by Debra Dunbar
Before he can ask what she means, Todd opens the door with a smile. “Come on in!”
Dare steps aside and lets Penny go first. She doesn’t so much walk past him as scurry. Had standing back broken some new rule of etiquette?
“I’m sorry for what finally brought you up here, Penny, but I’m glad you came up to the house,” Todd says with a gentle smile that goes all the way to his eyes.
“Um,” says Penny, her arms tightening around herself, and Dare wonders about her discomfort.
“Your home is beautiful,” Dare says, to divert Todd’s attention, even though with large windows, it actually looks like it would be terribly bright in the daytime. It was the right thing to say because Todd beams and explains how he designed and built the house himself while he and his family lived in the trailer Penny now occupies.
Dare’s eyes slide to Penny. She’s looking at a photograph hanging on the wall. Her brow is furrowed and she looks confused. Todd looks over at Penny, too, and a wide range of emotions play over his face so fast Dare can’t place them all.
“Oh, that’s my brother, Tom, he lives out in San Francisco. Don’t get to see him hardly enough.” There’s something defensive in Todd’s voice, or maybe it’s protective. Of who?
To take the edge off things, Dare points at another picture of three teenagers holding hammers, wearing light cotton shirts emblazoned with the words, “Habitat for Humanity.”
“Are these your children?” he asks.
Todd loosens up immediately. “Yep, those are them. They’re all off at college now. Don’t get to see them nearly enough now either.”
“Mmmm …” Dare’s eyes slide to a framed biblical quote, Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” and then to the picture that had so confounded Penny. In the photo, Todd has his arm around a man who looks to be a slightly younger version of himself. The other man is wrapped in a rainbow flag. Dare doesn’t understand what could possibly be troubling about the picture.
He instinctively moves closer to Penny, but she’s gazing out of the foyer. He hears light footsteps coming from the direction of her gaze and a woman steps into the room. Penny immediately looks down, but Todd brightens and holds up his arms. “My wife Emma! Emma, this is Dare. He’s a magical pirate-prince.”
Emma laughs, and it’s a beautiful, light musical sound. “I didn’t know you were allowed to wear your costumes out of the park!”
Pretending he knows what they’re talking about, Dare bows, but steals a surreptitious look at Emma. To Night Elves, their own host always looks perfect. Love, sex, food … all wrapped up in a single package … no one could be more desirable than Penny to Dare at the moment. With all that he feels for her, he does recognize that Emma is striking. She has olive skin, delicate facial features, and the creases around her eyes seem to accent their sparkle. Her dark brown hair is thick with a few bold streaks of gray. Emma isn’t terribly tall, but she is trim and even the simple movement of stepping into the room shows off strength and health. She smiles at her husband and then at Penny and Dare. “Follow me. It’s on the table.”
“Thank you for cooking for us,” Penny says, ducking her head and hustling past her.
“I only set the table! Todd does all the cooking.” Emma laughs, and Dare can’t help but smile. He knows this couple—well, not them—but they are a type he’s seen from ancient Greece, to Svartalfheim, to World War II Germany, and England: the exceptionally beautiful woman who marries a man who is a little stout, but a great cook. Also, Dare is certain that within seconds Todd will display a jovial sense of humor.
He glances over at the man expectantly, and Todd jerks a thumb at the picture of his brother wrapped in the rainbow flag. “My brother got the gay gene, but somehow I got the cooking and interior decorating genes.”
Dare is sure it is humorous, but he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. Todd seems like a happy person, so he doesn’t know how he couldn’t have gotten the “gay” gene as well. Dare smiles and sticks to something safe. “It’s hard to live apart from family.”
“Yes, it is!” Todd agrees as they step into a dining room table laden with a tempting array of different dishes. Before he can ask about Dare’s family, Dare turns the conversation to Emma and Todd’s children. They don’t just talk about their biological children, they talk about Penny—how she’s wonderful with the animals in their boarding stable, and how they’re worried about her living alone.
Throughout dinner it becomes more and more apparent that the older couple wants to adopt her. He senses they feel the same sort of responsibility toward her that he feels toward Enit. There is haze around Penny in Dare’s vision caused by the bond of blood between them, or as Gretta would probably more accurately say, his judgment is impaired by a chemical cocktail mixed up by Penny’s blood. The other adults’ gaze helps him see her for what she is: a child in need of protection. He sees how uncomfortable in her own skin she is, and realizes Penny would be a terrible consort. In the shifting tides of inter-realm politics she’d sink him—and herself. And he notices she hardly looks at Todd, and looks at Emma while Emma isn’t looking at her, blushing as the other woman catches her gaze.
Dare realizes he’d be a horrible consort for Penny as well.
As Dare and Penny finally leave Emma and Todd’s place, Penny gives a sigh of relief. She’d never thought they’d get away. Dare had seemed so happy and comfortable with them. Emma and Todd had been on a trip to Europe and seen the cathedrals—Dare had some funny stories from the construction of said cathedrals—it had almost been like he’d been there. Which makes her wonder. “How old are you exactly?”
“Don’t you know it’s not polite to ask a gentleman his age, Penny?” Dare’s words are light, but his tone is sharp, and in contrast to the breezy way he responded to Todd and Emma just minutes before.
“Excuse me.” He sighs. “We’ve had a lovely breakfast—”
Her brow scrunches at that description. It’s 8 p.m. … but maybe to a vampire, dinner is breakfast?
“—but we need to get to work. Tell me how you got to be at the club last night.”
So Penny tells him, wandering in the direction of the stables instead of her trailer, just because the night is beautiful, and she likes to walk. She gets to the part about the red room, and the couples making out, and whispers in shock, “Do you think the humans there escaped last night alive?”
Dare shakes his head. “I’m sure they are fine.”
“But Hickey Man wasn’t giving that girl a hickey, he was sucking her blood!”
“No, he wasn’t,” Dare replies. “Aurel is against one-on-one bonding.” Which she guesses means drinking from someone alone. She bites her lip; she will not examine why Dare might say bonding instead of just “drinking alone.”
“Then what were they doing?” Penny asks. They’re standing by the fence to the pasture now.
Dare stares at her.
“What?” Penny exclaims.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Penny, you know how reproduction works, don’t you?”
Penny’s face heats. “Oh.”
Dare says, “Humans are attractive to us for more than blood.”
Penny swallows, not really wanting to think of the implications of that. He’s not put any uncomfortable moves on her though … she decides not thinking about it is perfectly appropriate.
Dare looks away. “Keep going with the story.”
Penny nods and continues, walking aimlessly back toward the trailer. She can just make out the back of her home through the trees, and is about to describe how she knew something was really wrong because of Windows XP on the computer, when Dare puts a hand out and says, “Do you hear that?”
Penny cocks her head but only hears the sound of insects. Her eyes slide to Dare. He is motionless, his head bowed and eyes closed. He shudders, and a loud crack splits the night. There is a thud, a man’s scream from the direction of her trailer, and then another cra
ck and a crash that she swears reverberates through the ground. In the barn she hears the horses whinny fearfully. Emma’s and Todd’s door slams open, and Todd shouts, “What was that?”
Dare releases a long breath.
“I don’t know!” Penny responds as Todd barrels past with a shotgun.
Emma is there a moment later. “Maybe you two should stay back.” She puts her hand on Penny’s shoulder and Penny bolts.
“Penny,” says Dare.
From the front of her trailer, Todd cries out, “Emma, call 911.”
Chapter 5
“We found your stolen phone on the guy,” says a police officer. “And an unregistered weapon. Can’t say I’m going to lose sleep over this.”
“It’s just so strange,” says Emma, huddling under Todd’s protective arm.
“Yeah, strange,” says Penny. The dead tree by her home had inexplicably dropped on a vampire. Amazingly, one of its branches had pierced its heart. The police don’t know he’s a vampire; all they’d noticed was that the corpse had “funny ears.”
A policeman steps out of her trailer. “Thanks for showing me your ID.”
Dare exits just behind him. “No, problem, officer.”
Penny’s brow furrows. Dare has no ID.
“We’re going to clear out now,” the officer says. He nods at Penny. “We gotta keep the phone for evidence.”
“Of course,” Penny responds, wrapping her arms around herself.
As soon as the cars and the ambulance are gone, Todd says, “Penny, if you want to stay with us tonight … ”
“It’s okay,” she says. “Dare can stay over.”
Instead of looking suspicious that an unmarried man and an unmarried woman might be cohabitating for the night, Todd looks relieved. “Okay, then … see you in the morning.”
As soon as they’re out of earshot, Dare whispers, “I still don’t know how a window can be in a computer … was the computer really small enough to fit on a desk?”
“Yes, it was small enough! I have a computer in my home too, Dare.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“It was on my counter,” Penny replies.
“All I saw was a plastic book.”
“That was my computer,” Penny groans.
His eyes get comically wide. “No!”
Penny rolls back on her heels. “You look a lot more shocked by that than you were by the fact that there was a dead guy on my lawn.”
For a moment, his face goes completely expressionless, and then he shrugs. “Last time I was here I found myself in London during the Blitz. I’ve seen worse … and frankly, couldn’t have happened to a more deserving vampire.”
Penny frowns. “I thought you don’t like that term.”
Dare looks away. “It fits him.” His tone is light, although the words are heavy.
Penny feels a shiver. “Did Nor deserve it?”
Dare shrugs again. “Accidents happen?”
“Yeah …” she says, her voice hushed. And that vampire probably participated in Chantilly’s death too. She shakes her head. “Look, the important thing is, they had their …” She figures Dare won’t understand QuickBooks and says, “ … accounting books open, and I could see that they run a blood bank.”
“A blood bank,” Dare says, his tone changing again.
“Yeah, that’s when—”
“I know what it means. We must go there, now! There may be humans in danger.”
Penny’s eyes widen. “The keys I found, I wonder …”
Dare says, “Grab them. I’ll be pushing the car.”
A few minutes later, they’re driving down Orange Blossom Boulevard, and Penny’s having second thoughts. “Are you sure this is more important than the club?”
“The essence we need starts degrading as soon as blood leaves the body,” Dare says. “The blood they tried to give me was fresh. They weren’t harvesting it at the club … I … I know … but it must be somewhere close by.”
“But Hickey Man … and my sister!”
Dare wipes his eyes. “I’m not engaging in podsnappery here, Penny.”
“What?” One of Penny’s eyebrows dances.
“Not everything that goes on at the club is … innocuous … but more people are at risk at the blood bank.” He drops his hand. “Though we will have to think of those romantic human partners at the club when we take on Aurel, and get them out somehow beforehand.”
Penny bites her lip. “I wonder if the fire alarm would work again … would they pay attention to it after the false alarm last night?” She blinks. “I bet the sprinklers would work.”
“Sprinklers?” Dare asks.
“Yeah, the building had some. They’re heat activated. Most public places have them. They shut down fires pretty fast.”
“What do they look like?” Dare asks.
“Silver nozzley things in the walls near the ceiling,” Penny says, trying to explain.
“I remember seeing them when I … ”
“Yeah, there was one by our exit,” Penny says.
Dare inclines his head. “Yes, right, of course.”
Against her better judgment, Penny goes to the blood bank first. But when they pull into the mini-mall where LifeBlood is located, Dare says, “This can’t be it. It’s too far from the club.”
“It’s only a few miles,” Penny says, parking the car.
“It’s too far,” Dare says again.
“So should we leave?” Penny asks.
“No,” says Dare, already stepping out. “Let’s back slang it.” He shuts the door before she can ask what that means. Cutting the engine, she runs to catch up with him. They don’t go to the front door, but walk around the block of buildings—which she supposes it what “back slang it” means. When they reach LifeBlood’s backdoor, Dare holds out his hand, like he’s going to try the knob, but Penny cries, “Wait, let me try the key!” She looks around and can’t see any cameras, so holding the key with a Kleenex, she slips it into the keyhole, and turns. The lock gives and they enter. A light flickers above Penny and she finds herself in a garage. There’s a narrow little van parked to her left that has the LifeBlood logo emblazoned on its side. Dare charges past it, murmuring, “No one is here.”
Penny looks down at the second key on the key ring. It does look like it belongs to a vehicle. Shaking her head, she skips to keep up with Dare.
The room just past the garage is lined with blood horchata mixers on either side. Dare stops and stares at them dumbly. Penny passes him and checks out the rest of the place. There’s a waiting room, a room that is obviously for collecting donations, a receptionist area, and bathrooms … absolutely nothing nefarious.
“No one is here,” Dare whispers.
Penny finds her skin heating. “Looks like they just pump it and dump it in these machines.” Using a Kleenex to hide her fingerprints, she opens a cabinet. It has a whole shelf full of shot glasses. Taking one out, she says, “I’m guessing that most blood banks don’t keep these around, at least without alcohol.”
“I expected there would be prisoners …” Dare says, as though he’d not heard her.
“No, they probably just advertise like everyone else,” Penny says. “Offer juice and cookies and the reward of knowing you’ve done a good deed. If they’re not completely legit, they might offer an enticement under the table … money … or drugs.” Had Chantilly been lured here for money or drugs—or had she gone to the club hoping to score some? Had the bouncer let her in because she was alone?
Going over to one of the machines, she pulls the handle of one of the mixers, and the glass in her hand fills with warm liquid. She takes it over to Dare. “Is this nutritionally sufficient?”
Dare stares down at the glass. “This is an abomination.”
“Does it have everything in it that you need?” Penny asks again. Something dark is starting to churn in her mind.
“Yes … no …”
“Take a sip and find out!” Penny demands, and somewh
ere in the back of her mind it occurs to her that she’s almost shouting.
Dare starts to shake, and she shoves it at him. “Take it.”
And Dare does takes it, but his hand is trembling.
“Sip it!” Penny says, and now she realizes she is shouting, and she’s not sure why.
Dare tips back the glass, his eyes slide shut, and then he downs it. Lowering it, he says, “It is … it works.”
“Then why did they kill my sister?” Penny roars. Waving her hand at the mixing machines, tears rise in her eyes. “If they have this!”
Dare at her, mouth agape. “This is wrong!”
“Killing people is better?” Penny snaps, tears spilling from her eyes, her mouth tasting like steel.
Somewhere she hears a far-off rattling noise, but she’s too keyed up to focus on it.
“We don’t have to kill,” Dare exclaims.
“They killed my sister!” Penny shouts.
Dare lifts his arms and shouts back at her, “Without the bond, the power differential is all wrong!”
There is the sound of shattering glass. Ducking instinctively, Penny sees red, feels warm wetness, pinpricks on her sides and arms, and gives a cry of pain. She hears water splash, blinks, and realizes it isn’t water … it’s blood, all over the floor, Dare, and her. She hears the sound of her own panting.
“I’m sorry … I’m sorry …” Dare murmurs.
Penny straightens and looks around in shock. It seems half the horchata machines in the room have exploded.
Dare steps toward her and Penny backs up instinctively. “I don’t want to go to jail,” Penny says. It’s weird, but it’s the first thing she thinks.
Dare shakes his head. “My word, I will never let that happen to you.”
Penny looks around the room. “We have to get out of here.” She walks to the edge of the pooling blood and slips off her shoes, picking them up behind her. “Can you hide our footprints?” she asks Dare.
“Yes,” he says.
Walking toward the garage, she says, “My tissues are all bloody; I don’t have anything to hide my prints.”
Penny isn’t precisely shocked when the regular-old-not-automatic door opens in front of her all by itself, or when they walk by a security guard and Dare holds up a hand and says, “You will remember nothing,” and the guard just nods and walks off.
