Forever, page 27
The town’s mechanic only worked when he felt like it.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
At the Brooklyn accent, Daniel looked over to the front door of the cottage. Candy, last name chemo-brained and forgotten, was leaning out, and yeah, wow. Her hair was the color of a pumpkin, an orange that had absolutely no foundation in the natural chromatics of human follicles. The sixty-year-old was wearing a knitted sweater that had a Santa scene on it, the reindeer racing over her shoulder, the big guy in the red suit with the white beard perched on her hip. The yarn’s knotting was such that there was a sculptural quality to the depiction.
In contrast to all that winter-ready, she was wearing flip-flops—and her toenails were a shiny red and green, like she was in the process of polishing them.
Clearly, she was all ready for Christmas. Like maybe she’d started her countdown on Labor Day.
“Hey,” he said as he went over to the woman.
“You’re looking… great.”
“You never were a good liar, Candy.”
“Ah, how would you know.” She stepped aside. “Where’s Lydia? You wanna come in?”
Well, that answered one of his questions. “I’m okay, and I don’t want to take up much of your time.”
“Time’s all I got. Come in.”
After he shut off the bike’s engine, he was all but sucked into the house, and the decor was like the dress code the woman always sported, full of knickknacks and homey stuff.
“Hey, I know that,” he said.
“What?”
Going over to a diorama that was on a bookshelf full of figurines, he nodded. “Thomas Kinkade. They sold twelve hundred of these things in two minutes last month.”
Candy’s blue lids went wide. “How the hell would you know that?”
“I’m a fan of QVC, too.”
“No shit. I guess all those drugs really did fuck you up.” She laughed. “I’m kidding.”
“No, you aren’t.” He didn’t want to sit down. But where was he going? Not back to C.P. Phalen’s right now. “Ah, so can I ask you a couple of things?”
“Is this a job interview? Because I’m technically enjoying unemployment and I have another six months to go. I’m treating it like a staycation. I’m making bread and knitting.” She ran her hands down her sweater. “I made this. It’s ugly as hell, but I’m proud of it. Then again, I live alone with cats who don’t have an opinion about my clothes—what was the question?”
He debated about how honest to be. Then decided to take a page out of Candy’s vibe.
And fuck it.
“How long has the WSP been shut down?”
Candy went over and sat down on her plaid couch. Moving a set of needles into her lap, she resumed some kind of knit-purling with bright pink yarn. “It’s about three months now, but I’m doing good. I got a year of severance up front. I have to say… Lydia really took care of me when she closed shop.”
“So she was…” He cleared his throat so he could lie. “I mean, of course, she told me what she was doing, of course.”
“Yeah, she was worried about you. Still is.”
“When did you buy her car?”
“Oh, she gave it to me.”
“That was good of her.”
“She’s the best.” Candy lowered her knitting. “Now you want to tell me what this is all about, or do you want to keep playing these games? And I’m sorry I haven’t been by to see you at C.P.’s spread, but I was told your immune system was shot and visitors were not really welcome—also, no offense, but that house always freaked me out. It’s like a fucking mausoleum. You want coffee? Breakfast?”
He thought of the bagels in his pocket. “No, I had something before I left that freaky house.”
* * *
Up on the mountain, in a hidden cave with a natural spring-fed pool, Lydia sat on a trunk and stared across a crackling fire. She was back in the red robe from the night before, and across the way from her, stretched out on a pallet, was the male who had been shot at.
“You look so much better,” she said.
“Indeed.” He glanced down at his bare chest. “By nightfall, I should be back to normal.”
“I thought you were going to die.” When he didn’t reply, she exhaled and went back to fixating on the flames. “So… Xhex is your sister.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep the chatter about my family to a minimum.” Even though his tone was sharp, his eyes were soft as he stared over at her. “I’d rather talk about you.”
“I’m happily married.” Fine, that was technically a lie. But it was also a truth. “My husband…”
“Is dying.” As her head snapped up, he nodded. “My sister mentioned that last night. Often. While they were taking the bullet out of me.”
To avoid his stare, she looked over at the medical supplies that were stacked neatly in the corner. The cave was furnished with trunks and equipment, more of a hideout than a home, but then the wolven who had used this refuge hadn’t intended it to be much more than a transitory pawed-à-terre, so to speak. Lydia hoped that he didn’t mind them borrowing it for a day.
“How did you find this den?” she asked. “It’s well hidden. The wolven up here had to show it to me.”
“My sister knew where it was. She said the guy who used to live here—well, it doesn’t matter.”
How did she know Callum, Lydia wondered.
“They brought you a doctor, then.”
“Yes, the female healer took care of me. She was efficient and kind.”
Lydia got to her feet and paced around. “It was you, the night before last. Who was up here when we came to meet Xhex.”
“What a happy coincidence, is it not? I was here for another reason. I stayed… because of you.”
Shaking her head, she faced off at him. “It’s not going to be like that between us.”
“Because?”
“I’m married.” God, she wished she had a ring to point to. “Happily married.”
“And afterward?”
As pain lanced through her heart, she looked to the passageway out. “You know, I think I’m going to go—”
“I’m sorry,” the male said in a rush. Then he tried to sit up and couldn’t quite manage the vertical. “I’m rude sometimes.”
Putting her hands on her hips, she felt the need to correct him. “That’s not rude. That’s cruel.”
“I apologize.” He moved his hand off to the side, as if he were wiping his comment away. “Last night, how did you know I was there?”
Lydia touched the side of her nose. “I smelled you, from where you were standing. You’re not just a vampire, are you.”
“No, I’m much more dangerous than they are.”
“Is that a flex?”
“It’s the truth.”
She studied him objectively. With his dark hair and his fine features, he was handsome in an aristocratic kind of way, particularly in the fire’s restless light—but he was muscular as well, and he was right about the dangerous thing. She could sense the predatory nature of him, the wolf in her recognizing the animal in him.
“My kind are not welcomed in mixed company,” he murmured. “That was how my sister got into her difficulty.”
“What kind of difficulty?”
There was a long silence. And then he spoke clearly. “She was sold into an underground lab. She was experimented on. It was hell.”
“Oh… God.”
“Our family put her in there. I watched her get taken away.” He laughed. “You know, maybe it’s the painkillers they gave me, but I will tell you quite honestly… that it has destroyed me, what happened to her. What was done… to her. It’s become my life’s work, as a matter of fact.”
Lydia frowned. “That’s why you’re here on the mountain. You’re looking… for the lab here. Do you work for the F.B.G., too?”
“In a manner of speaking… yes.”
She started shaking her head. “You can’t destroy the lab. They’re trying to save people’s lives.”
“At the expense of vampires. And wolves just like you.”
“Not C.P. Phalen’s lab. My husband is dying from lung cancer, and the immunotherapy they developed could save his life if he tried it. But in any event, they will start treating people with the drug—people they want to cure, not hurt.”
As he frowned, Lydia talked even faster. “And the doctors who work there? They’re good people. They’re researchers who are ethical. I don’t know what was done to your sister or where or by who. But what’s being done here? It’s going to save people’s lives, and yes, it’s developed for humans, but a vampire might need it.”
“Vampires don’t get cancer.”
“Oh. Well. Still. But whatever, there are no vampires down there. No wolven. The subjects who will try it will be volunteers and they will be properly monitored.”
In the silence that followed, she looked around again, as if anything in the cave could help her make her argument.
“After your husband dies,” the male murmured, “you’re going to come here and be on the mountain, aren’t you.”
“You don’t want to talk about your family? Well, I don’t want to talk about my future.”
“All right. Then let’s go back to you in the present.” The male’s voice got lower. “You’re so beautiful, Lydia—”
“Well, isn’t this cozy.”
Lydia wheeled around. Daniel was standing in the entry to the den, his eyes ripping around and then locking on the male, who was clearly naked under the blankets on the pallet.
“Jesus… Christ,” Daniel barked. “You’re fucking him?”
Lydia took a step forward. “What—wait, no. No, I haven’t—”
“Don’t touch me.” He pushed her hands off of him. “And Blade, I should have known. You fucking asshole.”
“Wait.” She looked between the two. “You know him?”
“Yeah, I know him—and now I know what you’ve been doing while you’ve been lying to me about going to work. Kind of convenient that I didn’t leave the house, huh. Easier to feed me the line of bullshit—”
“Daniel, this is not what it looks—”
“Oh, my God, a line from the movies. Of course, I only know that because I’ve been sitting on my ass getting ready to die for the last six months—”
“I am not having sex with anybody!” She started waving her hands, as if she could erase the conclusions he was jumping to. “Daniel, I—”
“I’m not even talking to you,” he said to the male. “You sonofabitch. And you, Lydia, are you really trying to say you didn’t lie? About the fact that the WSP closed down months ago? About the shit about your car? If you’d wanted to give the damn thing to Candy, why the fuck would I care? Why lie about that? Or were you so busy lying about him”—he jabbed a finger at the male on the pallet—“that you just kept snowing me about everything? Fuck, Lydia. Fuck.”
“I didn’t lie—”
“You did!”
“—for a nefarious reason—”
“There are no good reasons!”
“You are dying!” she hollered back at him. “And I’m dismantling my life because you’re dying! Do you think I want to tell you that I’m pulling out of everything because you’re going to be gone and I’m going to disappear into the lair of the wolven for a couple of years to recover? You’re already dealing with everything, do you really want to hear about me giving up my job, my house, and my friends so I can help you to your grave? That I’m doing it all so I can squeeze out the last remaining days and months we have together—”
Daniel’s flat voice interrupted her. “I don’t believe you. I think you didn’t tell the truth… because you were doing him. Don’t you dare hide an affair behind my terminal diagnosis.”
“That’s not what’s going on here,” she said with despair.
“You’re naked under that red robe. He’s naked under those blankets. And he just told you how beautiful you are.” Daniel jabbed a hand into the pocket of his coat and took out some kind of bundle wrapped in a napkin. “Here. I brought a bagel for you. He can have the one I was going to eat—which is really apt, isn’t it.”
As Daniel tossed the food and turned away, she rushed forward, taking his arm. “You have this all wrong.” She glanced back at the male. “Tell him. Tell him.”
“He’s not going to say anything,” Daniel announced. “Not one fucking syllable is going to come out of his mouth.”
Lydia looked back and forth between the two of them. “Do you know each other?”
“Oh, yes, we do. And if he’s smart, he’ll keep quiet about that. I may be half dead, but I’m in a really fucking bad mood and if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay out of this.” At that, Daniel looked at her bitterly. “You know what the really pathetic thing is? I don’t even blame you. I can’t get it up, so why wouldn’t you look for sex somewhere else. And I could almost have lived with it if you’d just copped to the truth.”
He ripped his arm out of her grip. “Don’t you dare follow me. You’re going to give me an hour to pack up my shit at the house, and then you can come back down there.”
“Where are you going,” she choked out. “Daniel, I’ll leave, I’ll be the one who goes, but you have to—”
“My future, however long or short, is no longer any of your business.” He put his hands up before she realized she’d reached out again. “Don’t fucking touch me. And don’t you come off this mountain until I’m gone—that shouldn’t be too hard for you, though. I’m sure you two have loads of ways to pass the time. She’s all yours, Blade. Have fun—and Lydia, I’d be very careful if I were you. You may be confident about how special you are to him, but he’s a helluvan operator. He’s going to fuck you in ways you don’t like and won’t see coming.”
“Daniel—”
“Stop saying my fucking name,” he muttered as he walked off for the passageway. “I don’t want to hear it come out of your mouth ever again. You two deserve each other.”
THIRTY-SIX
WHAT DO YOU mean, Daniel is gone?”
As C.P. sat at the side counter in her kitchen, the one where the cooks took their coffee breaks, she was utterly exhausted and clearly not tracking. After having spent the day in Houston meeting with her team, she’d just flown back and had no idea what time it was, why she had decided to end up here—or where Chef was, for that matter. The only thing she knew for sure was that she cared about none of the answers to any of that—and maybe not even to where Daniel Joseph might have gone to.
What was Lydia saying?
Bringing herself into some semblance of focus, she murmured, “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand what you’re telling me. Forgive me.”
“He’s gone.”
Something in the woman’s voice got through the screaming in C.P.’s own head, and as she looked at Lydia properly, a cold rush went down her spine. The amount of distress in that face was the kind of thing you saw around car accidents on the freeway.
“Sit down.” She reached across and put her hand on the other woman’s forearm. “Please, sit down and tell me what happened?”
Had he died—
“He’s just wrong,” Lydia babbled. “He’s just—he won’t listen to me. So he packed up and left.”
“The program? The clinic?”
“Well, me, primarily. The rest of everything is just a… a side effect.”
The woman was positively caved in on herself, her shoulders slumped, even her hair hanging limply: She looked as if she had been left in the wilderness to fend for herself in the middle of a blizzard.
And then something else occurred to her. “Lydia, he’s not well enough to be out in the world.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
C.P. checked her watch. “It’s ten p.m. When did he go?”
“This morning. He didn’t want to see me again, so I didn’t return until late afternoon. He cleared out all of his things from our room, just as he said he would, but I’ve hoped he’d change his mind and come back. I’ve been waiting out in front of the house ever since.”
“Did he take one of my vehicles? Because they have trackers on them.”
“No, he’s on his bike.”
“The Harley?” C.P. leaned forward. “Is he insane—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but has he had some kind of psychotic break?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Well, then we’ll track his phone. Come on, we’ll find him.”
C.P. got to her feet and dragged the woman after her, going down to her study. Once inside, she went over behind her desk, called her computer up, accessed her contacts—and did a cut and paste into a phone tracker—
“Nothing.” She sat back and looked across. “I’m not getting a signal. So either he’s found and turned off the tracking on his phone or he’s destroyed the cell.”
As Lydia stopped pacing and they both went quiet, C.P. closed her eyes and rubbed the nape of her neck. What a day.
“How far are you along?”
C.P. popped her lids at the quiet question. “Excuse me?”
“You’re pregnant.” The woman touched the side of her nose. “It’s evident—but it must be pretty early as I only just noticed yesterday.”
“I, ah… I’m not sure what to say to that.”
“I’m sorry. I should have kept quiet.”
C.P. stared up at the woman, who was not really a woman in the conventional sense. Lydia wasn’t meeting her eyes, which told her there were probably other things the wolven had sniffed out.
“Unfortunately, pregnancy is not compatible with my disease.” C.P. smiled in a reserved fashion. “You must know that I’m sick, too, right? If you can sniff out a baby on board, surely you must be able to detect my cancer.”
Lydia’s face dissolved into sadness. “Yes, I’m so sorry. I didn’t say anything because it is not my business, and you’ve never mentioned it to anybody.”
C.P. lifted her chin. “I was going to be patient one. After Daniel declined the dubious honor.” As the female became shocked, she nodded. “Yes, and that seemed rather fair to me given that Vita-12b was created at my behest. Now, though…”
