Sundown & Serena by Tara Fox Hall

anyway, and rent one
instead. Because plates can be traced.”
    “I can’t rent a car, my credit’s too bad. I
don’t even have a credit card.”
    “Take a bus then. I’ll even buy you a
ticket.”
    “Where? Why?” I asked, confused.
    “Anywhere at least a state away. Because you
would already be dead, like that other woman Cassy, if he didn’t
want to draw it out.”
    Foreboding filled me. “Draw what out?”
    “Your death,” he hissed softly. “You remind
him very strongly of someone he can’t touch, can’t hurt at all,
someone who he hates and yet is obsessed with completely.”
    “Sar,” I breathed.
    He nodded. “He’ll send me back to bring you
to him in a few days, when he thinks you’re healed. He knows where
you live and where you work. So leave, and don’t forward your mail.
Don’t forward your calls. Disappear.”
    “Why?” I stammered.
    “Because if you aren’t here, if I can’t find
you easily, he’ll be angry, but he’ll forget you soon enough. There
are a lot of women with long dirty blonde hair. There are a lot of
women with hair like hers that won’t be missed.”
    “He can fuck off,” I said hotly. “I’m not
going to consent again.”
    “Dye your hair for the first six months at
least,” Lash interrupted. “Any color but the one it is. Cut it
shorter too, to your shoulders or above. A large part of the
attraction for him is your hair, because it resembles hers. You
can’t do anything about your face, but I don’t know how closely you
look like her.”
    “You speak like you don’t know her.”
    “I’ve never seen her, or met her,” Lash said
with a shrug. “But I’ve heard of her and nothing else for months
now, ever since the night he first got a taste of her blood. He’s
obsessed with her blood. He says it tastes of summer, and he won’t
let it go. It reminds him of another woman’s blood, a woman he knew
long, long ago.”
    I shivered, thanking God I wasn’t Sar. I’d
envied her for so many months, but I pitied her now. After what he did to me, what will he do to her, given half a
chance?
    “Your blood isn’t like hers, Sun. Yours is
normal human blood, or he would not have let you leave Hayden,”
Lash continued. “So there is no reason he would pursue you
cross-country. If you get away, and you don’t look like you do now
for a while, you’ll be safe.”
    “Why don’t you come with me?” I offered. “We
can both get away.”
    Lash looked at me in surprise.
    “He’s evil. You stay with him long enough and
you’ll become the monster he is. And you seem to be a good
man.”
    “I’m not a good man,” Lash said, narrowing
his flat eyes. “Don’t think that of me, because I dressed your
wounds. You thought that of Devlin when you saw his pretty face,
and that’s why you’re in this mess, because you were stupid, and
trusting. I’m neither good, nor even human.”
    Not human? I felt a
shiver, but pressed on. “You’re no monster, not like he is.”
    “I am a monster,” Lash hissed angrily. “You
have no idea of the things I’ve done. I’ve killed more people in my
life than he has killed in his, and he’s four hundred years old.
Hundreds of people, thousands. I don’t even remember their faces,
none of them. They don’t haunt my dreams. I don’t think about them
at all, or care that I killed them. And maybe that’s the surest
sign I am evil.”
    He let out a breath. “It’s way too late for
me. I’m sorry for you, but he’s my friend, my only one left. He was
there when I needed him. He’s done more for me than anyone ever
has, ever. I’m not going to abandon him now, no matter what he’s
done, not when he needs me most of all.”
    “I’ll go,” I ventured. “Thanks for warning
me. But why do you care what happens to me?”
    “I don’t,” Lash said casually, standing up,
and adjusting his whip. “But I want him to forget her, and get back
to what he’s good at, which is Ruling. He is nothing now, he who
was Ruler