As a commercial adjuster, I hadn’t been a delicate Southern Belle. My job requirements meant I had to go toe to toe with arson investigators, company owners, railroad inspectors, people who didn’t necessarily have my company’s best interests at heart. I had to know what I was talking about when I fought a claim, document it to hell and back and be willing to take the heat when defending my position.
In the thirteen years I’d worked as an adjuster, only two of my cases had been overturned by a supervisor. One was a train derailment and I’d thought the engineer should have been exonerated. Unfortunately, he’d later been convicted of texting while driving and that had called the earlier accident into play. The second time had been a huge mess - a developer had built over a portion of the Edwards Aquifer. The area had been riddled with limestone caves near the surface and a giant sinkhole had developed. My contention had been the developer should have done tests. My supervisor had disagreed since most of San Antonio was built over the Aquifer, our main source of drinking water.
I’d fought for my position in both cases and I hadn’t gone down without making a valiant effort. I’d been called a terrier, a bulldog, a scrappy little thing - a comment from a male co-worker who was nearing retirement. I didn’t bite his ankles because he was firmly fixed in the fifties.
Turning into a vampire, however, changed everything. I wasn’t on solid footing. I was unsure of myself. Plus, I didn’t know what my body - or my mind - was going to do at any moment. I wasn’t following what had been outlined in the “What’s Next?” pamphlet accompanying the Green Book.
Not only was I ferociously hungry all the time, I wasn’t pale and wan looking. I looked like I had a month ago, maybe better. My blue eyes sparkled. My hair had a sheen and rather than being a mousy brown, it had highlights. I’ve never had highlights. My skin downright glowed.
The rest was a mass of confusion.
I suspected Il Duce was right and I had the ability to call him. And Doug had showed up a little too conveniently at the funeral and hadn’t looked like he wanted to be there as if he’d been compelled. I didn’t want to test my theory on anyone else despite what Il Duce said.
Maybe I could compel people to leave me alone.
Fifteen minutes had passed since I pulled into the parking lot. I couldn’t stall any longer.
I grabbed the handle and gave the door a shove with my elbow while I grabbed my purse with my right hand.
The door wouldn’t open.
“Not now.”
I pulled the door handle, pushed against it with my left shoulder, but it was well and truly shut. I tried the door locks, but they seemed to work. When I’d tried to explain the problem to the mechanic at the dealership, he hadn’t been able to replicate the problem, ending up giving me the compassionate stare used by mechanics the world over.
You know what they’re thinking. “Poor dumb bunny.”
I tried it again. When it wouldn’t budge I tossed my purse to the passenger side of the car, placed my palms on either side of me, hoping I could clear the center console and gearshift without giving myself a proctology exam. The passenger door opened after a firm shove. I nearly rolled out of the car, finding myself on my knees, grateful I’d worn jeans.
I was reaching for my purse, half under the car, when I heard an odd sound. Not quite an explosion or a firecracker, but a combination of the two. A rat-a-tat-tat of noise combined with a plunk as they hit metal.
Gunshots.
Anyone with half a brain would have dropped to the ground and maybe crawled under the car. I think I was so surprised to be a witness to a drive by shooting it didn’t occur to me to drop and roll until long syrupy moments later. I threw myself behind a bush.
Where was she found?
Poor dumb bunny was hiding behind a bush. Guess she thought it was an iron bush or something.
The noise stopped, leaving a sterile kind of vacuum in its wake. Not a bird chirped. Not a frog croaked. Even the leaves on the trees overhead were oddly frozen.
When people streamed out of the orientation building, I finally stood, clutching my purse like it was a flotation device and I was in the middle of the ocean.
I made it across the street on shaky legs. People were staring at me. I couldn’t blame them. I had leaves in my hair and my jeans were covered in dirt. My top was probably drenched with the flop sweat of the truly terrified.
“Jesus, lady, you sure pissed someone off.”
I turned to find a young man with a goatee and bushy eyebrows staring at the parking lot.
After awhile, you begin to get accustomed to disaster. At least that’s what I told myself as I looked back at my car.
I wasn’t going to have to worry about opening that door any time soon, or ever. Silver dollar sized divots ran in a line from the tail lights to the hood. Both windows on the left side of the car were crazed and hanging by several large pieces, the sparkle of tiny fragments of glass littering the parking lot.
I wasn’t an automobile adjuster, but I knew enough to label my car a total loss.
Marcie copes.
Maybe I should have that carved on my tombstone. The situation as it currently was, however, I wasn’t going to have a tombstone. Nor was I sure that coping was what I was doing at this particular moment.
Shivers began from my stomach, radiating outward. My hands were cold, my feet twin blocks of ice. My lips were numb and if there was a brain cell currently at attention, it wasn’t making itself known. I stepped to the edge of the sidewalk, still clutching my purse to my chest. My stomach felt hollow or maybe it had simply dropped to my toes.
Dampness seeped up from the grass, wrapped around my ankles and stroked my calves.
I was shaking now, the urge to run almost more than I could bear. Fight or flight? Well, count me in on the flight side, honey. Draping the strap of my purse over my neck, I began to walk, increasing my pace as panic flooded me.
Marcie copes, my ass. Marcie was losing it, but I wasn’t about to have a meltdown in front of a dozen interested vampires.
My pace increased until I was loping along, a graceless gazelle in the night. My purse slapped against my back in a half hearted spank.
I began to run in earnest, my only desire to eat up the pavement, no destination in mind. I had to get away. I wasn’t even conscious of being myself as much as simply being, the days of running track in high school and college coming back to me with ease.
I didn’t have to labor for breath. I was breath. I was wind. I was part of the night, a creature that melted and surrendered to its environment. I was the gentle rush of leaves as I raced by, my sneakers pounding a relentless rhythm. I was me and not me, someone who was free of fear.
I heard a car or a truck or a lawnmower, some vehicle with an engine and took cover behind one of the trees. I knelt down, noting my heart was beating but not at an elevated rate. The runner I’d been marveled at the slow pace. Could I run forever? Could I run until the bones in my legs broke, then heal overnight only to run again?
Maybe I should in order to be safe.
I braced myself with an arm against the trunk, closed my eyes, and prayed. A simple prayer, one I’d uttered many times in the dark nights of my soul in the last month.
Help me. Beyond that, I had no words. I didn’t know for what to ask. Understanding? An end to this? Relief? Consciousness? Acceptance?
Something wet nosed my armpit.
I screamed and jumped. Or jumped and screamed. Or maybe both were simultaneous. Suddenly I was away from the trunk, flat on my back, looking up at the lolling tongue of a furry monster.
One who whined and drooled on me.
I rolled away, sat up, and regarded the Golden Retriever.
“You’re a dog.”
It goes to show how spooked I was by the shooting I was now talking to a panting dog, one who sat on his haunches grinning at me in the faint moonlight.
“You’d better move,” I said. “I’m a wanted woman. People are shooting at me.”
When they weren’t trying to run me down.
Pant. Pant.
I got to my knees, moving back to the relative safety behind the trunk, only to be followed.
“You really should move. You’re giving me away.”
Reaching out, I rubbed between his ears, which was probably not a smart thing to do. He could have rabies or ticks or fleas. He could have been hungry and wanted a Marcie Meal.
Instead, he lowered his head as if he craved attention as much as I did. I scratched him behind one ear. The blissful look on his face made me want to cry. How long had it been since anyone scritched him and told him what a good boy he was?
Although he wore a nylon collar, I couldn’t find a tag.
“Are you lost?”
He didn’t look scrawny and he was friendly. Stray dogs learned a caution around humans. Or maybe they’d been cautious before, which was why they were strays. Maybe they couldn’t bond with people. This dog didn’t have any problem bonding.
I wished I had something in my purse other than chocolate and realized I’d picked up some peanut butter cookies and hadn’t eaten all of them. I dug out the package which started his tail wagging. A difficult feat since he was still sitting but somehow he managed it which made his whole body shimmy.
“Do you like peanut butter?” I asked, giving it to him in pieces. “Every dog likes peanut butter, don’t they?”
He gave me the doggy equivalent of a smile.
“I don’t have any water,” I said. “I’m sorry. You’re on your own, there. You have to go home, now.”
He finished the last of the cookie, licked my palm and tilted his head like he was considering my words.
“No, you really have to go home. I hope you have a home. A dog as nice as you should have a home.”
I swear, he smiled at me.
“Go on.”
He stood, looked at my purse as if considering a cookie raid then finally moved away, the idea evidently discarded.
I watched him go, thinking of all those moments when I was a kid.
“Why can’t I have a dog?” It had become a refrain from my earliest memories.
“Because I work all day and you’re at school.”
That excuse had given way to: “They’re too much work. You wouldn’t take care of one.”
“Yes, I would.” I could hear my childish voice now.
“I don’t want one, Marcie. Enough about a damn dog.”
I’d taken care of my friends’ dogs, dog sat when I could. Why, though, had I never gotten a dog as an adult?
As an adult, I’d been fast tracked at college, then concerned about my career. My first big promotion came two years after I was hired at a national company. The second big advancement had been when I went to my current, make that ex, employer. I’d managed a division, responsible not only for its day-to-day operation but the tricky cases, the ones requiring a second look.
I’d traveled three days out of the week, which wouldn’t have been fair for a dog.
I watched him disappear into the growth of trees, hoping he found his way back to where he belonged. Hoping, most of all, that he belonged somewhere.
Everybody should belong somewhere, even a vampire who was beginning to re-think her decision about being a vampire.
Maybe I’d made the wrong damn choice.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Just the facts, ma’am
“Marcie?”
I heard my name being called. The first thing I thought was I’d been found. The second, after a panicked pause, was I knew that voice.
Huddled next to the trunk, I waited, hearing the crunch of footsteps on the road.
“Marcie?”
I peeked out from behind the tree to see Dan standing in the beam of his headlights. Something felt like a spider running over my hand and I jerked back, enough of a movement he turned and looked straight at me.
“Marcie?” He took a few steps toward me, hesitating on the other side of the tree.
Be nice to the nutso vampire, the one who runs into the night like a loon.
“Are you all right?”
I was so far from being all right it was laughable, but I nodded before realizing he probably couldn’t see me. Unless, of course, he had night vision.
Did vampires have night vision? Was that just one more vampire ability I didn’t have?
“I’m fine,” I said. A lie if I ever said one.
“You took off,” he said as I stood. I didn’t come around the tree, but I did stand and step to the side.
“I have that reaction when people are trying to kill me.”
He was barely four feet away, close enough he could catch me if I ran. The events of the night had made me cautious. Oh, who was I kidding? I hadn’t been feeling comfy since waking up in the VRC.
“You’re scared,” he said, in the same tone I’d used with the dog a little while ago.
“Hell, yes, I’m scared. Are you telling me I shouldn’t be?”
“You’re a vamp,” he said. “Most vamps aren’t afraid of anything.”
Well, I had news for him. I was afraid of almost everything at this point, including myself. I hadn’t the slightest idea what I was. Add the ability to call people to me without benefit of a telephone and I was just this side of whacked out weird.
“They busted up your car pretty bad. Why?”
“Because I’m a vamp?” I asked, using his term. It made me think of a slinky black dress and a sultry voice, not someone with glistening fangs.
“There’s a law about going after vamps,” he said. “Course, that doesn’t mean everybody obeys it, but the law is pretty strict.”
I nodded. Attorney General Pellam made it very clear vampires were the new underclass and, as such, would not face discrimination. He’d even announced that Mexican vampires would be granted asylum status, something not sitting well in Texas. But Mexico was still a very Catholic nation and they didn’t look on vampires with favor. Coming to the United States beat getting your head chopped off.
“You need a ride?”
I nodded again.
“You want to come along with me now?”
He was still talking to me slowly, his drawl more noticeable. He extended his hand to me, palm up, the same way he would to a skittish mare.
“Are they gone?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Never came back after the first volley.”
So, the car I’d heard had been his.
“If Il Duce thinks I’m going back to school, he’s nuts.”
He frowned, then the expression vanished as a smile curved his lips. “Mr. Maddock, you mean? Don’t guess he likes the name much.”
“He doesn’t,” I said, bending down and grabbing my purse.
Suddenly, I was tired. More than tired, I was exhausted. I wanted to be in my bed with my head under the covers.
“Would you mind taking me home?” I asked. “I’ll deal with my car later.”
“I can take care of it for you if you want,” he said.
“I have to call my insurance agent,” I said.
I still had insurance with the company I’d worked for - one of those niggling changes I hadn’t yet made. I was not going to pay the people who’d laid me off.
“I can do that.”
I decided the siren call to a single woman wasn’t an offer of money. Nor was it great sex, although it was certainly way up on the list. No, the most alluring thing a man could say to a single woman was offering to fix something for her or take out her garbage.
“Yes, please,” I said, before my feminist gene roused from being sucker punched and protested. Attempted murder will make Southern Belles out of the fiercest of us.
He held my arm with a soft touch, one encouraging rather than insisting. I went with him, staring down at the shadowed ground and picking my way to the street.
Of course his truck would be one of those huge honkin’ things. The wheels were so tall it required experience in mountain climbing to get to the sea
t. I sighed and pulled myself up, again glad I’d worn jeans.
Once he got in and closed the door, I wondered what brand of aftershave he wore. The interior smelled of sandalwood, pine and something faintly sweet. I took a deep breath, wondering if my olfactory senses had expanded. The scent went straight to the pleasure center in my brain.
I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, my thoughts carefully channeled somewhere between being the target of another attempt to murder me and Dan’s smell.
Maybe I could have overlooked Opie’s death. Maybe I could have chalked it up to a drunk hit and run. Maybe I could have even pretended the poor woman had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But tonight? What did I call tonight? It would be a little difficult to consider this a case of mistaken identity. Or a drunk driver.
Nope, someone had been aiming for me.
I could retreat to my townhouse, barricade the door and hide, which meant no more groceries or fast food deliveries. No contact with the outside world. But if someone wanted to get to me bad enough, they could always toss a bomb in one of the windows.
Great, now I had that image.
“You have to talk to the police,” Dan said.
I didn’t open my eyes.
“They’re waiting.”
“Then we shouldn’t let them wait,” I said, turning my head and looking at him.
Yes, I had definitely underestimated Dan the Driver’s appearance. In addition to smelling good, he had a smile to die for.
Bad choice of words, perhaps.
He drove a little ways until he found a spot on the road wide enough to turn around.
I clenched my hands together.
Evidently, in my attempt to emulate a greyhound, I’d run into the woods, away from the entrance to the school. All I can remember is needing to escape. My hind brain, or whatever it was controlling the fight/flight response, had been reacting to stimuli. I was no more conscious of my surroundings than a gazelle confronted with a starving lion: run, run, run.
Now the gazelle was being driven back to where the lion was waiting.
The orientation building was cordoned off, the area as brightly lit as a sub-division during a Christmas decorating contest. I didn’t want Dan to slow. I didn’t want him to pull up beside a police car and turn to me with a reassuring smile, one painted red and blue from the bar lights on top of at least three cars.
The Fertile Vampire Page 11
