She turned back. "Leave. Me. Alone. Any of that unclear? Any of you not speak such good English?"
"I get it!" Jeannie cried with the hysterical good humor of a Jeopardy! contestant. "You're a vampire!"
"No, she isn't," Burke and Michael said in unison.
The body stomped her foot, and all three of them took a step back. "Of course I'm a vampire, morons! What else would I be?
A Sasquatch? Nessie?"
"There are no such thing as vampires," Michael said gently. "I think you must have gone into shock when you were buried and that protected you until we could rescue you—"
" Rescue me?"
"And the whole thing has been too much for your system and now you think—"
"Oh, what crap. I don't need to breathe, ergo, I didn't suffocate, and I couldn't get out of the hole during the day. Ergo, I wasn't buried alive. Are you honestly telling me that werewolves don't believe in vampires?"
"The existence of one doesn't prove the other," Michael said stiffly. "I believe in witches, but that doesn't mean I believe in leprechauns."
"How'd you know they were werewolves?" Jeannie asked, examining the scratch on her left elbow.
"Because Boy Scout lost all his little tiny marbles, went into a screaming fit worthy of a Beatles fan, turned into a wolf, and jumped out of a twelve-foot hole. Call me crazy."
"Crazy," Jeannie said brightly.
Burke touched the bite mark on his neck, which was already scabbing over. It would explain a lot: her relative calm at being in such a fix, her utter lack of scent, and, of course, her walking and talking after being buried alive for more than twenty-four hours.
All his life, he had been told legends of wolves and fairies and water witches, and a grizzled beta had once claimed to have seen a demon, but never had he heard of a vampire, or even seen one.
Until, obviously, now.
"You're alive," he said, and it was impossible to keep the relief out of his voice, though he tried. Despite his efforts, both Jeannie and Michael turned and gave him odd looks.
"Newsflash, Boy Scout: I've been dead for forty years. Sorry about the… you know—" She gestured vaguely in their direction: all three were scratched, bitten, disheveled, sandy. "I was hungry and the thirst got a little away from me. Now, I gotta go. I'd eat a rat just for the chance to have a hot shower."
Without another word, she turned and moved off into the dunes.
Burke looked at his pack leaders. "Good-bye," he said simply.
Michael stuck out his hand and they shook. "I guess we won't be seeing you for a while. If ever."
"What?" Jeannie asked.
"I don't know," he replied honestly. "I guess it's up to… to… I don't even know her name."
"We'll keep your house for you. Everything that's yours will always be here for you."
"What?" Jeannie asked again.
"Thank you, Michael. I appreciate your help tonight. Do I have your leave to go?"
"You have my leave, O brother, and good hunting and many cubs," he replied, the formal good-bye of a pack leader releasing a beta male from his care.
"You're going after her? You've decided you're going to be mates and live happily ever after even though she's dead and you don't even know her name?"
"Good-bye, Jeannie."
"Burke!" she yowled, but he ignored her and loped off into the dark, a true rogue, now.
Chapter Six
Somehow, Boy Scout had flanked her, because he was waiting for her in the parking lot, the fluorescent lights bouncing off his black hair, making it seem very like the color of blood.
"I have a shower," he said by way of greeting.
"One side, Boy Scout. I've seen all of you I'm gonna."
"And a house. You could stay there and… and rest during the day and do your business at night."
Hmm. Tempting. Credit cards could be traced, a decent hotel wouldn't take cash, and she didn't want anyone to see her coming and going. Shacking up with a stranger for a night or two was—Wait. Had she lost her mind? Because she was actually mulling it over. Crazy guy's offer. As if he hadn't left her in the biggest fix of her life just last night.
Well. Second biggest.
Although, her gentler self argued, he had tried to help her. Badly, but the effort counted for something, right?
"Please," he said, and that did it. She was undone; it wasn't the "please," it was how he looked when he said it: miserable and hopeful all at once.
"Oh, all right," she grumbled. "Maybe for the night. I hope one of these cars is yours."
"It's not. But my house is just over the dunes, past the Beachside Motel." He pointed at a row of lights in the distance and she sighed internally. It had been a rough couple of nights, and she wasn't up to a hike, undead strength or not.
She opened her mouth to bitch, only to feel herself be swept off the warm pavement and into his arms. "It's not far," he promised her, and went loping through the lot and into the dunes.
"Boy Scout, you're gonna break your fargin' back!" she hollered, secretly delighted. When was the last time she had been picked up and carried like a bride over the threshold? Her mama had died when she was a toddler; her dad was too busy working two jobs to pick her up; cancer had taken him her first year at the U of M. After that… "I weigh a ton!"
"Hardly," he said, and the sly mother wasn't even out of breath. He raced with her across the sand, past the motel, up a small hill covered with stumpy, stubbly bushes, and then he was setting her down on a sandy porch. She turned and looked, and could barely make out the lights of the parking lot. Boy Scout could move. But then, she'd seen evidence of that just the night before.
He opened the door and made an odd gesture—half wave, half bow.
She walked into the house. "No locks, huh? Doncha just love the Cape."
"No one would dare," he said simply. "Will the lights hurt your eyes? We can leave them off if you prefer."
"No, the lights are fine."
Click.
They blinked at each other in his living room, both getting their first good look at the other, and both entirely pleased by what they saw.
For her part, she saw a tall, thin, black-haired man with gray eyes—the only gray eyes she'd ever seen, true gray, the color of the sky when it was about to storm. He was dressed in dirty shorts, shirtless and barefoot, and as tanned as an old shoe. Laugh lines—except he never laughed, or smiled—around those amazing, storm-colored eyes. His legs were ropy with muscle and his arms looked like a swimmer's: lean and strong. His hands were large and capable-looking. His mouth was a permanent downturned bow; even when he tried to smile, he looked like he was frowning. She liked it, being in a generally bad mood herself; sometimes it was nice to be away from perpetual smilers, and Minnesota had more than its fair share.
Burke saw a tall woman (she came up to his chin in her bare feet) with a classically beautiful face, strong nose, wide forehead, pointed chin. Black eyes, skin the color of espresso. Long, slim limbs. Wide shoulders that made her br**sts almost disappear.
Unpainted toes and fingernails; filthy linen pants and a T-shirt so dirty he had no idea what the original color was. And if he closed his eyes he couldn't see her: she gave off no scent of her own, only sand and sea. She was like a chameleon for the nose; she took on the smells around her, the smells he loved. He thought her accent was the same way: she didn't sound like much of anything. She didn't drop her R's like the locals, had no Midwestern twang, no Southern drawl. She didn't sound like anything. Or, rather, she sounded like just herself, and that was exactly right.
And there it was: that sense of rightness about her, the sense that she was for him and he was for her. Even though only one of them knew it.
That was all right. He was a patient man.
She mistook his silence for something else and glanced down at herself, the first time he had seen her self-conscious: "Ugh, look at me. I must stink as bad as I look."
"You're beautiful."
"Ugh, stop it right now."
"But you are," he said, puzzled.
Her brown eyes narrowed as she studied him. "Boy Scout, get those thoughts out of your head right this minute."
"Thoughts that you're beautiful?"
"Uh-huh. I'm not beautiful; it's the vampire mystique. It's like… like a hormone I give off. Makes it easier for me to bite you.
Any vampire can do it."
"You don't smell like anything; how can you be giving off a hormone?"
"Because, trust me, I'm not beautiful. I've got a big nose and big feet and tiny tits and my hair never grows so I always look like a shorn sheep."
He was dizzy with the wrongness of her self-perception. "Huh?"
"This will never work out. Not in a thousand years."
"Huh?"
"Look at us."
He smiled.
"No, really look."
"I don't care that you're a vampire."
"You don't even know what a vampire is, or does."
"So? You'll show me."
"And the age difference?"
He shrugged.
"Boy Scout, I've got at least fifty years on you! I was thirty when I died!"
"So call a nursing home."
"And…"
"And?"
"You're white."
He waited for the rest of the explanation, and she had to resist the urge to put her fist through his television set. "I'm black, you're white. Are you listening?"
"You mean—You're a bigot?"
" I'm not! Everybody else is! And don't even tell me how trendy it is to be black or to have a black girlfriend because trends are cyclical, they are, and one day you'll wake up and I won't be trendy and then where will we be?"