myself up, stretch gingerly, wil ing the healing process to move more quickly, to numb this ache.
“Anna!” Max’s voice. “Where are you?”
I rouse myself and step over the vampire’s body. I realize I never learned her name. Does it matter? Not now.
Max is fifty yards out, moving toward me at a run.
“Here.”
I let him find me. He has his gun in his hand and he is breathing hard. When he sees the crumpled remains on the ground, he turns to me, startled, bewildered.
“Who is that?”
“Your coyote.”
He kneels for a closer look. “She’s an old woman. How could she possibly—”
“What you’re looking at are her mortal remains. You were right in suspecting a vampire was behind the attacks. She was with a couple when I found her. I let them go.”
“I know.” Max holsters his gun. “I saw them run by.”
“Did they make it?”
“From what I could see.”
“Good.”
Max switches his gaze from the corpse to me. For the first time, he sees the blood soaking my shirt, on my thighs.
“You’re hurt?”
“No.” Not much anyway. He couldn’t have brought a.22? I don’t think I’l tel him I let myself get shot with his gun. “It looks worse than it is.”
He nods. Luckily, he knows how it is with vampires.
“What should we do with that?” He points to the thing on the ground.
“Bury it.”
Max swings his flashlight in an arc. “I didn’t bring a shovel.
What can we use?”
I spy a flat piece of rock and a long, sturdy branch kiln dried by the sun. I retrieve them. “It wil take work, but we can use these.”
I hand him the branch to begin scraping away sand and fol ow after, scooping out a hole with the rock. My side screams in protest but within fifteen minutes, we have a hole biough and deep enough to cover the corpse. I grab her by the arm to throw her in.
“She’s real y dead, right?” Max asks.
“You mean is she going to rise up in three days and come after us?” I prod at the body with my foot. “No. She’s gone.”
The remains land in the hole with the brittle thud of desiccated flesh and bone.
We set to work, shoveling the sand back in, tamping it down with our feet, setting a layer of rock and debris over the grave. To protect it from scavengers.
A flashback. Another vampire corpse. Another grave dug in the desert. Another pair of hands working beside mine.
Lance.
A shudder racks my body.
Max’s shoulder is so close to mine, he feels my body jerk.
He pauses. “Are you sure you’re al right?”
The vampire answers from the darkest place in my soul.
“It’s nothing. I just walked on someone’s grave.”
MAX RECOGNIZES ONE OF THE GUARDS AT THE
BORDER crossing. They exchange a few words in Spanish and he waves us through. It’s good because I’m not sure I want to try to explain the rust-colored stains covering my clothes.
Max takes me back to my car. He watches me climb gingerly out of the passenger side. “Can you drive?”
I massage my side. The scrape caused by the stake is healed. The path the bul et tore through my side is healed.
Now it’s just the skin pul ing tight as it regenerates over the holes that makes me wince when I move.
“Yeah. I’m a little stiff but by the time I get home, I’l be fine.”
I pul his gun and holster free from my belt. “Here. Maybe next time you can bring a cannon.”
Max grins and watches as I get into my car and crank the engine before he motions for me to rol down the window.
“Thanks, Anna. You did good tonight. I owe you one.”
Okay, here’s my chance to tel him what I planned to tel him. To go fuck himself. To never cal me again. To go to one of his vampire whores the next time he needs help.
What am I waiting for?
Max is leaning toward the window, smiling. He looks more like the Max I remembered. Superman, defending truth, justice and the American way. .
Shit.
I smile back.
And drive away.
CHAPTER 9
SLEEP IS A WONDERFUL RESTORATIVE.
Except for one occasion when a dream proved to be prophetic, my dreams are of human things. My parents, my brother, my niece, my life before the becoming. I’m always happy in my dreams. I’m always human.
When I awake this morning, the glow of having spent time with those I love lingers.
Then confusion as I try to zero in on my surroundings. This isn’t my bed. This isn’t my room. The impersonal, artificial coziness of a hotel room with its heavy blackout curtains, disinfectant smel and sterile, generic furniture comes sharply into focus as I look around.
The reason I’m here floods back, replacing peace with aggravation. It was two a.m. when I arrived back at the cottage. They were waiting for me. TV reporters from every local station. Al wanting to interview the
The hero. Me.
Luckily, I spied the reporters perched like vultures on the seawal in front of my place before they spotted me. I’ve been down this path before and Wiliams’ recriminations came back to haunt me. I did it again. I exposed my true nature to mortals. That time, my predicament was self-made. This time, I had no choice.
I drove to a nearby motel and checked in under a false name. It’s useful to have a couple of bogus licenses at times like these — il egal as hel but useful. Also useful to keep an extra jacket in the car. The camos I’m wearing are dust covered and bloodstained. I pul ed on an old jacket to cover the worst of it and paid cash for a single night. The guy at the desk looked at me with raised eyebrows but took my money.
Once settled in the room, I reviewed my options. I need to have a story ready in case I get ambushed by the press tomorrow.
I think I can use the adrenaline story I told Harris. If a mother can lift a car off a baby, why couldn’t a woman cross fifty feet of floor and get the drop on a gunman in the blink of an eye?
And by tomorrow, the story may have been relegated from the front page to the police blotter. Who knows what might happen during the night?
Satisfied with the story, I hadn’t bothered to get undressed, just threw myself across the bed. No reason to get undressed when you have no clean clothes to change into. It was amazing how quickly I fel asleep.
So now it’s a quick face wash, a cal down to the front desk to let them know I’m checking out and I’m headed
