She had dropped into the office for a few hours the next day to try and cover for Aaron. She’d told his supervisor her boss was suffering from a nasty case of the flu and would be out for the rest of the week. Jessica, meanwhile, had also called in sick, leaving her assistant, Megan, in charge of the bookstore. Then she, Lucy, and Dara had spent the afternoon scouring Jessica’s paperbacks and the internet for any information they could find about vampires.
They’d emailed each other anything that looked interesting. Most of it seemed like nonsense, of course, and a lot of it was contradictory, but it was all they had to go on. It would have helped enormously, Lucy thought, if they could have spoken to someone who actually knew anything concrete about these creatures. If they could have consulted an expert. But so far, the man Nathan had recommended, Kiefer, had never answered his phone. Jessica had left messages until his inbox wouldn’t accept any more, and he hadn’t responded.
“Well, we have to do something,” Lucy said. “We can’t just sit around waiting to see what happens to the guys when they finally wake up. If they ever wake up.” She was referring to Jason as well as Aaron, since Dara had reported that her husband had also fallen into a coma-like stupor two days ago, and had yet to stir again.
“I agree,” Dara said with a sigh.
The three women were sharing a video chat on their cell phones, and Lucy could see how the past few days had taken a toll on her two friends, especially Dara, who had developed dark circles under her eyes. Lucy wondered if she looked as bad herself. Probably worse, she decided glumly, considering she’d been the least attractive member of the group to begin with.
“I feel weird talking about this over the internet,” Dara added, raking a hand through her curls. “Why don’t the two of you come over? Bring some clothes and stuff. I’ve got plenty of room, and you can both spend the night if you need to. But we won’t let ourselves leave here until we’ve come up with a plan to help the guys. Sound good?”
Jessica looked discomfited by the thought of a sleepover at Dara’s, but she nodded anyway. “Alright. Let me pack up a few things. I’ll be over in an hour.”
“I’ll come over, too,” Lucy agreed, “but I don’t know about spending the whole night there. I don’t want to leave Aaron alone for too long.” In truth, she didn’t want to leave him at all, but she knew it was unavoidable if she wanted to help him. Before heading out, she stopped by the bedroom to check on him one more time.
Aside from the icy coldness and unnatural pallor of his skin, he seemed alright. He was still breathing, and when Lucy touched his wrist, feeling for his pulse, it was strong. His eyes flickered back and forth underneath his eyelids, but he didn’t seem distressed. He looked like he was just enjoying a quick, peaceful nap. If only, Lucy thought, sitting down next to him. She took a moment to admire how handsome he looked lying there, dozing, and to consider how often she’d fantasized about having him here, in her bed, although never in a million years would she have anticipated such bizarre circumstances as these.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she murmured to him. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you.” She brushed her hand through his hair and laid a gentle kiss on his cheek, noting how his beard hadn’t grown at all since he’d shaved. She peeled the bandage, which she’d been replacing daily, away from his neck, and checked his wounds. The puncture marks looked smaller and less angry than before, as if they were healing over. Was that good, she wondered? Maybe it meant he was getting better. She dabbed some Neosporin on the holes and covered them back up. Then she hopped in her car and drove over to Dara’s place feeling slightly less apprehensive than before.
She felt even more encouraged when she stepped across Dara’s threshold and saw how normal everything inside her apartment looked. If she hadn’t known any better, she might’ve guessed her friend only looked so wrung out as she greeted her because she’d stayed up too late watching television, and not because, like Lucy, she had a nascent vampire hibernating in her back bedroom.
“Wow, you weren’t kidding,” Jessica said, coming up the stairs right after Lucy. “I guess Jason really has done alright for himself. This place is so swanky.” She dropped a pink and gray striped backpack on the carpet and glanced around. Her eyes grew round, and Lucy understood her awe. The luxury apartment Dara shared with her husband was spacious and elegant, with vaulted ceilings and plush carpeting. The decorations were spare, and the furnishings simple in design, but everything looked well-made and expensive. A huge barn wood picture frame loomed above the fireplace, displaying a professional wedding portrait in which Dara and her husband, Jason, held each other close and gazed lovingly at one another with radiant smiles.
“He’s always taken good care of me,” Dara said in her bashful voice. She’d forgone wearing any makeup today and had swept her cloud of Titian curls back into a ponytail. Despite her fatigue, she looked younger now than when she’d first come into the bookstore the other night, even more like the fresh-faced teenager Lucy remembered from their high school days. “Why don’t you guys come into the kitchen,” she said, gesturing. “I’ll get us some drinks.”
“Oh, great,” Jessica headed in that direction, “I could really go for a highball. Especially one made with the sort of classy booze I’m guessing you’ve got stashed around here.”
Dara’s eyebrows rose. “I was thinking more like green tea, or maybe some coffee.” Seeing Jessica’s disappointment, she flashed a small, exhausted smile and amended, “But honestly, a whiskey and soda sounds so much better. Lucy, what’s your poison?”
Lucy, no connoisseur of alcoholic drinks, just asked for the same thing.
While Dara poured the drinks for them, Jessica and Lucy wandered around her kitchen. Jessica’s curious gaze landed on a cluster of photos tacked to a bulletin board hanging beside the massive stainless-steel refrigerator. Tapping a shot of Dara and Jason, smiling and hugging against some gorgeous, tree-covered backdrop, she blurted, “Your husband’s really cute, Dara.”
Amusement crossed Dara’s wan face as she screwed the cap back on the Real Spirits Signature Whiskey bottle. “Um, thanks-?”
Lucy smiled. “Where did the two of you meet?”
“At work.” Dara poured club soda into each of the glasses. She smiled as she told them about Jason coming to her rescue again and again as an IT version of a heroic knight. Then clouds darkened her eyes again, and she added, “Jason was the first real friend I ever had, you know. The only person I’ve ever felt totally comfortable around?”
Lucy was surprised by the lonely note in her voice. “You were always so popular back in school,” she pointed out.
Dara pushed a cut glass tumbler across the island toward each of them. “People were attracted to my looks,” she said flatly. “So they hung around me a lot. Most of them didn’t care to look much beyond the surface, though. And the few guys I dated before Jason…well, let’s just say they didn’t understand what I wanted in a relationship. I had…quirks I felt I needed to hide.”
As Lucy picked up her drink, she caught Jessica rolling her eyes, but thankfully Dara didn’t seem to notice.
“You have no idea some of the stuff Jason and I have been through together,” Dara went on, still in that flat voice. “A few years ago, my purse got snatched in a parking garage. The mugger jumped me in the stairwell, punched me in the face, and knocked me down the steps. The fall broke my arm.” She drew a tremulous breath as she touched her elbow. “I was already an introvert with a few low-grade anxiety issues, but after that…well, let’s just say it’s taken a lot of counseling and quite a bit of time for me to get better. In some ways, I still haven’t.” Her gaze flicked to the photos on the bulletin board. “But Jason has been incredible. So supportive. And he’s never acted like it’s any sort of burden to have to deal with me and my weirdness about wanting to stay in a lot of the time now…” Tears had leaked from the corners of her eyes, and she swiped at them almost angrily. “I’m not trying to make you guys feel sorr
y for me,” she sniffled. “My point is that I’d do anything for Jason. I will do anything. I honestly don’t even care what it is.”
Jessica’s expression had softened a bit. “Hang onto that state of mind, girl,” she said, tipping her glass toward Dara, “’cause who knows what we might have to do over the next few days?”
The three of them moved to the breakfast table, where an earnest discussion began over what each of them thought they should do next. Lucy brought up something she’d been contemplating for over a day already, ever since the first time Kiefer hadn’t answered his cell phone.
“Why don’t you try talking to Nathan again, Jessica? Tell him Kiefer’s not picking up and we need to know if there’s anyone else he can recommend to help us.”
Jessica shifted in her seat. “I don’t know, Luce. I’d rather not. He basically told me he’d be risking his family members’ lives if he got too involved with us and our problems. If anything happened to his relatives…well, I wouldn’t want that on my conscience, would you?”
“We could try hunting the vampire ourselves,” Dara suggested, and the other two turned to gape at her. Dara shrugged. “What? You mean to tell me neither of you had thought of that yet?”
Jessica smirked. “No, I’d definitely thought of it. I just wouldn’t have expected you to be the one to bring it up first.”
Dara touched her glass, turning it around and around on the table in a nervous gesture. “I won’t pretend the idea doesn’t scare me to death, but…this thing is out there. Hurting people. We can’t just let that go on. Not to mention that if—when—Jason and Aaron wake up, they’ll probably both be bloodsucking freaks. Nathan said the only way he knew to break a vampire’s curse was by killing its maker. Unless Lucy and I want our guys to be monsters forever, what choice do we have but to take out this thing that attacked them?” She paused, biting her lip. “Like I said, I’ll do anything.”
Lucy and Jessica were silent for a moment, contemplating. Finally, Lucy said, “How would we even do it, though? I mean, first we’d have to find it. And then what? We put a stake through its heart? Chop off its head? Set it on fire?” It seemed there were dozens of theories on how to kill a vampire clogging the internet, but they had no way of knowing which ones contained even a kernel of truth.
“Yes, yes, and yes.” Jessica tapped her fingers on the table. “That ought to do it, right? Nothing could survive all that.” She hopped up and went into the living room. She came back with her backpack, settled it on a chair, and unzipped it. “I’d had a gut feeling the conversation might eventually head this way, so I went over to my parents’ house while they weren’t around and raided one of their sheds. I grabbed a few of my dad’s hunting knives. A machete would’ve probably been better, but I couldn’t find one.” She pulled three leather sheathes from the backpack, slipping a shiny blade out of each of them. “We can each carry one of these bad boys,” she said, laying the weapons out on the table. The knives looked enormous and wickedly dangerous to Lucy, but she couldn’t help reaching for one.
“What about your dad’s guns?” she asked, sliding the blade toward herself.
“I figured he’d be more likely to miss one of those,” Jessica said. “And anyway, I doubt a gun would be much help against a vampire. It’s not a werewolf that we could maybe take out with silver bullets. Although I guess we should be glad about that, because where would we even get silver bullets?”
Dara’s face brightened. “This is good, Jessica. Nice thinking.” She selected one of the other knives for herself and turned it over in her hands. She looked intently at Jessica, her eyes swimming with emotion. “Thank you for being here,” she said. “For helping us. I know Lucy and Aaron are your friends, but you don’t know Jason at all, and you and I—”
“Oh, cut it out, Fuentes,” Jessica snapped, cutting her off. “I mean, Donovan. Now’s not the time to be getting sappy on me.” She paused, and her expression mellowed. “And of course I’m helping you. Like you said, this thing is out there, sucking people’s blood and acting like it can just turn whatever hot guys it runs across in our city into monsters.” Offense crimped her forehead and turned her mouth into a stern line. “What are we supposed to do? Just sit back and take it?”
“No,” Dara’s lips twitched like she was trying not to laugh. “No, I guess not.” She turned the knife over in her hands again, watching the light play along the lethal blade. “Alright,” she sighed. “So, now what?”
Jessica answered, “I say we go out and gather some more supplies—whatever else we think we might need. And then we start looking for this thing. Tonight.”
“Where do we look?” Lucy wondered. But then she remembered what Aaron had told her. “Wait. Aaron said this woman who attacked him approached him while he was at the Red Palm. That’s the bar across from that new Vintage Holmwood Hotel.”
Dara’s eyes widened. “Jason’s corporate party was in one of the banquet rooms at the Vintage Holmwood.”
Jessica brought her hands together in a single clap, rubbing her palms together. “Great! Then we have an idea of where this wench likes to hang out. Let’s go find her—and end her.”
Lucy stared at her friend. Jessica’s pretty face had darkened, and her topaz eyes were sparking with anger. I can’t believe we’re really talking like this, she thought, like we’re action heroes or something. If she hadn’t known just how serious the situation really was, she’d have been tempted to giggle.
As it was, the women threw back what was left of their drinks and got ready to go out shopping. Dara brought a purple gel pen and a notepad to the table and started a list.
“The knives are a good start, like I said,” she noted, “but we probably need more weapons.”
“Wooden stakes,” Lucy said. “That’s something that comes up again and again in every story and article about vampires. There must be something to it.”
“We can sharpen pieces of wood with the knives,” Jessica said.
“Won’t that dull the knives?” Lucy asked her.
“I brought a whetstone and a strop with me,” she replied. “We can sharpen them again if we need to. I’ll show you guys how to do it, just like my dad taught me when I was a kid.”
“How many stakes should we make?” Dara questioned.
“Well, we should each have at least two, right?” Jessica estimated. “In case we drop one or something?”
“When would we drop one?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know, during the struggle? While we’re fighting with the vampire?” Jessica flailed her fists around, performing vague combat gestures against an invisible opponent that seemed to have about twenty arms.
Fighting with the vampire, Lucy thought. We have to FIGHT A VAMPIRE!
She gulped, not wanting to think too hard about that part. “Okay. Well, um, we should make them in different sizes, too,” she suggested, “since we aren’t sure how thick they need to be in order to get the job done. So, maybe…four each?”
Dara wrote down ‘stakes’ and etched a number twelve beside it. “What else?” she asked.
Jessica fished an ice cube from her glass and popped it into her mouth. “I know I said fire was a good idea,” she said around the ice, “but if we do corner this thing outside a bar, I don’t know how realistic it will be for us to just torch her there, out in the open. There might be other people around, or we could accidentally set a building on fire. Maybe we should just stick to the knives and stakes.”
“What if we can move the remains elsewhere, though?” Dara asked. “We could take them out someplace remote and burn them there, just to be safe.”
“That’s assuming there’s even a body left to burn,” Lucy pointed out. “A lot of the stories say vampires just turn to ashes whenever they’re killed.”
“Yeah,” Jessica looked at her, “but what if this one doesn’t? Dara’s right. If there’s anything left, we’ll need to get rid of it. Completely destroy it, just in case.”
“So, we’ll
need, what, lighter fluid? Matches?”
“I’ve got some long lighters I use with my scented candles,” Dara said, writing down ‘charcoal lighter fluid.’ “We can use those.”
“We should get something to wrap the dead vampire in,” Jessica added. “’Cause I know I don’t want that just rattling around in the trunk of my car.”
“We can use my car,” Dara volunteered. “It’s an SUV; plenty of room. But you’re right, Jessica, we should buy a drop cloth or something.”
“And maybe some duct tape,” Lucy suggested. Jessica gave her a questioning look. “Duct tape always comes in handy,” Lucy explained with a shrug.
“Duct…tape.” Dara added it to the list in her looping, feminine script, and then dropped the pen beside it and pushed back her chair. She said, “Okay, you guys. Let me go check on Jason for a second, and then, if you’re down, we can go pick up all this stuff at the hardware store right away.”
“Oh, we’re down,” Jessica assured her, flicking a quick glance at Lucy. “We’re down for anything.” She and Lucy watched her head toward her bedroom.
When she returned a few minutes later, Dara said, “Alright, Jason’s okay.” She stopped short, pulling a face. “Well…as okay as can be expected, anyway.” Grabbing her wallet and keys, she led the others downstairs to her garage, where she let them into her shiny black 4Runner. It was so fresh off the lot, the interior still smelled brand new. They drove down a few blocks, to the nearest big-box hardware store, and used Dara’s platinum card to charge everything they’d decided they needed.
◆◆◆
Back at the Donovans’, Dara spread paper towels over her kitchen table, and the women sat down together, to whittle a dozen dowel rods into a stack of deadly-looking stakes.
“Wow, Donovan,” Jessica marveled at how quickly Dara was outpacing both her and Lucy, “you’re better at this whole would-be badass vampire assassin thing than I ever would’ve guessed.”
The Sharpest Kiss Page 8