Page 25 of Thirsty
When he looked back up, Lorenzo was gone.
Chapter 6
Lorenzo slammed his bedroom door behind him.
Fucking Charlie Wever.
Ever since he’d returned to Lorenzo’s life, something had been off. His inopportune entreaties, his budding friendships with Maggie and Rachel, the reminders of their past—all of it had been grating on Lorenzo’s nerves.
But tonight had been a step too far. To appear at one of Lorenzo’s haunts expressly to badger him, and to ask the things he did—with such lightheartedness! Charlie had asked him about his heartbreaks and his regrets, about losing people to secrecy, time, and pure awful chance; and he’d posed each question like it meant nothing to him, as if Lorenzo were simply a fascinating butterfly Charlie was pinning to a page, whistling while he worked.
His questions had stirred up something ugly inside, several lifetimes of loneliness and loss scrubbed right to the surface—and all of it, apparently, beneath Charlie’s notice. And then, just as Lorenzo had perhaps been poised to make some reply,he’d shifted right into taking over Sal’s life. Not that Lorenzo begrudged his friend any comfort in a difficult time—but he couldn’t help but notice that Charlie’s prescription had been the same thing he’d told Olivia: End it. Cut ties. Move on.
Charlie claimed such an interest in the sensitivities of Lorenzo’s heart, and in the lives of all supernatural creatures, when he was, in fact, nothing more than an overly meddlesome human who left nothing but emotional debris in his wake. Someone careless and cruel.
Some heartbreak in your past, I bet.Lorenzo took a deep breath, a leftover human impulse that had no real effect but still felt calming, as he tried to ignore the sound of waves in his ears.
He hadn’t known that the last time he ever saw his home under the sunlight would be the last time. He could remember the moment he’d last seen the blue sky—just before it was washed away by a merciless wave that smelled of blood and musket grit. But he couldn’t remember the final time he’d seen the sun’s light on his cottage, or on his wife’s hair.
He’d gone back to see them only once afterward, from a distance, hidden in the tree line; but the cottage didn’t look the same at night. The crash of waves was there, but the shriek of laughter was gone, and the warmth that clung to the stones so briefly after sunset.
Lorenzo looked exactly the same now as he had that night. The same as he always would, the same as he’d look in that picture Charlie had taken of him at the bar, so that he could get whathewanted from their arrangement. So he could move on.
With a sick twist in his gut, Lorenzo realized that it’d been days since he’d even bothered trying to come up with a plan to get his revenge on Charlie. In all the chaos he’d been causing,appearing randomly and trying to flirt his way into Lorenzo’s good graces, he’d actuallyforgotten.
Charlie thought it was so fun to meddle in others’ lives, to pry open their hearts and see what lay within. Lorenzo would see how he liked it.
He hadn’t turned on the lights in his bedroom, but that was fine; this would be easier in the dark. He lay on his bed, shaking out his limbs and trying to release any lingering tension in his body. He hadn’t done this in a long time, and he needed to focus.
It wouldn’t be as easy with Charlie as it would have been with a random human. Charlie was studying the supernatural, had a vested interest in them, and had shown up time and again seeking information about them. Clearly, he wasn’t as spooked by the paranormal as many humans were. But Lorenzo was willing to bet Charlie still had a healthy fear of the unknown lurking somewhere deep within. He could use that.
He would need a bit of luck too. A vampire could only enter a human’s home when they’d been invited, and the same was true for their minds; he could only walk into a human’s dream if the human would have dreamt of him anyway. But he had a feeling Charlie would be thinking of him.
Closing his eyes, he sought to center himself and clear his mind. Then he turned his focus to his own body—or more accurately, his corpse. He focused on the desiccated blood in his veins, the piercing hunger in the core of his fangs, the dirt under his fingernails. He felt the call of moonlight, the whistle of the wind, and felt his presence slip from his body and the physical world into someplace else. Into the ether.
He began to hunt.
He prowled, not in any place he could see or describe. Hewas a sightless, senseless animal following a trail more primal than scent, and he moved through the ether until he found something that felt familiar. Something that felt like Charlie.
He touched it, pushing against it, until it gave way.
Blinking, he realized he was in a dark alleyway. The colors were a crisp duotone of black and red, and the pavestones looked wide, like they’d been distorted by a fish-eye lens. Fog clung to the corners of the street, and something buzzed in the distance—an insect drone, too high-pitched to be soothing.
Yes, he was in the right place. This was Charlie’s dream.
Now he just needed to find his prey.
The alley stretched on endlessly as he walked; it had no real dimensions, of course, but he knew it would deliver him to Charlie eventually. Dreams felt endless to dreamers, but Lorenzo had done this once or twice before, and he knew that they were more like conveyor belts, pulling the dreamer through surreality and sensation to whatever they were supposed to see. Charlie was here somewhere.
He stopped when he heard the sharp scream of metal. A door appeared in the wall of the alley and then opened, party music and lights spilling out of it. Charlie giggled as he stumbled out of the door and into the dream’s red evening, heaving a delighted breath into the frigid dark. Lorenzo waited, letting the shadows cloak him from Charlie’s awareness. He’d take his time. He wanted to do this right.
After a moment, Charlie turned and walked away from him, humming a drunken tune, his hands in his pockets. Lorenzo waited until he’d almost lost the sound of Charlie’s footsteps, then began to follow.
It’d been a long time since he’d hunted like this. The dream helped him, wrapping fog around Charlie’s ankles, twistingwhat little light there was in the alley until it all seemed to pierce the eye, illuminating nothing. The ambient noise around them dropped away, until the only sounds were Charlie’s breathing, the rustle of his clothes, and then—one of Lorenzo’s footsteps.
Charlie shivered and stopped short.
He looked over his shoulder, uncertainty in his eyes. Lorenzo waited, statue-still, concealed in the shadows. He could hear Charlie’s heart beating faster, his breath coming sharper.
