by Maria Arnt
It took every ounce of effort Tanya possessed to act natural. When he caught her staring, she pretended to examine the wall again. This close, she could feel the buzz again, but it was different, almost magnetic rather than repulsive. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something weirdly familiar about him.
“Wasn’t Set the evil Egyptian god?” Tanya asked, wanting to seem like she was part of the conversation.
Dr. Walker turned to face her, and she realized his eyes were a very pale aqua, just a ring of color around his large pupils in the darkness. They seemed almost to glow, like a gas flame, but it was probably just a trick of the light. Why were museums always so dark? He was beautiful, in an older guy kind of way, although his lips were too thin and he needed a haircut.
“He is cast as the villain in the Osirian cycle, and that is how most people today know of him. He was the god of destruction, and the open desert, but also foreigners and politicians,” he recited.
Tanya shrugged. “Sounds like the bad guy to me.”
His smile was amused. “Not necessarily. The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with cycles, you see. They felt the world hung in a delicate balance, and that the rites and rituals they performed convinced the gods to continue the eternal process of life, death, and resurrection. Death was as necessary as life, destruction as essential as creation.”
Something in Tanya’s brain clicked. “Resurrection?” she asked slowly.
He gestured around the fake embalmer’s shop. “Of course. Why else go to all this trouble, if you didn’t believe there was something better beyond death?”
Before she could ask him more, a young intern came running through the exhibit. “Dr. Walker!” he called breathlessly. “There you are. Your lecture is about to start.”
He turned, and glanced at his watch. “So it is,” he began to step away, then turned back to face Tanya and her mother again. “Excuse me, ladies. It was nice meeting you.” He nodded to Mrs. Cooper and then smiled at Tanya a moment before turning back to go.
Tanya’s heart was going a million miles an hour. What the hell had just happened? She looked at her mother, who for all she knew had just nearly died, but it looked like Julie was trying not to laugh. “What?” Tanya asked.
“Oh, honey. He’s nice, but he is too old for you,” Julie said fondly, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Tanya blinked rapidly. “Excuse me?” What the hell was she talking about?
“Don’t try to fool your own mother, I saw the way you looked at him.” When Tanya continued to stare at her blankly, she chuckled. “Like he was a tall, juicy steak,” she teased.
Tanya relaxed a little. Clearly, her mom had seriously misread her assessment of Dr. Walker. “Yeah, you’re right,” she laughed. “Way too old.”
She has no idea, she thought darkly.
A month later, Tanya was still on the fence about Seth Walker. It was the first time she hadn’t been 100% sure about a mark, but she felt like she had to do something.
Every time she thought she was sure one way or the other, he would break the mold. A week of normal activity, followed by three bars visited in one night. Rather than becoming progressively drunker with each venue, he lit up and seemed reinvigorated. Then he’d go right back to stodgy professor. There were never any complaints at the bars, so it could just be that he needed a night on the town to loosen up now and then.
In the end, she decided to strike. If he ended up being human, she should be able to tell pretty quickly, and could easily dash off and lose herself in the city. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but she was starting to go a little stir crazy.
Decision made, she went through the ritual of texting her dad.
After a few minutes, his response came back:
Tanya already had the answer typed in.
It was their code, her way of telling him who to go after should the worst happen. She knew he hated texting, all those years working as a mechanic had abused his hands and made his thick thumbs nearly numb. But he insisted on texting so he would have the words to look at later. It took him a long time to type the next message, though.
Somehow, even though she hadn’t told him her concerns, Tanya felt better for having talked to her dad. She could do what was necessary, and he would understand.
6
“Detective Bradley,” he answered his cell phone. It was 8:03 AM on a Monday morning, and he had just sat down at his desk. He tried to sip his fresh coffee and nearly burned his lips.
“Um, hi,” said the male voice on the other end. “This might sound a bit odd, but do you know my daughter, Tanya Cooper?”
Bradley frowned. He hadn’t heard from Tanya for a couple weeks, but that wasn’t unusual. She had hinted that her family didn’t know what she was up to, so he played it cool. “Name doesn’t ring a bell, can you describe her?”
“Spunky redhead, about 5’ 3”, bit of a foul mouth, and... unusual hobbies.”
Hmmm... Maybe Daddy knew more than Tanya had let on. “Oh yes, she’s a freelance reporter, right? Shows up at some of our more unusual crime scenes. Why?”
“Well... It’s just... She went up to Chicago about a month ago to chase a new... lead... And we haven’t heard from her in about ten days. We were wondering if she had contacted you more recently?” his voice was full of hope and concern.
Bradley’s stomach dropped, and he glanced up at the photo of Lexie. He knew that feeling, from the first few days she had gone missing, the incredulous hope that she had just dropped off the grid for a weekend hike or something. The stress of not knowing if it was something worse. If Mr. Cooper really did know what his daughter was doing, it would be nerve-wracking.
“I haven’t heard from her, but if you like I can see if I can contact her,” Bradley offered. He scrambled to find a pencil and paper in the disaster on his desk to jot down some details.
“She won’t answer her phone or her texts, or email or Facebook,” her father said, sounding a bit panicked.
Bradley smoothed a hand over his mustache, thinking. “I have a colleague up in Chicago I told her to contact. He may have heard from her more recently, or know how to get a hold of her. I’ll give him a call.”
“Al... Alright,” he sighed.
“Hang in there, Mr. Cooper. I’ll give you a call back later today, even if I haven’t heard anything.”
“Thank you,” he hung up.
The detective immediately dialed the number of his friend Detective Shiro and tapped the pencil against his desk while he waited for an answer.
“This is Shiro,” he answered, chipper as usual.
“Hey Shiro, it’s Bradley.”
“Tom! How goes it down in ol’ Saint Louie?”
“Pretty quiet. Shiro, I need to know if the girl I sent you, Tanya, ever showed up.”
“Well sure,” he said, mystified. “Met me for coffee. We discussed her current project and what I should expect to see. Come to think of it, she said she’d probably be done with it by now...”
Bradley pinched the bridge of his nose. Shiro was something of a kid genius, but he was definitely the absentminded type. But when looking for fellow vampire-aware cops, beggars could not be choosers. “Has she contacted you within the last ten days?”
“Hang on, let me check,” his voice became distant, and Bradley could hear him thumbing through his phone. “Nope. Last text was twelve days ago, on the third.”
“Her father just contacted me because they hadn’t heard from her either,” He said darkly.
“So she hasn’t made contact with anyone in over a week?” all the enthusiasm drained out of Shiro’s voice.
“No. Do you have her current number?” Tanya’s habit of frequently switching phones often made it difficult to track her down.
“Sure,” he read off the number, and Bradley copied it down quickly on the corner of a newspaper.
“I might be able to get her to respond to a text, but let me know if she contacts you first,” he instructed.
/> “Yes sir,” Shiro ended the conversation formally.
As soon as the call was over, Bradley tapped in the new number and sent out a text:
It was vague enough that if someone else read it, they wouldn’t know what was up, but strongly worded so if Tanya got it, she would have to respond. He put the phone away, expecting that if there was going to be a response, it wouldn’t be for some time.
To his surprise, it vibrated in his pocket not three minutes later.
Bradley frowned. What happened that would she need to go undercover, and how would she manage such a thing?
It struck him how serious the situation must be if she was driven to actually using proper punctuation.
Aha. Bradley smiled, glad he had guessed right.
There was no response, which he expected. He gave Mr. Cooper a call back.
“That was quick,” Mr. Cooper said hopefully when he answered.
“Yes. It seems that Tanya is deep undercover. She said you know what she’s really involved in, so I’m sure you can understand why it’s important that she stay under the radar for a while,” he explained.
Tanya’s father let out a long breath. “Yeah. She mentioned that her last... job... didn’t turn out like she expected.”
“How so?”
“Well... she said that her lead turned out to be... nothing special,” he said.
Bradley realized that Mr. Cooper must not be somewhere he could speak freely, but he could read between the lines. The vampire she had been hunting hadn’t been a vampire after all. He wondered if she had killed the poor schmuck. It would be her first collateral damage, and he knew from experience how hard it was to take that.
“She’s safe for now, though. I’ll let you know if I get any updates, but if she’s able she’ll probably contact you first,” he said, using his reassure-the-family voice.
“Okay. Is there anything else we should do? Like go turn on the lights in her apartment or something?” he asked.
“No,” Bradley said quickly. “It’s possible her place is being watched. It’s best if you just... Carry on, business as usual, you know?”
Mr. Cooper gave a pathetic chuckle. “Easier said than done.”
“For what it’s worth, I know how you feel. Hang in there. She’s a tough one, she’ll find her way out. I’m sure of it,” he lied.
“Alright. Thank you so much for all your help, Detective Bradley.”
“No problem.” He hung up and stared again at the photo of his daughter. Losing Lexie had all but ruined his life. His marriage had fallen apart, and he’d nearly lost his job when he tried to push an investigation into the existence of vampires. Worst of all was the gaping hole in his heart that his daughter had taken into her early grave, leaving nothing but the nagging suspicion that there was surely something he could have done to protect her.
He would do whatever he could to make sure that Tanya’s story would have a far different ending.
Tanya floated in a black void with nothing around her, not even her body. She wasn’t even sure if she existed. She could have easily floated away into nothing, but every so often something drifted down into that abyss to call her back.
A touch on her shoulder.
The sound of a rich tenor voice, almost singing. Sometimes she recognized the words, but couldn’t string them together to make any sense of them.
The texture of a cool, wet washcloth on her forehead.
A comb being pulled gently, carefully through her hair.
And always that voice, rumbling on like distant thunder, soft and oddly familiar and comforting.
If this is being dead, Tanya thought distantly, it’s really, really weird.
Other times, the sensations were not so pleasant. She ached all over, and she was so tired, but wasn’t she asleep already? Tanya wasn’t sure. She thought for a while she was burning, and then, later, freezing.
And she was always thirsty, desperately so. She could feel her cracked lips, her sticky throat. All she wanted was water. Instead, some other liquid, hot and thick and coppery, filled her mouth. It was nasty. She spat it out.
She had no sense of time passing, but the thirst grew stronger. Eventually, she drank the awful liquid. After a while, she learned to tolerate the cloying taste, and then like it, crave it. It became her whole world, waiting for that taste, gulping it down as fast as she could, feeling it drizzle down her chin.
The voice sounded pleased.
Tanya could feel herself pulling together, each tiny piece dragging her back into something that made sense. She was still very tired, could not even think of opening her eyes. But she could feel her body once more.
She awoke slowly, like on a lazy Saturday morning. Distantly she wondered what she had eaten to give her such weird dreams. She made to turn over and burrow under the covers, but something pulling on her arm kept her from moving.
Then she realized that she was upright, not laying down in her bed. She opened her eyes, then screwed them shut again at the bright light that stabbed into her head. Groaning, she tried again to open them just a crack.
“Tatiana?” the familiar voice said, and with understanding came recognition: Seth. “Are you awake?” he sounded strangely ecstatic. She heard his quick footsteps heading away, and then the light in the room dimmed considerably, so she pried her eyes open.
She felt oddly light, and hyper-aware of everything around her. Seth came into crystal-clear focus as he walked back towards her. “You are awake. At last.” He pushed a few strands of hair out of her face and smiled like she was the most beautiful, incredible thing he had ever seen.
That was enough to distract her for a moment, until she realized why she was vertical: her arms had been tied to a horizontal pole, effectively keeping her upright even while she was unconscious. She tugged at the bindings, panicking, and then froze at the wash of sensation, at the feel of the fabric of her shirt as it moved across her skin. She could feel every single fiber and thread. Looking down, it occurred to her that while the clothes she was wearing did belong to her, they were not the clothes she had last been wearing.
Panic and dread filled her. “What did you do to me?” she croaked. Had he drugged her tea? What was he going to...
“I have freed you,” he said gently as he began to untie her from the pole.
It took her a moment to realize he wasn’t describing his current actions. “From what?” she asked.
Once Seth had finished untying her, and she stood wavering on her own two feet, he looked her in the eyes and said, “From time.”
Tanya stood there, frowning, and then slowly remembered what had happened. How he had changed, one minute a harmless geeky professor, and then the next, her worst nightmare. What he had said before she passed out. We will speak again when you rise.
“No,” she whispered before she had even fully figured it out. “Oh, god, no....” She looked down at her hands, which no longer showed all the little scars she had collected over the last few years of fighting. “Oh please, no....” She looked back to Seth, hoping he would tell her she was wrong.
He just smiled. “Oh, yes. Have a look for yourself,” he gestured to the wall, where a huge decorative mirror hung.
She turned and looked. Even from across the room she could see every last detail, how her hair, once a subdued auburn, was now flame red with copper highlights and deep russet undertones. Her eyes, which had always been a sort of muddy hazel, were now apple green with brown and gold flecks. Her skin was perfect, free of the lingering acne that had bothered her since high school. The freckles remained, standing out against her delicate, cream-colored cheeks. Even her body had changed, she thought she looked thinner, more muscular, and yet her curves were more generous.
In the reflection, she could see Seth come up behind her, smiling, and saw the difference in him as well. He looked a little younger, early thirties at the oldest. He had changed his unkempt sable black hair. Now it curled perfectly in a look which, if not quite fashionable, suited
him exactly. He put a hand on her shoulder and whispered, “See how beautiful I have made you?”
Tanya whirled to punch him, or at least she tried. Instead, she overbalanced, tripping on her own feet and nearly falling over.
“Careful,” Seth warned, catching her in his too-swift hands. “You will need some time to get used to your new body.”
She tried to punch him again, and he easily dodged it. Shoving at him, she managed to escape his grasp, but her legs tangled up and she tripped. The cold concrete bit into her palms, and she gasped, scrambling to get up. Instead, she just flailed helplessly. The sounds of her struggle seemed impossibly loud, and her own heartbeat pounded in her ears. Every time she moved the clothes she wore dragged against her skin. It was too much, she couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, and it seemed like the world was crashing down on her.
Suddenly, Tanya was engulfed in darkness, something wrapping around her tightly. She panicked more, fighting against it.
“Shh, Tatiana, it’s all right, calm down,” she could hear Seth’s muffled voice, and it had the opposite effect he intended, making her gasp desperately for air.
Then a strange sensation washed over her, as if she were detached from her body again. She could still feel everything, could feel too much, but she stopped moving, and that helped. Her breathing evened out, stayed steady, and she became aware that the darkness around her was a soft, black blanket that Seth had wrapped her in.
“Listen to my voice,” he said slowly, and her heartbeat shifted to align with the rhythm of his words. “You are safe, Tatiana. No one will hurt you. Focus on the feel of the blanket, on its texture,” he ordered.
Without thinking, she did as he said. It was soft, some kind of fleece or maybe microfiber, warm and yet thin enough that she could breathe through it easily.