by Mary Hughes
But it seemed extreme. Elena blew great burning holes in skeletal torsos. Bo stabbed and hacked, ripping open bellies and throats. Julian slashed and sliced, severing throats and even limbs.
None of my friends seemed to care that they were slaughtering people.
It was not over quickly. Later I knew there weren’t that many attackers. But it seemed for every creature who fell at Bo’s hand, for every one who crumpled at Julian’s feet, ten more came to replace them. The attackers boiled up around Bo and Julian like a monstrous football huddle.
No matter how many were killed, the circle of gaunt men rose up again. Undeterred. Jumping over the corpses of their fallen.
Sheer numbers must bring my friends down.
I shuddered, wondering what I should do. What I could do, unarmed as I was.
As I knelt there, undecided, one of the gaunt men stumbled from the pack toward me. His hands were pressed to his neck. Blood soaked his shirt.
He fell to his knees just a few feet from me. Collapsed to the ground with a whump.
I crawled over to the man. His head was canted at an unnatural angle. His hands fell away from his neck.
His throat was almost completely severed.
I shuddered, covering my mouth. A scream rang in my head but all that came from my mouth was a terrified little hiss.
And then—the unthinkable happened.
The head moved. The neck started to straighten.
The throat…started to close.
Before my eyes, the muscle and gristle knit. Became whole. Over it, the seam of skin fused. Like clay smoothed shut.
Soon not even a scar marked where the man’s throat had been cut.
The body sat up. The body…man…corpse…God, I don’t know what he was…he cricked his neck with a loud pop. Grinned and rose to his feet. Joined again in the attack.
I freaked. All my cocky self-confidence vanished. This wasn’t kind-of-weird-but-sexy Julian biting me. This wasn’t sitting in a bar with Bruno whispering conspiracy theories.
This was blood-splashing horror. This was shambling hordes that kept coming and coming. This was fighting the battle over and over until you just gave up and lay down and died.
I ran back into the warehouse. Grabbing my guitar case to my chest I huddled, eyes tightly closed. Shivering. Wanting to throw up but only choking on dry heaves. “Shit, Oscar. It’s real. V-v-v…they’re real. Hordes of vam…vampires…they’re out there. I’m dead. We’re all dead.” In his case, Oscar hummed a scary little threnody.
I don’t know how long I stayed like that. I know at some point I cried because when Julian came, Oscar’s case was wet.
Julian didn’t say a word, only knelt and gently wiped my face. Put his arms around me. Held me and rocked me. Eventually I felt safe enough to open my eyes. I wouldn’t let go of Oscar. Julian seemed to understand, simply lifted us both into his arms. He must have picked up my clarinet and amp, too.
He took me home. Undressed me like a child and put me to bed. Settled Oscar in bed next to me. Found my stuffed Jimi bear and put it in bed on my other side. Only then did he leave me, and then only long enough to get some cocoa.
He brought the hot cup to me and made me drink. He had to hold the cup because I was still trembling.
After I finished all of it, he set the cup on my night stand. Sitting next to me, he brushed my hair back from my face. “Do you want to talk about it?” It was the first thing he’d said since telling me to stay put.
“Were those…were those what I think?” My voice was thick and the words garbled, but Julian understood and nodded. I blinked back tears. “But there were hundreds of them! How did you survive?”
“Not hundreds. Maybe thirty.” He took a deep breath. “And we survived because we’re the same as them, Bo and I.” Julian watched me carefully, as if judging my reaction. “But you knew that.”
“No,” I whispered. I hugged my Jimi bear tight. “I thought maybe…I suspected…but not really.” I had thought v-thoughts. But my picture was Count Chocula. Dapper and pointy and part of this complete breakfast. Not even light-years close to reality. I looked into Julian’s face for the first time. Seeing his blue eyes soften, I said, “Will I…will I become one now?”
“Oh, Nixie. Of course not.” His fingers brushed gently over my cheek. “Only dead people can turn. You’re very much alive, sweetheart.”
“Then…what are you going to do to me? Now that I know?”
Julian took in another deep breath, let it out. Giving him time to think, or maybe giving me time to adjust to the worst. “Nixie…we can induce a certain forgetfulness. But only in cases of brief exposure. And only when the memory isn’t set. The trauma works in your favor, but…” His eyes shifted away from me.
Meaning the worst. “But Elena knows. She does, doesn’t she? That’s why the bazooka.”
“Yes. Elena is part of our world, now.”
“Meaning what? That she’s Bo’s slave?” I could have slapped myself for being such a blind idiot. “She is, isn’t she? Bo’s blood slave.”
“She’s Bo’s wife,” Julian said gently. “She gives Bo blood, but it’s voluntary. All Bo’s donors give by choice.”
“Donors.” A shudder went through me. “A damn blood bank. People are a blood bank to you. No, it’s worse. We’re food, aren’t we? Like a smorgasbord.” I pictured rows of steam tables, but with people under the gleaming silver lids.
“I said donors and I meant it.” Julian paused. “Would you like me to explain?”
No, my mind screamed. “Yes,” I whispered.
“Vampires can’t make their own blood.” Julian caressed my hair. “Like people whose bone marrow fails. So we need transfusions.”
“You don’t…drink…blood?”
“We take transfusions by mouth. But it goes directly into the bloodstream. Not the stomach.”
“Not food?”
“No.”
It sounded like the truth, but I needed to be sure. I looked deep into Julian’s penetrating eyes. That was probably dangerous, given the whole vampire/minion thing. But I had to know. I saw only honesty and a tender compassion. “So once your bloodstream’s full…that’s it? No more biting?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “Red blood cells die, Nixie. We need fresh blood about three times a month.”
“Cows?” I asked hopefully.
“Only humans can make human blood, sweetheart. We need to drink from them.”
“And the…the ‘humans’.” My shivering increased. Julian was not human. “They’re all volunteers.”
“Yes. For us,” Julian said. “For Bo and myself, and those like us.”
I hugged my Jimi bear to my chest. My fingers stole to my neck, where Julian had bitten me, not once, but twice. “What are you going to do about it?” I repeated. “Now that I know. Are you going to kill me?”
“No! We don’t kill people, Nixie.”
If I hadn’t been so numb I would have been incredulous. “What about the warehouse? You killed dozens of people there. Slaughtered them.”
“Not people. And we didn’t kill them.”
“Oh, no. You only sliced and diced them—” I stopped, flashing back. The body that fell near me. A vivid picture hit me, the body’s severed neck, rejoining. I shivered and clutched Jimi harder. “Why did you do that? Why so much…destruction?”
“Vampires are incredibly resilient, sweetheart. Wounds heal almost immediately. The only way to stop a vampire is to remove the heart.”
“Without a heart, a vampire is dead?”
“Without blood flow, the vampire can’t move. But he’s not dead. Put a heart in, any heart, and he heals. Even without intervention, the heart eventually regenerates.”
“They never die?” I said, horrified.
“We can die. Burning destroys us. A crematorium, or if we’re out too long in the sun. Beheading is almost as good. Then the body has no direction. And a head can’t move by itself.”
“That’s wh
y you cut off…sliced…yeah.” I tried to swallow, felt like a baseball was in my throat.
“We had to disable the rogues, enough to get you and Gretchen and Stella out alive. But they’ll put each other back together before morning.”
“Fuck.”
“Yes.” Julian paused. “Before the fight…you asked me not to treat you like a child. Not to lie to you. Did you mean that?”
“Yes,” I said in a very small voice.
“Do you still mean it?”
I had to think about that. “Probably,” was the best I could come up with.
Julian put his hand over mine. “I have to leave soon, Nixie.”
“No!” I dropped Jimi and clutched Julian instead. “There’s still hours until dawn. You don’t have to go until dawn, do you? Oh, please don’t go!”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. Remember what I said about those rogues putting each other back together before morning?”
“You said…it’s because you didn’t kill them.”
“Yes. But we did spill a lot of blood.”
“Can’t you get someone else to clean that up?” I asked hopefully.
“That’s not it. Nixie, the rogues will go to ground and heal. And when they rise tomorrow night, they’ll need to replenish. Which means blood, and lots of it. Fresh, hot, human blood.”
That cut through my numbness. I gaped at him. “Shit.”
“Exactly.” Julian rose. “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe here.” He leaned down, brushed a kiss across my forehead.
“Wait. Julian. What will you do?”
He was already at the bedroom door. When he turned, his face was in shadows but his eyes glowed unnaturally red. “Try to find an alternate source.”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then Bo and I will need to destroy the rogues. Permanently.”
I eventually got to sleep. When I woke it was with a kink in my back from snuggling up to Oscar. It’s hard to spoon naturally into a Fender case.
They say sleep is the great rejuvenator, and that’s true. My natural optimism had been partially restored.
Yes, I had failed utterly in a pinch. But I had been unprepared. Guessing vampire wasn’t the same as seeing one. Reality was, it would take as much training to learn to beat a supernatural foe as it did to get a martial arts black belt in the first place.
If it was only a matter of training. I now knew more than I had yesterday, but not enough. I still had a bunch of questions. As I dressed, sunlight streamed through the window. If lore was correct, Julian would be unavailable until nightfall.
But it seemed Elena knew the answers, too.
I trotted over in less than twenty minutes. When I got to the Strongwell apartment Elena was out. To my surprise, Daniel Butler answered the door.
Everybody knew everybody in Meiers Corners. Butler’s wife Joan was my third-grade teacher. Daniel Butler drove the bus on all our field trips. I remembered him as the little silver-haired guy in blue jeans who handed out the juice boxes.
Today Daniel Butler was all dapper in black cutaway coat, wing collar, and silk tie. Like the understudy for Tim Curry in Clue or Chris Barrie in Lara Croft. Like he took his name one step too seriously. “Hey, Mr. Butler. Going to a costume party?”
To my surprise, he blushed. “Not exactly. I just, um, well…”
“And how’d you end up with door duty for an apartment building?”
“Joan and I have the first unit. It’s, ah, easier for me to answer the door. When the doorbell rings. Since there’s no way to buzz visitors in.”
“Uh-huh.” That rang as true as plastic wind chimes. But none of my business. “Is Elena in?”
“The mistr…Mrs. Elena is doing some shopping, I believe.”
“Shopping?” I echoed. “For what?”
To my surprise, Mr. Butler got all red and stuttery. “I can’t say…I mean, I’m not sure. Maybe groceries. I think. Or shoes. Yes, that’s it. Miss Stella grew out of another pair of school shoes.”
Intuition whacked a mallet on a really big gong. “And how is Stella and her mom? After last night’s…events?”
Butler’s eyes got big. “You know about that? About…them?” He glanced up and down the street, then grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me inside. “You can’t say anything.”
“I’m not planning to. But a) you can tell me where Elena really is and b) you can tell me how Gretchen and Stella are really doing.”
Butler’s face went glum. “Miss Stella and Mrs. Johnson are doing about as well as you’d expect. Not well at all.”
“Why were they at the warehouse, anyway?”
“After Mr. and Mrs. Strongwell left, Mrs. Johnson took a call, then raced out after them. Apparently Miss Stella followed her mother, though no one knew it at the time.”
“Gretchen left Stella alone?” That was unheard of. Gretchen was the best mom since June Cleaver.
“No, Mrs. Johnson left Miss Stella with a young lady who was supposed to be watching her, and was instead talking on the phone. The young lady has been severely chastised, not the least by Mr. Strongwell.”
“And Elena? Where is she?”
“The mistress has gone to find any spare blood in the city. For the rogues when they rise. I wish Mr. Strongwell would just kill them. In a way, he is too civilized.”
Too civilized. Something I never would have applied to Bo Strongwell before. Just like I’d never considered Julian Suitguy the type to slice off heads. My perspective was certainly changing. “So Elena went to the Blood Center?”
Daniel Butler eyed me strangely. “No, of course not! That blood is strictly off-limits.”
“It is?”
“Well, of course it is. That’s one of Mr. Strongwell’s duties, isn’t it? Protecting the distribution center. Especially now that the gang has come.”
I frowned. The whole Bo and Lestat thing obviously had unknown depths. I would have to ask Elena about that, too. “Where would Elena have gone, then?”
“The Stark and Moss Mortuary, for one. Nieman’s Bar, for another.”
“Nieman’s Bar has blood?”
“My twin works there,” Daniel Butler said, sounding a little smug. “Who do you think came up with the recipe for the Red Special?”
The bartender at Nieman’s. Buddy. Did everyone in this town know about vampires except me?
“If the mistress isn’t at the funeral home or Nieman’s Bar, you could try the police station.”
“The police station has blood?” That made even less sense than the bar.
“No, of course not. Because of Miss Drusilla.”
At that, my brain slipped out of gear. I had to work to grind it back into low. Drusilla was a hooker. Meiers Corners’s only full-timer. What did she have to do with the cop shop? And what did either of them have to do with blood?
Then I remembered Dirk saying Police Captain Titus was a pimp. At the time I thought it was a metaphor, like me saying Julian the Lawyer was a bloodsucking vampire. But my metaphor had turned out to be reality. Maybe the pimp-thing was, too. Come to think of it, why had I ever believed clueless Dirk capable of a metaphor?
So that was the link from DD-Drusilla to the cop shop. But where was the link with blood? Unless…oh, no. It couldn’t be. Not another vampire.
Except if Drusilla was a vampire, it would explain how Julian knew her. Suddenly I wanted it to be true. It would explain what they had in common—besides Tab A and Slot B.
Optimism fully back online, I turned to go. “Thanks, Mr. Butler. You’ve been a big help.”
“Pleased to be of service,” he said. “Oh, Miss Nixie, one thing.”
I stopped at the door. “Yes?”
“If you do run across mistress Elena, could you ask her to pick up some shallots? We’re having guests for dinner and Cook is out of them. In fact, perhaps you would like to join us?”
“I’d love to, but—” I had nearly forgotten The Mating Game at my parents. “My mom’s doing a thing. Hey, Mr. Butler
. Do you know Denny Crane’s new partner? Bart Blei-something?”
“I have heard of him, of course.”
“Is he a you-know?” Meaning vampire.
“Certainly not.” Mr. Butler sniffed as if he was affronted.
“Great!” I pushed out the door.
As the door swung shut, I seemed to hear Daniel Butler say, “But Mr. Bleistift is
a—”
But I might have been hearing things.
Chapter Thirteen
I checked Stark and Moss Mortuary, Nieman’s Bar, and the cop shop. Just for kicks I strolled by the Blood Center, but beyond learning there was a big shipment going through in a few days, I got zip. Elena wasn’t at any of the places I checked.
By then it was one fifteen and I didn’t have any more time to look. I barely had time to shower and change.
Even so, I managed to show up at my ancestral home bang on the dot of two. Which of course had my mother flinging open the door and shouting, “You’re late! Get in here and set the good china! And would it have hurt to dress up a little?”
“I changed my shirt.” I looked down. My original tee had a yellow triangular caution sign emblazoned with the tasteful slogan “Slippery When Wet” and an arrow pointing toward my crotch. This shirt read, “I’m Up, I’m Dressed, What More Do You Want?” Apparently my mother wanted a lot more. I sighed and followed her in.
Today’s apron was white eyelet. And my mother had done a full makeup, complete with lipstick and blush. And she was wearing heels.
This was trouble.
“I thought brunch was at two.” I edged out of my jacket. “And what’s with the good china?”
“I said to be here at two. Bart’s coming at two thirty. I thought that would give us enough time to get ready. But no! You have to be late.”
Late by Meiers Corners’s standards, where you were expected to show up twenty minutes early. Where two o’clock was one forty, and two thirty was ten minutes after two. “Sorry, Mother.”
“Well, it can’t be helped now. You set the table, I’ve got to check on the ham.”
“Ham? We’re having ham?”
“Spiral cut. Brown sugar and brandy glaze.”
It was worse than I thought. Similar to the Mother Test, my mother has a Food Scale. An ordinary family meal was sauerbraten or pot roast. Special occasions like birthdays got stuffed pork chops. Holidays with guests were turkey or Cornish hens.
