Last Vampire Standing

by Nancy Haddock

  I stopped in the office doorway, intending to tell Saber I needed to make a run home. He looked up and grinned.

  “Hey, good news. I got a coded e-mail from Candy, and she’s got a team together.”

  “That’s great. When are they hitting Vlad?”

  “Maybe tonight, but probably not until Thursday. They’re planning strategy while they unravel some red tape.”

  “Are you still bummed about not being there?”

  He shrugged. “Not much. I got a call from Jackie, my Realtor. She wants to show the condo tonight and several times every day this week. Think you can help me speed shop for all that stuff she wants me to get?”

  The Triton-dream hangover vanished. I had a mission, and I could pick up a change of clothes while we were shopping.

  In the next two hours we hit Tuesday Morning in Ormond Beach, a Target, and a Wal-Mart. I’d decided against buying clothes since we were on a tight deadline, but I did check off all the items on the staging list.

  “What do you say to going back to St. Augustine tonight?”

  “Fine by me, but don’t you want to be around in case Laurel and Marco cause problems?”

  “If they do, the damage will be done before I can get there. Wherever there may be. With Jackie showing the condo this week, it’d be easier to be gone.”

  “Good point.” Yippee. Fresh clothing and my own shampoo.

  “If you want, I can stay at Neil’s place. I’ve got the key, and he won’t mind.”

  “He might not, but I would. Bring your laptop, and set up Operation Vlad at my place.”

  “Done.”

  “Purely out of curiosity, why did you decide to buy a condo instead of a house?”

  “You mean somewhere more remote in case vamps—or back then, weres—came after me?”

  I nodded.

  “I thought about it, but I didn’t want to fool with maintaining a house and yard.” He looked over and grinned. “Plus, I knew the resale value on the condo would be damn good.”

  “Now you’re ready to take on the upkeep of a house?”

  He reached over the console to take my hand. “I’m ready.”

  By five that afternoon, we had accessorized Saber’s place to HGTV perfection. Aside from adding colorful vases, throw pillows, and art, we’d assembled a bistro set. We also packed Saber’s sensitive files and books with titles like The Vampire Slayer Handbook. Okay, so that wasn’t a real title, but those books came off the shelf, and the Starbloods came out of the fridge. Wouldn’t do for a potential buyer to see that.

  Once we’d finished staging, we spit-shined the condo to a show-ready gloss. Saber threw a week’s worth of clothes and toiletries together, and we headed out.

  Saber had just shut the tail door on the SUV when I heard a plaintive mewling echo in the concrete parking garage.

  “You hear that?” I asked Saber.

  “Yes, but it doesn’t sound like Pandora, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “But what if it is? Help me look, would you? She’s been gone over twenty-four hours now. She might be hurt.”

  “Cesca, I’m telling you, Pandora can take care of herself. If there’s another cat down here, it probably belongs to one of the owners.”

  “I know, and I won’t take it home. Promise. I just need to be sure.”

  I heard him mutter, “Famous last words,” before I began calling. Two Here, kitty kitties later, a little ball of pure white fur edged from behind the rear tire of a Jaguar and tottered toward me.

  “Awww, hello, little one.”

  I ignored Saber’s “Here we go,” and scooped up the kitten. She fit in one hand, and when huge crystal blue eyes blinked at me, my heart turned over.

  “Oh, Saber, she’s so tiny and skinny.” I gently petted the top of her head.

  “We need to leave her here so the owner can find her.”

  “But what if the owner doesn’t find her in time? Or is out of town? Or what if she’s a stray?”

  “What if Pandora thinks she’s dinner?”

  “Oh. Hadn’t thought of that. You’re right.”

  I carried the kitten, now purring in my cupped hands, to the alcove by the staircase, rubbed my cheek against her downy fur, and set her down on the cement.

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s roll.”

  Saber did. He rolled those sexy cobalt eyes at me, and then stomped toward a door marked Storage. He fumbled with a key and disappeared inside. A couple of thuds later, he came out with a medium-sized cardboard box, and relocked the door.

  “Here.” He thrust the box at me, opened the rear door of the SUV, and handed me a towel. “Get her settled while I leave a note for the office.”

  I snagged the back strap of his sling. “Saber, if you’re allergic, or you really don’t want me to take her, I won’t.”

  He gave me a rueful grin. “You think I can leave her now that I found her?”

  In a flash of warmth, I knew he wasn’t talking about just the kitten.

  “Uh, no?”

  “Uh, no is right.” He pulled me in for a quick kiss. “Go take care of Snowball, so we can hit the road.”

  Snowball?

  I didn’t say it. I never brought it up, not in the hour it took to get back to St. Augustine. Not when we stopped to get Saber a fast-food burger. Not even when Saber stopped at Wal-Mart to buy kitten food, a litter box, and toys. Nope, I never one single time mentioned that he had named the kitten before we ever had her in the car.

  Must’ve been our night for felines, because Pandora, in her house cat form, perched on the tiki bar on my patio.

  “Pandora, geez, where have you been? I’ve been worried.” Saber stood next to me, and Pandora stretched to look into the box at Snowball.

  “She’s not a snack,” Saber said, shifting the box away.

  Pandora huffed, than turned her amber eyes to me.

  Your home is secure.

  “Thanks, but what about picking up the vampire trail?”

  They flew west and south. I lost the scent in a few hours.

  Saber cocked a brow.

  “She said,” I translated as I unlocked the door, “that they went west and south, and she lost them after a few hours.”

  “Could be anywhere by now. Here.” He shifted Snowball’s box to me. “I’ll get the other things from the car while you talk to Pandora.”

  I nodded, pushed the door open, and put Snowball’s box on the coffee table before I hit the code to turn off the alarm. Pandora padded in behind me, pausing to sniff each room in general, then stretching up to sniff Snowball again.

  “Uh, Pandora, it’s just a plain kitten.”

  She will sense spirits for you.

  “Okay, good to know. Do you have anything else to report about the vamps? Did you tell Triton about the trouble? Is that where you’ve been all this time?”

  She swung her head around. Triton will speak to you. Listen. I will keep watch.

  With that, she trotted out my open door.

  Triton would speak to me, huh? He’d better, and he’d darn well better speak to me clearly, not through another dream. I was so over these veiled messages.

  Saber and I settled Snowball and organized Saber’s command central space in the kitchen. Laptop on the table, VPA files in their storage box stowed underneath.

  I checked Maggie’s Victorian wraparound porch for the cabinet hardware. No delivery yet, so I watered her plants which, thankfully, were still thriving. On the way back to my cottage, I turned on my vamp hearing to see if the Listers were home yet. Silence. Good.

  Saber got to work on entering digitized log information of Laurel’s movements into a GPS charting software program. The printouts would not only time stamp everywhere Laurel had been but would also plot the times her tracker had been working and when it hadn’t.

  I remembered to make the hotel reservation for Jo-Jo, and since I’d sadly neglected my art institute classes, I booted up my own computer.

  When Saber went to b
ed, I played with Snowball until I wore her out again. Then it was time to knock on Triton’s mind door. If nothing else, I’d tell him to stay out of my dreams.

  I’d missed the cushy embrace of my leather couch and took a moment to get comfy. With the charm in my left hand, the static quickly morphed into the sound of waves breaking on a shore. Triton’s mind door appeared in my third eye, already cracked as if he knew I was coming.

  “Do you know what’s been happening?”

  I know.

  “A vampire named Ray mentioned a madness in the senior vampires. And a darkness. Is that what you’re hiding from?”

  The darkness is the Void. It consumes powers, and its victims descend into madness.

  I blinked. I was finally getting real answers instead of double talk?

  “Why does this void thing eat vamp powers?”

  It devours the power of all who are Other. Vampires, faeries, the elves.

  “Wait. Faeries and elves are real?”

  Francesca.

  “Don’t take that long-suffering tone with me. I get it. Void thing is hungry and shape-shifters are on the menu, too.”

  Yes. We must destroy it.

  “Well, of course we must. You get me the destroyer handbook, and I’ll jump right on it.”

  In my mind’s eye, Triton shook his head. The Void is not a joke.

  “I’m not laughing. I’m trying to understand. Don’t you give this thing more power by fearing it?”

  It feeds regardless. You must help me.

  “How? From behind the scenes, like the way you held land in trust for me? Wanna talk about that?”

  You know, then.

  “I know. How much do I owe you for back taxes? You might as well tell me, because you know I won’t be in debt.”

  What you owe can be paid when we meet.

  “There you go with nonanswers again.”

  I must go, but be ready to act when it’s time.

  The door slammed shut. Damn it.

  August thirteenth. I woke slowly from a dreamless sleep, savoring memories of this time last year. The lucky day for me when Maggie’s hefty construction foreman had stepped just so on a rotten part of the kitchen floor and fallen into the tiny basement where I had been trapped for over two hundred years.

  The man had landed on the lid of my coffin and might’ve broken through that, too, except that the wood had been darn near petrified when King Normand had put me there. After another couple of hundred years of curing, it didn’t give an inch.

  His plunge had jarred me, though, and if I screeched a little, who could blame me? Maggie didn’t, even if it did cost her the man’s construction expertise. He scrambled out of the hole he’d made yelling about the dead talking, and dashed out of the house just short of vampire speed.

  Maggie? She lowered herself into the hole and removed the worst of the debris from the coffin, talking to herself the whole time. When she tentatively knocked on the lid, I knocked back.

  “Hello out there,” I remembered saying. “Please don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Okay, in retrospect, that sounded lame, but my friend Maggie is about as fearless as they come. When she said to hang on and she’d get me out, I stopped her.

  “I’m, well, I’m a vampire, and I’ve been here a terribly long time, so before you release me, may I ask for three things? Please?”

  “What do you need?” she’d asked.

  “Blood, a new frock, and a hairbrush.”

  “Give me a few hours,” she’d declared, and she was as good as her word.

  She’d come back with Neil, who grumbled that Maggie was insane, but she’d prevailed. She put Neil to work cutting the silver-laced chains fastened to the coffin while she drilled a hole in the side of the coffin near my head. After centuries of using vampire hearing to eavesdrop on the distant, changing world, so much noise from power tools right outside my box was deafening.

  When the hole was drilled clear through, a small beam of filtered light let me see with my physical eyes. Excited, elated, exuberant. Words couldn’t touch the myriad emotions rioting in my heart in that moment. I would’ve cried if I’d been hydrated enough to make tears. Clever Maggie soon fixed that.

  She stuck an extra long straw through the hole, explained how to use it, then put the other end of the straw in bottle after bottle of blood. I sucked them dry without feeling the least bit queasy from the smell, and then Maggie fed me water chasers through a clean straw.

  When the chains lay on the basement floor, Maggie and Neil took tire tools to each end of the coffin and gently pried the lid loose. I pushed from inside, and, with a whoosh of fresh air, I was free.

  Neil took one look at me and brandished the tire iron. Maggie? She asked me my name.

  “Francesca Melisenda Alejandra Marinelli,” I’d told the petite yellow-haired angel.

  She’d stepped closer, put out her hand to take mine, and said, “I’m Maggie O’Halloran. Welcome to the world.”

  That sealed it. Maggie became my best friend forever.

  The baggy blue nylon shorts, equally baggy T-shirt, and rubber flip-flops she brought for me to change into seemed indecent at first. Of course, that was before I saw my first bikini. I thought the bikini bra was a fabric sample. Now the hairbrush Maggie gave me? That was the Holy Grail.

  What a long way I had come. Correction, we had all come. Thanks to Maggie, I had a new lease on afterlife. Thanks to Saber, I had a sex life. Above all, I had a family of my heart, friends, and a future.

  And I’d better get moving if I wanted to enjoy what was left of the day.

  I went to the kitchen to snag my Starbloods, expecting to see Saber hunched over his laptop, but he wasn’t in the house. Neither was Snowball, and I wondered if Saber had taken her to PetSmart. If he came back with one of those huge scratching post hotels, I was arranging an intervention.

  A long, leisurely shower and hair washing later, I was in a short, silky robe, flatironing my wild hair as straight as I could get it.

  I was just about finished, when a huge bouquet of flowers appeared, reflected in the mirror with Saber peering through the foliage.

  “Happy anniversary, Princesca.”

  My eyes swam with tears, and I dropped the flatiron on the counter as I turned.

  “Oh, Saber.”

  I touched one of the red roses mixed with white calla lilies and ferns. Then I noticed the art deco-style vase he held with his good hand, and steadied with the hand in the sling.

  “Is this the vase we saw at Tuesday Morning in Ormond Beach?”

  He grinned. “I found it at the store here, and took it to the florist to fill. These are the flowers you like, right?”

  Dear man. “They’re perfect. Thank you.”

  I took the flowers from him and leaned in for a kiss, when a white, whiskered face peeked out of Saber’s sling.

  “Meow?” the kitten squeaked.

  Saber pulled me the rest of the way into his body. “Never mind her. Kiss me.”

  I did until I felt little claws dig into my robe. Then I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Mood spoiler,” Saber said to Snowball, before swatting my butt. “Go get dressed. I have a full schedule planned.”

  When I finished my hair and makeup, I slipped into my favorite denim Capris, an icy blue bra top camisole, and sandals. The outfit was dressy enough for nearly anything Saber had planned, and with the mermaid charm tucked into my cleavage and a spray of the gardenia perfume Saber had given me for my birthday, I was ready.

  My steps faltered when I entered the living room. On the coffee table were a bouquet of daises, a gallon of Publix sweet tea, a package of Fig Newtons, and three gift cards.

  “The flowers,” Saber said, “are from Millie and the Jag Queens. The bookstore gift card and tea are from your tour guide friends, Janie and Mick.”

  The Fig Newtons and Blockbuster gift card were from Maggie, I knew. That cookie was one of the first solid foods I’d nibbled on abo
ut a month after I’d come out of the coffin, and we’d spent so much time at Blockbuster in my crash course to get up to speed with the twenty-first century, the staff knew us by name. The surf shop gift card was from my hang-ten buddy, Neil. Not that I can hang ten, or even five, but Neil and I had bonded through surfing. A far cry from when he was ready to bash me with the tire iron.

  Saber cupped my cheek, brushed a tear away with his thumb.

  “They really like me.”

  “Yes, Sally Field, they do, but no crying on your very first anniversary. We have things to do.”

  The rest of Wednesday afternoon and evening, Saber and I made memories. First we strolled St. George Street, had a bite of free pizza (I took the smallest one), and then stopped to taste-test gelato. The whipped cream-looking treat coats the tongue like a lover’s kiss, and I couldn’t resist testing three flavors. Between the gelato and tiny bit of pizza, my stomach groaned. I can eat real food, and I eat a touch more now than I used to, but my stomach is too shrunken to tolerate much.

  We headed to the bay front next. Specifically to the marina. Surprise! We were taking the sunset sail on the Schooner Freedom , the replica of a nineteenth-century blockade-runner. For two hours, Saber and I sat hip-to-hip near the bow and held hands. The nearly full moon rose early, and we watched dolphins riding the ship’s wake as they escorted us past the city sights.

  After dinner on the second-story veranda at A1A Ale overlooking the bay (Saber ate, I picked), he took me back to the bay front, this time to the horse-drawn carriages. One carriage with white bows and bunting on the sides displayed a sign on the back reading Happy Anniversary.

  “Saber,” was all I choked out before he kissed me.

  Our driver was a man in his fifties with a careworn face, shaggy salt-and-pepper hair in a thin ponytail, and look-into-your-soul blue gray eyes. I knew that intense gaze from somewhere but couldn’t call up the memory. Then again, duh, I likely saw him every time I guided a ghost tour. Saber had to have paid the man something extra, though, because the driver didn’t start the tour spiel that was part of the whole tour-by-carriage gig.

  Saber must’ve read my mind, because he held me close and whispered, “He’s just driving us tonight so we can enjoy the evening and cuddle.”