Relinquished Hood

by Kendrai Meeks

  Every muscle in my body pulled taut. Should I own up to the fact that I was in the room, or slip out and hope he chalked it up to his imagination.

  Caleb continued. “As far as supersensitive ears go, I’m willing to bet hoods got it slightly better, but I can still hear you.”

  The water shut off, and my panic turned on.

  “I’m... I was just... I’m sorry.”

  The shower door behind me creaked as it opened. The moisture poured into the much cooler changing room, as little, hazy droplets appeared suddenly before my eyes.

  “Don’t be,” Caleb said. “I like it when a woman is aggressive.”

  My eyes shut and my pulse booming in my ears, I only knew he was so close to me when he lifted my still-wet braid and shifted it to the right side of my neck. A moment later, his mouth, wet and soft and sweet, lowered to the junction of my neck and my collarbone.

  I couldn’t move. I wanted to, desperately, in so many ways not right for a Sunday. But as invested as I was with the sensations his mouth and his tongue brought on, I couldn’t shut off the little voice screaming in my head, which then turned into speech.

  “You’re not wearing a towel, are you?”

  I felt his lips move into a smile against my skin. “Aren’t hoods used to nudity?”

  “Hoods are used to being around naked werewolves. You’re not a werewolf.”

  His mouth moved to the sensitive skin behind my ear. “And what about hoods? Are they known for their naked ways?”

  “A hood’s hood is kinda what makes her a, you know, hood.”

  “A shame, that.”

  His hands circled my waist, pulling my hips back until my backside was against him. My eyes rolled, and I couldn’t stop the moan that escaped.

  “Caleb, I need...”

  One roll of his hips, and I felt my control slipping. Caleb’s hands maneuvered to the front, making for the bottom of my shirt. If I didn’t stop this now, he was going to find more than he was bargaining for on my chest.

  “Stop.”

  His hands, his movements, his hopes —they all fell still. He heaved a heavy sigh. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m...” Why not block him with the truth? “I’ve never... done it before, and as exciting as I’m sure this would be, I don’t want to have my first time be in the shower of an executive gym at WWL.”

  “No, it should be something better than that,” he agreed, backing away. “Challenge accepted. In time, of course. Be warned, Geri, and please forgive the pun, but I always rise to the occasion.”

  “I won’t forgive it. It’s not a good enough pun.”

  He laughed at that. “Okay then, Kline, you and your innocence get out and give me a chance to get dressed. At least I can take you for the best pizza this side of Chicago.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next day, as I clawed into the office, I thought about calling in sick to work for the first time in my life. It wasn’t that hoods never got sick – I remembered being stuck for a week in bed with the chicken pox when I was six. It was that I in particular seemed to have a very robust constitution. Until it met deep dish, sausage and pepperoni, that was, and robust became defunct. That, combined with the fact that I was burning the candle at both ends, working at WWL in the day, training with Tobias, then Caleb, late in the night, and fitting pockets of sleep in the crevices where those things overlapped, and I’d come to look like a strung-out addict by the time July rolled in.

  I was half way to the women’s bathroom at lunch time, hoping to grab a 15-minute nap in one of the stalls, when my supervisor’s voice reached up the hall.

  “Kline, hold back a minute.”

  I knew better than to roll my eyes. Unfortunately, the part of my brain in charge of “you know better than to” had already gone on break. “What?”

  Doug’s jaw worked, but he seemed to overlook my rebellious teenager impersonation. “The boss wants a word with you.”

  “I thought you were my boss. Or are you talking about yourself in third person? If that’s the case, you should know this intern knows her rights, which include a thirty-minute break after four hours worked.”

  Some people got angry when they were tired. Some cried. Me? Apparently, I verbally attacked supervisors.

  Doug was not amused. Standing in place, he cocked a hip and gave me an “oh, really?” glare. “Do you know how many deliveries you made today?”

  What was this, a pop quiz? “Twelve or so? My clipboard is on the shelf in the annex if you want to check.”

  “The correct answer is six,” he said, ignoring my lip.

  I quickly slogged through my mental catalog, counting out the stops on my fingers. “There were at least ten.”

  “No, Geri. There were only six that you delivered. The rest of them, you merely took to places they didn’t belong. That is called misdelivering. So far, today, you have delivered six packages, and misdelivered four. Do you know what batting six hundred gets you?”

  I glared at him. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “Didn’t you ever play baseball as a kid?” Doug continued. “You spend half your time wandering in places where you have no deliveries to make, and the other half dragging your feet. My god, Kline, we work in one of the easiest jobs in this whole company: take this thing from Point A to Point B. Ants have been doing it for millions of years, yet after a month you’re actually getting worse it at.”

  A bit of the guilt my mother had honed in me over the last twenty years peeked its head. “I’m sorry. I was out late last night, and I...”

  His hand shot up, cutting me off. “The extent of my concern for you only lasts between 10 AM and whenever you clock out for the day, and concern might be too strong a word. You’re an intern, and that means by default your position is supervised by the director of HR. Go tell her about your crazy night out on the town and see how she reacts.”

  “The HR director?” I saw her name in Palatino ten-point type in my memory, affixed to the bottom of my original offer letter for the summer internship. “You mean Inga Rosenthorn?”

  The agitated, middle-aged man in front of me blanched and threw his hand over his mouth. “Never call her by her first name. You will address her as Miss Rosenthorn or sir, yes sir.”

  “Does she have a preference?”

  Doug smacked his hands together. “She sent a message just now that you’ll no longer be working under me. You know what that means, right? Just a suggestion, Kline. In your next job, don’t treat the company like the jungle for your own version of Dora the Explorer.”

  I walked off the elevator, and into a cliché. If you had asked a Hollywood set designer to fashion something for a scene in which the supernatural villain was to be played by Meryl Streep a la The Devil Wears Prada, Inga Rosenthorn’s office would have been the unholy creation of that vision. Whatever carpenter had been in charge of its construction, they must have hit Home Depot on the day black marble was on sale. The floor, the tilework cut into a diamond grid that went half way up the wall, the shelves built into the walls... they were all made of it. Furniture was sparse. Two modern-styled ebony armchairs sat perpendicular to a black lacquered, bean-shaped desk carved with ivy and fleurs-de-lis.

  Thug 1 and Thug 2 had met me by the elevator the moment I’d exited. They didn’t tell me who they were, and I didn’t have to ask. T-1 closed the door behind him while T-2 jabbed a meaty finger at one of the armchairs. My field of vision longed to be filled, but the office held little in the way of curiosities after they’d left. I tried to imagine what my mother might do, armed with the knowledge she was about to sit face to face with the firstborn daughter of Dracula. First, catalog every route of ingress and egress, keeping eye on both from where an attacker could come, and to where she might escape. In this space, the only way in or out was the door through which I’d come. I turned, eyeballing the distance from my spot, thinking how long it would take me to cross it and what I might be able to use as a weapon to get past the guards.<
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  When I turned back, all plans and thoughts came to a screeching halt. Behind the desk, a file in hand and her hair pulled back in a spartan bun, sat a woman who had materialized from nowhere.

  “The vents,” she said.

  I cocked my head to the side, chiding myself inwardly for having adopted one of Tobias’s werewolf mannerisms. “Sorry?”

  “You were wondering how I got in here when the door behind you is the only way in or out.” She extended one delicate lily-white finger toward the ceiling, where an air vent had been built over her desk. “A very useful means of travel for our kind during daylight hours in a structure such as this. Your next question, I imagine, would be how the clothes travel with us when we become smoke, to which I would counter: how does a creature made of bone, flesh, and organs manifest itself as a particulate and reincarnate in its original form to begin with? Not knowing the answer to that, the clothes question has never captured my interest.”

  If I had seen her as a child, seeing her again sparked no memory. What was perhaps most surprising was how unremarkable Inga was. She had the kind of face you’d see in a crowd and forget the next moment. Dark brown hair pulled into a severe bun, topping off a slim face from which a hook nose erupted. Her bottom lip didn’t measure the width of the top one, making it look like she constantly pursed her lips. A thin woman, she might stand five foot four in heels. A strong wind could topple her frame.

  “I guess we’re not beating around the bush, are we?” I asked.

  “Bushes hate being beaten. I should know; I contributed large sums of money to several of their less successful campaigns,” she said distantly, more absorbed by the file in her hands. “You’re the daughter of Red Matron, and I’m the daughter of Dracula. What do you remember of me?”

  “Just going to your house.”

  “Not surprising. You were very young then. And now you’re... my, seems you’ll be twenty-one next week.” She opened her mouth, displaying two long, piercing teeth – the only weapon a vampire ever needed, and one they were never without. “We should celebrate with a drink.”

  My right hand twitched, wanting for my blade.

  “But luckily for you, I’m well fed here.” Her face lowered back to the papers before her. “You’re a student at Western Chicago University, I see. Never heard of a hood who came to the big city for college.”

  Suddenly, I doubted this meeting had come about just because I’d misdelivered a few packages. Wouldn’t Doug be disappointed.

  “You were originally invited into the internship program to work with Igor, mapping the slayer genome.” She dropped the folder to the desk and steepled her hands. Illusions of her plainness blew away with a single look. Her eyes... Not quite blue, not quite silver, but somewhere in between. Like Lake Superior when it froze, Inga had eyes the color of nature’s indifference to man. “Were you disappointed when you showed up on your first day to discover that you were assigned to the mailroom?”

  I made a mental note to ask Caleb if what I heard about vampires was true, and that they were sensitive to dishonesty the same way lie detector machines were. Not knowing that at the moment, however, I decided that honesty was my best – maybe my only – policy.

  “Quite a bit, actually.”

  “And why do you suppose I put you there, under the supervision of that horrid little man?”

  I sensed a trap, and didn’t know which way I should step to avoid it. At least I could take comfort in the fact that she didn’t seem to like Doug any more than I did. “Igor thinks it’s because you assume I’m a plant, spying for my mother.”

  She bit the end of her pen. “You’ve been caught several times snooping around areas you had no place being.”

  “I’m not spying for my mother.” A truth that, nevertheless, didn’t shift all of the suspicions she might hold about me aside. “But I’m still a hood, and from the forests. It’s in my nature to map out my surroundings. Instinct, really, telling me to know my turf.”

  Inga’s face fell. “Is that what it was? How disappointing.”

  I cleared my throat and shifted in my chair. “At the same time, it’s let me stay in the city instead of going back home to the job I worked last summer, so there’s that.”

  “Ah, yes.” Her index finger pinned down a page where I assumed my work history appeared. “At the... state park? I’m sure you’re much happier here than being immersed in the swish and sway of the forest and roar of the waterfalls, in a place where hoods and wolves run free.”

  Not knowing how to respond to that, I didn’t.

  Inga looked up again as she leaned back in her chair. “Would you care for a glass of water, Miss Kline?”

  No sooner had she asked the question than the door behind us opened. I didn’t turn to see who came in; I assumed it would be one of the same strong arms, just waiting for the obvious cue to enter. The new arrival came to stand beside me, leaning over to offer me the drink. I didn’t look until I had to, and then looked away as quickly as I must, unless my shock be too evident. I couldn’t stop my pulse from racing, though, and as Jess Harmond passed the glass to me, I saw a smile crawl across Inga’s face for the first time in my peripheral view.

  “Thank you, Jess. I wonder if I might ask for one more thing before you go?”

  If Jess had been a dog, his tail wagging could have powered Chicago. “Of course, Miss Rosenthorn. Anything.”

  Inga jerked her head in my direction. “Do you know this woman?”

  I swore that my blood froze. Igor had said he’d altered Jess’s memories, but would another vampire, one older and from a regal bloodline, be able to untwist his knots and release the truth?

  I looked to Jess, playing along, forcing a lip-deep smile onto my face. He examined my features with the scrutiny of a young sculptor studying The David.

  “We met at orientation. Other than that, maybe I’ve seen you around campus?” he asked. Then, realization dawned in his features, and my stomach fell to the floor. “Oh, I think we met at the library once. You do go to WCU, right?”

  “Thank you, Jess, that will be all.”

  With his mistress’s dismissal, the POS I’d almost slept with slunk out of the room, no care to the fact that he’d been sent off so unceremoniously. Enthralled, then. Definitely enthralled.

  “Tell me, Miss Kline, how is it that Jess Harmond has no clue who you are, when according to Igor’s own work reports, you two worked together at his WCU lab last summer?”

  Again, I decided that honesty would be best, though I’d pour it sparingly and into a glass I knew the shape of.

  “Prof. Karmarov told me he tinkered with Jess’s memory after Cynthia Wu’s death. I didn’t ask for details. A vampire’s prerogative, I guess.”

  The vampire’s head angled, and I could see contemplation working behind her eyes. Either she bought what I’d offered at face value, or she was saving up her doubt to spend it at a later date.

  “A shame what happened in Igor’s lab,” Inga said. “Xin was one of the most respected makers in the Americas. Many clutches vied to acquire her offspring.”

  With a gentle manner, I held up my hand and shook my head. “Please, I don’t want to know any more than I already do.”

  With that act, I tipped the scales in my favor.

  “Wonderful.” Inga clapped her hands and rose to her feet, inviting me toward the door. “You are a credit to your mother, Miss Kline. When Red Matron and I met several years ago, we reaffirmed that there was no place in the vampire world for you.”

  Remembering what curiosity did to the cat, I didn’t ask. Her cold, lithe arm settled over my shoulder, so feather light I wondered if she were touching me at all.

  She continued, “When Igor put you forward as a candidate to assist him here this summer, I was reluctant. I wondered if she had not taken my sage advice and was sending you as some kind of interloper. But now I see, you’re only here to serve your own purposes. That, I can respect.”

  How could she both praise and
demean my mother in the same breath, and which side of that statement did I rally against? Did I care either way?

  “I’m here because I agreed to continue my work with Prof. Karmarov. I find his passion for restoring slayers a worthy endeavor.”

  Cold, mauve-colored lips drew close to my ear. “But we both know that the slayers aren’t extinct, don’t we?”

  I stopped in place, pulling back to look into her smug expression.

  “Last night shortly after sunset, security informed me that you had tried to access the executive residence gym. Unsuccessfully, until Caleb Helsing showed up, that was.”

  “I take it you’ve been tracking me.” I couldn’t blame her. My mother had had our own training facility laced with a surveillance system not two summers before. If the hoods were doing it out in the sticks, surely a vampire-owned skyscraper in the big city had enough cameras in it to qualify as a reality show.

  “No, but of course, we do monitor the hallways and some of the shared private areas to see who goes in and out.” Her eyes rolled to look toward the ceiling. “As well as a few select air vents. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Caleb engineered a second meeting with you. He’s what I believe Hueys your age call ‘a player,’ and you aren’t displeasing to the eye. I thought, perhaps, you were to be just another of his conquests. Then, when I saw him moving the way only a slayer can move in front of you, I knew he’d let you in on his little secret.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.”

  Why did I care if Inga Rosenthorn thought I’d tell no one or not? But of course, I knew. My whole reason for being at WWL had been to figure out what Cynthia and her ilk were up to where the wolves were concerned. After more than a month, and with only four weeks left in my internship, I hadn’t found out anything, and every effort to do so had ended in failure.

  As quick as lightning, I realized what I had to do. Courage filled me as I pushed away my fear. I turned on heel and locked gazes with the daughter of Dracula.

  “If we can come to an understanding.”

  She lifted a hand to my cheek and patted it. “It’s so cute that you think you have any ground to negotiate. Consider it a privilege that I’m only firing you, Miss Kline.”