Dreams for the Dead (12 page)

Her skin grew hot as he lowered himself to a crouch in front of her. He laid one hand on her shoulder and squeezed it affectionately. His eyes were both fond and questioning, as if he were trying to read lines on her soul. The water tipped out of the bucket as she pressed her fingers to her lips, staring at him. Did she trouble his thoughts the way he troubled hers?

“It’s time to leave,” he said softly. He stood back up and waited for her.

This attachment she felt for him was embarrassing. She didn’t know him. What she did know was damning.

Against all reason, she cared enough to stay with him.
For
him. Maybe even to save him, lame as that sounded. Because he did need saving, didn’t he? And so did she. But who, Dawn wondered, was going to save her?

E
ight

T
he
drive back to Las Vegas was bleaker, somehow, than the one upstate. Dawn dwelled on her mistakes and tried not to blame herself for them. All the blame belonged to Tristan. To Branek and Jared and Loftus and whoever the hell else was an evil vampire.

Night fell as they drove and there was nothing but blackness outside the windows. Tristan didn’t stop this time, except once for gas. It was countless miles of headlights and road lines whipping b
eneath them. The mountains were one-dimensional paper cutouts.

Dawn watched the city appear from the darkness, a low, flat expanse of multi-colored lights spread across the valley. The skyline of casinos had little context in her daily life. She didn’t even know the names of some of them, and there was always something new being built. They added to the golden, sparkling beauty of the city at night. The sight filled her with comfort.

Tristan drove into town, back to the house of psychos. At night it was softly illuminated by lights shining up from within the slate paths. Dawn heard a chilling, alien noise in the eerily silent darkness as she exited the car—a girl’s plaintive cry for help.

“Who was that?” she demanded, eyes searching the impenetrable, deep green shadows surroun
ding the house.

“No one. A peacock,” Tristan said. “Haven’t you ever heard a peacock before?”

“No. Obviously.”

It was dark inside, and there wasn’t a sound except their footsteps crossing the foyer to Tristan’s room. She’d spent just one night there and it felt stranger to her than the generic motel rooms had. She walked in and the air on her arms grew colder.

“I’ll need a blanket this time,” she said, staring at the bed and wondering if she would sleep in it with him.

“I’ll bring one for you when I get back.”

“You’re getting blood?” she asked, turning to face him. He stood by the door, one hand on the knob, prepared to pull it shut and lock her in.

He knit his brow and looked away from her. “Yeah.”

“Wait.” Her teeth tugged on her lower lip.
I wanted to say … I needed to know …

“What?” he asked before she could gather her thoughts. “Are you volunteering?”

“No,” she snapped. “Get that idea out of your head already.”

“It’s a matter of trust, is it?”

“It’s a matter of I don’t want to do it.”

“You know,” he said slowly, “everything is different here. You and I can’t be the same as we were these past few days. It just … it won’t work, Dawn.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I get it.”

His brows lowered cruelly. “Good. I’ll go now. I might be back before morning. We can fuck if you’re awake.”

She chased the closing door but she wasn’t fast enough. “I hate you!” she shrieked, rattling the knob and pounding her fists on the wood. “Don’t you dare lock me in here! Don’t you
dare
!”

Her voice grew hoarse as she shouted obscenities at him. Eventually she slumped against the door, her fists aching, her eyes teary. Exhaustion and emotional turmoil were weighing her down, pressing on her shoulders, and Dawn wanted more than anything to sleep. The reality of being som
eone’s captive was harder to believe than dreams. She felt her way through the dark and pitched herself onto the bed with relief. She wept into the pillow until she fell asleep, too exhausted and sad for fear.

“Dawn.”

She could have been sleeping for hours or days. This was a room in which day and night meant nothing.

She thought about getting up, but there didn’t seem to be any point.

“Dawn.”

“Hmm?”

“Dawn, are you all right?”

The voice was out of place, but the face she knew. Leila sat on the edge of the bed, gently nud
ging Dawn awake.

“I was asleep,” Dawn said, her voice creaky. “I’m not all right.”

“You were crying.”

“Hmm?” Dawn brought the tips of her fingers to one cheek and they came away wet. “Oh. I was.”

“It must have been a sad dream.”

The words had the strange effect of causing Dawn’s lower lip to begin trembling. Her eyes squinted themselves shut and her mouth twisted, as if she were experiencing profound pain. But she felt numb from the inside out.

“It was,” she sobbed into the pillow. “God, it was.”

~

In the small hours of the morning, after he’d had his fill of blood, Tristan sat in the family room with Augusta and Branek. They spoke by the light of a single green bulb Augusta had screwed into the table lamp.

“I’m so bored lately,” she complained. “All I do is read romance novels. They make me not even want to bite anyone anymore. I didn’t even know you could get tired of drinking people’s blood.”

“You can’t,” Tristan said.

On the surface he appeared lazy and content, but inside he felt restless. He’d felt this way before, as a human, and he’d cured the feeling by practically abusing himself with various substances. He couldn’t do that as a vampire, but he could have run around the city all night, biting neck after neck until he was bursting with blood. Even that probably wouldn’t have satisfied him. Something tro
ubled him down to his core, a place he’d never really cared to examine.

“Have you ever tried … you know.” Augusta lowered her voice conspiratorially and leaned fo
rward. “Hospital blood?”

“Fuck no,” Branek declared, throwing out one arm for angry emphasis. “It’s not even warm. It’s from a
bag
in a
refrigerator
.”

“It still came from a human.”

“It’s not the same!”

“God, I was just asking,” Augusta said mildly. She turned to Tristan. “So how was your little trip?”

“Did you ever get some of that sweet neck for yourself?” Branek asked, chortling with mischief.

“What neck?” asked Augusta.

“That human girl he’s been toting around. Embarrassing himself, by the way.”

“I haven’t bitten her,” Tristan said.

“Not
yet
.”

“Come on. You may like to mix fucking and feeding, but I don’t.”

“Yeah, Branek, that’s gross,” Augusta chimed in.

“Thank you, Gus.” Branek turned back to Tristan. “Don’t you remember anything Loftus taught us? It’s
us
against
them
, and we’re so fucking superior. It’s like now you want to go skipping through fields of daisies or something.”

Tristan rose to his feet and socked Branek in the jaw. “I owed you that,” he said. He meant to sit back down but was suddenly aware of the rage burning wild inside him, clogging his throat, making his eyes sting. His words were growls shaped into familiar syllables, delivered through clenched teeth. “For breaking my nose, and biting Dawn. I never said she was for sharing, dick. If you touch her again, I’ll rip out your fuc
king throat.”

“Oh, she has a name now?”

“Just keep your fucking hands off her.”

“It’s funny how you think you could stop me if I didn’t.”

Tristan finally felt calm enough, though just barely, to sit again. He wiped a hand over his mouth to clear spittle from the corners. He heaved a sigh and his chest felt hollow. “I would, Branek. You don’t even know.”

“How interesting,” Branek said, not sounding interested at all. He looked hurt, strangely, but was trying not to show it.

An unexpected laugh escaped Tristan’s throat. “Do you think I
betrayed
you? Is that why you won’t let go of this?”

“You didn’t betray me, Tristan. You just betrayed our entire lifestyle.”

“Anyway.” Augusta blinked her fire-colored eyes and smiled at Tristan. “Speaking of humans … Loftus sent you to find Fallon, didn’t he? Is he coming? Did he ask about me?”

“Gus, I think you can forget about that ever happening,” Tristan told her gently. “He’s practically a monk.”

She sighed. “But he’s so pretty.”

Branek’s voice was sly. “Augusta, if all you want is someone pretty …”

“Oh, shut
up
. I already said you were gross.”

“That’s not what this girl said last night. Didn’t say much of anything, really.” He raised his heavy brows and loudly whispered his punchline behind one hand. “She was dead. I killed her.”

“
God
, Branek, tell me you killed her
after
you fucked her.”

He wiggled his eyebrows, his hurt feelings completely forgotten, apparently. “I’ll never tell. And neither will she.”

“You people disgust me,” Tristan said.

“You love us,” Augusta corrected, smacking his arm playfully.

“You, maybe.” He stood up from his chair and backed toward the door. “Have fun with your bagged blood and corpses, you sick fucks.”

Out in the foyer, he debated whether to return to his room, to Dawn, or find something else to do until sunrise. His conflicted thoughts disappeared at the sight of a familiar figure by the front door. He stopped short and drank her in.

She stood before him in a tight lilac dress and nude heels, hands on her slim hips, legs in a wide stance. Her full, smirking lips blazed red. Long, caramel-blonde hair tumbled past her shoulders. Deep brown eyes glimmered at him. There was some indefinable stillness about her, something that suggested violence. The first time he’d seen her, this quality had instantly driven him wild. He’d
wanted
her.

“Nola,” he said now, his voice betraying a note of surprise.

“Lover,” she joked breathily.

There’d been women. Not many, but enough. He wasn’t like Jared, mourning a list of dead, r
eluctant lovers. Or Branek, with an insatiable desire to prove his misanthropy.

The women were mostly human, since there were more of them than vampires, and they hung out where they were easy to find. He met them in bars, at gas stations, libraries, gr
ocery stores. Sometimes their interaction was little more than a sordid fuck against a back alley wall, but sometimes he took them home to play. Most of their names were lost to him now, if he’d ever bothered to learn them in the first place. Which he probably hadn’t.

Tristan wanted to be a lover, wanted to be loved, though he didn’t like to admit that. It felt weak and didn’t fit how he saw himself. Didn’t fit with the lifestyle. He’d been more tender with some than others, depending on what they wanted, but his behavior was always a lie. He’d never treated any of them fairly.

Not one of the women had mattered. Not until Nola.

Branek had met her at some music festival, where they’d both been draining groupies and dru
mmers. Impressed by her bloodthirstiness, he’d brought her back to meet the rest of them. They’d probably fucked first, but Tristan didn’t mind. It wasn’t as if the group of them had never shared with each other before.

Just … he didn’t want to share Dawn.

He forced himself to stop thinking about her and let a smile tug up one corner of his mouth. “What,” he said, “are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Nola dropped her arms and walked toward him, hips swaying, heels clicking on the tile. “Augusta told me you’d been away. I wanted to be here to surprise you when you got back, but you beat me.” Reaching him, she pressed a kiss to his lips. She trailed a finger up and down his arm, tea
sing the skin beneath his sleeve, and glanced up at him coquettishly. “I’ve heard things about you,” she purred.

“Like what?”

“You got a new toy while I was gone. I might be jealous.”

He sighed. “It’s nothing.”

“Prove it to me.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. In the garden, like we used to. You want to?”

Fuck yes he did.

They went outside and found their old spot near the pool, in the shadow of velvet ash trees. Chemical smells from the pool on the other side of the trees tickled his nostrils. Nola lay on the grass and he leaned over her, pushing the dress up to her waist. He needed to feel himself inside her right fucking now.

She moaned as he ran his hands over her body. God, yes, she was always so wet and enthusiastic. But for the first time his own enthusiasm for her was strangely lacking. Her proportions felt all wrong to his hands. The texture of her skin was strangely unpleasant. She didn’t fit properly beneath him. Feelings of doubt and yearning assaulted him, unbi
dden.

What the fuck was wrong here.

“Shit,” he said.

“What is it?”

“I—uh, I can’t—”

“Oh, Tristan,” Nola said sympathetically. “Let me help.”

“No,” he growled.

He rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. She obligingly ground against him, fondling her breasts. Watching her ride him never failed to stir him up. But not tonight. Tonight he ached with disappointment and rage. He tried to manage the unwanted emotions by slamming himself up into her, but they only grew more powerful.