Phoenix Dead (New Adult Dark Romance) (The Vampire Years) (6 page)

“We'll catch them soon, then you'll sleep.”

I managed another smile.

“Really, Lee. Danny's going round the clock tracking down leads. And he's probably the best in the department.” Starting the car, he leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “It looks like they did this at least once in California, but we can't say anything yet.”

I nodded, tacitly agreeing to keep the secret. We passed the rest of the ride in silence. He dropped me off in front of the school, telling me as I got out of the car that Jeff would be giving me my ride home.

“Right.” I waved good-bye, somehow finding my way into school despite my eyes starting to blur with tears. Somewhere deep down, I'd convinced myself that Danny would pick me up tonight.

It was, after all, my fucking birthday.

At least Chris had somehow found out that it was my birthday. He greeted me like usual at the main entrance, but with a bigger smile and a pink and silver striped gift bag behind his back. He wouldn't let me peek, telling me I had to wait until lunch.

I never made it to lunch. Two hours later, I closed the door to my locker, spun the combination lock back to zero and looked up to find a boy with midnight eyes staring at me.

I knew right away that we were the same, only he was much older. The youthful, smooth face meant nothing - he carried his age in his gaze. He could have told me he was as old as the desert and I would have believed him.

He was taller than me, maybe six feet, with a blend of features between Mexican and Native American. His hair was black as mine, but ultra-straight and stopping at his shoulders.

He handed me a cell phone, the screen displaying a picture. I looked down, saw that it was a photo of Casey going into her babysitter's house, wearing the clothes she'd left in that morning.

“I don't want to hurt you, Lee. I just want to talk to you.”

I stared at him, trying to figure a way out of this that didn't involve me going anywhere with him or Casey dead.

“She's dead if you don't come with me,” he whispered.

“Who are you?”

He smiled, flashing an unmistakable but discreet glimpse of fangs. “You can call me 'Oscar.'”

“Let me get my backpack, Oscar?”

Not answering, he reached in front of me, spun the combination to my locker, and then pulled my backpack out. Dipping into the front pocket, he fished my cell phone out then tossed the bag to me. As I fumbled to catch and shoulder the bag, he stripped the battery from the phone and pocketed both pieces.

I stared, mouth open, at his little trick of knowing my locker combination and how he'd zeroed straight in on my cell phone.

“Magic, Lee.”

He started in the direction of the gym, motioning for me to follow. At the exit, we blended into the students heading for the track around the football field. A few minutes later we separated from them. He headed for the fence near the canal and one of the few trees that lined it. As we neared the fence, I could see that someone had pulled the joining chain links back from the post.

There was a motorcycle parked on the other side. Climbing on, he handed me a helmet. The gesture seemed utterly ridiculous considering that he was likely lying and had every intention of killing me. I put it on anyway and sat behind him. The bike moved forward and I jerked, straightened a leg and touched my foot to the ground.

“You're kidding me, mija.” Oscar looked over his shoulder at me, the black eyes hidden behind sunglasses now. “Wrap your arms around my waist.”

Swearing at him under my breath, I obeyed. I looked behind me, watching the school grow distant and thinking that, even if I wasn't dead come Monday, I'd sure as hell be suspended.

Oscar drove to another empty house. This one had a realtor's lock box on the front door and a sign in the yard. He popped the gate to the back and pushed the bike in. The sliding glass door from the living room onto the back patio was unlocked. He opened the door and motioned me inside.

The interior was clean - the walls bright with no signs that Oscar or the others had been in here before. Of course, the bodies could have been stacked five high in the back bedrooms for all I knew.

When he shut the sliding glass door, I turned to him. “This is a lot of trouble to go through just to talk to me.”

Stopping about three feet from me, his gaze skipped up and down my body as he answered. “Can hardly have a conversation standing around in front of the lockers - me without a hall pass and all.”

There were ceiling-to-floor drapes on the sliding glass door and he closed them. “Tell me, Lee, would you have come if I'd shown you a picture of your uncle? Your other cousin?”

The house's last owner had torn the dividing wall out between the living room and kitchen and I walked over to the sink. There was a water filter on the tap and paper cups stacked to the side, alongside a real estate listing.

I poured a glass and took a sip while I stared down at my hands and willed them to remain steady. “Let's just get down to whatever it is you want.”

“Okay, mija, take you're top off.”

I dropped the cup, water spilling across the counter.

Oscar started laughing so hard drops of blood formed at the inner edges of his eyes. “It's okay, Lee. I was just joking - I've already seen you naked.”

I shook my head, my gaze transfixed by what looked like tears of blood. “You weren't in the house.”

“No. But that
culo
Army was and he…well…”

He didn't finish, just wiped his thumb across his lower lip.

When I kept staring at his face, he brought a hand up to his cheek and brushed at one of the drops of blood. “I forgot. You still cry little girl tears, don't you, Lee?”

Oscar brought his red, wet fingertip to his lips and slowly licked the drop of blood away. “Pretty soon, you won't even have that.”

Stepping around the counter that separated us, he grabbed my arm. “You're dying. Do you feel it?”

I did, but I wouldn't admit it to him.

“The guys, they wanted to hunt you down, take you out. I told them you'd be dead in a week, maybe two, anyway.”

He snapped his teeth at me for effect. “You won't even live long enough to earn your blood fangs, mija.”

“Why is that?” I tried to look him in the eyes but couldn't. I knew that, if I did, I'd see he was telling me the truth and I was still trying to believe he was lying. Who wants to be dead at eighteen?

“No new blood in you, for starters. You're dry as my
abuelita
on her wedding night, Lee.”

“So you're only going to let me live because I'm dead anyway. You're too kind, Oscar.”

He smiled at that and stepped closer. “Nah, I don't want you to die.”

"Your brothers do."

"Fuck them. Make them gods they still act like god damn sheep with their lame ceremonies."

Scary-assed, blood sucking sheep, maybe.

He brushed his nose along my hairline and then dropped his face to my neck. Hearing him inhale, I felt his lips brush my neck and ear.

“You're something of a freak among freaks, you know that?” He grabbed my other arm and kept me from pulling away. “The way you turned, you shouldn't have. No amount of our blood should have saved you, but it's like your body knew the blood, wanted it.”

He backed me up against the counter and pressed his body tight against mine. “And yet you haven't had any since, what, the hospital?”

I didn't answer. He ran his hands up my arms and cupped my face.

“So you have,” he whispered, his voice sounding far away. “But not much.”

He offered a wet laugh that made goosebumps rise up on my arms. “You find a cutter at school or something?”

Holding my face, he wouldn't let me look away. I blinked once before I answered, “No.”

He dropped a hand down to my neck and traced a vein. “I could find out in a heartbeat, mija.” He put his lips to the skin, held them there, while his hand trailed back down my side.

“Was it one of the cops that takes you to and from school, then?” Oscar slid his hand between us and trailed his thumb over my jeans' zipper. “You give him a little taste of this in exchange?”

“A dope head,” I answered at last, knowing that he'd keep pushing me until I answered. “Passed out at my uncle's house, I made it look like he cut himself.”

His lips left my neck to brush against my mouth.

“Smart, mija. But not subject to repetition, eh?”

“No.” I tried to slide away but his body and easy strength blocked me.

“I'm going to give you something, Lee, if you make me a deal.”

I moved backward, trying to evade him by pulling myself up onto the counter. He jerked me back down and wrapped his arms around me, one hand immobilizing my head.

“Listen to the deal before you start going all
loco
on me.”

I answered through clenched lips. “What is it?”

Oscar laughed and gave me a little shake as if to show me I wasn't so tough. “You're not going to give us up to the cops.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And not because you're doing us any favors.” Another laugh, another shake. “What do you think happens when the world finds out about us - about vampires?”

I swallowed hard at the word. No one had said it yet - not Army or his brothers, certainly not me. I'd been working like hell to avoid it.

“C'mon, Lee, tell me. What happens?”

I shook my head.

“Think, mija. All the disease, all the little wannabes out in the world? Cancer, Ted Bundy. We're not the monsters anymore.”

I forced my head back a few inches in his grasp so that I could look at him. “Don't kid yourself, Oscar.”

He flicked his lower lip out at me with a wet, angry snap. “Whatever, little girl. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me all the silicon implants and their coke head boyfriends don't want what I am selling? The strippers, the pimps, the grade-schoolers and their grandmothers, they'd all be begging for it.”

Oscar pulled my head back towards him and whispered his challenge in my ear.

“Tell me I'm wrong.”

I couldn't tell him he was wrong. I knew too many addicts who would swallow anything if there was the smallest promise that it would take away the fear and failure for even a couple of hours. “You're not."

“Good. So we're clear? You leave us alone, we'll leave you alone.”

“Yeah, now let go of me.”

Our bodies already were touching - hip to hip, chest to chest - but he managed to pull me closer still.

“I said I was going to give you something.”

“Don't you mean take?” Twisting, I tried to squirm loose.

“So vain, Lee.” Wrapping my hair around one of his hands, Oscar chuckled at me. “Someone been chasing after that little box of yours so long you're starting to think it has value?”

He punctuated his question with a bite to his lower lip. The sharp teeth sliced the skin, creating a thin ribbon of blood. He smoothed the ribbon away with his tongue and then pulled me into a kiss.

His tongue, tipped with his blood, pressed against my lips, coaxing them open. Growing hunger whimpered inside me. He kissed me deeper, his top lip covering mine, his bottom lip against my tongue as he licked at my upper palate.

Oscar didn't have to hold me now. The slow spill of his blood into my mouth made me knot my hands in his shirt. I had to lean against him to steady myself. Opening my mouth wider, I prepared to bite down, to take more than the stingy offering he was teasing me with.

“Hungry, Lee?” Laughing, he pushed me back. “Sorry, mija, no more than a blood kiss for you.”

For the first time since I'd met him, his face looked flushed. I thought I saw microscopic drops of blood beading on his forehead. Drawing a deep breath, I scented that I was right. He was sweating blood.

Reaching out, I touched his bottom lip, caressed it for a second before he moved another step back.

"I have to say, Lee, there's a lot of promise in the appetite you're showing."

Danny, for the moment, was forgotten. I wanted Oscar's blood, could sense how much power was flowing through him. He was older than all of them - Army, Nestor, the other hairy little animals that had gathered around me like I was a human trough.

“Why so little?” I asked and stepped toward him.

He straight-armed me back against the counter. “I think you just might make it, Lee.” Dropping his gaze, he took in the line of my body once again. “You're certainly well camouflaged for a predator.”

I caught his arm and ran a fingernail along the pale green line of a vein. “You still didn't answer me.”

“It's in the kiss, mija, in the blood - if you're strong enough to find it.”

He backed slowly away, his hand going up in warning whenever I threatened a step forward. At the sliding glass door, he pulled my cell phone and battery from his pocket and set them on the tiled floor. By the time I reached the patio, he already had the bike out on the street and was speeding away.