Cherry Stem

by Sotia Lazu

  A man in a black ski mask held Alex by the neck against the living room wall, his grasp not loosening at all despite Alex’s struggles. I ran toward them, but a second masked intruder flew into me just before I reached them.

  He had no pulse.

  The discovery shocked me enough that he managed to elbow me in the face and flip me on my back. I listened for the other burglar’s heartbeat but got nothing other than the erratic thudding coming from Alex.

  I tried to get up, but the guy straddled my thighs. I had to get him off me. I thrashed and kicked but only managed to make him cackle. Cackle. Like a cartoon villain.

  “Stop that, Cherry,” he said, “or Mr. Marsden will get to watch me do naughty things to you.” The lack of profanity and the matter-of-fact tone he used scared me, but not as much as his knowing my name did.

  I forced myself to relax and tried to think. He knew who Alex and I were, so it wasn’t a random burglary. “There’s a nice girl,” the scary vamp on top of me said, caressing my cheek. I’d heard his faint British accent before.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the second vampire had relaxed his hold on Alex, who was panting. Before relief could sink in, the guy shook Alex like a rag doll, and Alex’s head hit the wall with a sickening thud.

  Alex slumped down to the floor, and I suddenly went from scared to furious.

  A small table lay on its side next to me.

  I made sure I could still hear a heartbeat from Alex and squirmed underneath the heavy man. I didn’t try to throw him off me. On the contrary, I rubbed my body against his. “If you know me, you know what I can do,” I said.

  His fingers closed around my neck, and he pulled me closer. “Haven’t seen you in action but wouldn’t mind a private showing.” His knee slid between my thighs. I tried not to gag.

  I reached out, and my fingers closed around one leg of the table. There was no way I could break it without him noticing, but wood doesn’t need to be sharpened to be lethal. Not if you use enough force.

  I arched upward and rubbed my cheek against my attacker’s neck. His free hand roamed my body. I made an effort not to flinch away from his repulsive touch. “I have something in mind for you.”

  “Oh, I’ll get what I want. Don’t worry.” He pulled away to look at me, and I went for the throat.

  I closed my jaws over his jugular, locking him in place. Before he could react, I brought the entire table up. Hoping I was correctly aiming the leg for his heart, I plunged it through his back with all the strength I could muster. Flesh ripped and ribs cracked under the force of my blow. The next moment, my mouth filled with ashes. I’d heard staking led to instant death, but I couldn’t have imagined that a person could be there one moment and simply not be there the next—nothing but a thin layer of white powder.

  Lost in what had just happened, I didn’t have time to pull back before the end of the leg hit my chest.

  Sputtering and blinking hard against the dust that was everywhere, I rolled to my side and looked around.

  The other vampire snarled and lunged at me before I could sit up. I was on my feet and swinging the table in no time. It caught him on the head and stopped him in his tracks.

  “You bitch!” He took a couple of steps back. “I should have killed you after all!”

  That voice I knew. “Willoughby?” That wasn’t possible. He was supposed to have met the sun half a dozen years earlier.

  Before I could move, he was out the door, promising we’d meet again. “And the next time, I’ll make things right.”

  Technically vampires can’t faint, but I was as close to that as physically possible. I went to Alex, legs feeling as sturdy as noodles, and let out a sigh of relief when he inhaled. Carefully I picked him up and carried him to the armchair we’d spent the night in. “Alex?” I was relieved when he opened those beautiful gray eyes of his as soon as I called his name.

  “Cherry?” His lips moved slowly. “Who were—What—What?” He let his head drop back and squeezed his eyes shut again. “Were they vampires?”

  “Yes. I dusted one of them, but the other escaped.” I took his hand between mine, and my heart clenched when he pulled away. I tried to keep my voice from wavering. “Are you all right?”

  He looked at me and, with a rueful smile, whispered, “I’ll survive.” His voice was hoarse.

  “You’d better.” Tears filled my eyes again, making my vision blurry. What was it with me and crying? Still, I could make out the narrowing of his eyes as he studied my face.

  “They—These are real tears?” When I nodded, he muttered, “I thought they’d be blood.”

  “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this. The guy who escaped was my maker. He was supposed to be dead. Dead dead. He must have been after me and you were in their way.” I shouldn’t have spent the night. I shouldn’t have…

  “What’s done is done.” He touched the back of his head gingerly and winced. “Why did you help me instead of run?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Because they were attacking you?”

  His eyebrow quirked, one corner of his mouth twitching before he elaborated. “They’re your people. You should be helping them.”

  “That’s not how it works. We’re not a pack.” I kept reminding myself that he’d offered to hold me and keep the sadness at bay just before the attack. For that reason alone, I wouldn’t lose my patience and bite him to shut him up.

  “So what?”

  “Do you help criminals out, just ’cause they’re human?” He shook his head. “I didn’t think so. Besides, I like you more than I do them.” Spelling it out for him should do the trick. “Plus it’s my fault they were here. They must have followed me to the club and waited until it was dark again to make their move.” There were enough holes in my theory for it to be used as a fishing net, but the gist of the matter was that I was to blame.

  “I don’t think they were after you.”

  I reached for his hand again. When he didn’t avoid my touch this time, I gave him a gentle squeeze. “What do you mean?”

  “Can vampires enter someone’s home uninvited?” He coughed like his lungs were on fire, and I wondered if he’d taken a punch or two before I’d come out of the basement.

  I patted his back. “No. They have to be asked in by the owner of the house or a direct family member. Unless the owner is dead, of course, in which case…” The horror of what I’d just said made me instantly numb.

  Alex searched his pockets like crazy. “My phone.”

  I spotted the cordless lying on the floor and rushed to get it for him.

  He snatched it from my outstretched hand, punched in the buttons, and brought it to his ear. His whole body relaxed after a couple of seconds. Not wanting to intrude on a family moment, I pretended to be very preoccupied with my nails but watched him for signs of discomfort.

  “Hey, Mom. The house is fine.” He blushed and lowered his voice. “Yeah, I’m eating right. Mom, I’m thirty-two. I live by myself, I know how to… Yeah, okay.” He nodded a couple of times, rubbed his throat. “I promise. See you soon.” A grin split his face. “Say hi from me too, and he better be taking care of you.”

  I didn’t look at him until his thumb began caressing my knuckles.

  “She’s fine,” I said with a smile. His mother was unharmed, and he was being all chummy with the back of my hand. Things were looking up.

  He cleared his throat and nodded. “Which proves my suspicion. They’ve been here before.”

  Another coughing bout took him over. I went to the kitchen, filled one of the glasses on the drying block with tap water, and rushed back to him, having managed not to spill more than a few drops. He took it with a shaky hand and a mumbled “thank you” and began downing the water greedily. Choking on the second gulp forced him to take it a bit slower, but he still finished the whole glass.

  Reverting to cop mode happened instantly, in front of my very eyes. The line of his mouth hardened, his whole face becoming a stone mask. He was scary in a way th
at turned me on beyond words. “We’ve never met before last night, have we? You haven’t…” He waved a hand by his head.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then I was right. They were after me.”

  The idea seemed preposterous. “Why?” I hadn’t meant for it to sound as if I didn’t find him significant enough, but he scowled.

  “I’m a cop, Cherry.” The scowling lost its oomph by the way he rubbed his chest, as if in pain. He waved my worry off when I began to ask if he was all right. “I go after bad guys, and most of the time, I piss them off.”

  I rolled my eyes and sat on the armrest, one foot tucked under my butt. “Supernatural bad guys? You couldn’t piss off the normal mafia kind?”

  His laughter caught me unawares. “It seems the supernatural is attracted to me these days.” He was still chuckling when he cupped the back of my head and pulled me to him for a kiss. Brief and casual, it felt like something I could get used to—if I weren’t a vampire or he weren’t a human. It seemed he no longer resented my nature and was still attracted to me, but I couldn’t allow myself to get comfortable with that idea.

  “Any clue why they’d be after you?” I tried to pull away, but he didn’t let me.

  “Been looking into some disappearances lately. Girls in their twenties. Beautiful, sociable, no direct family. They go to a club or a party. Then nobody hears from them again.”

  I pushed against his chest so I could straighten up. “Willoughby—” I needed several deep breaths to finish that sentence. “My maker, he turned me after a party. If he’s part of it…”

  “You think he’s turning them?” His voice was flat, no emotion coloring it.

  “I think you should look for them in Dumpsters.”

  “He’s killing them?”

  “That was what he was planning to do with me.” Making my voice gruffer, I said, “‘I should have killed you, bitch!’ His words, not mine.”

  Alex’s eyes narrowed, and his brow furrowed. “We haven’t found any bodies.”

  “Oh my God, I knew the other guy too. The guy I offed?”

  Alex arched an eyebrow, urging me to continue.

  “He lied the first time we met. He hasn’t seen me.”

  Alex looked perplexed. Of course Alex looked perplexed. Alex didn’t know, and I wasn’t making any sense.

  “I was in a couple of films,” I said hesitantly, “of the adult variety.” Biting my lip, I turned away. “It was a long time ago.”

  That was the perfect time for him to say something, but he was quiet, even the wheezing gone from his breath.

  “A long, long time ago.” I needed to know he was fine with it, even though I had no clue as to why. “Never mind. Forget about it. The point is, the guy whose remains I’m now wearing was the one who found me after my turning. His name was Ted. Back then he’d said he recognized me. That he was a fan.” Alex was looking at me, expressionless. I wanted to slap him. “Tonight he said he’d never seen me in action, which means he lied before. Also, hey, he was here with my maker! Isn’t it too much of a coincidence?”

  For the first time, I thought maybe my situation hadn’t been an accident. Maybe I was supposed to have been found. “I remember waking up, hungry and disoriented. I had just found my footing when Ted appeared. He made a big fuss about how he loved my work and insisted he take me to the council. If he and Willoughby are a team now, they could have been back then too.”

  Even my maker’s insistence on leaving the party early made sense with that scenario. Newly turned vampires don’t rise until the next evening, if their turning is less than a few hours from dawn. If my rising had been the following night, they’d have risked someone else finding me first, and the happy coincidence of my discovery just as I was awakening would probably have had to take place in the morgue.

  “Are you sure it was him? Ted?” Nice. He would pretend he hadn’t even heard the porn part.

  “Yes. I knew his voice the moment he spoke. I just couldn’t place it until now.”

  “Hmmm.” He motioned for me to lean closer, and I did. I was worried he wasn’t feeling well; perhaps he needed me to help him up. He smirked. “Can I get my hands on either one of those films?”

  I matched his expression. “If you beg, maybe.” I sensed he was about to kiss me again, so I got back to the subject we should be concerned with. Great though the temptation was, flirty territory was too shaky under the circumstances. “We have to do something.”

  He grimaced. “I know. I finally have a lead, thanks to you, but I can’t very well say to my lieutenant that vampires did it all.” He pulled me sideways onto his lap. “Any clue where we can find that guy?”

  “I told you, I thought he was dead. Executed for turning someone recognizable.” I loved how soothing his hands felt caressing my back, yet had to wonder how exactly we’d gotten where we were. I guessed his acceptance of my undeadness was due to my fighting on his side, but could we really pick up where we’d left off the night before? A question for another time. “A huge mess was stirred when I was found. The existing council at the time was overthrown. My turning was the reason for the ruling against any but the oldest of vampires turning people. Even they have to have a special permit.”

  “Maybe you should start at the beginning.” This time his chuckle was forced. “My head is spinning with all the random data.”

  Before I lost my nerve, I offered what I saw as a good alternative. “I can do better than that. I can make you forget that I—that we—exist at all.”

  He pushed me back. Not hard. Not a shove. He just grasped my shoulders and made me sit up, my upper body away from him. “No. You do not get to mess with my head. Don’t even think about it.”

  I felt the need to explain, if not defend myself. “It won’t be messing. I won’t take away anything you need, just the—”

  “No! You will take away nothing.” He threw his arms up. “God!” Upset as he sounded, he didn’t make me get off his lap.

  “I’m just trying to help.” Maybe, just maybe, I was sulking.

  “Help?” His eyes widened. “How? By making me forget important info about a case that may never be solved otherwise? By making me forget one of the best nights of my—”

  What I’d heard was enough to make me stop sulking. Whatever it was he’d meant to say next, I’d gotten the point. And I liked it.

  Not that I could actually show my improved mood, with him scowling the way he was.

  “I’ll pretend you never offered to do that,” he said finally, only slightly mellower. “Now tell me what I need to know about all this.”

  What did he need to know? “I guess I’ll just take it from the start.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I mean, I was sort of a celeb, I got bitten by a guy I met at a party, and until now I thought he’d left me for dead.” Alex’s gray eyes were locked on mine, making it exceedingly hard for me to remember what I’d meant to say next.

  I can proudly say I managed, nevertheless. “Ted, who went poof, found me, supposedly recognized me from my films, and took me to the council to record my turning.”

  “The council. You mentioned it before. What is it exactly? How does it work?”

  I took a deep breath, then let the air rush out noisily between my lips. “It more or less comes up with rules to be followed. And of course with the repercussions for not following those rules.” Like for spilling my guts about our kind to a human. But it wasn’t like he’d tell anyone while I was around, and I was going to make him forget about us when I said good-bye, whether he wanted me to or not. I had to.

  Alex looked at me raptly, waiting for the interesting part, I guess. Too bad there wasn’t such a part coming. “There are five council members. Used to be the oldest vampires that ran things, but after”—I pointed at myself—“well, most of the ones that overthrew them are younger.”

  “Why was the council overthrown over something that an errant vamp did?”

  That was a very good question, actually. Why hadn’
t I wondered about that before? Oh, right: I hadn’t bothered to try and understand. What I’d cared about at the time was that I’d never have the perfect abs, that I was hungry, and that my career would never take off. “The story was that the old council should have come up with rules against random turning earlier, and that the fact that they hadn’t done so showed they didn’t really care about the ones they were appointed to protect.”

  “And the new council cares more?”

  “I don’t know. The services that took me in had existed since vampires were first organized, but they’re no longer necessary, since we don’t have more fledglings, so they were…discontinued. That’s the only change I know of.”

  “Services?” He tilted his head to the right and cocked an eyebrow. It was unsettling that I already considered the movement a trademark of his, like I’d known him for a long time and not just twenty-four hours. “Like social services?”

  I could see the idea of a vampire society with an infrastructure similar to that of humans amused him. “Yup.” I popped the p. “Vampire Social Services. We called them VSS. They took new vamps in and taught us what we needed to survive.” I paused. “There was also a handbook to be memorized and destroyed before we left.”

  That got a full-blown grin out of him.

  I swatted his shoulder playfully. “Don’t mock, sir. It was helpful.” It really had been. “I wouldn’t have learned how to control the thirst or fend for myself without it. I’m not sure I’d have even wanted to.” Constantine had helped me practice what I’d read, but it wasn’t the time to mention him.

  He caressed my back, his long fingers drawing soothing circles that drove the stress away. “In that case, I’m glad you had it.” He leaned closer to me.

  I wanted to kiss him. He certainly looked healthy enough for more than kissing, but there were things to be discussed. “I think I should talk to the council about tonight.”

  He sucked in his lower lip. I wished I were the one doing the sucking.

  “Sounds good.” His fingers crawled up my neck and began massaging my scalp. “And I should keep looking at what the missing girls had in common other than their age and looks. They didn’t even all vanish from the same place.”