Mindy’s eyes were too dry. They were desiccated, like a desert dune. Cracked, like a rock under the sun. “You’ve been tempted to hurt me before.”
There was a kind of honesty that burned. “Yes.”
“You’d had to stop yourself before.”
“Yes.”
“You could’ve killed me. Before.”
Lucia’s silence was an answer.
Mindy pulled her hand back. She could still feel Lucia’s barely beating heart against her palm.
“I get to choose, Mindy. Don’t I? If I have these urges but I don’t act on them… if I decide that I don’t want to hurt people, then that makes me something else. Doesn’t it? That makes me worthy of you?”
“So, you can resist your urges? You can choose?”
Lucia nodded like she was saying yes to the offer of a lifeline. “Yes, yes, we can have a safe-word or you can tie me up or wear a cross, anything, anything. I want you to feel safe, Mindy.”
“Then leave.”
Lucia’s head froze, downcast. “I’m here because you let me be here,” she said. “You can revoke my invitation anytime.”
“And if I didn’t? If I asked you to go, if I asked you to stay away—would you? Could you?”
“Minz, please—please don’t ask me for the heart out of my chest.”
“I want you gone.” The words were like Mindy’s tongue going numb.
Lucia went still, absolutely still, finally so cold that she’d frozen.
It reminded Mindy that she wasn’t a living thing; she didn’t need to move. She did because she chose to.
She chose to nod. “You didn’t have to revoke my invitation. Remember that. You didn’t need to push me away.”
Lucia didn’t flash away. She walked out the door, down the stairs, giving Mindy every chance to call her back.
Mindy didn’t.
CHAPTER 29
Lucia was out there somewhere. On the run. Hunting, being hunted. If Mindy cared, it was with a dull pang. Everything hurt so much that Lucia’s pain was just more white on a snow day.
Mindy crossed between the windows into Lucia’s room. She wasn’t there, of course. Mindy sat on her bed and let the atmosphere settle into her, leave a mark on her. She hadn’t been over here much. She wished she had been. She wished it had been their place as much as it was hers.
The bed smelled of Lucia, and for the first time in weeks, Mindy remembered the human Lucia. Wild and alive, careless and cruel, loving and lost. Of course she’d died. If Bakula hadn’t killed her, the world would’ve. She hadn’t been meant for it.
The Saturday night lights were blazing out there in the dark.
Enough.
She walked downstairs, the little brothers not seeing her, the mother ignoring her, and walked out to her car. Got in, scratched the key at the ignition, and couldn’t put it in. Her hand closed tightly around the car key. The other keys on the fob, house key, postal box key, rested coolly against her fist. She wouldn’t need them anymore.
Someone knocked at her window. “License and registration, ma’am?”
Mindy looked up, into the warm pools of Lucia’s eyes. She twisted the key in the ignition, rested her foot on the brake pedal to make a quick gear change, and rolled down the window. “Guess I can’t blame you for not wanting to leave things that way,” she said
“That’s not it. Mind if I…?” Lucia indicated with her finger.
Mindy sat back. In an instant, a bat flittered through the window and became Lucia in the passenger seat. “That’s better.” Lucia put her hands on the warm vents.
“I don’t blame you for anything,” Mindy said, hoping if she talked fast enough, her words wouldn’t trip. “I’m angry with you, but I don’t blame you. And I can’t be with you.”
“I know. Hey, I bought you flowers.” Lucia dug into her pocket. “I was going to go to the florist’s and figure out some bouquet in flower language and attach a note about the dance, but—here.” She pulled a twenty out. “You can spend this on flowers. Whatever you want. I really only knew that I was going to get you tulips… Just as good, right? The same thing?”
“Not really.”
“That’s us all over, ain’t it?” Lucia tucked the bill into Mindy’s jacket. “The ‘not really’ of couples. So, you really think Bakula’s gonna keep his word?”
“You heard?”
Lucia shook her head. “He’s kind of cliché. The whole ‘be my bride or else’ thing seems his style. And for a really smart person, you’re dumb enough to sacrifice yourself to that… Okay, I know you’re sensitive to the mentally ill, but that guy is not reasonably excited for Cocoa Puffs, let’s just say.”
“You can’t talk me out of this.”
“I know.”
“Someday, I just have to get my hands on a stake or a cross and wait till he’s sleeping—I’ll think of something.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’ll be safe.”
Lucia stared straight ahead. “You would’ve been safe if you’d lost my phone number the moment you found out what I’d turned into. We don’t have much in common. But I think we feel about the same way about ‘safe.’”
Mindy was crying, finally crying. Lucia had taken everything else, at one time or another. Her blood, her love, her friendship. Why not her tears, too? “What’s your plan?”
“My plan? Same as yours. Sacrifice myself for the greater good, have people write songs about me, build a statue, get Elizabeth Gillies to play me in a movie.” Lucia touched her nose. “Twinsies!”
“He doesn’t want you, El.”
“I know, it’s weird. But he’s gonna get me.” Lucia took Mindy’s hand. “There is one drawback.”
Mindy ground away some tears under the heel of her hand. “The whole plan being crazy?”
“No. I have to break a promise to you.” Lucia bowed her head to Mindy’s hand, drawing it up to her mouth like she was going to kiss it. Mindy knew what was going to happen and still watched as the fangs flashed between Lucia’s black lips and the venom flashed into her bloodstream.
Lucia came up for air, a trickle of blood on the side of her chin. She wiped it away. “Drive us to the church.”
Mindy obeyed, putting her hands on the wheel, two neat puncture marks on the back of her right one.
* * *
Mindy was driving the car, but she was zoned out, doing it all automatically like she was driving home from work, from school. And, with the same hallucinatory attention she’d pay to the radio, she was watching herself from the passenger seat. She saw herself turn the wheel, put on the gas, brake, even signal. Until they stopped in front of the church.
She was behind Lucia’s eyes. She was in Lucia’s head. Lucia suddenly said, “I know you’re here, Mindy. I can tell when you’re in me, now. I don’t know if you crawl in on your own or if I pull you in, but I don’t care. I’m just glad you’re with me. I didn’t know what this feeling was before, but I recognize it now. It’s love.”
Lucia reached out to Mindy, fixing her hair—pulling it out of place—fixing it again. “The venom will wear off soon. I can’t be here when that happens. I could never leave if you told me not to go.”
She turned off the ignition and put the key in Mindy’s pocket. “I just wanted another moment with you. But then, I’m always going to want one more moment. So I might as well go. It’ll never hurt any less.” Lucia’s vision blurred.
It took Mindy a moment to realize why—tears. She pushed through the numbness, made herself blink, made her lips part. She shoved the word into Lucia’s mind: Don’t.
Lucia reached out again, putting her hand on Mindy’s shoulder, and Mindy could tell she was just barely contenting herself with feeling Mindy’s warmth. “I have to. You’re going to go inside now. Just lie down on one of the pews and fall asleep. Don’t think of me. Just have beautiful dreams. And when I’m gone, you’re not going to think of me as someone you love. You’re going to remember that I’m stupid and vapid and
slutty and toxic and thoughtless and a total bitch who got herself killed. Someone like that, you should be able to get over pretty fast.”
* * *
Mindy didn’t want to forget. She didn’t want to get over it. She didn’t want beautiful dreams. She wanted Lucia—fucked up trauma case with all the bad wiring in the world. It wasn’t a profound decision. She’d made it a long time ago.
She refused to feel the wood of the pew under her, the slight crisp of the church’s AC, any of it. She seized onto what Lucia was feeling…the dread, the resolve…and pulled herself into it. Lucia didn’t want to share it, but Mindy wasn’t giving her a choice. If it was Lucia’s, it would be Mindy’s too.
The football stadium was teeming, the noise of the crowd and the marching band music audible for miles. It shuddered down right through cement and steel, into the cheerleaders’ locker room. Lucia straightened her cheerleading uniform. A long-sleeved crop top, a miniskirt, both blue with gold trimmings, the team logo emblazoned on the front. Her old captain’s uniform still fit, better than ever, in fact, on an all-blood diet. It made her wish she could look in a mirror.
El, what are you doing?
“Thanks for the loaner, Pammy. I’ll try not to get too much blood on it.”
“Uh-huh.” Pammy was checking over the banner she’d hold for the team to run through. Making sure it was weak in the middle. Once, it hadn’t torn, and she’d been paranoid ever since. “So, hey, you’re a lesbian now?”
“Oh. Yeah. Listen, real quick, I never really said this, but I think you’re doing a great job as captain. As good as me, even. But anyway, when it goes down, I want you to get all the girls back into the locker room. Keep low until it’s over, you get me?”
“Yeah, sure. How did you know you were a lesbian, anyway?”
Is she hitting on you?
Lucia shrugged. “Dated a girl. It seemed to work out.”
“Did you think about kissing girls a lot first? Or, like, the normal amount? Cuz everyone thinks about it a little, right? Like, you see Ryan Gosling kiss someone, you think ‘What if I were Ryan Gosling? Is that how I’d kiss someone?’ I mean, you’d tell me if you thought I was a lesbian, right?”
Oh my God, she’s hitting on you.
Lucia took her hands. “Pam, there’s a time and a place for this conversation. And it’s college.”
“Well, yeah, I mean, it just hurts a little. You want to experiment with the same sex, you work from inside the circle of friendship, you promote from within. You don’t just grab a nerd and say ‘Oh, you’re hot now, make out with me!’”
“Pam!”
“I’m not your type, am I?”
“You’re not my type.”
Unfiltered by concrete, the roar of the crowd came to the locker room door as if through a wind tunnel. Mindy had never realized how loud it was, but Lucia tuned it all out.
El, you don’t have to do this.
“Cheer, cheer, show no fear,” Lucia said as she strolled out of the tunnel and onto the field. No one was paying much attention to her. All eyes were on the coaches in the middle of the field, the referee with the silver dollar, and the coin toss about to be made. Quietness fell as the referee’s thumb flicked.
The coin went up, winked silver, and Lucia snapped her fingers as fast as she could. The sonic boom knocked it a few inches away from the ref’s outstretched palm.
“Hello, Carfax!” Lucia called, striding out onto the field. She pulled the referee’s microphone off his ear. “Let’s all give a big welcome to our guest team, the Pathfinders, so they don’t mind too much when our boys trounce them!”
Confused but excited, the crowd gave up a big cheer. The referee pulled at his microphone. Lucia held on to it tight. “And how about a big hand for our lovely referee here? C’mon, show ’im some love!”
Another cheer, slightly muted, went up as the referee tried hard to break Lucia’s grip. She put her hand dead center on his chest. “The ref, ladies and gentlemen!” She gave him a shove and he went back twenty feet. The crowd fell silent.
Mindy centered herself. She could force her toes to wiggle, she could cant her foot to one side…
The mike squealed with feedback as Lucia spoke. “Coach? Coach Bakula? This concerns you—c’mon, let’s get him out here. Bakula! Bakula! Bakula!”
Confused, somewhat intimidated, the crowd took up the chant. It wasn’t long before the man emerged from the bench, stalking angrily across the field. Lucia greeted him with a warm grin. “Hey, Coach! We all know Coach Bakula, we all know what he’s done…for our town. I thought we could just take a moment to say a few words about the man.”
Bakula pushed the microphone away. “You expose me, you’re out too. They’ll hunt you all the way to hell.”
Lucia smiled up at him. Mindy felt the smile she had fallen in love with, from the inside. “We can take the carpool lane.”
She stepped up. Lifted the mike. “He’s a vampire.”
Silence. It took the crowd a moment to decide to jeer, to boo, to figure out whether this was or wasn’t part of the show.
“I know because he made me one. Spread it to me like some sort of disease—” Lucia dodged a hot dog thrown by someone with a good arm. “Alright, fucktards, fucking look!” And she became a bat. Under the Saturday night lights, in front of ten thousand spectators, she was suddenly a bat fluttering around like she was fresh from hell.
Mindy could close her hands into fists. Squeeze them tight enough to make diamonds.
Then Lucia was a person again. Kicking the microphone up from the ground, back into her hand. “Okay then! I’m a vampire! Weird, right? But hey, I wouldn’t be one if it weren’t for this nut right here!” She jabbed playfully at Bakula’s ribs. “You know how it is? He saw me alone, attacked me, and drank my blood, left me for dead wrapped in chains and plastic at the bottom of Lake Travis. The old story. Usually he only drinks from your relatives at the retirement home, but I guess I’m special.” She thrust the microphone in Bakula’s face. “Coach, care to comment?”
Like a cat shifting for a new angle to pounce from, Bakula lowered his mouth to the microphone in Lucia’s proffered hand. “In all my years of coaching high school football, I’ve never heard anything so—”
“Is that true, Coach?” Quentin was charging back onto the field. “You hurt my girl?”
“We broke up, actually,” Lucia muttered.
“What I want to know is why you had to turn me into a vampire? Of all things! They’re not even cool anymore, they’re so overexposed! It’s almost as bad as zombies. Everyone’s doing vampires these days, its passé, it’s a total borefest! Werewolves are so much better! Hell, the Creature from the Black Lagoon is cooler. He’s vintage, he’s authentic, and he’s a dinosaur man—” Bakula punched her.
Lucia was now no longer standing there; she was whipping through the air to the end zone. Bakula pointed at Lucia and spoke, though his grip was so tight, he’d crushed the microphone in his hand.
“That is not a vampire! That pathetic, mewling excuse for a predator isn’t fit to sleep in a drafty coffin! Bitching and moaning over the gift I gave her. Look what you’ve done with it! Played pinochle with your little girlfriend and drunk a little blood, but only from those who don’t meet your high moral standards. You can’t even kill! You still think you’re one of them. You still play by their rules! You’re no hunter, you’re nothing! You people want to see a vampire? Fine! Let’s take off the mask!”
He took hold of his lower jaw and yanked on it, pulling and pulling and pulling…
Oh, man, this is gonna be gross.
His jaw snapped off, bringing a slew of skin with it. His jowls, throat, lips tore away, leaving only pale marble cords of muscle and the sharp bone of his maxilla. No lips, no gums anymore, just teeth. And more teeth. His cheek skin hung in flaps, disconnected from the bony and desiccated musculature. He tore them away like chicken skin off the meat. Then he hooked his thumbs under his eyelids and ripped back, and in on
e sweep, Bakula scalped himself. Nose and eyebrows gone, eyeballs left bloated in recessed sockets. His new cranium was mottled with chunks of fatty tissue sticking to his head like bits of tape. Long, clawed fingers plucked a piece off, and he casually flicked it away.
His skull seemed nothing but teeth. One massive outcrop: row upon row of needle-sharp teeth. A cancer of teeth, a tumor of them, no ears, no mouth, no nose in this death’s-head. Just jaws like a shark’s: Mindy imagined when the first set of teeth broke, more just moved into place. Always more.
“Hey, you’re bald! Is that a vampire thing? Am I gonna lose all my hair?” Lucia leapt back on her feet. “Wouldn’t that make bikini season simpler.”
“Impudent child!”
“Weirdo stalky-creeper-fuck!” Lucia shot back. She charged at him. Lucia may have specialized in tumbles, but she’d seen enough football practices to know how to block. She jammed her shoulder into Bakula’s sternum, sending him flying back toward the marching band.
“Eat brass section!”
Bakula landed on his feet. Blurring forward, his fist connected with Lucia’s throat.
For Mindy, it was like watching the field through a telescope as Lucia was pitched halfway across the field, only to be stopped by the goalpost so hard that it nearly ripped out of its concrete mooring. Lucia’s battered body fell like a rag to the ground. Her face broke her fall.
Okay, what’s the next part of the plan?
Lucia spat Astroturf. “Apparently getting my ass whipped.”
Your entire plan is to punch him?
“To be fair, I’ve added this clever bit in the middle where I punch him a lot.”
Lucia came to her feet in a whirlwind, flying back at Bakula, every stride devouring the distance between them. She threw a punch at Mach 1, and it flew right through Bakula as he seamlessly transitioned into a pile of rats. Off-balance, Lucia went down, rolling across the yard lines. She realized some of Bakula’s rats were still clinging to her and casually brushed them off. They scuttled together to reform into Bakula.
“We played a perfect game last Sunday. A perfect game! It was a shut-out! I had a great fucking lineup!” His voice was bones grating together, grinding into dust to escape his mouth. “We could’ve gone all-state!” Then he simply seemed to step outside of reality, step back into it right next to Lucia, holding her by the throat.
Ex-Wives of Dracula Page 36