Page 12 of First Blood
I wished I could jump down, wrap it around Laurie, and take him home.
I wished he’d want me to.
Two more nights until I could have him again.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out. Esther, damn it. She had something for me to do, something that meant I’d have to leave before Laurie came back from turning his latest trick.
He’d been gone nearly an hour. Either he’d been paid for a full-service job, or he’d been driven farther away than usual, or…or.
Another message from Esther, this one more urgent and with more details. One of my colleagues was dealing with a group of werewolves who’d gotten rowdy at a bar on the other side of town, and he needed backup.
I perched on the edge of the fire escape and hopped down, landing on my feet with a thump. It was still quieter than climbing down all those rattly ladders, and a lot faster too. A three-story fall didn’t faze me.
Two minutes later, I was in the car and off to crack some werewolf skulls. If nothing else, it’d give me an outlet for the rage I felt every time I saw Laurie cold and unhappy and couldn’t do a fucking thing about it.
***
The next night found me back on the fire escape in a mood dark enough to rival one of those broody, woe-is-me vampires from some dumb book. One of the fucking weres had clawed out and slashed up my coat, it was cold enough to start to bother even me, and Laurie was standing in his usual spot, shivering.
My teeth kept grinding no matter how I tried to relax my jaw, and I would’ve welcomed another werewolf fight. I needed something to hit.
A car pulled up, the falling snow and the windshield wipers obscuring who was inside. I tried to get a look at the men Laurie went with. I couldn’t follow every time and watch him with them — I wasn’t quite that masochistic, and if I saw, I’d end up killing them. But I remembered their faces, just in case.
I leaned forward, hoping for a better view. Laurie turned his head. I jerked back. He couldn’t possibly have seen me, not with his human eyes. They were beautiful eyes, the loveliest I’d ever seen, but they weren’t any keener than the average.
Laurie turned his attention back to the car and the passenger-side window rolling down in front of him.
And then he waved the guy on, shaking his head. I tensed as the asshole started to shout at him, but then he peeled out and went on his way.
I started to relax, only to go completely rigid as Laurie wrapped his jacket around his middle and walked my way. Where the fuck was he going? Why’d he turned away a paying customer? Maybe he’d seen something I couldn’t catch from my angle that spooked him. I could only be glad he had a trace of a sense of self-preservation, since up until now I hadn’t seen much evidence of one.
He walked right into the alley, right over to the fire escape, and tipped his head back, staring directly up at me where I was crouched on the metal grating like a fucking idiot.
“You might as well come down,” he said. I could hardly understand him through the chattering of his teeth. “I’m going home. It’s too cold out here, and — and you can get your blood a day early.”
Well, fuck. Put another checkmark in the ‘not a subtle creature of the night’ column.
Nearly two hundred years I’d been alive, and I couldn’t remember when I’d been so embarrassed — maybe that time in 1922 when I’d thrown up all over myself in front of Rudolph Valentino after drinking eel blood on a dare. It even splashed his shoes. So much for my brief attempt at living the glamorous Hollywood life, although it was useful to know eel blood was poisonous, I guessed?
And even that didn’t compare to how it felt to know Laurie knew I’d been sitting up here on a fire escape watching him night after night.
With no other option — Laurie was all but tapping his foot, and I wasn’t getting out of this — I hopped down, managing to land gracefully, at least, with a swirl of my torn coat.
Speaking of. I pulled it off and draped it around his shoulders, pulling the sides together in front of him.
Laurie’s tremulous half-smile, and the way he grasped the edges of the coat to wrap it all the way around, snuggling into its warmth,mywarmth…well, that made up for it.
“Let’s go,” I said, and wrapped my arm around him to hold him close.
This time he didn’t try to get away, instead leaning into my side a little. He probably would’ve been just as snuggly if I’d been a space heater, and it wasn’t anything personal. I kept reminding myself of that as the fragrance of him, sent into the air as he warmed up, hit my nose and made me feel like I was breathing opium or pure ethanol or anything else immediately intoxicating.
I snuck a glance down at him. The marks had faded from his neck at last.
But not for long.
I squeezed him a little tighter and picked up the pace.
It was quiet on the walk back, everything muffled by snow. It’d been coming down enough to mostly cover the filth of the streets, and eastside Lancaster looked almost pretty for once. Our breath sent plumes of steam up in front of us, and we didn’t talk. I didn’t have much to say. If he didn’t ask me what the fuck I’d been doing lurking on a rusty fire escape every night but not talking to him or interfering, I wasn’t going to volunteer.
