closer. He was hesitant, as if he were approaching an animal that might bite, which was probably wise of him, because that was what she was. His gaze kept lowering, sliding down her nude body, but he seemed to be trying to keep it from doing so. She didn’t feel any shame about her form, or any shyness. It was just a body, after all.
He had a blanket and pillow under one arm, and a glass of red liquid in his free hand. He held the glass out.
She took it, noting how quickly he jerked his hand back. Sniffing, she wrinkled her nose, but drank, too hungry to be fussy. Then she handed the glass back to him, and he gave her the pillow and blanket. She tucked the pillow under her head, spread the blanket over her and curled onto her side.
“You’re welcome,” he said, an odd tone in his voice.
She frowned and lifted her head to look at him.
“When someone does something nice for you, Foxy, it’s customary to say thank-you. And then they say, ‘you’re welcome.’”
“Oh. And you consider bringing me this blanket and pillow and that blood, to be nice?”
“Well, yeah.”
“I’m being kept prisoner in a cage against my will. If you want to be nice, let me go.”
He lowered his head. “Man, I can’t do that. Gregor would have my hide.”
“Then don’t expect my thanks.”
He shrugged, turned slowly and started to walk out of her cage, but then he stopped. “If you’d escaped tonight, you would have died, you know.”
She frowned and looked up at him.
“You’re a vampire now. It’s almost daylight. If you go outside in the sun, it’ll burn you alive. We can’t tolerate it, Foxy.”
She blinked three times, weighing his words. “Are you saying this so that I’ll be too afraid to try to run away again?”
“Why would you be? You’d just try it by night.”
“Are you forgetting that I’m in this place where I can’t tell day from night?”
“Sure you can. When day comes, you fall asleep. It’s irresistible. You feel that coming on, you know it’s almost morning. When you wake again, it’s just past sundown. Understand?”
Tilting her head to one side, she said, “Why are you helping me?”
One corner of his mouth pulled into a half smile. “I have a weakness for pretty women. And you are a—Well, hell, you’re a fox.”
She frowned at him, unsure why he was stating the obvious, but he just touched his forehead as if it were a way of saying goodbye and turned to leave her alone. He locked her cage again on his way out, though, the bastard.
6
“This thing is going to get us noticed—and probably killed—before we get within a dozen miles of Gregor’s band,” Reaper said, eyeing the vehicle Roxy had pulled out of her garage—where it had been, understandably, hidden—and parked in front of her house. He wore a look of distaste mingled with utter horror.
The customized conversion van was something to behold, and while Seth believed Reaper was a miserable curmudgeon about a lot of matters, he totally agreed with him on this one.
“No,” Reaper said. “Absolutely not.”
Roxy glanced at Seth, as if seeking a second opinion.
“Well, it’s not exactly…inconspicuous.” He wondered for just a second if he would be just as tactful if she wasn’t such a hotty, then wondered why it mattered. She certainly didn’t seem to care.
Shirley—and that was the van’s name, as its custom license plates attested—was yellow. Canary yellow. Its—her?—sides sported murals depicting fields full of sunflowers, and the rear window was decorated with a translucent sunset.
“She’s just what we need,” Roxy said. “Look, we can rent a car or something for short trips once we get where we’re going. But for getting there, and for emergencies, she’s freakin’ damn near perfect. Just look here.” She pulled open the side door. There were four rows of seats, all sporting black seat covers with giant sunflowers in the center of each one. They matched the floor mats.
Of course they did.
Seth managed not to groan aloud as he poked his head in, then stepped up. The van was tall. Most people would be able to stand up in it, though for Seth and Reaper it required significant stooping.
“There are only three of us,” Seth said. “Why do we need all this room?”
“Never mind that,” Roxy said quickly. “Take a look at this.” She went around to the back, opened the two rear doors, climbed in and pushed a button. The rear-most seats folded forward and down, then lower, tucking themselves neatly into the floor. Then Roxy lifted a piece of floor mat, tugged a handle hidden beneath it and the floor folded up, revealing a nearly full-sized bed underneath.
She met Seth’s eyes and grinned. “Built-in coffins. This baby can sleep three vampires under the floor, well hidden. And we could close the floor over them, and put three more on top, because the windows tint all the way to black at the touch of a button.”
Seth glanced at Reaper and saw that the man was impressed in spite of himself. There was a slight edge of approval nudging its way into his grimace.
“There’s a minifridge,” Roxy said with a nod, “so we can take a supply of that Kool-Aid you guys love so much. Her sides are reinforced steel. Bullet-proof. She’s got a Hemi under the hood, and all-wheel drive so we don’t get stuck. Big ground clearance for a van. She gets terrible gas mileage, but let me tell you, Shirley will fly. And to top it all off…” She moved to the center of the van, gripped a handle mounted to the inside of the sliding side door and lifted.
The inner panel of the door slid upward, revealing a cache of weapons stored behind it. Shotguns, rifles, handguns and several odd-looking little weapons that looked like dart guns. Boxes of ammo lined a number of small built-in shelves, and holsters and clips hung every which way.
“What are those little ones?” Seth asked.
“I call ’em Noisy Crickets,” she told him.
Seth laughed out loud, shaking his head, and muttering, “Good one, Roxy,” between chuckles. He was just getting it under control when he noticed that Reaper hadn’t so much as cracked a smile. “That was a reference to Men in Black,” he told the sour-faced vamp. “The movie? You know, Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones?” No reaction. “Hell, don’t you see movies at all?”
“No.”
Roxy handed one of the tiny weapons to Seth and took a second one off the wall for herself. “These shoot tranquilizer darts. I have a supply in the fridge, measured, loaded and ready to go. Seth, the only way Reaper will agree to let us come with him is if I can convince him that you and I will be perfectly
