"Stop calling me Lawrence. The name's Larry."
Jean-Claude sighed. "You have trained him well."
"He came that way," I said.
"Pity."
Jean-Claude made this sound like a hostile family reunion, or is that an oxymoron? I hoped he was right, but one thing I've learned about vampires--they keep pulling new rabbits out of their cloaks. Big, fanged, carnivorous bunnies that'll eat your eyeballs if you're not paying attention.
"What's wolf-boy in the back going to do?"
"I do what I'm told," Jason said.
"Great," I said.
We drove in silence. Jean-Claude rarely sweats small talk, and I wasn't in the mood. We could all have a nice little visit, but out there somewhere Jeff Quinlan had woken to a second night in Xavier's tender care. Sort of ruined the mood for me.
"The turn is just ahead to your right, ma petite." Jean-Claude's voice made me jump. I had sunk into the silence and the dark hush of the highway.
I slowed the Jeep. Didn't want to miss the turnoff. A gravel road, like a hundred other gravel roads, spilled off the main road. There was nothing to make it stand out. Nothing special.
The road was narrow with trees growing so close on either side it was like driving through a tunnel. The na**d branches of trees curved around us like interlocking pieces of a wall. The headlights slid over the nearly na**d trees, bouncing when the Jeep eased over a pothole. Naked wooden fingers tapped the roof of the Jeep. It was damn near claustrophobic.
"Geez," Larry said. He had pressed his face to the dark glass as far as the seat belt would allow. "If I didn't know there was a house down this road, I'd turn back."
"That is the idea," Jean-Claude said. "Many of the older ones value their privacy above almost all else."
The headlights picked up a hole that stretched across the entire road. It looked like a gully wash where rainwater had eaten the road away over decades.
Larry leaned over the back of the seat, straining against his seatbelt. "Where'd the road go?"
"The Jeep can make it," I said.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Pretty sure," I said.
Jean-Claude had settled back into the seat. He seemed totally relaxed, almost detached, like he was listening to music I couldn't hear, thinking thoughts that I never would understand.
Jason leaned forward, putting a hand on the back of my seat. "Why wouldn't she pave the road? She's been here almost a year."
I glanced back at Jason. It was interesting to find out that he knew more about Jean-Claude's business than I did.
"This is her moat," Jean-Claude said. "Her barrier against the curious. Many find our new status hard to accept and still closet themselves away."
The wheels slid over the edge. It was like driving into a crater. Miraculously, the Jeep crawled out the other side. If we'd been in a car, we'd have had to walk.
The road climbed upward for about a hundred yards, and suddenly on the right-hand side of the road was an opening. It didn't look big enough to drive the Jeep through, not without scratching the paint job to hell. The only thing that really told you it was a clearing was the moonlight pulsing against the darkness of the trees. That much moonlight meant something was there. Grass had grown over a scattering of gravel that might once have been a driveway.
"Is this it?" I asked, just to make sure.
"I believe so," Jean-Claude said.
I eased the Jeep into the trees and listened to branches slap the sides. I hoped Stirling's company owned the Jeep, and wasn't just renting. We crawled free of the trees with a last metallic scritch. An acre of open land spread out before us, silver-edged with moonlight. The grass was butchered short like someone had bush-hogged it last fall, and left it na**d and unfinished through the winter. There was a neglected orchard behind the house. The land rose in a gentle slope up towards the foot of a mountain. Just beyond the bush-hogged grass was forest, thick and untouched.
A house sat in the middle of the gentle rise. The house was silver-grey in the moonlight. Curling flecks of paint clung here and there, like the last sad remnants of an accident victim's clothes. A large stone porch graced the front of the house, hid the door and windows in a well of shadow.
"Turn off the lights, ma petite."