Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (61 page)

“Johnny, shut the fuck up!” ordered Dr. Knight. The running commentary stopped.

Paul answered Dennis. “I’ve thought about that,” he said, leaning heavily against the Explorer’s hood. “The thing is, to make sure the vampire doesn’t rise, you not only have to stake it, you have to—”

“Cut off his head,” Dennis interrupted. “And throw it in running water.”

Johnny stared at the boy in horror.

“I read a lot,” Dennis defended himself.

“Yes,” Paul confirmed. “And my brother didn’t manage the last part.”

“Why not? Didn’t he know? I don’t understand that.”

“Dennis, he was only seventeen. He did his best.”

“Well, that’s not a handicap I’ve got to contend with.” Dr. Knight’s voice was cold. “And I’m not only going to cut off the skull, I’m going to tear his bones apart and beat them into dust with a sledge hammer. We can throw the bone shards in the lake. We need to find some tools, some bags.”

“There’s some croaker sacks in the boathouse,” Dennis offered. “Lots of ‘em, With the tools. Dad wants to redo the sandbags at the pier this spring. We can weight ‘em down with rocks.”

“Good. That’ll do fine. And we can throw ‘em in the middle of the lake. Have to row out in the damn rowboat, I guess. I sure never thought about needin’ a boat and motor tonight and we damn sure ain’t waitin’ for tomorrow.”

“But Justin?” Dennis asked.

“Cain drained him,” Paul said. “He’ll rise tomorrow if we don’t do it tonight.”

“I’ll handle that, too,” Dr. Knight said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Wait a minute!” Johnny broke in. “You’re going to shove a stake through a dead body and cut off its head? The skeleton’s one thing, but a body, that’s—that’s—”

“Johnny, take the Explorer and go. I’ll ride back in with Dennis. You haven’t seen us do anything yet. Much. I know your legal code of ethics or whatever y’all call ‘em wouldn’t stand up to watching us mutilate a dead body. Felony or something. Go on.”

Johnny looked at Dr. Knight. He still didn’t understand but he knew he had to take this on faith. A long night of rowing over the surface of the cold, black lake lay ahead. Dennis was a teenager. Dr. Knight was sixty-five. And whatever was going on with Ria, that was obviously Paul’s department. They needed him.

“No, I’ll stay.”

“You sure? You can’t argue and you can’t ask questions. Not tonight.”

“I’m sure. But I’m asking questions later.”

“’Course you are. And I’ll answer ‘em. Thank you, son.”

Johnny nodded and added his own observations of details to clean up.

“The inside of the cabin, that rug. Got burn marks and blood all over it. We’ll have to toss it, too, with the bodies. Get a replacement up here, maybe nobody’ll notice.”

“Mom’ll notice,” Dennis assured them. “Soon as she walks in. But don’t worry about it. I’ll tell her I brought Lori up here and the fire sparked. Hell, I’ll tell her we were so hot, we set the rug on fire. She won’t say anything else.”

“Dennis,” Dr. Knight put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Your Dad’s a good surgeon but I swear, boy. You’re already twice the man he ever thought about being.”

“Oh, shit!” The exclamation came from Johnny. “I got the idea about the lake house from Ted Dorry, made him go through Justin’s file. He’s goin’ to have somebody up here in the morning if I don’t call him back. I think. He wasn’t real happy about it.”

“Well, you’d best be calling him, then. We got to get this place lookin’ just like it looked and we sure as hell don’t need anybody up here in the next day or two.”

“Okay. I’ll tell him he was right and Ria was out shopping and had car trouble. Damn, I hate lookin’ like an idiot!”

He paused. God, he’d give anything right now to hear Ria ask,
What? You’re not used to it by now?
No way she’d pass up an opening like that.

“Humility’s good for the soul, son. Let’s get moving. Paul?”

“I’m takin’ Ria now. Don’t try and see us. We’ll come to you. When she’s ready.”

“Right. And Paul, there might be something. We never even got started on any of Stu Harmon’s ideas—”

“No. That’s over. Nobody’s experimenting on Ria and if something changed me for the worse or killed me, she’d be alone. And Ria will not go through eternity alone.”

Paul spoke firmly. Again, Dr. Knight deferred.

“And Johnny,” Paul continued. “In the next few nights—if you hear anything in Ria’s apartment—don‘t come over. We’ll come to you. When she’s ready.”

“But guys—what are we goin’ to say about it?” Johnny asked. “After this weekend. I mean, Ria has a law practice, clients, friends.”

“I got a job offer I couldn’t turn down,” Paul improvised quickly. “On a newspaper somewhere.
Wyoming
,
Oregon
, hell,
Idaho
, I don’t care what you say. Ria and I got married, spur of the moment, and headed on out. We’ll be back on visits. Ria’s impulsive enough for that to be believable. And all of you know—we have to leave. Won’t take long for somebody to notice they never see Ria in the daytime anymore.

“Hate to miss the wedding,” said Johnny.

“Wedding was half an hour ago, Johnny. And believe me, you didn’t want to see the ceremony.”

Paul turned and walked back towards his new bride, whose consciousness was floating somewhere in the black void between the worlds while her body furiously healed.

He turned back.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you get me something? Won’t mean much to Ria for a few weeks but it’ll mean a lot to me.”

“Anything.”

“I want a set of wedding rings,” he said, and reached for his wallet.

“Paul, I’ll get whatever you want, don’t—”

“No, I have to pay for these.”

Dr. Knight closed his eyes. No white wedding gown, no white roses, no white cake. Yes, they needed this.

“What kind do you want?”

“Something unusual, as unique as you can find. Wide gold bands, I think, set with stones, but not diamonds.”

“Then what?”

“Rubies. Blood red rubies.”

“Okay. I’ll leave them when I get them.”

* * *

In the confines of the closed coffin in Paul’s mausoleum in
Rose
Arbor
Cemetery
, two bodies stirred instead of one. Paul shook off his day sleep quickly, rising from the coffin and looking for the supplies he knew Dr. Knight would have waiting.

Ah! There it was. Sitting next to an elegant tumbler. Paul poured the contents of the thermos jug into the glass. The stirrings from the remaining occupant of the coffin increased. He moved to stand beside it.

Ria sat up abruptly, a sleeper emerging from a nightmare.

“What—” Her voice cracked, harsh, unused, as though passing through sandpaper. “What’s happened to me? I—it
hurts
!”

He thrust the tumbler into her hands.

“Drink!”

* * *

During the first nights, the blood fury raged through Ria with the force of Hurricane Katrina. The butcher’s blood left by Dr. Knight was a poor substitute for the hot, pumping blood she craved in her state of existence, a mere stop-gap and nothing more.

After she slaked her first thirst with the nightly offerings her father left like clockwork, they cast out and Paul flew beside her through the woods on the banks of the
Ocmulgee
as she stalked and captured, bit and tore. And drank. And drank. And drank.

When he sensed the approach of sunrise, he pulled her back to the mausoleum, folding her in his arms in the cramped confines of the satin lining of the coffin, and closed the lid after them. He didn’t want her father to see her yet and hoped Dr. Knight didn’t raise the top to gaze at her when he left the blood.

A week after her first waking, Paul saw the jeweler’s case lying on top of the small chest of drawers. Ria, behind him, flitted impatiently from one side of their small residence to the other, appearing and disappearing in a feverish ballet.

“Let’s go, Paul, let’s go!”

He held the open case in his hand and turned around.

“Ria, you’ve had blood already. You’ve got to start getting this under control. You have to start tapering off.”

“I can’t!”

“You can! You can do this, Ria. Look,” he held the case out to her. “I asked your father to get them for us.”

She gave the rings the barest glance.

“I have to hunt, Paul! I have to!”

“Try to get by tonight, Ria. You’ve got to start sometime.”

She snarled and drew back her arm. “
I won’t!
Just because you’re Mr. Perfect and don’t need it doesn’t mean I don’t!” With all the strength of the vampire in its early bloodlust, she slapped him across the face with such force his head snapped back.

Paul dropped the jeweler’s case. He’d been in agony these past nights, the mental agony of guilt as he watched her rip and tear. Dear God, why hadn’t he just let her go? The mental agony melted and merged with the raw, burning physical agony assaulting his nerve endings while he fought to regain control of his own thirst.

He’d kept it dormant for so long. It was dormant no more. The taste of Ria’s blood, the coursing heat of it as it pumped into his waiting mouth! Ah, that unleashed wild, furious waves of need he’d struggled to crest and ride when he’d stood outside the cabin talking to the three humans. The smell of their blood almost overpowered him, the urge stronger than it had ever been, even immediately after his own transformation. Then the nights of following Ria as she stalked and gorged, wanting more than anything to stalk and gorge with her. And now she dared taunt his control?

He lifted his arm and struck back with all the strength of his enraged and tortured abstinence. She flew backwards and her body struck the marble wall with such force a mere mortal’s spine would have cracked on impact.

She lunged forward, spitting and hissing in her own fury. Her hands caught his shoulders and threw him back with equal force against the opposite wall. She fell on him again. They growled and snarled. Incisors gleamed as they locked into combat, a battle of immortal Titans.

Suddenly Ria dropped her hands and her expression changed. Paul saw the first surface glimmer of his Ria, the Ria who’d cried silently in empathy as he painted pictures of Cain in the night air.

“You want it, too. Don’t you? I didn’t realize—it was me, changing me, it brought it back. Didn’t it? How bad?”

“Bad. Horrible. I don’t think it’s ever been this bad.”

She looked down at the floor, her eyes searching and then finding. She bent and retrieved the rings. Taking the larger of the two, she reached for his hand.

“With this ring,” she said softly, placing it on his finger, “I think we’re more than wed, Paul.” She lifted his finger to her lips. “And will you wear my ring as long as you wore Chloe’s?”

He took the smaller ring and placed it on her finger.

“Longer,” he said. “For eternity.”

“Come,” she said, and tugged at his hand. “Let’s go.”

“Ria—”

“Not to the woods. I need to find a store.”

“A store?”

“Yeah. I just thought about it. You know what we got here, darlin’? The psychologists call it an oral fixation. Know what smokin’ is? An oral fixation. We need a carton of cigarettes. Two or three of ‘em.”

The first smile Paul had smiled in the last week flitted across his lips.

“Somehow, I don’t think it’s goin’ to be a real satisfying substitute.”

“Well, maybe we can find something to go with it.”

“Let’s go.”

They materialized within the walls of Ria’s apartment, plastic bag of cigarettes in Ria’s hand. They moved to the bedroom and physically consummated this new marriage sanctified in blood.

Always before, Paul had made love gently, sometimes almost tentatively, well aware that his great strength, unleashed, could injure her badly. Now there was no need for restraint and they reveled in the new physical freedom like an old married couple who, after years of intimacy, suddenly discover new passion in bawdiness.

“Good Lord,” Ria said softly, lying against his side with her head on his shoulder and her leg thrown over his thigh, and he knew. They were all right again. Both of them.

* * *

Paul handled the wheel easily and naturally as the silver Camry skimmed over the blacktop surface of Highway 41, headed for the
Alabama
border pointed west. The Mustang rested in Dr. Knight’s garage. It was simply too conspicuous an automobile.

He glanced over at Ria. She was turned slightly toward the right, gazing thoughtfully out the window over the nightscape with one elbow propped against the arm rest. Her head rested on the palm of her hand. Feeling his eyes, she turned and smiled and he was struck again by the miracle of her renewed beauty, emerging triumphant from the wreckage left by Cain.