Phoenix Dead (New Adult Dark Romance) (The Vampire Years) (23 page)

I shook my head. "No. But Paul does. He was refurbishing a closed motel last summer - his aunt's. She died from a heart attack before he finished and it's in probate now."

Chris leaned forward and looked at the map. "And if his mom and step-father are dead..."

"It'll take days before the cops know to look there," I finished.

"But would Nestor tell him to go there?"

"The reporter said a second eyewitness saw Paul and Casey alone in the car. A white four-door sedan, his step-father's." I put my hand on Danny's shoulder and looked him in the eyes. "I know Paul, he won't go where he's told. He has delusions of grandeur, a confidence that exceeds his ability. He's King-fucking-Kong and he won't want to share with the shit monkeys."

***

Ten minutes later, after Danny had shown Chris and me how to shoot and reload the handguns, we were in the station wagon heading towards Douglas. Conversation consisted of Danny asking me everything I could remember about the motel. I wound up tearing the cereal box apart and drawing the layout of the buildings.

It was set back from the road, with a big dirt lot in front for the semi-trucks that comprised most of the traffic on the road. Twenty units and an office attached to the manager's living quarters. Each unit had only one door in, plus one front window and a much smaller window at the back for the bathroom. The office had big sliding glass doors opening onto the front lot, a standing-room only lobby and a glass enclosed counter for the desk clerk. From there, a door into a combined kitchen and living room, two bedrooms off to the side and a single bathroom. In the kitchen area, a door opened on the back of the building.

We stopped at the last gas station before leaving the Douglas city limits, fueled up and bought some water and canned meat. In the car, Danny went over the guns again and gave us a basic game plan. Chris wasn't happy with Danny having him stay in the car behind the wheel until called forward. Danny wanted to do the same with me, but I wouldn't let him. I would be better able to sense if the buildings were empty. And, vampire or not, Paul was too chicken shit not to kill Danny the second he had a chance. Danny had survived last night because Oscar had wanted to play.

Fifteen minutes later the motel came into sight. It was a little more run down since the last time I saw it. Paul had been stripping the roof shingles off when his aunt died. Now a couple of the units had holes in their roofs. Windows were broken out on several others. Someone had graffitied the aged plywood hammered in place to protect the office's glass sliding doors.

We pulled around back, starting at the far end of the units and slowly driving towards the office. Twice I touched Chris on the shoulder to have him stop. I waited, listening. Each time the movements I had heard turned out to be birds. We left the car running near the back door to the manager's quarters. Chris offered a final terse, whispered protest that Danny answered with a hard look.

When I opened the car door, Danny tried one last time to get me to wait with Chris. "You said you don't hear anything."

"And if you believe me, there's nothing to worry about."

He shook his head, biting his bottom lip. I pressed the gun into his hand and he offered me the same stony look he'd just given Chris.

"I'm not ready to find out how good a shot I am if Casey's in the room." When he still hesitated, I forced his fingers around the grip. "Please, it's worth more in your hands than mine."

He relented. At the door, he positioned me to the side, took one listen against the door frame and looked at me. I nodded. He kicked the door, shattering the frame where it met the handle and sending the door crashing inward.

A bird flew out, almost getting shot for its trouble. Danny stepped in first. I followed a few paces behind him. He cleared the two bedrooms, the bath and the office as I stood in the kitchen area. He came back to find me in front of the kitchen island, staring down at a dead rat affixed to an area map by a knife through its chest.

I pulled the knife out and used it to push the rat onto the floor. I didn't need Paul here to translate the message.

Danny stood beside me, looking at the map. Paul had taken a dirt road into the foothills, the entire area a shaded no-man's land. But the pen outline didn't stop when the road did. Another two or so miles were marked off.

Leaving Danny for a moment, I walked to the door and signaled to Chris that it was clear. He turned the car off and came inside. Seeing the dead rat, he curled a lip but said nothing.

I stared at Danny, watched the metaphorical gears turning in his head. He patted his jeans pocket, absently looking for the cell phone he no longer had.

"He'll kill her if he sees the cops," I said.

Danny looked up, his eyes questioning me.

"It's easy enough for him to grab another girl. She's bait."

He glanced back down at the map. Traveling on the dirt road, the station wagon climbing up into the foothills, and then traveling on foot - it would be hours getting to the spot marked.

Danny looked to the two of us and nodded. "If we leave now, we might reach the son of a bitch before dark."

***

We had no such luck, reaching the end of the dirt road after twilight. The road ended in a turn around. The ground fell away from the sides. There was a flashlight in the wagon and I took it, looking for signs that the vehicle Paul was driving had been there.

Danny pointed. "Those are fresh tire tracks."

I followed them to the edge of the turn around and pointed the flashlight into the darkness below. Light reflected back. The car was about two hundred feet down the incline, its front end crumpled against a tree.

Chris stood next to me, looking over my shoulder. "How the hell did he plan on getting out of here?"

In answer, I swung the flashlight back at the station wagon.

"Fuck that," Chris growled.

Danny joined us, the sniper gun slung over his back. He pushed the 9mm at me, roughly saying my name when I refused to take it.

"Every second you spend arguing is another second he's alone with Casey."

Bloody bile rose in my throat. I took the gun, checked to make sure the safety was off and started down the trail marked at the far end of the turn around.

I could smell where Paul had walked on the trail. He must have carried Casey. There were only a few spots where I could smell her, the scent in those areas filled with terror and desperation. He must have placed her on the ground at those locations.

Seeing the flicker of firelight from a clearing in the distance, I reached behind me to stop Chris with a touch. He stopped Danny in turn. I motioned to them that we were leaving the trail and entering the shelter of the surrounding pine. We moved slowly, trying to minimize the noise we made and stay down wind of the campfire.

I think I knew before we reached the edge of the clearing what we would find. The scents were there, scratching at my sanity.

As the last bit of camouflage before the trees gave way to dirt and rock, I sank to my knees. Danny and Chris stopped and knelt beside me. A pine had fallen over, the trunk stripped of its branches. We sheltered behind it for a few seconds.

About sixty yards into the clearing, the fire burned. Paul sat on a large rock a few feet away, tossing small sticks into the flames.

Danny slid the sniper rifle off his shoulder. One round in the chamber - that was it. I put my hand over the barrel of the rifle. "Wait."

"Where is she?"

I pointed. There was a blanket a few feet beyond Paul, where the firelight faded to shadow. I felt the blood bile rise up again. Whatever the blanket covered, there was no movement.

Let it be a pile of rocks, I prayed.

"Lee, if she's dead-"

I stopped Danny's suggestion with a shake of my head.

"She's not moving," Chris whispered.

Danny's gaze was on me and I turned to him. "I have to know."

He looked away for a second, over to where Paul sat deceptively quiet, feeding the fire. As he did so, I placed the 9mm next to him and stood up. Stepping from the tree line, I heard Danny urgently whisper my name once -- as if he could make me come back and take the gun.

As if a 9mm would do any good.

I walked slowly towards the fire, my gaze jumping between Paul and the blanket. The closer I got, the worse the smells became. Dried blood, urine, vomit. I could not tell if it was shadows or stains that darkened the fabric.

Grabbing another branch, Paul leaned forward and fed it to the fire. I caught the glint of light in his eye as he looked sideways at me.

"Worm."

I had approached on the opposite side of the fire and I stopped at the nickname he had given me so many years ago. More than a nickname, it was a code word, presaging what would always be a rough night. Everyone else thought it was a fishing reference, that's how he told it.

You should have seen her put that worm on the hook all by herself, I never saw a kid look so proud.

But when we were alone, he would ask, "When is a worm not a worm?"

And when I refused to answer, he would finish the riddle. "When it's a little girl, wet and ready to be popped."

An invisible vise squeezed at my chest. I felt like I was nine-years-old all over again, Paul explaining what he meant with the wet pop of his finger from his mouth and a poke with it low down on my stomach.

Studying me, Paul tilted his head. "But you've already been popped, haven't you, Worm?"

Staring past him at the blanket, I didn't answer. If she was breathing, it was too shallow for me to hear above the fire's crackle and Paul's shifting motions.

He nodded over his shoulder. "This is your fault."

"It always is," I answered wearily.

"I thought she would turn...I thought--"

"Shut the fuck up!" I screamed. I knew what he thought and it would cloak my soul like a poison-dipped shroud for as long as I existed. It was an evil nightmare, what he had done to her, that he had planned to make her a vampire that he might always do it...

"Of course, it was my first time trying." He turned his head, freakishly slow, to look at the spot where I had exited the tree line. "I heard that pussy Oscar couldn't finish those two fags off."

He began to move his arms through the air in slow motion, replaying the judo moves he said he'd learned in the Marine Corps. He stopped when I stepped close to the fire.

I held my hands a few inches from the flames. "I almost killed you once," I confessed.

"I don't remember that."

"You were passed out."

Paul thumped his hand against his chest, smearing ash and blood on the shirt. "I mean it's not in the blood."

I shrugged. "Takes time to pull memories up like that. You remember that house we rented before you moved us onto the mining claim?"

Seeing his faint nod, I put my hand another inch closer to the fire. Blisters rose up, popping with blood. I pulled my hands back, watched them heal before I continued.

"You and Sandy had been out drinking. You came home fighting. You backhanded her, cut her lip."

He nodded more vigorously, and I didn't know if he was seeing it through his memories or mine.

"And then the two of you staggered into the bedroom and fucked."

Paul grinned at that. "Yeah, she was so fucking drunk, barely knew what was going on. I mighta called your name, even."

He had. Glaring at him, I shoved my hands in the fire and let the flame lick at them. When I pulled them back out, fire still danced on my skin. I blew it out.

"When you were both passed out and snoring, I took a butcher's knife into the bedroom."

"Stupid cunt, I see it now."

I stood there, in front of the fire, waiting as long as I had stood over his inert body that night more than five years ago. I stood there, smelling the final minutes of my cousin's life, tasting her fear and pain in the molecules of the air swirling around me.

"I was going to kill you both." I glanced at Paul. "You first. But then I would have been in jail."

"I knew you had it in you. You're my girl."

Shaking my head, I pushed a few of the rocks ringing the fire out of the way. The canvas shoes started to smolder. "I'm not your girl," I told him. "When I realized I couldn't stop you, I took the knife back into the kitchen. But I couldn't put it away."

I put my right fist to my stomach, laid the other fist against the first, as if I still had hold of the knife handle. "I was ready to kill myself."

I pushed another rock out of the way. This time the shoe caught on fire. "Can you see the knife?"

He looked down at his own stomach and nodded. He was seeing it -- feeling it -- as I had. Desperation, self-loathing at my helplessness, intent.

Then and now. I took my first step into the fire. The wind caught my shorn hair, lifting it for a moment before it ignited in a halo of flame.

My name echoed through the clearing. Paul and Chris screamed it. It slipped from Danny's lips, too, but with all the quiet calm of a prayer. Paul lunged at me, trying to pull me out of the fire.