Page 8 of First Blood
I turned and pulled out seven hundred. “You can take three nights off this week,” I said. “This isn’t from me. It’s…call it a consideration from my employer, for keeping your mouth shut about what happened tonight.”
He didn’t reach out a hand, so I dropped the money on the cardboard box by his bed. I hated how much putting it there made it feel like I was calling him a whore, even though that was objectively what he was, but I didn’t have anywhere else to leave it.
He stared at it, his mouth set in an unhappy downturn. Looked at closely, in the better light of the overhead bulb and the small reading lamp on the box, he couldn’t have passed for sixteen. The faint line between his eyebrows and the tiny, barely-there brackets around his lips were more than he should’ve had at twenty-two.
“That’s too much. You left three hundred before. For nothing. You should take some of this back.”
“I paid you the three hundred I offered to lick the blood off your lip. This isn’t from me. Like I already said. Separate transactions.”
His frown deepened, and I cursed my choice of words. But too late. “Eat the soup, rest, don’t go out unless you have to and only during the day, and wear a scarf. Don’t talk to anyone about what happened tonight and if they ask about your neck, it was a john who got a little rough and paid extra for the privilege.”
Laurie laughed softly, shaking his head. “No one I see would care about my neck. And they wouldn’t believe anyone paid me extra to choke me, either. But I’ll stay in and eat the soup.”
How many more fucking assholes did I need to kill? If I spent too much time thinking about all the ways what he’d said was wrong, the list would grow out of control.
“I’ll see you in three days. Friday night. Not sure what time.”
“I’ll be here,” he said softly, without looking up.
“Lock up after me.” I opened the door and stepped out, waiting to close my eyes and breathe deeply until I’d pulled it shut. Once I heard the lock turn and click, I booked it down the stairs.
***
Three days passed fucking slowly, not least because no one had told me what was up with the guy I’d killed in the alley. Not that Doran or Esther reported to me — the opposite. But I’d have appreciated knowing what the fuck was going on.
I spent those days and nights going about my usual business, intimidating or beating the shit out of anyone Fenwick thought was a threat to the peace and decency of Lancaster, and escorting a few very nervous human real estate agents and building inspectors as they went to check out one of the apartment buildings Fenwick had bought recently. He was a realist, just like anyone who’d lived as long as he had, and he knew Lancaster was going to have some shitty neighborhoods and some shitty people living in them. But he’d been putting time and a lot of money into moving the not-shitty people away from the predators, setting up subsidized housing for anyone with kids, anyone old, anyone who we could be fairly sure hadn’t robbed or raped or killed anyone.
This apartment building wasn’t much better than Laurie’s, but it was still at a point where renovations were practical. The discussions took a while, and I saw the last realtor to her car as the sun slipped under the horizon, casting a blood-red glow over the snowy rooftops.
Which left me with a few hours to kill.
I went home and took a shower, changed my clothes, and finger-combed my shoulder-length dark hair into something like order.
Contrary to popular lore — which always got it wrong; we weren’t even undead, for fuck’s sake, just warm-blooded, hybrid products of incredibly gruesome necromancy — vampires showed up just fine in mirrors. I scowled at my reflection, wishing popular lore had it right. I’d have been a lot happier not knowing what Laurie saw when he looked at me: harsh features, deep-set eyes…a killer’s face, not a kind one. Not trustworthy or comforting.
I hesitated over a bottle of cologne, but…no. Fuck no. This wasn’t a date.
My house occupied the end of a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of northern Lancaster, a good three miles from Laurie’s apartment. I opted to walk. I needed to get the fuck out of the house before I did something like iron my shirt, but it was still a little too early to show up on his doorstep, sweaty-palmed and panting like a desperate teenager picking up his girlfriend for the prom.
It was still only eight when I stomped up the filthy stairs of his building, a couple of residents flattening themselves against the stairwell wall as I passed. Had either of those guys ever paid Laurie to get on his knees? Had they left the needles in the front hall?
The thought left me scowling again, and they were lucky I was too impatient to stop and find out.
Laurie pulled the door open on my first knock this time, and for a second I couldn’t gather my wits enough to do anything but stare at him. His neck still bore bruises, but the marks had faded to a dull mustard-yellow, not dark enough to obscure the faint blue tracery of his veins.
And he wasn’t wearing his pajamas. He’d put on a shirt that looked more like something I’d expect a woman to wear, with a wide neck that left his collarbones and half his shoulders exposed. It was a shade of dark gray that made his eyes look like lapis lazuli. He was fucking breathtaking, and…he wasblushing.
If he started biting his lip, I was doomed.
He bit his lip.
All the blood in my body rushed south.
When he released that soft little bit of flesh, it had the indentations of his teeth in it, and it was plumper and redder and fucking…Jesus fucking Christ. I had to get it together.
“Do you want to...you should come in,” he muttered. “I can’t ask you that in the hallway.”
Ask me what?
