Let The Darkness Lead You Home 6 страница

Frank isn't even a little surprised at this news, though it's strange to think of the Ways as kids. The age Frank was when he came to live with them maybe. Frank's always thought of them as older, born decades before his parents even met, the leaders of the household he came to as a teenager, but doing the math now, Frank's outstripped them. By five, maybe even six human years in Gerard's case, more in Mikey's. Gerard will always look like this, and Frank will just keep getting older.

"Dunk again?" Gerard says, interrupting Frank's thoughts. "Or do you want to just rinse off in the shower?"

"Yeah," Frank says, needing a minute alone. "I'll do that."

Gerard gives Frank's hairline one last skritch, rinses his hands in the bath, and rises smoothly to his feet. "I'll turn the bed down," he says, and leaves Frank to his own devices.

Frank can't tell if that means he's turning the bed down and coming back, or turning it down and getting in, or some other option that hasn't occurred to Frank, so he rinses off as quickly as possible, gives himself a cursory swipe with a towel, and pulls on his sweats and t-shirt. There's no sound from the other room, so he opens the door while he's rubbing his hair dry to make sure Gerard didn't somehow silently burst into flame or anything.

Gerard's on the far side of the bed, staring at it intently. It's too dim for Frank to read the expression on his face, but his body language says he's not happy with what he sees.

"Everything okay?" Frank asks.

Gerard's head whips up, and Frank's pretty sure he's adjusting back to normal vision. "Fine. Just checking for bedbugs."

Frank's pretty sure even he is not good enough to make infrareds sensitive enough to pick up bedbugs in a heated hotel room, but maybe Gerard can see shit like that with the x-rays. "It looks like you found some," he says. And if they're in the bed, they're on the floor, and he really fucking does not want to bring bedbugs back to the compound.

"No," Gerard says. "It's clean."

Which means Gerard is glaring at the bed about something else. "So..." Frank says.

"Are you okay with that side?" Gerard is still being strange.

"Gerard, is the bed boobie trapped? I don't have to sleep. We can— I don't know, make up a bed for you in the bath or something, and I can sit in the car, or go find a diner, a cafe, I don't know. What's— "

"I knew what he was like. I shouldn't have taken you there." Gerard jerks back the covers, climbing awkwardly under them, giving up on all pretense that his problem is with the bed. Frank crawls in on his side, even though he was going to get his hair a little drier before he got cozy with his pillow.

"You knew he would..." Frank trails off, not sure if he means to end the sentence try to kill me, or eat his own pet in front of us.

Gerard reaches for Frank's knotted hands, covering both of them with one of his own. It's a strangely human gesture, and Frank's gotta say it's not the same when the hand on yours is so very cold. He has to resist the urge to try to chafe it warm again the way his grandfather used to do for his grandmother when she'd spent too long out in the garden without her gloves.

"I didn't know what he'd do, but I've seen how he is with his pets, the games he makes them play, the way he hunts. His zone is nowhere to take a human you value."

If it weren't for Gerard's hand on his, the way his knees are brushing Frank's, the way Gerard is staring at their fingers almost laced together, Frank would think Gerard just meant how much money Frank's skills bring in. But it's like Gerard is trying to comfort him. "We got out," Frank says. "I'm okay."

"I would kill anything or anyone that tried to take you, unless that would just put you at more risk, you know that, right?" Gerard says.

To take him? Is that why Gerard was freaking out in the hallway outside the operating room? Did Ulrich threaten to take Frank somehow? "Okay," Frank says. When a vampire says he would kill for you, it doesn't sound like hyperbole. Ulrich is still alive because he's hundreds of times stronger than the vampires of Gerard's generation, and Gerard didn't want to risk Frank further.

"I know," Frank says. But he still doesn't really understand what's going on.

"We'll be home tomorrow," Gerard says, squeezing Frank's hand. "Get some sleep." Gerard takes his hand back, closes his eyes, and goes deathly still.

It's impossible for Frank to believe that it was only yesterday he was lying in the willow bed watching Gerard sleep. Today he can't look at him, his monster's face devoid of everything that makes him human. Frank waits a few more minutes to make sure he's not going to stir, and then leaves Gerard alone in the bed.

With a north-facing room and Gerard on the far side of it, it's probably safe for Frank to sneak out the cracked open door, but he doesn't want to risk it. Nor does he want to sit in the car or go for a walk in a strange place with people who don't even have automatic sun shutters. Instead he takes his pillow and the bedspread Gerard folded down before getting into bed, and curls up in the boxy armchair in the corner. It's not remotely comfortable, but Frank can breathe there. He can think.

**

A series of thumps wakes Frank from a fitful doze, bringing his head jerking up from where it's tipped sideways onto the back of the chair. The room's black as fucking pitch, which means either Gerard turned off the light next to the bed or the bulb blew while they were sleeping. "G'rard?" Frank calls, tongue as stiff as his neck.

"Nothing," Gerard says. His voice is coming from the bathroom. There's another thump, softer this time, and Frank recognizes it as one of the plastic bottles from his travel kit.

"You don't have to pack for me," he says, stretching. The chair he fell asleep in should be two feet or so from the light switch. He just needs to stand, reach to his left.

Then there's a much bigger thump, the kind made by muscles and bone hitting tiles, and Frank doesn't even try for the light, just dives toward where he's sure the bathroom door is.

He misses it, but only by an inch, then catches the jam with his fingertips and manages to grope his way to the handle in less than a second, yanking open the door, hissing Gerard's name and hitting the lights all at once. He's not sure what he expected—Gerard flat on his face, maybe—but things don't look too dire. Gerard is on the floor, but sitting up, mostly, propped against the side of the bath, knees up to his chin. His skin is ashen, but Frank's choosing to blame the old-fashioned fluorescent lights until proven otherwise.

"Your night vision not as good as you thought?" Frank says, hoping that's it. They left the bathmat on the floor, and there are bottles, Gerard could have tripped.

"I'm just a little hungry," Gerard says, fingers gripping tight to his shins. "I may need you to drive until we're back in Eastern and I can hunt.

What the fuck. Frank can drive, though he hasn't been behind the wheel in years, but they're in a hotel full of people. Why does Gerard need to wait until they're back over the border? Plus, "I thought Ulrich took you to eat when I was having breakfast at Southern." Frank takes a few steps closer, peering down at Gerard's face.

"Go back," Gerard snaps. "Back in the bedroom. Please, Frank."

Surprised, Frank does lurch back, but only half a step, and then he goes to his knees so he's on Gerard's level. He's not leaving his gerent alone like this.

"Frank," Gerard says again, a strain in his voice Frank can't categorize.

"Fuck that. If you need food we're getting you food. How did this happen?" Vampires need to feed every forty-eight to seventy-two hours, Frank knows, or they get desperate, ravenous, and if still denied, weak and shaky, before the pain sets in. One of Mikey's men brought in a vamp he found in the woods on patrol one night, and she wouldn't stop screaming until they poured blood down her throat. Frank cannot fucking deal with Gerard screaming like that.

"You have to—" Gerard's hand shoots out and closes around Frank's wrist. "Go, Frank. Just go. I don't want to—"

Jesus. Jesus. Gerard doesn't need to hunt. He needs to feed right fucking now, and he's scared he's going to bite Frank. It should be Frank who's scared, but it's Gerard. And that's the last piece falling into place.

"Do it," Frank says. "Just do it. I'd rather—" Fucking hell, what is he saying. "I'd rather you didn't kill me, if you can, just, maybe like the feeder at the compound, but whatever you have to do."

"No," Gerard says, but he's pulling Frank closer. Close enough that Frank's chest is touching Gerard's knees. "You're a tech. You're my tech. I can't—" Frank can hear him sniffing, just like he did in the car, and Frank wonders which is stronger, Frank's fear or his want.

"Now," Frank says, his mouth barely an inch from Gerard's cheek. "While you still have some control." Fuck, he hopes it's not too late already. He wants this so fucking much he can't breathe, but he doesn't want to die.

"I'm sorry," Gerard says, spreading his legs and pulling Frank down between them. "I'm sorry, Frankie." And then his face is buried in Frank's neck. Frank has just enough time to get two handfuls of Gerard's shirt before he feels fangs.

The tales of being bitten are from his childhood, nightmare stories of monsters come to devour you in the dark. With few pets and no feeders at the compound, Frank hasn't heard a lot of survivors sharing stories about what it's like since he came to live with the Ways. But no one could possibly find the words for this anyway.

It hurts. So fucking much. Like a hundred-thousand tattoo needles all at once. Like a brand. Like razor-sharp teeth sinking in and then tearing to get at more of your heart's blood. It hurts like a high. Like falling off a cliff and flying. Like a jagged fingernail catching at your piss slit when you're just about to come. And fuck, fuck, fuck, why did Frank agree to this, it's awful, and it's never going to end, and he doesn't want to die, because he wants to do this again. Wants to feel Gerard's fangs in his arms and his thighs, right up high where his femoral artery runs so close to the surface and Gerard would have his face pressed up against Frank's most vulnerable skin.

Oh, god, he's fucked. He's so fucking fucked. He is not fucking normal. He isn't even thralled.

And shit, he can't hold his head up anymore. Where are Gerard's hands? Gerard was holding his head a minute ago— Why do his shoulders ache so much? His fucking shoulders, like his arms are being twisted off. Hurts much more than his neck. That hardly hurts at all anymore. A gentle throb. A sting, like someone's wiping skinned knees with a wet washcloth. Like a dog licking your face when you fall off your skateboard and cut your chin on the street. Gerard. Licking. Healing properties. Closing the wounds like he did for the feeder in Ulrich's parlor while Frank ate beef stew. Gerard didn't kill him. Doesn't want him to die.

The pain in Frank's shoulders eases, and he realizes it's Gerard's fingers loosening their vise grip. Hands slide across his back, down his body, and Frank can't move, can't open his eyes, but he's being lifted off the floor, carried, laid down on something soft. Words float past his ears, but he can't catch them. Fingers on his face, his throat, his hair, a whole hand heavy in the middle of his chest. He feels his heart beating against it, one-two-three-four-five, quick, but not racing. Feels wet against his lips, cold, thin. Not blood. The words coalesce, "Drink, Frankie. Come on. You have to drink for me. Just a few sips. Nice cool water. Drink."

When Frank parts his lips, a few rivulets of water spill over his tongue. Somehow he catches them before he chokes, swallows instead. "That's it, Frankie," the voice says. "Just a little more." Frank drinks more.

The water is good, but the bed is comfortable, and Gerard's hand is heavy, and Frank sleeps.

**

A knock on the door rouses Frank with a start, except his eyes stay shut and he doesn't move. It's just his brain racing, danger danger danger. Everything else weighs a thousand pounds. Voices, dipping and swooping, door shutting, and then the smell. Holiday kitchen, the sting of a slapped hand when he snuck a taste, eating 'til he wanted to pop. Struggling, Frank gets his eyes open enough to to see Gerard standing between the bed and the chipped desk, two large plastic bags in his hands. His face is shadowed in the dim bedside lamp, and he's backlit by the fierce glow of the parking lot lights streaming through the un-shuttered window. "Whaa—" Frank asks, wanting to know what time it is, if he's kept them from leaving in the window of opportunity that will get them home safely before sunrise. He could have slept for minutes or a week.

"I took too much," Gerard says softly, setting the bags down, reaching into the near one. "You need to eat something."

Fuck. Gerard fed on him. How could he have forgotten that? How much is too much? Frank feels like shit run over, but he doesn't feel like he's dying. 'Course, he's never died before, so how the hell does he know what that feels like? "'Kay," he says. Whatever smells like that needs to be in his mouth.

A half-liter carton and two boxes come out of the first bag, and the second one looks just as loaded. Frank is depleted, but he still only has one stomach. How long does Gerard expect them to be staying? "How—" he says, but can't finish because it takes all his breath to deal with Gerard lifting him, even gently, and depositing him on a pile of pillows.

The carton is minestrone soup, and smells even better right under Frank's nose. Less good spilled on his shirt, but Frank isn't used to being fed, and Gerard probably hasn't dealt with a spoon in decades. They get a rhythm going after a few false starts, and once Frank's eaten half the carton, he feels better enough to take the spoon out of Gerard's hand and do it himself. Gerard doesn't back off though, stays perched on the edge of the bed next to Frank's hip blinking creepily through his alts and normal vision, one hand loosely on the carton like he thinks Frank might drop it, the other on Frank's thigh.

"Can you just— not?" Frank asks once he's chased down the last bean with his spoon. He flicks a finger in the direction of Gerard's eyes, glad to feel like he's got control over little movements like that again. "I'm pretty sure I'm fine." It's the first thing either of them have said since Gerard started feeding him.

"There's spinach and nettle pie, too," Gerard says, blinking to normal vision and staying there. "I think it has potatoes in it."

It sounds delicious and explains the mouth-watering pastry smell, but Frank just ate two helpings of a soup filled with beans, vegetables, and chunks of meat. "What time is it?" Frank asks. "If we leave now can we make it home tonight?"

"You need rest."

There's enough food in those bags for Frank to rest for at least three days. In the mean time, what is Gerard going to eat? Because Frank's gonna be okay, but his bone marrow is already going to have to go into overdrive as it is. "I can rest in the car. I just want to go home."

"I don't know if Mikey can find you someplace by morning, but we'll get you something as quick as we can," Gerard says.

"Someplace for what?" Frank has everything he needs in his lab, including a whole case of BloodPlus injections he ordered after the first time Pete came to see him pale and wide-eyed and high as a kite after letting Mikey feed off him four nights in a row.

"For you to live," Gerard answers, like this should be obvious. "We'll find you someplace safe, let you take whichever of the lieutenants you like best."

Frank envisions a flood, a bomb blast, a failed cooling unit leading to a fire—all the things that might have happened to his lab while they were gone to make it uninhabitable, and then he realizes that Gerard thinks he doesn't want to live at the compound anymore.

"I thought the line of pillows down the middle of the bed was the most ridiculous you could get, but I was so, so wrong."

"But I broke the contract." Gerard should not look his most human when he's frowning, but he does.

Frank tries to remember the exact wording in a tech's boilerplate—it was something his parents read to him often when he was young and there was a time he knew it all by heart—something about a vampire cannot ask, demand, nor compel by any means direct or indirect, blah blah whatever. "I offered. I told you to."

"But—"

"Gerard. What time is it?"

Frown deepening, Gerard mumbles, "Almost midnight."

They're less than four hours from home, and this time of year the sun doesn't rise until 5:30. "Load up the car."

Gerard glares at him, but Frank glares back until Gerard stands up.

The whole time he's shoving things in bags and ferrying them out to the trunk, Gerard tries to convince Frank that one tech snacking session has overthrown the whole world order, and Frank can only be happy if he lives out his days exiled to some far reaches of the Eastern zone. All of which is total bullshit. But Frank's tired enough to experiment with letting Gerard getting all the drama out of his system unopposed for now, and hashing this out when they're back on home turf.

When Frank lets Gerard give him another glass of water, the arguments slow down, but Frank loses ground again when he goes to walk to the car and lurches sideways, nearly braining himself on the bedside table before Gerard catches him. "I'm okay," Frank blurts, expecting Gerard to pick him up like he did when Frank was blindfolded, but Gerard just leaves an arm around him, supporting him to walk on his own while he listens to Gerard lecture about the dangers of permanent brain damage when a human loses too much blood. Frank opens his mouth to point out that napping for a couple of hours is not the same as ceasing all respiratory and cardiac function, but Gerard's manhandling him into the car where the radio's already playing, so he shuts it again.

Determined to curtail Gerard's self-flagellation, as soon as they hit the highway Frank cranks the stereo as loud as it will go. The vertigo has passed, but he still feels floaty, and it's good to curl up in the seat and let his head loll against the headrest as the tires eat up the road.

Even in the flickering highway lights, Frank can see Gerard change as they cross over into Eastern, an easing in the tightness around his mouth, a loosening in his grip on the wheel. Frank gives it another ten miles or so, until they're approaching a town, warehouses on the outskirts where the humans hold late-night raves that are popular vampire hunting grounds, then he turns down the music.

"I can wait while you hunt," he says over the buzzing sound in his ears. "We have time."

Gerard's head snaps to the right and he looks at Frank like Frank just suggested they stop for a sun tan.

"I know I wasn't enough for you. Not if you were starving." Frank doesn't get what the big deal is. Even if they only count the times Gerard knows about, Frank's watched him feed hundreds of times. Waiting for a while in a comfy car with a feast of his own to munch on is so not a problem.

"I'm fine," Gerard says, and he doesn't slow as they pass the exit for the warehouse district. He looks okay, tense again but not like when Frank found him on the bathroom floor, so Frank lets it go.

Mostly. "What happened while I was in the kitchens at Southern?" he asks.

Gerard's hand twitches toward the volume dial, but he thinks better of turning it back up. "I didn't want to give him the satisfaction," he says.

Frank can still picture the smirk on Ulrich's face when Gerard half drained the feeder, but he doesn't get what Gerard means.

"It's not unknown amongst the other gerents that I don't encourage feeders in Eastern, but I've never declined when one's offered to me. Ulrich obviously noticed my distaste though." Gerard's jaw clenches, and for a minute Frank thinks that's it. But then, "He has pens," Gerard says.

Frank assumes Gerard isn't talking about the kind you write with. "Pens?" Frank says when Gerard seems disinclined to continue.

"Scores of people, whole families, huddled in the dirt. Crying. Trying to protect the children. All of them stinking of terror. Not sharp clean fear, but layers and layers of it, bone deep, stronger than the filth they were wallowing in. All of them waiting there for a vampire to reach in, pluck one of them out to devour while the rest watched. No thrall, no choice, no chance to get away. He knew I would hate it."

Frank shudders despite the heat blasting out of the vents. Feeders, pets, game parks—Frank thought he'd seen all the ways vampires have of making humans easier to feed from. He prays no vamp he's ever put a camera in records a meal at Southern's compound. "So you didn't—"

"I turned around and walked away. Which is when he told me if he wasn't satisfied with the work you did, you might see the inside of the pen before the night was through."

That possibility is more than Frank can deal with thinking about right now, so his brain skips over it. "He could run down any human faster than they could blink, couldn't he? Why keep them in pens like that?"

"Maybe after two thousand years, he got tired of running."

Tired, at least, is something Frank can relate to.

The music stays low, and his thoughts drift: to the warehouses lost in the rear view, packed with people who know that everyone who goes in isn't coming out alive, but do it anyway; the way the vids he makes with the longest chase scenes sell better with human and vamp audiences alike than even the ones with the most drawn-out kills; Gerard on the bathroom floor, telling Frank to go even as he pulled him closer. Maybe he wanted Frank to run. Maybe blood isn't as good if it's sitting there waiting for you.

"Should I have run tonight before I let you bite me? Would that have made it better?" Frank didn't think about what Gerard's reaction to to that might be, and he has to grab the dash as they swerve going a hundred and ten on the highway. Fortunately there aren't many other cars out tonight, and Gerard's been driving the GTO forever and gets her under control quickly.

"Frank," Gerard says.

But he's started now, and Frank doesn't want to stop. "Is that why you don't like feeders? Is there something in our blood when we run?"

"No," Gerard says, flicking a glance at Frank before focusing on the road again. "That's not— You were fine. Perfect. It's— I'm grateful. Thank you."

"Or is it the kill? I can run for you next time if you want, but I don't think I want to die."

The car stutters as Gerard shoots him another look, but doesn't lurch. "What? Frank. There's not— I told you already. There's not going to be a next time. You're a tech. You don't owe me anything."

Frank fingers the spot on his neck Gerard fed from. The skin is tender, and it aches like a bruise the day before it surfaces, but it makes him feel Gerard's arms around him again, feel his ribs moving under Frank's fists as he swallowed. It doesn't feel like a debt. "It's not about owing you," he says.

"Well then why would you— What I did was selfish. I used you."

"I'm okay with it. Really."

"Frank!" Gerard flaps a hand in frustration. "This is what I was telling you about. Brain damage. I fed on you. You became a tech to avoid all that. What I want doesn't— You stepped up in an emergency and I appreciate it. But it won't lower my regard for you if you don't offer to do it again."

Frank could argue this all night, or at least until they got home, but Gerard just said, what I want, and Frank's gonna think about that for a while instead.

**

When they get back to the compound an hour before sunrise, Frank's dozing in his seat and Gerard's mumbling along to the music he's turned back up to chest-shaking levels. Mikey, Pete, and Mikey's day-guard Jarrod are waiting for them on the steps, two of Mikey's lieutenants flanking the door behind them. Frank worries for a moment that something's happened—maybe Ulrich sent a gang of his guards to get Frank—but Pete and Mikey are smiling, and he realizes that the muscle is there to carry all Frank's things back down to the lab. Mikey probably just missed his brother.

It's Pete who comes to help Frank out of the car, and he brushes a finger over the newly healed skin on Frank's neck. "Nice," he whispers when he puts an arm around Frank to steady him. "Shoulda known it would take you two getting away to make him realize."

"Realize what?" Frank asks, because Gerard doesn't seem to have realized anything, and Frank's never talked to Pete about what he wants from Gerard. But Pete just gives him a conspiratorial look and slaps him on the shoulder.

"I've got your boy, here, sire," he says to Gerard. "These brutes can get his bags."

This makes Mikey beam and Gerard glower before saying, "Can you stay with him today? Make sure he's okay?" Belatedly, he turns to his brother and asks, "He can stay with him, right?"

"You're the boss," Mikey says mildly, and Frank's about to protest that he doesn't need a babysitter, but Mikey winks at Pete so Frank figures the two of them are on his side already and Pete will leave him alone if he asks. What Gerard doesn't know won't hurt him.

Frank tries to stop at his lab on the way by, but Pete bundles him along right to his apartment. "I know where you keep the BloodPlus," he says when Frank resists. "And your lab will still be there after you get some more sleep." Which is true, Frank knows, but he doesn't have to like being told where to go and what to do.

"Fine," he grumbles when there's no give at all in Pete's hold. "I'll just sit and do nothing while you wait on me."

"Just like I sat there and let you bring me tea and that nasty fucking beef paste sandwich and then stab me in the ass with your needles full of vitamins or whatever."

"It's EPO and minerals mostly," Frank corrects him, but he does sit on his bed when they get there.

"Whatever. Blood juice. Stay here. If you're good I'll bring you something from one of those bags of food I saw Jarrod getting out of the car. I'm not the kind of asshole who makes a dude eat beef paste."

Because he's pretty sure Pete would tell him not to, Frank climbs in the shower while he's waiting. There are a few dicey moments where he thinks he might pass out, and he has to put up with Pete standing outside the door telling him he's an idiot and if he doesn't come out now Pete's gonna come in there and get him, but he's got a towel rail to hold on to, and he's pretty sure Pete won't make good on his threats, and the water feels too good for him to regret the decision.

The steam makes him high enough that he doesn't protest when Pete insists on doing the injection for him, or when Pete does his overly familiar thing and tucks him under the covers, dropping a smacking kiss on his forehead. "Here," Pete says, setting a smooth black cylinder about the size of Frank's thumb on his bedside table. "Button on the top sends an alert to Mikey's cuff. You can borrow it. I'll keep an ear open for you and be down here in a flash if you need anything."

Frank is pretty sure he's never seen the thing before. "Where'd you get it?"

"Made it," Pete says. "Piggybacked off the security comms network. Had some trouble a few months ago out near the borders, and I wanted to be able to call for help if it happened again."

"I would've made you something." That's Frank's job after all.

"I know. But I miss doing this kind of shit. Hope you don't mind."

If Pete likes making tech as well as designing it, Frank might have to put him to work. "Nope," he says, thinking about offering Pete jobs to do. But they'll have to talk about it more after Frank gets some sleep. He's too tired now to keep his eyes open.

Дата добавления: 2015-09-29