Fangs In Vain by Scott Nicholson Read Free Book Online

they lay quietly. He stroked his hair, gazing past her to the
stars. Sabrina counted the slowing of his heartbeat as he returned to his usual
undead self. When he was back to eight beats a minute, she said, “You said you
loved me.”
    “Huh?”
    “When we were rocking and rolling
there, you said you loved me.”
    “Huh.” He said it like he was
already thinking about something else. If he were human, it would probably be a
beer, a cigarette, or the Green Bay Packers. With Luke, it might have been the
many people he’d murdered over the decades.
    “So?” Sabrina murmured.
    “So what?”
    “Do you?”
    He tensed, although his
diminishing hardness was still lodged inside her in a melted sea of combined
heat. “We don’t go there. You know that.”
    She tapped him lightly on the
chest. “I’m a woman. I’m always going to go there.”
    “You’re an angel. You only get one
love, and that’s way bigger than me.”
    “Love isn’t that small and cheap.
If there’s one thing I learned by coming back from the dead, it’s that love is
the reason for it all. In everything.”
    “What, did you meet John Lennon in
heaven or something? The place he told us not to imagine?”
    “Don’t be an asshole.”
    “Listen. We have a good thing
here. But we both know it can’t last.”
    “Talking like a sailor. Girl in
every port, ship’s leaving the dock, two ships passing in the night, blah blah
blah.”
    “This isn’t about you.” He
continued stroking her hair, although his fingers weren’t as gentle as before.
    “That’s what every man says when
he dumps you. So what else could it be about?”
    “You deserve better.”
    “That’s the other crappy line they
give. Heard it before, Luke.”
    “This is different.”
    She eased back until she could
look down into his dark, glistening eyes. The moon and sky were reflected in
his red pupils, like two miniature heavens that blocked out all hymns and harps
and angels. “So how is it different?”
    “You know I’ve been here for two
centuries, right? And I’m not here today because God wanted me to get saved by
Sabrina Vickers.”
    “You talk of destiny like it’s
something you make instead of something that happens.”
    He rolled her beside him on the
blanket, causing them to part. Emptiness and longing surged through her belly
and joined the complex tidal waves of sensations. The physical and emotional
tides made for ever-changing weather. That hadn’t stopped when she’d become an
angel.
    Luke sat up and gazed out at the
purple horizon where the ocean and sky melded into eternity. “I’ll tell you why
we can’t be together. You know I was in the United States Life Saving Service.”
    “Yeah. The early form of the Coast
Guard. Always a hero, huh?”
    “Right. A real American hero. And
do you know why I did it?”
    “To save lives. Because I know you
have a real heart in there. You have a soul. That’s the reason I’m here.”
    “Let me tell you a story, and then
you tell me if I could possibly have a soul.”
    She shivered, all heat from their
passion now carried away like skirling sand. Her voice fell. “Okay.”

 
     
    CHAPTER
SEVEN
     
     
     
    “It was 1896 and the hurricane
season was hard upon the Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Luke’s voice changed, his
grammar a little more formal. “Our Life-Saving Service crew was stationed a
mile from here and I was on foot patrol. The wind was high and the waves were
capping at ten to twenty feet, and the raindrops were thick as nails. I saw the
first broken barrels and other flotsam riding up on the surf, and I knew a ship
had run aground. I ran back to the base and rousted the crew, then returned to
the shipwreck site.”
    It could have been Sabrina’s
imagination, but the sea seemed to splash and slap harder to punctuate the
tale.
    “I could barely see, so I waded
into the breakers to locate the vessel. We later learned it was the B.E.
Osterhagen , a three-masted schooner sailing from Norfolk,