It’s easy enough to erase a recent memory, even one that emotionally scarring. Of course, I have to put something in my place to make it permanent. Leaving a hole in time with zero memory can lead to his brain unlocking what I made him forget months or years down the road. It’s tempting to make him think the dead guy in the doorway came in shooting, but I don’t want to start a gang war. For another thing, he died to claw wounds not bullets.
So I do the most ridiculous thing I can think of: this guy remembers a small group of ninjas attacking them with steel claw gloves.
Once I’m certain the implant stuck, I compel him to collect all the drugs and crap on the bed and go home. It takes him a few minutes to snap out of the fog and mechanically follow my compulsion. As soon as he leaves carrying the narcotics, I head out and drag the dude with the gun into the bathroom. It’s a lot of work considering my strength is merely normal and I’m not a big girl. Eventually, we’re in the bathroom with the door closed and he’s all mine to do with as I wish.
And no, I don’t have anything fun in mind. Merely erasing memories.
He might be a drug dealing gang thug, but he was going to let me go and didn’t try to grope me or anything. I’m glad he survived. As far as his memories go, he never saw me at all and remembers ninjas coming out of nowhere to attack everyone in the middle of their deal. Then, I send him home.
After he leaves, I check the remaining gang members. One of the four is dead, having bled out from a lucky (or unlucky as the case may be) claw slash to the side of his neck deep enough to rip open the carotid artery. The others all appear to have fainted from pure terror.
It’s butt-busting work, but I drag each survivor to the bathroom to escape the sun and fiddle with their memories. Roughly an hour and a half later, everyone left inside this motel room is dead. One unlucky tall-as-heck Jamaican dude, one Hispanic gang member, and two vampires. I re-secure the deadbolt on the outer door and run to the bathroom, pulling the shower curtain aside to reveal a standing column of dark grey smoke. Coughing, I wave my hands to disperse the cloud a bit, then lift Dalton’s stiff-as-an-Egyptian-mummy body out of the tub and lean him against the wall in the corner. That done, I strip and hop in the shower. Twice, my socks have escaped bloody ruin. This time because I’d left them in the bathroom. I might be dead, but sleeping with shoes on is still kinda weird.
My second shower is far more pleasant since I’m no longer covered in trenches of torn skin for the water to needle at. Once I’m blood-free, I hop out of the tub and proceed to wash the short and shirts in the sink. Kinda sad that the first time anyone wore these clothes they end up doused in gore. Even if they’re hideous, they don’t deserve to be ruined. There’s only so much water can do, but it does lessen the bloodiness from ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ to ‘highly unfortunate accident with ketchup.’
Again, I sit on the closed toilet while the dreadfully dorky T-shirt and shorts hang over the shower rod to dry. At least iPhone games keep me from completely losing my mind at the boredom. None of my wildest nightmares ever included spending a whole afternoon naked in a strange motel bathroom playing phone games with a dead body leaning on the wall nearby.
At 4:59 p.m., Dalton rapidly regains color and slumps into a heap.
He winces from the hard landing on his butt, glancing at me with one eye open. “You’re naked. Did something happen that I don’t remember and would woefully regret?”
“Nope.” I smile, my attention still focused on the phone game.
He exhales in relief. “Ahh, brilliant. Why am I on the floor?”
“Because you’re not stiff as a plank anymore.”
“That doesn’t explain why I’m out here and not in the tub.”
“Needed to shower. Figured you’d prefer to remain dry. Besides, standing on top of you while showering would’ve felt all kinds of wrong.”
“Ahh. Yes. I suppose that explains why you’re starkers. Why did you have to shower?”
“Clothes got bloody. Had to wash them too.”
He stands and plucks the Starsky & Hutch T-shirt off the shower curtain bar. “This is washed?”
“Fine. Rinsed. There’s no detergent here.”
“Ahh. Right. It’s merely damp now.” He tosses it to me. “Dare I ask what happened that you got bloody again?”
While putting the shirt and shorts back on, I explain the drug deal interrupted by ninjas. Dalton laughs himself to tears since he can also see the ridiculous mental image of ninjas I implanted in the gang members’ heads. Okay, so I had Mortal Kombat on the brain. Still snickering, he uses his shirt to wipe around the bathroom, eliminating possible fingerprints. I put my socks and sneakers on. With any luck, I’ll be able to avoid another dousing of blood.
He whistles at the sight of the room. “You did a right proper Jackson Pollack on the walls and ceiling.”
“The muse was impossible to resist.” I fold my arms. “Woke up this afternoon and just thought the place needed some color.”
Dalton shakes his head. “This motel is off the list of safe spots.”
“I think you need to reevaluate what ‘safe’ means. A bunch of guys randomly showed up to work a drug deal. And how many ‘safe crash spots’ do you have?”
“Oh, a handful.” He winks. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here.”
When we leap into the air, Dalton heads south. I’m about to question his direction sense but he explains via mental link he intends to secure us some less suspicious clothing, then slip onto a commercial flight. Cruising at almost 600 miles an hour is a whole lot faster than we can fly. We could’ve done that on the way down here, but I guess neither one of us had functioning brains due to emotion that night. Plus, flying commercial is more comfortable. However, we’d stand out too much in this dork couture, especially with bloodstains on me.
We head to a Macy’s.
“Stay close to me,” mutters Dalton.
“Okay.”
Cameras don’t pick me up. If you stay near enough, they’ll not see you either.
Oh, that’s cool. Must be one of those neato things Lost Ones can do that I can’t, right?
He smiles.
I hover beside him like ‘Overly Clingy Girlfriend’ while we grab reasonable replacement clothes and head for the changing room. It’s not even awkward at this point to get dressed in the same stall with him. We’re both focused on task and eager to get the heck out of California as fast as possible. Dalton snaps all the anti-theft stuff off the garments, leaves them on the bench, and we walk out as though we’d come in wearing those outfits. We’re not carrying bags and we left the swords outside on the roof before going in. No one gives us a second glance on the way out.
We collect the blades and fly toward LAX.
You’d think it would be an issue to walk into an airport carrying swords, but Dalton tells me to hold it close to my body and stay with him. We breeze past the ticket counter and go around the security checkpoint like cops. No one seems to notice this or care. Upon locating the next flight leaving for SEA-TAC, we lurk around that boarding gate for a while and simply walk on with the rest of the passengers, using a bit of mental influence to keep the flight crew from noticing that we don’t have boarding passes.
A minor snafu develops with someone whose seat we took, but Dalton smooth-talks it over by saying we had standby tickets, so we move to an unoccupied seat a few rows closer to the tail. Wow. I’d say this is the first time in my life being on an airplane, but I technically died five months ago.
It’s strange to be flying without the wind in my hair, but hey, the airplane’s offering a huge variety of in-flight meals.
26
Kinda Rough
Vampire flying from SEA-TAC airport to Cottage Lake is much nicer than our initial trip down to LA. The airline saved us three hours. Dalton and I land on the deck behind my house a little after eight at night. My intro calculus class has already started—and I never had a chance to do that metric crapton of homework for it. Honestly, my
desire to rush to school is pretty minimal after everything. I need to see my family.
Ugh. I missed classes on Thursday, too. Going to school really gets in the way of being dragged into vampire warfare.
“Well then.” Dalton faces me. “With Armand”—he makes air quotes at the name—“destroyed, that lot shouldn’t be much to worry about. I think I’m going to remain in the area for a while, but no need for me to impose on you for sleeping space.”
“Cool. Glad you’ll be around.”
He scratches an eyebrow. “Ehh, sorry about that whole Sam thing.”
Grr. I lean toward him. “What do you mean ‘the whole Sam thing?’ They almost killed my little brother.”
“Sorry.” He stares at the deck.
“No… that it happened isn’t your fault. That’s their fault. I’m just freaking out over it. I’m not upset with you. Well, maybe a little for brushing my little brother’s kidnapping off as a ‘thing.’ Really, I’m not mad at you for this.”
“That’s good to hear.” He gives me this playful but apologetic look. “Brits are prone to understatement. Can’t help it. Not trying to downplay what happened.”
I huff. “Yeah, I know. Again, just frazzled. Thanks for helping get him back.”
“There’s absolutely no way I could have done anything else.” He gazes off into the sky. “I know what you’re thinking, but that was a different me and a different time.”
“Yeah. It’s still kinda weird seeing you fight.”
“How’s that?”
“Oh, I dunno. The sight of you actually good at something is kind of a new experience.”
Dalton sticks his tongue out at me.
I chuckle.
“There’s a mild difference between ineptitude and being unlucky. The streets were kinda rough where I grew up. Worse even with the crowd I wound up with. Had to learn the knife early or you’d end up with one stuck in a sensitive spot.” He looks me up and down. “For a newbie, you didn’t handle that katana too badly. ’Course, you’ve got a bit of my blood in ya. Hmm. C’mere a tick.”
I step closer, one eyebrow raised. “Wwwwhy?”
Dalton rests his hands on my shoulders and stares deep into my eyes. Images flicker like a slideshow in my mind that starts off like a gritty, depressing version of Oliver Twist with knives and tween boys stabbing each other as well as grown men, moves on to the dingy slums of Whitechapel in the late 1800s, and jumps through scenes from both World Wars. Everything is from Dalton’s point of view when he’d been in the middle of a knife or sword fight. My muscles twitch as if my body’s trying to participate as well, but none of the images last long enough for me to react.
The bizarre experience leaves me a bit dazed and contemplating foot position and balance. I need to grab him to keep from falling over sideways from dizziness.
“Whoa,” I whisper. “What happened?”
“Sires can pass certain bits of knowledge to their progeny. I’ve tried to give you as much of what I know about fighting with a blade as I can. You’ll not attain mastery overnight, but you should retain some of what I just tossed into your bean. Once the bewilderment fades, you’ll at least know that the pointy end goes toward the bad guy.”
“My head is spinning too much to think about it.”
“Aye. That’s normal. Tomorrow or the next day, you’ll realize you don’t feel like such a newbie with a sword in your hand. Least I can do for the trouble I caused.”
I rub my forehead. “That was weird.”
“Well, you should go inside and let your parents stop worrying.”
“You’re not going to come inside to see Sam at least?”
Dalton fidgets. “Well, I suppose I could. Don’t want to impose.”
“My parents aren’t going to bite your head off for this. They know it’s not your fault.” I pull him toward the patio door. “And you do know you can stop by to visit when you don’t have a vampire gang wanting your head on a post, right?”
“Aye.” He chuckles as we go inside. “Will keep that in mind, luv.”
27
Permission to Lie
My parents leap off the sofa and run over as soon as we walk into the living room.
Mom and Dad collide, hugging me at the same time. Dalton stands a safe distance back while they go through various stages of freaking out before returning to controlled calm. Naturally, they want to know everything that happened, so I start explaining.
While I’m in the midst of telling the ’rents about the drug dealers, Sophia, barefoot in a normal white-and-pink dress as opposed to the gothic vampire princess doll gown I keep dreaming her in, pads down the stairs and walks up to me. “The boys are waiting for you upstairs.”
“What?” I ask.
“Except for Sam.” She smiles.
“What? Why?”
Sophia tilts her head. “To make them forget what happened. Coralie showed me how to put people in a mental fog.”
I blink. “You know how to magic people into a state of derp-a-tonia? Oh, that couldn’t possibly backfire. Nope. Not at all.”
She giggles.
“Glim already fixed their memory,” says Dad. “Are the boys still upstairs?”
“Well, that explains why Daryl’s mother keeps calling.” Mom rubs the bridge of her nose. “Didn’t we send them home last night?”
“Yeah, but they came back over.” Sophia bites her lip, looking unsure of herself. “Coralie showed me how to open the mirrors whenever I want. It’s a lot faster to go places. She also helped me navigate. It’s really tricky to figure out what places match the real world, but she kept us from getting lost. It only took us like an hour to walk to LA.”
“Wow, that’s incredible.” I whistle.
“Not really,” says Sophia, looking down. “We almost died like six times. It’s only a little safer than taking an Uber with a stranger driving.”
I gawk. “I don’t think you’d come close to death six times in an Uber.”
“Possibly in New York City,” mutters Dad. “Or Jersey.”
“The fire spiders even made Sierra scream.” She cringes.
“You’re not to go into hazardous alternate mirror dimensions alone, young lady,” says Mom. “Not until you’re at least eighteen.”
“Sorry, Mom. It was an emergency! And, I wasn’t alone.” Sophia shivers. “I’ll never go in there alone. It’s too scary. Fuzzydoom is in there. You don’t have to worry. I’m too much of a chicken.”
Dammit. If I didn’t grab Blix and run outside, we could’ve been there, done, and back in one day. The little bugger probably would’ve taken us right to the mirror in that bathroom. No wonder he was flailing when I carried him outside. He’d been trying to tell me to go to a mirror. Of course, had we done that and managed to slip in and out clean, Armand—ugh—would still be after us. At least my clumsy solution solved the problem permanently, even if I did get super lucky. It’s possible the story the parents got contained some embellishments, so it didn’t sound like we almost died.
“So the boys are all here?” I ask.
Sophia nods, then takes my hand and pulls me upstairs to Sam’s bedroom.
Mom and Dad make hesitant noises rather than actual words. Dalton floats up and over the sofa back and settles in to relax.
Once we’re upstairs, I whisper, “Glim already erased their memories.”
“Sorry. They came over today to hang out and I didn’t know they already forgot.” She fidgets. “Oops.”
We enter Sam’s bedroom. He and Blix are sitting on the rug absorbed in the PlayStation. Ronan, Daryl, and Jordan sit nearby, all three of them gazing into space.
“Sare,” says Sam, not taking his eyes off the screen. “Soph broke my friends.”
“They’re not broken.” Sophia shakes her head. “Just like on pause. I didn’t know they already forgot stuff.”
Mom and Dad walk in.
Blix emits a faint eep and zooms under the bed to hide.
“Are they okay?
” Mom waves her hand in front of Daryl’s face. He doesn’t react.
“Sarah,” says Dad. “You might need to make the boys’ parents forget they went missing for a night.”
“Jonathan.” Mom shakes her head. “They missed school. There’s a record of that absence. Their parents already know the boys were abducted by someone looking to hurt Sarah.”
“Exactly my point.” Dad folds his arms. “The police are going to be by eventually to interview us about why someone would want to abduct them over something connected to our daughter. They’re going to want details we can’t give them without sounding insane or compromising Sarah’s secrecy.”
“Okay, fine.” I hold my hands up in surrender. “I will rewrite parents. What story are we going with?”
“We got lost in the woods?” asks Sam.
“Nah. Can’t overuse that one.” Dad rubs his chin.
A grin spreads over my face. “I could blame ninjas again.”
“Pirates are cooler,” says Sam.
“Ninjas?” Dad glances at me. “Hold on, are you holding a katana?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you holding a katana?”
I shrug. “Because I haven’t put it down yet.”
He groans. “Sarah…”
“One of the vampires tried to take my head off with it. I objected. Mine now.”
“Fair enough.” He reaches for it. “Can I see?”
I let him take it.
He pulls it a few inches out of the scabbard and whistles. “Wow, is this authentic?”
“Yeah… how’d you know?”
“The wavy pattern of lighter metal along the cutting edge. That, and it’s got a much more gradual taper. This thing’s worth a fortune. Don’t lose it.” He snaps it back in the scabbard and hands it to me.
Mom waves to get everyone’s attention. “Hello? We’re still trying to figure out how to rewrite people’s memories here. Can you just make the whole thing go away?”
I rub my chin. “That would involve tracking down and visiting every teacher or school staff person who knows they missed school. Impractical. Easiest to make them all think they had like a twenty-four-hour bug or something and spent the day home sick.”
Ordinary Problems of a College Vampire (Vampire Innocent Book 7) Page 29