“Marlena,” he said. Just that, nothing more, but it carried his concern and apology on deep velvet tones.
The last few days again played through my mind like a bad movie. Horrid snapshots that seemed to sum up my life to this point. Destruction, death, fear.
“I can’t do this anymore.” My voice was flat, all the emotion of a moment ago hidden somewhere in the walls I’d built to shore up my mind.
Rune searched my eyes and waited.
“I can’t be this . . . this . . . person. I can’t live this life anymore.”
Understanding and sorrow filled his eyes, the same eyes that minutes before had looked at me without recognition. Only hunger. Fear’s spidery feet skittered down my spine.
He took a slow step forward.
“This time will pass. Joy will return.”
“Return?” My voice was almost a scream now. “How can joy return when it’s never been there to start with?” I flung my arms out wide to the world in general.
“This . . . this . . .
thing
has haunted me my whole life. Poisoned my whole life. Sucked the joy from everything. Me. My family. Everything.”
Another smooth step toward me. “Only because you’ve denied it. Never embraced who and what you are.”
“Like you embraced who you are back there? No thank you.”
His eyes flinched, but his face remained stoic. “What is it that you desire?”
What did I want? What would fix all this? I couldn’t get rid of this curse. I couldn’t ignore it. I would never be normal. Everyone who should have cared was dead, afraid of me, or hated me. What did I want then? A great weight squeezed my heart.
“I want it to end,” I whispered.
“It?”
“Me. This. All of it.”
He closed his eyes. A tremor shook his arms. His fists clasped so tightly small drops of blood fell from them. Then a sigh escaped him and he fastened his gaze on me.
“If what you wish is to end your existence. I will accommodate you.”
I thought of the scene behind the truck stop. “No.”
He took a step toward me. I took a step back.
“Do not fear it, Marlena. It is quite enjoyable. I knew a man who survived a skydiving accident once. He experienced the euphoria they call ground rush. The world streaks by in streams of color and the blessed ground comes up to meet you. Embrace you.”
He took another step. “If I take you to your death, it will be as that. Euphoria. Then nothing.”
I took another step back, but said nothing. I hadn’t asked to die, had I? Wasn’t I thinking more along the lines of just running away to a mountaintop somewhere? Did he see something in my mind I hadn’t acknowledged to myself?
“But I have a proposal,” he said. “That which you would throw away, give to me. Allow me the opportunity to help you control your power.”
He stepped forward. I stayed where I was, my gaze locked on his face, his eyes.
“Give yourself to me. If I cannot help you live with your gift, I will honor my first offer.”
Another step forward. Did he take it or did I? His face filled my vision. His eyes glowed soft blue in the dim light. He did not mesmerize me, but I was caught. His voice. My heart.
Could I do this?
“You have nothing to lose.”
What if I did learn to control my curse? What then? What did I want?
“I will release you whenever you ask.”
What does he want?
He was suddenly inches from me. He cupped his hands carefully on each side of my face.
“You.” He eased the gap between us. “With me.” His lips hovered over mine. “Awhile longer.”
He was reading my mind again.
“My apologies,” he said. His lips brushed mine in a feather-soft kiss. My traitorous body swayed toward him.
Heavy footsteps crashed through the dried leaves.
“She’s over here,” a stranger’s voice shouted.
Six men broke through the nearby trees and stopped. Three of them wore jeans, plaid shirts and cowboy boots—truckers most likely. The other three were cleaned up versions of the bikers behind the truck stop. Their leather vests had three stair-stepped letters, ZZR, stitched on the left breast with a halo over them—Zamora’s Zion Riders—Griss’s “pain in the ass” bikers from the front of the truck stop.
One of the men wearing a ZZR vest over a bare chest stepped forward. Colorful tattoos sleeved his left arm in blue, black, and red. Wild blond hair framed a tanned sculpted face and brilliant blue eyes that almost rivaled Rune’s. A close-cropped, reddish-blond beard and mustache framed a cupid’s mouth tilted in an uneasy smile. He searched my face with a puzzled expression. A probing energy reached out from him and touched my skin. His eyes widened, and his head jerked back. He shot a glance to Rune and frowned. Rune’s body tensed.
The man looked back to me and held a hand out palm up. “Ma’am,” he said, “you need to step away from that man.”
Rune tried to look the man in the eyes, but the stranger looked at my face and wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Rune’s voice was low and calm but dripped with menace. “The lady is with me, Mr. Zamora. This is none of your concern.”
The man’s gaze jerked toward Rune at the sound of his name, but he caught himself before he made eye contact. He kept his gaze on Rune’s chest as he spoke to him.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“I know you by reputation,” Rune said. “You seem to think you know something of me since you impugn my character so easily.”
I rolled my eyes. How could Rune feel so dangerous and still sound like a high school English teacher?
“We saw the lady run in here like the hounds of hell were chasing her.” Zamora turned his attention back to me and reached his hand out a few more inches. “I’d feel better if she stepped over here and told me what’s going on herself.”
I tried to smile. “I’m fine, really, Mr. Zamora. My friend and I were just having a discussion.”
“Romaldo,” he said, “My name is Romaldo. Aldo to my friends. And I’d feel a lot better if you were out of this man’s reach when you told me that.”
He smiled and took a small step forward. He reminded me of someone. A compelling aura flowed from him—a sparkling silver magnetism. Just looking at him made me feel safe.
“Step toward me, child,” Aldo said.
Child? He was maybe thirty-five. Way too young to be my daddy. Then I knew who he reminded me of, Christopher Lordy, the TV evangelist Grandma used to watch. Rune huffed a small laugh.
I glared at him.
Stay out of my head.
He smiled and shrugged.
Zamora cleared his throat, his hand still outstretched.
“Oh good grief,” I said. I rolled my eyes at Zamora and put my hands on my hips. “If I walk over there with you and tell you I’m okay, will you let us go on our way with no trouble?”
The last thing I needed was to be in the middle of another fight. I’d lived my whole life around people fighting—namely my mother and father. It was getting on my nerves.
Zamora looked at the three truck drivers in the group, then at his men.
“If that’s what you really want, yes,” he said. He still had his hand out and a perverse little part of me wanted to keep standing there to see how long it would take for him to get tired and drop it. I felt Rune chuckle again, and I elbowed him. He really had no sense of privacy—my privacy at least.
Rune’s hand lingered on my shoulder, then dropped as I strode past the men, ignoring Zamora’s outstretched hand. I stopped by a nearby tree and waited for him to catch up.
“Watch him,” he told his men before he made his way to me.
He glanced back at Rune then turned his back to him blocking Rune’s view of me. He looked into my eyes and put his hands on my shoulders. His hands jerked back a few inches and a puzzled look came over his face. He gently put his hands back on my shoulders as if he were testing a hot pan. Questions flooded his eyes.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I told him before I thought about it. Then flinched at my stupidity.
“Marlee.” He smiled. “You need to know that the man you’re with is dangerous. I’d feel much better if you’d allow me to escort you to your car.”
“Well,
Aldo
,” I shrugged his hands off my shoulders, “that would be a little difficult, even if I wanted to, because I arrived with my friend.”
He reached a hand toward my shoulder again and frowned when I stepped back. He had an energy signal like no other I’d encountered before. It seemed to probe the air around him. I felt spied on when it touched me. I’d absorbed some of his energy when he touched me, but instead of it melding with my energy, I could feel it as a separate thing inside me. Almost like an insect burrowing under my skin.
The Virago, as Aunt Tibby called it, sensed threat, and my hair puffed slightly with static.
He dropped his hand. Smart man. He could be taught.
“Where do you live then? I’d be happy to take you home.”
I peeked around him. Rune stood with his arms folded and a bored expression on his face, with an air about him that was far from harmless. Zamora moved to block my view again.
“I’d feel better if you didn’t look at him when we talk. That way I know it’s you talking, with no outside influence.”
I glared up at him. “So who died and made
you
my big brother, Al?”
Irritation spiked my energy and he flinched—from my words or the spike I couldn’t tell. I sighed and tried to control myself.
“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry. I know you’re trying to be all gallant and everything, but I know this man. He’s my friend.”
He still didn’t look convinced.
“Good grief, I’ve spent the night with him at his apartment. I think if he wanted to hurt me, he already would have.”
A wave of shock and disapproval rolled from him. His gaze trailed over my neck. If he thought I’d agree to a bite check, he had another think coming. He’d already gotten his creeping energy stuff all over me. Ick.
I pushed him out of the way and immediately regretted touching him. He jumped like he’d been shocked and grabbed his arm where I’d touched him.
“What are you?” he said.
“What’s the matter, you need to categorize me so you can judge me?” I said. “Oh, no, wait, you already have.”
“No,” he said, taking a hesitant step toward me. “I know you’re a pure spirit. I can feel you.”
He looked me up and down, and I felt the same probing energy flow over me, but it was more gentle this time. Caressing.
“What are you?” he repeated, the look he gave me a mixture of curiosity and fear.
His fear pissed me off more than his nosiness did, and that was really saying something. I pushed past him and stomped back to Rune. If I wanted to have a chance of never having to see the look that Romaldo Zamora had just given me ever again, I had to figure out how to control this curse. If anybody could help me with that, it was the man in front of me. I grabbed Rune’s hand and pulled him back toward the truck stop, which was unfortunately past the group of men. I glared at them and let my irritation spill out of me, taking power with it. Whatever the men saw or felt made them shuffle aside and let us through.
Rune allowed me to angrily drag him out of the trees like he was a naughty child. His amusement washed over me in gentle waves. That irritated me, too.
The large, white panel truck that I’d seen behind Rune’s bar waited a few feet away. The back door of the truck rolled up. Griss held out his hand to me, but I climbed into the back of the van without his help. Rune and Griss’s motorcycles were strapped to heavy rings embedded in the walls and floor of the cargo area. I sat on a long, high bench seat at the front of the truck’s cargo box. Rune climbed in, and Griss rolled the door down, plunging the cargo box into darkness. Rune’s voice sounded out of the blackness.
“Take us home, Tony.”
He sat on the bench seat near me, our lower legs touching. My anger ebbed as our physical contact drained my pent-up power. The truck surged forward. The noisy, bustling truck stop receded into the distance as we pulled onto the freeway.
Rune and Griss didn’t make a sound, and the darkness of the cargo box was so absolute that it felt like I was floating in nothingness. Tony’s faint energy signal from the cab of the truck behind me was the only thing to anchor me to reality.
“I need to clarify a few things if we’re going to do this,” I said.
Rune’s voice floated out of the ether beside me. “Yes?”
“This thing about giving myself to you . . .”
“A figure of speech.”
“Yeah, well, I’d like to define it if I could,” I said.
“Your safety and learning is all that you give.”
I sighed. “Good.”
“For now.” His velvet voice slid down my nerve endings and settled as butterflies in my stomach.
“Does this thing have lights?” I said.
“Of course, I apologize. I forget that you are not one of us and cannot see in the dark.” He shifted beside me and dim light glowed from small LED lights inset along the top of the walls. Griss sat cross-legged on the floor against the roll-up door, his eyes closed.
“Is it really easy to forget I’m not one of you?”
He rested his hand on my thigh, and I let it stay there. It felt comfortable and reassuring rather than a sexual advance.
“It is easy to remember that you are more than human.”
More than human. That was better than not human, which was the accusation I saw in Romaldo Zamora’s eyes.
Rune’s voice sparked with irritation. “Zamora is a fool and rivals his father at being a pompous ass.”
I rested my head back on the wall. “I really wish you’d at least act like you’re trying to stay out of my head.”
Rune chuckled. “An interesting request, considering that I did not just speak aloud.”
I sat up straight, and he chuckled again.
“Did you send the thought to me?” I asked.
“No.” He reached up and ran his hand over my hair. Tiny sparks snapped, following his hand along my scalp. “It seems you can glimpse my thoughts unbidden. An interesting occurrence. Something few non-vampire can do, and usually only when we allow it.”
He caressed a strand of my hair between his fingers. I yawned into my hand. The last few days had caught up with me. My body deflated with bone-crushing weariness. I put my hand on the bench seat and leaned on it, away from Rune.