Lucia jabbed her fangs into his throat.
“El!” Mindy cried. She saw, out of the corner of her eye that Seb stood stunned, not sure what to do, his crossbow only half-raised.
Lucia pried herself off Bakula’s throat, her lips a little wet with blood, but mostly with bronzer. She wiped it off on her wrist. “Uck! Get a real tan or don’t tan at all.” His eyes were glassy, his body wobbling a little on its heels. “Glamoured, bitch.”
Mindy let out the breath she was holding. “For fuck’s sake—”
“You want to try your luck with a cover story, or do you want me to use my roofie-spit and make him forget we were ever here?” She jerked her head to the top of the stairs. “C’mon, George Hamilton, let’s find out what you know.”
“And do you having any ice cream treats?” Seb added. “My host family does not believe in them.”
“Yes, I have many ice cream treats,” Bakula said woozily.
* * *
They sat him down in the kitchen. Seb was digging through the freezer for ice cream sandwiches, so Lucia ripped the crossbow off his back and shoved it into Mindy’s arms.
“If he moves, shoot ’im.”
“It’s clearly not him, El, how could you glamour another vampire?”
“I don’t know, how do you turn into mist? This is all crazy bullshit, Minz, why are you expecting it to make sense?”
“My Creative Writing teacher would hate you.”
“Fuck creative writing, this isn’t high school, this is real life! Real life! Sometimes you gotta arrow someone!” Lucia spun on Bakula, pulled out her own chair, spun that around too, and straddled it backward. “Are you a fucking vampire?”
Bakula talked like he had a bad head cold. “No. Vampires don’t exist.”
“You lying vampire motherfucker!” She slapped him.
“That hurt,” Bakula said truthfully, his voice dull and level under Lucia’s thrall.
“I’m gonna kick your ass if you lie to me again! I’m fucking gonna rip your face off with my fingernails, then go for a mani to get your face out from under my nails!”
“I didn’t do anything to you—”
“Liar!” Mindy put her hands supportively and restrainingly on Lucia’s shoulders. Lucia seemed like she would pull free, but didn’t. Her anger was wet and hot, boiling out of her through almost-tears in her eyes. “It was your boat! You were there!”
“Someone broke into my boat,” he said, as simple as a child giving a book report. “They took it for a joyride. I really thought they wouldn’t, since I’d allowed them to party inside the house and taken the keys with me, but I guess I can’t trust the team as much as I thought. I’m thinking next time I’ll have to specify a chaperone…”
Lucia slapped him with so much of her strength, his head twisted around. Mindy was amazed his neck didn’t break. But she’d only caught him with the tips of her fingers, her rage stealing her accuracy.
“El, stop—” Mindy pulled back on her, pulled Lucia out of reach of him. “It’s not him, okay? You have to stop.”
“I know it’s irresponsible, hosting the team in my own house without my supervision, but I just love those boys. I’m an old-fashioned coach. I can’t be ruthless with them; they’re not just parts in a machine to me…”
“Shut up!” Lucia pulled away from Mindy, her hands in her hair, pulling it out at the roots. It was dark in her white hands, like an oil spill on water.
“To a coach like me, the pride of my team is my pride. Their glory is my glory! Their fate is my fate! Sometimes I catch myself using the royal we—” Bakula pulled on his white mustache like he was reading Braille off its whiskers. “We Dragons have the right to be proud. Our veins flow with the blood of all the lions of the human race, those who have fought as lions. Texas is the whirlpool of the American races—”
“What is he talking about?” Seb asked.
“He’s high, he’s not talking about anything,” Mindy protested. “Seb, get a mirror.”
“He’s in on it!” Lucia sobbed it out, her eyes teary and cold at the same time. Glaciers in the sun. “He knows something, he’s playing you, he’s playing you because you’re soft!”
“And you hate him because he’s my friend! Just like you hated Seb!”
“What’d I do?” Seb asked, looking up.
“Seb! Mirror!” Mindy reiterated, frustrated, ready to scream.
“I remember facing the Bishop Huns,” Bakula said jovially, smiling to himself, no idea his fate was being argued over in the same room he was in. “Their fury swept Texas football like a living flame.”
“I don’t hate Seb!” Lucia cried, confused now.
“Yeah, because now you know we’re not dating!”
Bakula slapped his bicep. “Idiots! What devil was ever as great as Attila? His blood runs in these veins! Huns, indeed!”
“Why should I care who you’re dating?” Lucia asked in total exasperation.
“That’s right, why should you?”
“They say that I think only of myself, but what good are players without a leader? Where does the battle end without a mind and a heart to conduct it?”
“Do you know what he did to me?” Lucia shouted in her face.
“No, I…”
“Me neither.”
“Here!” Seb said, holding up the compact Mindy had packed. She grabbed it from him, opened it, held it in front of Bakula.
His reflection neatly twinned him.
Bakula’s melancholy oratory continued, the only thing that held. “But now, it’s all about safety—they don’t let us play like they did in the old days. This winning streak brings me no pleasure. It is a dishonorable victory.”
Lucia was still. “That doesn’t prove anything.”
Mindy turned the mirror on Lucia. No reflection. “He’s human, Lucia.”
Lucia threw up her hands. “Okay, so let’s splash him with holy water, throw a cross at him—”
“We already broke his door and bit him! Let’s just go, okay?”
Lucia stabbed a finger at her. “You don’t want it to be him! Not your friend.”
“And you do? Goddamnit, El, remember the last time we were here and I said we should leave? Why can’t you just listen to me?”
Lucia’s hands were on her skull like she wanted to crush her brain. “You don’t care. You don’t care about me.”
“I don’t care?” Mindy demanded. “I just said you can have my blood. Five. Minutes. Ago.”
“If you cared, you wouldn’t tempt me. Fuck this.” Lucia blurred.
Mindy heard the front door slamming before she spotted Lucia through the window, curled up on a stone post of the property’s fence.
Seb turned back to Mindy. “You know she is wants someone to go to her.”
Mindy shook her head. “Let her stew.”
Something scraped behind them. Bakula was pushing a salt shaker around the kitchen table.
“What are you being here anyway?” Seb asked. “Don’t you have the game?”
“Opposing team had an injury. They had to forfeit.”
“That’s too bad,” Seb said. “Their quarterback was great. Would’ve been a good game.”
“Don’t fraternize with him,” Mindy chided. “It’s…disloyal.”
“To Ms. Lucia?” Bakula asked. He seemed deeply confused, boggled by an intricate puzzle in his mind. “Huh. How can you be loyal to someone who isn’t loyal to you?”
“Lucia’s loyal to me. She’s my friend.” Mindy sighed. “Shit. Maybe we should use some holy water—baptize the guy if it’ll get Lucia to see reason.”
“Wait…go back…Lucia’s your friend?” Bakula exhaled slightly. “Oh yes, now I remember. I’d heard she wanted to befriend you. It’s really none of my business—”
“Wait, what do you mean, you heard?” Mindy sat down with him, close enough to see the grains of salt shift each time he prodded the shaker with his long stalk of a finger.
“Oh, us teachers, we
gossip as much as anyone. It’s not our concern how you live your lives. We just hear things. I didn’t know whether to tell you or not. It seemed like you might want to know—but then again, I didn’t think you would appreciate me intruding on your personal life.”
“His brain is fried eggs,” Seb said. “As you being say, Mindy, let us go.”
Mindy put up a hand, gesturing him to wait. “Who said what?”
“The cheerleading coach—Mrs. Fox. Nice lady. Tough, but nice. I don’t think she would make up something like that…”
“Something like what?”
“The rumor was that you were bi-curious, bisexual, it’s all the same to these kids. Most don’t really care, it’s not all that interesting these days.” He shrugged. “Glee, you know? But Mrs. Fox said she overheard Lucia promise Mr. Morse that if he won the game against the Panthers, you know, in January? That she’d have a threesome with him. He won, of course. Quentin’s a great runner, I think he’ll go college ball. So, to keep her promise, Lucia needed a bisexual woman. Someone who would be so grateful to be included that she’d do, well, anything. Anyone.” Bakula gave a loopy smile. “I never believed it myself. You just don’t strike me as that type of girl. I think you’re waiting for the right man to come along.”
Mindy felt like she was going to throw up. But she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, not until she talked to Lucia. She didn’t think she could do anything without asking Lucia if it were true. She barely felt like she could breathe.
She rammed out the front door and stalked to Lucia to give her the attention she wanted so badly.
“Are we having a threesome?” Mindy demanded. “Are we having a fucking threesome?”
Lucia looked past her to Seb, who had followed her out. “Whoa, Seb, my man, what moves did you pull?”
Mindy spun around. “Seb, go back inside the house, tell Bakula that we were never here and that a deer broke his door, some shit like that. Go!”
Seb hurried away.
“I think I should let you know,” Lucia said jokingly, so easy for her to cool down, to turn on a dime and make everything into a joke, “that I don’t believe in orgies before marriage.”
“Not him.” Mindy didn’t recognize her own voice—tight and controlled and throttled down somewhere deep in her gut. “You and me and Quentin. Because he scored more goals than the other team and you wanted to reward him. And why wouldn’t I do that? I’m such a great big bisexual slut, aren’t I? You probably could’ve paid me to do it, like a whore, but you thought you’d save a few bucks.”
Lucia’s eyes flashed. “Who told you that?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“No, no it’s not!” Lucia leapt down off the post.
“Then swear it. Swear it’s not true, El, I’ll believe you…”
“It’s…” Lucia’s head dropped to one side. “It’s complicated.”
Mindy felt like she was being strangled to death. Like she had wire wrapped around her throat. Like a guillotine was coming down.
“It was…a little bit true, but just for a little while!” Lucia tried to smile, assuage Mindy like a lion tamer with an angry animal, but she didn’t know what would work and what would make it worse. “I was going to see if you were interested, but then Quentin and I broke up and you were so nice to me, Minz, you were such a good friend—” She reached out…
Mindy punched her. It hurt, felt like slamming her fists into brick, but Lucia jerked away.
“You punched me in the tit!” Lucia cried. “Who does that?”
“Stay away from me.” Mindy didn’t know how she got the words out. It felt a little like her throat had been slit and what she said bled out. “Don’t call me, don’t e-mail me, just—I don’t want you in my life!”
She ran for the car. Lucia blurred in front of her, stood there as Mindy went past her. She did it again and again, never saying anything, and Mindy fled from her each time, until she was in the car, waiting for Seb. She honked the horn and he came rushing out of Bakula’s house with a box of ice cream sandwiches.
A last little whoosh of air, like a sigh, and Lucia’s face was outside the driver’s side window. Finally, words: “I’m sorry, I am so sorry, I never ever meant—”
Mindy looked at her. Her eyes shut Lucia up. “I would’ve given you every drop. Every last drop.”
Seb climbed into the passenger seat. They left Lucia there. She didn’t follow them.
Next day, the morning radio show, Up For The Count With Jack & Gil reported another animal attack. A local lady, Tammy Smith of Trench Street, was found in a pool of her own blood.
CHAPTER 16
Mindy set her food in the microwave, covered it with the dish that kept the hot juices from splattering everywhere, then started the nuking. There was a knock at the door, overpowering the noise of the movie her parents were watching.
“Mindy, can you get that?” her father called, and Mindy left the microwave humming to loop around the house to the front door. The knock kept beating at the door as she approached, slow but regular, like maybe it was just a branch blown by the wind.
Mindy unlocked the door. The beating stopped. She opened it and there was no one there, just a little white shape out on the lawn. Mindy turned on the porch lights. It colored in the figure a little—small and hunched over, shriveled up. “Hello?” she called.
The shape moved, and Mindy thought she saw a leg extending from out of the huddle of clothes. But it could’ve been a cane. It was so thin, so white. It moved again and Mindy could make out a little tail of white hair fluttering out from a head that canted down and seemed lost in the shadows that the light cast.
Mindy stepped outside. Her socks hit the damp grass of the evening’s sprinkler, and the cold ran up her legs like a bunch of tiny needles. “Hey!” she said, a bit louder, a bit ruder. “Are you alright?”
The shape was walking in circles making a staccato beat on the grass. The wind picked up, letting her see more of the white hair that seemed so thin, so frayed, and carried words to Mindy. Mutterings, indistinct but not unimportant. Weighted, as if the shape was trying to remember something.
The wind blew the front door closed behind her, cutting off the sound of the TV and the trivial conversation of her parents. She moved to reach out for the shape—it was that close— and was ready to defend herself. It was ridiculous: she could see the shape, see it was a person, a senior citizen, a woman, so what was the harm? But the way her body twisted…the way it lost itself in the shallow darkness… It wasn’t right. Mindy kept looking at her as if she were a Magic Eye picture and she’d made a mistake, but in her mind, she wasn’t thinking of it as a little old lady. She didn’t want to think about it at all.
“I’m gonna go get my parents,” she said, backing up. She took a step backward, I should turn around. Another step back, I should run for it. Another step. Now, now, now!
The shape reached out a hand, but it was more like it sprouted it from some abyss within itself, a skeletal tendril with claws for fingernails, bone-white for skin. It grabbed the sleeve of her shirt and it hung on.
“They let it in.” The voice was old and it was tired and it was defeated, words from a soldier about to be overrun or a prisoner on death row. “They let it in. They let it in.”
If I try to pull away, I’ll die. The thought was so clear in Mindy’s head, like a bell ringing in a quiet space. It could’ve been a prophecy, for all she knew. Yet she inched away, her body recoiling from that clawed touch on a biological, an instinctual, a molecular level. The long fingernails frayed her shirt sleeve, and Mindy imagined them in her skin. She thought of them cutting like razor blades.
“What’d they let in?” Mindy asked.
The woman looked at her. She turned, and Mindy saw the patch of blood on her neck, spreading onto a nightgown almost as white as her skin and becoming a second shadow, a darkness that encroached on an entire half of her body. Eclipsing her. “The Devil.”
Then Mindy pulled away. Sh
e ripped her hand free and she turned around and ran for the door as the distance narrowed and stretched and refused to let her pass. But then the door snapped into focus, and she was there, she was home, and she threw the door open and fell inside and she slammed the damn thing closed with her entire body.
The door slamming echoed through the house. Her parents looked at her. “What is it, sweetie?”
Mindy turned the lock before she answered.
* * *
Of course her father unlocked it, and of course he and her mother went out to put a blanket around the woman and bring her inside. And of course, in the light, it was just a frail old woman who’d hurt herself.
The police came while Mindy was up in her room sitting on her bed. Wishing she could feel foolish, but it’d been so real. That deep-bone certainty you have as a child that there’s something under the bed or in the closet and only pulling the sheets over your head could protect you. Mindy was too old for that. She was eighteen. About to graduate!
Her door opened without knocking, setting her teeth on end. She’d heard the muffled conversation downstairs, the police interviewing her parents, but hadn’t expected anyone to talk to her. It was just someone’s grandmother, right? Someone who’d gotten confused and escaped the retirement home—cut herself on something. Couldn’t be anything else.
Detective Lou Card came in, the lumbering bear, but he didn’t have that lazy heft now. He was on point, a soldier’s bearing, and he focused on Mindy hard. “Quite a shock, huh?”
Mindy nodded.
Ex-Wives of Dracula Page 21