Page 39 of Blood Lovers (American Vampires #1)

Heaven. For Now.

I wake up latched on to Syrsee’s neck , sucking down her blood like it’s a fucking milkshake. But then, suddenly, I’m full. I push off her and sit up in my seat, looking around, confused. And very angry, for some reason. “Where the fuck are we?”

Syrsee puts the truck in drive and pulls back onto the highway. “I dunno. Arizona, I think. But I haven’t been paying attention to the signs for a while now, so who the hell knows.”

She’s angry too.

I look at her for a moment, staring at her. She’s wearing a black tank top and her hair is blowing around her face from the AC blasting out of the vents. She doesn’t look at me. She just keeps driving.

Fuck it. I turn away and stare out the window. Red mountains and plateaus in the distance and dirt in every direction. I close my eyes and let out a long breath as the hot desert sun beats down on my face.

It feels good.

Suddenly, Syrsee slams on the brakes so hard, I go flying forward, apparently not wearing a seatbelt. The only reason I don’t go right through the windshield is because I brace both hands on the dash.

When we come to a jerking stop, I turn my head slowly to look at her, then growl, in a very nasty voice, “What the fuck , Syrsee?”

She doesn’t look at me. Just throws the truck in reverse and starts backing up at high speed.

I look behind us, panicked that we’re going to slam into an oncoming car, but there’s no one there. The entire highway is deserted.

She brakes again. And again, I’m jerked around. I’m just about to yell at her when she flings her door open, gets out of the truck, and walks over to the right shoulder to stare up at a sign.

I squint my eyes, trying to read the sign. But there’s a glare on it from the sun. So I get out and walk over to her. She’s breathing hard, like she’s about to blow up or something.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”.

Now it’s her turn to slowly turn her head to look at me. Her eyes are narrowed down into slits, her mouth a straight line, her face flushed with anger. Then she points to the sign. “ That .”

I look at it. It says ‘Petrified National Forest.’ But it’s been spray-painted over with some kind of graffiti tag. I look back at Syrsee, confused.

She starts spitting her words at me as she continues to point to the sign. “Do you see that? Do you? Do you know I could be getting a fucking pedicure right now?”

I… don’t know what to say. I have no idea what she’s talking about. “What?”

“I could be taking a shower, and being pampered, and… and… and eating something that is not a Slurpee or Lays fucking potato chips!”

“What?”

She turns and stands right in front of me, grabs me by the collar of my t-shirt, tugs on it and continues her rant. “I’ve been feeding you, asshole! For ten days! Ten !” She screams this. “And you… you… you have done nothing but drink me and pass out! Do you know how many times I wanted to kick you into the ditch and leave you there?”

I don’t say anything. I’m just kind of stunned.

“Do you?” She’s screaming. “And look!” She points to the sign again. “The horse and rider. They put this here for me !”

I look back up at the sign and… OK, I guess I can kinda see a horse and rider in that graffiti tag. It’s a figure eight on its side. Like a snake. But it doesn’t have a snake head. One end is a crude drawing of a horse’s head, the other a messy human face in profile.

“Only it’s not the horse and rider.” Syrsee has stopped yelling now, her voice rather soft. Almost… sad. “It’s me, Ryet. Me . The fucking night mare.”

She says that word in a very specific way. Night. Mare.

“What?” That’s all I can say because I’m so lost.

Suddenly, she’s crying. Not a held-in sob, the way I was in that last encounter with Jane. But a full-on ugly cry. It’s more like wailing. And she’s still ranting. Something about blood, and days, and clothes, and growling, and fear—she goes on and on about being scared.

And all I can do is blink at her because I don’t know what she’s talking about and she’s still tugging on my t-shirt collar like she wants to choke me. And… now that I look down at it, isn’t my shirt. It’s brand-new. Kinda stiff, and white, and too big. Because it’s blowing in the wind. Making it ripple across my back and something feels very, very strange back there.

I reach behind me, still trying to pay attention to all the angry words this woman is spitting out at me on the side of this road so she doesn’t think I’m not listening, and feel… bones .

Wings.

Or, at least, the start of them. Bumps on my upper back pressing against the brand-new cotton of my t-shirt as it ripples in the wind.

Syrsee stops yelling and just stares up at me, sobbing. Streams of tears run down her face and all I see is… her. Sitting in that truck back in White River. Crying in the parking lot of the diner because she was having a little breakdown.

And then I remember how easy things got. The fun banter. The way she smiled. The way I smiled back. And how, maybe for the first time since I lost my family, I had the desire to make a woman happy.

I have that same desire now.

She tugs on my shirt one more time. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

I take her hands, pry them from my shirt, and pull her close to me. She shakes her head, crying again, trying to push me off, but I don’t let her.

I hug her.

And even though I don’t understand anything she’s really talking about, I get it. She’s mad at me. She’s been taking care of me. She didn’t kick me into a ditch, she fed me. She cleaned me, and clothed me, and saved me.

And she’s done.

But more than that. She’s scared.

She fights me off for a moment, wailing about something else now. But I don’t give in. I hug her tighter, letting her know she’s not getting away.

It only takes another three seconds for her to give in and kinda slump into my chest, pressing her cheek to my heart, crying in a very sad way.

We stand there like that for a good few minutes, saying nothing. Just… blowing in the wind. Then she takes a deep breath, pushes back, and I let her.

She looks up at me with those same wounded green eyes that I saw from the little crack in her truck window back in the diner parking lot, and waits.

She’s waiting for me to save her.

She took care of me for ten days and she’s got nothing left.

Nothing… but me .

I smile a little. It feels kinda wrong after everything that’s happened, but I can’t stop it. I like this woman. And I want her to stay. Not so I can eat, but just because she makes everything about my life better .

“Come on.” I keep one hand and tug her over to the passenger side of the truck. “Get in. I’m driving.”

She gets in and I walk around the truck to the driver’s side and get in too. Then I pull away from the road, flip a u-turn, and head the other direction.

Syrsee is sniffling, her words hitched from crying. “Where are we going?”

I look at her and smile one more time. “Home.”

There was a letter in the room where I woke up that first time after Paul burned my family in a church fire. I was alone because Paul would always do that. He would feed me, and we’d… whatever… and then he’d leave while I was still drunk on the blood.

But he’d always leave those fucking letters. And this time it was a large yellow envelope with that deed inside it. Plus my little welcome-to-evil kit.

The land and the house are the only two things I truly own. Ninety-three acres on the top of a hill in West Virginia. There were two hollers on either side of my hilltop and each dirt road was lined with holler people who owned spreads just like mine from top to bottom.

They weren’t halfbreeds. They were just hill people. But over the decades they recognized me for what I was and I recognized that place for what it was too.

Home.

A place for me, away from Paul, because even back then—on day one—he knew I would need it.

I want to hate him for this. I want to hate him for knowing me. But I can’t. He’s gone—and I truly do hope it’s for good—though deep down I know it’s not and that’s why I allow myself that hope.

He’s not gone. Not for good, anyway.

And I don’t hate him.

Will never hate him.

And I love this piece of land in West Virginia.

At first, the people would flash hand signals at me. Little signs to keep my evil away. But I spent a lot of time there in those early years and we got to know one another. Maybe they don’t exactly like me, but most of them are very old now. And when each new child is born on those hollers, they take the time to explain me to the next generation.

I have never hurt anyone in those hills. I don’t drink people. So after about twenty years I was just Ryet. The guy who doesn’t age on the top of the hill.

And they were just neighbors. Ones I’d help if their well went dry or their truck slipped off the side of the road in the winter. They’d come pick my apples from the orchard and I’d find bushels of corn or beans left on my front porch each fall.

I complain about my life a lot, but there’s a huge advantage to living so long as a young person. And that’s… people. I know everyone and they know me.

Home isn’t even a good enough word for my West Virginia hilltop.

It’s the only Heaven I’ll ever know.

So that’s how I thank Syrsee for her help, and her trust, and her blood, and… just for being her and taking this stupid ride with me.

I make it her Heaven too.

At least for now.