Shit like this never seemed to happen to vampires in the movies. Where were my vampire groupies, my loyal henchlings? Where was fucking Renfield? I didn’t want to break into anyone’s house, but I didn’t want to be burned to ash, either.
There were other options. I could hide under a car, or in a doghouse, or in a mailbox. I could dig a hole and bury myself, technically, but what I really wanted was for Talbot to somehow sense that I needed him and to come pick my burnt ass up and take me home.
I walked through the woods, grateful that I lived in the South, where civilization and forest intermingle from the mountains to the beach. Lots of subdivisions extended right into the woods. Through the trees up ahead, I could see a long line of houses, the leading edge of suburbia.
It had recently become highly fashionable to cut down as few trees as possible; in some areas, contractors built sidewalks and even porches right around existing trees. This subdivision was older, but at least the contractor had let the trees run right up to the property line of the houses, especially where the natural slope of the terrain made building a little more difficult.
One guy was starting his car on my side of the street in the shadows while a woman was doing the same thing on the other side of the street in full sunlight. There were people in the houses. I could sense them. Some were asleep and others were waking, showering, getting ready, brushing their teeth. There were two people still in the nearest house, the one the man had just left. Both of them sounded female, one younger than the other: a mother and daughter.
I moved from house to house along the shady side of the street, concealed by the trees. The houses were all two stories, most with vinyl siding, and each house had somebody home.
I looked at my watch. It was 6:50 on a nice Sunday morning. Didn’t any of these assholes go to church? Back when I was alive, it had seemed like I was the only one who didn’t go to church on Sunday. How long had this been going on? What time did church service start now? Eight o’clock? Nine? I couldn’t wait that long; the sun would be really most sincerely up and this whole stupid subdivision would be bathed in light.
I started toward the closest house, even though it had a family of four inside, but the same strange vibe I’d gotten last night, the odd discomfort that kept me from flying across the county road, repulsed me. It wasn’t the same feeling a blessed house gives off, it was something else, and it almost had a smell, like badly burned toast. It could have been anything, an amateur mage, a botched breakfast attempt…I was too tired to figure it out.
Through the haze, one of the houses suddenly looked perfect. It smelled like freshly baked cinnamon rolls, and the aroma drew me closer nearly against my will. I’d never liked cinnamon rolls in life, but this was intoxicating, almost as much as pizza. If I’d been a cartoon, the scent might have lifted me off of my feet and carried me along.
The wooden privacy fence was short enough to jump and there was an obliging shade tree that completely bridged the gap from fence to garage; only one person was home, plus the house had blacked-out windows in one of the second-story rooms. An amateur photographer would have just the sort of room I could use as shelter until Talbot could come pick me up.
The door to the garage was locked. Rather than force it, I turned into a mouse and crawled under the space between the garage door and the concrete. I turned human again on the other side and looked around for a light switch. The garage smelled of old gasoline and bagged grass. Despite the noxiousness of the smell, I felt a twinge in the back of my throat. I was getting hungry. In the warmth and humidity of the garage, I caught myself falling asleep again. Being exposed to the sun by a goofball with a garage-door opener didn’t sound like fun to me, though, so I shook myself awake again.
I usually go to sleep a few hours after dawn, but I can make it to early afternoon if necessary. Once or twice I’d managed to stay up all day, but each time, I’d passed out at sunset and slept clear through to the next one.
The bulb blew when I tried to turn the lights on. I had almost been expecting it. It was the way things had been going since Friday night: one big fuckup after another. The inside door was locked. My foot did a pretty good job of opening it before I remembered that I was trying to be sneaky. Upstairs I heard a girl sit up in bed. It sounded like she was grabbing something off of the floor. “Mom?” she cried out. “Dad?”
“Nope,” I said under my breath. “Not quite.”
I heard footsteps. Hungry though I was, I didn’t want to eat this teenage kid, home alone on a Sunday morning. Wasn’t she supposed to be watching cartoons? Or was that Saturday? The door from the garage opened up into a little eating space adjoining the kitchen. I sped across the linoleum and into a sitting room that had been converted into a home office. Hanging blinds over the bay window were all that stood between me and an instant sunburn. A small stream of sunlight scorched my leg where one of the blinds was askew.
Where to hide? I considered my options quickly, racing the footsteps overhead. There were no good hiding places. I could smell her now. Her scent was familiar, somehow, and afraid. She also smelled a little excited, which got me a little excited, too, but if I wasn’t going to kill her, it was unlikely that I was going to force myself on her either.
I’d always thought vampires turned into black cats, but it never seemed to work that way for me. Slowly but surely she came down the stairs. A white long-furred kitty waited for her. Of the various creatures I could turn into, it was usually a good bet that the cat would get the most sympathetic reaction. She came around the corner, saw me, and shrieked. Now, what kind of person is afraid of cats?
She was a beautiful girl, dark haired, with smooth skin and bright green eyes. She looked like a younger, more attractive Tabitha. She was wearing a white tank top and panties. Despite the baseball bat in her hands, I was noticing things that I shouldn’t have been. And then I recognized her. She was the girl in the battered photo Tabitha carried in her purse. I cursed in whatever language it is that cats speak and turned into myself again.
She froze, midscream. “So,” I said casually, “you must be Rachel.”
She cocked her head to one side and began slowly backing away from me. “I’m Eric,” I offered lamely. “Your sister’s boyfriend?”
She stopped and looked at me. Her fear was subsiding and I smelled something that it would have been better if I hadn’t. Was Tabitha’s whole family a big mob of vampire junkies? I wondered what would happen if I got Tabitha, Rachel, and their mother all in a room together. It was yet another image to be added to my internal wall of shame. Did all men have thoughts like these? If so, why wasn’t I smart enough to keep them to my subconscious?
Roger had once told me that all I had to do if I wanted to rule the world was keep my mouth shut, my pants on, and my temper under control. “What about sunlight?” I’d asked him. He’d laughed at me and said that if I was strong enough to rein in the first three things, he was pretty sure even sunlight wouldn’t be a problem for me.
“Holy shit! And you really are a vampire? What are you doing here? Is Tab with you?” Rachel asked. She’d gotten closer to me in the brief moment I’d been lost in thought. I shook my head, backing toward the door.
She continued to walk toward me and I considered running out the front door and into the sunlight. She had the same look in her eye that Tabitha had had when she’d first approached me at the club. Maybe one of the other houses had a pack of werewolves in it or a few vampire hunters…something safe. Anything but this. My eyes were glowing against my will and my fangs had dropped down in full-on vampire munch mode. She should have been running away at this point. Instead, she was taking off her tank top. She was certainly pierced in interesting places.
Closing my eyes, I fought back either a yawn or a snarl. I could not eat, sleep with, or otherwise enact upon Tabitha’s sister. Even though I couldn’t see her anymore, her scent still plagued me. There hadn’t been any cinnamon rolls in the oven when I’d passed, yet their tantalizing aroma mi
ngled with hers. What was I doing here?
With supreme effort, I mustered enough concentration to turn back into a cat. Lower to the ground, I struggled to keep my gaze on her ankles. A low rumbling echoed from my chest. I was purring at her. Damn it.
Sunlight was beginning to reach the side windows of the house, so I darted past her and up the stairs. She yelped as I brushed by her in transit, and if cats could smile, I would have. Now all I had to do was figure out a way to call Talbot and explain my situation without being the jumper or the jumpee with regard to Rachel.
My memory really sucks, but even so, I knew that I had never encountered this kind of problem in my living years. What was it about vampires that attracted these women? Surely they couldn’t all be necrophiliacs. When I’d died I had been in my thirties. I didn’t remember much, but I did recall that I hadn’t been particularly handsome. I wasn’t Quasimodo either, but…
Focus, Eric.Drowsiness was making me punchy. I skidded on the hardwood flooring at the top of the stairs and slid into the wall. Rachel sprinted up the stairs behind me. A phone and a door, that’s what I needed.
Mom must have been a great housekeeper, because I couldn’t smell anyone but Rachel. Everything else smelled new. Maybe they’d just redecorated?
Photographs of Rachel, Tabitha, and their parents lined the hallway in cheap frames, plastic that was meant to imitate wood. I passed the bathroom in my mad feline dash down the hall. There were two bedrooms upstairs, one with a “No cats!” warning symbol and the other with a two-drink-minimum sign.
I surmised that the second room might have been Tabitha’s and darted toward it. Changing back to human form felt like coughing up the world’s largest hairball, but without thumbs, I couldn’t turn the doorknob. I vaguely remembered Tabitha having told me once that she spray-painted her windows black when she was a teenager. They must have been the windows I’d noticed from outside.
“Thanks for not scraping the paint off the windows, Mom,” I muttered. Rachel reached the top of the stairs as I closed the door behind me and locked the dead bolt. I hoped she didn’t have the key. Why had Tabitha needed a dead bolt on her bedroom door? Rachel slapped the door with a perturbed grunt, then her footsteps disappeared back in the direction of the stairs.
Tabitha’s room was done in black and crimson. No wonder she liked the color scheme at the Demon Heart. She had crosses mounted to the walls and a blacklight bulb hung in the overhead lamp. Little Goth dolls lined a shelf on her wall where I still laughably expected a teenage girl to have wooden horses, old Barbies, and pretty glass knickknacks.
It looked like Tabitha had cleared out all of the stuff she really wanted and left the junk she didn’t want for her parents to throw away. That sounded like the Tabitha I knew. When I saw her queen-size bed, piled with fluffy black pillows, I almost went to sleep on it. Instead, I slapped myself a few times. I heard Rachel’s footsteps pounding back up the stairs. Either she was quicker than I thought, or I’d just spent a minute or two staring into space.
Phone! There didn’t seem to be a phone. In one corner, I saw a huge pile of books and an empty cordless phone charger. All the books appeared to be about vampires. That explained a lot. I heard a key in the exterior lock on the dead bolt and leapt for the door. It was impossible that Rachel could have been fast enough to open it before I could reach her, but it happened anyway. There was probably a fancy psychological term for it, but the only way she could have been faster than me was if I subconsciously wanted her to be faster. Then again, maybe it was just sleep slowing me down.
She was still topless and determined. I tried to ignore her body heat. The warmth of her as she entered the room called to me almost as much as the blood coursing through her veins. I had just healed from major injuries and I needed blood. I needed a phone. I needed Talbot. He could make things simple. He could handle things. That was his job. I needed Marilyn to slap my face for me and tell me to control myself, to act like the man she’d agreed to marry. Every time she told me that I wasn’t a monster, for a few minutes, a few hours, I wouldn’t be.
I grabbed Rachel by both arms and pulled her against me. She was afraid, but willing, just like her sister. I threw her down on the bed and straddled her thighs. Shifting my grip, I trapped her arms above her head. She leaned up and we kissed. Her tongue was pierced. Roger once told me that it’s always the younger sister that you have to watch out for. He must have been talking about girls like Rachel.
“I need…” I struggled to find the words.
“I need you too, baby. It’s okay. I want you.” It was her turn to purr.
I pictured Rachel lying cold and dead on her sister’s bed or worse, rising the next night, like her sister had, only eighteen instead of twenty-three. It was enough.
“What I need is a telephone,” I managed.
“After,” she whispered. She turned her head to one side. “Drink first. I want to feel it. I want to feel the pleasure and the pain.”
“I need to use the telephone. I need to call the Demon Heart and have someone come pick me up.” I was proud of myself. Total control was mine. I could resist the young woman underneath me. She started kissing me again. Her breath smelled like those cinnamon buns they sell in the mall. Her heartbeat filled my ears and then I did the only thing that I could think of that would keep me from doing exactly what she wanted me to do. I fell asleep.
8
ERIC:
PRICE TAGS
When I woke up, I was in the back of the party van. The party van had two seats up front and two benches along the sides in the back, with heavy shutters separating the driver from the people in back. It had originally been a paddy wagon, but I’d bought it a few years ago and had it fixed up to suit my needs.
The shutters were adorned with crosses. It wasn’t anything that would keep a vampire at bay for long, more of an attention-getter to help jar me back to my senses in case I was ever out of control. Talbot had also replaced the rear doors with windowless ones. The other additions we’d made included a good air conditioner and a stereo system.
I realized belatedly that I was not alone. Rachel was in the back with me; my head was resting on her lap. I don’t know what it is about the hour or two of sleep that I get each day, but I wake up hungry, much hungrier than I am after twenty some-odd waking hours. Combined with the hunger from before, I didn’t stand a chance against it. Rachel was going to get bitten whether I wanted it or not.
Faster than humanly possible, she found herself on the floor of the van as I spread her legs and bit into her femoral artery. As soon as I started drinking, I was trying to stop. Rachel’s fear was real. It made things harder to control. It was obvious to the thinking part of me that she had expected it to feel good. Why anyone would expect puncture wounds to feel good is beyond me, but I’d been around long enough to know that the pain often takes humans by surprise.
Fighting the hunger is like being in a wrestling match with a bigger, badder version of yourself; like getting a starving man to slowly sip broth a little bit at a time, only the starving man is ten times stronger than you and at least twice as mean.
I tried to hear Marilyn’s voice in my head.You are not a monster. You are the strongest man I know. When you rose for the first time, I was standing right there and you didn’t touch me. Roger himself told you that a newly risen vampire has no self-control. If you could control yourself then, you can control yourself at any time. Over and over, I repeated it in my head like a mantra.
I still don’t remember rising. Marilyn has told me the story, but I don’t remember doing any of it. According to her, I rose in full daylight. She was standing over my grave, but I did not attack her. I stood there for a minute in the sunlight, thick black smoke pouring off my exposed skin. Then, I took refuge in the cemetery’s chapel. When she followed me inside, I supposedly said, “Am I late for something?” and passed out.
My memory has been like Swiss cheese ever since. I’ve always blamed it on having been embalmed. Som
etimes I forget what happened yesterday, or five minutes ago, but just then, for a moment, I remembered what it was like to control myself. I remembered the calm and ease of my early days as a vampire. I remembered a different me, just long enough to take my teeth out of Rachel and hold her close.
“That was so fucking incredible,” she gasped weakly, “and it hurt so fucking much! Holy shit!” She laughed as I held her. The danger was lost on her. She wouldn’t believe how close she had come to death, or maybe she didn’t care. I shouldn’t have cared, but I did. I knew Rachel. I had a connection to her, through our kisses, through her sister. If I murdered her, she wouldn’t be a faceless woman who died in the night, soon forgotten. Knowing the victim makes it more real, makes it harder to forget, and I damn sure don’t want to remember.
By the time we got to the club, Rachel was sleeping. Talbot gave me the hairy eyeball as I carried her out of the van, under the awning into the club’s rear entrance. Marilyn met me at the door. She looked and smelled old, but if I half closed my eyes, let my vision blur, I could almost see her like she used to be, the red-haired vixen on the motorcycle.
My Marilyn stared at me from behind a mask of age, her hair cut short and grown gray, the once luscious lips dry and stern. Her eyes were the same, though, blue as an ocean and every bit as tempest tossed. Old as she had become, I still wanted her as badly as I had on the day I’d died, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with me, not like that, not since my death, not once.
She studied the girl I was carrying. Rachel looked like a trollop in her hip huggers and white tank top. There was a bloody rip where I’d bitten through her jeans. The blood was making the material stick to her leg. “Who is that?” Marilyn asked.
Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires Page 43