I didn't know how that would turn out, but I knew it probably wouldn't end well for Debbie. Vampires who bite in the asylum are usually dealt with the same way they deal with animals that kill people.
The ceilings in the asylum were high. Even with the net, I couldn't reach high enough to get her so long as she continued to fly as high as she could.
I took off in the direction she was flying, jumped up on the foosball table, and launched myself through the air, swinging the net over Debbie.
She fluttered around in the net, shrieking in a rage. She was clearly pissed. I couldn't exactly blame her.
"Come with me, Nicky," Cain said. "We'll let her out in my office."
It took everything I could to keep her in the net as she flapped her wings in a fury, trying to get out. At least in Cain's office, there wouldn't be anyone she could hurt.
Except for me, of course. If I got cut, I'd leak. I could fix it, usually by sewing up my wound with a strand of my hair, but it wasn't a pleasant experience by any means. Since I didn't have blood, my wounds didn't clot. If ever I got cut, I had to act quickly to avoid becoming a raisin.
The best way to avoid that predicament was to move fast, move carefully, and try not to get sliced by one of her clawed wings. Or, worse, get bitten.
I ripped off my Winnie the Pooh gown and threw it over the top of the net. I was in my panties and heels only. It wouldn't be the first time someone streaked in their skivvies through the asylum.
I ran behind Cain toward his office and, slipping through the door, he pulled it shut behind me.
"Alright, Nicky," Cain said. "Let her out. She already knows if she attacks me, she'll regret it."
"You told her who you are?" I asked. "How'd she react to that? She's a bit of a bible thumper."
Cain laughed. "She just wanted to know how I survived Noah's flood. And where my first wife came from."
I tilted my head. "Good questions. I'd like to know those answers, myself."
"Another time," Cain said. "Let her loose."
I took my gown off the net, and, with a few erratic flutters of her wings, Debbie flew out of the net, crashed into the wall, and fell to the ground. Cain leaped on her and, stroking her gently, whispered in her ear.
"Relax, Debbie. It's okay. You're safe. No one here wants to hurt you. We are here to help. Only to help."
As Cain spoke to her, she stopped shaking. As she relaxed, she resumed her standard shape. Of course, she was naked. I quickly wrapped my gown over her.
She might have to see me in nothing but panties and heels, but at least she wouldn't be naked and embarrassed.
Cain grabbed another sunlight collar from his desk. "Debbie, it's okay. Would you please put this on?"
"No!" Debbie said, shaking. "I'm not wearing that."
"It's just to make sure everyone's safe, Debbie. I know you don't want to hurt anyone. You're a good person, Debbie."
"I am!" Debbie said. "Or I was before I became... this!"
"Remember your neighbor," I said. "You didn't want to bite her. But you couldn't control yourself."
Debbie sighed. "Fine, put it on me."
Cain nodded, and with a kind smile, put the collar around Debbie's neck. "Why don't you take a seat, Debbie."
Debbie sat down. "Nicky, put something on. No one wants to see that."
If only she knew how many people actually did want to see me like this... including her son... but I was smart enough not to contradict her at the moment.
Cain picked up the phone from his desk. "Rutherford, would you bring Nicky another gown, please?"
"Thank you," I said.
Cain nodded. "Why don't you take the chair, Nicky."
I sat in the chair Cain usually sat in during our sessions. Cain moved to the front of his desk and leaned against it. "I think this will give us a good chance to talk about why we're all here."
"Don't waste the effort," Debbie said. "Why don't you just cut out my heart and be done with it?"
"You know we can't do that," Cain said. "Your son would be devastated."
Debbie huffed. "He'd get over it."
"No, he wouldn't," I said. "Despite everything, Devin loves you."
"He turned me into this," Debbie said. "If I'd died, I'd have gone to heaven. I'd be with Tom, now. But instead... now I'll be damned for sure."
"Why do you think you're going to hell, Debbie?"
"Because when I was staked, that's exactly where my spirit went. I was in a vampire hell!"
"That doesn't need to be your eternity," Cain said.
"I'm not going to take theology lessons from a murderer!" Debbie said, narrowing her eyes.
"Debbie, give him a chance. Cain isn't the same person you read about in your bible. He's changed..."
"No," Cain said. "It's fair. I've done things I'm not proud of. But even your God had grace for me. He put a mark of protection on me. He's kept me alive ever since."
"I still want to know how you survived the great flood," Debbie said.
Cain smiled. "I'm good at treading water."
Debbie laughed. "You seriously tread water for forty days?"
"The flood happened to come under a full moon," Cain said. "I swim better in that form. Happened to come upon a rather large boat."
"Noah let you on the ark?" Debbie asked.
"It was either that or risk me biting a giant hole in the hull. Noah made a choice. I think he was afraid that if he let me drown, he'd be complicit in my death. He was avoiding the seven-fold curse."
I smirked. "I'm sure that was awkward. I can't imagine Noah introducing you to his family."
Cain shook his head. "He kept me with the animals. I'll tell you what, that place smelled to high heaven."
I laughed. "I can imagine. The Neck have always been fond of the great flood."
"I thought you didn't have any clear memories of your time as one of the Neck," Cain said.
"I remember some things. It's sketchy. But we had something like a collective, ancestral memory. The Great Flood is one of those legends we're just born remembering. It was one heck of a meal."
Debbie cocked her head. "What the hell are you, anyway, Nicky?"
I glanced at Cain. He nodded at me. "What I am now is a woman. Nothing else matters. What I used to be, well, we all have a past, don't we?"
"Then what were you?" Debbie asked.
"I was a water elemental," I said. "A species known as the Neck. But I'm different now."
"You can't just change what God made you," Debbie said.
"Don't you believe that when you're saved, you become a new creation?" Cain asked.
"Yeah," Debbie said. "But we don't become a whole different species."
"But doesn't the Bible say that you're born in sin, born inclined to evil?"
"Yes, all have sinned and fall short of God's glory," Debbie said.
"So you believe that by a miracle of God, people can change, right?"
"Of course," Debbie said. "But that's different."
"You don't think God is capable of saving someone like Nicky?"
"It's not a question of what God's able to do," Debbie said, looking away at the wall. "It's a matter of what he does do. And I don't know of any example in my Bible of God changing some other species into a human."
"So what story does the Bible tell, exactly?" Cain asked.
"It's the story of God's people from the beginning. How he saves them, from the fall into sin, until the end of time."
Cain nodded as he pinched his chin. "You asked how I found a wife, right?"
"I did!" Debbie said. "If you were a child of Adam and Eve, did you marry some sister that the bible didn't mention?"
"The Bible is the story of God's people, of Israel. It doesn't tell us everything that God ever did. It doesn't tell you, for instance, what my curse and mark really were. It also doesn't tell you about other people God might have made."
"So you did marry your sister!" Debbie said. "Disgusting!"
Cain shook his
head. "My parents might have been the first humans, special people given a unique task to care for the earth. But that doesn't mean that other people, other clans of people, weren't made, too."
"I see what you're saying," Debbie said. "I suppose that makes sense. Sort of."
"There's a lot that happened in the world that was never recorded in your Bible. There's a lot your God did, too, that he never revealed to the prophets who wrote it down. But doesn't it align with the character of the God you worship that he might love other creatures, that he might choose some among them to bless in various ways?"
"God is good," Debbie said. "All the time."
"I believe that Nicky is one such person upon whom, through many unlikely ways, God has shown his grace, that He has blessed and given a chance at redemption."
I snorted. I hadn't ever thought about it that way. Mostly because I never gave religion, or God, any consideration at all. But Cain was working his psychotherapeutic magic. Far be it from me to contradict him.
There was a knock on the door.
"Come in," Cain said.
Rutherford appeared with another gown and handed it to me.
"The Smurfs? Seriously?"
Rutherford shrugged. "Beggars can't be choosers."
Chapter nineteen
It's not easy to sleep when there's a vampire on the other side of the room—even if it was Devin's mom and she was wearing a collar at the time. If she wanted to, she'd just bat shift out of it. Of course, I didn't need sleep. Vampires don't, either. And in Vilokan, without sunlight, there wasn't any reason why vampires and the rest of us couldn't have the same waking hours.
"What are your intentions with my son?" Debbie asked, her voice interrupting the awkward silence and my attempt at counting the ceiling tiles in our room.
"I honestly don't know where our relationship is going. But right now, my only intention is to love him and protect him."
Debbie huffed. "Just like his father. Love him and protect him. By making him a vampire hunter."
"In all due respect, ma'am, Devin was hunting vampires for the Order before I ever met him."
"I know," Debbie said. "But you're keeping him in it. I loved his father, don't get me wrong. But I always figured if anything ever happened to Tom, I could get Devin out of that scene."
"He's not involved with the Order anymore."
"But he's still hunting vampires."
"Is that what you think we're doing? Looking for vampires, tracking them down, just to get rid of them?"
"Well, aren't you?" Debbie asked.
"They're hunting us," I said. "The same vampires, like the bat shifter that bit you, have been coming after him. I've been helping keep him safe."
"Which wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been there, at the church, the night Tom died. When Mina let all those bat shifting vamps free."
"Whatever would have happened, had I not been there, you can be certain would have been a lot worse. You realize, an ancient vampire who had the power of compulsion had infiltrated the high ranks of the Order and was basically running everything, including your husband?"
Debbie sighed. "Devin told me about that."
"Do you seriously think Devin was better off serving a pseudo-religious Order, one doing the bidding of a vampire, than he is with me?"
"I already said I didn't want him in the Order, either. It's not like being with you was his only alternative. He could have taken up an honest job, met a nice girl at church. Had a normal life."
"First," I said. "Devin is studying graphic design at the community college. I'm not getting in the way of that. Second, has it occurred to you that maybe what you want for him isn't what he wants for himself?"
"Every day," Debbie said. "I know he doesn't want that. But maybe if you were out of the picture, he'd come to his senses."
"I am a nice girl, ma'am."
"Yeah, right," Debbie huffed. "You're not even human, much less a girl."
"I am, on both accounts," I said firmly. "But I don't need your approval to be comfortable with who I am."
"Good, " Debbie said. "Because you don't have it."
"But Devin could really use it," I said. "That boy loves you with his whole heart. Like a son should love his mother."
"And I love him, too! Why do you think I'm so concerned?"
"You may love him," I said. "But you don't accept him for who he is."
"I only want him to be the kind of man that God wants him to be."
"You mean, a person full of love for others? A compassionate person who genuinely wants to make the world a better place?"
"What he's doing with you. The bible calls it an abomination."
I snorted. "I've read about that. First of all, I'm a woman. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it."
"I don't smoke. It's sinful."
"Of course not," I said, rolling my eyes even though I knew she couldn't see it. "But hasn't it occurred to you that the bible condemns all sorts of things that the church usually turns a blind eye to? When I read the bible the first time I was at this asylum, the big picture in what I read was that love overcomes sin. All Devin is asking for is to love whomever he will love. Isn't that what Jesus said the greatest command was? To love God, first, and to love one another second?"
"Like I said, I love my son. I just don't accept his choices."
"And isn't the God in the bible someone who loves and accepts us in spite of ourselves? I think if you're reading the whole Bible just to sort out what is or isn't sin, you're missing the point. I mean, Jesus said that even if a man looks at a woman lustfully, he's committed the sin of adultery in his heart. I think he was just making the point that none of us can point the finger at others, for their faults, without being guilty ourselves. What I got from that was that pointing fingers and fixating on other peoples' sins was the bigger problem. All of us, equally guilty, but all of us equally loved."
"You've given this a lot of thought," Debbie said. "You said you only read the bible when you were here, before?"
"That was the first time I read it," I said. "I've been rereading it since I got together with Devin. I'm just trying to understand it because I know it's a part of his life."
"Devin is a warlock now," Debbie said. "It used to be a part of his life."
I sighed. "He still reads his bible, says prayers every morning. Being a warlock, and believing in the message of the Bible, aren't mutually exclusive."
"But what you two do together..."
"What do you think we do together?" I asked. "Believe it or not, we haven't done anything like what you're implying. Not yet, anyway."
"You haven't? I just assumed since he struggles with perversion...."
"If we did do it, it wouldn't be a perversion, ma'am. Respectfully, it would be an expression of our love."
"So he doesn't want to do... you know?"
"It's not him," I said. "I'm a virgin. And like a gentleman, he's been patient with me."
"I had no idea," Debbie said. "I just figured..."
"Not everything you've figured is true," I said. "But perhaps you should talk to him about why he's made the choices he's made. And by talking to him, I mean listen to what he has to say. Don't just talk at him about what you want him to do or not do."
Debbie didn't respond right away. Not for about thirty seconds. "Thank you, Nicky. I think you're right."
Now it was my turn to be silent. Not because I didn't have anything to say, but because it was the first kind thing Debbie had ever said to me, it was unexpected. "Of course," I said. "What we have in common is that we both care about your son."
"And we both change into bats!" Debbie said, laughing to herself. "I can't believe that this is my life."
"Another sentiment I can agree with," I said. "But can I give you a little advice?"
"What's that?" Debbie asked.
"When I first was changed into this form, when I became human, I thought I'd become something inferior to what I was before. I've now met more than one vampire
capable of compassion. I'm willing to admit that I was wrong on both accounts."
"Wrong about what, exactly?"
"That humans are inferior to elementals, that they're nothing but walking meals. And that vampires are purely evil. Humans are, in many ways, superior to the Neck. They know love, they have compassion, they have families. While I'm still mostly cynical about the goodness of vampires, I can say this much, that it isn't what someone is that makes them good or evil. It's the life they choose for themselves that defines them. You may have to drink human blood, but there are ways you can do it that won't leave humans traumatized. You can choose to see what you have as a gift rather than a curse."
"Sounds like something you might need to learn, yourself," Debbie said.
"I'm working on it. But since we're celebrating what we have in common-it seems that we share a really good shrink, too."
"He's surprisingly impressive and insightful," Debbie said.
I laughed. "His insights don't just come from his education. Did you know he actually studied with Freud, himself?"
"I didn't!" Debbie said. "I have to say, though, that if it is true it's pretty impressive.."
"It is," I said. "But I think, you know, based on what I read about his history in the bible, he's had more than a curse to overcome. He's had his own mommy and daddy issues to deal with."
Debbie sighed. "And not just with his parents, not just with Adam and Eve. It was when God rejected his grain offering but accepted his brother's sacrifice that he became jealous and killed Abel."
I chuckled. "I don't know if it took him that long, but I can imagine Cain laying on Freud's couch venting about it thousands of years later."
"I can too! But ultimately, like Cain told us earlier, God still showed him grace. Maybe I need to do the same with Devin."
"In your own way," I said. "I think you're right."
"You know, Nicky. I didn't think I'd ever say this. But I can see what Devin likes about you."
"You mean, he likes me for more than my fantastic legs?"
"I'm sure it's your butt, too. You have a nice one."
I almost choked on my tongue. "Um, thanks? I think?"
Bat Shift Crazy: An Ex-Shifter turned Vampire Hunter Urban Fantasy (The Legend of Nyx Book 2) Page 10