Blood Bound

Chapter 25: The slumbering doll

I'm a bit anxious when the two of us step out of the diner. I keep glancing towards the car and hope that he won't notice the missing licence plates.

„Do you know where you're going to stay?" Matthew asks as he walks towards the car.

„N-no!" I yell abrubtly as his hand reaches for the door handle. He startles and looks surprised. „I mean, no," I hastily say, hurrying over to the car and lean against the window of the passenger door. I'm sweating buckets by now and I'm sure he can hear the loud drums of my heartbeat. „I only just got here." I hope my frame can shield anything that's inside the car, especially a sleeping, ravenous vampire.

„Then I can take you to my place," he says casually.

My eyes widen in surprise and my heart might have skipped a beat. „What?"

„No, I mean," It's Matthew's turn to splutter in embarrassment, his face turning slightly red. „The motel I'm staying at probably has some rooms left since it's the off season."

„Oh I see," I sigh in relief but I see to my horror that Matthew still reaches for the handle. „What are you doing?!"

He raises an eyebrow. „Uh, getting in the car."

„Can't we walk there?" I ask, inching to the side so that I'm leaning against the driver''s door.

He chuckles. „We could but I don't think it's a great idea to leave your car here with all of your stuff. I'm not saying there's a lot of theft here but you can never be too careful."

Crap. He's right. It would not be so great to return only to see the car empty or the police waiting for me with a couple of questions about missing licence plates and what would appear to them to be a sleeping bag with a corpse inside it.

I give him a tight smile as I open the car and slip into the driver's seat, watching him through the rear mirror and hope to God that I don't throw up the one decent meal I've had in days. My stomach lurches uncomfortably and I tighten the grip on the steering wheel as he enters and he himself gets comfortable in the seat beside me.

„It's not that far from here, so I'll guide you there," Matthew remarks with a smile.

I nod and start the car. We leave the parking lot of the diner and go back to the road. Matthew is telling me something about the town itself but I'm not really paying that much attention. My eyes are on the road and so is half of my mind. The other half is screaming internally and panicking. I know the sleeping bag is buried under the hiking gear like I had arranged it before stepping inside the diner but at every turn, I'm petrified that the hiking gear might slip and reveal what is underneath it. My eyes keep darting between the road, at Matthew and the rear mirror so fast that I'm getting nauseous.

Somehow I do manage to slip in „aha-s", „I see-s" and „that's nice-s" whenever Matthew pauses in his guided tour and looks over at me expectantly. If the situations were different, I would have concentrated wholeheartedly towards him and his stories about the town.

The motel is thankfully not that far but it's smack in the middle of town and that doesn't bode well with me and Sophie if we need to make a quick getaway. It doesn't look like a dirty road motel either, which is something I had been expecting. It is instead clean and painted in warm, creamy colors and is on two floors. The warmth and cleanliness of it all makes me feel uneasy as it reminds me of the other place with a nasty lurch in my stomach.

„See, it's pretty nice," says Matthew reassuringly.

I give him a small smile as I park the car, though I have no intentions of telling him what I really think of the place. The uneasiness crawls over me as I survey the motel but I try to convince myself that I won't stay there for too long.