Free Bound by the Vampire Queen by Joey W. Hill Page B

metal made her glance right. The woman Jacob had addressed was hobbling into the dim light with the help of a rusty shopping cart. She was much older than the men, perhaps in her seventies, or perhaps the elements were harsher on a woman’s thinner skin. Whatever story had put the men on the streets, this woman was here due to mental disorder. It was in the furtive way she looked at them as she muttered to herself and the little dog.
    Lyssa suspected schizophrenia that had dovetailed into dementia as she got older, exacerbated by poor nutrition. Fear emanated from her, but also a belligerent streak of independence that had her clutching the small mixed-breed dog and jutting her chin at Jacob.
    “You won’t make me tell you nothing. I know about your kind. What you want, what you see. You won’t get into my head.”
    Jacob had worn a light jacket over his T-shirt and jeans. It covered the nine-millimeter and six-inch army knife he carried, along with a couple very well —sharpened stakes. He was vampire, but he never stopped having the mind-set of a vampire hunter, and he went nowhere with Lyssa where he wasn’t armed. But in this instance, he was carrying something more effective, something he’d picked up at the convenience store. Fishing them out of his pockets under Essie’s suspicious stare, he extended the chocolate bar and pack of peanut butter crackers, one of his favorite personal combinations before he’d become a vampire. He’d probably intended to have a taste and then offer the rest to Lyssa.
    Throughout the centuries, Lyssa had seen unimaginable poverty and deprivation. As awful as it was, homelessness in twenty-first-century Atlanta was nowhere as bad as it could get for a human being. But it still stirred her pity, to see such shadow-dwellers, lost to the world through their own madness or other trauma and circumstances they couldn’t or wouldn’t resolve. The woman she was looking at had been on the streets for a long time.
    Over that time, she’d probably been raped, beaten, her belongings stolen again and again.
    As much as it stirred
her
heart, the man handing the chocolate to Essie had a chivalrous streak a mile wide. Leaving the woman here, in these circumstances, would go against everything Jacob believed was right, but he would do it, because she knew he saw the same thing Lyssa did. This was the only place Essie would live, the only life her madness would let her embrace. This was all she had, the world she knew. But he could give her his respect, and the chance to feel valued.
    “Have you seen the tree?” he asked. “It will stand out. It has a special magic, an unexpected beauty.” She’d let the dog down. Jacob stayed in his nonintimidating squat while the terrier mix sniffed suspiciously at his ankles. “Your dog probably enjoys the shade there in summer. It’s a will ow tree. It looks like a beautiful slender woman, her hair rippling in the breeze.”
    The woman opened the chocolate, sniffed it, then hid it in one of her pockets. She was continuing to mumble to herself unintelligibly.
    “He crazy as Essie,” Pipe Guy said to his companion. That one nodded agreeably, propped on his spiked board, sipping the coffee. But Lyssa had seen the gaze they exchanged.
    They know what you’re talking about, Jacob.
    “I saw her,” Essie said abruptly. Leaning forward, she seized Jacob by the lapel of his jacket, peering into his face. The two men tensed, but Jacob lifted open hands, showing he wouldn’t react with violence.
    “So long… younger then. More teeth.” She cackled, showing a mouth full of decay. Lyssa detected the odor at this distance, and knew Jacob was getting a direct blast. But he didn’t move, focused on Essie’s expressive face. “She ran. Ran like ballerina, so pretty. So graceful. Dancing through alley. Like girl with red shoes. Fairy tale. Tiny, delicate little butterfly wings, so she moved just over the ground, not very high. They were too small. They