Regina drummed her fingers against the steering wheel, the same distracted SOS she had been tapping out for nearly half an hour now, and again contemplated the series of misfortunes that had led to her being stranded on a seldom-traveled road on the wrong side of twilight.
First, she had left the freeway to buy some (abysmal) coffee and gotten fantastically lost in an unknown stretch of backcountry Maine when she tried to find her way back; then, just past gathering dusk, she had felt the distinctive lurch and fwipfwipfwip of the Mercedes' fan belt giving up the ghost; and - to round off the trilogy - after acting the responsible driver, pulling over, and setting her hazard lights to flash she had realized her phone had zero reception in this miserable hollow of land, and had all but thrown up her hands in despair.
There wasn't anything to be done with a broken belt besides shelling out for a tow and a replacement, so she was deep in the type of pickle she hated most: being entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers.
If any strangers should even pass, and slow down long enough to render some aid, that was.
She had half a mind to stand at the side of the road and ruche her skirt up past the knee to entice any men (or women) who happened upon her to stop, a trick she had seen work so effectively in that old Clark Gable movie, but all the scandalous thighs, or gesturing thumbs, or hazard flashers in the world would be for naught if there wasn't anyone there to notice them in the first place.
Regina allowed herself to groan pitifully, slumping to rest her head against the wheel. Trust her to choose a deserted road to compound her bad luck, especially when she really didn't have the time to wait around for a rescue.
And in that defeated position, she missed the sight of headlights in her rearview mirror, and the swerve of a car approaching, and slowing, and she may have bungled the opportunity entirely if not for the sudden crunch of gravel outside her window that made her startle back to reality.
The man who had paused, now idling next to her - relatively innocuous-looking, if a bit scruffy - lifted a hand in greeting and signaled for her to roll down the window.
"Everything okay, ma'am?" he called across the gap, his voice pitched to friendliness.
Regina sighed - confessing her blunders was always the worst part. "No, actually, I've run into some car trouble, and I'm not getting any service on my phone to call for a tow."
The man rifled around the passenger seat of his car, eventually procuring his own cell and grimacing. "Bugger, you're right about the reception."
They were both clearly at something of a loss, but after a moment's hesitation the man cleared his throat and pressed on gamely. "Do you want me to, er, take a peek under the hood and see if it's something easy to deal with?"
"Oh, no, I'm quite sure it's the fan belt. There'll be no fixing it out here."
He arched an eyebrow admiringly. "A lady and a mechanic."
"I thought about searching out the nearest service station on foot, but without my GPS, or a basic map, I wasn't willing to take the chance that 'near' means anything except in the most relative sense in these parts."
"I'm not familiar with this end of the county myself, but by my reckoning the next town might be as much as 20 miles from here."
"That's what I was afraid of," Regina muttered.
"Look," the man started, glancing somewhat timidly in her direction, "I know it's all a bit weird, taking a ride from a man you've only just met, but I'd worry about leaving you out here all alone with night coming on like this."
Relief. She hadn't had to ask for help, after all (she hated asking) - he had simply extended the offer. And while there was something about this good samaritan she couldn't quite qualify, something about his earnestness, how quickly he had settled on the intimacy of giving her a ride, she would be foolish to let him pass on when full-dark was quickening its approach across the sky.
"I'll even let you choose the radio station," he called over lightly, reading the indecision in her silence, and the boyishness of the overture won an honest laugh from her.
Perhaps the day could still be salvaged, her hours of driving and waiting coming to a fruitful end at last.
"Well, I don't suppose we have any better options," she answered, nodding to him and making a cursory check of the dashboard and floor to ensure she wasn't forgetting anything crucial. "Better the devil you know than whatever else might be prowling these fields at night."
"A sound sentiment," he agreed, leaning over to pop open the passenger door for her after she had finished double-checking the locks on the Mercedes. "I'm Robin, by the way."
"Regina."
Robin eased the car into drive, and Regina tried to adjust her body to the strangeness of an unfamiliar seat. The mood lingering in the air was not...uncomfortable, exactly, but something unsure, and the awkward specter of either making small talk or completing the trip mutely hung heavy between them.
She pursed her lips, and, deciding for them, moved to rest her fingers over the radio dial. "May I?"
His ready assent indicated that he, too, was all too eager to break the stillness, and Regina set about fiddling with the various knobs, navigating through an even divide of static and country music until she hit upon the rolling thunder and faintly menacing bassline of her favorite Doors song.
She paused on the station, briefly closing her eyes with pleasure that this should be the song she had found (it seemed meant for her, and for this moment), and grew more pleased still when Robin made an appreciative sound next to her.
"Great song. They don't make music like this anymore."
She mmmed in agreement, settling back into her seat with the feeling of a great weight removed from her mind. The night really had tipped in her favor.
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we're born
Into this world we're thrown...
"What brings you to this charming piece of bumfuck nowhere, anyway?" Robin asked, interrupting her music-induced reverie, though he had the decency to redden when she titled her head towards him with reproval. "Excuse the language."
"No need to apologize, I couldn't have said it better myself." She gestured through the windshield, where his headlights illuminated very little of interest beyond the bare curve of the road. They both chuckled.
"Business," she continued, opting to keep the story honest but brief. "I'm supposed to be at a conference in Portland tomorrow, but, as you can well see, I managed to take a few wrong turns after I left the interstate."
"I know what you mean. All the signs just disappear once you hit these back roads - it's like passing into another dimension, like something out of The Twilight Zone."
"That's a creepy thought," she muttered darkly, mock-shivering a little. "And you? You're hardly a native to the area yourself."
He grinned, exaggerating his accent to a ridiculous cockney to question, "Whatever gave me away?"
Regina laughed obligingly, but pressed, "That's not an answer."
"What's an immigrant bloke like me to do but live out his Kerouac fantasy by taking spontaneous road trips, searching for the 'true soul' of America and all that?"
She had noticed the maps - Vermont, Michigan, Tennessee, Wyoming - when she had first clambered into the car, her stilettoed heel having slipped a bit on their glossy backings where they lay strewn over all visible floor space.
"Quite a collection you've amassed here. They've become something of a relic of the past in recent years," she observed.
"It's old-school, I know, but I've always liked having something physical to trace a journey out on." Robin shifted his eyes to her playfully, pointedly. "And unless you're a poor navigator, paper maps aren't wont to suddenly stop working when you need them most."
She acknowledged the hit - a fair one - with a bob of her head. "We all get set in our ways, I suppose."
She bent to retrieve a map of Maine from the pile underfoot, noting as she did that many of them had been dotted with red x's - not within the bounds of a state's cities or rest stops as one might expect, but along the lengthy, desolate expanses of highway and service roads that fell in between.
"You mark your destinations?"
He smiled absently, his mind clearly drifting elsewhere: perhaps to certain old haunts she had dredged up with her question. "More like interesting sights I happen upon along the way."
She had turned her attention back to Maine, neatly unfolding the (as yet unmarked) panes of the map, when Robin coughed politely and gestured to the open air vents. "Er, are you cold?"
Regina shook her head, puzzled.
"It's just the gloves, the long sleeves - not typical dress for a daytrip in August," he said sheepishly, as if sorry he had remarked upon it.
She did feel a little caught-out now, fingering the high collar of her shirt defensively as a flush rose on the sides of her neck. "Just my driving clothes."
"Driving clothes?" he repeated, voice rising with amused disbelief. "Speaking of relics, that sounds like something direct from the last turn of the century."
"My mother had views about how a young woman should act, what she should wear, even when it came to something as mundane as driving." Her lips twisted at the unpleasantness of the memory. "I guess it stuck."
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad…" Robin quoted softly, and she joined in on the second line. "They may not mean to, but they do."
"Though I'm not convinced my mother didn't mean to," Regina said, trying to maintain the same lighthearted cant as Larkin's verse but unable to hide some of the damage in her voice.
Glancing sideways at her, Robin hummed in understated sympathy, but there was subtle movement in his shoulders, twitching down to his hands, that told Regina he was starting to grow antsy. Parental abuse was a touchy subject to stumble onto with strangers, she conceded, particularly when they were both weary - and perhaps more than a little wary - after a day's traveling in unfamiliar territory.
"Still no signs of life out here," Robin muttered, flicking his brights off and back on as if to confirm the barrenness of their surroundings. "I think I have an updated road guide for Maine in the glove compartment, if you'd just -"
His sleight-of-hand was wonderful, drawing her eyes one way while he inched smoothly towards some other target, but she was (as ever) quicker.
"My knife will be in your heart before you can retrieve whatever-it-is you're reaching for under your seat," she said calmly, tipping her wrist just enough so he would catch the cool gleam of metal poking out from her sleeve, "but, by all means, try it."
He stilled, like an animal struck dumb by a passing beam of light, but kept driving at the same steady, unhurried pace he had maintained since picking her up. The hand which had gone searching under his seat slowly returned to the wheel, empty, and flexed there with violent energy.
"Oh, but you are a wonder," he growled, smiling terribly, his voice roughened by both his unmet need and genuine reverence. Regina noticed, more powerfully than ever, how very sharp his teeth appeared in the moonlight.
"I know." It was a rare, almost precious, thing to find oneself in the company of a fellow creature of the night, and she couldn't help baring her own teeth into a smile, white as bone.
"I find myself in the presence of the Queen of Hearts, then, if I don't miss my guess."
She grimaced, despising the sobriquet the media had affixed to her - it was so like them, the fools, to think only in witticisms when they understood nothing about the whys of what she did - but affirmed Robin's suspicion with a nod. "When did you realize?"
"That you weren't exactly the damsel-in-distress you claimed to be?" He chuckled, a low, dangerous sound so entirely different from the friendly face he had presented before. "I very nearly didn't. The gloves were an odd touch, but explained away easily enough...no, it was something about the eyes. The way you watched without watching, tracking my movements, cataloging every detail. You looked like a hunter."
"You're quite good at hiding how observant you are."
"High praise, coming from the likes of you."
Regina's mouth twisted again. She hated being the uninformed one in a conversation. "You obviously know who I am - do I know you, by reputation at least?"
"I doubt it," Robin said with smug satisfaction. "I like to keep a low profile. Never hit the same state twice, vary my routine as much as I can stand, kill discreetly."
"So you weren't entirely lying about the road trips."
"It's the things half-true that make the most compelling lies, don't you think?"
"Weapon of choice?" she tried, wondering what precisely he had had in store for her, if she had been a more trusting passenger or a little slower on the uptake.
"There's something to be said for the elegance of a hypodermic needle. Very little mess, and if you stage the scene right, it doesn't even ping as homicide in the coroner's reports most of the time - just another unfortunate soul lost to the opioid crisis."
It was a clever tactic, and one that suited a man with such dexterous hands. She was willing to speculate that his career had started with petty theft, until the thrill had tapered off and he'd been left searching for more, escalating the game to stealing lives instead.
"Unusual to leave no identifying mark, no calling card…"
He shrugged, as if to say he had his own way of claiming his kills. "You rather like sending a message, don't you?" he remarked, studying her profile, "and for that nothing short of the grotesque will do. What do you do with all the hearts?"
A humorless smirk tugged at the corner of her lips. "I'm not the type to kiss and tell."
"Kill and tell," Robin amended for her, winning another shared smile, and it was curious how quickly the tension between them had dissipated into something more playful, understanding.
Not that Regina was stupid enough to let her guard down even a notch, or loosen her grip on the knife tucked into her shirt, but...like calls to like, and neither could deny that there was interest there, and the twinning of something dark and damaged in their hearts that made this meeting intimate, special, for both of them.
"We're due to come out near another exit ramp in a few minutes. There's a little outpost: a diner, a gas station, the basics. It's not much, but -" Robin trailed off, but she didn't miss the way the speedometer had begun to tick down, slowing, as if he were loathe to reach their destination.
Their parting.
"Are you asking what we're going to do with each other once we find civilization again?"
What we're going to do to each other, she thought, knowing that his mind was attuned to the same query.
"In a manner of speaking," he acknowledged.
"It's unusual for people like us to meet, you know. Dangerous, too." She had pored through the library's shelves on true crime more than once, finding the psychology fascinating to pick apart and measure against her own. "How many times have you heard of serial killers joining up, hunting together?"
Robin shook his head.
"We're too territorial, too jealous…"
"Two of a kind that doesn't play well with others," he finished, grimly.
How well he understood. She felt soft towards him, gentled, when she answered, simply, "Yes."
"Still, neither one of us is likely to get a jump on the other now."
"I suppose not. And I'm not sure you're my type anyway." They both laughed at that. "We could go our separate ways, melt back into the shadows, pretend we never - pardon the expression - spilled our guts to each other. Stick to our respective hunting grounds."
"You could ruin me with the information you have," Robin said, mingling candor with a minor threat. "And I, you. Do we trust in that? In some killers' accord?"
Regina felt it rising, the living thing climbing through stomach and throat and brain and burning red - the impulsiveness, the sickness, in her that made all roads within lead to trouble - and she knew she would not let this man leave her, not by his hand or hers.
(And if ever the fascination, the all-consuming need for his body, his bite, to be her company in this world, were to wear off, if her calm broke back into hunger, she would take the consequences as they came. She would eat her sorrow on a blade's edge, as she had always done.)
She spoke carefully, weighing her words against the twitchings of each responsive muscle in his jaw. "If this outpost's off the interstate, there may be someone hoping to pick up a ride. A drifter might be comforted by a nice young couple going in his direction, offering a lift…"
His eyes captured hers, the road forgotten, and he lay fully opened to her at last. "Your car. I'd hate to leave a trail, careful as I'm sure you were."
"Who said it was my car?" she challenged, pleased that he was already preparing, planning. "Cutting out hearts doesn't half pay the bills, much less let me afford a Mercedes."
"My queen," he husked, desire evident in the strain of his voice, the tensing of his hands against the steering wheel to find control, and the epithet was no longer hateful when it was coming from his tongue, when it sounded like a prayer.
He was hers, and she his, and tonight they would seal their pact in blood, unbreakable.
Moonrise, now at its peak, burned whitely through the trees, over the low-lying fields that bordered the road, but beyond that the fluorescent glow of a city was beginning to strengthen, beckoning them in for a cup of coffee, a meal, a word with other lonely travelers, welcoming them all in from the shadows with promises of respite before the world whisked them onwards again - a flash of taillights, and gone, fading back into the anonymity granted by our willingness to never look too closely at the night.
Riders on the storm
(There's a killer on the road)