Dreams for the Dead (10 page)

Fallon looked up with well-restrained surprise. “Don’t you know?”

“I assume it has to do with your”—Tristan cast a skeptical look at the stacks of ancient texts on the altar steps—“expertise.”

For a moment Fallon considered the knowledge he had, how much to share. He was fooling himself if he thought he had an advantage of any kind. Tristan could have dragged him back to Las Vegas in the trunk of his car. He could have sucked his neck dry and fucked up whatever plan Loftus had. That idea had a certain appeal.

“Have you ever been to the caverns?” Fallon finally asked.

“Yes,” Tristan answered. “All of us have.”

“That is where Loftus keeps his secrets.” Fallon sounded quite solemn, even for him. “That is where he keeps my mother.”

Tristan lifted his eyebrows. “Why does he have your mother in a cave in the desert?”

“He loves her. She’s dead. I am a resurrectionist.”

“Are you.”

“That’s what Loftus trained me for. I am skilled in blood magic. Dark rituals—the kind that r
equire sacrifice.” He sighed. “The unholiness astounds me. Sometimes I think I must have apprenticed myself to the devil to learn these things.”

“I’m sure I know the feeling,” Tristan murmured. “What do you do, exactly? I’ve never much believed in magic.”

“It isn’t hard. I’ll evoke demons and ask something of them. At least one will respond when I chant the names. They’ll ask for something in return for their assistance. Blood, or a vessel to carry them in our world.”

“That sounds incredibly non-specific.”

Fallon sighed. “That’s alchemy. It’s very vague. It’s mostly ceremony, actually. I’ve memorized all the names of the goetic demons. All the alternate names of
prima materia
. I know which symbols to trace in the air.”

“Good for you. What else?”

“I know it’s impossible to transmute lead into gold, but it isn’t impossible to turn a human immortal. And that’s the basis of alchemy: the quest for immortality.”

Tristan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Have you ever done this before?”

“No. There hasn’t been an occasion. Until now, I suppose.”

“Right.” Tristan pushed up from the pew and walked bac
kward toward the door. “Well. It’s time to put your magic to use. Get down to Las Vegas and talk to Loftus. Maybe you won’t feel so unholy if you pray first.”

He left the church and walked in the opposite direction of the motel. He followed along a fence for a while, looking at the brown and white shapes of sleeping horses on the other side of it. One horse was black. It lifted its head as he passed, a single limpid eye turned on him.

Nobody was on the street. It was too late for a casual stroll. So many of the gas stations were closed. A grocery store, he thought. A bar.

Dawn. He could have tasted her so many times. He could have broken her into pieces if he’d wanted.

The bar. The only one in town from what it looked like. All he had to do was wait for some stumbling drunk to come piss in the alley, and he didn’t have to wait long. Blood from a stubbly, unwashed neck, heavily laced with a potent combination of liquor and nicotine wasn’t the greatest, but it was blood, and he’d had worse.

He felt revived, but so fucking exhausted. Why did he feel like this. Why did he feel an
ything. Where was a goddamn window when you needed to shove your fist through glass just to prove it didn’t hurt.

He walked, and the night grew thin. The first flowing hints of orange sunlight began to erase the stars. The streets were empty, the light on the ground still gray. In the coolness of the predawn air, he felt envious of those who dreamed.

His gait quickened as he headed for the motel.
Dawn
, he thought to the rhythm of his feet on the street.
Dawn, dawn, Dawn.

She slept, her body repairing itself. A flash of annoyed embarrassment overcame him. He regre
tted having shared a snatch of his childhood with her, however brief. As if tearful confession came naturally to him. He didn’t want her thinking they shared any sort of understanding. He didn’t want her expecting anything from him, not comfort or pleasure or compassion. He had nothing to give her.

It was sweet, though, the way she thought she could seduce him. Really fucking precious of her. She just had no idea about him.

She was already on his bed, so he lay down beside her. It was less trouble than moving her, and he didn’t allow their bodies to touch. For the first time in a long time he slept, dreaming the only dream he knew, of an alternate reality where he’d died young without any idea of the pain and sorrow he wished he’d never known.

S
even

H
er
memory of yesterday afternoon made Dawn feel odd and insecure. The fight between Tristan and Branek, the blood, the attack, crawling into Tristan’s unhuman arms like he would protect her from whatever terrors resided in darkness. She blamed her affection on delirium caused by loss of blood. On her intent to save Leila. On anything but sincerity.

She dressed in the bathroom. She hadn’t brought many clothes and they were getting grungy. She wondered when she’d be able to do laundry again. Maybe Tristan would take her to a laundromat. They would hang out beneath fluorescent lights, watching the dryer spin around and around. It was strangely funny to imagine him doing laundry, but surely he had to wash his things like everyone else.

“What?” Tristan asked when she emerged giggling from the bathroom.

“Oh, nothing.” She smiled. “I was just thinking of you doing your laundry.

His brow creased. “Why is that funny?”

“Because you’re a vampire.” Dawn let loose with laughter and clapped a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking.

“And vampires don’t have chores to do?”

“Domesticity”—she gasped, trying to hold her laughter in—“doesn’t come to mind … when I think about vampires. Oh my god.” She doubled over, barely able to get the words out. “I always think of them like in old movies, with widow’s peaks and … and … dark lips. And capes!”

Tristan looked dubious. “Well. I’m glad you find me so amusing.”

“I’m not laughing
at
you,” she assured him. “I don’t even know why this is so funny.”

“Neither do I,” he said dryly.

“It’s okay,” she gasped. “You look mostly like a normal person.”

“Mostly?”

Her laughter died off quickly. “Um. Well. You’re slightly better looking than most.” A stray giggle escaped as she stood there before him like a reprimanded child, only partially contrite.

“Do you want to eat or not?” he demanded.

Once they sat in the café again, her humor had evaporated. Looking across the table at him, she found it hard to imagine the innocent child he must have been once. Innocence was practically impossible to find once a person had lost it, and there was no evidence he’d ever had it.

Memories from her own childhood flitted through her mind, pictures of places and times whose context she had long forgotten. A grassy pond surrounded by swa
ying cattails out behind a motel with a green roof. The barest remains of a ghost town somewhere off the road in the desert, and a bullet hole-riddled car she had been convinced belonged to Bonnie and Clyde. Salt flats stretching off in deceptive distances. Petroglyphs on orange rocks.

What do you want to do with your life?
She’d asked Zach that question once. She’d asked Leila. Yet Dawn didn’t even know how she’d have answered the same question. Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, it was too elusive for her to identify.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked, trying to massage a headache away. That morning she’d thought he was asleep, lying there next to her, but he’d opened his eyes the second she’d looked at him.

“Not often,” he said. His fingers drummed restlessly on the tabletop.

She pressed the howlite to her lips and pretended it gave her courage. “Can you tell me about vampires? Like … crosses, or holy water. Do those hurt you?”

“No. Not even if someone believes in that shit. By the way, I have a reflection and appear in photographs. Don’t even think about asking me about garlic.”

“I wasn’t going to.” Her French toast came and she doused the plate with syrup. She’d ordered a side of bacon, too, and she dug into her food ravenously. Branek’s attack had taken a lot from her. “What about coffins?”

“That’s not even practical.”

“Aren’t you …” Dawn cleared her throat nervously. “Aren’t you dead?”

“Technically, yes. Undead, I guess you’d say. You have to die to become a vampire, but you don’t get buried. There’s no afterlife.” He considered that for a second. “
This
is my afterlife.”

“Is that what you really think?”

He gave a scornful laugh. “Why not? I’m living it. I died and there was no bright light or feeling of serenity. I didn’t look down on myself from somewhere up in the air. There’s no god of any sort. If I ever had any beliefs about what happens after death, I don’t now. Death is nothing.”

“That sounds … sad.”

The corners of his mouth pulled in, more grimace than smile. “It’s not something I’d recommend.”

“Do you know many humans?” she asked.

“No. I don’t take the time to get to know them before I drink their blood. Rip their throats out, in some cases.”

Dawn flinched. “I hope that means you’re not going to drink from me.”

“I hadn’t planned on it.” He looked up from his coffee. “It’s not always violent. It can be very nice. For both parties.”

“I’m sure all your
toys
would say so.”

“Some of them, yeah.” He grinned slyly.

She huffed. “Well. Don’t expect anything like that from me.”

“I would never.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. He didn’t appear to be joking, but then a tiny twitch at the corner of his lips gave him away. “You’re disgusting,” she accused.

His lifted his eyebrows, head down as he carefully tore the lid off a creamer. “I’m realistic.”

“You’re insane.”

“Not clinically.”

They were silent for a few minutes while she ate. Her headache had begun to dissipate and she was beginning to feel more like herself. Whatever that meant anymore.

“Your heart doesn’t beat,” she said thoughtfully. “Do you breathe? Do you do, um, other things?”

“I do everything. Just less of it.” His eyes flicked to her and he seemed not to like her expression. “Look,” he said, leaning toward her. “My heart
does
beat. A little. And I don’t need pity. My life isn’t some sad cautionary tale, all right? There was good stuff, too.”

Dawn nodded agreeably. “Like what?”

Tristan sat back again, relaxing. “Well … one time we were ordering pizza. Jared, Augusta, and I. Augusta wanted something different than the usual delivery chain. So we picked a random place in the phone book, called in our order, and went to pick it up. It turned out the pizza place was in the back of a strip club on Boulder Highway, and we had to walk through the club to get to it.” A smile tugged on his lips but he fought it off valiantly. “Augusta got the pizza while Jared and I just stood there staring at the dancers. They weren’t dancing yet, but they were walking around with their tits out.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen. We were allowed to charge whatever we wanted to Loftus’s credit card by then. Augusta had to shove us out of there, practically.”

Her heart ached for him suddenly, and she didn’t like it. She gave a careless toss of her hair. “I’ve heard you shouldn’t eat, drink in the bars, get tattoos, or talk to the women on Boulder Highway,” she blurted, not sure whether she was being serious or sarcastic.

“That’s probably true, in general. But that pizza was pretty fucking good.”

She looked down and poked at the rest of her food. Strange, breathless feelings seized her. Stupid compassion for a hapless boy who didn’t exist anymore. It was hard to grasp what a drastic turn her life had taken. Never had she thought she’d be shacked up in kidnapped exile with some guy she barely knew. Some vampire guy she’d let fuck her. That was before she’d known he was a vampire, of course, but she wasn’t confident it wouldn’t ha
ppen again.

“The night we met,” she began, but stopped when her heart began to pound rapidly.

He stared unfathomably at her from behind black lenses.

“Take those off!” she snapped.

He did, but she didn’t feel any less nervous being able to see his eyes. She cast furtive glances at the other diners, but no one paid them any attention.

“The night we met,” he said, blinking slowly. His gravelly tone made her stomach flip over. “I noticed you laughing with your friend. Then you noticed me, and there was something about the way you looked at me that made me think you could accept me. Almost without question, even if you knew everything about me.”

His expression gave nothing away. It took courage to meet his eyes.

“I would have fallen for you,” she whispered.

“What would I have cared? One human is just as meaningless as another, and I’ve seen so many of them.”

“Don’t be cruel.”

“It’s all I know. I think you accept me anyway, though,” he said. “Don’t you?”

Dawn shook her head, though not necessarily in response. “Please, Tristan. Tell me what’s ha
ppening to her. I need to know.”

“You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“Yes, I do. I
need
to.”

Something in him froze, then thawed a minuscule amount. He spoke without emotion, his eyes steady on her face as he watched for a reaction. “Jared would say he’s a romantic. He’s always dreamed of … well, the
one
. Obsessively. It was pretty harmless until he was about sixteen. That’s when he learned how to kill. And he liked it. Whenever a girl he chased made him angry, well … she didn’t last long after that. It was worse after he became a vampire.”

“Is he …” Dawn swallowed hard. “Is he going to kill Leila?”

“He seems to like her a lot. I doubt it.” He reconsidered. “At least not for a while.”

She let out a long sigh and slumped back in her chair. “That’s not very reassuring.”

Tristan blinked. “It was meant to be.”

Dawn sat forward again. “What’s he doing with her, then? You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t know what he’s doing. We all have our own tastes.” He made a face somewhere between a lascivious grin and a grimace. “Generally, we like to play rough.”

“I heard her screaming in the middle of the night.”

“The most soothing lullaby, I always thought.”

“This is old news for you, I guess, but Leila’s my best friend. That could have been me screa
ming, but you didn’t touch me that night in your room. You’ve barely touched me since. I was the one who had to come to you.” Dawn paused, looking intently into his eyes. “You’re not like them, are you?”

“Like I said, we have different tastes. And I do like it rough. Don’t try to turn me into your r
omantic fucking hero.”

She flushed angrily. “I’m not. And m-maybe I like it rough, too.”

He raised his eyebrows, amused, and leaned across the table to her. His voice was low and intimate. “Oh, yeah? You want to be thrown onto the bed? Or a table? There’s some fun stuff we could do the next time I tie you up. I would offer you some biting, but I’d probably break the skin.” He parted his lips and tongued the tip of one fang. “I’m not much into blood in the bedroom. What about you?”

“Uh …”

“What about a little hair pulling? A little pain to sweeten the pleasure? I’m open to a lot of things. I might even have tried some of your personal fantasies already.”

“Um …” Dawn glanced around, embarrassed. “Can we … can we not talk about this here? Can we go now?”

He slid his sunglasses back on almost violently. “Anything you want.”

She stood by him awkwardly while he paid the check, cheeks flaming. They walked out into the cool morning and he turned to her, smiling gently, but without humor.

“Dawn.” He touched her lightly on the chin. “Everything is going to be fine. I promise. You trust me, don’t you?” She smirked bitterly at him. “Good,” he said. He leaned down and brushed the barest of kisses across her lips. “It would be a mistake if you did.”

Back in the room, she kicked off her shoes and fidgeted. She was profoundly embarrassed, ha
ving never experienced a guy or a situation even close to this before. Nobody had ever said things to her like he just had. Silently she told herself to remain calm. She was the one using him. Not the other way around.

Tristan tossed his sunglasses down and turned to her. “What do you think? You want to try som
ething new?”

“What? Like what?” she stammered. She didn’t know why she felt so awkward. She was twenty-three years old.

“Anything,” he said. “You can tell me what you want.”

“I-I didn’t know you needed an invitation.” Her voice shook slightly.

“I guess I draw the line at rape.”

She smiled unhappily, not knowing if she was about to do something she didn’t want to do. “I don’t know where my line is.”

“Lucky me, then. I can help you find out.”

Hesitantly, she nodded. She couldn’t help being intrigued. She wanted him. Part of her thought he might be bluffing or joking with his talk of roughness and fantasies. He wasn’t, though. He was the kind to a
lways go through with anything, everything. And if she’d been bluffing back in the café, she wasn’t anymore.