For the Dead Travel Fast
—-xxx—-
Kate hadn't been willing to test the reach of the Porsche hybrid, and so she had stopped for gas. But only after exiting the interstate and crisscrossing through back roads and rural routes for a good two hours, thoroughly losing Castle and his weaker sense of direction.
That could be excused, since the transition was taking its toll on him. For reasons neither of them understood, he was sluggish and fever-hot, struggling to remain present, and yet not dipping into another phase. She was beginning to wonder if he should have sipped from her veins a bit more, or her from him a bit less (or more?) but those kind of second-guesses weren't going to help.
The gas stop hadn't taken much; she had run inside and paid cash, and when she'd come back out, Castle had been making fish faces at the glass, absurd and grotesque contortions of his features for her amusement, the total idiot, all while she pumped.
What a goofball. Whom she loved so much it actually made her chest hurt as she breathed.
Now they were three hours from Ute Mountain Reservation Casino and Hotel, another convenience store map spread across Castle's thighs, despite the ever-shrinking nature of his concentration. He was gripping the seat belt across his shoulder as if to hang on, and she had become the nagging wife, urging him to drink just a little more Powerade, another sip, one more.
She found her way back to the interstate, and really, it wasn't too late. She could take the northern track and head back to Denver—longer on the road, double the hours in the car—but it wasn't like they were locked into this route. They didn't have to keep going south.
"Kate."
They were betting everything on a smirking kid from a taco truck.
Her blinker sounded in the waning twilight. Her headlights held the interstate sign trapped, frozen.
"Are you having second thoughts?" he husked.
"A thousand," she breathed.
He was silent. She knew what he wanted, what his choice was, and even though her natural pessimism looked askance at a vampire support system, she had been the one to take them out of the hands of competent medical care while he suffered.
It was his turn to decide their fate.
She turned onto the interstate, once more heading south.
He let out a breath, his hand crinkling the map as it laid heavy over his knee. He tilted his head back, as if he'd been holding himself rigid as he'd waited for her to turn.
"Nap if you need to," she told him. The white noise of the interstate was like a lullaby; she got up to speed quickly in the Porsche, and the rhythm of the car could sooth if they let it. "I'll wake you when we cross onto the reservation."
"No, I'm awake," he said.
But you don't have to be. Maybe he didn't trust her to keep going.
She wasn't sure she trusted herself.
He fiddled with the radio a while, scanning for something distracting, but there seemed to be a lot of evangelical broadcasts or country music stations without anything to recommend them. He ceased after an hour, and she tried to keep her mind empty of all thought.
Of course, she couldn't. The thoughts crowded in, desperate and ever more urgent.
"Don't let them separate us," she blurted out.
"What?"
"If it—when we get there. Rules of engagement. Where you go, I go, vice versa."
"Oh. Yes. Definitely."
"Don't swallow everything they say as gospel truth."
"Mm. Investigate for ourselves, I can agree to that."
"My weapon stays on me."
He hesitated.
"Castle," she insisted.
"If they say, hey this is a gun-free zone, our reservation, our rules: what do you want us to do?"
"Leave."
He grunted, rubbed his chest with the heel of his hand. She wondered if her teeth marks bothered him. "Leave."
"I'm wiling to strike a deal, I'm willing to talk, but I will not hand over my service weapon, Castle. I have a responsibility as a sworn officer of the law."
"Okay, no, I see that." He glanced at her. "What else?"
She chewed on her lip, eyes fixed on the horizon. Stars had begun to come out, pinpricks in the green-grey twilight. "We have to both agree to their terms. Whatever they are—"
"Kate, this isn't a surrender. We're not negotiating our white flag to a superior force."
Weren't they?
"We'll follow Taco Kid's instructions, ask for Wahkara, and see where that leads. And, I agree, we won't be held prisoner again, not even if they say it's for our own good. No, you can't have your service weapon out of your hands. But terms? Look, if it feels fishy to you, if it looks like they're leading us astray, then okay, we get in our car and we keep going."
"Great Salt Lake," she said, feeling pinched somehow. Narrow. Drawn tight.
"Hell, we could go to California for all I care. Somewhere to lie low until I transition. I mean, Big Sur gets pretty isolated, but between here and there are a hundred great camping spots in the national parks. And since you're driving like a champ, why not go north, Great White North, where it will snow out all the thirsty deranged horde and leave us cozy before a fire."
She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"It doesn't have to be one way. This is only a way. An offering made by a couple of people like us who think it will help. But we don't have to choose it."
"But you want to."
"I want to transition correctly, whatever that means, be in balance, and I think having other vampires around who can give us some direction on this will only help. But I'm not looking for harm to befall us."
"I know," she whispered.
She really did. She trusted him with her life—she had put her own weapon in his hands and known he would come through for her. Why was this so hard? Why did she balk at trusting his judgment when it came to the vampires?
"I was too easily seduced," she croaked. Clenched the wheel. "Not once, but twice. Twice."
"Seduced," he echoed.
"It wasn't that Royce came onto me, quite the opposite, though I knew it was risky to my career. I seduced him, but for his secrets, for his power—of course, I had no idea it was this, not at first—but I wanted to run flat out like he could, I wanted to survive tricky situations, I wanted—"
"To be reckless and not have it bite you in the ass."
She grunted, but she couldn't get around that assessment.
"So he told you he was a vampire, that was his secret, and what? Now you have to die."
She laughed, caught out by the humor in his voice, the slant he put to a period of her life that had been so dark, so bleak. "I guess you could say that." She loosened her grip on the wheel. "Although, I fought him tooth and nail to get accepted as a possible candidate for transition. That's how he put it. Candidate. I had no idea what it was he was really after."
"How could you have known he was looking for something like what we have?" Castle's comforting hand at her elbow again, soothing, stroking. "Royce probably never gave you signs he was into that, and cops don't necessarily strike me as being the romantic type, at least not in public. Bad for their image."
She arched an eyebrow. "I don't think you could call what he was looking for romance."
"Mm. Okay, true enough. Mind-blowing bloody sex."
She huffed. But it was funny. Damn him.
"You were trying to be better for your mom. You wanted it badly."
"Seduced," she said flatly. "In my darker moments, I can't tell you that it was me coming onto him and not him orchestrating or manipulating my youth and hard-headedness and—"
"Grief," Castle supplied. Too quickly. "Manipulating your grief against you to serve his own end."
She sucked in a breath, stung. He'd come at that conclusion so effortlessly, she knew he'd thought it before.
"The way you talked about him, before I knew about the vampire stuff, Kate…"
"You think he took advantage of me."
"Yes." His fingers curved into the crease of her elbow. "And I say that as a reformed rake, a man who took advantage far more than I like to admit, all those young willing fans—"
"Castle," she censured, huffing at him. "That was back when you were also young and willing. It hardly compares."
"Young!" He gasped. "And now I'm old. Is that what you're saying?"
She rolled her eyes.
"I'm deeply wounded, Detective."
"Captain," she snapped.
He laughed. "Captain Beckett doesn't loose those slings and arrows. That was the work of Detective Beckett. Smarting because her training officer was a bastard who ate on her neck instead of teaching her how to be a proper vampire."
Kate sighed. Their silence this time was no longer fraught with second-guessing and frustration; she simply shook her head at her young self and gave it up. Nothing for it now. And it was Castle who helped ease her way from wounded to healing. In more ways than one.
"You said twice you were seduced. Let me hear more about your Nazi lover."
"She wasn't a—" Kate gaped, eyes locked on the horizon but utterly not seeing it, for one black moment, seeing nothing at all. "Oh my God, she was a Nazi."
"Mm, yes, yes she was. You said she performed experiments."
"She… oh God, I fucked a Nazi."
"You couldn't have known," he said cheerfully.
"You would think I could have." She twisted the wheel between her hands, hot shame burned away by sharp indignation. "I think Nazism would be kinda hard to miss."
"Clearly not in your case."
"Oh God. She was so seductive. Not just hot; she was definitely hot. But. She knew exactly how to get to me emotionally—"
"You know, there are reasons why therapists aren't allowed to have sex with their patients."
"And I thought we were above all that," Kate groaned. "Those rules were for other people. Not me. I wasn't really that fucked up, I was just a vampire. And so my vampire therapist was more my friend than my professional mental health worker."
"You say mental health worker like lady oft the night, and honestly, for you, I am seeing those are not dissimilar."
"I don't sleep with my therapists, usually."
"I mean, you sleep with half of them."
"No," she fought back. "Only a third."
"You've had three therapists? That's a lot of turnover."
"One of them was a Nazi, Castle, so let's keep the judgment to a minimum."
He grinned; she grinned back, shook her head to regain her concentration on the road.
He always managed to pull her pigtails. Wasn't that what she'd told him? She'd grown used to it. Not just used to it—his humor and amusement were necessary to her life now. His light. Made the bleakness have color once more. "Thank you, Rick. For that. I had a crisis of confidence in my own ability to trust my instincts when it comes to vampires, to all this, and you've been patient, you've been careful with me, let me have my head, but also reined in my more foolish notions, and that's—amazing."
"Kate—" He tried to soften it, the moment, as if it wasn't as momentous as she knew it to be.
"No, it matters a lot to me that you're in this, we're in this, together." She chewed on her lip furiously to keep back tears. "Partners." Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat, and then again to make sure she could get it out. "Like I said, my experience with vampires—the end results were catastrophic. I was deeply betrayed. Not just one bad choice. But twice."
"Kate. As someone I'm rather fond of once said to me—" He slid his hand up to her neck, thumb brushing across her pulse. "Third time's the charm."
—-xxx—-