Depraved (Tales of a Vampire Hunter #2) (5 page)

“There was that Buffy chick on TV. Did you ever watch that
show?” Oliver smiled, remembering how, as a child, he’d watched reruns hoping
to learn something about his kind until his mother made him stop.

Miranda laughed and shook her head. “Before my time.
Anything in it that seemed real?”

“No. Totally made up. She could seriously kick some ass
though. I thought that was cool. Took karate for a while because of it.”

“That could come in handy.” Miranda laughed softly, leaning
over and running her hands down the muscles of his arms.

“She had human sidekicks and that really pissed my mom off.
She always stressed how important it was for us to operate in secrecy.”

“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to involve humans?”

“I always thought the same thing. Why
not
tell people about vampires and hunters? If
there aren’t that many vampires, we could have wiped them out by now with
human’s help.”

“When you put it that way, I’m glad it’s a secret.” Miranda
wrinkled her nose at him.

“Let’s stick to what’s real.” Oliver kissed her forehead.

“What we
think
is
real,” she reminded him, smiling a crooked little smile.

“Okay. So, there are not many vampires. They’re all clans
like yours, mostly family related by blood, with a few like you they created.”

“No one’s like me, except maybe you.”

“For all we know, there could be others like us. Maybe they
just wanted us to think we were the only ones.”

“They sure acted like we were important to whatever their
real plans were,” she said.

“Agreed. I don’t think they would have gone to the trouble
they did if we were a dime a dozen, but if I learned there were more like us I
wouldn’t be shocked.”

“Me either. Okay, back to what we do know. Vampires bite
people, give them their blood and some turn into vampires as a result, but not
all,” she reminded him. “I wonder why not?”

“We’re doing vampire hunters now.” Oliver chuckled. “But
that’s something else we should think about. When we were in the catacombs and
my mom was talking, remember when one of the vamps said something about their
kind dying off?”

“I got the feeling they wanted our blood as some sort of
antidote for their problem. One of them said it would only take a drop, and
there’d be enough to go around.”

“When I was a kid, a couple of times, they took blood from
me. Did that ever happen to you?”

“In a way, Sage took it when she turned me into a vampire,”
Miranda said. She frowned. “Once, when I was a teenager, I had to have a
transfusion, but they just gave me blood.”

“That’s pretty serious. What happened?”

“We were in a car accident, my foster mom and me. I had
internal bleeding. My dad said I almost died, but they’d saved me with surgery
and blood transfusions. Do you think that was staged? Like, they ran our car
off the road, cooked up something with doctors at the hospital? That sounds
crazy too but could they have done something like that?” Her voice was high and
thin.

Oliver wished he could deny the possibility, just to make
her feel better. “It’s possible. But why would they go to all that trouble with
you, to make it seem like an accident instead of just taking your blood, the
way they did with me?”

“Did you say you started noticing your abilities when you
were younger, and that’s when they started taking your blood too? Maybe by the
time they knew for sure I had abilities I was too old to force into giving
blood. They had to do something to get me to go along with it.”

Oliver’s brow wrinkled, but he nodded. “I could buy that.
Remind me some time to tell you what happened when I was fifteen, the only other
time I gave them my blood.” After hearing about her accident, that had happened
right around the same time, he was fairly certain his own horrific incident had
been staged too, at the cost of his brother Derek’s life.

Lost in her thoughts, Miranda was silent for a minute, then
she shook her head as if scattering her disturbing memories. “Okay, we’ll file
this stuff away with the rest. They’re capable of anything to get what they
want and probably have been manipulating us since we were kids. That’s the main
thing I’m getting from everything we’ve shared so far.”

“We can’t believe anything they ever told us, or be sure
about anything we thought we knew before.” Though they’d agreed on that up
front, saying it was one thing, accepting it would be much harder.

Pulling Miranda closer, he settled her on his lap and slid
his fingers into her short hair, gazing into her worried blue eyes. “The sooner
we let go of the past, the sooner we can start building a future.”

It sounded like something some self-help guru would say.
Oliver kicked himself for not finding anything more reassuring to offer her.
Things were topsy-turvy and the lies were so entangled with everything else, he
didn’t know if they’d ever know what was real.

She kissed him, and then turned her face, sweeping his
cheeks with her lashes.

“Butterfly kisses make everything better. My mom always said
so,” she told him.

Oliver smiled, running his hand over her back, slipping his
fingers under her shirt. He wished they could spend this time naked, making love
instead of sorting through everything.

“We’ll make things better together.” He kissed her tenderly.

“I know. It’s all just so scary. Like the foundation on my
house just blew away and tossed me into the ocean without a raft,” she said
when he broke the kiss.

“I’m your raft, Baby.” He kissed her again, breathing into
her, wishing they could sail away to a place where nothing would ever hurt her
again.

“You’re my heart,” she said softly.

“You’re mine,” he replied, meaning it but feeling slight
dorky saying it. This gushy-mushy love thing was new. A part of him just wanted
to growl, toss her on the bed and show her how much he loved her. The other
part felt like this kind of gentle sharing was important as they began to bond
and open up about themselves.

Miranda sighed and slid her arms around his neck, resting
her head in the crook of his shoulder.

Oliver liked the way she managed to fit herself to him, no
matter what position they were in, like a puzzle-piece. He took a moment to go
back over things they’d discussed so far, not wanting to miss something as love
made his brain soft and his dick hard.

“Have you ever heard anything about vampires dying, other
than at the hands of vampire hunters?” he asked.

“No, but they didn’t tell me about much.”

“My mom didn’t either.”

“Maybe they kept us in the dark because they knew we were
different.”

“They didn’t seem eager for us to know what was going on,
that’s for sure. So, it’s odd that they suddenly told us what they did.”

“I think it’s important we figure out why. If all they
wanted was our blood, they could have taken it from us back when we thought
they were our family and we were safe with them.”

“Yeah, why send you to where they knew I’d be, let us get to
know one another and get on a plane to the one place they knew you’d go, follow
us, stick us in cages and . . .” Oliver stopped talking as his mind raced
ahead.

Miranda sat back up. Her eyes were wide with the same
realization he’d had. “Because, they wanted us to do what we did? Needed us to
for some reason?”

“That’s my best guess.”

Miranda chewed on a fingernail. “Do you think they knew we’d
get away? They couldn’t have known I’d kill Jonathan. I never had those sorts
of vampire abilities before.”

“I don’t know.” He hated to say that again, but he didn’t want
to guess. “They either knew or set that up too, as some kind of a test, or they
were as shocked as we were by all that went down and that we got away.”

“Test? You mean like to see what we could do if pushed to
the wall?”

“Exactly. We both started developing new abilities when we
came together and had to deal with all they threw at us.”

“Or it was not planned, and they’re as freaked out by what
went down as we are.” She sighed, rubbing her eyes.

“I doubt they wanted us to escape, but we can’t be sure. I’m
fairly confident they didn’t know where we were headed, but wolf-dude showing
up makes me sure they know where we are now.”

“So, what next?”

“We keep talking and keep moving. Think about ways we might
be able to block their ability to read our minds. See if you can remember
anything else about vampires and their talents that we could fight or use
against them.”

“You never finished telling me about vampire hunters.” She
covered a yawn with the back of her hand.

“I will. In the meantime, you should get some sleep. I’ll
stay up as long as I can.”

She didn’t argue and pulled the blanket over herself,
snuggling down next to him and closing her eyes.

He stayed awake as long as he could, until sleep pulled him
under into a place filled with dark dreams where black dogs howled at full
moons and vampires danced, blood spattered, upon altars of stone.

“I had the strangest dream,” Miranda
said when Oliver woke her, kissing her softly until her eyes opened.

“You can tell me in the car.” He pulled back the blanket and
swatted her wiggling bottom.

She pouted, sitting up then coming to her knees on the bed
and wrapping her arms around his neck. “Come back to bed. I’ll make it worth
your while.” She slid her hands down the back of his shorts and pulled him closer,
nibbling his neck.

“The sun’s already coming up, and you’ve got a wicked case
of morning breath. Let’s hit it after you brush.” As adorable as she was, she
couldn’t distract him from the uneasy feelings he’d had since waking.

“I can’t believe you said that!” She laughed and chased him
across the room.

He grabbed their bag and opened the door to their room. “It
got you moving, didn’t it?” He grinned.

“Ladies don’t get morning breath,” she said, strolling past
him, her nose in the air, an exaggerated sashay in her walk.

Oliver snorted. “Questionable heritage aside, Darlin’, I
think it’s safe to say you’re no lady.”

He grinned at her dramatic gasp, but pushed her into the
bathroom before she could say anything. This playful side of Miranda was fun,
but Oliver was antsy and eager to get out of town and as far away from that
wolf-vampire-dude-thing as he could in one day’s driving. Closing the door
behind her, he put his back to the wall and kept watch. Everyone else in the
hostel seemed to be sleeping, and though Oliver saw no one else, he couldn’t
shake his agitation.

“Come on,” he muttered under his breath, rapping lightly at
the door.

“Coming,” she said, snatching the door open. “It takes a
while for us non-ladies to get it together in the morning.”

“I’d have thought it’d be the other way around,” he said as
they head down the hall.

“Whatever.” She grinned.

“You starving? If not, I’d like to get out of town, put some
miles on before we stop. You good with that?” He slung the backpack over his
shoulder and unlocked the passenger side door for her.

“We have the oranges we got yesterday. That should hold me
for a while.”

Oliver was happy the car started on the first turn of the
key and reminded himself to check the oil next time they stopped.

Miranda pulled the map and guidebook out of the glove box
and then rummaged around in their bag. Finding the broken bottle weapons, she
put one on the dash and tucked the other into the center console between them.
By the time they’d skirted town and headed south she’d peeled an orange and was
feeding him segments as he drove.

“Aren’t you stopping to buy weapons? After the dreams I had
last night, I like the idea of silver bullets a lot more,” she said, licking a
bit of orange from her mouth.

“I talked to the hostel lady. She told me about a pawn shop
outside of town that will be fair with tourists. They’ll have what we want.”
And, he thought, we’ll get the hell out of here and away from whatever it is
that’s making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and stay up.

Despite Miranda’s jolly morning mood, Oliver’s anxiety
hadn’t diminished. Something was wrong; he just didn’t know what.

It was easy navigating the straight streets of Oaxaca armed
with the hostel owner’s excellent directions. He tried to relax, concentrating on
simple things like how luscious Miranda’s lips looked when she licked them, but
uneasy thoughts battered their way through.

“Tell me about your dream,” he said, afraid he already knew
what she would tell him but needing to know for sure.

She scrunched up her nose and finished the last orange
segment. “That wolf-thing or something like it. It was like this weird mix of
all the stuff we talked about.”

“Like?” He scanned the street ahead, looking for the pawn
shop sign.

“You know how dreams are sometimes; it was sort of a
collection of scenes like the opener of a TV show. The wolf thing was there and
a pack of black dogs.”

“Vampires?” He saw the place they were looking for and
pulled over, parked and turned off the engine, but didn’t get out of the car.

“Yeah, but not like ones I’ve seen. It must be because we’re
in Mexico, but these were more . . . I don’t know, Aztec looking. They had
long, black hair, and there was a stone pyramid like thing with torches on top
of it. Weird, huh?” She laughed softly, but despite that seemed unsettled by
what had filled her dreams.

“What’s really weird is that I had dreams with the same cast
of characters and setting. A Full moon? Black dogs howling? Vampires dancing on
top of the stone structure. Blood?” He decided not to tell her about the girl
he was pretty sure the vampires in his dream had been sacrificing. Maybe she
hadn’t seen that part.