The Vampire's Fall. Michele Hauf

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СКАЧАТЬ off Highway 35 and earned enough to eat on. And I have the truck.”

      “You remembered you own a truck?”

      “Uh, no. It was running and no one was using it, so...” She winced and tilted back another swallow of beer.

      She’d stolen a truck. Blade was impressed. Pretty and devious. The woman had survival skills, that was for sure.

      But she’d been hit by a bus and had stood up and walked away? Was she something beyond human? If her story was the truth, she had to be. He didn’t scent his own species on her. He could also scent when werewolves or demons were around. Faeries were a challenge.

      He got nothing from her. Just plain human. A human who had attracted a shifter demon who had claimed she was their own.

      “You’re not afraid the cops will remind you that you don’t own a truck?”

      “I’m not sure what fear is, actually.” She offered her hand again to shake. “I should get going. I’m tired. It was nice to talk to a kind person for a while. Blade Saint-Pierre, right? Maybe we’ll run into each other again?”

      “I’m in town a lot.” He almost offered his services if she needed anything, but...he’d learned his lesson with pretty women. They were nice to look at, touch and make love to. But getting to know them and caring about them? Wrong, just wrong. “See you, Zenia.”

      She strolled out of the bar with a wave to him. And Blade remained to keep an eye on Brock.

      * * *

      A knock on the truck window woke Zenia from the first tendrils of sleep. She sat up on the front seat, knocked her foot on the steering wheel, swore and spied the dark-haired man peering in at her.

      “Blade.”

      After talking with him in the Blue Bass she’d assessed that he was a nice guy who had the compassion to worry about a complete stranger. But here he was again. And her heartbeats picked up pace. What made her believe she had any skill at reading another person’s intent? As she’d once suspected, had she gained a stalker?

      She sat up to open the door, but paused. It was close to midnight. She had parked in an empty parking lot beneath a streetlight. A city park paralleled the lot, but no residential houses or businesses were nearby. It had seemed a quiet place to sleep through the night, but now her caution rose.

      He hadn’t tried to touch her, as had the other creep in the bar. But something about this man was dark. Mysterious. And now the hairs on her arms prickled.

      She turned the key backward to the accessories position, then lowered the window down two inches. “Yes?”

      “You sleeping in your truck?”

      She nodded. Wished she had an iron pipe, or even a wood bat.

      “This is going to sound strange,” he said. “It might even put up your weirdo alarms again.”

      “I haven’t completely lowered them, so give it a shot.”

      “You’re welcome to park on my land tonight. Uh, it might be safer. Unless you don’t mind taking your chances with Brock.” He turned and cast his gaze across the parking lot.

      Zenia followed his gaze and there, across the street from the lot, idled a big yellow Hummer rimmed in chrome. She couldn’t see inside the cab, save for the glimmer of burning cigarette embers.

      “Is that the guy from the bar?”

      Blade nodded. “I’ve been watching him watching you for about an hour.”

      Zenia clutched her arms over her chest. “You’ve been watching me a lot today.”

      “Sorry. Seems as though you need it. This is not what I normally do. I mean—”

      “Stalk women?”

      He nodded and shrugged. It was a sheepish kind of move that settled her worries. She wanted to trust him. She would allow herself to trust him.

      “Where do you live?” she asked.

      “Ten miles north of Tangle Lake. It’s secluded. Brock won’t follow you there because he’s afraid of me. We had...an altercation a few months back. But then, if you follow me, you do risk leaving the safety of town.”

      Yikes. When he put it that way. And yet, as strange as Blade was, Zenia sensed the other option would see her struggling with the man across the street not long after Blade left.

      “Maybe,” she said.

      “I’m heading back to my truck. You can follow me if you want to. The drive is down a long forested road, just so you know. You can park in my driveway. Lock your doors. I won’t bother you. You have my word.”

      “I don’t know if your word is good.”

      “That you don’t.”

      Was it fair or even rational to give him points for honesty?

      “So you think you need to protect me from demons or something?”

      “Beyond the very human Brock?” He shrugged. “You never know.” Blade shoved his hands into his front pockets. “Your choice, Zen.”

      And he strode off toward the truck that Zenia now saw was parked down the street. A bowlegged stride moved him swiftly, as if a shadow in the night.

      Zenia scrambled into the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition. When Blade’s headlights blinked on and slowly drove past the other man’s truck, she made a snap decision and shifted the truck into gear.

Chapter 4

      Zenia woke with her name zinging between her ears. Except it wasn’t the way she had chosen it. Blade had called her Zen last night. She liked it. It sounded like the man had made the name his possession when he’d said it. And that didn’t bother her at all.

      But did she feel Zen right now? Hard to tell. She wasn’t sure what to feel. She was a woman out of place. Did she have a place to return? Was there a house or an apartment waiting for her to push a key into the lock and resume her life? She hadn’t a key, a purse or any identifying materials on her after the bus had hit her.

      Only that weird tin circle.

      She glanced at the flimsy circle she’d hung around the rearview mirror. She’d been clutching it after coming to a stand against the street pole. In that moment, she’d almost tossed it aside, but she’d felt an intuition to keep it. For some reason. Curious.

      Had it anything to do with the destiny she felt she tread? For the undeniable feeling that contacting the police would not be wise? Was it a true feeling or was it that she thought she should have a goal or reason for existing so destiny was a good fill-in-the-blank answer?

      Sitting up, she pulled her knees to her chest and bowed her head to work out the kinks from sleeping across the stick shift. A knock on the driver’s window startled her. A swath of dark hair reminded her that СКАЧАТЬ