“I understand.”
“We’re here, but I can’t wait for you, Anita. They sent the ear of one of the dancers out with the customers they released. The vampires are threatening to send the rest of the dancer out, a piece at a time.”
“I will be there ASAP, Edward.” But I was talking to empty air. He’d hung up.
“Fuck,” I said, and put a lot of feeling into it.
“I heard most of it. What’s the address?”
I told him. He asked for his phone back, and did some things on the screen. I peered at the screen and found a little map. He studied it for a few minutes, then said, “I’ve got it. Are you ready?”
“I can’t feed you again this soon, Truth.”
“I feel fine, Anita; trust me, I won’t need to be fed when we land.”
I just had to take his word for it. I let him pick me up again, and I had to keep pressure on the wrist bite instead of holding on to him. I was hoping if I kept pressure on it, the bleeding would stop before we landed. If it did, it would be the only thing that had gone right tonight.
61
I TUCKED MYSELF in against Truth’s body as hard as I could without being able to hold on to him, but finally I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stopped pressing on my wrist and wrapped my arms around his neck. I held on and buried my face against him. He felt warm now, warm with my blood, my energy. There was a pulse in his neck to move against my cheek as if the beat of his heart were calling to me.
The bend of his neck smelled clean, fresh, like clean sheets that had been dried outdoors in the wind and sun. It was almost like his skin held a hint of all the sunlit days that he would never see again.
I felt something change in the way Truth held me. It made me move my face so I could see. There were flashing lights and a lot of cops down below, but not too close. Truth took us down on the far side of a darkened strip mall. He had to run a little to take up momentum, but it was smoother than the last landing. Either he was getting in practice, or he just felt better.
He stepped into the thicker shadows by the darkened store and looked up the street toward all those flashing lights.
“The police barricades are just up ahead.”
“You can put me down now,” I said.
I got a flash of his smile in the dimness. He put me down without a word. “Are you still bleeding?”
I looked at my hand and found the blood drying. “No.”
“Good.”
We stood there for a moment awkwardly. There was a tension like you get on a first date, where you don’t know if you should kiss or just hug. This was wrong; I’d never felt like this around him before. He leaned down toward me, and I stepped back. “I’m sorry, Truth. I don’t know what’s happening, but I don’t think it’s voluntary on either of our parts.”
He stood straight, looking at me, his face still mostly in shadow. “You think I’m bespelled by you.”
I shrugged.
“But it’s not just me, Anita; you feel the pull, too.”
I remembered something Jean-Claude had told me once. “A lot of Belle’s line of vampire powers cut both ways, and it only cuts as deep as the vampire is willing to be cut.”
“Then you must be willing to be cut to the heart,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I hid behind work. “I have to go. You have to go.” I shook my head. “Go, Truth, just go, be somewhere else.”
One moment he was there in the shadows; the next he was skyward, blowing my hair across my face.
I turned toward the crowd and the police barriers. I’d have to get through all that before the uniforms would let me through to talk to SWAT. I wanted to find Edward, not for police work or practical reasons, but because I needed a friend. I needed a friend who didn’t want to fuck me or fall in love with me. I needed someone who didn’t want anything from me. The list was getting smaller every night.
62
I WAS ALMOST to the edge of the crowd when a man in a gray hooded sweatshirt turned and blocked my way. I opened my mouth to say, Excuse me, sir, but I got a glimpse of the face in the hood and the words froze on my lips.
I had a glimpse of dark brown eyes, black hair, skin darkly pale, a handsome, masculine face, until he turned into the light and the burn scars on his right side showed.
My hand reached for the Browning, but it wasn’t there, nothing was there. I was unarmed, and he was standing in front of me.
“Do not contact your vampires via mind; I will sense it, and I will tell my vampires to kill the temptresses inside the club. And, yes, I knew you were unarmed. I did not think you would ever be that careless, but it gives us a chance to talk.”