by Drew VanDyke
Eventually I spoke. “Guess I should shut up and let you get a word in edgewise. I’ll be quiet.”
“Thank you.” Shelby paused and took a breath. Do vampires breathe? I guess they have to, to speak. “Margaret has stage four breast cancer.”
“How the hell can you be…?” I put my hand over my mouth and mumbled, “Sorry.”
“She’s known for some time, and has been hiding it. But vampires can sense disease and decay.”
“Kind of like smelling the meat at a butcher shop,” Jackson added.
“Ew. Not helping.”
Shelby glanced archly at Jackson. “Please, Mr. Wolfe. I’m having a hard enough time as it is.” Turning back to me, he said, “So, I persuaded Margaret to tell me about it, and I’m doing what I can.”
“Which is?”
“Which is an exchange of blood. Her blood nourishes me, and the free-floating cancer cells are no threat to me. In the parlance of you younger people, I eat them for breakfast. I give her clean vampire vitae, which helps fight the cancer, improves her general health and appetite, and frankly, makes her feel better. I’m a walking dialysis machine.”
“Oh come on. You can’t mean to tell me that this is entirely altruistic on your part.”
“Not entirely, but the more ethical of my kind do our best to benefit the demesnes we supervise. Think of it as good business practice. I also wanted a reason to be close to you. As you are set to play a pivotal role in the affairs of the weres,” he nodded to Jackson, “it behooves me to ingratiate myself with you so that our future interaction is normalized in the community. Small towns and all that.”
“What, keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” I taunted. And yes, I do question my sanity in taunting a vampire, but he brought out the protective bitch in me.
“I might put it more delicately, but yes, I need you on my side. Alpha female and all.”
I rounded on Jackson. “Why does everyone keep saying that? Nothing’s decided yet. And just exactly what does Con-Man here know about your little proposal? I’m beginning to think that you’ve both been playing me from the very start.”
Jackson dropped his eyes. “Not playing you. I’ve told you nothing but the truth – just not the whole truth at once, which would have overwhelmed you. Ashlee, I had to tell Mr. Shelby about the possibilities. He’s the master of this territory and any lycanthrope alphas are his wolves to call.”
“And what, that makes us his slaves?”
“Subjects. Not the same thing. And no, not you. It just makes me subject to him...within certain specified limits. Just like my pack is subject to me, within pack law. Neither of us are tyrants.”
“So you say.”
Jackson sighed. “Everyone who chooses to live in a society submits to some authority. Cops and judges and mayors and governors, all the way up to Congress and the President. We have our hierarchy and our ways of doing things too.”
“You have. What about me? You seem to keep forgetting, I’m not a lycanthrope. I’m a lupine. I became this way because of some fluke of the supernatural, not because I was descended from or bitten by a were. By the way, what would happen if you bite me?”
The alpha held up his hand. “Pretty much the same. It hurts, then it heals.”
“Ouch. Sorry. What about if he bit me?” I pointed at Con.
Jackson sighed. “You know, we are doing this so far out of order. I wanted to tell you everything in a straightforward, reasonable manner, but it hasn’t worked out that way.”
“Bite? Me, him?”
“As a lupine, you are pretty much immune to vampire powers.”
“Plus, you had an abnormal physical response to my glamor,” Shelby said.
“What, like, my allergies are my bullshit detector?”
“So it seems.”
“So indeed.” I sat back against the porch column, watching a low-rider cruise slowly by. The gang bangers within eyed us balefully, but I got the feeling that was more about us being Caucasian in a heavily nonwhite neighborhood than anything.
If they only knew none of us three were even part of the human race, much less any other “race,” they’d probably shit bricks.
“Back to Peg,” I said. “Does she or doesn’t she know you’re a vampire?”
“She doesn’t.”
“And how is this okay? I mean, if it were my body and I was getting blood transfusions from a vampire, I’d want to know about it.”
Shelby examined his nails with mock modesty. “Would you really? Or would you just be grateful that for the first time in a long time, you felt better, you were happy, and there was hope on the horizon for continued health? Not to mention that a distinguished gentleman was interested in you for the first time in years.”
He had me there. “But what’s it doing to her in the long run? What happens when there’s more of her blood in you and more of your blood in her?”
“It doesn’t work like that, Ashlee,” Jackson interrupted.
“You know, I think you need to let me handle this, Mr. Wolfe. And as for turning her, young lady, she would have to be brought to the brink of death, drained almost entirely dry and then filled with a specific infusion. It’s not something we do accidentally, B-movies notwithstanding.”
“But you don’t have Peg’s consent for any of this.”
“If it’s a good thing, why should we even bother?” Jackson asked, and I turned to him.
“You really don’t get it, do you? You really don’t understand how once again you’re making decisions for the rest of us. ‘For our own good.’ Well maybe we want to have control of our own lives.”
“Oh dear,” my mother murmured in the background.
“Ashlee.”
“Jackson,” I mocked him. “I am so mad at you both I could just spit. And if it wasn’t for the fact that I already had my one allotted PTSD breakdown within the last 24 hours, I’d rip you a new asshole. I just don’t have the energy.”
“Miss Scott.” Shelby oozed warmth, and I felt a sneeze coming on. “I think you’re overreacting.”
Don’t ever tell a woman she is overreacting, because if there’s one thing I know, my internal senses are usually pretty reliable even if I can’t articulate what they’re telling me when I’m in the heat of the moment.
“You haven’t even seen me overreacting yet, Mr. Shelby.” I turned to Jackson. “I don’t like this. Not one bit. Not one bit at all. And I hate all of the secrets. What ever happened to honesty is the best policy? And why are you all right with a world where we have to violate basic morality to survive?” OMG, where did that come from?
Shelby remained patient. “If I didn’t give Margaret my blood, she couldn’t even move without incredible pain. She might have expired already. Is her free will important enough to die for?”
“Yes! But that’s a false choice anyway. You can tell her any time and let her decide.”
“And when she decides she’d rather not expire in horrible pain? Which is what any rational person would do.”
I felt helpless in the face of the obvious. Of course Peg would choose to live, even if she had to be a vampire’s kept woman to do it. And who was I to complain? But the obvious wasn’t always right. Maybe I couldn’t explain it very well, but I knew in my gut that something was wrong here.
“Maybe I should be thankful about this, Mr. Shelby, but I’m not. Although the end may justify the means, I find the very nature of what you’re doing repugnant.”
“Real medical practice is rarely pretty. Do you really want to watch a surgeon at work? Not everyone can handle all aspects of the truth. Not about who we are. Not about how we live.”
“But you’re not even giving her the chance to find out.”
“Have you told Will who you are?”
I ground my teeth. “Not yet. The time hasn’t been right.”
Shelby cocked his head in evident skepticism. “Hello, pot. Call me kettle.”
“The difference is, I hate lying to Will abou
t who I am. I hate that you’re lying to Peg, but you’re comfortable with it. And I really, really hate that you’ve put me in this untenable position. And I still think you’re hiding a lot of shit from me. So, let me have it. What kind of thrall is she under, exactly?”
“I would never hurt her.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I influence her decisions, I put her to sleep, I make the pain recede into the background and my blood effectively halts the progress of the spread of disease, but she still has some resistance and I can’t make her do anything she wouldn’t normally do on her own.”
“So, how do you fuel up?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” he said, but I knew he was being intentionally obtuse.
“You know, fuel up, tank up, fill up. Nobody gets something for nothing. You can’t get enough nourishment from a sick woman.”
“I have a few intimates. These are humans who have entered into binding contracts and receive benefits from the relationship. It is a reciprocal transaction, a mutually consensual informed arrangement.”
“Consensual and informed. But not with Peg.”
“Unfortunately I jumped the gun when it came to Peg, and here we are. I take your meaning, and I take responsibility. But that doesn’t change the facts.”
“You still need to tell her. Immediately.”
“When you let me decide when you tell Will, I’ll let you decide when to tell Peg.”
Before I could think too deeply about that, Jackson interrupted in a funny wise guy accent. “How about we tell Will and Peg at the same time, see, and it might make you being a werewolf not such a big thing if it came as a package deal, see?”
Wise guy, my ass.
For some reason this was the last straw. I’d had it with them and their reasonableness and their platitudes and their we-got-it-all-under-control cocky superiority. I jumped up, growled, pulled out the keys and stalked over to the truck.
Jackson followed me. “Give me a ride back to the lodge?”
“Why should I?”
“Because I’d rather hang out with you than him.”
Grr. “All right. Get in.”
“It’s my truck.”
“And I’m driving.”
Jackson got into the passenger side. “Between you and Sully, I might as well give up my alpha status.”
“Is Sully’s wolf straight?”
“Yes. Most are.”
“Maybe I should mate with him.”
“Ouch.”
“Whatever.” I slid behind the wheel and started the truck.
I didn’t talk as we drove. Now, I’m not usually one to use the silent treatment because I know how painful it is, being on the receiving end of it from my twin. But this time, I did. Silent and stuck with a werewolf made me feel like a pissed-off Helen Keller. Well, one that could see to drive, anyway.
“Turn here,” Jackson said as we navigated the country roads on the way to the lake lodge.
Rather than break my self-imposed silence by asking why, I grunted and complied. It was hard to stay mad at the man. Hell, it was hard for me to stay mad at anyone, really. My anger often blew through me like desert rainstorms, impossible to sustain.
Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up in front of a dimly lit Victorian Gothic next to a small, neat cemetery. The ruin of a small stone chapel brooded nearby. “This is his abode.”
“Con’s?”
“Yep.”
“A cemetery? Really? Are they always so cliché’?” I realized I had broken my silence without even thinking about it. Desert rain.
“We are what we are.”
“Then why are you men assholes?”
“Why are you women bitches?”
I didn’t really have a good answer for that, but I ground doggedly onward. “Do you consciously go out of your way to infuriate us, or is it something that just comes naturally?”
“You got me there.”
“People are not a means to an end, you know. People are an end in themselves.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that we’re not just resources and pawns for you and Con to push around, trying to get what you want. I’m beginning to understand what Sierra might have felt like. First you build her up with fairy tales about how she’s going to become werewolf royalty, and then you turn out to be gay. Well, at least she gets to do the deed with your straight wolf once a month…only he’s hot for a lupine, and not even because of love or lust or inflation. It’s a fucking breeding plan. You wanted her to go out meekly in the night and accept her fate like a good little girl, and she didn’t.”
“We never meant it to go down that way,” Jackson said.
“Yeah, well as my dad always said, ‘hindsight is better than foresight’ and to quote my brother, ‘payback’s a bitch.’”
“I thought writers tried to avoid clichés.”
“Only in a paying piece, but this piece ain’t playing.”
“What does that mean?”
I pulled up to the lodge. “It means I’ve made my decision.”
Jackson got out of the truck, shut the door and leaned back into the open window. “And?”
“Finish the pool house and go back to Montana. I’m nobody’s bitch but my own, and I’m headed for Yosemite.” I put my foot down, spraying him with gravel from the tires of his own truck.
After dropping Jackson off, I enjoyed the solitary drive home – sort of home, I guess. Amber’s guest room, anyway. Ever since leaving Knightsbridge almost a decade ago, I hadn’t had a home. Just a place to put my shit, as George Carlin would say. I’d spent more time in luxury hotel rooms than in my San Francisco loft. In fact, I could hardly justify paying for it. At least I ought to move farther out, where the rent was lower.
Or just give up the loft completely, bring all my stuff to the pool house once it was finished and live here permanently until Will and I…assuming we did…eh, you know. I could pay Amber rent to cover the inconvenience. She didn’t seem to mind too much, and it would only be temporary. I mean, I wasn’t going to give up traveling and writing or anything. Just changing my base of operations.
A sudden attack of sneezing made me wonder about Shelby again. He said he was going home, but he’d had no ride from Peg’s. Did he lie, or was he traveling in some special vampirish way? Could he shift into a bat, like in the movies? If so, was he flying above me right now, watching me, trying to affect my mind?
Sigh. The more I learned, the less I knew.
I stuck my hand out the open window and flipped the warm night a big fat bird.
When I opened the door to Amber’s, I dropped to my knees and Spanky jumped into my arms in the uninhibited, uncritical and unconditional love of a dog. I began to sob, and he licked the tears from my face. You know, I try so hard to be good. I don’t walk through the world bitching and bemoaning my existence and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. But today had been too much.
Chapter 7
Early the next morning I packed up a couple of suitcases of clothes, loaded them and Spanky into Amber’s white Lexus, and drove away before the pack arrived at the pool house to begin the day’s work. I left them a note so they’d know I wasn’t in any trouble, but I absolutely did not want to deal with any more supernatural bullshit or anyone’s expectations for me.
Yes, the irony of heading straight for my family vacation in the mountains did smack of frying pans and fires, but unless I wanted to blow them off entirely, call up one of the magazines I wrote for and ask for an assignment, they were pretty much my only choice. That or drive to the City and lock myself in my loft.
At least my family loved me as they drove me crazy. Pack instinct or no, Jackson and his people didn’t, and Shelby’s charm was a mile wide but only an inch deep.
I called Will on the way out of town to let him know where I was going. He was back at home and resting. Suppressing the guilt I felt at leaving him to Con’s mercy, I asked him
to drop by Amber’s every now and then to let me know if he saw Whelan hanging around, which reminded me: I needed to talk to my sister about him when I saw her.
Maybe I should have dragged Will with me, but that wouldn’t get Peg, Sam and Siobhan away from Con. I’d warned the vampire about screwing with Will and his niece, and short of a stake, I couldn’t really protect them. No, their family was better off all together.
I decided to skip the trip into Yosemite National Park and beat the folks to the cabin up at Bumblebee. They weren’t due to leave the Ahwahnee for a couple more days, so this would give me some time alone. I needed the time to think things through, and to meditate.
Mine is a very active form of Zen meditation. Okay, I wasn’t always meditating, but it amounted to the same thing. I turned off my cell phone, paddle-boated around Pinecrest Lake, took long naps, and hiked up to Flat Rocks where I could still see holes in the granite where the Washo tribe ground their acorns, retracing the steps of hikes we’d taken when I was a kid.
Being up there, it was one of the few times I felt connected to my patriarchal line’s distant tribal heritage. Dad’s grandmother had been full-blooded Cherokee, he’d always told us. We’d never pursued that side of our ancestry, but at times like these, my heart knew where it belonged: out in the open, out in the wild.
At night, under the waxing moon, I forced the shift, now that I knew I could. With the blazing stars of the mile-high mountains above me I prowled the darkness, howling my anger and frustration at the moon until finally I slept on those pockmarked boulders and dreamed of squaws grinding acorns into flour in the shallow indentations.
For once, Ghost Mom left me alone. I figured she was tied to Knightsbridge by her early death and seldom manifested elsewhere. Today, tonight, that was fine with me.
When I awoke in the deeping hours, the moon had set and I found myself naked beneath the Milky Way. Standing there, I raised my hands to the heavens and called out to the multitude of witnesses I knew were there: to the God of my upbringing, to the Goddess of my Celtic foremothers, to the spirits of my aboriginal ancestors.
