Longest Days (The Firsts) (4 page)

BOOK: Longest Days (The Firsts)
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It was getting late though and he was exhausted.  Maybe it would help him sleep better than usual.   Maybe the dreams would let him the fuck alone…just for a night.  He closed his eyes and laid his head back.  He deserved this life, this fate.  It would be nice, though, to find peace someday.  Not feel like the worthless shit he had for the past year.  One more for the road?  Probably a bad idea.  He looked around the room again.  No one was leaving.  They were enjoying the young woman’s company too much.  He watched her head back to her table, which was on the other side of the bar.  Someone was sitting there.   Was it a woman?    He thought it was by the small size and how she was sitting.  Though she was covered head to foot.  A hoodie with the hood pulled up was really androgynous and he couldn’t see her face.  Well, she must not have been a looker like her friend.  No one was bothering her.  He felt a little sorry for her.  Nature was cruel.  One girl with the looks of Helen of Troy can rule the world while another might be lucky to ever be loved at all.  People were addicted to physical beauty.   He should know.

He started to get up before he became too maudlin when the woman seated at the table turned her head.  He saw her face, and it knocked him back into his seat.  What the hell!!??  He sat forward.  He had to be more drunk than he realized. 
It was her
.  The face that peeked from under that unremarkable hood was the one that had haunted him for a year.  The stunning woman whose death he had been responsible for. 
It was her
.

But it couldn’t be.  He shook his head and closed his eyes.  Then opened them and looked back at the woman, expecting to see a nice, plain little local. 
No.
  It was still his Asian goddess.  No one else on earth could look like her.   He was sure of it.  He staggered toward her through the writhing drunk bodies on the makeshift dance floor.  His eyes couldn’t leave her face.  Suddenly she looked up directly at him.   Their eyes locked and he saw her expression change.  She looked startled.  And she couldn’t take her eyes off him, either. 

They stayed like that as he approached and stopped, inches from her, and then didn’t move.  He couldn’t speak.  What do you say to a dream?  To a ghost?  
I’m sorry I killed you.
All I want to do is wrap you
up and keep you safe.

Eillia stood.  How did she know this man?  She felt certain she did, and yet she drew a blank when she tried to remember him.   But he wasn’t a stranger, she felt that.  She searched the handsome, rough, masculine face.  Long hair, pushed back, like restless fingers had done the grooming.  Hard cut jawline that hadn’t seen a razor in a while.  Piercing pale blue eyes.  Not a face you would forget.   But she couldn’t place him.

“How do you know me?” she asked suddenly.

He looked shocked.  Then he blinked and cleared his throat.  “I don’t.”  He kept staring and then repeated.  “I don’t.  I can’t.”

“You look like you do.”

“No.  I mean, you look like someone I knew…but she’s dead.”

Oh.  She looked like someone from his past.  That explained it. It didn’t explain how she thought
she
knew
him,
but she didn’t consider herself entirely reliable right now.  Just a weird fluke, that’s all this was.  Well, she could help him with his shock.

Eillia touched him on the forearm to compel him to forget her, and was surprised when he moved his hand quickly and took her fingers in his.  He turned her hand over in his, caressing the palm, then looked back into her eyes.

“You’re warm, you’re real,” he said softly.  Then he abruptly reached up and pushed the hoodie back, revealing her face fully, the dim light in the bar bouncing off the shiny black hair that cascaded down her back and around her face.  Eillia was so mesmerized by his actions, she didn’t move to stop him. He stepped closer and cupped her face in his hands. 

Eillia breathed deeply to capture his scent.   He smelled so good
.  How did she
know his scent?

“You are so lovely.  I’ve never seen anything else in my life that made me believe more in God than this face.  Only a god could have designed you.”

Eillia drew an uneven breath.  Whoever he lost had been a lucky woman.  This man was capable of such passion.   She could feel it through his touch.  An arc of that passion moved through her and centered itself in her loins.  She thought he might be able to bring her to an orgasm with his touch alone.  Whoever this man was, she couldn’t feel this way.  It was a betrayal to her love with Hamid.  She couldn’t
want
this man.  How could she
want
him?

“No,” she whispered, and captured his gaze.  She moved in close.  He smelled like whiskey and man and she wanted to vampire speed him to her little cabin, rip off his clothes, and crawl inside him.  But instead, she said, “You don’t know me.  You will leave now and go home.  You won’t remember seeing me here tonight.  You’ll just remember drinking, seeing some friends, and carefully driving home.  Go.”

He blinked and turned away, went back to his table, pulled on his outdoor gear, grabbed his keys and threw a fifty dollar bill at the bartender.  He murmured something no one understood and disappeared through the door.

Eillia dropped into her wobbly chair.  Oh, God.  What was that?  He acted like he recognized her.  And she felt something when she saw him.  But she could
not
place him.  She should be able to.  With a sigh, she ran her hands over her face.  Well, it was over.  He
wouldn’t
remember her and she
couldn’t
remember him.  So, her reaction to him was just horniness, and that was very common for vampires.  And much more so for her, since she hadn’t even seen to her own needs this past year.

She looked around for Starla, and found her in a lip-lock with the handsome blonde.  Eillia pushed through the crowd with her mind, everyone stepping aside automatically for her without even realizing it.  As she approached Starla and the young man, she put her hand on his arm and looked into his eyes.  He had a good heart.  Okay.  Still, a little compel never hurt.

“You’re going to escort this young lady home safely in about thirty minutes, give her a great good night kiss, and then make sure she gets in her apartment before you drive carefully to yours.  Right?”

He nodded.  Starla blushed.

“Just looking out for you, honey.  He’s a good guy.  I’m leaving.  See you tomorrow, if the snow allows.”

“Alright, Lia.  Thanks for coming with me.”

“Sure.  It was interesting.”   She left quickly, and when no one could see her, she vampire speeded to her truck and headed home.  All the way, she kept thinking of the stranger who hadn’t seemed like a stranger.  And how all she wanted was to throw him down on her bed and let herself
feel
something again.  It was too soon. 
It was too
soon.
  Wasn’t it?  It all made her head hurt. 

When she got back to her frigid cabin, she built a fire vampire quick and pulled two heavy plush blankets off her bed to curl up beside it.  Nights like these she often slept right here on the floor in front of the fire.  Eillia curled up, wrapped snugly inside her blanket cocoon, with hopes of restful sleep to calm her racing mind and libido.  She went out quickly to the increasing sounds of the wind shreeing through tiny air leaks in her cabin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daniel had fallen asleep.  He woke to loud bangs and piercing shrieks as the wind continued to try to blow his house down.  He grinned as he pulled his tired naked body out of bed.  The big bad wolf was at his door.

“Go ahead, do your worst, you motherfucker,” he said, and looked around to see where the bottle of JD was hiding.   Shit!  Nearly empty.  And the storm just gaining strength wasn’t expected to let up soon.  He had enough cans of soup and hard bread to keep him in food for the next week…but he was out of liquor as soon as that bottle was empty.    It told him two things…he’d been drinking
far
too much…and he had to find a way to get back to Bully’s.   Weird thing was, he’d meant to pick up a few bottles last night before he left.  He couldn’t remember why he hadn’t.   Winter had just started and there would be a lot more nasty days to come alone in this poorly built pre-fab shack he lived in
.  Note to self, lay in a huge supply of liquid
anesthesia.
  He couldn’t face the long winter sober.  Too much fucking reality there.  Made it too easy to remember.

Well, damn storm had to let up sometime, so he would plow his way out and get down to town to load up.  He wandered over to his small front window.  White.  Nothing but white.  Okay.  Distractions.  No reception tonight for the small television near the fireplace.  An old VCR and TV combo in the corner he’d never touched.  Were there tapes?  A short search turned up old classic westerns and some old sci fi movies.  He picked one about alien invasions in Colorado, heated up some chicken noodle soup, grabbed the remaining JD and sat down to try something different to occupy his mind.  It didn’t take long after the final drop of Jack was gone to realize he needed to make that booze run soon.

An hour and a half later he fell asleep.  It was a deep, restful, undisturbed sleep.  He would awake amazed at how well he felt.  It was the first good sleep he could remember for a very, very long time.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

The wind was relentless.  Horizontal snow pelted her little cabin.    Ice pellets banged at her windows  in a vicious attack, as if they were trying to break in.  The high pitched whine of the sustained winds of the blizzard hadn’t stopped in hours.  Eillia loved it.

Nature, raw, and ravenous…teaching everyone she ruled this world.  No one would be out in this.  She wouldn’t be going to work.  There would be no one to serve.

So she would stay home and sleep.    She sighed as she stoked the fire in the large fireplace before she went back to bed.  There was no peace to be found there either, but the unconsciousness helped.   When the dreams didn’t come.

She
had
noticed, though, that she was sleeping less than she used to, and the other night at work, someone remarked that he saw her smile for the first time.

Eillia pulled the plush blankets up and climbed onto the rickety couch she’d pulled right up next to the now roaring flames.  It felt so good and smelled even better.  Then she realized…she actually was smiling right now in pleasure.  She was warm and comfortable and she had one of the Blue Star’s huge chocolate cakes in her fridge.  A young girl in town had insisted she had to see a new movie that had come out last year, some silly sci-fi about aliens, and had loaned her a disc.

Wrapped in the blankets, the fire crackling, a huge piece of chocolate cake on her lap, watching a current movie, Eillia smiled.  She lowered her head.  Was it okay that she was smiling so much again?  And looking forward to creature-comforts?  She drew a deep breath.  She thought it was.  It felt good to feel good again.  Yes, she was healing.

 

 

 

Daniel was losing it.   He stood at the window and stared out, and although he couldn’t see anything through the white-out conditions, he still stood there searching for any sign it would stop and let him out of his prison.  There had to be a way to get to the Wooly Bully.  He could last a little longer, but if this went on for a week…
oh, fuck!

He turned and paced.  Then returned to stare again, and paced some more.  All along he’d thought he was in hell.  He was wrong. 
This.
  Being trapped with only his own company and tortured memories with no way to filter them. 
This
was hell.

 

 

 

Eillia was getting bored.  And hungry.   For food and blood.  She looked out the window at the endless flakes of snow building up minute by minute.  The wind had let up a little.  It was no longer howling, and she kind of missed it.  Soon, she would be able to get out and head into town.  Of course, she couldn’t go to work yet.  She couldn’t advertise to the humans that little things like four feet of snow wouldn’t even slow her down.  If no one else made it to work, then the lone small woman who cooked in the cramped kitchen shouldn’t either.

She realized she’d made a mistake in not securing a blood meal two nights ago when she’d accompanied Starla to that bar.  It would have been a perfect time to do it.  But the sexy stranger she thought she might have known had thrown her a curve, and she hadn’t even thought about anything but him that night.  Or since.  It was offensive to her that his face was carved into her memory now, while Hamid’s was fading away.  And she didn’t know why.

Assuming there would not be anyone around in town this late in the middle of a blizzard, she decided to hit the general store for some supplies.   She should be able to find
someone
she could compel for a blood meal  After pacing a few moments, she went to get her snow gear.  If nothing else, it would get her out of the cabin for a while and get her mind off her libido that seemed to have been reignited.   And this cabin was feeling claustrophobic suddenly. 
Funny how for the past year it had just felt safe.

When she’d found this place a year ago, she had been looking for a place to hide…a hole to crawl into and disappear.  She’d known she couldn’t return to her normal life without Hamid, who had been there almost forever.  Now, she was ready to crawl out and see the light again.  Not, of course,
sunlight,
but to begin to repair her shattered life.  It seemed right.  It was time.

Several layers of sweaters preceded her parka.  The gloves didn’t match.  And that didn’t matter.  Her favorite, however, was a heavily furred head wrap one of the kind Inupiat local ladies had given her last month.  It was warm and reminded her of one she owned that now lay in a drawer outside her home in Paris.

Now well wrapped up, she pulled the door closed tightly.  The air was refreshingly clear and pure, the snowflakes now large and pillowy, but still falling at a fast rate.  If it continued much longer, everyone would be snowed in for about a week before they could dig out.  Eillia just stood there for several long minutes with her face tilted up, immersed in the sensuous experience of falling snow and cool air.  The snow had reached a good three plus feet, so she cleared a large path in front of the cabin.  With vampire power and speed, it took mere seconds.  She knew it would be too suspicious to do it all the way to town, so she revved up and glided across the remaining distance until just outside the town proper, where she noticed someone had already begun snow removal.

BOOK: Longest Days (The Firsts)
5.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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