Endlessly (16 page)

I heard the snap and crunch of bone and
cartilage. She’d bitten deep, tightening her grip. She pulled his
blood quickly. His struggling slowed, then stopped. She let go of
his body. It slid down the wall to the ground. More bones broke,
then silence.

Suddenly her hand was on my shoulder.
She’d become so stealthy since her change. We embraced, then she
pulled back.

“I’m ready to go now.”

I looked down at the broken man. She’d
crushed his neck and face, but only after he was dead. She’d done
him a favor. I would’ve killed him slowly, giving him far more
pain. I stepped over him and followed her.

As we reached the car I glanced around.
The streets were empty. I went around to the driver’s side. She
stood by the passenger door, licking the blood from her hands. She
stumbled then giggled.

“You’ll notice that if the person is
drunk or high you get a dose of whatever they’re on.” As I got
behind the wheel I noticed I was feeling good myself. “Where to
now?”

“Wherever you wanted to go before I
dragged you to this godforsaken town,” she said. “Might as well
make a night of it.”

**********

In that week before we were to meet the
Quatre we both consumed more than normal. For the first time since
I could remember, my body was growing. Most of it was muscle. I was
glad that I wore my clothes baggy.

Ash liked my transformation. I
encouraged her to eat as much as she craved. She’d lost weight
going through her vampire change. A few days of frequent feeding
filled out her hips, restoring her curvaceous figure.

We made a game of it. Ash found that
she gained most from human blood. She experimented with her new
mental powers, reading their thoughts, projecting her own thoughts
into their minds, and generally toying with them.

We traveled to several clubs where I
showed her different incarnates. We kept to the shadows of the goth
scene. That was where we fit in best.

In one club I bribed the manager to
give us a booth in a shadowy corner. There we sat, watching various
incarnates. I pointed out a couple of visitors from other
planets.

“Really? Another planet?” She seemed
amazed.

“Really,” I said. I could barely take
my eyes off Ash. As I pushed her hair from her eyes, our waitress
showed up with four shots of vodka.

She looked at me, puzzled. “Why did you
order those anyway? We can’t drink them…can we?”

I picked up a shot glass and drank
it.

“We can eat and drink anything we want.
There’s just no real food value, or nutrition.” I drank another
shot. “But just as we can get drunk from the alcohol in the human’s
blood, we can also just drink it straight, and get drunk even
faster. After all, you have to at least try to act human in
public.”

“But a lot of the customers here aren’t
exactly human,” she said.

I nodded. “That’s true, and we should
keep that in mind. We can’t sit here staring them down. That’s
going to make them as restless as a herd of wild buffalo. Some of
these people are incarnates who don’t know it yet. They may not
ever find out, but most of them have a kind of sixth sense that
tells them something is off about us.”

Loud music kept our conversation from
human ears, but we could hear ourselves, and we could pick up some
of the talk among the incarnates around us. Ash gulped one of the
shots.

“So, what do we do to fit in?” she
asked, picking up her second shot.

“Look around,” I said. “What do you
see?”

“People talking…dancing.”

I bent, touching my nose to her collar
bone. I gave her cool neck a massage on one side as I ran my nose
up to her ear on the other. I inhaled her. “What else?” I
whispered, kissing her softly under her ear.

Her breathing quickened. She ran her
fingers through my hair. “People…people searching…”

“For what?”

“Love.”

She kissed me furiously, and ran her
frozen fingers across my chest. I pulled her close. Her breath was
like ice water filling my lungs. She broke the kiss,
panting.

“See? Acting human isn’t that bad is
it?” I kissed the hollow of her throat. “Now very discretely look
to the bar. You will see a medium-build Asian man with wire-rim
glasses making out with a blonde girl.”

Ash laid back on the bench, trying to
drag me down with her. I laughed, and brought her back up
again.

“Not here, love.” I chuckled. “Wait
until we get back to the hotel.”

With her mind she begged.

Always so eager,
I thought. I kissed her again.
The man with the blonde is a demon.

What?
she thought.

That’s what we call them.
They’re as old as the Earth. They’ve evolved with it, and they try
to maintain an equal mix of good and bad in the world. They don’t
go through any visible, dramatic shifts because they are always
shifting, or evolving. With a single word they can strongly
influence a person to do something against his or her will. It
could be good or bad, depending on the life they have chosen. If
one of these beings chooses good, he or she becomes an angel who
gives life, but giving life to others takes away from the angel’s
life force. If they choose to become demons, their influence is
bad, and they can take lives…

She finished the thought for
me:
…and they gain from it.
She glanced toward the bar. I kissed her under the
chin, then followed her gazed.

As the blonde girl kissed him, the
demon stared straight at us.

I don’t like him.
She stared at him, then at me.
He’s not putting up a wall, but I can’t read his mind.
She nuzzled her face into my neck.
He’s influencing that girl. She doesn’t know why
she’s doing what she’s doing. Her mind is screaming in rebellion.
But she can’t stop.

Just keep your distance
from them and don’t listen to anything they say
. I stroked her chin.

I can read the aliens. One
doesn’t know and the other does. So that means that the one that
knows can shift, right?

I nodded.
Yes. But he probably won’t. Most likely Earth’s
atmosphere is different from that of his world. He could shift, but
only for a few seconds. Aliens don’t have any special abilities,
just the possibility of understanding that they are tourists
here.

What about Sara? You said
she is a fairy. Where is she from?
Ash
thought.

The mention of Sara sent a flash
through my head.

“Are you okay? I just saw something…in
your mind,” Ash said, using her physical voice.

“Yeah. That’s what Jessica told me
about. I had my wall down. Sorry you had to see that, whatever it
was. It pretty much blinded me.”

It was a blur of
images,
she told me.
I couldn’t keep up…

What were we talking
about…
I thought.
Oh, right…Sara. A fairy. Fairies, elves, trolls, dwarves, and
dragons like you, all come from another realm. Fairies and trolls
are very similar except for odor and looks. You remember Patti from
the store--she was a troll. Trolls are deceitful liars and thieves.
They won’t stop until they get what they want. Trolls have a
glamour effect: they can manipulate their appearance.

Fairies are persuasive,
like a demon, and truly greedy. They will tell you whatever you
want to hear, and make you believe it, but they don’t have any
other abilities.

Then there are elves and
dwarves. They’re good people. They tend to keep to themselves. Both
are crafty with their hands. Elves can communicate with animals
easily. The dwarves I’ve met are very good artists.

It’s kind of like the whole
universe, and all its realms, have to keep an equal ratio of good
and evil. You, as a dragon, are the referee. Your job is to make
sure that the balance doesn’t go too far to the evil
side.

I cradled her face in my hands and
kissed her. She wrapped her arms around my neck and stared into my
eyes. A fire ripped through my body. She started to pull me down to
the bench again. From beneath the table all I could see was the
legs of nearby dancers.

You’ll have to wait until
we get back to the hotel to seduce me. Otherwise we’ll get arrested
for public indecency, I told her. So the question is, are we going
to eat tonight? Or are we going to skip?

She looked around the
club
. One or two?

One for you will be fine.
I’ll just take the aura,
I told
her.

“I think you should eat too,” Ash
said.

“You’re just trying to fatten me
up.”

“Hey, more cushion for the
pushin’.”

I laughed as she looked around the
club.

A girl in her mid-twenties
walked toward us. She was dressed in black and had long black hair,
a lot of black eye makeup and bright red lipstick.
She abuses her toddler,
Ash thought. The girl stared at Ash through vacant
eyes.

I stood, and let the girl in to sit
between Ash and me. Ash spoke to the girl, convincing her that we
already knew her. No one else paid any attention to what happened
in our isolated booth. I grabbed the girl’s hand and held
it.

Ash leaned toward the girl.
I looked around. No one was watching.
Careful,
I thought.
Make it look normal.

The girl’s fingers buzzed with
vibrations, then Ash froze her stiff with a thought. Ash raised her
hand to the girl’s ear, as if she were telling her secrets. She bit
down gently just below the girl’s ear. Ash began to feed. I closed
my eyes and pulled the aura. I felt the girl’s body go limp. Ash
laid the teetering head to the side, as if the girl had passed
out.

Ash sat up, leaned across the girl, and
kissed me. I tasted the blood and it made me hungry in more ways
than one. I felt the fire in my chest.

“We need to go,” I told Ash. I could
barely contain myself. She smirked at me as we left the girl hidden
in the dark booth.

**********

The day before the meeting that would
determine our fate. Ash and I went to a secluded wooded area. She’d
grown tired of smoky dark bars, and wanted to be out in the light,
but away from people. I wasn’t that thrilled with the daylight. It
bothered my eyes more than hers. But it was what she wanted. We
drove down a country road to a deserted house. The snow had melted
and the ground was soft. The temperature was cold but not freezing.
Behind the house lay a dense woods. We walked into the woods, and
went about a mile.

Why am I so tired?
She thought.

“Because you’re still cold-blooded,” I
said out loud. “Your body is trying to hibernate. Whenever we spend
a lot of time out in the cold you’ll get lethargic.”

“Hm. Never thought of that.”

She walked up to a tall tree with a
trunk at least three feet in diameter. When she pushed, it fell
right over, hitting other trees on the way down. She made it look
easy.

“Okay,” I said. “That tells us what
you’ve got. I might be strong but not that strong. We should get
you warmed up.” She gazed at the felled tree, then shrugged. She
followed me back to the car. We were as ready as we’d ever
be.

Chapter 16

NO REGRETS

I tried to divert her attention from
our possible fates by showing her the new life she’d taken on. The
premonitions seemed to be fading. Now when I saw them it was like
looking through a window rather than stepping into a scene. They
were more like distant echoes of the past than meaningful stirrings
of the future.

When the day of our meeting at the mall
came I knew I couldn’t take Ash. She wasn’t ready for a public
shopping center. I hoped this wouldn’t compromise the Quatre’s
plans. I felt that we could still make it out of this situation
alive, but I knew that any smart bookie would’ve set the odds
against us.

I woke up early and packed our stuff
into the car. I had been through this once before, so I knew the
drill. We had to get on the road, only then would they give us
instructions. There would be directions to a plane or train. We
would wind up at an undisclosed location. Along the way some people
would have pieces of the puzzle, but no one person would be able to
get us to the Quatre.

The Quatre never disclosed their
location until they had to. They had several safe havens throughout
the world and were constantly moving from one to
another.

I woke Ash so that she would be ready
for the meeting. I planned to have her stay in the car as
insurance. I knew she could take care of herself if someone decided
to make a preemptive strike.

During our travels I’d bought sewing
supplies. After she showered I got them out and helped her alter
her clothes. We slit her jeans in the back to accommodate her tail,
and she selected a belt. She would need one now to keep her pants
up. We slit her shirt from the bottom to just below the neck on
each side, and hemmed the borders to keep them from fraying. We
then attached two buttons to keep the middle flap down. To cover
her wings she always wore the trench coat. The wings folded close
to her back, and the trench coat lay pretty flat.