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.
Seven
It was hunger that woke Marcus. His stomach was cramping with it. That awareness was followed by the realization that he was lying on a bed, under a blanket. A glance around told him where he was and reminded him what had happened. It also explained why he was so hungry. The one bag of blood hadn’t been enough to make up for the blood his body had used healing his balls.
Grimacing at the thought of the injury he’d taken, Marcus reached down to feel gingerly around under the blanket. His jeans were hard and crusty with dry blood around the groin, but there was no longer any pain down there. He’d healed. Great. Now he just had to get up, get out of here without his oh-so-lovely hostess busting his balls again, literally, and get back to the SUV to find some blood. Unless, of course, the blood he’d brought here was still around. From the disgusted look on Divine’s face, he doubted she’d consumed it. She’d acted like it was skanky week-old roadkill he’d offered her. Here he’d been trying to do something nice and she’d beaten the crap out of him and sneered at his offering.
“Women,” he muttered under his breath, and was about to shift the blanket off himself and get up when a sound in the other room made him pause. He supposed he should have assumed it was Divine. It was her RV after all, but there had been something furtive about the sound. He lay still, ears straining, and then stiffened and closed his eyes to feign sleep as he heard the bedroom door slide open.
It was barely opened when it closed again, but the sound came with a smell that told him the person at the door wasn’t Divine. She smelled like wild roses and vanilla, a surprisingly potent combination that made him think of cupcakes in the garden. It made him hungry.
However, the smell that had slid into the room when the door was opened was musk and male sweat. Marcus opened his eyes to find the room empty. Surprised by that, he eased the blankets aside and carefully sat up, relieved when the action didn’t add to the pain his lack of blood was causing. He was weak though. He needed blood.
The distinct whoosh of the RV’s screen door closing made Marcus get to his feet and head out of the room to investigate. Even if he only caught a glimpse of whoever was walking away from the RV, it was something, he thought.
Marcus was halfway across the lounge area when flames suddenly exploded outside the windows on either side of him. Freezing, he glanced from one window to the other and then continued forward, running now. He pushed through to the curtained-off area with the table where Divine did her fortune-telling, noting that there were flames outside those windows as well.
Muscles tightening, Marcus reached the door and tried to open it, not terribly surprised when the doorknob turned but the door didn’t budge. Why set the RV on fire and leave the door open for the person inside to escape? And it had to have been deliberately set on fire. Flames were shooting up at every window. Natural fires did not start that way. Besides, he could smell gas. It must have been used as an accelerant. Put that together with the attack that had left Divine and the RV bloodied last night and it appeared someone was out to get her.
Grinding his teeth together as the doorknob grew hot in his hand, Marcus stepped back and then threw his weight at the solid panel. That would have done it on most doors he’d encountered, but all it did here was crack the solid inner door in a couple spots. The center held fast. They must have jammed something up against it inside the screen door, he realized.
The fire was growing quickly. Judging by the way the fire had erupted, they must have poured the gasoline all the way around the RV and then set it on fire. It was the only explanation for the way the flames had popped up at every window. But the fire was quickly taking hold now, eating into the fiberglass and whatever else the RV was made of, and the heat inside was quickly becoming like an oven on broil. Immortals tended to be highly flammable and Marcus knew he didn’t have long.
Giving up on the door, he turned and glanced from one window to another and then hurried back into the lounge area. After a brief pause, he settled for the window above the couch. It was bigger and he could use the couch as a launching pad, he decided, and ran for it. When he hit the couch and leaped up, Marcus raised his legs, drawing them close to his chest even as he curled his head down and wrapped his arms around it, trying to make himself as small as possible as he crashed into and through the window. It was only as the glass cut into him that Marcus considered that he should have thrown one of the kitchen table chairs through it first to clear away the glass, and it was only as the flames licked at him that he thought he should have dampened the blanket on the bed and wrapped it around himself before leaping out.