"Ted, you b.u.g.g.e.ring b.a.s.t.a.r.d, good of you to arrive so quickly!"
It might have been me, but I thought I detected a note of insincerity in his voice. Me, I wanted to throw my arms around this Ted and thank him for interrupting what could have been a very dangerous moment.
A tall skinny man climbed down from the trailer and gave a grinning reply. "I"m missin" my shows because of you, buddy. Hope I didn"t interrupt nothin" between you and that gal. Two of you looked awful cozy."
"No!" It escaped me with all the denial of a condemned soul. "Nothing going on here!"
Ted laughed and walked around to the damaged side of the car, poking his head inside and wrinkling his nose at the sight of the blood.
"Sure...I can see that."
Bones arched a brow at me in silent challenge, causing me to look away. Then he clapped his friend on the shoulders."Ted, old chap, the car is yours. Just need to get a piece out of the boot and then we"re golden. Drive us to the place, we"ll be done by then."
"Sure thing, bud. You"ll like the back. It"s air-conditioned. Some boxes to sit on, or you could ride in the car. Come on, now.
Let"s put this baby to bed."
Ted opened the back of the trailer. It was equipped with stabilizing clamps to fasten a car onto. I shook my head in admiration.
Bones really had thought of everything.
When Ted lowered the steel ramp on the back, Bones jumped into the Mercedes and drove it straight onto the clamps. After a few adjustments were made, the car was secure. Then Bones left to get his motorcycle, returning in a few minutes to put it in the trailer on its side. When he was finished, he grinned down at me.
"Come on, Kitten. Your taxi"s waiting."
"We"re riding in back?" Frankly, the thought of being alone in a confined s.p.a.ce with him frightened me, and not for concern of my arteries.
"Yeah, here. Old Ted doesn"t want to risk being seen with me. Values his health, he does. Keeps our friendship a secret. Smart bloke."
"Smart," I muttered as I climbed into the trailer"s interior. Ted closed the door with a decisive click and sound of a lock turning. "I envy that."
I refused to sit back in the car where my blood stained the seats and a body lay in the trunk. Instead, I was as far away from Bones as the tight interior of the truck"s trailer could manage. There were crates toward the front, filled with G.o.d knows what, and I huddled into a ball on one of them. Bones perched contentedly on a similar box as if he hadn"t a care in the world.
"I know this isn"t a concern for you, but is there enough oxygen in here?"
"Plenty of air. Just as long as there isn"t any heavy breathing." His brow arched as he spoke, while his eyes told me loud and clear that he hadn"t overlooked an instant of our earlier moment.
"Well, then I"m safe. Absolutely safe." d.a.m.n him for the knowing twist of the lips he gave me in reply. What would I have done if he"d moved closer before? If he"d separated that last inch between our mouths? Would I have slapped him? Or...
"s.h.i.t." Oops, said that out loud.
"Something wrong?"
That half smile still curled his lips, but his expression was serious. My heart started to beat faster again. The air seemed to close in around us, and desperately I searched for something to break the tension.
"So who"s this Hennessey you were asking about?"
His expression became guarded. "Someone dangerous."
"Yeah, I gathered that. Sergio seemed pretty scared of him, so I didn"t think he was a Boy Scout. I take it he"s our next target?"
Bones paused before answering, seeming to choose his words.
"He"s someone I"ve been tracking, yes, but I"ll be going after him alone." My hackles rose at once. "Why? You don"t think I can handle it? Or you still don"t trust me to keep this secret? I thought we covered this already!"
"I think there are certain things you"d do well to stay out of," he replied, evasive.
I switched tactics. At least this topic cut the strange mood from earlier. "You said something about Sergio being Hennessey"s best client. What do you mean by that? What did Hennessey do to whoever hired you? Do you know, or did you just take the contract on him without asking?"
Bones let out a soft noise. "Questions like that are why I won"t tell you more about it. Suffice it to say there"s a reason why Ohio"s been such a hazardous place for young girls lately. It"s why I don"t want you chasing after vampires without me.
Hennessey"s more than just a sod who bleeds someone when he can get away with it. Beyond that, don"t ask."
"Can you at least tell me how long you"ve been after him? That can"t be top secret."
He caught the snippiness in my tone and frowned. I didn"t mind. Better to be arguing with each other than, well, anything else.
""Round eleven years."
I almost fell off my crate. "Good G.o.d! He must have a real fancy price on his head! Come on, what did he do? He p.i.s.sed off someone rich, obviously."
Bones gave me a look I couldn"t decipher. "Not everything is about money."
From his tone, I wasn"t getting anything else out of him. Fine. If he wanted to play it that way, fine. I"d just try later.
"How did you become a vampire?" I asked next, surprising even myself with the question.
A brow arched.
"Want an interview with the vampire, luv? It didn"t turn out too well for the reporter in the movie."
As I murmured, "I never saw it. My mother thought it was too violent," the humor of it made me laugh. Bones grinned as well, and cast a meaningful look toward the car.
"I can see that. Good thing you didn"t watch it, then. Heaven knows what might have happened."
Laughter fading, it occurred to me that I really did want to know, so I looked at him pointedly until he let out an acquiescing noise.
"All right, I"ll tell you, but then you"ll have to answer one of my questions. Got an hour to burn anyhow."
"Is this quid pro quo, Dr. Lecter?" I scoffed. "Fine, but I hardly see the point. You already know everything about me."
A look of pure heat was shot my way and his voice lowered to a whisper. "Not everything."
Whoa. Back came that awkwardness in a flash. Clearing my suddenly dry throat, I fidgeted until I was scrunched up even smaller.
"When did it happen? When you were changed?" Please just talk. Please stop looking at me that way.
"Let"s see, it was 1790 and I was in Australia. I did this bloke a favor and he thought he was returning it by making me a vampire."
"What?" I was shocked. "You"re Australian? I thought you were English!"
He smiled, but with little amus.e.m.e.nt."I"m a bit of both, as it were. I was born in England. It"s where I spent my youth, but it was in Australia that I was changed. That makes me part of it as well."
Now I was fascinated, my earlier consternation forgotten. "You have to go into more detail than that."
He settled back against the side of the trailer, legs casually splayed in front of him. "I was twenty-four. It happened just a month after my birthday."
"My G.o.d, we"re almost the same age!" As soon they were out, I realized the absurdity of the words.
He snorted. "Sure. Give or take two hundred and seventeen years."
"Er, you know what I mean. You look older than twenty-four."
"Thanks ever so." He laughed at my obvious chagrin, but put me out of my misery. "Times were different. People aged far more rapidly. You b.l.o.o.d.y folks don"t know how good you have it."
"Tell me more." He hesitated, and I blurted out, "Please."
Bones leaned forward, all serious now. "It"s not pretty, Kitten. Not romantic like the movies or books. You remember you told me you slugged those lads when you were young because they called your mum a wh.o.r.e? Well, my mum was a wh.o.r.e. Her name was Penelope and she was fifteen when she had me. It was fortunate that she and the madam of the place were friendly, or I never would have been allowed to live there. Only girl-children were kept at the wh.o.r.ehouse, for obvious reasons. When I was little, I didn"t know there was anything unusual with where I lived. All the women doted on me, and I would do house ch.o.r.es and such until I got older. The madam, her name was Lucille, later inquired as to whether or not I wanted to follow in the family business. Several of the male customers who were so inclined had taken notice of me, for I was a pretty lad. But by the time Madam approached me with the offer, I knew enough to know I wouldn"t want to perform such activities. Begging was a common occupation in London then. Thieving was as well, so to earn my keep, I began to steal. Then when I was seventeen, my mum died of syphilis. She was thirty-three."
My face paled considerably listening to him speak, but I wanted to hear the rest. "Go on."
"Lucille informed me two weeks afterwards that I had to go. Wasn"t bringing in enough quid to justify the s.p.a.ce. It wasn"t that she was cruel, she was simply being practical. Another girl could take my room and bring in three times the money. Again she offered me a choice-leave and face the streets, or stay and service the customers. Yet she added a kindness. There were a few highborn women she was acquainted with that she"d described me to, and they were interested. I could choose to sell myself to women rather than men. And so that is what I did.
"The girls at the house trained me first, of course, and it turned out I had a knack for the work. Lucille kept me in high demand and soon I had quite a few regulars among the blue bloods. One of them ended up saving my life.
"I was still picking pockets, you see. One unlucky day, I pulled the purse off a toff right in front of a bobby. Next thing I knew, I was in chains and up before one of the meanest hanging judges in London. One of my clients heard of my predicament and took pity on me. She persuaded the judge through carnal means that sending me to the new penal colonies would be just the thing.
Three weeks later they shipped me and sixty-two other unlucky b.u.g.g.e.rs to South Wales."
His eyes clouded, and he ran a hand through his hair reflectively.
"I won"t tell you about the voyage except to say it went beyond any misery man should ever have to endure. Once we were at the colony, they worked us literally unto death. There were three men I became mates with-Timothy, Charles, and Ian. After a few months, Ian managed to escape. Then, almost a year later, he came back."
"Why would he come back?" I wondered. "Wouldn"t he have been punished for running away?" Bones grunted. "Indeed he would have, but Ian wasn"t afraid of that anymore. We were in the fields slaughtering cattle for beef jerky and the hides when we were set upon by the natives. They killed the guards and the rest of the prisoners except Timothy, Charles, and me. That"s when Ian appeared among them, but he was different. You can guess how. He was a vampire, and he changed me that night. Charles and Timothy were changed as well by two other vampires. Though three of us were changed, only one of us asked for it. Timothy wanted what Ian offered. Charles and I didn"t. Ian changed us anyway because he thought we would thank him later. We stayed with the natives for a few years and vowed to return to England. It took us nearly twenty years to finally get there."
He stopped and closed his eyes. At some point in his story I"d uncurled myself from my ball and sat staring at him in amazement.
He was absolutely right, it wasn"t a pretty story, and I hadn"t had any idea what he"d been through.
"Your turn." His eyes opened to stare right into mine. "Tell me what happened with that sod who hurt you."
"G.o.d, Bones, I don"t want to talk about that." I hunched defensively at the memory. "It"s humiliating."
That dark gaze didn"t waver. "I just told you that I used to be a thief, a beggar, and a wh.o.r.e. Is it really fair for you to cry foul over my question?"
Put like that, he had a point. With a shrug to hide my continued pain, I summarized it briskly.
"It"s a common story. Boy meets girl, girl is naive and stupid, boy uses girl and then hits the road."
He just arched his brow and waited.
I threw up my hands. "Fine! You want details? I thought he really cared for me. He told me he did, and I fell for his lies completely. We went out twice, and then the third time he said he had to stop by his apartment to get something before we"d go to this club. When we got there, he started kissing me, telling me all this c.r.a.p about how special I was to him...." My fingers clenched. "I told him it was too soon. That we should wait to get to know each other better, that it was my first time. He disagreed. I-I should have hit him, or thrown him off me. I could have, I was stronger than he was. But..." I dropped my eyes.
"I wanted to make him happy. I really liked him. So when he didn"t stop, I just stayed still and tried not to move. It didn"t hurt as much if I didn"t move...."
G.o.d, I was going to cry. I blinked rapidly and took in an uneven breath, pushing back the recollection. "That"s about it. One miserable time and then he didn"t call me anymore. I was worried at first-I thought something bad might have happened to him."
Bitter laugh. "The next weekend I found him making out with another girl at the same club where we were supposed to go. He told me then that he"d never really liked me and to run along because it was past my bedtime. That same night, I killed my first vampire. In a way I owe it to being used. I was so upset I wanted to either die or murder someone. At least having some creature try to rip out my throat guaranteed me one or the other."
Bones didn"t make any of his usual mocking quips. When I dared to meet his eyes again, he was simply staring at me, no scorn or judgment on his face. The silence stretched, seconds into minutes. It filled with something unexplainable as we kept looking in each other"s eyes.
The sudden jostling of the trailer broke the trance as the vehicle ground to a stop. With a slight shake, Bones leapt down from his perch and headed to the rear of the car.
"We"re nearly at the place, and there"s still work to be done. Hold open that bag for me, Kitten."
His normal jaunty tone was back. Perplexed by the earlier moment, I joined him at the rear of the trailer.
Bones unwrapped Sergio from his plastic shroud as cheerily as a child ripping through wrapping paper on Christmas. I was holding a kitchen-sized garbage bag and wondering what he was up to.
It didn"t take long to find out. With his hands, he twisted Sergio"s head off as cleanly as if it were the top on a soda bottle. There was a sickening crunch, and then the withering cranium was unceremoniously dumped into the bag."Yuck." I thrust the bag back into his hands. "You take it."
"Squeamish? That lump of rotting skull is worth fifty thousand dollars. Sure you don"t want to cradle it a bit?" He smiled his familiar mocking smile, the old Bones again.
"No, thanks." Some things money just couldn"t buy, and my spending more time with that head was one of them.
The rear of the trailer opened with a creak and Ted appeared in the artificial light.
"We"re here, bud. Hope you both had a smooth ride." His eyes twinkled as he looked back and forth between the two of us.
Instantly I was defensive. "We were talking."
Ted grinned, and I saw Bones hide a smile as he turned to face his friend.
"Come on, mate. We"ve been driving for, what...fifty minutes? Not nearly enough time."
They both laughed. I didn"t, seeing nothing amusing at all.
"Are you finished?"
Sobering, Bones shook his head. "Stay in the trailer for a minute. Something I have to take care of."
"What?" Curiosity killed the cat; I hoped for better results.
"Business. Got a head to deliver, and I want you to stay out of it. The less people know of you, the better."
Made sense. I sat on the edge of the trailer with my feet dangling and then peeled back the cloth to inspect my wrist again. The wound was completely healed, the skin coapted together around the edges and unscarred. There was such a vast difference between vampires and humans, even half-breeds like myself. We weren"t even the same species. So why did I tell Bones things I"d never told anyone else? My mother didn"t know what happened with Danny, for example. She wouldn"t have understood.