Interview with the Vixen

by Rebecca Barrow

  She screws up her face. “But I didn’t die. I’m certain about that part. So that means I’m not a moroi, right? But then—how does someone become a strigoi? You said the first ones were cursed.”

  Dilton nods. “Only the first, though,” he says. “After that, they could create strigoi in a similar way to moroi. But instead of the bite reviving them, it’s the blood that’s key. To create a strigoi, they must be bitten and then ingest vampire blood. They don’t have to die first. It almost seems like it’s a virus—”

  “Okay,” Veronica says, cutting him off before he can get too deep into his nerd theory. “So if I’m a strigoi, that means he … fed me his blood.” That makes her want to throw up more than her original horror at the idea of drinking blood did. From him? The man who attacked her, who killed her parents?

  And now I have his blood coursing through my system? she thinks. Now I am what I am because of him?

  “Okay,” she says again, but it’s steely this time. “So how do I undo it? Do I kill him? And how—stake through the heart?”

  Dilton holds his hands up. “Whoa, whoa, slow down,” he says, and spins the laptop back around. “I don’t know about undoing it, but as far as I can tell, yes, you’re right—a stake through the heart would kill a vampire. That or decapitation.”

  “Take his head off?” Veronica leans back. “So that’ll kill him, but it might not fix me. That’s what you’re saying, right?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be much literature on the vampire-back-to-human process,” Dilton says with an apologetic shrug.

  Veronica drums her nails on the table as she tries to process all that Dilton’s telling her, a terse staccato beat. “Let me see again,” she says after a moment, and Dilton slides the laptop across to her.

  She scans the page he’s on quickly, only seeing all that he’s already told her. But none of it is what she really wants to know.

  How do I get my life back?

  On the sidebar of the page, there’s a collection of links. Veronica hovers over them for a second before deciding to click on the very last one.

  When the new page opens, it’s full of images. Veronica squints, leaning in to see better, because they all look old and like they’ve been scanned in from ancient books or something. It’s mostly more of the kind of images Dilton had found—drawings of vampires in all different forms, some more human-looking and some more monster. Interpretations of a myth, Veronica thinks.

  But it’s the image at the bottom of the page that catches her attention. It looks like a family tree, almost, with one shadowy fanged figure at the top, strigoi written beneath it, and tiers of similarly fanged progeny spreading out beneath. Then the same image is mirrored, but this one has a red X laid over the fanged drawing, and each descendant drawn differently—no fangs.

  Veronica, like everyone in Riverdale, had to do a family tree project way back in fourth grade. It was easy for her, seeing as how her family was among the founders of the town—there was plenty of history for her to research. She’d spent hours painstakingly cutting and pasting family photos and inking their names and relationships to one another in careful cursive.

  But this tree is way less thorough than her project, and the words there aren’t in a language Veronica can read. All she can do is interpret the images, and what they seem to be saying to her is how to take down a bloodline.

  “Look,” she says to Dilton, turning the laptop so he can see and tapping a finger on the image. “I think this is showing us how vampire lineage works. See the strigoi at the top? Underneath are the vampires they’ve created, I think, and then the vampires those ones have created, and so on.”

  Dilton nods. “So they’re all traced back to one strigoi sire. One bloodline.”

  “Right,” she says. “And then look—” She points at the second version, with the sire crossed out. “I’m pretty sure this says that if the sire of a bloodline dies, then all their progeny reverts to their human form.”

  “That makes sense,” Dilton says. “Cut-the-infection-out-at-the-root kind of thing.”

  A plan is solidifying in Veronica’s head, and for the first time since the previous night, she feels a sense of control coming back. “The vampire who attacked me and killed my parents,” she says, “he’s gotta be the sire. And once we kill him, I’ll go back to being human. And everything will be back to normal.”

  Except for my parents being dead.

  Veronica shakes her head. Can’t think about that now. First, get her humanity back. Then deal with the earth-shattering loss of her normality.

  “I’m sorry, did you say ‘once we kill him’?”

  Veronica covers her grief with a grin at Dilton, flashing her fangs. “What’s wrong, Dilton? You scared?”

  He sits up straighter, holds his chest out. “What? No way.”

  “Good.” Veronica reaches out and pats his cheek. “Because we’re going to need some weapons, my friend.”

  WHEN DILTON’S MOM gets home later that night, he tells her that he and Veronica are working on an extremely important science paper and he knows the rules about girls staying over but would it be okay, just this once, for this extremely important school reason?

  Veronica listens in on the stairs, trying not to laugh at Dilton’s earnestness. What does his mom think, that she’s going to corrupt her baby boy? Dilton’s cute and all, but he’s not Veronica’s type, and besides, they have way more pressing issues to deal with.

  Namely, killing one strigoi sire and returning Veronica to her regular ol’ human self.

  “Okay,” she hears Dilton’s mom say. “It’s just so nice to see you have a friend over, Dilly!”

  Now Veronica feels a pinch of sympathy, but she squashes it. Focus on the most important thing.

  “Weapons,” she says again, when she and Dilton are up in his room. “We need all that stuff you said—garlic, holy water, silver, crosses. Obviously, you’ll have to handle all that.” She smiles, with her fangs this time. She’s getting pretty good at flicking them out and pulling them back in.

  It would make quite the party trick, if it wouldn’t also send everybody fleeing in terror. Or—actually, maybe that’s a bonus.

  “And then I can have the stakes,” she continues. “That should give us a good shot at taking this creep out.”

  Dilton’s already busy on his laptop again. “There’s a store that carries everything we need about an hour and a half from here,” he says.

  “Wait. Seriously?”

  Dilton nods. “There’s an active paranormal community out there, Veronica. You can never be too prepared.”

  She rolls her eyes. “This isn’t Adventure Scouts, Dilton,” she says. “This is Slayer Scouts. And our motto is—”

  She pauses. What is their motto?

  And then it comes to her, and she runs her tongue over her fangs, feeling every ridge and edge, and her smile this time is sharp. “Death to sires.”

  IT’S TOO LATE to go on a weapon-buying spree tonight—the paranormal supply store would be closed by the time they got there—so she and Dilton agree to go first thing in the morning.

  Dilton’s mom insists on Veronica taking Dilton’s bed while he takes the couch downstairs. Veronica spends the night sleeping fitfully, woken by dreams of her parents’ empty eyes, until she gives up on sleep entirely. She spends the next few hours waiting for the sun to rise, staring at Dilton’s ceiling, marked with glow-in-the-dark stars. They’re just like the stars Betty used to have, before they decided she was too old for such things, and looking at them now fills Veronica with a soothing kind of nostalgia. Memories of sleepovers at Betty’s, being nine years old and desperate to make it past midnight.

  When she hears Dilton’s alarm going off downstairs, Veronica goes down and makes sure to feign tiredness, yawning the same way he does. “Being up at this hour on a weekend should be outlawed,” she says to him, and he just nods blearily as he stumbles upstairs to the bathroom.

  They set off not half an hour l
ater and make good time on their way there. They stop first at a clothing store, so Veronica can outfit herself appropriately. “I mean, I can’t fight a strigoi in this,” she tells Dilton, gesturing at her sweatshirt-and-knee-socks combo—an extreme social-media-cool-but-won’t-be-cool-in-six-months look. “What have I taught you about fashion, Dilton?”

  What she eventually decides on is not quite like her usual style, but it feels perfect for her vampire self on this sire-killing mission: tight jeans with rips at the knees, a ribbed tank, and a cropped leather jacket with zips all over, all black, naturally. And she adds the killer finishing touches: boots with a chunky heel, perfect for stomping Big Bads, and a pair of pearl hoop earrings.

  Drinking blood, wearing ripped jeans, and leather? Oh, she’s doing all kinds of new things lately.

  When they finally arrive at the paranormal store, the gray-haired woman behind the desk eyes them suspiciously when they enter, like she thinks they’re going to steal something, and Veronica sniffs. As if she, a Lodge, can’t afford to pay for a few wooden stakes and a pile of garlic.

  And also, if she wanted, she could steal this stuff and scare the living daylights out of this woman, she realizes.

  Huh. Maybe there’s a small upside to being a vampire.

  “Don’t forget the crosses,” Dilton says to her, arms full of liter bottles wrapped in red plastic and proclaiming themselves full of Father Frank’s Certified Holy Water! Straight from the Source!

  She stares at Dilton. “I can’t get the crosses,” she says. “Remember?” She lowers her voice. “That whole I’m-a-vampire thing?”

  Dilton looks like he’d smack himself in the head, if his arms weren’t full. “Oh, yeah. Well, you find us some flashlights instead. I’ll be back in a second.”

  Veronica drifts around the store as Dilton disappears, scanning the shelves. Silver bullets, for werewolf killing; all manner of herbs and crystals, for spell casting; guides on dealing with faeries and various other beings. There really is nothing you can’t buy, Veronica finds herself thinking.

  When they have everything they need, they pay the grumpy old woman and make a quick escape. The drive back feels longer, but Veronica knows that’s her nerves. Okay, so maybe she’s a little scared of the Big Bad Strigoi. He did almost kill her less than two days ago, after all.

  It’s okay, she tells herself. They’re only going back to her house to look for clues—something to tell them who this sire vampire is, and where they can find him. Because once they find him, Veronica can kill him.

  Payback for stealing her humanity.

  Payback for taking her parents from her, forever.

  Veronica shakes her head violently. She can’t think about them now. Once she’s dealt with the strigoi, she can figure out how to tell everyone that Hiram and Hermione Lodge have been murdered.

  Dilton pulls up outside the Lodge mansion, and Veronica’s heart is in her throat. “Okay,” Dilton says. “I got us these, as well.”

  Veronica bursts out laughing when Dilton hands over a walkie-talkie and a matching Bluetooth earpiece. “Are you for real?”

  “We’re gonna need to communicate,” he says. “These are more reliable than our phones. Also, you don’t currently have a phone.”

  She eyes him. “You’re enjoying this. This is like your superhero final-battle dream come to life, isn’t it?”

  “I will not dignify that with a response,” Dilton says, and he knocks his walkie against Veronica’s. “You ready?”

  “As long as you are,” she says. The plan is simple enough: This is the last place Veronica saw the strigoi, so it’s the first place it makes sense for them to search for clues. She’ll go in, and Dilton will act as lookout.

  If the strigoi is here, or shows up and tries to attack again?

  Dilton has the holy water, the silver crosses, and plenty of garlic to pelt the strigoi with. That should weaken the strigoi, and then Veronica will have her chance to stake him, right through the heart.

  And then, for good measure, she’ll take off his head, too.

  (She hasn’t told Dilton about that part. That’s just a little extra personal revenge, on behalf of her parents.)

  Veronica flips the passenger-side visor down and checks the makeup she applied in that first clothing store. Her eyeliner is perfectly winged and her lips painted deep, almost purple, red.

  She has her weapons and her armor. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

  IT’S CREEPY QUIET when Veronica enters her house.

  Well—what else was she expecting?

  Go quietly, Dilton had reminded her. Just in case the strigoi is still hiding out here.

  Veronica steps lightly through the foyer and heads up the stairs. She has a stake, sharp and menacing, tucked in the back of her pants—it’ll be the perfect magic trick, when she reveals it and uses it to kill the strigoi, if he shows up.

  Lights up onstage and the showgirl takes a bow!

  Veronica slows as she approaches her father’s study. This is the part she’s dreading the most. She doesn’t know what her parents’ bodies will look like now, what they’ll smell like, or how she’ll react when she sees them. But she can’t afford to fall apart; she can’t let her guard down and give the strigoi the opportunity to get the drop on her.

  She hesitates outside the half-open door, left where she’d flung it on her way out, a bloody handprint just visible on the dark wood. Her breath comes fast, and then she makes an executive decision and turns away.

  I’ll come back, she tells herself. I’m not avoiding it. I’m just being thorough, careful with the plan.

  The walkie in her hand crackles. “Veronica?” Dilton’s voice is reedy through her earpiece, but at least only Veronica can hear him. “What’s going on?”

  Veronica quicksteps down the hall, toward the library, and brings the walkie to her mouth. “Checking things out,” she says quietly. “No sign of him up here, and nothing useful that I’ve seen yet.”

  She makes her way through the house, going methodically floor by floor, but there’s no sign of the strigoi anywhere, and nothing to indicate why he chose her home to invade or where he might be now. She radios back to Dilton: “It’s empty. I’m going to go down to the basement. It’s the last place to check.” Well. Last besides the study where her parents’ bodies are. “Get ready, just in case.”

  “Basement? Might not be a good idea,” Dilton walkies back. “He may be hiding out down there. Older strigoi often retreat to dark, damp spaces.”

  Veronica would roll her eyes if he were in front of her to see. “Are you just reading the Wikipedia entry to me?”

  There’s a moment’s silence before Dilton speaks. “I mean—”

  “Dilton, you know better than that,” Veronica says. “Always cite a reputable source. Get it together, kid.”

  She heads down, despite his warning, taking the back way through the kitchen and then creeping down the basement stairs. Veronica never goes in the basement; there’s nothing in there besides the housekeeper’s cleaning supplies, boxes full of her father’s business documents, and the expensive art her mother collects but never seems to hang. But now she makes a circuit of the dank space, shining her flashlight into the cobwebby corners. It’s as she expected: boxes and paintings and—

  Veronica squints. Wait.

  There’s a box in one corner that doesn’t fit with the rest. She gets closer, aiming her light right at it, and lets out a slow breath.

  Of course it’s not a box like the rest at all.

  It’s a coffin.

  “Really?” Veronica looks to the ceiling and exhales noisily. “A coffin? Really?”

  The walkie crackles. “Did you find anything?”

  Veronica picks it up. “Only that vampires really love dramatics,” she says.

  “What?”

  “There’s a coffin down here.” She approaches slowly. The strigoi could be inside. Right? That’s what old-school vampires do, or at least that’s what all the scary stor
ies talk about—vampires sleeping through the day in their plush, velvet-lined coffins. “I’m thinking this is our Big Bad’s bed.”

  Dilton’s voice comes through excited. “If he’s asleep, that’s good,” he says. “You can kill him without him even knowing it’s coming.”

  Veronica runs her fingers across the top of the coffin, and they catch on something, grooves in the wood. She leans down and narrows her eyes. It’s some kind of etching, a symbol, like an old crest of arms or something. Veronica speaks into the walkie again. “There’s something on the coffin—”

  A crash comes from above.

  Veronica jumps and then freezes, staring up at the ceiling, the house above her.

  “Veronica?”

  “Shh,” she hisses into the walkie. “I think there’s someone in the house.”

  The strigoi. Is he back?

  “Remember the plan,” Dilton says, but Veronica takes her earpiece out and shoves it in her jacket pocket, silencing him. She doesn’t need to be told what to do.

  Veronica creeps back upstairs, trying to pinpoint where the sound came from. It was loud enough for her to hear all the way down there—maybe a window breaking? Why would the strigoi need to break a window to get in? Maybe it’s not him. Perhaps somebody has sensed that the Lodge house is strangely still and thought it’d be a good time to loot something.

  You picked the wrong time, monsieur cat burglar, Veronica thinks, and she pulls the stake from where it’s tucked at the small of her back.

  But she slows as she goes up the main stairs. The sound is coming from the study.

  Of course, she thinks, heart sinking. Of course it is.

  At the top of the stairs she stops, allows herself a minute to steel her nerves. She is Veronica Lodge, head cheerleader, future business tycoon, queen of the coordinated accessory.

  I am going to go in there and I’m going to kick ass and I will not be intimidated by some robber or some old-timey vampire or whatever else might be waiting in there.