Vampire Innocent (Book 9): An Introduction To Paranormal Diplomacy

by Cox, Matthew S.

  I stop short on the sidewalk, shocked out of my mental tirade at the touch of freezing concrete under my feet. Dammit. We can’t stay outside for long. Sophia’s nightgown isn’t doing much for warmth. And double crap… we’re in London. They’re like… umm… eight hours in the future from Washington State. Was almost ten at night when we… oh, shit! It’s gotta be creeping up on six in the morning here. Sunrise any minute. No wonder the guy looked so tired. He had to be on his way to work before dawn. Also explains why everything is closed.

  Near to panicking, I hurry down the street and make a few random turns, searching for a good place to shelter from the sun. Sophia’s a trooper, tolerating the freezing cold without too much protest other than a shriek when we step in a puddle crossing the street. Grr. I scoop her up and carry her up to a jog even though we’re lost.

  Finally, I spot a cop. No, I’m not going to tell the police what happened to us or sic them on the mystics. But, a cop ought to know the area. I rush up to him and dive straight into his head, forcing him to ignore how we’re dressed. Since Sophia’s with me, my standards for crash pad are higher. Need somewhere relatively child safe. No drug users, vagrants, gang punks, or whatever.

  “Excuse me,” I say. “Where’s the nearest hotel?” Do they call them hotels here, or are they inns? Argh, don’t be a dumbass. I’m in London, not medieval times.

  The constable points to the left. “Go down end of the block, hang a left, then another left soon as you can. Point A’ll be on yer right.”

  “Point A?” I blink.

  “Aye. Point A Hotel. Closest one to us. Or ye kin follow Holywell Row up ta The Curtain. ’At way.” He points past my shoulder.

  “Okay. Thanks.” I get a glimpse of the building from his memory, a tall, thin black-walled place on Paul Street.

  With little time to debate, I rush to the corner, carrying Sophia, whip around the next corner, and haul ass past some kind of night club and a short, wide building named The Lycaeum to the Point A hotel.

  By sheer luck, I still have my purse with me—didn’t put it down with my book bag—but we don’t have time for me to go through the process of filling out paperwork. Also, the clerk will probably call the police on two young girls taking out a hotel room on their own, especially when the smaller one has only a nightgown on in December.

  Right. Into his brain I burrow.

  He programs a room key for us at my compulsion, then forgets he ever saw us. Haze fogs my brain within seconds of us entering the stairwell. The walls shift and wobble in a blurry mess halfway between trying to escape the Titanic and overdosing on LSD. I have a vague impression of force yanking on my arm and seeing a super close-up view of Sophia’s foot in my face…

  And the next thing I know, I’m on the floor of a tiny bathroom.

  The air smells like Sophia, faintly strawberry. I sit up, momentarily confused by the abrupt change in surroundings. It finally hits me I must’ve blacked out due to sunrise on the stairs. Somehow, Sophia managed to drag me to our room.

  “Oh, shit. We’re in London.” I suppose it could be worse. London’s about the only place on the planet rivalling Seattle for rain. According to my phone, it’s 2:58 p.m. on Saturday. Oh, neat. It auto-switched time zones.

  Cartoon sounds come from the outer room.

  I pull myself upright and walk out into a small, ultra-modern hotel room. Sophia’s sitting on the bed watching an unfamiliar animated show. As soon as she sees me, she springs off the bed, runs over, and clamp-hugs me.

  “Can we get food? Please! I’m soooo hungry. I didn’t call room service ’cause you didn’t really get the room the normal way.”

  “Yeah… sure. In a bit. Need to call Mom and Dad.”

  “I did already. Thought it would be better to tell them right away than let them discover us missing in the morning. They want you to call home as soon as you wake up. Mom was ready to go right to the airport and come here after calling the police, but she got stuck in a logic trap. We can’t really say magic kidnapped us.”

  “Ugh. The PIBs would straight up crap a Rubik’s cube if we did.”

  She laughs, though sounds more nervous than amused. “I talked them into waiting for you to call. Mom still wanted to fly here, but you’re eighteen and have mind-control powers.”

  Oh yay. Welcome to adult responsibility. “Gee… hope I’m ready for so much trust.”

  “It’s not trust. They couldn’t find a babysitter for Sam and Sierra,” deadpans Sophia.

  “Hah.”

  “Seriously, you should call them right away. Mom sounded totally calm on the phone.”

  “Crap.”

  She whistles. “Exactly.”

  I sit on the end of the bed, Sophia beside me, and dial home on speakerphone.

  “Hello?” asks Mom, too casual to have looked at the caller ID.

  “Mom. Hey, sorry. Just woke up.”

  “Sarah!” says Mom a little louder than normal volume. “What the heck is going on? Where are you and Sophia? Are you seriously in London? Sophia is not pulling my leg?”

  “Afraid she’s right.”

  Mom exhales hard. “This isn’t funny.”

  “Not trying to be.”

  “You’re not talking about London, Ohio?” asks Mom.

  “Nope. England.” I say. “Unless they have weird license plates and drive on the wrong side of the road in Ohio.”

  Sophia leans against me, cringing at Mom’s groan.

  Click.

  “Sarah?” asks Dad, from another handset. “How’s the weather over there? Did you check out Big Ben yet?”

  “Jonathan!” yells Mom. “Our daughters are overseas without money or passports.”

  “Or clothes,” says Sophia. “All I have is a nightgown.”

  “Easily enough fixed,” I mutter. “There’s shops all over the place here. We’re in London, not stranded far from civilization.”

  “What are you going to do?” asks Mom.

  “You have to try fish and chips from a legit place,” says Dad.

  “Jonathan! You’re not helping,” shouts Mom, attempting to muffle the phone.

  My father either trusts me to protect Sophia, or he’s not coping well with instantaneous overnight international travel. Probably trusts me. If the weird stuff was going to make him crack, he’d have snapped four months ago.

  “Relax, Mom.”

  “Don’t you tell me to relax, young lady. I am as calm as can be considering two of my daughters are in Europe for reasons I can’t discuss with any sane person.”

  “You’ve got Dad to talk to,” I mutter. “Oh, wait. You said sane.”

  Dad makes a thbptptpt sound.

  “Tell me what, exactly, is going on,” says Mom.

  “So… remember the thing with the soul jar?” I explain the group of mystics trying to grab Sophia because they believe she has power over this wayward spirit, but I’m not about to let her involve herself in anything dangerous. “As soon as it gets dark enough for me to go online, we’re heading right to the airport.”

  “You still have your authorized user card?” asks Mom.

  “Yeah. Should I use it or charge the flight on Vee-sa.”

  “Umm. You don’t have a Visa. When did you get a Visa?”

  “Allie,” says Dad. “Capital V.” He makes wee-ooo noises.

  “Oh…” Mom hums. “Well, an international flight ticket bought same day is going to be ridiculously expensive. And you don’t have passports, so you’ll need to use the special Visa card anyway.”

  Right, Mom’s telling me ‘go ahead and steal plane fare’ without saying those exact words. Plausible deniability. Besides, I think she could get disbarred for inciting the commission of a crime. But… supernatural stuff. The PIBs will clean it up if I make too big a mess. Hmm. Maybe I should call them for help? Nah. Not yet. Then I’ll owe them a favor.

  “Okay. Will do. Please try not to panic. We’re fine. This is only annoying.”

  “I’m mildly jealous
,” says Dad. “I’ve always wanted to visit London.”

  “Heh. We’re not here to sightsee. Anything specific I need to know, or can I call you back if anything changes?”

  “Other than my nerves going crazy, no.” Mom lets out a heavy sigh. “This stuff isn’t easy to get used to. I’m not sure how to process people kidnapping the two of you but not holding you against your will. It’s almost weirder than how you got to London.”

  Sophia bites her lip at me.

  “Yeah. Okay. The tiny one is famished. Need to figure out a way to feed her without causing a giant mess.”

  “Put a bib on her,” says Dad.

  Sophia rolls her eyes. “Not that kind of mess. Sarah’s offline. She can’t make people forget seeing us. It’s December. People are gonna call the cops if they see me outside barefoot in a nightgown. They’ll think I’m abandoned.”

  “The police might be of help, no?” asks Dad.

  “What exactly am I supposed to tell them? We were teleported here? Or should we make up a story about guys in a black van grabbing us off the street back home, flying us to London, and dumping us in an alley?”

  “Oh, good point.”

  Mom sighs. “I hate not being able to help more directly.”

  “You and me both.” I frown. “Waiting for the sun to go down is a huge pain.”

  The scent of cooked meat reaches my nose.

  “Mew,” says Klepto.

  I glance toward the meow. The kitten’s standing on the room’s tiny table, next to a plate holding a grilled chicken sandwich and fries.

  “Ooh!” Sophia leaps up and runs over to eat.

  Somewhere, someone’s about to wonder why their late lunch vanished.

  “Right. Food situation’s dealt with. I’ll call again once we’re at the airport.”

  “All right. Be careful,” says Mom.

  “Don’t mess with those guys in the big fuzzy hats.” Dad chuckles. “It’s illegal.”

  “Not on my list of stuff to do, Dad. See you guys as soon as possible.”

  Mom verbally worries at me for a few minutes more, but eventually, we get through the ‘I love you’ thing and the ‘be careful’ thing about ten times. Sophia’s already done with her lunch before I’m off the phone.

  “Damn. Battery’s getting low. Better charge it.” I fish the charging cable out of my purse and hunt around for an outlet.

  “Wait! You’ll fry it,” shouts Sophia. “They have like different power here.”

  “Oh, crap. Yeah. Ugh. I need coffee. I’m not thinking.”

  “Does coffee do any good for you?” She tilts her head.

  “Maybe, but only in the sense of making me think it’s doing something. I need a power adapter.”

  “Mew,” says Klepto… then vanishes.

  “The cat is on it.” Sophia winks, then returns to the bed to resume watching cartoons. “So, we’re gonna stay here until it’s dark out?”

  “Yeah. As soon as I’m online, we’ll go someplace and get you real clothes… then hit the airport.”

  She fidgets. “Do you think we should help the mystics? The ghost is gonna kill them.”

  Okay, maybe I’d been too pissed off at them to think about anything more than giving them the proverbial finger by storming out… but this is a centuries-old serial killer. I got a brief look at him when Soph let him out of that jar, and he did not strike me as a warm fuzzy sorta guy. Sure he left her be in peace, but she’d freed him. No guarantee his ‘sense of honor’ will stop him from harming Sophia if they meet again, especially if she’s acting against him. If what Asher said is true and she is connected to this ghost somehow by the broken enchantment in the soul jar, the spirit has to know this. As soon as he perceives her as a threat, it will be her on the receiving end of some ridiculous thirty-step chain reaction ‘accident.’

  I don’t want the mystics to die, but—sorry to be a bitch here—Sophia’s life is worth way more to me than theirs. Even if she manages to save all eight of the remaining mystics, if it kills her to do it, we’re way into unacceptable territory.

  “It sucks what’s happening to them, but I can’t let you be hurt. You aren’t the only one capable of stopping the bad ghost. According to them, it’s only easier for you. But, you’re a kid with no training. Those mystics opened a portal and pulled us across the planet. You can’t do anything so powerful. I don’t know what they’re even thinking asking you to take on a wraith.”

  “What’s a wraith?”

  I shrug. “Same thing as a ghost, but sounds more evil.”

  Klepto reappears on the bed, a power adapter in her mouth.

  “Thanks!” I pet her, then hook my phone up to charge.

  So, a few hours to pass.

  It takes a bit of doing, but I eventually figure out the TV controls and find The Goonies playing on a movie channel. Sophia leans against me on the bed with the kitten cozied between us. Yeah, my kid sister screams, scared of the Fratellis. No way is she going to end up taking on a legit dangerous spirit.

  When the movie’s over, Sophia scrambles off to the bathroom. I collect my phone from the charger and hunt around online for a clothes shop. Looks like a department store is fairly close, a bit south of us. Marks & Spencer, Finsbury Pavement. Hmm. Weird name for a store, but definitely sounds British.

  Sophia screams.

  Nothing in a bathroom should prompt slasher movie victim screams, especially when Sam and his frogs are thousands of miles away. Could the mystics be jackasses enough to try magically grabbing her again? Maybe they yoinked her nightgown. No, her scream had way too much terror and not enough anger.

  Sophia backs out of the bathroom, still in her nightgown, pale-faced and trembling.

  “Soph?” I drop the phone on the bed and jump to my feet. “What’s wrong?”

  She glances at me for an instant, then runs to the outer door, scrambling to undo the deadbolt and chain. Okay, something in the bathroom has clearly horrified her beyond reason. Did Dad forget to flush again? Wait, he’s not even here.

  My sister bolts out into the hallway.

  I hurry after her, glancing left into the bathroom at a wall of black fur filling it entirely. “Okay, weird. This hotel has a serious mold problem.”

  Even without my vampiric abilities active, I overtake Sophia in the hall and grab her at the stairwell door. She’s trembling as hard as if she’d witnessed a man shot in the face.

  “Hey,” I say in a soothing tone. “It’s okay. Why are you so scared?”

  She spins into me and grabs on. “Look out… he’s coming.”

  “What?”

  “Look!” She points back down the hall.

  I twist to peer behind me. A ten-foot-wide sphere of black fur squeezes out the door of our hotel room. Tiny wings at the top, no bigger than Chinese take-out wings, flap furiously, but the creature drifts forward at a snail’s pace.

  Oh. It’s only Fuzzydoom.

  Wait. Fuzzydoom? I blink. We’re not in the mirrorverse.

  “What the heck is he doing here? How’d he get out of the mirror?”

  “Umm…” Sophia fidgets. “I may have been a little mad at the mystics for what they did to me at school.”

  I glance back down the hall. “So, you summoned the pom-pom of annihilation?”

  “No!” whines Sophia, stomping. “I didn’t mean to do it. I wanted to try making a portal or something so we could go home. But he came out.” She shivers.

  “Send him back.”

  “I can’t. I’m too scared to do magic.” She pulls back, trying to get away from me and dart down the stairs.

  Fortunately, Sophia is a twig. I don’t need vampiric strength to hold her. “You have to send it back. If it touches anyone, it’s going to kill them.”

  She struggles, whining out her nose. The poor kid’s phobic of this monster she created despite it looking like it came from Looney Tunes. It’s one thing to be ten years old and still terrified of a nightmare monster she invented at age three… but
it’s something else entirely for said nightmare monster to actually exist. Can’t use the ‘grow up, it’s all in your head’ tactic. I’m still not sure if Fuzzydoom can actually kill anyone who touches even one hair. Honestly, instant death is a bit dark for a three-year-old to come up with. She probably convinced herself touching it would do something super bad to her. When she grew up a little, and didn’t outgrow the fear, the consequences of touching the pom-pom from hell changed to a more tangible ‘kill’ instead of an undefined, but awful, fate.

  You might think it’s strange of me to stand here psychoanalyzing my sister when such a dangerous monster is stalking us. But Fuzzydoom legit moves so damn slow I think a granite statue could outrun the stupid thing.

  Anyway, better to assume it is capable of hurting people. Sophia would totally lose her mind if something she made gave someone a paper cut. If it killed a person? I’d have no choice but to be forced to erase the memory. Otherwise, she’d be crushed… and spend the rest of her life in therapy. Seriously, this kid is too nice. We get kidnapped and she feels guilty for not helping the people who kidnapped us. Between her age and optimism, I’m sure she has no real comprehension of the danger helping those mystics really puts her in.

  “Soph,” I say, grabbing her head in both hands and staring into her eyes. “I realize you’re legit phobic of the giant fuzzball, but I also know you don’t want to hurt anyone, right?”

  “Mmm.” She nods, tears streaming down her face.

  “It’s slower than the week before Christmas. It’s never going to catch you. Send it back to the mirror world before it hurts someone.”

  Shivering, Sophia points at it… and squeaks.

  I hug her from behind, resting my chin on her shoulder. “Try to sound a little more commanding. Your magic pulled it across. You can send it home. It can’t hurt you.”

  “He,” whispers Sophia. “Fuzzydoom is a boy.”

  “Okay. Send him home before he hurts anyone.” I squeeze her. “You got this, kiddo.”