Vampire Most Wanted

Six

“You’re a star, kid!” Chapman announced as he stopped at the Tilt-A-Whirl next to Marcus. “You handled the Tilter like you’ve worked it for years. And handled the kids like a pop star too. They were eating out of your hand. Never had a Friday night go by without some kind of push and shove war, or flat-out fights break out over girls or line cutters. Yes sirree, kid, you’re a star.”

Marcus straightened from collecting the empty cotton candy cones and disposable drink glasses that had been dropped carelessly around the Tilt-A-Whirl and smiled wryly at Chapman. He was often called kid, son, or young man by people in their forties or fifties and up. He was no longer surprised by it, but it still felt like he was being talked down to and it rankled a bit. “Thank you. Glad you are happy.”

“Happy? Hell!” Chapman shook his head and spat into the dirt. “How would you like a full-time job and come with us when we leave here?”

“What about Stan?” Marcus asked mildly.

“Stan,” Chapman murmured on a sigh and scrubbed the back of his head with agitation. “Seems that scrap Stan got himself into in town wasn’t a fight so much as a shoving match. He shoved harder, the other guy fell back and broke his neck on the bottom rung of a bar stool. Dead before he hit the floor.” He let his hand drop wearily to his side. “Stan’s been charged with manslaughter. He ain’t gonna be available for a while.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Marcus said quietly. He’d seen too many stupid accidents like that happen over the centuries to be surprised by it.

“Yeah, so am I,” Chapman said quietly, staring at the ground and shaking his head. “Stan’s not a bad guy, and from what I hear the other guy started it. Didn’t like a carnie talking to a local girl and decided to intervene, started shoving Stan around and when he shoved back—” He shrugged. Straightening, he shook his head again as if shaking off the thought of Stan’s fate and turned away. “Well, you think on it. You have a job if you want to travel.”

“I’ll think about it,” Marcus murmured, watching the man walk away looking tired and defeated. The sound of a screen door opening drew his gaze to the side to see Divine ushering a young woman out of her RV.

“Thank you so much,” the brunette was saying earnestly as Divine walked her down the steps.

“You’re welcome,” Divine said solemnly, pausing at the foot of the steps. “I hope everything works out for you.”

“Thank you,” the woman repeated, and then hurried away. Divine watched until the customer was halfway up the darkening midway, and then turned to pick up her A-frame sign.

Marcus frowned as he noted how pale she was, and that there were lines of pain around her mouth and eyes. It reminded him of the blood he’d found in her RV and the dried blood she’d had on her clothes and in her hair earlier. She’d obviously been injured at some point in the night, and judging by the amount of blood that had been in the RV, badly. She might even yet still be healing from it; he couldn’t be sure. But he was quite sure she was in serious need of blood . . . and she didn’t have any. He’d gone over that RV from stem to stern and not found anything but a small bar fridge with some old cream in it, presumably for those occasions when Madge came by for coffee.

Moving to the nearest trash bin, Marcus disposed of the garbage he’d gathered while waiting for Chapman to come tell him he could knock off. He then headed for the back lot where his SUV was now parked. He’d moved it there on his break. Finding the blood in her RV and seeing it on her had convinced him that it might be best to be close at hand, at least until he found out what had happened. Which meant he’d be sleeping in his SUV. It was probably for the best, he acknowledged. Staying at the hotel might raise suspicion among the carnies. No one on their wages could afford a motel room let alone a hotel. He wouldn’t get any information at all if they were all suspicious and leery about him, so staying here had seemed the better choice.

Several people called out greetings as he passed and Marcus responded politely, but didn’t slow. At his SUV he made sure no one was looking, then climbed in the back, unlocked the built-in fridge, and retrieved several bags of blood. He stuffed them inside his shirt, grimaced at how obvious it was he had something in there, and then tugged on the leather jacket he’d used as a pillow last night. It was too damned hot for the jacket, but the leather at least made the bulge in his shirt less obvious. Still, he moved quickly as he locked up and left the SUV, sticking to the shadows as much as possible on his way back to Divine’s RV.

He knocked once on her door, but—afraid she’d turn him away—Marcus didn’t wait for her to answer. He pulled the door open and stepped inside, barely ducking in time to avoid the mop that came swinging at his head.

“Whoa. It’s me,” he said quickly, holding up a hand as he straightened. Good thing he did too, or he would have taken the mop in the face. Damn, the woman was fast. “Divine, it’s me, Marco.”

“And what the hell makes you think that makes it okay to break into my RV?” she asked dryly, this time doing the unexpected and ramming the end of her mop into his groin.

Marcus’s breath left him on a sound he didn’t think he’d ever made before. It came out a whooshing “eeeee-iiiiii-owwwww” and ended on a howl. He also dropped the bags of blood in favor of cupping his screaming genitals with one hand while grabbing the mop with the other to ensure she didn’t do that again. He needn’t have worried, Divine’s hands had gone lax on the mop, her attention fixed on what he’d dropped.

“What the devil is that?” she asked with dismay, staring at the clear bags of dark crimson fluid lying on the floor of her RV.

“They’re for you,” Marcus muttered through gritted teeth. Damnnnn, the woman had nearly unmanned him . . . and the blow had hurt enough that he’d nearly passed out. He still might do so. Immortal women were stronger than mortal women, or mortal men for that matter, and she hadn’t held back. It was all he could do not to cross his legs and hop around continuously howling like a sissy boy. Alternately, he wanted to rip his pants down and see if his balls were still intact. He suspected she’d crushed at least one of them with her blow, popping it like a balloon in his jeans.

That thought made Marcus cast a reluctant glance down. He groaned when he saw the blood beginning to blossom at his groin. Dammit, the woman had unmanned him.

“Well, what on earth do you expect me to do with these?” Divine asked, bending to pick up one of the bags and peer at it with distaste.

Marcus snatched it from her hand and slammed it to his mouth almost before his fangs had finished extending.

She stared at him wide-eyed as the bag quickly began to shrink. When the last drop of blood had been sucked up through his fangs into his body, he pulled the shriveled bag away with a gasp of pain and turned away to bang his forehead against the wall and then lean there trying to ignore the new pain now centered at his groin as the nanos in his blood began to make repairs. Damn, the fix was almost worse than the damage had felt when she’d hit him. Correction, he thought grimly, trying not to gnash his teeth. It was worse, because the blow had taken only a moment and the repairs were going to take much longer.

“Crap,” Marcus groaned, pressing his forehead harder into the wall to try to distract himself from the pain in his lower regions. He followed that up with a lovely string of curses in both Italian and English that ended on an “Ah hell,” when the world blurred around him and he felt himself sliding toward the floor and unconsciousness. It seemed the cure was going to knock him out where the actual blow hadn’t.

Divine watched Marcus sprawl on her floor and sighed with exasperation. She really needed to control her temper. While she’d been annoyed that he would enter before she’d given him permission, all she’d managed to do was make more work for herself.

Clucking under her tongue, she shook her head, set aside the mop, and then squatted to turn the man over. He was white as a sheet, she saw, but didn’t understand why until she gave him the once-over and noted the bloodstain around his groin.

“Oh damn,” Divine muttered, guilt sliding through her. She hadn’t meant to do real damage, just teach him a lesson about entering other people’s homes without permission. Unfortunately, she used her strength so rarely that Divine forgot just how strong she was. This wasn’t the first time she’d done more damage than intended. She’d once tossed a grandson through a wall when all she’d meant to do was slam him up against it. But she hadn’t felt too bad about that. It had been Rufus, who she suspected didn’t follow her rules about feeding. He was a mouthy piece of work, always sneering at the “stupidity and weakness of mortals.” She’d heard him more than once declare they were stupid cattle and deserved to be slaughtered. He knew she hated it when he said things like that. She hated that he even thought like that, and blamed herself for it.

Divine didn’t spend a lot of time around her son and his sons. She hadn’t since he became a man and struck out on his own. She had visited with him more often at first. She’d even raised several of his boys in the early centuries when the birth mother didn’t want to be bothered, but had found it too heart-wrenching when one or another of them had been caught by one of Uncle Lucian’s scouts and killed. It had actually been a relief when Damian had stopped asking her to raise them.

The last time she’d spent more than a half hour or so with Damian had been when she’d had to rescue him from Uncle Lucian up in Canada. She’d moved as quickly as she could when she’d got the message from Abaddon that her son might need her. Fortunately, the carnival she’d been traveling with at the time had been in Michigan and she’d got to Toronto quickly enough. She’d checked into a hotel and had immediately tried to contact Damian. When she hadn’t been able to reach him, she’d reluctantly tried to contact Abaddon with no success. She’d paced her hotel room for two days, trying repeatedly to reach either of the men. Just as she was about to give up and head back to Michigan, Abaddon had called in a panic. He’d told her Leo was holed up in a hotel in downtown Toronto and Lucian and his men were there searching for him.

Divine had ground her teeth at his calling Damian Leo, but had merely snapped out, “Which hotel? What room is he in?”

The hotel hadn’t been far from her own. Still, by the time she’d arrived, slipped past the men her uncle seemed to have streaming through the building, and got to the floor Damian’s room was on, she’d been too late. They’d found him, and Damian was lying on the floor in the hall, several bullets in his chest and an arrow protruding from his heart.

Shocked and horrified, Divine had scooped him up and started to turn away with him, but a small sound, perhaps a gasp, had made her swing back toward the room Damian had lain outside of. A petite brunette was trying to help a dark-haired man to his feet and had spotted her. The woman was opening her mouth to scream when Divine had taken control of her mind, stopped her from making a sound, wiped her mind, and put her to sleep. She’d then rushed off for the stairs with her son, carrying him up rather than down and then leaping from the rooftop of that building to the next, and then the next after that before stopping to remove the arrow from his heart. He hadn’t miraculously gained consciousness right away, of course. Besides the arrow, he’d taken several bullet wounds and lost enough blood that he would be out for a while. She’d waited an hour, though, before moving.

Not knowing what else to do, Divine had left him there while she went for her RV. It hadn’t taken long . . . even so, Damian was gone by the time she returned.

In a panic, she’d called his number only to have a strange voice answer. Suspecting it was one of Uncle Lucian’s men, she’d hung up at once and called Abaddon instead, telling herself that just because they had the phone didn’t mean they had her son. Her calls to Abaddon had again gone unanswered. Divine had stayed in town for another full day calling again and again, and then had packed up and headed for the border, intending to get as far away from Canada and her uncle as possible.

The next weeks had been stressful as she waited to learn whether her son had managed to drag himself off that roof on his own, or had been caught. She’d also changed carnivals at that point, moving to the Hoskins Amusements, and she’d dialed Abaddon’s number so many times she’d started to dream about dialing it. And then she’d finally got a call, not from Abaddon, but from her son. He was alive, well, and wanted to thank her for saving his life. Seriously, that’s what he’d said. Divine had flipped. All that anxiety and fear and he finally calls her up cheerful as a chimp to say thanks? Divine had demanded to know where he was and when she found out he was holed up not far from where the carnival was, she’d left at once to go see him.

Her temper hadn’t improved any once she’d arrived at the dilapidated building he’d taken shelter in. He deserved better than the holes he chose to inhabit, and she didn’t like his choice of companions either. Not the women. They were all emaciated drug addicts, every one of them high as kites, either passed out and blank-brained or so strung out their thoughts didn’t make sense when she tried to read them. She hadn’t been any more pleased to find her grandsons just as high from feeding on them. She’d ignored that at first, too intent on seeing for herself that Damian was all right to care what her grandsons got up to. Once she’d seen for herself that he was alive and well, Divine had demanded an explanation and Damian had explained that Abaddon had carried him off the roof and got him away when she’d left him there.

That last part had been said with a wounded note that suggested she’d abandoned him, and that was when Divine had let her temper rip. She’d explained in no uncertain terms that she’d left him to fetch the RV and came back to find him gone.

“Says you. You were probably off fetching the Rogue Hunters to come get Dad,” Rufus had sneered, his words slurred with the effects of the drug-soaked blood he’d consumed. Divine hadn’t even thought; she’d picked him up by the throat and thrown him up against the wall . . . only he’d gone right through it, crashing to the floor in the next room. Divine had followed to make sure he was all right, and then to warn him to watch his tongue if he didn’t want to be tongueless as well as fangless. It had been an empty threat, but effective. He’d said “Yes ma’am,” and nodded repeatedly as she’d turned and stormed out.

Damian had followed her, but when she’d asked how Lucian Argeneau had tracked him down, he’d been infuriatingly vague about the whole ordeal. He’d claimed that a couple of the boys had taken some risks they shouldn’t have and behaved stupidly, and that he’d tried to clean up their mess and got himself caught. Damian had refused to explain what those risks had been, however. He’d also avoided her eyes the whole time, which had made her suspect he was lying to her about something, though she couldn’t tell which part of the tale was a lie.

“What risks?” she’d demanded. “What stupid things did they do?”

“They’re my sons. I’ll handle it,” he’d said, refusing to explain.

Divine had let the matter go, too emotionally exhausted from weeks of worry to have the energy to fight with him. But she’d taken the time to warn him in no uncertain terms to lie low and avoid trouble for the next little while. Lucian didn’t like to lose, wouldn’t be happy about losing him, and would have his people out in force looking for him. She’d emphasized it by pounding at him until he’d assured her he’d lie low for a while.

The moment he’d made that promise, she’d mounted her motorcycle and left. Divine always came away from visits to Damian’s chosen shelters feeling slightly dirty. She blamed it on Abaddon and some of her grandsons. She had always found Abaddon loathsome, but while she disliked admitting it, some of her grandsons left her feeling the same way. As a rule they avoided her as much as possible, and were mostly quiet and polite when they couldn’t avoid her, but it didn’t matter. Divine always left worried about what they were up to and feeling like she needed a bath. It was why she didn’t go out of her way to see her son. In fact, she hadn’t seen him more than half a dozen times over the last century, and four of those times had been over the last two or three years, twice when she’d had to save him from Lucian and then had visited him after, and twice the last couple of days.

Marcus moaned from the depths of his unconsciousness and Divine turned her attention to the man she was squatting over. She supposed she couldn’t just leave him lying there on her floor. Well, she could, but it could get awkward if Madge or someone came along for a visit and peered through the window.

Clicking her tongue against her teeth, she picked up the man and carried him to the bedroom at the back of the RV. After laying him down there, she debated stripping him so he’d be more comfortable and then shook the thought away. Seeing the injury she’d done him would just make her feel guiltier and she resented feeling guilty at all. She shouldn’t. He had entered uninvited. A man could get shot for something like that.

Mind you, Divine supposed he might prefer getting shot to whatever had happened in his pants when she’d hit him. She’d lived a long time and never seen a man actually turn the different colors he had with pain. At one point he’d actually turned green.

Grimacing, she quickly covered him with a blanket so that she didn’t have to look at the evidence of what she’d done Divine then returned to the other room and surveyed the mess. After a sigh, she collected the remaining bags of blood and tossed them in her refrigerator, then set to the task of cleaning up the blood that had dried on her floor. Fortunately, she didn’t favor carpet and her RV was floored with a laminate that looked like hardwood. Everything in her RV was easily cleanable, which came in handy at times like this. Not that there were many times like this. Actually, this was the first. But she had no doubt there would be others in the future before she traded this RV in for another. Life could get messy.

It didn’t take long to finish her cleaning. Once done, Divine walked to the door to the bedroom and peered in at Marcus again. She’d nearly covered his head with the blanket when she’d tossed it on him, and he was lying as still as death under it, nowhere near regaining consciousness. In her experience, if he weren’t very deeply under he’d be moaning and thrashing. Healing was often more painful than the injury that brought it on, which was something she’d learned well at an early age.

Not wanting to think about that, Divine turned away and headed for the door. She needed to head into town and find a meal. She needed blood. The throbbing in her head had got steadily worse as the day had progressed, and then it had begun to spread. A sure sign she needed blood. She wasn’t too concerned about leaving Marcus here alone. There was nothing here for him to find that would tell him her identity. In fact, there was nothing here to tell him much of anything about her. Divine had learned long ago to travel lightly. She never knew when she might have to move again, and possibly do it with nothing but the clothes on her back. She’d done that many, many times over the years.

Stepping outside, she sucked in a breath of fresh air, peered up at the starlit night, and then went to get her motorcycle.