged myself across the ground, not looking at the strangely clean bones jutting out of my limbs.
It wasn’t a thought, just an instinct. The sun. Have to hide.
With my shaking hands, I dug, clawing at the earth. I stopped, gritted my teeth, and shoved my arm back into the right shape, crying out from the pain. Then the other. My legs I didn’t even want to look at. I dug until there was a shallow pit and slid into it, and yanked on the pile of dirt I made, pulling soil and scrub grass over me, stuffing it over my face before I wriggled dirt onto my arm.
The sun came later.
I lived, if you can call it that.
I woke up and sat up, hacking and coughing dirt. My arms and legs were back to normal, like they’d never been hurt at all. Somehow I knew the crack in my head was sealed, but my skin was waxy, dry, too tight and almost brittle. I crawled out onto the dirt and heard shoes scuffing in the dirt.
“There it is. Kill it.”
They shot me. Flashes in the dark, the bullets ripped into my body before I heard the bangs. Too loud, just walls of sound. They hit me in the sides. You’d think a vampire’s thugs would know how to kill one. They shot me in the chest. I launched myself at them, and though they outsized and outweighed me, there was no contest. I only remember bits and pieces of it. When I smelled blood, the cold void in my middle took over, reaching through me with its sharp grasping legs, dragging razors along the insides of my veins until I felt warm blood gushing past my lips.
The other one was going to get away. While I fed on the first I grabbed his leg, tore at his calf. He tried to call for help. I crushed his hand in mine. The phone he held cracked to pieces, and so did the bones of his hand. I fed from him too, until I felt almost sick from fullness, the heat thrumming through me.
I wrapped myself up in one of their coats. I ran.
I didn’t go to Las Vegas boulevard, I didn’t go for help.
There was a souvenir shop on Tropicana Avenue. I wound around the back. Jumping over the fence behind the shop was easy, and when I pulled on the doorknob on the back door it just came off. The shopkeeper chased me out when the alarm went off, carrying a double-barreled shotgun. Until he met my eyes.
Dully, he stood there, weapon drooping to one side, forgotten. I found a VIVA LAS VEGAS tote bag, stuffed it full of t-shirts and jeans, threw open doors in the back until I found the store’s little powder room. I locked the door and stripped naked, wiped myself off with stolen clothes and bathed in the sink, washing the blood and dirt from my skin and hair. I still looked dead when I was done, but when I put on a pair of jeans with HARD SIX plastered across the ass and a black hoodie with a picture of flamingoes on the front that glowed in blacklight and put up the hood, I could hide.
I left the shopkeeper. He was sitting in a chair, gun across his lap. He looked through me as I left, and pulled the door shut behind me.
He, or somebody, probably found a shredded, blood-soaked cocktail dress and heels in that bathroom, along with a pile of bloodied t-shirts, all balled up and shoved in the toilet.
That night, I wandered. I had no idea where to go, what to do. I didn’t remember my last name, what city I grew up in or even what airport I flew here from. All I wanted to do was stay away from another vampire. They had to be out there, others like Vincent and Elizabeta and if they found me they’d kill me, I was sure of it.
Eventually, I found my way back to the Strip, further up, towards the north end where the glitz and glam just peters out and turns back into sprawl.
Lost in a big crowd, I just walked. A knot of people walked all at the same pace from corner to corner and I walked with them.
One foot in front of the other. I kept walking. When they mounted a tour bus, I walked on by myself, head down, shoulders hunched. A group of toughs stepped out from an alleyway and stepped back when I passed, muttering to themselves. Something changed their minds.
Good for them.
Eventually, I walked into a gas station, not far from Freemont Street.
I stared at the clerk. He froze, then leaned forward and went back to chattering into his Bluetooth, in Swahili. It must have looked odd on the surveillance tape when I broke the cash register open and took out a cool eighty-four dollars and thirty-six cents, ten of that in coins, and stuffed it in my pocket.
The mind whammy helped. It kept the clerk at the front desk of the cheap motel where I holed up from checking my identification, or charging me to stay. I took a scalding hot shower. It got the blood off but it didn’t warm me up. I had to figure something else out from there. I wasn’t getting on a flight, and I couldn’t figure out how I’d work traveling by bus. What would I do when the sun came up?
I paid for two nights and left the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. I spent that day under the bed. The next night, I found a used car dealer on the north end of town. I broke in, took the keys to an old Chevy, and drove. I don’t know what happened to the car, but it got me to Arizona before the sun came up, and the basement of an abandoned gas station. From there I started heading East, not quite knowing why.
Four days in, I couldn’t try hitchhiking anymore. It felt like I’d swallowed razor blades. Everything was hazy. I had only a vague idea of where I’d come from, an even more vague one of where I was going. The way the sun came from when it rose, that was all I knew. Had to get East.
The fifth night away from Vegas I ended up in a bar, what people call a honky-tonk. I sat down at the bar and tried to figure out what to do, when a big guy put his hand on my shoulder.
I looked in his eyes. That little voice had a lot to say about him.
He had a bad night.
I slept in the trunk of his car for another few days, another few hundred miles.
One day I got out of the car of a man I’d killed.
I knew my name was Christine.
That was about it.
Chapter Thirteen
I’m lying on the bed. I don’t feel anything, just cold.
That’s a lie. I do feel something. Hollow. Emptied out, like something took a big bite of my middle and I can feel a chill through what’s left. When I finish speaking I just lay there and stare straight up, wondering what happens next. There isn’t much of a story after that. Everything goes fuzzy again. I don’t know how many men, how many feedings, how long it’s been. I don’t know what year or even what decade this is. It might have been six months or six years and I’d have no idea.
He sits beside me. The way the bed dips makes me want to roll over and press against him. When he rests his hand on mine I feel warmth for a quick second before my hand just goes numb and I pull it away. He really is handsome. Beautiful, even. A warm smile, a sparkle in his eyes when he looks at me. I start to wonder what his intentions are behind all this, how he knows my mother.
“Wh
at time is it?”
“About three in the morning. We should eat dinner.”
“I’m not thirsty.”
“Hungry,” he corrects.
He takes my hand and tugs.
“Come on.”
Sighing, I rise from the bed and follow him out of the room. He still has my hand, pulling me behind him.
I sniff the air and catch a whiff of something. The usual smells are still there. Sweat, the sickly-sweet tang of blood, his breath on the air. I smell something else and breathe deep, drawing it into my lungs, and heat flushes through my body. I smell sweet potatoes, and gravy and cranberry sauce. Something stirs deep down in my gut, an alien sensation half remembered. He’s no longer pulling me along. I match him step for step down the stairs, around the corner and into the dining room, and stop at the door.
There’s a long formal dining table, completely covered in food. It looks like a grocery store commercial at Thanksgiving. A turkey in the middle of the table, a perfectly sliced ham, big heaping bowls of mashed potatoes, golden russet and sweet. There’s cold salads and rolls and a tureen of steaming gravy. I stare at it and that sensation in my middle grows. He takes my hand again and stops to pull out my chair.
I drift into the seat and stare out over the expanse of food, at the empty plate in front of me. I take my napkin and fold it in half on my lap and sit up, primly. Mike walks to the far end of the table, grabs a chair, and drags it down the length of the room. I watch him the whole time. It’s like watching an old movie I saw once but forgot, both strange and familiar. Finally he settles the chair to sit next to me and starts carving the turkey, peeling the skin back with the carving knife before deftly slicing the meat.
The first serving is mine. He layers a few slices on top of each other. I stare at it, and sigh.
“I can’t eat real food.”
“I want you to try.”
“It’ll make me sick.”
“I don’t think it will.”
More food. Slices of ham, big blops of potatoes, both kinds. Heaping scoops of macaroni and potato salad. There’s barely any room on the plate by the time he drops a slice of canned cranberry sauce on the only available spot, along the edge. That’s before he slops gravy on the meat and shoves pats of butter into the potatoes.
“Come on. Eat. Just a bite.”
He fills his own plate and sits down, watching me.
I feel queasy. I think. I cut a piece of turkey with a fork and scoop up a little bit of mashed potatoes with it. Butter leaks out all over the rest of the plate. I raise it slowly to my mouth, part my lips, pull the meat onto my tongue and bite down, sliding the fork between my lips.
It’s like it explodes. I jerk in a full body reaction.
I can taste it.
I almost drop the fork. It’s more than a taste. For a moment I’m not there anymore.
Six, maybe seven years old. There’s a piece of turkey quivering on my fork. I’m cranky and hungry and tired, and sitting at this same table. It’s not Mike next to me, it’s my mother. I stare at her like I know something bad is going to happen. She takes my wrist and guides the food to my mouth and pats my head. She says nothing and there’s nothing to be said. My father has left and it’s another Christmas alone. Mom is barely keeping it together. There’s dark circles under her beautiful green eyes, and she looks like she’s been awake for a million years.
The turkey falls down my throat and the memory is gone, lingering at the back of my mind like the salt on my tongue. Trembling, I lower the fork and pick up a crusty, chewy roll. It’s still warm under my fingers. With the end torn open, I use it as a scoop for the buttery potatoes, equal parts sweet and gold, and raise it to my mouth.
When I bite down into it and pull the riot of flavors into my mouth, it’s not my hand anymore. It’s his. I can’t see his face but I can see my mother behind him, trying to scowl and fighting back a grin. I’m wearing the sweater he brought me for Christmas. I’m wearing the ring he gave me. Mom has noticed but she hasn’t asked. I take food from his hand like a pet bird and eat it and slide my foot up his calf under the table, playing a dangerous game.
The slaw dressing on the macaroni salad, heavy with vinegar, stings my tongue and I convulse. As I taste and feel the soft noodle and the firm hard boiled egg squish between my teeth I’m not in the dining room anymore. There’s warm air on my arms and legs, on a small patch of skin on my back where my shirt has ridden up because he won’t stop touching me. A rough bench beneath my legs, food on the table. My uncle is waving his beer to keep the flies away. Sweat clings to the glass, bubbling the Budweiser logo.
While no one is looking, a kiss is stolen.
Every bite is the same. Another moment, another memory, like peering through a clean spot in a dirty window, into a room I know by heart but have never seen. The fork falls out of my hand and I push back, my stomach churning. I cover my mouth.
Mike drops his fork and stands up.
“What’s happening?”
“Stay calm,” he says. “I knew this would happen. Come back to the table and-“
The table. I know the table. I know this room. I look around, finally seeing it for the first time.
I run.
I bolt through the parlor and back up the stairs, taking them two at a time, run back to the room.
Not the room, my room.
I throw the door open and it’s like seeing it for the first time, again. I take a step back out into the hall, peering through the door into my bedroom. I was born in that room. The bed used to be pink, there used to be My Little Pony posters on the wall, incongruous with the stately moldings and hearth and the other opulence. Later the room was darker in tone. The second time I had sex was on that bed. I know it was the second, the first was in the back of his car. When he gave me the ring.
My finger. There’s still a band of indented skin on my finger where my ring used to be. Before Vincent stole it. He stole it from me.
“Chris!”
I run. I don’t want him to find me. The tears sting my cheeks, hot and wet. I throw myself through the doors into the library, turn and shove a chair under the handles. He pounds on the doors.
“Chris, let me in!”
I ignore him. I circle the room. That symbol on the floor was never there before. This was my father’s office before…
I choke, and food rises to the back of my throat. Before my father died.
The desk. My mother never used this room. She kept it the same. There used to be a pipe set on the corner and it’s still there, on a pipe rest. I pick it up, feel the cool wood under my fingertips. It still smells like tobacco. There’s still a blotter and a magnifying glass and the last thing he was working on when he passed away, a stack of unfinished notes for a paper he hadn’t written yet, held down with a smoothly polished rock from the time we went to the Catskills between kindergarten and first grade. I saw a snake and cried, and I fell down and scraped my knee. I can see my mother holding my leg and wincing before she touches me with the bactine, knowing it’ll hurt me and knowing she has to.
Something on the desk doesn’t belong.
A notebook. His notebook.
I open it and it’s not a notebook at all.
It’s full of charcoal sketches. The most recent page falls open, the spine bent from wear.
The drawing is not finished, just roughed out. Most of the work has been done on the face. My face, asleep, eyes shut, lips pursed in peaceful repose. I’m lying on my back, and the further from my facial features the less defined the drawing. A bundle of roses rests on my chest, clutched lightly between my fingers, but the thorns cut into my flesh yet draw no blood. There’s a few lines suggesting a gown but I am basically naked, laid out on a bed, a crown of roses on my head.
A cold wave of disgust bursts through me. Did he strip me while I was sleeping to draw me naked?
I flip back through the book.
More drawings, and they are all me.
There’s a drawing of
me playing football, of all things, running in the grass barelegged, the football tucked under my arm, a great big grin on my face as my hair blows in the breeze. I flip the page and there’s another picture of me lying but in bed, in my side, the covers all tucked up around me except where they’ve pulled away and exposed my bare back. The technique is masterful. With only a few strokes of his pencil he’s managed to make me look sweaty.
More pictures. More and more, dozens of poses and they’re all me.
I see the dates.
If they’re not lies, he’s been drawing me for years.
One of the first ones is a full page spread. I’m laid out nude on an antique chaise lounger, one arm over my head, a great big sapphire I’ve never owned on a chain around my throat, the stone nestled between my breasts.
A voice whispers in my mind.
Draw me like one of your French girls.
Okay, but you know what that means.
I see my hands as I slowly peel off my clothes. He’s never really seen me naked before. In the car we kept our shirts on and…
Stumbling backwards, I turn the page again.
The layout of the picture makes me turn the book sideways. It covers both pages. It’s a church, a cathedral. There’s a huge altar and standing in front of it is me, in a wedding dress, a veil draped over my eyes, a bouquet in my hands. There’s a difference here.
This one is signed.
Mike.
I drop the book. It lands on the floor with a solid thump and I stumble backwards until I bump into my father’s old record player.
Music thunders through the library, and I spin around. I know this song. I feel it in my bones.
My legs turn to jelly and I fall, clutching my head. My temples are pounding. I can feel blood sliding around in my veins, feel tears spreading down my cheeks.
The chair cracks and the doors fly open. Mike charges in. My mother is behind him.
Thrall (A Vampire Romance) Page 12
