LITMIR.BIZ

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I’d imagine the womb to be like. I should have been able to drop off immediately, but my brain kept replaying the horror of my circumstances. I didn’t have a clue where Nathan was or if he was even alive. When I tried to communicate through the blood tie, all I got back was crippling pain. Did that mean he was dead? Just imagining it intensified the agony, so I shielded myself from his thoughts…or the void where they once were. All I wanted was to feel Nathan’s arms around me, to hear him tell me that everything would be all right. Instead, I cried, grateful for the mechanical noises that would keep Max from overhearing my sobs.

      I wasn’t sure when I crossed the line between conscious and asleep, so it was quite a shock when I opened my eyes and found myself in Cyrus’s bedroom in his palatial mansion. The mattress beneath me was soft, the linen sheets as cool and crisp as I remembered.

       Clarence has really kept the place up.

      “You’re awake.”

      I hadn’t heard the voice of my former sire, even in dreams, since the night I’d killed him. I’d seen him many times, but always through a murky blue filter. We’d never spoken. Still, I remembered his cloying praise and manipulative words. His gentle tone should have put me on my guard, but I somehow knew I dreamed, so he could do me no harm. I had no reason to resist him. Not that I’d ever been able to in the past.

      I rolled onto my side to face him. His long, white-gold hair covered his shoulders and the pillow beneath his head. A smile formed slowly on his beautiful mouth, and I ached to touch him.

      “I’m not awake.” I couldn’t force the sadness from my voice. “I’m on a plane. I’m sleeping.”

      He nodded and reached for me. His hands weren’t the clawed nightmares they’d been after five hundred years of living death. They were smooth and strong when he brushed my hair from my eyes. They slid down my neck to the scar he’d left on the night he’d changed me, and a shudder of longing passed through me at his touch. In reality, Cyrus would have been pleased with that reaction. In my dream, regret softened his usually cruel face. “You’re right. You’re not awake. But now your eyes are open.”

      I leaned forward and kissed him. There was none of the need for control or power in it that there had been when he was alive. I surrendered completely, willed him to do the same with my mind. In my dream, I could have him again, the parts of him that I’d loved and not feared. The parts of him that had seduced me into questioning whether my humanity was truly worth keeping.

      When I opened my eyes again, I was awake, and a very startled Max was pulling away.

      “I was trying to—to wake you up,” he stammered, rubbing his chin as though I’d hit him. The look in his eyes was just as accusing. “And you kissed me.”

      “Sorry.” I resisted the urge to wipe off my lips. “I was dreaming.”

      “Must have been a hell of a dream.” He slid his hands into his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels while looking at anything but me. “There was something on the news I thought you should see.”

      In the other room, Max had CNN on the television. The picture-in-picture function displayed MSNBC. I dropped onto the couch. “No porn? This must be important.”

      “Shh, it’s on again.” He gestured to the screen. “It’s been coming on after the ‘top of the hour’ shit.”

      The anchorwoman, who’d previously reported a story about a toilet-trained horse, put on a more somber expression. “Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, are searching for a suspect in a brutal slaying that took place in front of several eyewitnesses Monday night.”

      “That was last night—” The words stuck in my throat. I grabbed one of the throw pillows and hugged it tight to my chest.

      The anchorwoman continued. “The victim, whose name has not been released, was jogging down a public bike path when an unidentified man tackled her to the ground and cut her throat.”

      A teenager appeared on the screen, her face blotchy and red from crying. “It happened so fast, no one could do anything. His face was all messed up, like it got burned up or something. It was like he just ripped her whole neck out.”

      “We’re following up with witnesses and pairing them with police sketch artists, and we’re hoping to get an arrest as soon as possible.” I recognized the middle-aged police officer on the screen as the one who’d given me a speeding ticket earlier that year. He looked a lot more forgiving of the psycho killer than he had of my measly eighty in a fifty-five.

      Back in the studio, the anchorwoman fixed the camera with a somber gaze. “Police artists have compiled this drawing…”

      Though it was hastily sketched in pencil and the jagged snout of his feeding face had somehow translated to a larger nose and whorled burn scars, there was no denying the man in the picture was meant to be Nathan. The reporter’s voice continued. “Police say the suspect is Caucasian, in his midthirties, with facial scars and several tattoos. He should be considered dangerous.”

      “Tattoos.” I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger. “The sigils. Of course.”

      “Hopefully, the Movement will have more information on this when we land,” Max said softly.

      “They’re going to kill him, aren’t they?” I couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. This was where Max was supposed to say something to comfort me. He remained silent.

      I covered my face with my hands. “I hope they do kill him. Because if they don’t, he’ll never forgive himself.”

      4

       A Rabbit Hole

      If the dead priest hadn’t owned a television, Cyrus might never have known what was happening.

      Not that he felt he owed the Father any gratitude. Cyrus hated television. Since its horrible birth, the blasted thing was all humans could talk about. In this wretched captivity, though, Cyrus needed something to occupy his mind, and he wasn’t about to take up Bible study.

      The Mouse still slept. After she’d finished crying and he’d rested long enough to manage sitting upright again, he’d demanded she bring him a first aid kid to bandage her bruised and bloody neck. He’d let her sleep in the bed. He had no use for it. The care and, God help him, nurturing, he’d displayed had unsettled him. There’d been no chance of sleeping after that.

      For the first few hours, he’d busied himself ripping pages from the Bible on the shelf to make paper cranes. He’d worked through the first half of Genesis when he grew bored and flipped on the television. It helped him cover the sounds from upstairs. Though any sensible vampire would have been sleeping by now, the Fangs seemed content to blast pounding, repetitive noise that barely qualified as music.

      There were three channels, and only one showed anything of interest. The local news anchorwoman wore too much rouge and her hair looked like one perfectly molded plastic piece. Exactly the kind of woman Cyrus liked to charm, then torture to death. He leaned forward in his chair.

      “Authorities in Louden County are calling off their search for three people who were reported missing after a church fire in Hudson.” The picture cut to three photos. The dead priest and nun, and a pretty girl with a bright smile wearing a cotton sundress.

       The Mouse.

      The anchorwoman’s nasal voice continued. “Police say Father Bartholomew Straub, Sister Helen Jacobs and Stacey Pickles were working at Saint Anne Catholic Church on Friday when the fire broke out, but the three have not been seen since. Footprints leading away from the building suggest they may have attempted to walk to safety, but with desert temperatures reaching record highs over the weekend, they are presumed dead.”

      Cyrus eyed the girl on the bed, shaking his head. “Pickles?”

      More disturbing than the Mouse’s ridiculous name—though barely—was the matter of the

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