“Lucia,” Mindy said calmly as she could manage. “He’s not following us. If he’d wanted us, he just wouldn’t have let us leave. I don’t think he’s following us.”
Lucia opened her mouth, and a strangled sound came out, like something was being murdered inside her. Mindy knelt down beside Lucia. Tried to reach for her, reach into her mind and found a fountain of words— So stupid, I should’ve known, how could I have not have known? It was too hard to remember. I forgot, and all this time, he was with Mindy for months, all this time, I could’ve stopped it. All this time, he could’ve done anything to her. She could be dead, dead, because of me, dead — “Lucia, stop,” Mindy said, just like before, only gentler.
Fucking vampire venom doesn’t work on vampires; of course it doesn’t. Fooled me, so stupid, stupid—
Mindy reached out, thought better of touching Lucia, and just took hold of a dangling lock of hair and ran it through her fingers, hoping the steady pressure would lead Lucia back to her. “I’m fine, El, I’m fine.”
Mindy felt the resolve coiling inside of Lucia, saw her eyes snap into focus. “Get back in the car. We’re driving. You’re driving.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere but here. As far as we can go. Across the border, maybe. You speak Spanish, right?”
“El, we are not going to Mexico.”
“We’re going somewhere, we’re not staying here.”
“Yes. We are.” Mindy finally felt confident to put her hand on Lucia’s cheek. She was so cold it burnt. “We’re doing what we should’ve done from the beginning. We’re going to the cops and we’re telling them everything, how we’re getting a SWAT team or the National Guard down here, and they are going to shoot him with a bazooka or something.”
“Cops? You heard him, Minz, they’ll think I killed Card, they’re not going to listen.”
“The Town Council, then. And you can turn into a bat, they’ll listen.”
Lucia shook her head. “I have to keep you safe…”
“Neither of us will be safe until he’s gone. And I for one am not spending my life looking over my shoulder, El, we’re going to have this sicko hunted down and shot in the street. Just come with me. I’ll take care of you.”
Lucia looked away, digging into her lip with her fangs, and Mindy didn’t need the link to know she was thinking of throwing her in the car and driving off anyway. But she wouldn’t. Not Lucia.
“You don’t leave my sight.” Lucia bargained finally.
Mindy took Lucia’s hand. “I won’t let go if you won’t.”
CHAPTER 26
A swipe of Mindy’s smartphone showed her that the Town Council was in session at that very moment. They went to the local library, where the Town Council always met in the same side room used for meetings of the anime club and the summer reading program. Mindy walked by that room every time she came to check out a book.
This time, the blinds were drawn, and the door was solidly shut, a patrolman standing in front of it. Seeing them making a beeline for it, he raised his hand.
“Sorry, ladies. Emergency session, closed doors, no admittance for any—”
Lucia snarled at him, fangs extended. He took five steps back, automatically. Lucia tried the door, found it locked, and ripped it open anyway. She and Mindy spilled into the room.
It was a simple, drab conference room. Rows of empty office chairs lined up for town meetings, facing an elevated desk area that was occupied. All the names Mindy knew only from voting signs. The county clerk, county commissioner, sheriff, mayor—even Principal Haywood was there. Seeing the two girls, their hushed conversation came to a sudden stop.
Mindy suddenly felt like she was having one of those dreams about having to take a test without studying. At least she wasn’t underdressed—she still wore the champagne dress from the Sadie Hawkins Dance.
Wait, what was she worried about? She always got good grades. “Hello…old people.” Then again, she had gotten a “C” once. “I need to talk to you about a thing. And it’s going to sound crazy, and you won’t want to believe it at first, but hey, remember evolution. Think about how that tumbled out. So, yeah, uh, anyway…my friend here, Lucia.” Mindy nudged her with her elbow.
Lucia looked at her, silently asking what she was supposed to do. Give a little wave?
Mindy conceded the point by facing the Council again. “She was attacked. Bitten, in fact, by a vampire. She’s a vampire now. And the guy who did it, who bit her and tried to kill her—obviously he’s a vampire—but he’s also Coach Bakula. From football. And I know this is exactly like the part of the horror story where the kids tell some crazy story about zombies or killer dolls or something…but aren’t they always right? Don’t be the people in the horror movie who don’t listen.”
“We have proof,” Lucia whispered.
“We have proof!” Mindy said loudly. “Wait, why are you telling me we have proof, just, just show them.”
Lucia was stock-still.
Mindy reached out, petted her arm. “It’s okay. I’m right here. Just…you know.”
In a series of blinks, Lucia appeared all around the room. Sitting in an empty seat, crouching on the podium, standing beside the Texan and American flags, at the door, at the water cooler, hanging from a fluorescent light…
Mayor Redfield took off his glasses. “Hon, we believe you.”
Lucia sped back beside Mindy. “You do?”
“Well, about you being a vampire.”
“But you don’t think it’s Bakula?” Mindy demanded.
“No, I believe that. It’s just—”
“Excuse me, I heard there were some very hardworking politicians in here who needed their caffeine?” Bakula was coming through the door, juggling four trays of Starbucks on two outstretched arms. He nodded at the girls as he passed them. “Mindy. Lucia.” He set the trays on the podium and started handing out orders to their respective owners. “Alright, freshen my memory: who wanted their coffee black with two sugars? I know someone wanted it, but I can’t for the life of me remember who.”
Mindy looked at the exit. Now three patrolmen were standing in the way.
“Coach Bakula,” Mayor Redfield said. “Mindy and Lucia have been telling quite a tale about you.”
“And my ears have been burning.” Bakula handed him his cup. “Cream, no sugar, right?”
“That’s right, Coach.”
“Ah-ha!” Bakula tapped his temple. “Still some charge left in the ol’ battery yet. Well, not my most shining moment, I’ll admit. But at least now you can see the chicky in question, get where I’m coming from. And let me tell you, she wasn’t wearing some toga that first time after school, either.” He smiled bashfully at Principal Haywood. “How many times did you send Ms. West home because she dressed like math class was going to turn into a rap video?”
“Too many times.”
Mindy realized what was going on. “Don’t drink the coffee! He’s drugged it! You’re all drugged!”
“No,” Lucia said. “No, they aren’t.”
Bakula hopped up onto the podium, sitting facing Lucia. “Now, before anything else, I just want to say it’s mighty solid of you to come down here and ’fess up to what’s been done. Mighty solid. But, you needn’t have bothered. I already told them everything. I’ve taken full responsibility for my part in it.”
“Your part in it?” Mindy asked. “You attacked her! You assaulted her!”
“Whoa now!” Bakula held his hands up. “Easy on the trigger there, missy. Lucy was old enough to know what she was doing. After all, she did it with half the town.”
“You’re saying she slept with you?”
“You, of all people, aren’t going to blame me for that? Just doing what comes natural.”
“There is the matter of the Highway Patrolman,” Mayor Redfield said. A flash of red came through the windows before the squad car pulling up killed its lights. “Fooling around a little is one thing, Coach, but we had a strict agreement on n
on-proliferation. A vampire in Carfax is one thing. Ten vampires in Carfax… We never agreed to that.”
“I know, I know, I most humbly apologize.” Bakula put his hand on his heart. “You probably could’ve told me, and you would’ve been right: the girl was a bad idea. I tried to break things off with her. Somehow she got a hold of my blood. Probably got into the footballers’ supply—she was getting it on with my team captain too, which should’ve warned me. Well, we all know what comes of this and that. It’s on me, I fully admit. I just didn’t think she had it in her. If I’d known, I would’ve told you back when these attacks first started. I thought, same as you, that it was just one of my kind passing through. But it was Lucia, and she’s gotten worse. Escalated. Now this poor Card fellow is dead. It never should’ve happened.”
“You’re damn right it never should’ve happened,” Judge Rowling barked. “We agreed you’d only drink from the retirement home.”
“The retirement home and those that consented to it,” Bakula argued right back. “Just look at that little hussy. You’re telling me you would turn her away, she wanted you to put your teeth on her?”
Mindy found her voice. “She never consented to anything! He attacked her!”
Bakula held up a hand. “Now, Murphy, I know you’re standing up for your friend, but let’s not cloud the situation any further. We all know—a vampire can’t come into a house without invitation. And we all know you have to drink a vampire’s blood to become a vampire. Well, it’s obvious Lucia’s been drunk and it’s obvious she’s been drinking.”
“She was at a party. You stalked her, you hunted her down.” Mindy looked frantically from gray face to gray face all arrayed above her, all looking down with a sort of…disgust. Like she was doing something rude. “Why are you letting him even talk to you? He’s a vampire! You all know he’s a vampire!”
“A 140-game winning streak,” Lucia said. She sat down heavily. “He’s the coach.”
“That I am.”
“The winningest coach in high school football,” Mindy said, remembering. “He could coach college ball, easy.”
“Surely the head cheerleader isn’t going to take this town to task for bringing home the Ws,” said Bakula.
We have to get out of here, Mindy thought fixedly at Lucia.
Lucia was still too quiet. Mindy looked down and caught a tremor in her hand. She covered it with her own hand. We have to go.
Lucia turned and looked at her. Mindy could feel her centering herself, feel her pull back from whatever pain she felt—feel her squeeze her hand. Right.
Suddenly she was in Lucia’s arms, she was being carried through a world blurred at the edges, her racing heart and flushed skin cooled by Lucia’s touch. Then she felt a pain so sharp she saw black, wrenched out of Lucia’s grip, and slammed down to the floor. Her hair. Bakula had her by the hair.
Lucia skidded to a stop in the doorway, toppling chairs in her wake, sending her hair into a vortex as she stared back, teeth bared like she would gnaw off an arm to get Mindy out of the trap—preferably Bakula’s.
“Shoot her,” Bakula said, and the guns were loud as a fireworks displayed.
Lucia’s arms twitched in front of her. Like catching bullets, only she wasn’t that fast, Mindy heard them ripping into her, splitting hardened skin and meat like hatchet blows. One punched right through Lucia, splattering Mindy with blood. It felt like quicksilver on her face.
Go just go just go, she thought desperately.
Lucia snatched up a chair, throwing it at the shooter, reducing it to kindling with the impact. He went down, his body butting into the other two. Mindy heard the room’s side-door being kicked in, the cops from the police car outside streaming in. Lucia, you have to go, you can’t—not all of them.
Mindy didn’t know which she was worried about more: Lucia not being able to get all of them or her being able to.
Lucia moved so fast, she seemed to flicker like a hummingbird, head swivelling from the downed, rising cops to the ones coming in armed with shotguns, to Bakula and Mindy and the whole room painted with the light coming through the open door, so red, so blue.
She threw herself at a window, hitting it in one agonized howl of motion and then disappearing into the night. The only sound was the tinkling glass of the window breaking and breaking and breaking.
“Nice shooting,” Bakula said sardonically. “I’ll take the girl. If Lucia’s bitten her, she might be infected. I’ll see what I can do to fix that.”
And as the Town Council thanked him, Mindy’s world went black.
CHAPTER 27
Awake. Upright in a chair. Comfortable, natural, except for the cold at her wrists and ankles. Her eyelids weighed a thousand pounds. She let them stay shut. Her body kept doing what it was doing. Breathing, sleeping… She was almost asleep. Almost…
No. She couldn’t let her body keep…slipping from her. She had to focus. Music, there was music playing. A lullaby without a mother. She couldn’t make out the words, the tune, just a rhythm apart from noise. Barely awake. Practically dreaming. She was sitting down. She repeated it to herself like a mantra, the few things she knew.
Lucia—Lucia wasn’t there. She tried reaching out to her with her mind; it hurt just to think. She could touch her, but just barely, just with the tips of her fingers, just brushing her. She heard a refrain like a song stuck in her head. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
It was gone.
Her eyelids were getting lighter. She’d almost think she was getting stronger, but if anything, she felt weaker. But she could open them a little ways and see mostly the fog of her own eyelashes and a little of her body. She was pale, the color of fine china, matching the fragility she felt. She could see her pulse pitching in her wrist, a little itch under the skin. Her wrist… There was something there. A band of her skin was another color. A silvery color. She was handcuffed.
Mindy woke up. It wasn’t some secret lair with pentagrams drawn in blood on the walls. It was just a dining room—the same furnishing, the same aesthetic as the rest of his house. She was seated at the head of a long table. Empty chairs, except for an antique table mirror, placed in front of her like a dinner plate. She scrutinized her reflection, helpless to do anything else. She wasn’t wearing the champagne dress anymore, but a nightgown. Conservative, practically Victorian. Her skin had been cleaned off, her hair combed. She thought some makeup had been applied. Her neck was bandaged and there was an IV stand beside her, the line leading down to another bandage on her wrist.
She remembered bringing pizzas here once, a party—next to a lake—no…
Something scratched like a claw. Mindy turned, saw a record player on top of the sideboard. The record needle was scratched over an LP before finding its groove again. The song started again. This time Mindy recognized it. “It’s A Fine Day” by Jane. She remembered it from I Love The 80s. After she’d downloaded it, it’d helped her get to sleep. “They’re playing our song,” Bakula said. He was behind her, but he wasn’t in the mirror. Mindy craned her head, not far enough to see him, but far enough to glimpse him.
He wasn’t human. Whatever she saw, it couldn’t have been human.
“Do you remember? The last time? Nineteen-eighty-something. This was your favorite song. You were a little intern, your jacket had those shoulder pads, and you had that perm and those huge glasses. You looked cute, though. Lucy, she was ridiculous. The leather jacket, the Mohawk, the whole punk…thing. Must’ve thought she was Joan Jett.”
“If you hurt Lucia, I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Now, I don’t appreciate that language in my classroom, and certainly not in my home.”
Suddenly, he was touching her. She hadn’t seen his hand coming in the mirror, but it was against her cheek, turning her toward her reflection. She could see her skin pressed in against nothing.
“Just so you know, back in the sixties, we had this conversation. Back then, I wasn’t able to get to you so soon, mentor you, and
your parents at the time, as it turns out, should not have been trusted with that. You were a very rude girl, very unpleasant company. I tried my best to be patient, but eventually, I had to give up and wait for another try. I snapped your neck and dumped you in a dry well and, I came to regret that, waiting for you to come back to me, but not much. I’m hoping you’ve learned something since then. I hope this won’t be another 1964.”
His hand left her. God, it’d been cold. The chill stayed like frostbite.
“Now, can you ask politely?”
Mindy thought that if she tried very hard, if she pretended Lucia was the name of a dog or a painting or anything but her, she could ask without her voice breaking into a million pieces. “Is Lucia okay?”
“She’s fine.” The cold hand patted her on the shoulder. “Long gone by now, I think. Two vampires in the same turf—toes get stepped on. She’s a smart girl, in an animal cunning sort of way. She’ll see, if she hasn’t already, that there’s no point in fighting for you. Never fight with someone who wants it more, Mindy, that’s something you learn in football.”
His hand lingered on the skin of her shoulder, fingers trailing down toward her collarbone. “Take your hand off me.”
“What’s the magic word?”
Mindy gritted her teeth. “Please.”
His hand came away, but he moved it as if he’d only done it to arrange a stray hair from over the lobe of her ear.
“What happened to me? Why’d I pass out?”
“Oh, just a little trick. Vibrating your skull at excessive speed. The brain can’t take it, shuts down like a pilot pulling too many Gs. To everyone else, it looked like you fainted. You can really only use it with women, you see. And then I took a little of your blood—no more than you’d give at a blood drive—to whet my appetite. I was feeling peckish, you see. But I’ve run a saline drip on you, just to be safe. I bet Lucia never did that for you.”
Ex-Wives of Dracula Page 33