A Vampire's Claim (39 page)

So they fought, day by day, for every single yard. The Japs came within a stone’s throw of Port Moresby, but by God, they pushed them back to the coast. The losses had been incredible. But for all that, all the horror he’d seen, Dev had been a free man. Terry had faced captivity, starvation, disease, and the irreparable cost of buckling under the enemy’s will.

Men came home from war, lived out their lives. But Terry had died in that POW camp, his spirit gone. What had come home to his wife was a shell. Dev knew it, because he’d been that shell even before he stepped foot on his first battlefield. He’d gone to the front line seeking death, but he wanted to take the whole goddamn world with him when he went. He’d wanted the taste of blood.

Well, he’d found it, hadn’t he? And just when he’d learned to still the screaming in his head, find that silence, he’d put himself up to the elbows in blood again.

A tool for demons . . . Gravedigger.

He had the hood up, his elbows on the top of the Rover’s grill, his fists clenched and held behind his head, his eyes squeezed shut.

Go to the place of nothingness . . .
The Elder’s words spun in his head. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He needed to do something else, cut the wound, purge it before the weight of it strangled him.

The tire iron was there. He’d seized it up and turned before he’d had a conscious thought of what he was about to do. He just needed an object, something to focus on. There. Bob had a rusted-out junk cistern at the side of his place, one he hadn’t yet hauled away.

Dev struck the metal, using all his strength. The red flooded in, filling his vision as he struck again. And again. Images broke loose, each one jolted by the impact of metal on metal, a hammering that vibrated like electric shocks through his hands, up his arms.

Men gunned down, rows of them. When his gun had locked up, he’d simply plunged in. One bullet took him in the shoulder, but he’d pulled his knife and hacked and stabbed, screamed in a way Tina never would have recognized, never would have wanted, some kind of feral, rabid animal that should be put down, put out of its misery . . . Bodies everywhere.

Valor. Bull dust. Not valor. Savagery. Monstrous.
He’d have drunk their blood if he could, bathed in it, reveled in their deaths.

Why did you take them from me? Why? Why?
Why?
What the bloody hell did I do to you, you bastard, son-of-a-bitch
excuse for a fucking God?
Every syllable resulted in a violent clang against the metal, the reverberation singing up through his arms, welcome pain.
What did
they
do to you? What did my little boy, my Tina, do to deserve that? Those vampire kids.

They died alone, without me, screaming . . . Why didn’t you take me?

In some far place, he realized he was screaming the words, the accusation, at a wide, unresponsive sky, echoing back at him. He was going to fucking explode into pieces. The last swing was so hard, a piece of the cistern flew loose, the jagged edge whipping up toward his face.

That’s it, cut my throat, you Bastard. I’ve dared You to do it a hundred fucking times. Too chickenshit, aren’t You? You
know I’m coming for You . . .

When the haze cleared, he realized that he hadn’t had his throat cut by the spinning piece of rusted metal after all. He was on one knee, the tire iron gripped in two trembling hands.

Shhh . . . Easy, Dev. I’m here.

Danny had caught the spinning piece of metal, and was tossing it aside, a nasty cut on her hand. With her other, she’d pressed him down beneath the arc of the projectile, all so swiftly that in his haze of fury he hadn’t noticed any of it until after the fact.

When she touched him, he flinched, lowering his head, not wanting to look at her or anyone. Instead of withdrawing, she stroked the sweat-dampened strands from his jawline, moved to caress his nape, an almost maternal gesture that made things worse and better at once.

“I’d have been better off as an ignorant jackaroo,” he said hoarsely. “The blokes used to tease me about it, say I was a bit of a snorter, being so educated and all. But poetry and literature can destroy a man, as much as it can save him. All those words . . .

they all come back to haunt you.”

“The day we stop striving to be more than we are, Dev, we might as well tell the world to stop turning and the sun to stop rising.”

Her arms came around his chest from behind then. Startled, he felt wetness against his shoulder and knew she was shedding tears for him, but her arms held him fast, wouldn’t let him look.

Danny knew Dev probably didn’t realize it, but she knew about the Kokoda Track, knew about the 39th battalion, the men who were sent back into the thick of it again and again. Who’d endured battles where eight hundred men went in and as few as thirty would come out. It seemed no matter how hard Dev endeavored to die, to end his own misery, Fate wanted him to live. She’d heard his words, the futile hopelessness in him, the deepest, darkest well of his soul screaming out at the heavens, and it had torn her own heart to pieces. She squeezed her eyes shut.

I won’t let you go, either, bushman. The world wants and needs you, more than you know.
But she didn’t let him hear that.

“You smell bad,” she informed him after a time. “How about you go wash up, pick yourself out a new shirt? My treat.”

He stayed in the same position, but his head dropped against her forearm. “You can deduct it from my salary, when you deign to start paying me. I’m not going to become your kept man.”

She squeezed his chest, made him straighten and turned him toward her, helping them both to their feet. Somehow his hat had stayed on, and she pushed back the band to get a better look at the dark, dangerous eyes and brooding mouth. Taking one of his hands, she raised it to her mouth, curved his palm around her cheek. “Go wash it off, Dev. Let it go for today. You’re going to get a handle on it again. Give yourself time.”

Then she pressed into him, slid her arms around his back. She let out a sigh of relief as his arms closed around her at last, the hard length of his body from thigh to chest against hers as he lowered his face into her neck, into the curtain of blond hair she had loose and waving on her shoulders specifically because she knew he liked it that way. She knew she smelled of soap now, damp, clean skin, for she heard his thoughts register it. Woman. A man’s sanctuary. The sanctuary Terry hadn’t been able to keep, and so that had been the end of it for him.

Am I your sanctuary, then?

Dev lifted his head, studied her face.
You’re the vampire I serve.
She felt the effort it took him to let her go, step back. He couldn’t afford to treat her like this, view her this way. She wasn’t Tina. She wasn’t a human he could fall in love with and depend upon.

While she couldn’t argue with any of those thoughts—in fact, she’d made it quite clear he needed to think of her like that—it still felt wrong at this moment. Actually hurt a little, such that it almost put her back up.

You need me. Want me. That helps.

He sighed, turned away. “No offense, but I’ve enough voices in my head at the moment, love. If you don’t mind . . . don’t add to it.”

God, that was a bad one. In the washroom, Dev sat down, told himself to pull it together. She might be listening, but after his uncharitable comment, he wouldn’t blame her for ignoring him. That had been real comfort offered by her arms, real tears on her cheeks. Ah, hell, he couldn’t go down this road. Just couldn’t.

He really shouldn’t be here. This was an example of why. Even without the detonator that Ruskin’s actions had set off, the longer he spent with people, the more things like this boiled up. And yet, he couldn’t shake the notion she needed him.

You’re a daft bugger. She’s not Tina. You don’t have anything to prove; she’s even said so herself.
A vampire with ten times his strength and speed, with enhanced senses, and as rich as Methuselah to boot.

Tina had been like wildflowers. So perfect and marvelous, a joy in every way. He couldn’t be with a flower again. Too delicate, too easily crushed. Here today, gone tomorrow, before he even understood the miracle of it. It wasn’t that she hadn’t done well as a station wife, because she had. Most women couldn’t handle the life, and she’d loved it.

But she wasn’t spinifex. Something that looked attractive, almost soft, but had barbs, a clever, deceptive mind. Someone who might get overwhelmed by other men’s evil, but who had a core of fury to her that would take them with her, deliver them to hell herself. A lot of
men
didn’t have that in them. Danny had it in spades.

There were different types of fragility, though. Different needs. He’d felt them in Danny, couldn’t shake that feeling, no matter how he wanted to do it. So, cursing at himself and the whole situation, he went the back way out of the washroom, looking for her. Bob was there, taking out some trash. He gave Dev a glance.

“You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m good, Bob. I’m sorry, mate. I turned the corner there, big-time.”

“You never need to say that, Dev. Ain’t no sorries ever. Just is what it is. You come take it out on my cistern anytime. But leave the working one be, if you don’t mind.” Bob gave him a grin and a steady look, which Dev managed to return. “Left you another beer on the nose of your Rover. Your lady and her men are waiting, I think.”

He was right. As Dev went out front, he found Danny sitting on the tailgate of their vehicle, gazing up at the night sky, the other stockmen leaning on theirs, waiting them out. Because of Bob’s outdoor lights and the moon, he saw the sheen of her hair, the paleness of her skin, the slim jaw and high cheekbone. Her clean ivory shirt billowed against her. It was open at the throat, so that when she twisted and looked toward him, the movement revealed the cleft between her breasts. Since she loved her opals, she was wearing one now, shaped like a flame, the light blue swirling color like the fire in her eyes. She looked beautiful, delicate, and yet invincible and calm, all at once.

She’d been that way from the beginning, he realized. Even when she knew she was out of her element. Somewhere along the line she’d learned you couldn’t show weakness to your enemies, and often even to your allies, or they wouldn’t be allies any longer.

While he could only make out an idea of her expression, he knew she’d been listening in. It was odd, how that had bothered him so much when it happened, for all of about two minutes. Then it didn’t bother him much at all. Maybe because he really didn’t give much of a dead dingo’s donger about anything. If anyone found anything in his head worth knowing, good on them.

But that wasn’t it, and he knew it.
She
didn’t bother him, hadn’t bothered him from the first, in a way that was uncanny. He kept his own counsel, preferred his solitude and privacy. Hadn’t told anyone about his life who didn’t already know about it from having been around him when it happened, or like Bob, connected to it indirectly. But she knew all of it now. Hell, he’d told her the worst of it the first night, before she’d ever drilled into his head. Maybe he’d been lonely long enough and she’d been there at the right time. Maybe he felt comfortable with her because there didn’t have to be any promises between them. Nothing but lust, for that matter.

Are you going to stand over there and beat a dead horse all night?

He narrowed a glance at her shadowed silhouette, heard her chuckle at his retaliatory thought.
Now that wasn’t nice at all, Dev. I
might be of a mind to make you pay for that one.
Then she straightened from the tailgate. Even in the darkness, her movements suggested the deadly purpose to her, that stillness that reminded him forcefully, when he was of a mind to forget, that she wasn’t human.

Grab your beer, bushman, and let’s go.

When they at last reached Alice Springs, they had a private berth on the train to Adelaide, two narrow stacked beds and a sitting area by the window. They boarded at night, but when daylight came, he pulled the curtains. Not for the first time, he thought of what she’d said, about how few vampires risked living out here, where it would be easy to get marooned during the daylight hours.

Even now, all he had to do was reach over her and pull back the drapes to puncture her body with an unrelenting square of bright sunlight. Why did she trust him so? Why did the idea of someone doing such a thing to her send his hand automatically to the knife at his side?

The trip by vehicle had been long, so almost as soon as she washed up, she’d lain down on the long seat by the window, blinked sleepily at him.

Come take off my boots, Dev.

He’d arched a brow at her. “Expect you’ve known how to do that since you were a little one, love.”

I have. Come take them off.

Meeting her eyes, the blue that could pull him in so deep he was reminded again of swimming in the beauty of the Great Barrier Reef, he’d put his swag and weapons in the corner and moved toward her.

“You playing games with me, love?”

“Would it be easier for you if you thought I was?”

He shook his head. Not a denial, but a resignation to the peculiarity of her ways that compelled him to go to one knee by the long seat, shifting her sole to his knee so he could unlace the boot and slide it from her dainty foot. He unrolled the sock as well, letting his palm slide over the ankle and smooth flesh of her sole, tease the tips of her toes. She stayed on her side as he shifted farther down the cushion, worked the boot off the next one. On impulse, he bent and put his lips on her insole, teasing it with the tip of his tongue, feeling a tremor run up her calf beneath his hand. Then he laid his head there, feeling a temporary easiness to it.

“What will you do while I sleep?” Her hand passed over his hair, grazed his shoulder before he straightened.

“You brought along some books. I’ll probably read. Get some sleep myself.” He gave her a half smile. “You know, they say mothers need to sleep while their babies are sleeping, to keep up with the little tykes when they’re awake.”