Fatal Retribution (Raina Kirkland Book 1)

by Diana Graves

“I think I felt more than an emotion just then,” I whispered to Alicia.

  “Excuse me!” the lady yelled. Her perfectly painted face turned into a fake smile as Kamaria’s weak bones lifted from the chair, and walked over to the counter.

  “What?” Alicia whispered back.

  Kamaria’s face wrinkled sourly. “What will it be?” she asked.

  “Uh—,” the lady stared up at the large chalk board menu on the wall behind the counter.

  “I think I almost made out a thought. I felt her malice toward us, but I could almost hear her inner voice in my head say that we don’t deserve the air we breathe.”

  “Whoa. Try it again,” said Alicia.

  The door chimed again, and this time Tristan walked through with the morning sun at his back. He had the top half of his long black-gold hair pulled back to expose all the sharp narrow bone structure of his face. He was wearing jeans and a gold silk button up shirt. He paused just in front of the door and scoped the room in search of us. So, Wild West. He took off his sun glasses, hung them from his collar and smiled our way before heading to the counter. Tristan felt calm, relaxed and nothing more, no thoughts came to me.

  “Nothing,” I whispered to Alicia.

  She shrugged, “It was a fluke then.”

  “Hey, Grams,” he called out over the lady’s shoulder.

  “Hello kiddo,” she said with a smile. “Your usual hun?” she asked. He nodded, and she began to work on his usual sixteen ounce black coffee with a drizzle of chocolate syrup.

  “Hey!” said the lady. “I was here first. Don’t you think its good business to serve customers as they come?” She wasn’t wrong, but this was Kamaria’s café, where the customer is never right.

  Kamaria gave her a harsh face, “You’re a mean bitch.”

  Alicia’s eyes went wide, and she let out a curt laugh before she cupped her hands over her mouth. Tristan looked back at us with a wide smile. Kamaria was such a bad ass old chick. She took no crap. Not from anyone.

  “You can’t talk to customers like that!” the lady shouted in outrage.

  “I think you better just go get coffee elsewhere,” Tristan said politely. Tristan was right. Once Kamaria decided she didn’t like you, she wouldn’t serve you. It wasn’t the best policy for a small business, but Kamaria never seemed too worried about money.

  The lady gave Tristan a flesh burning glare. “This shit hole will be out of business within a week!” She slammed the door hard on her way out.

  “Grams,” Tristan pleaded. “You can’t be so mean to every rude customer or you may just go out of business.”

  Kamaria handed Tristan his coffee. “She was impatient, and she gave Raina and Alicia a nasty look, and then tried to tell me what to do with my own café. What kind of weak bitch do you take me for boy?” She crossed her arms over her bony chest.

  Tristan just nodded. “You’re right, Grams,” he smiled. “Thanks.”

  “You are welcome,” she said, and carefully lowered herself into her chair. Tristan opened his wallet and pulled out a crisp twenty for the tip jar. Kamaria considered us family, and would never take cash from us, so we put what we could afford to in the tip jar as payment.

  Tristan scooted into his seat next to Alicia, took the lid off of his cup and started blowing at his coffee. Alicia couldn’t keep her eyes off him, and I had to admit that for some reason it annoyed me. Was it that I felt Alicia wasn’t good enough for Tristan or the other way around? Or, was it the age thing? Tristan was just a few years from thirty and Alicia and I just became old enough to drink alcohol. I didn’t know for sure, but it felt like jealousy for some reason.

  “What do you need to give me?” I asked Tristan to end the silence that had built up since he sat down.

  He took a small sip of his coffee before he reached deep into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a flyer. “Seth had me stop by the Bastion last night to talk to someone. I picked this up for you,” he said. He handed me the flyer over the table.

  In bold lettering it read, “You and Immortality, instructor Damon. Classes will be held every week night from ten to midnight. Registration is not necessary. Just walk, fly or crawl in at your own discretion.” There was a silhouette of a man on the back and an address, phone and fax numbers below it.

  “Damon is the guy Seth’s having me talk to. He’s a—shrink and he’s also the teacher of Bastion’s Life as a Vampire in America class. You don’t have to go until you’re already a vampire or about to become one, but Seth said you might benefit from it.”

  “I still can’t believe this guy attacked you guys for no reason, and now Nicholas and Michael are vampires and you’re infected, Raina!” Alicia growled.

  Tristan nodded. I could feel the hatred building in his mind, threatening to overflow into actions.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Alicia gently.

  “Besides wanting to dig a hole and call it home, or get to know the cold underbelly of a large rock, I’m fine.”

  “What does it feel like to be a living vampire?” she asked.

  I had to think about that one. It kind of felt like a constant caffeine rush or sugar high. My body felt ready, ready to run or fight or anything. My mind felt sharp, like I was thinking too fast. I also felt emotional. Everything either made me too happy or too angry. But, I didn’t want to say that to Alicia and Tristan. It felt personal, too personal. “Like I should be dead but I’m the exact opposite,” I said sarcastically.

  “Will you have powers like vampire do?” she asked. Her face was far too light hearted for the type of misery I was feeling. I didn’t want to think about that stuff right then. I wanted to think about normal stuff, whatever that was.

  I sighed. “Probably, but I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to grow fangs?” She leaned forward in her seat, eager for the answer. I tried to feel her emotion but the answer was faint in my mind. She felt maybe curious mixed with envy.

  “Eventually,” I shrugged, because I didn’t feel like indulging her tactless curiosity any longer. I knew my face was offensive, my eyes were lazily looking out at nothing, and I wore a deep frown. Alicia seemed to get the hint. She sat back and shut up.

  “I think Seth was right. You should take those classes,” Tristan said. I rolled my eyes at him, even though I agreed. Mato told me what was in store for me, but I couldn’t trust that was everything. What else would this disease change? Even though my senses were under control, I knew that if I wanted to I could smell, see, hear, taste and feel more than anyone should, at least anyone living.

  The conversation didn’t improve. They asked me one probing question after another and I rarely had answers. I didn’t know if I could fly. I didn’t know if my soul was gone now or if it would leave me after death. I couldn’t tell them if I could transform into a wolf or bat. I didn’t have a favorite collective in mind, and I wasn’t saving up for a coffin. Eventually Tristan left the café. He said he was going to Darkness to see Michael and Nicholas. Alicia left shortly after him, and for a short while I sat alone with my thoughts.

  MY HERO

  WHEN I GOT home it seemed like a good idea to escape into a book for a while, so I spent the rest of the day in my room reading a Wanda Winks novel. My room was my sanctuary from the crazy hateful world outside. With soothing green walls smothered with inspiring and artful photos and the pleasant aroma of vanilla incense heavy in the air. Just sitting in it had an extraordinary calming effect on me.

  I owned all of Wanda’s great works. She was renowned for her many detailed adventures as a witch private detective, and for producing books thick enough to use as a short stool. She died only five years ago and I was reading her last book. It was written just months before her untimely death at the hands of her town’s local werewolf pack. I was actually reading her last days on earth. I didn’t understand at first how Wanda’s beloved local pack could ever attack her, but as I read on I discovered that she had been deeply in love with their wolf king, Raymond. W
hen she asked his favor another woman of the pack challenged her. They set up the fight and there was a terrific battle. Reading it made my heart race. I gripped the book tightly, hanging on every word. I tasted the pain and fear and my heart raced for it. In the end Wanda’s superior magic won out as it usually did. However, when werewolves die they change back to their human form, and the werewolf in question had not been the woman who had challenged Wanda, but the wolf king’s own sister. She had loved the woman who had challenged Wanda and had tricked Wanda into coming early. She was in wolf form when Wanda arrived. The two women looked identical in the wolf form. Wanda had killed the sister of the man she loved, and the sister had died for the love of friendship.

  Despite the king’s love for Wanda he sent orders out to his wolves. Wanda imagined him standing in the den of the vampire strong hold, The Killing Castle of Detroit Michigan, “Kill her on sight!” he might have shouted out over a crowd of at least seventy werewolves.

  Right now in the book Wanda’s hiding out. Goddess, how scared she must have been. I didn’t need to read the rest of the book to know how it ended. Eventually they must have found her because she disappeared. All the police found of her were body parts, and when they put the pieces together they didn’t make a whole person. The king was prosecuted for murder and sentenced. He was given a MARK, mandated right to kill. A MARK gives anyone the authority to kill the marked individual on sight for a sizable reward. Any non-human can be marked, which wasn’t a terribly comforting thought.

  With Raymond marked, Wanda’s partner, Sen, had the pleasure of hunting down and killing him. Sen hacked him into little bits with a silver sword. It had been all over the media for months. The headlines read, “Famous writer and detective eaten alive. Partner brings murdering werewolf to justice with his blade.” A Shakespearian romantic drama if ever there was one.

  It was dark outside, and even though I had only a few more chapters to go, I needed to stop. I needed a break finally. I had read through Mom coming home. She had called me for dinner but I declined it. I could still hear the television, which meant Mom was awake.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said as I walked into the living room. The living room was spacious, and walking into it was like walking back in time to Victorian England—with a flat screen and a computer. In the center of the room sat a long blue Victorian sofa, and a highly polished coffee table. Sitting directly behind the sofa was an antique desk. Mom was sitting on the sofa with a bowl of homemade mint ice cream and watching the local news. She was wearing her gold nightgown. Her hair was braided loosely and hanging over her shoulder. She matched the décor, a classic beauty.

  “I didn’t think you were coming out tonight,” she said without turning her head to see me standing behind her.

  “I just needed to get out of my own life for a while.”

  She nodded and I got the impression that she didn’t really hear me at all, that she really didn’t care. “Are you going to be okay coming to work tomorrow?”

  I plopped down beside her on the sofa, and curled my feet into the throw pillows to warm them. Snuggling in against her I said, “Yes, I’ll be okay.”

  “I want you to tell me if it becomes too much for you, Ray.” Her words were full of care but her eyes never left the TV. I let it go. Mom always seemed to be in her own little world.

  “How was work?” I asked. I didn’t care, but I wanted her to pay attention to me, more than she was. I thought that if I made the conversation about her that she might show interest, but this tactic never worked before. Why would it work now?

  “Budgeting, sending out invoices and preparing for the shipment of the two giant mandrakes. They arrive Tuesday morning and I’ve only finished one pot,” she said it with a spoon full of ice cream in her mouth, eyes on the TV and absolutely no interest.

  “You should have let me come with you,” I said, always willing to give a full on conversation with my mom one more shot before giving up entirely and sitting like a zombie until bed time.

  She actually looked at me then and my eyes went wide with hope. “You needed this day to yourself. What kind of mother would I be if I asked my daughter to come to work the day after being attacked by a—.” She let the last part go inaudible and turned back to her TV program. And, just like that, awkward regularity was back.

  “Alicia and I will prepare the other pot tomorrow,” I assured her before I got up and made myself a plate of leftovers. I sat back down with a freshly reheated plate of baked tofu and garlic bread with steamed veggies.

  “What’s going on?” I questioned, motioning to the television with a mouth full of bread. There was a young man being interviewed. He had a dark tan, short brown hair and perfectly straight big white teeth.

  “Oh, um, he’s part of a group of students who think they’ve found a way to manipulate the vampiric virus in some way.”

  I listened in on the interview. The sun was in his eyes and the news camera was too close to his face. It was a very unflattering shot.

  “How close is your research team to creating your miracle cure?” asked the interviewer off camera. The man listened to the interviewer with thin pursed lips and then nodded knowingly.

  “We are very close to unraveling the mysteries of the vampire. How does the disease alter almost every cell in the body; rewrite the DNA? Why does the body die but seemingly live at the same time. We aren’t the first scientists to ask these questions, but we are the first to come this close to the answer, Stacy,” he said. He looked at the unseen interviewer as if that had answered the question. It didn’t…he should go into politics. The camera moved from him to Stacy, a beautiful Asian woman with flowing sandy brown hair in an elegant red blouse.

  “This has been a lovely interview with University of Washington grad student, Mark Press. It’s been a privilege talking with you, Mark,” she said while shaking his hand before she turned back to the camera. “Back to you, Steve.”

  “Thanks Stacy. Well, that’s just fascinating isn’t it?”

  “Oh shit!” I shouted as a thought came to mind. Mom sat up straight and looked at me, “Nicholas!”

  “Yeah,” she said, thoroughly uninterested as she relaxed back into her seat.

  “He’s being moved tonight.”

  “He was moved. Tristan called about an hour ago to tell me everything went fine. He’s at Bastion Fatal, safe and sound.”

  “Oh,” I said. I sunk back into my seat. If I had remembered sooner I would have been there when they moved him—maybe. I cuddled into the throw pillows on the other side of the sofa, and ate my dinner.

  ANGER MANAGEMENT

  MY JOB AT the Natural Kitchen was in the plant nursery. Though, my responsibilities were rather limited due to my black thumb in gardening. I helped with the plants in small ways, like filling the pots and turning on the irrigation system. You know, stuff where I didn’t actually have to touch the plants. So, why did my mom put me in the nursery if I’m so horrible with plants? Because, I’m worse with people; easy to anger and quite unforgiving.

  I was on a platform preparing the last pot for the shipment of mandrakes. My gloved hands smelled like fertilizer because I’d been digging in it all morning. I arched my back to stretch before bending back down to the ten foot pot. The mandrake’s roots look like humans, and they come in female and male form, but giant mandrakes are also human sized, hence the twin ten foot pots.

  We needed the giant mandrakes for a recipe Mom had designed that required its leaf juice. Mom demanded the freshest ingredients for her work, so ordering the juice alone wasn’t an option. She loved her plants as well. Mom will no doubt spend many hours singing to her new plants. Sometimes I felt like she loved her plants more than her children.

  “Okay, I’m done!” I yelled down to Alicia, who was waiting at the bottom of the platform with a long watering hose.

  Alicia climbed up the platform vigorously, “Can you turn on the water?” she asked.

  I slid down the ladder like a pro and dashed to the water
knob.

  “Okay, okay!” Alicia yelled down to me and I stopped turning the knob.

  With our job almost done, I looked down at myself. I was wearing old holey jeans and a pink undershirt, which I wouldn’t wear in public because it shows way too much cleavage and side boob. The greenhouse that Mom and Fauna had built against the back of their shop was humid and hot, and eventually I had to take off my cream colored top in spite of my poor choice in undershirt.

  “How did Mom get the other pot done yesterday?” I shook my head. “I mean, there are two of us and we took the same amount of time as her?”

  Alicia shrugged, “I don’t know. Turn off the water.” I did.

  Alicia climbed down the ladder, wrapped up the hose and laid it on the floor. “Lunch?” she asked. “Or, would that be dinner?”

  I looked up at the clock hanging over the door, which led to the storage room, and beyond that, the store. We worked all day, straight through lunch.

  “It’s about five. I have some time before class.”

  “You’re going to that vamp class, aren’t you?” she asked with bright eyes.

  I smiled at her. I was in a much better mood today. I credited that to working. It helped me get my mind off of everything that was going wrong.

  “You sound like you want to go.”

  “Well, yeah, I mean, it’s held at the compound of Bastion Fatal!”

  “Do you want to come with me? I didn’t see anything on the pamphlet that said I couldn’t bring someone for support.”

  “Yeah, I mean, I’ll have to ask my dad.”

  “That means no.” I couldn’t keep the disapproval out of my voice. Alicia was a college graduate in her early twenties, and she still let her dad run her life. “Your dad would never allow you to go anywhere near Bastion Fatal.”

  “Just let me call him. You never know,” she said, before disappearing to the stockroom to use the phone. It didn’t take long for her to come back with a frown on her face.

  “Is an ‘I told you so,’ in order?”