Page 27 of How a Vampire Falls

“Another new experience for me,” Ryker said with a broad grin that caught the light of the waxing moon.

“It’s not exactly anoldexperience for me. I’ve only walked by Lunar Lane a handful of times, and always in broad daylight.”

The grin wasn’t letting up. “Okay, so…about turning back. When I was a kid, there was this empty rundown house on myblock. The human kids said a vampire lived there, and he was five thousand years old.”

“Fivethousand?”

“In fourth grade, even I didn’t question that detail. Pretty sure at that age I really did expect to live forever. You know, I still feel basically immortal.”

“Same,” Leslie said. “I can’t fully get my head around what it means, living for a millennium. I think thirty is too young to get it.”

“Exactly.” He shrugged. “So anyway about this house—I ask my dad, and he explains how property seizure works via the U.S. Marshals Service. How the house then went through multiple auctions and sales but no one ever occupied it again. Naturally, I try to pass this info on to my buddies, but they’re not having it. Way too dull to be believed.”

Wherever he was going with this story, she relished the peek into his childhood. No surprise Ryker was the kid trying to fact-check suburban legends. “What did you do next?”

Because surely he’d done something.

He nodded as they kept walking, ever closer to Lunar Lane. “One day we’re proving our courage, running up onto the porch and punching the doorbell and dashing back to the group. When it’s my turn, I’m about to hit the doorbell when a few things click in my brain.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“First,” he said as if uninterrupted, “I knew relics don’t tell their age, especially to humans. So these kids who’ve never met this alleged relic—they can’t possibly know how old he is. Not even their parents can possibly know. And second, adult vampires have super-human hearing, so ifanyvampire lives here—never mind a relic—he already knows I’m standing on his porch before I ring the doorbell.”

“Sharp thinking for a little kid.” She could see him in her mind’s eye, tousled blond hair and magnetic blue eyes, bouncing with mischief and studying the world around him with a mind that already sped along faster than most.

“The third thing I realized—this entire game was stupid. I wasn’t scared of any vampire, however old he was. But I did want to know for sure, was the house unoccupied or not? And it was way more important to solve that puzzle than to obey my peers on a dare.”

“Brilliant. What did you do?”

“I didn’t punch the doorbell and run. In fact I didn’t punch the doorbell at all. I knocked on the door and waited.”

Aha. “And now you’re game to knock on the metaphorical door of Lunar Lane?”

“Life’s pretty bland if you spend it avoiding the unknown.”

He sounded game to march straight into wolf territory. He didn’t intend any harm or offense, she knew. But he didn’t know what he didn’t know, so it was up to Leslie to make sure he didn’t accidentally disrespect her neighbors. “Was your dad right about the house being vacant?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, well, keep in mind that Lunar Lane isn’t.”

“Obviously.”

“In other words, we’re not going to trespass, Ryker. Not one step onto their territory under any circumstances, including their private road. It’s a wolf thing, and they’re extremely serious about it.”

He stopped walking for a moment, seemed to absorb what she’d said. He really hadn’t known. At last he nodded. “Thanks for making sure I didn’t do something stupid.”

“Part of my duty as a local.”

Ryker nodded again. Then he kept walking, and Leslie kept pace beside him.

Eight

As he approached the border of wolf territory, Ryker felt exactly like his nine-year-old self knocking on the door of the dilapidated structure that now lived in his memory as the “Marshals House.” He wouldn’t disregard Leslie’s instructions, of course. But he remained half-inclined to march up to the alpha’s house and knock, just to see what would happen, to see what wolves were like on their own land, where they didn’t have to turn their gaze away or whatever the heck they did to keep humans from running away screaming. Which was the alpha’s house anyway? Maybe one of the two visible from the intersection, sitting on opposite sides of the red-dirt road. Did the alpha live in one of these as a sort of sentry, or was his property farther back?

Then Ryker took another step, and he forgot all his questions.

Run away. Right now.

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