by Laura Legend
“I already told you I’m not interested. I don’t know who you are or what you want. But my work has been officially classified a disaster by the university and I don’t take well to being badgered by anonymous texts from strangers.”
Cass heard Zach bang through the door behind her, still tying his apron.
“Everything all right here, Cass?” Zach asked.
Mr. Harvard was confused by Cass’s response and flustered by Zach’s sudden appearance and protective posture. He withdrew his hand and stood up straight, more than a foot taller than Cass. She could tell he was not used to bumping into any kind of objections or road blocks. He was used to just getting what he wanted. Immediately.
Definitely a damn Leo, Cass thought.
“But I never—” the stranger began, recovering.
She cut him off. “If you don’t need a coffee, then please leave. Now. My boss is going to come out here any minute; I’m already on thin ice, and you’re going to get me fired.”
She watched him realize that she was serious and, more, that he had misjudged the situation. He had misjudged her. Still, being a Leo, he would probably come back and start over again.
He hinted at a theatrical bow with a little wave of his hand, snapped his card onto the counter—Richard York—and turned on his heel to leave, cell phone in hand.
Cass was surprised that he’d agreed to go so quickly. And, to be honest, part of her was sad to see him go. She was pleased, though, to feel the hostile, jealous vibe coming from Zach. It was a welcome consolation prize.
7
Java’s Palace was dead the rest of the day. Only a handful of people wandered in over the next couple of hours and not a single one of them looked like a bronzed Olympic swimmer in a ten-thousand-dollar suit with an MBA from an Ivy League school. Not a single damn one.
Cass chatted a bit with Zach, but after the little incident with Mr. Harvard he seemed withdrawn and distracted, and spent most of his shift in the back reorganizing the supply room. Since they were working the evening shift their manager had already gone, and it was just the two of them.
A couple of times she heard Zach swearing like a sailor as he wrestled with boxes of styrofoam cups, but she didn’t check on him. She just gave him some space. What happened between a man and his styrofoam cups wasn’t any of her business. Plus, all the baristas at Java’s lived by the same shared code: what happened in the stockroom, stayed in the stockroom. The stockroom was a sacred space.
Cass wasn’t really in the mood to talk anyway. Like Zach, she felt distracted, her mind ping-ponging between thoughts about her dad, her dissertation, and Mr. Harvard. Though, given the unpleasant associations of the first two, her thoughts were tending toward Harvard.
She patted the front pocket of her jeans. She could feel his business card burning a hole in it.
She pulled it out and looked at it again. It was obviously expensive—heavy black backing with embossed white lettering—but it didn’t contain any of the usual information. Just his name. It was like you were supposed to already know who he was and how to get in touch with him and, if you didn’t, then you probably weren’t supposed to.
She flipped the card over—nothing on the back. She smelled it. It bore the faint but distinct scent of pricey cologne. She thought about biting off a corner to see what it tasted like but decided that was just too weird.
Richard York, Richard York, Richard of York … What kind of name was that, anyway? English royalty? Was his mom the duchess of something? It seemed like the kind of name you’d have if you were a leading member in some skull and bones Harvard cabal. Also, what about his first name, Richard? Did his friends call him “Dick” for short?
She didn’t know. This whole thing was strange.
Had she been too abrupt? Had she been wrong about this guy? What if Dick wasn’t a dick? Was there really something to her dissertation? Were people taking it seriously? Had she just shut the door on something that, at this low point in her life, she really needed, whether she wanted to admit it or not?
Pull yourself together Jones, or you’re going to end up under that park bench fighting pigeons for bread crumbs like Zach predicted.
She put the business card back in her pocket, pleased to again feel its subtle burn against her thigh.
When Zach popped his head in to say it was time to close, Cass sent him home and promised to wipe everything down herself. She wanted to be alone.
Zach caught her vibe and didn’t put up a fight. He grabbed his jacket and motorcycle helmet, gave her arm a squeeze, and headed out the door.
Once he was gone, Cass locked all the doors and got to work. She wiped down the counter and serving area first, then the tables. She flipped all the chairs onto the tables and swept the floors.
She gathered her stuff and was about to turn off the lights when she came to a decision. She pulled out her phone and reread the text from yesterday, the text that had started this whole thing and that she assumed was from Richard.
She could just text him. She had his number. She could just change her mind. She could simply arrange to meet him someplace safe and neutral and see what he had to say. She walked in a slow circle around the room and tried composing a message.
Changed my mind. Been thinking about your abs all day. Let’s meet for drinks.
No. That was not the right approach here. She deleted the whole thing and tried again.
Changed my mind. Let’s meet to talk more about what you’re proposing. - C
After the aborted first draft, though, this tamer draft still sounded too skeezy to actually send.
“What you’re proposing?” Am I expecting him to proposition me? Propose marriage? Good Lord! Which would be worse?
And now this little failed experiment in composing a text had her doubting her own motives. And motives, in the end, were the real sticking point. She could tell Mr. Richard York was being truthful with her, but she couldn’t tell why. In addition to doubting her own motives, she couldn’t tell the first thing about his.
She deleted the whole thing again and pocketed her phone.
I’ll get back to you tomorrow, Dick, she thought.
She locked the door behind her and headed toward her car. She turned the corner, lost in her own thoughts, and was almost to her car, keys in hand, before she noticed three big guys in black leather with ominous postures waiting for her there.
Her first thought was: Shit.
Her second thought was: Black leather? Seriously?
Her third thought was, again: Shit.
But her fourth thought was more useful: Swords. In the trunk.
She decided to make the opening move.
“Hey guys,” she said. “Mind getting off my car?”
The men stood up straight and gathered themselves.
“Ms. Jones?” the tallest asked.
Cass tightened her grip on her keys, slipping three of them between her fingers, improvising a set of sharp brass knuckles.
Go for their eyes and balls, she repeated to herself. Eyes and balls. Eyes and balls.
“Maybe,” Cass answered. “Who’s asking?”
“We are.”
“And who, pray tell, are you?”
Eyes and balls.
“Well, Ms. Jones,” the tall one said, his smile broadening to reveal a mouthful of sharp, brilliantly white teeth, “we’re vampires.”
Cass felt her lazy eye twitch and pull into focus. This guy was telling the truth. Or, at least, he thought he was.
8
“Riiight. And I’m the queen of England,” Cass replied. “Tea, anyone?”
Cass had a bad feeling about this, but, for the moment at least, she decided she didn’t really care what these men thought they were. All three had eyes and (presumably) balls. That was all that mattered for now.
The tall one signaled his two associates and they moved in tandem to grab Cass.
Cass dropped her bag and settled into a subtle defensive stance.
The
side street where she’d parked was dark and quiet. Several of the street lights were out. It was late and there wasn’t likely to be any traffic coming to her rescue. The air was cool and the incoming clouds signaled that rain, again, was on its way. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“Who can I serve first, gentlemen?” Cass asked. “Do you take sugar or cream with your tea? Would you like a biscuit or crumpet to round things out?”
Neither of the men smiled. The one to her left moved first. He was at least a foot taller than she was and had more than a hundred pounds on her. Showing his own set of pointy white teeth, he lunged for her arms, hoping to quickly pin her and settle this whole thing with a minimum of fuss.
Cass was waiting.
In one smooth motion, she slipped her foot through the strap of her dropped bag and swung her leg through a powerful arc that sent the bag, heavy with books, crashing into the man’s face, breaking his jaw and sending him reeling. He staggered backward, surprised, and spit out some bloody teeth into his hand. Blood and saliva dripped from his chin. He looked down at the teeth in his hand, then up at Cass in disbelief, and then back to the teeth in his hand. For a moment, Cass thought he was going to shrug off the blow, but then his knees buckled, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed onto the ground in a heap of black leather.
History books, one, she thought. “Vampires,” zero.
The leader, still hanging back, looked both surprised and amused.
The other guy, though, was not amused. He just looked angry. Cass could tell right away that she’d had her freebie. This guy was taking her seriously and he wouldn’t make the same mistake as his friend.
He tried to circle around Cass but she was slippery, ducked a punch, and put some extra distance between them.
The guy sneered, shrugged his leather jacket, and feinted a couple of jabs at Cass’s face.
Cass didn’t fall for it, though. In fact, she never fell for feints. In the same way she could tell when someone was lying with words, she could tell when they were lying with their bodies. This gave her a serious advantage when she sparred because her power to instinctively tell feints from true blows gave her an almost prescient fighting style. She could take advantage of openings that, technically, weren’t even open yet.
Still, this guy’s length was a problem. She would have to step well inside his strike zone if she wanted to get anywhere near tagging him, while he could stay a step back and keep her within reach.
He threw a couple more punches that she successfully dodged until, sensing an opening, Cass stepped right through a blow, shorting him, and threw an uppercut of her own that connected. While he was still stunned, she jabbed with her keys straight for his eye.
Bingo.
She could feel the soft tissue burst and felt, for a moment, disgusted by the bloody mess she’d made. This guy would never see out of that eye again.
But black leather guy number two was an experienced fighter and he took advantage of her disgust and hesitation. Ignoring the pain, he threw a haymaker that, even when she saw it coming, she couldn’t avoid. His fist slammed into the side of her face and her whole world exploded into stars. As Cass stumbled under the force of his blow, the man swept her leg, sent her sprawling to the ground, and moved immediately to deliver a flurry of game-ending kicks to her ribs.
Cass dropped her elbows to protect her side, squeezed her eyes shut, and curled into a ball.
She thought of her mom—would she see her again if she died? She thought of her dad—could he survive losing her and her mom? She thought of Zach. She thought of her dissertation. All these thoughts flashed through her mind as she braced herself.
Then she heard screaming.
“Aagghhh! What the—? Get off me, you damn cat!” the guy raged.
She stole a peek through her fingers and saw that an orange tabby—her orange tabby?—had attached itself to the guy’s face like something straight out of Alien. His hands and already bloody face were getting shredded by the cat’s razor sharp claws and teeth.
Cass hadn’t seen her cat in days—What the hell is Atlantis doing here?—but she wasn’t going to waste the chance he’d given her by wondering where he’d been or why he was here now. She got her arms under her for leverage and mule-kicked the guy right in the groin. He forgot about fending off the cat, grabbed his crotch, dropped to his knees, and started keening at an ungodly pitch.
Vampires, it turned out, did have balls.
As Atlantis jumped clear of the man’s face, Cass moved to finish him off. She delivered a round-house kick to his head that knocked him flat and turned out his lights.
Cass was still seeing stars and half of her face was going to be one big bruise tomorrow. She could already feel it swelling.
She stood up slowly, rolled her neck, vertebrae cracking, and spit the blood from her mouth.
History books, one. House cat, one. Vampires, still zero. Now, where’s that last guy?
The last guy was still leaning against her car, smiling. He greeted her victory with a mocking slow-clap that broke into laughter.
“Wow,” he said. “Just … wow. That was not what they said to expect. But I’m glad to have seen it. I’m glad you’ve got a little fight in you. This should be fun.”
Lightning cracked somewhere nearby, thunder followed almost immediately, and rain started to fall. Fat drops pattered the pavement between Cass and the man.
Cass wiped the water from her face. She didn’t feel any regret for hurting these assholes. They’d started it anyway. But she did feel something else, a kind of fire spreading from her heart out into the rest of her body, that she’d never felt before. It felt powerful. And she liked it—even as her own hungry response to that power worried her. This wasn’t just adrenaline. This felt like something more. This felt like magic. This felt like her mom.
As the fire spread up her neck and across her face, everything seemed to slow down. Time itself seemed to slow down. Her lazy eye locked into focus and her cataract swirled for a moment before it burnt off entirely, like morning fog under the heat of a rising sun.
Cass breathed deeply. Her eyes burned like black coals.
For the first time in a long time, everything seemed clear. Everything in the world seemed sharp and well-defined.
The rain was falling heavily now and her clothes were already soaked. Cass peeled off her jacket. Her tight, black “The Future is Female” t-shirt clung to her torso. She could feel her socks squish in her shoes. She rolled a hairband off her wrist and pulled her black hair back into a wet ponytail.
“You never said,” Cass yelled above the sound of the rain, “whether you wanted sugar and cream with that tea. It looks like we’re out of cookies, though. Take that up with your friends.”
The remaining guy smiled as the blood drained from his face making him, impossibly, even more pale then he already was. He cracked his knuckles and tossed his own leather jacket onto the hood of her car. His eyes turned albino pink and the veins and tendons in his neck and arms bulged. His fingernails looked more like claws. His whole body seemed to swell like he’d just pressed his “I’m Bane and now I’m going to break your back, Batman” button.
Shiiiit, Cass thought. Shit. Shit. Shit.
She considered running but knew she wouldn’t make it far. No, her only hope was in the trunk of her old Volvo.
Maybe if she ran straight at him, screaming, he’d be frightened and she’d put him off balance?
She took another look at him now, his chest wide and heaving as he breathed heavily like something that had escaped from the zoo.
Uhhh, probably not, she thought.
In the end, he decided for her. With blazing speed, backlit by a crack of lightning, he rushed her, leading with his shoulder, looking to tackle her.
Normally, Cass wouldn’t have stood a chance. But as he made his move, she felt the heat flare through her body again. With her eyes focused and her vision clear, time slowed to a crawl. Rather than ducking or trying
to slip to the side, Cass took a running step toward the vampire, met him halfway, and vaulted neatly over his back, sending him sprawling.
Key fob still in hand, she popped the trunk of her car before she’d even landed. She took the landing in stride and, before the guy could even get to his feet, she was already pulling a sword from the trunk of her car.
Now who’s in charge, asshole, she thought as she brandished her sword.
This last guy was back on his feet now. His eyes flashed with fear and anger when he saw the sword and she grinned back at him.
But this only lasted a moment before he started laughing.
What the hell?
Case looked down at the sword in her hand.
It was a padded practice sword.
What was she going to do, tickle him with it?
The guy was on top of her in the blink of an eye, batting the sword from her hand and pinning her against the rear of her car. He seemed even larger than he had been a moment before. She tried to knee him in the balls but he blocked her blow.
His teeth shone in the dark and he leaned in toward her. Was he going to bite her?
He really does think he’s a vampire! What the hell?!
Cass knew she only had a moment left to act. Shifting all her weight, she stomped on his foot, knocking him off balance, and then used that momentum to flip their positions. Now he was pinned against the back of her car, leaning back into the open space of her trunk. With one hand on his throat, Cass reached over him and grabbed the trunk lid. She smashed the trunk lid down onto his face again and again.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
And it did. But it didn’t seem to slow him down. It only seemed to make him angrier.
He roared back at her and, as she leaned past him to root in the trunk for some other kind of weapon, he tossed her into the air. Cass flew backwards and landed hard on her back, knocking the wind out of her.
The guy moved to pin her to the ground before she could recover but froze mid-stride. His eyes were locked on her right hand.
Case had found what she was looking for in the trunk: a razor sharp katana.