One Must Hide

David

Keen senses could be a curse as often as they were a blessing.

He'd pulled them in, bunched them tight, centred them as exclusively as he could on the moment, but it only took an instant of inattention for his hold to relax and the world around to snap back into sharp focus.

The walls and floors and ceilings offered the scantest veil of privacy. Faint glimmers of human life flickered above and below and all around, spreading out like a feebly twinkling galaxy, some brighter than others, but none worth the attention it took to discern anything more.

He reached farther, sending his senses out beyond the immediate, extending his consciousness into the night. The fine ties that linked him to his rank glinted like cobwebs, as apparently insubstantial as they were binding, traces leading all the way back to their originators.

Something else was moving out there in the darkness.

He swept back, refining his search, concentrating his senses, and his awareness brushed against a wrinkle in the fabric of the night, the least sensation of friction, the tiniest sign that someone was there and trying to hide himself.

David opened his eyes.

Robin dozed in his arms, neither fully asleep nor close to awake. The not-quite steady rhythm of her breathing was the giveaway. She dozed, and for all that she was like a beacon fire to David's extra sense, he found himself more dizzied by the faint fragrance of her hair and the silky feel of her skin against his. The thought that there were vampires out there who would kill her just for a taste made rage crystallise in David's chest.

He disentangled himself. It wasn't easy, for more reasons than the fact that the narrow bed gave him little room to move, but he extricated himself without disturbing Robin's half-slumber. He retrieved his clothes from the floor where they'd fallen, dressing rapidly and silently, determined to deal with the other vampire with all possible haste. He did spare a moment, though, to pick up Robin's clothes and fold them tidily on the single chair.

It was late, very late, and so cold that a thin coating of rime had accumulated on David's bike. He withdrew his gloves from a pocket and put them on, then brushed off the worst of the ice before swinging his leg over the seat. If the need to leave Robin was an injury, the cold was insult added to it. The big BMW purred more than it roared, but it still made enough noise to wake up a neighbourhood, and David swore briefly and eloquently to himself as he put the bike in gear and pulled away.

He threw his senses wide and the night blossomed around him. The other vampire was a couple of miles away and moving fast enough that he couldn't be flying. His attempt at secrecy wasn't bad, and David considered the possibility that he was travelling in company with others, more competent at concealing themselves. It didn't matter. His own defences were virtually impenetrable to anyone except the other Lost Boys. They were nearly as good as Dwayne's, and Dwayne had invested a disproportionate amount of time and effort over the years in perfecting his stealth.

The roads were clear and David opened up the throttle, glancing down to watch the needle of the speedo climb steadily towards three figures. The BMW didn't respond quite as sweetly as the custom Triumph he'd left in Santa Cruz, but it was good to try new things. The freezing air in his face stripped away the last remnants of the contentment he'd found with Robin, and while part of him resented the loss, the greater part relished the intense alertness. He wished he could have brought her with him - Robin had taken to their extreme style of riding from the start - but he had no desire for her to witness the ugliness he intended to cause that night. It was enough that Robin knew they were killers; she didn't need to see it. Still, it would have been good to have her there, warm against his back, her arms snug round his waist, the envy of the others. It had been so long.

And abruptly, he realised that the pain in his chest, the sweats and shivers, the fitful weakness he'd been experiencing had gone. He felt certain and strong again, confident in his knowledge of his limits, and he wondered if Robin was responsible for his renewed equilibrium. There was a cure he'd be willing to take again.

He knew she'd have more questions when he got back. He intended to give her the answers. She already knew the worst, and what he'd seen in her eyes hadn't been disgust or condemnation. It was salve to that festering wound; she was a balm, a panacea, to everything that hurt him, and he would destroy utterly anything or anyone that would stop her from being so.

David kept that thought firmly in his mind.

His quarry was close by now. He turned off the long, straight road that so suited the power of his bike and into a tree-lined residential suburb. Row ands rows of houses huddled together in the frosty amber glow of endless streetlights. He wondered if the residents of one of these nondescript habitations had fallen victim to the vampire he tracked.

He heard the engine noise of the car, louder and less refined than that of his bike. He eased off the throttle, letting the BMW slow to a crawl as the headlamps of a massive SUV punched through the night ahead.

David sat his bike dead in the centre of the street, keeping the revs up, staring past the incandescent beams of light as the vampire behind the wheel put his foot down to accelerate, waiting as the ton of steel hurtled towards him, waiting and waiting. Then he dropped his shields and the full blinding presence of who he was seared into the darkness.

Brakes screamed. The stealth that hadn't been enough to deceive David shattered. The four-by-four swerved as its driver wrenched the wheel hard left. David just sat there, coolly assessing the significance of the stranger.

The driver door opened and the vampire stepped out. He looked like a typical convert: no more than a couple of years old, tall, lean and pale. He'd been turned in his early twenties - also typical. He was not untalented, but he stank of fear as he held up his hands, smiling disarmingly. "Parley, pal, parley." He had a Scottish accent.

David turned the key back in the ignition, cutting the BMW's engine. "Where's your rank?"

"No rank," he lied. "Just me. Look, pal, I'm sorry if you were here first, I'll just go."

David flung his senses out, seeking and finding the fine threads that led away to the north from the intruder. "You're not going anywhere." He climbed off the bike. "Don't," he added, and the stranger froze in the very act of trying to flee. "You won't get far."

"You're him, aren't you?" the young vampire asked shakily. "You're really him."

David felt an instant of pity. The sensation lasted almost a tenth of a second. "I was having a good night," he said, walking unhurriedly toward his prey. "You picked a bad time to come south."

The vampire backed away. "Please," he said. "Please, just."

It was the briefest of struggles. David overpowered his inexperienced adversary within three heartbeats. There was no tidy way to kill a vampire without draining him, and David wouldn't do that, not tonight. He broke the youngster's neck, instead, crushing the spine to temporarily paralyse him, and dropped the limp, mewling body before too much blood could spill out. A skeletal ash tree provided a sharp-ended branch to finish the job.

The Lost Boys usually made a point of clearing up after themselves, but David didn't have the patience to do more than throw the corpse in the back of the SUV and then park the big car around the corner. He'd get Marko to dispose of it tomorrow night. One more parked car on a street full of parked cars probably wouldn't attract much attention. He knew he should have found out more about the vampire's rank, because the others would probably come to investigate their rankmate's abrupt death, but he couldn't make himself care. Marko and Paul would handle it.

For now, David had better things to do.

Hours might have passed, or even days, but it was the draught, insinuating chill fingers under the sheets, that roused her from that place somewhere between asleep and awake.

As Robin eased herself up on one elbow the covers fell away, baring far too much to the cold. She snatched the thin duvet back, cursing the ancient window. David had gone.

She sat up, clutching the bedclothes to her. Was it daytime? No. The curtain was still open, but the only light came from the electric strip over the sink, the dim glow that had traced David against the darkness, thrown the muscles of his chest and shoulder into relief, gleamed from the sweat on his skin...

Robin swallowed hard, feeling dizzy. She looked for her watch. It wasn't there, and she remembered how David had unclasped it, how he'd kissed her fingers as he'd let it drop, how he'd grazed the soft skin of her wrist with his teeth...

She cut herself off again. Her watch wasn't on the floor now. Nor were her clothes. They'd been folded and placed neatly on the chair by the desk. It baffled her until she remembered how brutally tidy David kept his room at the farmhouse. So he'd picked up her things, but he hadn't said goodbye?

She wished she knew what time it was.

The sheets were rough and scratchy against her skin. The duvet was too light to be warm. The room was as unlovely as it had been on her first impression. It hadn't mattered, any of it, but now, as a place in which to wake up alone, it did, and Robin started to give serious consideration to the idea of getting upset when David returned.

The he did.

He paused, letting the door swing shut by itself, and turned his head to look at her. For an instant he wore an expression of unreserved tenderness and then, as though remembering himself, he reasserted control. He stepped around the foot of the bed. "You weren't meant to wake up before I got back."

"Where did you go?" Robin asked. She stretched out one hand, still holding the duvet against herself with the other, to touch his arm.

David stepped back. "Don't. I'm frozen."

Robin reached after him, brushing his wrist with her fingers. He was cold, but she didn't flinch back. "I don't care."

For a moment he just stood there, almost in disbelief, and then he took her hand and moved nearer, and then suddenly caught her to him. "You'd better mean that," he whispered fiercely.

Robin grabbed a handful of his hair, making him bare his teeth with the tug. "Don't you dare doubt me."

David's eyes flared with contained fury, but his laugh belied it. "Never." His face stilled, and he bowed his head close to hers, his cold cheek to her temple. "Never, Robin."

It was later, a lot later, before he spoke again.

His hair was prickling the back of her neck.

That was the only thing keeping Robin from sleep; that faintest irritation, spiky against her skin. It had been bothering her for a while, but not enough, until now, to make her conscious of it. At last she said, "That tickles."

"It's meant to," David said in her ear.

With an effort, Robin turned over to face him. "You're a monster."

The corner of his mouth curled in what might have been a smile. "You say that as if it's not true."

"It isn't," Robin said. She kissed him, softly, and felt him accept it without the urgency of earlier. "Not all the time."

"You have such capacity to see the best in me."

"I've looked very closely," Robin told him, and David laughed. He pulled her closer, and Robin dropped her head to his chest, closing her eyes and enjoying the feel of his fingers stroking her hair.

"You wouldn't forgive some of the things I've done," he said after a while.

Robin raised her head. David was looking into nothing, staring over her shoulder. "Try me." She hesitated, then went on, "Tell me about your sister."

He tensed - she felt it right through his body - and then slowly, bit by bit, let himself relax again. "That story starts with my brother."

When he halted again, Robin wondered if she should prompt him, but she sensed he was struggling to find the right words, so she waited, listening intently.

"I was only a few minutes older than him," David said at last, "but it might as well have been years. That was how it worked growing up. We were twins, but I was the older one; Jackson was my little brother. I think he hated it. I know he hated it. I did everything first, and he resented that. I got my drivers' licence before him. I got my hands on illicit beer before him. I kissed my first girl before he did." He smirked, then composed himself again. "And that would all make it sound like we despised each other."

"You were close," Robin said.

"As only twins can be," David agreed. "He could finish any thought I started. Often did. And we were identical. Even our friends sometimes couldn't tell us apart, though Marko always knew." As if predicting that she would ask, he added, "Marko moved in down the street when we were seventeen. Skinny little Jewish kid from out of town; he was always going to get beat up. But Jackson and I had our first motorcycles by then, and Marko's father owned the local garage, and that's someone you want on your side. He turned out to be one hell of a mechanic himself, and no one dared lay a finger on him while they knew he was with us. Or with me. He was never Jackson's friend as much as he was mine. I guess you could say he's the one who came between us."

He paused again, and Robin studied him covertly. Something had changed in his face. He looked tired with more than just weariness, and some of the arrogance, the calculation, the coldness, had gone. She couldn't believe that he'd let down all the defences he had, but this was as close to the real David as she thought she'd ever seen.

David shifted a bit, tucking his arm under his head, looking up at the ceiling. "We'd left school by then. Jackson had been drifting from one bad job to another, but I'd got work as a courier. We were both still living with our father." Distaste coloured his voice on that pronoun, but he didn't elaborate. "I worked odd hours, so I could go for days without seeing Jackson. I'd got in the habit of leaving him a few bucks for gas to keep his bike going, the weeks he wasn't working. He bitched about it sometimes, but he always took it. Then a few days before our birthday, I left the money on the kitchen counter, and it stayed there. I thought he must have got himself a new girlfriend to bail him out. In a way, I guess I wasn't wrong.

"He left me a note to meet him at a place just out of town, so I did. And I met his new friends." Scorn, mixed with disgust tinged the word.

"They were vampires?" Robin asked.

Emotions contorted David's face. "They'd holed up at a place with a pool and a tennis court and a garage the size of a football field. I thought they were just a bunch of rich kids. Trust funders with too much money to spend. Some of them were. Or had been." His eyes went darkly distant. "I couldn't have known what they were. I was human, and incredibly young, and incredibly stupid."

"David," Robin said, feeling his anger rising, feeling helpless to stop it. "Tell me.tell me what happened."

He took a deep breath, and continued. "All-night partying, as much drink as you could hold, and the girls... We weren't quite nineteen, and it was like every teenage fantasy we'd ever had. I couldn't resist it, and Jackson never stood a chance. I turned up late for work the morning after that first night, and I still don't known how I got through the day without killing someone; scarcely awake, scarcely sober. I went back that same night after dark, and it was like I'd never left. I don't think Jackson had.

"That was the night I met Max. Jackson introduced me, and I remember how he said that it was Max's party. I assumed he meant it was his house, or his parents'. I'd noticed him around, not really getting involved, but watching everything that was going on. I know we talked for hours that night. I don't remember a word of it."

The idea of David being susceptible to a vampire's mental persuasion seemed impossible. "Max?" Robin asked, thinking of the actor in the movie.

"He was a little older than us," David said. "At least, that's how he looked. And I still had no idea. That came the next night.

"I was late for work again the next day. They told me not to bother turning up again. I decided to go back to Max's place, but when I got there it was closed up. The gates were locked. I climbed over the wall and went in anyway. It was deserted. There'd been forty, fifty of us the last two nights, but in daylight, no sign that anyone was there at all. Just the house, and every window blocked against the light, and Jackson's bike still in the driveway. So I broke in.

"Max's talent was suggestion. He could make you see whatever he wanted you to. He could hold a room full of stupid, drunk teenagers in his thrall and make them believe they were at a wild party. When I forced a window and went inside, I couldn't understand what had happened. The place was a wreck, and it stank like something dead. The furniture had been trashed, and there were stains on the walls. I was still hungover, and I wasn't being very careful. All I could think about was finding Jackson and getting both of us out of there. But Max found me first.

"He said it had been a test, and that I'd passed it. That I'd seen through the deception and that made me worthy. He was very.eloquent."

David fell silent again. After a moment, Robin began, "What did he-”

"He tore apart my life," David said, doggedly, as though determined to get through the story without dwelling too closely on it. "He dissected every part of it, from my family to my debts to my discontent. He showed me a picture of a young man with few prospects and fewer friends. And when he showed me what he was, and what he offered, I took it. I was nineteen that day, and I never aged a day more."

"And Jackson?"

"When he woke up, Max offered him the same. But I'd still beaten him to it again, and how he hated me for that."

"I can't exactly blame him," Robin said.

"Oh," said David, very softly. "I can."

The dangerous quality in his voice wasn't something Robin wanted to contradict. Instead, she said, "Max turned you both."

"Yes," said David.

Robin waited for him to elaborate. He didn't. A grimness had returned to David's face, and she could almost feel him closing down again, locking himself back away those impenetrable walls. "You said, earlier, you became a full vampire three days later."

"Don't ask me for details, Robin," David said, sharply, almost viciously. "There are some things I don't.some things I won't." He trailed off, as if losing the thread, but his eyes were anything but vague. "Three days later," he said finally. "That was Max's rule. Three days I had to suffer. Three days hungering for blood and being denied it. Three days feeling like every cell in my body was tearing itself apart. And on the third night Max came to me and explained why.

"He had a vision for his rank. He'd been a solo for decades; a vampire without allies. Run out of territories, spat on by the old guard of his kind; an outcast in every way that mattered. He could have been part of a rank but he'd rejected their rules. He didn't see why vampires should have to pull strings from the shadows, didn't see why we should have to keep ourselves hidden. There were enough of us, he thought, that if we all came out of the night together, we could take power in the world for ourselves and put mankind in its place. He was a firebrand, and he was dangerous, and his rank wanted nothing to do with him.

"He set about forming his own rank with his own rules. He'd been doing it for ten years by the time he found us. Max wanted a rank formed entirely of his own vampires: chosen by him, turned by him, targeted by him. He had a sense for finding humans who'd turn out to be forceful vampires, and he'd spent a decade refining his own techniques for finding talent and honing it. It was Jackson who'd first caught his eye passing through Sacramento, and when he found out about me, he wanted both of us. He knew we'd be powerful additions to his rank. And he'd learned how to get the most out of us.

"So he kept us isolated, starving, scared and angry for three days, like dogs being trained to be mean and hungry. He took us to the edge of what he knew we could endure, and then he told us the price of being part of his rank, and turned us loose." David smiled. "I say loose. We were being watched. Of course we were. Two half vampires let out alone for the first time - we could have created a massacre. If we had, Max's lieutenants would have put us down, and we weren't so far gone that we didn't know it. We raced each other home, and for once, I didn't get there first. When I did, he'd killed our father."

He said it so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that it took Robin a moment to absorb what he'd said. "God," she said, and couldn't think of anything else to follow it.

"Do you think I was shocked?" David asked. "I wasn't. I'd known we'd go for him first. Max was very clear with his instructions. We each had to make a family member our first kill. He told us it was the only act extreme enough to unlock our full potential. But Jackson had taken the easy option, and for the first time I could remember, I had to live up to him."

The faintest shake had finally crept into David's voice. Robin steeled herself for the end of it. "Go on."

"I told myself there was no decision to make. I had to kill one of them. A woman of forty or a girl of eleven. I sat by my father's body for hours telling myself that I didn't have a decision to make. But Jackson still made it for me.

"At the time I wasn't sure if he'd done it out of bloodlust or just to make a point to Max. I thought maybe it was a bit of both. I didn't understand that he'd done it to get to me. I found our mother dead on her kitchen floor. He hadn't bitten her; just broken her neck. There wasn't even much blood. I remember how disappointed that made me feel. But I knew that Carly was asleep upstairs."

He stopped speaking, and Robin felt his chest jerk, just for a moment, in an odd little motion that might have been a sob, but couldn't have been. David didn't cry.

She raised her head from his chest. Tears had tracked shining paths down his face. Robin squeezed her eyes shut, but the image remained, burned into her brain. The only good Leon there ever was. She laid her head back down on his shoulder and moved her hand to his face, laying her fingers against his jaw, just holding him and no more.

A long time passed, and Robin wasn't sure that she hadn't dozed for some of it, before David spoke again. "So," he said, and she came alert. "How does it feel to be sleeping with a monster?"

The question was self-destructive. Robin thought very hard before she replied. "I wasn't sleeping. And monsters don't have regrets."

"Don't they?" he asked bitterly.

"I can't forgive you any more than you can forgive yourself," Robin said. "You killed your sister. If there's a hell, one day you'll burn in it. Until then, if you want punishment, you'll have to do it yourself."

David didn't reply, not for a long time, but he did close his hand fractionally tighter on Robin's shoulder. Then, deftly, he slipped out from under her. "I have to go."

"But... Where? Why?"

"Sun's coming." The leader of the Lost Boys dragged his t-shirt on over his head. "We'll stay until the New Year. You need to see your family."

Robin shook her head, bewildered. "Then what?"

"Then you come back to Santa Cruz with us. Or you stay here." He stamped into his boots.

November was almost over. "What if I stay here?"

"You'll die." David said the words very evenly. Then he turned, leaned down to her, and kissed her, dizzying in his intensity. "But don't let that colour your decision-making. Good night, Robin."

And he was gone.