My sweater was drenched in blood turned black by the bluish parking lot lights. The hood, where Opie’s head should have been, was curiously misshapen. Felipe reached out but stopped himself from touching her.
"Is she dead?" I asked, my voice sounding strangled.
Felipe nodded, then sat back, his hands splayed on his thighs.
"They didn't stop," I said, staring at the parking lot exit.
Felipe turned to look at me.
“It wasn’t a hit and run,” Kenisha said from behind me.
I turned. Her shoulders blocking out the light behind her. “This was deliberate. Someone killed Opie on purpose.”
She spread her legs, looking at me like I was a cockroach she was going to stomp to death.
I wisely kept my mouth shut.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Things that howl in the night
I don’t like Death. I’ve always thought of it as an enemy, something stalking me from the day I was born. To me the Grim Reaper is the perfect picture of Death, wrapped in a brownish gray monk’s robe complete with a bony finger beckoning me closer.
Whenever anyone close to me died I could almost hear Death cackling and making a mark on an invisible chalkboard. Death - 1, Marcie - 0.
Maybe that’s why I chose to become a vampire, a darling of the dead, a nobkin of the night, a fanganista. (I have to come up with a better name one of these days.) I didn’t want Death to win again.
But Death was breathing down the back of my neck right now, chortling in the shadows, giggling maniacally as I answered the questions put to me by the police.
Detective Joe Halston was a heavyset man with jowls like a bulldog and surprisingly kind eyes. Gray hair turned bluish in the parking lot lights fell over his forehead. A crease in his left cheek made me wonder if he’d been sleeping before coming here. The black windbreaker he wore didn’t look thick enough to hold off the cold.
His voice growled as he asked me questions he’d probably already asked the others.
Did I see the license plate? No, I hadn’t been close enough. Nor had I even thought to look, which is probably a clue to my naiveté .
Did I know the make of the pickup? I don’t know anything about trucks. One of them looks the same as the next. All I knew was it was big, bigger than the average size pickup truck and black.
Did I know of anyone who would want to hurt Ophelia Richardson? I hadn’t even known her last name. Wasn’t that a clue to how much a stranger she was?
She would have hated dying, especially since she’d planned her transition so carefully. She would have hated dying the way she had, with her skull crushed and her face… Well, her face had been unrecognizable.
Poor Meng had gotten sick every time he’d glanced over at the body. Felipe was a rock, however, becoming almost paternal toward me.
I let him.
If he wanted to put his arm around me when I started to shake, that was okay. If he wanted to give me his jacket, I was fine with that, too. If he wanted to run interference between me and Kenisha the Cop, that was even better.
Where was Il Duce when I needed him? Maybe I should call him. I gave the thought about five seconds before dismissing it.
Felipe finally moved away and I was left standing by the parking lot light, the pose reminding me of the musical, Cats. I’m sure I’d be placed in a mobile padded cell if I started to sing about withered leaves, moaning wind, and memories.
“You’ve had an eventful night,” Il Duce said from behind me.
I whirled, startled. I hadn’t heard him arrive. For that matter, I hadn’t seen his car. Had he flown in?
“Can you change to a bat?”
“Pardon?”
“Do you have the power to turn into a bat?” I asked, enunciating each word.
He frowned at me, an expression that might have kept me silent any other night.
“No, I do not have the ability to change into a bat.”
“Where did that rumor get started?”
“Did someone tell you I changed into a bat?”
I shook my head, unwilling to go into the whole Hollywood/book mythology at the moment.
“Why are you here?”
“I am your mentor,” he said. “It is my duty to attend to you when you are having difficulties.”
“Nobody else has a mentor. Why do I?”
He didn’t answer.
“How did you know where I was?” I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some secret vampire GPS signal. Instead of a bat logo in the sky, it flashed Marcie in Trouble and gave my GPS coordinates.
Il Duce, however, didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who was into technology that much.
Since he still didn’t answer I decided to let the question go for another, more important, one.
“Is there any way to bring her back?” I asked, turning and staring at the draped figure within the yellow crime scene tape. “She was a vampire when she died. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“Regrettably, no,” he said. “She is too damaged and has lost too much blood.”
For a moment I thought he was going to say something else, but he merely shook his head, took me by the elbow and guided me over to the group surrounding Opie’s body.
“Have you any other questions for Miss Montgomery?” Il Duce asked Detective Halston.
“No,” the detective said, glancing at me. “But if you can remember anything else, please give me a call.”
I nodded, feeling an odd urge to say goodbye to Opie. She’d been kind to me, compassionate about Kenisha, and sweet to both Felipe and Meng.
The world had lost a good person tonight, vampire or not.
I looked for Felipe to give him back his coat. The man must be freezing my now. I would have if he hadn’t been so courtly. As we walked through the parking lot I could tell Il Duce was right behind me.
I stared at the pavement. "I thought vampires didn’t cast shadows.”
“Please modulate your voice,” he said. “There is no reason for everyone to know we’re of the Kindred.”
I glanced at him, realizing he was annoyed.
Big deal.
“Just how old are you?”
“Pardon?”
“How old are you?” I asked, enunciating the words again.
“Is that germane to our discussion?”
“A thousand? Five thousand?”
“Five hundred seven, if you must know,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“You were alive in the middle ages.”
“Slightly past, but yes.”
Holy heck. I wanted to ask a hundred questions, all bubbling up in my mind. But this wasn’t the place and from Il Duce’s frown, he probably wouldn’t welcome my questions.
I looked around for Felipe but didn’t see him. Taking off his jacket, I handed it to my mentor.
“Can you see to it Felipe gets this back?”
“Who is this Felipe?”
“I thought you knew everything?”
“When it pertains to you, Marcie, yes.”
Well, that was certainly a scary thought.
I explained who Felipe was and what he looked like. With a courtly bow, one better suited to the 19th century than now, he said, “But of course.”
I left him, making my way back to my car.
On the way home, I didn’t want to think of Opie, how I’d come to like her during our two hour dinner and how charming she was. I especially didn’t want to remember the sound as the truck hit her. The truck had sped up, not slowed down. The only time it had braked was to run over her body a second time.
I reached over and turned up the heater. I hadn’t been cold until tonight and now I wondered how much of it was the temperature change and how much was shock.
As an insurance adjuster, I had handled several cases involving death. One, where the railroad was involved. Two more when a commercial parking garage collapsed. But it was one thing to deal with the paperwork of unexpected death - quite another to
witness it.
Hell, I hadn’t even realized I was dying when Doug bit me.
I pulled into my parking place, grateful my neighbor had finally parked straight. Mr. Gunderson was a lovely man, but his depth perception sucked. He always thought he left enough room between our cars in the covered, assigned parking, but most of the time I had to park in the guest spots. Tonight, fortune - and Mr. Gunderson - smiled on me.
Grabbing the packet from school and my purse, I hotfooted it through the complex to my townhouse. It was a small place, but bigger than the one I had right out of college. Every year the rent went up until I was thinking of buying my own house. With the money from the Death fund, I could.
I tossed the packet on the bar and walked upstairs.The townhouse had two bedrooms, with the master suite upstairs and a smaller full bath downstairs next to the second bedroom. I’d converted it into an office, but I hadn’t been in there for two weeks.
Amazing how your life can change on a dime.
I was nearly desperate for a shower, as if I could wash away the events of the last few hours. I peeled off my clothes, leaving them in a trail as I walked into the bedroom. The hot water was barely warm when I stepped into the shower but I didn’t care.
I had to get clean.
Leaning my head back with my eyes closed, I let the water hit me. When it got hotter, I didn’t move, feeling the need to be purified. I started to cry, not at all surprised.
Sometimes, the only thing you could do in a situation was cry. Maybe that’s why I would never be a badass: too emotional. I might even be too emotional to be a vampire. I felt things strongly. When I was angry, I was furious. When I was sad, I was in the pits.
Several things I couldn’t think about any longer. My family, for one. Those friends I thought I had. I missed everyone and I wanted to explain. This hadn’t been my choice. But the choice to live, even as a vampire, had been one I’d freely made.
I didn’t want to die yet. So shoot me.
Poor Ophelia. I felt even worse about my jealousy now she was dead. But if she’d been alive, standing in front of me, I’d probably still be jealous. She was everything I wasn’t. Beautiful, check. Accomplished, check. Talented? She probably had played piano by ear.
I was still jealous of a dead woman. What did that make me?
Pathetic, that’s what.
I finished my shower, got into my gauze nightgown and padded downstairs. I don’t wear slippers. I’m not a shoe gal anyway. I’d rather be barefoot. Wearing really high heels only lasted a few weeks for me. My arches ached and my back hurt. Plus, I couldn’t move like the sinuous models on TV, hips rotating from left to right. I had a tendency to take a tentative step, rock a little, then take another step. As a friend once told me, it looked like I had something between my legs I was trying to grind to a pulp.
I went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I grabbed a bottle of wine, the same bottle I was saving for an important occasion, from the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Now seemed like a great time. Tonight had taught me two lessons: I wasn’t as immortal as I thought and I was desperately lonely.
My purse was on the table in the hall. I picked it up, noticed the packet and took that, too, along with my bottle of wine and the glass. Once in the living room, I plunked down on the sofa, stretching my feet out on the leather ottoman.
I remoted the TV on, not paying any attention to the news. Instead, I opened my purse, pulled out the bag of Mexican pastries and ate the head off a cinnamon pig.
After I polished off a few pigs, washed down with a decent Chablis, I motored through the rest of the pastries. The world was not a bad place when you ended the day with white wine and Mexican cookies.
Picking up the envelope, I studied the handwriting. My name was written in elaborate script, something I’d seen on a handwritten invitation to a wedding.
What did the Eagle Lady think I needed to know?
The pastries done, I crumpled up the bag and put it aside, opening the envelope with confectioner’s sugar fingers. Five pages were inside, along with a memory card.
As I glanced through the pages, my blood chilled.
She had to be kidding.
But I doubted the Eagle Lady had a well developed sense of humor, especially since she didn’t look as if she ever smiled.
I took the pages and the memory card into my office, ignoring the faint layer of dust over my bookshelves. I inserted the card into my PC once it booted up.
The wind pressed hard against my office windows, hinting at a storm to come. I loved the sheer majesty of storms. I loved the rumbling fury of thunder, the slashing of the wind, the punishing rain. We humans, um vampires, seemed so frail when measured against nature.
I made myself take a deep breath and sit. Staring at my hands, I willed myself to calm.
Until this moment I’d thought the end of my innocence was when I’d awakened in the VRC. Instead, it was now, when my mouth was dry and my blood was pounding in my ears.
The memory card was filled with pictures. One by one, I studied each before advancing to the next.
Why hadn’t he told me? Why hadn’t anyone told me? Why was I left to sit here in the darkness, alone learning another truth, one I wasn’t prepared to know?
At the rate I was going I needed to put Il Duce on speed dial. When I rang his number a recording explained the offices were closed. Great, I had a nine to five mentor, which did nothing to explain how he’d known I needed him at The Smiling Senorita.
One crisis at a time. A few hours ago, it had been Opie’s death.
Right now it was werewolves.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A duke, a prince, and a vampire walk into a bar…
As long as I was in front of the computer, I googled Il Duce. To my surprise - and why should I be? - Il Duce was quite a mover and a shaker in Texas. He was on the Governor’s Committee on Paranormal Relations, Treasurer of the State of Texas Legal Defense Education Fund - Paranormal Branch, and involved in a dozen charities.
In addition, he was the CEO of something called MEDOC, a conglomeration of medical laboratories, each specializing in a different blood borne illness. MEDOC also supplied the state and federal government with various virus testing apparatus and vaccines.
Il Duce was a very wealthy man, um vampire.
When the door shivered, I rolled my eyes. I knew who it was immediately. Il Duce couldn’t be bothered to knock.
I opened the door and stood back as he strode into my house, bringing the chill in with him.
He’d changed and was now dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, topped with a leather jacket. Even in casual attire, he projected power. Did a vampire acquire that power from simply being a vampire? I suspected, in Il Duce’s case, it was something he possessed when he was, what? Alive? Mortal? Human?
I was running out of words.
“You are upset,” he said, studying my face.
What an understatement that was.
“I am upset,” I said, turning and walking into my living room.
He followed me. “It was a terrible thing your friend was killed. I am sad I could not have helped her.”
I plopped down on the couch, poured myself more wine from the bottle I’d opened earlier, pre-werewolf pictures. Normally, I was a cheap drunk. One glass and I felt woozy. Now, however, either my super fast vampire metabolism was burning off the alcohol too quickly for me to feel it, or I was too upset to get buzzed.
I explained what I received from Ms. Renfrew.
“What else haven’t you told me?” I asked, looking up at him.
“You are speaking of werewolves?”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’m speaking of anything else you’ve conveniently left out.”
“Normally, you would not have to be told but Miss Renfrew believed your knowledge was severely lacking.”
I was not buying that the rest of the world knew about werewolves. Vampires, yes, because they’d had to come out of the closet.
; Since the government started obtaining people’s health records, they began compiling a database of DNA profiles. One stockbroker’s - Target One, as he was called - profile perfectly matched that of a man who’d recently died at the age of ninety-eight. Since DNA is individual, like fingerprints, eyebrows were raised. By the time the probe was finished, over ten thousand vampires were forced to admit their status.
But werewolves?
Nope, if there were werewolves, capitalism wouldn’t be far behind.
As it was, there were enough commercials for vampire products.
Need to keep those fangs looking new? Bright and Sharp, the only toothpaste you’ll ever need.
Pas-true, our new blend of cow and sheep blood, pasture raised with no antibiotics - for the discerning vampire. That one was hosted by the guy who did the Mexican beer commercials. His melodic voice almost had me racing out to buy some of the stuff and I can’t stand the taste of blood.
So far, there were no commercials offering resorts to the furry. Need a place to unwind during the full moon? Come to the Lunar Mountain Retreat where you’re free to explore the wilderness. Lean-tos filled with clothing furnished for those embarrassing mornings after. Grooming essentials of long toothed combs and wipes provided.
Any self-respecting entrepreneur would have jumped at the chance to sell to werewolves. They could also market to humans:
Anxious about the full moon? Wondering about your neighbor? Thinking your boss’s ankles are starting to itch? Wear the full moon pendant, made of one hundred percent guaranteed pure sterling silver for those nights you’re forced to be out. This emblem will protect you against the creatures of the night, make a fashion statement and show you’re aware of the changing nature of today’s culturally diverse society.
If the world knew about werewolves, I would have known about werewolves.
“So they’re real?”
He nodded.
The Fertile Vampire Page 6