Blood of Gold (11 page)

“You wouldn’t understand,” Patty snapped.

“We have to go get her,” Simone said. She got up from the table, handing Rod’s cellphone back to him. “When did you see her last?”

Everyone grew quiet as they realized that Laura had been like a ghost floating around the house over the last few days and that none of them could remember talking to her recently. No one had seen her since they’d woken up at dusk, and now the night was almost over.

“She can’t have gone far,” Simone said in a faint voice. “I’ll go. It’s my fault. I should have watched her closer.”

“
Your
fault?” Patty snorted. “What are you, the boss?”

“I can help,” Rod said. “Nobody will look twice at me. I can drive the van and the two of you can hide in the back.”

Simone looked at him gratefully, and he blushed.

“We can’t all go,” Patty said. “Someone needs to stay here. Laura might return.”

As they stood there in silence, it became increasingly obvious what the solution was. Finally, Patty spoke up.

“Simone, you should stay here with Rod. There’s no telling what I might do to him if you leave him here with me.” She looked at Rod and licked her lips, and he could see she was only half joking.

“Can you drive?” Rod asked.

“I grew up on a farm,” Patty said. “Of course I can drive.”

“Stick shift?”

She gave him a withering look. He dug into his pockets and handed her the keys. “There should be enough gas, but if not, see if you can’t trade some of the tools in back for cash or fuel. If you need to park during the day, no one will bother you if you park along the beach road.”

She snatched the keys out of his hand. There were only a couple of hours of darkness left.

#

Laura had wandered off from their hiding place without meaning to and without a plan. She just wanted to get away. She was tired of being ignored by the others. Simone had Rod to talk to, and Patty… well, Patty always had Patty.

It wasn’t until she was walking north along the highway that she realized she wasn’t going back. No matter what, she was never going to be cooped up again, unless… unless it was because
he
wanted her.

Thanks to Rod’s magical phone, Laura had realized that no one had even submitted a missing person’s report on her. She’d been thrown away, just like that. At least
he
desired her; at least
he
talked to her. He could even be nice sometimes. Like that time he’d brought her ice cream. Or when he’d let her lie in the backyard, staring up at the stars. He didn’t have to do that.

They had called him the Monster; that was before he’d become a
real
monster. But Laura had never really thought of him that way. To her, “Monster” had become almost a term of endearment. She’d whispered it in his ear once, and he’d reared back and looked at her strangely, then had gone back to what he was doing. From then on, she kept her feelings to herself, but when she thought “Monster,” it didn’t have the same meaning as it did to the others.

The outside world was bewildering, not only because it was different, but because it was so much faster, brighter and scarier than she remembered. What had happened to her body was frightening. She had desires that weren’t natural. Down in the basement, she’d been safe. She knew what to expect every day. Sure, she didn’t like… what he wanted from her, but that only happened once in a while. She could shut her mind off while he was doing those things to her.

The hardest part was leaving her two friends. Well, she wanted to call them friends, but were they really? Had they chosen each other? Would they have ever hung out together if they’d met in the outside world? She might have gone out on the town with Patty a few times, but she doubted she would have exchanged two words with Simone.

Simone called her “sister,” but Laura sensed that the other two had always kind of looked down on her.

Because she was Monster’s favorite, that’s why. He’d always gone to her first. He liked her best. They were too
old
.

She heard the horn only after the truck had already gone by, so close she could feel the wind of its passing. It was one of those enormous pickups that they had nowadays, as long as a stretch limousine and just as spotless. Coming from the country, she didn’t understand clean, unmarked pickup trucks. Pickups were supposed to be used, otherwise what good were they?

The huge truck swerved as it came to a stop. A middle-aged man, tall and rangy, with a bald head and a bushy mustache, got out. He stood there for a moment, examining her, and then approached her. “You all right, girl? You shouldn’t be walking along in the dark like that.”

He had his hand on a holster attached to his belt. He’d be wary of anyone out here alone, she thought, especially with all the chaos and danger of the last week. Still, he seemed genuinely concerned.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. She tried to walk around him, but he grabbed her arm. It was all she could do not to snarl at him.

“Why don’t you let me give you a ride to town?” he said. His voice sounded kindly. Then again, when the Monster sounded kindly, it was when he was most dangerous.

“No, thank you,” she said politely.

“Listen, you can ride in the bed of the pickup if you’re worried. I’ll be driving. You’ll be fine.”

Laura peered down the road. It was pitch dark. The lights of the town seemed a long way off. “OK,” she said dubiously.

“Good!” the man said, sounding surprised. “That’s good!” He walked back to the truck, put his hand on the door handle, then looked back at her.

Laura surprised herself by walking past the back of the pickup and going to the passenger-side door. She climbed up onto the seat, feeling like a little child, perched up so high.

The bald man got in quietly, slowly, as if trying not to alarm her.

He started the truck and the radio began blasting. Some guy was shouting nonsense lyrics at her.
Rap
, she remembered, though she’d probably only listened to it a few times in her life. The bald man quickly turned down the radio, then searched the channels until he came across a station playing classic rock. With the sound of “Piano Man” playing, he pulled out onto the highway.

#

Patty was pleased for Simone that she had found Rodney, who was obviously hopelessly in love with her. Patty was also desperately jealous. She needed to get away, at least for a while. The lovers’ shy glances at each other were too much. “Get a room!,” she wanted to shout. If Laura’s disappearance hadn’t given her the excuse, she would have found some other reason to leave.

She expected to find Laura walking alongside the highway. Laura was pretty simple in her choices. She’d find a road and follow it. She probably wouldn’t even think to hide when she saw headlights coming toward her.

Patty reached the outskirts of Crescent City without spotting her friend. Once in town, Laura could have taken any number of side streets, so after driving around fruitlessly for a while, Patty drove to their old prison, even though it was possible she’d get there before Laura.

It was as if the universe had a hole in it.

The house wasn’t there. In its place was a still-smoking heap of rubble, only a small part of the blackened frame still standing. When Patty got out of the car, a burnt-mildew smell assaulted her heightened senses. It seemed to her that she could smell every moment of her life buried under that rubble, all the crappy meals and soiled clothing, and… the Monster. She could smell him even through the smoke.

She could also smell the stench of death. It was coming from a house on the same side of the street, two doors down. She walked swiftly toward the partly open door, looking around to see if anyone was observing her. Inside, she found the remains of four people, two adults and two children, from the looks of it, though it was hard to tell. Beneath the stench of rotting corpses, she smelled something else, subtle but unmistakable. The Monster.
Her
Monster. He’d done this. He’d been here.

She went into the closest bedroom and looked out the window. From there, she could see most of the street. She sat down on the bed and waited.

#

The man driving the pickup smelled comforting to Laura. He smelled of cigarette smoke and whiskey, with an underlay of oil and fast food hamburgers. In fact, he smelled just like her father. And like Monster. But Laura could also smell his animal flesh under those familiar odors, could hear his heart beating and sense the blood coursing through his veins. She drooled, and a string of saliva splatted onto her T-shirt. She shot a glance at the driver, but he was pretending not to have noticed.

The drool had dripped off of her elongated fangs, which she was having more and more trouble hiding. She turned her face to the window and tried to think harmless thoughts, but nothing came to her. She hadn’t felt safe for so long, she simply couldn’t remember the feeling.

“You OK?” the man asked.

“Yeah, fine,” she murmured. It was hard to speak clearly when her fangs were extended.

She sensed him examining her, could almost feel him staring at her thigh where her too-short skirt was riding up, and then at her breasts, which she knew were large for her small frame. She started to tense, not sure what he was going to do, not sure what her reaction would be.

She felt his hand on her shoulder. He probably didn’t mean anything by it; it may have simply been a comforting gesture, but she reacted as if he was attacking her. She turned her head and bit into his wrist.

He cried out, and the pickup swerved onto the shoulder of the road. He overcorrected and suddenly they were shooting across the highway and into the trees on the other side. The truck started rolling, and Laura felt her head crack against the window and heard the glass break. The truck finally came to a stop, settling upside down.

The quiet was broken only by the clicking of the cooling motor. Any animal sounds had been silenced, the night creatures scared away. They were too far from the ocean to hear the waves. Floating in the darkness, Laura realized that she had been in complete silence for as long as she could remember. She didn’t mind: it was peaceful. But wait… what was that clicking sound?

She slowly came to her senses.

She still had the bald man’s wrist in her mouth, and it was half chewed through, as if she had never stopped eating, even during the accident. She looked over at him and saw that his head had been sheared off by a tree branch that was embedded in the back of the headrest. She kept chewing, finishing off his fingers, then his hand, and on up his arm to his neck. She didn’t stop until the top half of him was gone, except for the bones.

Laura crawled out of the wreckage, then had a thought and went back and searched his wallet. It was filled with twenties, more money than she’d ever seen in her life. She took the wallet and started walking down the highway toward Crescent City. Dawn was glimmering on the horizon. She’d have to find shelter soon. She looked down at her coat. It was covered with blood. She took it off, used the inside to wipe her face and hands and tossed it to the side of the road. Her stomach was full, and she felt good for the first time in a long time. She knew it was cold, but for some reason it didn’t affect her.

The older motels were among the first buildings on the outskirts of town. She went to the office of the first one she saw and rang the bell. An old lady in a robe emerged from out of the back, hair disheveled, blinking, as though she’d slept the night in the armchair in front of the blaring TV.

“Checking out?” she asked.

“I want a room,” Laura said.

“You want a room
now
?” The woman sounded suspicious. She examined Laura, who suddenly became self-conscious, wondering if she’d managed to wipe all the blood away. She looked out the window anxiously as she dug into her pocket.

Laura handed five twenties to the old lady. “How many days can I get for this?”

The clerk pulled the front of her bathrobe together. She got a shrewd look on her face. “Give me another twenty bucks and you can have three nights.”

Laura dug into the wallet, keeping it out of sight below the counter, and handed over another twenty. When the woman tried to give her paperwork and tell her the checkout time, Laura almost shouted at her, “Just give me the keys, lady! I’ll fill out all the paperwork and stuff later, all right?”

The woman took the keys from a drawer, looking startled. “It’s at the end. Last unit. You could have told me you needed to use the bathroom.”

Laura grabbed the keys and hurried down the broken concrete of the walkway. She quickly unlocked the door and ducked inside, slamming the door behind her as the first rays of the sun came over the edge of the parking lot.

Then she lay back on the bed, feeling completely satiated for the first time since she’d been Turned.

Eating the man who’d picked her up had been easy. She probably would have killed him anyway, even if they hadn’t had the accident. She hadn’t felt a thing. Not a tinge of doubt, not a twinge of guilt.

I’m going to like being a vampire
, she thought as she fell asleep.

#

Deb Hutchins watched the girl slip into the room. Showing up at dawn and being in such a hurry for a room? Well, didn’t that seem a little suspicious? She was well aware of what had been going on in Crescent City, though her motel had been far enough away from the fighting to avoid damage. She’d benefited from the lack of decent rooms left in town and had been full almost every night: the conflict had been a windfall.

She didn’t kid herself about the quality of her motel. When she was young, she’d thought running a motel was a no-brainer. Take people’s money for simply making their beds and cleaning the bathrooms? Piece of cake! Then things had started to break or wear out. She’d worked hard for years trying to keep up with the entropy, but the money had only been enough to fix things, never replace them. Her husband had run off with one of the maids, and she’d never trusted anyone else to clean since then. Now she was old and worn out, and tired of the crap people did in her establishment.