Depraved (Tales of a Vampire Hunter #2) (7 page)

“Saying it once is a big deal. Can’t you just keep that in
here?” He tapped on her head and grinned a lopsided grin.

“It’s been a crazy time since we met. I guess I need to feel
it here,” she said, taking his hand and moving it to her heart. “It’s all we’ve
got. It keeps me safe, grounded.”

Women were so much better at expressing themselves, Oliver
thought. “I’ll work on that.”

“Should I add it to your to do list?” She smiled, and her
eyes twinkled.

He chuckled. “I’m reminded every time you smile at me like
that, Darlin’.”

They bought some fruit and nuts. Oliver was mindful of the
money, but everything was inexpensive and necessary. He said no to the hammock
made of strands of colorful cotton dyed in shades of blue, but paused when
Miranda held up a small carved dog. Unlike the other animals on display, this
one was solid black. The only color on it was a fiery red used to paint its
eyes.

“
Perro Negro
,” the gray-haired lady selling the carved animals
said, crossing herself.

“Black dog,” the young man working with her translated.

“It’s not like the other carvings you’re selling. What is
it?” Miranda asked.

She managed to keep her tone light, but Oliver could tell by
the way she quickly put the black dog down and reached for his hand again that
it bothered her.

“
El Diablo
,” the woman
said, crossing herself again.

“The devil.” The young man wiggled his fingers around in the
air, his eyes widened in mock fright. “Just Mexican superstition.” He cast a
sideways glance at the older woman who muttered something under her breath.

“So, it’s the devil in the form of a dog?” Miranda asked,
picking up the little carving again.

“No. It’s . . . how do you say . . . a hound of hell? It
hunts down lost souls for the devil.”

Oliver took the dog carving from Miranda and put it back on
the table, linking his fingers in hers.

Miranda wouldn’t budge. She turned to the young man again.
“Okay, so I get why she’d be superstitious about that, but why have the carved
ones around?”

“If it’s after you, there’re only two ways to get away. One,
you can go see a
nagual
if you can get
away. They say the
Perro Negro
moves very
fast, so this is not the best way.”

“What’s a
nagual
?”
Miranda asked.

“Like a witch, but scarier. The old people around here say
the
naguals
can change into animals too, like
bats. In some parts of Mexico, they drink blood and make bad magic that hurts
people, but around here people like my
abuela
think
we’re special because our
nagual
protects us from the
Perro Negro
and looks
out for all the people and the land.”

“You don’t believe in the
Perro
Negro
, but you talk about this
nagual
like he’s a real person,” Oliver said, frowning.

The young man glanced at the older woman again before
continuing. “I’ve never seen a
Perro Negro
.”
He didn’t say more. He didn’t have to.

“You said there were two things you can do if a
Perro Negro
’s after you. What’s the other?”
Miranda asked.

The young man smiled again and held up the carving of the
black dog. “Some people say the
Perro Negro
can change into other things to fool people too, but if you have one of these
in your house, it can’t get you no matter what. You want to buy? I give you a
good deal.”

“No, but thanks anyway.” Oliver tugged Miranda away from the
stands and back to the car.

The young man’s stories shook them
both. They didn’t talk much on the way back to the car.

“Feeling better?” Oliver asked.

They’d stopped by the car to admire the view—a deep valley
lined with pine trees, the rock splitting the earth, revealing a tantalizing sliver
of blue ocean that lay on the other side of the mountain range.

“Yeah. A little. I think I just needed to walk on steady
ground. We should keep going. This drive is taking a lot longer than you
thought it would.” She climbed back into the car.

“Reading my mind again?” Oliver said, as he started the
engine and pulled back out onto the highway.

“No. I just know when you’re anxious.” She peeled a banana
for him, leaving a bit at the bottom to hold onto so he could eat and drive.

“It’s afternoon already, and we’ve only managed to go about
twenty miles. We haven’t seen anywhere we could stay if we have to stop for the
night.”

“I saw some houses up in the hills. You think there’re
villages up there? We could take a side road and check it out.” She popped a cashew
into her mouth and drank some water.

Oliver was glad to see she had a bit of pink back in her
cheeks.

“I haven’t seen any signs for towns and the guidebook didn’t
mention any until you come down out of the mountains.”

Oliver had been too busy watching the road to notice much
else. The pass through the mountains had proven to be a long, tedious drive.
The hairpin turns, steep descents and places where parts of the road had
vanished due to landslides, made for slow going. It sure was pretty though.

“If things were different, I’d love to camp out in a place
like this. I bet the stars are spectacular at night.”

He glanced at her and let his eyes linger for a moment. He
wondered if she had any idea how sexy her mouth was. Her bottom lip was fuller
than her top one, and it gave her the most adorable, sexy, pouty . . .

“Watch out!” Miranda yelled, stopping Oliver’s thoughts
midstream.

Oliver’s gaze flew back to the road. He slammed on the
brakes and narrowly missed hitting a rangy looking black dog that slunk off
into the bushes.

“Jesus! Where’d that come from?”

“I don’t know. I was looking at you.” She chewed her bottom
lip, her gaze flickering to him and back to the road.

“This country is full of strays. It’s nothing, Baby. Not
nearly as big as the one we saw yesterday,” he said, knowing where her thoughts
had gone. Just like his had.

“I know, but it’s weird. That carved dog, the stories the
dude told us about it. And we see a black dog . . . now?” She almost screamed
the last word.

Oliver kept his eyes on the road, forcing himself to drive
slowly and carefully despite how late it was getting and Miranda’s agitation.

“The stories, the dog . . . just superstitions, like he said.
Yelling isn’t going to help.” He didn’t even try to keep the irritation from
his voice.

“Holy crap, Oliver! Don’t you think that
nagual
thing sounded an awful lot like a
vampire?” Obviously, she’d had enough of the whole not talking about it thing.

“The blood-sucking part, but
not the rest. Humans don’t know about vampires,” he reminded her.

“You saw the way that old
lady crossed herself when she told us about the
Perro Negro
. And that
kid made it pretty clear he’s seen a
nagual
. They sure seem to believe.”

“He said the one around here
was different. The people here have a bond with it,
so it doesn’t hurt them, right?” The logical side of
Oliver, the one that had been raised to hate, fear and hunt vampires, struggled
with the idea of people actually knowing about and supporting vampires.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice
softer. “Right here, in this
exact
region. Funny, huh?”

“Or coincidence. I picked
this place because I read about it in a story,
and it was near Mexico City.”

But what if you didn’t that
pesky voice inside him whispered. Convenient how memories seemed to come back
just when he felt desperate for direction, for a sense of control.

Miranda didn’t answer. Her
silence told him more than words that she thought he was full of shit.

“You argued with me yesterday
too when I told you I saw a wolf. Remember how
that
turned out?”
Her eyes flashed.

“Maybe we should start doing
the opposite of whatever we think makes sense.” Oliver laughed, but sobered
when she seemed to consider the idea. “Maybe we’re over-thinking everything.
Seeing threats that aren’t there?”

“We didn’t imagine wolf-dude,
and we’ve both been on edge ever since we got to
Oaxaca.”

For Oliver, his unease was so
close to the sensations that came over him when he was near a vampire that he’d
wondered more than once if Miranda was causing it. She was half vampire after
all.

“Yeah. I said we should try
to have open minds too. Be prepared to believe even the unbelievable,” Oliver
conceded, still not liking the idea of a vampire people supported or werewolves
that worked for the devil.

“Maybe we
should
turn
around. Go back down and head the other way.” Miranda reached over and laid a
hand on his thigh.

“We’re more than halfway
already. I say we keep going, find a place to stay on the other side of the
mountains and scrap the idea of pushing on to Huatulco. We’ll throw a dagger at
the map and go where it lands.” He covered her hand with his, glad she wasn’t
pissed at him anymore. They had enough troubles.

Miranda laughed softly.
“Okay.”

Traffic
eased,
and the road was in better shape
as they reached the summit and started down the other side of the mountain
range.

*****

For the last hour, they’d
been working on reading one another’s thoughts and trying different tactics to
keep each other from being able to do it. Emotion seemed to have a lot to do
with it. Miranda had always said it was easier for her to pick up his thoughts
when he was upset. He’d found the same thing with her as they experimented. But
when they managed to calm themselves, and consciously think about blocking
their thoughts, it was impossible to pick up anything.

“Well, now we know that you
have some vampire hunter abilities too. That’s a start,” Oliver said, wondering
what else she might be able to do, hoping they had time to find out.

“That’s great, but it’s only
going to work if we’re constantly on guard.” Miranda sighed.

“As a way to stop them from
picking up our thoughts, and using them to track us, it’s fairly worthless, but
if anything ever goes down again, and we want to keep them from picking apart
our heads, it might be our best defense,” Oliver said.

“Do you think it would stop
them from doing the hypnosis thing too?” Miranda’s voice was full of new hope.
She always had liked having a plan, no matter how shaky.

“Same deal. We have to think
that if they’re strong enough, they might be able to do it from afar, blocking
us,
so we don’t realize they’re near,
which sucks. But if we know we’re in their presence, I don’t see why conscious
blocking wouldn’t be worth a shot.”

“Vampire hunters do it all
the time when they’re with a vampire, right?”

“It’s one of the main things
we do. If we didn’t, the vampire might wonder why they find us so attractive,
why they’re so entranced by us that they’ll do anything to make us their next
meal, including the stupid things that get them killed. If they saw into our
heads and knew what we were thinking, we’d be dead.”

“There’s nothing you can do
to protect yourself if a vampire gets wind of what you’re doing and turns on
you first?”

“That’s the downside to what
we do. We can lure them, we can seduce them, we can take their souls and snuff
them out, but we have the same weapons humans do when it comes to killing them
if we let our guard drop, reveal our thoughts, and they decide to make us
dinner.” Oliver had only killed one vampire in his life. He’d been just
starting out when shit had hit the fan and he and Miranda had started running.
Now, his lack of experience worried him.

Miranda moaned, leaned over
and put her head in her hands.

“All that mind reading give
you a headache, Baby?”

“Maybe.” She groaned and hung
her head out the window, reaching for the door handle. “Stop the car! I’m going
to be sick!”

Oliver pulled over at a wider
spot in the road, mindful of the steep drop-off, thinking a little barf on the
side of the car was better than losing Miranda over the side of a cliff.

“Careful!” he said as she
bolted from the car.

He followed, standing close
by as she was wracked with heaves. It was awkward, another reminder that he
didn’t know her very well. Was she one of those people who’d want to be left
alone, or should he hold her hair or something?

“Better?” he asked when she
finally stopped.

She stood up straight and
wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Still really nauseated.”

Oliver handed her the water
bottle he’d grabbed when he’d come after her. “Don’t drink too much.”

“I’ve never been car-sick
before, but I’ve felt sick to my stomach ever since we got on this road. I just
need another minute,
and then we can go.”
She wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his chest.

Holding her, looking over the
top of her head, Oliver felt another twinge of alarm at the lateness of the
day. The sky had already turned that late afternoon shade of pinkish-orange
that said sunset was just around the corner. He shoved an urge away to hurry
her back to the car so they could get going.