Dead Certain (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 3)

by P. S. Power

  Work was fine, and a good place to start, but she wanted, no, needed, more. Friends to share with, and people to help make things better for. Not that she knew where this idea was coming from, since it didn’t sound totally like her, she didn’t think. There had to be a point to things though, beyond just making frozen goodies, and on occasion putting together the right paperwork for Vampires, or their Human friends.

  Real people went out, and did things. They hiked and camped, even though she sucked at both of those. She hadn’t loved them as a Human anyway. Hiking was probably well within what she could do pretty well now, she bet. Being alone in nature, or even better, with other people there, might be fun. Dancing even could be.

  Ed had basically told her that standing in the back room babysitting Ginger was a no go for the night, since a big part of what was being done had to do with confidence. The girl had the skills she needed now, and a phone with which to call in help, if it became needed. That was supposed to be Ed, too. Not the youngest Vampire in town.

  So they were both at home, for the first time in so long that she kind of wondered if it was fair to claim she lived there. Edom was actually relaxing, too. Listening to some old time piano music. It was scratchy and had a hum to it, but was off of a CD, not a vinyl record. So something recorded from a file that wasn’t very good. He seemed to like it, and was sitting in the living room doing nothing but tapping his toes to what had once been a catchy tune, no doubt.

  For her part, Eve started cleaning things up. Doing laundry, which took only a few minutes to get started, having good machines for it there, and then dusting the whole house. The front room had a cream colored carpet, which needed to be vacuumed, but she didn’t want to bug Ed by doing that, so left it until last, sweeping and scrubbing the whole place. It took about an hour, since in her boredom, she realized, she’d pushed herself into super speed ranges. It hadn’t even hurt enough to get her to notice she was doing it.

  Then, as the music was changed to better quality Big Band in the other room, she finally sat on her uncovered bed, and tried to just think for a bit. It wasn’t a thing that she spent that much time doing, compared to other things in her life. Contemplation had never truly been her thing. It led to things like remembering, if you weren’t careful, and her life, if nothing else, had taught her that most things were better left forgotten.

  Still, she had some things to consider and not doing them would leave her weaker than she wanted to be. So Eve needed to buckle the hell down, she decided, and not be a little wimp about what she needed to consider now.

  Magic. What could she do with that kind of thing? It was really clear that increasing parts of herself, the ones she already knew well, and the things she could do, were what worked. So far at any rate. Just to check she tried to get a candle lit, using her mind. Some Vampires could do it after all, so why not her? No matter how much energy she tried to throw at it, that just didn’t work. Moving things at a distance did, which she practiced for an hour, until it was kind of clear that doing more was just goofing off, and not going to help her be better at it.

  The music had shifted again in the other room, this time to a soft melodic singer with a very mellow, but good voice. She just listened to it for a bit, before a new song came on that she remembered from a high school dance. One at which the music had nearly had the poor AV guys lynched by the football team. Barry Manilow. That Edom liked that kind of thing…

  Well, why not? Now that she had better ears, she could tell that the guy was beyond merely good. He was brilliant, even if some of the stuff he sang was a bit sappy for her tastes. Love songs, and odes to women that she didn’t know anything about. Most people put themselves, and their current situations into love songs that they heard, but that had never been her way, had it?

  Eve had been with a lot of men, and a few women, but none of them had ever loved her. It hadn’t happened the other way around either. When Hally had been off getting a boyfriend, and later a girlfriend, Eve had just moved from one person to the other, desperately trying to find a connection, but never really doing it, since that was scary, wasn’t it?

  Now, well, she really was busy, but how long each day would it take to keep a relationship going? Three or four hours? She didn’t even sleep now, so claiming that there was no time wasn’t honest, was it?

  What she didn’t have was anyone to really call on for things like that. A good guy that she actually liked, and wanted to keep around. The closest she had was actually Ben, and she hadn’t talked to him for months. Not since she’d given him a hummer in the back of Zack’s bookstore. With Zack right there, having done him first. That had to have left him feeling a bit like she didn’t care about him, didn’t it?

  Worse, it was nine at night on a Thursday, and she really didn’t know him well enough to just call him up, and ask if he wanted to do anything. For that matter, she didn’t have his number.

  So she just sat, for a long time, and wondered what the point of being a kick-ass, and pretty good looking, Vampire was, in her world. Well, she seemed to be doing all right with the first bit. Many tushes had been booted. Some fatally. No one would claim she wasn’t doing it right when it came to that part.

  “It’s about having the time to get things right, isn’t it? To fix the things that I messed up, and to figure out how to help other people, while still making sure I get what I need. Why else live forever?” She spoke the words out loud, so softly that it didn’t occurred to her that Edom, in the other room, was a Vampire too.

  “That’s the way of it.” His voice was deep, relaxed and happy sounding. Normal for him. “There’s time to be what you want to become, to learn, explore, and help others. Not all at once. Not even for one of us, but yes, there is time. You can appreciate the world, and find out what lies at the very bottom of things, if you want to. Most never go that far into anything, even if they have forever. I think it’s worth it though. Mastery of anything tends to start you on the road to mastery of many.”

  She walked to the other room, since she didn’t need to go to confession, in particular. Or, well, she probably did, but not with Edom. If she was going to do that, she’d go and call The Cleric, since that was his deal, right? Acting like a Priest all the time? For all she knew, he really was one.

  Ed, dark and handsome, his teeth nearly shining under the single light that illuminated the space, wore jeans for once, like she did most days. He had on a t-shirt too, which hugged his muscular form closely. It should have been hot, but Eve just didn’t care about that kind of thing anymore. For a brief moment it left her feeling a tiny bit sad.

  Still, he wasn’t hard to look at, which was nice, in its own way.

  “I was just thinking that I should try having a relationship. I’ve never really had one. Not past a few friends. The closest I’ve ever gotten was a few fuck buddies that I had sex with five or ten times. Then they’d get bored, or we’d lose touch. I have problems that way. Trust issues, and things like that. Not a huge mystery as to why, but I think it’s time for me to grow up a little bit.”

  Her maker looked at her, and smiled.

  “Good idea. Do you have anyone in mind? Ginger mentioned that she was considering making a claim on you. I think everyone laughed at her, since that kind of implies that she’d toss you in the corner and have her way with you a few times to prove her dominance, but flowers and poems could work, too. Or, what do you young people do now? Sexting?”

  “Like I know? I was thinking about Ben. He works down at Zack’s, in the mall. A Human, but nice enough. Not the best looking guy in the world, but not bad that way. He’s kind of dating Kaitlyn though, and she’s really pretty. A succubi so that might still work out. They don’t have a lot of long term relationships. Not that I have any reason to think he’d want to do more than fuck. He’s just the only normal guy I know.”Then she grinned a bit. “I had been thinking of making a play for Bey for a while, but just as things started looking good there, Maggie came into the picture. I can’t compete t
here, so that leaves me at loose ends I guess. I can look though, right?”

  There was a smile then and a nod.

  “Again, you get time. There will be good people, if you stop to notice them. To make it even easier, you work with the public, so won’t be stuck with only other Vampires to choose from. That opens the pool up a lot. This is a great time to be single and looking for a connection, too. If you want to get to know someone, society will pretty much let you. Guy, gal, black, white or other. When I was a boy, even looking at the master’s daughters, or the other white girls, would have you beaten. I don’t mean staring at the back of their skirts with lust in your eyes either. I mean glancing at them, and letting your eyes come up past their feet for too long. It took me nearly thirty years to be able to actually look at a woman and meet her gaze. I mean just stare into her eyes, and not wonder if the world was about to end. After I became one of us. This is a better time that way.”

  Eve might not always feel like the sharpest tack in the tool shed, but she understood what had been said there. His master hadn’t been the one that brought him over, had it? Then, everyone had to start somewhere, and if you were going to be born black, over two hundred years before, that meant your odds of having been a slave went up a lot, didn’t it?

  Eve changed the subject.

  “Say, you never mentioned who your maker was. I didn’t ask, since, you know, it just doesn’t come up in conversation a lot, but I guess it isn’t forbidden for me to know, if you want to tell me?” Unless he didn’t, or it was, but so far that had never been the case for anyone else that she’d known.

  “His name was Charles. Bey was his maker. He was a bit wild, actually. New to being a Vampire. Not thirty years one of us, when he made me, and not all that well controlled. I was just one of about fifty that he made, trying to create an army, to take over Kentucky. He’d bought me, for the price of a good horse. We weren’t close, but unlike the others, I didn’t go insane with the first blush of power. I wasn’t well controlled, but having been a slave saved me. I was already so afraid, and angry, used to holding that all in, that I did it, even with the power of the universe rushing through me. A few years later when Bey was ordered in to kill us all, I fell back into that pattern, which allowed me to survive. When the others all started to explode around me, their head gone without warning, I just fell to my knees and froze. Looking at the ground, like I’d been trained to my entire life. I didn’t move while the others died, just knowing that he was going to end me, too, and that doing anything would be futile. Charles was the second or third to die that night. I think Bey felt the loss keenly, so when he got to me, instead of take my life, he just stood there for a long time, and then spoke to me, like I was a child.”

  That kind of sounded like Bey to her. Soft spoken and friendly even, when he could be.

  “What did he say?”

  That got a sudden, and disarming grin.

  “That if I wanted to learn, and was willing to try, he’d show me what to do, since he was my grandfather. It wasn’t easy for him. I was more than half wild, and it took years for me to be able to handle being around people safely. A decade. Longer to break most of the bad habits that Charles had left me with. After that, when I was in control of myself well enough, I went off on my own, for about a hundred and thirty years. Eventually I met up with Lenore, who suggested that I travel with her for a while, as a porter and bodyguard. She was an actress back then. Decently famous. Movies, but before they had talking in them.”

  That got Eve to blink several times, and sink onto the sofa, across from that matching soft fabric chair that Ed was in. She didn’t speak for a while, but finally realized that she’d known that about Lenore. It just hadn’t really occurred to her that, a long time before she’d been born, ninety to a hundred years ago, Lenore and Edom had known each other, and been friends.

  “Have you been with her ever since?”

  “God no. We traveled together until the movies dried up, and she went on to start working for the Council. She’d always been stronger than I was, when it came to resisting the light, so moved up pretty quickly. It was still hard for a black man to find work that only took place at night, so I moved into music. I was a jazz musician for nearly thirty years, and then took a turn with the blues. In the seventies I started a chain of discos, and have been in that business ever since, even as things, and styles, have changed. The Council owns the T2LA franchise, but the original idea was mine. After that took off, I ran into Lenore, who’d suggested I come and be her second, about fifteen or twenty years ago, now. Then I finally decided to settle down and make a child of my own. The end.”

  She grinned, “except this isn’t the end, is it? It’s just another thing in a long line of events that will keep going. So, do you find being a parent rewarding enough? I swear, I’ve tried not to be the worst Vampire kid ever. I’m not a teen yet, but I’m planning my rebellion to be something along the lines of moving out of the house too young, and voting Libertarian.”

  Rather than laugh at her, Edom seemed pleased for a bit, and then shrugged.

  “So far so good. I do keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For you to turn out to be a hidden Greater Demon, or one of their slaves, if not something worse than that. What that would be, I have no clue, but things can happen. You aren’t though. At least Zack assured me that you were just you, and not tied to anyone other than me. He’s a Greater Demon though, so you know, who can trust that?”

  “I understand. You just weren’t ready for my natural awesomeness to shine through so brightly. Well, no one can blame you there. I mean, they could, but then I’d make fun of them… And tell Barb to stop calling me Special Snowflake. I’m afraid that’s going to stick if she doesn’t cut it out.”

  Edom stood up, changed the CD, and sank back down as a man started to croak in the background. It wasn’t good at all. Eve didn’t comment though, since it might be an exercise in personal discipline on Edom’s part, or something, and interrupting would be rude.

  After a while it was clear to her that Ed was done talking, and while she was probably welcome to just sit there, it wasn’t very interesting. They needed to get the internet. A computer, too. She smiled then, and decided to be heavy handed and just go get one. It wasn’t like she didn’t have the money for it. The box might be a pain to carry back from the store, but Wal-Mart was open all day and night, so why shouldn’t she go and at least see what they had that way?

  It took her the rest of the night to go and buy a readymade machine, and then find a desk to put it on, and get it all set up. That didn’t have the internet put into the house, of course, which she’d have to call after in the morning, but Ed didn’t comment on the machine appearing, and while he was old, he knew what the thing was, having been in public in the last twenty years like he had.

  They left at the same time, about six, and she got to work about three minutes later, running on foot. It took Ed over half an hour to do the same thing. When she got to the shop Ginger was smiling and seemed happy enough. True there was the body of a dead Vampire in the back room, but the place wasn’t messy or anything.

  Eve glanced at the man, who was laid out on the floor, under the spot where the node was, even if she couldn’t see the thing at all.

  The fellow, the dead one, had slightly blackish blood, and fangs that were dropped down, as well as a knife sticking out of his throat. It was a big thing, clearly meant to compensate for having a little dick. She didn’t check that one, but from the skuzzy clothing, which had blood stains on the front which were both Human smelling and old, and the unkempt hair, he wasn’t exactly an upstanding citizen. Still, killing people was kind of a no-no, most of the time.

  “Hey, Ginger… I can’t help but notice that there’s a body back here. Is there a story to go with it, or are we just hiding your rage problem, when we go off to bury this thing?”

  Felicia walked in just about then, having gotten a hotel room in town, not too far away. That let her do something
in the evenings that wasn’t going to be bothering Ginger. She heard what was said, and looked a bit scared, but didn’t comment. The counter girl, in her cute white and green dorky looking apron did though.

  “He tried to kill another Vampire that was buying blood. To take it from her. So I stopped him. I got her information, the victim, so that you could check and make sure it was all real, and not me just slaughtering annoying people. I didn’t give into the temptation to do that even once. I think someone should note that down somewhere. This guy was asking for it. Legally, I mean.”

  Eve called the number, in case the woman was going to end up sleeping that day, and found her just about to go down, from the sound of it. Still she didn’t wait to explain, knowing what it was all about.

  From the way she told it, Ginger had engaged in an epic battle, and protected not only her life, but virtue, from the enraged and hungry Vampire man. It was probably closer to what the girl that had killed the man had said, but Eve wrote it all down, so that the report was ready when Edom got there. It really was a better story, involving high kicks, an epic exchange of powerful blows as the two went toe to toe for about ten minutes, with Ginger laughing as she suddenly sped up, using her super human speed to end it all, and save the damsel. Okay, the word damsel hadn’t been used expressly, but it had been heavily implied. Honestly, from the way the Vampire lady on the phone spoke, if Ginger had been a boy, she’d totally be getting laid in the coming days or weeks.

  Instead of making a big deal of it, he dug in his front pocket and then tossed Eve his car keys.

  “Take the body and get rid of it for us? Show Ginger how. It can come up. You have your license with you?” He seemed worried about that part, but Eve actually did. Her debit card, and some cash too. Just in case she’d needed to prove who she was at the store. She normally didn’t bring that stuff with her, but pulled it from her pocket, to show him how prepared she was. It made her look competent, she thought. Ready for anything.