Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires

by Adrian Phoenix

  “I’m talking about you buckling your seat belt so that I don’t get a ticket. Void City cops love to pull people over, particularly if they think you’re undead.”

  Drops of blood flew off of my cheeks when I jerked around to face him. “I don’t want to wear a fucking seat belt!” Fingernails elongated into claws at the end of my hands and my jaw popped to accommodate the fangs that slid out of their sheaths in my gums. Refusing to flinch, Talbot remained blasé.

  “Turn back into a cat if you don’t want to wear a seat belt. There is a cop up ahead.”

  “Would you shut up about the damn cop?” I yelled, not sure why I was reacting this way. “If he pulls us over I’ll rip his fucking head off, okay? Just forget about it! I’m not wearing a damn seat belt, you stupid motherfucker, and you can’t make me! I’m the boss here! I’m the vampire, not you. I’m a Lady Bathory and you’re just some…some…mouser, whatever that is. A cat, or a human that used to be a cat, or whatever the fuck you are. You’re not even human. You probably don’t even have a soul. You probably never had one…and…and you raped me, you bastard!”

  The officer in question eyed us warily as we passed, saw my fangs, and mouthed “Fuck that” to himself. Smarter than the rest of us, he knew when to mind his own business.

  A twinge of pain squeezed my chest. With it came other thoughts, emotions, a flood of regret. If Rachel hadn’t died, I’d never have become so obsessed with death. I never would have gotten wrapped up in the vampire scene. I’d have stayed in college like my parents had wanted instead of rebelling and deciding life was too short to waste.

  I wouldn’t have even met Eric, I wouldn’t be in love with him, and I wouldn’t have spent the last two years praying that he loved me back. I’d probably have been off somewhere, hopelessly in love with some asshole who just wanted my body, but he would have been a human asshole. Maybe I’d even be pregnant.

  The tight ragged pain spread out from my chest, up into my skull, and down my arms and legs. My insides felt tight and shrunken. At the back of my eyes, the pain and pressure increased, as if my eyes were going to jerk through the sockets and become recessed in my braincase.

  “It hurts,” I yelled.

  “What?” Talbot asked.

  “It hurts!”

  I grabbed the sides of my head with full vampiric acceleration. My elbow touched the window with what would have been a light bump, but the increased velocity magnified the force of the blow, shattering the passenger’s side window. Glass cut into my elbow and I started to scream. I needed to get out of the car, to run; I felt trapped, as if the car were attacking me, or keeping me prisoner, or both. I attacked back.

  Brakes squealed and the Jaguar swerved into an alley. The driver’s side door flew open, and I lost sight of Talbot as I lashed out at the upholstery, leather shredding easily under my claws. Something was wrong with me again and it was worse than the drugged blood. Euphoric anger had detached me from my actions in the Demon Heart, but this was real.

  Pain lanced through my hand as I punched through the dash and into the glove compartment. Metal and plastic cut me, but I jerked my hand free, leaving blood and skin behind, before kicking away from the dash, breaking my seat, and flailing into the back of the car, my claws tearing at the ceiling and smashing out the rear window.

  Suddenly my lungs started working and went into over-drive, pumping air in and out with such urgency it might have been trying to atone for all the breaths it had missed over the last couple of nights.

  Once, in high school biology class, we’d had to dissect a frog. I had been so afraid I’d hyperventilated and passed out. This felt a lot like that. Rapid, shuddering booms shook my chest and I realized my heart was beating. Not only was it beating, it was beating far too fast. Gritting my teeth, I managed to stop actually screaming, but a high keening sound escaped my throat.

  Talbot rounded the car, put his hand on the passenger’s side door, and I hit it from the inside with both feet, ripping the door loose of its hinges and sending Talbot and the door flying into the concrete wall of the building. He was still holding on to the door when he hit the ground. “Get away from me,” I screamed through chattering teeth. “Don’t touch me!”

  Color leached out of my vision, the world sliding to black and white, to grayscale, and then to shades of red. Waves of heat rushed over me and my entire body began to vibrate. Staggering out of the Jag, I pressed my head against the cool metal on the roof. Beating loudly in my ears, the sound of my heartbeat was joined by another sound, a loudwhooshing sound; I realized it was the blood rushing through my veins once more. The pain left my chest, the inner tightening faded as blood flowed. Color vision came back, but the colors were too bright, blindingly kaleidoscopic. “What’s happening to me?” I demanded.

  “Turn back into a cat,” Talbot choked out as he shoved the door off onto the sidewalk.

  I tried. Desperately. I couldn’t.

  Panic continued to swell inside me. I felt like my heart was about to tear itself out of my chest like a baby alien from that space movie with Sigourney Weaver.

  He got to his feet and took a deep breath. “It’s probably autonomic function return brought on by postmortem stress, maybe even a panic attack. It’s rarely this bad, but I’ve seen it before.”

  None of that made sense to me. My body was too loud. At the end of my fingers, claws extended and retracted, rhythmically gouging holes into the roof. “Don’t touch me,” I panted. “Get away from me.” Bottom fangs pushed their way into my mouth from between the teeth in my lower jaw, blood filling my mouth as the gums ripped open, a long searing pain. I shouldn’t even have bottom fangs. What was happening to me? “Your blood must have done this to me,” I spat out, shaking so hard I could barely talk. “It’s poisonous or something.”

  “It’s not my blood, Tabitha, it’s you. Your body is reacting to stress the only way it remembers how. Turn back into a cat,” he urged, “and it will stop. You have a pulse as a cat. Your body will remember what it’s supposed to be doing.” He didn’t sound mad at all, but there was a tone in his voice that I didn’t recognize, a tinge of concern or wonder. “Trust me, Tabitha. Turn into a cat.”

  Hugging my arms tightly around myself and closing my eyes, I finally managed to turn into a cat. The panic and anxiety were still there, but my body was calm and controlled. Normal heartbeat. Normal breath. Normal blood flow. Everything felt right, natural, as it should be.

  Talbot leaned in through the passenger’s side door, turned off the engine, and pulled his keys out of the ignition. Leaning up against his poor Jaguar, he asked, “Better now?”

  I nodded.

  He looked down at the keys in his hand and mumbled, “Ninety-three thousand dollars. Damn, you’re high maintenance.”

  Angry, sad, and terrified all at once, I curled up into a ball of fur, pressing myself against the brick wall of the alley, not knowing what to say, what to do, or how to react. Why had I let Eric do this to me? No more sun. No more mirrors. No food but blood. How could I have wanted this? Liquid diets had never worked for me, and now I was on the ultimate liquid diet. Not just for six to eight months, either. No, I had signed up for the infinity plan. Immortality was all fun and games until you read the fine print.

  “What’s happening to me?” I meowed.

  “PMS,” he said, stone-faced.

  I glared at him.

  “Postmortem stress,” he continued. “It happens to the newly undead. There comes a point when you stop thinking of yourself as human and accept your new self. You let go of who you were and become what you are. When it happens, your body freaks out. Your mind freaks out. So essentially, you’re freaking out,” he answered. “Eric is the only vampire I know of who never did it. I meant to tell you about it first thing. I guess it slipped my mind.” It hadn’t, though; I could tell from the smug cat grin on his face. He’d worn the same self-satisfied expression when he’d held me down at the Demon Heart while Marilyn and Desiree fed me cold blood.
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br />   “Bullshit,” I meowed. “You guess it slipped your mind? You wanted to see me freak. You got off on it.”

  “Told you I wasn’t human,” Talbot said without remorse or shame.

  I rose to all fours, pacing back and forth, my tail twitching furiously. “PMS when I’m alive and PMS when I’m dead. Retaining water may have made my ankles swell, but it never made me rip a sports car apart.”

  I turned human again and it no longer felt strange or otherworldly. The change was as natural as stepping out of one dress and into another: a momentary vulnerability, followed by comfort in my new outfit. My body was still warm and my heartbeat was steady. I was still breathing. Blood pumped through my veins, but the sound was muted. Now that I expected it, none of it was so alarming.

  “One in a mill—” Talbot reached for my cheek and I slapped him so hard it knocked him across the alley. When he landed, I was there, claws out and waiting. It was a cheap shot and it left him too dazed to react.

  “I told you not to touch me, Talbot!” I sank my right-hand claws into his chest, just above the heart. Crouched on his chest, the claws of my left hand at his throat, I said, “I’m very grateful for all your help. I needed it. I needed your knowledge and experience. I really, really did, but I swear to God that if you ever touch me again I will rip your heart out with my bare hands, throw it in the street and back over it with Eric’s Mustang! Do you understand?”

  Fur puffed up under my fingertips as Talbot’s ears slid upward and extended, pointed, like a cat’s. I made a move to claw him with my left hand, as a threat rather than to rip his throat out, but he caught it with a hand covered in sable fur. His voice echoed in my head, his jaws unmoving as he spoke.

  Tabitha, you do not want me as your enemy.Cat’s eyes glared at me from his handsome face as his nose broadened and whiskers erupted from his cheeks. The first three buttons on his shirt popped loose as his chest expanded, the material drawing tight and ripping where my claws pierced it.I can make your life a living hell.

  “Too late!” I spat. “Don’t you understand that? Everything is totally fucked up now. Eric will never want me now that I’ve been with you and you should have known better, Talbot. You should have fucking stopped me. You’re supposed to be my damn babysitter!”

  “It had been a long time for me, Tabitha. A very long time, and if I took advantage of you, if you think I did, then I’m sorry.” He took hold of my right hand and gently pulled my claws from his chest. I let him. Even with my hand poised to hurt him, possibly kill him, I was afraid. His claws were holy. He was some kind of sacred hunter. I was just a vampire, a queen, sure, but…

  His expression softened as my claws came free, the fur subsiding, his pantherlike features not quite melting into human ones, but fading, like an illusion. He stared at me with human eyes that were too cute, too endearing, and I let him up.

  “My kind does not apologize, Tabitha. We don’t have to, because we are never wrong….” I bared my fangs, arms crossed, standing against the brick, away from him, as he continued, “Or we claim we aren’t. I’m different.” He straightened his clothes, brushing at the dirt, and the rips disappeared. I wondered if they were really gone or if it was an illusion. Did he really look human at all or did everyone simply see what he wanted them to see?

  “I am willing to admit that it is remotely possible that I share part of the blame, but not all of it.” He leaned in close, his lips a breath away from mine. Despite myself I wanted to kiss him. “You did not smell out of control,” he continued. His left hand traced the outline of my body, almost, but not quite touching me. “You smelled like you knew exactly what was going on and I trusted that.”

  He looked me straight in the eyes, dared me to make contact, to pit my will against his.

  “Now I’m going to smell like you,” I said, looking away.

  “Most people only get one chance with me, Tabitha. You’ve already had two; this makes it three. I let it go the first time you jumped me, because you didn’t know any better. I let the second one go because you were drugged. I’m going to let this one go because of the postmortem stress and the extenuating circumstances, but don’t try for a fourth chance. I’ll tear you apart and swallow all the pieces. Unless you’ve made a pact with a demon that I don’t know about, you won’t be coming back from that.”

  Angry with myself and with Talbot, I brushed past him, stopping near the car. Little dots of light reflected up at me from the Jag’s passenger’s side mirror, which lay cracked in the alley. I picked it up and looked at my reflection. I was a mess. My new blouse was ruined; grime and blood spotted it in multiple places and there was even a small rip where glass had cut it. My hair—

  I don’t think I could have been more surprised if I went to my folks’ house and Rachel answered the door. I dropped the mirror, stumbling away from it in denial. “My reflection. How…”

  After a moment, I picked the mirror up again. I did look beautiful, even with the grime and dirt. Then, my image slowly faded, along with the body heat and my other renewed bodily functions. It was more depressing than the ruined blouse, like dying all over again, without the promise of immortality.

  “Damn.” I shivered, cold again, as my fingertips caressed the glass. “Come back.” With unbearable slowness, my face reappeared in the glass. “How is this possible?” I whispered.

  “I suspected it when you first turned into a cat, and appeared to be alive,” Talbot said from across the alley. “Eric seems to draw vamps that defy the norm. Every one he creates comes prepackaged with pain and wonder. Maybe one in ten thousand, possibly one in a hundred thousand vampires can turn their bodies back on, choose to cast a reflection in animal form or human form. The number of vamps who can do both? I couldn’t even begin to calculate. Maybe one in a million? My guess? No more than five and possibly just you.”

  “What?” I asked. I’d heard what he said, but it wasn’t sinking in.

  “They’re called Dolls. They are vampires that can seem completely lifelike. You can stop worrying about whether he’ll want you or not. He’ll probably fall head over heels for you. You’re immortal, you’re beautiful, and you will never change. You can have body heat, a heartbeat…even blood coursing through your veins. You can even cast a reflection when you wish. You’ll probably even be able to have saliva and, um, other appropriate fluids after a little practice.” He let out a long breath again.

  “But I tried that earlier and it didn’t work—”

  “The first time you tried to transform into a bird it didn’t work either. It takes practice, like anything else.” Talbot reached out as if to touch my cheek again, but checked the impulse before I swatted him, though I don’t think I would have.

  “If you think Veruca was angry that you could turn into a cat,” he continued, “you should know that there will be plenty of vampires that will hate you for what you can do. Just stop worrying about your boyfriend. The only way another girl could compete with you now is with magical breasts and an enchanted crotch. He’s yours for the taking, if you still want him.”

  I smiled. “Oh, no; he’ll have to earn it.” If he wanted this Snow White, then first he was going to have to kiss my cold dead lips. I didn’t want him to want me because I could be warm and lifelike, his precious little doll. First he had to want me for me.

  And then…I forced blood to run through my veins, watched as my pale perfect skin grew pink and pretty. Mine for the taking. I liked the sound of that.

  29

  ERIC:

  PICTURE PERFECT

  Have you ever slept through an entire day and woken up at night thinking it was still the same day? That’s kind of what happened to me. I woke in my own bed at the Pollux, with Rachel paying me some not unwanted attention below the waist. Disorienting—but nice. I don’t know how it is for girls, but for guys, when something like that happens, you go with it. Everything else is immaterial. For instance, the rainbow wig completely escaped my attention at first. As did theHappy Birthday ban
ner hung on the wall opposite the bed and the balloons tied to the bedposts.

  “Are you wearing clown makeup?” I asked.

  Rachel looked up. Though bereft of white paint, she wore thick black mascara mixed with blue, strategically smudged at the corners of her eyes. The big red clown nose was obscene in contrast to her nakedness and the black choker around her neck. I wondered if the tiny gold padlock held some special meaning.

  “Happy birthday!” Rachel straddled me and doffed the wig and nose, going from clown to Goth as easy as smiling. While I’d been asleep, she’d apparently highlighted her dark hair with streaks of reds and blondes.

  I don’t like clowns. I’m not afraid of them, but I’ve never found them amusing. This, the Goth thing, was more my style. We kissed, smearing her black lipstick. My heart began beating in time with our rhythm. As birthday surprises go, this was near the top of the chart.

  It isn’t hard to get up there though; my birthdays are usually a disaster. Or at least as far as I can remember. Ninety percent of the women who have ever dumped me chose my birthday as the magical day. When I was alive, two of the three wrecks I’d been in were birthday related. My mom died of a heart attack on my nineteenth birthday. You get the idea.

  Maybe, I thought, maybe this will be one of the good ones. The knob on the bedroom door began turning, almost in slow motion. Have you ever had your girlfriend walk in on you while you were screwing her sister on your birthday? Yeah, I thought not.

  Tabitha wore a midnight-blue dress that clung to her curves. A diamond necklace sparkled at her throat in the partial light from the hallway. The necklace accentuated her cleavage even more than the dress’s plunging neckline. Her skin took on a golden tone, little bits of glitter catching the light. She was beautiful. She looked almost human. Her expression was exactly the sort of complex blend of shock and embarrassment I might expect her to have worn if she’d walked in on her parents having sex.

  A package rested in the crook of her arm. It tumbled to the ground as she turned and ran. A gun I supposed to beEl Alma Perdida was visible for a microsecond, flipping through the air.