For the Dead Travel Fast
—-xxx—-
Castle woke violently just outside of Cleveland on I90W. His thrashing and groans made the hair stand up on her arms, but she could do nothing more than send out her voice, calling to him, reminding her husband of their humanity, recalling him to her with sound alone.
"Castle," she called, keeping the urgency out of her voice, keeping calm for his sake. "It's okay. We're okay, we're safe." For now. "Go back to sleep, you're gonna be fine. Sleep."
Her words, the litany of soft shushing and the murmur of her inflection was all it took. He dropped back into the deep sleep of phase, though she saw the sweat pouring down his face, the sheen of it slicking his chest. He still wore no shirt; he'd taken his shoes off to let them dry; she could scent the lake on him as he steamed up the car, and she ran the air conditioner just to keep the windows from fogging.
She also knew she still smelled like the deranged, and that it was affecting him subconsciously. He had said as much when he'd admitted to wanting to lean over and take a bite of her. She'd only ever torn at Royce before being forced to transition Rick; since her own transition, she had never used her teeth to open human flesh, she had never instigated a full Blood Letting, she had only ever drunk from the willing. Mistress Kate knew how to treat her subs.
Much like the woman on the beach, with her pets.
She shook off that thought, discomfited by the idea.
She wondered again at the size of the horde, the vast undead army which Royce had often alluded to in that nasty and threatening way. There's a horde out there just waiting for a morsel like you. You gotta toughen up, kiddo, or they will eat your face off.
She hadn't expected the woman at the beach to back down. That whole time, Kate had been concocting half-baked exit strategies which all had poor outcomes while the woman had whined about wanting a little taste. Kate didn't know what the vampire world was like, or what rules it might have. She'd scoffed at the idea that there was some kind of civilization to it, because her experience of two vampires had been cutthroat, steeped in betrayal. She couldn't imagine a woman like that at the lake, who would back down with a bit of face-saving, shake her off like she was the weird one for saying no.
Maybe all the modern vampires had blood orgies. Why not? What the hell did Kate know?
The wound at her shoulder was fetid; she could smell herself now in the close confines of the car. She took the risk and cracked the window, and immediately the whip of fresh air revived her.
It seemed to revive Castle too, because he groaned and jerked awake, a noise in his throat like a growl.
"Rick?" she asked.
"Weird dream. A dog. Attacked me. In the car. It was—"
He broke off so quickly that she knew he'd realized it wasn't a dream. He was breathing hard, scraping a hand down his face, not looking at her. Probably there had been other nightmares as well—her own phase had been filled with terror—but he was soldiering through.
Her throat closed up.
"Um," he scraped. "I need to take a piss. Can we stop?"
She flinched. She was pretty sure he didn't need to use the bathroom, and she was a thousand percent sure he'd never used such a crude phrase before. Not her writer. Which meant he was less her writer and more... this. "Yes, we can… try. A gas station?"
His throat worked; she jerked her eyes away from that alluring movement and put them back on the road. "Anywhere," he husked. "I gotta… Kate the smell."
She winced. "I… realize it must be thick."
"No, you don't. It's clear you don't, because if you smelled that like I did, you'd be tearing at your own flesh to get it out of you."
She blinked.
He labored for breath, his head turned to the door; he pushed the button and the window went down, all the way, and he hung his head out.
She tried not to be hurt by that; it wasn't really her. It was the wound the deranged had inflicted on her. And no, she couldn't smell it like he could, and she didn't know if he was just extra sensitive in phase, or if she was a poorly turned vampire.
Kate took the exit while he hung his head out the window, the least-populated exit she could find, a lone Marathon and a Dairy Queen.
"Ooh, ice cream!" he said, some of his usual self reasserting.
She smiled at that, parked the SUV at a pump. He reached for the door handle and she stopped him. "Hey, I don't think we should split up, Castle."
He blinked, and she saw all of it coming back to him, everything, but he didn't say a word. He just nodded and waited for her to get out of the car and start the gas pumping. She'd run the Porsche as far as it would go on its hybrid engine; she would have to get gas far more frequently now that the batteries were so run down. She highly doubted the middle of northern-western Ohio had an electric port.
Castle got out of the car and stretched his legs; she noticed he'd found the duffle and donned a shirt, one of those black t's he'd started wearing under his plaids in the winter. It hung on him like a bedsheet, and all she could do was stare.
He came around the back end of the car, close to her but not downwind, and leaned against the bumper. Hands in his pockets, casual, but she saw the tension in his jaw, the furrowed brow. He noticed her noticing. "What?" he said.
She shook her head, not sure why she was mourning the writer when he was standing right here.
Well, no, she knew why. Because he'd never be that man again. He was vampire now, and the chiseled jaw and sharp cheekbones and the adam's apple that protruded at his throat might not always be so painful, but that version of her husband would never return. He said piss and snapped at her for smelling bad.
She took a deep breath, made herself let it go.
"What?" he said, exasperated now. "Don't do the silent bullshit, Kate." So she gestured to his shirt and he glanced down. "Yeah, guess you grabbed one of the XXLs. I bought a pack on accident and never returned them."
"No," she scraped out, swallowed past the knot in her throat. "No, it was in the dirty clothes pile. I grabbed whatever was closest."
He plucked the shirt off his chest and sniffed it, laughed. "Yeah, you did, didn't you?" And then the grin fell off his face as he realized. He stiffened, glanced down at himself, jerking away from the back end of the car. "What the hell? Why—"
He caught sight of himself in the tinted window of the SUV and his hands dropped.
She blew out a breath, returned the gas nozzle to the pump, slowly closed the gas cap.
He looked at her. He was stunned speechless.
"Your metabolism is very high," she echoed lamely.
"My metab—Kate. My face." He touched his chest, ran his hands down to his hips, eyes widening. "My whole body is…"
She waited for it, the shock to transmogrify to horror, at her, at what she'd done to him, at what he was now.
She realized she was braced for it, her hands in fists, her breathing too fast, like she expected him to hit her. That was how powerful his words were to her, how much damage he could do her with just a few lines.
His face broke into a ridiculous grin and he gave a war whoop. "Best diet ever! Admit it, I look good, don't I? I didn't do a thing, and the pounds just melted away." He strutted before the back end of the SUV, looking at himself in the windows, combing his hair down, so proud she had to laugh. He turned his smirk right on her and crowded in; his kiss was rough and fast, and he was breathing hard when they parted. "You think I'm sexy, don't you? You can say it. Sleek, svelte, 0% body fat, and you want me bad."
She tried to make a joke of it, tried even to share in his enthusiasm. But she faltered—not just because there was a certain grief in losing the man, but because there was something all too seductive about the way he looked at her mouth, and how close their hips were, and just how hot he burned against her.
And how he smelled. Like euphoria.
But she saw the struggle in him the second before she realized she was struggling too, and she stepped back. At her defensive movement, his eyes bleached pure white, and she pressed her hand against his chest to ward him off.
Not even grey, not a hint of that whitewashed denim, just icy white.
"No. No, Castle." She held him off with a hand and glanced rapidly at their surroundings, but she saw no one. No clerk, no customers, no other folks stopping for gas. "Rick."
He stumbled, shook his head like a dog.
She had to keep talking. "You're my husband, and I know you would never hurt me. But if you feast from me, if you tear at me with your teeth, you will kill me. You will kill me. I am too weak to survive that."
He buried his head in his hands.
"Rick? You just—"
"Stop," he croaked.
She froze.
He lifted his head. "We have to get her out of you. That bitch marked you and we have to tear her out."
Oh shit.
This wasn't her writer.
—-xxx—-