Min's Vampire

by Stella Blaze

  Is this really blood? If I’m not real, then what is this stuff?

  She looked from her bloodied palm, then to her other, and realized with a start that she had somehow lost the Shamlus stone. She turned round and round, looking over the pavement beneath her feet, but saw nothing.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” It was an angry male voice, and it spun Andy on her heel. He was leaning out the front door of the house she’d run into the fence of, and he had a cell phone and a baseball bat in his hand.

  “I’m sorry…” Andy tried to say, but even she couldn’t hear her voice over the ruckus of the car alarm. The baseball bat wielding man sighed, and reached into the pocket of his robe, fumbling as he exchanged his cell phone for the alarm controller. With a queer beep like a sneeze, the alarm stopped, and she could hear the echo of it dissipate.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. She pointed at his gate. “I accidentally ran into your gate, there, and it scared me. So I jumped back and ran into your car too.”

  The man grumped and his shoulders loosened. He was a big man, with huge shoulders, tousled brown curling hair, and a five o’clock shadow you could use as a scouring pad. He ambled out of his house and toward the gate.

  “You hurt?” he asked as he shut the gate.

  “W-what?” Andy was distracted. Whether it was just paranoia or not, she felt like there were more than just human eyes watching her.

  “You’re holding your hand. Did you get hurt?” The guy seemed genuinely concerned, which was at odds with his bruiser exterior.

  Andy worked up a smile to placate him. “No. I just scared myself. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” And she started walking away, leaving behind the Shamlus stone and any protection it might have offered her.

  Before she knew it, residential streets grew to more granite and steel buildings. She was approaching downtown, and even though it was late at night, there was a steady stream of traffic moving in every direction. She didn’t feel any safer though, until she began to run into pedestrians. People in cars can always just shut you out when you scream for help. At least with people out walking around, there was a one in ten chance someone would stop and help. At the very least there would be two out of ten that would be witness to your abduction, and one of those people would probably actually talk to the police…if they got to the scene before the witness got bored and left.

  But why would they bother?

  After all, wouldn’t they know, couldn’t they all tell, that she wasn’t like them. Andy remembered her mother swearing that she was indeed real. What was it she had said? Oh, yes. That whatever in the hell she and the fae Queen had formed her from, it had been naturally occurring in this universe. So that was great, just great. Maybe she had been formed out of some mystical mud…or maybe she had been a fae plant of some kind.

  Either way, why hadn’t a human noticed this about her before?

  Well, Min hadn’t noticed. And Min was attuned to the flow and ebb of magical forces…wasn’t she? Well, that was because Min had been affected by the spell that created her.

  Andy wondered if she now looked different to Min? Maybe like an insect, or an alien, or whatever the hell they’d made her out of.

  Oh god…what if she really had been made from some sort of magical bugs?

  It made her flesh crawl.

  Chapter 23

  Min strode through the streets of Augusta armed for battle. She had an iron sword at her hip, two silver daggers, one strapped to each thigh, the Bellini shotgun she’d used on the werewolves strapped to her back, and a small arsenal of magical paraphernalia stuffed in a velvet sack, tied onto the scabbard of the sword.

  Luca had gotten back to the house a few minutes after Andy’s grand escape, and they’d all three headed off to search the city for her. Not that Min expected to visually find her. She’d somehow taken the small, white and silver stone Min had gotten in Scotland ten years ago and used it to make herself disappear. Well, to turn invisible. So she was pretty sure that tracking her would be a fairly silly thing. All she could hope was that somehow she and Katarina would notice something out of place, or pick up on a magical aura, or that Luca would be able to sniff her out in the big, vast city.

  Luca had gone east, and would swing up north, and then down south of the city. Katarina and Min had gone west and were going to mirror his search pattern.

  They just had to find her. Andy wasn’t a skilled practitioner or spell caster. How she’d managed the disappearing act still had Min stumped. Maybe the stone was some sort of magical conduit that Min had neglected to identify. Clearly she needed to go through her personal belongings with a careful eye. If they all survived the night, maybe she’d have Andy look them over.

  If they survived…

  Min looked over to her mother, and couldn’t help feeling a wave of happiness pass through her. Their mother—her mother? No, she was their mother, and she was alive and well, and with her, looking better and better every minute she was awake. No matter what she’d withheld from them, it was still so wondrous that she was present again, not just some lifeless body, bereft of a soul and cold as marble to the touch.

  And god help that treacherous faerie bitch if Min ever got her hands on her. Queen or not, Min was going to strangle her with her bare hands…or set her on fire and have herself a fae barbeque.

  Suddenly her mother stopped and shuddered. Min thought for a moment maybe she sensed something, some clue as to where Andy had gone off to, but when Min came over to her, she saw her mother had broken down in tears.

  Min gathered her mother in her arms and made the same sounds of comfort her mother had always made to soothe her and her sister. Stroking her long silver streaked hair.

  “I’m so scared, Min. What if something happens to her? What if the Winter Queen’s forces have already seized her?”

  “No, no…don’t even think that,” Min said, though those thoughts had already passed through her own mind. “If there had been any fae around the house, Luca would have smelled them when he was there. She’s probably just walking around, thinking. And with that invisibility spell of hers, she’s in absolutely no danger.”

  But no spell is perfect. Min didn’t want to start thinking about what could be happening to her sister this very moment. Logically her mind told her that Andy really wasn’t her sister, no matter what false memories her mother and the fae had dumped into her mind. She remembered the real, Andy-free history of her family as well as the alternate reality of having a sister.

  A memory of Min once telling her sister that she’d wished on a shooting star that she would have been an only child. Andy had been only seven, and had burst into livid tears. Guilt welled up red hot and sticky, and Min had to force herself to breathe.

  “Luca will find her,” Min said, her voice sounding far surer than she felt. Please, by the goddess, let him find her.

  ~*~

  Luca swept through the city, letting his nose lead him rather than his eyes. Min had already told him that her sister had gone all invisible, so looking for her with his peepers would be of no use. So he let her mild, clean scent lead him from Min’s house out into the night. She seemed to be headed toward downtown—but that was quite a stretch for a human on foot—but if she’d been running, and afraid, maybe not.

  Thankfully Min’s little sister didn’t wear any kind of fancy, obtrusive perfume. So, even with her scent being so mild, he wasn’t having too hard a time following it. That was until that scent led him into a small, upscale neighborhood that seemed to appear like an oasis among all the midsized office buildings that were announcing he was getting closer to downtown and skyscrapers.

  That’s where a cacophony of scents nearly made Luca lose her trail. It wasn’t just the inundation of human scents, because there were certainly too many in this small parcel of homes for him to weed out. No, there were other scents that practically screamed out to him. First was the redolent of musk of wild fae. They were not part of either the Winter or Su
mmer Courts. But they still served the Courts to a point. There had been three, and their aromas were as far from humankind as he could imagine.

  The other scent was pure Sidhe…and fucking familiar. It was the same scent he’d gotten a nose full of when Min had tried that spell on him, to try and bring her mother back to life. It was the thing that had come into Min’s very home, merely in shade form, and had kicked Min to the side like she was nothing.

  The Winter Queen.

  Well shit. As if things weren’t bad enough, now the big bad Min and her mother were trying to keep Andy from was already in town.

  If she was physically in this realm—and by the overwhelmingly heady scent of her, she most certainly was—then he needed to find Andy, and now. There was absolutely no time to waste. If the Winter Queen was there, the only place on the planet she might be safe was in her family’s home.

  That home’s threshold was strong with only Min’s magick to buffer it. But it hadn’t been able to hold the Queen back before. But Katarina had lit some rather odd shaped candles—that smelled like they were made out of belly fat of the Creature from the Black Lagoon—and had told he and Min that they were gifts from the Summer Queen. Reinforcements to her own rather powerful wards. They were to be used for exactly a time like this.

  The flames had been green, purple and blue, and he could feel the energy they threw off like the heat from a fire. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but he was hoping they’d be strong enough to stop anything that was going to attack the house.

  But that was before he knew the Winter Queen herself was coming to the party.

  Of course, what good was a threshold when Andy was running all over town, her only defense invisibility. For as surely as he’d tracked her scent, so too could the wild fae, and the Queen.

  He was about to leave the area, try to extricate himself from all the olfactory sensations, then try circling the area until he picked up her scent again—hopefully they hadn’t already caught her, for the Queen could have simply just opened a doorway back to her realm and taken Andy with her—when a breeze brought an odor so strong he could almost taste it.

  Blood.

  Before he could even tell himself to, he was across the street and touching the sharp point of a cast iron fleur-de-lis that stood sentinel atop a yard’s iron gate. He touched that point, and the blood was still fresh enough to be sticky. He brought it to his nose and took a long whiff. Andy, most assuredly. But it certainly wasn’t her naturally mild scent. Her blood was just full of power. Power that made the tiny patch of flesh he’d touched it with start to sizzle.

  He wiped his finger against the iron gate, letting the nighttime moisture of dew help take the trace of blood from his burning flesh. Min had said Andy wasn’t human…and she hadn’t been kidding.

  But that was a good thing, for now he could follow a scent that was far more redolent, one that literally burned the smell of fae right out of his nose.

  Chapter 24

  Andy was exhausted as she rounded a corner in downtown Augusta and found herself across the street from a small all-night diner. The place was the only light coming from the entire city block, and that illumination seemed to make the night warmer, softer. As if it weren’t the middle of winter.

  Her mind had raced as her pace had gradually slowed, and her body shook from cold and weariness. The warm light seemed like a beacon. Watering some rather plentiful hanging baskets of mums and geraniums, a woman in a blue and pink waitress uniform looked over and smiled at Andy.

  “I just started a fresh pot of coffee. Would you like a cup?”

  It was the woman’s job to serve people food and drink, but for some reason Andy couldn’t fathom, her words felt more like an invitation than a sales pitch.

  Andy nodded and started walking toward the waitress and the warm light of the diner. “I’d love some.”

  “Good, good. It’s been one hell of a slow night.” The woman’s voice was lovely, with only the slightest of southern accents. She winked as she pushed through the door of the diner. “And I could use the company.”

  Andy followed, and was comforted by the mingling scents of the diner: coffee and honey, bacon and pancakes, and powdered sugar. The waitress pointed out a booth that was halfway back the length of the restaurant, and right at the entrance to the server station.

  Andy slid into the Naugahyde-covered seat and felt her body cry out in relief—to finally be off her feet. In a flash the woman was back with a cup and saucer in one hand, a pot of steaming, fresh coffee in the other. With practiced skill she turned the cup over on its saucer and filled it up. She placed a bowl of creamers beside the cup then asked if Andy was hungry.

  The coffee smelled wonderful, but not only wasn’t Andy hungry, her stomach roiled just at the thought of drinking anything either. She gave the woman her best smile and shook her head. “Maybe later?”

  “We’re open all night,” the waitress said with a beautiful smile, walking back to the server station to start rolling silverware into paper napkins. She hummed a tune Andy had never heard before as her graceful hands made quick work of her side work. The song didn’t sound like something current. Maybe an old folksong?

  The diner felt warm enough, nearly too warm, but Andy still felt such a chill in her bones. As if they were wrought from nothing more than frigid solid pieces of water. Not to mention the arctic sensations that played in her stomach and clung around her heart. She ran a hand up under her eyes, rubbing away the threat of tears.

  Andy sat, staring at the cup of coffee, holding it between her chilled hands, inhaling the aroma of the dark roast, but not taking even a sip. She just could not reconcile, couldn’t believe, that her mother and her sister had been lying to her for her entire life—well, for the last year, since that was in actuality her entire lifespan.

  I’m not real.

  Not real. What in the name of god did that even mean? Did it mean that she was only a magical construct? Something temporary, an illusion fashioned out of some sort of primordial mist? It made her chest hurt to even think it, but that was all she really had, wasn’t it? Her thoughts? For her family was not her family, and her life was a lie, and her memories…

  She pushed that thought aside. Noting, nothing that had happened so far, not the spiders, or the wicked faerie Queen—not even her mother’s news about her origins—felt quite as horrid as the realization that everything she remembered was a lie. Not even a lie. They had never existed, they had never happened!

  An hour ago she had been just a woman standing in a park, waiting for the man she had a crush on to come out and talk to her. And now she was…

  “What the hell am I?” she said, closing her eyes and sniffling. The heat and burning of imminent tears started to form behind her eyes. She hated crying. It made her feel so ridiculous, so out of control.

  “You’re a star,” the waitress said in her sweet voiced accent. Andy laughed, and blotted her eyes on her napkin, looking up to the waitress. She stood there with a pot of steaming hot coffee in her hand and that beatific smile on her face. She leaned over and refilled Andy’s suddenly empty cup.

  Andy blinked at the cup, and the fact that it was empty, and then she looked up again at the waitress.

  But the woman was no longer a waitress. The woman before her was stunning, probably the most beautiful creature Andy had ever beheld. Tall and voluptuous, with long waves of fiery red hair that flowed down her back to her hips, skin so pale yet so radiant, it literally looked kissed with sunlight. Her lips were full and pouty, the color of strawberries, and her eyes shone the radiant green of the rainforest—lush and so very, very deep. Inhuman vertically slit pupils accented those eyes. She smelled like a mix between a farmer’s market and a forest.

  She wore a diaphanous green silk gown that matched her eyes, and though it covered every inch of her, it did nearly nothing to conceal her.

  The only thing remaining of the waitress was the compassion in her eyes, tempered by a cool, eternal patience.
She smiled more deeply, sliding into the booth seat opposite Andy. Andy looked around for anyone to call out to. But the diner was empty.

  Something came to her out of the cacophony of terror that was her mind, something her mother had said. That one Queen had come to her, to press some great power into human form, and all just to keep it from the other Queen. The Queen of Winter, the beautiful, terrible creature she’d glimpsed in the frozen puddle. And though her coloring was all wrong, and this creature seemed to radiate heat not bitter cold, there was a striking similarity in the features of her face, and the features of what had glared back at her from in that frozen puddle of spidery craziness.

  Andy gulped, that icy feeling spreading through her with renewed intensity. Seeing how bad things had gotten, and how quickly, this could only be the Queen that was hunting her. Which seemed consistent with the sort of day she was having.

  Andy sighed, feeling her shoulders loosen. She didn’t have anywhere else to run, and no way of defending herself. “You must be the Queen that wants to kill me. Well, good, I’m sick of waiting around for it. Go ahead. Get. It. Over. With.”

  The fae’s head snapped back and the most beautiful peel of silvery laughter came out of her mouth, like tiny bells. Sensations washed over Andy, as if someone was stroking feathers over her every nerve. Then the faerie Queen held her belly, the nonexistent thing that it was, and bore her startling green eyes into Andy once more. “I put a lot of effort into shaping you into this lovely form, I hardly think I want to destroy it.”

  Andy’s eyes felt like they were about to pop right out of her skull. “You made me?”