He eyed me for a long time and nodded. I pulled out my bottle of water. Sipping with one hand, I did a sort of “you may proceed” gesture. He cleared his throat. “I was born in the forties. I had a relatively normal childhood. Grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland. I had a good buddy, Max, who I stuck with through thick and thin. Postwar America was the land of opportunity, lots of cash flowing around for people smart enough to grab a hold of it.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“Not important,” he said, shaking his head.
“Seems important.”
“Our undefined system worked pretty well until the seventies. We contracted with a vampire who did not have a sense of humor about us not being able to deliver some product he’d ‘ordered’ from another vampire’s warehouse. The vampire wanted us to have enough time to pay him off, so Max and I got turned.”
“Just like that?” I asked. Now that I had some insight into Finn’s background, his obnoxious kitten-based nicknames, the relatively chivalrous manners, hell, his insistence that he was right simply by nature of possessing fangs and a penis, made a lot more sense. I was dealing with 1950s Ozzie and Harriet sensibilities.
“Well, I’m sparing you some pretty terrifying details, but yeah, I wasn’t going to let my friend wander through eternity alone. But it worked out OK for him. He ended up having a daughter before he was turned. Because we were still in the coffin, he missed a lot of her growing up, but he, uh, reconnected with her recently. He’s getting to know her and her son, his grandson, something I tease Grandpa Max about mercilessly whenever I get the chance.”
“And what did his daughter think of her dad just showing up after all those years?”
“It was complicated,” he admitted, frowning. “But Libby’s a very sweet girl. Forgiving. And she wants to have a relationship with Max, so that’s a good sign, I think.”
“Who was your sire?”
“Not a nice person, and let’s just leave it at that.”
“And have you ever turned anyone?” I asked. He didn’t respond. “I am going to interpret your pregnant silence as a yes.”
The silence went way past its due date before he spoke. “It’s complicated. I liked her, quite a bit.”
“And to thank you for giving her eternal life without wrinkle cream, she gave you the ‘let’s just be friends’ talk?”
“Something like that.” Finn’s lips quirked, and I could tell that he was holding in a laugh. “I thought we were headed in the non–‘just friends’ direction, and for once, I wanted that. I wanted something long-term, maybe even permanent, for the first time in a long while. But she couldn’t take the way I edited the information I gave her. She didn’t accept my . . .” He trailed off, miles away for a moment.
“Your pauses are becoming suspicious.”
“You find everything suspicious.”
“True enough,” I admitted.
“Have you ever loved anyone?”
“Definitely not.”
“Spoken like someone who has been hurt in that fashion humans find so dramatic and humiliating,” he said, making me gasp. “Is that why you find me so objectionable? Because I remind you of the idiot who clearly wounded your psyche for life?”
“I-I don’t find you—I didn’t—objectionable,” I stuttered. “And you don’t remind me of the idiot—who was not actually an idiot but a very intelligent doctoral student. So intelligent, in fact, that he figured out how to earn that doctorate without doing any original work.”
“So now I’m objectionable and stupid,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“You’re not stupid, not at all. You’re just—you—”
“Come on, kitten, spit it out, you haven’t had any problems insulting me before.”
I blew a frustrated breath through clenched teeth. “You’re charming in a way I find completely offensive. You don’t think a girl like me knows what it means when you smile and turn on the charm? It means you’re five seconds away from asking for money or trying to sell me something.”
“What do you mean, a girl like you?” he asked. When I made a skeptical face, he added, “You have to know you’re gorgeous, right?”
I snorted derisively, because no, I did not “know” that. “I’m just saying, I’m sure I’m not your type.”
“How about you let me decide what my type is, thanks very much, and I don’t appreciate the insinuation that I’m some shameless, shallow dick,” he retorted.
I bit my lip to keep from snickering, making him add, “OK, fine, but I’m not shameless or shallow.”
I lifted an eyebrow. He jostled my arm, and I lost my grip on a full-on guffaw.
“OK, I’m not shallow,” he said, and before I could respond, he added, “Don’t lift your eyebrow again, woman.”
Still giggling, I pillowed my head against my arm, blinking against the growing weight of my eyelids. “I’m sorry. I’m rude to you.”
“Consistently,” he noted. “You are consistently rude to me.”
“I tend to react that way to strong personalities,” I told him. “To people I think might try too hard to influence me or flatter me. I get . . .”
“Cranky? Snappish? Defensive to the point of pathology?”
“True enough again.” I sighed.
“And—as the target of said pathology—can I ask why?”
“I mentioned before,” I said, stopping to yawn. He shifted me toward his body, letting me rest against his side. “My father was a highly respected academic. He taught Civil War history and strategy, even consulted at West Point a few times. He traveled . . . a lot, to different Civil War battle sites to do research, give lectures, that sort of thing. Which left me alone with my mother. She was, well, polite Southern people call it ‘high strung.’ Everything was a trial. Everything was high drama. I didn’t know that it was unusual. I didn’t spend enough time in other kids’ houses to see how their moms behaved.”
“Other kids? Not ‘friends’?”
“I didn’t have time for friends, too much ‘helping’ at home,” I said.
“What about your father?”
“I don’t really think he cared as long as he could continue his work without being bothered. He wasn’t really what you would call a hands-on parent, other than making sure that I had all of the right paperwork filled out when it came time to apply for college.”
“How did your mom handle that?”
“Oh, sure, she was all for me attending college, but I had to attend the school where my father taught, and I had to live at home. It was to save money, she told me. But, honestly, she didn’t want me to leave. She wanted me to get my little useless degree so she could at least claim that I was a college graduate when people asked—I mean, we were a family of academics. We did have standards to maintain—but then she wanted me to stay home.
“And I almost let her do it, that’s what scares me the most. I totally bought into the idea that the world was out to get me. I was terrified of everything. Shopping at night, because it meant crossing a parking lot alone in the dark. Ordering something over the Internet, because I was handing my address and credit card information over to a stranger. Learning to drive long distances alone, which was a constant exercise in my mother calling me every five minutes to make sure I wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere. I read every survival book and worst-case-scenario guide I could get, so when my mother started asking me what if, I had an answer for her. I told myself if I knew what to do, it couldn’t be that bad. It became a habit.”
“I was wondering how you knew all of the plane-crash information.”
I closed my eyes, shrugging. “Habit.”
“Do you see her often?”
“Not in . . . three years, maybe? My father’s funeral. I was traveling, trying to make it home in time, but she didn’t tell me the service plans until the very last minute, and I missed it. Which made me look like a horrible, uninvolved daughter when I wasn’t able to travel in time to make the visitation. Now she’
s living in a retirement community in Florida with a bunch of other widows who also complain about their absent adult children. She’s very happy there, or as happy as she’s capable of being. I’d like to have a relationship with her, but for her, that means living my life for me, through me. I can’t be an extension of another person.”
He ran his fingers lightly over my hair but said nothing. And I appreciated that. So many people over the years had responded to any discussion of my family estrangement with “But she’s your mother. You can’t just ignore your mother.” Or “I’m sure that’s just her way of showing how much she loves you.” They didn’t know what it was like to grow up with her, but somehow thought they knew what was best for me. Or at least they knew that the way I was living my life was offensive to their view of the world, and I must change that right away. So I stopped talking about it with most people. The fact that Finn hadn’t reacted with advice or platitudes made me think that I’d been right to trust him with the information.
Even if he did try to smolder at me.
Obscure soda–based blood sugar only carried me so far.
It was Finn’s turn to be the strong one, supporting my arms and helping me over obstacles as we took a wide circle around the ravine.
We trekked through one long thicket of trees after another, my feet dragging behind us. The glucose and pep I’d picked up from that Ale-8 had abandoned me hours before, and I was crashing hard. The ground seemed to sneak up on me, rising and falling, tripping me up as I struggled to control where I put my feet. I refused to let him stop for breaks. I refused to slow us down. I had to get out of the woods.
“Why haven’t we seen helicopters or search lights or something?” I huffed as he helped me over a massive fallen log. “They can’t just assume that we’re dead because the plane was reduced to a charcoal briquette. That’s rude.”
“Well, I’m sure . . . they’ve got to be . . .” Finn was struggling to find something cheerful to say. I could tell by the strained expression on his face. It was the same face my mother made when I did something different with my hair, though she always gave up and told me what she really thought. “Maybe the rescue crews are looking in the wrong place. Maybe they don’t believe there could be survivors.”
I found that terribly depressing, that Finn would try to sugarcoat our situation after being so openly and irritatingly frank for so long. And I was angry that he thought he needed to protect me from reality when it was so clear that our situation was growing more hopeless. And then there was the even more confusing undercurrent of gratitude that he would try. Clearly, the lack of fluids was shutting down the more rational bits of my brain.
The hem of my jeans caught on the log’s branch, and I stumbled, landing hard on my butt. I groaned, wincing at the resounding pain of the impact. Hissing, I threw my other leg over the log and buried my face in my hands. “I hate this. I hate how lousy I feel now that the Ale-8 superstrength has evaporated. I hate bugs and the humidity and the mud. I hate how much it hurts to walk, and I hate feeling weak. I hate that we’re in a place called ‘the lakelands’ and we haven’t come across one freaking lake except for the one we crashed into! ‘Lakelands’ implies more than one lake! I hate how one place can be so fricking hot and fricking cold all in one day. Pick a fricking temperature and stick with it!” I flopped back on the ground, not giving a single damn about getting my clothes any dirtier.
“You done now?” Finn looked vaguely amused by my tantrum, perhaps because it was directed at circumstances in general and not at him.
“Sort of.” I sighed, standing and brushing the bark chunks off my jeans.
“Drink some more.”
I drank again, while he scanned the horizon for danger.
“Come on.” Before I could ask what he meant, he picked me up, carrying me bridal-style for a few steps before slinging me around his back.
“No, we’ve talked about this,” I muttered into the skin of his neck. “You’ll tire yourself out, and I’ll have to carry your heavy vampire butt through the woods again. I don’t have it in me until I get my steak.”
“Your steak?”
I nodded, rubbing my cheek against the lovely cool of his neck. “I’m going to eat all of the steak when I get out of this. I mean, all of the steak. As in ‘all of the steak in the world.’ You can come and watch.”
“That’s a tempting offer. And what will you have for dessert?”
“I was thinking about something involving chocolate pudding and raspberry coulis.”
Finn stopped. “Really? I think I would like to hear more about that.”
“Later. If I talk about it now, I’ll tell you too much.”
“But I want to hear your thoughts about chocolate pudding and raspberry coulis. Desperately.”
“Nope.”
“Spoilsport.” He was moving again, and I was reveling guiltily in not having to walk, promising myself that I would make him put me down in just a few steps. As soon as I got my wind back, I would make him conserve his strength. But for right now, I was comfortable for the first time in a while, so I was going to enjoy it. I raised my head with a start. “What is it?”
“Can you stand for a second?” he asked, gently unfolding my legs from his waist so my feet touched the ground. He walked toward a large tree, the trunk the thickness of a smart car, while staring up into the branches.
“Finn?”
His hands shoved through the thick kudzu growing up the trunk. He grinned and yanked the kudzu vines hard, bringing a good chunk of them rippling down the tree and revealing a rusty metal ladder. The bark had grown over portions of the metal, permanently securing it as part of the tree.
“What is it?” I asked. “Another deer stand? Check and see if there’s a shower or a freezer stocked with Ben and Jerry’s.”
“I’ll be right back.” He climbed up the ladder gracefully, his dust-covered butt disappearing through the low-hanging branches.
“Or maybe some lights in the distance. Water towers. Helpful signs stating, ‘You are this far from civilization.’ ”
Finn did not respond to my requests. I wondered if he was going to just launch himself from tree to tree Tarzan-style and disappear.
“Finn?”
With Finn out of sight, I folded to the ground. I was exhausted and sore and hungry—not potted-meat hungry but hungry. And even with the hand-me-down boots, my feet were killing me.
I leaned against the tree, tucking my head between my knees. Without Finn there, I let a few miserable tears seep through my eyelids. I indulged for a few seconds before I wiped my cheeks and commanded myself to stop. My body couldn’t spare the water needed to cry.
I heard a rustling overhead and swiped my filthy hands across my cheeks one last time. I didn’t even care about the grime and potential bacteria. I had enough spine to want to avoid Finn’s pity at all costs. It was bad enough he had taken to hauling me around the woods like a child.
I pushed to my feet, wincing at the pain in my knees as I did so. “What is it?”
He grinned broadly. “There’s a lake!”
I exclaimed, “Finally, the lakelands’ reputation comes through!”
6
Take advantage of creature comforts where you can. Physical discomfort leads to resentment. You don’t want that resentment to fester should you find yourself in a Peruvian soccer team situation.
—Where the Wild Things Bite: A Survival Guide for Camping with the Undead
Even with my weak human senses, I could smell the water before we saw it. It had that same slightly fishy, coppery odor as our “landing site.” I wondered whether that smell reminded Finn of blood. We heard the gentle sound of water moving against the shore. Given the unrelenting landscape of “trees, rocks, more trees, trees, trees,” it was lovely to see a wide expanse of sparkling water, rippling in the pale light. Now we just had to get around it.
“We are sure this isn’t the same lake we landed in, right?” I asked, hands on hips as we stood,
admiring the view.
“Based on the lack of smoldering wreckage, I’m going to say yes,” Finn said, nodding.
“I’m just saying, ‘walk in a straight line if possible’ hasn’t been the greatest navigation plan.”
“Everything can’t be planned,” he said. “Sometimes you just have to act on instinct.”
“My main instinct is flight.”
“Having flown with you, I disagree.”
I struck out at him, smacking his shoulder. “That’s not funny.”
He caught my wrist and wrapped his arm around me, squeezing me to his side. His voice was almost fond as he chuckled into my hair. “You have strong instincts, kitten, you just need to hush all of the noise in your head long enough to listen to them.” I stopped, putting a few steps between us as he continued. “It’s written all over your face. You’re always arguing with yourself, always trying to figure out the consequences ten steps ahead of time. Sometimes you just have to let life happen to you.”
“You let life happen to you, and now you drink blood and can’t go out during the day,” I countered.
“You’re not wrong,” he said, stripping off his shirt. I watched him tug the stained material over his head, revealing a physique that was just as muscled and well wrought as I’d suspected it to be—even if I had underestimated the inherent lickability of his collarbone.
And I had officially reached “just can’t even” levels of sexual frustration.
All of the noise in my head reduced itself to white noise and the whimpers of my overstimulated libido. When he reached for the button of his pants, time seemed to catch up with me, my brain started working again, and I had enough sense to whip around so my back was facing him.
“What are you doing?” I yelped.
“I’m going to go for a swim, wash off in the lake,” he suggested, nodding toward the glittering water. “Join me?”
“Oh, sure. I’ll just go pluck the fruit of a shampoo tree in yonder meadow,” I scoffed, throwing an arm toward the woods. Unfortunately, that brought the unpleasant odor of . . . me wafting up from under my sweater. That was not helping me with the whole “argument against bathing” thing. I was grossing myself out, and I didn’t even have supersenses.