The mere sight of him made me angry. “What are you doing here?” I asked, ready to start the next drink in the queue—only to realize I’d caught up and there was nothing left to make.
“I wanted to see how you were doing,” he said. “You haven’t been at work all week.”
“You’ve been checking up on me?” I sounded offended, even though I really wasn’t. If anything, I was slightly flattered.
“Well, yeah… I want to make sure you’re doing okay.”
“As you can see, I’m totally fine,” I said, grabbing a towel and wiping down the espresso wands.
“I can see that,” he said, leaning his forearms on the bar. “I was just concerned; that’s all.”
“My well-being is no longer your concern. You broke up with me, remember?”
“Give me a break,” he sighed. “Fee—Fiona, I still care about you. A lot.”
“You okay, Fee?” Candace asked, walking up behind me.
I glanced at her and nodded, noticing her giving Sean the death stare.
“Do you want something to drink?” I asked him, then added, “To go?”
“No; I’m good,” Sean said, running a hand through his wavy hair. “I’m just glad you’re doing well and hope we can find a way to still be friends.”
He said goodbye to Alexis as he rounded the counter. They’d been friends first and had introduced us three years earlier. We’d been friends a long time before he finally kissed me.
“Can you believe that guy?” Candace asked, once Sean was gone.
“I dunno. Thought it was sweet,” Alexis said from her station by the register.
I was somewhere in the middle. I liked the fact that he was concerned about me, but didn’t want to see him right now—not after what had happened before the accident—especially at my place of work. “I think he just had to get it out of his system,” I said as another cup was passed to me via Candace.
“Why is it every time I come in here, you girls are just standing around talking?” said a voice from the lobby.
I cringed every time I heard the shrill voice of Mallory Fiennes, the owner’s devil of a daughter. She was also a senior and I had the unfortunate luck of sharing two classes with her.
“I don’t know. Maybe you continually show up at just the right time,” Candace said, making no move to be productive.
“I don’t know why my father doesn’t just fire the lot of you.”
“Maybe because he likes cute young girls working for him.”
Alexis tried to stifle a snicker. I went back to wiping down the counter, not needing any more drama; the quicker we got whatever she wanted, the quicker she’d leave.
Mallory’s face scrunched up like a pug and turned bright red at Candace’s snide comment. “Well, there’s plenty of those to go around, so don’t count yourselves special,” Mallory finally fired back.
“Hey, Mallory,” Eli said, sauntering in from the back room.
Mallory’s anger instantly melted away. “Hi, Eli. Can you make me my usual chai?”
“Of course,” he said, going over to the espresso bar and edging me out of the way.
Mallory wouldn’t let any of us even touch her drinks; only a select few baristas were allowed to craft her chai latte, even though we all knew exactly how she liked it. She was probably afraid we’d spit in it or something. Candace had done worse once when no one was looking. I couldn’t do that to a paying customer—though Mallory wasn’t a paying customer at all. She simply ran up a tab that never got paid.
Eli slid the finished drink over to her and walked away. Mallory removed the wad of gum she’d been chewing and took a careful sip. “See, ladies, that’s how it’s done,” she said, leaning over the bar, then tossing her gum toward the trashcan behind the counter. It landed on the floor, a few inches from Candace’s foot. “Oops… my bad,” she said with a malicious smirk.
“If that had hit me—” Candace started.
“You would have done nothing. You’ve got customers. Chop, chop,” Mallory said, turned with her drink, and walked out the door.
“Can I help you?” Alexis said at the register.
“One day…” Candace said. “I’m gonna throw a chai in her smug plastic face.”
“I’d like to see that,” I laughed, leaned down, and picked up the gum with a piece of wax paper.
“Eli, we need help out here!” Alexis yelled.
“And I’m off!” Candace called, removing her apron.
The next few hours flew by due to the steady stream of people coming in. I barely thought of Sean or Mallory at all during that time. It wasn’t until things died down and we had nothing left to do but clean, that my thoughts began to wander. Alexis bugged me about hanging out after our shift since I hadn’t gotten out in over a week. She could tell I was distracted and insisted I needed a little R&R.
“Fee, are you even listening to me?” Alexis asked, putting up the chairs in the lobby.
I had the espresso machine in pieces, giving it a good deep clean. Eli was in the office counting the tills—or talking to his girlfriend or anything to get out of having to clean with the rest of us.
“Of course,” I said, absently.
“Then did your mom say yes?”
“Say yes about what?”
“You said you were listening!” she whined. “About getting out tonight.”
“Yeah; sorry,” I replied. “I called her. She wasn’t keen on the idea, but finally caved.”
“Perfect!” she exclaimed. “Candace will be here by the time we’re done.”
“It’s a party,” I said sardonically and got back to scrubbing the espresso machine.
5
Fiona
We drove out into the foothills, past the toll road, and seemed to leave civilization behind. Candace led the way in her older sister’s green Mustang. I rode with Alexis in her beat-up Chevy pickup. The poor thing still had a tape deck and manual crank windows. And it definitely possessed no airbags, which never used to bother me but made me a little nervous now.
There was one wooden sign for Black Star Canyon that was barely legible, and a few hundred feet later, we turned onto a gravel road wide enough for a single car. The poor excuse for a one-lane road was lined with short wooden posts. On the left, I could see the earth fall away as we worked our way into the canyon. A rock wall grew on the right at a similar rate to the cliff on the other, descending into darkness. There were no street lights out here, only moonlight—and the little sliver hanging in the sky was barely visible. We could only see as far as the headlight beams would allow. And then we came to a gate stretching across the road, forcing us to stop.
Candace was already out of her Mustang and opening the trunk. Alexis and I got out and helped with the supplies Candace had brought—a fire log, pink lighter, the fixings for smores, a six-pack of hard cider, and three folding chairs. Her sister was twenty-two and usually willing to get us alcohol.
Candace left her headlights on while the three of us hopped over the gate with our supplies and settled in an open spot in the gravel. The driveway extended deep into the canyon, disappearing into the darkness beyond the reach of the headlights.
After kicking around some of the rocks, Candace placed the fire log in the center of the makeshift firepit and set it ablaze.
“Burn, baby, burn!” she yelled into the night, her hands hovering above the undulating flames.
Alexis laughed as she scrolled through her phone, found a song we’d all heard way too often, and turned on her pocket-sized Bluetooth speaker.
Once she was done with her silly witch dance, Candace returned to her sister’s Mustang and killed the headlights.
I wouldn’t say we did this regularly, but we’d been up to Black Star Canyon after dark a number of times. It was our secret place to escape the outside world—our little haven under the stars.
Something about the canyon always made it about ten degrees cooler than even a mile down the road. The weather was already warmi
ng with the promise of spring, but the nights were still cool. However, the fire prevented any need for a jacket.
We spread out around the fire in our beach chairs. Candace passed me one of the pear hard ciders, then offered one to Alexis. I tossed the cap into the flames and took a swig.
“Thank you, Bethany. That hits the spot,” I said, speaking of Candace’s older sister.
“Thought you could use it after… well, everything,” Candace said, balancing her bottle on her knee.
“You’re not on medication, are you?” Alexis asked.
“Not since this morning,” I said. “I don’t hurt that bad.”
“You were in a car accident. That’s crazy. Sean sent me pics of the car. It was messed up.”
I hadn’t even seen pictures of the accident.
“That car was made of tinfoil; what do you expect?” Candace said.
As if she was reading my mind, Alexis passed me her phone, open to a picture of Sean’s wrecked Civic, wrapped around the light pole. I flipped through the few pictures she had—of the car, emergency vehicles, a growing crowd of bystanders, and even one of me being taken away on a gurney. I was out cold; no memory of any of this.
“Wow…” I said, giving her back the phone and taking another sip of my cider. “I feel like I’m dead, looking down at my own body.”
“Yeah; I can’t believe that was you,” Alexis said. “But look at you now, good as new.”
“I don’t know about that.” I touched the chilled bottle to the bump on my forehead and winced. “At least it’s going down a little.”
“It’s not even noticeable,” Candace said. “You’re so self-conscious about your scars. No one even notices.”
She’d said that to me countless times before, but I always felt like people were staring. I always saw the jagged scar running down the right side of my face each time I looked in the mirror, smaller lines shooting off the main one like the branches of a tree. If I couldn’t help but look at it, I didn’t understand how others could resist it either. Whenever I spotted people’s eyes on me, I knew what was catching their attention.
“I know,” I said, acknowledging her statement, but not agreeing.
“It’s not really over is it?” Alexis asked. “I mean, you’re not Candace and Brian, breaking up like every five minutes.”
“Hey,” Candace protested. “We’ve been back together for five months.”
“And how many times did you break up before then—or threaten to since then?”
“I—I don’t keep count of that sort of thing.”
“Exactly my point,” Alexis said, smugly.
“I think it really is,” I said. “I don’t know how to get past this one. I can’t stop looking for my father. And I’m certainly not going to do it for him.”
“Nor should you,” Candace said. “It was totally unfair of him to ask.”
“But I’m sure he’s kicking himself,” Alexis said. “He knows he screwed up. He’d be stupid to let someone like you go. Give it some time.”
“I always thought you could do better,” Candace said. “I didn’t want to say anything before, but there it is.”
“You’ll say that about anyone,” Alexis said.
“When she gets that little extra confidence, she’ll realize it’s true.”
“How about not talking about me like I’m not even here,” I snapped, finishing my cider, and setting the empty bottle next to my chair.
“You can do better than that guy, Fee. You don’t deserve to settle,” Candace said, looking me square in the eyes.
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
“I do.”
“Sean was not settling,” Alexis chimed in. “He was just a stupid high school boy, doing what stupid high school boys do—freaking out when things start to get serious.”
“Well, we’ll be out of that dump soon enough,” Candace said, handing me another cider. “A fresh start for college is a good thing.”
“What about you and Brian?” Alexis asked. “You planning to break it off for good this summer?”
Candace laughed as she moved onto her second cider as well. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Alexis was still nursing her first drink, not even halfway through the bottle—more interested in tearing at the label than drinking the contents.
I was tired of talking and arguing about Sean. I couldn’t see us getting back together, so simply wanted to move on. “You know what would make me feel better?” I asked. Both girls could probably guess, especially once I reached for the bag of smores ingredients.
As I skewered a marshmallow and stuck it into the fire, the music from Alexis’s iPhone went quiet. When she checked the phone, it seemed to suddenly have died.
“It was fully charged,” she whined, slapping it against her palm like that was the miracle fix-it strategy for electronics.
The only other sound besides Alexis’s complaining was the crackling from our fire.
And then I heard it—the crunch, crunch of approaching footsteps on the gravel. They were heavy, pervading the air thickly like the march of army boots, and when the steps drew closer, I was able to distinguish several distinct sets.
Not one of us moved. We sat, frozen to the spot.
Slowly, nervously, I turned to the direction of the incoming footsteps and saw several beastly shadows floating toward us. After a few more moments, the footsteps suddenly stopped.
“Hello?” The single audible word came from Candace. Her voice tremored and crackled along with the fire, her phone—now in her hand as a comforting lifeline—also just as dead.
I checked mine as well, but it was as useless as the others, which made no sense at all.
No reply came from the human-sized shadows now standing behind our cars.
After a prolonged silence, the sound of tires on gravel could be heard. They too were inching closer. But I didn’t see anything. The phantom car sounded so near now, but still it was shrouded in the darkness. Then, there was a shadow the size of a truck creeping slowly closer. Slowly, slowly it inched in our direction.
“We don’t want any trouble.” It was Candace again, her voice squeaking now.
After another elongated moment of silence, I was blinded by white light. Two xenon globes split the darkness like tiny suns, causing the three of us to shield our eyes with raised hands. There wasn’t time for any more reactions. Once the spotlights hit us, everything began to unravel quickly.
6
Matthew
I’d been keeping a closer eye on Fiona since her accident the previous weekend and knew we couldn’t prolong this any longer. I urged the Assembly we needed to move fast before any more potential accidents befell her.
As soon as I found out she’d be returning to work on Friday evening, we scheduled the operation. It was just a bonus that she and her friends decided to drive out into the canyons—nicely isolated—for some girl bonding time.
Trent and I walked up the gravel driveway in the dark. We were dressed in black army fatigues and black ski masks to maintain anonymity and drive up the intimidation factor. The loud voices and laughter from these girls could be heard from at least a half mile away. I could also hear music from one of their cellphones—probably with a Bluetooth speaker. Trent had the Beacon and as soon as we turned the last bend, he’d be ready to press the button. Both of us had been dropped off at the edge of the main road, so the Land Rover wouldn’t be within the Beacon’s range when it emitted the pulse. All electronics within 250 feet would be knocked out—not completely fried, just reset. The cars would need to be jump-started, but that was just one part of the operation.
“You ready?” Trent asked, his voice muffled slightly from the ski mask.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said.
Trent hit the button on the small metal device in his hand and everything fell silent ahead of us. Typically, all the lights would have gone out too, but these girls had lit a bonfire. Our footsteps were now quite
noticeable, as was the high-pitched whine of the drone overhead—the eye in the sky—which was circling up high enough to where it wasn’t affected by the pulse of the Beacon. But that didn’t matter anymore. The girls ahead weren’t going anywhere.
After a good thirty count, the drone operator back at the base would radio Finn in the Land Rover that it was safe to proceed. Trent and I waited in the shadows for the cavalry to arrive.
“Hello?” It was the girl with the long black hair—Candace Rhodes—and her voice wavered as much as her hands.
I pulled out a plastic handgun of True North’s own design from my hip holster. Lightweight, accurate, deadly, and untraceable. It wasn’t something I needed, but would certainly get their attention.
The Land Rover was on its way, crunching along the gravel, and when the tires stopped, the night seemed to get even quieter.
“We don’t want any trouble.” It was Candace who spoke up again. She obviously fancied herself as the hero of the group.
It will be no trouble at all, I thought.
Two seconds later, the headlights from the Land Rover flooded the area with bluish white light, signaling it was time to use that extra intimidating force.
The driver’s side door of the Land Rover burst open, and Finn emerged from the SUV also wearing a ski mask. Then the three of us descended on the frozen and dumbfounded teenagers.
“Everybody stay where you are!” Trent yelled. “Hands up where I can see them!”
“Show me your hands!” I demanded.
The eye in the sky was flying away now, back to base, its small whine quickly growing fainter and then non-existent as it glided over the foothills.
All guns were up and aimed at the shaking teenage group. The other girl—Alexis Andrews—was crying now. Candace looked dazed and helpless, and Fiona’s blue eyes couldn’t have grown any wider. I almost felt bad doing this to her—but it was what we’d always done, and she couldn’t be seen to be getting special treatment.
Angeles Vampire Page 3
