When I got home from work, I wanted to call Lana. I really did. I’d been thinking about her a lot when I wasn’t stressing about the whole Rini, suicide, vampires killing us thing. But I was also too much of a chicken to call. Just afraid she’d yell at me or cry or hang up. I was exhausted and stressed and had just dropped another twenty bucks buying garlic at the shop around the corner, but Lana did deserve to know what was going on. I’m sure she was stressed about it herself. So I took the modern coward’s way out and warmed up my computer. It’s hard to yell over IM. Not the bravest move, but give me a break—I am only seventeen.
Sherbert: Hey. You there?
There was a long pause where I wondered if she’d blocked me or something.
Turnover: Guess you’re not dead.
Sherbert: No, just grounded for life.
I hoped maybe she’d find that funny or at least have a little sympathy or something, but she didn’t reply.
Sherbert: How about you? Your dad pissed?
Turnover: Yes.
Sherbert: Grounded?
Turnover: Yes.
Sherbert: On the next plane to San Francisco?
Turnover: Probably.
Sherbert: Mega super angry at me?
Turnover: Yes.
Okay. She didn’t mince words. I stared at the last “yes” and wondered what I could do to make it better.
Turnover: I’ve been freaking out for two days wondering if you guys were okay.
Sherbert: We’re fine. Except for Rini. Xander’s kind of freaking.
Turnover: What’s wrong with Rini?
Sherbert: She went back to the bridge last night. Got her braces off, though.
Turnover: What?
Sherbert: She had braces.
Turnover: No, I mean about the bridge.
Sherbert: Yeah. She quit her job. X thinks she wants to be a Nearling.
Turnover: We have to stop her!
Sherbert: How?
There was a long pause.
Turnover: Intervention?
Sherbert: Would have to find her first.
Turnover: I think we know where she is.
Sherbert: Do you want to go back down there?
Turnover: Not exactly.
Sherbert: Me neither.
Turnover: Do you think she’s in danger?
Yes, after what happened to Lydia, I thought she was in a crazy amount of danger, but was that something that was important to share with Lana? Would it freak her out? I couldn’t see the benefit of stressing Lana to the eyeballs like the rest of us.
Sherbert: No, but Xander does.
Turnover: He really cares about her.
Sherbert: I guess. We both do.
Turnover: If you think of something, I want to help.
Sherbert: Okay.
Turnover: Seriously.
“Herbert!” Grandma barked. It was obvious she was standing right outside my bedroom door. “Are you on the internets?”
“Yes, Grandma.”
She opened the door. “Looking at dirty pictures or talking to Kewpie doll?”
I did my best to not roll my eyes. No reason to provoke her. “I’m instant messaging Lana.”
“Well, tell her you have to get off now. I heard sirens outside.”
I really wasn’t sure what hearing sirens had to do with the Internet, but Grandma looked super stressed, and I knew it was my fault. “Okay, Grandma. Let me just tell her I have to go.”
“Go ahead,” she said, not moving an inch from her position in the doorway.
Sherbert: Sorry. Got to go. Grandma’s waiting.
Turnover: Is she really there, or is this just an excuse?
Sherbert: Want her to type something?
Turnover: No!
Sherbert: That’s what I thought.
Turnover: Call me later?
Sherbert: Okay. I promise.
After that, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. It’s funny because I spend plenty of nights at home doing nothing when I’m not grounded or fearing for my life, and I’m usually not bored at all. But there was something about knowing that I couldn’t go out, even if I wanted to, that made being stuck at home extra boring. I tried reading in my room for about an hour and then just said the hell with it and turned off my light.
*****
“Sherbie…”
“Hmph…” I grunted, rolling over and slinging an arm across my face. It wasn’t even close to dawn; Grandma couldn’t possibly want me to wake up already.
“Sherbie,” a voice hissed. There was a quiet tapping at my bedroom window.
“Whah?” I sat up straight in bed.
Through the drawn blind I could see the silhouette of someone crouching down outside my window. If it was Violet Girl, probably with her horde of crazy vampire groupies back to torment me, I wasn’t having it. Grandma was stressed to eleven, and I was tired of being woken up every night with some new insanity. I didn’t care who was out there, vampire, Nearling, Chosen, or deranged lunatic, they were going down.
I slid out of bed and grabbed some pants off the chair. I struggled into them as I padded down the hall and through the living room. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I cracked the front door open and slipped outside.
Creeping along the front of the house, I stopped at the corner and peered around the edge. The person was still there, dressed in black, crouching down and tapping on the window in an attempt to get my attention. I felt my blood boil in my veins. We hadn’t gone to the police. We hadn’t done anything to injure the vampire. We just didn’t want to join his stupid fang club, and we wanted him to leave Rini alone. There was no reason his minions should be harassing me at my grandmother’s house night after night.
Feeling a rage burning inside my veins, I sprinted around the side of the house and charged toward the dark figure. Catching her by surprise in a diving tackle, I used my full body weight to inflict the maximum injury possible as we both hit the ground.
“What the hell?” Xander yelped with the wind knocked out of him. “Get off me, you freak. What’s your problem?”
“My problem?” I immediately rolled off of him and scrambled to my feet. “What are you doing sneaking around outside my house in the middle of the night?”
“I was trying to get your attention. You turned off your phone and your computer.” Xander remained sitting on the ground, wheezing to get some air back into his lungs. “Didn’t you hear me knocking?”
“How do you think I knew you were out here?”
“Then why the hell did you jump me?”
“Because I thought you were Violet Girl.”
Xander started struggling to get up, so I grabbed him by the arm and helped haul him to his feet. “Sherbie, that really hurt. That’s no way to treat a girl. Why would you want to do that to Violet Girl?”
“Because she and her creepy friends have been out here harassing me and my grandmother for the last couple of nights.”
Xander had hunched over to rest his hands on his knees as the second stage of his recovery process, but this piece of information made him look up. “Maureen’s been harassing you?”
“Yeah, but…” I did a double take. “You know her name?”
“Yeah. Maureen O’Neil,” he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“From school.”
“I know.”
“How long have you known who she is?” I was beginning to feel like even more of an idiot than I normally do.
“It took me a while. I mean, she didn’t look that cute in school, but I bet she’s let that vampire tap her neck a couple of times.” Xander straightened up. “I guess I figured it out that first time we went to the bridge.”
“But you didn’t even see her there.”
Xander smirked. “I see a lot more than you think.”
That comment really rubbed my fur the wrong way. Xander could be one of the least observant people on the planet when it served him. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
<
br /> Xander shrugged. “Why didn’t you figure it out? She’s only had a giant crush on you since we were sophomores.”
This left me flummoxed. Again, Xander had figured out something that I didn’t. This went against the structure of our friendship. I was used to being the insightful one; Xander was more the eye candy. I gave up and switched topics. “So what are you doing outside my house at three in the morning?”
“I talked to Rini, and she was acting like a complete bitch. I know she was on her way back to the bridge to let that thing bite her again.”
“Oh,” was all I could think to say. What was there to say? I mean, if she was doing crack or working as a go-go dancer or something, we could nark on her to her parents, but I was pretty darn sure they weren’t going to believe us if we showed up and said, “Look, Mr. and Mrs. Hampton, you know how your daughter’s been looking smoking hot lately? Well that’s because she’s under the spell of a vampire who happens to live under the Detroit-Superior Bridge.” They’d probably have us both arrested and accused of leaving Rini’s body in a shallow grave.
Squaring his shoulders, Xander straightened to his full height. He was wearing a black leather jacket, black leather pants, and I had to assume, his black combat boots. Cleveland can get pretty hot in the summer, so I thought his outfit was probably kind of sweaty. He was also carrying an olive green satchel that he’d bought at an army surplus store last year. “We’ve got to get her back.”
“How?”
He tossed the bag at me, and when I caught it, I could feel pieces of wood inside clunking together. “Open it,” he said.
I flipped open the flap. Inside was a butchered chair, the legs and support bars all sharpened to deadly points. “What do you think we’re going to do with this?” I asked, pulling out a stake.
Xander flashed me a menacing grin. “We’re going to kill the vampire.”
Chapter 27
“Xander, there’s no way we’re going to kill that vampire. Especially now.”
Xander snatched back his bag of homemade stakes. “Why not?”
“Because it’s the middle of the night.”
“So?”
“So you don’t go trying to sneak up on a vampire in the middle of the night. That’s when they’re awake. You wait until the daytime. That’s when they’re asleep.”
It seemed pretty obvious, but Xander gave me this look like I was a total genius. “Sherbie, that’s brilliant. I knew I was right. You’re definitely the guy I need with me to do this.”
“I didn’t say I was going to do this with you.”
“You’re not?”
“Why should I?”
“Because we have to save Rini.”
“Xander,” I explained to him, “Rini has absolutely no interest in being saved.”
“That doesn’t matter. She’s under his control right now. She’d want to be saved if she wasn’t. And besides, we can’t keep letting some creepy old vampire make party snacks out of half the teenagers in Cleveland.”
“I hate to say it, but that’s their choice. None of the people at the vampire party seemed to be complaining.”
Xander scoffed, “That’s because anyone caught complaining probably ends up dead.”
“All the more reason not to go back under the bridge,” I said, remembering it was the middle of the night and I should keep my voice low. “Listen, Xander, teenagers do stupid stuff all the time. They drink and drive; they take a ton of drugs and melt their brains; they have unprotected sex and end up pregnant. This is just another dangerous thing to add to a very long list. And besides, I’m not even sure drinking someone else’s blood is illegal if they’re handing it over voluntarily.”
“What about killing them and dumping their bodies in Lake Erie?” he asked.
“You’re right. That’s probably illegal,” I had to admit. “But we don’t know for sure that Vincent is going to kill her. Who knows? She might end up the next big thing in Hollywood.” Xander made a face. “Listen,” I went on, “I don’t want Rini dead any more than you do, but if we go back there, it’ll definitely provoke Vincent. Tomorrow’s front page will more than likely show photos of us as the next three idiot teenagers to have succumbed to peer pressure. Going back there would literally be suicide.”
Xander kept shaking his head back and forth. “We have to save her, Sherbie. You have to do this with me.”
He was my friend, and he was upset, but the thought of the vampire cutting into my flesh and sucking out all my blood gave me the shivers. Plus a weird part of me really, really wanted to go back there, and that scared me even more. “Why?” I asked him.
Xander leveled me with his electric blues. “Because I’d do it for you.”
Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! There was no way out of helping if he was going to use that cheap ploy. “Okay, fine,” I sputtered. “But we’re not going now, and we’re not going half cocked. We can at least have a plan.”
“I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” Xander cracked into a grin. “We’ll do it tomorrow. I’m not risking waiting any longer. Every time I see Rini, she looks worse… or better, or… I don’t even know. It’s like that vampire is erasing who she is.”
The next morning, I knew Xander had returned even before I left my room because I could smell the scent of cooking bacon wafting out of the kitchen. Grandma was busy at the stove being the ultimate hostess. Bacon, eggs, toast—all the fuel a growing boy needs to spend the day staking vampires. I really had to have Xander over more often in the mornings. Yeah, there was the tradeoff that he’d talked me into going on a suicide mission, but the food was much better when he was around.
Once we’d finished and Xander went through the whole rinsing his dish and placing it in the dishwasher ceremony, he said, “Mrs. Lehmer, that was delicious. You really should open a restaurant.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Grandma protested. “It was just eggs on toast.” But I could tell she was secretly pleased.
“I’m headed to the mall,” Xander told her. “I can give Sherbie a ride, if you don’t mind him getting out of the house a little early. I know he’s still grounded.”
Grandma scrutinized me with her lips pushed tight together. “I suppose it’s okay. Just this one time. As long as you boys are careful.”
“Thanks, Grandma,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. Then I thought about what we were actually leaving to do, and I added, “I love you.”
“Don’t overdo it,” she grumbled. “You’re still grounded.” I wondered if those were the last words she’d ever say to me.
I had put my garlic collection in a bag and dropped it out the window before breakfast. I jogged around the side of the house to grab it while Xander got the Dart started.
Once we were both inside the car Xander, gave me an eager look. “So? What’s the plan?”
“We go to the police.”
“What? I thought we couldn’t go to the police or they’d think we were crazy and lock us up and all that.”
“Yeah.” I had said all that, more than once. “But here’s the catch. We don’t mention anything about vampires.”
It felt weird walking into a police station. I mean, we hadn’t even done anything wrong, and I still somehow felt guilty. The cop sitting at a desk behind some bulletproof glass just glared at us without saying anything. “Um, excuse me,” I said, feeling like an idiot. But Xander had clammed up, so I figured it was up to me to take the lead. “We have some information about all the suicides in Cleveland lately.”
The cop gave us a bored look. He shoved a clipboard with some papers clamped to it through a slot in the Plexiglas. “Fill this out and have a seat.”
I was not overly thrilled about having to put all my personal information on a paper that I was handing in to the cops. The last thing I wanted was a squad car coming by the house and scaring my grandmother to death. I put my cell number instead of our house phone and wrote on the corner of the page, “Please just call if you need to talk t
o me. I don’t want to upset my grandmother.” I’m not sure requests for privacy were accepted by the police, but I figured it was worth a try.
I was annoyed that because I had spoken up, I was the one having to fill out the paperwork. I tried to hand it to Xander, but he backed off saying, “It’s all you.” This really pissed me off until about five minutes after we sat down when the cop at the desk knocked on the glass and said in a muffled voice to Xander. “There are two forms there. You need to fill one out, too.”
After forty minutes of being fidgety in the waiting room, an officer opened a door and called us in. His name was Sergeant Maddox, and he had a classic flattop haircut. “What’s this all about?” he said after glancing at our paperwork as he slouched at his desk in a tiny office.
“It’s the Detroit-Superior Bridge,” I began.
The Sergeant sighed. “Let me guess. It’s the home to a bunch of vampires.”
“What?” Xander and I both said simultaneously.
“Yeah, a couple of your friends got here before you, pulling the same crap. Cleveland’s infested with vampires; they’re living under the bridge, blah, blah, blah.” Maddox leaned forward, folding his hands and resting on his forearms. “Here’s my advice: try reading a few less vampire books and maybe go to the gym instead. Watch some TV.”
“But…” I floundered.
Sergeant Maddox tossed our forms onto a large stack of papers. “Don’t worry, kids. The Cleveland Police will take care of all the nasty vampires living under bridges and in the sewers and at the mall and wherever else they hang out.”
Feeling dismissed, I got to my feet, but Xander wasn’t budging. “We’re not making it up,” he said.
The sergeant gave him an emotionless stare. “I’m sure you’re not. And like I said, we’ll look into it.”
Fangs for Nothing (Vampire Hunting and Other Foolish Endeavors) Page 17