Scarlet Prison

Chapter 20

The headlights of Garret's truck glared through the glass door as he pulled up. I went out to meet him. He heaved himself out of the truck and gave me a yellow toothed smiled.

"Nova! Good to see you girl!" Garret was the kind of guy that either loved you or growled at you. Him and Vince were on a strictly growl relationship for reasons that I couldn't fathom. We didn't know how he would react to Dana yet, but there was no reason to risk it when we knew for sure that he was fine with me. Besides, I felt kind of special to have the truck driver's approval, and I didn't want Dana to spoil that for me.

"How has the painting been going?" I asked.

"Remember how I told you that I had trouble with the faces on my last painting? Then I spent hours, on a burst of inspiration, getting them just right. Well, this time I just said 'Screw it!' and I gobbed on black paint, where the faces were supposed to go. Lilly thinks it's the most meaningful thing I've painted and she's got some friend from a gallery coming to look at it this weekend! Can you believe that?! I spend hours painting beautiful faces, and Lilly doesn't look twice. Then I spend a few minutes dishing black paint onto the canvas, and Lilly loves it!" He sighed in exacerbation. "I've been with her for 389 years, and there are still things about her that I don't understand."

"What does she think the faces mean?" I asked, perplexed. I was a lost cause, when it came to understanding art.

"Hell, if I know," he said, making me wonder how many of the famous masterpieces out there were the result of some artist throwing together meaningless garble, only for it to be proclaimed to have meaning by someone else.

Garret handed me the electronic signature pad. "Somehow having them delivered to your door takes all the fun out of it, don't you think?" Garret asked, jumping to a different topic with no warning.

"Um, I guess," I muttered as I scrawled "Nova" across the pad. I had realized, when signing my pseudonym for the first time, that I couldn't remember how to do a capital cursive "N." The result was that my signature now included a capital printed "N" connected with cursive scribbles that somewhat resembled the rest of my name.

"Oh I keep forgetting that you were born during Darwin's War. Since you were turned at a time when the vampires were taking over the world, you never really knew what it was like to live in the shadows." Garret took the pad back and led me to the back of the truck. "I guess you just seem older than that. You seem like someone who would be familiar with the shadows."

"How do you think I lived before I was turned?" I asked.

Garret assessed me for a second. "Yes, the war certainly was the beginning of our backwards world, with humans living in hiding. One day we will set it right, though, and you will get to experience the true glory of living in the shadows." He turned to unlatch the truck.

"Don't fill my head with tantalizing promises," but my skin was crawling with an eerie feeling, even before he turned to show me his dead serious expression.

"I don't make promises lightly, Nova. This is one I intend to keep."

I let a slow smile pull at the corners of my mouth. "Well," I said, "I apologize for doubting you."

I didn't know how to feel about this whole "setting the world right" attitude that most certainly involved murdering masses of vampires. And the end goal was what, exactly? To enable the remaining vampires to secretly murder humans while living among them? Nes was right. Violence plagued the vampire race.

***

I found myself on a date with Dominik, apparently without the intention of breaking up with him. For now.