by Bee Murray
He didn’t answer me.
I expected him to lunge at me, or scream back, or—I half-expected him to kill me without hesitation.
He dropped his hands and looked at me, his perfect face marred by the purple blisters that the cross had given him.
There was something to be said for mythology and movies.
Vinnie’s eyes had cleared, and his deep burgundy gaze was tortured.
Vinnie. Vinnie’s back in control.
He grimaced as he pulled the pencil out of his neck. It lay flat on his palm and he stared at the crimson droplets that added to the mess on the floor.
“I — I don’t know what to say,” he whispered, meeting my eyes once more he staggered backwards, putting as much space as he could between us. But he didn’t account for the blood and debris on the ground. A sense of unease started at the base of my spine.
“Vinnie,” I warned.
It happened in slow motion. One minute he was standing, and the next minute he was falling, arms flailing wildly.
His eyes widened in surprise right before he crashed onto the antler coffee table.
A sickening crunch echoed through the room and we both looked down in horror.
Vinnie’s face creased in a brief half-smile. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Vinnie!” I grabbed for his shoulder, but he was too heavy for my broken wrist to support, and he slipped out of my hands and slumped over onto the floor.
The sound of my own screams echoed in my ears as I watched a pool of blood grow underneath him, a broken piece of antler sticking straight out of his chest.
18
TUESDAY
Must. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
So much adrenaline was pumping through my body that it would not surprise me if I could suddenly see sounds. It was like standing in the middle of a serial killer’s basement while jazzed on a half dozen red bulls. Fear, anxiety, adrenaline—it was a potent mix that made me aware of every single nerve ending in my body.
Vinnie just fell on an antler. ON AN ANTLER. Did he stake himself? We don’t know. Fucking hell. Did that seriously just happen?
I nudged Vinnie’s body with my foot and shuddered when he didn’t move. A pool of blood, dark and thick, was slowly accumulating under his body. The asshole had attacked me. I should have been relieved that he was out of commission, but the sight of his motionless body made my chest hurt.
This was… Wow. I did not anticipate this.
This was all so unnecessary.
Vinnie was a lot of things.
Selfish. Rude. Vain. Arrogant. Moody AF. Painfully inept? Sure.
But vicious? No. Not really. Vinnie had always been a lover, never a fighter.
Does that sound like a cold-blooded killer to you?
No.
For all his asshole tendencies, and despite his talk of his ‘monster’ and his ‘darkness,’ Vinnie’s soul was still bright. Homicidal wasn’t his default setting. I should know. I’ve made a career out of cleaning up after the ones who have given in to their own darkness.
He wasn’t evil but the vampire in him was trying to be.
I felt another wave of deep-seated hatred run through me for his maker. He referred to her as the ‘Crimson Lady,’ but that made her seem almost folksy. An innocuous vampire who had accidentally turned him into her little pet and then abandoned him on the side of the road. I referred to her as the fang-faced homewrecker who broke Vinnie. That crimson bitch ruined everything.
She destroyed him when she turned him into this monster and forced him to live in the darkness. This was all her fault, and she needed to pay.
But first: to the problem at hand: Vinnie and the damn antler.
The tang of blood filled the room and I choked on it as I tried to decide what to do. Vinnie lay on his side on the linoleum floor and I could see the end of the antler protruding from his chest.
The wound had stopped bleeding, but the pool of blood was thick and dark and I swallowed hard to keep from panicking.
I walked toward him slowly and bent down to confirm what I’d seen from across the room. The bleeding had slowed to a trickle.
That was good… right?
Forming a plan, even if it was an extra crappy one, would be reassuring. Plans anchored me when I wanted to give into the complicated feelings that filled my body.
Anger. Worry. Horror.
Soul-crushing anxiety.
I didn’t have the bandwidth for any of that right now, so I built a small box in my mind and shoved each feeling into it and locked it shut.
I picked up my phone and called the one person who would have answers.
“Pisces PR Agency, Elena speaking,” The tension released from my shoulders when I heard the bright, business-like tone of my favorite researcher at the firm.
Elena and I got along well. I understood her hatred of social interactions more than most, and she understood my need to ask questions without judgement.
“Elena, this is Tuesday,” I hesitated, suddenly unsure of how much to reveal over the phone, “I have a research request. It’s for a Level 10 client situation.”
“Go ahead, please.”
I bit my lip and looked at the pool of blood next to Vinnie.
“What are the indicators of death in a vampire?”
Elena didn’t answer for almost a full minute, and I held my breath.
“It says here that individuals who carry the vampiric infection, or are susceptible to vampirism through blood-borne pathogens, are deemed immortal. Sacred objects, silver, blessed water, and wooden stakes can wound them. Those with vampirism have perished through specific incidents such as beheading, fire, and a stake through the center of the heart. Death is indicated through sudden exsanguination of the infected individual, desiccation, or, with fire, combustion.”
I let out a breath. I’d caught maybe six of those words. “Could you say that again with smaller words, please?”
“Which ones?”
“The perishing parts.”
Elena only paused for a moment. “Sudden blood loss, drying into a husk as all the moisture leaves the body… and bursting into flames.”
I’d know the last one.
“Are you sure? What if the vampire was, hypothetically, staked near the heart with a non-wood object? Do they die then or just injure themselves for a while and take longer to heal from their stupidity?”
Elena sighed, and I heard the clicking of the mouse through the fuzzy connection.
“I do not see any research showing death of an infected individual through partial staking of non-wooden objects without showing significant exsanguination.”
Hope soared through me, and I thanked Elena politely before putting her on mute.
There was so much tension in my body
“You selfish, stupid jerk!” I yelled at Vinnie’s prone body. “You don’t get to just die by antler. You don’t die unless I tell you to!”
Unmuting Elena, I thanked her again for her time and asked her a few more questions about vampiric first aid, which she dutifully answered.
I ended the call and set the phone down carefully on the broken table.
Pisces PR’s contract with Cainin Records would end as soon as I delivered Vinnie into their care. They could work out all the messiness of what to do with his undead career without me. I was just the chaos coordinator, someone else would have to manage him.
After that, he’d be filed away as just another case that went awry. Vinnie and I would go our separate ways, and I would conveniently leave out a few of the juicier details in the debrief report. Carlyn would assign me a new client and send me off to solve a new crisis. It would be business as usual. That would be it.
“I’ll fix this, Vinnie. I promise. Even if I have to go rogue,” I muttered.
The cabin was a disaster all around me. Shards of glass, splintered wood, the broken crucifix… I made a mental note to tell Carlyn that we would need a special clean-up crew out here. It looked like a murder
scene and you can’t outsource that kind of clean up to just anyone.
If it was the last thing I ever did, I was going to make sure that the Fang-Faced Homewrecker died screaming for what she’d done to Vinnie.
Now, I’m no expert on vampire mythology, but according to most of the movies I’ve seen, there was a way to partially reverse some effects of vampirism. Dark magic was part of it, but it was the link with the senior blood link in the afflicted’s chain that had to be severed.
Cut the cord. Cure the vamp.
It sounded easy enough. And who’s saying that I wouldn’t be doing a bunch of vamps a favor? I hardly believe that crimson bitch wouldn’t have started (or stopped) with Vinnie.
I wasn’t a witch or familiar with magic—dark or light. But the work I do means that I have access to all kinds of people who, for the right price, would sever just about anything you want.
One in particular stood out and I closed my eyes in dread, knowing what I had to do. I hated asking for help. The cost of asking was often too high to pay. But this situation was different and Carlyn had trained me well.
If you want something done right, you have to surround yourself with the best. Don’t fuck around with the ones who are still learning their craft, just go straight to the master. My pulse rocketed as I reached for my phone. Everything in me screamed that this was a bad idea.
I looked down at Vinnie, my most recent bad idea, sprawled out on the floor. It gave me strength and I took a deep breath.
I’ve worked in this world long enough that I’ve accumulated a few IOUs and favors to various people. That’s all this was. Calling in a favor.
My bloodstained fingers were steady when I gripped the phone and dialed a number I knew by heart.
My eyes were locked on Vinnie’s prone frame, and I swallowed hard. This could be beyond the favor owed. But if they asked for payment, I already knew that I would give them whatever they asked.
“Answer the phone. Answer the phone. Answer the freaking phone.” I chanted as I tapped my toe on the sticky floor.
“Tuesday,” the voice greeted me with warmth and my skin immediately started crawling. If I wasn’t careful, I would be in over my head before I’d realized I’d left the shore.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Ugh, so slimy. Shudder.
“I — I need a favor,” I said firmly. “There’s a person of interest that I must locate and I only have a name: Apogee. I’ll send the file. This is… personal.” I tried to convey confidence. These kinds of people only respected force. Any sign of weakness would see me eaten alive.
The silence on the other end of the line was charged, and anxiety crept up my spine while I waited for a response. I never asked for favors. Ever. But this one—this one was worth it.
Vinnie was worth it.
“Apogee is outside the realm of a favor, little bit. I can get you the information you seek. You know the price?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded almost gleeful, and I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat.
Sometimes you have to deal with scary players to find scarier players. Pull it together, Tuesday.
“I do,” I whispered and closed my eyes against the sudden feeling of panic that washed over me. There was no turning back now.
“We will begin immediately. Send the information the usual way. I’ll look forward to seeing you in person soon to collect. It’s been too long, Tuesday.”
The line went dead and I let out a shaking breath as I slumped against the wall
OK.
That Fang-Faced Homewrecker would be taken care of in the future. We would find her and I would free Vinnie from her clutches. This I vowed. Now, I just had to get him awake.
According to Elena, the biggest issue for injured vampires was the blood loss. If they lost too much blood, they didn’t die, but they sank into a coma until they received an infusion of blood.
I pushed at Vinnie’s shoulder with my foot.
“Drama queen.”
Blood.
Everything always comes down to blood. We had at least a pint on the ground. I wondered if there was a way to somehow sop it up and reuse it somehow. The idea of being on my hands and knees wringing a bloody washcloth out into a teacup made me gag.
Nope. That plan would not work.
My hand drifted to my inner thigh and caressed the two puncture marks he’d made. I hadn’t even given him the chance to heal me properly before I’d bounced out of bed and launched this total mess into motion.
I could donate some blood to this effort, but I have no idea how to safely do that.
The regular method wouldn’t work… for reasons.
Merde.
Elena had mentioned that it was imperative to render some form of basic first aid to a vampire if they were severely injured. I wasn’t up on all the latest vampire health directives, but I was pretty sure that ‘antler embedded in chest, currently unconscious and bleeding out’ qualified as a severe injury.
That’s a plan. It’s not a good one, but it’s a plan, and that was all I needed.
Satisfied that I had a starting point, I carefully made my way back to the kitchen for a bottle of whiskey and a roll of paper towels. Looking down at my sticky, scratched, blood-streaked legs, I figured a pair of pants might be a good idea. I was still naked under Vinnie’s shirt. I desperately wanted a shower, but getting Vinnie into some kind of recovery was my priority.
Vampirism was, at its core, an infection from a blood-borne pathogen. You usually couldn’t get it if a vampire bit you. It was usually shared through repeated ingestion of vampire blood, or through blood transfusion. I was covered in more blood than Carrie on prom night, and that worried me.
As a human, I have more blood supply than a vampire so it would stand to reason that most of the blood that covered me was my own. But when I threw an elbow and crushed Vinnie’s nose or when he leaked out blood after falling on that stupid, hideous table… that blood could have risks.
Bandaging, cleaning, and covering my wounds had to come first, in order to stay on the safe side.
The first aid kit in the bathroom was woefully inadequate for the aftermath of a vampire attack, but I made it work.
I turned on the tap, ran the water as hot as I could manage it, and plunged my cut leg under it. I gritted my teeth as the scalding water cleansed my wounds. The cuts weren’t nearly as deep as I had initially thought, and I slathered them both with antibiotic ointment and some colloidal silver. I did not know if the silver would help prevent a vampiric infection, but it couldn’t hurt. Bonus? It would definitely prevent any vampire biting for a while.
I found a small brace in the first aid kit and a bottle of acetaminophen and almost cried with victory. Wrestling the cap off the bottle, I poured four tablets into my hand and swallowed them with a generous shot of whiskey. The soft brace barely fit over my wrist, but I was thankful for it.
Once bandaged, I chanced a look in the mirror and gasped in horror at my reflection. I looked like a shadow of my former self. My complexion was deathly pale with deep purple circles under my eyes. My hair, normally shiny and thick, hung limp and matted. Fingertip bruises decorated my upper arms and a long scratch traced its way from the top of my shoulder to the underside of my breast.
I looked like I had literally been through hell. All that was missing was a burn mark or two, but it was still early in the day.
I took another swig of whiskey straight from the bottle and choked as the amber liquid burned down my throat and warmed my chest.
Ok.
I could do this.
Clothing. Clothing helps. If nothing else, clothing made one feel a little more human. After everything that had happened, I desperately needed some human time.
Except clothing was in short supply. The cabin came equipped with necessities like bedding, towels, and coffee but it did not have an extra stash of clothes. We only had what we had been wearing when we escaped Vinnie’s house, plus a few odds and ends we’d s
tolen on our journey here. My spare set that I normally kept in my tote bag was taken by our foray to Vinnie’s penthouse. I kicked myself for not restocking before we went to the book club meeting but it’s not as if I could have predicted all of this.
I had to be strategic about this, so I had something acceptable to wear out to the grocery store if needed.
Vinnie’s flannel shirt was shot to hell, but it was cozy and warm, so I kept it and rolled the sleeves up as far as I could. Vinnie’s jeans were still on the floor of the bedroom, and they wouldn’t fit me if I tried. Those weren’t an option. I still had his t-shirt from the other night before the apocalypse of our own making, and my fleece jacket. My jeans were missing, probably somewhere in the bedroom. That wasn’t a lot to go on.
The coveralls I had snagged from the garage when we’d left Seattle (to match the hat, of course) peeked out from my bag in the corner. Perfect.
They were three times too big and smelled strongly of diesel, cheap cigarettes, and motor oil, but they were sturdy and would cover me. My hair was hopelessly tangled and matted and I didn’t have the time it would take to fix it, so I just swept it up in a messy bun on top of my head. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe I will just chop it all off at the end of this. It can be a cleansing moment.
Even cleaned up, I still looked like some sort of lost soul from a horror movie, but at least this time I looked more like the serial killer and less like the victim.
Channel your inner Dexter, Tuesday. You can do this!
I saluted my reflection grimly and gathered my supplies—including the shower curtain and the loofah from the tub. Better to be over prepared than under-prepared, I always say.
Vinnie was in the exact spot I’d left him in, and that was comforting.
I moved the lamp from the side table to the floor and spread the shower curtain out on a relatively blood-and-glass-free section of the floor. With a grunt, I grabbed Vinnie by the ankles and dragged him to the shower curtain. It was like moving a boulder with one hand, but inch by inch, I maneuvered him enough to have most of his body on the plastic.
