A Night Without Stars (20 page)

Seconds stretched into minutes as I waited. Unable to remain perfectly still I began to fidget, first with the hem of my shirt and then with a long curl of hair, spinning it round and round my finger.

The loud BANG from somewhere above me made me jump. It wasn’t the sound of a gunshot, but rather something – or someone – falling. A high-pitched yelp echoed down the stairwell. A yelp that could have come from one of two things. A whiny puppy or…

“TRAVIS?” I shouted, cupping my hands around my mouth to make my voice carry. “TRAVIS, IS THAT YOU?”

“Lola,” came the answering wail, “Lola get him off me!”

I took the stairs two at a time and was well out of breath by the time I reached the third landing. A flashlight knocked into one corner of the tiny space supplied enough light to see Travis’ terrified face as he lay on his stomach with Maximus crouched on top of him.

“Get off him!” I cried, pulling at Maximus’ arm. “That’s my friend. That’s Travis. You’re hurting him!”

Maximus swung his head towards me and scowled. “Hurting him? Your
friend
blinded me with the flashlight and hit me in the back with a baseball bat.”

“You did?” Impressed, I kneeled beside Travis and patted him on the shoulder. “Nice work.”

“Can’t breathe,” he wheezed out.

“
Maximus
.”

He stood up reluctantly and stepped to the side, out of the light. I grabbed Travis’ hand and hauled him to his feet. His hair was mussed and one side of his face was red from where it’d been pressed against the floor, but otherwise he looked fine. “I heard you scream so I came out and when I saw him” – he gestured to Maximus – “I thought he was, you know, one of them. So I beat him up.”

“You struck me once,” Maximus corrected icily, “and tripped over your own foot.” 

I couldn’t help the grin that slid across my face. Reaching out, I tousled Travis’ hair. “My hero.”

“Who is this guy, anyways?” Travis swatted my hand away, but I didn’t miss the quick blush that stole up and over his cheeks.

“He’s the one I told you about before. The one who knows about the drinkers.”

Maximus dropped one shoulder against the wall and frowned his disapproval. “You told him about me?”

I nodded.

“Don’t tell people about me.”

I rolled my eyes. I was too accustomed to Maximus’ brooding temperament to take offense to the hard edge in his tone, but Travis wasn’t.

“Is he always like this?” he whispered.

“Pretty much. Usually he’s worse. Where’s my dad?”

Travis shifted from foot to foot and scratched the side of his head. His voice little more than a mumble he said, “In the room, uh, sleeping. He found an old bottle of wine downstairs in the restaurant.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Surprised and angry and hurt, all rolled into one. I guess some small part of me had hoped with all our lives on the line Dad would have been able to manage his drinking, at least for the night. Talk about high expectations.

“Let’s go,” I said dully. The excitement at seeing Travis paled in comparison to the disappointment I felt for my dad. Picking up the flashlight, I pointed it up the stairs. “Maximus said we should sleep on the top floor. The drinkers don’t like heights.”

“How does he know that?” Travis asked.

“I don’t know.” Turning, I aimed the flashlight directly at Maximus’ face. Glowering, he raised his hand to protect his eyes. “But he’s going to tell us. In fact, he’s going to tell us everything he knows. Aren’t you, Maximus?”

He waited until I moved the light to the side to say, “I will tell you what I can.”

“Hear that?” I jerked the flashlight in Travis’ direction. The yellow light bounced off the wall and flashed across his face before settling on the railing. “He’ll tell us ‘what he can’. Well what if
what you can
isn’t good enough?” Riding high on a sudden surge of temper I started to point the flashlight back at Maximus, but in the blink of an eye the flashlight was gone.

It was easy to forget how quick Maximus could move. His speed was uncanny, as was his ability to move in absolute silence. One moment he was lounging against the wall and the next he was behind me, one hand holding the flashlight, the other resting on my hip. The hand on my hip squeezed, fingers digging into bone. “You’re angry at your father,” he murmured into my ear, his voice too soft for Travis to hear, “not me. Channel the anger, Lola. Make it work for you, not against you.”

I twisted out of his grasp. “Just because you’ve saved my life doesn’t mean you know me,” I snapped. Except he did. In one minute he’d figured out what my shrink never could.

I was angry all of the time
.

Angry at Dad for not seeing how his drinking was ruining everything.

Angry at Mom for walking out and never looking back.

Angry at Big Sis for following in her footsteps.

Usually I could tamp the anger down, slide it under the rug, and forget about it but every once in a while it overwhelmed me and I couldn’t tamp it down or slide it under the rug or forget about it, no matter how hard I tried. In those instances the only way I could relieve the pressure was to lash out at whoever was closest whether they deserved it or not. Odds were they never did, and the guilt of knowing I’d freaked out on someone for no reason was enough to start the whole process all over again.

“Lola.”

I looked up and caught Travis watching me, his eyes wide with concern. “I’m fine,” I said flippantly. “No big deal.”

“If you want to talk about it—”

I leveled him with a stare. “When have I ever wanted to talk about it? Just get your baseball bat, okay? And let’s go. I don’t want to stand in this damn stairwell all night.”

Travis retrieved his bat and we trudged up the stairs after Maximus. When I felt my best friend loop his arm around my shoulders it seemed only natural to lean into the pressure, and for one blissful second I closed my eyes and felt all the weight I carried simply slip away.

“Thanks for watching after my dad,” I said quietly as we reached the third floor hallway. The smell of must and mold was less distinct up here. The carpet was the thickest I’d ever walked on and felt like velvet when I reached down to touch it with my fingertips. There weren’t any windows in the hallway. The only light came from the flashlight Maximus carried. He shined it at every door we passed, ticking down the numbers until we reached the right one.

“Anytime.” Travis tapped the bat against his foot. “It’s all kind of like a movie, you know?”

I knew exactly what he meant. Hadn’t I drawn the same comparison myself? “A really bad movie.”

“With horrible actors.”

“And awful special effects.”

It was sick and twisted and completely inappropriate, but we still grinned at each other. Travis even snickered.

Then I remembered everyone was dead or dying and the world was ending and I was most likely being hunted down by a psychopathic vampire chick and suddenly I didn’t feel like grinning anymore.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I Sleep Next to a Boy

 Between them, Travis and Maximus managed to drag my dad out of bed and haul him up two flights of stairs to the fifth flour. I was in charge of the supplies which didn’t really seem fair since I had to make two trips to their one, but I didn’t complain. People were having their blood sucked out of them and I had to carry three bags up some stairs. What was there to complain about?

Dad got his own room. Travis and I took the adjoining one. It was sparsely decorated with a queen-sized bed that had been stripped of all its linens and a single bureau shoved up against the back wall. The bathroom was tiny, with a narrow counter, blue porcelain toilet, and standing shower. I made Travis and Maximus wait out in the hall while I peed.

I changed into my pajamas and hopped up on the bed before I called them back in. The mattress was hard as a rock, but it was still a mattress, and just sitting on it summoned a yawn of epic proportions. When was the last time I’d slept more than two or three hours? I couldn’t remember.

“I flushed the toilet,” I told Maximus. The last one into the room he closed the door behind him and locked it. Travis sat at the foot of the bed, drawing one long, gangly leg up to his chest. In the muted light filtering in through the window I couldn’t gauge his expression, but the lines of his body were tense. “Hope that’s okay.”

Maximus leaned against the bureau and crossed his arms. “It’s fine. They’ll most likely cut the water lines soon though, so if you want to take a shower do it tonight or tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning.” I didn’t relish the idea of going to sleep covered in dried sweat and blood, but I couldn’t think of a more vulnerable position than being naked in the shower. What would I do if a drinker attacked? Hit him with a loofah?

“How do you know that?” Travis asked.

I poked him in the back with my foot. “How do I know what?”

“Not you, Maximus. How do you know the water lines will be cut? How do you know those… those
things
don’t like heights? How do you know about them at all?”

Practical, dependable Travis. I started to lean forward and tell him Maximus was the king of evading questions, but Maximus’ next words effectively turned me into a mute.

“Because what is happening to your town happened to mine.”

In the silence that followed his stunning revelation you could have heard a pin drop. For a few seconds I even forgot to breathe. The sharp ache in my chest reminded me to start again and I exhaled the pent up air in my lungs with a loud
whoosh
.

“What?” I managed. “I don’t… how could…
what
?”

The bureau creaked under Maximus’ weight as he sat on the edge. Moonlight slashed across his chest, turning his jacket silver and leaving his face hidden in shadow. “I was only four years old,” he began quietly. “I don’t remember much of anything. Except for the screams. My town was smaller than yours, a tiny logging village at the base of a mountain. In one night they killed everyone. It was a slaughter. My parents hid me away in a woodbin. The next morning a family passing through found me wandering down the road covered in blood. They took me to the nearest police station, two hours away. I tried to explain what I’d seen, but the authorities thought my story of blood and monsters with silver fangs was nothing more than a terrified delusion. By the time they got to my town the drinkers had covered up everything, and it was eventually forgotten.”

A chill passed between my shoulder blades. “How do you cover up murdering an entire town?”

“The same way they’ve been doing it for centuries. This time it was a pipeline leak. After they killed everyone and drained the bodies they lit the entire town on fire. Before it’s been an earthquake. A flood. A wildfire. Any disaster, natural or otherwise, will suffice. People have a way of turning a blind eye to what they do not want to see and the drinkers make certain those who do are duly compensated.”

“And your parents?” I whispered.

“Both killed,” he said flatly.

Both killed
… No wonder Maximus had evaded my questions. I knew I bristled like an angry bear if anyone ever dared ask where my mom had gone. It was bad enough having to explain she’d left Dad and I for some biker dude with a mustache. I couldn’t imagine telling people she’d been murdered… and not having a single person believe me.  

“But you never forgot,” Travis said.

“I never forgot. When I was old enough I sought out other survivors and learned everything I could about them. I’ve traveled the world, always trying to get one step ahead. Helping when I can. Killing them when I’m able. There’s a group of us who fight, but we’re spread too thin. The drinkers have had centuries to perfect mass murder.” He hesitated. Rubbed his jaw. “Although this time it’s different.”

I pressed back against the headrest until I could feel every bump of my spine against the wood. “They’re not hiding the bodies. They’re not covering it up.”

The whites of Maximus’ eyes flashed as his gaze cut to mine. “You’re right. They’re not.”

“This is nuts,” Travis muttered before he stood up and went into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him and locked it. Within seconds came the sound of running water as he turned on the shower.

“He’ll be out in three minutes tops,” I estimated. “Travis is a total wimp.”

“He’s tougher than you think he is.”

“Travis?” I snorted. “Are we talking about the same person? Tall, skinny guy with freckles and red hair? Don’t get me wrong, I love him to death, but I’ve beaten him at arm wrestling. Using my left hand. And, to be clear, I’m a righty.”

Maximus pushed away from the bureau. “Sometimes the ones we are the closest to surprise us the most.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you want it to mean?”

“Oh, enough with the riddles.” Annoyed, I crossed my arms over my chest and scowled. “You’re not freaking Batman.”

Maximus’ teeth flashed white in the darkness as he smiled. “Does Batman speak in riddles?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. You should have told me about what happened to your parents.”

“You didn’t ask,” he said simply.

“Didn’t
ask
?” Curling my hand into a fist I slammed it down on the mattress with enough force to send a cloud of dust spinning up into the air. Choking on the scent of must and mothballs I cried, “Are you kidding me? All I’ve done since I met you is ask questions!”

This time when he appeared suddenly beside me I didn’t jump. I was starting to get used to his sudden movements, along with the fact that I couldn’t anticipate them. He rested his arm against the top of the headboard and leaned towards me, close enough so I could make out each individual lash framing his cool gray eyes. His voice huskier than I’d ever heard it, he said, “Maybe you didn’t ask the right ones.”

I was surprised the lights didn’t come on with the amount of electricity crackling between us. I’d tried hard to fight it, but the truth was undeniable. I was attracted to Maximus. It wasn’t only his physical appearance that drew me (although the tall, dark, and handsome thing, while totally cliché, worked really well for him). He had a haunting quality about him. A kind of gruff gentleness beneath the hard exterior. As the donkey from Shrek would say, the guy had layers.