For the Dead Travel Fast

—-xxx—-

Riding on the back of her motorcycle, through the desert, Sonoran, blazing heat. The helmet was too heavy for his head. He wobbled, and she wobbled in turn, tied to him by the fulcrum of the bike between their legs. He tried to stay upright, tried not to crash them. He was so hot, his body raw every place the bike touched.

He looked down and he was naked. His skin exposed to sun and wind, to the sand scalding him as they rode the strip of highway, sixty-six miles an hour and faster, climbing, the wind whipping across his body, lashing him.

He was scoured by sand. Blood pricked and welled. He cried out her name—

When she turned her head, she was grinning with blood-soaked lips, teeth made pink with the blood running out of her mouth and down her throat, pooling there at the hollow of her throat.

And he, entranced rather than horrified, shock and awe both, leaned in and lapped at the pool of blood she offered him.

Little darts of his tongue, tentative at first, testing her out, himself too. The taste of her like salt and honey, and vaguely the musk of sex as he breathed her in. She clasped her fingers together at the back of his neck and the wind whipped around him, the bike surging forward without anyone at the controls, but it no longer mattered.

(This was all a dream.)

The helmet was mysteriously gone (he had a moment's thought for that), but his legs were spread to straddle her (the bike?) and she was arching her back to press her leather-clad body against his bare flesh.

He sank his teeth into her throat and she made those bedroom noises that drove him wild.

—-xxx—-

Kate paced the narrow room, billowing the shirt from her body by plucking at it repeatedly, overheated, faintly nauseous. Her feet were bare, sticky; she didn't know why.

Castle remained on the bathroom tile, no longer out cold, but he was filling the room with his heat and scent, the pheromones of blood lust, and she was trying damn hard not to give way. She remembered what that felt like, while still in phase, and she was not going to do it to him.

But they couldn't stay here, cramped in one room.

It was time to find their next spot, check the news to see if anyone had discovered the body in their apartment—and its unnatural state. They had to lay low, isolated, as isolated as possible, so that no one came calling. Both natural and unnatural visitors would be dangerous with Rick in this state of flux.

She might be dangerous for him.

And him for her.

Plucking the shirt away from her breasts, she tilted her head back and let out a long breath. Ignored the scent of him, calling her to slake her thirst—it was a mirage, it was all mirage, and she was in the desert of his phase.

Kate made up her mind. Moved quickly once she had. Clean underwear, careful with the bra (one of his favorites; had she selected it subconsciously or had it been the one on top?), leggings. The t-shirt she'd donned on her way out the door for ice had unfortunate stains of pink along the bottom half, but it looked tie-dyed rather than horror show.

Keys to the bike, the helmet, a wad of cash, her phone. Just in case, she wrote the burner number on the back of a take-out menu from the desk, propped it up beside him on the bathroom floor. No, he would not have the wherewithal or even coherence to understand the meaning; it was just in case someone found him.

Why did she think that? No one had bothered her in her time here, separated from him and working odd hours as Captain of the Twelfth, so why did she assume this was all about to crash down around them?

Because nothing ever went as planned, and he was a beacon for trouble. Not to mention, freshly transitioned, he was literally a beacon: the heat of phase produced a distinctive scent that called to the world for miles around, called to her caged with him, and she needed fresh air.

She also needed to stock up for the long haul. Pick somewhere isolated, find maps, buy iron supplements and Gatorade; she didn't want to do beef jerky again, but she would if she couldn't find enough to keep her going cross-country. Hell, at this point, she'd lick packets of salt, one by one, if she could find them.

(Had she already decided on cross-country?)

She was ready to go, and he would feel less like shit on the move as well; she remembered striking out for the woods still half-phased and wild with the newness of thirst, but Royce had at least tracked her down and locked her up in her father's cabin. Sat on her until the next phase had laid her out.

She was halfway down the fire stairs before she realized it, crazed and exhausted, and she pulled up short on the landing. Her heart pounded, her ears popped as if she'd suddenly dropped elevation, and she took her first mostly-clean breath in hours.

They would go when it got dark. Even in the dank stairwell, she could smell him, and she wasn't as old or as long-lasting as some of her kin out there. She had horror stories; she had legends; what she did not have was a damn playbook, or a set of rules, or even a fucking mentor who could give her cryptic warnings. She'd had a training officer once, and he'd neglected to train her.

She could strangle him for that if he weren't already dead and cold.

She shivered and hurried down the stairs, certain her phase-crazed trance state had locked the room behind her because he was hers after all, her transition, her kill, her feast. She protected her own, and her body thrummed for more. Even if she had no memory of locking the room, she knew, too, that it wouldn't matter to someone like her.

She had to get them out of the city.

Beckett stepped onto the street for the first time in hours, and just the sight of the crowded sidewalk and the close buildings and the school across the street with its old Gothic architecture was revival for her. She could smell the people, the life bustling and teeming and inveigling, and she wanted in on it, part of it. (She needed it, because she could not have, right now, what lay behind her upstairs).

Beckett pulled on the helmet and slung her leg over the motorcycle, a curious sense of Castle at her back, sliding onto the bike with her, like a phantom limb. She even looked over her shoulder, half spooked, half comforted, but he wasn't there, of course. He couldn't be there.

She revved the bike; it surged forward and into the street, sliding smoothly between two taxis and around another car, illegally using the space between vehicles to push her forward, move her ahead. She was aiming for the river in a way that she knew meant it's time to go, it's time to leave the city and while it was purely instinct, it was all she had to go on.

On that first foray, with Castle mostly dead and her hands still shaking and blood still drenching her shirt, she hadn't been with it enough to properly plan. She had been fighting a panic attack, she saw that now, the exchange of gunfire had triggered her, his body on the ground a fresh trauma. Add to that, the taste of his blood both new and hypnotic, like the red whine which made her a little crazy, and she'd been doomed to failure. It was a miracle she hadn't been picked up by an on-duty officer.

Now, she threaded through traffic with a clearer head, despite the urge to go back in that room and drink from him. It was an urge, and she had resisted her urges in regards to him for years; it was as natural as a habit, and easy to shoulder once more. She searched as she rode, looking not only for necessary road trip supplies, but for others like her, too aware, scenting the wind, driven by urges.

She knew they existed. She had run across only a handful in her short time (so to speak). But rare was not the same as extinct, and if there was anywhere in this world they would be, it would be here.

Now.

Because that was her luck.

She would not let that happen to him. He was hers.

—-xxx—-