Death Over Easy

by Tawdra Kandle

  “How did Diego become a vampire?” I was curious; it seemed that he must have been fairly new to the life when he’d changed Veronica, since his brothers had been alive.

  She pressed her lips together. “That is his story to tell, and not mine. All I can tell you is that it happened one night when he had been riding home very late, along a dark and lonely road, and he never knew for sure the name or face of the man who’d sired him into this life. Or this non-life. He was found wandering and delirious the next day and taken home, where they feared he would die. But apparently the vampire who made him slipped into his bedroom and delivered the bad news, that he was now a blood-drinker. That happened only about six months before Diego and his brothers visited our villa.”

  “Is Diego . . . still alive?” I thought of the vampire stories I’d read. In those, sometimes vampires went underground for decades, when the undead life just became too much for them.

  “He is.” Veronica hesitated and then shook her head. “More on that later. For now, I’ll tell you that the day my son passed from this life, I left Diego. I told him that I had fulfilled my obligation to him, kept my promise, and now I was going to live on my own.”

  “But what about the rest of your family? Your grandchildren? Didn’t you worry Diego might kill them if you abandoned him?”

  She smiled. “As odd as it sounds, Diego is a man of his word. That night, when I’d begged him to go away and leave us alone and we’d made our bargain, he’d accepted my blood in exchange for that of Benito and Adriano. In his mind, my grandchildren, my siblings’ offspring . . . they were of no matter. I’d kept my end of the deal, and so would he.”

  “What did you do? Where did you go?”

  She stretched out her arms. “Oh, dear girl, where didn’t I go? After all that time, I was finally free. I went all over Europe, down into Africa, into China and India . . . eventually, I made my way to the New World. My family was among the early settlers in this lovely state. I kept my eye on them in St. Augustine, and then I visited now and then once they’d established the home base at Harper Creek. For years, I had to continue my practice of drinking from the dying, but the longer I was a vampire, the more I began to learn. I was eventually able to take little drinks, without killing a human. And once those marvelous places called blood banks were invented, I never was forced to drink from a living person again.”

  “How many did you turn over the centuries?” Lucas was terse as he stared at Veronica. “How many lives did you turn inside out? How many blood suckers like you did you create?”

  She pursed her lips, her eyes wide and frigid as she returned his glare. “One. In nearly four hundred years, I turned one person. Just you, Lucas. Only you.”

  For a few minutes, the air between them crackled with tension. Lucas was wound so tight that I feared he might leap onto her, and Veronica was like a cat, watchful and waiting.

  Lucas slumped back in his seat, closing his eyes. “So now we know your story. Can you fast-forward through the colonial era, the Revolution and the antebellum years and maybe bring us into the twenty-first century?”

  “Of course.” Veronica didn’t respond to his baiting with anything but a slight smile. “But you have to understand, as I pointed out, that I had been keeping my eye on my family over the years. I had seen that my own gift had been passed on through the generations—and I had also realized that in some of my descendants, that ability had morphed a little. Some had other talents that were related to my mind hearing, even they weren’t exactly the same. And before long, those in my family with these gifts began to seek out others like them. When the Institute was created in the late eighteen hundreds, I was very pleased. I thought my mother, particularly, would have liked this idea, as she’d been one of the most practical and accepting people I’d ever known.

  “Now and then, I used my connections to help the Institute. I’d send information, or I’d nudge someone along. It let me pretend that I was part of them, even though of course to this modern group of Carruthers, I was nothing more than a footnote in the family history.

  “And then . . . something happened. I was in California in the late 1960’s. Well, everyone who was anyone spent some time there during those years.” Veronica looked a little embarrassed; I had the sense that if she could have blushed, she might have been doing just that. “I was a flower child. A hippie. I hung out in Haight-Asbury, I participated in sit-ins . . . and the music! Oh, God, the music. Janis Joplin. Jefferson Airplane. The Grateful Dead. The Mamas and the Papas. I heard them all, and I even knew some of them fairly well.” She smirked a little. “I had a lot of money by then, and no one else had two cents to rub together. I funded quite a lot of concerts, road trips and protests.”

  I tried to imagine this beautiful, exotic woman with granny glasses and flowers in her hair. “It must have been incredible to live through that time.”

  “It was. Oh, I’ve been part of so many ages . . . it can make me tired to remember, but there was hope in those days. Even though we were horribly cynical, it was a different sort of cynicism. We liked to talk a lot, but deep down, we really thought we could end war. Save the world.” She met my eyes. “Unfortunately, in some people, that hope and belief evolved into arrogance—a misplaced sense that it was our duty to do whatever was necessary to change society. People twisted our message in horrible ways, and the things that happened . . . well, it sickened me.

  “But none more so than the day I heard through the grapevine about a commune north of San Francisco. A friend of mine told me a story about a group of men and women who had gone a step further than the rest of us. These people had been delving into the supernatural. They’d been studying the paranormal. Some of the leadership believed they’d been called to open the door to another world—a world of peace and serenity, a world without war. But they also knew that this couldn’t happen without bloodshed. And they were willing to make that happen.”

  This was beginning to sound eerily familiar. “The Hive. That was—what was his name? Donald?”

  Lucas nodded. “Donald Parcy. You were part of that?”

  She rolled her eyes, impatient. “I wasn’t part of it. I was trying to stop it. Most people who heard about this group figured they were crazy. But being who and what I was, and knowing what I did, I realized that they could be inviting into the world an evil that they could neither anticipate nor control.”

  “What did you do?” I gripped the edge of the table. It was like something out of a movie . . . except, I reminded myself, it was real.

  “I got to the commune as fast as I could, and I insinuated myself into the leadership. I used my mind hearing to get a closer look at their plans. And then I realized something: they were way off on their timing. They were using some faulty texts as the basis for the date of their ritual, and it was going to be wrong. I began to relax, because I thought, well, nothing will happen and then eventually they’ll all just fall away. They’ll forget about it.

  “Still, just to be on the safe side, I hung around until the day of ritual came. Only five of them were allowed to take part, but I listened in on their minds so I knew what was happening. Everything went according to their plans, until it didn’t. They were so disappointed that I also felt sorry for them. I was about to duck away and disappear, when I heard . . . something. It was a voice, and not a human one. A shot of pure power ran through the five men, and it was strong enough that even just hearing it through the minds, I was knocked off my feet. The pain . . . it was incredible.”

  “What did the voice say?” I held tight to Lucas’s hand, not even aware that my nails were biting into his palm.

  “It wasn’t a language they could understand, but I could and did. It was ancient. And it was insistent. The voice was telling them, Open the door. Open the door. Over and over, pushing and demanding. I lay on the ground there in the woods, and I curled in on myself. I hadn’t been in that much misery since the day Diego had turned me. But I didn’t know what to do.

  �
��Finally, there was some kind of a snap, as though a string had broken or a wall had crumbled. I couldn’t explain it. The pain eased, the voice stopped, and I was just getting to my feet when something went through me, like the bitterest wind you could ever imagine. It was cold, and it was ugly, and I was more frightened than I’d been the entire time, because I realized that whatever they had let into our world was now free.”

  “That was the demon.” Lucas sighed and leaned his forehead into his hand. “They opened the door and let it escape.”

  “Exactly.” Veronica glanced at me and then back at Lucas. “That day, I didn’t know what to do next. I wanted to give chase, but I didn’t even know how to start pursuing an entity I could neither see nor hear. I started toward the five men, but the closer I got to them . . .” She massaged her forehead as though feeling the ache from that day. “Chaos. Complete and utter chaos in their brains. Whatever had been unleashed had unhinged them all. They were babbling madmen. The rest of the commune didn’t know what was going on, but once the men began to stagger out of the clearing, there was screaming, and people ran as far away as they could. I tried to help, but it was no use.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I thought about going to Carruthers with the story, but there wasn’t anything that they could do any more than I could. I realized all I could do was wait and see. For a solid year, I stayed in northern California, waiting and watching for I didn’t know what. But nothing happened. The Summer of Love ended, the age of the hippies began to end, and it seemed I’d been worried for nothing. I couldn’t perceive anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Until . . .?” Lucas prompted.

  She inhaled. “Until Carruthers had a case that involved a local senator and a friend of his who was going to run for office. The would-be candidate had a girlfriend who was murdered, and the Institute was hired to prove that this man was innocent. In the course of the investigation, they ran up against something . . . unexpected. Something that was more than they’d ever seen before.

  “I’d just happened to be nearby because Cathryn was struggling. Of all of my descendants—and there are quite a lot of them now—she is one of my favorites. She reminds me of myself, I think: we share a gift, and although she seems to be controlled and almost frigid, deep down, she’s much more vulnerable than you might think.” Veronica flickered her eyes toward Lucas. “You know that. You knew the truest form of Cathryn, didn’t you? In Cape May that summer.”

  “I knew some of her,” he muttered. “What she chose to share with me. I don’t know that it was her truest form, but she was different than she is now.”

  “That’s accurate. The year before you met her, she’d had a crush on a boy she’d met in college. He was deeply in love with someone else. They weren’t meant to be, those two, not any more than you and Cathryn were. But still, she was nursing a bruised heart, and I was staying close. I saw what happened with the Senator’s case. I was nearby when Tasmyn Vaughn confronted the real murderer. And as I stood there, listening, I was paralyzed, because I knew that voice. I knew that evil. It was the same entity that those men, led by Donald Parcy, had ushered into our world so long before.”

  “Tasmyn. I know that name.” I frowned, looking at Lucas. “Who is she?”

  His lip twitched. “Rafe’s old . . . flame, I guess. They went to high school together in King. She worked for Carruthers when she was in college.”

  I remembered now. “And the guy Cathryn had a crush on . . . he was in love with Tasmyn.”

  Veronica pushed her tea cup away. “Exactly. Oh, it’s all so complicated and complex, isn’t it? Cathryn fancied herself in love with Michael, who only had eyes for Tasmyn. And then she fell for Lucas, who was meant for you, Jackie. Meanwhile, Rafe thought that Tasmyn was the only girl for him, until he met Nell, who’d tried to kill Tasmyn when they were all still in high school.”

  I held my head. “It sounds like a soap opera.”

  “Life is messy, darling.” Veronica smiled a little. “Do you think you might warm up my tea before we finish?”

  I stood up and added water to the kettle before I put it back on the burner. “So you heard this evil . . . and you realized it was still around.”

  “Yes. And I was very distressed, because not only was it still in existence, on this plane, but it was very near my family. I began to investigate and research and explore. And what I found was chilling.”

  We all fell silent as the kettle sang out. I added leaves to Veronica’s strainer and poured water slowly over it. Lucas pushed his cup forward, too, for a refill. I thought as I served them how bizarre it was that I was making tea for two vampires. Well, one full-fledged vamp and a half death broker.

  “Oh, Jackie. You know, I do enjoy you.” Veronica sipped her tea and patted my arm. “But I know what you mean about bizarre. Sometimes I think of Hamlet on that wall in Denmark . . . There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  “Exactly!” I returned the kettle to the stove and sat down again. “I have a game I play with Rafe, where I think up different creatures and ask him if they’re real or not.”

  She spread her hands on the table. “Here I was a vampire for centuries, yet I had no inkling what demons were, how they existed or what they might do. I’ve learned more following Carruthers and their investigations than I did for hundreds of years before.”

  “Are there such things as vampire slayers?” I inquired. “Oh, and have you ever met vampires like Angel or Spike? Because if I were a vampire and I knew them, I’d be all over that. I’d be hitting that hard.”

  Lucas gave a discreet cough. “Um, hello, Jacks. Right here. Your half-vampire boyfriend, remember?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re new to the game, and you’re more like what Giles might be like if he were vamped.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “But don’t worry. Giles is hot, too.”

  Veronica smiled. “I haven’t met anyone who is a dedicated vampire slayer, no. As far as I know, Buffy is a purely fictional product of Joss Whedon’s incredible imagination.” She tilted her head, considering. “But I like to think that if she did exist, we’d be friends. We’re more alike than different, and after all, I wouldn’t be trying to eat her friends.”

  “But back to the topic at hand.” Lucas glared at me. “So you realized the evil that had been set free in 1967 was still around. What came next?”

  “As I said, I began researching everything. I followed some hunches, and I spoke to some people I’d met over the years. Certain things that I’d always dismissed as lunacy or fancy, I began to take seriously. And after years—centuries—of working hard to block thoughts from my head, I began to listen. I found that I could trace that evil.

  “I wasn’t always successful in following its path. From what I’ve been able to discern, in the beginning, the demon possessed one body at a time for long stretches, staying under the radar as it learned more about our world. But more recently, and certainly since Tasmyn dealt it a slight blow, it’s jumped around a bit. It had lived within a man named Ben Ryan for quite a while, but since that time, it seemed to go from body to body.”

  “Is the demon in Mallory Jones?” I knew that Mallory was a powerful witch, someone who had committed murder more than once. She had killed Joss, Rafe’s girlfriend before he’d known Nell, when Joss and Rafe had been working undercover on one of the Hive’s communes.

  Veronica shook her head. “It doesn’t seem likely. Mallory coexisted along with Ben Ryan at times, both of them performing horrible deeds. I think Mallory’s form of evil is within her. I don’t think it originates from an outside source.”

  “All right. We’ve gotten as far as you following the demon to Ben Ryan and then here and there afterward. What happened next?” Lucas shifted, his expression grim. We were getting closer to his first encounter with Veronica, and I could tell that it was making him tense.

  “Rafe and Joss went undercover, and Joss was killed. I should h
ave been there, but at that point, I was on the West Coast, trying to get through to Donald Parcy and the other four leaders who’d let the demon over. By the time I realized what was happening, I was too late.” She looked inexorably sad. I wished I could offer some kind of reassurance.

  “I didn’t realize Rafe was still alive in the camp, so instead of going after him, I followed Cathryn to Cape May. I was worried about her. Being near her, I could feel her pain. Her guilt. She was being consumed by remorse for something she could never have foreseen, given her limited understanding of the wider circumstances at the time. So when she met you . . .” Veronica smiled at Lucas. “I was glad. You were good for her, dear one. You kept her from self-destructing, when I think she was on a dangerous brink. In another situation, you two would have been perfect together. Cathryn needs someone strong in her life, because she herself is such a strong person. But she also needs a man who sees how beautiful her soul is and understands that her chilly exterior hides a very tender heart.”

  I tried hard not to snort. I’d known Cathryn Whitmore for a little while now, and while I was all on board with the chilly exterior, I’d yet to see evidence of the tender heart.

  “However, even though I wished I could give you both my blessing, I knew that it was not meant to be. I’d been in touch with a prognosticator and—what you call a precognitive—and she had foretold you, Jackie. She also told me about the man who is meant for Cathryn. While in the short term, I realize that what happened between the two of you was painful, Lucas, I think you know the truth now. Jackie is your destiny. She’s the one you need, and she’s also going to be an important part of our fight against the Hive.”