anightwithoutstarsfinal Read online

  Maximus’ chest rose and fell with every sharp intake of breath. His eyes were dark. His fists clenched tight. Without giving myself time to think about what I was doing I stepped closer and touched his arm.

  He jolted and looked down to where my fingers were splayed across the sleeve of his leather jacket. His muscles were clenched so tight he was nearly vibrating from all the tension coursing through him. Neither of us moved.

  The cornstalks rustled quietly as they closed in around us, cutting away the outside world. Maximus lifted his head and our eyes met. He swallowed hard, his Adams apple jerking. When he lifted his other arm and settled his hand on my shoulder I held perfectly still. He captured a lock of my hair and rubbed it back and forth across the rough pad of his thumb. Our breathing grew ragged, then calmed as we synched with each other. One breath in, one breath out. One breath in, one breath out.

  I wondered if he was going to kiss me, and guilt warred with anticipation as I thought of what it would feel like. Rushed and sloppy, as Everett’s kisses had been? Or slow and sensual, as though I was slowly sinking into something deeper, something meaningful?

  His gaze went lower, lingering on the curve of my mouth. The hand on my shoulder tightened, fingers pressing down. I closed my eyes…

  “Stop lagging behind,” he growled. “We don’t have all night.”

  Tossing a bucket of ice water in my face would have had the same effect. My eyes flew open as he turned and stalked into the corn, leaving me staring after him like an idiot. I felt like an idiot, not because I’d thought he was going to kiss me, but because I’d stood in the middle of a dark field with my eyes closed while the screams of the dead and dying rang in my ears.

  What kind of person was I?

  Maximus was an asshole, but at least he was an asshole with a gun that saved my life while I… I was just a snarky, sarcastic girl with a chip on her shoulder the size of a small country.

  My mother’s words, not mine.

  Maximus and I reached the hotel wrapped in stony silence. Without the benefit of light it really did look abandoned, and I supposed hiding out here wasn’t the worst idea Dad ever had. Not that I would be telling him that, especially after I almost had my neck popped off trying to get his beer. If the entire case were gone by tomorrow morning he would be the one going out to get more. I wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

  The front door was one of those old fashioned spinning ones that allowed multiple people to enter at once. I’d never liked them, even when they didn’t lead inside creepy old hotels.

  “Move.” As though he could sense my hesitation Maximus brushed past me and threw his weight against the door. It gave with a loud mechanical whine and I glanced nervously over my shoulder, half expecting a small army of Angelique’s to come flying out of the corn.

  “They shouldn’t venture this far out of town.”

  I turned and caught Maximus staring at me, his face half covered in shadow. “Shouldn’t? That’s not exactly reassuring.”

  He shrugged, as though to say what do you want me to do about it? I followed him into the lobby, sucking in my belly to squeeze between the door and the wall.

  The inside of the hotel had fared no better than the outside over the years. Silver light trickled in through the few windows that weren’t boarded up. I hugged my arms tight to my chest as I looked around, observing the toll neglect and decay had taken on the old building. The scent of mold and dust hung heavily in the air, clogging up my nostrils and making me sneeze.

  I wandered further into the lobby, my footsteps echoing on the hardwood floor. Nearly everything had been stripped away; even the paintings that once hung on the wall were gone, leaving behind empty hooks and faded rectangles on the blue wallpaper. A few chairs were scattered here and there. The front desk remained, although it leaned heavily to the right and two of the four drawers had been ripped out.

  “Where is your family?” Maximus asked. He stood in front of the revolving door, arms crossed and legs braced. The case of beer sat beside him. I didn’t bother asking him to pick it up. If Dad wanted it, he could come down and get it.

  “My dad said they would be in room thirty-three. No, two. Thirty-two.” I tilted my head back to study the ceiling. A glass chandelier hung from an old-fashioned brass fixture in the middle of the lobby. Bits of plaster peeled around it, leaving flakes of white dust on the floor. It was hard to imagine what the hotel must have looked like in its prime, but I liked to think it was beautiful.

  Maximus moved silently across the room. “We’ll have to go higher than that.”

  “Higher?” I asked, confused.

  His dark eyes flitted to mine. “Drinkers are leery of heights. They will go up if they absolutely have to, but they prefer to stay close to the ground. The higher you are the greater your chances.”

  “Remind me how you know so much about them again?” I asked as we bypassed the elevator and headed for the stairs. Maximus held the door open behind him and he answered when it clicked shut, plunging the stairwell into absolute darkness. I reached out instinctively, looking for something to steady myself. Wouldn’t you know that something turned out to be Maximus’ arm.

  In the sudden silence that followed his sharp intake of breath sounded inexplicably loud. I snatched my hand away.

  Bad, I scolded myself. Very bad. I needed to be concentrating on staying alive, not dreaming about what it would feel like to have Maximus’ mouth on mine. It’s just hormones, I told myself. Just stupid teenage hormones that clearly didn’t understand the severity of the situation.

  Maximus cleared his throat and began to climb the stairs. “I’ve had time to study them,” he said over his shoulder. “The way they move. How they kill. Their strengths and weaknesses.”

  “So you’ve known about them for a while.” Clinging tight to the metal railing I managed to find by sweeping my fingers across the wall, I followed him up. Unlike the rest of the hotel, they had been built for practicality, not showmanship. Ten steps up, a small landing, a sharp left turn, and another ten steps. By the second landing I was confident enough to walk a little more quickly, although I kept my hand on the railing. Why break my neck falling down a flight of stairs when there was a perfectly good drinker waiting to do it for me?

  “I have,” Maximus acknowledged.

  “And you didn’t think to tell anyone?”

  He stopped so suddenly I slammed into his back.

  “Ouch,” I said, rubbing my nose. “A little warning would be nice.”

  “Every human on earth has heard of vampires. Books have been written about them. Movies have been made. Children dress up in fake blood and plastic fangs for Halloween.”

  “And your point is?” I asked when he fell silent.

  His coat rustled as he turned. “My point is we’ve known about the drinkers since the beginning of time. Once they were feared and openly hunted down like the vermin they are. But as the centuries passed they grew smarter. They lived in the shadows, killing only those no one would miss. The homeless. The helpless. The hopeless. Soon they were forgotten and became fable instead of fact.”

  “Until now.”

  The edges of Maximus’ eyes glittered white in the darkness. “Until now. Tell me, Lola, what would you have done if I came up to you three days ago and told you then what I am telling you now?”

  “I’d have thought you were nuts.”

  “Precisely. How can you warn someone of something they already know, but choose to ignore?”

  It was, all things considered, a valid point. If Maximus had gone around talking about monsters that lived in the dark and drank human blood he would have been locked up, or at the very least laughed out of town. That was the thing about people. We were more than happy to invite the supernatural into our homes every night, but ask us to believe what we watched on the television was real and our minds were blown. Real Housewives, yes. Vampires, no.

  “But how do you know about them?”

  “Let’s just say I
have an open mind.”

  He began climbing the stairs again. Annoyed and distracted I hurried after him, but my right foot didn’t quite clear the first step. My shriek of alarm echoed in the small corridor as my arms spun in circles and I teetered on the edge of the landing, a half-inch away from crashing down two flights of stairs.

  Suddenly two strong, capable hands closed around my waist and quite simply lifted me up, pulling me away from danger and setting me down beside the wall. I collapsed against the cool brick, pressing my face into a groove while I waited for my racing heartbeat to return to normal.

  “Are you always this clumsy, or is it only in life and death situations?” Maximus asked dryly.

  “Shut up.”

  From somewhere above us came the sound of a door slamming and the unmistakable pounding of footsteps. I drew in a sharp breath and instinctively moved closer to Maximus, who wrapped one arm around my side and jerked me against him. My cheek fell against his chest and I heard the beating of his heart through the smooth leather of his jacket. It was soft and steady, a hard contrast to the rigid lines of his body.

  “Go down to the bottom of the stairwell and wait,” he hissed in my ear.

  “What about you?” I heard a sharp click and felt a cool brush of metal against my bare arm. “Oh yeah,” I whispered, feeling foolish. “You have a gun.”

  “Go down,” he repeated, “and wait. Now, Lola.”

  I didn’t like the idea of running and hiding. It went against the part of my brain that said ‘GO-FIGHT-WIN!’ like I was some kind of deranged cheerleader. “But—”

  The arm around my waist gave a threatening squeeze.

  “Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “Just don’t… die or anything, k?”

  “Are you worried about me?” Maximus sounded amused.

  I could feel my cheeks turning bright red and was suddenly very, very thankful it was pitch black. “No, I’m worried about what would happen to me if something happened to you.”

  His low chuckle sent my heart pounding again, this time in a not-so-entirely-unpleasant sort of way. “Don’t trip on your way down.”

  I stepped away from him and made a face.

  “I saw that.”

  “But it’s so dark. How can you even—”

  “I have excellent night vision.”

  I raised my hand, knuckles pointing towards him, one finger in particular raised high above the others. “Can you see that?”

  “Very mature.”

  “I do my best.”

  “Lola…”

  “I’m going, I’m going,” I grumbled. Carefully turning around I held fast to the railing and began my descent down the stairs. Fear was an excellent motivator – you haven’t gotten in a real workout until you’ve tried running for you life – and I reached the bottom landing in half the time it had taken me to go up. My hand hovered on the circular doorknob as I stood poised to flee in either direction. If the drinkers came from above and below I was royally screwed, but in the dark where the only sound came from the panting of my breath I tried not to think about that.

  Seconds stretched into minutes as I waited. Unable to remain perfectly still I began to fidget, first with the hem of my shirt and then with a long curl of hair, spinning it round and round my finger.

  The loud BANG from somewhere above me made me jump. It wasn’t the sound of a gunshot, but rather something – or someone – falling. A high-pitched yelp echoed down the stairwell. A yelp that could have come from one of two things. A whiny puppy or…

  “TRAVIS?” I shouted, cupping my hands around my mouth to make my voice carry. “TRAVIS, IS THAT YOU?”

  “Lola,” came the answering wail, “Lola get him off me!”

  I took the stairs two at a time and was well out of breath by the time I reached the third landing. A flashlight knocked into one corner of the tiny space supplied enough light to see Travis’ terrified face as he lay on his stomach with Maximus crouched on top of him.

  “Get off him!” I cried, pulling at Maximus’ arm. “That’s my friend. That’s Travis. You’re hurting him!”

  Maximus swung his head towards me and scowled. “Hurting him? Your friend blinded me with the flashlight and hit me in the back with a baseball bat.”

  “You did?” Impressed, I kneeled beside Travis and patted him on the shoulder. “Nice work.”

  “Can’t breathe,” he wheezed out.

  “Maximus.”

  He stood up reluctantly and stepped to the side, out of the light. I grabbed Travis’ hand and hauled him to his feet. His hair was mussed and one side of his face was red from where it’d been pressed against the floor, but otherwise he looked fine. “I heard you scream so I came out and when I saw him” – he gestured to Maximus – “I thought he was, you know, one of them. So I beat him up.”

  “You struck me once,” Maximus corrected icily, “and tripped over your own foot.”

  I couldn’t help the grin that slid across my face. Reaching out, I tousled Travis’ hair. “My hero.”

  “Who is this guy, anyways?” Travis swatted my hand away, but I didn’t miss the quick blush that stole up and over his cheeks.

  “He’s the one I told you about before. The one who knows about the drinkers.”

  Maximus dropped one shoulder against the wall and frowned his disapproval. “You told him about me?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t tell people about me.”

  I rolled my eyes. I was too accustomed to Maximus’ brooding temperament to take offense to the hard edge in his tone, but Travis wasn’t.

  “Is he always like this?” he whispered.

  “Pretty much. Usually he’s worse. Where’s my dad?”

  Travis shifted from foot to foot and scratched the side of his head. His voice little more than a mumble he said, “In the room, uh, sleeping. He found an old bottle of wine downstairs in the restaurant.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Surprised and angry and hurt, all rolled into one. I guess some small part of me had hoped with all our lives on the line Dad would have been able to manage his drinking, at least for the night. Talk about high expectations.

  “Let’s go,” I said dully. The excitement at seeing Travis paled in comparison to the disappointment I felt for my dad. Picking up the flashlight, I pointed it up the stairs. “Maximus said we should sleep on the top floor. The drinkers don’t like heights.”

  “How does he know that?” Travis asked.

  “I don’t know.” Turning, I aimed the flashlight directly at Maximus’ face. Glowering, he raised his hand to protect his eyes. “But he’s going to tell us. In fact, he’s going to tell us everything he knows. Aren’t you, Maximus?”

  He waited until I moved the light to the side to say, “I will tell you what I can.”

  “Hear that?” I jerked the flashlight in Travis’ direction. The yellow light bounced off the wall and flashed across his face before settling on the railing. “He’ll tell us ‘what he can’. Well what if what you can isn’t good enough?” Riding high on a sudden surge of temper I started to point the flashlight back at Maximus, but in the blink of an eye the flashlight was gone.

  It was easy to forget how quick Maximus could move. His speed was uncanny, as was his ability to move in absolute silence. One moment he was lounging against the wall and the next he was behind me, one hand holding the flashlight, the other resting on my hip. The hand on my hip squeezed, fingers digging into bone. “You’re angry at your father,” he murmured into my ear, his voice too soft for Travis to hear, “not me. Channel the anger, Lola. Make it work for you, not against you.”

  I twisted out of his grasp. “Just because you’ve saved my life doesn’t mean you know me,” I snapped. Except he did. In one minute he’d figured out what my shrink never could.

  I was angry all of the time.

  Angry at Dad for not seeing how his drinking was ruining everything.

  Angry at Mom for walking out and never looking back.

  A
ngry at Big Sis for following in her footsteps.

  Usually I could tamp the anger down, slide it under the rug, and forget about it but every once in a while it overwhelmed me and I couldn’t tamp it down or slide it under the rug or forget about it, no matter how hard I tried. In those instances the only way I could relieve the pressure was to lash out at whoever was closest whether they deserved it or not. Odds were they never did, and the guilt of knowing I’d freaked out on someone for no reason was enough to start the whole process all over again.

  “Lola.”

  I looked up and caught Travis watching me, his eyes wide with concern. “I’m fine,” I said flippantly. “No big deal.”

  “If you want to talk about it—”

  I leveled him with a stare. “When have I ever wanted to talk about it? Just get your baseball bat, okay? And let’s go. I don’t want to stand in this damn stairwell all night.”

  Travis retrieved his bat and we trudged up the stairs after Maximus. When I felt my best friend loop his arm around my shoulders it seemed only natural to lean into the pressure, and for one blissful second I closed my eyes and felt all the weight I carried simply slip away.

  “Thanks for watching after my dad,” I said quietly as we reached the third floor hallway. The smell of must and mold was less distinct up here. The carpet was the thickest I’d ever walked on and felt like velvet when I reached down to touch it with my fingertips. There weren’t any windows in the hallway. The only light came from the flashlight Maximus carried. He shined it at every door we passed, ticking down the numbers until we reached the right one.

  “Anytime.” Travis tapped the bat against his foot. “It’s all kind of like a movie, you know?”

  I knew exactly what he meant. Hadn’t I drawn the same comparison myself? “A really bad movie.”

  “With horrible actors.”

  “And awful special effects.”

  It was sick and twisted and completely inappropriate, but we still grinned at each other. Travis even snickered.