met briefly and mostly in battle. She wondered if she would meet him again on different terms.
She wondered a lot about her future. She did not know what it held for her, but she knew with whom she might want to spend it. What a dangerous thought. She tightened her grasp on him, and he answered it in kind. He turned his head to kiss her collarbone. It made her smile. He likely meant it as an innocent gesture, but the effect it had on her was anything but. “I too love strawberries.”
“See? We are meant to be. Destined lovers from the stars for our shared love of red fruit.” He held her like he loved her. Really loved her. Perhaps it was not her body he was trying to claim after all.
Perhaps it really was her heart he was after.
She wondered how long she could pretend she had not already given it to him.
Maxine’s dreams were quiet. She barely slept, to be fair. She stayed there on the floor with Zadok, holding him, gently stroking his shoulder. She had put her gloves back on, afraid that too much contact with him might weaken her control. His soul was more substantial than those of the mortal lives she had accidentally destroyed, but hardly as firm as Vlad’s. She worried that if she touched him for too long, she might tear him to pieces without intending to.
Finally, he stood and, placing a kiss atop her head, walked across the room in silence. He seemed lost in his thoughts. He retook the shape of Bella, and, nudging Eddie to wake him to take his turn, the vampire lay down to pretend to sleep for the rest of the night.
Maxine had then shut her eyes. She only knew sleep had come for her because Eddie was gently shaking her arm. “It’s morning, Maxine. We’ve got to go.”
It was time for all this to end.
In a strange way, she was relieved. She hated this endless wandering—this purgatory within which she had been placed. It would be a relief to make forward motion, even if it was into disaster.
The hunters allowed her to use the water closet to relieve herself before they departed. She ran some cold water through her hair and over her face to try to straighten herself out a little. She assumed Zadok would not wait long before revealing his game.
Maxine and “Bella” were the last to step out the door and down the stairs to the street. The huntress stopped her with a gentle hand on her gloved wrist. Turning toward the other woman, she watched as Bella took her hand and lifted it to her lips. She placed a gentle kiss atop her knuckles. It was a masculine gesture—one of the few times she let the act slip—and it was a tender one as well.
“Be strong, empath,” Zadok-Bella whispered. “He needs you to be strong.”
And with that, the moment was over, and the false huntress was once more the giddy young girl, smiling proudly and bouncing down the stairs to the street, holding Maxine’s chain in her hand. With a shake of her head, Maxine could do little more than follow.
“You were right,” she said quietly to the illusion as she walked behind the pack of hunters. “I think I would have been happier not knowing what was to come.”
The blonde girl flashed a cunning smile over her shoulder. “That makes me two for two, hum?”
“I suppose so.”
Regardless of which turns Alfonzo chose to take, or which alleyways he decided to duck down, it did not matter. They never made progress. The streets were always the same. Repeating again and again, connecting to each other in nonsensical and impossible ways. It was truly a nightmare. But whose, she could not say. Dracula’s, or theirs?
She supposed it did not really matter.
It was around one bend that Alfonzo drew his sword and held it in front of him. Eddie drew both his pistols. Finally, they were not alone.
More or less.
Zadok—an image of him, at any rate—stood in the center of the street facing their way. Ghouls were crouched at his back, jaws dripping ichor and gore as they clung impossibly to the walls of nearby buildings like a spider might do. The hungry creatures gnashed their teeth.
They were all a lie. Even the monsters.
As was the vampire who stood at their lead. “Greetings, hunters! Have you been enjoying my Master’s hospitality?”
“Fuck off, demon,” Eddie snarled and lifted a gun and pointed it