along the lines of, “SHOOT HIM SHOOT HIM SHOOT HIM.”
Maximus was very obliging. I watched between my fingers as he shot three bullets into the Drinker. Head, heart, and stomach. The Drinker stutter stepped to the side and collapsed forward onto his knees.
“Why?” he managed to groan.
Maximus walked up behind the Drinker and put one foot between his shoulder blades. “You touched her,” he said harshly before he drove the heel of his boot down and the Drinker turned to ash.
“Holy shit,” I gasped, scuttling back on my hands and feet crab style. “Holy shit. What happened? What did you do? He – he
“He’s gone. That’s all that matters. Get up, Lola. We can’t stay here.”
I took his offered hand, still staring at the spot on the sidewalk where the Drinker had simply… disappeared. Shaking my head, I looked dazedly at Maximus. “So you were what, like following me or something?”
Maximus’s fingers reached out toward my face. I flinched automatically and his hand hesitated in midair. “Your hair is tangled,” he said softly.
I held my breath as he pushed my hair behind my shoulders, using his fingers to comb out the worst of the snarls. For an instant his thumb lingered on the curve of my collarbone before he withdrew his hand and cleared his throat. “The bruises on your neck are already fading. You didn’t get rid of the scars yet, I see.”
I cleared my throat as well. Maximus had managed to do it with a quiet
His eyebrows lifted. “Ask away.”
“Well…” How, exactly, did one ask if they were turning into a vampire? “The thing is…”
Maximus offered me one of his rare smiles. “You are not becoming one of them.”
“I’m not?” I said with relief.
“No. Consider your fast healing a side effect of the bite. When the scars are removed, it will go away.”
“Oh.” I glanced down at the scars. Such tiny things to have caused so much worry. At least now I could tell Dad and Travis the real reason I had survived going through a windshield.
“What are you doing out here in the open so close to night?” Maximus asked, all traces of compassion vanishing as quickly as the Drinker’s body had. “Do you have a death wish?”
“Of course not,” I said indignantly. “For your information I have found a perfectly safe place to stay.”
“That doesn’t exist.”
“What doesn’t?”
“A safe place,” he said.
I stiffened. “We tried to get out of town but they must have detonated some kind of bomb in the road. We couldn’t get to the interstate.”
“We?” His head cocked to the side.
Damn it. I wasn’t going to tell Maximus about Dad and Travis. “Nothing. No one. Nevermind. I misspoke. It happens when I’m nervous.”
“You don’t trust me.” He stated it matter of fact and he was right, of course, but the brief flickering of hurt that crossed his face took me by surprise.
“I – I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t,” Maximus said, studying me closely.
“Shouldn’t what?”
“Trust me.”
He was impossible. “I have to go back.”
“Back to where?”
“The Ren-damn it. How do you
Another smile, this one longer than the last. I ruthlessly ignored the answering flutter in my belly. “None of the above. So the Renner Hotel, hmm? Not a bad choice, all things considered. Who is with you?”
Why fight the inevitable? “My dad and my best friend.” Something in the assuming nature of his tone caught my attention and I quickly added, “Wait. Are there other survivors that you know about? Anyw-in the town?” I was about to say ‘anywhere’ but I changed my mind at the last second. If the entire world had been destroyed, I didn’t want to know about it. At least not yet. As my Mom used to say, you have to focus on the little things to see the big picture.
His shoulders lifted and fell beneath his leather jacket. “There are always survivors. You know what they say about cockroaches, don’t you?”
I shook my head. I was not, by any means, a cockroach expert.
“If the world was destroyed by a nuclear blast, cockroaches would survive.”
“Are you comparing me to a cockroach?” I asked skeptically.
His teeth glittered white in the darkness. “What if I am?”
“Then I would say you’re crazy. This isn’t some kind of nuclear blast or a war or something.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Lola.” Maximus stepped closer, pushing into my personal space. I let him push. I liked to see his face up close. To see the color of his eyes. The curve of his lips. The unruliness of his hair. “This is a war,” he said softly, so softly I had no choice but to lean towards him to. He angled his body to mine. We were as close as two people could physically be without touching. My breath caught in my throat, refusing to go up or down.
“What kind of war?” I managed to croak.
“A war to end all wars.” His eyes burned into mine. “A war to end the human race.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The words rang in my head. Our eyes held until I looked away, over his shoulder. I saw the case of beer that had gone flying out of my hand when the Drinker grabbed me and brushed past Maximus to pick it up. He followed me, silent as a shadow.
“Beer?” he said as his gaze dropped to the case I had balanced against my hip. “You risked your life for beer?”
I could tell by the disgust in his voice that any special moment that may or may not have sprung up between us was gone. Hitching the beer up a little higher, I tightened my arm around it protectively. “It’s not for me. It’s for my dad. He needs it. To… to fall asleep,” I finished lamely. I had never told anyone about Dad’s drinking problem before. Not even Travis. He probably should have caught on when I stopped inviting him to my house, but Travis was oblivious about stuff like that. Real problems were beyond his scope of