Just as she was turning to head back into the living room, her throat began to feel tight. She rocked her head up and down, trying to relieve it.
But it only grew worse. It felt like a boa constrictor was wrapping its length around her throat, squeezing tighter and tighter.
Her cheeks began to feel tight, too, like someone had found a valve on her, plugged her in, and was blowing her up like a hot air balloon. Nina’s hands flew to her face, knocking the cup from the counter. While she knew rationally she could no longer breathe being all immortal and preserved in a lifelike state, according to Wikipedia, it didn’t comfort her when it felt like she was choking.
Panic set in as she felt her cheeks and neck now swollen and so uncomfortably stretched taut, she thought she’d explode, sending bits of herself splattering against the walls. Nina flew from the kitchen to the living room where Wanda sat, still immersed in her books, the yellow highlighter poised over a page.
Nina jumped in front of her and stomped her foot, banging her knee into Wanda’s to catch her attention.
She tried to yelp, but nothing came out, increasing her panic.
Wanda looked up, and her face fell like a piano crashing from the window of a high-rise. She hopped up off the couch as Nina circled her throat with her hands to show her the universal sign for choking. “Oh, my Gooooood! What happened to your face? You look like a blowfish!”
Nina rolled her eyes in thanks for the commentary on how horrible she looked and wrapped her hands around her throat more tightly, sticking her face in Wanda’s. She opened her mouth and pointed a frantic finger inside.
“Omigod! You’re choking!” Wanda immediately circled behind Nina, grabbing her around the waist and pressing her fist to Nina’s diaphragm, jerking her upward.
Nina’s feet dangled in the air from the force of Wanda yanking her against her slender frame. She struggled against her, pressing her hands down on Wanda’s forearms and digging her nails into them, but to no avail. As Nina’s throat continued to swell, Wanda’s hysteria grew. “Stop—fighting—me—Niiiina!” she spat through teeth that sounded clenched, giving her another upward heave beneath her breasts.
Nina bounced when Wanda gave her another good, hard shake, rattling her teeth. She peeked over Nina’s shoulder to the floor and squealed, “Nothing? How can that be?”
Nina’s response was to use the heel of her hand to reach behind her and clap Wanda on the forehead, but even that didn’t stop Wanda the Warrior.
“Owwwww! Stop hitting me. What have I told you about using your hands to communicate?” she admonished fiercely, gasping for breath, preparing to jerk Nina upright for one more round of Heimlich.
Wanda tried once more, all the while reassuring Nina in a high-pitched, frantic tone that she had credentials in saving lives. “I’m certified in the Heimlich,” she grunted. “I bet you didn’t know that and C—P—R. Crap, Nina, what did you eat? Omigooooood!” she bellowed once more in frustration when she saw no evidence of an obstruction flying from Nina’s mouth. “Why won’t it come out? Waaaait, how could you have something stuck in your throat? You can’t eat? Jesus, Nina! Why didn’t you tell me?” She dropped Nina like she was hot, pushing her away and leaving her to land clumsily on her knees, her hands out in front of her, bracing herself for the slam to the floor.
Wanda dropped to her knees, too, prying Nina’s mouth open with her fingers and rooting in her purse on the floor with the other. Nina gagged, spitting her fingers out in protest, but Wanda jammed them back in, ripping her mouth open wide. “Damn it, Nina, cooperate!”
Wanda was swearing…that meant the shit going down right now was bad. Nina vaguely saw something flat, brown, and slim coming at her, but her eyes were so swollen even her super night vision wasn’t cutting it.
“Bite down!” Wanda yelled her demand. “My wallet will keep you from swallowing your tongue and where is your phone? My, God, Nina. Clean up once in awhile, would you?”
Swallow her tongue? Holy fucksticks. Nina grabbed at the wallet, but found she was too weak to do much more than let Wanda drag her around like a rag doll.
Wanda hauled Nina up to the couch by the waist, throwing her down. Her head slapped against the back of the cushion like those bobble-heads on the dashboard of a car, her jaw still locked on the wallet. “Damn! Forget the phone. I can’t call 911.” Grabbing Nina by her shoulders she shook her, fear lining her face, her frustration seeping into her question. “What’s happppeeennning to you?”
As the words slipped from Wanda’s mouth, pinched with worry, her expression suddenly changed.
It really was true.
You could visually see a lightbulb moment occur. It glowed over Wanda’s disheveled head like a beacon in the night.
Understanding washed over Wanda’s expression, and then she was all limbs and lightening-fast movement. She hurled her purse up onto the couch and poured the contents out, sifting through them with fingers that Nina saw were shaking.
“Ahaaaaaa!” she cried in victory when she latched onto what looked like a big Magic Marker. Wanda stuck it between her teeth and yanked off the cap, spitting it to the floor, revealing a needle. She took a deep breath, obviously seeking her center. Something she claimed she had to do a lot of when it came to dealing with Nina and Marty when they were together.
Her chest expanded, and her eyes held ferocious determination. “Okay, I know what’s happening to you.” Her words were measured, only laced with just a touch of anxiety as she clearly attempted to stay calm. “Now just hold still!”
In slow motion, Nina, through swollen eyes, saw the glint of the needle in the lamp light. The tip gleamed manically at her as it swished through the air, aiming in the direction of her thigh.
Uh, no.
Whatever energy Nina had left rose to the surface, and she called on it. Galvanizing all of her strength to her feet, she focused on making them move. No fucking way was she letting Wanda stab her with that. It was the size of a friggin’ Dewalt drill bit.
Nina launched herself off the couch in an awkward forward motion, the wallet still hanging out of her mouth, and knocked Wanda out of the way, running for the far side of the living room. Which wasn’t far to go, but still…
“Ninnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaa! Come back here noooooow!” Wanda roared, setting after her, heels clacking on the tile floor like the feet of a thousand elephants.
Nina’s head whipped around, the wallet securely clamped between her teeth, to see Wanda coming at her with the speed of Flo-Jo and the hunched shoulders of an NFL pro.
She was like—like some demented warrior Viking.
Wild-eyed, Wanda zeroed in on Nina with a fierce gaze—just like a good bloodthirsty warrior should eyeball her intended prey.
Her hair flowed out behind her in a blaze of chestnut, her breath came in hard, harsh pants, her knees pumped with a thump-thump sound to them. Her left arm sliced the air with a dogged swing, while the other held the Magic Marker above her head like some kind of weapon of mass destruction.
Jesus effin’, who the fuck was this woman?
Nina heard Wanda’s scream in slow motion, her rebel war cry warbled and distorted to Nina’s overly sensitive ears.
Nina faked her out and ran in the other direction. Her eyes but slits in her head left her crashing into the table lamp. Yet the vampire gig was totally helping her evade Wanda. She moved from place to place with the speed of light and that was kinda cooool.
Even if she was choking to death.
“Nina, stop running around like The Flash! I’m just trying to help!” Wanda yelled with a ragged breath, cornering her behind an old wingback chair Lou had given her.
The hell she needed that kind of help. No help involving needles, thank you. She didn’t mind administering them, but she didn’t at all like being poked with one. Nina fought to keep her head upright, gripping the back of the chair. She rocked to the left and the right, preparing to run as if a pack of women from Bobbie-Sue with makeover kits were upon her.
Wanda stopped suddenly, a few feet in front of the wingback chair Nina stood behind and cocked her head. The bewildered look on her face coupled with her gasping breaths gave Nina pause.
Nina cocked her head in question, too.
“God, Nina.” Her voice held disgust. “How long has it been since you washed your curtains. Would you just look at them? They’re filthy.”
Nina tried to make a face at Wanda just before she found herself compelled to look at her lone living room window. She’d rip Wanda a new one for judging her lack of Martha Stewart-ness. Her face and throat were on freakin’ fire, her cheeks were preparing to explode, but she snapped her neck to look behind her anyway.
And that was her first mistake—letting herself be distracted by Wanda.
Actually, it was her second.
She didn’t have any fucking curtains.
Nina swiveled her head back—a head that felt like it was the size of a hot air balloon—just in time to see Wanda run over the top of the cushioned seat of the chair, lifting one leg high as she planted it on the wingback and tipped it right over, launching herself at a swollen, off-guard Nina.
Nina vaguely thought Wanda looked like some demented crab, as her body flew through the air, landing on her with a solid smack. They fell hard to the tile, Wanda throwing her body over Nina’s, the puff of air between their bodies making a whooshing noise when they connected. Wanda’s heels scraped on the tile floor as she pinned Nina to it.
And it was then that she eyeballed Nina’s thigh.
Her mark successfully located, Wanda took action. With the fluid grace of a jouster, she rammed the Magic Marker-like needle into Nina’s leg, and looking back a couple of seconds later, Nina wasn’t sure why she’d made such a fuss. It didn’t even sting.
Wanda peered down into Nina’s face and gave her a smile that oozed satisfaction. “Thank goodness.” She yanked the wallet from Nina’s mouth and tossed it on the table that had cracked in two during their half-assed chase.
Nina pried her lips from her teeth. “Thank goodness what, Refrigerator Perry?” Her tongue still felt thick, but almost instantly useable.
Wanda pinched Nina’s cheek, heaving another harsh breath from between her lipstick-smudged lips. “Your face, it’s all better, you idiot.” She dragged Nina’s hand up over her cheek and said, “See? No more swelling. You were in anaphylactic shock. When I finally figured out you couldn’t possibly be choking, I realized you’d had an allergic reaction to something. I’m allergic to bees. That was an epi pen I poked you with. I carry one wherever I go in case I’m stung. I took a chance, even if you are dead, that it would work. And I was right.” She beamed with pride, patting Nina’s cheek with affection.
And Wanda was right. Nina ran her hands over her face and neck. The swelling was instantaneously gone. But what the hell was she allergic to?
Nina ran an impatient hand over her face, brushing away the strands of hair stuck to it in wild disarray. “Get off me, Xena. Jesus, who are you anyway? I’ve never seen you like this, Wanda. You’re all fierce and shit lately.”
Wanda hiked herself up, straddling Nina’s hips and smiling contritely. “I’m not the woman I was a year ago—or even six months ago, that’s all. You and Marty seem to think I’m some weakling. I assure you that’s not the case. Now how do we go about figuring out what just happened here?” She extricated herself from Nina and stood up, smoothing down her skirt, then her hair.
Nina sat up, letting her palms rest behind her on the floor and drawing her knees to her chest. “It probably has something to do with being a friggin’ vampire, and I’m really getting tired of one surprise after the other—”
“It probably does,” a luscious male voice said from behind her thin apartment door.
Nice.
Dracula’d come to play.
Booyah.
CHAPTER
7
“Well?” Wanda tilted her jaw toward the front door.
“Well, what?”
“Oh, Nina, stop being such a B-word. Aren’t you going to get the door? The vampire’s here.” Wanda grinned down at her, extending a hand toward Nina, offering to help her up.
Nina grabbed her hand and hauled her body upward, giving Wanda a scathing glance. “Um, no. I’m not going to get the door.”
Wanda gasped. “You are, too, and if you won’t, I will. I just don’t understand, and enlighten me if you will, why you have to be so difficult about this?” Wanda spun on her heel, scooping up the broken table pieces as she went for the door. “He’s just trying to help. It could be much worse. He could have just left you to expire, you know.”
Expire…like she was a carton of milk or something. “He’s not trying to help me, Wanda. He’s just trying to get me to join his club of fruitcakes, and I don’t want to be a part of the club. I’ll figure this out alone.”
“Stop making him sound like some kind of psychotic vampire on a blood-sucking rampage. Your paranoid delusions are becoming really old. He’s offered you what you need to survive. Not a lifetime membership to the vampire nation. Now be nice.” With a long breath and a hand run over her mussed hair and clothes, Wanda popped the door open while her smile grew wider. “Hi, Greg. It’s nice to see you again, and who’s this?”
Svetlanna, serene and smiling, held out a hand. “I’m Svetlanna, Greg’s mother. We’ve come to see how our fledgling vampire is faring.”
Wanda stepped aside, allowing Svetlanna and Greg, dressed in a black sweater and jeans, entry, giving some shoes Nina had thrown off a kick to clear their paths.
“Wanda, right?” Greg inquired with that self-assured smile brightened by his deadly charm and not involving a hint of arrogance when he directed it at Wanda. Yet the moment his eyes landed on Nina, they darkened, and his eyebrow rose in that pompous way.
“It is…Wanda, I mean. How nice that you would remember.” She gave Nina a “see how nice the vampire can be?” look. Nina rolled her eyes back at her.
Wanda’s hand encompassed Svetlanna’s, shaking it. “Please, come in, and it’s so nice to meet you, Svetlanna. I had no idea Greg had a mother. I mean, well, one that was still…um, alive, er, here…uh…”
Svetlanna’s light tinkle of laughter crowded Nina’s small apartment. “I’m definitely here, though decidedly dead.” She lifted her lips in obvious amusement. Svetlanna turned to Nina, the tilt of her mouth growing wider. “How are you, Nina?”
Nina shifted from foot to foot, jamming her hands into the pockets of her faded jeans. While she was pretty sure it wasn’t Svetlanna’s intention, just her mere presence, so collected and well put together, made Nina feel like she was fresh off some secondhand thrift store rack. “I’m fine.” Her eyes strayed downward, drifting to her couch, which was littered with two weeks’ worth of laundry. That she should care that her homemaking skills were less than exemplary struck her as odd. She’d never given a shit before, but somehow Svetlanna’s refined presence among the shabby clutter of her apartment seemed wrong. It left her without much to say and rather embarrassed.
Svetlanna, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind at all. She walked right up to Nina, ignoring the broken table, the overturned chair, and the pile of crumpled clothes and grabbed Nina up in a firm hug. “How are you feeling? Have you fed?”
Wanda shut the door, snorting and stepping around Greg, who filled Nina’s small apartment with a delicious scent. Not to mention a delicious body that made Nina’s stomach react with a jolt. Fuck.
“Oh, she ate, uh, fed all right,” Wanda assured them.
“Wanda,” Nina warned.
Wanda flicked the air with a finger. “Don’t Wanda me. Something isn’t right about what just happened, and maybe if you’d stop being such a stubborn B-word about things and started taking the help people so generously offer you, even when you’re a total wretch to them, we might find an answer.”
“An answer to what?” Greg asked, removing his jacket and laying it over the back of her couch like he
planned to stay a spell.
Why couldn’t she have just been bitten by some butt-ass fugly vampire? Was it so much to ask that her perpetrator be unattractive? Did he have to wear clothes that showcased all those hard planes and sharp angles on his body?
“Nina? Why don’t you tell Greg what just happened?” Wanda prodded through tight lips.
Nina sent her the death stare. The one Wanda and Marty’d labeled her “bully” for. But Wanda flapped a hand in her direction, dismissing Nina’s killa, icy glare. “She had a horrible reaction to something. She went into anaphylactic shock. I think…Actually, I know that’s what it had to be, because I had to chase her down with my epi pen. I’m allergic to bees—thank God I had it with me. There aren’t many bees in the middle of winter, but I guess I just never took it out of my purse when summer had passed. Anyway, the shot worked, and I have a bad feeling the reaction she had, had something to do with the blood she drank.”
Nina grunted low in Wanda’s general direction, but it left Wanda unfazed and sticking her tongue out at Nina.
“Where did you get blood, Nina? I didn’t leave you with much last night.” Greg’s demand didn’t sit well with Nina.
“None of your business,” she retorted like a two-year-old.
“Oh, Nina,” Svetlanna chided with dulcet tones. “You must be careful. Why didn’t you just come to us?”
Nina was suddenly mute.
But not Wanda. “She didn’t come to you because she’s a stubborn pain in the butt. She bought blood off the black market is what she did. Both Marty and I told her she was crazy, but she never listens to us. Most times we just go along with whatever she says, because she threatens bodily harm. And she didn’t come to you for help because she thinks you want to turn her into one of your minions. It’s a very Interview with a Vampire mind-set.” Wanda’s eyes flashed fire, and she smirked at Nina as if she were daring her to pop her in the mouth for giving her up.
Greg barked a harsh laugh at Wanda’s words. “Show me the blood,” he commanded, heading toward the kitchen before giving Nina the opportunity to thwart him.
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