Circus of the Damned - Laurell K. Hamilton [70]
Larry’s blood flowed over the vampire’s hand. Sticky and warm like barely solid Jell-O. The vampire didn’t react to the blood. Iron self-control. I stared into his nearly black eyes and felt the pull of centuries like monstrous wings unfolding in them. The world swam. The inside of my head was sinking, expanding. I reached out to touch something, anything to keep from falling. A hand gripped mine. The skin was cool and smooth. I jerked back, falling against the car.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me!”
The vampire stood uncertainly, Larry’s throat gripped in one blood-streaked hand, holding his other hand out towards me. It was a very human gesture. Larry’s eyes were bugging out.
“You’re choking him,” I said.
“Sorry,” the vampire said. He released him.
Larry fell to his knees, gasping. His first breath was a hissing scream for air.
I wanted to ask Larry how he was, but I didn’t. My job was to get us out of here alive, if possible. Besides, I had an idea how Larry felt. Hurt. No need to ask stupid questions.
Well, maybe one stupid question. “What do you want?” I asked.
Alejandro looked at me, and I fought the urge to look at his face while I talked to him. It was hard. I ended up staring at the hole my bullet had made in the side of his chest. It was a very small hole, and had already stopped bleeding. Was he healing that fast? Shit. I stared at the wound as hard as I could. To fight the urge for eye contact. It’s hard to be tough when you’re staring at someone’s chest. But I’d had years of practice before Jean-Claude decided to share his “gift” with me. Practice makes . . . well, you know.
The vampire hadn’t answered me, so I asked again, voice steady and low. I didn’t sound like someone who was afraid. Bully for me. “What do you want?”
I felt the vampire look at me, almost as if he’d run a finger down my body. I shivered and couldn’t stop. Larry crawled to me, head hanging, dripping blood as he moved.
I knelt beside him. And before I could stop myself, the stupid question popped out. “Are you alright?”
His eyes raised to me through a mask of blood. He finally said, “Nothing a few stitches wouldn’t cure.” He was trying to make a joke. I wanted to hug him and promise the worst was over. Never make promises you can’t keep.
The vampire didn’t exactly move, but something brought my attention back to him. He stood knee-deep in autumn weeds. My eyes were on a level with his belt buckle, which made him about my height. Short for a man. A white, Anglo-Saxon, twentieth-century man. The belt buckle glinted gold and was carved into a blocky, stylized human figure. The carving, like the vampire’s face, was straight out of an Aztec calendar.
The urge to look upward and meet his eyes crawled over my skin. My chin had actually risen an inch or so before I realized what I was doing. Shit. The vamp was messing with my mind, and I couldn’t feel it. Even now, knowing he had to be doing something to me, I couldn’t sense it. I was blind and deaf just like every other tourist.
Well, maybe not every tourist. I hadn’t been munched on yet, which probably meant they wanted something more than just blood. I’d be dead otherwise, and so would Larry. Of course, I was still wearing blessed crosses. What could this creature do once I was stripped of crosses? I did not want to find out.
We were alive. It meant they wanted something that we couldn’t give them dead. But what?
“What in the hell do you want?”
His hand came into view. He was offering it to help me stand. I stood without help, putting myself a little in front of Larry.
“Tell me who your master is, girl, and I won’t hurt you.”
“Who else will, then?” I asked.
“Clever, but I swear you will leave here in safety if you give me the name.”
“First of all, I don’t have a master. I’m not even sure I have an equal.” I fought the urge to glance at his face, see if he got the joke. Jean-Claude would