What was she still doing up? Was she waiting for me? All my life, my grandmother had had an uncanny sixth sense. She’d known when I came to her house, crying, that my mother and I had the first of those gawdawful fights in my teenage years. She’d come to school more than once to bring me lunch. Once she’d arrived with a change of clothes when I’d had an accident of the menstrual kind.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she were waiting for me, which meant I had two choices. Get in the car and go home. Or take the long walk to the front door.
Of the two, only one choice was in doubt. I knew what would happen when I went home. Nothing. I’d sit and worry. But if I knocked on her door, I wasn’t sure what my grandmother would do.
I’m not an exceptionally courageous person. I would not, like some of the movies show, go into a basement if I heard a strange noise. Not that we have basements in San Antonio. But we do have attics and if I heard footsteps in the attic, the first thing I would do is get the hell out of the house. I’d call the police or someone else to investigate. I wouldn’t take a flashlight, go up the steps and call out, “Hello, is anyone there?”
Why, then, did I think knocking on my grandmother’s door was tantamount to investigating a noise in the attic?
Stress was making a band tighten around my head, a warning a headache was right there, waiting. I pressed two fingers against the bridge of my nose, took a deep breath and willed it away.
Toddler-like, it refused to budge.
I walked slowly up the steps and down the walk. I raised my fist to knock on the door as it opened.
Nonnie stood there, a foot shorter than me, as far from frail as a rock was next to a blade of grass. Her face, lined and weathered by life, was curiously expressionless. Not one speck of recognition warmed her faded blue eyes. Nor did her arms reach out to hug me.
“Marcela.”
She never called me that.
“Nonnie.”
We were two gunfighters facing each other down a dusty street.
Something flashed across her face. I wanted to capture the expression and study it because I’d never before seen my grandmother afraid and certainly not of me.
A curious buzzing now accompanied my headache. I pressed two fingers against my left temple but it had no effect on the sensation. The pain was growing, the headache a living thing trying to crawl out of my skull.
“Marcie, you have to leave,” she said.
Her face changed, sagged into sorrow. Her eyes watered and I wanted to ask what was wrong.
“Please, Nonnie,” I said, the words sounding as if they came from far away.
She took a step back.
I crossed her threshold, onto the porch where I used to do my homework. We had played Sorry and Clue here, both of us armed with frosty bottles of root beer and bags of chips.
My foot hit the weathered boards, painted green like the rest of the house.
Her face was the last thing I saw, tears rolling down her face as the buzzing consumed me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Oh my, Grandma, what a big zapper you have
“What are you doing here, Marcie?”
I blinked open my eyes to find myself sitting on cold concrete steps. Ahead of me was the slope down to the street where my car was still parked. I looked above me, expecting to see the Live Oak trees and saw Il Duce’s face, instead.
“What are you doing here?” I repeated. The words, however, didn’t sound as they had in my mind.
I felt drugged.
“Why don’t we sparkle?” I asked, marginally more understandable.
“What?”
Evidently not.
“If we’re vampires,” I said, determined to ask the question, “why don’t we sparkle? Don’t all vampires sparkle? Or why don’t you sparkle if I’m weird and you’re just a normal vampire? Why don’t I sparkle?”
He bent down and grabbed my arm, helping me to stand. I swayed on my feet, the sudden buzz in my brain reminding me.
I let him escort me down the sidewalk to my car. Once there, he just stood, not releasing his grip on my arm. I stared back at Nonnie’s, wondering what had happened. I couldn’t remember anything after I stepped across the threshold.
I lifted both hands to my head, a more difficult task than normal, and pressed fingers against my temple.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have the devil of a headache,” I said.
“We don’t get headaches. Normally.”
I looked up at him, annoyed he was so much taller. Was I shrinking? I straightened up, gave him my most official “I’m an insurance adjuster and I’m investigating your claim” face.
He smiled, his teeth white in the darkness, a vampire with Cheshire cat tendencies.
I would have frowned at him, but it was too much effort.
He lifted his hand and - presto - a long black car pulled up.
“Meet me back at Miss Montgomery’s home,” he said. Dan nodded, glanced at me, then pulled away.
“Keys,” Il Duce said, stretching out his palm.
“Not Miss,” I said, reaching into my jeans pocket. I’d left my purse in the car. Was it still there? “I’m not a miss. I’m a Ms.”
He shook his head, walked me around to the passenger’s side and opened the door.
I slid inside. I can’t remember the last time I was a passenger in my car. Probably when I went on a test drive with a mechanic. Although the car was only a few years old I’d already replaced one major computer. I’d taken it back to the dealer a couple of times but no one could figure out why the door locks sometimes refused to open and the windows wouldn’t roll down.
The car knew better than to give Il Duce any guff.
I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and tried to figure out what had happened.
How had Il Duce found me?
“I’m tired of this,” I said as he slid behind the wheel.
Of course he would know how to drive. But a Kia? No doubt he was used to something more expensive.
He glanced at me.
“I’m tired of all these questions. I have too many questions, Duce, and no damn answers.”
“Duce?”
Belatedly I realized what I’d called him. “It’s a nickname,” I said. “Il Duce. The duke.”
“I know what it means. I must object, however, to being called the same name my countrymen used for Mussolini.”
I turned my head. “Did you know him?”
“Can you not come up with another name? My own, perhaps?”
Il Duce suited him, but so did Niccolo.
I closed my eyes rather than answer.
“What happened?” I asked as he pulled away from the curb.
My reluctance to look back at my grandmother’s house bothered me. So, too, knowing it was dangerous for me to be there, knowledge tied to the buzzing in my brain and the easing of my headache the farther we got from the house.
“Dan said he lost you on Broadway. It was a guess you would either come here or your mother’s house.”
For fifteen minutes we drove, the silence in the car not as peaceful as expectant. When I finally spoke, he took a deep breath, a sigh sounding strangely relieved.
“What is she?” I asked. “What is my grandmother?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But she has some power. During your trial, I felt something when she entered the room.”
Oh, goody.
“I don’t understand anything,” I said. “The longer I’m a vampire, the less I understand. Pretty soon, I won’t know my name.”
“What do you want to know?”
His attention was on the road, but I had the feeling he was focused intently on me.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
He didn’t say anything. Fine, be that way.
“I want to learn karate,” I said. “And how to shoot a gun. And I want a concealed carry permit.”
“You’re afraid.”
“Yes,” I said. Honesty
being the best policy and all that. “I’m afraid.”
“Of your grandmother?”
I nodded. “Of her, of you, of the Kindred. Of my fellow Fledglings. Of Miss Renfrew, whatever the hell her name really is. I’m getting a dog, too.”
“Dogs don’t like vampires.”
I didn’t tell him about the dog I’d found in the woods. That dog had liked me. Maybe a Pranic vampire was beloved by dogs.
“I don’t have to do things because you tell me to do them. I know you’ve taken me on to raise, but I don’t need you.”
I sounded whiny. Besides, both of us knew I was lying. I was so out of my element as to be gasping like a stranded fish.
I stared out at the passenger window, seeing myself in the reflection. Other than looking sad I was myself. I hadn’t sprouted horns. I had skin instead of scales. My eyes weren’t glowing. Okay, so I had fangs, but I had to concentrate before they snapped into place. The one time I’d managed to do it my mouth had hurt for hours.
Why the hell did I have fangs, anyway, if I didn’t need blood?
“Someone tried to kill me,” I said, my voice sounding entirely too calm.
He didn’t say anything.
“Now my grandmother’s zapped me with something.”
Still silence.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” I said, “but I suspect you do.”
I slowly turned my head and regarded him.
“Why do I think you’re going to lie to me?”
He still didn’t answer.
“I don’t know what I am,” I said, “but whatever it is, someone doesn’t like it.”
No one had ever tried to kill me before I’d become a vampire, so I guessed it had something to do with my present condition.
The buzzing had blessedly stopped. I was in the most curious detached state almost as if I was looking at myself and him from a spot a few feet above me. Was I having an out of body experience? Or had I been pushed to the wall too many times and my mind was splitting in two?
“There are those who would eradicate our kind,” he said softly. “They have been around for as long as vampires. What they do not understand, they seek to destroy.”
I nodded. Finally, something that sounded like the vampire myths I’d read. Stakes, crosses, holy water, that sort of thing. The fact none of those worked was curious, though. There didn’t seem to be a true religious component to vampires. We’re not evil, they seemed to say. We’re simply the victims of a blood borne illness.
I didn’t feel up to tackling answers about good or evil right now. I only nodded and fell silent.
After a quick glance at me, Il Duce did the same.
When we arrived at my complex, he parked in my space. I bit back my smile at his frown when he realized how tight it would be to get out of the car. Mr. Gunderson had done his usual parking job. No doubt Il Duce had minions to park his vehicles.
When he shimmied between the cars I held out my hand for my keys.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the chauffeuring and the rescuing.”
“I shall walk you to your door.”
“No.” I held up my hand. “No, just no. Hell no, whatever no, no.”
“Have I offended in some way?”
I turned. His face was partially in shadow, lit by the dim bulb over Mr. Gunderson’s car.
He was standing there still and implacable, his will almost pushing against me. It felt like a hand pressed against my mind, making sure I knew he was here and he could do that to me.
“Stop it,” I said. “Whatever you’re doing stop it.”
“You should not be able to feel me. That you can do so is unique, my Marcie.”
“I’m not your Marcie and I don’t like mind control.”
“You have the capacity for it.”
“I don’t want the capacity to do it.”
“A foolish statement, Marcie. It’s like saying you don’t want to use your legs. Will you forever remain in a chair, then?”
“I would counter that your statement is even more foolish. My legs don’t involve anyone else. If I choose not to use them I’m not harming anyone. Mind control is the active presence in another person’s psyche. Without their knowledge or their permission.”
He shrugged, a curiously casual gesture at odds with his formality.
“It’s the same thing a mother does when she coaxes a child to rest. Or police when they hint at a speed trap. A little persuasion, that’s all.”
I made a rude sound. “You’re trying to tell me a vampire’s motives are altruistic? I don’t believe you.” I sighed. “I’m tired of paranormal stuff. I’m tired of things going bump in the night. I’ve had it with all the damn questions I have that no one can answer. I’m tired, Niccolo, of you.”
He might have wanted to say more but I didn’t stick around to find out. I wanted safety, security and someplace normal. For now, my townhouse fit the bill.
I closed the door behind me, leaning my forehead against it. Slowly, I turned and walked up the stairs, dragging my purse behind me.
When my tears came, I wasn’t surprised. I was feeling a little weepy and a self-pity party seemed called for. I was a vampire who didn’t want to be a vampire. I was a pariah, weird even among vampires. Someone wanted to kill me and I’d lost the one person in the world I thought would always love me.
Nope, tears didn’t seem out of place right now.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Open up a can of whoop vampire
The next night I reluctantly dressed for school, stopping by the convenience store and loading up on high carb, low nutrient goodies. I didn’t want my stomach to growl during class.
I wiggled my fingers at the clerk, the one person I’d seen every night for the last week. She didn’t smile or acknowledge my presence.
Her wiry black hair, tied back in a quasi-pony tail, was threaded with gray. Deep-set brown eyes were cupped by wrinkles and narrowed from years of suspicion. She watched as I headed for the candy section, her finger probably resting on the silent alarm button.
I had a thing for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but the other stuff wasn’t bad. I dumped my candy and cookies on the counter. The selection made me look like I was a escapee from a Betty Ford type clinic for weight loss.
“Hungry,” I said, with a shrug.
Not a muscle moved on her face. I was tempted to shout, “Boo,” just for grins. Or command my fangs to slide into place.
My luck, she would know all the rules I’d had to memorize from the “Civil Rights and You” section of the Green Book. I was not allowed, for example, to use my condition to threaten, harass, frighten, or otherwise intimidate another citizen. Failure to obey the law could bring me up before the Council. From the little I’d heard of them, I didn’t want to be a focus of their attention.
I paid for my booty, got into the car and attacked the candy like I hadn’t eaten in days. Actually, I’d had a great dinner - steak, peas, mashed potatoes, and two slices of cheesecake for desert. But that had been over an hour ago and I was already hungry again.
I stepped on the scale this morning and I was exactly the same weight I’d been a month ago. The ability to eat anything without gaining an ounce was one thing about being a vampire I could live with - in a manner of speaking.
Halfway to school, I noticed Dan the Driver behind me. I tapped my brakes twice, getting an answering flash of lights. Had he watched me scarf down my candy? I hadn’t asked what kind of vamp-servant he was. Were they all linked to a vampire by blood? Did the servant donate his blood as part of his employment contract?
Maybe Miss Renfrew would be forthcoming about the servant/vampire relationship.
Stopping at the store had been for a two-fold reason. I was hungry, true, but I also didn’t want to be early to class. I have a pathological need to be on time and I tried to delay at home. The little voice I’d obeyed all my life was tapping against the crystal of my watch.
You’re going to be late. Hurry. You
can’t be late. Hurry.
I once read an article saying people who were always early were control freaks. They want to control the meeting, dictate when it should start, how it should be conducted. I didn’t think that was true. I was a control freak because my mother had been the opposite. Growing up always late for school, always having to go to the attendance office to get a note and lecture first thing in the morning had acted on my psyche.
I asked Santa for an alarm clock one year. Santa, in the guise of my surprised grandmother, had provided. From then on, I wasn’t late for anything. If my mother was still in bed when it was time to leave, I walked to school. My way way of dealing with the chaos of my mother’s life was to regulate my own.
Now I pulled into the school parking lot, wishing I’d noticed what the other Fledglings were driving. I didn’t park in the same place as the first night, but found a spot beneath a majestic tree whose leaves filtered the bluish parking lot lights.
October was chilly but only when the norther raced down across the state from Canada, losing ambition by the time it hit Central Texas. This was the time of year when natives smugly announced the average daily temperature was seventy-five something. The three days each winter when the temperature plunged to the teens, we cranked up the heat, put on our wooly things hidden in the back of the closet and suffered.
Tonight there was only a hint of chill, the warm air carrying it aloft like a gift. Here, a taste of winter to spice the senses, make you yearn for something white instead of green and ice instead of dusty winds from Mexico.
I sat in the car and waited, hoping the three of them would have entered the classroom. I suspected Miss Renfrew would be brusque and competent, moving the discussion to where it should be, on the things we needed to know, not speculation over Opie’s tragic death. I didn’t want to be at the business end of Kenisha’s venom, or have to commiserate with Meng. Nor did I want to meet Felipe’s sad puppy dog eyes and feel my skin shrivel as I fought back the feeling of being responsible.
The Fertile Vampire Page 10
