“Uh huh.”
I put the urn back in the duffel bag and hefted it up. I wasn’t sure where to put it, but somewhere other than the parlor sounded like a good idea. So I brought it up to Megan’s room and then went looking for my friends. I passed a couple more vampires on my search, but most of them ignored me, until I ran into Amanda and Gregory.
Amanda seemed to have made it back home okay, but it hadn’t improved her mood. They glared at me from where they stood whispering together in a hall. I stared straight ahead and kept going.
I found Lacey and Bryan playing pool in a game room. I asked if they had seen Megan, and Lacey said she was in the kitchen. That sounded odd for someone who didn’t eat solid food, but I headed that way to see what she could be up to.
I only got lost once on my way to find her. Sure enough, Megan was in the kitchen, wearing a white apron over her dress and peering into the oven. Mixing bowls and utensils covered the counter.
“What are you doing?”
“Baking a cake.” She clicked off the light and the oven went dark.
“What?”
“Baking a cake. It’s Bryan’s birthday in a couple of hours, right?”
“Uh, yeah, it is.” Crap, I was going to have to run out tomorrow and get him something. Or maybe he’d like an assault rifle; I had a bag full of those upstairs. “I just…I dunno. I’m a little surprised by you baking, is all.”
“Chance, I was born in the forties. I spent my formative years in the fifties. Before I was turned, the plan was for me to go to school and get my M.R.S. So, yes, I can cook.”
“M.R.S. degree?”
She shook her head. “I figured I’d get married, stay home, have kids, and raise a family. You know, be a housewife.”
“Oh. Huh. Okay. Anyway, that’s cool you can cook, ‘cause I love to eat.” I smiled at her.
She smiled back. “It’s nice, isn’t it? The way we can both make food for each other!”
I blanched, choking. She just laughed and shook her head at me. “You’re too easy.”
She started to clean up the dishes. “So, who was that you were talking to earlier?”
“Huh?”
“I heard you in the hall talking to someone on the phone. Did Father Allen call you back?” Uh oh. I wasn’t sure if she had heard both calls or not, but decided to play it safe and assume she had.
“Yeah, he called. We’re going to do it tomorrow night at eleven. So I called Toni and let her know so she could tell her pack, and now I suppose I should tell Donovan as well.”
“I’ll let him know.” She finished putting away the dishes and started wiping down the counters. “You going to be working out all of the details over lunch?”
Guess she did hear both conversations; bat-like hearing and all. “Um, yeah. Just going to be making sure both packs are on the same page. Bring the same number of people and whatever.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, scrubbing the same spot over and over again. I guess she wanted it really clean. She didn’t seem to want to say much more about it, and that was fine by me.
I kept her company while she baked the cake, let it cool, and then frosted it. It looked really good; the frosting job could have been professional. She even found some candles, which got me wondering if vampires celebrated birthdays, or undead days, or what. And, if so, just how did you fit that many candles on one cake? Then I remembered that it probably wouldn’t be cakes they were sticking the candles into and I decided to get off that train of thought.
When the cake was finished, Megan asked me to retrieve Bryan from his game of pool. Lacey must have been in on it, because she smiled conspiratorially and helped usher Bryan back toward the kitchen, despite his protests that we were just doing it because he was actually going to win that game. Apparently it would have been his first of the night.
The kitchen was dark, and Bryan looked confused for a second until he saw the cake on the table, eighteen candles burning. Megan stood grinning behind it. It was one of her rare open-mouthed smiles that showed her teeth, and I thought the candlelight made her look eerily predatory.
It didn’t seem to bother Bryan, however, who said, “Shit, a cake! Thanks, man!” He blew out the candles, we sang happy birthday, then turned on the lights. Those of us that could enjoyed a really good cake. It dawned on me that this was probably Bryan’s first home-cooked birthday cake in over ten years.
Chapter 29
We all headed back into the billiard room for a while, talking and playing pool. Lacey was good, Megan was okay, and Bryan and I pretty much sucked. It was nice to just hang out, though, even with the girls running the table all evening.
Finally, I had to call it a night. It was getting late and we had a big day ahead of us. Megan said she had talked to Meriwether and he had gotten us each a room. Somehow, mine ended up right next door to hers. Bryan’s and Lacey’s rooms were in the opposite wing.
I went up and grabbed the duffel bag out of Megan’s room and brought it into my own. My room was similar to hers, but it was painted in a neutral beige color and had less interesting furniture. The night had cooled off, so I opened up the shutters and cracked the window. I wasn’t too worried about someone creeping in the window at night; most of the monsters here would just use the door. On which thought, I went over and locked it.
Someone had left a new toothbrush and other toiletries in the bathroom. I got ready for bed, crawled in, and turned off the light. I thought about putting the Kimber under my pillow. But really, it wouldn’t do me much good against what was in this house. All it would do was make my pillow lumpy and keep me up.
I might as well have slept with the gun, because forty-five minutes later I was still awake. I was having some trouble getting to sleep in a house full of vampires. Not that they didn’t seem friendly enough, with a few notable exceptions, but I was still thinking what would happen if one of them wanted a late night snack.
As it turned out, it was lucky I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t hear anything, I just sensed it. That same feeling that I had come to associate with a shaman. I looked around the dark room, and then I saw it coming in through the window. Long and thin, it slithered down and onto the bedroom floor, where I lost sight of it.
The Kimber sat loaded in its holster on top of my clothes, on an armchair, which of course was on the same side of the bed as the snake. There were plenty of guns in the duffel bag and it was on the right side of the bed, but none of them were loaded. If I were lucky, it would be a non-poisonous snake, but let’s face it—why would you go to the trouble of turning yourself into a snake and not turn yourself into something dangerous?
Now, if it was a real snake, I might be able to make it over to my gun. I had some experience with rattlers, and if it didn’t perceive me as a threat and I didn’t step too close, it would probably just leave me alone until I shot it. But I had to assume that this one thought like a person. And if it knew I was up and aware, it was going to come for me. Of course, it didn’t wait until I was up and aware; it came for me anyway.
I saw the triangle-shaped shadow poking over the bed, and my decision was made. I flung my blankets off and over its head and leapt for where I thought my gun rested. I had forgotten about the small table, and I screamed out as it collided with my shin. I fell forward into the chair, but had enough presence of mind to grab the holster as the chair and I tumbled sideways onto the floor.
I grabbed the gun out, flipped the safety, and tried to find the snake. It found me, and I felt pain like a couple of hot nails being driven into my leg. I fired once; the muzzle burst illuminated the room. The snake reared up and I fired at it again.
I tried to stand and the snake struck again, this time on my wrist. I flinched from the sudden pain and dropped the gun. I fell back down and started groping for the gun with my other hand. He must have changed, because I saw the shadow of a man stand up and move to the dresser. He grabbed the urn and went to the door that led out to the porch, throwing it open just as I awkwardly picke
d up the gun with my off hand and raised it.
The door to my room crashed open as the shaman lunged out through the door. I rolled to a position where I could see out through the doorway, firing at him until my gun was empty. I saw him turn sideways a little, as if I had hit him in the back. As I watched, his form changed into that of a giant black bird as he leapt over the porch railing. A blur ran across the room and lunged after him, just missing as the shaman leapt off the porch and into the air, urn gripped in his talons.
“Are you okay? What happened?” Megan had come back from the porch and was down by my side almost instantly, her hand on my leg.
“Snake bit me. The shaman. He took off with the urn. Need to go get him.”
“Sorry—I can do a lot of things, but flying isn’t one of them.” We stared at each other in silence as the implications of the evening sank in.
A couple more vampires had come into my room to see what was happening. At the sound of a footstep, we turned in unison to look out the open door to the porch.
Paul stood in the open doorway, one hand holding the huge raven by a wing and the other holding the urn.
“I heard gunfire and went outside to see what it was when I found this. You shot it. It wasn’t flying very well. More like hopping. So I grabbed it and brought it back for you.”
He handed the urn over to me, and I took it. “Uh, thanks. You can have the bird, though; I don’t need it.”
“It’s still alive. Suffering.” He grabbed its head and twisted. I heard a snap. He grabbed the other wing and spread them out before him. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bird this big before.” Slowly, in his hands, the form shifted and he was left holding the naked body of Isaac Black Cloud, the snakeskin necklace of cat claws around his neck and the bird feather earring in his ear. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”
The pain was intensifying; the shaman had definitely been a poisonous snake. I turned and headed back into the room. I stumbled and Megan caught me, lowering me down into a chair. Someone flicked on a light, and I slumped on the bed in my boxers, blood seeping out of two snakebites, surrounded by half a dozen vampires.
Megan was bent down, looking at my leg. I saw her frown, looking at the old scars from the vampire that attacked Kristi and me back at school. Then she focused on the fresh wound from the snake. It was oozing blood and had started to look discolored.
Now that the light was on, I noticed she was wearing sweats and my t-shirt. At least someone had managed to get almost all of the blood out of it; I guess the staff in a vampire nest had lots of experience with that.
“I’ve got to get the poison out. Hold still.” She bent down to the wound. I felt her teeth break the skin, and then she was sucking out the poison.
Lacey and Bryan came in. They had wet hair and were wearing towels. I looked at them. Granted, I was in a bit of an awkward situation myself, but I tried to turn the situation around with a quizzical stare.
“We went swimming,” said Lacey. “What?” She said defensively. “We borrowed suits.” She opened the towel to show me, but I was in too much pain to fully appreciate the view.
“Damn,” said Bryan, seeing me half-naked with someone sucking on my thigh amid a circle of spectators. “Kinky, bro. I never knew you liked an audience.”
At Bryan’s remark, Donovan frowned slightly and announced, “Show’s over. Looks like they caught our little cat burglar, or bird burglar, or whatever it was. Everyone out.”
All the vampires left except for Donovan, who stood staring at Paul; Paul stood on the porch still uncertainly holding Isaac’s body out in front of him. Megan remained as well, of course, continuing to make little sucking sounds. I was pretty sure there couldn’t be that much poison.
“Shaman,” I supplied, answering Donovan’s unspoken question. “He works for Powers.” I wondered if it would be rude to pry her off.
“Worked for Powers, anyway,” said Donovan. “Get rid of it,” he said to Paul, who nodded, then slung the corpse, which was bigger than he was, over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and jumped over the porch rail to the ground below.
“Nice shooting, Tex,” said Donovan to me; and then to Lacey on his way out, he said, “Lacey, you know you could take care of that much better than Megan can.”
Lacey grinned and said, “Yeah, I figured she just wanted an excuse to, you know….” I wasn’t quite sure how to take that. Megan stopped and slowly pulled away, looking sheepish.
Donovan started to walk out, pausing to look at the wrecked door. He shook his head and walked off. Megan got up to make way for Lacey, who had wandered up to me and knelt down, looking at my leg. “Ew, Megan, you made a mess.”
At Lacey’s words, Megan wiped her chin and looked at the blood that had come off on her hand. She saw me watching her, quickly turned away in embarrassment, and headed into the bathroom.
Lacey put her hand over the wound on my leg, and I felt a weird sensation, like when you can feel a cold drink run down your throat to your stomach. Only this was running back down my leg and out the wound. I watched the bloody liquid ooze out the tear in my leg. The pain eased as it did, leaving just a dull throb. She did the same with the bite on my wrist. That wound was a little cleaner, and its venom just trickled back out the two holes with a minimal amount of blood.
“All set. I’ll send you the bill. You’re lucky poison’s one of the things I do well.”
I looked at her, surprised again at the effortless way Lacey managed to do complex magic. I wasn’t sure which she hit harder—the mall or the books—but I was starting to think it might be the latter.
“What? Poison is foreign to the blood. I can just sort of make the blood, I dunno, evict it.” She stood and glanced at the clock by the bed. “Wow, it’s late. We should hit the hay.” Bryan was going to say something, but then Lacey grabbed his arm and nodded at my bathroom. I could hear the sink running. Megan was still in there, I supposed cleaning herself up a bit.
Bryan said, “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” Just out of the doorway, he turned to me and gave me a thumbs-up. Then Lacey tugged his arm, and he was gone.
Megan came out shortly after they left. “How are you feeling?
“Not too bad, considering. I think I’m going to owe Donovan, though.” I surveyed the room. The front door was torn off the hinges and there were at least four bullet holes in various walls and pieces of furniture.
“You can sleep with me tonight,” she said, then saw my shocked look and added with a sigh, “In my room, I mean. You know, because it has a door.”
I shrugged, looking at the open doorway. “It’s not like the door will keep out anything that lives in this house.”
“Any thing?” she asked, hand going reflexively to wipe at her chin.
Oops. “Anyone, I meant. A door is not going to keep out anyone in this house that wants in.”
She turned her head back to look at me, but a hurt expression lingered.
“True,” she admitted, plopping down on my bed, “but at least they offer a false sense of privacy.”
“Is vampire hearing really that good?”
“Not really, but it never hurts to play it up just a little.” Of course, now I wasn’t sure if she was downplaying it purposely so I would underestimate them. I decided not to think too hard about it.
I thought about her offer. It was tempting. Doors are always nice, plus I’d be a lot safer with her than alone, though the vampires would probably be on alert for the rest of the night. I couldn’t imagine them letting a second attempt get that far.
I looked at her sitting on my bed, her hands gripping the mattress edge, her feet swinging back and forth, pouting a little at my calling her a thing. She was wearing sweats and my oversized t-shirt, and had taken off most of her makeup while cleaning off my blood in the bathroom. She was the cutest thing I had ever seen.
I walked up to her and held out my hand. Her eyes went wide for the briefest second, then she took my hand and I helped her up. She hopped off the bed
and landed standing up against me. She looked up questioningly.
I swallowed, looking down at her. “I wish I could take you up on your offer. Trust me, there’s nothing right now that I want more. But I think if I spent the night in your room tonight, I wouldn’t be getting much sleep, and we all have a big day tomorrow.”
Her eyes dipped for a moment and then she looked back up at me with one of those rare open-mouthed smiles. “Oh, really—not much sleep? Why is that? Do I snore?”
“Well, maybe just a little.” Her expression turned to shock, and I added, “No, it’s not you, trust me. It’s me. See, if I end up in your room tonight I’d be too busy doing this.” I leaned down and did something I had wanted to do since the moment I saw her.
I’m not sure how long the kiss lasted, but it was kind of epic.
When we finally pulled apart, I was thinking that I really didn’t need any sleep to handle tomorrow. I mean, I had pulled a lot of all-nighters at school and had still done okay on tests the next day. This wouldn’t really be that much different.
But she smiled, ran her hand down my bare chest, and slowly pushed away. “I suppose you’re right. Big day tomorrow. And you’re hurt; you should rest.” She shrugged, and then just turned and walked away, pausing at the door to give me a little wave. “‘Night.” Then she was gone.
I turned out the lights, deciding a cold shower would just make me more miserable. I had just laid my head on my pillow when a shadow filled my doorway. A surge went through me as I thought it was Megan coming back; at that moment, I decided sleep was way overrated and I had more important things to do. Like her. But then I realized the shadow was bigger, taller and bulkier than Megan.
Donovan’s voice said, “Chance, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Yeah?
“Did you tell anyone you were here tonight? Anyone at all?”
“No, why?” Then it hit me. “Oh.”
“Right,” he said, then turned and left.
Someone had told Powers where to find the urn, right down to the room. And the only people who knew that information were in this house.
Chance in Hell Page 21