Fortunately, squeezing stuffed animals is totally guiltless.
A few minutes later, Ashley emerges from the mental fog and blinks rapidly. “Whoa. It worked. That’s so cool. And weird.”
“Yeah, well. I didn’t erase your memory of wanting to eat the whole box of ice cream, or of asking me to help you resist it. So, now you don’t want to do it but you remember wanting to.”
“My head hurts.”
“Heh. Okay, so spill. What happened?”
“Do we have to stay in the closet?”
“It’s much more comfortable in the dark.” I elbow one of her coats. “But it is a little cramped. It’s okay. With the curtains closed, your room is only a little over-warm.”
We re-emerge into a hot July day rendered in electric pink. I remove my scarf, hoodie, and gloves since they’re not helping. Covering my skin is only a shield against direct sunlight, and her curtains are already blocking that.
“Oh, ouch.” Ashley sits on her bed, pulling her giant stuffed unicorn into her lap as a reflex. When I get close enough, she grabs my hand, turning it to examine a strip of red burn where the North Face logo is clearly visible in white not-burned skin. “Sorry.”
The gloves have a breathable mesh on the side with a plastic logo. Guess a little light made it through the gloves after all. “It’s okay. It should heal up in an hour or so.”
“Umm. So, I met this girl Tabitha at the vet clinic last week. She came in with her mother and this adorable calico cat. We kinda got talking and ended up going on a couple dates.”
“Okay…”
“Last night, we went out, had a nice date, came back here and cuddled on the couch.” Ashley wipes a tear.
“Right…”
“We started kissing and stuff. She said something nasty about guys, I don’t even remember what, and I said they’re not that bad. When I told her I’m bi, she like totally freaked out. One minute we’re falling down a rollercoaster and about to go all the way, the next, she’s calling me disgusting and storming out the door.”
“What?” I gasp. “The heck for?”
“She thinks it’s disgusting that I’ve been with guys, and didn’t want to touch me because she said it would be like doing it with a boy by proxy.” She buries her face in her hands and starts sobbing again. “I really thought I’d fallen in love with her.”
“Ash.” I rest my hands on her shoulders. “You went on two dates with this girl. Why are you so upset over this?”
“I dunno. Maybe the Universe is telling me I’m gonna be alone.”
“Don’t overreact. The right person’s out there somewhere, but it’s okay to be single, too.”
She lets out a long, hard breath and squeezes the unicorn plushie. “Okay, Hallmark.”
I chuckle. “Kinda weird.”
“What’s that?”
“Surprises me that a lesbian would be like so harsh to someone who’s bi.”
“Ugh.” She flops over sideways. “Don’t get me started. I get it from everyone.”
I’m laughing before I realize it.
She rolls over onto her back and tries to glare at me, but ends up laughing. “Dammit, you know what I meant.”
“I know. It’s cool. I’m here for you. I literally lit myself on fire for you today.”
“Hmm.” Ashley twirls a strand of red hair around her finger, staring up at me. “You wanna go out, get drunk, and do a whole bunch of stuff that we’ll both regret tomorrow and will probably ruin our friendship?”
“Take me now, you beast,” I deadpan.
She snickers.
“Seriously though, that’s not a good idea. Besides. I can’t get drunk.” I swipe a finger over a strip of bare skin where her shirt pulled up.
She curls into a ball, laughing. “Eep!”
“Well, I could get drunk or at least tipsy, but it’s a real pain in the ass. I’d have to drink blood from someone who’s trashed.”
“Yeah. I’m kidding. I don’t really want to get romantic with you. Just saying stuff to fail at making jokes. Argh!” She pounds her fists into the bed in a mockery of a little kid having a temper tantrum.
Ash clearly needs ‘friend time.’ “Hey, wanna hang out like we used to before life got weird? And by weird, I mean the whole almost-an-adult crap hit us?”
She uncurls, hair sprawled everywhere, and grins impishly. “Movie, anime, games, doing our nails… or did you mean like the way we used to used to? Back yard swing set is out since you’d catch fire. Should I break out the dolls? Mom put them in the attic a few years ago. She wants to give them to my theoretical daughter someday.”
“Dolls?” I laugh so hard I fall over onto the bed. “Hah. Sure. Whatever will make you feel better.”
She gazes up at the ceiling, still intermittently chuckling. “If my mother catches us playing with dolls like a pair of eight-year-olds, I’m probably going to end up in therapy.”
“If you end up in therapy, don’t tell them that your best friend is a vampire.”
Ashley rolls over to muffle her laughter with the comforter. “No, that won’t end well.” She hugs herself. “I’ll be in a straight jacket again.”
I stop laughing and stare at her. “Again?”
“Aurélie.” She glances sideways at me, then bursts into laughter. “Teasing. The look on your face!”
Whew. Holy crap. Thinking about my best friend in a romantic context is awkward enough, especially with the weird fetish stuff thrown in. Adding Aurélie to that is just beyond. She’s kinda like a second mother to me and, well, she looks so innocent on the outside. It’s difficult to imagine anyone who looks like her even being aware of what sex is… much less knowing more about it than anyone alive. That woman has probably seen—and done—things that would make the average strip club owner feel faint. But I do not want to know about it.
Nor do I want to even think about sex while I’m in Ashley’s room.
“Let’s find an awful movie and make fun of it.” Ashley jumps off the bed and runs over to turn her TV on.
“Sounds good.” I fan at my face, but it doesn’t help. The oppressive heat in the room isn’t actual heat. Stupid sun.
Homework can wait for the wee hours. Ashley needs me now.
15
Bait Goblin
I hang out at Ashley’s until she shoos me off to school.
That’s a good sign that she’s feeling better. She’d only met that Tabitha girl a week ago and had two dates. Mostly, I think her emotions ran out of control for two reasons: the stress of school plus work, and the monthly friend is lurking around the corner. Hormones are going nuts. Ash’s usual reaction to that time of the month is that everything makes her cry. Happy stuff, sad stuff, a bowl of oatmeal that’s a little too warm… the littlest thing sets off a storm of tears. But, she knows she’s emotional because of stuff out of her control and she finds humor in it.
Ever hear someone laughing while sobbing? It’s weird.
My monthly visitor usually made me antisocial. Just wanted to sit somewhere quiet and be alone. I could get kinda crabby too sometimes, which is Mom’s reaction. She turns into this little mean old woman every so often, kinda like a female version of Mr. Neidermayer, but at least Mom always apologizes soon after.
But… that’s a thing of the past for me.
I think if word got out that vampires existed and becoming one ended period cramps, there’d be mobs of women chasing elder vampires up trees like packs of feral hounds after alley cats. Heck knows I sure don’t mind being off that particular out-of-control train. Worrying about accidentally pissing off a powerful elder or being eaten by a three-ton wasp-scorpion-tarantula thing in an alternate dimension is a worthy exchange.
Monday is English lit from 7:00 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.
The class zips by in a relative blur since the discussion of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is both interesting and fun. Professor Kendall made it a point to use the word ‘ersatz’ as often as possible.
As is my
habit, I head out of the building and walk down the street to the parking garage even though the Sentra is back home. Did I mention how much flying rules? Right as I pass the former church on Harvard Ave—it’s some kind of music school now—two men sprint out from behind the cinder block wall separating the building from the parking lot and rush at me.
I don’t have enough time to respond to their burst of supernatural speed before they’ve grabbed me by the arms. Without a word, they drag me into the small parking lot toward a big, silver sedan with an open trunk.
Oh, hell no.
Despite my struggling, they drag me up to the rear bumper. I’m not strong enough to get away from their grip—until the guy on my right side lets go with one hand to pull a gun out of his pocket.
He raises it toward my head, smiles, and says, “Night night time.”
Fear and anger give me the strength to wrench that arm free from his one handed grip and fling myself into a backward lean an instant before he would’ve shot me. A flash of heat and light washes over my face, the bullet corkscrewing in front of my eyes before burrowing into the clavicle of the guy holding my left arm.
I rake my right hand at his face, claws extending in mid-swing. Startled as if he’d never seen claws before, he jumps back, dragging me by his hold of my left arm, evidently forgetting he’s only keeping me in range to slash him. I score three slices down his cheek. The guy screams, involuntarily releasing his hold to clutch his wound.
Vampire claws cause an amazing amount of pain. Way more than even being shot. They almost cause as much agony as listening to that collaboration album Metallica did with Lou Reed.
Speaking of… jackass number two tries to shoot me in the head again, but misses by an inch as I fling myself forward. Really not liking bending over in front of this guy, but it does put me in the perfect position to ram a kick backward into his groin.
He goes flying off his feet, landing a good distance away, sliding on his back.
“Bitch,” mutters the guy I slashed.
I have less interest in getting into a fight with these two than walking in on my parents trying to give me a fourth sibling. Wait, no… given those choices, I’ll take the claws. Scratch that. I have less interest in fighting these two idiots than streaking downtown Seattle—which is probably going to happen anyway if I get into a claw fight. Point being, I don’t want to do either one—so I launch myself straight up.
Dalton must really have pissed someone off. He also must be doing okay. The LA vampires wouldn’t be trying to kidnap me if they’d found him. Either Glim’s right about them having some kind of magic they can attack him with using my blood, or it’s a simpler case of kidnapping and threatening his progeny in hopes he cares about me enough to give in to their demands.
I don’t doubt Dalton would try to play the gallant hero and rescue me. I doubt that he’d pull it off successfully. Technically speaking, the first time he tried to save my life, he didn’t quite do it. The man means well, but…
The vampire with the handgun fires into the air trying to hit me while the other one jumps skyward to chase. While I’m nowhere near as much of a gamer fiend as Sierra, I’ve played enough Call of Duty to know that it’s way harder to hit a target moving sideways than directly toward or away. So, I swerve to the left rather than flying straight up. It must work since no sharp nips of pain hit me anywhere.
However, the other guy—the one I slashed—gains on me, and doesn’t look at all happy. Growling, I pour on as much speed as possible, wind threatening to rip my backpack off. The guy gets a hand on my sneaker; I pivot and dive straight down before he can reel me in. The maneuver causes him to overfly me and lose his grip. Miraculously, it doesn’t cost me a shoe. Of course, the guy doesn’t simply give up and keep going. He’s gotta turn and come after me.
I level off, hoping for as much lateral speed as possible, but the LA douche is still gaining on me about as fast as a normal person walks. Down below, a stream of police cars goes by with their lights on, no doubt heading toward the gunfire. Hopefully, that other vampire is long gone and those cops won’t have a bad night.
Still, outrunning this guy is not happening in a straight, open race. Going home wouldn’t help me much, and puts my family in danger. Something tells me vampires from LA don’t give a rat’s ass about Aurélie’s decree.
Again, he grabs for my leg. I swerve to the right, rolling like a fighter jet and flying upside down for a few seconds. It’s tempting to give the guy the finger, but he’s already furious.
Wait… Aurélie.
Her charm aura is so damn strong she can affect other vampires with it. If I can evade this thug long enough to get to her apartment… she could totally flip this around. We’d be kidnapping one of them. Maybe she can figure out exactly what the heck happened.
The guy chasing me also pulls out a handgun.
Oh damn.
I hurl myself to the left as he starts firing.
Crap. Crap. Crap. This really is turning into Top Gun. Getting into a vampire dogfight is the last damn thing I ever wanted to do. And hey! No fair! I don’t have a weapon. A bullet nips my backpack, so I pull upward, swerve to the right, then corkscrew down and left as two more bangs go off behind me. This idiot is going to hurt someone on the ground if he keeps shooting at me.
Against my better judgement, I swing around and fly straight into him, taking a bullet to the stomach for my trouble. My right knee finds his groin—hey, force of habit—the same instant I sink my claws into his right shoulder and grab his wrist with my left hand. We spin around and around a few times before I manage to bite him on the wrist. He yowls in agony, losing his grip on the handgun. It’s gone in a blink, lost to the chaotic whirl of electric lights spinning below.
I think he hammers his fist into the side of my head, because I lose a few seconds, find myself a fair distance away from him, and my skull is throbbing. The burn tunnel the bullet tore into my gut has become a hell of itching.
A glassy smash stands out from the background din. I can’t see it, but something tells me that gun punched a hole in the window of a car. Oh, please let it just have scared someone or hit an empty car. The guy lurches at me again, so I take off, flying hard for center city where all the high-rises are.
Seconds later, I see a pigeon coming. More like, I’m hurtling toward the pigeon at 120 miles an hour and the poor feathery thing is just hanging still in midair waiting to detonate on my face. Most ordinary people limbo broom handles or sticks. Hello. I’m Sarah Wright. I limbo terrified pigeons. A quick leftward roll to the side lets me slip past the bird without hitting it, though the wind force of my going by sends feathers flying.
The man chasing me blurts something and starts gagging. Hah. I must have literally scared the crap out of that bird. I don’t wanna look. If he took it in the mouth, that’s gonna make me vomit even though I can’t.
“Damn bitch,” shouts the guy, before going off in a Spanish rant I can’t follow.
Oh yeah. Call me a bitch. How original. I race for the skyscrapers, but the dude catches up to me and grabs my ankle again. Stomping at his face with my free leg doesn’t make him let go. We’re getting kinda close to a high-rise that’s mostly glass with like orange stripes between the window rows. I fly straight at it while continually booting the guy in the head. It’s an absolute shock that he hasn’t plunged claws into my leg yet to hold on.
Rather than try to reel me in, he grabs my right ankle, too… probably to stop my sneaker from having a continued discussion with his face. Seconds before he pulls me in by both legs, I swerve to the left and kick, swinging us around into a flat spin and shaving him off with the corner of the building. He crashes through a window like three floors down from the roof as I cruise past the high-rise on the left, scraping the glass but not breaking it.
I slow to a stop about a block away, watching the building. My goal has changed from getting away from him to leading him to Aurélie’s place. One of the things my Dad always does with gobl
ins when he’s running a D&D game for us is to have one run out and attack, then flee in an effort to lead us into an ambush situation. We only fell for it once, but he keeps trying it. Maybe he’s doing it as a running joke. Right now, I feel like that bait goblin. The dude’s probably a bloody mess inside that office or apartment or whatever it is. This would be a great time for me to get the hell out of here, but… I’m waiting for him to emerge from the building so I can lead him to Aurélie’s. Though, if a piece of debris penetrated his brain, he’s going to be out cold for a while. Maybe I should consider myself lucky and go home.
It is kinda hilarious to picture the guy cruising into a window at over a hundred miles an hour. Since the dude shot me in the gut, I don’t feel the least bit bad about doing that. Unfortunately, he launches himself out another window like Superman, way faster than expected. Guess we heal faster as we age. That crash would’ve messed me up for a while.
Eep. Time to go. I zoom toward Aurélie’s apartment building, something like the Cirrus Tower. The LA vampire is pissed. His anger level has to be affecting his flight speed. Okay, this isn’t fun anymore.
I buy a little time with some rapid swerves around the various high-rise towers in the area. Despite flying to Aurélie’s place reasonably often, I’m having trouble recognizing her building in the heat of panic. Like four towers look kinda the same, mostly bluish glass. I know it’s not the oval-shaped one. He surges in close, grabbing for my backpack, so I roll to the side, causing him to cop a cheap feel of my boob by accident, but that beats his getting a hold of my pack and dragging me around like a seeing-eye dog in a harness.
He goes for my neck. I bring both legs up, plant my feet on his chest and kick. It more pushes me away than launches the guy, but any distance is good distance. We’re both so strong that the weight of our bodies is a mere triviality. He careens far enough off that he has to cut around the opposite side of a high-rise to avoid a repeat performance of window diving.
Ordinary Problems of a College Vampire (Vampire Innocent Book 7) Page 18