Vampire Innocent (Book 10): A Vampire’s Guide To Adulting

by Cox, Matthew S.

  “The dog.” Sam grins.

  I peer at Sophia. She’s going gradually red in the face, standing behind me holding her arms out to either side, her lips curled in an adorable snarl. Her eyes are somewhat less adorable, fiercely locked on me with a ‘hurry the hell up’ glower.

  Right.

  I dive into the cop’s head, erasing his memory of seeing me on fire. He’s going to remember thinking he saw smoke coming from the brakes but it turned out to be a plastic bag stuck to the catalytic converter. No big deal. We’re good to go, have a nice day, drive safe, and so on. Since I’m probably going to resume smoking when Sophia drops her magic, I give him a compulsion to disregard it.

  “All set.”

  “Whew.” Sophia slouches.

  In an instant, I’m being microwaved again and traffic resumes.

  “Aha, plastic bag on the catalytic.” The cop smiles at me. “Thought you might have had a fire issue. Have a nice day, miss. Drive safe.”

  “Will do. Thank you, officer.”

  We scramble back into the Tahoe. Like Follows Rule Girl would, I signal and pull into traffic as soon as it’s safe. The Littles and I spend the rest of the ride to the airport discussing if Sophia is going to piss off some kind of time guardian if she keeps tinkering. Sophia rather calmly says they only care about big changes. Altering the course of world history or something. Avoiding a ticket or stopping a police officer from becoming awakened to the existence of paranormal beings is relatively minor.

  “Besides, I only stopped time in about a two-mile area.”

  “Oh, only,” I say.

  “You are scary, Soph.” Sierra shivers. “And wait… what happens at the edge? Do people outside the stop keep moving until they crash into cars stuck in time?”

  “Most likely,” says Sam, “the border of the temporal disturbance has a compression effect where time feels like it slows down progressively the closer an observer gets to the event horizon where time experiences a full stop.”

  “Okay, Carl Sagan,” says Sierra.

  Sophia shrugs. “Sounds reasonable to me. I don’t really know.”

  “Hang on…” I make eye contact with her via the rear-view mirror. “Your magic is strong enough to stop time in a two-mile radius while simultaneously shielding me from daylight, but you can’t fix the air after Dad blows up the bathroom.”

  “Yes.” Sophia nods. “I can’t use magic when I’m unconscious.”

  We’re still laughing when we arrive at the airport twelve minutes later.

  Mom and Dad are waiting for us at the curb in the pick-up lane.

  Mass hugs ensue.

  After helping them load luggage into the back, I face Mom and offer the Tahoe’s security fob with all the ceremony of a samurai gifting a katana to their warlord. “As foretold in the writings of Azmordac, I return this great relic to its rightful master.”

  “Wow, you remembered.” Dad grins.

  Yeah… Azmordac was a weird little Nostradamus like prophet from the D&D campaign he ran for us last year.

  Mom calls me a goofball with her eyes as she takes the fob. “Is it in one piece?”

  “Yep.” By some miracle, but yeah.

  “We actually destroyed and repaired it four times,” says Sophia in an entirely serious tone.

  Mom gives her side eye, unsure if the girl’s kidding or serious.

  “It is unscratched,” says Sam. “But it smells like Dad tried to grill steak again.”

  Mom raises an eyebrow at me. “You burned my truck to dried-out cinder?”

  “Little bright today.” I make a pinchy gesture. “Not intentional. It’s me burning.”

  “Oh…” Mom cringes. “Sorry, dear.”

  Dad rolls his eyes. “I did not burn those steaks to a cinder.”

  “I liked them.” Sam raises his arms and lets them flop to his sides.

  “Says the boy who thinks demons are normal,” mutters Sierra. “You don’t have taste buds. Steak exists in three states: not yet cooked, perfectly rare, and charred to a cinder. Any state other than the first two is the third state.”

  “Meat is evil.” Sophia makes a ‘blech’ face.

  The rest of us laugh. We’re laughing with her, not at her. Mostly.

  We hop in, Mom behind the wheel. I surrender the passenger seat to Dad as per our usual protocol and end up in the middle of the back seat, Sierra on my left, Sophia and Sam on my right.

  “So,” asks Dad once all the doors close. “Anything go crazy while we were gone?”

  “Kinda,” I say. “But not here. Blew up some psycho vampires in Ventura, California.”

  “It was on the news, too.” Sam bounces in his seat. “But not the vampire part.”

  Mom twists around to look at me. “What were you doing in California?”

  “Made a bad call.” I explain Wolent wanting me to bring a message down there in a gesture of officially joining vampire society as an associate of his, and being afraid using my family as an excuse for delaying it might get Paolo and Stefano plotting even harder to do bad stuff to us. “If anything like this ever happens again, I’m not going anywhere until you guys are back.”

  “Fair enough,” says Dad.

  Mom looks at him.

  “The kids aren’t little anymore, and she had Ashley helping out.” Dad doesn’t seem thrilled, more accepting. He sighs. “We’re in strange territory now, Allie. I think Sarah’s gotta trust her hunches sometimes.”

  “She is lucky nothing happened.” Mom starts the engine.

  “Yes, I was. You’re right, Mom. I learned. Won’t roll those dice ever again.” Ooh. Distraction time. “Check this out…” I take my phone out and pull up the photos of child-i-fied Ashley. “Found a photo tweaking app.”

  Mom squeals like Sophia seeing a kitten. “Oh, my. She is so cute.”

  Sierra and Sophia exchange a surprised glance at Mom believing me.

  “Not sure you rolled dice. You made a decision based on calculated risk.” Dad reaches back and pats me on the knee. “Maybe you overestimated the risks, but you did what you thought had the kids’ best interests at heart.”

  “Trying.” I flash a cheesy smile.

  “So, I really have to hear this story. How did you blow up five elder vampires?” Dad wags his eyebrows. “Did you bring the headband?”

  “No, I didn’t. Was not expecting to get into a fight at all, just Fed-ex a scroll. Thought it would be simple.”

  “Adorable.” Mom hands my phone back.

  “The pictures, or Sarah thinking something she had to do for vampires would be simple?” asks Sam.

  Mom sighs. “Both.”

  Sierra examines her fingernails. “Nothing is ever simple for the drama llama.”

  “I’m not the drama llama.” I point at Sophia. “She is.”

  For an instant, it seems Sophia’s about to stick her tongue out at me, but she presses the back of her hand to her forehead and drapes herself across my lap as if fainting. “Everyone is so unspeakably wicked to me. I simply cannot bear the torment any longer.”

  “See!?” I tickle her exposed sides.

  “All right then.” Mom pulls away from the curb to begin our ride home. “Let’s hear the story.”

  “Right, so… you remember Ben and Cody?”

  34

  Too Normal

  My head hurts.

  No, not because of a bullet. Freakin’ schoolwork. It’s so damn tempting to compel my teachers to simply give me a passing score and skip the rest of their classes. How is it I’m a vampire who can stay up all night—who has to stay up all night—and I still end up feeling like there’s not enough time in a day to get everything done? Even being able to type at superhuman speeds only helps so much. College work is more than writing essays. This surge is mostly due to make-up work for the classes I missed on Monday, but Professor Connolly in Tuesday’s bio class hammered us with a project paper.

  Since the parents are home, I can retreat into my cave and throw all my waking
time at homework.

  By Friday night after class, I’m all caught up. Except for another philosophy paper Dr. Heath assigned last night. It can wait for the weekend. Happy to be out from under the burden of school work, I end up staring blankly at my computer screen, not doing anything for a few minutes.

  Sometimes, doing nothing is awesome.

  The brain needs blah time.

  Sierra walks into my room, knocking on the door without slowing down as she enters. “Hey, Sare.”

  “Hey.” I swivel the chair around to look at her.

  Typical Sierra, dark blue T-shirt, jeans, barefoot. She’s also holding two plastic-and-foam swords. “Wanna practice a bit?”

  “Yeah, sure. Why not?” Been meaning to suggest it, but… distractions.

  We head upstairs to the kitchen and go out the patio door to the yard. Sierra tosses me one of the swords. Feels like a wooden core wrapped in PVC and a layer of dense foam. A hard enough wallop from one of these wouldn’t be comfortable, but it’d never kill or even seriously hurt someone. Well, I could probably break someone’s face with it. But I’m not going to whack my sister any harder than a friendly bonk.

  Perhaps attempting to exploit my hesitation to ‘hurt’ my siblings, Sierra goes on the attack right away. It’s truly weird how Dalton shared his knowledge with me. I react on instinct, parrying her strike and flowing smoothly into a counterattack—which she expects and ducks. Wow, okay.

  Again, she comes in, faking a gut shot. I know the move; this is going to end up poking me in the face the instant I try to defend the feint. I ignore the low blade and ‘stab’ her in the chest.

  “Gotcha.”

  “Grr.” She grins.

  We reset and go at it again. The soft thwap of our fake swords bouncing off each other fills the backyard for a few minutes. I’m holding her off from hitting me back for the most part, and not putting too much effort into tagging her. She’s surprisingly adept, stopping every one of my attacks. Her constant smile—like she’s having the time of her life—prevents me from really trying to smack her. I don’t mean ‘really smack’ in the sense of hurting her, more like putting genuine effort into scoring a point. If she taunted me or boasted, I’d bop her a few times.

  She’s surprisingly good for an almost twelve-year-old, but it would take an enormous amount of skill for a human to defend against vampiric speed. If I really wanted to bop her, boppage would happen.

  Her technique is also alarmingly familiar. Too familiar.

  Hmm. As a test, I stop holding back. For a few rounds, I put sincere effort into trying to score a hit on her, but don’t resort to superhuman reflexes. She still holds me off, but is definitely working for it. Purely out of curiosity—I swear I’m not mad at her—I cheat, speeding myself up a bit faster than humanly possible.

  She does, too. Blocking my next three attacks, barely, but still blocking them. What the hell. Finally, I try a feint as fast as I can make myself move. Any normal person would see me do some Matrix level blurry crap. Sierra grunts, but manages to get her foam sword in the way before my ‘blade’ bounces off her chest.

  We stand there, swords crossed, staring at each other. I’m the picture of total resting calm while she’s sweating and gasping for breath. Her expression is obvious. The girl might as well have ‘busted’ written on her forehead in black Sharpie marker.

  “Sierra?” I ask.

  “Hmm?”

  “How did you learn Dalton’s style so well?”

  She blushes a little. “Uhh, what do you mean?”

  “You shouldn’t have been able to block this.”

  “I know.”

  “But you still did.”

  “Yeah.”

  We remain there in the same pose our swings ended in, swords crossed, for another few seconds before relaxing and standing like normal people. She’s still breathing way hard. It’s obvious she really had to work to keep up with me the last few rounds. Sierra’s sorta favoring her left leg. I hope she didn’t pull a muscle straining to block my last shot.

  “I asked Dalton for help.”

  “Umm…” I tilt my head. “He said he could only transfer knowledge to me because he’s the one who gave me the Transference. We have a mental link due to his being my sire.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “So… how did he manage to teach you so fast?” I blink. “If he turned you, I’m going to rip his balls off.”

  She laughs. “No… he didn’t. Look at me. I’m still alive.”

  True, she’s not a vampire. Whew.

  “He’s a good teacher.”

  “What are you hiding?” I ask.

  Sierra raises both eyebrows. “You think I’m hiding something?”

  “Yes. You’re making that face.”

  She looks down, raises and lowers her toes. Shifts her weight on to her right leg, then sighs. “You’re gonna freak out.”

  I tuck the foam sword under my left arm and take her hand. “I promise I won’t.”

  “Really?” She looks up at me.

  “Really.”

  “Okay.” She lets all the air out of her lungs, takes a breath, lets it out.

  “You’re delaying.”

  “Yeah. Let me delay.”

  I tap my foot.

  “So, umm. Dalton gave me a tiny sip of his blood. The night the blunt sword broke off and broke the window on the Tahoe? Yeah… I was a little stronger than I should be.”

  Ooh… I shiver in a brief surge of freakout anger, but let it go. “He made you into a thrall?”

  “No. It’s totally different. C’mon. You know Dalton. He wouldn’t set aside some of his power for me.”

  “Yeah, he actually would. You’re a kid whose life is kinda in danger because of something he did.”

  Sierra blinks. “What did he do to put me in danger?”

  “Turned me.”

  “Oh.” She gives me this blank look like she can’t decide if she should laugh or feel sad. “He didn’t though. I’m not like his slave or anything. It just gave me some of what he knows… and made me a little stronger and faster. He said it won’t last forever… or even very long. Maybe a month or two. I’ll still remember what he taught me, but won’t stay boosted unless I keep getting blood from him.”

  I pull her into a hug. “He did thrall you.”

  “No. He’s not gonna control me. Besides, it’s ickier than kissing a boy. Tasted horrible. Not like you where it tastes like food.”

  Her revulsion is both cute and authentic. Okay, I don’t think she plans to continue begging him for supernatural favors. “Why did you ask him to do it in the first place?”

  “It’s not gonna hurt me.” She jabs her big toe at the grass. “Sophia’s got magic. Sam’s got pet demons. And I’m just normal ol’ Sierra.”

  “You’re not jealous?” Crap. Dalton said she’s jealous, but not in a ‘I hate my siblings for being cooler than me’ way. She’s feeling vulnerable and frightened.

  “Correct.” Sierra nods once. “I’m not jealous.” She lowers her voice. “I’m scared. We’re in a world of evil crap now, and… I really don’t wanna be defenseless.”

  There are a few things I am completely certain will never happen: an end to global warfare, national healthcare in the USA, someone inventing microwave food that doesn’t stay frozen in the core, and Sierra ever admitting to being afraid of anything. Like, no way. She’d never even lie about it to get something she wanted.

  I hug her tight. She squeezes me back.

  We have a sincere moment… at least until she whispers, “Can anyone see us?”

  I laugh.

  She giggles, pulling back from the hug, wiping tears on her arm.

  “Please be careful.”

  “I will. Being careful is the entire point.” Sierra holds her fake sword up. “Are we done for now or do you wanna go a few more points?”

  “Up to you.”

  “Feeling like movie or games now.” She exhales hard. “I’m wiped.”
/>   “Cool.”

  “Oh, by the way… Sam’s got a hell hound.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I hang my head. “Has Mom discovered him yet?”

  Sierra cocks her head back, eyebrow up. “Is she screaming and losing her mind?”

  “Good point.” Sigh. “How do you think we should tell her?”

  “Uhh, do we have to? He’s invisible unless he wants someone to see him.”

  I look around the yard. “Really?”

  A shimmer near the fence all the way at the back end catches my eye. For a few seconds, a huge dog fades into view. Looks like a cross between a Doberman and a German Shepherd, only much hairier, shaggy even, and about the size of a pony. Oh, he’s got little horns, too. His eyes glow an eerie shade of dark crimson, yellowish smoke peels out from between teeth I’m sure could snap a man’s leg off in one bite.

  Somehow, he manages to be utterly terrifying and still cute. I mean, a doggo is still a doggo, right?

  He rests his chin on his forepaws, and fades away.

  “Wow…” I glance at Sierra. “You know Mom is eventually going to find out.”

  Sierra starts walking back to the deck. “Yeah. But we can enjoy the quiet before she does.”

  Hah. True. “Yeah, enjoying some quiet sounds really good about now.”

  fin

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you for reading A Vampire’s Guide to Adulting!

  I am truly humbled by the reaction this series has gotten from readers. Never imagined it would be so well-received when I started it on a whim. I am beyond thrilled so many of you enjoy being part of Sarah and her family’s world. Hoping to continue this series for as long as I can.

  Additional thanks to Lee Hargrove for editing and Alexandria Thompson for the cover design.

  About the Author

  Originally from South Amboy NJ, Matthew has been creating science fiction and fantasy worlds for most of his reasoning life. Since 1996, he has developed the “Divergent Fates” world, in which Division Zero, Virtual Immortality, The Awakened Series, The Harmony Paradox, and the Daughter of Mars series take place. Along with being an editor at Curiosity Quills press, he has worked in IT and technical support.