When Darkness Falls(39)
Whatever it took.
Chapter Eighteen
“Have you tasted Haley’s blood?” Lydia said.
Outside, it was dark, but the three tulip-shaded bulbs on Lydia’s ceiling fan cast rays of light over the kitchen table.
Devon shifted in his chair. “What are you talking about?”
It was after one in the morning, but Devon didn’t feel tired. He’d arrived before dawn the day before and had slept soundly in Lydia’s guest room, despite the oversweet, slightly nauseating honeysuckle smell from the potpourri on the nightstand. When he’d awakened around 8 P.M., Lydia had been out, so he’d taken a walk. At least, he thought he had, but he couldn’t recall exactly what he’d done or where he’d gone. He’d returned a few minutes ago to find her here, waiting for him with a pitcher of margaritas. Though he’d told himself a walk would help him think things through, he’d avoided thinking entirely. Avoided imagining any of the things, including the last time with Haley, that had prompted him to get on the plane.
“If you have, you won’t be able to stay away from her. You’ll hunt her down and kill her.”
Devon stared at his hands. They looked real. He touched the butcher-block table. It felt real. He looked across at Lydia, who rocked her chair back on its back legs, smiling at him with those red, red lips that covered her very white teeth. She wore narrow jeans and a turquoise tunic that set off her blue-black hair. This must be another dream. None of them had involved anything so mundane as conversation, but it seemed the only explanation.
“Well?” Lydia said.
Devon thought of the night he’d bitten Haley’s lip when they’d been kissing, and last night in the living room. When he’d raked his nails down her back and blood had sprung up and without thinking he’d bent down and licked it away. Only that had taken him over the edge.
Which didn’t prove anything.
But what happened after, and the headlines in the paper the next morning, what about that?
Devon pushed the thoughts away, though he’d come here to answer that very question. “What are you getting at?”
“I would think that would be obvious by now.” Lydia sipped her margarita from a salt-rimmed blue glass.
“Nothing’s obvious.”
“It would be if you weren’t so frightened. I’ve done something wonderful for you, darling. You’ll never be hungry again, or tired, or afraid, or cold, and you’ll live forever. At least, so long as you stay out of the sun.”
Devon stared at her. “What are you saying? I’m some kind of vampire who drinks blood and ought to be sleeping in a coffin?”
Lydia waved her hand. “Oh, please. Stakes through the heart and fear of crucifixes and all that crap? Not at all. I’m telling you you’re a powerful being. Beyond human. Superhuman.”
“A superhuman that can’t go in the sun.”
“Right. You weren’t having panic attacks, you’d developed a healthy fear of something that will kill you.”
Numbness spread through Devon. It reminded him of the times when he was a boy and, eager to go swimming, had plunged into Lake Michigan in mid-May, before the water had time to warm from the icy Chicago winter.
“Almost any injury, we can repair,” Lydia said. “That’s why neither of us had any marks the other night. Watch.”
Lydia took a carving knife from a kitchen drawer and sliced it across her wrist lengthwise. Devon watched through a haze, a spectator at a magic show. Or a bullfight.
Time slowed. Lydia’s skin opened. Flesh showed on both sides. A thick line of blood appeared, but within minutes the wound began healing, and by the time Lydia wiped the blood away with a blue dish towel there was only a thick red scar.
“And that’ll be gone in a few hours,” Lydia said.
The knife blade was still bloody.
? ? ?
At twenty-four minutes after one A.M., Haley stepped out of the jet way and into LAX. Though she and Brian had traveled to Los Angeles to play music, they’d driven there as part of a long tour and had never come through the airport. LAX struck her as brighter and more spacious than Midway or O’Hare. She was relieved that it had clear signs, which she followed to the rental car counters.
She flipped open her wallet and mentally inventoried the plastic inside. Her bankcard—she could get a little cash. The emergency Visa—she could rent or buy anything. At least she could have until the deductible for Devon’s latest emergency room visit had brought them close to their credit limit. It would be enough, though. It would have to be. She got the least expensive car available.
The clean-shaven, square-jawed rental car agent suggested the Best Western when she asked about safe and not-too-expensive hotels in the North Hollywood area. She and Brian had played at a few clubs and coffeehouses near there the times they’d been in L.A. She reserved a room for the next night and headed for the gift shop, where she bought a Thomas Guide. The inch-thick spiral bound book was filled with grid maps of different parts of Los Angeles. She and Brian had used one to fill the gaps where the GPS faltered, plus get an overview of the different parts of the city. Between the Guide and directions through her phone, she ought to be able to find her way. She felt better when she found the page with the hotel and traced several routes. She’d hoped for one that would allow her to avoid the expressways, but it was impossible. Haley didn’t drive often, and she especially didn’t like merging. But there was no help for it in Los Angeles.