Part 18 (1/2)
The bathroom door opened then and Dee came back out. Jo tried to twist in her seat to see her, but Ernie hardly glanced her way, merely turning on his heel and moving to the bed.
”Feed her when the food comes,” he ordered, dropping to lie on the bed. ”And make sure she doesn' t get away. Wake me when night falls.”
Ernie closed his eyes and completely relaxed, seeming to drop off to sleep at once, and then Dee moved into view beside Jo. The girl was looking toward Ernie, watching as his breathing became slow and steady, but Jo was looking at the girl's throat. All there was to see was a large, neat bandage covering the wound on her neck, and then the girl turned to look at her. I f Ernie hadn't already told her Dee didn't like her, the look she gave Jo then would have told her so. Dee's eyes were lasers of hatred, slicing her to ribbons.
”He's mine,” Dee hissed, glaring at her.
”You're welcome to him,” Jo said solemnly, keeping her voice low. ”In fact, if you want to untie me, I' ll happily get out of here.”
Dee hesitated, and Jo felt a moment's hope, and then Dee glanced to Ernie. Jo did as well, her heart sinking when she saw that his eyes were open and focused on them.
”If she escapes, you die, Dee,” he said calmly, and then closed his eyes again. Dee's breath hissed out and she scowled at Jo and then moved to the dresser, opened the top drawer, and retrieved something. It wasn't until she turned and headed back to the table that Jo saw it was a gun. She watched the other woman drop into the seat across from her and set the gun on the table. Jo stared at what to her appeared to be a very large gun barrel pointing in her direction, and then glanced to Dee and asked, ”Yours?”
”Mine now,” Dee said defiantly, and picked it back up to examine it briefly as she said, ”We got it off a cop on the way out of Texas. He stopped us for speeding.”
”You don't sound like you're from Texas,” Jo said quietly.
”I'm not. I'm from here.” She set the gun down again. ”We were just pa.s.sing through Texas on the way back to Canada.”
”And the policeman you took the gun from?” Jo asked.
”He won't need it anymore,” Dee said with a shrug, and then added defiantly, ”He was an arrogant p.r.i.c.k anyway. He shouldn' t have insulted Ernie.”
”Right,” Jo said on a sigh, trying not to imagine some poor police officer stopping a car on a lonely road at night, never knowing it would be the last car he'd stop. Forcing the image away, she asked, ”So how did you end up traveling through Texas with Ernie if you're from here?”
”His father took me south,” she muttered.
Jo felt herself tense. Ernie's father was who she was being taken to, and it did seem smart to learn all she could about him. ”Why did he take you south? What's he like?”
”He's crazy mean,” Dee said quietly, beginning to rotate the gun slowly on the table. ”He and a couple of his sons showed up at our farm earlier in the summer.”
Jo blinked in surprise, not at the news that Ernie's father and his brothers had shown up at Dee's farm, but that she actually came from a farm. With her piercings and dress, Jo would have guessed she was a city girl.
”They came in the middle of the night, killed my father, kept cutting and feeding on my mother, sisters, and me for a couple days, and then they killed my mother and two of my sisters and took my younger sister and me and headed south. They fed on just the two of us on the journey, occasionally dragging in another person to feed on. Usually a girl. They seem to prefer girls, but then probably because they didn't always just use us to feed on. Ernie's father mostly left us alone except to bleed us, but his brothers...” She swallowed and shuddered. ”They liked to do other things too.”
Jo didn't need her to spell out what those other things were. Ernie had said some of his brothers weren't past the s.e.x stage. She could figure it out. ”I'm sorry,” she said quietly. ”It must have been awful.” ”It was,” she said in a vulnerable voice that made her seem much younger than Jo had at first thought she was, and then she suddenly straightened and sounded much stronger as she said, ”But then we got to Ernie's place.”
”Where was that?” Jo asked, but Dee shrugged.
”I was pretty weak the last leg of the trip. I slept a lot when they weren' t bothering me. All I know is I'm pretty sure it wasn't America anymore when we stopped. It was hot, the people all spoke gobbledy-gook, and the signs were all in Mexican or something.”
”South America then, probably,” Jo murmured. If that's where Ernie's father was it meant a long drive to get there. Days even. She might get an opportunity to escape, she thought, and then glanced up as Dee continued.
”Ernie was nice to me.” When Jo's eyebrows rose in surprise at the suggestion, Dee scowled and said, ”He was. He'd bite us, but he didn't do those other things.”
Afraid the girl would get angry and shut up, Jo smoothed out her expression and nodded quickly.
Dee relaxed a little and continued, her voice grim. ”When he said he was heading out on a trip, his father gave me to him 'for the road.' I think he thought Ernie would only get another meal out of me and be dumping me on the side of the road somewhere, but Ernie didn' t feed on me. He fed me and got me healthy again. He took care of me and fed on others like that cop, and only once I was strong again did he start feeding on me again. I'm his now and he looks after me.”
”And your sister?” Jo asked quietly.
”She died before we left,” Dee said dully.
”I'm sorry,” Jo repeated on a sigh. She was silent for a moment, considering what she'd learned, and then asked, ”So was Ernie the only brother there who had fangs?”
Dee nodded. ”The rest of them had to cut us... except Basha.”
Something in Dee's voice made Jo peer at her more closely as she asked, ”Basha?”
”She's like Ernie, she has fangs,” Dee said, her voice sounding admiring. ”She's not crazy like the rest of them. Basha's beautiful with this long, gorgeous, icy blond hair and these cold eyes... and she's powerful, icy cold and so strong... None of the boys mess with her. The second day we were there, one of them said something to anger her, and she threw him through a wall.”
Jo frowned as she recognized the hero wors.h.i.+p in the other woman's voice. ”What did he say?”
”I'm not sure. They were in the next room and he suddenly came cras.h.i.+ng through the wall and fell at my feet, and then she stepped through the hole his body left and glared down at him and said, 'Remember to watch your tongue around me or you' ll be tongueless as well as fangless.' And then she stormed off.” Dee sighed with very definite admiration, and then added, ”Even Ernie's father listens to her. She's the one who convinced him to lie low for a while and stay out of Canada until things blew over. Ernie's father really is a cruel b.a.s.t.a.r.d,”
Dee told her, and almost managed to look pityingly on Jo. ”He's going to hurt you bad when Ernie gives you to him.”
Jo stared at her silently and then sat forward in her seat, ignoring the pain it sent shooting through her arms as she said a little desperately, ”You could help me escape. We could both go. I know people who could keep us safe.”
”Like they kept Ernie from taking you?” she asked dryly, and shook her head. ”Oh no. I'm his. I'm not betraying him and giving him a reason to kill me. I want to be strong and powerful like Basha. I want to be turned, and if I'm loyal he' ll turn me,” she said with certainty.
Jo sat back wearily and shook her head. ”He's not going to turn you, Dee. He sees us both as little more than cattle. He' ll use you up for as long as it pleases him and then he will dump you at the side of the road like his father expected.”
”No,” she said at once, almost desperately. ”He took care of me when we left his father. He cares about me.”
”Yeah, that bandage on your throat and the way he's treated you since I got here show a whole lot of caring,” Jo said grimly.
”He was angry. It was your fault,” Dee said at once.
Jo stared at her silently, wondering why Ernie would have bothered nursing the girl back to health. She didn't think for a minute he cared for the girl, but... ”Who did the driving on the way up here?”
”He did at first, but after the first couple of days when I was feeling better, he slept during the day and I drove, and then I slept at night and he drove,” she said proudly. ”He trusted me.”
”He needed you,” Jo corrected firmly. ”Feeding you a couple of meals and not raping you was enough to get you to feel so grateful you took over the day driving. It cut the journey in half for him.”
Dee merely glared at her.
”Why didn't he fly?” Jo asked abruptly.
”What?” Dee asked with confusion.
”Why did he drive all the way here rather than fly? He could have saved himself a lot of time,” she pointed out.
”He doesn't like flying,” Dee said coldly, and then added almost reluctantly, ”His father and brothers teased him about that, said it was another sign of his inferiority, that a no- fanger wouldn't be afraid of flying. But they're the ones who are inferior. They don' t have fangs and have to cut to feed, and Basha has fangs and she's the smartest and strongest of all of them.”
Jo was silent for a minute. The girl definitely had a hang-up about this Basha woman.
Sighing, she leaned forward and tried again to reason with her, ”You're fooling yourself if you think he's going to turn you, Dee. You aren't going to be like Basha. You're just as dead as I am when we get back there. Once we're there, he won't need you to drive anymore and he' ll hand you off to his brothers to finish what they started on the first journey down south.”