Fatal Retribution

by Diana Graves

  “Goddess,” I breathed. I could feel his hips working against mine, grinding himself inside of me, thrusting inside of me, fast and deep.

  “That is how it could be,” Melvern said, his voice slid over my skin like melting ice. I shivered. My knees were weak and my head was a little lighter. I swallowed past the lump in my throat.

  “Did you put that thought in my head?” I whispered because that was all I could do.

  “Would you like it to be more than a thought?”

  “Um, I’m sorry but I—I can’t. I don’t mean any disrespect.” I was blinking too much and too fast in my sudden anxiety. How do you turn down a vampire, a master vampire? Shit.

  He nodded, laughing. I was so confused.

  “What do you think of Mato?” he asked right out of left field. It was such a drastic change of subject that I had to take a moment to catch up, but before I could say anything he continued. “You don’t have to say anything. I knew what you thought of him the moment I asked the question. You are an open book to me. He likes you a great deal more than you like him I think.”

  “We just met not even an hour ago,” I said, and now I was really confused.

  “Every vampire has a talent, though some are a jack of all trades. Mato has a great ability to read people. He knows a person’s quality within seconds of meeting them. He knows you better than you know yourself and he likes what he sees.”

  “So, he can see the future?”

  “No,” Melvern began. “He doesn’t know what makes you special, he simply knows you are. Though, right now he’s worried that I might be stealing you away from him before he even gets a chance to woo you.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  He shrugged, “We’ve long been friends, nearly three hundred years now.”

  “Oh, I get it. You’re buddies, and you wanted to check out the girl before your friend gets his heart broken.”

  “Yes, in a way. If you jumped at a chance to sleep with me, like most women would after such a vision, I would have intervened—but I think Mato may have you pegged.”

  “As what?”

  “Honorable, dependable, caring, trustworthy, and brave—those are the words running around in his mind when he thinks of you. The words in your mind have more to do with lust, so far.”

  “What strange sort of cruel friend are you?”

  “The best sort, the sort that would seduce any woman to save him pain.”

  “And does he thank you for this service?”

  “Never,” he said with a laugh. He left our conversation at that and I felt strangely exposed, confused and somewhere deep down flattered.

  10:

  I WATCHED MELVERN walk away, back to the crowd of people surrounding the sitting area. The false memory of having sex with him was too fresh in my mind not to blush when I caught myself admiring his strong back-side. I was ashamed of it, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of him, sexually at least. The imaginary sex felt so real, so tangible.

  “Raina?” Mato said from a few feet away. I jumped and instantly blushed—more if that was at all possible. I’d been staring at Melvern for how long? I didn’t know.

  “Yes?”

  Mato seemed to search for his words on the floor, as though they were written there for him to read from. “May I talk with you?”

  “Yes,” I said tentatively. “But, can we talk outside? I think I need some fresh air.”

  He looked up and back at the table of food. “Have you had enough to eat?”

  “No, but I’m fine,” I said and he tilted his head toward the elevator, telling me to lead the way, so I did.

  The town was bustling with life. I could appreciate it more knowing that my brothers would live, sort of. The streets and shops were filled with people and creatures of all kinds going on about their night. The locals mostly consisted of vampires like Mato. Many of them had visible tattoos covering their arms, legs and faces. It wasn’t uncommon for collectives to have identifiable tattoos. Seth had three green dots between his thumb and pointer finger with red vines forming the letters B.F. for his collective, Bastion Fatal. It would seem that these Native vamps adopted the practice, and took it to the extreme.

  I cracked a big smile when I saw a gothic Starbucks on the corner of Bite Me Street right next to Dark Ally’s BooX, a welcomed bit of unexpected normalcy in all this freakish chaos.

  “Can we get some coffee?” I asked Mato.

  He was standing by my side, looking down at me with an oh-so-serious face, but he nodded. The serious face worried me.

  I took in the town as we made our way toward the café. I was noticing more about the town than I had when we arrived this morning. Horse drawn carriages strolled up and down the main street. Dark and sinister looking totem poles and gaudy street lamps stood tall, overshadowed only by the old overgrown forest that seemed to have the entire town closely surrounded. Gargoyles were perched high on the court house but they were like no gargoyles I had ever seen. They seemed a strange mix of Gothic Victorian and Native American design, much like the rest of this town. The names of the roads and shops gave the town away as a tourist destination. Names like Coffin Threads Clothing Store and Dante’s Inferno Bakery put a much needed smile on my face. Mato didn’t smile. Maybe he didn’t agree with Darkness appealing to the vacationing masses. Maybe he saw it as selling out, maybe. Then again, he was a cop. Maybe he was just too jaded to appreciate the silly things in life.

  The Starbucks was actually pretty much like any other I’d been to. It was simply decorated in darker shades of the same sort of trendy décor. Instead of browns and greens and blues it was blacks and grays and reds. And it was full of the same sort of people doing the same sort of things, just less humans.

  “What will it be?” asked the blue haired barista with a name tag that read, Laura. By the N tattooed on her neck I knew she was a necromancer, a person born with a natural ability to raise the dead. There used to be a law that all human-looking none-humans had to be branded; N for necromancer, W for witch, F for Fey, and so on. That was until it was ruled unconstitutional sixty some years ago, which was why I had to ask, “Why the brand?”

  She gave me a deadpan face and rolled her eyes, “I was born in a small town and laws might change, but people don’t.”

  I nodded, “That is true. I’ll have a tall soy-latte.” I usually got a real fancy drink when I went out for coffee, but I didn’t feel like fancy coffee. “You?” I asked Mato. “I’m paying.”

  “Vente, hot, thanks.” Mato took a seat in a smooth red velvet chair.

  “Seven, fifty,” Laura said. I took my wallet from back pocket. It was thin because it only held three items. My driver’s license, my bank card and my papers, proof of being a registered and legal witch in Washington State. I’m sure Laura had similar papers in her wallet.

  “So, what did you want to talk about?” I asked as I took the seat next to Mato in a shiny black wood chair with a red cushioned seat.

  “What happened in the hall—you didn’t know what was happening to you, you were not warned. This makes me think that you are not well informed about your condition, and you should be.”

  “They just said that I would go through all the changes, they didn’t specify what that meant.”

  “They should have,” he said.

  A different barista handed us our drinks in turn. He was a thin dark vampire named Tom. My latte came in a small cup with a lid, too hot to drink just yet. Mato’s blood came in a large cup with a lid too, but he drank it down quickly.

  “Good?” I asked when he was done.

  He nodded and set his empty cup down. “Local blood.”

  As I understood it, most restaurants and such got their blood from China, the biggest exporter of human blood for vampire consumption in the world. “Is local somehow better then foreign?” I asked.

  “Yes, local means fresh.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “You should know all that will take place in
your body,” said Mato getting back on subject.

  “Such as?”

  “You will gain in weight. Your bones will become denser. Not like stone, like those of a vampire, but they will be harder to break and you may become anemic. Your skin will become paler, your nails and hair will grow faster. You will find that under-cooked meat has some appeal.”

  “I’m a vegan.”

  “For now,” he said.

  “Is that all of it?”

  “You will begin to prefer the night—and your teeth will fall out.”

  My eyes shot impossibly wide, “Huh?”

  “Others will grow back in their place, stronger sharper teeth. There will be a learning curve and your inner cheeks and tongue will suffer for some time.”

  “And all of this is going to happen over the next few months?”

  Mato nodded. I took my first sip of latte while I thought: tougher bones, paler skin, cravings for bloody meat, living at night, vampire teeth…Yup, everything but death and full on blood lust.

  “Oh, there is one more thing.”

  “Really?” I said from over my coffee, and I couldn’t keep the worry off my face or out of my voice.

  “You may gain your—power. All vampires have something they can do that most other creatures cannot. Most speculate that it has something to do with different parts of the brain being accessible. The most common vampire trait is mind reading, like Master Melvern”

  “What’s Olathia’s talent?”

  Mato smiled then, a wide one that made him look so inviting. I instantly felt comfortable sitting with him, enjoying my coffee, even though the conversation was less than pleasant.

  “She congers lust and feeds from it.”

  “She’s a succubus?” He nodded. “And you?” I asked before I remember that I already knew. His smile became faint on his lips.

  “I know people, their nature at least.”

  “You know me?” I asked. I don’t know why I asked, and I instantly wished I hadn’t but I couldn’t help myself. Melvern could have been lying just to mess with me. But I think my reason was a bit more pathetic than that. I’m twenty-one years old and I’ve never had a boyfriend. If what Melvern said was true I wanted to hear Mato say it, even though I didn’t know him, and a relationship with him was so farfetched a concept that I could barely entertain it. I wanted to hear him say he wanted me the way Melvern said he did.

  Mato’s face became serious again. He leaned forward in his chair and held out his hand to me. I placed my hand in his. It was warm. He looked at me, directly at me with his honey-gold eyes, and I struggled not to flinch under his unwavering attention.

  “What do you see?” I finally asked.

  He dropped his gaze and licked his lips. “You are a good person, truly.”

  “Thanks,” I murmured. I was a little disappointed. I couldn’t help it, but what did I expect. That he would confess love? That’s just outrageous, and I had to laugh at myself, just a little.

  Still holding my hand, Mato stood and looked down at me. For a moment there was tension between us. I knew what he thought of me, he knew what he thought of me, but neither of us knew what I thought of him. I suddenly felt heat crawl up my face and I took a sip of coffee to distract me.

  “I must head back to the station. Will you be okay to find your way back to the clinic?”

  I nodded with a mouth full of coffee and a cheesy smile on my face. He smiled down at me and let go of my hand before he headed out the door.

  “Hot damn, he could bite me any night!”

  I turned to find a table of young witches. They were staring after Mato and laughing. One of them caught me looking and winked at me. I quickly turned back around and sipped my coffee only for a minute longer before I headed out the door.

  I didn’t want to go back to the clinic just yet. I looked down Bite Me Street and while it looked utterly deserted, it also looked completely inviting. Bite Me Street was a residential area and like most of the buildings in this town, the houses looked like they were all relatively new construction. They looked the same, same design and same dramatic paint. Cookie cutter houses with the Adam’s Family in mind, vampire suburbia. I liked it.

  The street was well lit but not too well lit that I couldn’t see the waxing moon in the sky, or the stars.

  A block down the street I came to a house with police tape up around the yard and candles and flowers on the side walk. It was obviously a memorial to someone. The candles melted down to cover the side walk and street in multi colored wax. There was a great big piece of cardboard attached to a stake in the ground with a picture of a man stuck to it. I didn’t know how to feel as I looked into the face of the man that attacked us this morning. He looked kindly when he wasn’t trying to kill me. He had smiling eyes, small and personal. His thin brown hair was combed to the side, leaving his dark bushing eye brows the most striking part about his face. Under the photo, “R.I.P Paul Frito,” was written in big bubble letters.

  “Poor Paul.” I looked down the side walk to find a little boy on a blue bike.

  “Yeah?” I said. The boy looked a lot like the guard from the clinic, and I wondered if they were related to him. It was a very small town after all.

  “The vampire hunter was called to Mrs. Keller’s house this morning because something killed her dog. I guess it was Paul,” said the boy pointing his small finger toward Paul’s picture. “He turned into a vampire.”

  “Why did he go into the woods if he was in a town full of people?” I asked myself more than the boy.

  “All these lights,” he said in his small voice. “New vampires don’t like light. Not at all.”

  “Do you know how this happened?”

  “Everyone knows why, but no one knows how,” the boy said.

  “Why did this happen?”

  “Cause Paul had a bad life. He was so sad.” The boy was shaking his head with his eyes to the ground. “He was my friend,” the boy cried and sped away.

  “Wait! Please!” I yelled after him, but he didn’t stop or look back.

  I looked back at Paul’s photo and I wanted to be mad at him, but I felt sorry for him instead, and I hated that. The boy had said Paul had a bad life, that he was sad. But, if Paul had such a horrible life why would he want to be a vampire? Unless he was attacked like us, and then he was just as much a victim as we were.

  After pacing for a while I ducked under the police tape and headed for the house. I walked around to the back until I spotted an open window. Small towns; got to love them. I set my coffee down and climbed in.

  It was dark and smelled of stale and rotting food. From the window sill I looked out over Paul’s kitchen. It was small and cluttered with junk. Old beer cans were stacked in a corner, and probably every magazine he’d ever bought was sprawled out over the table and counters. The window I was perched on sat directly in front of the dining table. I carefully maneuvered out of the window and off the table, without touching too much junk.

  I kept my hands over my mouth as I came to the kitchen sink, where a putrid smell of stagnate water, rotting food and sour milk overpowered my senses. This man was in desperate need of a housekeeper.

  Strange. There were no personal pictures on the walls, nothing but naked women and movie posters.

  “This guy was a pig, but that doesn’t explain anything,” I said to myself. I made my way into the living room to find the front door wide open and two glowing eyes looming at me from the dark. They were like cat eyes but five feet too high to belong to any cat.

  “Have you satisfied your curiosity,” asked a familiar voice, Mato’s voice.

  I put my hands up in the air, “I’m sorry I broke in.” My heart was in my throat. “Am I in trouble?”

  “No,” he said and in blink he closed the front door and turned on a lamp that sat at an end table beside the cluttered couch. With the light on the room looked ten times worse. Junk food, video games, garbage and magazines seemed the theme of the living room.

&nb
sp; “Why am I not in trouble?”

  “Why would you be?” he asked plainly. He looked scary in the dim light. His pale skin was luminous. I opened my mouth to answer him but he interrupted me. “You have questions about Paul?”

  “Yes, of course I do,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and locking one knee. I looked at Paul’s place warily. I felt like crap. Mato was the sheriff and I was standing in his crime scene.

  “Shit, I’m walking in your evidence, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all. I’m so sorry.”

  Mato crossed the room in a frightening vampire speed that nearly sent me tumbling over a random pile of clutter as I tried to back away from him.

  “Do not be sorry,” he said. He caressed my shoulder lightly, and I didn’t mean to, but I flinched. His fingers pulled away with a liquid grace. “You are not hurting anything by being here. Sit,” he said while he turned to make his way to the couch. As he sat down his head gave a little twitch and his eyes wandered slightly, but he looked back at me with a fangless smile of encouragement, so I sat beside him silently. At the clinic and café I felt safe being with Mato, but now that I was alone with him in the dark of an empty house, my heart was beating fast in my chest, my feet felt cold. He was a dead man, a blood drinker. He could probably kill me with his pinky if he wanted to.

  “I’m still sorry,” I said.

  “What did you expect to find?” He asked and folded his hands in his lap.

  “I don’t know; something that would explain why and how Paul became a vampire, something that would tell me where I’m supposed to direct all this…anger.” I spared a thought for using his attraction to me to entice him into telling me everything he knew, but I quickly dismissed that notion. I was not, nor would I ever be that kind of woman. Instead I simply asked outright, “Was he attacked?”

  Mato stiffened and his vampire eyes shifted slightly again and then came back to me but he was silent.