Northern Bites (Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter, Vol. 2) (27 page)

I sat up straight in my seat. “Are you crazy?” The thought of driving still terrified me—as in cold sweats and mass panic.

Fane turned to me, resting an arm on the steering wheel. “Just around the parking lot. No one’s here, Aurora. And you can go as slow as you want. Five miles per hour if that’s what you’re comfortable with.”

I stared at the steering wheel. He made it sound so easy. Sweat gathered under my arms and I shivered. “I’m not ready.”

“The longer you wait
, the harder it gets. Take the next step. Joss never got over his death and look how he turned out.”

My head snapped
up. “Are you comparing me to Joss?” Fane’s roommate only happened to be the most sullen vampire I’d ever met. He chuckled in reply.

I surveyed the parking lot through the windshield. Patches of flattened snow
gripped the pavement, but I couldn’t make out any ice. “Fine,” I said, unbuckling my belt. “I can drive from one end of the parking lot to the other if it will make you happy.”

“It’s not for me,” Fane answered with that same infuriating smile.

I scooted to the middle seat and shot Fane a pointed look. He grinned and opened the driver’s door. As soon as he stepped out, I settled into his place. He walked around the front of the car. Guess he trusted me enough not to run him over.

After I clicked my seatbelt in
, I heard Fane chuckle again. Ignoring him, I pressed my foot down on the brake. I felt proud of the way I put the car in drive without hesitation. But as soon as I had it in drive, I froze. I pressed my foot firmly on the brake, and I jammed down so hard my leg began to tire. As I reached to put the car back into park, Fane touched my shoulder gently. “Aurora, let go.”

I took in a deep brea
th and nodded.

I returned my right hand to the steering wheel
and squeezed. Slowly, I lifted my foot off the brake. It stayed in place, and I laughed with relief.

Fane chuckled. “She’s a tank, remember? You gotta give her gas.”

“Uh-huh.” I felt much better. I lowered my right foot slowly to the gas pedal, hovering right above. My heel touched the floor. I rested it there. Much more comfortable. Then slowly, I lowered the ball of my foot to the pedal. I barely touched it the first time. The car didn’t move. I laughed again. Nerves.

Fane said nothing as I hesitated each time I came close to pressing down. That’s t
he great thing about vampires. They have all the time in the world.

I took in another breath and straightened in
my seat. Eyes on the parking lot. “All clear. All mine. No one but me. No big deal. Not at all. I can do this. I can totally do this.”

Fane played the gentleman and didn’t comment as I spoke aloud.

I stared at the snow bank at the far end of the parking lot. Even if I somehow panicked and pressed down too hard, there would be a nice white mound at the end to cushion the blow. What was there to be afraid of? “Nothing but fear itself,” I whispered.

I pressed on the gas pedal gently. The car moved forward. I took my foot off the pedal
, and it rolled to a stop. A nervous laugh ripped through my lips. Fane remained silent.

I pressed down again and again
, and the car moved forward. I pressed down harder. It wasn’t fast. My eyes were on the pavement, not the speedometer, but we couldn’t have been going over ten miles an hour.

A sense of exhilar
ation built inside my chest. I braked gently in front of the snow bank and put the car in park.

Fane and I sat staring at
the wall of snow. I didn’t care about the big grin on my face.

“See?” Fane said. “Like riding a bike.”

“Yeah,” I said, a bit breathless. “Well, if I ever need to get to one end of a parking lot to the other I’ll be fine.”

Fane laughed. “Now that you’ve made it from one end to the other, how about turning her around and making a full circle?”

I shook my head.

“N
o?” I heard Fane ask beside me.

“That’s enough
auto rehabilitation for today.”

“Very well,” Fane said. “I’ll drive you home.”

“No.”

I was staring straight ahead into the snow bank so I didn’t see Fane’s expression, but I could see that he’d turned his head to look at me.

“You want to give it another go?”

If only he knew.
“I don’t want you to drive me home.”

The only sound in the car came through the air vents. I kept my eyes forward
, feeling suddenly shy. What happened to badass Aurora? The one who straddled Fane on the public bus? The one who pushed him back on the bench of this car and gyrated against his body while slipping him the tongue?

And what about Fane? Where was the tough talker now? He had to go and ruin things by being nice.

The silence was unbearable. The sound of my seatbelt when I unclicked it amplified in the quiet of the car. I paused a moment then scooted toward Fane. No turning back. Someone had to take the reins.

“Aurora.” His voice stopped me.

“Yes?” I asked innocently. I turned and faced him.

“Not a good idea.”

I frowned. “Why not?”

“You’re a vampire hunter.”

“I’m not hunting you.”

“Do you have your knife on you?”

Did he really expect me to hang out in a house full of vampires without one? “Of course I have my knife on me.”

Fane stared out the windshield at Denali High with all its interconnecting hallways.
“If you can’t trust me, this can’t work.”

“I don’t trust anyone right now.” I mean, take Melcher. I didn’t trust him
one iota. And he wasn’t even a vampire.

“All the more reason why this is a bad id
ea.”

“
Then why did you bring me here?” I asked, waving a hand in the direction of my old high school. “Why are you picking up where we left off?”

“I’m trying to help you move on.”

I sucked in a breath. Fane might as well have punched me in the chest.

“
What we had was good,” Fane continued. “Let’s not ruin that.”

Tears slipped down my cheeks.
It happened so fast I never felt the moisture gathering in my eyes.

Why did my heart have to get all gushy over a vampire? If it broke apart it was my own damn fault. Vampire hunter, Aurora. Vampire
hunter,
not lover. God, I felt like such a fool.

I put my face in my hands.

“Aurora?”

“Just take me home.” There was no masking the tears
in my voice now.

I heard Fane move toward
s me then stop, hesitate, and pull back. The car door opened and closed. I took that opportunity to hurry and move over. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Fane when he opened the driver’s door.

He
got inside the car. “If anything happened between us, you know you’d regret it in the morning.”

I sucked air in through my nose and blinked rapidly. “You’re the one wh
o would regret it, not me, Fane. I’m not the one hung up on vampires. You’re the one with the hang up!” I felt angrier as the words came out. “The moment you found out what really happened to me after my accident you treated me like I had the plague.”

His
lips twitched slightly.

“You think that’s funny?” I demanded.

He straightened. Eyes narrowed. “There’s nothing amusing about the plague.”

Right, probably not the best
analogy. It was possible Fane had actually caught the plague and now had to live with it the rest of his life. I wondered what kind of predominant symptoms vampires with the plague displayed. Maybe not the best time to ponder.

“I’ve never regretted our time together,” I said.

“Haven’t you?” Fane’s words sounded like ice.

“When I broke up with you I was confused and scared for your safety.”

“My safety?” Fane said with disbelief.

“There’s an entire unit of the government that exists to hunt down and kill people like you.”

Fane turned to me. “Then I guess it’s a good thing I have someone on the inside to look out for me.”

I swallowed. “There’s only so much I can do.”

“At least you don’t want to stake me.” He faced forward again.

Before I could answer, he put the car in reverse and made a sharp backwards
u-turn. We faced the entrance. How many times had I driven out of this lot, happy to have completed another day in so many leading up to graduation?

The emptiness of the
school grounds seeped deep inside me. I would still graduate, only not with my original class. The students at Denali High had felt as familiar to me as family not so long ago. Now I was the new loner girl who had gotten a boy killed. The tears pooled in my eyes again. I blinked rapidly. Better to wait and torture myself with these thoughts later inside my room with a box of tissues by my side. I wasn’t going to humiliate myself in front of Fane twice in one night.

We drove in silence the rest of the way. As Fane drove up my hill
, he half-heartedly asked, “How are things at home?” to be polite. That’s all. I could hear it in his voice.

“Fine,” I said.

“Good.”

I figured I’d leap out of the car the moment Fane came to a stop in my driveway, but I didn’t. I sat staring at the dark house the way I’d stared at my old high school. “I asked my mom if I could move
into my own apartment.”

“I can’t imagine she liked that.”

“It doesn’t matter. In another couple months I can start making my own decisions.” I reached for the door handle.

Fane stopped me by putting his hand on my thigh. “Aurora.” My heart responded with erratic beats. “It’s not
that I don’t want to. Far from it. But deep down I know you’re not ready to cross that line.”

I pulled my leg away
. “Good night, Fane.” I hurried out of the car. I didn’t want to hear another word from his mouth. I focused on reaching the front door.

Once inside,
I went straight to my room, curled into bed fully clothed, and cried myself to sleep.

20

Dante finally called late Sunday night. So late I’d already brushed my teeth and gotten into bed to rest up before a full week back at Hell High.

“Finally,” I said in place of “hello.”

“I’m back, baby!” Dante said.

I propped my pillow
against the headboard and leaned against it. “Melcher said there was some activity in Fairbanks?”

“We went panning
and came up with gold,” Dante said with barely contained excitement.

“Did it have anything to do with the death of Crist or Mike?”

“Melcher said you all solved that,” he said. His voice dropped an octave. “I loved your last text, by the way. Almost as much as the other ones. Humor is highly undervalued in our line of work.”