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There was a silence, and then,
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why? Why’re you calling? Why the hell’re you calling me? It’s been forty years and now you’re calling me and I want to know why, goddammit. If you’re calling to apologise, you’re about forty years too damn late.”
Virgil frowned. “Why would I be apologising?”
“You’re the one calling me!” Javier shouted. “You’re the one calling and now you have the, the, the nerve to ask why you’re calling? I’m the one asking why! I ask, you answer!”
“Javier, I really think we’re getting our wires crossed here …”
“Dementia, is it?” Javier said. “You know that you owe me an apology, but you can’t remember why, is that it? Y’know something? I’m glad. I’m glad your mind is leaving you. Couldn’t happen to a nicer fella.”
“My mind is fine, Javier, but to be honest you’re starting to irritate me here.”
Javier hooted down the phone. “Oh, is that right? Oh, is that right?”
“I just called to check on you,” said Virgil. “I’ve been thinking about the old days a lot and I saw someone last night who could have been your double from back then, someone who I would have sworn was you if I hadn’t known what age you were. I’m calling to ask if you have a son or a grandson and if they’re anywhere close to Desolation Hill.”
“I don’t know where that is,” said Javier, “but it sounds like just the place you deserve to be.”
“Do you have anyone in your family that looks just like you did forty years ago, or not?”
“No!” Javier yelled. “I don’t have any children, you dirty, lying, treacherous sonofabitch! I never had children and I never got married! The only woman in the world I ever loved looked at me like I was a joke and it was all your fault!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Darleen!”
Virgil frowned. “Who?”
“Darleen! Darleen Hickman!”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“The wardrobe lady on set,” Javier said, anger biting at his words. “I fell in love with her and you knew it. There was a future there. A possibility. But you couldn’t let that happen, could you? You couldn’t stand the thought of any pretty girl being with anyone but you, the starof the show.”
“What is it you think I did, Javier?”
“You know damn well what you did. You gave me that nickname.”
“What nickname?”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“I don’t know what it is we’re talking about.”
There was another silence, and then, “The Goat-molester.”
Virgil’s laugh was as loud as it was unexpected, and he immediately felt bad. “Oh right, yeah. That. Uh … and that damaged your relationship with the wardrobe lady?”
“Darleen,” said Javier. “And of course it did. Everyone was laughing at me behind my back. Nobody took me seriously from that moment on. She had feelings for me – real, actual feelings – but how could she look at me in the same way once she’d lost all respect for me?”
“I’m … I’m really sorry, Javier. I’d forgotten all about that.”
“I hadn’t,” said Javier bitterly. “That ruined my life, Abernathy. Ruined it. And it’s all your fault.”
“I’m sorry,” said Virgil. “I am genuinely sorry, Javier, I really am. I had no idea it would cause you such hardship. The only thing I can say is that it wasn’t done with any degree of maliciousness. It wasn’t personal.”
“It felt personal.”
“And I regret that. I do. Please accept my apology.”
“You know what?” Javier said. “I don’t. I’ve been waiting forty years for you to say sorry, and now that you have, it means nothing to me. You were a sonofabitch then and you’re a sonofabitch now. I hope you do get dementia. I hope you get dementia and you die a slow, horrible death.”
“Right,” said Virgil. “Well, in my defence—”
“Your defence can go to hell.”
“In my defence,” Virgil persisted, “and taking all things into account, with the benefit of hindsight and whatnot, I don’t know … maybe you shouldn’t have molested that goat.”
Javier hung up.
(#ulink_3d50a231-642a-5b2d-af15-fb1e55693a72)
SOMEONE KNOCKED ON HER door and Amber woke immediately and went to spring out of bed. As she was moving, she realised two things. The first was that she had shifted during the night and was now in full demon mode. The second was that she was about to put her full weight on to her left hand, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
The pain hit her like an electric shock. She pulled her hands into her chest, rolled off the bed, and landed on her feet in a crouch, gritting her teeth to keep from crying out.
That knock again. It was calm. Unhurried. No urgency to it.
Amber waited for the worst of the pain to pass, then straightened, and moved slowly to the door. “Who is it?” she called.
“Me,” said Milo.
“Anyone else with you?”
“No.”
She gripped the key between her palms and turned it, and the lock clicked and she stepped back as Milo opened the door.
He saw the look on her face and frowned. “Hurting?”
“A little. I’ll take the painkillers.”
“You shift when you were sleeping?”
“Yeah. You?”
He nodded. He was clean-shaven and his eyes were calm – the benefits of a good night’s rest. “I’m going to head out to the edge of town,” he said, “keep watch for the Hounds.”
“Let me get dressed.”
“No need. I’m just going to be sitting there. You take a look around, see what’s what. If we can hide out here, it’d be nice to know what the town has to offer.”
Amber frowned. “You mean … we’re going to be apart? During the daytime?”
“Is that okay with you?”
“Sure. It’s just … I haven’t been alone in the daytime for … a while.”
“You’ll adjust.”
“What do I do?”
“Whatever you want. Go for a walk. Have some breakfast. Relax. It’ll come back to you. Oh, and …” He pointed to her face.
“What?”
“You can’t go out horned up.”
“Oh yeah. Sure.”
He nodded, and walked off, and Amber closed the door behind him and locked it again. Then she looked around and wondered what the hell she was going to do.
She swallowed some painkillers and brushed her teeth and peed, and as she was peeing she looked at the tub and tried to remember the last time she’d had a real bath. She filled the tub and added in all kinds of crazy liquids until the bubbles nearly spilled out on to the floor. Then she took off her clothes and climbed in, one long red leg at a time. Bracing her bandaged palms on the tub’s edge, she lowered herself into the water, gasping, until her ass touched the bottom. She laughed, then, and sank further, until the hot water was up to her chin.
“Oh, this is nice,” she muttered to the room.
She closed her eyes, breathing in the steam, letting it clear her head of any residual sleepiness. It had been so long since she’d been able to relax, to think of anything other than the chase. Even now, there was a part of her that was still on edge – but it was a small part, and she could have easily drowned it out if she’d been so inclined.
But of course she didn’t. Just because Gregory Buxton had vanished from the Hounds’ radar when he was in this town didn’t mean she would, too. And even if she did, so what? The Hounds would still be able to ride on in here and search. They didn’t need supernatural powers to find her – they just needed eyes.
So she kept that edge, the part of herself that remained wary, and she let it bite at her thoughts and burrow into her head. That edge had helped keep her alive after Imelda had died. After Glen. After her parents.
She wondered about them, where they were, what they were doing. How they were doing. She felt a curious mix of satisfaction that she’d fouled up her parents’ plans, that she’d forced them to go on the run with Grant and Kirsty Van der Valk, that Astaroth was almost as pissed with them as he was with her … but also concern. That part puzzled Amber. She didn’t care about them. They had bred her to be killed and eaten, just like they had her brother and sister whom she had never known. She was not concerned for their well-being.
She was definitely, definitely not. She was almost sure of that.
Thoughts of her parents irritated her, but there was only one other person she could think about that would banish them to the back of her mind, and that was Glen. She only thought about him when she was in demon form. Her heart was harder when she was like this, better able to cope with what had happened to him. With who he was now. What he’d turned into.
She’d been aware of him following her. Some nights she’d look in the side mirror and glimpse something moving behind them. Some nights, when the Charger was quiet, she could hear him above her, his clothes fluttering in the wind.
Why he was following her, she didn’t know. She’d been told that most breeds of vampire were pack animals – they stuck close to the one who’d turned them. But the vampire that had killed Glen had vanished, and his undead family back in Cascade Falls were in disarray – certainly the patriarch was no longer around to guide them. Amber had seen to that personally.
That might be it, of course. Glen could be following her to kill her, to exact revenge for Varga’s death. She doubted it, though. Revenge didn’t seem to be Glen’s style, soulless monster or not. No, what was infinitely more likely was that Glen’s preoccupation with Amber – especially in her current form – had stayed with him even after his death. Maybe it was the one thing he was clinging on to. Maybe he had designs on a coffin built for two.
Amber closed her eyes and held her breath, and submerged so that only her knees and her hands and her horns were above the water line. Down here, in the muted world of the bathtub, she opened her eyes again and looked at herself. She couldn’t blame Glen for his preoccupations, of course. Was she not as magnificent as everyone said? Was her figure not astonishing? Were her features not flawless?
She loved being this way. She loved being tall and red and horned and beautiful. She loved being sexy. She’d never been sexy, not as an ordinary human. Sexiness was for other girls, not for her. Never for her.
She broke the surface of the water, and smiled.
Until now.
After her bath, Amber went for a walk. The people seemed friendly enough, even if she did catch them staring at her from time to time. On three occasions she actually glanced at her bandaged hands to make sure she wasn’t in demon mode, then she put it down to the fact that visitors were probably a rarity around here.
It was a pretty town, surrounded as it was by trees and snow-covered mountains and looking up into a huge blazingly blue sky. It had a smell to it, too – fresh and open and healthy. Invigorating, even. Amber fully acknowledged all of this. Further, she had no trouble admitting that it was downright lovely to see every store open for business – that being quite a change after spending the last few weeks driving through small towns teetering on the edge of survival.
Watching the people file into church, she figured that there was absolutely nothing about Desolation Hill that she found disagreeable, and yet something had got its hooks into her and was pulling her down.
Deciding that breakfast might improve her mood, she stepped into Fast Danny’s, the only one of the three cafe/diner joints on Main Street open on a Sunday morning. There were a few patrons sitting at tables, all of whom examined Amber when she walked in. She ignored them, chose a table in the corner, and sat, started reading through the menu.
The waitress came over, a woman in her forties who looked like she’d had a busy morning. Her nametag identified her as Brenda.
“Just passing through?” Brenda asked, which struck Amber as an odd thing to greet someone with. At the Firebird, Amber had always greeted customers with a smile. There was no smile on show here.
“Kinda,” said Amber.
“Oh yeah?” Brenda said, but not in a conversational way.
Amber had a soft spot for people waiting tables. She knew what a crappy job it could be. That being said, Brenda’s attitude was not going to be earning her any tips.
“I’m staying for a few days,” Amber said. “At the motel.”
“The Dowall Motel?”
“Is there another one?”
Brenda didn’t bother to answer that. “Were you told about the festival?”
“Yeah. But we weren’t told what kind of festival it is.”
“It’s a local one,” said Brenda. “Townsfolk only.”
Amber decided that she didn’t like Brenda’s dismissive tone. She didn’t like being dismissed. Her skin itched. All she had to do was relax and she’d shift, and then she’d be taken seriously. Then she’d be respected.
“That was mentioned,” she said quietly.
Brenda nodded, apparently satisfied. “Okay then, what can I get you?”
And, all of a sudden, Brenda was in full waitress mode and Amber was left with all that hostility and nowhere to put it. “Uh …”
Brenda looked at her, eyebrows raised, waiting.
Amber felt the hostility drain from her. “The Danny’s Breakfast, please.”
