Stained (28 page)

"You don't have to. All you have to do is kiss me."

Julia gladly obliged.

A few hours later, it was dark, and Cayne was in the leather chair and she was on the floor between his legs, getting a back rub. New couple talk was going swimmingly. Julia had told him all about the modern-day terminology of love. First there was a thing ("Annabelle and Joe Guy are having a thing. Wonder if it'll go anywhere."). Next came talking, a semi-formal testing of the waters. Then seeing each other, kind of dating. And after that, coupledom. Dating. For when things were serious and people were committed.

After he melted her by saying that they were probably not even in the league of high school relationships--"I guess all the stuff we've been through gets us some points," she agreed--Julia turned the spotlight back on him.

"I want to know more about when you were by yourself."

"Before I met you?"

"Right. Like, did you ever travel with anyone else? Or fly by them for a little while?"

"Sometimes I stopped to see Andre."

"No one else?"

"Rosa, a few times."

"That must've gotten lonely."

"I was too busy for that."

"Driven..."

She focused on the feel of his fingers in her hair until he spoke again.

"I knew I was going to kill him. The fall-out made me forget why, but still, I knew."

Julia wound her arm around his ankle, stroking the top of his foot. He didn't say anything, but brought his head to rest on hers.

"I hate Samyaza," Julia said. "I wish I could kill him."

"You won't. I'll be me. He never gets near you. I can't believe I let him near you when I have." He squeezed her lightly with his knees. "He had his hands on you. That makes me want to kill him even more."

"Yeah. That pretty much sucked."

"You were brave."

"I trusted you," she said, remembering the ease with which he caught her.

"Best not do that."

A few minutes went by with him just kneading her back. "Well I do."

Cayne's face was studiously blank, and for a second she thought he might pull away. Instead put his face in her hair. "You smell good," he said.

"You
are
good," she said, turning to face him.

He stroked her mouth with his. "You taste good." His hands trailed down her arms, and Julia whispered, "No."

Making out was only fun if it wasn't a distraction from something weightier.

So Cayne continued messing with her hair, and Julia made him tell her about history. She was stunned at how much the English and the Scots hated each other, at least back in the day, and also by how much things had changed since then. (Cayne spent his childhood fishing. She'd spent hers on Nintendo64).

The really weird thing was, for an ancient, Cayne didn't seem to know all that much. He didn't remember why women started wearing bras, seemed clueless about the
Titanic
, had never hit up a Beatles concert, thought prohibition was merely "prohibiting something," and didn't seem to know that Pearl Harbor was any place significant.

"Do you know about World War II?" she asked, incredulous.

"America and Europe? The axis and the allies?"

"Yeah. So what's the inside story?"

He looked miffed. "I don't know."

Julia's mouth hung open.

"Come here." He lifted her up and led her to the mirror. Julia was still gaping when she saw her hair, done kind of like pigtails, twisted up on top of her head.

Cayne's hand hovered over it. "This is how ladies hair looked where I was from."

"Pigtails?"

He laughed. "Platelets. Your hair looks nice this way."

"Well thanks." Julia grinned, feeling a little like someone's Bratz doll. "Nineteenth Century Scotland Julia. Now," she pulled him back away from the mirror, "back to World War II. Do you really not remember
anything
?"

Cayne shook his head.

"Did you have amnesia more than once?"

"No."

"What about Vietnam?"

"I've been there." As an afterthought: "That was also a war."

"Cayne, why did the American Civil War start?"

"Freedom for African slaves."

"You're getting this from history books! You're not that old. Why did you say you were?"

"I was born in 1812."

"You were not."

He tilted his head.

"Why don't you know some this stuff if you were alive for it? I mean, I know you weren't in every country at once, but you didn't even know about D-Day. What did you spend your time doing?"

He turned to the window. "My memories still haven't settled."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess not."

"Even if when they do, I might not be able to tell you much. We were fighting our own battles then." He winked at her over his shoulder. "They probably weren't as interesting."

"Will you tell me about them?"

He looked back at the window and mumbled something.

"What?" she asked.

"I'm tired."

Julia let her curiosity fade away. "I'll sleep near you every night, and maybe your nightmares will go away."

"If anyone could make that happen, it's you."

He sat beside her on the cot. She traced a circle under his eye, and he caught her wrist. He placed her palm on his face.

"I'm tired, too," she said.

So they slept.

Chapter 38

When they were close to D.C., Julia pulled Cayne onto the cot and kissed him. Where in the past forty-eight hours things had been pretty PG-13, they now broached R territory.

Cayne broke contact when things started getting really hot, and disappeared into the hall. He returned with doughnuts, coffee, and
The Washington Post
.

He sat in the leather chair and skimmed the paper. Julia looked past him, out the window. The sky was blue-gray, with dirty looking clouds that hung low to the ground. She felt claustrophobic.

Cayne closed the paper--apparently there was no front-page story about a Stained retreat--and stood to look out the window. Julia joined him. "How will we know what we're looking for?"

"If Rosa said answers will find you, they'll find you." Cayne sounded as enthusiastic as she felt. "We wait."

Julia hugged herself. She didn't want to leave the train. She had a feeling that something bad would happen.

Already, she was seriously regretting their decision to follow Rosa's advice. An organized group of Stained, a group that had assassins and possibly zombie-like bikers and who knew what else, a group that was actively participating in some weird-people war, wasn't Julia's idea of a good time.

But she needed to know more about herself, more about her birth parents, more about her purpose. She was sick to death of being a pointless orphan, even a pointless orphan with a hot half-demon boyfriend.

Cayne knelt by the cot, where Julia sat triple-coating her toenails.

He scrunched his nose, and put a hand on her knee. "Close your eyes."

Julia did, expecting a kiss. Instead, she felt his finger press on her forehead. Then she felt a sharp sting.

"Ow."

"Sorry," he said hastily. "I created a link between us. That way if we somehow get separated, we'll be able to find each other."

"Seriously?" He nodded. "Why didn't you do this weeks ago?"

He shrugged.

"Oh." She pouted, rubbing her stinging skin. "Well you could have told me it would burn."

Cayne ran a finger over the spot. "But then you wouldn't have let me do it."

Julia gave him her evilest evil eye, and that's when she noticed something in her head; a warm glow that, strangely, felt like his lips.

"Do you care?"

She shook her head, suddenly shy. "I like it."

"I like it too." He smiled, and she was dazzled. "Even if you are cluttering things up."

"I am not! My mind is in perfect working order."

"Whatever you say, runaway."

"You're a poet."

"And I didn't realize it."

Julia rolled her eyes as the intercom crackled to life, and an over-eager voice announced that the Union Station, D.C. stop was ten miles away.

"Cayne?" she said, lacing up her shoes and getting up to pace. "Do you think we should be worried? Not worried, I guess, but you know, extra vigilant or something? I know you said whatever it is will find us, but what if it's--"

Julia's worries were muffled by Cayne's hand on her mouth. He pulled her back to his front, wrapped his arm around her hips, and let his head drop to her shoulder. His cheek, rough with stubble, brushed her own.

"Nothing will hurt you."

Cayne turned her to him and placed his hands on her shoulders. "I need you to promise me something." She nodded. "If somehow we should get separated, or even if we don't, I want you to promise to consider your safety above anything."

Julia started to protest--it sounded an awful lot like he was saying, "Ditch me if you have to"--but he looked into her eyes and said,
"Please."

She nodded. "I'll be careful."

"Thank you."

Washington was springing up around them, a confusing maze of cement and glass and asphalt and traffic. "I think maybe we should just keep riding this thing," she said.

"You need to know."

"How will that change anything? Sam will want to kill me regardless, and he'll always want you, right? Cayne," she whispered, "what if this goes wrong?"

His expression softened; he pulled her to him. "It won't," he said. "You'll be all right."

He kept an arm around her as they got off the Amtrak. This Union Station looked like a mall--a wide-open space with brick floors, a fancy ceiling, fat columns, and stores--and, like its cousin, it was jam-packed with people: men and women with brisk strides wearing suits and clutching briefcases, college students with colored iPods and team sweatshirts, tourists in windbreakers and jeans with cameras and shopping bags.