Tana directed Aidan to pull the car into a gas station about an hour after they’d left Lance’s house. There were no other cars in sight, and these days all twenty-four-hour marts had bulletproof-glass cashiers’ booths, so she thought it’d be safe to stop. Full dark had fallen, her arm was starting to ache from holding the tire iron, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be able to keep it together much longer. Exhaustion was creeping up on her, her cuts stinging and her head throbbing. She hadn’t eaten anything since she’d woken—hadn’t even thought of eating—and each time her stomach growled, Aidan looked over at her as though her hunger reminded him of his own.
It was hard to stay alert, hard not to be distracted by images of the farmhouse, of bodies, rising up behind her eyelids when she blinked, everything drenched in red. And along with that, the memory of the vampire’s teeth scraping the back of her leg, his hand clamped on her calf.
She’d watched programs in health class talking about the spread of infection. There’d been an illustration of the human mouth and the vampire mouth side by side. She thought of it, illustrated in blue and yellow, pink and red. Vampire canines grew longer than their human counterparts, with thin channels that let the creature draw blood up through its teeth and into the back of its throat. When a vampire bit down, a little of its own fouled blood was pushed into the human bloodstream, causing infection. There’d been cases like hers before, cases where the teeth didn’t fully penetrate. Sometimes people were fine, sometimes they weren’t. If she didn’t go Cold in forty-eight hours, she’d know her luck had held.
Aidan pulled up to one of the pumps. “We can’t keep driving without a plan. We’ve got to go somewhere.”
“I know,” she said, her panic-fogged mind going round and round, every possible move seeming worse than the last. She had no idea what to do next. All she knew was that she felt about ready to jump out of her own skin.
As he opened the car door, a lock of hair fell into his eyes. He pushed it back, the way he’d always done. It seemed like such a normal gesture, when everything else was so not normal, when he wasn’t normal, that she had to swallow past the lump in her throat.
He reached for the pump, selecting regular unleaded.
Tana felt as though everything was happening much too slow and too fast, all at once. During the drive, she’d been afraid to talk, because if she started, she wouldn’t be able to hold how she felt inside. She wouldn’t be able to make him believe she was in control.
“We’ll get a map and make a plan,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t see how tired she was. If she seemed weak, she might seem more like prey. She made her voice as steady as she could. “I’m going to the bathroom to get cleaned up first, though. I’ll meet you in the mart after you’re done with the gas.”
From the trunk she heard a soft thump. Gavriel was back there, waiting to be freed. But what would he do then? Were they supposed to just dump him by the side of the road and hope for the best?
“We’ll be right back,” Tana called, and despite trying to control it, her voice quavered.
Slinging her handbag over her shoulder and grabbing her boots, she walked steadily away from Aidan and the car until she got to the corner of the mart, then she ran the rest of the way to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it. Before she could help it, she started sobbing. She cried and cried until she choked on her tears. She slid down the wall, crying so hard she could barely catch her breath. She slammed her fists against the loose linoleum tile of the floor, hoping the pain would shock her into calming.
Shock, Tana thought, I’m in shock. But she didn’t really know what that meant, only that it was bad and that it happened in the movies. In movies, people got over it quickly, too, usually with a slap to the face.
Standing, she slapped her own cheek and watched it become rosy in the mirror above the grimy bathroom sink. She didn’t feel any different.
After long moments of standing there, staring at her reflection, she remembered that she’d said she was going to get cleaned up. She washed her arms in the sink, splashed water on her legs to rub off the blood. She couldn’t see the scrape on the back of her knee very well, but from what she could see, it looked not much different from her other scratches and cuts. It didn’t seem swollen or discolored. It didn’t seem deep. It didn’t seem like anything at all, much less something that could turn her into a monster. She cleaned it with the antibacterial soap in the pump and shaking fingers, hoping that could kill any infection before it spread. Then she stood up, leaning against the locked door, and started lacing up her boots, pulling the ties tight.
When she was done, she called Pauline.
Dialing the number was automatic, giving in to the temptation of momentary escapism. She couldn’t think as the phone rang; her mind felt empty of everything but the feeling that if Pauline answered, then she was going to be all right for a little while. Tana didn’t know what she was going to say, didn’t even know how to put together words to explain where she was or what had happened. She’d been operating on instinct and impulsiveness at Lance’s farmhouse—get everyone out and worry about the consequences later. But later had come. It was waiting for her outside the door. She could only forestall it.