Staked

by J. F. Lewis

  It didn’t work like in the movies, though, and my first thrust hadn’t been hard enough to penetrate all the way to her heart. I glanced down at the stake, remembering Percy and mentally checking biology. I’d rammed it against her sternum, splintering the shard of wood and deflecting it into the side of her breast. I instantly realized my mistake. Stake jutting through the ripped front of her shirt, Veruca head-butted me and shoved me away from her. I grabbed for her shirt to steady myself, but it ripped, coming free in my hand, and I landed on my ass.

  “You are so dead, bitch!” Veruca yelled. She kicked at my face and I twisted away, catching a glancing blow to my cheek. I threw her tattered shirt back in her face as she stumbled, put off balance by the kick. I got a good look at the cute little frog tattoo she had above her pelvis when I grabbed her leg and hurled her across the room.

  Vampire strength is fun for the whole family. She flew over the coffee table and crashed through a pressed-wood closet door, bringing coats and jackets down on top of her. I glanced around the room for something wood, something sturdier than the picture frame. The coffee table was glass and the chair legs looked like metal. Damn it.

  In the closet, Veruca roared, clawing at the jackets as she got to her feet. Her head bumped the top shelf in the closet, sending a shoe box tumbling and spilling its contents—a pair of leather gloves with scorched palms and an unmistakable pearl-handled six-shooter—onto the floor.

  Veruca grabbed for the gun, wincing as the crosses on the butt smoked against her skin. I launched myself over the coffee table at her, grabbing for the stake, but she pulled away from me and it popped free of her chest.

  She fired once, twice, missing both times either because the pain in her hands threw off her aim, or because I was moving too quickly. I darted in low, under the gun, thrusting the stake in at an angle under her ribs. The gun barked again, pain lanced through my shoulder, and she froze, hands flaming as El Alma Perdida tumbled from her limp fingers. The little frog tattoo flashed bright white and vanished. I was afraid that she might do the same. Her skin began to melt away, followed by the muscle underneath. Her skull opened its mouth in a silent scream and then her entire skeleton exploded into ashes with a loud fwoosh. I’d killed her. I felt sick to my stomach.

  At least I’d found the gun. Eric would be pleased with me. Smoke poured out of a nice neat hole in my shoulder where the third bullet had passed clean through. Talbot and I were going to have to dig three bullets out of the wall.

  Dropping the stake, I walked over to the door. “Unlock?” I asked it tentatively, wondering how the hell we were going to get the door open if Veruca’s death hadn’t reset it. I guessed killing her had broken the spell, or maybe it was that I still had her dust on my hands, but when I touched the doorknob, the door pulsed blue and opened easily.

  Talbot stepped inside and looked at the pile of ash, the broken bit of picture frame, and the blood covering the floor. Finally he looked at me, my clothes in shreds and covered in blood, most of it mine.

  “A stake through the heart kills Soldiers and Drones,” he observed. “Bet she wishes she’d made Master.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed numbly. I kept expecting her to re-form like Dracula did in the movies, and while I knew that was possible for me, since I was a Vlad, for her poof seemed to pretty much mean poof. “I wonder when security’s going to get here.”

  “They won’t.” Talbot smirked. “Veruca swung first, and she’s not a resident.” He picked up El Alma Perdida. “Eric will be glad to see this.” Gun in hand, he walked across the room and dug three perfectly preserved bullets, casings and all, out of the wall. “That’s just weird,” he said after reloading the gun and returning it to the shoe box.

  I sat down in one of the chairs, the bullet wound still throbbing. It was healing very slowly, not like the other wounds, where I could literally feel them closing. Talbot looked down at me, his eyes softening. “You did good. Are you hungry?”

  I noticed his heart speeding up as he asked me. Sexual excitement rolled off of him in waves. Talbot ripped open his already ruined shirt, exposing his muscular, chocolate-colored chest. Watching me intently, he popped a claw, drawing it lazily down his body, blood welling up along the wound.

  His blood smelled strong and powerful, but more importantly, it was warm and so was he. My hunger awoke with a need almost as overwhelming as when I’d first risen. “I thought I didn’t have anything you were interested in,” I said coyly.

  Three magic words left his mouth, almost as strong and powerful as I love you. “I was wrong.”

  The need for blood permeates everything when you’re hungry, gets confused with other hungers. At that moment there was no difference between the hunger for blood and the hunger for sex. I leapt on him with animal glee, licking the long line of blood off his chest. He shivered and his excitement ignited mine. I wanted him inside me and he didn’t resist as I fumbled with his belt, lapping at his bloody chest while I pushed down his pants.

  He slipped off my pants and panties, awkwardly because I wouldn’t lift my lips from his chest. I dove for the artery pulsing in his thigh, but he caught my head and forced me up to his neck. I pushed him back onto the coffee table, following him down, and it shattered, but I didn’t care. Talbot began to protest, but I sank down onto him and he snarled with pleasure.

  His hands cupped my breasts and he seemed only slightly startled when I sank my fangs into his neck, penetrating him in my own way.

  When he tired, I made him keep going and he did everything I asked and more, like a dying man following the orders of the one person who can give him water. Sex with a warm, breathing person was more than I could have explained. No wonder Eric liked to sleep with the living. They are so alive, so hot, and so full of blood. When I was finally sated, I lay sprawled on his chest, wearing nothing but my diamond necklace, and listened to him breathe, wondering when we’d left the remains of the glass table and found our way to Roger’s bed. Tiny wisps of smoke rose from the little scratches Talbot had given me.

  “I bet you’ve never done that with Eric,” I teased.

  “Definitely not,” he laughed. “He’s even less my type than I thought you were.”

  “Why do you stay with him?” I asked.

  Talbot’s beautifully massive chest rose and fell deeply. “He’s a unique individual—worth protecting. You could say he awakens in me an infinite curiosity.”

  “And me?”

  He blinked and smiled, showing me his fangs. “You’re unique, too. I find you almost as curious as I find Eric.”

  “I still love Eric, you know,” I told him seriously.

  His eyes flashed and the pupils became slits. “I’m glad. If you fell in love with me, it would end badly for one of us. Eric would kill me or perhaps eventually you would kill me. After all, my kind is incapable of the kind of love you more human types feel for each other. Our bonds are based on dominance, mutual need, and, at most, a deep and abiding fondness.”

  I still didn’t understand what Talbot was, but I felt I understood him. Maybe he was some strange cat-human hybrid, or perhaps he had lied about not being a lycanthrope. The romantic in me liked to think it was a spell. Anything was possible. I’d met a wizard, become a vampire. Perhaps Lord Phillip himself had trapped Talbot in the body of a man, as punishment, like with Percy. No, that didn’t sound right. Talbot had described himself as a sacred guardian, a noble hunter. To me, that said: cat. Obviously not a normal cat, but a magic one. I wondered absently if it counted as bestiality if you had sex with an animal that had been turned humanoid.

  I lay there, trying to bask in his warmth, in the afterglow of our intimacy, but the moment was gone. A final curl of smoke drifted up from the shallow scratches around my breasts and my pale skin was whole once more, as if the act itself had not taken place, leaving me empty and restless. Talbot had been a nice substitute, but I craved Eric.

  I got up, found Roger’s shower and washed the last traces of combat from my body. Once
I was dry, I started going through Veruca’s clothes. She’d been smaller than me, in every way, and her clothes tended to be one size too small for her already. Not having to breathe enhances a vampire’s ability to dress for effect, but it also meant that there wasn’t anything in her closet that fit me. Which left me my panties, my shoes, and my diamond necklace. The pants had long rents in them and I didn’t want to put back on what was left of the sequined top.

  “What the hell am I supposed to wear?” I asked, holding the remains of my clothes and shaking them in Talbot’s general direction.

  “I think that outfit suits you just fine,” Talbot murmured throatily from where he was sprawled on the bed.

  I rolled my eyes and changed into a cat.

  “That suits you even more.” He wasn’t teasing.

  I changed back, in further exasperation. Poof…clothes. Yay me! The clothes I’d been wearing were new again and I wasn’t holding them in my hands anymore, I was wearing them. The magic that had repaired them left them feeling right-out-of-the-dryer warm.

  “Now, that’s something I’ve seen only Eric do.” Talbot rolled out of the bed, naked. He stretched and yawned, his fangs and claws popping out midway through and retracting at the end. He flexed at me and I admired him openly. He was taller than Eric and more heavily muscled. His dark skin was sleek, almost glossy, and stood out in perfect contrast to the red satin sheets. The picture he made was incredibly alluring, and I considered taking off my newly created clothes. Just because I was in love with Eric didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy a little companionship from the living. What was good for the goose…

  “How does it work?” I asked softly, placing my hand on Talbot’s shoulder.

  “With Eric it seems to work automatically,” he told me. “When he changes shape, unless he’s paying close attention, it changes whatever he was wearing into the same jeans and T-shirt outfit he prefers. I mentioned it to him in El Segundo, but I’m sure he’s forgotten by now. Not that it matters much since he wears the same damn thing every day.”

  “I think he looks nice,” I said defensively.

  Talbot laughed at that, and I couldn’t help but join in.

  23

  ERIC:

  NO GOOD NEWS

  With no music playing in the Demon Heart, no crowd, not even Marilyn or one of the girls getting ready to open the club or shut it down, the silence ate at my nerves. I needed something to block out the sound of the oni out front jabbering back and forth at each other in Japanese in between mouthfuls of dead werewolf.

  I thought about ordering a pizza—Italian sausage, black olives, mushrooms, and daikon—just so I could smell it, look at it, feel the warmth of the box.

  I don’t know what daikon tastes like, but I’m fond of the smell and I’m curious. Few things are more annoying than a curious vampire. If the smell of a particular food entices us, we want to make people eat it, so they can describe the taste to us. The best description I’d gotten of daikon was “kind of like a pickle, but not.” How can something that looks like a big white carrot taste like a pickle, but not? Did they do something to it first? The question vexed me.

  Greta sat across Marilyn’s desk from me, playing with a staple remover, pretending it was a shark or a vampire, something with fangs. The phone rang in my office across the street and Rachel stirred in her sleep, but didn’t wake. On the third ring, Greta heard it too.

  “Phone’s ringing,” she told me.

  “I know.”

  “You want me to go and—”

  “No,” I said too quickly. “Just wait a minute.” My brain wouldn’t process what she’d told me about my “uber vamp” form. How could I have been turning into a giant, black-skinned, leather-winged beast thing off and on since 1965 and not know it, not even have had an inkling beyond the understanding that I blacked out when I got really mad? It was like Bruce Banner not knowing about the Hulk.

  I didn’t want to think about who was setting me up, either. If I’d known where the investigation had been likely to lead, I never would have looked into it. I would have taken on the werewolves without question. A wise man once said “Ignorance is bliss,” and he was right. I wanted Veruca to be behind everything, needed it. I wanted to forget about the check I’d seen where Roger had forged my name. I wished Roger had dotted his damn i’s.

  So I concentrated on the pizza. If I gave up on the daikon, I could call one of the big pizza chains, but if I wanted the daikon, I had to wait until Jackie’s opened at six. I could get Jackie to put anything I wanted on a pizza, even if he had to run down to the Asian market. Jackie knows about vampires, and if you let him know that your order is for eating in front of one of us, he tacks on an extra 50 percent surcharge and makes it look like it does in the pictures on the menu.

  I remembered sitting in his diner with Roger watching Froggy, still Veruca then, eat a Reuben. It’s a big deal for vampires to share their food porn like that, proof of our long friendship.

  The phone rang in Marilyn’s office and I jumped, startled. It wasn’t supposed to do that. I glanced at it suspiciously. For all I knew the phone was undergoing a demonic transformation. It certainly seemed like the week for it. It rang a second and a third time before I answered it. It was Talbot; I recognized his breathing.

  “How did you get through to this phone?” I asked. “Didn’t Marilyn transfer the calls to her home number?”

  “Star six eight,” he answered.

  “Huh?”

  “It forwards the call, but only if the number dialed is busy or there’s no answer…. Look, don’t worry about it. I tried you at the Pollux first.”

  He sounded upset. Tough shit, it wasn’t all blow jobs and balloons for me either. “Did you know that I turn into some sort of rampaging berserker flying vampire thing when I lose my temper?”

  Talbot scoffed. “Of course.”

  “Even Talbot knows! Am I the only fucking person around who doesn’t know I’ve got go-go gadget bat wings?” I yelled, holding the receiver about a foot from my face. I hung up the phone and threw up my hands.

  Greta acted sympathetic, but I could tell that she was trying to hold back her laughter.

  “Who else knows?” I asked her. Before she could respond, the phone rang again. It was Talbot. “Does Marilyn know?” I asked him.

  “I…I think so,” Talbot answered. I hung up on him again and cast a disparaging look at Greta.

  “Even Marilyn knows! Why does nobody tell me these things?” Greta watched me as I paced the room angrily. Small snorts of nasal laughter escaped despite her best attempts to hold them back. “It’s not funny, damn it!”

  Greta couldn’t even speak. Tears of blood rolled down the sides of her face and she burst out laughing. Loud obnoxious guffaws filled the room punctuated by a periodic “I’m so sorry” or “I know it’s not funny.” She clutched her sides, sliding farther down in her chair, leaving me staring at her in impotent rage and disbelief.

  The phone rang and I picked it up before the first ring finished. “I swear to God, Talbot, if Tabitha knows, I am going to fucking kill somebody!”

  “I don’t think she d—” Talbot began.

  I hung up the phone again and put my hands on my hips. “Well, at least there is one person who is as clueless as me. Of course it’s frickin’ Tabitha.”

  More laughter erupted from Greta and she began to gasp for air in a way that looked absolutely human.

  “It’s not that funny!” I yelled, standing over her.

  She nodded her head. “Yes, it is,” she gasped. “Hello, Talbot? Blah blah blah. Click.”

  I didn’t get it. Maybe that was funny in a women-are-from-Venus way, but here on Mars, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The phone rang again and I picked it up. “Talbot, I think Greta has gone loopy. She’s over here laughing her head off like it’s some big joke. I’ve been a vampire for over forty years and nobody bothered to—”

  “You have a collect call from ‘Talbot,’” interrupted a mecha
nical voice. “Will you accept the charges?”

  “Yes,” I answered. Why was Talbot calling collect?

  “Talbot?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he answered, drawing out the word. He sounded pretty ticked off.

  “Why the hell are you calling collect?”

  “Because, if you’ll pardon my language, some asshole keeps hanging up on me and I thought that if you had to listen to the operator first, you might actually stop and pay attention!”

  Talbot didn’t usually yell. Greta stopped laughing and climbed back into her chair. Her chest was still heaving a little, but she had control of herself. I breathed in and out deeply a few times to calm myself. I don’t need oxygen, but the act of breathing triggered a physical memory, giving it much the same effect. “Okay, sorry. I’m ready to pay attention now; it’s just a big shock to find out something like that.”

  “I’m sure it was,” he interrupted, enunciating slowly and clearly. “I’m sorry none of us knew how to tell you, but I need you to listen right now. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “If you hang up on me again, I’m going to come over there while you’re asleep and put a big ‘jackass’ tattoo on your forehead. Do you understand?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”

  “Okay. Good. The good news is that we found the gun.”

  I slapped Marilyn’s desk. “Hot damn!”

  “Veruca had it.”

  “What did she have to say for herself?”

  “Not much, but it’s pretty clear she’s the one who shot the werewolves you found at Orchard Lake.”

  “Did you get her to tell you why she left one of the bullets behind?”

  “No, and I don’t quite know how to tell you this, Eric, but we found her at Roger’s place.”

  “Was he all right?” I asked.

  “He wasn’t there,” Talbot answered. “But you have to consider the possibility that he is wrapped up in all of this.”

  “That’s crap, Talbot,” I said, determined to deny it.