Page 19
THE DOOR THUDS as it closes, but it won’t stay closed without a lock. I look around and grab the Bible on the nightstand. No chairs in this room, so it’ll have to do. Cor twitches and freezes when he realizes what I am doing, breathing heavily and a little panicked, shoulders bunching as he forces himself to stay where he is. He lets me close the door and put the book against it, but it costs him. I’m not a psychologist, but I can see how being locked into a small box for centuries might give a man claustrophobia. Just to be safe, I hover near the door and off to the side, keeping my distance and eying him warily. His hands shiver ever so slightly as he stares at the exit, deep breaths expanding his chest as he seems to try to get a grip on his panic. And for him to have hand spasms, he must be almost frantic.
My eyes flit down his body unbidden, taking in his state in the pale electric lights of my room. He looks so alien amidst the sixties decor, like a piece of barbaric history shoved into the glory days of the Cold War. Not that he looks like the sexy kind of barbarian. The sickly yellow light shining from the bouquet of ancient light bulbs on the ceiling does nothing for the state he is in, bringing out the brown in the dried blood and the gnarly, swollen edges of the burn wounds on his chest. It shines on every little blemish, every bruise, every tangled knot in his mane, leaving nothing obscured. He’s a mess in every conceivable way. And now he’s my mess.
He finally seems to accept that he isn’t locked in and turns away from the door to inspect the room, as if switching from the greatest threat to the next lower one. Muscles ripple as he stretches up and touches the cheap chandelier, hissing when he singes his finger on one of the bulbs. His abs peek through the remains of clothing, now nothing more than flaking, unidentifiable patches of thread sticking to his dirty skin. Eight-pack, because why stop at six? And that’s the outline of his cock. My mouth turns dry, and I quickly turn, swallowing. Okay, calm down. First things first. Bath, clothes, plan. No ogling, no touchy touchy.
I stalk towards the bathroom, telling my venom-drugged body off resolutely. Cor’s glare burns prickling holes into my back all the way to the shower. The need to turn to him becomes an itch, but somehow I keep my eyes on the shower taps and not scald myself as I adjust the temperature. It’s no small feat.
As soon as the stream of water is just warm enough to be pleasant, I turn. “You need to shower first, you sti—”
And he’s right there, just like in the ramshackle apartment, just like outside. Staring. Looming. All he has to do is lift his hand and he could touch me, grab me. My breath gets stuck in my throat.
The corner of his mouth twitches.
A furious blush heats my face and I stagger away, cleaning off the bathroom sink bric-à-brac with my elbow. He ignores the ruckus, watching me with widening pupils as I fumble and gasp.
“Shower,” I croak, pointing, and sit down on the toilet lid hard. If I don’t want to literally rub elbows with the vampire in question, it’s that or falling gracelessly, so sitting it is. And of course my face is red because of the damn heat in this shoebox of a bathroom, not because of the proximity to that much muscle mass, or the tantalizing outline of a hefty, half-chubbed cock behind threadbare rags.
Cor watches me intently until I stop moving, then turns to eye the steaming shower, and I thank all powers that his attention is finally off me. I feel like I can breathe again, which is nice. Air is great. He prowls forward and reaches out for the steady—if weak—stream of water, flinching when his fingers meet the warmth. He makes a strange sound, half gargle, half laugh, and grabs the shower head to examine it more closely. Water splashes everywhere, drenching both me and the meager stack of towels within seconds.
That’s gonna be fun when we come to the drying off part. “No, no, no, no,” I curse and scramble forward to grab the shower head, shoving Cor into the tiny cabin as I wrestle it from his fingers. He staggers inside and throws me a crestfallen look, fists opening and closing as he assesses the situation. Something flinty flickers through his eyes.
“That’s not how you use that,” I quickly say before he gets any ideas, reaching inside to hook the shower head back into the fixture. Our bodies brush and I make a tiny whimpering sound as my nether regions express their excitement over Cor’s physique. His skin is incredibly warm, and it’s not the shower’s doing. He should be cool to the touch, faintly warm at most, but he is warm like a living person. If I close my eyes, I could easily forget he’s a vampire.
Focus. “Right, so, you stand in there, and you use this to scrub yourself.” I present him with a cheap hotel soap bar, half the size of my credit card and definitely not enough to get centuries of grime off him. He’ll need a pressure washer or a sandblaster or something to get truly clean, but it’s the best I have. It’ll do for now.
Cor snags the soap from my fingers, sniffs it, and raises his brows, looking impressed. And he seems to know what to do now, turning around and dragging the tiny block over his skin in scrubbing motions as he twists and writhes in the steady stream of water. The last bits and pieces of cloth slough off his body and collect at the drain, so I pick them up and throw them into the tiny bin next to the sink.
Cor just keeps on showering. Brown-red rivulets roll down his back and over his ass, dripping along thick thighs and corded muscles until they disappear into the drain, and why am I still staring at him?
I turn on my heel and stalk out, cursing softly under my breath. I can feel Cor’s sharp stare on my back as I pass the open bathroom door, but I know better than to close it after what happened to the lock on the front door.
Water splashes as I pull out my phone. A stink unlike any other floats out of the bathroom, a mixture of dung, blood, and soap that sticks to my tongue and the inside of my nose until I want to retch. Instead, I move to the front door, open it a crack for fresh air, and dial Stanley.
His greeting is less than enthusiastic. “What the fuck are you calling me again for? Is he dead?”
Lucky for me, he can’t see my grin. “Hello, Stanley. No he isn’t, and he won’t die anytime soon. He’s actually showering, which is where you come in.”
He snarls. “I don’t come in anywhere, hunter. Because of you, I’ve been made the envoy to you lot, and now my girlfriend has left me. And you know why? Because she doesn’t see a future for me. Like, any future. As in, she thinks I’ll be dead before we move in together. So thank you, thank you a lot.” And he hangs up.
My phone feels hot against my ear as I listen to nothing. My heart hammers to the beat of his accusal, feeding the little gremlins in my soul. Stanley—a vampire!—talks of the future, family, romance, like it’s a given. Like I took something from him that should matter, like I should care or at least understand. I don’t. I have no future and I never will. Hunters die young; they don’t have a choice, and they don’t have a future. We live to fight until we can’t fight anymore, then we die, and the next one takes our place. I won’t ever have a boyfriend, and he will never have a chance to leave me because I might die.
I’ve never thought about this, too caught up with wanting to be in the field, to be good at what I do, and now here I am. It’s funny how a few words out of context can shake a person to their core. If I didn’t need his help, I would delete his number right now. The shower roars, then falls silent as Cor figures out how to stop the water.
Gnashing my teeth I dial him again, taking care not to crush my phone as I grip it hard. He picks up, already drawing breath to tell me where I can shove it, so I hiss out the one word that will stop him in his breath. “Fine.”
He barks a laugh, still furious. “Nothing is fine!”
“The fine. The one your clan owes.”
I know I have him when he says nothing for a moment, eerily quiet. He sighs at last, so very human for a moment. “What do you want, Gideon?” He sounds resigned.
I mentally run through the list of all the things I would love to have right now, then settle for the bare minimum. “A place to hide a vampire—Strigan—whatever he is. Clothes for him, I mean for Cor. A hair clipper, and your silence about the whole thing.”
“Jesus fuck Gideon, you’re keeping him with you? No wait, don’t answer that. I can’t help you, not with this. I don’t want your pet psychopath to remember that I exist.”
The phone groans quietly, and I quickly loosen my grip before the screen cracks. “This isn’t me asking for a favor. I will lower the fine. Considerably. And I’ll tell them it’s because you’ve been so graciously helping me find out what kind of curse made a vampire rot and fall apart alive.”
By the way Stanley hisses, I can tell that he didn’t know about the leper vampire. And if he doesn’t know, Loreley doesn’t either. Which means I’ve suddenly become a very valued commodity, what with me having information they will desperately want if this thing spreads. “What are you talking about?” he asks, sounding a little breathless, and a lot worried.
