anightwithoutstarsfinal Read online

  “There.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “That should hold them. This will be a good place to lay low for an hour or so.”

  “An hour?” I said, already shaking my head. “No, I need to get home now. I need to find my dad and my best friend—”

  “They’re looking for survivors. You go outside right now and they’ll tear you to shreds.” He spoke with a nonchalance that set the tiny hairs at the back of my neck on edge. “If you really want to help your dad and your friend the best thing you can do right now is stay alive.”

  Suddenly sixty minutes didn’t seem like that long of a wait.

  “Hop up on the desk,” he said.

  I studied him under the fringe of my eyelashes. The light had done nothing to soften his features. If anything he looked harder, meaner, and I was glad I’d stumbled into him. If I were going to rescue my dad and Travis I would rather do it with a badass by my side. But that didn’t mean I was going to start blindly following orders.

  “Excuse me?”

  The boy sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “This is not a democracy,” he said after a long pause. “I don’t want to help you. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do, but the moment you endanger my life you are on your own, do you understand?”

  “What does my getting on the desk have to do with endangering your life?”

  “When I ask you to do something you do it, no questions asked.”

  I’d never been very good at following directions. “And if I ask questions?”

  “Then I walk,” he said flatly. “I should walk out right—”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m going, see? I’m getting on the desk.” I pushed a chair out of the way and jumped up on the metal desk. My feet clanged against the side before I scooted forward until I was sitting on the very edge. “What now, oh great and fearless leader?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Let me see your knee.”

  Before I could stop him he was kneeling in front of me and rolling up my pant leg. His fingers brushed against my bare skin and all I could think was: thank God I shaved this morning. One hand cupped my calf while the other slowly probed around the edges of the wound. I heard a quiet intake of breath before he rocked back on his heels and glared up at me. “This is deep.”

  “I know.” All things considered, a little scratch on my knee was the least of my worries. With all the abuse my body had taken tonight I was lucky I wasn’t breathing through a tube.

  “How are you still walking?”

  I straightened my knee and bent towards it, studying the bloody scrape and the bits of grass and dirt that clung to the angry red skin. I guess it was pretty nasty looking. I sat back and glanced at the boy. Under his olive skin he suddenly looked pale and sweat gleamed on his forehead and upper lip. “Hey, you’re not going to faint or anything are you? Does blood gross you out? It grosses my friend Travis out. He can’t stand it.”

  He shot me a look. “Blood does not gross me out.”

  “Okay…,” I said slowly. “Then why do you look so—”

  “Did one of them bite you?”

  The question was so unexpected that I stared at him in shocked silence for a good ten seconds. How the hell did he know that? It wasn’t exactly your regular icebreaker. Hi, how are you? Oh, I’m great, how are you? Excellent, by the way did a girl bite you today? “What? I – uh – I have no idea what you’re – HEY!” I yelped when he grabbed my shoulders and dragged me to my feet.

  “Turn around.”

  “Who do you think—”

  My outraged protest withered and died when he grabbed my waist and spun me around until I was facing the desk. Thrown off balance I braced both hands against the top of it, my nails skittering across the fake wood. He began to pat me down, cop style. His fingers swept down my right arm and pressed over the top of my hand, right where I’d been bitten. He froze for half a second. I heard something being unzipped, followed by a soft click.

  He held a flashlight above my hand, pointing the beam directly over the bite marks. I looked as well, something I’d managed to avoid until now.

  I half expected to see my hand oozing puss and squirting blood. Not a great mental picture, but courtesy of actually paying attention during health class I knew human saliva contained over a thousand different types of bacteria. Think about that before the next time you suck on a paper cut.

  I wasn’t prepared for what was really there, which was… nothing. Well, nothing except for two white scars evenly spaced between my thumb and pointer finger. Two white scars shaped like half moons marking the spot where Angelique had sunk her fangs into me.

  “You were bitten.” The boy backed away from me so fast he knocked over a chair. The resounding crash sounded extra loud in the confined space.

  Cradling my arm tightly against my chest, I twisted around and glared. He was acting like I had some deadly contagious disease. It wasn’t my fault I’d been bitten. After all, I hadn’t exactly asked to be turned into a human chew toy. “Yeah, so she bit me. What’s the big deal, anyways? What’s it mean?”

  I didn’t like the way the boy was staring at me. I didn’t like it at all. Suddenly self conscious I turned my hand inwards and brushed it vigorously it against my shirt, hoping for one insane moment I could rub the scars off, but when I glanced down they were still there, even more glaringly obvious now that the surrounding skin was flushed a hot angry red.

  “What does it mean?” His laughter echoed through the storage unit, flat and humorless. “It means you’re screwed.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Maximus

  Well that didn’t sound very promising.

  I took a harder look at the scars. They were oddly shaped and it was strange the wound had healed so fast, but other than that I couldn’t see anything else wrong with them. My hand felt normal. I felt normal. In fact, considering what a beating I’d taken, I felt great. Adrenaline, I decided. It had to be the after effects of adrenaline.

  Lifting my chin, I looked at the boy and scowled. “Who are you?” I asked, realizing for the first time I didn’t know anything about the stranger I’d locked myself in a storage unit with. Who he was. Where he came from. What his plan was. Come to think of it, I didn’t even know his name.

  Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Great survival skills, Lola! To which I say until you’ve been chased through your neighborhood listening to the dying screams of your neighbors, I don’t want to hear it.

  “Let me see the bite marks again,” he said.

  I snorted. “No way, pal. Not until you start talking. You said you wanted to help me, right? So start helping me. What the hell is going on? What are those… those things out there?”

  Something flickered in his dark gray eyes. “What do you think they are?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.” Duh.

  “You’ve seen horror movies, haven’t you?” His smile was thin and fleeting. “Give it your best shot.”

  I toyed with the end of my braid. “Some kind of cult on a rampage?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Hmm… An inbred family of axe murderers?”

  “Try again.”

  “Okay, I’ve got it.” I snapped my fingers. “Vampires! I mean, they had fangs, right? That’s what they are. A horde of murderous vampires bent on destroying civilization as we know it.”

  “And we have a winner,” he said softly.

  “What do you mean we have a – wait, no. I wasn’t being serious. You do know what sarcasm is, don’t you?” I started to laugh, but one glance at his face and my throat closed up. “Don’t you?” I repeated.

  “Do you?”

  “I invented sarcasm.”

  “Then you must know I am not being sarcastic, not even a little bit, when I say your third guess was surprisingly accurate.”

  He sounded so damn sincere I actually believed him… for all of two seconds. Then the absurdity of what he was saying sank
in and I began to snicker. I couldn’t help myself. I mean, vampires? A cult, that was easy to believe. Crazy shit like that happened all the time. Axe murderers, Satan worshippers, even a military experiment gone wrong – all believable on some level. But vampires? As in burn in the sun, sleep in coffins, drink your blood vampires? Did he think I was an idiot?

  Looking back now, I really should have seen it earlier. But that’s the thing about the truth. Even when it’s staring you straight in the face if you only see what you want to, and I wanted something explainable.

  Travis was the one who believed in the supernatural, not me. I’d always had enough crap to deal with without feeling the need to invent more. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, aliens… They all added up to the same thing in my book.

  Complete and utter bullshit.

  “Is this some sort of reality show or something?” I asked suspiciously. Instantly I looked to the corners of the room, searching for a telltale blinking red light. When I couldn’t find any on the ceiling I began to search the chairs. The boy watched me with his arms crossed and his expression shuttered as I crouched down and ran my fingers under the plastic seats and down the metal legs. I moved slowly at first, taking my time, but as the seconds ticked by and I didn’t find any hidden cameras my search took on a feverish intensity.

  “Would you like some assistance?”

  Ignoring him I turned my attention to the desk. There had to be something here. A wire. A light. A microphone. Something. Determined to find it, determined to prove everything I had endured was one sick, twisted hoax, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled under the desk, not caring how stupid I looked or what the boy thought of me.

  If I found a camera it would mean Travis wasn’t really in danger. If I found a wire snaking across the underbelly of the desk it would mean the woman covered in blood wasn’t really dead. It would turn everything into a big joke. One big, awful, horrible joke.

  Except I didn’t find anything, because there wasn’t anything to find. But you knew that.

  You knew it all along.

  “There’s nothing here.” Defeated, I crawled out from under the desk and leaned up against one of the legs. A thin layer of dust covered my jeans. It brushed off on my arms as I brought my knees up and hugged them tight to my chest. “This isn’t some lame reality show, is it?”

  “No,” the boy said quietly, “it isn’t.”

  He crossed the room in three long strides. I studied the scuffed leather toes of his boots, not wanting to look up and see the I-told-you-so expression I was certain he was wearing.

  “You never told me your name, you know.” I tried to sound flippant, but even to my own ears there was a hoarseness in my voice that betrayed how perilously close I was to tears. I swallowed the hard lump in my throat. Crawling around searching for cameras like a deranged lunatic was one thing. Crying was another.

  The boy folded his long, lanky body in half until we were at the same level and I had no choice but to stare straight into his eyes. It was like gazing across a stormy sea. You could see the crests of the waves as they broke out of the water, but the real turmoil was beneath the frothing surf, hidden from view. “Maximus. My name is Maximus.”

  “Maximus, huh?” I tried to smile but the skin on my face wouldn’t stretch. Everything felt tight, from my forehead all the way down to my toes.

  It reminded me of a few weeks ago when I’d tried on a pair jeans that were one size too small. By some small miracle I managed to get them buttoned, only to spend the next ten minutes trying to peel myself out. Needless to say, I didn’t buy them.

  That’s how I felt now. Like somehow I’d slipped into a body that was one size too small and my skin had to stretch to fit over it. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.

  “I’m Lola.” I didn’t offer my last name, and Maximus didn’t ask for it.

  “Sorrows,” he said instead, causing me to blink at him in confusion.

  “What?”

  “That’s what the name Lola means. Sorrows.” Those stormy gray eyes studied me intently. “Are you sad, Lola?”

  It was difficult not to squirm. Most kids in the twelve to nineteen age bracket were too busy looking at their cell phones to engage in eye contact that lasted more than a few seconds. Either Maximus didn’t have a cell phone or he just really, really liked making other people feel uncomfortable.

  “I’m not sad,” I scoffed. Except I was. I’d just become an expert at hiding it. I wore my sarcasm like a shield, using it to protect the soft, vulnerable side I didn’t want anyone to see. A soft, vulnerable side that had no place in a world filled with drunken fathers and bloodthirsty monsters.

  I still wasn’t sure what to be believe – although at the moment a psychopathic family of axe murderers was running neck and neck with vampires (pun totally intended) – but I did know something evil was happening outside the door of the storage unit.

  It wasn’t only my imagination anymore. Travis’ frantic phone call, the woman covered in blood, Angelique’s fangs sinking into my flesh… All proof that something dark and twisted had come to the perfect little town of Revere and was tearing it apart from the inside out. I didn’t know why, or how, or even what they wanted. I just knew I needed to find my dad, rescue Travis, and get the hell out of Dodge.

  When Maximus stood and offered his hand I took it without thinking, sliding my fingers along the calloused ridges of his palm until our hands interlocked. He pulled me up until we were standing so close together I could see each individual eyelash framing his baby grays and I was forced to come to terms with something I’d managed to ignore until now: Maximus was Hot with a capital H. If, you know, you were into the dark haired brooding mysterious types, which apparently I was now if my hammering pulse rate was any indication.

  It was so disgustingly cliché that I gave myself a mental slap. Pull yourself together Lola. Don’t you dare be one of those idiot girls who loses her head over a guy and gets herself killed because of it.

  “Let go,” I demanded, giving a sharp tug.

  Ignoring me, Maximus turned my wrist until my new scars were visible. He murmured something unintelligible under his breath before he abruptly dropped my hand as though I’d burned him and stepped back, putting as much distance between us as the cramped storage unit would allow.

  “You’re infected,” he spat in disgust.

  Well excuse me.

  I held my hand up towards the light to get a better look, but there was nothing to see. “No,” I said slowly, shaking my head. “I don’t know how it healed so quickly but it’s definitely not—”

  “Your blood is infected. That’s why you aren’t crippled with pain right now. By the look of it you took a beating that would have knocked out a grown man, and yet you’re standing here talking to me as though nothing has happened. That’s because you don’t feel anything, do you? The slice on your cheek. The cut on your knee. The bruises on your arms.”

  There were bruises on my arms? I glanced down and couldn’t quite hold back the gasp. It escaped between my lips on a little hiss of air when I saw the angry smudges staining my skin in every dark color imaginable. How had I not seen the bruises before now? My arms looked like a canvas straight out of some angry artist’s worst nightmare. I lifted the hem of my t-shirt, only to quickly yank it back down when I saw my stomach wasn’t any better off.

  Maximus had a point. I should have been curled up on the floor whimpering in pain. Instead I felt… nothing. No, that wasn’t completely true. I felt one thing.

  Energized.

  I’d assumed it was the lingering traces of adrenaline, but what if it was something more? What if I really was infected? Stranger things had already happened tonight.

  “Who bit you, Lola?” Maximus stepped forward, crowding me back against the desk. When my thighs bumped into the metal drawers, leaving me with nowhere else to run, he barricaded me in with his arms. I’d never been claustrophobic, but I’d also never been pinned to a desk by a hot guy with a gun. In theo
ry it should have been sexy. In reality it was intimidating as hell. “Who bit you?” he repeated softly. “I need to know.”

  And I needed to get out of here. My brain was on overload. I couldn’t process any new information. Not when I was still trying to come to terms with what I’d already been told. “I don’t… I’m not…” I shook my head, trying to clear it. My poor, pitiful braid slipped over my shoulder and I ran my fingers through the snarled ends. “I don’t remember,” I lied.

  Maximus slapped his hands against the table with enough force to jostle open a drawer. “This is not a game,” he growled. His eyes were dark and heavy on mine, his pupils wide enough for me to see my own reflection. I looked terrified. “This is not make believe. This is not pretend. The monsters are real and they are here and they are not leaving. Do you understand?”

  Couldn’t he see that I didn’t want to understand? To understand would mean to accept. Accept that Travis was in very real danger. Accept that the woman covered in blood was really dead. Accept that the girl who had bitten me was more than a very skilled, very scary actress paid to play a horrible, horrible prank.

  “Angelique.” My shoulders sagged. “She said her name was Angelique.”

  “Angelique.” Maximus hissed the name like a curse and spun away from me. He began to pace the length of the tiny unit. His shadow was enormous on the opposite wall. It moved sinuously, rippling across the stacked furniture like something alive.

  “Do you know her?” If I sounded suspicious, it’s because I was. Maximus knew more than he was telling. A lot more, if I had to guess. I wanted answers almost as much as I wanted to close my eyes and pretend none of this was happening.

  His eyes flicked to mine. “I have heard of her. She is not a creature to be trifled with.”