“I can hear you sniffling.” Dahlia’s voice was groggy with sleep. I closed my eyes tight, squeezing them to block out the light from the doorway. The recipe for macaroons should help. I could envision them fluffing up as they baked.
“Two-thirds cup ground almonds; one and a half cups powdered sugar; three large egg whites, room temperature; five tablespoons granulated sugar; one teaspoon vanilla extract. Preheat the oven to two hundred eighty degrees. Line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. Draw one-inch circles on the back of each sheet, spacing the circles at least a half inch apart. Grind the almond meal with the powdered sugar in a food processor until fine. Sift the almond-sugar mixture twice through a mesh sieve . . .”
The words tumbled off my lips like powdered sugar dusting a fresh batch of cookies, and sleep finally rocked me in its dark embrace.
An unfamiliar man’s voice jerked me out of scrambled dreams of a Barbie doll grooming dogs while cats chewed on Roger’s face and he twittered like a bird.
“Jesus, you two look like death warmed over, baked, fried, and set out on the curb for the crows.”
I rolled to one side, my bed creaking. The man who’d woken me sat on the edge of Dahlia’s bed. His dark-brown hair was slicked back, tight to his skull and curled up at his shoulders. Of average build, he didn’t seem all that menacing. Nice profile, clean cut, wearing a well-fitted suit. He looked like the last salesman who’d tried to hawk his wares to me: an instant whipping device for eggs that had broken as he’d given me the demo. The man on the edge of Dahlia’s bed tipped his head, and I got a glimpse of the marks on his neck: two perfect puncture marks.
Bite marks.
Vampire bite marks. We’d been warned about them in Sunday school, and the teacher had shown us pictures so we knew what we were looking for when out in the “real” world. Two tiny holes with bruising around them, spaced an inch and a half apart on average.
“Merlin, are you going to help me or not?” Dahlia breathed out, her voice raspier than just a few hours before. I craned my head to look past him to her.
“You got the money?” He rubbed the first two fingers of one hand over his thumb in a slow circle.
The skin above her left eye lifted. “How much exactly are we talking?”
“For you, a deal. Seventy-five.”
This was the warlock, then. A warlock who played with vampires. A shudder rippled through me, and I pulled my sheets up closer to my chin. The movement seemed to draw his eyes to me.
Dark eyes with a hint of blue around the edge that was so faint I almost missed it locked onto mine. “Your roommate looks only marginally better than you. She got any money?” His eyes never left me as he spoke, and I slumped farther down into my bed. My heart rate kicked up, and perspiration tried to pop up all over my body. No more sweat for me, though.
He grinned at me, but that did nothing to soothe the growing anxiety in my gut. “She’s scared of me. I can smell it on her.”
He could smell me? What kind of freak show was he?
“Leave her alone, Merlin. She’s a Firstamentalist,” Dahlia said.
His grin widened, and I could see he was far from perfect. His front teeth were slightly crooked, turning east and west respectively. “Really? Firstamentalists are so much fun to play with, with all their gasping about going to hell and how every supernatural should be burned at the stake. You know, they were huge supporters of all four Walls that separate humans from Supes.”
Four Walls. I knew there were two in Eurasia, one here in North America, and there was a proposed Wall—
“That’s right, they are building a Wall in South America now, cutting the continent in half. No one thought the numbers of Supes would be near as high as they ended up being.”
He stepped away from Dahlia’s bed as he spoke. There was nowhere for me to go, nowhere for me to get away.
So I closed my eyes.
A laugh burst out of him. “Oh, goddess, bang me, baby. She closed her eyes. Does she think I’m a bogeyman?”
Dahlia sighed. “Merlin. I said to leave her alone.”
“In a minute. I’m enjoying myself.”
My bed creaked as he leaned his weight onto the edge, and I squeaked, “Go away.”
“Tell me your name.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The devil needs a name to call you by, and I’m not giving you mine.”
His laugh was deeper this time, darker if that was possible, and the tone in it made me shiver. “I’m not the devil. I’ve met him, mind you. He really is an ass, but hardly anyone to worry about.”
I couldn’t help it; my eyes flew open. Merlin’s face was only a few inches from mine. “You have not met Lucifer.”
His lips twitched. “It really wasn’t all that memorable. He’s quite the sloth. Lazing about in bed, eating, belching, telling terrible jokes and expecting people to laugh. Boring as . . . well, hell.” He winked as though I wouldn’t get his stupid joke without his prompt.
I pushed myself farther into my bed, close enough to the far edge that another inch and I’d fall out. “Why aren’t you going away again? I don’t have money, and I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re hawking.”
Merlin tipped his head to one side, and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You are human. You’re dying. Yet you’re more afraid of me than death. That’s rare. It’s intriguing.”
“I don’t want to intrigue you.”
He shrugged and backed off the bed. “Too late . . . Alena.”
“You told him my name!” I snapped.
“I didn’t,” Dahlia breathed. “I swear I didn’t. I knew he was the real deal. I knew it.”
My charts, he had to have read it from my charts. Except I knew my charts were at the nursing station under lock and key. Everyone who contracted the Aegrus virus had his or her information kept that way.
“Dahlia, you have your price. Can you afford it?” He didn’t look at her, but instead continued to stare at my face.
She chewed her lower lip. “Is there anything . . . cheaper?”
Merlin blew out a low grunt. “You said you didn’t want to howl at the moon every month.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s the only cheaper option.”
Good God. Understanding hit me like a frying pan to the back of the skull. “You’re going to turn her into a Super Duper?”
Dahlia choked on a laugh as Merlin slowly turned to face me once more. “I’m sorry, what?”
I wasn’t sure I had the blood flow for my face to burn red with embarrassment, but it sure felt like it. “I mean, that’s what . . . we call—”
“You call supernaturals”—he paused, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose—“Super . . . Dupers?”
He was going to kill me. I knew it without a shadow of a doubt. He was going to strike me down with his fearsome rage—
Merlin clapped his hands together and let out a laugh that echoed in the room. Not like his earlier laugh; this one was full-bellied, like he couldn’t control himself. Tears streamed down his face as he roared. I looked at Dahlia. Her eyes were wide and she shrugged. “At least he didn’t kill us.”
“He hasn’t left yet,” I pointed out.
She grimaced. “If he kills us, he can’t get paid, now can he?”
Slowly, in tiny increments, he got control of himself. He brushed his hands over his face. “Good goddess, I have not laughed like that in decades.”
Decades? Just how old was he? Not more than thirty by the looks of it.
He pointed a finger at me and I flinched. “Alena, you stay there. We’re going to speak more in a minute.”
Ridiculousness. “Just where am I supposed to go, exactly?”
“Don’t die. We have business, you and I.”
I swallowed hard but didn’t move. Business I understood all too well. That he thought I had any with him was more than a little unnerving. I braced myself; if there was one thing I was
good at, it was business. There was no way he could outbusiness me.
Not that there was any way I was doing any such thing with him.
Merlin leaned over Dahlia and handed her a cell phone. “Here. Transfer the money.”
We weren’t allowed cell phones in our ward—too much chance of telling people what the Aegrus virus really did to us, I guess. It made me ache all the more for Tad, that he had been through this alone. I’d snuck away to the ferry and made it to Whidbey Island only once. Tad had been sick when I saw him, but he was nowhere near as bad as I was now.
“Sis, you shouldn’t have come.”
I wore the suit they gave me. I squeezed his hand, clutching it between both of mine as I sobbed, fogging up the plastic of my helmet. “I couldn’t not come. You can’t die, Tad. You can’t.”
“Not really my choice now, is it?” He grinned, his face a mask for what I knew had to be an immense amount of fear. His dark-brown hair was the same color as mine, and his eyes the same brown as well. As close as we were in age, we’d passed for twins more than once. But his eyes didn’t look afraid. They were nothing but calm. He had always been stronger than me, leaving the church when he was only sixteen, living on his own, standing up to Mom and Dad no matter what.
He pushed my hand away. “Go home, little Lena. I’ll be okay here on my own. I promise.”
I fell on him, wrapped my arms around his neck even though the suit kept us apart. “I love you, Tad.”
“Love you too.”
The memory hurt, knowing that if he hadn’t had a roommate like I’d gotten in Dahlia, his last days would have been completely cut off from the world.
I itched to get my fingers on the tiny phone and lose myself in the technology, to pretend I was still a part of the world I knew.
Dahlia gulped. “Okay, give me the phone.”
With trembling hands she took it from Merlin, and her fingers skimmed over the keyboard. The room was bloated with silence between the three of us. Less than a minute later she handed it back to him. “The money’s gone. My parents were taken by someone saying that they had a cure. They were scammed.” A sob hitched in her throat. “I don’t understand. They told me they were going to leave it there until today. That I had until today to use it before—”
I didn’t want to point out that Merlin was scamming them too. Either way, there was no cure. I knew it.
“Well, that’s too bad.” Merlin tucked the phone into his back pocket. “Good luck on the other side, Dahlia.”
He turned and faced me with a wide grin. “Alena. You’re paid for. What would you like to be? Carte blanche for you.”
What was he saying? Paid for? Me? No, that wasn’t possible.
“Roger paid for me to be . . . turned into a Super Duper?”
Merlin shrugged. “No name attached to the cash. Just your name as the recipient.”
There was no way it was Roger; he would have said something. He would have waited for me instead of moving on to his Barbie doll with the bleached blond hair and penchant for dogs. Which of course explained why she liked Roger. I pulled my thoughts away from my husband with some difficulty.
“Well?” Merlin prompted. “What do you want to be?”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” I frowned up at him, putting my best Yaya face on. The one my brother and I had seen when we’d been caught red-handed in her cookie stash.
Merlin smiled. “Ah, let me explain. As a Firstamentalist you wouldn’t know, I suppose. The Aegrus virus can be cured very simply. I will turn you into the . . . Super Duper”—he chuckled, and his eyes sparkled—“of your choice. Vampire. Werewolf. Witch. Whatever you’d like.” He paused. “So what will it be, Alena? Which monster do you want to become?”
CHAPTER 3
Dahlia gasped. “Alena, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know any of this. I mean, I don’t even know who would pay for me.” I picked at the hole in my sheet as my mind raced. “Did my parents pay for this?” That was almost as ridiculous as thinking Roger had paid for me to be cured. No, not cured, turned. The cure was as bad as the disease. I believed that. I did. Really. I didn’t want to go to hell, my soul burning in fire and brimstone while a lazy Lucifer laughed. This was one of those things I couldn’t let go of, a belief I knew was true all the way to the tips of my toes no matter how far I strayed from the church.
Maybe.
I shook my head. What was I thinking? I wasn’t going to do this. Yet a teeny-tiny part of me screamed to listen to him. To take the chance.
Merlin sat on the edge of my bed again, the mattress bending under his weight, inadvertently rolling me toward him. “You have your pick. The money covers any number of possibilities, really. You want to be a mermaid? I haven’t done that in a while, but here in the Pacific Northwest you’re dealing with nipple-screaming cold water if you go that route.”
I slapped a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. I had to be dreaming still. First Roger with his Barbie doll and dog-grooming scheme, and now Merlin’s offer. There was no other answer to this strange, surreal, ridiculous moment.
But my soul was on the line if this really was happening. Merlin kept his eyes on mine but didn’t ask again. I knew the question. I might not have attended church in a long time, but I knew the consequences of taking him up on his offer, of saying yes to living. And I knew in my heart that I couldn’t risk it.
“No. I don’t . . . I don’t want it.”
I should have felt relieved at making the right moral choice. My mother would have been proud of me. Yet all I felt was a sense of defeat so sure I thought I would pass out.
Dahlia gasped. “You can’t turn this down, Lena! One of us has to make it out of this crap hole of a ward.”
“You take it, then. If the money is there, and you really want to do this, Dahlia.” I looked at Merlin. His eyebrows shot up, but he nodded.
“Yes, the money is there. They didn’t say you couldn’t transfer the goods.”
“Then cure Dahlia. That’s what she wants. I don’t.” I smiled at my friend while a part of me screamed inside to tell Merlin yes.
Lies, lies, lies. I was lying to myself. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live. But I’d believed too long that being a Super Duper, a supernatural, was beyond evil. That even if you were turned by accident, your soul was stripped from you. And you’d never be the person you had been before. You’d be of the devil. You’d be a horrible beast, a monster that was violent and dangerous. You’d never go to heaven, blocked from being with your family forever.
I couldn’t make myself do it. Tad was already there on the other side; I couldn’t bear never seeing him again. Never hearing his voice because I made a selfish choice out of fear.
Dahlia reached a hand out for me. “Maybe there’s enough money for us both?”
Merlin grunted. “If you both want to be werewolves, sure. The money’s there.”
Dahlia cringed. “I’d do it. If that means we both survive. We could howl at the moon together. Help each other get the excess hair off our backs.”
My eyes welled, and my lips trembled. “You’re a good friend, Dahlia. I’m sorry to have met you here and not before.”
“Truly touching, ladies.” Merlin clapped slowly. “What is the decision?”
“Help Dahlia,” I said.
He kept his eyes on me. “You sure? No backsies.”
I raised a hairless eyebrow at him. “Backsies? What kind of warlock are you? Were you in a boy band in a prior life?”
His eyes twinkled. “Firstamentalists don’t believe in past lives. Or are you not as hard-core as you make yourself out to be? Perhaps you’d like to change your mind?” Why was he pushing me so hard? He had his money, what else did he need? Why did I get the feeling this was personal for him?
“Manner of speaking,” I mumbled as I pressed my arms into the bed. Mostly to keep from flipping him the bird. He winked at me, as if he could read my mind, before he turned back t
o Dahlia.
He bent over her and she let out a moan. “Don’t hurt her!” I jerked upright, and my chest protested the sudden movement. A low crack vibrated through me. One of my ribs was my guess.
He turned with Dahlia in his arms, the sheet wound about her skeletal frame. “She’s not the one to worry about, Alena dear. She’s going to survive. You, on the other hand, are going to die here alone, without even your friend now to hold your hand.”
In a few quick strides he was at the door and pushing through it. Dahlia reached back for me, her eyes wide with fear . . . and hope.
“You’ll never get past the nurses,” I whispered. With bated breath I waited for the alarm to go off, though I hoped for Dahlia’s sake they made it out.
I counted to one hundred. Nothing happened. The minutes ticked by, and I finally had to admit to myself that somehow Merlin—if that was even his real name, which I seriously doubted—had gotten them out of the ward.
So why wasn’t I happy for her? I was. Of course I was. But I was sad too. Dahlia had been my only source of comfort and human companionship for the last few weeks, and really, I’d thought we’d die within days of each other. A friend who’d be with me to the literal end. Merlin was right about that. I was going to die alone now.
I lay down, easing back into the fluffy pillow, and surprised myself by drifting back to sleep without a single dream to mar the bliss of escaping the world for a few hours.
The next several days were so quiet I might as well have been entombed already. The nurses—all of them some form or other of Super Duper so they were not at risk of infection—checked on me regularly. They brought me meals, asked me how I felt. None asked where Dahlia had gone. They cleaned her clothes and items out, changed the bedsheets, and said nothing about her absence.
The second day, I stopped my nurse from leaving right away. “Can I ask you a question about being . . . a supernatural?”
The nurse, a slim lady with slightly pointed ears and long flowing hair, paused as she tucked in the sheet at the foot of my bed. “What would you like to know?”
[Venom 01.0] Venom & Vanilla Page 3