August 2013
I could hear the whipping wind in my ears. It was a familiar, comforting rush. Besides the steady purr of the truck that I was nestled in the bed of, the world was pretty quiet. My head, however, was a different story. On one end of things, there was an ache that ran deep into my body - Domare's pain. His body was still healing from Michael's attack, but also something else. Something else had happened to him. Whatever it was, it hurt mightily, but I reveled in the fact that I could tell his body was still trying to heal itself. If nothing else, this pain meant that my vampire was alive for now.
The other half of my agony was mine to own. I couldn't see out of my left eye, and my head was pounding. The skin on one side of my face itched ferociously. I reached up with trembling fingers to trace that side of my cranium and felt the unfamiliar stretch and heat of swollen skin beneath the pads of my fingers. I couldn't however, bring myself to check and see if I even still had my left eye. My blood boiled beneath my skin. I had known the touch of Nexus once, and now it burned in my veins again, but my body wasn't even able to properly register all the pain. I must have been in shock.
I lay in the truck and stared at the tattered remains of the canvas covering the truck bed. Stars gleamed above it in an endless stretch of night sky. I wondered how long we had been riding, but lacked the strength to get up and learn the answer. I fell asleep eventually, all the pain between Domare and I dragging me back into its depths.
When next I woke, the world was bright, and Domare's body was curled around mine in the bed of the truck. We were still riding, and I wondered if we had ever stopped and how much time had passed.
"Winston?" Hazel's voice asked raspingly from where she lay on Domare's opposite side.
"Yes?"
She made a relieved sound. "How are you?"
"Alive," I said as loudly as I could, but my throat was parched and I ended up coughing for a spell, trying to cover my mouth with my hands. When I pulled them away, I saw the blood on my palms and grimaced.
"Don't speak," Hazel said tiredly. "Michael shot me with Nexus before you and Domare found me. Half a syringe in my arm."
I wanted to tell her that he had gotten me with it as well, but couldn't form the words.
"Domare is alive," she told me, as if I didn't already know. "He moves in this state, but he hasn't woken."
I hated the fact that my brain chose that moment to start working again. "How long have we been in this truck?" I forced out, coughing again after.
"A day and a half," she replied over my hacking.
"Need to switch to a-a car," I rasped. "Too...conspicuous."
"I'll tell Brucker," she said, a note of promise in her voice. "When we stop."
I turned on my side so I could see Domare's face, and when I finally could, I wished I hadn't. From head to toe, he was a bloody mess with torn skin that was barely healing.
"What h-happened?" the words escape my mouth in a hiss as I reached forward to wipe the blood from Domare's face. How are you alive? I thought at him, and was answered only with silence.
"He hit the cab when the explosion hit," said Hazel, sound groggier with each word.
I tried to look upward, at the cab, but pain after pain shot through my head. I just couldn't manage it.
"Poor Brucker," Hazel said sadly. "Clarice is gone, yet still he drives on."
A wave of sadness hit me, sadness and gratitude. If it hadn't been for Brucker, we never would have made it out of there alive. And he did it after his vampire died, I thought pitying. I couldn't have done that. I stared at Domare's blood-smeared face and felt my good eye start to water.
"Domare," I whispered, pressing my swollen head against his own.
"Rest now," Hazel eventually added. "While you can."
I closed my eyes.
We spent another day on the road in that truck, barely getting by on discarded bottles of water and some stale granola bars that had been tucked away in the glove box. Brucker finally gave in and traded it up for a battered old Honda at a small-time junk yard. I don't know how the other slayer managed to talk the guy into trading us for that beat-up military rig, but he did, and I was more than grateful when Brucker helped me into the back seat of that little car - even more so when he single-handedly moved Domare from one vehicle to the other and sat him next to me.
I couldn't believe that the junk-yard owner didn't question anything. God knows that we were a bloody mess, and it had to be really obvious that truck had been gunned to Hell and back. Brucker tucked Hazel into the front seat of the car and took up the driver's seat, though he looked huge and uncomfortable behind the steering wheel. The air conditioning didn't work, so we rolled down the windows as Brucker pulled us back onto the dusty desert road, keeping us just barely above the speed limit. I prayed that our tags were good.
In the three days since we had left Pluto, Domare hadn't stirred. He did, occasionally, move this way or that, but his mind didn't even flicker with so much as a dream.
"Where are going?" I asked as the sun started going down over the wide expanse of desert. Trees were starting to appear more and more often. We had to be getting close to a more wooded area. I had never missed civilization so much.
"East, I reckon," Brucker muttered. "Don't really know."
"Stay off of the interstates," I told him. "Have we been followed?"
"Not since the day before yesterday, but I lost 'em."
"Good," I sighed, pulling Domare's weight against my side. Where ever we ended up, I hoped there was a bed. "We're going to run out of gas eventually."
"Yeah," Brucker said. "We used up all the extra fuel in the truck, and all I have is about twenty bucks that I found in that rig. It won't get us far."
"I have a debit card," I admitted, could feel the weight of it tucked into one of my pockets. It was one of the few things I had kept when I had first arrived at Pluto. "I could max it out, but I'm sure it will pop up on a tracker somewhere. We'd have to use it and run." I said carelessly. Good credit didn't mean much to me anymore. I knew we'd probably be on the run for the rest of our lives.
"It's not worth the risk," Hazel said from the front seat. "But Domare and I need blood, and what Brucker can provide isn't going to be enough until you get better, Winston."
"Truck stops are full of wandering idiots," I suggested. "Rest stops, too, but those are all on the interstate, and we need to stick to back roads. The best we can do for now is to find a supermarket or something."
"This is hopeless," Brucker muttered, and I sympathized. It really did seem that way.
"No, it isn't," Hazel interjected. "Find me a phone."
We pulled into the next gas station, parking in a shady corner, and I said, "I don't think pay phones exist anymore. They got rid of all of them a few years ago."
"I'll go ask the cashier," Hazel muttered. "Stay here."
"Wait," I said hastily. "You're still a mess. If you go in there, that guy's gonna freak out and call the police."
"I can go," Brucker suggested, but Hazel shook her head.
"I have to be the one."
I had a bad idea, but I voiced it anyway. We were out of options. "Steal a cell phone."
Brucker glanced at me in the back seat, and after a short pause, he said, "Alright. Back in ten."
It took more like five. He casually slipped back into the driver's seat a few minutes after he had left it, plopped an iPhone into Hazel's lap, and calmly got back on the road. I didn't even want to know what he had done to get that phone. Hazel struggled with it for a few minutes before making a frustrated sound.
"How the hell does this contraption work?" she muttered angrily.
"It's a touch-screen," I tried to explain, holding out my hand. "Pass it here."
She did, and I quickly pulled up the dial-pad. "Be happy it's not locked," I told them. "Number?" Hazel rattled one off from memory. I dialed the number, hit the call button, and passed the phone back to her. Someone answer pretty quickly and Hazel practically sunk into her seat from relief.
"It's Hazel," she said into the receiver. "We got out."
A pause.
"Four," she said after a moment.
Another pause.
"In bad shape," was her next reply. "We're broke, broken, and almost out of money." She listened to something on the other end, and turned to Brucker.
"What state are we in? City? What road?" she wanted to know.
Brucker answered her questions quickly, and I let myself drift off. I was so tired, my head still hurt, and though Domare's pain had lessened, I still felt the weight of it. I was also a bit worried about what that second dose of Nexus might do to my body. Would I grow a third arm? Or just die? If diluted, the formula wouldn't have been mixed with any vampire blood, which was probably for the best. My head was still swollen, though, and that pain had barely subsided.
Hazel finally ended her phone call, afterward crushing the phone to pieces in her hand and tossing it out of the car's window. "There's an abandoned gas station about three miles up," she told Brucker. "Stop there."
We did, and I was actually relieved when Brucker shut the engine of the car off. I glanced at the boarded-up windows of the abandoned gas station tiredly. Hazel twisted around to observe Domare's pale form next to me.
"He needs blood," she said quietly and glanced at Brucker, indicating that he should feed my vampire.
"I'll do it," I said quickly, but Hazel shot the idea down immediately.
"You're too weak, and practically glowing with chemicals. You'll only make him worse."
I grimaced. "He needs it."
"But not from you," she retorted. "Brucker."
"Yeah, yeah," the slayer said, but when he got out and opened the other car door, I practically jumped across Domare to keep him away.
"No," I said fiercely, sprawled awkwardly across my vampire and the back seat. "Domare is mine and you have the Nexus in your blood. I won't risk it."
"I've drank Brucker's blood twice already," Hazel said. "It's fine. Domare will have to drink from someone else eventually."
"But not from another slayer," I growled. "Never."
Brucker stepped away from my mutilated glare. I probably looked like a monster from a bad sci-fi film, head half swollen with only one good eye. Hazel had confirmed that I did still have my left eyeball, but it was bloodied beyond recognition, even as it sat uselessly behind the closed lid. Had Michael not pumped me full of pure Nexus, I might have healed from the needle at least, but the chemical was doing things to my body that none of us understood. We only knew that it wasn't for the better.
Hazel groaned. "Fine," she spat. "I'll feed him, but I'll have you know that this is ridiculous, you lousy, overprotective human."
"His human," I snarled. "I get a say."
"Clearly," she said, stepping out of the car and coming around to Domare's side. She bit through her own wrist and held it over Domare's mouth.
"Your healing is still slow," I noticed when the small wounds on her wrist didn't immediately close.
"Not as badly as yours," she pointed out, practically gloating.
"You used to like me, Grandma Greyson," I said mumbled. "What happened?"
She sighed, still holding her wrist over her Grandson's mouth. "You made him care for you more than he cares for me," she admitted with a sad expression.
"He doesn't hate you," I told her, trying to sound comforting. "He refused to leave you behind."
She smiled a little and finally pulled her wrist away, then turned to Brucker, flashing her fangs hungrily.
"Not in the open," I reminded them, so they got back into the car before Brucker let Hazel dig her fangs into his neck. I turned my attention back to Domare, still unconscious.
"Why isn't he waking up?" I thought to ask when Hazel had finished drinking from Brucker.
"He needs a lot more blood that what we can give him right now. He's barely alive," she explained.
I shuddered. "I don't want him to die," I whispered, wrapping my arms around Domare's shoulders.
Brucker made a broken sound, and I remembered what he had lost.
"I'm sorry about Clarice," I told him, but I didn't want to ever have to empathize. My vampire was alive, and I would make sure that he stayed that way. Brucker drew in a harsh breath and said nothing in response.
"Help is on the way," Hazel said quietly. "They'll be here in a few hours."
I pressed my mess of a face against Domare's blood-stained hair and said nothing.
And we waited.