Page 6 of The Curse of Eternity
“Apologies,” he said softly.
“Yeah, yeah, where am I going?” Truthfully, I wasn’t totally blinded, but everything further than a few feet away was hazy. He took my hand again, startling me, but I didn’t pull away. Mostly to maintain the illusion that I was impaired, but my pulse thundered when his cold callused hand exerted the smallest pressure to lead me forward.
An unusually polite vampire, he may be, but I still didn’t like this.
We took a turn past the doorway ahead before shuffling across a stretch of carpeted floor. Then a second door creaked open.
“A step,” he instructed, and I crossed over a ridge in the floor. My boots crunched over grass while my heart raced. The click of a car door’s locking mechanism made me jump. If he was lying about where he was taking me, at least I knew how to tuck and roll to get out of a moving car. Even if I had to break through the window to do it.
“Inside,” he said—bossy, much?
“And here I was taught never to take a ride from strangers,” I muttered. His answering chuckle almost made me smirk, but then I frowned.He’s thebadguy, remember?
The passenger seat was cool to the touch, made of a comfortable leather. Aside from the bubblegum-scented air freshener barely overpowering the used cigarettes in the ashtray, I couldn’t make heads or tails of the car’s interior features. When the engine roared to life, the noise settled in around us like the car lacked any sound dampening.A classic model, maybe?
It started forward a short way over gravel before pulling out onto an asphalt road while a train’s familiar chugging rumbled by.Okay, so he must live near a rail line.An increasing numberof streetlights affirmed that we were returning to Albuquerque, and thankfully not heading out into the desert.
“Where are you taking me, anyway?” Buses might not be active after midnight, but I’d walk home if I had to.
“Back to where I found you. Unless you are lacking in vehicular transport and would prefer me to drop you elsewhere?”
“I’ll manage.”Vehicular transport?Yeesh, this one was old.
“It was never my intention to interfere with your work,” he assured, the same hesitant, apologetic cadence returning to his tone.
“I’m sure my family finished up just fine without me.” The bitter words left my mouth before I really thought about it, and my fists clenched, itching for my machete. Chagrin washed through me. Here I was, with yet another monumental failure under my belt. Seriously, after so many months of rehabilitating into my old life, I end up being helped out by an enemy?
The charity of it, if the vampire could be believed, was excruciating. How proud my ancestor would be, knowing that his great-great-great—however many times ‘great’ granddaughter—was a recovering addict might be bad enough, but this took the cake. Alexandru Dracula, aka Abraham Van Helsing, spent the better part of three centuries on a vendetta to destroy his younger-brother-turned-first-vampire—Vlad Dracula—and I couldn’t manage against one lousy undead.
It wasn’t like Vlad didn’t have it coming, he did attempt to murder Alexandru to usurp the Wallachian throne. At least, that’s how the story went. How Helsing lived for three centuries to slay Dracula at last was the real mystery. Supposedly, the archangel Michael gifted him immortality, strength, and speed to rival Dracula in order to end the vampire’s reign of terror over Eastern Europe before it spread to the rest of the world.
Not that I strictly believed in that story. Especially since it involved Dracula having gained his vampirism from the devil himself. No matter what the truth was, my family and I were still ‘blessed’ with superhuman enhancements. Our duty was to eradicate the vampires Dracula made in those three hundred years, the ones who fled the old continent when their ruler was snuffed out. Some legacy I upheld, where I got regularly bruised and battered by the undead.
Part of me wished the vampire had killed me. At least I’d have died with my dignity.
Silence stretched between us through three stops at the deserted lights before the vampire suddenly said, “What do you call yourself?”
Considering everything that had happened tonight, that struck me as an oddly normal question. I could have ignored him, but my name wasn’t exactly rare.
“Maria.” No need to give him my last name since ‘Harker’ was much more identifiable. “And you’re Drake, right?” I glanced sidelong at the vampire as his knuckles tensed on the steering wheel.
“I did not realize descendants could overhear cellular telephone conversations so clearly,” he remarked, uneasy.
“Don’t underestimate me,” I warned, and grimaced when he smiled.
“I would not dream of it,” he said, like it was a private joke, and I had to catch myself on the dash when the car stopped short.
Growling under my breath, I ignored his brief chuckle and lifted my blindfold. The sign for Richmond Drive SE was dead ahead.The bastard really brought me back?He’d even left the car’s doors unlocked. I immediately grabbed the interior handle, but hesitated. Wary, I shifted to stare him down.
“Now what?” This couldn’t be it.
“Now you exit, and we part ways,” he answered, a strange edge of dejection in his voice. Whatever it was, I wasn’t asking twice.
Leaving the scarf on the seat, I climbed out of the low car and onto the sidewalk. Something clattered against the pavement beside me, and I spun to find my machete in its sheath, lying undamaged at my feet. When I bent to pick it up, the car’s engine revved. It took off in a hurry, leaving a cloud of exhaust that obscured its make, model,andlicense plate as it turned the corner. A shaky breath passed my lips, worn from all the adrenaline.
Beneath the waning moonlight, a chill breeze slithered over my bare shoulders as I turned toward the warehouse—and froze.
Down the street, a figure only a couple inches shorter than me emerged from the shadows cast by a main entrance’s overhang. My grip on my machete relaxed when the streetlight illuminated their dark brown complexion and the short black hair on their head. A curved blade with a bone pommel was held tight in their grip while small chestnut eyes took me in over an upturned nose and very full lips.
