by Chism, Holly
And Richmond was just there, reaching out almost faster than I could see him move to grab Ray. And he tossed him away from me, sending him sailing fifteen or twenty feet to land in a snow drift. He started to follow, to continue the fight, and I grabbed the closest thing I could get my hands on, and yanked it loose to hit the older vampire with it. I heard the crack as whatever it was broke at the base.
It happened to be the stop sign. I swung it hard, like a baseball bat, by the aluminum post (which was cold enough to burn, damn it).
And yes, I did hit him. And yes, he did stop. More in shock than anything else, because hitting him was like slamming a baseball bat into a metal pole sunk deep in a cement footing. I sincerely doubt I’d actually hurt him.
“You hit me,” he said, shocked to stillness. Staring at me in surprise, his eyes wide and brows high (if he’d been human, I’d expect the lines across his forehead to cause wrinkles).
“I did.” I stayed between Ray and the older vampire.
“Why did you hit me? I was only trying to protect you from that human,” he said, pointing at Ray and trying to edge around me.
I was still holding the stop sign, so I decided to make use of it: I stuck the sign itself in front of Richmond’s face. “Yeah, stop. He was trying to protect me from you because he’s a cop, and saw me act scared when you showed up.”
Richmond looked past me to where Ray had come up to my back, a gun held at low ready in front of his right leg. “Is this true?”
“Yeah, it’s true,” Ray said. “And if you was a rapist, I was protecting you from her.” His speech, under stress, was a lot less grammatically proper than I was used to hearing from him. “If you know what I mean.”
Richmond relaxed. “Ah. My apologies, then. Would you be the law enforcement officer that has been working the serial murder cases where the young ladies are left in their own boudoirs, completely drained of blood?”
Ray offered a short nod. “I am.” Andi was making her way around behind the other vampire. I rolled my eyes and wagged my stop sign at her. She got the message. Thank goodness.
“Then we have much to discuss, after I do this,” he said, stepping up to me. He handed me a vial of liquid. “Drink that. It’s my blood. It will supplant his claim on you, and prevent him from visiting your dreams ever again.”
I took it, and tucked it in my pocket. “He’s watching from the entry way of the store. I want to be away from here before I do that, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“Ah. Not a bad plan,” he agreed, grimacing. “Would you mind if I rode with you? I’m afraid I don’t have my own car, here. It, ah, broke down in Topeka, and I caught a ride with a day helper to make it the rest of the way.”
I nodded. “Mine’s the ancient Toyota,” I said, pointing. “The passenger door is locked. Give me a moment, and I’ll open the trunk for your luggage, and reach through and unlock it. The electronics are iffy when it’s this cold. Honestly, so is the rest of it.”
“I see,” he said, waiting patiently for me to follow through on what I said. The trunk was first, and the back end of the car bounced under the weight of the duffel as he tossed it in, then closed the trunk. “How have you been caring for yourself?”
I eyed him through the now-open passenger side door. “Not sure what you’re talking about, there.”
“I’ve seen the footage of your departure from the morgue you awakened in,” he said. “But I’m unsure if you fed on your way out, or if you fed some other time soon after, or how many corpses you’ve made that will need covered up.”
I smirked. “My first meal was a coroner doing an autopsy who nicked his own finger. I had maybe a cup, and made sure he didn’t remember it. Also made sure he’d be more careful in the future. After that, I left town and headed west. On a coin toss. I only make corpses if they attack me or someone else, and the police aren’t real hot on making sure that the murderers of rapists are brought to justice. The cases are usually filed as a heart attack brought on by a drug OD. I’ve checked.”
“Ah,” he breathed. “That would explain what the young man thought he’d protect me from. So, he knows.”
“He tracked me through computer evidence and security camera footage from St. Louis all the way here, through the four weeks I traveled, looking for somewhere to settle. I found this town, a town without the awful ‘move along’ feeling all the other places I thought would work had, and I found a gorgeous farmhouse, right before the beginning of February, and bought it. I’ve lived here since.” I paused, waiting for traffic to go the way I wanted it to, so that the Mustang could keep me in sight—Andi’s request. And I realized that I wasn’t feeling the urge to flee, anymore. Instead, I was feeling the urge to answer all of his questions truthfully. That, more than anything else, scared me. “Why am I not scared of you, now?” I asked.
“Simple. I offered to care for you,” he said. “We’re well away; why don’t you do as I asked, now?”
I nodded. “As soon as I safely can. Probably once we reach city limits and get out on the country roads. Not so much traffic,” I said. “At this point, with so many idiots out on the road despite the time of day, I don’t want my eyes off the road or my hands off the wheel. So, that offer was enough to disarm my instincts?”
“That offer from me, yes. From almost any of the others, no,” he clarified. “I, and a very few others, have a special role in our society, one that allows me to do this without harming you or myself. This talent is rare, and puts me in the role I carry out.”
“I see,” I said. My tone, I was sure, made it clear that I didn’t see.
“Oh, dear,” he said, raising one hand and stroking a beard that wasn’t there anymore. The habit of touching it hadn’t disappeared, yet, so I wondered how long he’d been clean-shaven. “I can’t explain this well. It’s not something that is easy to explain at all, even for those who are well versed in lore.” He thought for a few moments as I kept us moving. Traffic eased up as we passed outside city limits, and I fished in my pocket for the vial he’d handed me. “Some of us have special abilities when we turn. Some of us can break bonds between sire and child, in the interest of protecting the child when the sire must be…dealt with,” he continued, placing his hand on his chest. “Some of us can vanish from human perception during the night hours.”
“I can do that,” I said. “I have to remember to breathe so that I don’t do that. It was harder than most other things to adjust to,” I admitted. “Remembering to breathe so that you can pay for the clothes you’ve chosen, or the gas your car needs…things like that were really, really hard to remember. At first. Now, it’s enough of a habit that I have to consciously stop.”
“Ah,” he said, mildly surprised. “Would you please…stop breathing for a moment? I need to test a theory.”
I shrugged. And did. I glanced over to see him staring vacantly in my direction, one eyebrow slowly raising. “Alright, my dear. You can breathe again.”
“Well?” I asked, glancing at the road, then back over.
“You vanished from my vision and my hearing,” he said. “I could sense that you were there, but not where you were. The sense of you diffused through the car. I do believe you inherited this from your maker. He inherited it from his. It’s…rare. And even more rare that the one with this talent is willing to work with me rather than against me. In fact, until I met you, I hadn’t met any of the line you were brought into continuing to pay for the things they needed once they realized they were…unseen.”
I fumbled the lid off with one hand and put the vial he’d given me to my lips, tipped it back, and shuddered. All the way down to my squishy insides. It felt…weird. Something pulled painfully, then settled. “Huh. I wonder if the ones with this talent specifically pick the ones willing to break laws to pass it on to,” I said.
“That has been something I’ve speculated,” he admitted. “I’m very glad you’re not one of those.”
“He didn’t choose me,” I said. “I was an accide
nt. I fought back.”
“And it’s well that you did,” he said grimly. “You said your sire was actually in the entry of Walmart?” I nodded. “I didn’t see him. I couldn’t sense him at all. You were the only one of us in my senses.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I’ve got a grudge, then,” I said. I pursed my lips, and thought. And realized I wasn’t breathing. Glanced over. And thought some more as I returned my attention to the road in front of us. There were black ice patches, here and there. But I glanced back after several moments of silence.
I still wasn’t breathing, I realized, and he was still looking right at me. Squinting, yes, but he could see me.
I took a breath and his eyes widened. “You drank the vial,” he said.
I nodded, making the turn to the country road that led to my driveway. “I did,” I said. “Did that make a difference?”
“I believe so,” he said wonderingly. “You were hazy, but I could see you well enough.”
“Does that carry through to my former sire?” I wondered.
His grin was a terrifying thing to see: I hadn’t realized that the fangs extended. “It might, at that, Meg,” he said. “It may very well do exactly that.”
I pulled into my driveway, feeling pleased, almost as pleased as I was creeped out by the fangy grin. And then, I asked, “How common is this for your talent? That you can take over as sire for someone to protect them from someone else, and you find that it will help you catch the one you’re after?”
“It’s not totally unheard of,” he said slowly, “which makes it far more common than it should be. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be needed. However. Though it isn’t unheard of, it doesn’t happen every time. I was unsure if it would help me as it has helped you, and I am still unsure of how much it will help in tracking—what did you call him, again?”
“I’ve called him many things,” I said. “Most common and least impolite is ass-face.”
“I’m still unsure how much help this will be in tracking him,” he said, gesturing at the vial I’d set in the ash tray/trash can, “but it was worth doing for itself.”
I turned the car off, and waited for him to get out before I popped the trunk for his bag. “If you don’t mind, I was planning on offering my bedroom to you while you’re here. I’m fine sleeping on my couch, and the bedroom door locks.” I fumbled my keys—my hands really were burned, I noted with distant surprise as I looked down to put the key in the lock and saw them under the bright porch light. I decided I’d need to have a warmed-up cup of blood to heal from that. It wasn’t charred-burned, but the flesh was definitely not undamaged. Frostbite.
He smiled as he followed me up my front steps. “I would be delighted, were I not kicking you out of your own bed,” he said.
I shrugged. “I don’t have any vampire safe guest rooms,” I explained. “The only one I can think of isn’t useful during winter—I slept in the storm shelter in the back yard for a month while my basement room was expanded into a small apartment. I’d offer you that, but I found out the hard way that I can freeze solid for weeks on end and survive it. It doesn’t have electricity, or any way to vent fumes, or I’d stick a heater out there. But it doesn’t, so it’s not useful as a cold weather shelter. Waking up solid and not able to move is scary, especially when you start getting hungry.”
Richmond grimaced, put a hand on my shoulder, and squeezed gently. “That sounds like you’ve experienced it. It would be one of the things you should have been taught before you were allowed out on your own. I’ll accept your bedroom, if you trust your housemates to not kill us in our sleep.”
I shrugged. “They haven’t killed me yet, and Andi’s been living here since October, before the attacks and nightmares started. Ray’s been here for a few days, and he hasn’t tried hurting me, either.”
He nodded. “The best ones have no wish to kill us. The very best like us for who we are.”
I shrugged. “I’d call her the best friend I’ve ever had,” I said, watching the Mustang pull in. “And if I hadn’t been attacked and murdered twenty-one years ago, I’d never have known her.”
Plotters Gonna Plot
I honestly don’t know what they talked about when they went upstairs, or what the two investigators had plotted out for Richmond. I decided not taking the chance of ass-face invading my dreams and finding things out was better than assuming he couldn’t. Because the bond, as Richmond referred to it, felt stretched and weakened, but not totally broken.
Instead, I went in, checked the auctions (my GOD people were willing to pay crazy money for dusty mason jars full of booze, and un-proofed gold coins), then started in on my interrupted market research. I’d tipped the chair back a bit on its spring, coffee cup cradled against my chest, staring at the ceiling when Richmond appeared in my library. I spun my chair, and raised an eyebrow. “Would you care for a cup of coffee?” I asked.
“Thank you, no. I prefer tea,” he responded. “If you don’t mind, I would like to take a chair by your fireplace.”
“Of course not,” I said. “I don’t even mind building a fire for you, if you’d like.”
He tipped his head to one side and stared at me in shock. “You don’t…fear fire?”
“Not in a fireplace, I don’t,” I said drily. “It’s quite cozy, and I clean my own chimney every couple of months during heavy use to prevent my house from burning down.”
“Oh,” he said. “It’s one of the ways we can be killed.”
“Lovely,” I said faintly. An ugly thought hit me. I swallowed, hard. Thought about leaving it unvoiced, but asked anyway. “How often have you set a massive fire to kill one single criminal?”
“More than once,” he admitted. “I try very, very hard to not permit it to come to that. I have removed two from the line of your sire in that manner. One in Chicago, during the latter part of Queen Victoria’s reign, and one in San Francisco during the early part of last century, in this nation alone,” he said soberly.
I reeled a bit, honestly. I was pragmatic to the point of not feeling bad over hunting at frat parties, or for killing I couldn’t remember how many violent rapists. But that… “The Chicago fire was started by a cow, according to the history books. And the San Francisco fire started from the earthquake.”
“So the memories of the investigators were changed to discover,” he agreed. “Those are only the most recent ones I can think of, not all of them.”
“That option is not on the table here,” I said firmly. “For one, it wouldn’t work. For another, I can see him even if you can’t. There are other ways.”
“With that, yes. But when you have only the vaguest of ideas of where the scoundrel is lairing, and they do not appear to any of your senses…there isn’t much choice. Especially if it works, and it has never failed.”
Richmond leaned toward me, brow furrowed. I couldn’t tell if he was confused by my morals popping up, or if he was trying to force his views on me. The pressure I felt in my mind and gut said that it was at the very least a mind fuck. Maybe he was confused, too. I didn’t know. Didn’t much care, either. Especially not as it occurred to me that he’d just admitted that it was a go-to tactic to destroy vampires with my talents.
I moved to the fireplace and built a fire. I needed the comfort from staring into the flames, and a small, petty part of me wanted Richmond uncomfortable. I pulled my knees up under my chin and wrapped my arms around my legs as I sat on the floor, staring into the growing, catching fire, thinking hard. He’d want me involved, now. And would probably want to default to the burn-the-whole-place-down strategy that had worked in the past, despite how many it killed. Or how unlikely it was to actually work, given modern fire control measures.
And I realized I didn’t want to work with him. At all. I really didn’t want him in my house, either, but I didn’t want ass-face to get away with killing another girl shortly. His normal schedule was creeping up on us. But. I couldn’t work with him. I just…couldn’t. Not after finding out abo
ut the fires he set, and the utter lack of remorse for all the lives lost, and all the livelihoods crushed.
“Will you come upstairs with me and see what your friends have found for me?” he asked after a moment. “You may see something that the rest of us missed.”
“I don’t want in on what the three of you have figured out,” I said. I paused, then went on with the first excuse I could come up with. “I don’t want to know. Just in case you were wrong about the bond being broken.”
“I honestly think there should be no further issue with your sire invading your dreams to learn what you’re doing,” Richmond said, “but I will not force you to do more than you have done.”
I sighed. And decided to be blunt. “Okay. I get it. And you’re not understanding. I don’t want to go upstairs with you. I don’t want to work with you. After finding out how many innocents you were willing to kill horribly just to nail one asshole, I don’t really want to have any more to do with you. Not helping you, not learning from you, nothing,” I said firmly. “Not with you. You can stay here, and you can borrow my car if you need to, and you can borrow my bedroom, but as soon as ass-face is dealt with—without setting anything on fire, mind you—I want you to leave.”
“You…want me to leave,” he repeated, stunned. “Not tutor you in the things you need to know.”
“I’ve done okay on my own for twenty years,” I said, shrugging. “Without the literature I’ve found since you contacted me. And I’m doing the assigned readings.”
“Much of our culture’s knowledge isn’t put on the websites,” he warned. “Those are far too recent for any but the most superficial of overviews. If you want depth, you will have to have contact with an older vampire who can teach you more.”
“Is it written down anywhere?” I asked, crossing my arms across my chest and narrowing my eyes.
“It is,” he admitted slowly. I gave him credit for telling me that honestly when he’d rather have not told me the truth. “Most larger groups have copies. I don’t know that they lend them out, but they have copies.”
