A Trail of Echoes (2 page)

I
rushed to the bathroom
. That too was empty. My mouth became parched as my eyes fixed on the dressing table. The note and the bottle of my blood still sat on the table, untouched.

Fear gripped me as doubts began to flood my mind.
Where is he? Did he change his mind and just leave without me?

A bloodcurdling scream stopped me short. It came from downstairs. Panic coursing through my veins, I shot out of the room and hurried back down the stairs. The screaming continued. It was coming from the room behind the empty reception desk. Racing around it, I forced the door open and barged in.

It was all I could do to not scream too.

The room looked like a scene out of a horror movie. The bodies of three men lay strewn about the room, one of whom I recognized as the man who’d sat at the desk. There were deep puncture marks in their necks, their bodies splattered with blood.

And in the far right corner of the room, Ben was sucking the life from a young woman before my very eyes. His hips crushed against her thin frame, holding her in place against the wall as he took deep gulps of her blood.

“No!” I croaked. “Ben!”

I threw myself across the room at him, sliding my arms around his neck and pulling myself up onto his back. Holding him in a choke, I tried to force him to release the girl. That was not the wisest idea though because even if I managed to pull him away, his fangs would rip through her jugular. Instead, I placed one palm over his forehead, holding his head steady, then positioned my right wrist directly beneath his nose.

“Let her go,” I begged, whispering into his ear. His eyes narrowed, and I could feel shudders passing through his body as he drank. But then the scent of my blood, so close to him, began to take its effect. Apparently I smelled so disgusting that I was spoiling his appetite. After four more gulps, his jaw loosened, and he released the girl.

Her face was frozen in utter terror as she collapsed on the floor.

Afraid to step away from Ben in case he launched another attack, I pulled him down to the floor with me as I checked the girl’s pulse. It was so faint, I could barely feel it.

“You need to heal her with your blood,” I hissed to Ben, having no idea whether vampire blood could even heal a person at such a desperate stage.

He still seemed to be in a daze, his whole face now contorted with some kind of pain of his own.

“Ben! Give her your blood.”

Extending a claw, he cut his palm and held it to the girl’s lips.

“Drink,” I urged, clutching the girl by the shoulder.

But she didn’t.

I shook her hard. But as I checked her pulse again, it became clear that I could shake her until her neck came loose. She wasn’t going to respond. She was gone, as gone as the other ravaged corpses in this room.

Standing up with Ben, I placed both palms against his chest and pushed him back against the wall.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I asked through trembling lips. “I left my blood for you!”

Ben’s eyes looked unfocused, blood still dripping from his lips, onto his soaked robe. His voice was low and hoarse as he responded. “You shouldn’t have left without warning me.”

Ding! Ding!

The shrill sound of the bell at the front desk pierced the atmosphere.

My hair stood on end. I looked in panic from Ben to the corpses scattered around the room.

“Excuse me,” a high-pitched voice called in Arabic. “Excuse me!”

Shooting to the door, and wiping the blood that had gotten on me onto my black robe on the way, I stepped out of the room and back into the reception area, closing the door behind me and standing there, holding the handle in place. Now that I had distanced myself from Ben again, I was half expecting him to storm out and attack the middle-aged Arab woman standing behind the desk.

“What was all that screaming?” the woman complained, her black eyebrows knotting. “It woke me from my rest.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, ma’am,” I replied, trying to act as though I had just returned from a toilet break rather than from witnessing a bloody massacre. “It was coming from the street outside. I am not certain what happened, since I have been busy with paperwork.”

“Hm.” The woman eyed me curiously, then her expression turned back to annoyance. “Anyway, I also came down to tell you that the flush in my toilet has stopped working.”

“Oh, dear. That is… entirely unacceptable. If you return to your room now, I will send someone up in the next hour. Okay?”

“In the next hour? I can’t wait that long!” she grumbled.

“Okay,” I replied. “How about in the next fifteen minutes? I will try to get hold of our caretaker.”

She still looked dissatisfied, but to my relief, she headed back up the staircase.

I clutched the door handle and stepped back inside the room, slamming the door behind me.

My stomach lurched as I looked over the horrifying scene once again. I half expected Ben to be crouching over the girl, drawing out the very last drops of blood from her still-warm corpse. But no. He was sitting on the floor in the far corner of the room, his back against the wall, his head clutched in his hands, breathing heavily.

I hurried over to him and bent down to his level, gripping his shoulders.

“Ben,” I rasped. “We have to leave. If someone finds us…” I looked up at the ceiling. If there were any surveillance cameras in here, they were well hidden because I couldn’t spot any.

“Get up,” I urged.

When he looked at me, his green eyes seemed darker than usual. Much darker. They were practically black.

His mouth was no longer covered in blood. I could see that he’d wiped it against his sleeve. He stood up, slightly unsteady. His jaw clenched as he eyed the corpse nearest to us.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. He reached for my wrist and closed his hand around it. The next thing I knew, he was pulling me into the reception area and out of the main exit of the guesthouse. When we arrived on the street outside, it was dark. He gathered me onto his back and lurched forward with speed that made my stomach flip.

I was still feeling overwhelmed at what I’d just witnessed Ben do. I’d known that he was a vampire, but I’d never witnessed such a harrowing scene, even during my stay at The Oasis. And Ben… although he had told me about his struggle around humans, I’d still thought he was different because of the way he’d treated me. Seeing his darkness so starkly before me was something that I was still trying to come to terms with.

As he ran, we were just a blur in the darkness. It was a good thing too. Although he was wearing black, which helped to camouflage the stains, his robe was drenched in blood. We were moving too fast to see, but I was certain that we were leaving traces of blood on the sidewalk.

My grip around Ben’s shoulders tightened.

“We have to stop and get you some new clothes,” I said.

He didn’t argue with me. I was sure that he was having the same thoughts about leaving a trail behind us. We stopped as we reached a night market and he placed me down on the ground.

Taking the backpack off my shoulders, I dug inside and reached for a few notes—enough for new clothes. I handed the backpack to Ben, who put it on his back. He stood behind me, one arm wrapped around my waist and the other holding my upper left arm as we walked forward. His position against me made me feel like a prisoner being escorted somewhere.

I didn’t tempt fate while stopping by a clothes store and made our visit quicker than I’d thought possible. I chose the robe within a matter of seconds, and then thrust the cash at the stall owner, not even waiting for the correct amount of change.

We rushed away from the market and arrived at a quiet road. We stopped at the doorway of an old building. Placing the backpack on the ground, he pulled off his robe, then removed his pants, stripping to his underwear. I was supposed to be keeping watch, but I was embarrassed to find my eyes roaming his ridiculously attractive physique.

I tore my eyes away as he stepped into his fresh pants and pulled on the new robe. Bundling up the old soiled clothes, he threw them into a trashcan at the side of the road and turned back to me.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “Let’s continue.”

“Where to now?” I asked.

“Now, we need to head for water. The Nile. Do you have any idea how to get there? Are we going to need to pick up a map?”

“I have a map,” I said, reaching into the backpack. I pulled it out and handed it to Ben.

He opened it up and looked at it. Although it was dark, and there were no streetlights where we were standing, we could both see all the details of the map clearly. My supernatural vision was yet another thing I was still getting used to.

We found our location on the map, then figured out the quickest route that involved passing by the least number of humans. Once we were confident in the plan, I climbed onto Ben’s back, the backpack once again fastened over my shoulders.

Then he ran nonstop, slowing down only occasionally to consult the map he had gripped in his hand to ensure that we were still going in the right direction.

Soon, the night air felt cooler and fresher. I sensed that we were approaching a body of water. When Ben stopped, we were standing in a dark harbor. A myriad of boats surrounded us. There were larger vessels—as large as cruise ships—as well as smaller ones like speedboats.

“So we’re going to need to choose a route and buy a ticket?” I asked.

Ben shook his head. “We need to avoid people as much as possible.”

I had already guessed what was on his mind as his eyes settled on a speedboat about fifteen feet away from us.

“Stealing?” I asked in a small voice.

“I don’t see what other choice we have right now.”

“So you know how to navigate the boat?” I asked.

“I’m used to navigating submarines. I can handle a boat,” he muttered. I slid off his back and watched as he looked quickly around the harbor, then leapt onto the boat. I motioned to follow, but he held up a hand.

“Just stay where you are and keep watch. Shout if you see someone coming.”

I did as he requested. It seemed to be a quiet evening on the harbor. There weren’t many people around at all, making my task an easy one.

About five minutes later the engine chortled and he returned, nodding in my direction.

“Okay. I’ve figured out how to get the boat to start without keys.”

He held out a hand, and I took it as he helped me onto the boat. He led me into the small cockpit in the center of the deck, and we both took a seat. Adjusting the controls, Ben began to navigate the boat backward. As soon as he had maneuvered out of the bay, he ramped up the speed. Soon we’d left the harbor and were moving toward the center of the wide river.

He kept the lights switched off as he looked up and down the river. There were a number of other boats on the water at this time of night. We had to be careful to avoid them because they could not see us.

We sailed north along the river for the next few hours, dodging any boats that passed our way, until the lights along the riverbank began to grow dimmer.

“We’re running out of fuel,” Ben said. “We’re going to have to head for land.”

Surrounding us on either side were tall marshes. Clearly we had traveled a good distance away from the city and were in some kind of suburb. Ben navigated the boat toward land and I gripped the sides of the boat as it hit the bank. As we both stepped out, I winced as mud filled my shoes.

He held my hand and we waded through the sludge until we reached a concrete road. There were no other boats nearby along the bank that we could see.

“We should start heading north by foot. It will be faster anyway. The boat was just to get us out of the city.” He inhaled deeply. “Definitely not as much human blood around here.”

“Good,” I muttered.

I decided that I wanted to run for a while, so we raced along the roads of the sleepy suburbs that passed nearest to the river. The chirp of crickets filled my ears, and the occasional roaring of a truck as it trundled by… and then, once we had entered the early hours of the morning, the sound of helicopters slicing the air above us.

Ben and I sped up, trying to keep out of the spotlights that the choppers were shining down, but they kept hovering nearby. I shot a panicked glance at Ben. Gripping my hand, he tugged on me sharply and pulled us into some bushes to our right. As he kept leading me forward, the shrubbery got thicker and thicker and the ground muddier. Ben removed the backpack from his back and hung it over a low-hanging tree branch, then pulled me into the river until I was chest deep.

“Take a deep breath,” he whispered.

I didn’t have time to draw in much breath before he pulled me under with him. I remained submerged for as long as I could before I was forced to resurface for oxygen. I ducked down quickly again afterward. We remained in the water for what felt like the next ten minutes, until the helicopters seemed to have passed.

We headed back to the bank, where Ben retrieved the backpack from the branch and continued running. As the first light of morning showed behind the horizon, we arrived at a harbor on the outskirts of a small town. Looking around, I was disappointed to see only cruise ships.

“What now?” I asked, looking nervously at the sky.

Ben eyed the huge ships.

“We have two options. Keep traveling by foot and hope we find another boat soon, before the sun rises… or buy tickets on one of these cruise ships.”

I stared at him, wondering if the last part was some kind of joke.

“You, on a cruise?”

He looked back at me. “Given the searches on the roads last night, I don’t think it’s a good idea to travel by land. But we need to keep moving.” He averted his eyes to the brightening sky. “Trust me when I say I feel crazy for suggesting this, but I think we’re going to be safer on one of those cruise ships, at least until tonight.” I gaped at him as he continued. “By my estimation, if we pass the day on a cruise ship along the Nile, of course it will go slow, but then we’ll only need one more night of traveling by foot—if that—and we’ll end up in Ismailia. There we’re sure to find a boat to take us down to the Red Sea, toward the Gulf of Aden, and hopefully as far as the Arabian Sea.”