by Stec, Susan
The interior of the cabin was rich, decorated in gold and black, but all business. Computers, printers, phones, and surveillance equipment lined one side of the cabin, making it a click away from all corporate offices throughout the world. Couches and recliners upholstered in soft black leather sat on the other side with ebony tables scattered in between. The carpet was thick and rich, red like dried blood, and the cabin walls, gold with black trim. Beautiful sconces made of copper glowed on the walls every few feet.
Marcus's brother stopped examining his cuticles and reached out and brushed the laptop screen with his fingers. The document he was working on slid off the screen. A screensaver popped up with the BAMVC bat logo. It flew circles around the computer screen.
Dorius swiveled the computer chair, slapped a leather-secured ponytail off his shoulder, and locked eyes with Marcus. "Is there a personal motivation in your line of questioning? Or could it be that you just don't understand the issue in the first place?" Dorius pulled on the cuffs of his silk shirt and silver cufflinks tossed reflected light around the walls of the cabin. "Because if you are going to spend the next nine hours trying to defend your mate and her family from being the sole factors in this horrid affair, I have neither the time nor patience for the conversation we were about to embark on. Do I make myself clear?"
"Always, brother dear, always." Marcus took a sip of blood from the crystal glass, dabbed his lips with a black linen napkin, and continued. "However, amuse me, will you, Dorius? Give me just one scenario where I could fathom the possibility that an infected animal found its way across the Atlantic, to Italy, and then directly to one of the highest mountains in the Appennini range. And furthermore, precisely selected the most feared creature in Italy—and our primary enemy—to bite and infect. Because, Dorius, any other assumption would be just that. Not one member of Chick's team has visited Italy in their immortal lifetime, nor are they aware of our relationship with the alpha of the Italian wolf pack." Marcus carefully set his glass on a gold coaster resting on an ebony table beside his chair. The intricate gold trivet mounted by faceted crystal and bathed in red looked festive on the lacquered surface.
Dorius waved down one of the attendants, who, in turn nodded and then scurried toward a door at the back of the cabin. Turning to face his brother, Dorius sighed frustration.
"The point is, no matter how the creature made its way to our homeland, it originated from the blood of your mate's sister. They brought this plague down on us. The rest has generated situations exploiting that blunder." Dorius glanced at Marcus's glass of blood and licked his lips. "Unless, of course, you can give me another assumption other than exploitation, as to how my nemesis, Karl—not only a werewolf but the blight of my existence—has more than upped the ante by acquiring bloodletting fangs? While you are at it, please tell me why his pack has attacked the populous of Milan, which, might I add, just happens to be near the airport where we house our Jet and a few Italian colleagues?"
Both of them glared a silent settlement to agree to disagree.
As the previously summoned attendant quietly stepped out of the room at the back of the cabin and whispered, "She is ready, sir," Dorius rose without taking his eyes off his brother. "I will be supping in the aft cabin, should a need arise for you to continue to disturb me this evening."
* * *
As the sun set on the horizon on the other side of the lake, and the rest of the house was waking, I puked another cup of coffee into the sink.
"How many evenings are you gonna try that before you give up, Mom?" Resi, dressed in a pink sweatshirt and gray cutoff sweatpants, got up from the table and padded barefooted toward the front windows. Her dark auburn hair was pulled up in a big floppy knot on the top of her head, and it wobbled with her butt as she walked. She was filling out her cutoffs and reminded me of the old Resi; the daughter I had before immortality reached up and bit us in the jugular.
"Don't squash my dreams, Resi."
As I turned to heave the remainder of my stomach contents, Resi called from the living room. "Oh damn. Puke faster, Mom. You're gonna want to check out the scene in our front yard."
In between gags, I stared from misty green eyes at a luminescent reflection of myself in the window above the kitchen sink. Red curls rioted around a heart-shaped face. Marcus's Born to be Bad, Stewie-tee, dappled with regurgitated coffee, hung off one freckled shoulder. "Be a dear and describe it to me," I suggested.
"Well, first, there's a big-ass Suburban parked in the circle drive. I'm guessing Betty and Sonny are in it."
"So," I croaked and ripped three feet of paper toweling off a spindle under a cupboard near the kitchen window. I dampened half the towel under the faucet and wiped my face. Flip-flops clacking, I shuffled my way into the dining room and I made it to the picnic table. I looked over at Resi. "And?" I grunted, eyebrows pulling my eyelids up.
"Remember the Jehovah witness showdown?"
"Oh-my-God," I moaned. "I am so not ready for act two."
"Actually, it would be act three. The Jehovah's showed up in New Orleans, remember? Anyway, the infected animals are three deep surrounding the Burb. I don't think we should wait for Betty and Sonny to open the car doors. I bet the little buggers smell Sonny in the vehicle."
"He's like a friggin undead Pied Piper," I said, and then heard my mother trudging up the stairs. "Mom," I grunted as she stepped into the kitchen. "Grab my cell. I want Resi to get a video of the flocking critters for Sonny."
"Why are they sitting in the car, anyway?" my mother asked, dragging poufy leopard-spotted slippers into the dining room.
Mom tossed her chin at the gator in front of the leather couch. "Your iPhone is on the coffee table, right there, Suzabella. Get it yourself."
I ignored Mom's usage of my dreaded nickname because Resi scurried over to pick up my cell phone. I watched my troublemaking mother sit on the other side of the picnic table. She wore a red silk kimono cinched somewhere between a bulbous tummy and two sagging sacks of flesh. One side of her face and hair was pillow smashed, and she covered it with her hand as she placed an elbow on the oak table and cupped her jaw.
"I'm starving." Mom tossed her free hand in the air. "I went over to my usual feeding grounds last night. The first guy I approached called the cops. All I did was ask him to look into my eyes and told him he was about to have the best piece of ass in his life."
"Nanna," Resi said. "I could've gone a long time without hearing that.
Mom rolled her eyes. "The guy told the first cop on the scene he thought I came from Shady Pines, that assisted living place. What the hell? Like someone who looks as old as me could have walked that far. That's a stupid ass theory if I ever saw one."
"Heard one," I corrected.
"You know," Mom said to me. "I don't know what's worse: your sister's complete lack of brain cells or your constant necessity to try and exercise your two."
Mom hissed at me. "Saw one, okay? And, while I was looking the cop up and down, I noticed a bad cut on his left thumb. To change the subject I told him he should doctor it up with some neosperm. The bastard laughed at me. And if that wasn't frigging annoying enough, after he stopped laughing, he took my elbow and guided me into the backseat of his police vehicle very gentle like."
"Nanna," Resi said over giggles, "that's because the antiseptic ointment you were talking about is pronounced Neo-spor-in, and sperm is—"
"I know what sperm is!" Mom slapped the table. I hated when she did that. I always jumped a little. "It's the shit that cursed me with Susan, who in turn, infected me with you!"
Resi cackled.
I cringed.
Smirking, Mom's gaze popped off each one of us with a look usually reserved for my sister, daring a crassness comment. We knew better.
"Anyway," Mom said, "at the police station while we waited for Jeni and Paul to come get me, everyone laughed at everything I said. My mind-control thing wasn't working for shit. I was ready to fang all of them, but I didn't want to spend the night in
the clink." Mom shook her head, one corner of her mouth tilted upward. "I think they thought I had Alzheimer's instead of vampireness."
Her eyes glazed over and she stared right through me. "So much for ridin' sexy guys 'til I walk like a bow-legged cowgirl on hot pavement."
After a second, Mom's eyes focused and she said, "I'm thinking I should do breakfast over at the bingo hall tonight. You interested?"
"Maybe," I said. I hadn't been totally tuned into the conversation since Mom said Jeni and Paul picked her up at the station. "You saw Jeni?"
"Yeah, they were headed to Paul's after they dropped me off here," Mom said and looked at the kitchen. "I'm beginning to hate the smell of coffee when I wake up."
"I know, right?" I said, not wanting to get into an argument about Jeni spending the night with a sexy wolfman. "I almost stayed under the covers for another hour, or so. You?"
"You're still not sleeping in your coffin?" Mom asked.
"Nah, I couldn't find it in the garage." The left side of my lips rose sadly. "I'm gonna look in my old butcher shop out in the barn. I put it somewhere after Marcus moved in."
"Excuse me," Resi said. "I hate to interrupt a mother-daughter moment, but a light just came on in the Suburban."
"So?" Mom said.
I looked longingly in the direction of my burbling coffeemaker. Damn shame I couldn't toss it in the trash. Jeni still used it.
"The critters are now six feet deep and have the Suburban surrounded," Resi told us.
Mom laughed. "This just might make getting up worthwhile. Keep the film rolling, Resi."
"Be nice, Nanna," Resi said, "or I won't go to bingo with you later."
Mom's eyebrows rose. "You will?"
"If you promise not to get us arrested," Resi said, eyes on the phone pointed out the window.
"Is there enough light out there?" I asked.
"Yep," Resi said. "The sensor lights in the front of the house are blaring."
"They've probably been sitting in that vehicle all day," I said. "I bet it's hotter than hell inside."
"Their own stupidity," Mom said. "I didn't tell them to stay out in the car until we woke up. Did you?" Her facial expression didn't read sympathetic. She looked elated.
"Sonny's a nice guy. He probably suggested it." I stared out the back sliding-glass doors and watched the day settling; and the moonlit a landing strip across the lake. "Betty probably bitched all day—the poor guy."
A blue heron landed on the end of our dock, ten feet away from an otter eating a fish. The heron's long spindly legs lifted slowly as it stalked toward the otter. The otter, a regular visitor this time of day, scooped up the rest of the fish in its maw and rolled into the water by the cypress knees.
"It's getting pretty dark," Resi interrupted my thoughts. "I think we should go out and scatter the critters before Betty or Sonny open the Burb's doors."
"Va bene! Va bene! I'll turn the damn porch light on so they know we're awake," Mom said, grunting her way into a standing position, "but that's it."
"That should stir things up," I mumbled. I was betting the vamp critters were already putting attack-strategy tactics into motion.
"THE RACCOON WITH THE SPLIT EAR IS BACK!" my sister screeched from the second floor before she pounded down the stairs and staggered to a halt in the kitchen.
JoAnn jerked open the refrigerator door and started stacking blood bags in the turned up hem of her pajama top. She had major bed head. Her dirty-blond hair, now peppered with gray streaks, was greasy and stuck out this-way-and-that, showing parts of her white scalp. She had on a pair of pink, terrycloth-slippers over white slouch socks, and they both matched the jersey jammies covered in roses and speckled with dried blood.
"Whoa, Jo, slow down on the O positive," Resi said. "You're gonna deplete our supply before the next shipment gets here."
"I'll be camping out in my coffin. I will not fight with that raccoon again!" She scurried out of the kitchen, and seconds later, I heard her bedroom door slam and the lock engage.
I yelled up the stairs, "Are you sleeping in my coffin?"
"No!" JoAnn yelled back.
"Did you dig up yours?"
"No!"
"Is the one you're sleeping in red?" I was screaming now.
"Yes!" JoAnn screamed right back. "And it's always been first come, first served around here. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, y'all!"
"God damn it!" I shouted.
Resi said, "If you make her dig up that casket, she's gonna smell like a dead dog, and freeze her butt off with all those refrigerated blood bags."
I tried to ease my anger by delving deeper into that visual. But Resi's Gay Pride sweatshirt got in the way. Her chest read, LET'S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT ... I'M NOT. "Resi, nobody wears sweats in Florida, in the fall, except you and your aunt."
Resi pouted. "We can't help it if we're cold-blooded."
JoAnn and my daughter were always cold. They wore sweatpants and long sleeve shirts in August.
A terrorized scream echoed through the house. "The raccoon is hanging onto my bedroom windowpane!"
We all sighed. My sister had a penchant for the dramatic. "Okay, let's go see if we can shoo the critters—"
Hisses, screeches, growls, barks, claws raking metal, and other angry wildlife noises erupted on the other side of the glass panes in the front yard.
I begrudgingly moved to the window.
"The whole front yard is full of fang-fed vermin!" Zaire came running up the stairs and slid across the great room yelling, "Don't anyone give JoAnn a rifle!" Zaire was always ready to fight.
The last time the critters congregated in our front yard, it scared the crap out of three unsuspecting Jehovah witnesses. I think we amped up the scare, though, when we ran out armed for Armageddon. I had quite a gun collection in a safe in my garage. I really enjoyed hunting before I acquired fangs and had to survive solely on blood from the wildlife in the area. I never got the hunting bug back after we heard from BAMVC and started receiving shipments of type O. I was not a trophy hunter.
"What are you doing here?" I asked Zaire as I took my crossbow down from the fireplace mantle. "I thought you were on a plane to Italy with the rest of the rogue hunters."
"I told Dorius I'm not leaving my girl until the curse is lifted," Zaire said with a grin for my daughter. "And I wanted to stick close to Betty and Sonny since, technically, it's their first time in the field with us."
That's my girl. Out of all the women in my family, Resi found a keeper.
"What's the combo to the gun safe?" Mom asked, stomping by me and into the kitchen. She was headed for the garage.
"Fa-get-it!" I shouted over my shoulder.
Outside in the yard, Betty yelled, "Get your asses out here and bring weapons!"
"I'll get her a butter knife." Mom opened the silverware drawer. She snagged one of Great Grandma's butter knives, yelped and dropped it. "What the hell? The damn thing burned me!"
"Swell!" I said. No crosses. Forget sunlight. And now we couldn't touch silver? It was like Raphael had been watching True Blood reruns. "What the hell is next? Are we going to have to stand in front of Walmart's electric doors until the greeter invites us in?" I screeched at the floor under my feet, fist pumping in Hell's direction.
"I better open the gun safe." Zaire jogged through the kitchen on her way to the garage. "Is the tumbler on the safe silver?"
"Yeah, like I can afford that!" I laughed.
"Zaire!" Mom shouted after her and then paused for a human heartbeat, brow furrowed as though she was thinking. "Bring me something that'll scatter meat at a hundred yards, and make sure the stock is wood or plastic or something! No metal!" Mom looked at her sizzling hand. "Don't listen to Suzabella; I'm the boss." She popped the tips of her thumb and index finger into her mouth.
I hated that nickname. Grandpa gave it to me after telling me many times how skinny, ugly, and stupid I was. I started to remind my mother of that when Zaire shouted back, "That'd be your tele
kinetic powers, Chick! Use them wisely, grasshopper. Every weapon in this safe has a silver trigger and muzzle."
"Even the crossbows?" Mom asked coyly, and then grinned at me.
"Yep," Zaire said.
I gently laid my crossbow on the picnic table and was really glad I'd only held it by the stock and fore grip. "I call dibs on the asbestos gloves!" I ran to the stove we never used, opened the oven door, and snatched the gloves; I tossed Resi one and smirked at my mother.
"Holy shit," Resi whispered from the window as I watched my mother ransack the pot holder drawer. I didn't like the sly smile on her face.
I glanced where Resi was pointing, and caught Betty as she shape-shifted into a hawk and shot straight up. A Bald Eagle circled the large oak tree in the center of our yard in hot pursuit. The eagle went at Betty, claws extended; Betty hit the eagle hard and they rolled in the sky, all beaks and claws until they separated and flew out of view above the oak.
The rest of the vamp critters circled Sonny and the van. He was dressed in navy blue Dockers, a button-down, long-sleeved, white dress shirt—one button open at the collar—penny loafers and navy socks. He had light chocolate eyes, blond hair cut conservatively above his collar, and short sideburns tucked under horn-rimmed glasses. He stood very still as a Gator with a swishing tail waddled by, followed by six squirrels, a raccoon, two armadillos and a gray fox; all of them forming a tight little cluster. The gator hissed at the sky over the oak tree. The raccoon strutted on his hind legs, eyes glaring at JoAnn's upstairs window. I could clearly see his split ear where JoAnn had bit the animal to dislodge it from her water bra the first time she went hunting for blood. We figured she sucked from the animal and then it drew blood into its mouth since the brassiere was totally destroyed. JoAnn didn't want to discuss the incident, but there had to be suckage from both parties for the raccoon to be infected. We didn't know until days later that we had us a vampire raccoon on the property, and by then, the infection had spread to other animals.
A loud screech from outdoors drew my attention as the eagle carcass hit the ground, minus its head, and Betty, in hawk form, landed beside it cawing victory.