Blood Memories

Chapter 19

Do you have a car?" I asked as we stepped outside the hotel.

Instead of answering, he looked up and down the street, then walked to an early-eighties, dirty-blue Camaro and climbed in the driver's side.

He couldn't possibly have rented this. What a piece of junk. Hardly his style.

"You should lock your doors down here anyway," I said. "Somebody too drunk to see might steal it."

His answering laugh made me nervous. The interior looked even worse. Marlboro boxes, Hershey bar wrappers, and Big Gulp cups covered the backseat and floor. As I slammed my door, Philip reached up with both hands and jerked the steering column five inches out of the dash, exposing red, black, and green wires.

"What are you doing?"

"Rewiring the ignition," he answered casually, as if we were talking about fall fashions.

Later I felt ashamed of my own reaction. "You can't do that. It's illegal."

Laughing again as the engine roared, he squealed the tires while pulling into traffic. "You are too tame. Or is this your gift again, eh?"

"Philip, stop the car. If the police catch you, they'll lock you in a cell."

Doing seventy-five as we hit the southbound on-ramp for Seattle, he glanced at me warily. "What are police to us? They are too slow to catch us. Bullets don't hurt us."

"So what do you do when you get pulled over?"

"I don't pull over unless I'm hungry."

He started weaving through traffic, the needle peaking ninety. Steering with one hand, he fished around on the dashboard, found a crusty Black Sabbath tape, and slammed it in. Ozzy's voice screamed out two rear-window speakers. Whoever owned this car really needed to be told what year it was. I hadn't seen a cassette player in years.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Seattle Center. This city is new to me, but Maggie said hunting in the center was good."

"You want to hunt now?"

"Don't you? We just woke up." His accent seemed to be getting worse instead of better, making me wish I spoke French.

"No, I fed last night."

"So don't feed." He shrugged. "Just hunt."

Maybe Maggie had been right about me. Maybe I hadn't seen enough in my one hundred and eighty-six years. "You just want to kill someone?"

He took his eyes completely off the road and stared at me. "Is this for real or are you playing? What do you do all night if not hunt?"

"Take care of William, read books, settle the bank accounts, talk to my investment broker. I don't know, just things."

"No?" Amused, almost pleased, he pushed the needle up higher. "William is gone. You are immortal, with no need for books and investment brokers."

That's the first time the word «immortal» sounded absurd to me. Webster's unabridged defines it as "not mortal; deathless; living forever." I know. I looked it up once. What a crock. We may not get any older, but the body count hit three last night. Sounded pretty mortal to me. Maybe Philip wasn't keeping score.

Watching him drive-his long hair flying out the window, his head bobbing to the music, his face sporting an adolescent grin-made me try to see beyond his gift. What was he besides beautiful and careless? His black Hugo Boss pants and Calvin Klein shirt suggested his taste was not only good, but up-to-date. Edward always bought Savile Row and Christian Dior, which worked on him but was sort of "older crowd"-sort of.

Philip also cared what Julian thought. Why? Why would Julian's opinion matter?

"Turn down the Mercer/Fairview exit," I said.

Downtown Seattle is a mass of one-way streets, confusing signs, and heavy traffic, but my too-happy companion drove as if he were on a backwoods dirt road.

"Where'd you learn to drive?"

"Paris," he answered. That figured. He found a pay-by-the-hour parking lot near the Space Needle and jumped out. "We ditch this car now."

"Whatever you say." Instinct screamed that it was time to ditch golden boy. But I didn't. Maybe he was the only true vampire among us-cold and fast and wild. Maybe Edward and I struggled too hard to hoard little bits of humanity and somehow never quite fit into either world. Philip didn't feed just on blood. He seemed to feed off the world, draining life and power and material wealth from anything unlucky enough to cross his path. And he did it without thought or remorse or pity-a purist in the true sense. Fascinating. Frightening.

"Look, a roller coaster," he said, smiling. Canned carnival music and bright lights flooded the scene. He bolted toward the bumper cars, and then stopped, looking back for me. "You like rides?"

"No… I don't know."

He jumped the few steps back to me, looking confused, as if he wanted to grab my arm but didn't know how. Again, his expression reminded me of a computer accessing data it couldn't find. Perhaps he'd forgotten how to touch someone he wasn't murdering.

"Come, Eleisha. Come on."

"How long has it been since you've hunted with someone else?"

His eyebrows knitted. "What year is it?"

What year? How could he be so up on fashion and not even know the year? "Don't you read the newspaper?"

That annoyed him. "Newspaper? For sheep and puppets. You start to believe your own gift."

"And you don't?"

The night lights and black corners pulled at him. I could see it in his eyes, and in spite of myself, it called to me as well.

"Too much talk," he said. "Come."

Changing his mind abruptly, he steered away from the carnival and headed down toward the fountain. I followed about a half step behind him, watching a wide variety of people pass us. Philip ignored all of them like an overfed cat turned loose in a science lab. We reached the huge round fountain in Seattle Center's heart. Four teenage kids sat on the lawn, smoking and talking. Philip headed straight for them.

A tall boy, about sixteen with a shaved head and two pewter skulls hanging in the same ear, took a long drag and noticed us. Apparently he didn't want extra company, because his lips tightened angrily at our approach, and then Philip smiled. All four of them smiled back. Too weird.

"Bum a smoke?" my partner asked, pointing to the cigarette.

"Here." Pewter Skulls held out the pack. "Where're you from?"

"France, but I like your city."

Philip's communication skills with the kid actually surprised me. I don't know what I expected. But the sight of him sitting on the grass smoking and making small talk didn't fit my mental image. Pewter Skulls introduced himself as Culker. The rest of the group included a boy named Scott with a green mohawk, a blond girl named Becky with small eyes and a blue leather miniskirt, and an African American girl named Jet in a pink, tie-dyed dress under a loose jean jacket. They were all about the same age. I thought the mohawk was passe. Becky seemed to have about four working brain cells, but Jet's face caught my attention, clean and straightforward. Part of me actually wanted to talk to her, but that wasn't my place here, not my gift. Philip had them eating from his hand.

He leaned back on his elbows. A mass of silky red-brown hair hung to the ground.

"Who's that with you?" Culker finally asked him.

I'd been sitting quietly behind Philip, hiding in his overwhelming shadow. A safe place, almost pleasant.

"Eleisha, say hello to our new friends."

I fell into my routine and focused on the ground. "Hi."

Scott turned to Philip. "Hey, if we give you the money, will you buy us some beer?"

"Where did you plan to drink it?"

"At Becky's. Her folks are gone. You want to come?"

This was too easy. Although if we trotted down to the nearest 7-Eleven, picked up a case of cheap beer, and then headed to Becky's, how would Philip manage to get someone off alone?

As we fell into step toward a store, I noticed Jet walking beside me and gave her an honest smile.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Seventeen."

"How old is he?"

"Twenty-nine."

She wasn't dumb. Due to our unnatural skin tone, our ages are often difficult to place. But Jet's questions struck a little deeper. Why would an incredibly beautiful, well-dressed, adult Frenchman want to hang with them when he had a pretty, seventeen-year-old girlfriend for company? It didn't make sense.

"You going out with Culker?" I asked to change the subject.

"Culker? No way. These guys are just my friends. I like your coat."

"Oh, thanks… Did you dye that dress yourself?"

"Yeah." She seemed pleased. "I do all kinds of stuff. Sell clothes at the Folklife Festival."

"What's that?"

"You don't know 'bout the festival? Where're you from?"

I smiled. "Portland."

She smiled back, and we talked all the way to a run-down mini-mart. Philip glanced back at me once. He went inside and came out with a case of Henry Weinhard's Ale that must have cost twice what Culker gave him. Didn't this situation seem unusual to any of them?

"Awesome," Scott said. "My car's two blocks south."

Becky kept moving closer to Philip. I'm sure he noticed.

We all piled into a rusted Buick Skylark with cigarette butts falling out of its ashtray. We ended up driving to Capitol Hill, but Scott spent twenty minutes trying to find a place to park.

Piles of dirt and garbage had been plowed to the sides of the road. One decrepit apartment building melted right into the next one. Every available parking space seemed filled with a dented Volkswagen Golf. Babies cried through open windows, and some guy down the block kept yelling, "You bitch!" over and over again.

I wanted to go home, but we didn't have one.

Scott finally managed to squeeze the Skylark between two cars, and everybody climbed out. I'd figured out by then that Becky's parents didn't live in a house.

"We can't be too loud," she said. "The guys below us are crack dealers. One of them gets mad easy."

Charming.

Something about her apartment's interior touched more sorrow than its outside. Small arrangements of dried flowers sat on paint-splattered tables. An old mattress was covered by a hand-stitched quilt. Cheap lace curtains blew out from chipped windowpanes. Someone cared about this place enough to try to make it a home.

Culker broke open a Henry's. "We should've bought some chips or M amp;M's."

"Order a pizza," Philip said. "Isn't that what you Americans do?"

"Can't, I'm almost broke."

"I'll pay."

Could they possibly be this blind? Jet sat alone. What was she thinking? It's funny how Wade had given me a different perspective of mortals. On impulse, I reached out and touched her mind-as I would have with Wade-not expecting to get through. Psychic pictures come to us only when feeding or when another vampire dies. But to my surprise, her immediate thoughts flowed into me as though she were speaking.

Philip was the most perfect thing she'd ever seen, and she usually didn't go for white guys. But what was he into? Why was he here? If he was looking for some kind of threesome, he'd pick Becky. That was obvious. Not that Jet cared. Her baby boy was with a sitter, and she ought to get back soon, anyway. His ears were bothering him, and she'd need to take him to the doctor tomorrow.

I pulled out, reeling internally. How long had that taken? Had she felt me? Only seconds seemed to have passed, and she continued watching Philip with the same cautious curiosity. She had a little boy? I wanted to know more but didn't know how to deal with the moment's revelation.

Was I more like Wade than I realized?

Philip caught my attention suddenly by sitting down next to Becky and touching her bare thigh. I hadn't seen him touch anyone yet, and the movement of his hand was slow, light, gentle. That's why he hadn't grabbed my hand in the carnival. Touching was only for victims.

The room fell silent as he leaned down and kissed her. Everyone-including me-watched the gradual movement of his open mouth as he licked her lips and face. His pale hand moved up her side, feather touch, like a concerned lover. Nobody else moved.

What was he doing? This didn't make sense. If he wanted to lure her away from her friends, he should have just asked. She'd have followed him off a cliff.

The red polyester couch they sat on showed huge gaping holes of foam rubber. Becky's breathing quickened when he moved to her neck. Completely lost in his gift, she tried to put her fingertips on his face. The scene changed.

Click.

He ripped out a chunk of her throat before I could blink-right in front of her friends. Instead of falling into a hazy state of slow motion, the world rushed to a hundred miles an hour. Scott started screaming as blood shot out of her jugular and covered his T-shirt. Philip jumped over the back of the couch and landed on top of him.

"No way, man," Culker kept repeating from the center of the room. "No way."

Philip stopped Scott's screaming by flipping him onto his stomach and breaking his neck with a loud crack. Then he smiled up at Culker.

Until that point, I'd been too off guard to move. What was he doing? He wasn't even feeding, just ripping and breaking bones. But they'd seen us. Both Jet and Culker could describe us right down to "any distinguishing features."

"You son of a bitch," I said in despair.

He turned his head toward me, laughing savagely. Jet bolted for the door. I caught her by whipping my left arm around her stomach and pulling her back into my chest. She was nearly a head taller than me. Her mouth formed a scream. Hating myself, hating Philip more, I grasped her entire chin with my right hand and jerked. Her body hit the floor before the scream ever escaped.

Culker began crying.

"Do it fast," I hissed to Philip.

It sounds cliche to compare Philip to an animal, but that's what he reminded me of. I mean it. He couldn't even talk. Culker seemed to know running was a waste of time and backed up against the wall.

Please don't let him start begging.

Philip was on him in a flash, tearing at his neck, but this time I heard sucking sounds. Often frightened by my own kind, sometimes confused, that was the first time I ever felt ashamed.

"We gotta go," I whispered. There was no way we could clean this mess up. Better just to leave it.

Philip dropped Culker's body and stared at me as if he didn't know who I was. His eyes made me step back.

"No," he said, finding his voice, red liquid dripping down onto his black shirt and vanishing against the darker color. "Not yet."

I'd thought the worst was over, but it wasn't. Putting his own wrist to his teeth, he tore it down to open veins and held it out. "Here, like with Edward."

For a minute I didn't get it. Then what he wanted came crashing down, followed by revulsion. "Stay away from me."

"Like Edward."

"Philip, don't."

Jet's dead body lay between me and the door. But in the time it took me to glance down at her, Philip had his hand around the back of my head, gripping my hair.

"You know nothing," he breathed in my ear. "You need me."

Survival instincts told me to do whatever he wanted and get away as soon as possible-please him and run. But I didn't. Something snapped. Grabbing his shoulder for support, I rammed my knee into his stomach hard enough to make him spit out a mouthful of Culker's blood.

"I don't need your arm." My own voice sounded unfamiliar. "I don't want you touching me. You're sick. You weren't even hungry, were you?"

He gasped once, eyes glazing over. He didn't hit me. "But I thought…" He looked confused. "You hunt with me now, like with Maggie or Edward."

"This isn't how we hunted! Any of us. Maggie left bodies sometimes, but at least she made sure they were drifters or dealers. She always took their ID, and she never killed anybody for any reason but to drain life force. Is this what you do in France?"

"We do as we want," he whispered. "We are not sheep, Julian and I. And how many have you killed in just this past hundred years? How many?"

"I'm not like you."

"You are. This moral piety will not comfort the dead."

His words hurt and left me wanting cool air. I ran into the hall and down to the street, not caring who saw me. The dirt and garbage still sat in large, ugly piles. The baby upstairs still cried.

"I don't want to hurt you," Philip said into my ear. He must have followed me down, swift and quiet.

"What do you want?"

"For you to be happy, like with Maggie or Edward."

Was that really his game? He'd been taught by someone that we have to live out our existence alone. Now was he questioning that? He and Julian had once thought me insane or weak for living close to other members of our kind. Did Philip want an instant family? He knew nothing of humans, and even less of vampires.

"You can't have everything you want," I said.

"Yes, I can." He smiled and threw his arms in the air. "We live forever. This is our heaven."

Before I could respond, he glanced around and spotted an old Firebird among the Volkswagens. "This way."

Not wanting to follow him, I looked down at my watch. Four o'clock. We'd been inside that apartment for over two hours? Felt like minutes. "All right, but we need to find a hotel. It'll be dawn soon."

He didn't answer but scowled at finding the car locked. Using his right elbow, he smashed the driver's window and opened the door, then unlocked my side. "Get in."

"Promise to take me to a hotel?"

"Wherever you want."

While he worked on starting the engine, I climbed in and watched him. "Why do you always take old muscle cars?"

"These are fast, solid, and they almost never have alarms."

"I thought you didn't care about police or getting caught."

He flashed me a dirty look and whipped out onto the street. My manner with him in the past half hour had been leaning toward foolish. If I wanted any control at all, I'd need to turn the manipulation beacon back on. He just made my skin crawl.

I was normally asleep by five or so. My eyelids felt heavy. "Have you ever been inside Maggie's place?" I asked.

"No."

"It's wonderful. I wish we could go there."

The passing minutes didn't bother me too much. Philip was doing ninety by the time we hit northbound I-5. I was actually beginning to relax when the first siren roared from behind us.

"Jesus, Philip, don't pull over."

"I hadn't planned to."

"Can you outrun him?"

For an answer, he laughed out the shattered window. "Now we are having fun, no?"

"No."

This was all we needed. A cop chasing us down in a stolen car with Philip's wrist torn open and his shirt soaked in blood.

"You'd better lose him. He'll be calling for backup."

"Too many movies," Philip answered, and then he glanced over at me. "Put on your seat belt. I'm not used to passengers."

Obeying him instantly, wondering how he could talk and drive so fast at the same time, I looked back to see the police car falling behind. A second siren wailed from our left.

Philip might have gotten me into this, but somehow I believed he would get me out. He wasn't scared or worried or putting on some macho show for my benefit-as a mortal would. His expression was focused but calm, every fiber, every muscle and reflex moving in rapid sequence.

Whipping to the right with no warning, he threw me off-balance, and I grabbed the dashboard.

"Hold on," he said.

We flew off I-5 onto the Bothell exit. Philip never took his eyes off the rearview mirror. Sirens still screamed, but no lights were visible. He turned behind the office building of an old wrecking yard and braked the Firebird so hard I jerked forward against my belt.

"Get out," he said, shoving his own door open.

We ran among rusty cars, trucks, motorcycles, and army jeeps as the sky slowly turned from black to dark gray. Our speed felt good, too quick for most mortals to keep up.

Philip slowed down next to an abandoned barn. The changing sky bothered him a lot more than the cops had. Me, too.

"We better get another car and find a hotel room," I said.

"There's no time."

Tearing the barn door open, he slipped inside. The building must once have been part of the wrecking yard. Hubcaps, blackened socket wrenches, and even an aged engine lay scattered in the grass. I followed Philip to find him on his knees, ripping up floorboards.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't answer, but my question had been pointless. I knew what he was doing-making a hole under the barn for us to sleep in.

"Here," he said, "get under here."

"We can't stay in this place. What if somebody comes? What if somebody finds us?"

"You would rather take chances outside? No one has been here in years. We'll be all right."

My eyelids felt even heavier than my arms, and what choice did I have? He was right. We had no chance outside. The sun would be up in a few moments. Walking over, I slid down into the crawl space between the ground and the barn floor. Philip's body dropped down next to mine. Lying on his back, he put all the boards back in place over us.

Part of me wanted to thank him, but if not for his reckless behavior, we wouldn't be here in the first place.

"Sleep now," he whispered. "We talk tonight."

"I've never slept on the ground before."

"Never?"

"No."

His next words were a jumble, and his hard body relaxed slightly in dormancy. I don't remember anything else.