"You just met Ben?"
"Uh-huh."
I made a point of not looking at him and kept running my finger around the top of my glass as if I was nervous. He reached out and stopped my hand.
"You don't like it very much in here, do you?" he whispered.
"No."
"I've got a room a few blocks away. You want to just go there and talk?"
"I don't know… What about Maggie?"
"She looks pretty busy."
I didn't say anything. He stood up and held out his hand. "Let's just get out of here."
My own hands are so little that when I reached up he suddenly seemed afraid to grasp one. "Okay," I said, "but I've got to tell Maggie where I'll be. What motel are you in?"
"Green Clover Inn, room eight."
"Wait here."
Maggie was sitting at the bar, laughing with Ben. The buzz in the place drowned out my words as I leaned over to her ear.
"Just a drifter. Green Clover Inn. Room eight. Ten minutes."
She nodded very slightly without breaking her smile and turned back to Ben.
Gunner came up behind me and put his hand on my back. He talked to Ben for a few seconds, and then steered me toward the door. "You'll feel better once we're outside," he said. "It's pretty smoky in here."
That was kind of funny since he was holding a lit Marlboro between his teeth.
The streets were busy outside. I stopped to put a few dollars in an open guitar case but didn't talk much to Gunner-what a stupid name. At that point I didn't want to talk.
"Is your friend back there trying to get you into her line of work?" he asked suddenly.
"I'm already in her line of work."
"You don't act like it."
"How should I act?"
That made him uncomfortable, and he shut up for a few seconds, then spat out, "How much?"
How much? Oh, great. Maggie didn't tell me anything about that. I had no idea what to say. "Don't worry about it."
He glanced at me sideways. Yeah, that was the ticket, just convince him he was such a stud I'd get him off for free. Maybe he'd believe it. I hoped so. Maggie had a lot of questions to answer later.
"This is it."
He stopped in front of a run-down motel sans any porch lights. Pulling a key from his pocket, he opened the door to room 8 and motioned me in.
"You hungry?" he asked. "We could order a pizza or something."
I wondered if most guys offered to buy pizza for hookers, but that seemed unlikely. It bothered me that he was being so nice.
"No, I'm okay. But go ahead if you want one."
He sat down on the bed. There were dead cockroaches in the air vent over his head, and the bedspread sported two gaping cigarette burns.
"I don't think I ever caught your name," he said.
"Eleisha."
"Hey, listen…"
A knock sounded on the door. His eyebrows wrinkled. "Someone's probably got the wrong room." He opened the door and Maggie walked in.
"Just thought I'd check on you." She smiled with an odd light in her dark eyes.
"What about Ben?" Gunner asked.
"I told him I wanted to show Eleisha a few things. He understood."
Every time I looked at her it took me by surprise. It was hard to believe anything so perfect could be walking around. She obviously had the same effect on Gunner, but he'd been caught off guard by her sudden appearance. Before he could move, she ran her hands up his chest. I stood staring in rapt interest. The whole scene took on the same unreal quality as Maggie's bedroom.
His expression went blank. Then something close to pain, but not quite, flickered through his eyes. Staring down into her beautiful face, he seemed to forget my existence. Maybe he even forgot his own. With one hand he grasped the back of her thick mane and pulled her mouth up to his. I couldn't take my eyes off them. She'd achieved absolute control in a matter of seconds.
But she didn't waste any time.
I'd killed hundreds of people since the nineteenth century, but until that night, I'd never actually watched one of my own kind feed. With the exception of Edward, I'd never seen one of them kill. He operated hard and fast, like a machine. I used to go to horror movies and grimace every time some supposed vampire's face distorted into a grotesque demonic mask and his fangs grew to epic proportions. It isn't like that. Our fangs don't grow. Our eyes don't turn red. We don't hiss or spit or turn into slaughter-crazed animals.
Maggie didn't do any of those things. She just moved her mouth down to his neck, pinned him back against the wall, and bit down until she punctured his jugular. He didn't scream. He didn't struggle- much. I'm not even sure he knew what was happening to him. Quiet and simple.
I just stood there, watching.
She let his body slide to the floor and knelt there, drinking for a while. Then she looked up at me. "Hurry up. His heart's still beating."
It's not just blood that we take in. It's life force. Both Maggie and I would feed on energy through his blood. Without letting myself think, I walked over and crouched down, putting my mouth on his neck. Of course none of us could drink all the blood in a grown man's body. All those stories about us draining bodies are lies. We don't leave neat little snake-eye puncture wounds either. No one could feed like that. Most victims die from blood loss, but more than half of it ends up on the floor. This guy's throat was a mess. Even if we didn't drink from him, he'd bleed to death in a matter of minutes.
I sank my teeth in and drew down… and then as always, while feeding, images of his life passed through my mind. This was a side effect of absorbing his life force. I'd grown accustomed to it many, many years ago.
This time, I saw a small, decaying house on a run-down street, an unshaven man-Gunner's father-drinking from a bottle. I saw a thin woman with a sad face, and then flashing visions of different motorcycles… a pretty girl with long black hair, laughing in one moment and slapping him in the next. I saw a long string of bars and pool tables…
Maggie must have taken a lot because I held his head with one hand and drew fluid out of his throat until his heart stopped beating. It's a cold experience to feel someone's heart just stop like that.
"He's dead," I said woodenly, pulling back.
"Good," she said from the bathroom, cleaning up. "Get his wallet, wash up, and let's go."
"What about the body?"
"Leave it. Nobody cares. Without his ID, he's just another John Doe."
"He must have given his name to the clerk."
"I doubt it. Cash-and-carry business around here."
Hiding or disguising or dumping bodies was a natural part of hunting for me. Leaving him made me nervous, but Maggie was already outside. I washed up and followed.
I didn't feel so reckless anymore. We walked more than a mile before she said, "You did good back there. Better than I'd expected."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you pegged that guy in a hurry. I was watching you from the bar and you had him in less than ten minutes. Surprised me."
Her praise had an odd, soothing effect. I hunted to survive, so that I could go on living and taking care of William. No one had ever judged my technique and said "Good job" like that before. The opinions of others didn't really matter much to me, but for some reason I liked hearing how pleased she was.
"Can we go to a higher-class place next time?"
"Oooooooh." She laughed. "Getting snooty already? People in the higher-class places get missed. Better get used to smoke and tattoos."
"Fabulous."
Warmth glowed from her pale face in a way that made me feel welcome. She'd been alone too long. It's funny how she thought herself so worldly and couldn't recognize the scars of loneliness.
She broke into a run down an alley-still wearing those heels. I watched her hair blow back like a cloud and then followed her into the darkness. I felt right somehow. Happy.
Maybe I'd been lonely, too.