He murmurs against my mouth, “As many nights as we’ve lost, I think I can make arrangements.”
Ben
Asleep, Camille’s sated from our lovemaking, her soft, sleep-laden breaths, causing her chest to rise and fall under the weight of my arm. No longer are her cheeks pale but painted a peach-colored blush. Her warmth seeps into me, bone-deep, soothing my very soul—if I have one. She does, and I don’t want to screw that up for her. She’s also alive, with a human lifespan ahead of her, and babies if she wants them. She’d always wanted a big family. A dream of hers I’ll never fulfill.
As if my body’s temperature can drop further, a chill rattles through me. How can I survive without Camille? How can I survive with her when she faints at the sight of blood? I don’t want to let her go. But that chill I label “selfish”… By keeping her here, selfish is precisely what I am. If we flee this place and exist as a couple only in the dead of night, I’m depriving her of sunlight, of life.
I don’t want to rob her of anything, which means I must decide for her. An impossible decision for both of us if I’m honest.
With fluid movements, I plant a feather-light kiss on her beautiful cheek as I roll away, tucking the blanket against her back to replace my body. I’m immortal. She’s not. I don’t want this underground, dangerous life for her, so I must do the right thing. The only thing I should have done. From the beginning.
Chapter Three
Camille
A shadow stretches across the earthen floor inside the torch-lit underground. The click of a handgun is as expected as the disappearance of Ben. I’d felt his pain, even though the love we’d made could have fueled the glorious sun. He didn’t bite me or cause me pain. Quite the opposite. He is my Ben, honest, honorable, gentle, playful, and oh-so-very passionate.
“Camille, are you okay?” Anderson, along with his men, stands poised, flashlights and guns raised, the steady beads fanning red and gold arcs into the depths of the underground.
Anderson’s face falls when he meets my gaze.
He knows I’m hurting, bold tears streaming down my hot cheeks as I sit perched on the nest Ben made for us. “Where is he?”
Anderson shakes his head, but his side-eye betrays him. He knows where Ben is.
Classified.
My heart sinks further, and the icy chill of the catacombs permeates me to the core. Maybe Ben and I aren’t so different, both of us uncertain about how to embrace our new life as a couple. I suspect it’s hard for him to see me as both his lover and food.
“Ben told you where to find me, didn’t he?”
“Yes. Before he left.”
Anderson’s smile is nothing more than a flat line, the disappointment and betrayal just as apparent by his deep-set eyes.
“He’s a good man, my husband.”
“The best of them.” Anderson offers his hand.
I take hold as he helps me to my feet, wrapping the blanket around my shoulders. I lean into the yoke of his arm, burrowing into his side more than I should. Comfort is what I’ve needed—still need. But as I stand upright, I have to respect Ben’s choices. He is a good man, even though the decision he’s made for both of us is dead wrong.
“Thank you for seeing Ben as both human and vampire. For treating him with respect, and for your kindness.”
“I wish I could do more…”
Anderson’s somber tone gives me pause, and I glance behind me, into the darkness, thankful to know the truth. My husband is a warrior, a hero, free now. I mouth the words, wishing in some way Ben could see through the dense walls, “I love you. I always will. Forever. And then after...”
Camille
At work, the keyboard under my fingertips is as inanimate as I feel. For this past month, it’s as if someone from above is pecking out my daily routine: wake, shower, drive, work, eat, work, drive, sleep. I barely sleep, though. Memories of Ben and I twist up in my head. Some are of our shared time together, intimate and bliss-filled, as if we are riding on pink puffy clouds. Others confirm my aversion to blood will prove to worsen his wasting. On those nights, I wake up sweating, breathless, and alone in my fret-filled panic. The hollowness inside me leaves my belly swirling, as my nerves are nests of vipers. One gray day seems to blend into another, yet I’m dotting my i’s. Existing. Surviving, if this is what this is.
Movement pulls me from my reverie, and I glance up.
“It’s lunch. A few of us are heading over to Diamond’s Diner. Want to join us?”
The girls from my office stand over me, but their swaying body language reveals their growing impatience with me. I grab my lunch, holding up my bag that reads: Live Your Truth.
The signs I’m failing myself are everywhere. I’m pushing away opportunities in exchange for holding onto my misery. I’m cheating myself, but I’m ignorant of the facts and what I can do about it. I press a weak smile onto my face. “Thank you. Maybe next week?”
“Sure, next week…”
It’s the same every day. I’m thankful they continue to include me in their group, having been privy to the news of the existence of vampires, including my husband, just as much as everyone else. I haven’t told anyone I saw Ben, talked to him, held him, loved him, but, somehow, I think they suspect.
Lunch bag in hand, I hope today is the day I can eat an entire apple without throwing up. I tell myself I’m okay, or I’m going to be okay, buy my mental insistence hasn’t tricked my feeble appetite as much as I wish it had.
Outside, sunrays shoot warmth right through my sweater. I welcome the seventy-degree day in the middle of fall. Autumn leaves crush underfoot as I stroll to the large beech tree on the far side of the town park where Ben and I picnicked the day he asked me to marry him.
As I approach, even from forty feet away, the tree’s silvery cambium layer has grown, so it borders the heart-shaped groove Ben and I cut into the tree. Ben heart Camille. But as I draw closer, I spot a fresh mark, which I read out loud. “And then after…”
My throat twists, and hot tears spring as I visually search the park. He can’t come out during the day, which means he’d been here sometime last night. I palm my heart with one hand, hoping he can see me as he certainly saw me the morning I’d said those words, deep in the caverns under the PDU. I lean in and press my lips to the carved letters, leaving a peachy lipstick kiss for Ben to see, either tonight or when he returns. “Oh, Ben. There must be another way…”
I dig my apple out of my favorite cushioned bag, taking a crunchy bite, allowing sweet juices to slide down my aching throat, nourishing my spirit and body. I brace myself against the sturdy, smooth trunk and glance across the park where I spot a turquoise Ford Thunderbird. It’s a 1966. I know because I rode in that very car as Homecoming Queen when I’d switched schools late in my junior year. The vehicle no longer belongs to the sheriff. It’s his daughter’s. The Sparkles salon owner, Stacey Miller, has emblazoned the side with her sassy motto: My hair is comin’ down!
The slogan could have said anything. Live your life. Make today memorable. Go for it. Ben’s still taking chances on me. He’s always risking his life by chancing being seen. He still loves me. Maybe even waiting for me to make a move, one I’ve been so desperately rejecting.
Our house won’t be tolerable knowing Ben is alive, out here, alone.
...cells are temporary housing…
I recall Corporal Anderson mentioning housing. Is Ben at the PDU? On-site, somewhere in the direction of where the construction trucks headed? Is he still taking sustenance from a stranger when I should be the one feeding my husband? For better or worse and in sickness and health, we both pledged ourselves to each other.
I’ve been selfish, allowing myself to remain trapped inside my foggy machinations, thankful for the dark clouds while he’s still suffering. If given the opportunity, I’m sure I’ll learn to work through the sight of my blood, the prick of pain as I’m a strong and capable woman. I will not faint, or I will, but Ben will be there to catch me every time. We�
�ll support each other.
I gather my lunch bag, knowing what I need to do. It’s out of my character, but that’s the lesson, I believe. Sometimes you have to bust out all the stops and fly off into the unknown to have a forever worth remembering. Sometimes you have to put your fears behind you or face them head-on. As I hurriedly traipse across the park and slide into my SUV, I realize I have one stop to make before I welcome my forever, whatever that will be. The PDU isn’t home. It’s still a cell, even a prison. I’m breaking out my husband. One way or another.
Chapter Four
Ben
Horn blaring in the distance, I’m thrust awake, although, as a vampire, my dream state is more of a hazy suspension. I check out my surroundings, expecting to be wrapped by vertical steel bars. Still, even though I have no problem seeing in the darkness, a full minute ticks by until I make sense of my homey surroundings, and the honking morphs into an annoying trill before it fades.
Legs and arms held out, I sprawl atop a queen-sized bed. The new cushion absorbs my weight as if I’m floating on a blow-up raft down a lazy river. Everything about the on-site housing is surreal. White cotton sheets twist around my restless legs when I spot the downy pillow to my right. The fluffy mound is undisturbed as if waiting to cradle Camille’s pretty head.
Camille.
Mentally, I kick myself for etching our tree, marring something that holds such perfect memories. I shouldn’t make promises when I’m unsure she’d want to take a second chance with me after what I’d put her through. What I’m putting her through.
Again.
Or maybe I’m sabotaging my future and laying blame on myself for giving up my humanity to serve my master. Camille’s smart and has figured out my loyalty. She probably hates me.
I shouldn’t hope for an us, when I stripped her choices when I left her, deciding she was better off without a vampire as a husband. Especially after having my humanity stolen from me. What the hell is wrong with me?
My belly complains from hunger, but I tell it to quiet down as I fed last week. Or was it the week before?
I stroll to the front room, thinking of catching up on some mindless comedy when I spot a few of my vampire comrades perched on their porches, curiosity drawing their crimson stares toward something in the distance.
Night filters through protective windows. The sun is but a memory when I step outside. Dusk casts the PDU vampire base in amber shades. For a few moments, I try to make sense of what I’m seeing.
On the horizon, a single black SUV blazes toward the vampire housing, kicking up debris. A curl of tan smoke precedes a line of trailing security cars, their blue and red lights strobing against the sparse scrub brush that spans the outer limits of the PDU’s protective fence line.
“Ben, your heart’s pounding like a jackrabbit’s, your breathing’s racing to catch up. What’s going on?”
Master worms his way inside my head, our psychic connection stronger than graphene, and as if Riley’s part of my vampire DNA. I hone my stare toward the unfolding scene. Vampire eyesight is eight times more powerful than a human’s, and a smile pulls at my lips, reaching to my eyes. “Camille’s here.”
“There? On-site? She’s the one who blew past the guard gate and shattered the crossing arm to smithereens? She’s the one who told Anderson to fuck off? Well, I’ll be damned.”
I can picture Riley, one palm pitting his hip, while he runs his free hand through his unruly dark hair, completely caught off guard at Camille’s tenacity to reclaim what’s hers, or to part peacefully. I won’t let myself believe the latter. Risking her life to tell me to go pound sand isn’t her way.
Warmth settles in my chest as pride fills me to the brim, and I laugh out loud. I jab my hand in the direction of the SUV, letting every vamp within earshot know who’s heading our way. “Here comes my badass wife!”
Riley deepens our connection, allowing him to witness what I’m glimpsing.
“I told you once you gave Camille a sign, suggesting you were the one holding back and not her, she’d come for you. I’m not saying a human-vampire relationship will be easy, as Other Kind are still fighting for human rights, which votes next month in the senate, but I think you need to let Camille decide what’s best for her.”
I step farther out onto my landing, widening my stance as she comes into view. “Says the man who’s married to the queen.”
Riley chuckles. “I’ll call off the dogs…”
He’s gone from my head but not before the SUV slides around the corner, heading straight toward me. In a puff of leafy debris, she slides along my gutter, the tires butting the curb.
I expect her to leap out, but she stays seated, her hands still locked around the steering wheel, head held straight as if she’s looking at what’s ahead of her instead of in the rear-view.
I need to start picturing my future.
My pulse soars, beating on my chest bone to the point of pain. Inside my mind, emotions heighten—fear like I haven’t felt before. What if she’s here to tell me to fuck off? To tell me she wishes I had actually died?
No. No, Camille’s not here for that.
The vehicles following her park along each side of the street, obviously having heard Riley’s command, but not taking any chances since Camille’s human in a vampire encampment.
I hold up my hand as Anderson gets out of his vehicle. “Give us a minute. Camille’s come here to talk to me. Let’s show her some respect.”
The pop of her door opening draws my attention, and I lower my arm, staying put, although I want nothing more than to fall at her feet and beg her to take me back.
She scrambles out of the car, sporting her favorite blue jeans, which she’s tucked into her knee-high brown leather boots. These are the ones I adore, which make her appear wholesome and taller than she is. A simple black collared shirt buttoned to just above her cleavage exposes a pumping vein. Look away.
Only I can’t. My natural urge to take Camille consumes me just as it had since the very first time I’d seen her.
Suddenly, I’m warm—hell, molten for her, and she has no idea what she’s doing to me. “You want to come in?”
Anderson heads my way, stopping behind Camille. “You’re fine where you are, Mrs. Santos.”
She gives him a sideways glance. “What I have to say won’t take long, and I want to do it face to face. In the open. But I don’t need anyone speaking for me. Is that clear, Corporal?”
“But, Camille—”
“Stay out of this, Anderson,” I hiss, a growl rumbling from deep inside as I widen my bare feet, feeling foolish as I do it because Anderson’s spot-on in his positioning and recognition of the tense scene. Camille’s put herself in danger by coming here, but she’s also brought a caravan of backup.
The crowd expands, a few vampires leaching out onto their driveways to get a better look.
“Show’s over. Everyone goes back inside. That’s an order,” Anderson barks.
Enforcement, in both human and vampire forms, emerge from the vehicles. Our master crowds our thoughts, backing up my order. Our hive minds having no choice but to obey.
Once satisfied the vampires have returned to their homes, Camille strolls to the back of her car. She lifts a bag marked with a big red bullseye. Hugging it to her body, she climbs the steps to my landing.
She’s so close, and I can practically taste her as my body begs me to claim what’s mine.
I push a tentative smile on my face. “You found me.”
She lifts her finger to her lips, nibbling on the skin as she used to when she was nervous.
Her blue eyes catch the porchlight as she hugs herself. “It wasn’t hard to do after I found the message you carved into our tree. I knew you were close. Then I remembered the construction truck. I figured, the PDU isn’t letting their soldiers roam freely until after the Other Kind rights bill passes.”
She’s smart, caught up on policy, and I’m sure Tricia’s keeping her informed. “What I did to you was wron
g,” I say boldly. “I’m a royal ass.”
“You’re not royal, but you were Ben, my protector, as always.”
I scout the military she’s brought with her, at least twenty well-armed men. “You don’t need protecting.”
“I don’t, but I do need you. No matter if you think I’d be fine without you, I’m not. Losing you is like losing myself. Call it codependent, messy, twisted, a sad state. I don’t care. You’re the only man I’ve ever loved since the first time I watched you catch the football and make the game-winning touchdown.”
I recall the scene—the ball arches high, sailing toward me, the leather landing between my open hands. I pump my legs, crossing the goal line and making the touchdown. The crowd roars, but I stumble over my own two feet when I catch Camille staring straight at me, waving her pompoms high in the air. “You were supposed to be cheering for the other team. Your squad members didn’t approve.”
She flips her ponytail. “I couldn’t help my response. I was as attracted to your looks as I was your skill, your absolute control, how your team members respected your tenacity and grace. Even when you fumbled the earlier play, they still put their trust in you.”
That time also reminds me of redemption. Of rising and beating the odds, like I’m doing now and have done. If she’ll give me another chance. “How could I resist your pretty blue eyes scoping me out for the entire game? Not a chance. Every time I looked, there you were—your pretty smile all for me. I knew I had to have you, but I’m this now. I’ve pledged to serve Riley as a vampire soldier and a member of his guard. I’ll still have military missions that will call me away. I can’t promise the world we live in will be easy for you, as you’re married to a vampire and a soldier. I can’t promise we’ll be accepted anywhere, even here on site.”
Her warm palm lands on my cheek. “Nothing worth fighting for is easy. But we’ll find a way to make us work. It’s how we started, both on opposing teams. Our differences didn’t stop us then. It won’t stop me now. There’s just one issue.”
Hexes and Handcuffs: A Limited Edition Collection of Supernatural Prison Stories Page 27
