One Night Burns (The Vampires of Livix, #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

sheet, it shone through the windshield into the interior, splashing across our faces and down our bodies spilling back, fluttering at the edge of everything. I could see the wink of light as he reached for the shifter, clutching, and jamming it into a higher gear. The engine roared and the tires chirped launching us to a greater speed. We left the light at the far intersection fluttering and splashing the ground like forgotten bed clothes.
    I pulled at my seat belt as our speed approached excessive. While seeming safe I knew we traveled at the edge of too fast. “Why so rapid?”
    “This isn’t fast. But I forget.”
    “Forget what?”
    “If you don’t drive fast all the time you’re unused to it,” he looked at me with those piercing eyes of his, framed by his heavy brows, “I also know after that light the police stop putting up their speed traps. Old habit, sorry.”
    That seemed a little creepy.
    He continued, “I’ll tone it down. It gets curvy up ahead anyway.”
    I hadn’t been watching close enough and empty unfamiliar countryside blinked at me through the windows. A lonely road, a fast car, and a new boy I recently met. Mom would be angry.
    He reached over and put his hand lightly on top of mine that gripped the seat next to my thigh. That was nice and reassuring. I loosened my fingers clenching the leather. He slowed the car down and put both hands on the wheel. We started going around a crazy number of curves surrounded by woods and brush. Back and forth and up.
    Out of the darkness of the woods we hit a clearing and the moon filled the horizon big and full. It washed over the car seeping into the paint. The dark tattoo detailing on the hood changed and lightened up in the moonlight into more of a bright fire-engine red now instead of the nearly black red I saw under the street lights where it looked like days-old spilled blood.
    The pavement ended and the road turned gravely. Garin continued forward.
    “Aren’t you worried about scratching the paint job or making it rust faster from stone chips?”
    “Cars are transient. A blink of the eye and they are gone. There’s always maintenance.”
    “But your investment in it will be damaged.”
    “Don’t casually throw around the word investment. Vehicles are not an investment, necessary transportation, joy at times, but never an investment.”
    “I read about collectible cars selling for thousands of dollars.”
    “Very specialized vehicles, collected by people as furiously as salt shakers and teapots.”
    “People put a lot of work into those collections.”
    “And that’s it. A lot of work and when you put it together, it’s collecting for the love of the objects. The possible increase in value is accidental. Not investing.”
    “So you put a lot of work in these seats?”
    “Not for an investment. Joy. The leather on these seats costs as much as many new cars –”
    I instinctively pulled my hand back from the seat worried I could stain it.
    He laughed at seeing me recoil, “You won’t hurt it. If I sell this car I won’t get more than the baseline cloth covering. But then I don’t tend to sell my cars.”
    “– what happens to them?”
    “I drive them until they get too worn and the maintenance gets too excessive. Then I use the accumulated real cash I would have spent on a new ride that I put into real investments that grew to buy the replacement vehicle.”
    I hoped he didn’t think like that about relationships.
    The car rolled forward. The gravel new and crunchy. A little dust stirred up to the vehicle and billowed passed us as Garin stopped the car. The moon shrunk as it came away from the horizon. Some shadowy clouds hung overhead and would shield the moon soon.
    “Where are we?” I asked as we got out of the car. It looked like an empty park. Some benches huddled by a shock of maple trees and looked over toward the city lights of Livix.
    “The highest spot for miles around. High enough to look out and see the city of