Misty (14 page)

“If you help me unload, I can get you a good breakfast and a safe place to sleep.” His voice sounded tired.

“Seems like a good deal.” She nodded, opened her door and got out and stretched.

He went over to the back door and knocked loudly. It took a long time before anyone answered. A very sleepy lady of around sixty opened the door. She was really glad to see the driver and he went in. The next she knew, he was opening the dock doors from the inside. She untied her clothes and pushed them, now dry, into her bag. She threw the bag on the dock, went up the dock steps to wait while for the driver. Misty realized she had never gotten a name but watched as he lowered the truck ramp and opened the back doors.

Since the ramp was on the same level as the dock it was easier to get the boxes off the truck and into the building. This turned out to be a safe house for junkies in recovery, run by nuns. She introduced herself, using her real name. After the truck was unloaded she did get a great breakfast. They showed her a bunk that she collapsed on fully dressed, too tired to even kick her shoes. Misty slept the clock around. The truck and driver were gone, but there was plenty of work and no pay. She stayed around for two weeks when another truck came in.

She helped unload it and asked him for a ride. He agreed, so she thanked the sisters and exchanged all of her clothes for some they had in their giveaway closet. She had now been away from any Vampires for almost two months. This was longer than she thought possible. Perhaps it was possible to stay under the radar when it came to the Council, but she wondered about their special enforcer.

Was his ego hurt, was he determined? How long would he try to find her? Maybe he would just chalk it up to a bad experience, maybe he had more important projects to work on. Maybe he would go on to other projects. She could only pray and continue to work on staying hidden in a most unusual way.

Chapter Eleven

Rad was in a corner of a bar, drinking a whiskey, talking to Marco on his cell. He was getting an update on business and any word from the Council. He asked to talk to Alex.

“How are you doing Rad?” Alex tried to hide his concern, but even on the phone Rad could read his friend.

Rad took a long sip of whiskey. Vampires did not get drunk. But right now he wished he could. He looked around the dark bar taking in the details and watching the one person he was going to talk to later. “You don’t want to know.”

“You got some messages from the Council. Seems they were a bit upset when you left in such a hurry and didn’t help wipe some of Bath’s powers away.” Alex’s voice had a trace of amusement in it.

Rad smiled his crooked smile. “Hey, so they had to do a little work. Time they got off their lazy butts. Some of them have been on that Council too long.”

“How goes the hunt?”

There was a long silence.

“It is the most frustrating and the most interesting hunt I think I have ever been on. This woman is amazing. The bad part is she is making me more aware of her in ways that I should be able to stay away from. There is the Council Directive, which I am probably going to break. Yet, I want her to agree. Strange, the more I am away from her, the more I hunt her, the more…” He did not finish that sentence.

Again there was a long silence.

Finally Alex spoke. “Perhaps you should let someone else find her.”

“Alex, you will enjoy this. I have to find her. I have no choice. But it still comes down to the fact that I am the best hunter. I don’t think anyone else will be able to find her. She is too smart. She bought clothes at a Good Will and changed. I don’t know where she got rid of the old ones but it changed her smell for a time. I am actually running at night to pick up her scent. I get traces of it everywhere but none of it pans out. She knows I can trace the smell of her and she is doing things to throw me off the trail. She is the best I have ever hunted.”

“Rad, she is more than just special blood. She is avoiding all Vampires on the road and leading you on a merry chase. Wonder what she really is?”

“When I catch her I will let you know. But I think that we will not be turning her over to the Council. I have gotten a thread of a memory from a guy who worked in a kitchen. Looks like I have a long run south. Get me a car.” He hit the button on the Blackberry and got up and went out into the night outside the bar to wait.

The man came out with two friends, all of them pretty much wasted. He took his time. Once he had the man alone, he search the man’s memory to find her. It had been weeks ago that the man had seen her. There was no indication of where she had gone, but he had memories of her, very strong since he was attracted to her but didn’t find any way to get close to her. She had disappeared.

In anger Rad took his blood and left him in an alley, weak and drunk and unconscious. He went to an agreed upon place and found a servant with a black Mercedes with dark tinted windows. The servant offered him blood by tilting his head, but Rad thanked him and declined, then traveled swiftly south.

* * * *

She was in a little town on the border of Texas and New Mexico. It was off any of the main routes and had never been very large, only one main street. Now with the economy so bad, about half of the stores were boarded up. The ones that were open were dark and the windows unwashed, covered with the dust from the unplanted, surrounding fields.

The only working industry was a small iron foundry that was on the edge of town, still putting some people to work, as iron was one of the items in demand in the U.S. Two of the stores on the main street were owned by the family that owned the foundry. One of them was doing so bad it was only open three days a week. It was a women’s dress shop, as advertised through crusty windows. The other was the hardware and general store, also with windows you couldn’t see through. That store had one man and two kids to handle the inventory along with any customers.

It had taken her three weeks of travel to end up in this nowhere part of the world, but she decided to stay for a while. She tried for a job at the dress shop but got referred out to the foundry. The foundry was a shock and a learning experience. Loud, unbelievably hot in the southern sun, and a black cloud of dust everywhere. Mostly the sidewalls were non-existent. The main working foundry had grown over the years in a confusing, makeshift way, with roofs going in different directions and some internal walls. Mostly there was no floor, just dirt covered by the black dust from the manufacturing of iron. In some areas cement flooring was required, but it was so covered by debris that it was rough and uneven.

You got into the area of the giant furnaces and you found out what heat really was. They talked about the insulation, but you could feel the heat rolling off the furnaces, yards away from them. The heavy caldrons that took the red liquid to pour into the sand molds drug the heat across the buildings and made it flow into the molds. The molds turned into heat that blistered and roasted the air. All of this before the noise added to this hell. Because as the red hot liquid hit the molds it began to solidify immediately, the sand molds were sent down long shaker tables. The fifteen-to-fifty-pound red-hot pieces of metal being pushed down a rolling, jolting, shaking table that broke the sand mold away created a noise level higher than standing next to a jet engine and put out more heat. Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but it was as close to a description as she could come up with.

She knew that there were probably newer and better foundries that had better and cleaner ways to handle this process. But with the economy, this foundry was still doing it the old way, making money, but not going to change. She got a job working on a computer to handle labels. They needed numerous labels for each shipment, most required by government bullshit.

Her office was against the wall in the back by the loading docks and, thank all blessing, this was away from the noise and the furnaces. There was one other woman in the office with her, who hardly talked. She seemed to have some type of allergy, as she sniffled constantly. There was one window air conditioner, that rattled. The workers and drivers tried to find excuses to come in to enjoy the weak cooling.

She went with the guys at the end of the second week to the restaurant. There was a lot of talk about the restaurant. Evidently in this sad, remote area of the United States, where unemployment was so bad, there were no workers without green cards. So about twenty miles away, by itself on a corner of a couple of county and state highways, was the restaurant. It was clean, plain, and matched the Texas/New Mexico area that still had a lot of cowboys mixed in with the farmers. Cheap but good home cooked food, large steaks, but no fish made up the menu. The talk was loud, with a lot of ma’ams, thanks, and apologies for cuss words that were not that bad. There was a mild tussle for the chance for a couple of guys to sit next to her.

She made a note to keep away from one of the owner’s sons. She just didn’t need anything that would cause any trouble while she stayed in this sunny place that did not seem to have any Vampires and not many strangers except for the truckers who picked up the loads outgoing on the foundry dock. But even these were normally guys that the workers had grown to know over the years.

So she was able to stay for a couple of months. But she began to feel uncomfortable. There was no Vamp alarm
—
it was the dreams. At first she would wake up in a sweat, damp all over and no idea what was wrong. She had no idea of any dream, no memory. She saw the eyes. She would be in a deep sleep and they would appear, like two tiny pale lights, off in the distance as they came slowly closer.

When they came close enough for her to realize they were pale blue eyes surrounded by long dark lashes, she would bolt upright in bed still expecting to see the eyes. She was shocked to only see the dull walls of the apartment above the store that she had rented. She began to have erotic dreams. She had never had these types of dreams before. But there were hands on her, touching areas that aroused her. She would awake with the sheets tied up around her. She would stumble into the small shower and stand under the cold water, which in this southern town was not really cold but tepid.

When her co-workers started to make comments about the dark circles under her eyes, she began to think it was time to move on. Maybe the dreams were a warning. Maybe he was getting close. Experience had taught her to move on without any warning, so she took her Friday paycheck and went to the restaurant. She worked in the office on Saturday morning, went with a co-worker to the bank to get cash, normal.

She stayed in her room on Sunday and on Monday she filled her backpack. She was now used to living on very little.She put the cash that she had hidden away into several locations on her body and hid the backpack on the way to work. She had bought an old bike and used it for travel, so it was easy to take a second to hide her backpack in a drain that she had already located for just such a use.

She worked all day, eating lunch with her co-worker in the AC office and at the end of the day told her what they both would finish tomorrow. She smiled and said bye to those who caught her eye. She went back to the ditch and recovered her backpack. She next went to an old house on the outskirts of town that was empty. She took her bike inside and settled down to wait for night.

She allowed herself to doze off and when it was around midnight, she felt it was safe enough to get on the road. The town was dead. She took a couple of back roads, going west, happy that there was no traffic. It took her two days to get to a major highway and a truck stop. By that time she was down to her last water and all of her food was gone.

The trucker that let her ride was also looking for a return. Like sex. She put up with his raw jokes and the snide remarks, because as long as the truck was moving west she was safe. At the next truck stop he needed to fuel up, which was south of Vegas. She put a lot of distance between him and what he wanted from her. This became a running problem, as he was insulted that she was not attracted to his charms.

She decided to go around to front, away from the big rigs, ending up where the public filled up for gas and got food. She looked for a place to hide. She saw a rental truck, open and loaded with household furniture. She ducked in trying to squeeze between some boxes and furniture, but a man came around to see what was making the noise. She heard the truck driver cussing, not too far away.

She looked at the man and whispered a
please
and motioned to the trucker who was stamping around like a madman. The guy looked at her and over at the trucker. He nodded, walked away and she heard the rental truck start up, pulling away from the pumps. In a couple of moments it stopped under a streetlight, and the man came around to the back.

“Okay, he’s still back at the truck stop. It’s not safe for you to ride back there. Come on up and sit with me.” He helped her down walking around to the passenger side and opened the door. She stepped up into the cab waiting until he got in to start on down the highway.

“Thank you. He wanted payment for a ride, but it was not cash, if you know what I mean.” She looked over at him. He nodded his head and kept both hands on the wheel. She guessed he was not a truck driver and that the rental truck was the first time he had driven something heavier than a pickup.

“Where you heading?” He asked.

“West.” She decided he looked like the type that needed something more solid. “I have a cousin in California who thinks she can get me a job.”