Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (33 page)

He didn’t answer. He just stared down at his
hands and tried to push himself farther into the corner of the
couch.

“You are, aren’t you? Wow. Can’t say that if
I ever met a vampire I would ever have expected him to be like
you,” she said. “At least you don’t sparkle.”

Cory had no idea what that was supposed to
mean, but he took it as a compliment.

He’d told himself
when he woke up that first day that he wasn’t going to stay past
sundown. He hadn’t been able to imagine feeling comfortable with
Lynn longer than that. It wasn’t until the third day that he
admitted he was beginning to like her, and it took until the sixth
day for him to leave the building again.

Primarily he didn’t leave because he was
still far from one hundred percent. Although the blood Lynn had
gotten for him did miracles in restoring his body, even so much
that the scar in his side began to fade, the effects of the bullet
lingered far longer than he had hoped. Whatever immune system he
had as a vampire, it apparently wasn’t very good at purging garlic
and silver from his system. He often felt sudden sharp pains in his
guts for no known reason, and these aches kept him sluggish and
occasionally lethargic.

Lynn was attentive to him during these times,
making sure he stayed fed and keeping him comfortable in his bed.
It was the only bed in the apartment, but she let him have it with
no complaint and usually slept on the couch. On the occasions where
the poison feeling in his stomach was worse than usual she would
actually sleep in the same room as him, huddled up on the floor and
waking whenever he cried out in his sleep to make sure he was
okay.

All these things did a lot to endear her to
him, although she was far from a perfect person. Once in a while
when he was slow to move around the apartment, usually when he
needed to go to the bathroom (a prospect he tried to avoid as much
as possible, and in order to prevent too much of a nasty odor from
unflushed toilets they would usually use the bathrooms in other
apartments), he would see a hint of impatience in her. She
controlled it quickly and kept it below the surface, but somehow he
liked that about her. It made her real. It made her human. It was
just another one of the many ways that she showed she wasn’t the
inhuman thing that he was. Flaw or not, it was another thing he
wished he could see in himself.

On occasion he thought about going back out,
but even if he wasn’t getting used to being babied he still feared
the Dusters. Lynn said she didn’t know why they were outside what
was supposed to be their territory, but to Cory it was obvious that
their territory must be expanding. It made him fear for
FancyDancer’s safety, maybe even a little bit for the few other
vampires he had met. But mostly he feared for himself. That odd
mixture of near-suicide self-loathing and desperate need to survive
always proved to not be well mixed at all, and survival floated to
the top. He knew he was more or less safe from the Dusters here, at
least as long as Lynn was around to watch out for them, so here was
exactly where he would stay until he found a better option.

Lynn herself didn’t leave the apartment much.
When she did it was very early in the morning, right around the
time the sun was rising and Cory was just getting tired, or at
twilight. She had her own reasons for wanting to keep away from the
world, so she did anything she needed on the outside when she
thought there would be fewer people. Although she didn’t tell him
much about why she hid herself from the world like he did, it was
still another thing that endeared her to him and made him feel like
there was the slightest connection between them.

That left them alone in the apartment
together on most days, which was awkward at first. Cory didn’t feel
like he had much he could say to her even though she never stopped
asking questions. To start with they were questions about what he
was and how he had gotten that way. Of these Cory only gave her the
most basic information, none of the dark and nightmarish stuff that
she probably thought she wanted. There was no way to tell her and
have her truly understand the terror of being locked in a three
foot by three foot poison cage under the earth for years, waiting
for the moment when some unseen monstrous entity decided it was
time to take him.

When he proved to be tight-lipped about all
that, Lynn started to turn the questions to more personal things.
That was equally frustrating but for entirely different reasons. He
would have been more than happy to be forthcoming if he only could.
All he could tell her about himself were guesses—that he was pretty
sure he had been either seventeen or eighteen when he’d been
turned, that he had to have come from someplace nearby. He couldn’t
say if he still had parents or family that were looking for him, or
if they were even the kind of people he would want to return to if
he remembered.

When he’d said this Lynn had acted
sympathetic, and when she wasn’t asking questions she soon got
around to explaining her own story. Both her parents, she’d said,
had been drug users. Lynn had been the middle child of three
sisters, although the youngest had died when she was five thanks to
her inattentive mother passing out one day when she had taken the
girls out and let the girl wander into traffic. Lynn said she had
no idea where her older sister was now, but she had a lot of choice
words blaming her for leaving home when she’d turned seventeen
without taking Lynn with her.

Cory still didn’t know how all this had
resulted in Lynn living in the fire-scorched ruins of an abandoned
building all by herself, but he was careful not to ask too many
questions. He figured she had the same rights to her secrets that
he did, and as the days passed he became more and more comfortable
around her.

Still, by the end of day six, he had begun to
grow restless. He still wasn’t completely healed, but the walls had
started to feel cramped. In the last year he had grown used to the
wide open spaces of the city, and that was the only place where he
truly felt everything wasn’t too tight, even the skin on his own
body. Sure he had a tendency to hide in tight places, but there was
still the open air coming in from somewhere, the chilled wind, the
sounds of birds in the day and small creatures scuttering in the
gutters at night. In the apartment, whether it was better shelter
or not, it was naturally darker, especially with the blankets over
the windows. The walls of his erstwhile bedroom felt so close, a
closeness that he couldn’t escape as easily as he had even
squishing himself in the too-small space under dumpsters. And the
smell of his body and Lynn’s, plus the odor wafting from the poorly
maintained bathrooms, was far too familiar.

In short, by the time the sixth day had come
around he was having hideous dreams and flashbacks to the cave.

He said nothing of this to Lynn. He didn’t
even know how he could if he had wanted to. She certainly didn’t
seem to notice anything might be wrong with him, even as he woke in
the middle of the day in a sweat colder than a living body should
have been capable. She didn’t yet know him well enough to realize
anything might be off, and he found himself desperate to keep her
in the dark. The funny thing, though, was that he didn’t want her
to know not because he was uncomfortable with her understanding,
but because he didn’t want to worry her. He didn’t know at what
point he had started factoring her worries or fears into the
equation, but that point was here all the same.

Besides, even as the dread and panic snuck up
on him, growing stronger day by day, he figured it would be an easy
enough fix. All he needed was to get out for a while. It didn’t
even have to be long. He could slip out when Lynn went out for one
of her occasional trips and be back before she returned. All he
needed was the fresh air, something to remind him that he was free,
at least physically if not mentally.

He waited until one of her dusk excursions,
then pulled himself up out of his bed and made his way out of the
apartment. He was shocked at first just how much effort his every
movement took. He’d gotten up and walked around the apartment
enough, even going with Lynn to explore the rest of the building’s
rooms just so he would have something to do, but now that he was
actually trying to leave the building his limbs felt like they
belonged to a boneless carcass. Cory momentarily thought about
giving up and just heading back to bed, but the thought of going
deeper into the building only brought up memories of the door at
the end of the aisle. Although he logically knew he wasn’t in any
danger here, a sort of dull panic set into the back of his brain,
driving him out the apartment’s door and down the hall.

Although he had left the apartment to use the
toilets in other parts of the building several times, this was the
first time he had gone all the way down the hall through the parts
that had been affected by the fire. A window at the far end of the
hall still provided just a small amount of sunlight, giving him a
view he hadn’t had the first time of the smoke and water stains on
the walls. The floor creaked loudly at several steps, letting him
know where the floorboards had been warped or damaged, but that was
still probably nothing compared to what was in the apartments that
had actually been hit with the fire. Two doors before the stairs he
found the apartment that had been the source of the fire and took
just a second to look in. The layout had been similar to Lynn’s
apartment before it had been ravaged. Most of the walls were
completely black and the windows had been smashed out. Although
Cory knew nothing about how to tell where a fire had started he
guessed that it would have started in the middle of the living
room, considering that was where the carpet had burned away
completely and left the floorboards bare and charred, even open
enough that he could see through in parts to the floor
underneath.

For the first time Cory wondered about anyone
that had died in the fire, and decided he needed to get out of the
building before his mind could dwell on it any more.

When he came out the door at the bottom of
the back stairwell the sun was just in its last moments of setting,
turning the sky above a pleasant pink. He always did love this time
of the day, as the lack of direct sunlight allowed him to still
appreciate the sun without many consequences. Now that he was out
of the building he felt stronger, mentally if not physically. His
pace was still sluggish but he felt a rare moment of joy in being
able to breathe the fresh air.

That moment was short-lived, though, as the
memories of what had happened last time he’d been outside returned
to him with complete clarity. Cory had a vision of the two men with
the gun waiting for him outside the building for the last week,
staying in the shadows between houses just across the street as
they were sure that he had to come out eventually, and when he did
they would be waiting for him. Logically he knew that was idiotic,
but that didn’t keep his muscles from locking up and a sweat from
breaking out on his forehead.

They’re not here
, a pleasant voice in
his head thought.
People like that wouldn’t be sitting around
just waiting
. He knew it was true. A human needed to eat, to
sleep, to keep themselves occupied. Now if it had been one of the
guards from the cave…

Stop it
! he thought to himself.
You
can’t live like that, waiting for the next thing to pop out at
you
. He took deep breaths with his eyes closed, then remembered
he was still out on the sidewalk in plain sight. That wasn’t so bad
at this time of day—people probably wouldn’t look twice at him.
They would see his dirty and ripped clothes, catch the smell
wafting off his body as they passed, and they would do their best
to pretend that he wasn’t part of their world. But the longer he
stood around doing nothing, acting petrified of his own shadow, the
more he would stand out. Someone might call the cops on him for
loitering. Even if he couldn’t currently move so fast people could
barely see him like normal, he still had to move. He had to pretend
not to be a monster. He had to go somewhere, anywhere other than
here, at least for a little while.

He could have gone in any direction. It
didn’t really matter which, since he told himself he would be back
shortly anyway. Cory still didn’t feel like he could get very far
on his own power no matter how long he’d been resting, and Lynn’s
place was the closest thing he had to a safe haven despite the
horrible claustrophobic feeling it gave him. But purely on
instinct, without even realizing he was doing it, he started down
Main Street back to downtown, the Retlaw, and his cozy little space
in the dumpster enclosure.

The street was busier now than it had been
the last time he’d been on it. There were a few people out walking,
since the weather was nice for the first time in months, and there
were more cars on the street. Normally this many people would have
given him an attack and sent him scurrying for a corner where he
could catch his breath, but just for tonight he welcomed it warmly.
As long as they were all around, then the two attackers wouldn’t
make a move. Not that he actually believed they were nearby, but he
felt more protected against them anyway.

He didn’t make it far before he stopped and
stared across the street. The pizza place and the gas station next
door looked different at this time of night. The gas station had
cars in all the parking spots and several at the pumps, with a
steady stream of people coming and going. Although Cory never paid
any attention to that kind of thing, he guessed the business was
probably from people trying to cash in on some big lottery jackpot
and thinking the best way to possibly win was to get it at one of
the “lucky” stores. The pizza place was equally busy. There would
be no one hiding out between them right now with a gun loaded
especially for him or his kind.