Heartbeat (Morta Fox Book 1) Read online

  “It’s my house,” he said with a shrug, working on a cabinet that had the door hanging open.

  I sat on the only chair in the room. “Really?”

  “Really. I’ve worked on it through the years. Did the best I could,” he said and looked proudly at his kitchen.

  “The…the vampires…” I said, because I wasn’t sure how to properly ask.

  “One of them is dead, the other alive. Won’t recover for a while, though,” he said and opened the cabinet under the sink to bring me an unopened bottle of whiskey. I couldn’t keep from smiling as I took a sip.

  “Don’t run like that. Ever again,” Hammer said after a while.

  “Sorry,” I breathed, and my mind wandered to the sleeping humans, and how we’d sneaked in, taking what didn’t belong to us without regard. “Guess I’m not a big fan of sucking the blood out of sleeping people.”

  “Oh, yeah. You prefer drunks,” he said, smiling.

  If I didn’t appreciate the bottle of whiskey in my hand, I would’ve thrown it in his face.

  “I did it once. Once. And I couldn’t fucking help it,” I hissed.

  “I wasn’t trying to say that you could. But that is what you’ll feel if you don’t feed soon,” he said.

  “How long do I have?” I said, taking another sip of my whiskey. I was dying for a cigarette, but like hell I was going to ask him.

  “I don’t know. With a normal vamp, you only need to feed once a week. With you, though, it could be different,” he said, watching me curiously.

  Of course I was different. I had a beating heart.

  I looked away and played with the bottle in my hand, trying to get my mind off smoking. I knew I should’ve said thanks by now, but he was just so annoying.

  I made myself prepare the words and say them. If it wasn’t for him, who knew where I would’ve been? I sure wouldn’t have ended up sleeping or whatever I did during the day in a soft bed with a thick blanket.

  Hammer’s giggle made me look up at him. He had his hands tucked inside the pockets of his jeans. They weren’t exactly new, but they did seem clean.

  “What?” I asked, a little pissed. I never liked people laughing at me. I liked vamps even less.

  “All you have to do is ask,” he said, shrugging. He meant the cigarettes, goddamn him. I rolled my eyes, but I did want that smoke too badly.

  “Fine…” I started reluctantly.

  “And say please,” he added with a broad smile.

  “Forget it,” I hissed, my mind completely changed. I could do without a smoke.

  “Suit yourself.”

  “You’re fucking impossible.” I couldn’t keep that to myself.

  “Oh, I’m impossible?” he said, pointing his hands at himself. “Did I chicken out and run from the window, or did you? Was I so reckless, so irresponsible and ignorant to run into two of the shittiest vampires to have ever existed in the dead of the night? Did I help one of said vampires recover by taking the rod out of his chest?” he exploded.

  “I was trying to help!” I shouted, getting up from the chair.

  “I mean, what were you thinking? I told you that vampires heal extremely fast! I told you—”

  “Yeah, well, sorry I didn’t let Jordy remove your face from your skull!”

  “And, again, I’m a vampire! A freaking vampire, and I was fine!”

  “You were not fine! You were getting your ass kicked by your friend there right in front of my feet!”

  “I knew what I was doing! You just had to stand there—”

  “Fine!” I shouted so loudly that it felt like the word scratched my throat. “Next time you’re getting your ass handed to you, I will just sit by and watch it happen.” Somehow, I found myself right in front of him and staring up at his face, while he backed away against the kitchen counter and watched me in surprise. “Just don’t ask for my help then.”

  “I won't!” he hissed.

  “Fine!” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Fine,” he repeated and leaned even closer to my face. There was but a short inch of space left between our faces, and my fingers twitched. I breathed heavily. Even my mother couldn’t get under my skin like that.

  He leaned even lower, and I thought that was it. That he was going to kiss me. The way he was watching my lips, with so much hunger and passion, I knew if he had a normal heart, it would have been pounding. I learned how to read expressions when I was a teenager and wanted to see if I could go down to the kitchen and grab a snack when my mother was there watching TV. I’d stay by the stairs and watch, trying to determine what she was thinking. So, yeah, he wanted to kiss me.

  What was even more interesting was that I didn’t even think to move away. I almost welcomed it, and I flushed and flustered, feeling very out of character. I had never before wanted a guy to kiss me. I didn’t understand why he would want to, but I first needed to figure out why I did.

  The next second, he leaned back. “Here,” he said, showing me his pack of Marlboros. He’d only reached for his pocket to get it.

  I didn’t want to accept defeat by taking it, but I was burning with rage at myself so I couldn’t refuse. I took the pack and walked fast to the living room, far away from him. Only when I dropped on the sofa did I realize that I had no lighter. A string of curse words fell from my lips when something fell on my lap. I looked down to see a box of matches. Hammer leaned against the doorway and watched me while I lit the cigarette and drew the smoke in.

  He left me and disappeared for a little over an hour, as if to let me mull over why I’d been so sure that he would kiss me and why I hadn’t even wanted to move away.

  The feeling was foreign to me. I didn’t know how to handle it. It was stupid and childish of me to have those thoughts in the first place. I mean, why would he want to kiss me? Sure, he’d proposed I be his sex toy—at that, I remembered to put my lipstick on, lots of it—but today was different. He looked different. He even felt different. Not like a monster.

  I knew I couldn’t let myself forget that fact. I had already drunk a quarter of my bottle when he came back to the door.

  “Come on. I want to show you something,” he said and disappeared again before I had the chance to say anything. I had no choice but to follow.

  Behind the stairway, there was another door. It led us to a basement. Hammer turned the switch, and lights went on all over.

  “Holy shit!” I said, looking at the light bulbs. “How the hell did you get this all the way out here?”

  “Stealing, of course. But I can't use it too much, or they’ll know.”

  “But how?”

  “Three hundred years is a long time,” was all the explanation he gave.

  “Holy…” I didn’t let myself say shit again. A large space, completely untouched by fire, explosions, or time greeted me. Floor, ceiling and walls were set in white-grey tiles. Thirteen cars were in front of me, some old, some even fairly new.

  “Do you like it?” he asked, smiling proudly.

  “I love it! Shit, this is amazing!” Screw not giving away my excitement. I’d never seen anything like it. I ran to the first one, admiring the BMW's blue and white sign on the hood, rusted only a little at the edges.

  “Only three work, but I have no fuel so…” Hammer said. I didn’t care. I hadn't seen cars so beautiful in forever, and when I did see them, they were printed on one of the magazines Mom kept in her room.

  Here, he had everything. I couldn’t remember all the names, but I did recognize them and frankly, you’d have to be blind not to appreciate the beauty.

  “Name them,” I called to him without looking. “Come on, tell me their names!”

  I stood in the middle of the room and waited for him to come to me while he laughed and told me the names of each one.

  “How did you find them?” I asked, almost breathlessly.

  “I took them from all over, whenever I could. Bounty hunters have a lot of free time.”

  “Well, they’re wonderf
ul.” They were, and they made me feel that, too. In fact, my mood was so good, I figured now was the best time to thank him for saving me.

  “Hammer, I—”

  “What? You want to try the backseats?” he said with a sheepish grin. I rolled my eyes. There went my moment.

  “You’re an ass,” I said and turned around to go back upstairs.

  “Come on!” he called. “I was just kidding!”

  “Sure you were,” I mumbled.

  “Morta, you have no sense of humor,” he said as he followed me.

  “Nope, I really don’t.”

  “Don’t you want people to like you?”

  “Nope, I really don’t,” I repeated.

  “Of course you do! Who doesn’t?”

  “Someone who’s looking forward to dying?” I offered.

  “Oh, ha-ha. Very funny,” he murmured.

  “It wasn’t a joke.”

  “See? No fun at all.”

  “You don’t have to stay with me, Hammer,” I reminded him.

  “I know,” he said.

  “Then don’t.” Again, a pointer.

  “I want to.”

  My skin felt like it flushed for a second, but I didn’t let that distract me.

  “Then learn how to deal with my lack of humor.”

  By the time I fell against the sofa again, I almost felt tired of the word game we kept playing. Hammer took the pack of cigarettes from the table and threw one at me.

  “Or, I can just push you until you develop one,” he said, touching his temple like he just came up with the idea of the century.

  “Why do you bother? I mean, I’m going to die soon. You’ll even be the one to kill me.” He flinched and didn’t even try to hide it. I grinned. I could make him feel bad for a change. “So, tell me how. Are you going to decapitate me? Remove my limbs? Burn the torn pieces…”

  “Morta…” he warned me, but I kept going.

  “… in the middle of nowhere? Or will you cut me to pieces, and then throw me to some animal?”

  “That’s enough, Morta.”

  “Or, better yet, will you cut me to pieces and then eat me raw?”

  “Stop!” he said. “Seriously, just stop.” He sounded so serious that for a second I felt guilty for pushing him.

  “And you say I have no sense of humor,” I mumbled.

  “You really have no idea.”

  He didn’t say anything else, and neither did I until one of the candles almost went out.

  “Why don’t you use electricity up here?”

  “I told you, they’d know.”

  “Even if they did, why do you care? It’s not like they can come out here and find you. Boston’s way too far.” We had run fast and long. I didn’t know where we were exactly, but it definitely felt like far away from Boston.

  “No, I steal it from New York,” he said.

  That made me sit up and look at him.

  “There’s electricity in New York?” I asked, taken completely off guard.

  “Of course. The biggest RO Community is based in Manhattan.”

  My mouth fell open so far, it’s a wonder my chin didn’t touch my lap.

  “What…what do you mean?” I asked. Last time I checked—every time I checked—the only place left standing on earth was Boston. The only one.

  “You don’t know?” Hammer asked, squinching his eyes as if to try and figure if I was lying. I simply shook my head. With a deep sigh, he came around the sofa and sat next to me.

  “Well, New York was completely blown, but also completely reconstructed by RONY. Its population is the largest.”

  “Oh, my God,” I whispered, covering my mouth. This was big. It was huge! “But why would the ROB lie? I mean, all of my life they kept reassuring us that we were the only people left on the face of the earth.”

  “You lived in Boston? Inside the walls?”

  “Yeah, until two years ago. But…but how could we not know? How can people not know?” It made no sense to me.

  “Well, New York isn’t the only other community. There’s one in Washington, too,” he said with a sorry smile.

  “Three? Three RO Communities?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “Yeah, the one in Boston is the smallest. I’ve been in all three of them until they invented those things that beep every time we come close. The one in Washington is the best. Almost everything is new. Buildings, streets, even cars. I got my Lamborghini there,” Hammer said, laughing at himself. “The one in Manhattan is the biggest. It maybe has over a hundred thousand people living in there.”

  “Oh, God…oh, God!” So many people! “And you thought to tell me this only now?!” I hissed. I hit him as hard as I could on his shoulder, but it only made him laugh.

  “I thought you knew. There are some that live on the outsides of walls that know.”

  “Yeah, but you knew I talked to no one. Even if someone knew, I would’ve never found out!”

  “Really? You talked to no one? Not one person?” he asked, squinting his eyes at me in suspicion once again.

  “Irrelevant. Tell me more,” I urged, moving closer to him. I couldn’t keep in place from the excitement.

  “Well, New York was reconstructed from the ground up, but the inside is not as good-looking as in Washington. They had to travel and move construction materials by boats only, since all the bridges to it were burned and destroyed.”

  “I can't believe they wouldn’t tell us!” I shouted. “Why? Why the hell keep this from people? Do you know how many would die to know this? How much hope this would bring?” I asked, feeling blessed for a second because, though people never said it in words, their faces told that they were all depressed. Banned to a routine inside a huge wall to live without freedom forever.

  “Exactly,” Hammer said. “The RO believes that hope and no limitations brought the world to its knees and made it what it is today. That’s why each community is led to believe they are the only ones left. Because if they knew there were others, the RO would never be able to keep them under control. They’d want to go outside the walls, travel and meet new people. It’s human nature. So they keep them isolated and figure if the people think they’re the only ones alive, and there’s absolutely nothing out there except for destroyed, empty cities, the RO doesn’t even have to work that hard. The people will refuse to leave and get out of their control all on their own.”

  “But it’s our right,” I cried, furious now as much as excited.

  “To the RO, everyone lost their rights when the explosions started,” Hammer said sarcastically.

  “But the explosions started because of you! Because of the vampires!” He flinched, and I was almost sure he’d remind me that I was now a vampire, too, though I was a freak among my kind now, just as I was when human. Still, he didn’t need to. My mouth clamped shut.

  Why the hell did I get excited that there were others out there? Other humans? I was a vampire. It wasn’t like I could go and start new someplace else. Somewhere where no one would know me. I’d daydream about such an opportunity countless times. I even swore to myself that I would try to be polite, talk to people and even smile at them if such a place existed. Over and over again I’d been disappointed to know that there would never be someplace new for me. I’d been fooled to believe so by the very ones that took the credit for saving and protecting the remaining humans. And now that my dream was so close I could taste it, I was a monster.

  “I, uh…” Hammer said, looking away from my face. “It’s fine, Morta. I mean, it doesn’t matter now,” he mumbled, and I knew it. I saw it in his face and heard it in his voice that he didn’t know what else to say. He was as uncomfortable as I was heartbroken, and he didn’t know how to handle it.

  I wasn’t sure why he even bothered to feel bad about the look on my face, but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut for the life of me.

  “Don’t be stupid, Hammer,” I spit. “It’s not fine. It hasn’t been fine for two decades. It’s never going to be fine.�
��

  “I don’t even know why I told you…” he mumbled.

  “Oh, trust me, I’m even more surprised that you did. You’re no better than the RO. In fact, you’re worse. You’re a monster.”

  “At least I’ve accepted what life chose for me. I don’t go around looking for ways to die because I’m, oh, so desperate,” he said.

  “You are a son of a bitch, you know—”

  “What, you think someone owes you something because your mother didn’t love you, and you were all alone in the cold, dark world? Because you’re just a hopeless little girl without any guts to handle the hand that has been dealt to you? You think the world owes you because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you woke up a monster? Well, join the fucking club! You’re not the only one.”

  A world of poison hung from my lips, but I stopped myself for a second. It had never occurred to me that I might not have been the only one who was turned against her will. And from the way he spoke, I was ready to bet that Hammer didn’t ask for this, either.

  He was right. I was a little girl with mommy issues, and I was hopeless. Still, I was too stubborn to say that I didn’t really mean what I said, or even let it go.

  “How dare you call me a coward? You watched two innocent people die because you were looking to save your own skin when you could’ve helped them! But no! You stopped me because you were afraid! You are the coward here,” I hissed.

  “I have never feared anything in my entire life,” he shouted. “Never….” he hissed and grabbed the back of my neck to pin me in place. I grabbed his forearm and tried to remove his hand from me. “I didn’t fear for my own skin. I feared for yours.”

  My mouth opened, but no word got out. There was just too much heat in those words. Heat that burned my fingertips. For a second, the smell of something burning from the night before came back to fill my nostrils, and I realized just where it had come from.

  “You got burned last night.” He finally let me go. “You got burned from the sun…” While carrying me to safety.