I liked the cottage. Madeline brought in some of the pieces she had had in Egypt. Some were simple and stark like the wood cross from her father’s home in Lebanon. Others were almost painfully ornate, like her favorite armchair, a hideous Victorian monstrosity. I wondered what my mother would have thought of it.
Frowning, I tried to decide if she would have hated or loved it. I could not remember her taste in furniture. She had moved into my father’s house when she married him. His mother, my grandmother, was still living at the time so the furniture in the house was hers. Sito Zahra died when I was a small child. I could not remember her face, just her name. I could not remember my mother’s parents at all, and I knew they had lived a lot longer than Sito Zahra.
Why? Why remember one thing and not the other?
I pounded my fist on the table in irritation and sucked in a breath in dismay as splinters flew.
Wonderful.
If Madeline came back to find a shattered kitchen table, she would never leave me alone again. I dropped to my knees to survey the damage.
The table leg would need replacing. So would the metal support that attached it to the underside of the table. The tabletop had a bit of a dent in it, but it was the leg which had borne the brunt of my ill humor.
Disgusted at myself, I sank back on my heels. I would have to go to town to buy a replacement strut and wood for a new table leg. Whoever had lived here before us had left tools in the shed out back, and I knew I could fashion a leg like the other three, but I needed aged pine to shape.
I would wait until just before closing time. Even though it was close to Christmas, I did not think there would be many holiday shoppers in a hardware store.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, and then dropped my hand abruptly as I realized what I was doing. Madeline said it was not uncommon for certain human traits to be carried over into our strange new lives. I had loved music before I died and still enjoyed it, but pinching my nose was a stupid thing to do. I used to do it when I felt a headache coming on.
Madeline often thought it was an expression of my frustration and used it to gauge my reactions. I had a lot of things to be frustrated about, but that did not mean I wanted to show it.
Glancing out the kitchen window, I saw that the light was changing. With the shorter winter days, darkness came quickly. It was time to start walking to town if I wanted to hold myself to a human pace. It seemed an appropriate penance for my earlier untoward display of vampiric strength.
Remembering to grab a coat and wrap a wool scarf around my neck, I ventured outdoors and into the snowy lane.
Chapter 2
Outside had a life all its own. As I walked down the lane I took in a variety of scents, sights, and sounds. I could see melting snow dripping from the trees, hear the skittering of a rabbit searching for food, and see a hawk flying high overhead.
Their presence was easy to ignore. It would not be that way downtown. I enjoyed my solitude while it lasted.
The closer I ventured into the city, the more the cacophony rose around me.
“Got no money for presents. What’ll I do?” A burly day worker, big and full of tempting blood, lumbered past, muttering to himself.
“Bicarbonate of soda, eggs, yes definitely more eggs. Do I need flour? No, there’s at least a few more cups left, and the recipe only calls for two…” A housewife, dragging a petulant girl by the hand, swept by speaking softly to her absentminded husband.
“Why do I have to carry the shopping basket? I look like a maidservant. Betsy’s family sends their maid to do all their shopping.”
And on and on it went, like cattle lowing continuously in my ear.
I stuck my chin to my chest and kept my head lowered. I felt nothing for these people and their small-minded concerns; nothing but a near overwhelming desire to stop their incessant chatter once and for all, with my teeth.
Clenching my fists, I buried them in my pockets and walked on. It was far more difficult to walk through crowds without Madeline’s reassuring presence to distract me, but I could do it.
I stepped past the publisher’s house and stopped for a moment. The smells of the ink were incredibly strong. Leaning back against one of the iron lamps, my eyes passed through the dusty glass to the figures within at their work. I took another deep breath, let the smells of iron salts and tannic acids fill my nostrils and throat. Gold reflected on the window from the flickering gas lamp.
For a moment, I wondered if FQ Publishing Co. would hire an Egyptian vampire from Cairo. I knew absolutely nothing about book binding or printing, but for sure the new strength inherited by my curse would come in handy. The positive part of the job would be a lack of smells other than ink. I shook my head, sadly, knowing it would not be possible and continued my walk.
At a crossroads I saw a bunch of Christmas carolers, milling about like a flock of sheep. Their shepherd, no, their choir leader, herded them together and commanded them to start singing. Several were off key.
I fled down a side street. It was bad enough that I had to hear humans complaining, but to be subjected to that amateur performance? It was too much to bear. I, the youngest violinist of the Cairo Opera, having to listen to this rubbish? Never.
The side street was a residential area, lower middle class by the looks of it since the houses were small with tiny yards in front. Most of the men weren’t home from work yet, and the sounds of their households were comfortingly mundane.
All but one.
“No, oh no. How? I was only gone for an hour. Why? I can’t believe this is happening.”
Distress, sharp and panicky, colored the woman’s voice which was jumbled like broken glass. There were other sounds as well, coming from an immature and sleepy voice. It was a child, wondering why his mother was so upset, why her grip was so tight.
I stopped dead in the dirty slush of the street and turned my head toward the house from where the voice was emanating. It was a small, unremarkable two-story home behind an iron-wrought fence and a few snow-covered rosebushes hibernating under their icy blanket. Through the open door I saw the back of a woman, the top of a child’s knitted cap just visible over her shoulder.
Fear emanated through her. I could see it in the way she stood, in the sound of her voice.
“What if he’s still here? Dear God, what shall I do? I have Robert with me.”
I smirked a bit. Whoever ‘he’ was, he was not in the house anymore. I could sense and smell only two humans inside, the woman and the child. There was another smell, remarkably familiar to me due to my recent issues with the table.
I moved closer to the gate in the cold iron fence. The woman began backing out of her doorway and I saw the splintered wood on the ground. Her movement was sending the scent of pine wafting my way.
The door was hanging off one hinge. The other was wrenched and useless. The lock was pulled completely out of the door, which had splintered when someone jimmied it open, probably with a pry bar.
Her hysteria was rising. I felt the predator within me stir and take notice. Chasing a panicked animal was easy. They were so very predictable. She’d take the path of least resistance, dodging to the right back between her house and the one next to it, since sturdy bushes blocked the passage between her home and the one to the left. Once she saw me blocking her route to the street, dodging right was the only logical option left to her.
I could be on her the moment she was out of sight of the road, and fast enough to prevent her from screaming. Her nearest neighbor wouldn’t even hear me pounce if I played it right. The child would be easy too.
I bit my lip, hard, and swallowed back as my mouth began to water.
She turned and saw me at the gate, eyes wide and frightened, carrying her boy in her arms.
“Ma’am? Are you all right?” I heard myself asking.
Perhaps Madeline was right about human traits carrying over. My manners were intact, even though they were competing with my more lethal impulses.
“What?”
/>
For a second, I saw myself reflected in her tears. The pale green of my dead eyes and the strange leather look of my tanned skin.
“Oh, hello…” She said, putting a hand over her heart. I could hear every beat of that heart as it pumped hot blood through her body. She looked me up and down. I could just hear her mutter to herself, “What am I doing? The burglar could still be here.”
As her eyes wrenched themselves away from me and back to her predicament, she tightened her grip on her child.
Irritated at the constant squeezing, he began to wail.
She was an inch away from wailing herself. Something had to be done.
“He has quite the pair of lungs on him, doesn’t he?” I observed with a rueful smile.
Madeline always said that our looks could beguile, that it was one of the things that made us so dangerous to susceptible humans. I hoped she was right. The child’s cries were beginning to grate on my nerves.
She gave a strained sounding laugh.
“Yes, he does,” she answered, bouncing him gently as she glanced back worriedly through the open doorway.
“I see your door is broken. May I take a look?”
Once again, she turned to look at me, and I saw a blush on her cheeks. Those spots of blood rushing to her face… I could feel my mouth water, and my muscles tense in preparation for the kill. I must look a monster to her. Yet, she nodded her head and motioned for me to approach.
“Please do. Please, come in.” she replied, stepping back to allow me access to the doorway. It would be my supposed ability to scare away miscreants that decided her. A monster to scare away the monsters.
I opened the gate in the low iron fence and made my way up the step and onto the porch, carefully breathing through my mouth and not my nose. It only helped a little bit.
“You’ll need a new lock and another hinge,” I told her.
I ran my hand down the sharp edges of the splayed wood.
“The paint may need some touching up as well.”
The door was a rich brown color. Judging from the layers I could see where the wood was broken, it had been red and then black before its current coat of paint.
She moved closer to me to take a look, the child in her arms quieting to an occasional whimper.
So close, so warm and pulsating with life’s blood. I willed myself to stay still.
“Thieves was it? Perhaps you should check to see what was stolen,” I suggested as calmly as I could. I needed distance from her.
“Oh yes, of course.”
Dread took hold of her form as she stiffened and moved slowly into the house. I remained outside taking huge gulps of non-human scented air.
“Oh no,” she sighed. I heard her lay the child down on something soft.
I didn’t want to witness the woman’s desolate moments, but curiosity overcame me and I followed her into the hall. I watched as she sank to her knees, seeing the mess the robber left in his wake. Drawers were pulled out, contents strewn everywhere. A small Christmas tree was lying on its side, knocked over in the robber’s haste.
“The presents are gone. I saved up so long for Aiden’s watch. Now I’ve nothing to give him and Christmas is so close. What shall I do? Robert won’t notice, he’s too young to really understand, but what of my mother and father?” She searched frantically through broken ornaments and fallen pine needles. “Where’s the scarf I knitted? The sewing kits? My sister’s perfume?”
Her fingers paused and she sucked in a breath as she encountered broken glass. The scent of lavender wafted through the room as she carefully gathered broken pieces of the perfume bottle together. It was the only gift the thief hadn’t taken.
“Why? Why did this have to happen?”
It wasn’t really any of my business, but a gentleman never left a lady in distress without trying to help.
“I’ll go to the hardware store and see if I can find a suitable lock,” I called out from the hallway.
The smell of lavender was not overpowering enough to mask the alluring scent of her blood.
“Yes, thank you. That would be nice,” she said, trying in vain to sound as if she wasn’t crying. I pretended not to notice.
With a brief wave of goodbye, I left her there, a small plump woman with her shawl slipping off one shoulder, holding broken glass in her hands.
Chapter 3
The hardware store was nearly deserted, just as I’d hoped. I made my purchases quickly and left. I had to be crazy, spending time around humans, placing myself in a state of constant temptation. I set my own supplies by the fence and made an appropriately human amount of noise opening the iron gate and tramping up to the porch.
She met me at the door, and I forced a smile on my lips.
“I can’t thank you enough for doing this,” she babbled.
She’d switched from hysteria and grief to gratitude. Yet, there was still that weakness. The predator inside me strained against my control. Demanding a release. Demanding to feed.
“Was anything taken?” I asked mildly, trying to hide my tension.
“Just some of my jewelry and my husband’s good set of cuff links from upstairs.”
I nodded as I bent down to inspect the work ahead of me. She would be feeling unsafe in her own home, and desperately wanting the door fixed.
“I wouldn’t sleep soundly tonight,” she continued innocently, “knowing that anyone could come in from off the street and my husband isn’t due home until tomorrow.”
Oh… How naïve she was. I tried to put from my mind the fact she would be alone tonight. Her and the baby. Alone. They would be in a house that I had been invited into. A surge of emotion rose in my chest, a feeling of utter joy.
“Can I get you anything? A glass of cider? Coffee? Tea?”
Her eyes were brown, like her hair which was pulled back in a low bun on the back of her neck. She reminded me of a plump little wren. She had no idea she was asking a monster to tea. That feeling, that thrill of the hunt. I smothered it, relentlessly.
“Tea, if it’s not too much trouble.”
I knew from the firewood stacked along the side of the house that she didn’t have a coal stove. The brick chimney protruding from the roof was a dead giveaway. Tea would require lighting the wood-burning stove and putting the kettle on to boil. It would keep her in the kitchen and out of my way.
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all.”
She smiled and I saw that she had dimples on either cheek, which only appeared when her mouth creased. I watched her retreat into the kitchen. The fashions of the day were not kind, the narrow skirts serving to accentuate her short stature and wide hips.
Her sincerity surprised me. She wanted to be busy doing something for me. If I had to guess, she was not ready to face cleaning the upstairs mess which the thief had left for her.
I wondered where the baby had gone. It was not difficult for me to pick up the low sound of breathing from upstairs. She must have laid him down for a nap, promising herself that she’d tidy up after I was done.
From the hall, I could hear her debating whether she should use the good china or a simple mug. Not that I cared. I wouldn’t be drinking the tea, or anything else, I reminded myself sharply and got to work.
Blocking her low ramblings from my ears as best I could, I concentrated on replacing the broken hinge and lock without snapping the metal pieces or splintering the wood even further. Darkness was falling, and the woman was preoccupied in the other room, so I indulged myself and worked at vampiric speed, finishing well before the kettle started to squeal. I swung the door open wide to test the hinge. It held firm.
I heard her steps in the kitchen before she entered the hall.
She’d decided on the good china. It was white with dark blue accents and tiny pink roses strewn across the porcelain.
“Here you are,” she said, passing me the steaming cup and saucer as she glanced over at my workmanship.
As I took it from her gingerly, our fingers brushed.
> “Oh,” she gasped. “Your hands are so cold. Would you like to come into the kitchen to warm up?”
Misplaced remorse swept through her. I didn’t mind the cold, not anymore.
“No, I really must be on my way.”
I glanced down at the cup, momentarily at a loss as to what to do with it. I really didn’t want to drink it. I knew that this was not what my body demanded of me. Glancing over the cup at her, my eyes locked on the vein in her throat before I quickly looked back to the saucer in hand.
“It’s Earl Grey,” the woman confided. “You probably noticed that it smells a bit different.”
She was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t like it.
“It smells wonderful,” I lied.
There had to be some way to distract her so I could toss the liquid out the door.
“Almost as good as that other smell from before,” I continued. “Was it lavender?”
She clasped her hands sadly, and nodded, eyes starting to tear up.
“I bought a bottle of perfume for my sister. The thief broke it.”
“What a shame. Is that your son crying?”
Appealing to her mothering instincts worked perfectly. Not only did she turn her head in the direction of her child’s room, she also took a few steps toward the stairs to listen. It only took a second for me to pitch the noxious fluid out the open doorway and onto the snow, returning the cup to its saucer as gently as possible.
“I don’t hear anything,” she said reluctantly, returning her attention to me.
“My mistake,” I apologized, smiling and lifting the empty teacup to my lips, pretending to drink it down.
She watched with a gentle smile on her face, completely taken in by my act.
“Thank you for your hospitality Mrs.…”
I realized I did not know her name. I knew from overhearing her panicked worry earlier that her son was named Robert and her husband was Aiden, but people rarely muttered of themselves by name.
Holidays Bite: A Limited Edition Collection of Holiday Vampire Tales Page 81