by Helen Allan
“Freely!” Tanya hisses, “I need to speak to you, NOW!”
I give Zan an apologetic smile and, frowning, leave the bar to follow Tanya to the ladies’ toilets. It was a slow night, otherwise I wouldn’t have left, but I know there isn’t going to be a rush of customers.
When I enter the toilet Tanya launches herself at me, her fingernails drawn and I only just have the presence of mind to pick up the bin near the washbasin and smash her over the head with it before her nails can connect with my face.
She cries out and falls back, more from the shock than anything, although it did seem like it hurt her, which was a first.
“What the fuck Tanya?” I pick up the bin, holding it at the ready. I can see she is shaking her head like a rabid dog trying to get control of her thoughts.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she moans, “I don’t know what came over me, I just, oh fuck!”
I follow her gaze and look at what she is staring at. She is holding up her wrist, and the red stone on her vampire bracelet is blazing like it is on fire.
“What does that mean?” I ask, fear making my voice shake.
“It means,” she says, looking at me with bloody tears in her eyes, “that Zan is one of the prince-bloods or blood princes, I can’t fucking remember, either way, you know what has to happen.”
I walk calmly, or as calmly as I can, back to Zan at the bar. I’ve asked Tanya to give me a minute, but every step I take my mind is doing cartwheels. I was playing a dangerous game, a very, very dangerous game, and the stakes had never been higher.
“Zan.”
“What was that all about? Friend had one too many drinks?” he smiles, although I can see it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Uh, yeah,” I force a smile in return, knowing that it looks more like a grimace, “something like that. Look, do you think you could help me get her back to our apartment?”
He looks at me for what feels like a long time, his eyes studying mine, before nodding.
“C’mon then,” I say, untying my black apron and getting my coat.
“Can you just leave?”
I nod. I had already asked Tanya to phone my boss and tell him I had a migraine and needed to go home immediately. I do get migraines occasionally, my vision goes all blurry, and I throw up. So I knew he would come and lock up and, being a slow night, it would be ok if I left.
Zan stands up from his stool, draining the last of his beer and putting his hands in his jean pockets as I walk around.
“Look,” he says quietly, standing close. I can smell his aftershave, it’s woodsy and natural, reminds me a little bit of the way gin smells, delicious, “threesomes are…”
I make a choking sound. I know I’ve gone red from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair.
“No, no,” I hold up my hand to forestall whatever he is about to say, “I promise you, this is not a sex thing. Really, definitely not.”
“Ah, ok then,” he smiles, it seems to me some of the tension goes out of his shoulders, but I could be imagining it. I wonder if he would have gone with it or not, ‘guess I’ll never know.’
“I don’t share my toys,” I say, laughing now, I don’t want him to wonder where I stand on the kink ladder, “really.”
He raises his eyebrow and chuckles. “Where is she then?”
“I’ll just go get her, wait here.”
I open the toilet door, prepared to be attacked again, but Tanya is all smiles. She slips her mobile guiltily into her pocket as I beckon her.
“Hey, you told me you wouldn’t phone anyone about this – we agreed.”
“I didn’t,” she frowns, “I was just finishing up with your boss.”
I nod and lead the way out of the toilets and back to Zan, unconvinced. Tanya could be a sneaky, sly bitch when she wanted to. If my plan is going to work, I need to make sure I am only dealing with her, not a dozen of her freakishly strong vampire mates.
“Remember, I told him you are pissed, and I need help to get you home. So act drunk.”
She nods and totters a bit on her heels, but her eyes are bright and alert, almost as bright as the blinding red light emanating from the stone in her bracelet.
Zan drives, and it only takes a few minutes to get back to the apartment. He takes one of Tanya’s arms over his shoulder, I the other, as we help her into the lift and up to our floor. I keep my eye on her and shake my head vigorously when her fangs extend at the proximity of his throat.
As we unlock the door and enter the apartment I slip out from under her arm, ostensibly to reach the light switch, but instead I take the only opportunity I know I will get and reach for the timber hat rack near the doorway. Snapping it in half over my knee with all my strength, I turn and drive it into her chest.
“So that’s everything,” I sigh, securing Tanya inside the chest freezer and ignoring her screams of retribution.
You’d think she slept in a coffin during the day, but you’d be wrong. I mean how many young women would have a creepy coffin in their apartment? And besides, caskets are expensive, especially the nicely lined sunlight-proof ones. A chest freezer though, completely dark. And Tanya has kitted hers out quite nicely; it’s full of fluffy throws and brightly-coloured cushions. We used to joke that it was like the inside of the bottle from that old show ‘I dream of Jeanie’, except she wasn’t a nice little blonde genie waiting to nod and grant you wishes, she was more like, chainsaw genie.
Luckily for me, she was also a security freak genie when it came to her freezer coffin. She made me lock it every morning after she settled, so there was no way anyone could stake her while she slept. Not that any other human knew about her, except me, but paranoia knows no bounds when you are part of the undead, apparently.
I flick the silver padlock on the freezer and straighten up to see how Zan is coping. He hasn’t run screaming from the apartment that I’m a crazy person, so that’s a start.
“So let me get this straight,” he says, staring out the window of our apartment, his face hidden in the shadows, hands still pushed hard into his jean pockets. “Your best friend is a vampire. My blood is special, in some way, and she needs to drain me dry, then go visit this queen vampire, who will drink from her, but we don’t know exactly what my blood will do to them, or why they want it.”
“Yep, that’s as far as I can tell,” I say quietly as I throw my clothes, books, shoes, into a second suitcase.
“And now you are telling me that, even though you impaled her with that piece of wood, she will heal and come after us.”
“Yep, I couldn’t kill her Zan; we are best friends. I just had to incapacitate her to give us time to escape. Frankly I’m surprised it worked, I didn’t realise I had the strength.”
“And you want me, now, to get on a plane and fly home to NZ, never to return.”
“Yep.”
“And you will stop off in Australia with your parents, even though Tanya, the bloodthirsty vampire, knows where you live?”
“I’m going to see Mum and Dad,” I sigh, “but then I’m going to move someplace else. I’m not sure where yet, but somewhere she won’t find me. But knowing Tanya, this will all blow over in a couple of weeks, and she will go back to being just a normal, everyday vampire.”
“And what if she doesn’t?” he muses.
“Then I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“There’s more you haven’t told me, isn’t there,” he sighs, turning to me. His eyes are reflected in the street lights shining in through the window as I flick off the apartment lights, hand him one of my bulging suitcases, and open the front door.
“Yes,” I say quietly, “there’s more.”
“I’m not proud of it Zan,” I say, taking another sip of my second strawberry daiquiri and fiddling with my seat’s overhead light button, on, off, on, off. “But what else could I do?”
He looks up from his laptop and gives me an intense, are you fucked in the head? Kind of look.
My tears have d
ried now, but I can see he is still uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with women weeping, uncomfortable with the new knowledge he has, the new way of seeing the world and of course, particularly not thrilled with the fact I’ve been complicit in Tanya killing people.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” I mutter, putting my daiquiri down before I can spill it, I’m already sticky all over from spilling the first one in my lap, that’s what really started the tears. Mostly they were tears of frustration, but also delayed shock, I guess, about everything. Also, there was the fact that he was sitting as far away from me as possible and treating me like I was a pariah. I could tell it was going to be a long, long series of flights if we couldn’t make up. “It is the stuff of horror movies, but it’s real.”
“You’ve killed people Freely,” he says quietly, raising his eyes to mine.
“No,” I whisper, “she did, I just helped dispose of the bodies. There is a more than a subtle difference there.”
“And you were worried about me being the axe murderer,” he murmurs, looking away.
“Zan you have to get past this. Yes, I helped Tanya dispose of bodies, yes I covered for my best friend. But I saved your life, doesn’t that count for something?”
He nods abruptly and returns to focusing on his computer. I can feel the lump in my throat tightening again, the tears about to spill over some more. If I’m totally honest, I’m crying for more than the fact that this man, this gorgeous man, thinks I’m a monster. I’m crying for the loss of my best friend, for the lost opportunity to finish my degree and scholarship, the loss of a lifestyle I’d come to enjoy – everything.”
I lean back into my seat and close my eyes, but all I see before me is the shock on Tanya’s face as I drive the stake into her chest. I was careful not to target her heart; I wasn’t lying to Zan, I didn’t want to kill my best friend. But I had lied to her, tricked her into believing I was going to let her drain him and then imprisoned her in her freezer coffin. Ever since she had been turned, the one person she knew she could 100% count on to help her had been me. And she was the one person, well vampire now, who I knew would 1000% always support me, no matter how shallow and selfish she was, she was always there when I needed her. And now…
I knew she would be out of her freezer by the next night. I planned to text one of her creepy vampire friends and let him know to release her as soon as Zan and I were safely far, far away. Still, the look she gave me, it was as though I had betrayed her in a way she could never have imagined and, I knew, might never forgive.
I sighed and opened my eyes, trying to see what it was Zan was busy working on with his laptop. It looked like some kind of drawing.
“What is that?” I ask, swallowing the lump in my throat and pretending everything is normal.
“It’s a CAD program,” he says, not looking up, “I’m designing a side-board for a dining setting.”
“Huh,” I lean closer to him to see the image he is drawing and I notice him flinch slightly, so I lean back.
“So you don’t just make the furniture, you design it too.”
“Yes,” he says, resolutely closing the lid on the laptop and turning to me, “Freely, how did you break that hat rack? It was solid jarrah. Did it already have a break, a crack, and you took advantage of that?”
“No,” I grip my bottom lip between my teeth, “I don’t know. I feel like, and I know this is going to sound really, really strange, but I feel like I have become stronger in the past two weeks, powerful, like, strong enough to hurt a vampire.”
He looks me in the eyes; I can see he is almost holding his breath.
“It doesn’t sound strange,” he sighs, “you saw me lifting those Oregon beams yesterday.”
I nod, I had been very, very impressed at the time with how easily he had hefted around some huge logs, testing their moisture content or something.
“I’ve become stronger too. At first I thought the logs were substandard, they were way lighter than they should be for that grade of timber. But I ran all the moisture and age tests before I ordered them – they were perfectly normal. I just somehow, could lift them.”
“Do you think we have become stronger since we met?” I wrinkle my nose in disbelief.
“I really don’t know,” he says, reaching for my hand where I had it resting on my thigh and flipping it over. My heart misses a beat, thinking he is going to hold it, but he isn’t, he is just studying it. I have no idea what he thinks he will see, claws? A tattoo that says; ‘I kill for kicks?
“But,” he continues, “I know now that my going into your bar wasn’t an accident, I think somehow we were supposed to meet. This whole crazy vampire thing, that old man in the woods,” he shakes his head in disbelief, “I think something strange is happening that you and I can’t explain.”
“Well, the crazy old man said you had to go home to find the answers,” I say, moving my hand away from his scrutiny and tucking it between my legs, “so that might be a good place to start.”
“Yes,” he says, turning to look out the window, “but he also told me I had to stay with my gypsy.”
Chapter 4
I wish him goodnight and shut my hotel door firmly.
Singapore, hot, sultry Singapore. The smell of Chinese food wafts up through the open sliding doors as I step out onto the small balcony and my tummy rumbles. I don’t know why I get so hungry on flights, I mean they feed us lots of those itty bitty meals, but I’m starving now. I decide on a shower before I worry about my stomach.
This stop-over was scheduled as part of the flight. Both of us agreed we were far enough away from Texas now to feel safe and could afford to sleep and stretch in a real bed before continuing the next leg of our flight. I half-hoped we might share a room, but he reserved two without asking. If I’m honest, I kind of appreciate that gentlemanly move, although I wonder if it is because he is respectful, or worries I might kill him in his sleep.
I peel off my clothes and step into the shower, luxuriating as the hot needles pound my sore muscles. Unwrapping the little bar of hotel soap, I sniff, it smells like orchids and vanilla and lathers up into a mountain of white bubbles. I sit down on the shower floor, the tiles cold on my arse, and soap up my feet, sighing as I massage the swelling away. I hope there’s no verruca or anything on the tiles, you hear horror stories about people getting huge warts and diseases from showers, but I’m kind of past caring. Long flights are not something I cope with well. My feet swell, my back aches, my skin dries out, and my hair feels like string. I decide to wash my hair with the little hotel shampoo and conditioner, even though I know it probably won’t suit my hair type. It smells faintly of orchids too, and I wonder if I’m going to come out of the shower smelling like a florist. I wish I’d thought to pack my own enriched conditioner, my hair requires a fair bit of care, given its thickness and length. But I was in a panic to leave, and only grabbed what I could see in my bedroom.
Eventually, feeling guilty about the amount of water I’m wasting I get out, wrap myself in a white, fluffy towel and wander back onto the balcony. To my left I see him, standing with his bare back to me, a white towel around his waist, staring into the distance. I study the muscles in his shoulders and his brown, lean torso. ‘mouth-watering. No wonder Tanya wanted to eat you, I could take a bite out of those shoulders myself.’ As if sensing he is being watched, he turns and catches me staring.
I wave and, clutching my towel tight around my chest, scurry, embarrassed, into my hotel room.
Stretching out on the crisp white sheets I let the warm air of the evening dry my body and think about dozing off, but my stomach again reminds me it needs sustenance. I could just order room service, but the glimpse of the city from the balcony had shown me a street market not far, and the sounds and smells are calling me.
I open my suitcase and look in despair at the contents. I had packed so quickly, throwing in anything I thought I might miss, books and shoes were mixed up with underwear and photographs. I pause and pick up a photo o
f Tanya and I at last year’s Mardi Gras. She is dressed as a sexy nurse; I’m a nun. Sighing I throw the picture onto the bed and continue my search for something to wear. Eventually, I decide on comfort over style and throw on a loose, paisley cotton shirt and a long flouncy skirt. I’ve always favoured hippy-style clothes; op shop finds were my favourites, 70s prints, anything with flowers. You wouldn’t know it if you saw me at work on the newspaper. I wore neat little grey pinstripe suits and black pumps to the office, but outside, I was a hippy through and through. I survey myself in the hotel mirror and pick up my purse, locking my passport in the room safe. ‘should I ask Zan if he wants to come? Or should I just venture out as an independent woman? He’s probably had enough of my company after a 22-hour flight. Hell, he has probably locked and bolted his door against me, maybe even pushed the furniture up against it just to be sure.’
My morbid thoughts are interrupted by a knock at the door. I recheck myself in the mirror and press my eye to the little round security peephole in the door. It distorts him strangely, like a carnival mirror, but there is no mistaking that head of hair. My heart does a little skip as I open the door. He and I smell the same now, orchids and vanilla.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he looks me up and down and grins, “you do look like a gypsy.”
“What?” I frown and glance down at what I’m wearing, “I love this skirt.”
“Nah, it’s great,” he says, seeing my annoyed frown, “I’m just saying, ah, never mind, do you want to go get something to eat?”
I smile. “You read my mind; I’m starving, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I remember you saying Chinese food was your favourite, so, I mean we have most of tomorrow to rest before our next flight, we may as well venture out.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I smile broadly, “let’s go.” I’m secretly thrilled that he remembers my favourite food – it’s the little things.
We make our way to the elevators and travel down in silence. I can see his reflection in the mirrored walls, he still looks slightly uncomfortable, and I sigh quietly.
