Stefan (Lost Nights Series Book 1) (18 page)

I wasn’t sure how long I sat there before the first wave of fatigue hit me. The sun was close to the horizon. I’m not sure how I came to be so sure of that fact. Maybe nightwalker had a few survival instincts they were reborn with. But the why didn’t matter. It was time for all good little creatures of the night to go to bed.

Slowly pushing to my feet, I looked down at the tomb. As distasteful as it might seem, I knew it was the wisest course. I wasn’t sure if the stained glass would be enough protection from the sun and if someone poked their head inside the crypt, it would be better if they didn’t spot me curled up in the corner like some homeless vagabond.

With a soft grunt, I pushed the lid partially off the tomb and lifted poor old Uncle Isaac’s bones out so that I could fit inside. “Sorry old boy. I’ll put you back when the sun sets,” I muttered with a grimace.

Lying in the tomb, I took a deep breath and focused on how easy it was to move the massive stone slab rather than think about the fact that I was attempting to bury myself alive. No. That was wrong. I wasn’t technically alive now. As I struggled with that thought in the complete unyielding darkness, another wave of fatigue hit me. But this one was different.

My strength left me completely and there was an odd tugging in the center of my chest like someone was tied a string to my soul and was now trying to pull it out of my body. Panic consumed me. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. The tugging continued until I was sure that the key part of me was going to be ripped free and I would be nothing. I would become the air, floating free with no substance. It was the same feeling that had consumed me when Vanko had attacked. I was dying. Vanko had failed to turn me and my second chance had been only a cruel lie.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. The sun had risen and I was dead.

Chapter 14

My scream reverberated through the stone tomb, searching for an exit, but it could only come back to rebuff me in the face. I was alive … so to speak. The sun had sunk back below the earth and I was alive. Dear god, did I have to go through dying every morning? It wasn’t painful, but the sensation was terrifying. Every morning I’d have to relive the terror that gripped me in the woods when Vanko had killed me.

I lie in the dark, trembling and teeth chattering, for several minutes until I finally got a grip on myself. This must have been the price for escaping true death. I tried to tell myself that I’d get used to the feeling with time but I just wasn’t sure that such a thing could ever truly happen. Our every instinct was to fear death. You could never become accustomed.

But what was my other option? Give up? Not likely. With a grunt, I slowly pushed the lid back on the tomb and listened for any sound to indicate that someone was near. Silence lay heave over the crypt and beyond in the graveyard. I could hear cars farther away and the wind rattling the limbs of the naked trees, but no one was close to my hiding spot.

Swiftly climbing out of the tomb, I replaced old Uncle Isaac and closed the lid. Taking a second to brush off crypt dust, rotting clothes, wood, and bugs, I cautiously stepped into the graveyard. Relief replaced my earlier unease over my morning death, but the relief proved to be short-lived as hunger pangs started to assail me. My stomach ached and my fangs throbbed. I needed to feed again, which answered my question from the previous night — I needed to feed at least once every night. Damn.

Hunkered in the shadows at the back of the graveyard, I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do. The one time I’d fed, I killed Otto. Sure, there was a little part of me that had wanted him dead for his part in my kidnapping and murder, but I didn’t think that was why I’d killed him. The hunger had taken over. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I had wanted to.

And now what? I didn’t want to hurt anyone else. And even if I could stop myself from taking too much, I couldn’t wipe the poor person’s memory and that seemed really important if I didn’t want the world knowing that I was a nightwalker. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Flopping on the ground, I sat on the slightly damp grass with my head in my hands and my elbows balanced on my knees before me. My temples felt like someone was trying to drive spikes into my head and my joints ached. The longer I waited to feed, the more intense the pain became. But I didn’t know what to do. I’d rather starve than kill an innocent person. I feared the driving hunger as well. What if I couldn’t fight it and attacked someone?

Lost in my own misery, I nearly missed the approach of … something … someone. The noises were incredibly faint like a squirrel or a rabbit moving quietly in the brush, but there was a sense of something much larger. I was just starting to push to my feet to look around when a young woman stepped into view. She was slender and short, wearing a motley of bright colors so that you couldn’t possibly miss her.

Lurching back, I slammed my shoulder into a tree trunk, but barely noticed the pain. The woman said something angrily at me and made a pointing gesture. I didn’t understand her but I got the impression that I was being told to get the hell out of the graveyard.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” I said with a shake of my head. Her skin seemed to glow in the thin moonlight and there was an eerie silence to her movement that only nightwalkers could achieve.

The woman seemed surprised and cocked her head to the side a bit. “You … Are you American?” she said with a distinctly British accent.

“Yes,” I said with an enormous sigh of relief. I’d finally found someone I could communicate with.

“I said you’re not welcome here. Shove off!”

I jerked at her rough tone, embarrassment heating my cheeks. I’d never been kicked out of any place in my life and I certainly had never expected it to be a graveyard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any harm. I just needed a place to stay for the day.”

“Fine. It’s night,” she said sharply with an absent wave toward the dark sky above.” “You’re not welcome in this city.”

“Could you at least tell me where ‘here’ is?”

“Jedrzejow.”

I continued to look at her blankly. The name of the city didn’t ring a single bell in my head.

“Not too far from Kielce.”

I shook my head, still not recognizing it.

“You’re in Poland,” she said slowly.

My legs gave out beneath me and I fell back to the ground. Poland. That bastard had driven me all the way to fucking Poland. That was on the other side of Europe. How was I going to get back to Venice? I had no money. No identification. Who was I fooling? I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was the worst vampire ever made.

The tear started falling and I hated myself because I couldn’t hold it together. It was all just too much. Framed for murder, kidnapped, killed, brought back from the dead, and then I kill the guy who killed me before he could tell me anything about being a nightwalker.

“Hey now. You can’t cry. Nightwalkers aren’t supposed to cry,” the woman said, sounding utterly bewildered.

“I’m sorry,” I choked out. I wiped away my tears to find my hands streaked with blood. My tears had been turned to blood, which only made my sobbing worse. It was just that final straw that caused me to break. The past few days have been too much for me to take in. There was no normal for me any longer. My life was gone and I didn’t know what kind of future I could possibly even hope to have.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s not you. It’s … everything. It’s just too much to take in,” I said softly between gasping sobs.

The woman had crept closer so that she was now only a few feet away so that she could get a good look at my ragged appearance. “You haven’t been a nightwalker long, have you? Couple years? We all need a period of adjustment.” She was trying to be reassuring, which was incredibly sweet considering that she had been trying to kick me out of town just a minute earlier.

“This is my second night,” I admitted, but she only looked confused.

“Second night of what?”

“Being a nightwalker.”

The woman looked absolutely floored, her mouth hanging open in shock. But she quickly recovered, jumping away from me. “Where’s your maker?”

I hesitated. I didn’t know if what I’d done was viewed as good or bad among nightwalkers. I wasn’t ready to lose the one person I could talk to, but I also couldn’t lie. I was a horrible liar. “He’s gone. Dead. I … killed him.” And then the story just came spilling out of me in a tumble of words, trying to convince her that it had been an accident.

When I finished, she was sitting on the ground across from me with a sympathetic look in her brown eyes. “Ahhh… love. You’re going to be fine. You’re just a bit peckish. You’ll feel better once you’ve had a bite,” she said gently, nearly putting me in tears again.

She rose to her feet in a flash. It wasn’t quite the same boneless manner I’d seen at the Coven meeting but she certainly moved less like a jerky puppet on a string than I did. I shied from her extended hand and got to my feet on my own, but she didn’t appear insulted.

“I’m Daphne, but some of my mates call me Daffy for short.”

“Erin Prescott.”

“It’s just Erin now. Nightwalkers don’t bother with last names,” she continued easily with a wide grin. “There just aren’t enough of us around to make it worthwhile. In fact, most of them change their name from their human one. It’s really best to shed everything from your past life. It’s much easier to move on that way.”

“What? Change my name to something like Spike or Vlad or….” I broke off at Daphne’s laughter and found myself smiling a little as well.

“Did you watch that
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
show too? Wasn’t that a hoot? I do love that one.” She laughed, shaking her head. “No, it doesn’t have to be anything like that. My old name was Trudy, but I’d always liked Daphne so when I struck out on my own, I told everyone I was Daphne. You’ve got plenty of time now to think on it.” She started toward the entrance of the graveyard and motioned for me to follow. “Let’s get your breakfast.”

“I can’t. I’m afraid. I’m afraid I’ll kill someone.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you.”

I didn’t know if I would trust Daphne but I didn’t see what option I had. I certainly couldn’t take care of myself as I was. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and I was just going to leave a trail of dead bodies as I tried to get back to Venice — assuming that was my ultimate destination.

With some reluctance, I pushed to my feet and slowly walked toward her. There was a snarling in my head and an overwhelming urge to bite her, but I clamped down on it and held the shreds of my self-control together. Daphne gave no outward appearance that she knew of my struggles despite the shaking that now wracked my body. She kept a comfortable distance between us without seeming to.

“How many other nightwalkers are there in Jedrzejow?” I asked between clenched teeth. With any luck, a continual stream of information from my companion would help to get my mind off the gnawing pain.

There are just six of us and we like it like that.”

“Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning to stay,” I said quickly. Were nightwalkers territorial? If so, I didn’t want to upset the one person who was willing to help me get through a feeding without killing anyone.

“No, love. I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, briefly laying a hand on my shoulder. “We’re all misfits of a sort.”

“What do you mean?”

Daphne led me down the block, her arms swinging at her side, making her seem both young and human. “We’re all relatively young and our nest doesn’t have an actual master. We all escaped our makers or masters and settled here so we could live in peace.”

She glanced over at me, her eyes narrowed in speculation. “You know, your story sounds kind of familiar. You could fit in with us.”

I flashed Daphne a weak smile, touched by her offer. It gave me a feeling like maybe I wasn’t totally alone in this world. Maybe I had a few options. I just needed some time to think and figure out what I wanted to do. “Thank you. I don’t know what I’m going to do next.”

A light and fluffy laugh danced from Daphne as we turned down a residential block. “Don’t worry. You’ve plenty of time to decide things now.”

Yeah. Eternity stretched out before me. That thought itself was more than a little mind-numbing. I remained silent the rest of the way as Daphne chattered on about living in Poland with her mates. She was a cheerful, optimistic thing that seemed to take everything in stride. I used to be like that, but I was definitely feeling off my stride now.

Daphne took me to a small two-story house near the end of a quiet block dotted with abandoned homes. All the windows had curtains blocking any light into the house. Instead of heading up to the front door, she cut around the side to the back door where a tall lean man was blocking the entrance. He looked as if he were no more than sixteen with long thin hair streaked blue to match his bright blue eyes. His dark blue jeans and baggy T-shirt with the Batman emblem in the center made him look even younger, but he was probably a few centuries old.

The stranger glared at me for a second before snapping at Daphne, who promptly barked back at him.

“I’ll leave tonight,” I said, assuming that he could understand English and that his problem was me.

“Good,” he growled before stepping away to let us enter.

Daphne made a face at him as she walked by, looking as if she wanted to say more, but I put a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it. If you could teach me just a couple things so I can get by, I’d greatly appreciate it. I think I need to get back to Venice.”

We stopped in a small, barren kitchen, with the man shutting the door behind us. There were no lights on in the little room, but I had no trouble picking out the empty white countertops and the stove the looked to be collecting dust. Yeah, no humans living here.

“Do you think going back to Venice is wise?” Daphne asked.

For a moment, the hunger that had been eating away at my brain subsided and I stared at the lovely English woman. “I don’t know, but then I don’t know what I should do next. It’s all a mess. I just know that Stefan is worried about me and he at least needs to know that I’m …” I drifted off. I had been about to say that “I’m still alive,” but that was so wrong.

“You’re the one… the woman the Coven is looking for?” the male nightwalker said in heavily accented English behind me.

I twisted around to look at the nightwalker who was glaring at me. “What?”

“Erin, this is Ignacio,” Daphne introduced with a grimace. “The oldest of our little group. He’s also spent some time in Venice and he still hears whispers from there on occasion. At least, he does when there’s some kind of big news.”

“And I’m the big news?”

“Human woman disappeared from Venice. The entire Coven is demanding that you be found.”

Fear suddenly twisted in my stomach and I felt cold. “Do they think I ran off?”

Ignacio shrugged. “Don’t know.”

I sighed and started for the door. “I need to get back to Venice before this gets worse.”