Read A Night Without Stars Online

Authors: Jillian Eaton

Tags: #Children's Books, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy & Magic, #Children's eBooks, #Science Fiction; Fantasy & Scary Stories, #Paranormal & Urban, #Vampires

A Night Without Stars (10 page)

BOOK: A Night Without Stars
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“This” – the boy lifted the gun – “is a Beretta Elite semi-automatic double action.”

He might as well have been speaking Greek. “What does it do?”

“What does it
do
?” he echoed. “It kills the bad guys.”

“You can’t strangle them with your bare hands?” I’d meant it as a joke – the situation could use some
serious
lifting up – but the boy didn’t take it that way.

“I do that too.” He shrugged, as though the idea of choking the life out of someone was no big deal. “But this is faster.”

My mouth opened. Closed. For once, I didn’t have a witty response.

“Well, good luck,” he said indifferently before he turned to go.

“Wait. You’re not… Are you leaving?” Under normal circumstances I stayed as far away from the dark, brooding types as I possibly could. They were nothing but trouble with their intense stares and intellectual conversations about the meaning of life. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and given the choice between going it on my own or sticking with the guy with the gun, I was choosing the gun.

I grabbed the boy’s arm and felt the rigid tautness of his muscles through his jacket. My fingers dug in, harder than I had intended. He didn’t so much as flinch. “You have to help me.” I didn’t like the desperate edge in my voice, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I
was
desperate, in every sense of the word. “I live in the apartments out behind the old baseball field and my dad—”        

“We can’t talk here,” he interrupted. For the second time his head tilted to the side, as though he were listening for something. “Follow me.”

He moved quickly, ducking in and out of the shadows until it seemed he was little more than a shadow himself. I struggled to keep up as we went up one alley and down another, ensnaring ourselves deeper and deeper into the twisted maze of warehouses. When I tripped – for the third time – he grabbed my wrist and ordered me to stay behind him or get lost.

Such a charmer.

Finally we stopped short in front of a gray door. The boy kicked it open with one well-placed strike of his boot and I followed him inside. The door slammed shut behind me, plunging the room into absolute darkness. It smelled vaguely of urine, and something sweet I couldn’t identify.

“Lights,” I said when I bumped into something hard. “Lights would be nice.”

I heard the flick of a switch and then a single bulb flickered to life, allowing me to do a quick study of my new surroundings.

The room was small and cramped and filled with office furniture. An old storage unit if I had to guess, one possibly owned by the high school. The metal desk shoved diagonally into one corner looked exactly like my history teacher’s desk at school. 

The boy lifted a folding chair from a mess of other chairs stacked haphazardly against the far wall and held it above his head. “Move away from the door,” he said curtly.

“A please wouldn’t kill you.”

“Move or get out.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

I wondered if my new friend was always so grumpy, or if his delightful personality only shined through during life threatening situations. Either way, I couldn’t be mad at him. Not really. A little disgruntled, maybe, but that’s only because for once someone was being ruder than me and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. I stepped to the side and he jammed the chair underneath the door handle.

“There.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “That should hold them. This will be a good place to lay low for an hour or so.”

“An
hour
?” I said, already shaking my head. “No, I need to get home now. I need to find my dad and my best friend—”

“They’re looking for survivors. You go outside right now and they’ll tear you to shreds.” He spoke with a nonchalance that set the tiny hairs at the back of my neck on edge. “If you really want to help your dad and your friend the best thing you can do right now is stay alive.”

Suddenly sixty minutes didn’t seem like that long of a wait.

“Hop up on the desk,” he said.

I studied him under the fringe of my eyelashes. The light had done nothing to soften his features. If anything he looked harder, meaner, and I was glad I’d stumbled into him. If I were going to rescue my dad and Travis I would rather do it with a badass by my side. But that didn’t mean I was going to start blindly following orders.

“Excuse me?”

The boy sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “This is not a democracy,” he said after a long pause. “I don’t want to help you. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do, but the moment you endanger my life you are on your own, do you understand?”

“What does my getting on the desk have to do with endangering your life?”

“When I ask you to do something you do it, no questions asked.”

I’d never been very good at following directions. “And if I ask questions?”

“Then I walk,” he said flatly. “I should walk out right—”

“Okay, okay. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m going, see? I’m getting on the desk.” I pushed a chair out of the way and jumped up on the metal desk. My feet clanged against the side before I scooted forward until I was sitting on the very edge. “What now, oh great and fearless leader?”

His eyes narrowed. “Let me see your knee.”

Before I could stop him he was kneeling in front of me and rolling up my pant leg. His fingers brushed against my bare skin and all I could think was:
thank God I shaved this morning.
One hand cupped my calf while the other slowly probed around the edges of the wound. I heard a quiet intake of breath before he rocked back on his heels and glared up at me. “This is deep.”

“I know.” All things considered, a little scratch on my knee was the least of my worries. With all the abuse my body had taken tonight I was lucky I wasn’t breathing through a tube.

“How are you still walking?”

I straightened my knee and bent towards it, studying the bloody scrape and the bits of grass and dirt that clung to the angry red skin. I guess it
was
pretty nasty looking. I sat back and glanced at the boy. Under his olive skin he suddenly looked pale and sweat gleamed on his forehead and upper lip. “Hey, you’re not going to faint or anything are you? Does blood gross you out? It grosses my friend Travis out. He can’t stand it.”

He shot me a look. “Blood does not
gross
me out.”

“Okay…,” I said slowly. “Then why do you look so—”

“Did one of them bite you?”

The question was so unexpected that I stared at him in shocked silence for a good ten seconds. How the hell did he know that? It wasn’t exactly your regular icebreaker.
Hi, how are you? Oh, I’m great, how are you? Excellent, by the way did a girl bite you today?
“What? I – uh – I have no idea what you’re – HEY!” I yelped when he grabbed my shoulders and dragged me to my feet.

“Turn around.”

“Who do you think—”

My outraged protest withered and died when he grabbed my waist and spun me around until I was facing the desk. Thrown off balance I braced both hands against the top of it, my nails skittering across the fake wood. He began to pat me down, cop style. His fingers swept down my right arm and pressed over the top of my hand, right where I’d been bitten. He froze for half a second. I heard something being unzipped, followed by a soft
click
.

He held a flashlight above my hand, pointing the beam directly over the bite marks. I looked as well, something I’d managed to avoid until now.

I half expected to see my hand oozing puss and squirting blood. Not a great mental picture, but courtesy of actually paying attention during health class I knew human saliva contained over a thousand different types of bacteria. Think about
that
before the next time you suck on a paper cut. 

I wasn’t prepared for what was really there, which was… nothing. Well, nothing except for two white scars evenly spaced between my thumb and pointer finger. Two white scars shaped like half moons marking the spot where Angelique had sunk her fangs into me.

“You
were
bitten.” The boy backed away from me so fast he knocked over a chair. The resounding crash sounded extra loud in the confined space.

Cradling my arm tightly against my chest, I twisted around and glared. He was acting like I had some deadly contagious disease. It wasn’t
my
fault I’d been bitten. After all, I hadn’t exactly asked to be turned into a human chew toy. “Yeah, so she bit me. What’s the big deal, anyways? What’s it mean?”

I didn’t like the way the boy was staring at me. I didn’t like it at all. Suddenly self conscious I turned my hand inwards and brushed it vigorously it against my shirt, hoping for one insane moment I could rub the scars off, but when I glanced down they were still there, even more glaringly obvious now that the surrounding skin was flushed a hot angry red.  

“What does it mean?” His laughter echoed through the storage unit, flat and humorless. “It means you’re screwed.”

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

Maximus

 

 

 

Well that didn’t sound very promising.

I took a harder look at the scars. They
were
oddly shaped and it was strange the wound had healed so fast, but other than that I couldn’t see anything else wrong with them. My hand felt normal. I felt normal. In fact, considering what a beating I’d taken, I felt great. Adrenaline, I decided. It had to be the after effects of adrenaline.

Lifting my chin, I looked at the boy and scowled. “Who are you?” I asked, realizing for the first time I didn’t know anything about the stranger I’d locked myself in a storage unit with. Who he was. Where he came from. What his plan was. Come to think of it, I didn’t even know his name.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Great survival skills, Lola! To which I say until you’ve been chased through your neighborhood listening to the dying screams of your neighbors, I don’t want to hear it.

“Let me see the bite marks again,” he said.

I snorted. “No way, pal. Not until you start talking. You said you wanted to help me, right? So start helping me. What the hell is going on? What are those… those
things
out there?”

Something flickered in his dark gray eyes. “What do you think they are?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
Duh
.

“You’ve seen horror movies, haven’t you?” His smile was thin and fleeting. “Give it your best shot.”

I toyed with the end of my braid. “Some kind of cult on a rampage?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Hmm… An inbred family of axe murderers?”

“Try again.”

“Okay, I’ve got it.” I snapped my fingers. “Vampires! I mean, they had fangs, right? That’s what they are. A horde of murderous vampires bent on destroying civilization as we know it.”

“And we have a winner,” he said softly.

“What do you mean we have a – wait, no. I wasn’t being
serious
. You do know what sarcasm is, don’t you?” I started to laugh, but one glance at his face and my throat closed up. “Don’t you?” I repeated.

“Do you?”

“I invented sarcasm.”

“Then you must know I am not being sarcastic, not even a little bit, when I say your third guess was surprisingly accurate.”

He sounded so damn sincere I actually believed him… for all of two seconds. Then the absurdity of what he was saying sank in and I began to snicker. I couldn’t help myself. I mean, vampires? A cult, that was easy to believe. Crazy shit like that happened all the time. Axe murderers, Satan worshippers, even a military experiment gone wrong – all believable on some level. But vampires? As in burn in the sun, sleep in coffins, drink your blood
vampires
? Did he think I was an idiot?

Looking back now, I really should have seen it earlier. But that’s the thing about the truth. Even when it’s staring you straight in the face if you only see what you want to, and I wanted something explainable.

Travis was the one who believed in the supernatural, not me. I’d always had enough crap to deal with without feeling the need to invent more. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, aliens… They all added up to the same thing in my book.

Complete and utter bullshit.

“Is this some sort of reality show or something?” I asked suspiciously. Instantly I looked to the corners of the room, searching for a telltale blinking red light. When I couldn’t find any on the ceiling I began to search the chairs. The boy watched me with his arms crossed and his expression shuttered as I crouched down and ran my fingers under the plastic seats and down the metal legs. I moved slowly at first, taking my time, but as the seconds ticked by and I didn’t find any hidden cameras my search took on a feverish intensity.

“Would you like some assistance?”

Ignoring him I turned my attention to the desk. There had to be something here. A wire. A light. A microphone.
Something
. Determined to find it, determined to prove everything I had endured was one sick, twisted hoax, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled under the desk, not caring how stupid I looked or what the boy thought of me.

If I found a camera it would mean Travis wasn’t really in danger. If I found a wire snaking across the underbelly of the desk it would mean the woman covered in blood wasn’t really dead. It would turn everything into a big joke. One big, awful, horrible joke.

Except I didn’t find anything, because there wasn’t anything to find. But you knew that.

You knew it all along.

“There’s nothing here.” Defeated, I crawled out from under the desk and leaned up against one of the legs. A thin layer of dust covered my jeans. It brushed off on my arms as I brought my knees up and hugged them tight to my chest. “This isn’t some lame reality show, is it?”

“No,” the boy said quietly, “it isn’t.”

He crossed the room in three long strides. I studied the scuffed leather toes of his boots, not wanting to look up and see the I-told-you-so expression I was certain he was wearing.

BOOK: A Night Without Stars
5.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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