Companions of the Night Page 10

  He dropped the nightgown farther along, then left the creekbed, veering off through the underbrush They weren't backtrailing, and Kerry could only hope Ethan knew where he was going She had no sense of where they were in relation to the car.

  And Ethan wasn't talking to her. He hadn't said a word—besides "Give me the pillow"—since they'd left Regina's body at the clearing. He was walking faster than she could comfortably keep up with, but she didn't want to hold on to his jacket the way she'd done earlier. And she certainly wasn't going to beg him to slow down when he could easily see for himself she was having trouble. She tramped along behind him, snapping twigs, skidding down embankments with a flurry of dead leaves, uprooting plants when they climbed a steep incline, and puffing open-mouthed with the exertion. She didn't dare let the distance between them grow to more than a few feet or she'd likely misjudge where he'd stepped and land in ground that was boggy rather than just wet. The only way she could keep up was noisily, and if he didn't like it, he could say so.

  He didn't say a thing.

  She had a chance to catch her breath when Ethan stopped to set one of the sheets on the soggy kind of ground she'd been avoiding. He picked up a rock, big enough that a normal man probably would have had a hard time budging it, and hurled it so that it landed on the sheet. Both began to sink immediately.

  Then they were back to walking.

  Just when Kerry had begun to give up hope that they'd ever find their way out of the woods, they finally reached the road, the stolen Shadow just a few feet from where they'd emerged.

  "What about...?" She gestured vaguely to the other sheet, the comforter, and the quilt he was still carrying.

  He threw them into the backseat, which she took as his subtle way of telling her not to worry, that they'd dispose of them later. And, indeed, as they passed through Spencer-port—once more heading toward Rochester—he flung the denim jacket out the window without even slowing down.

  He still wasn't talking when they returned the Shadow and exchanged it for his original Skylark.

  "It'd be interesting," she told him, "to be here when the customer and the mechanics start arguing about the mileage and the half-empty gas tank and all the mud."

  Still no answer, despite two attempts at conversation on her part. Sulking, she figured. Be like that. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the window.

  She expected that they'd turn around and head back toward Brockport, toward finally doing something about finding Ian and Dad, but he continued on to Rochester. They stopped at an observation point that looked out over the Erie Canal, where he weighted down the second sheet with a rock and threw it into the water. He picked up a few extra rocks, which he tied up in the comforter, but they didn't get rid of that until they were passing over the bridge that spanned Irondequoit Bay.

  Kerry checked her wristwatch It was past 5:00. The last several weeks, her alarm for school, set at 6:30, had gone off while it was still dark outside. She estimated sunrise was about 7:00. Enough time to ditch the quilt and make it back to Brockport, if that was his intent. Not that they could go back to the house he had identified as his uncle's. Whoever had killed Regina had to know about it and could come during the day while he was helpless. She stole a quick glance at Ethan. She seriously doubted he planned to ask her to guard his sleep.

  The thought of sleep made her eyes droop. It had been so long since her few hours' worth of sleep Thursday night. After all the running around and emotional strain of tonight, she was surprised, now that she thought about it, that she'd made it this long.

  She stifled a yawn, and Ethan glanced at her. Which was more than he'd done the last couple hours.

  "Where are we going to spend the day?" she asked in the midst of a second, bigger yawn.

  He seemed to be considering not answering, but he finally said, "Rochester subway system."

  "Rochester doesn't have a subway," she said.

  "It did until the fifties," Ethan told her.

  She thought this was good news, that he hadn't gotten confused with Buffalo—since at this point there probably wasn't enough time to get there before dawn. But she couldn't be sure. She didn't even know what to hope for anymore, everything had gotten so muddled.

  She asked, "So what happens to an old subway system? Doesn't it get knocked down and filled in?"

  "Most of it did," Ethan agreed.

  "So this will be underground?"

  "Yes."

  "And really dark?"

  "That's the point."

  "I mean really, really dark?"

  He looked at her but didn't answer.

  Rats, she was thinking. And assorted creepy-crawling things. Creepy-crawling all over her while she couldn't even see them. And the kind of people who lived in sewers and on park benches—not just eccentric people like Phyllis, the little old lady who came into the store with cans and bottles she collected for the refunds and who always wore her clothes backward so the CIA would get confused when they tried to follow her—but drug users and escaped convicts and perverts. She remembered, for the first time in hours, the handcuffs, which would guarantee she'd be absolutely unable to defend herself.

  Stop it, she told herself. Ethan would hardly choose to sleep where there were humans about, not while he'd be unable to protect himself.

  Rats and creepy-crawling things. She tried to reassure herself that she could make noise to keep them away.

  And hope the noise didn't attract the perverts.

  Suddenly she wasn't the least bit sleepy.

  Ethan pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour supermarket. "Now what?" she asked miserably as he led her into the store.

  "Flashlight," he told her. And, when she looked up hopefully, he added, "I don't need you getting hysterical."

  She didn't argue with him about it.

  While he picked up two heavy-duty flashlights, the kind with six-volt lantern batteries, to last throughout the daylight hours, she took the opportunity to use the rest room. She half suspected he might demand to accompany her, but whether he was beginning to trust her or was just reluctant to make a scene, he let her go on her own.

  Just when she'd decided that it didn't make any difference what she hoped or thought, that she could never escape no matter how she tried.

  But the situation hadn't changed Dad and Ian were still missing, and Ethan was her best chance of finding them.

  She relocated him in the video department, watching, of all things, 101 Dalmations. But he had considered that she might not come back, she thought, determined to read human expression into his eyes, into the fact that he linked arms with her.

  "In the movies," she pointed out to him, "a vampire could have turned into a bat or mist and followed me."

  "In the movies," Ethan countered, "Lassie never peed on the rug."

  Arm in arm they approached the cash registers. "Snack?" he asked her.

  After he'd been nice enough to provide for light and a bathroom stop, she was sure he was about to do something thoroughly reprehensible. She had the awful feeling he was talking about the cashier. In the bright lights of the store, she saw that he'd lost most of the color he'd had earlier in the evening. Had he eaten—fed was the word he'd used—before she ran into him early in the evening? Probably not. The realization hit her that the color she'd seen in his cheeks had probably been from drinking the blood of the laundry vampire hunters last night.

  When she didn't answer, Ethan tossed a box of sugar doughnuts on the conveyor belt. "All we've got back in the car is Coke and chips," he reminded her.

  But then, as they walked back outside, lest she begin to think too kindly of him, he took her arm and whispered into her ear, as though they were conspirators together, "There were too many people."

  Good, she wanted to say. But was it good for her if he got too hungry?

  Back on the road, she asked, "Why did you buy Coke and chips? Can you eat some foods?"

  "I entertain," Ethan said. He looked over at her and
gave a wicked grin. "Occasionally."

  "I see. Sort of like the old witch in 'Hansel and Gretel.'"

  "Sort of," Ethan agreed. "It works out especially well with college students. I give them all the beer they can drink. They pass out." He gave her a quick glance, to make sure she understood. "Etcetera."

  She didn't like where she had led this, and switched directions. "So where's this subway station?"

  "It's not a station."

  "Whatever." She leaned her head against the window. The window was cold, but it was warm in the car, and dark, and she had already survived a lot longer than she had originally thought possible, and he hadn't killed anybody in her presence yet, and she only planned to close her eyes for a second...

  ...but the next thing she knew there was a bright light, and she was lying down on the ground.

  Ethan had hold of her wrist.

  She was instantly awake enough to know that he was going to sink his teeth into her arm but not awake enough to fight. Then she felt the cold circlet of metal and heard a click.

  She tried to sit but was brought up short because she was handcuffed to a solid-feeling section of track. "You did that," she accused him.

  "I did what?"

  "You made me fall asleep."

  "You were predisposed to anyway," he told her.

  They were in a tunnel. There was a lot of rubble but no garbage—probably meaning no people. It was no doubt all for the best that while the glow of the flashlight he'd set by her was bright in their immediate area, she couldn't see very far. The tunnel looked ready to be brought down by a good sneeze.

  He set the second flashlight, unlit, right by her hand, in case the first's battery wore down. Her backpack and the bags from the two grocery stores were also within easy reach.

  "You didn't want me seeing how to get in here," she said as he sat down cross-legged near her but not near enough for her to be able to reach.

  He just smiled.

  "Did you carry me?" It was a disconcerting thought, that he'd had her completely helpless. Not that she wasn't completely helpless in any case....

  Had he bitten her while she'd been asleep? Would she know? She didn't think she felt weak.

  She managed to refrain from touching her neck to check, but he seemed to guess what she was thinking anyway. His smile flickered at the edge of genuine amusement.

  "You didn't need me at all, did you?" she asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "In the laundry. When I thought I was rescuing you. You could have just ... used your hypnotic vampire powers—"

  "Too much adrenaline."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  He was having a hard time not laughing at her. "I could have put the thought in their heads that they wanted to sleep, but they were too keyed up and would have resisted."

  She sighed. "Were you ever in any real danger from them?"

  "Certainly," he answered cheerfully enough.

  "But you probably could have escaped without me?"

  Ethan made a point of pausing to consider, a mere politeness, she was sure. "I wasn't incredibly worried yet," he admitted. "But you had no way of knowing that. And it was very kind of you to want to help."

  "You're being too friendly," she told him. "You're making me nervous."

  "Good night, Kerry," he said with a laugh, lying down on the ground.

  She started to lie down also, but she jumped when she realized Regina's wadded-up quilt was under her head. Even though she couldn't see any blood, she shoved it away in disgust.

  Ethan was watching. "You might get cold," he said.

  "Not that cold," she answered, though she could already feel the chill seeping into her.

  "You're being silly." He closed his eyes and lay still for a moment, but then he took off his jacket and tossed it at her.

  "What about you?" she asked, hardly able to keep her teeth from chattering.

  He opened his eyes yet again. "Vampires only feel the most extreme temperatures," he told her. "I was wearing the jacket so as not to be conspicuous."

  Kerry lay back down, wondering if her sleepiness was his effect or just the last thirty hours catching up. "What about tomorrow?" she asked. She ignored the fact that she was beginning to think like a vampire, marking time by nights rather than days. "What's the plan?"

  When he didn't answer, she looked and saw that his eyes were closed. She checked her watch: 7:05. She knew that his heart did beat, although very slowly, during his waking hours. Did it slow down even further, or even stop entirely, by day? She fell asleep before she could figure it out.

  Chapter Twelve

  KERRY WOKE UP at about 10:00 A.M., her back sore, her right arm—the shackled one—stiff, her toes numb, and the rest of her body aching with cold. The light was still on. No creepy-crawlies in sight, and Ethan hadn't twitched.

  Finally she pulled the quilt to her. Without looking closely, she spread it out just enough so she could lie on top. It would protect her somewhat from the cold, hard ground. Any blood, she tried to assure herself, would have been on the sheets and comforter. Still, she was sure she'd never fall asleep again.

  The second time she slept, she dreamed about Regina making Ethan into a vampire. She was aware enough to know that she was dreaming and that, anyway, he had already admitted this wasn't the way it had happened.

  But she dreamed it the way he had described it.

  He was lying by the side of the road, his head on Regina's lap. His expression was frightened and brave and defiant all at once, the same as it had been at the laundry, the darkness of his hair accentuating the paleness of his skin. Regina, looking beautiful but cold and cruel, leaned over him. She tipped his chin up, arching his neck, and set her lips against his throat. She caressed his face and hair gently, but Kerry could see this was only so he wouldn't struggle as she drank his blood. Because it was a dream, Kerry could feel what Ethan felt, which was fear—how could it not be?—and shame, but also pleasure, which was the reason for the shame. Kerry tried to wake herself up but couldn't. His breathing came faster and faster, until, with a shudder of pain, it stopped entirely. Then he opened his eyes.

  With that, finally, Kerry woke. It was only early afternoon, but she didn't dare sleep again.

  The trouble was, awake, she kept thinking about her family: Was Dad okay? He wouldn't try anything brave and stupid, would he? And how about Ian? Did kidnappers routinely let little kids bring their stuffed koala bears with them? And where was Mom when they needed her?

  Best to fill her mind with other thoughts, Kerry decided. Any other thoughts.

  The flashlight seemed to be getting dimmer, so she turned on the backup flashlight, turning off the first to conserve the battery in case they got desperate. From her backpack she took out the book she was supposed to have read for literature class. With Regina's quilt wrapped around her, munching on boxed sugar doughnuts and potato chips and sipping Coke, which was as cold as if it had been refrigerated, she finished the story. She hadn't seen a major plot twist coming, and she automatically deducted fifteen points from her potential test score on the basis of an essay answer that made no sense in light of the way the story had ended.

  Eventually she got bored enough that she not only did her math homework, she started the next unit's assignment as well. Like I have much chance of ever making it back to school, she thought.

  Ethan woke with a sigh at 4:35.

  Kerry would have been willing to bet that if she looked it up in an almanac that would have been the exact moment the sun disappeared beneath the rim of the world. She was about to say "Good morning," but that was ridiculous under the circumstances, and "Good evening" sounded too much like a cartoon version of a Transylvanian count. "Hi," she said.

  Ethan sat up, exhibiting none of the slow, gingerly movements she had needed before she could move without stiffness. He did give a little stretch, putting his arms around his knees. See what a couple hundred years' practice sleeping in graveyards will do for your physique, she
told herself.

  "Still here," he commented. Hard to tell whether he was surprised.

  She held up her arm to show it was still securely shackled to the track.

  "I truly hope that wasn't a hardship," he said.

  She had found she was most disinclined to believe him when he used words like honestly and truly, though in this instance she couldn't see what he had to gain by lying. "I was okay," she told him. Even in this light she could tell he was paler than last night, and she didn't want to say anything that might get him annoyed enough to see her as a meal. Not that she estimated he'd need much of an excuse. "What's the next step?" she asked.

  He indicated her backpack. "Do you have a change of clothes in there?"

  "My school clothes," she answered. "What I wore yesterday." She saw that the cuffs of her supermarket-uniform pants were muddy from their trek through the Bergen Swamp. How had Ethan managed to stay clean? When she sniffed at her blouse, she found that it stank of gasoline. Day-old clothes couldn't be worse than that.

  He got the key from his pocket and came to unlock the handcuffs.

  "Your hair is longer than yesterday," she said.

  "Yeah." He sounded tired, or disgusted. "Our bodies have a tendency to revert to the state they were in when we first became vampires. My hair was longer then I have to cut it every day, or in two days it's down to my shoulders."

  That could be recently, Kerry thought. People wore their hair all sorts of lengths nowadays. On the other hand, she knew the 1960s were famous for boys wearing long hair. She'd seen movies set in the 1950s and was fairly certain short hair was in back then. The only other times she was aware of men wearing long hair were during the Civil War and in colonial times She really hoped Ethan was from no further back than the '60s.

  She rummaged in her backpack and found a spare ponytail elastic for him.

  "Thanks " This time he did sound surprised His hair was just long enough that he was able to pull it back into a tight tail.

  Kerry thought it made him look like a drug pusher. "You cut it yourself?" she asked.

  "Barbers notice things like people coming in every day." Perhaps in repayment for the elastic, Ethan started massaging her wrist to get all the feeling back into it The corpse coldness of his touch did more to stiffen her muscles than his attempt at being helpful relaxed them. "I was lucky to be well shaved at the time," he added, uncommonly talkative. "When vampires who have beards want to get rid of them, they have to shave two or three times a night."