Five
Three days later, the phone rang. It was after sunset, and long past when Erika thought she was going to get one. The mad dash to the kitchen to grab the receiver knocked over some papers on the table in her foyer, creating a blizzard of paper to go along with the snow falling outside. She hit the answer button on the phone as soon as she grabbed it, and breathlessly said, "Mitch?"
"No," said Adonis. "I'm not sure where Mitch is."
Something about the way he said it made her nervous. "What do you mean?"
"I went to visit him like you asked and he's not here. I talked to some neighbors and they said he left yesterday, but didn't tell anyone where to. I can't reach him on his phone either. He may not be answering certain numbers though, so I thought I would see if he would pick up for you."
"Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. I'll try and then call you right back." Adonis grunted and she hung up the phone. Then she pressed the quick-dial button she had programmed for Mitch. It rang a few times before he picked up.
"Hey kid," he said weakly.
She sighed in relief, then frowned. "How are you doing?"
"Me? I'm fine. Well, sort of fine. You know what I mean."
"So where the hell are you then? Adonis says you're not at your place and the neighbors are saying you left town a few days ago."
"Oh. Well I was hoping to make it back before anyone went looking for me, but right now I'm at my mom's house in Syracuse attending my sister's wedding."
"I never knew you had a sister," said Erika.
"Contrary to popular belief, I am not an only child. I just choose never to talk about it. At any rate, I'll only be gone for a few days or so. Besides, me being busted up like I am gives my mother something to take her mind off the wedding. Personally, I wish I weren't here, but she guilt-tripped me into it."
That sold it for Erika. Her mother had been the queen bee of guilt-tripping. It had been her favorite weapon against her only daughter, so Erika felt a bit of sympathy for Mitch as a result. "Why don't you want to be there?" she asked, curiosity eating at her.
"I'd rather not get into it," he replied. Silence filled the line for a moment, then he said, "Listen, I ducked out of a dinner party so I need to get back to it. I hope you don't mind."
"No, of course not."
"Thanks. And hey, don't give Adonis too much of a hard time while I'm gone. I know he seems a little off, but he's one of the good guys. I'll be back in a few days. You be good." He hung up, not waiting for a reply. Erika slowly brought the phone down and set it on the table. A few more days, minimum, with Adonis. She wasn't sure she could stand him for that long.
She sulked for a little bit, then remembered she had to call Adonis back to let him know about Mitch. He picked up on the first ring. "I just got off the phone with Mitch," she said. "He's fine. He's out of town at his mother's. She guilt-tripped him into attending his sister's wedding out in Syracuse."
"That's good news, I suppose," he replied. "Unexpected, but I guess family is like that." She couldn't disagree with him on that front. "Well, with that out of the way, I was wondering if you wanted to try something with your ability tonight."
"Oh, no," said Erika immediately. "I'm not going to offer myself up for food again."
Adonis chuckled. "And you won't have to. It'll be easier to show you what I intend to do rather than try to explain it over the phone."
"Well, try," she said. She was resigned to spending time with Adonis, at least for a bit longer, but not so soon after the previous night.
"Well, see, it's like..." he trailed off, and she could hear him trying to form words, but nothing was coming out. "I'll tell you what," he finally said. "Can I meet you at Papa's and explain it to you there? You can decide whether you want to give it a shot after I lay it out, and in the meantime you get some food. My treat," he added after a slight pause.
She didn't want to accept it, but the free meal sold her. Supplies were getting low, and her mother's pension check was still a week away. Plus, as shifty as Adonis seemed, it was no real deterrent for putting free food in her stomach. "Yeah, fine," she said. "I'll be there in an hour."
An hour later she left the house, and a light snowfall dumped a dusting of snow on the hood of her jacket in the time it took her to walk to the pizzeria. She opened the door and stomped her feet to knock off the slush that had frozen to her boots, then pushed the hood back so she could look around. Adonis was sitting at the same table she had first met him at, a half-eaten pizza in front of him as well as the half-empty remains of a two-liter pop bottle. She kept her coat on when she sat down, only pausing to take off her gloves before she grabbed a slice of pizza and stuffed it into her mouth. "Talk," she said around bites.
"The way I figure it, your ability is something done unconsciously at the moment a vampire tries to feed on you. A psychic defensive mechanism, as I mentioned before. Tell me, what do you feel at the exact moment you think it triggers?"
Erika set the slice she was almost finished with down on the plate in front of her, and opened the pop to take a drink. When she finished, she said, "Nothing. I figure I'm going to die or something terrible is about to happen, so I give in to it and hope I make out the other side okay." She picked up the slice and finished it off.
"So in order to reproduce your ability in a nonthreatening environment, we would need for you to simulate those feelings, or to actively harness them. That is what I'm proposing. After the other night, I went on a side trip and rounded a vampire up. He's currently wrapped up in duct tape at an abandoned house I know about near Kenmore."
Erika stopped chewing. Her eyes got very wide, then she swallowed what was in her mouth and made sure to keep her voice down as she asked, "You did what?"
"I told you I had some ideas about what we could do to explore your ability further. This is the primary one."
"I thought I told you that I didn't want to be put in harm’s way."
"I kept that in mind when I came up with the idea," he said evenly. "He is unable to do much more than mumble at you through the duct tape covering his mouth. He is equally wrapped up with his arms and legs bent behind him so he cannot go anywhere unless I decide to let him. Which I will not do." The conviction in his voice was palpable. He believed his idea was going to work.
Erika didn't say anything at first. She was still hungry, so she focused on eating instead. Adonis let her be. He had been around Erika enough to know that silence was a good thing. It meant she was thinking things through. When the second slice had served its purpose in sating her hunger, Erika picked up her pop and sat back in her chair. Despite Adonis' assurance that no harm would come to her, she still felt apprehensive about the prospect. Hunters killed vampires, they didn't capture them. Not even to conduct an experiment that had the potential to lead to their death. What Adonis was proposing went against everything Mitch had taught her. It railed against the basic tenets of the Eternal War. It was wrong.
Yet, Adonis adamantly believed that what he was doing was right. Erika couldn't find fault in that. Her ability did kill vampires, though not in the usual way. If there was a way she could actively harness it without putting herself in harm's way, then she had to explore it. Right?
"Fine," she said after she had finished the last of her pop. "But I reserve the right to call things off if I feel threatened in any way. Deal?"
Adonis nodded. "Deal."
Split Page 5