Page 81 of Flames and Blood

Kalli

We drive out of Aurora at nightfall, and the towns get smaller until they stop. For the first hour there are still lit windows and gas stations and a man walking a dog along a verge. By midnight it’s one pump under a bulb with moths in it. After that there’s nothing. Road. Trees. Dark with no other light in it anywhere.

I’m not used to traveling the way he does. My clan flies in daylight because you can see weather coming, and every trip I’ve ever taken started in the morning and ended before dark. Now the sun is the thing we’re running from, and I’m learning how to deal with a day built backward.

“You do this every night?” I say.

“Drive?”

“No.” I pick my words. “Treat the nighttime like daytime.”

“Whenever I’m working.”

“And when you’re not working?”

“I’m still awake at night. It’s how my kind functions.”

I glance at his profile, the straight nose and broad forehead in relief against the darkness.

“Don’t you miss the sun?”

He nods. “Sometimes. But you get used to it. And I guess it’s a fair trade-off for immortality.”

I’m still looking at him. At the unlined features and the thick dark hair. A face that hasn’t aged in decades.

“You live forever.”

He shrugs. “If nothing sets out to kill me first.”

“You said there was a list,” I say. “Of things that want to kill you. Were you joking?”

He chuckles. It’s a good sound, warm and rolling. “When you live as long as we do, you’re going to piss off something at some point. And I’ve probably pushed my luck more than most.”

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

He shakes his head. “No. I might be young as a vampire, but I’ve lived a good long life by human standards.” He shoots a look at me. “You should understand that. Dragons practically live forever, don’t they?”

“Not forever. But we age different. Slowly. I think it’s why some of us don’t realize that we need to keep the clan lines healthy until it’s too late.” I push down a shudder as I remember Ilmar Vex and his paper-thin skin.

He looks at me as if he knows what I’m thinking. “We need to stop for fuel.” He nods toward a gas station coming up ahead, guiding the truck off the road toward it.

He stops at a pump and climbs out. I sit back with my feet on the dashboard and roll my neck from side to side. A truck comes in behind us and sits there with its engine running.

Gideon doesn’t look at it directly. He fills the tank, pays, gets in, and takes the next turn instead of the one on the map.

“Was that anything?” I ask.

“Probably not.”

“You took the wrong road for probably not?”

“If it might be something, I take the wrong road. Every time.” He checks the mirror. “There’s one reason to sit at a pump at one in the morning with your engine running, and it isn’t fuel.”

“He could be sleeping.”

“He could be. He wasn’t.”

Nothing comes of it. My whole body stays lit up for an hour afterward, waiting for something that never arrives.