Phantom (Endlessly Book 3) (2 page)

I looked down the street. I couldn’t even see their taillights.

2
MISSED CONNECTION

I was still pacing when Sarah came out of the bar. Laughter and music filled the night and died as the door closed. I turned to look at her. I don’t know what she saw in my face, but it was enough to worry her.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked.

Before I knew it I was looming over her. “Who was that girl?”

She stepped back and looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “There’s a bar full of girls, Jason.
If you want one that bad… go ahead.”

“No!” I yelled. “Who the fuck was that girl?” As I pointed down the street, I felt a ripple. That was my body warning me to tense my muscles. Otherwise I would shift into the form of a werewolf.

“She’s Sandy’s garbage disposal. Everyone calls her Oz.”

“Where do they live?” Once again I advanced on her.

“I don’t know.” She backed away, half cowering.

“What do you mean you don’t know? You just spent all that time playing fuckin’ Chatty Kathy and you didn’t find out where the fuck she lives? Did you at least get her number or something?”

From the look on Sarah’s face I was sure my eyes had turned yellow.

“Why would I?” Being a vampire, she shed no tears, but
she was sobbing. “You know vampires don’t want to hang together; draws too much attention when people start disappearing. Don’t yell at me.”

“Fuck me.” I stared up at the night sky and sighed. “I’m not yelling at you.” I couldn’t stand to watch her cry over something this stupid. I knew I was being an asshole, but girls are so touchy. Why couldn’t she roll with the punch
es?

“Here, you could walk into that bar and pick up any girl, but you’re obsessing over some… Oh my god!” She breathed. “She’s the one.”

“I-I don’t know,” I stammered. ”Something happened… I can’t put it into words.”

“Just like Verloren and Ashley,” she cried.

Their names were like tiny pricks of pain. Verloren Fagan had been a vampire. We’d had a strange relationship: friends who were doing all we could to hate each other. We’d been the destruction duo of Fort Wayne, feeding all over the Midwest, but we were discrete about it. Verloren always held out to the brink of starvation to keep the killing to a minimum. That had reduced our risk of getting caught.

I spoke through a clenched jaw:
“I don’t know, but you need to get your fucking ass back in that bar and do what you have to so we can get the fuck out of Seattle. I need to talk to Hania.”

She turned away, sulking, and headed toward the bar entrance. I followed
her. Her face constricted and her lip trembled in a tearless weeping. Girls were so fucking emotional. Sarah had just gone from bitchy, to giddy, to crying in under two minutes. If I’d yelled at Verloren like that, he would have made a smartass comment and moved on.

Back in the bar, Sarah used mind control to pick out someone to follow us back to the car. Verloren had been able to see who was human, but Sarah had to sniff them out. She always picked through the crowd
, looking for a guy who deserved it. It was because of the torture Kale had inflicted. It wasn’t enough that Kale was dead; she wanted revenge on every guy that had ever thought of hurting a girl. Most of them hung in bars preying on the drunken women — fucking weirdoes if you ask me. I found pleasure in having a woman want me, not fight me. If they want you, they’ll do anything to please you. Why would anyone want to fuck a warm corpse? A willing participant is always better than a drugged, lifeless body.

I sat at the bar and had a couple of drinks. From the corner of my eye I noticed a couple of hot girls ey
eing me. Any other night I would have approached them, but tonight my mind was muddied by Sarah’s friend and her tattooed companion. Then there were those echoes of Verloren and… Ashley. I don’t know why it mattered. I could fuck up a relationship in about point three seconds. But I felt different about the tattooed girl; it was more than a sexual attraction. I still had a strange sensation in my chest.

“Oz,” I whispered without realizing I had spoken out loud. I felt a tug in my chest as if someone had jerked on a rope tied to my sternum. I looked up from my beer and saw Sarah motioning for me to follow her.

She’d made her choice and the three of us headed to the car. Sarah drove and I let the poor bastard sit shotgun. I sprawled out on the back seat and thought about the girl. My mind ran through memories of Verloren going off after Ashley. Is that what I looked like?

Where was Ash? She’d promised to come back after summer. She couldn’t make it throu
gh the cold weather. Streetlights flashed by and I let Ash’s emotions take hold. She was happy, yet sad, always on an emotional roller coaster.

I scooted down on the back seat and saw Sarah’s designer sun
glasses dangling from the visor — a necessity due to the light sensitivity caused by the vampire virus.

As the tugging kept up in my sternum, I closed my eyes. What was happening to me? Was I losing my mind?
I looked at Sarah.

“What do you know
about that girl?” I asked her.

Sh
e looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Not a lot. Her name is Nicole. She left after the Quatre fell, like most of the others.”

“She lived at the house?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know her well. She usually hung out with Josh and Cory.”

Cory was dead, so there were no answers there.

I asked: “And she’s bi?”

“I figured you would’ve asked about that first,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Hey, I’m not a complete sleazebag,” I said, looking at the man in the passenger seat.

“You could have surprised me,” she mumbled.

How could she be bisexual and my soul mate? It didn’t make sense. I needed to talk to Hania
. He would read me like a palm — and know. He was the only member left of the Quatre, because he hadn’t participated in their bullshit scheme.

I picked up the CD case off
the floorboard. Sarah wouldn’t stop at a motel until we were across the Puget Sound. She often made side trips around Port Angeles, but never saw her family once she was free from Kale. I couldn’t blame her. How would you explain an eternally young, albino mommy to your kids?

I flipped through the CDs until I f
ound an Ice Nine Kills album and handed it to Sarah. She sighed as she put it on and I motioned her to turn up the volume. I leaned back on the smooth leather seat of the Lincoln and listened to the new sound system I’d installed. The world was dim through the dark-tinted windows, but the music sounded great. I found myself singing along.

I watched the guy in the passenger seat. He never flinched or moved. I’ve often wished werewolves had some kind of mind control power. All we got was strength and speed, and we get real fucking ugly, real quick. We don’t really look like w
olves, more like massive humans with a canine head and longer arms so we could run on all fours. All of that was fueled with human meat. That’s why the man in the passenger seat was going to be dinner.

Normally I would have cleaned up after Ash. I hadn’t eaten after her in a few months, but there was still a faint connectio
n. I could drop everything I was doing and find her, and I wanted to. I missed her and loved her and wanted her to be safe. I looked out the window and knew it was getting too cold for her to be out in the forest. She needed to come home so I could be near her again.

Her vacation needed to come to an end. Life was going to continue without Verloren. Vampir
es don’t have souls and he would never be reincarnated. Even if he did come back, it had only been a year-and-a-half since he died.

I looked out the window. He would only be a toddler.

3 UNSIGHTLY SCARS

As we drove to Port Angeles, I knew we were close to Ash. I could feel it, like a dog finding its way home. I knew what I was going to do before we reached the motel. I didn’t want to talk to Hania anymore.

Sarah pulled into a s
mall motel and I checked us in — same old song and dance. I was the lookout as Sarah directed the guy into our motel room. It wasn’t bad sharing a room with Sarah; in a sense it was like sharing it with Verloren. Ashley and I had only shared a room once, and it didn’t go over well.

I liked to watch Sarah torture her victims. Whether this made me more demented than her, I didn’t know. She liked to kill them slowly, so they knew death was coming. Where most
vampires would drain a person’s blood quickly then let the werewolf take over, Sarah did not. For an emotionally sensitive person, she was extremely cruel to her victims. Many times she would have me shift and help her. It was something we never discussed and I never told other people about it. Every vampire had his or her own unique feeding habits. Sarah’s just seemed more gruesome. To me it was all part of being a werewolf.

Sarah would keep t
hem quiet, and as she fed off them she saw their thoughts. Sometimes she would have me feed on their hands or feet. She wanted to know what it was like for them to be eaten alive. As they sat powerless, she only took sips, reading their minds as she did. Sure, Verloren and I had fucked with people before we ate them, but she took it to a new level. I think Kale might have rubbed off on her just a tad.

Mostly it was just stupid shit, and I was used to it. She always
made a big production out of it and I would roam around the town as she had her way with them.

I sat in a desk chair by the window, s
pinning and rocking. My mind went back to an earlier trip.

“Jason, let me see your pocket knife,” Sarah said.

A young
blond man lay on the motel bed. She straddled him. I handed her my pocketknife and she opened it slowly. The man’s eyes were glazed with fear. His mouth was open and he struggled to scream, but Sarah’s vice-like mental hold kept him silent and still.

Sarah pushed the blade of the knife against the man’s crotch. “I could cut it off,” she said, leaning close. She wore an evil grin when she looked at me. “Shift.”

Standing behind her, I did as I was told, stripping and transforming into my incarnate form. His eyes couldn’t have gotten any wider, then he saw me. His glance bounced back and forth between Sarah and me.

“Your options are pretty limited,” Sarah told him. “You
can let me cut it off, and I’ll let my friend here eat your hands, and you can live. This way I know you can never hurt another girl. Or… you could let me kill you.”

Sarah used the knife to cut a hole in his jeans and pressed the cold steel against
the base of his organ. I flinched at the thought of it. She gave him a moment to think over his options before easing up on the mental hold, allowing him to talk.

He strained to whisper: “Just fucking kill me… you psycho bitch.”

“I thought you would say something like that. Just remember… I never promised it would be quick and painless.”

The man opened his mouth to scream, but Sarah gripped his thoughts and cut him short. All he could do was whimper.

Sarah turned to me. “Give me two hours Jason, then he’s all yours.”

I dressed in a hurry and left her to her mind games.

Tonight she seemed different as she sat down beside the man on the bed. Her mind seemed to be exactly where mine was. I was thi
nking about Verloren and Ashley and the weird earlier incident. For a few minutes she only stared at him. I sat, rocking back and forth in the chair, as I waited for her to decide if she wanted me to stay or not.

She spoke to him in a slow, sad voice. “I’m going to kill you, but before I do I’m going to tell you why.”

This was something new. I quit rocking and the room became quiet. The only sound was the terrified man’s breathing. The man looked straight ahead, and his breaths quickened. His already racing heart gained speed.

“I had a normal life once,” she started. “It might not have been perfect, but it was nor
mal. I had two children — girls. I loved them with all my heart.” She reached inside her shirt and pulled out a locket on a thin chain that always hung around her neck. She opened it and showed him the contents. “Beautiful girls. Of course their father never helped, but I didn’t care, I had them.” She looked down at the locket before she closed it and tucked it back into her shirt.

I felt like I was intruding
on something extremely private and debated whether to leave. Curiosity glued me to the chair. I wanted to see this approach unfold.

“A man came along promising me the world. I believed him. He was my knight in shining armor. What I didn’t see was that he was promising
me
his
world, and in doing it, he destroyed mine. He didn’t tell me what he was… what I am now, and I hated him for it. In his world he was powerful, beautiful and strong, and no one ever told him no. He kept me locked away, only visiting me when he wanted pleasure. He fed me like a chained dog. He wasn’t my knight…” Her lip trembled as her eyes turned glassy. “… he was a tyrant king that stole my life and kept me from my children. He made me into a monster, just like him. Now I have to drink human blood to live.” She nodded her head at him. “I’m a vampire and I would love to do the world a favor by killing myself, but I can’t leave my children. You see… I can’t leave any possibilities that my girls could ever go through what I did and even though you could never come close to doing what he did, you could still destroy their happiness. It might not be my girls you’d do it to, but it would be
someone’s
little girl.”

Sh
e stared at him for a long quiet moment. Sarah turned her green eyes on me; I felt disgusted and guilty for being a man. I stared at the floor. What a dick thing to do. I wished she would’ve warned me, or told me to leave. Now I felt like a huge horse’s ass. I backpedaled, recalling women I’d known. Had I hurt any of them as deeply as that? I hoped not. I’d never struck a woman, but Sarah’s speech showed me cruel torture didn’t have to be physical.

As Sarah fed I turned the chair toward the desk and stared at the window. I wasn’t looking outside; I was just thinking. I hoped I’d never hurt Lex like that. I would have to talk to her. Lex was one of three gargoyles sharing the underground house with us. When I first moved here, Lex and I had a relationsh
ip. I’d been clear with her it was only sex and she’d agreed. Had I left her with any hard feelings? I didn’t think so. We’d hooked up a few times since, but it didn’t go beyond sex. Women were strange creatures. How could a guy tell if they were telling the truth or just stringing him along?

Sarah’s hushed voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “Jason.” I turned the chair around to face her. She stared at me for a moment. “You’re a good man,” she whispered. “Don’t ever doubt yourself.”

She quickly left the motel room. Sarah always disappeared when I took over. I assume she was checking on her kids, but she never said so. With Sarah my policy was don’t-ask-don’t-tell. The wrong question would make her cry. She could get sentimental about stupid shit and was almost always touchy. I’d never met anyone who could swing from cruel to crying as fast as her.

I pushed everything out of my mind and got to work. I stripped the man and
placed his body in the bathtub before taking off my clothes and throwing them in the corner. Whenever I shifted it felt as if my body was being thrown, like missing a descending stair on the way down. I glanced at my massive form in the mirror and ripped the body into pieces. My claws shredded his tissues, slicing like hot knives through butter. I swallowed whole chunks. I hated having to clean the intestines before I ate them and the liver always had a strange gamey taste. I would’ve left them, but we couldn’t leave any evidence. The bones always came last. I had to chew them up thoroughly and it took some time. There was a lot of snapping and popping as my canine teeth ground them into something I could swallow.

When I finished, my stomach felt like it was going to explode. I pulled on my body to shift back to human. What a fucking mess. What was left would have to be forced down the drain. I caught sight of myself in the mirror: blood up to my elbows, caked around my mouth, and down my naked chest. My stomach bulged
, making muscle lines vanish. It would fall within an hour as my body converted mass into energy for my shift. I would burn through it quickly this time.

I used the man’s clothes to clean blood off the floor. We didn’t want to leave that. I showered, cleaned the tub, rinsed the bloody clothes and balled them up. I dressed and made sure I had enough cigarettes before I headed out of town. I left Sarah a note telling her I would meet her back home.

It had started raining a cold wet mist. It soaked me, but never really formed complete drops. I dropped the dead man’s clothes in a dumpster and walked through town heading in the direction of Ash’s emotions. I could feel that strange tug pulling me east, but Ash’s emotions drew me south. That’s where I went.

Once I reached the secluded woods outside town, I stripped, slipped my cigarettes and cell phone into my jean
s pocket, and rolled them up. Cold and wet air hit my naked skin, giving me goose bumps. I shifted and fumbled with my belt as I strapped my jeans to my thigh. They were all I’d need to cover myself. I had more clothes at home.

I ran on all fours, covering a lot of ground quickly. I tore through the damp sword ferns and moss-covered brush, not caring if I left a trail. I had climbed quite a few hills and was deep in the forest when I sensed Ash’s position change. Still the tugging came from the east. I turned abruptly
, throwing mud as my back feet tore into wet ground.

I changed direction, going down a large hill. I wasn’t sure which way I was headed, but I was going south of the pulling. That felt like the way to Ash. I pushed harder, running faster than I’d thought I could. When Ash moved a
gain, I fell as I tried to turn, and mud covered me. I stood up and shook myself off.

What the fuck was Ash doing? I was panting hard
, trying to catch my breath; I watched my exhalations burst out in thick clouds of fog. The misting had stopped and the night brightened.

A full moon climbed the sky. A gurgling noise came out of my mouth as I listened to her emotions. She didn’t want me to find her. Why?

I need to talk to you, Ashley. It’s important,
I told her, hoping I was close enough for her to hear my thoughts.

I took off running toward her again. She was backing away, but more slowly this time. I kept repeating my message in my head, hoping she would stop when I got close.

Her emotional emanations strengthened. I pushed harder, as if I were going into the last sprint at the end of a race. I knew I was close.

Stop
, Jason,
she thought.

I slid through mud
and into a fallen tree. The tree bounced off another and made a sickening thud as it hit muddy ground.

She had to b
e right here, I heard her mind and could feel her pain. I looked around, circling some trees, searching. I laid my nose to the ground to see if I could smell her. Her scent was different from any other, not stale like a vampire, or sweet like a human. Though it was faint here, it brought to mind cut grass, the ocean, and clean linen. I picked up a trace. I circled repeatedly, sensing that she was right beside me. The search was starting to irritate me. It was like picking a scab. I listened, thought I heard her breath, then nothing. Was she trying to piss me off? If so, she had succeeded.

Shit, I needed a smoke; I wasn’t used to all this running. My panting died down as I shifted back to human. The bundle strapped to my thigh fell down my leg. Now my clothes and I were caked in mud. The cold wasn’t so bad during my shift, but as a human my body recoiled from it. I fished around for my cigarettes and
lighter, but as I lit up something moved behind me.

“Ash?” I whispered.

“What do you want, Jason?” She sounded aggravated.

Her voice came from above. I looked up and saw her perched on a branch high above me. Her hair should have shone bright white in the moonlight, but it was a ratted mess. She was muddy. She wore several layers, all puffed up and bulky—Verloren’s clothes. They didn’t fit her. She also wore the backpack she’d left with, and it reminded me of the wings that had occupied the same spot.

It was getting too cold for cold-blooded creatures like her, and she moved sluggishly. If she were to stay out here all winter she might send herself into hibernation.

She pulled the hood of
her sweatshirt up, hiding her face. Her matted hair hung out the front like limp tentacles touching her waist. She needed a haircut.

“I need to talk to you,” I told her.

“Yeah, I kinda got that part. So talk.”

“Where have you been? I thought you said you were going t
o come home?” She sat unmoving. “Are you gonna come down here or do you want me to come up there?”