by Helen Allan
As we leave the hotel lobby the heat from the street hits us with a whump. He is wearing a thin, cotton T-Shirt with a picture of rugby-playing sheep on it, and khaki cargo shorts. I wish momentarily that I’d thought of shorts, but I know I would have been self-conscious about my legs since I hadn’t shaved them in a few days. His legs though, whoa.
“Which way shall we go?” he asks, turning to look into my eyes.
I swear I nearly swoon every time he does this. His eyes are so brilliantly blue, it’s like he is looking into my soul and it’s responding by saying on a loop; ‘kiss me kiss me kiss me.’ I swallow a grin and indicate left with my head. It’s not that I would do him straight away, if given the chance, I like to take things slow with men, mostly, it’s just my mind, my dirty little mind throwing up sexy montages and visions of him naked that’s driving me crazy.
“I think I saw markets that way from my balcony,” I say brightly, pointing to the right, pretending all is well with us, “sometimes the street food in these places is really great.”
“Ok,” he nods, and we walk on, in silence. I’m conscious of the distance between our bodies; it is like a visual example of how far apart we are psychologically at the moment. I wish he would just open up and tell me what he is thinking. I’m starting to wonder if I might just be better off getting a different flight home, so he doesn’t have to put up with my, clearly unwelcome, company.
As we reach the markets, I can’t help but check out some of the stalls. The silk work on clothes and textiles attracts me; I’ve always been cushion girl. It makes me miss the little apartment I shared with Tanya. We had an eclectic market-style mix of old furniture, plants and colourful Moroccan cushions in orange and hot pink that I loved. Once again I am gripped by the feeling that I will never have that kind of life again.
“How about this?” Zan asks, interrupting my introspection and pointing to a small roadside stall with tables and stools. “Satay chicken on sticks.”
“Yum,” I smile.
We saunter over and order a bowl of jasmine rice and four satay sticks each, perching on the stools I shovel mouthfuls in and moan in delight. “This, this is the real deal,” I grin.
He watches me eat and laughs. “You know most girls don’t eat as much as you do.”
“Are you saying I’m fat?” I lower my satay stick and point it accusingly at him.
“No, no,” he raises his hands in mock surrender, “I’m just saying you have a healthy appetite. It’s nice. I’ve always been uncomfortable around women who consider a lettuce leaf as their main course.”
Mollified I narrow my eyes at him and resume consuming my meal. As I’m eating, I see a small Asian man in a black skivvy and dark green pants, sidling up between the tables. For some reason he attracts my attention and, in between another scoop of rice, I see another man, also dressed in black, heading towards us from another direction. I start to look away, but my eye is caught by a pulsating red light on his wrist – he is sporting the same bracelet that all vamps wear – which means he knows about Zan’s blood.
Zan, seeing the direction I am looking, turns to see what has caught my attention and stiffens.
“Yeah,” I say quietly, putting my bowl firmly back on the table. “We should leave.”
As we rise and walk past the counter, I pick up another set of disposable chopsticks and wind my damp hair up into a bun, securing it with the clean sticks. I hold a second, used, pair close to my side, slipping the ends slightly under the edge of my shirt sleeves. Zan puts his hand on the small of my back and half pushes; half guides me away from the men, who are closing in fast. The heat from his hand burns through my shirt and makes me think hot thoughts, but I shake my head and concentrate on figuring out which direction we should take to get back to the hotel fast.
“Are they?” he asks as he manoeuvres us through the tables.
“Yep.”
“How do they?”
“Bracelet,” I say through gritted teeth, “tuned to your blood, don’t ask me how, I have no idea. Just run.”
The decision on which direction we should take is made for us as a third vampire appears and they close in, effectively shepherding us away from the crammed street towards a less crowded alleyway. I hear Zan growl low under his breath as one of the men comes up close enough to touch us, and I know, somehow, that I need to take my chance.
I lean in, past Zan, under his arm, and hit the man in the chest with a chopstick. Both our eyes widen in surprise as it enters his chest like a knife in butter and pierces his heart. In an instant he turns to dust. I see tourists and pedestrians around us pause, shake their heads as though they thought they saw something, and then keep walking.
As another vampire reaches for Zan, he kicks out and connects with the guy’s chest, sending him flying through the air at least ten metres and crashing into a clothes vendor’s stall. The angry shouts from the store owner and customers follow us as we make a break for it and try to force our way through the people at a run.
The third vampire is following close behind as we turn up the street towards our hotel and run full pelt. I know we can’t outrun him, I’ve never been able to beat Tanya, and she is one lazy as shit vampire. But somehow, we are keeping ahead of him, and we enter the hotel lobby with him still about ten metres behind. Spinning, hands on knees, panting, I see him come to a halt outside the hotel, reluctant to continue the chase inside. Zan, nowhere near puffed, paces, hands on hips, back and forth in front of the automatic glass doors, his face a storm cloud.
Realising he might actually go outside and try to fight the vamp, I catch my breath and go to him, putting my hand on his arm. He jumps back as though scalded, and I grimace.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh, touch you, it’s just, you can’t go out there. He’ll kill you.”
Zan looks down at me, frowning, grabs my arm and pulls me towards the elevators.
“Wait, slow down boy,” I growl, as we enter the elevator, yanking my hand out of his grasp. “What the fuck?”
“How?” he says, shaking his head and looking at the ceiling. I can see he is trying to calm down and collect his thoughts, so I wait. “How did you make that guy disappear?”
I shrug. “First of all, he isn’t a guy; he’s a vampire. Second of all, I have no fucking idea. I’ve never actually seen a vamp die before. So I guess that is what they do when you hit their heart with a wooden stake, just, poof! ‘Thank God I didn’t hit Tanya’s’ And thirdly how did you manage to kick that other vamp from here to kingdom come?”
He looks at me, runs his hands through his thick hair and shakes his head, his expression serious.
“I don’t know. It’s like I said, I’m suddenly stronger.”
“Well,” I say petulantly, “me too. So stop treating me like I’m a serial killer. I don’t know where my moves came from; it was like it was just natural, like I was born to do it or something. And it scares the crap out of me.”
“Good,” he says, looking at me and reaching out to tuck a stray lock of my hair behind my ear, “if you weren’t scared I really would think you were some kind of freaking psycho killer.”
I frown at him, the words to some random song start going round and round in my head “psycho killer, run run run away ….’ and I start to giggle.
“Do you know that song?” I start to say.
“Psycho killer?”
“Yeah.”
We both start to laugh.
Sitting in my room later, we pool our ideas. The violence and the run seem to have broken down whatever barrier was between us and we are like we were before, relaxed, flirty even.
I show him the text Tanya sent. She escaped her freezer far earlier than I had anticipated. I knew she had phoned someone from the bar, lying bitch.
Zan hands the phone back to me. The text was short and to the point:
“I will find you, and I will bite you to death.”
“Not very imaginative is she,” he laughs.
“No. But
don’t underestimate her, she’s smarter than she appears.” Street smart, like a rodent, a blood-thirsty rodent.
“So here is what we do know,” he says, taking a bite out of a chocolate bar from the mini fridge. “You were best friends with a vampire.”
“Are,” I correct him.
He pauses, nods and continues, “you are best friends with a vampire, and as part of your friendship you used to help her dispose of bodies, because that is normal,” he pauses again and considers me with severe eyes over the lip of his beer bottle.
“Yes,” I sigh, “and I know how it sounds when you say it like that. But Tanya was turned when we were 16, nearly 17, and things just don’t seem so, well, final or whatever when you are that young. The vamp who turned her was on holiday in Australia, and when he left we had to figure out how she could survive by ourselves, so we did.” ‘Plus, we were both big fans of Twilight, but let’s not go there.’
“And did she ever kill anyone you knew?” he swallows, his voice deadly serious.
“No,” I say, my voice small, “she almost did once, but after that she only hunted out of town, and it wasn’t too much longer, only a few months, before her parents decided to move back to the States.”
“Did she ever bite you?
“No,” I smile and shrug, “she says I smell like Draino. None of her friends ever tried to fang me either. I figured it was because they didn’t want to annoy her.”
“Ok,” he says, opening another bottle of beer and offering me one. I shake my head, I’ve already had two, and the last one went straight to my head, I didn’t get enough dinner. “So, when you moved over to Texas and moved in with her, you realised there were other vampires.”
“Uh, yeah, well obviously I knew there were others, but I just didn’t realise there were so many. Tanya is popular, always has been I guess. She has a lot of friends, especially men, and she soon made her way into similar circles.”
“And there is a queen?”
I lean back onto the pillows, supporting my back, which still aches a little from the flight, and yawn. “Yeah, kind of, she makes everyone call her the queen, but Tanya said she wasn’t really a queen, more an area mayor or something.”
“And they have to drink young blood in order to stay young?”
“Yeah. Tanya will age like a normal person if she doesn’t get both young blood, and other vampire blood regularly. It’s some kind of strange magic I guess.”
“And my blood is extra special.”
“Yeah, all I know is that all vamps get a bracelet when they are turned. That bracelet lights up if they ever come across some kind of special blood, they call it prince blood, but apparently, it’s super rare. Tanya said no one she knows has ever found it.”
“Until me,” he muses, “and what do we know about you?” He is watching me as I snuggle deeper into the pillows, I wish he would snuggle up with me, but wishes are for children, and I’m a grown up, supposedly.
“Well, we know I’m stronger than I was,” I say sleepily, “and apparently I’m ‘your gypsy’ and you are supposed to stick with me.” ‘In me would be even better,’ I giggle, maybe that second bottle of beer wasn’t such a great idea.
“Yes,” he says, “so you will come home with me?”
He’d already asked me that earlier in the night, but I hadn’t made up my mind.
“Sure, sure,” I say as my eyes start to close, “I’ll change my flight, phone Mum and Dad tomorrow.” I feel like it is impossible to keep awake, I yawn again and blink, I think I might have fallen asleep for a second and then woken up. I did that once when I was driving a long distance back home, nearly drove off the road. Scared the shit out of myself. ‘Did I just agree to something? Never mind.’
“Close your eyes,” he laughs, “I’ll find my own way out.”
“Ok,” I sigh, but I’m basically already asleep.
Chapter 5
Zan’s parents met us at the airport. He had told them he was bringing a girl home and assured them everything was fine, that he’d just wrapped up their business dealings earlier than anticipated, but he looked worried when he got off the phone.
The reason was evident when we landed. Clearly, I have to assume; they didn’t like the look of me.
His mother was, at first, warm and welcoming, his father, a sternly handsome, muscular man, despite his age, was the opposite.
As we crested a hill and the car clung to the edge of a perilously tight cliff road, I subconsciously slid closer in the back seat to Zan, not wanting to look at the steep drop-off out the window on my side. As I did so, I noticed his dad stiffen and shoot an angry look at me in the rear vision mirror and I looked up to see if Zan had noticed. Evidently, he had, but his shrug told me he had no idea what it was about.
Now, sitting and sipping a cold drink in their beautiful house, the views of the ocean evident from the wall to wall windows, I felt even more uncomfortable. To say they were rich was an understatement. Everything about this place screamed wealth, not in an ostentatious way, more a classy undercurrent of money, old money.
Once again I was thankful I hadn’t succumbed to the idea of taking Zan on a quick stop-over to my parents’ home. They were your average Australian farmers, nothing fancy. Certainly, we were not poor, but compared to Zan’s folks we would have looked like country bumpkins. Lucky for me Mum and Dad were up in the northwest of the state on their annual sun-seeker caravan pilgrimage and wouldn’t be back for several more months. This meant I could a) avoid having to go home and answer uncomfortable questions and b) stop worrying that Tanya would hunt them down and suck them dry. There was no way she could find them living on a beach up north, totally off the grid.
I snapped back to the now as I heard Zan’s father talking to him in a low voice on the other side of the room. He had barely said a word to me since we entered the house, other than to suggest Zan should take a stroll with him when we initially sat side by side, our thighs touching, on the couch. It was the closest we have been since we met and I appreciated the meaning behind it. Zan could see I was uncomfortable and a little confused by his father’s coldness.
Now, as I stroll around the room, peering closely at family photographs, periodically admiring the view, I hear my name mentioned and wander, I hope nonchalantly, up to Zan and his father.
“You found your gypsy,” his father sighs, “there is nothing else for it. I will call Clementine.”
Frowning at me, he stalks from the room.
“Uh, is something wrong?” I ask Zan as he turns from me and looks out the window.
“I don’t know. Dad said he received a call from an old friend who told him I was on my way home. He said he wants to show me something later, something he says he should have shown me a long time ago. And Mum,” he sighs, “Mum’s crying in the kitchen but won’t tell me what’s wrong.”
“Jeesh,” I raise my eyebrows, “is it me? I mean maybe I should stay in a hotel or something,” my voice trails off.
“Can’t,” he sighs, “Dad says you have to stay here where it is safe.”
“Okayyy,” I stretch the word out, frowning. I really have no idea what is going on but I sure as shit don’t want to stay in a house where I am not welcome. “Well, shall we go for a walk, the beach looks beautiful.”
“Yeah,” he turns to me and grins, “come on I’ll show you around.”
As we turn to leave his father comes back into the room and, seeing Zan help me with my jacket, frowns.
“No dipping your wick son,” he says, his voice grave, as we walk out the door.
I blush and keep walking. As we go down the steep cliff pathway towards the beach I turn to him, my mouth open, incredulous. “Did your dad just say what I think he said?”
I can tell he is embarrassed, he nods and shakes his head, signalling me to keep walking in front of him.
“Yeah, my parents have always been worried I’ll knock up some girl who will want to take the business. It’s why I’ve never brought anyone home
.”
“That is fucked up,” I laugh, “but you should tell him, not that we are planning to, you know,” I blush, “and anyway, I’m on the pill.”
He laughs.
“It wouldn’t make any difference. He’s told me that since I was 15. I think both my parents have some crazy ideas that their sons should save themselves for marriage or something.”
“Has he said that before? That dipping the wick thing?
“Yeah,” he shakes his head, “the first time he said it I was going to stay at a friend’s house overnight.”
`Eww, is this where he tells me he is gay? I knew he was too hot to be true?’ “Um, a male friend?” I hope my voice doesn’t reveal my thoughts.
“Yeah,” he laughs, taking my arm momentarily as I slip on a rock and letting it go just as quickly, “but he had twin sisters, they were 16, and they had been phoning me a bit. I thought at the time Dad didn’t want me to risk my friendship by screwing my friend’s sisters.”
“Of course,” I say, my mind whizzing around, wondering if he did or didn’t.
“Didn’t make any difference though,” he chuckles, answering my unasked question.
“What?” I turn to him, laughing, “you didn’t!”
“Of course I did,” he laughs, “I was 15, they were twins…”
I shake my head and giggle as I look down, watching my feet on the small rocks, fearing I might slip and land arse up, totally blowing my cool façade. So obviously he is experienced…
“So really though? Never brought any other girl home?”
“Nope,” he says, turning to smile at me as we reach the beach.
“Wow, I feel privileged,” I laugh, picking up a rock to skip it across the waves. The beach is all little blueish-grey pebbles, so different from the soft white sand on the beaches at home. My rock doesn’t skip, which is bloody annoying, just sinks in the waves.
“You should be,” he says thoughtfully, skipping a rock perfectly across the top of the water.
