Hourglass (15 page)

I sighed. “I just need to go home.”

Reggie’s lips pressed into a line, but I guess he figured I might sue if he fired me for being sick. He let me leave.

The dizziness stayed with me as I waited at the bus stop, and throughout the long ride home. My pitiful few singles in tips were crammed in my pocket. If I hadn’t felt so awful, I would’ve been depressed about having to return to Hamburger Rodeo tomorrow.

Instead, I just tried to hold on—and not to think.

I tried not to think that I’d felt the same way the day Lucas and I were clearing out the destroyed Black Cross tunnel, and on a couple of days since.

Or that, lately, my appetite for blood—which had been growing sharper and sharper from the day I’d first bitten Lucas—had suddenly almost vanished.

Don’t freak
, I told myself.
It’s not like I’m pregnant or anything.
We’d been careful, and, besides, this had begun before Lucas and I first made love. No, pregnancy wasn’t what I was scared of.

All the same, I knew something was happening to me. A change was coming.

“IT’S NOT FUNNY,” I REPEATED FOR THE FOURTH time, but I couldn’t keep from smiling as I said it.

“I know it’s not funny. We need the money.” Lucas was able to keep a straight face until he continued, “And Hamburger Rodeo is the challenging kind of job most people couldn’t keep for even four days.”

“Shut
up.
” I thumped his shoulder soundly, but I was laughing as hard as he was. Although it was embarrassing to drop an entire tray of glasses of water in front of the whole restaurant, at least I’d managed to soak Reggie in the process. I’d lost my job a couple of days after I’d come back from my sick leave, which would have worried me if it hadn’t been so hilarious.

Lucas was peeling back the cellophane on a couple of microwave pizzas, which was what we had for dinner most nights. Although we were free to shop for what we wanted now, instead of scraping by on the bleak rations Black Cross provided, we didn’t have cash for much. Also, neither of us knew how to cook.
I didn’t mind, though. I wasn’t that hungry these days.

“How was your day?” I asked. Lucas didn’t talk about his job at the garage much; he just came home gasoline scented. I didn’t mind that, though. He always took a shower first thing and emerged warm, damp, and smelling just great.

“Same old,” he said shortly. “Listen, don’t worry about that hamburger place anymore, all right? You’ll find something better. You ought to fill out some applications at the bookstores in town. You love to read.”

“That’s a good idea.” Which would I rather recommend: Jane Austen or Bacon Buckaroos? No contest.

I thought happily about my potential new career in book sales as I finished setting the table, reaching down to the basket to grab a couple of glasses—until the dizziness crashed over me.

Everything went sort of grayish, and I could see spots in front of my eyes. A weird chill swept through my body. I hung onto the wall for a moment, trying to get my breath.

“You all right?” Lucas turned toward me, concerned.

I gave him a quick smile. “Yeah, just turned around too fast. That’s all.”

He didn’t look like he believed me, but then the microwave dinged, and he turned to collect our dinners.

Not for the first time, I wondered if I shouldn’t have told Lucas about the weak spells I kept having. I hadn’t even spoken to him about fainting at work. But saying something to Lucas would mean admitting something was wrong—really wrong—and I wasn’t ready to admit that yet.

We sat down to dinner, splitting between us the newspaper Lucas had brought from his job at the garage. It smelled a little like motor oil, the same way Lucas did when he got home. Weirdly, the smell of motor oil had become slightly sexy to me. I grabbed the want ads (just in case any bookstores were listing openings), the front page, and the entertainment section. Lucas took the sports pages, but he never read those first. Every evening, he went through the local news—scoured it really, paying close attention to each story. I figured he was trying to learn more about our new city, but I was wrong.

Lucas straightened up and pushed a page toward me. “Look at this.”

I looked. A woman had been found dead in a Dumpster downtown. “That’s sad.”

“Keep reading.”

I didn’t see how it was going to get any less sad. Then my eyes widened.

My mouth was dry as I whispered, “A vampire.”

“A vampire who’s let us know where he’s working.” Lucas
smiled grimly. “Which means a vampire who’s just made a big mistake.”

“You don’t mean you want to—to hunt this vampire?”

“He’s killing people.”

“But what are you going to do? Just—kill him first?”

Lucas was very still. “I’ve done it before. You know that.”

He’d killed a vampire to save Raquel during his year at Evernight Academy. Although I believed that he’d truly had no choice, and that Raquel might easily have been killed otherwise, the thought of hunting down a vampire and killing him in cold blood made me feel sick inside. “It seems like there should be another way.”

“Well, there’s not.” Lucas pushed back from the table, energized by the thought of action. “It’s not like there’s a vampire jail or anything.” Then he paused. “Is there?”

“Not that I know of.”

My unease must have showed clearly on my face, because Lucas covered my hand with his. “Once the vampire knows we’re after him, he might take off. Leave town. That happens a lot. The second they find out a hunt is on, they split.”

“Here’s hoping,” I said. “For his sake.”

Lucas gave me a lopsided grin. “That’s the spirit.”

“You really need this, don’t you? A mission. A reason for—”
For being,
I wanted to say, but the look on Lucas’s face stopped me.

“Hey. You’re my reason. Having a normal life—well, as normal as hiding out in a wine cellar gets—I’ve waited a long time
for that. The fact that I get to live that life with you just makes it more perfect.”

“Okay, you don’t need a mission.” I folded my arms. I wasn’t actually annoyed with him, but I felt Lucas needed to know I had his number. “But you really like having one.”

Sheepishly, Lucas nodded. If the situation had been any less grave, I might have laughed. He looked so boyish when he got called out. It was cute, really.

I hadn’t become a master hunter during my six weeks with Black Cross, but I had learned a few key things, including the first rule: Never go out for a hunt unarmed. Lucas and I didn’t have the Black Cross arsenal to turn to. We searched around in the Woodsons’ garage to see if there was anything we could use; it worked on the same security code as the wine cellar, and was happily laser free. Obviously Vic’s parents weren’t going to have gallons of holy water stored near the riding mower, but whatever they had on hand would beat going on patrol with nothing but good intentions. Luckily, Lucas found some gear—including several wooden gardening stakes, which could serve if needed.

The garage was closed on Sundays, which meant that Lucas and I had the next day free. I’d come up with all sorts of plans for us earlier in the week, like maybe taking a carriage ride through the historical section of Philadelphia or maybe just staying in bed for hours.

Instead, we set out for the downtown neighborhood where that woman had died.

As the sun set, Lucas and I arrived in the alleyway. We
couldn’t walk all the way down to the site of the murder; part of the alley had been sealed off with strips of yellow tape that read
CRIME SCENE
.

“We could duck under it,” I suggested. “Even if the police did see us back there, they’d just think we were going to see it because it was gross or something. On a dare, maybe.”

“Not worth the hassle. We know how things ended here. What we have to figure out is where it started.”

Lucas and I began making our way through the neighborhood, looking for a place where a vampire might scope out potential prey. Neon beer signs in the window of a nearby bar served as a pretty good guide.

“I’m going to go in,” he said. “Get a look at the crowd in there.”

“Don’t you mean
we’re
going in?”

“No.” When I gave him a dirty look, Lucas sighed. “Listen, we’re both too young to be in a bar legally. But I’m twenty and can pass for older. You’re seventeen—”

“Only for two more weeks!”

“—and you look seventeen. If I go in, chances are nobody’s going to throw me out. If you go in, it’s fifty-fifty at best that the bartender’s going to let us stay. Besides, dressed like that”—Lucas gave my blue sundress an appraising glance that made a slow smile spread across my face—“you’d definitely draw too much attention.”

“Well. When you put it that way.”

Lucas kissed me softly, and I rested my hands against his
chest. I liked feeling the rise and fall of his breath. He murmured, “Get yourself something to eat, okay? We ran out of Ranulf’s stash a couple days ago. You’ve got to be starving.”

I hadn’t even noticed that I’d gone without blood. “I’ve had a few things,” I lied. “Don’t worry.”

He gave me an odd look, and I thought that I’d betrayed my concern. But Lucas kissed my forehead and headed toward the bar without another word.

You know, I really should eat.
I began looking around for any sign of life. Probably it didn’t matter that I hadn’t wanted blood. Humans lost their appetite when they were sick, after all. Probably I had a touch of the flu or something, and instead of having human symptoms, I had vampire symptoms. I should make sure I had plenty of blood so I could get well.

Alleyways are good places to prowl for food, both for vermin and the creatures who hunt them. Within a couple of minutes, I heard some scurrying behind a garbage pail. I wrinkled my nose from the odor as I darted behind the can and grabbed—a rat, a small one, twisting in my grasp. It smelled no better than its surroundings, and I didn’t like the thought of where it had been.

This never bothered you before
, I told myself.
Remember the pigeons in New York? Flying rats, basically.
Before, my craving for blood had driven me past the gross-out factor. Without any appetite, this was a lot harder to do.

As the rat squirmed, I said, “Sorry about this.” Then, before I could chicken out, I bit down, hard.

The blood flowed into my mouth, but the taste was—flat.
Empty. Like a bad imitation of the real thing. I forced myself to take all four swallows the rat offered, but it did nothing for me. In fact, it tasted sort of disgusting. I recalled the one time Lucas had tasted blood, and the face he’d made as he spit it out. Finally I knew how he felt.

I tossed the rat’s corpse into the garbage can and hurriedly fished some mints out of my bag. The last thing I wanted was rat breath.

Yet the mints seemed flavorless, too. Maybe I hadn’t really noticed, because Lucas and I had mostly eaten bland microwaved food these days, but human food didn’t taste right either.

What’s wrong with me?

“What’s wrong with you?”

I jerked back to attention. The voice I’d heard—a woman’s voice—came from perhaps a block over. With my vampire hearing, every word was as clear as if I stood only a few feet away.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” said a man’s silky voice. “Nothing’s wrong with you either, so far as I can smell.”

“I don’t smell bad,” she retorted. “And it’s—your teeth—”

“What, you’re not going to be shallow, are you? Judge on appearances?”

I grabbed a stake from my purse and hurried toward the voices. Hopefully Lucas was also on this guy’s trail; if not, I wasn’t going to have any chance to reach him. My thong sandals slapped against the pavement, and I wished that I’d had the sense to choose something quieter and more practical for my only pair of shoes. But I also suspected the vampire was distracted.

When I reached the corner, I stopped and glanced around. They were silhouetted sharply against a nearby streetlight. Dusk had only just turned into night. The vampire was short but stocky and powerful, and the woman was tiny, hardly up to his shoulder.

“You’re making me nervous,” she said, trying to make it sound like she was flirting, though I could tell she meant it. She didn’t want to admit how scared she was. That was the number-one thing vampires used to their advantage—people’s refusal to believe that the worst-case scenario could really be happening to them.

The vampire leaned closer to her, his arms on either side, almost pinning her to the brick wall of the nearby building. “I’m trying to make you excited. Get that pulse rate going.”

“Yeah?” She smiled feebly.

“Oh, yeah.”

I’d had enough. Although I had no illusions about being able to scare the guy, I thought I could surprise him. That might do the trick.

Quickly I held the stake up in a fighting position, spun around the corner and said, “Back off.”

He glanced at me—and smirked. So much for the element of surprise. “Or what, little girl?”

“Or I’ll paralyze you with this. After that, you’ll be out of luck.”

The vampire’s eyes widened slightly; because I’d accurately described what staking did to a vampire, he’d realized I knew
what I was talking about. That was the general idea. But it wasn’t nearly as intimidating as I’d hoped. “You might
try
.”

“Excuse me,” the woman said, “but do you two know each other?”

“We’re about to get real well acquainted.” The vampire took his arms from around the woman, and she wisely took off running. Her footsteps clattered against the sidewalk into the distance. He swaggered toward me. Though he was a short guy, his shadow from the streetlamp was tall and thin, stretching over me.

Lucas
, I thought,
this would be a really good time to step outside the bar and check on me.

The vampire stopped. “You don’t smell human.”

I raised an eyebrow. Finally I had his attention. Every other vampire I’d ever met was impressed by the fact that I was a born vampire, a rarity.

This one simply shrugged. “Hey. Blood is blood. Who cares where it comes from?”

Oh, crap.

Then a voice rang out, “You’re gonna care when it comes from you.”

“Lucas!” I cried.

The moment I saw him at the other end of the alley, Lucas started running straight for the vampire. I was forgotten. The vampire turned and sprang at Lucas, who dodged him and slammed his joined fists into the vampire’s back, sending him sprawling.

Well, if the guys had forgotten me, that didn’t mean I had to forget them. I grabbed a broken brick from the alleyway and threw it at the vampire as hard as I could. My aim had improved, thanks to my training with Black Cross; the brick caught him square in the gut. He turned to me, eyes reflecting eerily in the streetlamp, just like a cat’s.

“Get out,” I pleaded. “Get out of town for good. That way we don’t have to kill you.”