Longest Days (The Firsts) (2 page)

“I don’t know,” Starla said one night after their rush had finished.  “I guess I’m ready to start my life. I’m already twenty-six and it’s past time.  You know what I mean?”

Starla leaned against the counter as Eillia kept herself busy cleaning and chopping.  And although she seemed like she wasn’t listening, she really was.

  “I know everyone has probably said this before, but I want to
be
someone someday.  Don’t want to wake up some morning after seventy years of life and realize I’ve never gone more than fifty miles from the place I was born.  I like working for Hugo and I
love
working with you, but I don’t want to be a waitress all of my life.  And oh god, I don’t want to marry someone like Joey D and have four children we can barely afford and sleep in a tiny cold bed next to someone that smells like fish every night.   Is that unreasonable?”

Eillia leaned against the other side of the counter, her face just inches from Starla’s.  She searched her eyes and saw how trapped Starla felt.  The girl was
so
earnest and a little desperate.  It seemed life messed with everyone.  But Eillia knew how easy it would be if Starla just trusted herself and followed her heart.  She put her hand out and brushed a loose curl back from Starla’s forehead.  Where her fingers touched Starla’s skin, it tingled.  Starla released a long sigh and smiled.

“Huh,” she said, as if inebriated.   Then she closed her eyes and leaned toward Eillia and slid her hand up to touch Eillia’s cheek.

“You’re so warm.  And I feel so, um…delicious.  You have a relaxing effect on me, Lia.  I’m glad you came here.  I’m glad you’re my friend.”  

Eillia’s touch could make a human relax, feel energized, feel sexually stimulated, feel confused, or increase her ability to control them.  It was a vampire skill they called “impressing” that most vampires mastered early.  In this case, she just wanted to help Starla feel more comfortable with herself and her life.  

“You’re going to be fine.  Really.”   Eillia brushed her hand across Starla’s face again.

“Why don’t you head home and get to sleep.  Have a nice dream?  I’ll close up so you can get going.”

“No.  No, I’ll help,” Starla argued.

Eillia couldn’t let her.  She had an agenda.  So she caught Starla’s eyes and told her to go home, to be careful.  She compelled her to get that sleep and wake up refreshed and feeling like she could conquer the world.  Tomorrow would be interesting for her new little friend.  Starla smiled softly, grabbed her parka and gloves, slid them on, wrapped a six foot scarf around all of it and said goodnight. 

Eillia hated to compel her.  She was the only friend Eillia had made since she came here, and Eillia considered compulsion to be a betrayal to those she cared about.  But sometimes necessity overcame desire.  So, she used it now because she wanted to get a blood meal from someone before she headed home for the night.

She lowered the lights and watched the darkened street.  A few moments later a lone figure moved past and she leaned out to intercept him.

Ah.  Easy.  One of the fishermen they served earlier.  Kind of sleazy.  He’d looked at Starla and Eillia like they were on the menu.   He was perfect.

“Hi, would you like to come in for a nightcap?”  She said as he passed the door.

He stopped abruptly and looked around as if he expected she wasn’t speaking to him. 
Idiot.
  No one else was around at all.

“Yes, you,” Eillia clarified.

And there it was.  The nasty grin that meant he thought he was going to get some tonight.  No.  But
she
was.  Blood, and very
needed
blood.  It had been too long and she was weakening from nutritional deficiency.  As she closed the door she put her finger to her lips to signal him to keep quiet, then led him to the back of the diner.  She glanced back once to see that awful grin still on his face.  When she turned to him a moment later, he had already dropped his parka.  The belt buckle was next.  Eillia rolled her eyes.

“Come here,” she said, and compelled him to sit on the floor.  She got down beside him and pulled his shirt back.

“Hum,” she mumbled, “Not too clean.  Oh, well, beggars and choosers…”  And she struck quickly, the pierce fast and the draw quicker.  It took only a few minutes to get what she needed.  She sealed the wounds and had him redress for his journey outside.

“Continue to your destination, wherever you were heading.  You will have no memory of me or this visit tonight.  Go.”  He nodded and went back out into the increasing snow.

Eillia turned, killing the rest of the lights and stretched.  Better.  She could feel the blood move through her body and repair physiological vampire processes that had slowed down and become impaired with starvation from blood meals.  The high calories from normal food aided the extremely fast vampire mechanisms.  She got all she needed here at the restaurant for that.  This would keep her for around three or five days.    She finished closing down the kitchen and took her little Ford home.  Tonight, she would sleep well.  And if the dreams came, well, they came.

Daniel downed his third double-shot of whiskey.  His passion for the amber liquid was the only thing he’d kept from his old life.  And his first name.  He was the king of self-medication.

He looked around the tacky bar he found himself in almost every night before he made his way back to the shack he now called home.  Everything was rough-hewn and harsh.   Like his life here in the frozen north.  Lots of snow, wind, and fish.  Not much light, or sun, or comfort.  Just what he had been looking for when he made his way to the top of the world a little over a year ago.

The locals here were pretty good at self-medication too.  Most of them had been born and raised here…who the hell would come here on purpose?    Other than someone like Daniel who had nowhere else to go?  Up at the bar, Daniel watched two fishermen who had become as close to friends as he’d made since he’d been here.  Joey and Joey D.  Seriously, they had the same first names.  Not related, just sons of two women who had a thing for the name or maybe a celebrity with that name…he didn’t know.  But everyone just called them by their first name and added the D for the younger of the two who was smaller than the other and called “little dog.”  Inupiats.  Locals.  Good boys.

“Hey, Danny, get your ass over here.  Need a tie-breaker,” Joey D said, drunker than Daniel.

Daniel groaned.  All he wanted after twelve hours on the ropes was to go home, shower, and collapse.  Even drunk, he couldn’t stand his own body odor.  He scowled at the eight men collected around the small bar.  No one there, except Cay, the bar tender and proprietor, was sober.  That was the pastime in this frigid landscape where everyone you meet is someone you’ve known all your life.  Drinking and fucking.  In that order, too, from what he could tell after a year of self-imposed exile here.  He was where he belonged.

“Hey, hey, hey…oh, Danny boy…”

Daniel rolled his eyes.  “Joey D, spit it out.  It’s late and I’m fucking exhausted.”

“Hey, yeah.   Joey says the hottest woman on earth is Angelina.  I say it’s Reese Witherspoon.  Like me those cute petite blondes.  So.  What do you like?  Petite, blonde, and cute, or tall, dark and sultry?”

Unbidden, a face flashed in Daniel’s mind.  Stunning, beyond either of the actresses Joey D. mentioned…exotic, sexy, and unforgettable.  A face he had spent the entire year trying to purge from his memory.  He downed the rest of his whiskey and looked at the two Joeys.

“I’m gonna go with petite, dark, and sultry.  Sorry, no tie-breaker here, boys.  You two be careful heading home tonight.  Wind’s picked up and so has the snow.  And you two are totally shit-faced again.  Your mamas know you get toasted every night?”

Joey snorted.  “Our mamas are just glad we got the hell out of the house.”

Joey D snorted.  “Yeah, I cramp my mama’s style.”

Daniel shook his head and turned away.  “Good night, boys.”

He slipped on his heavily lined parka and pulled the hood up, tying it in place as he headed for the door.  Yeah, he thought, Joey D’s mama had some style, alright.  He’d availed himself of it at least a few times over the past year.  Bleached blonde, tall,
not
unattractive, except for the heavy makeup she insisted on lathing on her face that was starting to show the years.  And there was the fact that there wasn’t a man in Wilkes-Barre she hadn’t been with except her son.  She really
was
the horse that got rode hard and put away wet.  People in town didn’t treat her very well, even the men who repeatedly showed up at her door to use her and shove her away when they were finished.  The few times he’d been with her was partly out of need, and partly out of pity.  He thought
someone
ought to be nice to her.  She really was a sweet woman…just took some wrong turns and kept making the same wrong ones year after year.  Anyway, he stayed out of it.  It wasn’t his concern.  He had no right to judge anyone else’s life choices.

Even the heavy winter gear barely held its own against the northern winds.  It was brutal tonight and although it was night, the white snow beginning to cover the ground again and the snow-filled sky made everything pretty bright.  He would have been able to see his way easily to his four wheel drive truck if the wind hadn’t forced him to keep his head down.  Ass-end of the world in climates…and it was where he belonged.  He didn’t like to think about what brought him here…and there was no atoning for his actions, no redemption.  But he did want to try to find a way to move past it and have at least a tiny measure of peace in his life.   He didn’t deserve it, true, but it was his one goal now.  Stay up here, live some, die  soon…and do no harm.  Simple goals for a man who was living on time borrowed with the blood of others.

Her blood
.  Her face swam back into view as he started his truck.  He shook his head.  Not like he wasn’t going to be seeing it again when he finally fell into bed in about an hour.  The dreams rarely let up.  He never knew which one would haunt him before he fell into his usual drunken slumber.

CHAPTER TWO

The dreams came hard that night.  The memories.  Reminders that made sure he never forgot. 

Daniel got back out of bed as he often did when the dreams assaulted him.  And reached for the bottle that usually waited nearby.  It was getting colder, the air sharper than it had been earlier, so he stoked the fire to warm his small living room as he waited for daylight, and dropped onto the hard bench that served as his couch.

He thought back over the past year since he’d come to Wilkes-Barre.  As a young man years ago he could never have imagined himself in such a stunning landscape that was cold as ice and as unfriendly as the bowels of hell.  And he loved it here.

It was where he belonged anyway.   For the first six months or so, he’d kept to himself…drinking and sleeping eighty percent of the time.  Eventually he’d taken a job on a fishing boat.  Hard, brutal, punishing work that helped him feel a sense of some value again. Lately, though, he’d begun to join some colleagues at the local bar, the Wooly Bully for drinks and some masculine camaraderie.  Some.  He was still mostly reclusive.  But he had been seeking companionship occasionally.   Men, to drink with and bitch about the job.   Women, to fuck and let himself feel like a man again for about thirty minutes.

He hadn’t forgotten her.  If anything, in the past twelve months, the memory of her face had become more vivid, more real.  He dreamed of her.  A lot.  Not every night, but most.  And they weren’t always about her death.  Sometimes they were so fucking hot he woke up with a hard-on and sweats. 
Alone.
 
Drunk
.  With intense guilt that never left him.  All he wanted in the world was to hold her and touch her and tell her it was all okay.  But that would never happen.

Because he had killed her.  Not personally, not with his own hands…but he was entirely responsible for her death.  And he would never forgive himself. He’d fallen in love with a ghost. 

For the year since he’d carefully buried her body in a hidden place in the woods to protect her remains from people who would desecrate them, he had never had one day he didn’t think of her.  He’d hoped, somehow, to make amends.  But how do you do that when she was gone forever and robbed of her life?   No.  He’d made his way here to this harsh life and he would die here.  His only comfort was that damn whiskey bottle that was never far away.  He’d already discovered he couldn’t sleep without the blur of alcohol.  He wasn’t sure he ever would again.

He had only seen her in death.  And she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.  Long sleek black hair surrounding the face of a goddess.  An Asian heritage, creamy skin, perfect classic features.  Long dark eyelashes covering eyes he would never get to see looking into his.

He’d held her for a while before he committed her to the deep resting place he’d dug quickly in Canadian soil.  Her body remained warm and soft.  It hadn’t been his intention when he took her from the mission site, but he found he needed to touch her and beg her forgiveness.  He’d caressed her cheeks and held her head, his hands curling into the satin strands of her hair as he told her his life story.  She couldn’t hear him, of course, but he felt compelled to confess his sins before he buried her.

Daniel had been a soldier in a special forces unit for eight years of his life.  Eight years where the very abnormal became normal to him.  When he’d left the military, he’d found he couldn’t fit in with ordinary people in ordinary lives.  He thought he was a monster.  He’d spent eight years, his entire adulthood, efficiently killing people who he’d been told needed to be killed.   So, after three years of trying to be average Joe and working in a huge warehouse stacking boxes, he knew he wasn’t that man.  Then an old buddy he’d served with hooked him up with a mercenary soldier team.  He fit right in.  And that was how he made a very lucrative living for the past ten years.  And that was how he came to be at a large compound in Canada, charged with eliminating what he assumed were drug suppliers or worse.  It was going to be his final job.