Dreams for the Dead (16 page)

It would be hard. But she would do it. She had to.

As she surrendered to sleep that night, half in dreams and half out, images flashed before her, drawing themselves out until they melded with reality. Tristan—his dark glowing eyes and unsmiling mouth. Pale skin, bloodstained skin. Mouths dripping with blood. Swimming through the air like w
ater while people chased after her. All throughout the night these images painted themselves on the backs of her eyelids, haunting her dreams.

E
leven

T
he
record played, filling the room with scratchy sound. Tristan lay on his back in bed, on top of the covers. He’d lain like this often over the years, losing himself in dirty, gritty music to forget things he didn’t want to think about. Things he didn’t know he didn’t want to think about, like being a teenage joy killer, or a twenty-one-year-old guy who’d made every effort to avoid himself, or a brand-new vampire ripped in half with an insatiable hunger.

Coming to live with Loftus straight from the orphanage, he hadn’t known what to expect. None of them had. Somehow they’d known it wouldn’t be good. Only Branek was excited, and he was the only one old enough to understand things the rest of them couldn’t yet grasp.

It soon became normal to see Loftus bringing home men and women. He would seduce them in various ways while the children watched from somewhere unseen. He wanted them to watch. He wanted them to see the manner in which he killed with his teeth, the way his dripping tongue lapped up the blood. Branek, still a human, would have to clean it up, and he would taste it, tentatively, on the tip of one finger.

“He’s a vampire,” Branek would tell them later, confused but also excited. “Vampires need blood to live. He’s going to make me one too, when I’m older.”

Loftus would come sit by each of their beds at night, as if he were a real father. “Wouldn’t you like to be happy forever?” he’d ask in a soothing voice. “You will, one day. I promise.”

He gave them candies and juice when he was pleased with them. He let them go hungry when he wasn’t. But they had a roof and they had beds, even if the house was always cold. The years passed and they grew, and grew accu
stomed to their life. Despite his occasional cruelty and the horrific things he did to strangers at night, they came to trust him, more or less. If they hated Loftus and sometimes hated Branek, the three of them—Tristan, Jared, and Augusta—still had each other.

“You
fools
,” Loftus had seethed when he’d found out they’d been killing random people. They stood before him, eighteen years old, aching heads hung low as they awaited punishment. They weren’t ashamed at having killed, just that he’d caught them. “Do you have any idea how much trouble this could make for me? You’ve left bodies in every corner of this city.”

Tristan’s bleary red eyes cut to Branek suspiciously. Had he told?

“While I commend your initiative, I do not approve of your methods. You are sloppy and needlessly reckless. Wantonness is encouraged, of course, but only if you are careful. You have
not
been careful.”

“We only wanted to be like you,” Jared said meekly. He rubbed his eyes and yawned.

“You will never be like me,” Loftus said, silver eyes blazing.

“You promised to make us vampires!” Augusta cried. She ground her teeth together and clawed anxiously at her thighs.

“I do not turn children into vampires. I train children, who then become adults. You three are still children and you have much to learn. When you’ve come of age and I determine you are ready,
then
I will change you. Until then you must be patient, as I am. Soon you will all take your place with Branek and I.” He paused, his eyes sliding over each of them. The look on his chalk-white face changed into something less harsh. “I must ask,” he said. “How do you find the feel of blood on your hands? The scent of it?”

“It’s … warm,” Tristan said inadequately. He still felt zoned out from all the pills he’d popped the night before. “It’s beautiful.”

“It smells like life,” Augusta said, and Jared just nodded.

Loftus had smiled in approval.

After that, they’d trained themselves in patience and developed an actual methodology. Now, when they killed, they picked out a random person and took turns following him or her, learning their routine. This had a different kind of thrill. Anticipation. That person never knew they watched. Never knew they were being studied, or that soon their life would spill all over the pavement, and three teenagers would taste it on their fingertips in fascination the way Branek had done years ago.

“I can’t fucking wait to be a vampire,” Augusta would always say.

Jared would nod and jostle Tristan with an elbow, both of them in a perpetual state of half-drunkenness. “I’m going to get so much ass.”

Tristan had never known what he wanted. It was always music, and girls, and thrills, and maybe some drugs here and there. There was a knot deep inside him that never seemed to go away. His fee
lings confused him. He couldn’t decipher them, or maybe he was afraid to, so he erased them with various forms of outside stimulation. Sometimes he thought he recognized himself in Augusta’s desperate eyes, but then laughter or killing would distract him, and he would feel almost normal.

Soon he didn’t even have to force himself not to feel. He just didn’t feel at all. And
that
was normal. He became who he was supposed to be. He’d lived up to the potential he’d recognized in himself, alone in that lightless cavern. Surpassed it, even. And not once had he ever looked back to mourn a man he might have become in another life.

If he’d ever looked back at all, it was to pinpoint a moment, any moment, where he wished he’d died. Like a fucking candle gone out. There were several.

Something is gone.

Something is lost. Stolen.

I’ve never been the same since …

The door to his room opened slowly. “You look lonely,” Nola said. He felt her weight sink the bed b
eside him.

Tristan grunted. He slid an arm around her, drawing her down beside him. It was exhausting to think of all that had passed between them and the inexplicable gap that still separated them. They’d been together on and off what, five years? Time meant nothing.

“You’ve been up here for hours,” she said. “Have you even fed?”

“Some. I should go out again soon.”

“We can go together.”

“Sure,” he said without conviction.

Nola propped herself up on one elbow and stared down at him. “All right, I know something’s the matter with you. Does this have to do with your human that ran away?”

“What do you take me for?” he huffed.

“I don’t know what to think. Yesterday I threw myself at you, but I could tell your heart wasn’t in it.”

“That’s probably because I don’t have one.”

“Don’t be a shit,” Nola snapped, dark eyes flashing at him. “I care about you. I want to help you.”

“Damn it, Nola, don’t do that. I didn’t ask for your help. I’m perfectly content just to lay here in my room by myself until the fucking world ends.”

She took a deep breath. “Look,” she said gently. “We’ve all had moments like this. Existential crisis, right? Just know you’ve always acted within your nature. And if something really bothers you, just forget it. Some things are better left forgotten.”

“Not everything,” Tristan said.

She scooted off the bed, grabbing his hands to take him with her. He rose reluctantly, but then his eyes fell to her sugared-cherry lips, her breasts pushed up in the low-cut dress. Lust stirred in him, and he was glad to feel it. He’d thought something had happened to him, that maybe something was wrong with him, but it seemed he could still work up his old enthusiasm for Nola with very little effort.

“I guess Loftus wants to see you all in the family room,” she said. “I just came up here to tell you that.” She didn’t meet his eyes.

“Are you sure that’s all you came up here for?” he murmured, dropping his mouth to hers. He had her quick against the wall.

“God, I missed that,” she sighed afterward.

“Yeah.” He lowered her to her feet and stepped back.

She trailed a finger down his chest. “Do you remember the time we got stranded in Pahrump? When Branek drove us out there chasing some toy, and then left us?”

The sky had been overcast that day, the clouds thinned out after a brief shower. They had the peculiar effect of obscuring the sun while also magnifying its light. Abandoned, Tristan and Nola wore sunglasses to shield their sensitive eyes. The man they’d picked up squinted in the gray but deceptively bright day. They’d intended only to steal his car at first, but a shared wicked glance communicated that they’d each come up with other ideas.

“Is this where you live?” Nola had asked as the man led them to a small, blocky house. It was dismal in the morning light, sitting in the center of a barren, weedy lot. Besides scattered trailers, half of them empty, there was nothing else around them but dirt and rocks. And that meant there would be no one to wi
tness what they were about to do, and no one to hear the man scream.

“Sometimes,” the guy said. He was a shifty type.

The front door was practically falling off its hinges. Inside, there were candles melted into the stained and matted carpet. Dead leaves had piled into the corners. The screens on the barred windows were torn, letting in faint patterns of light.

“This house looks abandoned,” Tristan said.

“It is,” said the man.

Nola just smiled. “It’s perfect.”

With an exhausted sigh, the man lowered himself to the bare mattress in the middle of the room. It was the only place to sit and, fortunately, it looked much cleaner than the carpet. “So? What do I need to do?”

“What is it you want?”

The man made an exasperated sound. “We talked about this. So tell me. Does he like to watch?” He cast a glance up and down Nola, though there was no lust in it, then flicked his gaze to Tristan. “You want a blow job? What? Tell me.”

“I do like to watch,” Tristan said, lurking at the edge of the room.

“Great.” The man sighed and patted the mattress. “All right, should we do this here, or—”

“Right there is fine,” Nola said.

She pushed the man down on his back with one heeled foot to his chest. She rucked up her dress, smiling dangerously as she bent to straddle him. The man didn’t react except to drum his fingers restlessly against her thighs, wanting to get this over with. Her hair brushed the mattress as she leaned down, and Tristan knew the moment she bared her fangs. He smiled.

The man yelled and tried to shove her off, but she was strong. She ripped into the man’s throat as he bucked against her, his manly yells turning to the terrified shrieks of a child. Nola rode with his frantic movements, her nails digging into his skin. Tristan might have b
elieved they were fucking had it not been for the screams and the smell of blood. Actually, screams and blood didn’t preclude fucking, in his experience.

In less than a minute, the screams died out alt
ogether. Nola drank until there was nothing left. When she was done she lifted her head, the skin around her mouth stained crimson. She smiled with bloody teeth.

“Nice work,” Tristan said, crossing the room toward her. He’d gotten a hard-on watching her.

“Thanks,” she breathed, pulling him down to kiss her.

They’d had sex beside the body, right there on the filthy floor. By the time they were done it had started to rain again, and it washed the blood from their skin. They’d taken the man’s car and driven into town with the windows down, leaning over every few miles to affectionately lick the rest of the blood off each other’s faces.

“That was …” Tristan gave a short laugh as he remembered. “Yeah, that was a good time. And Branek was a son of a bitch. Still is.”

“I felt so close to you that day.” Nola nuzzled against him, smiling. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

“I told you.” He shot her an irritated glance. “I don’t need you to worry about me.”

She smiled and touched his cheek. “I do anyway. Come on. I want to know what Loftus has to say to you guys. He seemed excited. I mean, for him.”

They walked out to join the others in the family room. Pressed close against him, Nola swayed her hips and touched his arm suggestively, secure in her power over him once more. Tristan let her do it, but he returned none of the physical affection. He wasn’t into it.

Fallon had shown up earlier that afternoon, pale and pious, when Tri
stan had just been thinking he’d have to go looking for him all over again. Loftus and Fallon had been cooped up in the office all evening, discussing rituals or whatever. Fallon’s dead mother, apparently.

Tristan and Nola reached the family room. “I’ve gotta get her back,” Jared was saying, reverence in his voice. “She’s so beautiful. French-Indonesian.”

“Why do you want her back?” Branek asked derisively. “You’ve already had her. Unless you want the pleasure of killing her for getting away. Then I understand.”

“Where’s Loftus?” Tristan asked.

“I’m not going to kill her,” Jared said, offended. “She’s my soulmate.”

“We’re still waiting,” Augusta said to Tristan. “As usual.”

“How many is that now?” Branek wondered. “I’m afraid I’ve lost count.”

“It’s different this time,” Jared insisted.

“Right. Different from all the other different times.”

“It’s true!” Jared raged, slamming a fist down on the table. “Why don’t any of you ever believe me?”