I saw the eyes first. They swam above me, so vibrant in their intensity I had to look away. The voice came next. Soft. Crooning. Gloating.
“Pretty pretty girl. I’ve found a pretty pretty girl. You ran too slow, pretty girl.”
A cold finger trailed down across my cheek. I struck it away. The voice giggled.
“Ooo, a fighter, eh? Here, let me help you up.”
Strong hands dug into my shoulders and hauled me to my feet so fast my head spun. The hands released me and I stumbled forward, catching myself on a lamppost. Holding fast to the metal, I spun around it to study my attacker as bile curdled in my throat. This can’t be happening again, I thought hopelessly. It isn’t night yet! It isn’t fair.
This Drinker was a young man, slender and tall as a willow. His hair was pale blonde and cut short enough to outline the round edges of his skull. His t-shirt and jeans hung off him, too big for his wiry frame. His eyes were the same blue as Angelique’s. He grinned and held out one fist, slowly peeling back finger after finger to reveal what he had clutched in his palm.
A ball of my hair. The bastard had ripped my hair right out of my head. While I watched he lifted the hair to his nostrils and inhaled deeply, his eyes flickering closed. When his tongue darted out, dark red against his pale white skin, I made a sound of disgust and looked away, stomach turning. The Drinker’s high pitched giggles filled the air.
“I know what you are,” I bit out. “And I’m not afraid of you.”
The Drinker darted forward, light as a cat. His pointer finger slid down my arm and I didn’t register he had sliced my flesh open until he danced away and sucked the blood clean from his fingertip. “Mmmm. Tastes like strawberries.”
He stared at me expectantly, his gaze feverishly bright, no doubt waiting for me to start crying or fall to my knees begging for mercy. I did neither. My blood made a faint drip drip drip sound as it ran past my wrist and fell to the pavement. The Drinker licked his lips and began to circle me, much as Angelique had when she had me cornered the night before.
“Where have you been hiding, moppet?” he asked. The corner of his mouth curled up. “Clever, clever moppet to last this long.”
“What are you going to do to me?” I said, ignoring his question. I didn’t want to say anything that might give away Travis or Dad’s location.
“Oh moppet, the things I’m going to do to you… Best not dwell on them now, though, not when – what is happening to your arm?” he hissed as he crouched low, blue eyes darting left and right. “You didn’t tell me you were already claimed. Sneaky little bitch.”
I followed his gaze to my arm and saw what had upset him. My strange new healing powers were at work again. Before my very eyes the cut on my arm stopped bleeding and closed up, leaving only a light pink scar. “That’s right,” I said, seizing the opportunity he had inadvertently given me. “I’m already, er, claimed. So you can’t, ah, have me.”
“Who bit you?” he snarled.
“Angelique.”
“Angelique… but… her pet ran away. Unless…” He sprang up and grabbed my jaw, forcing my head as high as it would go, leaving my throat completely defenseless. “Unless the little lost lamb has returned to her flock,” he murmured, all but shivering in delight.
“Did I say Angelique?” I gasped. “I meant Angela.”
“No,” he purred, rubbing his cheek against mine. “I don’t think you did.”
“Let her go.”
I had never heard three sweeter words.
“Maximus!” I cried out his name as he stepped into view. His eyes were trained with deadly intensity on the Drinker that held me captive. I could have wept when I saw the gun in his hand. “Maximus, he’s going to -”
“Shut up,” he said without sparing me a glance.
The Drinker twisted me around until my back was pressed against his chest. I could feel his breath on my ear. The smell of it reminded me of the sickeningly sweet scent coming from Mrs. Dobb’s apartment. Oh God, I thought dimly as his arm looped around my throat and tightened. He’s using me like one of those human shields in the movies. The ones who always get shot by the good guy trying to get the bad guy. I’m toast.
“I said let her go,” Maximus repeated. He took a step towards us. The Drinker snapped his teeth an inch from my face and dragged me back past the lamp post.
“Finders keepers,” he whined. “I found her first. I want her.”
Maximus stepped forward again. This time the Drinker reacted by tightening his hold on my neck until I gasped for air. Maximus stopped short. “She belongs to Angelique,” he said calmly. “You can’t have her.”
There wasn’t going to be any of me left if the Drinker didn’t stop choking the life out of me. I wheezed in air through my mouth as my vision went gray around the edges. My legs kicked feebly, striking at nothing.
“You’re killing her!” Maximus didn’t sound so calm now.
The arm wrapped around my throat released a fraction of an inch. I sagged forward, gasping and sputtering. My hair tangled around my face, temporarily blinding me. Maximus and the Drinker continued to exchange words, but I wasn’t listening to them anymore. No, I was concentrating on the lamp post two feet in front of me and trying to remember what other helpful tidbits I had learned in the defense class. Too bad I hadn’t paid closer attention. Mrs. Hamilton had been right – you never knew when you would have to kick a guy’s ass.
The idea came to me suddenly, like all great (and ridiculously crazy) ideas do. If it did work it would give Maximus one open shot where I could only pray he wouldn’t hit me by mistake. If it did not work I would most likely end up with a broken neck. Not great odds, but what else was I going to do? Wait for Prince Charming to come rescue me? I just wasn’t that kind of girl.
I tucked my elbows to my sides and buckled at the knees, throwing the Drinker off balance. Humping my back like some kind of deranged whale I charged at the lamp post and slammed on the brakes an inch before hitting it, twisting sharply to the side and simultaneously dropping my left shoulder. Caught by surprise the Drinker went soaring rather gracefully over top of me. The lamp post broke his fall.
I scrambled away on my hands and knees, shouting something highly intelligent along the lines of, “SHOOT HIM SHOOT HIM SHOOT HIM.”
Maximus was very obliging. I watched between my fingers as he shot three bullets into the Drinker. Head, heart, and stomach. The Drinker stutter stepped to the side and collapsed forward onto his knees.
“Why?” he managed to groan.
Maximus walked up behind the Drinker and put one foot between his shoulder blades. “You touched her,” he said harshly before he drove the heel of his boot down and the Drinker turned to ash.
“Holy shit,” I gasped, scuttling back on my hands and feet crab style. “Holy shit. What happened? What did you do? He – he vanished. Where did he go?”
“He’s gone. That’s all that matters. Get up, Lola. We can’t stay here.”
I took his offered hand, still staring at the spot on the sidewalk where the Drinker had simply… disappeared. Shaking my head, I looked dazedly at Maximus. “So you were what, like following me or something?”
Maximus’s fingers reached out toward my face. I flinched automatically and his hand hesitated in midair. “Your hair is tangled,” he said softly.
I held my breath as he pushed my hair behind my shoulders, using his fingers to comb out the worst of the snarls. For an instant his thumb lingered on the curve of my collarbone before he withdrew his hand and cleared his throat. “The bruises on your neck are already fading. You didn’t get rid of the scars yet, I see.”
I cleared my throat as well. Maximus had managed to do it with a quiet hem hem. I sounded more like a car engine backfiring. So ladylike. “Ah, no. Not yet. I wanted to ask you about that, actually.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Ask away.”
“Well…” How, exactly, did one ask if they were turning into a vampire? “The thing is…”
Maximus offered me one of his rare smiles. “You are not becoming one of them.”
“I’m not?” I said with relief.
“No. Consider your fast healing a side effect of the bite. When the scars are removed, it will go away.”
“Oh.” I glanced down at the scars. Such tiny things to have caused so much worry. At least now I could tell Dad and Travis the real reason I had survived going through a windshield.
“What are you doing out here in the open so close to night?” Maximus asked, all traces of compassion vanishing as quickly as the Drinker’s body had. “Do you have a death wish?”
“Of course not,” I said indignantly. “For your information I have found a perfectly safe place to stay.”
“That doesn’t exist.”
“What doesn’t?”
“A safe place,” he said.
I stiffened. “We tried to get out of town but they must have detonated some kind of bomb in the road. We couldn’t get to the interstate.”
“We?” His head cocked to the side.
Damn it. I wasn’t going to tell Maximus about Dad and Travis. “Nothing. No one. Nevermind. I misspoke. It happens when I’m nervous.”
“You don’t trust me.” He stated it matter of fact and he was right, of course, but the brief flickering of hurt that crossed his face took me by surprise.
“I – I trust you.” As much as I can trust anyone who carries more weapons around than Brad Pitt in an action movie and seems to know a suspiciously large amount about what is happening, I added silently.
“You shouldn’t,” Maximus said, studying me closely.
“Shouldn’t what?”
“Trust me.”
He was impossible. “I have to go back.”
“Back to where?”
“The Ren-damn it. How do you do that? Are you in the government?” My eyes narrowed. “FBI? CIA? GI Joe?”
Another smile, this one longer than the last. I ruthlessly ignored the answering flutter in my belly. “None of the above. So the Renner Hotel, hmm? Not a bad choice, all things considered. Who is with you?”
Why fight the inevitable? “My dad and my best friend.” Something in the assuming nature of his tone caught my attention and I quickly added, “Wait. Are there other survivors that you know about? Anyw-in the town?” I was about to say ‘anywhere’ but I changed my mind at the last second. If the entire world had been destroyed, I didn’t want to know about it. At least not yet. As my Mom used to say, you have to focus on the little things to see the big picture.
His shoulders lifted and fell beneath his leather jacket. “There are always survivors. You know what they say about cockroaches, don’t you?”
I shook my head. I was not, by any means, a cockroach expert.
“If the world was destroyed by a nuclear blast, cockroaches would survive.”
“Are you comparing me to a cockroach?” I asked skeptically.
His teeth glittered white in the darkness. “What if I am?”
“Then I would say you’re crazy. This isn’t some kind of nuclear blast or a war or something.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Lola.” Maximus stepped closer, pushing into my personal space. I let him push. I liked to see his face up close. To see the color of his eyes. The curve of his lips. The unruliness of his hair. “This is a war,” he said softly, so softly I had no choice but to lean towards him to. He angled his body to mine. We were as close as two people could physically be without touching. My breath caught in my throat, refusing to go up or down.
“What kind of war?” I managed to croak.
“A war to end all wars.” His eyes burned into mine. “A war to end the human race.”