THE DINER WAS ONLY A few hundred meters away from the motel room, so the rain didn’t affect us too much. I ordered onion rings, a large bacon cheeseburger with the lot, and curly fries. My vampire friend (what was I thinking? My psychopath kidnapper) ordered a small plate of nachos. I suddenly felt self–conscious.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m old, I don’t—I can’t—eat a lot at once.”
“How old?” I asked. “What do you eat? Where are we going?”
He just stared at me.
I chewed on an onion ring and swallowed thickly. My throat was still on fire, my cheeks red–hot with a burning fever. A flash of falling through a stained glass window came to me, and I shifted uneasily.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“Save me. Make sure I didn’t die.”
He studied me for a long time, a peculiar look on his face. “I honestly don’t really know. I’m just making this up as I go along, Mia.”
I baulked at his casual tone.
“Don’t say my name like we’re friends,” I said stiffly. “This is your fault, all of this. You took me. You chased me and made me jump out of that window. Don’t say my name.”
“Okay, then,” he replied, a trace of a smirk haunting his mouth. “I’m making this up as I go, honey.”
I glared at him. “I want to go home.”
Ryan nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “Soon.”
“How soon?”
“I just need to figure out the details.”
“What details?”
He was grave. “I need to make sure you … can survive on your own.”
I snorted. “Are you kidding me?”
“Well, are we going to talk about the elephant in the room, or just avoid it and change the subject all the time?”
I eyed him warily. “So talk.”
He sighed. “You’re one of us, now. You’re a vampire. I know you’re having a hard time believing that, but it’s true.”
“How am I supposed to believe that when I don’t believe in fairy tales and monsters and glittery fucking vampires?”
Ryan laughed. “Honey, we don’t sparkle. We bite.”
I huffed. “You’d make a lousy salesman.”
“Immortality tends to sell itself.” He smirked. I rolled my eyes and chewed on a French fry. “Can’t you just tell me what I need to know so I can leave?”
He raised an eyebrow. “It takes a bit more than a crash course and a few hours to teach you what you need to know.”
I stared at him. “How am I supposed to know what to believe? As far as I’m concerned, this is your fault. And I wish I had stabbed you in the heart.”
He extended his hand across his uneaten nachos. “Give me your hand.”
I didn’t.
“Oh, come on, I won’t hurt you,” he said impatiently. “It’s not a trick. Here.”
I reluctantly rested my palm on his. “Now what?”
“Just relax. Close your eyes and open your mind. Let me show you.”
“I can’t see anything,” I complained. But no sooner had I finished my sentence, that something slammed into my head like a ton of bricks and I had to grip the table with my spare hand to keep from falling off my chair.
Suddenly, I could see everything I wanted to know, or almost everything. I saw the small village in Italy where Ryan was born. I saw how he had been Turned into a vampire by Caleb one night in Venice, how he had left his homeland and travelled with his new–found vampire family to Spain. I felt the searing rage that his newborn bloodlust entailed, saw the faces of those he killed. I tasted their blood and the energy it contained in the back of my throat. There was a massive palace where he lived with many other vampires, led by Caleb. Hundreds of years later, I saw the beautiful blonde Spanish princess he fell in love with. I saw her Turned into a vampire, how something had gone wrong, how she had almost been killed. I saw a girl who had been beaten and drained almost to death, a girl who had changed his loyalties and made him abandon the only life he had ever known, and I realized with a shudder that that girl was me.
I tore my hand away, struggling to catch my breath.
I tried to think of something to say. “Are you really that old?” I managed finally.
Ryan smiled and nodded, taking a bite of his nachos like the psychic–link thing hadn’t just taken all the energy out of him. Me, I was exhausted from the mental novel I’d just been subjected to.
“You regret it,” I said. “I believe that. But how am I supposed to trust you that this isn’t just another game? I mean, you’ve moved me from one jail cell to another, but I’m still your prisoner.”
“I understand you’re wary.”
“That’s an understatement, don’t you think?”
His cell beeped. He stared at the screen for a moment.
“Our ride’s here soon,” he said. “Better wait in the room. We don’t want to blow our cover before we even get out of the country.”
“Wait, where are we going?” I eyed him warily over bottles of ketchup and mustard.
“Home.” He stood up and threw a twenty down on the table.
“Where is home?” I didn’t move from my seat.
He sighed. “Not New Jersey.”
I cleared my throat. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
He eyed me suspiciously. “Last time you said that, you stabbed someone.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously?’
“You can go back at the room.”
I shook my head. “I’m about to burst. I’ll just be a minute.”
He shrugged. “Okay, whatever. Hurry up.”
I stood and made a beeline for the bathroom, feeling heat at my back. “You’re coming to watch?” I guessed, disappointed.
“I’ll wait outside the door. Pee fast.”
I entered the bathroom, the door swinging shut behind me. There were two stalls and a rusting basin bolted to the cinderblock wall. I immediately entered the furthest stall and locked the door behind me. It was like my luck had suddenly turned for the better. A giant window, as wide as the stall and two feet tall, hung over the toilet. I put the lid of the toilet down and stepped up as quietly as I could onto the plastic, levering the window open with such ease, it could have been a set–up. Without looking back, I shimmied feet–first through the window and landed with a satisfying crunch onto the gravel ground outside. I was in the parking lot of the diner, the motel at my right and the busy highway a couple hundred feet away. The rain had stopped, making things even easier.
“Well, fancy seeing you here,” a voice drawled, and I swore under my breath as Ryan sauntered around the corner, a smug smile plastered across his face.
I searched around for a weapon, anything I could strike him with. Bingo. A rusted tire iron lay half buried in the gravel near my feet, thorny weeds growing around it like chains. I leaned down and pulled it free, brandishing it like a sword in front of me. Ryan charged me as I brought the tire iron up in a wide arc, slamming it against the side of his head. Dark blood exploded from his cheek and he crashed face first into the loose road base. I slammed it into the back of his head again and again, as he tried to crawl away.
“I’m trying to help you!” he yelled as his mouth hit gravel. “Stop it!”
I laid one final, spectacular blow on the back of his skull and dropped the tire iron, making a run for the highway. He might have been an old and awesome vampire, but I was a state track runner, and I was fast.
Not fast enough. I felt a hand latch around my ankle and I landed awkwardly on my ass so hard, the shock went all the way through my tailbone and up to my head. I scurried backwards on my hands and heels, when Ryan landed on me from where he stood, effectively pinning me to the ground. I thrashed about, nails gouging at flesh and feet kicking blindly.
“Stop.”
“You tricked me,” I said sullenly, panting.
“It was a test,” Ryan said, hauling me to my feet and pressing me against the wall. “You failed. Or passed. You did exactly what I thought you would do. You’re predictable.”
“You’re an asshole,” I said, humiliated. He had played me again.
“Listen,” he said urgently, his fingers biting into my shoulders. “I can never go back there, do you understand? Centuries of loyal service, of being at the top of the chain, all gone. My friends? All gone. My house? Gone. I got you out of there because I didn’t want you to die like that.”
“How would you prefer me to die?” I shot back, shoving him in the chest. He relaxed his fingers but didn’t let go of me.
“I don’t want you to die at all,” he rephrased. “I want to help you. I was going to help you escape before you jumped out of the window, you stupid girl.”
His look was so genuine, his frustration so heartfelt, that I couldn’t help but trust him a little bit. Not much, but enough to stop struggling.
“Why me? Why not Kate? Or any of the other people you’ve helped him kill?”
Ryan seemed to deflate a little, looking to the highway for inspiration.
“I guess … I’m tired,” he said finally. “I don’t know why it was you. Maybe because—because once someone forgets their human life, it gets easier. But you, you wouldn’t forget, and I’ve never seen that before.”
My eyes started to burn. “I want to go home,” I said stubbornly.
“Jesus Christ, you’re like a broken record!” Ryan said, letting me go. “Fine. Go. Hitch a ride with the next trucker. I guarantee you, you’ll be dead before nightfall.”
I stood there dumbly, having just been given my freedom and maybe not wanting it any more. I swore under my breath and looked out to the cars going by, ordinary people oblivious to my plight.
“You’re the one who started this,” I accused, turning on him. “You are the sick bastard who followed me to my car and beat the living shit out of me, more than once. There is something fundamentally wrong with you, do you get that? You are a bad person. You’re a fucking psychopath!”
Ryan studied me for a moment. “There is something very wrong with me,” he agreed. “Over the years, I’ve let the darkness inside me rule my life. I’ve killed countless people just like you.”
“Way to make a girl feel safe. I’m done here.” I stormed towards the highway, resisting the invisible ribbon that pulled me towards Ryan like a magnet.
You made me want to be a better person, he said in my head, and I stopped dead in my tracks.
Wanting it isn’t good enough, I replied.
You’re the reason I’m leaving that life behind. I want to help you. It was a pleading, more than anything else.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
What about everything that I have? I demanded. What about MY life?
Three months, he pleaded. Three months for me to teach you what you need to know. To make sure you don’t kill someone if you get hungry. To make sure you can hide what you are. Three months for me to make sure Caleb isn’t a problem for either of us. Then you go home to your boyfriend and your family and your life and forget all about me.
I turned to face him, and his sad kid face tore at my heart. I’d always trusted my gut instinct, and it had never let me down. The only time I had ever ignored it, I had been kidnapped. My head told me to run. My gut told me he was right, that I should stay.
Three months is a long time, I said across the lot.
Not when you have eternity, he replied.
I thought about it. About how weird everything felt. About how good the blood had tasted when he fed me as I slept. About how I had no fucking clue how to get more of it if I needed it. About how I might hurt somebody without meaning to.
Two months, I countered reluctantly.
The bastard just smiled.
I stared out to the highway, trying to figure out why the hell I had agreed to stay, when my skin started to burn.
I yelped, pressing my hands to my hot face. I shied away from the sun’s overpowering rays, covering my face with my arms. I felt a hand on my wrist as Ryan pulled me towards shelter.
“What’s happening to me?” I gasped.
A firm grip steered me towards the motel room. We stopped for a moment in the shade created by the veranda that was attached to the diner entrance.
“It’s just the sun. New vampires are very sensitive.”
“Well, shit!” I said. “Am I going to burst into flames?” The mental image was horrific.
“No. That’s a ridiculous myth propagated by television shows and novels. But,” he paused for dramatic effect, “You’ll probably feel like you are burning alive.”
“Awesome,” I muttered.