33
Chapter Three: The Eagle Prince
Tucson, Arizona.
Night of November 2.
Sunrise: 6:42 a.m.
Your feet hurt.
You already passed the place you were supposed to stay yesterday, but it's just an empty garage; there's nothing there for you.
An hour before dawn, you reach the chain-link fences and industrial parks that mark the outskirts of Tucson. You can see cheap stucco houses up ahead, but the burbs are no place for a vampire. Without a cell phone or money, and with your clothes too trashed for polite company, you revert to skills you honed when you were still alive, when Brian suddenly demanded you get someone or something under cover. When you find an abandoned semitrailer in a factory parking lot, you note that the high walls should keep the worst of the heat off. You check it for holes in the ceiling. Finding none, you crawl inside.
You spend the day with your brain screaming in terror and your body paralyzed, as trucks and factory machines move all around you. Someone actually moves the trailer, which you're sure hasn't been moved in years. They drag it into the sun, so you spend the day boiling in a metal box under Arizona's daytime heat. The moment the sun sets, you throw open the door and—even though people are still working—flee into the night.
Yarrk whimpers when he sees you and nuzzles your hand, either out of pity or to check if he can eat you.