by Mary Hughes
“Only sixteen. And such a hellion.” Mother paused. Added, almost reluctantly, “So independent. Such an original.”
“How did she die?” Julian asked. It was less a question and more a breath; a whisper of acceptance and encouragement.
“She had an accident.” My mother’s reply was just as soft. “Giselle used to go joyriding, though I told her not to. Such an adventure, she would say. So exciting.”
“A car crash?”
“No. A boy took her up on his motorcycle. They were going too fast down a country lane and…and Giselle was not wearing a helmet. Neither of them were. But only my Giselle died.”
My jaw dropped. “Mom! You said she died of a drug overdose!”
My mother turned on me, her expression angry but her eyes suspiciously shiny. “I did not want you idolizing your sister! I did not want you taking off higgledy-piggledy with some man and dying…too…” My mother covered her mouth, realizing what she’d revealed.
All my life, my mother had swept Giselle under the rug. I thought it was because she hated Giselle’s independence.
Now I saw it hurt Mom too much. That she didn’t want me to end up the same way.
Wow. I would have to rethink more than a few things.
A small sob came from my mother’s chair. Any thinking or rethinking stuttered to a halt.
Oh, fizzle-shizzle! Mothers weren’t supposed to cry. Especially not my mother, stalwart, stifling, and never, ever sloppy. I tried frantically to think of something to keep her from going off the deep end.
I just didn’t know how to deal with Mom being vulnerable.
Julian came to the rescue. “Would you pour me some coffee, Mrs. Schmeling?” He picked up cup and saucer and held them out, matter-of-fact. So nice and normal.
It was the only thing that could have pulled Mom back from that scary emotional brink. “Why…yes. Yes, of course, Mr. Emerson.” My mother picked up the coffeepot, which clinked once against the tray. Then she had it under control and smoothly poured him coffee. Julian took a small, appreciative sip.
“Excellent coffee, Mrs. Schmeling.”
“Do you like it?” She set down the pot and wiped discreetly under her eyes. “It’s some of the fancy roast from the grocers,” she continued in a more normal tone. “Usually I don’t go in for those Vee-and-ease fancy-schmancy coffees, but…” And my mother was off and running again.
Chapter Eighteen
And that was how Julian Emerson bumped St. Bart out of first place in the Mother Race. He clinched it by taking the coffee cups and service to the kitchen and suggesting that mother and I relax and visit while he washed up.
Even I appreciated that.
When Julian came back, we chatted a bit more. Finally I asked about Bruno’s little delivery.
“I put it in your room, Dietlinde,” my mother said. “It looks pretty big. Probably heavy. Maybe you should ask Mr. Emerson to help you with it.”
My mother was sending me to my room—with a man? Well, with a vampire, but my mother thought he was a man. According to my mother, men only had one thing on their minds. From my experience, vampires did too, but that wasn’t the point. The point was…oh. I remembered my mother saying a man wouldn’t stay with the cow if she didn’t give him milk.
I didn’t tell her the cow had already been milked. And that the man probably wouldn’t stay with her anyway.
But Julian seemed to want to stay with me at least for now, so I led him to the small room upstairs that was my childhood sanctuary. I found the bazooka almost immediately and headed back.
I stopped when I realized Julian wasn’t behind me. Returning to the doorway, I saw him, face thoughtful, wandering around the room. Touching things, looking at them, sniffing at a few. He considered my Neon Genesis Evangelion poster and my TMNT action figures. My first Fender propped up in the corner, and my dartboard Justin Timberlake. He stopped the longest in front of my bookcase, sitting on his haunches to read the titles on the lowest shelf. Every once in a while he’d smile, like he’d caught the name of an old friend.
Then Julian saw my special oil on the top. He rose, picked up the slender bottle. Turning, he looked at me for the first time since we’d entered the room. “What’s this?”
My cheeks heated. “Isn’t it obvious?”
Julian pumped a little bit into his hand, tested the consistency. Thick, but not too thick. He brought it under his nose, took a small sniff. “Mmm. Nice. What’s it for?”
My blush deepened. While I lived at home it was only for masturbation. But seeing Julian rub it, smell it…I swallowed hard. “It’s for fapping.”
Julian blinked. His eyes tracked in that way I was coming to know; searching for a translation.
Suddenly his eyebrows winged high. His eyes met mine. “Fap. The sound of intercourse on Internet porn sites.”
“Um, yeah. Or in manga.”
“Japanese comics?” His eyes tracked again. “Of course. Baka. Japanese for stupid. Could it be so simple? What about pwn?” I opened my mouth to reply when he said, “Internet, no…cultural reference…yes, it’s computer gaming, isn’t it? Pwn translates to own. To own or rule!”
And then, like Helen Keller breaking the sign language barrier, unlocking the door to understanding with the key word water, Julian got it.
“Fapping.” He advanced on me, backing me into a wall. Abruptly, he thrust the hand with the oil down my pants. His fingers slid slickly over my pubes, began caressing back and forth. “I’ve been buckets of stupid, haven’t I?”
“Well…not exactly.” My hips rocked against his oiled hand. “What do you mean?”
His mouth hovered over mine. “Shizzle, Nixie. I’ve been a faphead.” He kissed me, lips feather-light. “Feening over not understanding you. You must have thought my brain was rolled, as baka as I’ve been.” His tongue flicked delicately over my lips. All the while his hand kept pumping, fingers caressing.
“Uh…not totally. Baka, that is.” I was trembling, my body starting to perspire. “You’re not Betamax about this hXc stuff. You’re wicked on that.”
“Betamax.” Julian kissed down my cheek, nipped my neck. I could feel his breath heat my skin. “Betamax cassette tapes? Ah. Old, obsolete. And hXc…hardcore?” He nudged aside my hoodie, wet the tee over my breast with his tongue. “Well, I can’t help thinking hXc with you, Nixie. You’re hawt.” He clamped onto my breast and began to suckle. “Leet.”
“Julian.” I was starting to pant. “We’re in my parents’ house.”
“So?” He pushed me harder into the wall, letting me know how really hawt he found me.
“So my door doesn’t have a lock.” The pressure was delicious. I arched against the wall.
“So?” I heard his zipper go. He removed his hand from my pants, but only to use both to push them down to my knees. Taking my bared hips in his hands, he raised me against the wall. While I was still trying to figure out how we were going to do this with my legs clamped together by my pants, he sliced his erection between my thighs and into my pussy.
With anyone else, that would have gotten them about one inch inside. With Julian’s prodigious length, he stuffed me full. “Oh,” I gasped, the heat searing me. “Wouldn’t this be easier if you turned me around?”
“I want to kiss you as you come.” He lowered his head.
His kiss was no longer delicate or light. His mouth opened on mine, his tongue driving, stabbing, dominating. His hips thrust in time to his tongue, hard and sure. Between his hands, hips, and my jeans, I found myself pinned securely against the wall. I could only hang in his grip and enjoy.
My fingers tangled in his hair. I gasped his name, and he growled mine. His deep, rumbling purr started, and I swear it vibrated clear through my chest and into the wall. And all throughout he thrust, thrust, thrust.
“Julian. Bite me.” I offered my neck. “I’m so close…bite me.”
“I can’t.” It seemed like he was speaking through an ocean of pain. “I would take too much. I want—oh, how
I want. But your blood pressure’s too low.” His words were lisped around his immense canines, as long as I’d ever seen.
“Bite me.” I yanked his head into to my neck. Felt his breath steam my throat. “Bite me!”
“Nixie, no—”
“Bite me now!” I arched back hard, thrusting my throat into the pearl of his fangs. My blood rushed to meet them, kissing them with fluid red lust. I moaned and shuddered on the brink of a huge orgasm.
Julian roared. His mouth opened like a snake unhinging. He skewered my throat in a bite so powerful my eyes flew open and my entire body unfurled hard against the wall.
Forget bombs bursting in air. Forget lightning sizzling through the sky. Forget geysers of water and steam blasting out of the earth. This was so beyond.
I climaxed like a bullet train. Like a subway rocketing through deep, dark tunnels. Like running face first into a cliff at ninety miles an hour. The power of it was so far beyond anything I’d ever experienced, it destroyed me. Tore me in half, ripped out my heart, and smashed me back together.
And as Julian gushed and gushed into me, I realized with awful clarity that I would never be whole again.
Then I passed out.
I woke facing a bright yellow wall decorated with cheerful rainbows and flowers. The scrape-scrape of a clock sounded from somewhere. At first I thought I was in a hospital, but I lay in a recliner, not a bed. And the woman who bustled in wasn’t a nurse. “Feeling better, girl?” My friend Twyla Tafel’s cocoa brown eyes watched me with concern.
“Twyla? The mayor said you were going to your sister’s. What are you doing here?” I tried to sit up but felt weak as a puppy. Twyla put a hand to my shoulder, held me down with astonishing ease. I closed my eyes. “And where, BTW, is here?”
“Blood Center. I was on my way to my sister’s when I got the call. Came right over.”
The reason I was at the Blood Center was obvious, once I saw the needle in my arm. “What call?”
“Mr. Hottie Attorney. Said to come over right away, so I hustled my bootie right along.”
“Julian? Where is he?” I looked around. The rainbows and flowers were actually only along one wall. The other three were concrete, two lined with refrigeration units.
“He took off. Something about a fight. So it’s Julian now? Not Mr. Pricey Prude? Not the Lewtz at Law?”
Julian was anything but prudish, at least in the important things. And I’d found out he wasn’t getting any of the money we raised. But I didn’t know how much Twyla knew, so I only said, “Did he say what kind of fight? Or where?”
“No. Only that I was to keep you from following. He was quite insistent. Kinda scary about it.” Twyla shivered. “That boy’s got sharp teeth.”
I tried sitting up again. This time I didn’t feel so weak. “But Julian may be in trouble. I have to go. Where’s my bazooka?”
“Your what?” Twyla’s fine brows knit together. “Since when do you have a bazooka?”
“Uh, long story. Have you seen it?”
“No,” Twyla said at the same time I saw it behind her. She glanced back. “And even if I had, sexy and straight took the ammo.”
“Shizzle. Twyla, could you do me a favor? Could you call Bruno Braun, and—”
“No. No way, José. Nein, nicht, not, nyet, never, uh-uh.” Twyla put up a long-nailed hand, today enameled in stop-sign red. “I know what you’re thinking. And ain’t no way. Leet lawman would have my ass on a platter if I let you one step out of this building, much less following him to that fight.”
I sighed. “Fine. Can I at least make a phone call?” Digging in the pocket of my pants, I pulled out my cell phone.
“I guess. Lawboy went all testosterone protective over you leaving, not you calling.”
That was Julian. “Yeah. He thinks I’m a kid.” I hit Elena’s speed dial.
“No way, girl. I saw him look at you. No way that man thinks you’re a child.”
Thinking about Julian looking at me, I got hot. “Then why won’t he let me help him fight?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because he’s got fifteen inches and a hundred fifty pounds on you?” Twyla rolled her eyes. I rolled mine back.
My call to Elena went over into voicemail. Which meant she was probably at the fight too. With Bo no doubt. “At least tell me where Julian is. I know that you know. You know everything. I promise not to leave.” In a low voice I added, “Before I’m ready.”
“I heard that,” Twyla said. “So, yes, I know, and no, I’m not telling.”
“Come on, Twyla. Julian might need help.”
“I’ll be the one needing major help if he finds out I told.”
“C’mon, Twyla. You owe me.” When she tried to look innocent I hit her with, “I know you’re the one who set the mayor on me, you haas.”
She had the grace to blush.
“I vowed revenge, but if you tell me where Julian is, I’ll consider us even. But if you don’t—”
“All right, all right! It might be okay if you guess.”
“I can live with that.” Where would Julian, Bo, and Elena be? Well, where would a vampire fight be? The last one had been outside of the Roller-Blayd factory. My thoughts were accompanied by the scrape-scrape of the clock. I pointed at the bag of blood draining into me. “How long until this is done?” I frowned. “And why am I not at the hospital?”
Twyla crossed her arms and leaned against a rainbow. “Well, smarty, why do you think you’re not at the hospital?”
“I guess because it was too far away from my parents’. And…because the Blood Center is closer to the fight!” Scrape-scrape went the clock.
“Now your wetware’s working.”
“So how long until I’m done?” I looked around for the clock. It occurred to me that clocks went tick-tick, not scrape-scrape.
“Another fifteen minutes. You didn’t need a full unit. But your Julian wanted you to rest after.”
“Like that’ll happen.” Scrape-scrape. “Do you hear that?” Such an odd-sounding clock. Especially when there was no clock in the room at all. “What is that?”
“What?” Twyla cocked her head. There was only silence.
Then—scrape-scrape. “That,” I said.
Twyla frowned. “Sounds like mice.”
“Like mice digging,” I agreed.
“Huh. I’ll have to call pest control when I get back.”
“Except—” I strained my ears. “Don’t mice go scritch-scritch instead of scrape-scrape?”
“Maybe they’re using tiny shovels,” Twyla said.
“Ri-ight.” I wondered how many vampires Julian and company were fighting this time. Wondered if I’d get there in time. Wondered, if I did get there in time, whether bazookas were point-and-click. Bruno hadn’t left any instructions. And Julian had taken the ammunition. Hopefully Elena’s ammo would fit. “Are you going to pull this thing out of me when the time comes, or is there a nurse around?”
Twyla pushed off the wall to come sit in the chair next to my recliner. “I am. Don’t worry, Lawboy showed me how. He’s the one who fixed you up, you know. I was pretty impressed, how efficient he was.”
“Yeah, well, I guess it’s a hobby of his.”
“Medicine?”
“No, blood.” I looked around. Boxes sat on pallets. Refrigerators hummed. It looked more like a warehouse than a hospital. “Do they usually do transfusions at the Blood Center?”
“I don’t know. They must, though, right? I mean, they have the equipment.” Twyla indicated bag and pump. “That looks like the last of it.” She unhooked me.
But when I tried to get up, she sat on me. “Let me go!” Only it came out more like mumph miggle mumph.
“Nuh-uh. Hunkalicious would take a bite out of me if you followed him.” Twyla sounded wary. If only she knew how incredibly orgasmic Julian’s bite was, she’d be spritzing herself with barbeque sauce.
“Not…going to follow…him,” I gasped.
“Promise?”
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“Yes,” I said with the last of my oxygen. She got off. I sucked in a bushel of air.
I had told her the truth. I wasn’t going to follow Julian.
I knew where he was. So I was going to go straight to him.
Chapter Nineteen
But when I got to the corner of Fifth and Grant, there was no crowd of ravening freaks. No bodies flopping heartless to the ground. No heads rejoining in a creepy-weird dance of rebirth.
Instead, a suspicious orange glow came from the east. I trotted toward it. As I got closer, I could see the orange halo was shot through with plumes of black smoke.
Shouldering my bazooka, I ran. It felt like miles. But only half a block further on I got a clear view. I screeched to a halt.
Kalten’s Roller Skating Rink was nothing but a big camp fire.
If there’d been a fight, it was long over. Stunned, I stumbled closer, wondering where Julian and Elena were. Wondering if they were okay. Wondering where the hell I’d stage my bands now. As I stood mired in my stupidity, flames began licking the building’s windows.
“Nixie! Don’t go any closer.” A hand clasped my shoulder, long-fingered and pale. “It’s dangerous.”
I turned. Behind me was Bart Bleistift. His nice boyish face was concerned. And strangely, a little wary.
“Bart? What are you doing here?” The wary expression, coupled with the time of night, made me suspicious. Butler had said Bart wasn’t a vampire, but who else would be out so late?
I mentally smacked myself. Did I think everyone in the world was a closet bloodsucker? I was getting way too vamparanoid.
“I was walking home,” Bart said. “Working late.”
See? I told myself. Totally non-weird explanation. “Big case?”
“Some meetings that took all afternoon. Then I had to finish up a few things.” Bart smiled his nice boyish smile, and I felt better.
He threaded his arm through mine. “So, how about I walk you home?” He gave me a saucy wink.
The wink implied I’d get laid. If Bart had asked me last night, I’d have shouted yippy. Since then I’d had deal-breaker sex with Julian. I knew until that memory faded, no one else could compare.