Dating for Demons

by Serena Robar

  It was still about an hour before daybreak; I could tell Hunter was surprised when we stopped at our destination.

  “You wanted to take me to a lakeside house without asking any questions? Do you think the house doesn’t know it’s on the lake or something?” He was being sarcastic of course, but I wasn’t sure why. He seemed very disappointed. Did he think I was taking him on a bank heist or something?

  I jumped off the back of his bike and returned the borrowed helmet. “Boy, you don’t like not knowing what’s coming next, do you?”

  He unbuttoned his duster, took off his own helmet and replied, “You have no idea.”

  “Follow me.” I walked quietly across the gravel driveway, to the side of the house. The basement door was the entrance directly into the library. Vampires usually entered the house through the front door. At least, that’s what Colby mentioned once.

  “Piper?”

  “Huh?” I kept looking around for signs of anyone moving around in the house.

  “Why are you tiptoeing?”

  I looked down and sure enough, I was on the toes of my canvas high-tops, trying not to make any noise. “I don’t like the sound gravel makes when you step on it.”

  Mark that down as the lamest excuse, ever.

  “Uh-huh.” Hunter looked at me like I was crazy. Which I surely was if I was taking him into a vampire library. I pushed that thought aside. We came to the door and I took out the card.

  I waved it in front of the pad and the blinking light went from red to green. I pushed the door and it swung open easily. No blaring alarms or sirens announced our entrance. I let out a big sigh of relief.

  Hunter gave me a questioning look so I said, “Sometimes the door sticks.”

  Inside were rows of books, like any other library. I walked down the first aisle slowly, trying to get my bearings. I noted the checkout desk in the back of the room, with two doors behind it. Both were closed, and both had locks on the door-knobs.

  “Where to now?” Hunter asked, making me jump.

  “I’m not sure. Just keep your eyes open for more of the text I showed you. I think we might find something in the back room. Follow me.”

  I led him to the back of the library, to the locked doors, and tried my key on one. The door swung open easily. Yay me! Inside were two copy machines, extra paper and office supplies. Clearly I’d found the supply room.

  “Oops.” We backed out and I went to the other door. I used the key, but this time it didn’t turn. I tried again and it still didn’t turn. Now what?

  “I think you need both the card and the key, like this,” Hunter took the card from my pocket and swiped the side of the lock, then tried turning the key and voilà, it opened.

  “How’d you know to do that?”

  “I’m not just another pretty face, you know,”

  “Clearly,” I agreed and we entered the second room.

  This room had a vault-like quality: several pages of text were framed behind glass that was wired to an alarm system of some kind.

  “Over there.” I pointed out one particular frame that seemed familiar. Hunter investigated.

  “You have that one already,” he concluded after looking it over.

  “I do? But it looks like this has more text.” I pulled out the sheet of paper that held the Prophesy.

  “This is an etching, see? This paper was actually put on the stone or wood where the original message was carved and then someone sketched over the paper to pick up the engraving.”

  “Show me.” I peered over his shoulder.

  He traced the symbols with his finger and I checked them against the paper in my hand. All the symbols matched. The only difference was the size of the document.

  “So these are the exact same? There’re no symbols that have been transposed or copied incorrectly?” I gave him the paper to double check.

  “No, everything looks the same.” He handed it back to me and my heart felt tighter. That just left a translation error. Part of me had hoped someone wrote down the original symbols incorrectly, which would have changed the meaning of the text, but it looked like the symbols were perfectly transcribed. Crap!

  “You look like someone just ran over your cat.”

  “I don’t have a cat, I’m a dog person,” I replied, not willing to comment on the meaning of his statement.

  “Smart girl,” he replied but I didn’t ask what he meant; I was too bummed about our discovery.

  Hunter walked around the room and stopped in front of another frame. He seemed frozen in place so I went to investigate his find.

  It was an artful symbol, not like the others I was now familiar with. The sweeping shape wrapped around angular lines was very pretty and yet haunting at the same time. I flipped over my Prophesy page and quickly sketched the symbol.

  “What is it, do you think?” I asked Hunter, who didn’t respond.

  He’d gone very pale and I was worried he’d fall over where he stood. I reached up to steady him when he grabbed my wrist in a painful grasp.

  “Is this some sort of joke?” he hissed at me, his color returning.

  I looked at the wall and then at him in confusion. “What are you talking about? What does it say?”

  He released me suddenly and backed out of the room. I rubbed my wrist, taking one last look at the picture that had so upset him. He obviously knew what it meant and I doubted he was going to share that knowledge with me. What could it possibly say and why would Hunter react so strongly to it?

  I left the room, careful to see that it locked behind us. I checked my watch and realized we should probably wrap things up. I found Hunter two aisles down, reading the titles of books on the shelves.

  “What kind of place is this?” he asked me, not bothering to turn around when he spoke.

  “What do you mean?” I hedged. I couldn’t really tell him it was a vampire library but I should have thought the titles of the books here might give it away.

  “This book is called You Can’t Go Home Again: Rebuilding After the Change.”

  “Uh, clearly this book is about uh, menopause. Right, see. The change is going through menopause. Didn’t your mother or grandmother ever talk about the change to you?” I took the volume out of his hands and stuck it back on the shelf, babbling the whole time. “All my grandmother talked about was the change and how she suffered from hot flashes and mood swings. Never knowing when her period was going to arrive …”

  Hunter was staring at me like I’d gone off the deep end. I shrugged. “It’s a real pain in the butt never knowing when you’re gonna start your monthly, you know. I can see why women going through the change would be cranky about that.”

  I’d seen my mother use this tactic on my father many times and it always worked. Bring up feminine things to guys and they couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. I was glad to see Hunter was no exception to the rule.

  “Are we done here?” he asked.

  “Yes, I think we can go now.”

  “What about the symbols you need?”

  “I’m not totally out of options yet. I can check one more place.” I reached the door to leave and pushed on it without swiping the card. Simulated sun lights flooded the room, bright like the sun, and an alarm blared. Hunter threw his arm around me, using his duster to cover my head, and shoved us out the door with lightening speed.

  We raced to his motorcycle and sprayed gravel in our haste to leave the driveway. Once we were safely on the road and it was obvious no one was chasing us, he slowed down. Both our hearts were racing and I hugged him tighter as he drove. That was a close one. I should be grateful that Hunter reacted so quickly to get us out of there, but I couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t the first time he’d jumped on his bike and made a quick escape.

  He drove us back to the House as the sun just started to peek over the horizon. He sort of dumped me off on the front lawn and shouted he’d call me, then rode off into the dawn. I guess I couldn’t blame him for getting away from me a
s fast as possible. I did almost get him killed, even if he only thought the biggest risk was getting arrested for breaking and entering.

  I went into the House, pleasantly surprised by the quietness around me. Dawn was when good little vampire girls and boys were going to bed. Except half-bloods. They only possessed some vampire traits, so many of them kept the same hours now as they had when they were alive.

  I hoped I could catch Ileana before she crawled into her coffin, or whatever she slept in, for the night. I took the stairs two by two. Though most of the girls at Psi Phi slept in the dorms in the secret basement, Ileana preferred to sleep upstairs with her personal human maid, Sophie.

  I walked quietly down the hallway, carefully listening for any noise to indicate if someone were sleeping or out and about. I arrived at Ileana’s and pressed my ear to the door.

  “For goodness’ sake, Piper, you walk like an elephant. Come in,” Ileana said from inside.

  That’s what I get for trying to be quiet in a vampire house! Sure, not everyone possessed super vampire hearing but you could bet at least one person did.

  “Sorry to wake you,” I said as I entered, carefully checking the floor of the entryway for Sophie. The maid usually slept by the door or outside it to guard her charge. Ileana Romanav was a half-blood who’d managed to hide from persecution for more than one hundred years by masquerading as a new family member every generation. She’d pretended to be her great-great-grandmother, great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother, and now she was just Ileana. Thanks to Colby emancipating half-bloods, she was a free Undead. You’d think she would be a little grateful but Ileana was royalty, which might account for the attitude.

  “Why are you skulking about the house at this hour?” Ileana asked, sitting pretty in her large canopy bed while Sophie brushed her gorgeous blonde curls.

  “Oh, you know me. Skulking is what I do.” I looked around the room for the old journals her whacked-out father used to keep. She guessed my intention immediately.

  “Sorry, they aren’t here. I gave them to Colby, though I don’t know what good they’ll do her. Or you for that matter.”

  Ileana didn’t believe in the Prophesy. Her father had worshipped vampires, had longed to become one. He served them and did their bidding, and the only thing he got for his devotion was brutally murdered and a half-blood daughter. Ileana had no deep affection for full-bloods or her father, for that matter.

  “Why you two persist in researching this Prophesy nonsense is beyond me. I told you I don’t believe in the silly thing and yet you two act like the world is coming to an end or something.”

  “What if it is?” I countered. What made her so sure she was right about the Prophecy being bogus anyway?

  “Dear Piper, the world has been around a long time before we came upon it and I daresay it will still be here for a fair amount of time after we leave.”

  “I don’t mean the literal world, Ileana, I’m talking about vampires and humans. Our existence in this world.”

  Sophie paused in her brushing and looked at her mistress in question. “Do you really think that Colby is capable of bringing the end of existence as we know it?”

  Ileana tried to trivialize my question. “She can’t even match her shoes to her outfit. Why, today she had on ballet flats with her jeans! Truly, I don’t know how she manages to get to school in one piece sometimes.”

  Sophie went back to brushing her hair. I looked at Ileana and she smiled back blankly, but her eyes darted toward her maid momentarily. I nodded and changed the subject to something less distressful … something Sophie would enjoy.

  “So Sophie, smuggle any cats in lately?”

  “No, just the one, miss. Colby made me take it back to that crazy lady. She has so many cats, she can’t possible take care of all of them. And this one was just a little thing, it wouldn’t possible be missed.” She switched to brushing another section. “Don’t know why we can’t keep just a wee little one around.”

  Of course, I knew why Colby didn’t allow cats in the house. She was deathly allergic to them, even in her Undead state. Which hardly seemed fair, but who said being Undead was fair?

  “Cheer up,” I told her. “Maybe she’ll let you get a dog or something.”

  “Do you really think so?” Sophie brightened at the thought of getting something as large as a dog and smiled while she completed her task.

  “All right, mum, I’ve finished with your hair now. Piper, I need to put Miss Ileana to bed.” She sounded like an old-fashioned nursery nanny instead of a young maid of twenty-something but I took the hint.

  “Colby?” Ileana called to me as I reached the door. “Let’s catch up when I awaken, just you and I. Maybe we could go for tea at that lovely new teahouse by PSU?”

  I tried to hide my surprise. Ileana had never asked to do anything with me, ever. In general, she tended to keep her distance with everyone. I thought it had something to do with all those years of protecting herself. Colby just thought she was a snob.

  “Sounds great.”

  “Excellent, I have Sophie running some errands for me tomorrow and I don’t want to go without my afternoon teatime.”

  Somehow Ileana had a way of turning a nice invitation into an obligation to serve her, but I ignored it because I knew she would speak frankly about the Prophesy without Sophie in the room. Sophie might be a maid, but Ileana was very protective of her and wouldn’t allow anyone to say things that upset her. Things like how their existence was coming to an end. I imagine it sort of put a damper on their daily routine.

  Seven

  COLBY

  I have a soul. Full, intact, complete. My essence is the exact same as it was when I was alive. Which would probably explain why feeding was still as tough for me now as it was the first time I tried it. I knew it was necessary to survive but that didn’t make it any easier to walk up to a virtual stranger and take a pint of O negative.

  Full-bloods, on the other hand, were missing a piece of their soul. It was probably an evolutionary necessity. Aunt Chloe told me once that during World War II soldiers used the worst kind of epithets for the enemy. The way they talked around the camps and such, you would think the enemy armies were demons. It was a means to dehumanize the people you were ordered to kill.

  I don’t think I really understood that until I became a vampire. How do you take an eighteen-year-old soldier who’s been raised in a moral household where he was taught right from wrong and then expect him to put all that aside and kill another person?

  I wasn’t raised to drink other people’s blood. But I have to do it or I die. And it’s hard. Really hard. If I didn’t have the support of others like me, I don’t think I could keep doing it. I think eventually it would warp me. So full-bloods had to change. To evolve. To lose a bit of their humanity in order to survive.

  I knew Thomas was not the same man he was when he was living. He’s still a good man. He’s just harder somehow, less sentimental, with more of an edge. He was missing a piece of his soul, his essence. To hunt your former peers, you must change. And he did.

  I doubted Barnaby would come after me directly, but he needed me so he could play on the fears the Prophesy exacerbated. It was logical to assume he would come after someone close to me. That left two likely candidates. Thomas and Piper. And Piper had a complete soul. I wasn’t totally ruling her out because Barnaby had unleashed his possessed playthings on us in the parking garage. At the time I thought they were only after me, but what if they weren’t? After all, I didn’t get staked and they’d tried to block the exits so Piper couldn’t escape. If they only wanted me, who cared about a human girl getting away?

  But if they killed Piper and possessed her body, they could try to influence me through her. But was she the logical first choice or were they getting desperate? Did they think they were running out of time? Maybe possessing Piper was Plan B. If so, what was Plan A?

  I thought of Thomas. He wasn’t sleeping at night, he was edgy and doing things I wouldn�
�t categorize as rational. Sending Carl away to New York City was one such decision. Why send away his best friend when he knew we needed him here? Thomas was isolating himself. Not a good sign.

  I returned to Psi Phi House and went directly up to my room. Would Thomas be there? Slowly, I opened the door so I wouldn’t disturb him if he were sleeping. I was surprised to find him watching television, propped up on my bed.

  “Hey,” I said carefully. We were fighting the last time we spoke.

  “Hey.” He smiled his sleepy, sexy half-smile and my heart melted. He looked rested, like he’d finally gotten a decent rest.

  “You look better.” I shut the door behind me and joined him on the bed.

  He reached out and drew me near, fitting our bodies together nicely. I sighed in contentment.

  “I feel better. I haven’t been able to sleep much lately—all these crazy dreams—but for some reason, I lay down here and was out. A good three hours of deep sleep. I feel like a new man.”

  “Did you get something to eat?” I asked, craning my neck back to look at his face. The dark circles seemed lighter, his muscles were less tense. Maybe he wasn’t in danger of being possessed by a demon. Maybe he was just tired from all the extra work lately.

  “I had a bag of A positive and it helped.”

  I wrinkled my nose up at him. “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s really not that bad. It was pretty fresh, from this afternoon, so it still had some kick; but in general, I think I prefer it straight from the source.”

  “I don’t know what Aunt Chloe was thinking. I mean, I get that we are a bit suspicious and all. There are twelve of us now and we have to feed daily. Sometimes we’re lazy, we don’t like to leave the area to feed and the bloodmobile van is kind of an ingenious way to keep the girls from eating out and risking exposure but still …”

  “Ballsy,” Thomas agreed.

  “Yeah. Half-bloods just aren’t as picky as you full-bloods. Guess we’re not blood connoisseurs,” I teased him.

  He laughed at me. “Yeah, that’s it.” We looked into each other’s eyes and I knew there was nothing I wouldn’t do for this man. I was in love. Big-time.