In the Dark (34 page)

“I’m
hungry,” I said once I could take in a slow, normal breath to
speak.

Sebastian raised
an eyebrow in acknowledgment and continued watching the road. The
tires hissed on the wet pavement.

I cleared my
throat. “So’s Amanda.”

He nodded once,
still quiet.

“So I’d
like to drop her off and go out,” I went on. “If you
don’t mind making the trip.”

Sebastian
glanced at me. “If she is hungry as well, why leave her
behind?”

I blinked a
couple times, thinking of the nights Kent had opened his wrist for
me. He hadn’t even let me bite him myself for months –
something I appreciated. Even with razor sharp canines, you have to
bite hard to get a mouthful of blood. Not the kind of thing you get
used to real quick.

“She just
got turned last night,” I said, even though he’d been
there. I expected a nod, some sign of agreement.

His eyes stayed
on the road, his mouth shut.

“So I
don’t think she’s ready to try going out on her own,”
I elaborated, in case he didn’t get that part.

“How else
do you mean for her to get her food?” he asked.

How else . . . ?
How had he been taught?

“Well,”
I said, frowning, “me.”

Sebastian’s
eyes flashed my way. Curious. “You mean to nurse her like an
infant?” he said, like he couldn’t believe it. Apparently
he had not been taught the way I had.

“Isn’t
that what she is? An infant vampire?”

Made sense to
me. I waited for him to answer, wondering about his infancy. I
decided I wouldn’t like it.

“And if
something happens to you, Ian?” he asked. “If you do not
show her what she needs to survive you risk her life. As Kent risked
yours.”

I snapped my
mouth shut.

Kent had left me
extremely uneducated, true. But still – feeding was intense. I
didn’t think rushing anyone into it could possibly help their
transition to being a vampire. Besides, Amanda could figure out how
to feed on her own if she really needed to. It was intense but it
wasn’t complicated.

“I don’t
want to scare her,” I said. “And besides, if anything
happens, she’ll have you and Josephine.”

“You would
force her care on us with your death?” he asked relentlessly.

This was getting
silly. I braced myself, trying to take a stand – seat. Gypsy
dug her claws into my leg when she felt me tense. “I’m
not going out on any suicide missions,” I said, gently
unhooking claws from my leg. “I’m going to be careful.”

“Do you
suppose Kent thought anything would happen on the night he died?”

“Hey,”
I said, pushing back surprised anger. Gypsy dug in again.

“I am
sorry, Ian, but Kent did leave you unprepared. I am trying to warn
you against doing the same thing to your sister. Your new daughter.”

I sat still,
letting the anger bleed off, reminding myself that he cared and only
wanted to look out for Amanda. Even if that meant playing the
asshole.

“You have
a point. I’m not going to leave her as far in the dark as Kent
left me. But I’m not going to scare her out of her mind,
either. I want her to wait while I eat and feed her when we come
back.”

Sebastian
shrugged like a man frustrated. Short, harsh. “As you will,
Ian.”

“Thanks,”
I said, just as short, and let the argument go at that. I pet my cat
and didn’t speak again until we reached the parking garage.
Josephine’s Porsche pulled into the slot next to the Vector and
cut the engine. I got out with Gypsy curled tight against my chest,
Sebastian behind me. Josephine and Amanda took their time, chatting
and not looking at us. I cleared my throat to get their attention.

“I need to
eat,” I said when they both looked at me. Neither one said
anything.

“I still
say this is unwise,” Sebastian said quietly. “She will
not thank you.”

“I already
said I’m not going to keep her in the dark the way Kent kept
me,” I said back. “What else do you want?”

“Teach
your sister what she needs to know about herself. Take her with you.”

“I’m
not interested in having her watch me suck blood from strangers,”
I hissed. “I think she’ll have plenty of time to learn
later on.”

“As long
as nothing happens to you.”

“Excuse
me,” Amanda said.

We looked up.

She crossed her
arms expectantly. “Did anyone plan on asking me how I felt?”

“No,”
Sebastian informed her, before I could open my mouth. Amanda’s
eyes went a little wide.

“Excuse
me?” she managed.

“I said,
no, in answer to your question whether we intended to consult your
feelings in this matter.”

Leave it to
Sebastian to cut to the chase. Trample a few sensibilities. Ignore
tact.

“And why
not?” Amanda asked. I watched her shoulders set.

Sebastian
shrugged again. “You no longer exist in a state you understand.
You do not have the experience to make these decisions for yourself.
Until you mature enough to make educated decisions, I do not see the
point of asking how you feel about them.”

Amanda stood,
staring at Sebastian. He stared right back.

“Look,
Amanda,” I said, stepping between them. “The fact is this
is all very new and kind of scary. You don’t know anything
about vampires yet. I think it’d be best if you wait here while
I go get something to eat. Don’t you?”

“I’ve
gotta learn sometime,” she said, like she thought I was being
over-protective.

“And that
time’s not tonight.”

“Why?”

“Why?”
I tried to bring her back to the point. “You have to make
someone bleed and then drink it. That’s why.”

“It
doesn’t sound that bad,” she insisted.

I bit my lip,
trying to choose the wording of my next argument very carefully.
Letting her get her way on this was not an option.

“All
right,” I said.

I turned to
Sebastian and dropped Gypsy into his arms. With a quick look around
to make sure we had the garage to ourselves, I rolled my shirt sleeve
up and held my wrist out to Amanda, palm up. When she frowned, I took
a step closer.

“Take a
bite.” I flexed my fingers. The tendons in my arm shifted under
my skin. Amanda frowned a little deeper. “Go on,” I said,
watching my point get made. “This is how it’s done, you
know. Bite me.”

“Ian –”
she faltered.

“Here,
I’ll help –” I took my wrist in my own teeth and
chomped, pulling my lips back so she could hear the skin snap as it
broke, watch my teeth sink in. It stung like razors, but at the same
time my wrist tingled under the hard perfection of my fangs. When I
held my hand back out to Amanda, her eyes had gone wide. I dropped
it.

“It’s
not as easy as you want to pretend,” I told her as I rolled my
sleeve back down. “You’re waiting here for tonight.”
I turned to Sebastian, holding Gypsy for me. His eyes were cloudy.
Thoughtful, maybe.

“If you
would,” I said, aiming a hand at Amanda. I didn’t meet
anyone’s eyes. I felt dirty and exposed.

Sebastian headed
for the elevator without another word. Amanda and Josephine followed.
I got back in his car, slumped in my seat and waited for him to come
back down.

T
his
was the first time he had seen a mother and new child interact
outside his own pack. Sebastian boarded the elevator with a
thoughtfulness that had become familiar of late. Ian had exerted her
superior experience without harming or horrifying Amanda. Simply
convinced her of the truth: to feed for the first time was
frightening.

He wondered how
his own infancy would have gone, had his father – mother? –
stayed long enough to do more than kill him. How would it feel to be
cared for, even a fraction? When they reached the penthouse, he set
the cat on the floor and watched it scurry under his couch –
when he looked up, he found Josephine standing close by, apparently
waiting for something. He stood and she kissed him again, that same
gesture as earlier. He kissed her back, enjoying her soft smile when
she let him go. He boarded the elevator and rode back down, still
thinking.

Was this why Ian
had become important to him? Because perhaps, for reasons he could
not guess at, she cared for him?

When he reached
the Vector he found her sitting deep in her seat, her face troubled.
He got in and stayed still, waiting for her to speak. She sighed and
leaned her head against his shoulder. To his surprise, he did not
react to her as a threat.

Am I growing
slow?

No, his hand had
tensed, ready to move. He had simply stayed it. Ian was no threat.
Not simply because he could defeat her as easily as a newborn, but
because he did not suspect her of attacking him.

“I hated
that,” she murmured.

“She
needed to know what you had to tell her,” he said. He did feel
she had done well, convincing both her new child and himself.

She sighed
again. “Why did you change your mind so fast?”

The answer to
that came at once. “The look on her face.”

Specter would
have laughed, forced her to feed from him, mocked her for being so
eager and then so frightened. Sebastian found himself growing more
and more to hate Specter.

“You must
have had it rough,” Ian murmured. “I’m sorry.”

“It is no
fault of yours, Ian.”

But her comment
made him think. Somewhere between Sarah’s death and finding the
pack, he had ceased to think of his life as hard or difficult.
Somewhere between them, the pain had faded into an ache he still
vaguely felt, wordless, imageless. Endless. At some point, he had
stopped thinking of the quality of his life and started thinking of
just how to live. How to survive one more night, find blood, stay
hidden from the sun.

He’d
thought that was all his life meant anymore. Survival.

Even the members
of his pack sought more than that, securing wealth and property,
building reputations for themselves, playing idle terroristic games
when otherwise unoccupied. His own reputation had been largely built
on his avoidance of such games. He had found them time-consuming and
disgusting. Perhaps because their idea of life had never been, at
heart, his own.

Ian sat back up
with a faint smile. He’d been getting smiled at frequently of
late. A pleasant change. He started the Vector and pulled out of the
parking garage.

That, I
think, is something I could use more of in my life. My idea of what a
life is.

But the rest of
it . . .

He had not
thought of it in too long. He could not recall what he might have
wanted, or why.

I shall have
to find out.

T
he
rain started again on the way out. Seattle. Good for coffee, clubs,
and rain. A hundred tiny pellets of water hit the roof when Sebastian
pulled out of the garage.

“You
prefer feeding in clubs?”

“Not the
Half-Moon,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to set foot in
that place again. Ever.

He nodded once
and drove toward the Pike Pine Corridor. There were lots of clubs in
that area. I’d find something.

I listened to
the shoosh of the tires on wet pavement, stared out the window,
watched the windshield wipers go back and forth.

“So your
pack was pretty much your childhood,” I said.

Sebastian
flicked an eyebrow. An acknowledgment.

“So did
this Specter guy change you, or someone else?”

His face stayed
the same. “Someone else.”

I watched rain
trickle down the tinted glass. “But Specter’s the leader,
right?”

“Yes.”

“What was
it like to be a young vampire with them? How did they teach you
stuff?”

“I started
out on my own,” Sebastian said. “By the time they found
me, I already knew what I needed to survive.”

“On your
own? All by yourself? Your . . . parent didn’t stay around to
help you?”

“He or she
did not.”

I blew air into
my chin-length bangs. They fluttered around my face. “If you
already figured out what you needed to know by yourself, why did you
hang out with the pack when you met them?”

He didn’t
answer. I knew he’d heard me, even if he didn’t act like
it. He didn’t sigh or shift in his seat, like I would. I let
Sebastian be, waiting, until I was sure he’d forgotten, lost in
his own thoughts. Or he didn’t want to answer.

I traced the
shape of the moon, the buildings, drew the pictures the raindrops
suggested on the glass with the tip of my finger.

“I don’t
know.”

I flinched in
surprise, even though Sebastian’s voice was soft.

“I have
wondered that since I found them and joined them.” His voice
stayed flat and calm. I dropped my finger from the glass and
listened.

“I think I
stayed because they were the first I had found like me. I thought, at
the time, that they might be the only ones. They offered me knowledge
of what I was, others like myself to associate with. I craved that at
the time.”

His eyes were
far away. Wistful and bright.

“You were
lonely,” I said.

He nodded.
“Yes.”

I hesitated.
Then asked. “Are you lonely now?”

There was a long
silence, with only the swoosh of the car tires and the rain to fill
it.

“I don’t
know,” he said at last.

That didn’t
sound like all he had to say. I waited for him to organize his
thoughts and keep talking.

“I find
your company and Josephine’s pleasant,” he went on. “But
I do not think either of you truly know me, or would want to once you
did.” His voice had gone softer. His eyes dark.

I reached out
and set my hand over his on the shift-nob, like he’d done for
me so many times. Reassuring without invading.