About a Vampire (30 page)

Another big issue she'd discovered reading her husband's mind was that her discomfort in social situations embarrassed him and made him feel put upon. He felt he couldn't leave her alone at parties or she'd sit in a corner like a wallflower looking miserable. That had stung her and all Holly could think was that she hadn't been socially awkward at the nightclub with Justin, Gia and the boys. But then they hadn't spent the night giving her reproving looks, or censoring everything she said.

Holly had spent a lot of time the past two weeks thinking of her time with Justin and the others. Despite the situation, she'd laughed more and been more relaxed around them than she'd ever been in her life. She'd enjoyed her budding friendship with Gia, and had often found herself laughing at the twins' teasing as they trained her. She'd even enjoyed Justin's attempts to woo her. More than that she'd missed talking to the man. She kept recalling their chat on the way back from visiting his parents, and the others they'd had on their shared dream dates. They'd laughed a lot while bowling and then at the fair, at least they had before passion had overtaken them. She missed that laughter. She missed a lot of things. But mostly, she missed Justin . . . which made her feel guilty as hell and didn't help anything.

It seemed clear to Holly that unless she wanted to lose her marriage, she needed to stop thinking about Justin, banish him from her mind. She also needed to get past letting James's thoughts affect her. But it was hard. She knew she wasn't perfect and shouldn't think James would believe she was. She even had complaints of her own about him, but she still loved him, and she was quite sure he loved her despite the mild criticisms and complaints she'd read from his mind. But knowing he probably had complaints, that all husbands did, and actually knowing what those complaints were . . . well, it was two different things entirely. And Holly didn't have a clue what to do about it.

At this rate, it was looking like Gia, Justin, and the others were right and she was going to lose her marriage and her childhood sweetheart and then what would she do?

An image of Justin's laughing face came to mind and Holly forced it away. She couldn't let him affect her decision. She would not leave James for Justin. That could not be the reason. And she couldn't give up on her marriage this easily. Marriages took work. She needed to work at it. She would get past her memories of him, or find a way to block them. She had to.

“So?” Elaine said as Holly finally settled on what she would order and lowered her menu. “Tell us about New York.”

 

Seventeen

“B
ill was really weird tonight.”

Holly watched the lights flickering past the car and shrugged with disinterest at James's comment. In her opinion, everyone had been acting weird tonight: Bill, Elaine, the waiter. Dear God, they'd all acted like she was Marilyn Monroe or something, fawning and sucking up to her, and hugging her too long as they'd left. Someone should have warned her about that side effect of being an immortal. She supposed it was handy when it came to feeding, but she had bagged blood to work with. Having everyone practically drooling on her was just embarrassing really when she knew she was the same person she'd been just a ­couple weeks ago. It had been bad enough when Bill had flirted with her lightly, but then Elaine had started jokingly suggesting that they have an orgy . . . well, Holly had been glad when they'd finished eating and could leave. Fortunately, James had seemed just as eager to go home as her.

“Elaine was kind of acting strange too. I think she was actually hitting on you,” James said now.

“Jealous?” Holly muttered, glaring out the window now.

“What?” He laughed, but it didn't sound like a natural laugh. “Did you just ask me if I was jealous? Why the hell would I be jealous of Elaine?”

Holly opened her mouth, and then closed it and shrugged. “She's an attractive woman.”

“Maybe. I've never noticed,” he lied and Holly turned sharply to peer at him with disbelief.

“Really?” she asked dryly.

James shrugged, his attention firmly on the road ahead. “She's not my type.”

“Oh, right, so you've never imagined it was her you were making love to on a Sunday night?”

“What?” he squawked with obvious alarm. “Where would you get something like that?”

“From you,” Holly snarled, suddenly furious. Between classes, work, and going out it had been a really long day for her, a long two weeks actually, and while she'd tried not to be hurt by all of his little thoughts this past week, she was. They had cut her to the quick and her self-­esteem was now bleeding out and turning to red rage.

“Don't be ridiculous, I would never say something like that,” he protested.

“No. But you sure thought it, James.”

“What, you can read minds now?” He laughed nervously and shook his head. “You're just being paranoid.”

“Paranoid?” Holly asked in dulcet tones, her temper completely shredded. “Oh no, you don't get to call me paranoid, James. You can think I'm OCD and socially awkward, and you can pretend it's Elaine you're banging to get it up, but you do not get to tell me I'm paranoid for knowing it.”

“What the hell?” He glanced to her with alarm and then back to the road. “Where are you getting this stuff?”

“From you, James,” she repeated grimly. “From your thoughts.”

Grinding his teeth, he tightened his hands on the steering wheel and shook his head. “That's not—­”

“Possible?” Holly finished for him.

“You can't—­”

“Read your mind?” she finished again, and then snorted grimly. “Actually I can. You see, I wasn't away in New York at the start of the month. I was in Southern California, just outside Los Angeles, learning to be a vampire because I was stupid enough to run with scissors.”

“What?” he squawked turning to peer at her. Then shock turned to anger, and he growled, “You've lost your mind.”

“Really. Then what are these?” Holly asked, and opened her mouth to let her fangs slide out.

James stared, his anger slowly giving way to amazement and then fear. Before he could recover or respond, the sound of tearing metal hit her ears and Holly was thrown against the seat belt, then jerked back against the seat as they crashed into something. Even as they came to an abrupt halt, darkness was closing over Holly, dragging her into its soothing depths.

S
omething was dripping. That was the first thing Holly was aware of. It was followed by a damp sensation everywhere and pain. Lots of pain. Groaning, she opened her eyes and peered around, confused at first as to where she was and what had happened. A red light was glowing nearby, casting a nightmare vision across the interior of the car as it blinked on and off, briefly lighting up the man in the front seat next to her.

“James?” Holly murmured. She started to shift, to try to move closer to him, but sharp pain in her side made her halt and glance down. A tree branch had come through the windshield and impaled her, running through her right side and into the car seat.

“Nice,” she muttered, and then grimaced.

A moan from James drew her attention his way, and Holly frowned and reached her left hand out to touch his shoulder. He was slumped on the deflated airbag draped over the steering wheel. He moaned again at her touch, but didn't respond otherwise and she glanced over him worriedly and then looked out at the front of the car.

They'd crossed into the oncoming lane and continued right off the road to crash into a tree, she saw. The driver's side of the car looked like a squeeze-­box. Her gaze dropped toward James's legs then and alarm claimed her as she saw that the metal had been pressed in and crushed his legs. She couldn't even see most of his legs from the seat down, but she could smell the blood and guessed that was the dripping she heard, it was running over the metal and dripping on the already soaked car carpet.

God, all she could smell was blood.

“James, can you hear me?” she asked, her voice surprisingly strong considering how much it hurt to even breathe.

James moaned again, and this time, started to rouse and try to sit up, but then he cried out in agony and fell back against the steering wheel, unconscious once more.

Cursing, Holly turned her attention to the tree limb pinning her to the seat. It was a smallish branch, about four or five inches in diameter would be her guess. Gritting her teeth, Holly grasped it about six inches in front of her chest and managed to snap it in two.

“Couldn't have done that as a mortal,” she muttered to herself as she tried to work herself up for what came next.

“This is gonna hurt,” she grumbled, and then grabbed the end of the shaft now protruding from the right side of her stomach and yanked it out with one quick jerk and an agonized scream.

Holly sat clutching the stick and panting as she waited for the pain to ease. It was when she slowly became aware of liquid running down her stomach and soaking her pants that she dared to glance down and see that she was pretty much hemorrhaging blood.

“Crap,” she breathed, and then looked around for something to at least staunch some of the bleeding until her body could repair itself. Not spotting anything right away, Holly dropped the stick, popped open the glove compartment and retrieved the half roll of paper towels she'd placed in there just last week. Pulling off wads of “the quicker picker upper,” she quickly stuffed it into the hole in her stomach, wincing as she did.

“I'd never make it as a field medic,” she muttered to James's unconscious form as she unrolled more paper towel to add to the first bunch. “I hope the nanos don't think the paper towel is normal and try to turn me into a big roll of it or something.”

Holly laughed weakly at her own joke, and then shook her head as she pictured herself as a roll of paper towels with arms and legs.

“Must be delirious,” she decided.

When James moaned in response, Holly peered at him sharply, and then eased to the edge of her seat to brush the hair back from his face. She frowned at how pale he was. The man had lost a lot of blood, and he was still losing it. Holly was no doctor, but it seemed pretty obvious that his chances of surviving weren't good if they didn't get help soon.

She peered out the car windows, looking for that help. But of course they'd crashed in one of the few stretches of uninhabited road between the restaurant in San Francisco and their home in San Mateo. James would insist on using back roads instead of the freeway. Cursing again, she turned to peer at her husband, her mind working.

This wasn't his fault; it was hers for arguing with him while he was driving. If she'd just kept her temper in reign and her mouth shut . . . How had she expected him to react when she'd flashed him her fangs? And she shouldn't have been running with scissors in the first place. If not for that, Justin wouldn't have turned her to save her life, and everything else that had happened, wouldn't have, including her husband dying on a dark back road at the age of twenty-­six.

“Screw that,” Holly spat, and without thinking about it, grabbed him by the hair with one hand and pulled him back to rest against the driver's seat. At the same time, she raised her other hand to her face and ripped into her wrist. If Justin could turn her to save her life, she could turn James, Holly thought grimly as she quickly placed her gushing wrist against James's gaping mouth. She wasn't sure if it was her yanking on his hair, or what, but James woke up enough to open his eyes and peer at her dazedly. He then choked and tried to back away from her wrist, but she held him still.

“Swallow,” she ordered grimly. “We may be having problems, James, but I'm not going to have your death on my hands for the next millennia or however long I live, so swallow.”

Much to her relief he did.

Holly kept her wrist to his mouth until James passed out again, and then took it away to see that it had stopped bleeding. The nanos had sealed it, she noted and wondered if they were doing the same to her stomach. If so, she might be able to take the paper towel out now. But Holly had other matters to concern herself with just then, and so she left the paper towel and instead turned her attention to the metal crumpled around her husband's legs. Holly eyed it briefly. She was obviously stronger now that Justin had turned her. She'd snapped that branch like a twig when she wouldn't have been able to before the turn, but breaking a branch and unbending the metal from around James's legs were not the same thing. However, she didn't see much choice here.

Straightening, Holly opened her door and got out to walk around the car. When she reached the front, she braced both hands on the uncrumpled passenger side of the hood and shoved with all her might. Much to her amazement, the car rolled back under the effort. Her confidence getting a big boost from that success, Holly moved to examine the driver's side door and then glanced into the car with surprise when James stirred. She'd thought he'd be down for the count, but he'd thrown himself back against the car seat, his face a rictus of agony. When he then began to moan in a loud voice, she quickly set to work on the door.

Holly didn't know if the blood she'd given him had perked him up a bit, or if the turn itself was already causing him pain, but James was soon screaming his head off as she worked to free him. She withstood it for a good ten minutes, before she, who had never hit anyone in her life, stopped what she was doing and punched her husband, knocking him out. It wasn't because his agonized screams were driving her crazy, which they were, but Holly just couldn't bear that he was suffering such agony. His being unconscious, to her, seemed a kindness. Unfortunately, the pain didn't let him stay under long and ten minutes later she was knocking him out again.

Sighing with relief when James fell silent again, Holly finished unbending the last of the metal pinning him in the car and then pulled her husband out of the front seat and set him on the grass at the roadside so that she could get a look at his legs. The damage was horrifying. His left leg had been nearly amputated with just a bit of tendon remaining attached at the knee. She was amazed that it had come with him when she'd pulled him out of the vehicle. His right leg was a little better. At least it was still fully attached, but it looked like someone had run it over with a lawn roller, crushing all the bones.

Mouth tightening, Holly pulled her jacket off and quickly wrapped it around both of his legs and then tied the sleeves together, hoping this way to keep from breaking the small tendon and bit of flesh that kept the lower left leg attached. She then scooped him into her arms and stood to peer up and down the road.

James had really picked a doozy when he'd chosen to use this back road. Not a single car had passed since their crash and while Holly was grateful no one had come along to see what she could do, she could use a car about now to stop and give them a lift.

Turning to the right, she started jogging up the street, hoping she'd find a busier road at the end of it and someone who could drive them home. She was nearly to a cross street as unlit as the one she was on when Holly noted the driveway on their right. Pausing, she turned to look around, relieved when she spotted the golden lights up ahead. It was a house, and someone was home. There was also a van in the driveway. Holly hurried up the driveway to the house and shifted James in her arms to hit the doorbell.

A moment later the door opened and an overweight man in a wife beater grinned out at her as he crumpled an empty beer can in his hand. “Well, hello little lady. What can I do for a pretty little thing like you?”

Holly didn't waste time on niceties, she merely slipped into the man's thoughts and took control of him. Within minutes he'd fetched his car keys and was opening the back door of his van for her. She immediately crawled inside with James and sat down cross-­legged before arranging James half in her arms and half on the metal floor. Then she glanced to her chauffeur, Earl.

“Get in here, Earl, and close the door,” she instructed. Holly wasn't sure if her control would hold if he was out of her sight, so didn't risk sending him around the vehicle to get in. Instead, she made him climb through the van to the driver's seat and gave him her address with instructions to drive there.

Once he'd started the engine and begun to back out of the driveway, Holly relaxed a little and grimaced as hunger immediately roared up inside her. It had been gnawing at her since the accident, but she'd managed to ignore it while she struggled to free her husband. Now though, she had nothing to distract her and it was making itself known, with a vengeance. Grinding her teeth together, she looked around the interior of the van. It looked like a serial killer's holiday vehicle. Rope, duct tape, spades, and various implements that could have been used to torture someone hung from a pegboard strapped to one side wall, while a narrow cot was up against the other behind her.