Threshold

Chapter 1Sutter’s hand shook as he slid the keycard into the slot. He missed real keys. He missed the weight of them in his pocket. He missed the artistry that used to go into creating the truly unique ones. Most of all, he missed the way they always worked because there was never any mistaking which end you had to stick inside the lock. With a muttered curse at the flashing red light that indicated the door was still secured, he tore the card out of the slot, flipped it around, and tried again. When the light turned green, he twisted the handle and shoved the door open as swiftly as he could, unwilling to miss this narrow window of opportunity modern technology was granting him. His toe caught on a skinny strip of the worn carpet that had the weft unraveled at some point in the distant past. Blood splattered against the doorjamb as he shot his hand out to grab it to stop him from falling on his face. He had to blink several times to see the stain he left behind in the empty parking lot’s insipid lighting. f**k. So much for being careful. He needed to clean it off before anyone saw it, not an exciting prospect when he could barely stand on his feet. The room was like any other cheap motel chain. The full-size bed smelled of all the bodies that had stayed here before him, so much sweat and semen that it mingled into a stink rather than a cocktail he could actually enjoy. Its two flat pillows hadn’t been placed with much care. Rather than the voluptuous mistress he longed to sink into, the bed more closely resembled an old woman’s desiccated corpse. Under other circumstances, he would have chuckled at the irony. Tonight, he couldn’t afford to waste the strength that would take. He fumbled for the chain lock, but when he tried to slide it in, it refused to go. Quick inspection showed someone had dented the end of it, misshaping it too much to fit properly into its slide. The cool metal clicked against the plate when he dropped it in disgust. It wouldn’t make a difference, of course. As far as locks went, it was flimsy at best. Hell, for that matter, staying at a cheap motel that had hourly rates posted behind the bulletproof glass at the front desk was as good as sleeping in a paper bag, but this was all Sutter had at the moment. Time was running out on him. He had to hope that the motel was out of the way enough to buy him twelve hours before he could get back on the road. Otherwise, he was a dead man. Again. His watery legs carried him to the bathroom, where he grabbed the sandpaper hand towel off its ring and dampened the corner in the sink. He was ready to drop by the time he cleaned the blood from the door, but he held on long enough to make it back to the tiled floor where he could finally shed his clothes without having to worry about staining the carpet. Even if anyone would notice another stain in its mottled spread. Most of the blood had dried, leaving him with that itchy sensation he hated where it adhered to the sealing edges of lacerations. Some of them were healing already, like the shallow cuts along his shoulders and the top of his back where he’d done his best to dodge those bastard’s blades. The slices farther down were still raw from the constant rubbing of the driver’s seat in the car he’d stolen to get away, and when he twisted his arm back to prod carefully at them, his fingertips came away sticky and wet. He needed to sleep on his stomach if he wanted them to heal. The problem with that was the biggest source of his blood loss came from the gaping hole on the left side of his abdomen. Projectile stakes might make it easier for a hunter to take a vampire down from a distance, but they worked for s**t when the target was a blur of motion. More often than not, they missed the heart and lodged somewhere else. Sutter was just glad this one had hit below his ribcage. Broken bones on top of everything else would slow him down even more. The first step he took toward the bed, the world tilted around him. He crumpled to his knees before he could catch himself, whacking his temple against the aluminum handle on the cupboard below the sink. Hysterical laughter bubbled to his lips as he felt fresh drops of blood begin their excruciating journey down the side of his face. What was another ounce or two gone? He was surprised he had any left to lose, considering he hadn’t fed since before the attack. With his clothes strewn around him, he settled on the floor, leaning back against the sink. His legs were too long to stretch out comfortably, but he did the best he could. He wasn’t going anywhere. Black spots battled the clarity of his vision, and everything felt too far away, sounds, sights, smells. Closing his eyes might be the last thing he ever did, but he lacked the strength to keep them open any longer. Had it been worth it? By all rights, he should be stuffed and sated at the Den where the only pain he would be experiencing would be that radiating from his spent c**k and come-filled ass. His stomach would be full, his skin intact, and he could drift away as the sun rose, secure in the knowledge that he would wake again as it set. All he’d had to do was stay, and he could have avoided all of this. But even as he slipped into unconsciousness, Sutter knew one thing. Running away had been his only option. Regardless of the pain that had immediately followed, he would do it all over again if he had to. * * * * When Sutter slept, he rarely dreamed. As far as he knew, vampires didn’t. Something about the deepness of the sleep state, he’d always been told. The body went into recovery mode, and everything else was superfluous to that. The only time they appeared was when he dozed, and that wasn’t sleep so much as lucid resting. Though he never told anyone about them, he always rationalized them as daydreams, fantasies of a life beyond that which he had, memories of a time before the world had flipped on its axis. They were harmless, barely memorable when he was awake, certainly never getting in the way of performing his duties. Give Petrus an excuse to punish him? Sutter wasn’t nearly that stupid. Of course, running away probably wouldn’t get him a Mensa invitation, but that was a different issue entirely. So the fact that images came to him after he passed out on the cheap tile floor of the motel bathroom was a surprise, enough so he half-believed he had died and this was actually his purgatory. It couldn’t be heaven, not with as many people as he’d killed over the last twenty years, but it didn’t reek of damnation enough to be hell, either. * * * * Candles flickered in their sconces high up on the walls, the low drone of a thousand bugs underscoring their dance. They made his ears vibrate, and when he tried to stretch to blow them out and give his hearing a rest, the walls grew taller, expanding beyond his reach. Sutter collapsed against the marble altar, and a deep baritone replaced the buzz. “Don’t move,” it soothed. “Everything’s all right.” He didn’t recognize him. Nobody in the Den had a timbre that rich or a tone that gentle. “Where am I?” he asked, but his voice, too, was unfamiliar, a dry croak that harkened back to the first day of his rebirth. He tried to swallow and couldn’t. “Someplace safe for now.” “For now?” Terror surged through his veins, replacing the stolen blood that usually flowed there. “Is he coming? He can’t. I’m dead if he finds me.” “But I thought you were dead already.” For a fleeting moment, Sutter saw a figure looming over him, the candlelight behind the broad shoulders silhouetting his companion in gold, but then a damp cloth pressed over his eyes, blinding him once again. “Stop talking. You need to conserve your strength.” “You don’t get it—” “Neither do you.” Though it took every ounce of energy he possessed, Sutter snatched the cloth away from his face and blinked against the light again. His strange companion was an absence of detail, an empty blot against an emptier world, but though he wondered who would want to be in this place with him, Sutter knew he didn’t have the time to indulge the curiosity. “I have to go.” He tried to swing his legs over the edge of the altar, but just like the walls, the sides swelled to impenetrable heights, forcing him back onto its tableau, at the mercy of his shadow jailor. “Please. Don’t do this.” “Do what?” “Let him find me.” “Don’t worry.” The compress came back, but not before Sutter caught a glimpse of vivid blue eyes filled with sorrow so strong it sprang across the distance between them and suffocated what little power Sutter had left. “I’ll take care of everything.” * * * * Everything hurt. Sutter was accustomed to pain. It came in all forms, from hours spent on a rack taking the whip for Petrus’s leisure to the slow burn of loneliness when he was cast into solitary for some infraction that hardly fit the punishment. For twenty years, he’d suffered as he thought he had to, because he was a lowly fledgling in a nest of vampires older and stronger than they told him he could ever be. But this was different. First of all, he hungered. At least as a Den member, he’d never lacked for a meal. If anything, he’d been forced to glut himself more than once, killing the people he was told to in every way imaginable. Petrus had said he had a gift for it, that no other vampire amongst his chosen could draw it out as long or as painfully as Sutter could. Sutter had thought that a compliment until he finally learned better. His stomach growled, loud enough to stir him from the slumber he should’ve kept until sundown. A swell of nausea bubbled in the back of his throat, and when he tried to swallow it, his chest tightened, his esophagus slamming shut at the same time. Panic forced his unseeing eyes open, until reason throttled it into submission. He wasn’t choking. He couldn’t. No need to breathe, no need for air. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was a good old-fashioned anxiety attack, but that was almost as ludicrous as thinking he could drown in his own bile. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Strong hands guided his shoulders back until his head hit the pillow again— Pillow? How’d I get in the bed? His eyelids carried the weight of rocks, but he blinked against his confusion to force the room to focus around him. Yes, he was in the bed, though he was oddly relieved to see that he was in the same hotel room. The bathroom door stood open and he could see his ruined clothes hanging over the shower rail. The bedroom was illuminated with the light spilling across the threshold, the distant hum of the fluorescents reverberating beneath his skin. He recognized that sound. It hadn’t been a dream after all, just the distorted imagery he would’ve associated with a fever or drugs. “You should be sleeping.” That voice again. Now that he was fully awake, he remembered it from his hallucinations. Turning his head toward it, he first saw a set of powerful thighs, encased in a pair of worn jeans that would get the guy arrested for indecency if the wrong cop got a good, long look at the package they did little to hide. A fat c**k was tucked against the man’s hip, and even in his pain-riddled state, Sutter smelled the pre-come that had either leaked from it within the last hour or did so now. Scanning upward revealed an even stronger torso, flaring into a broad chest covered by a plain dark T-shirt. The tight sleeves accentuated heavily muscled arms, a tattoo emblazoned on the left bicep for all to see. It was a set of dog tags done in blue, stamped with USMC and surrounded by the phrase, “Freedom is not free,” etched in red. A Marine. His blond crew cut confirmed it. The face was as remarkable as the hard body. Cheekbones as chiseled as his muscles. A strong nose over even stronger lips. Younger than Sutter had been when he’d been turned but not by much, twenty-five at the outside. But even in the murky light, the deep blue of the man’s eyes stood out the most. The sorrow that had struck Sutter so profoundly was still there. He hadn’t imagined that part in the slightest. “You’re not going back to sleep, are you?” He didn’t wait for an answer before bustling around the room again. “At least let me get you more comfortable, then. Maybe that’ll do the trick.” What trick? Except his throat was still too rough to speak. He watched the stranger go to the closet and pull out a spare pillow and another blanket from the shelf over the hanging rod. The rear view was as impressive as the front, muscles rippling beneath his clothes as he worked. If Sutter wasn’t poked so full of holes, he would’ve pounced on the human at the very first stretch. “Here.” Coming around Sutter’s side of the bed, the man dropped the blanket to the floor first as he slid his free arm beneath Sutter’s shoulders. With unexpected gentleness, he lifted Sutter up the few inches necessary to prop the second pillow beneath his head. “I know it’s not much, but it’s better than the bathroom floor, right?” Sutter could only watch as he deftly flicked the blanket open and spread it out over the bedspread. That was when he saw the peek of white on his own torso. A fresh bandage covered the stake wound. What the f**k had happened while he’d been unconscious? Who was this man? Why was he fussing over Sutter like a baby chick? He wanted desperately to throw the stranger against the wall and run as far away as he could, but the tiny slivers of light that stole around the edges of the closed curtains locked him in the room better than any shackles ever could. He couldn’t even protest when the man picked up a glass of water from the nightstand and held it to his lips. “I didn’t call the police, if that’s what you’re worried about.” As Sutter sipped at the water, the man held it steady, his gaze solemn and unshakable. “I figured anyone who checked himself into this place without tipping off Dewitt that he was bleeding as badly as you were was looking for discretion.” Dewitt must’ve been the grizzled clerk who’d taken Sutter’s cash without looking up from his greasy copy of Sports Illustrated. Sutter had been careful, yes, but as far as he was concerned, Petrus could’ve had his fangs and c**k buried in Sutter’s body as he paid and the old man still wouldn’t have noticed. The water helped, soothing over the rough edges the last twenty-four hours had wrought. When Sutter coughed, the stranger snapped back, withdrawing the glass before anything spilled. “Who are you?” Sutter ground out. It hurt—f**k, did it hurt—but he didn’t feel nearly so helpless when he had a voice. As long as he had the choice, he would use it, consequences be damned. “My name’s Max.” He held out his left hand, but when Sutter glanced at it with a frown, he blushed and pulled it back. “My dad owns this place.” “And you’re…what? The welcoming committee?” Max chuckled. “Hardly. You’re in hell’s armpit. If I didn’t live here, I’d avoid it like the plague.” His gaze flickered to the exposed tattoo. “I didn’t know there was a base nearby.” He didn’t think there was anything nearby. He’d driven north from Sacramento on purpose, getting off I-5 somewhere in Oregon to get lost in a world of trees. The Pacific Motel had been the first note of civilization he’d seen in miles, and even that was set off alone, the nearest town another fifteen miles ahead, according to the road signs. It should’ve been ideal. “No base for me.” Another smile, though this one was melancholy. “Not anymore.” “How’d you…” The words caught in a rasp. In a flash, the water was back, the glass pressed to his bottom lip, tipped up and flowing at just the right speed as Max watched without a word. When Sutter had his fill, he ran his tongue over the cracked skin and tried again. “How’d you know?” Max jerked his head toward the door. “I saw the blood outside. When I asked Dewitt about you, he said you looked like you were going to sleep off a bender, so I knew it had to be bad. You didn’t answer when I knocked, so I stole the master key when Dewitt wasn’t looking and let myself in.” His eyes widened in innocent alarm. “Just to check up on you, I swear. But you were passed out, and the bathroom was a wreck, and I couldn’t just leave you there, could I? You’d’ve been a goner before you ever got the chance to check out.” His raw appeal was an adrenaline rush Sutter really didn’t need right now. A naive do-gooder hiding inside a killer’s body. That was how Petrus had hooked him all those years ago, though his had been one of many masks he donned when the purpose suited him. Max wasn’t the same—he was alive, for starters, which was already a step in the right direction—but the threat of what he could do to Sutter’s common sense remained. Sutter closed his eyes, trying to block out the rumble of his stomach as the image of sinking his fangs into Max danced at the edge of his awareness. “No, I guess you couldn’t,” he muttered. The hardest part of agreeing was knowing it was completely true.