Lust for Life (10 page)

When he sees me, his lips part but make no sound, like they’re waiting for the words
to enter from the outside.

I have none to offer, so I climb onto the bed and take him in my arms.

Shane sobs without tears, heaving great, shuddering breaths that quake my body. He
holds on to me so tight that for a moment I feel like I’ll squish up like
a stress ball. But I’m made of strong stuff now, and I can take it.

He pulls away finally and rests against the wall, tilting his head up to stare at
the ceiling. “We need to call Lanham.”

“He better find out how the hell this happened. If someone knew Jim escaped, they
should’ve warned us.”

“Yeah, that, too.”

“There’s something else you want to talk to him about?”

He lowers his chin to look straight at me. “Asking for a transfer.”

“Out of Enforcement? I can understand why you’d want to do that after your first kill,
but you’ve worked so hard, and if you start over in a different division, you’ll have
to do a whole new training.” I can’t believe I’m arguing for him to stay an Enforcement
agent. “Besides, Lanham will never let you do it. He’ll only color outside the lines
when it’s his idea.”

Shane’s face remains impassive. “I don’t mean change divisions. I mean change locations.
If you’ll come with me.”

My spine turns cold. “You want to leave?”

“I can’t stay here at the station. I know what I did was justified.” He swallows,
and I wonder if that was the truth. “The other DJs will say they know it, too, but
I can see it in their eyes. They think I’m a murderer. I was the one to end him, to
plunge that stake into his—” Shane shifts his lower jaw from side to side, and I wonder
if the tears are finally on their way. “They can’t mourn him with me here.”

“I’d have to get a transfer, too. You think the Control would do that?”

“Married agents usually stay together. Like Agent Sellers and Captain Wayne-Sellers
from Indoc?”

“But they’re both in the same division with jobs at headquarters.” I point to my lonely
engagement band. “Besides, we’re not married yet.”

“Then let’s change that. We’ll move the wedding up.”

“Shane, no. I’m not rushing our wedding. We won’t give Jim the honor of turning our
lives upside down.” I put my hand on his knee. “Think about it before you decide what
you want. It would mean leaving the station, leaving Sherwood, probably leaving Dexter.”

He gives me a sharp look. “Dexter?”

“If the Control deploys us somewhere, it could be some field situation where we wouldn’t
have a permanent home. That’s no life for a dog. Plus, he’s a vampire, which makes
him extra freaky about routine.”

“Okay.” He runs a hand over his head, back to front. “We stay for Dexter.”

I offer him an out. “If you still feel this way at the end of our contracts, and you
want to stay in the Control, then we’ll ask to be deployed somewhere stable away from
here. Somewhere we can keep Dexter.”

“That makes sense.”

“In the meantime, we need to go deal with the DJs.”

“I know.” He gives a long sigh. “I’ve lived in Sherwood for more than ten years. It’s
probably time for a change.”

“You’re a vampire. Change is bad.”

“Usually.” He shifts to sit on the edge of the mattress. “Maybe not this time.”

9

Stand by Me

The DJs are still gathered in the common room when we enter. Noah and Regina sit together
on one end of the foldout couch. Spencer is in the kitchen, pouring Jeremy a tall
glass of blue Gatorade. Deirdre is slumped over the table, her cheek pressed against
the marbled linoleum surface, an open bottle of rum in her hand. Monroe sits in one
of the overstuffed brown armchairs with his gleaming red acoustic guitar, softly picking
an old blues tune that I recognize but can’t name. I’m glad Adrian hasn’t moved in
yet—at least he’s spared this tableau of misery.

Shane comes with me to the center of the room by the coffee table. He starts to cross
his arms, then drops them and simply stands straight, eyes forward. Like a soldier.
“If you guys have something to say to me, say it now.”

Deirdre lets out a growl. “I have a lot to—”

“Not you. You’re done.”

Spencer spreads his hands. “What do you want us to say?”

“I think he wants a round of applause.” Regina throws up her arms. “Or maybe we should
do the wave.”

Spencer looks confused by the latter term. Then he turns back to Shane. “You gonna
defend what you did? Killin’ one of our own with no warning? Deirdre told us you didn’t
say a word to Jim. You just staked him like an animal.”

Shane stares straight ahead, as if he’s making an official report, not discussing
the death of a friend. “Jim has demonstrated his superior strength on numerous occasions.
In the time it took me to say a word to him, he could’ve torn off my head. More likely
Ciara’s head, since she was closer.”

I resist the urge to rub my neck. “It’s true. You guys remember Thanksgiving three
years ago. He threatened to kill Shane in front of all of us.” I glare at Spencer.
“You’ve seen the way Jim acted around me when he thought we were alone.”

“I seen it.” Monroe sets down his guitar with a low hum, then stands and comes toward
me. “I was the one found them, remember? In his room, covered in her blood. The way
he was at it, he woulda chewed straight through her neck if I—” He stops, his hand
halfway to me. It starts trembling, which I’ve never seen it do before. Monroe lowers
his hand, then stares at it like it’s not even attached to him. “This is all my fault.
I shoulda ended it that night.”

“I stopped you. We thought my cousin Cass would die if he died. We thought we needed
Jim to bring her back.”

“We were wrong.”

“Then look at it this way: if we’d killed Jim that night, then Deirdre would’ve died,
alone in her house. As young as she is, she’d never have survived her maker’s death.”

Deirdre shows no reaction to this, just keeps scraping the black-and-white label off
the rum bottle with her jagged thumbnail.

Noah speaks up at last. “I never support killing, you know that. Yet I cannot help
but admit I am relieved that Jim is no longer a threat.”

“What if he wasn’t a threat?” Jeremy’s voice is faint from loss of blood. “What if
that nursing home rehabilitated him? Isn’t that what they’re there for?”

“You think maybe he didn’t escape?” Regina twists her studded leather bracelet so
hard it squeaks. “Maybe they let him go on purpose because he’d gotten better?”

“He wasn’t better!” I tell them, nearly yelling. “After Halloween I checked to make
sure Jim hadn’t escaped and set the bomb at the Smoking Pig. Lanham said nothing had
changed. Jim was still a prisoner under guard.”

“Maybe Lanham lied.” Regina gasps. “Oh, no, wait, Colonel Stick-up-His-Ass has never
lied to you. Except all the times he’s lied to you.”

She has a point. Lanham has saved me so many times, literally and professionally,
it’s easy to forget his motives could be mixed at best.

Spencer examines the bits of pencils scattered on the chair. They’re smooth at both
ends, like unsharpened golf pencils. “Looks like these were shaved off flush with
his skin.”

He holds one of the pencils up to the kitchen ceiling light. “His body mighta healed
around the wound and sealed it off. Which woulda made ’em harder to get out.”

“And if only one or two actually pierced his heart,” Noah points out, “it could still
pump. He could still live.” He rubs a spot on his chest an inch down and to the right
of his heart, probably remembering the time he took a crossbow arrow there. “Also,
it would leave room for the final killing blow.”

No one but me looks at Monroe or Shane, the ones who delivered Jim’s wounds.

“So he was walking around with those things still inside him.” Regina shudders. “I
wonder if he could feel them.”

“I bet the Control wondered, too.” The DJs won’t like my next conjecture. “They might’ve
wanted to study him. How often do they get a half-staked vampire in their midst?”

“They could make one anytime,” Regina says with a snarl.

“Technically they could, but politically? No way. Not with the uproar over Project
Blood Leash. Right now the Control is tiptoeing around the undead so we don’t all
quit. Another anti-vampire injustice would destroy the agency.”

Deirdre scoffs. “How is keeping Jim alive with stakes in his heart
not
an anti-vampire injustice?”

“Every society treats their criminals worse than they treat regular people.” Noah
sits on the corner of the couch. “They don’t have the same rights, so they are used
and discarded.”

“If Jim was useful to the Control as some sort of lab specimen, they would’ve had
him under maximum security.” Shane examines his left hand, stretching and flexing
his fingers. “But they obviously didn’t.”

“Then they did let him go on purpose.” Jeremy sips his Gatorade. “Maybe the Control
sent him as an assassin.”

“But why would they?” Noah asks. “He was a danger to humans and other vampires. Releasing
him would go against everything they say they stand for.”

“They stand for ‘whatever it takes,’ ” Regina growls. “If the Control wanted you and
Shane dead, the best way
to do it would be to let Jim go. They wouldn’t whack you directly.”

“But we’re valuable to them.” I glance at Shane. “Right?”

“You
were
valuable,” Regina says. “With no more anti-holy blood, you’re just another vampire.”

“She was a vampire when she saved my life.” Monroe points to the left side of his
head, where a holy-water blast took his skin, skull, and brain, all of which grew
back. “She had the power with just her thoughts and her words. This girl’s more than
just another vampire.”

“True,” Regina admits, then says to me, “You do have a lot of enemies. It’s one reason
why I like you.”

“We may never know how Jim escaped,” Shane says, “but we should assume it wasn’t an
accident, and watch our backs.”

“I bet Jim could tell you how he escaped,” Deirdre snarls. “Oh, wait, he can’t because
he’s dead.” She takes another chug of cheap rum.

The phone on the end table rings. It’s an inside line, from David’s office. He often
comes in at seven a.m. to set up the syndicated morning news programs.

I go to answer it, then hesitate. “Does David know what happened?”

“We told him.” Spencer is lining up the pencil segments on the table in order of size.
Deirdre reaches out to the pile of Jim’s clothes. Spencer pushes it closer to her.

I answer the phone. “Hey, David.”

“You okay?”

“Better than I could be, I guess. What’s up?”

“Colonel Lanham’s here to see you.”

“Already? Who called him?”

“No one. Apparently Jim had some kind of tracking device in him. All the high-value
prisoners wear them.”

I eye the line of pencils. “Spencer, did you hear that? Is it in one of those?”

He squats down level with the table, then selects the smallest pencil and hands it
to me. Sure enough, next to the graphite inside lies a silvery gray fiber.

David continues. “The sensor also detects the temperature difference between a vampire’s
body and the surrounding air. That way they know when and where an escaped prisoner
dies.”

Makes sense. No point wasting resources trying to find a vampire who’s already gone
poof
.

“Lanham wants you and Shane to debrief him,” David says. “Bring Deirdre, too.”

•  •  •

Shane and I help Deirdre stagger upstairs to the office. She insists on bringing the
rum. Whatever keeps her quiet.

Lanham is waiting in David’s office, his height and presence making the room look
even smaller than usual. “Griffin. McAllister. I understand there was an incident
and that James Esposito Jr. is now dead.”

Deirdre lets out a wail and slumps to the floor next to Lori’s desk.

I speak over her noise. “He’s dead because he got away from you guys. How the hell
did he escape?”

“We’re looking into it. There’s been a report of an incident outside the facility
where he was staying. Perhaps it was a diversionary tactic.”

“Your security must suck if you have to jab prisoners with tracking devices.” When
he glares at me, I add, “Sir.”

His jaw shifts. “I can’t reveal details about our correctional facilities’ methods.
But remember, ever since the vampire agents’ work slowdown, we’ve been understaffed
agency-wide.”

A convenient excuse. Or the truth. Or both.

Lanham looks down at Deirdre, who’s clutching the legs of Lori’s chair and whimpering
now instead of wailing. “This must be Ms. Falk.”

“Jim’s most recent progeny,” I tell him. “She called us for help because Jim abandoned
her and she was starving. While we were there, he showed up. I guess he was looking
for sanctuary before the sunrise.”

Lanham gives me a sharp look. “You ‘guess’? He didn’t state his purpose?”

I shut my mouth. Shane can tell him, and he does:

“Sir, I acted immediately, in the belief I was defending my life and those of Agent
Griffin and Ms. Falk.” Shane swallows, almost imperceptibly. “I struck without warning.”

“I see.” Colonel Lanham fingers the rim of his black cap. “Which part of your training
led you to believe this was the right tactic?”

Shane stands even straighter. “The part where we’re taught how to fight those older
and stronger than ourselves, sir. We’re to use any weapon at our disposal. Including
surprise.”

Deirdre practically spits. “There’s a difference between surprise and cold-blooded
murder.”

Lanham holds up a hand. “Before anyone says another word, I need to interview the
three of you separately, lest one account color the others.” Lanham looks at Deirdre
and gestures to Franklin’s empty office. “Ma’am?”

She lifts a bewildered gaze from the floor to his face.
A tear hangs from each set of eyelashes. Lanham squats in front of her and extends
his hand to help her up, like she’s a child, and not a vampire who could tear out
his throat with one leap.