by Dean Murray
Chapter 6
Neither of us said much once I exited the bathroom. I thanked him for thinking of my 'pajamas,' he nodded and went back to wiping his gun down. I'd realized partway through my shower that I was more tired than I'd expected, so I finished packing my clothes and then curled up under my covers.
Ash finished examining his armory a few minutes later and turned out the other lights in the room. I thought I'd fall asleep instantly, but instead sleep remained elusive for more than an hour. Ash seemed to drop off immediately, but I tossed and turned for more than an hour without managing to find sleep myself.
I'd never been very good at dealing with insomnia. Mostly I just got more and more worked up as time went on because I knew I needed to be sleeping. Of course, the more anxious I got, the harder it became to fall asleep. At the best of times I tended to come unglued when I couldn't manage to go to sleep. This wasn't the best of times, and I suddenly found tears coursing down my face. I was tired and scared nearly out of my mind. Anton was some kind of psychopath super villain and the one thing that I knew for certain was that I was in completely over my head.
It was all suddenly just too much for me to deal with, and I started crying. I tried to keep my breakdown quiet enough not to wake Ash, but between one sob and the next he was there with his hard, bare chest up against my back.
Ash wrapped his arms around me, but he didn't say anything, he just held me while I cried myself out. Twenty minutes later I finally wound down and he loosened his arms enough for me to turn around and face him.
"Are you OK?"
I ran a hand across my face, trying to fix the worst of the mess that my face had become, but finally just gave up and nodded.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to just fall apart like that, I just couldn't sleep and then suddenly it was like all of the craziness of the last few days just hit me all at once."
"It's OK. The first time you realize that you're out, more or less on your own, in a world that would like nothing more than to chew you up and spit you out, can be a hard day or two. It gets better though."
I cocked my head to the side and looked at him.
"Are you speaking from personal experience?"
Ash gently guided me down to my bed and pulled the covers up to my chin.
"It's late, you should go to bed, Kristin."
Ash went back to his side of the room and seemed to fall asleep within seconds. I expected to toss and turn still, but instead I fell asleep myself a few minutes later.
All of the dreams that I'd been too tired and scared to deal with earlier chose to make an appearance as soon as I dropped into REM sleep.
The first one started off fairly sedately. I was hiking the hills around our town. It wasn't something I did very often. I didn't have a lot of free time, and what time I did have tended to be spent reading rather than running around outside during the three or four weeks a year that you could comfortably do that kind of thing in southern Idaho.
Still, this time I was actually enjoying myself. I'd just finished climbing to the top of the 'mountain' that had the school's initials on it when I started getting the feeling that someone was watching me. I spun around looking for the source of the feeling, but couldn't see anyone for miles. Even the town looked deserted. I turned around to head back home, telling myself it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but I couldn't shake the feeling. Even worse, I started seeing things out of the corner of my eye.
I flipped my head around trying to see what was following me and tripped over a rock. I'd been moving pretty quickly so I rolled a few feet before stopping. When I looked up Anton was there. It was Anton, but it was something worse. His eyes weren't really human anymore. Instead it was like looking into a pair of dirty windows. I couldn't really see inside them, but I kept getting vague impressions and all of them filled me with fear.
Anton reached down and picked me up by one arm. When I started struggling, he hit me. Hard. In the stomach. I doubled up, gasping for air, and he just laughed at me. Once I could breathe again he frowned, dropping me on the ground and then stepping on my hand.
I felt the bones in my hand break. Not one or two, every single one of them. It was the worst pain I'd ever felt. I screamed, but he just laughed again. He backed up a step or two and I rolled onto my knees. Even holding my hand tight against my chest resulted in too much jarring to my injury. I thought I was going to pass out from the pain, but I pulled myself to my feet and took a couple of wobbly steps.
I only made it a short distance further before Anton knocked me down again. I screamed in agony and then he kicked me in the ribs. It was like a vise had been fastened around my chest. It seemed like it went on forever. Anton would let me feel like I was making progress and then he'd hurt me again.
At some point I heard Ash calling my name.
"Kristin, it's me. I won't let him hurt you anymore."
I looked around, desperately wanting to see Ash and only seeing Anton. Somehow that was what told me this had to be a dream. I believed Ash when he said he would protect me from Anton. I knew that didn't mean I was safe. I didn't know the details, but it was obvious that Ash wasn't as strong as Anton. I wasn't safe, but I knew I wouldn't die alone until after Ash was dead and that as long as he was alive he'd be fighting to keep me alive.
The knowledge that I was dreaming was all that I needed to wake up. My thrashing about had kicked my covers away, but that was of secondary importance. Ash was on my bed, cradling me against his rock-hard body in an effort to stop me from flailing. A textbook probably would have said that restraining someone in the throes of a nightmare wasn't the best thing to do, but it worked perfectly for me. I relaxed into his arms and my heartbeat slowed almost instantly.
"Are you alright?"
I nodded, not quite trusting my voice. I could tell that I was on the verge of tears again, but the range of emotions that had pushed me to the edge of crying were too complex to identify fully. Gratitude for Ash, for him having saved me now multiple times, was there, but so was regret. I was feeling things for him that I was fairly sure he wasn't going to reciprocate. He was too closed off for it to be any other way.
"I'm sorry, Kristin. I didn't expect the nightmares to start this soon or I would have warned you."
We sat there in silence for a few seconds, me trying not to have a second cry fest in one night, him apparently lost in thought. I started to roll away from him but he wrapped his arms tighter around me and sighed.
"The answer to your question earlier is yes. I'm speaking from personal experience. I worked really, really hard to get the opportunity to be on my own. The first time I ran into something really dangerous it nearly killed me. I managed to get away and spent the next two days on the road trying to make sure that it couldn't catch up to me. At the end of the two days I found myself a motel like this and tried to get the rest I'd need to keep running. I ended up crying myself to sleep."
"I'm sorry. That must have really sucked."
I could feel Ash nod against my back.
"Yes, it really, really sucked. In the end you can't change the world, Kristin. All you can do is change yourself, so that's what I set out to do. I tried to make sure that I wouldn't ever be quite so unprepared for all of the craziness out there that wants to chew me up and spit me out."
Chapter 7
My dream terrors didn't return that night, but real ones visited shortly before dawn. My first indication that there was something wrong came as Ash rolled out of my bed. I opened my mouth, sleepily intending on asking what was going on, when I heard the key rattle in our lock.
I sat up, moving almost as fast as Ash as I realized there was no good reason for anyone to be trying to get into our room unannounced right now.
Ash already had his boots on, knife in the left one, a gun in one hand while the other stuffed magazines in his jeans pocket. He motioned for me to be quiet and then handed me his backup pistol before moving to the center of the room.
The door came open only a c
ouple of inches before Ash fired his first shot. The second came only a fraction of a second later, the combined effect leaving my ears ringing. Ash was moving already, he hit the door with enough force that it knocked whoever was standing behind it flying.
I was moving to follow, conscious mind not really having made any kind of decision. The next three shots were from slightly further away. I made it outside and realized that it wasn't raining anymore, but the rest of my mind was focused on Ash.
Two men were running away from him but he calmly sighted them in and shot first one and then the other. Despite the ringing in my ears, I somehow made out his yell to get our things. I stumbled back into our room and grabbed both of our suitcases. I wasted a couple of seconds looking for my shoes before realizing they were already on my feet. I must have slipped them on somehow before following Ash out the door.
Ash arrived back at our room as I was walking out. He pulled an unconscious female out from behind the door and then pulled his knife out of his boot.
"Get our things to the car, Kristin. We don't have much time."
I didn't want to leave him alone with her, but at the same time I knew that I didn't want to see what he was about to do. I found myself woodenly turning towards our vehicle. I only made it a few steps before he caught up to me, pulling me along by one arm.
He threw both suitcases into the back and then all but picked me up and set me in the car. Less than three minutes after the first shots were fired we pulled out of the parking lot. Ash was on his phone a couple of seconds later, but once again I only caught pieces of what he was saying. I was pretty sure he'd just called someone and told them to distract the police with conflicting stories.
We made it back to the interstate without being pulled over, and I realized that I was still holding Ash's backup gun. I gingerly slid it back into the jockey box.
"Are you alright, Kristin?"
I shrugged. I wasn't really ready to talk about it yet. My brain knew that whoever had been about to break into our room hadn't been planning on anything good, but the speed with which he'd killed them had my emotions in knots.
"I know you don't want to talk to me right now, but we need to talk about what happened back there."
My normal feistiness suddenly boiled back up and I turned towards him and let him have it.
"OK, let's talk. Do you want to start by telling me what the hell just happened? Or maybe we should skip the unimportant parts like what happened and instead just focus on the motivations. Did you really need to slit the throat of an unconscious woman?"
Ash winced, either at the fury in my voice or at the memory of what he'd done. It didn't really matter much either way, but I hoped it was the latter.
"You can't really separate the two things like that, Kristin."
"Really? Because I don't see how someone opening the door to our room justified killing what, four people?"
Ash was getting mad now. I hadn't even been sure he could get mad.
"Look, you were the one who wanted a glimpse into my life. You asked for it and now you've seen what the world looks like when you scratch away all of the glamour and glitz. People aren't nice, most of the time they aren't even good. If people are bad, how do you expect the monsters to be any better?"
The intensity in his voice made me pause.
"You're saying those weren't humans?"
"Vampires. Each and every one of them was a parasite that survives only by leeching blood from normal people."
Somehow I hadn't expected that vampires would be real.
"How did you know?"
"The smell. I couldn't pick it out earlier. Either they hadn't been in that room before, or the smell from your gum drowned it out. As soon as the door opened I could smell them. It's not a smell you can forget."
I mentally flailed around, trying to put in words what was bothering me.
"They…they were running away, Ash. They weren't a threat."
The intensity was back in his voice as he responded.
"Vampires know one thing. They live for the hunt, the feed and the kill. They were running away because they were overmatched. If I'd let them get away they would have just waited for the next victim. I won't have that on my hands."
It was hard to argue with his logic. We passed the next couple of hours in silence. I'd felt conflicted before, but this was a new level of being torn between opposing ideas.
On the one hand, I really wanted to like Ash. It was hard to believe someone so thoughtful could be anything but kind. Even setting aside his raw physical appeal, there was a lot to like. Stacked against that was the savagery he'd displayed. It had been one thing when Anton was trying to kidnap me. Then the reaction had been provoked. This time the reaction had seemed so out of kilter from the trigger.
I looked for ways to break the silence, but every time I shifted positions or cleared my throat his eyes found me instantly, and there was something there that stopped me from saying any of the things I'd planned on saying.
It wasn't hostility, it was more like hurt, but somehow my mind refused to associate that feeling with Ash. He was too self-contained for something as small as my good opinion of him to matter in the slightest.
Ash picked another motel as the sun started to set. This time I waited in the car as he checked us in and then scouted out the room.
"It's clean. Smells like it should."
"So we're safe?"
"No, that just means if there's something dangerous around, it's human enough that you can't pick it out just from its smell."
It was another sobering thought. Ash disappeared into the bathroom to take a shower and I was left with nothing but my suitcase. I turned on the TV, but after randomly surfing the channels for a few minutes I turned it back off and pulled my notepad back out.
Ash came out in just his jeans shortly after I started what I was pretty sure was my fortieth attempt. I watched him pull a shirt on and then leaned back and took a deep breath.
"What would you tell my parents? I mean, if you were me and you wanted them to not worry."
Ash shrugged, but there was a hesitancy to the motion that made me press.
"Come on, Ash. I need some help here. My parents are going crazy with worry and I don't know how to make things better."
"You can't make things better. At least not all the way, and definitely not with the truth."
Somehow I'd never considered lying to them, not about something this big.
"So what should I say?"
"You're the only one who has a hope of crafting a lie that they will believe. One way or another you need to try and convince them though. You can't go back, not with Anton out there. You'll never know but that he's there waiting for you to come back, using them to lure you back. The best way to guarantee their safety is to convince them that you're never coming back and then for you to never return."
Words failed me once again. I mustered a nod and then escaped into the bathroom, convinced somehow that he was right. The room was empty when I got done with my shower and ventured out of the bathroom. I sensed that Ash hadn't been running away, he'd just been trying to give me the space I needed to finish my letter.
I opened my notepad back up and crafted the best lie I'd ever managed. I hadn't left for a boy or any of the other reasons that they'd never have believed. Instead I told them that I'd cracked from the pressure. Pressure I'd put on myself. I'd left and was too ashamed to come back and face them.
I took away all hope that I'd ever come back but tried to balance it with the sense that I'd managed to land on my feet, that I had a place to stay and a steady job. The emotions continued to surge higher and higher inside me as I worked on my letter, but I refused to break down and cry. I knew once I started that there'd be no turning back, and I needed to finish the letter now, not later.
I finally entered a state of numbness which let me put the last few paragraphs down on paper. Once it was done, I stared at it for a few minutes before folding it up and tucking it back
inside my suitcase.
I turned out my light and curled up under my covers, still unable to feel anything. Ash came back inside a couple of minutes later, but I pretended to be asleep already. He quietly got ready for bed and then turned his light off as well.
I almost thought I imagined his whispered good night, but the way it hung in the air was something I couldn't have just conjured up from nothing. His continued thoughtfulness broke down the barriers I'd put up and I found myself quietly sobbing into my pillow.
Ash's hand on my shoulder was the lifeline I'd needed without really realizing it. I turned towards him and he wrapped his arms around me and just let me cry without saying anything to try and make it better. It was the perfect response—there wasn't anything that could make it better other than time and distance.
Chapter 8
Things were less tense between Ash and I after that breakdown. Without me having to ask, he stopped the next morning so I could buy envelopes and then after I'd addressed it to my parents he stuffed my letter in another series of envelopes and addressed each of them somewhere else. It seemed like a reasonable way to me to make sure that nobody could track us down.
Once we were back on the road, letter safely deposited in one of the blue post office pickup boxes, I decided to see if I could get Ash to open up to me.
"So where did you learn all of this spy stuff?"
"If I told you, then I'd have to kill you."
The line was delivered with such a matter-of-fact tone that I almost didn't realize he was joking. It wasn't until he looked over and gave me a small smile that I started breathing again.
"In truth, that's not far off. Once I left home I knew I needed training if I was going to survive. I started taking classes. I signed up with nearly everyone who claimed to have any knowledge, but I focused mostly on those who claimed to be ex-Special Forces or from the intelligence community."
