Dead Certain (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 3)

by P. S. Power

  Then they both went back in, and the Greater Demon said goodbye to everyone. Kissing David on the way out, if only on the cheek. Since he’d nearly been left out of their activities, it seemed to baffle him a bit, but that was probably on purpose. Thinking otherwise would be to think that her friend didn’t know everything she was doing fifteen steps ahead of what the rest of them could see.

  The idea though, that she could do magic, and better, had been, was worth investigating. To that end, she focused on Felicity, and ran a single line of pink life energy from herself to the other Vampire. She was well fed, but not brimming with energy in particular. Without explaining what she was doing, Eve held the idea of the other woman just not getting tired, or dying, at all, and held it as well as she could, remembering what it felt like for her each day.

  It didn’t work perfectly, but when Ginger got back, clearly having had a shower, and looking a bit embarrassed, but unharmed and not crying about how she’d failed utterly, the new Vampire was able to get up, and go running with her. Not all that fast, but she wasn’t of the Bey line, Eve didn’t think. It was clear that she was a Classical, but there was something a bit different about her. No complaints though, even as Ginger, who was kind of a slowpoke, pushed at her to keep going faster. Eve could hear her, occasionally, as they came around the outer perimeter of the mall, on the back side.

  She manned the front, though Edom came out to help, without a jacket on, a clean apron over his shirt.

  “Eve! I noticed that we have a new Vampire up and about? Is she going to be working here?” He was asking it as if she had the right to hire someone like that?

  “Nope. We could probably get some free labor out of her though. She runs the T2LA in Sparks, Nevada. They don’t have a node or embassy, so I guess the club is kind of a big deal there. Where people buy their blood and all that? It’s Keeley’s territory, um, The Mistress of Souls? She came in to visit last night, and asked if I could help Felicia get up to speed. Oh, um, in other news, Ginger is pretty much up to speed, as for working the front here. Also working with Humans. I got Zack to pretend to be one, and set her loose on him. Since there was no horrible screaming, I take it that worked pretty well. So, we should start her in on the paperwork portion of things here. Have her take a night shift or something, in a few days. That’s your call though, being in charge. I’m just making suggestions, like a good lackey.”

  She started cleaning again then taking the front glass, as the dark chocolate colored man in the expensive suit went over the machines, and then carefully started a new batch in the first machine, which meant emptying it and cleaning the whole thing first. When he was done, he turned to her, and shook his head a little.

  “Councilor Memes called yesterday, and we spoke about you at length. She said that you two have met?”

  Eve didn’t know, as odd as that sounded.

  “I think that I met everyone on the Council, when they came to lock me in a little box for doing what they would have ordered me to, if they would have known it was coming first. Which one is she?”

  “Nosferatu? Long fingers and big ears? Most often bald, especially the men. Lots of triangularly pointed teeth?”

  “Oh, yeah. She seemed nice. Batty as a loon, but not mean about it. What did she want? My instant death?” After all she’d heard about things of late, that made a certain kind of sense.

  “Not at all. She was just interested in having you set up a program for Council employees, to teach them, like you have the people here? It would be a full time thing, or at least take up your days, most of the time. There are a few hundred that are on the list. The real trick there is that I think they want to hold a monopoly on it. So, if you could not just take everyone that shows up? Felicia should be all right, if she runs one of our clubs. Probably not very high on the list, but what are you going to do, tell The Mistress of Souls no?”

  That one was a point that the people in charge would be able to get well enough, she thought.

  “I can do that. Do I get a place for it, or are we working from here on it? Either way works for me. If we do it from here though, you can make all those contacts, which might be a good idea. Me too, of course, but I don’t think I’m going to be doing too much else, for a while, from the sound of things. Then, I wouldn’t give me that much power yet, so it’s not a huge problem for me. I’m all mellow and easy going that way.” She kept wiping the counter, but there was no chuckling from her maker.

  “I know that. As for Ginger, I can show her what to do, as far as paperwork goes, and handling things as they come in. Can she do a shift with you tonight? Then she can try it alone tomorrow.”

  It was a day faster than Eve had thought of doing it, but the fact was, running the place just wasn’t all that hard. The only thing that was really needed was for Ginger to learn to fight, in case anything happened while she was alone.

  At least enough to protect herself and the embassy. It wasn’t going to happen overnight, but at two, when Ginger and Felicia both came in, seeming fresh and relatively alert, Eve took them both to the back, and drilled them for hours on various fighting techniques, while Edom ran the front. They weren’t good, even the seventy odd year old Felicia, by the time evening came, but either one of them could probably knock out a human black belt without thinking about it too hard. That was down to having superpowers though, not skill level.

  She didn’t know what to do with Felicia for the night, but Edom did.

  “I was going to go and look at the clubs here. We have two that are fairly local. My second, Barbara, is running them both right now, as general manager. Would you like to come and review them? Perhaps you can give us tips, and we can share operations secrets?”

  The brown and orange eyed woman seemed very pleased by that. Almost like Ed was asking her out on a date. Which wouldn’t be a horrible idea, would it? There was no law saying that a Vampire couldn’t have someone special. Even if they weren’t into sex, it never hurt to have a friend that could wash your back in the shower.

  Seeming a lot more flirtatious suddenly they both started to leave, through the back, just after David got in. He was kind of surprised by the change in things, because Edom smiled and sent him back home, directly.

  “You get tonight and tomorrow off. Eve, you and Ginger have the new recruits coming for interviews? Do you need anything for that? I’m sure Dave will stay and help, if you want?”

  “Nope. I’ll handle those, and Ginger will run the front, and handle any other business that comes in. Then, after they go home, I’ll laze around and criticize her work as if I could do any better. I’m all over this being in charge thing now.”

  Without commenting they all got out of there, not saying anything else. It wasn’t exactly some big thing, after all.

  Starting at seven the Humans came in, with a few Vampires arriving for their blood at the same time. None of them were a problem though, even if they were clearly eavesdropping.

  When the six people that seemed to be coming got there, the seventh she’d really expected not showing at all, Eve clapped a few times, and had them sit in two booths, side by side, while she stood.

  “All of you applied to the new training program, which for the time being is the only legal way to become a Vampire. Yes, you could do it the old fashioned way, and probably not end up being killed for it. The purpose of this program is to give anyone making the transition the skills to cope with the hardships, both mental and physical, of being undead, before it happens. That’s the first thing you need to know; if you become a Vampire, you are going to die. We’re animated corpses, that feed off of life energy to keep going. We aren’t just people that sleep odd hours, or have a strange coffin fetish.” She looked at the group in front of her, made of three men and three women.

  None of them seemed ready to run off, having heard that part of her intro speech, so she went on, as the other Vampires in the room stared, openly. At her.

  “Being one of us means being constantly hungry, thirsty and v
ery often aggravated. Angry all the time, basically. You have to learn to control that now, before we add super strength, speed and mental powers to the mix. The program as it stands right now will take about three to five years for each of you to get through. You can live at home, work a job, or even go to school at the same time, and really that’s encouraged. I know that I don’t want any lazy people, in particular. Especially in this first batch. This will probably be the hardest thing that any of you have ever done, but it’s worth it, if you do it right. It will make your first decades as a Vampire so much easier it would be insane to skip.”

  She was about to ask if anyone had a question, when one of the guys, who was dressed in stylish black, and who had makeup on to make himself seem pale and serious, with poorly managed hair that had to be on purpose, raised his hand. She nodded to him.

  “Yes?”

  “I heard that if you want to be a Vampire, you have to, you know, be gay? I’m pretty straight.” He seemed nervous about it, like he was going to have to do homosexual stuff right then, as punishment for asking, so she shrugged.

  “That’s not always going to be wrong. More to the point, if you live long enough, you’re probably going to end up doing almost everything, sooner or later, so getting over that idea now is a good one, just to start with. If you think it’s a problem for you, let us know and we’ll find some guys for you to practice on. That’s exactly the kind of thing we’ll want to work on though. If it’s going to be hard for you later, don’t wait, face it now. Fear of heights? Snakes? Bigotry? This is when you should be moving past it.” As if it were open season to ask anything, one of the girls, who was kind of chunky, made face.

  “I’m not very good looking, is that… I mean, you’re like a model.” A few of the others nodded. Like their looks would be what kept them from being picked.

  “That won’t be a problem for any of you. For one thing, by the time you get through the program, you’ll all be thin. Part of the training requires three to four days of fasting per week, while being directly around food most of the time. That’s for a reason too, and it isn’t about losing weight, but you will. It’s really hard not to, doing that. The idea is to put you into the greatest state of hunger we possibly can, over and over again. If you go past that your body will stop being hungry, since you’ll go into a state of metabolic ketosis. We want you to be uncomfortably hungry though, as much as possible, so that you can get used to it. As for the rest, the best look for a Vampire isn’t really being too good looking. You want to be above average, but only enough for it to help you blend with the people around you. You’ll all be fit and toned by the time you cross over, so that won’t be a problem. One or two of you will be better looking than that, but not so much that you’ll be kicked from the program for it.” She looked at one of the boys, who was a bit chubby, but had great cheekbones, and the oldest of the women, who was in her late twenties. She was kind of hot already, actually.

  They had more questions, some of which were better answered by other people.

  For instance, when they got to the question of why they had to be older than twenty to become a Vampire, Ginger walked out from around the counter, wearing her apron, and gestured at her body. She’d been thin enough, and cute, when she died, but really did look like she should be getting ready for her first day of high school.

  “Forever. I can’t go to a bar, unless I know someone there, even with ID. Maybe with enough makeup, but it’s still hard. People don’t take me seriously either. It doesn’t matter how good my ideas are, they just get ignored, most of the time. I mean, look at all of you? You didn’t even think I was a Vampire, did you? I look like a kid that should be working in a place like this, and possibly too young even for that. You don’t want that. The ideal age for a person is between twenty and forty, right now. So waiting until you look at least that old makes sense. Most of life works better if you aren’t going to be marginalized for the rest of eternity.”

  The gothy looking boy, who was about seventeen, nodded, and didn’t raise his hand again.

  “So, why become one, looking like you do? Why not wait?”

  The Vampire girl smiled, a bit sadly, and looked at each of the Humans there.

  “I didn’t get a choice. I was out walking home from the library, in the dark, and woke up the next night, starving and half out of my mind. I’d been shoved under a log, which hid me well enough, but there was no one there to feed me, or help me at all. I ran, I remember that, then found a family. There were five of them, two women and three kids. I killed them all. I couldn’t even start to do anything else. I got lucky then, and was found by the local Proctor. She took me in and found someone willing to train me out of that kind of thing. I was beaten for years after that. It’s how things are normally done, by the way. It, until Eve came up with her method, was the only thing that worked at all. Once you frenzy once though, it’s a lot harder not to do it again. Most of the time, if it happens, you’ll just be killed. I got so lucky. Even with all the help and care I got, they nearly had to kill me, a year ago. I couldn’t take it, and ran away, and attacked a woman. She lived, but it wasn’t because of me being in control. That isn’t allowed anymore. If you do that the Council will kill you.” The room was silent for a bit, as Ginger rather nervously ran her hands down the front of her apron. It was clean, even though she’d been working in it.

  She locked eyes with the chubbier boy. He was dressed in normal clothing, and reminded Eve a bit of Ben, her friend.

  Then Ginger went on, embarrassingly enough.

  “Eve though, when she woke up dead for the first time… She’d been kidnapped, and was put in a room with a Human girl, by other Vampires. They’d cut the young lady, with a knife, to set Eve off into a blood frenzy, first thing. Do you know what she did?”

  No one did. Not among the Humans. One of the Vampires that was standing to the side, Linda, cleared her throat.

  “She fought the four Vampires that had taken her, and escaped with the girl. Leaving her alive. The point here is, I believe, to point out the power of this kind of training. There are Vampires that have been around for decades that would have been hard pressed to do either of those things. Really, at first I thought it was all lies, meant to promote this girl for some reason. Until I saw her, and watched what she did. If you can make it into this program, any of you, I suggest you hold on to the opportunity with both hands and never give up, no matter how difficult it feels. To start out with that kind of control is… Unheard of. I wish that I could have had the same for my own daughter.”

  It had an impact, which was a good thing, even if it was embarrassing for Eve.

  “So, now, one on one interviews. The rest of you can stay out here, and chat. I’d like to start with Lawrence?”

  He was the oldest man there, and probably the homeliest of them. His face was too thin, and he looked a bit stupid, but he had several higher degrees, and his résumé had been impressive. If it were for a job, he’d have been hired already. Still, as she’d pointed out to reassure them all, looks weren’t the main criteria, and really shouldn’t be. Stupid Vampires that were pretty to look at weren’t worth the trouble, in the long run.

  So guys like Larry here had a real shot.

  One by one she ran through each of them, looking for things that would make them not worth the time or effort. Some of them were afraid they wouldn’t make it. That was normal though. They probably wouldn’t, after all. A few of them thought that they could handle things already, it was clear, which she marked down. Again, if you weren’t fairly confident, at least internally, you probably weren’t going to even try to be a Vampire. A lot of them were narcissist, or nearly so, she’d noticed. Not as much for the ones that she knew, but even they tended toward pretty decent self-esteem.

  The heavy set girl was a bit miserable, when it was her turn.

  “I have to starve myself? Over and over? If I could do that, I wouldn’t be fat.”

  Eve could see that one, but didn’t think
this girl would actually have half the problems of some of the others.

  “You’ve been on a lot of diets, right?”

  That got a head nod, and a look that seemed defeated.

  “They don’t work for me very well. I might be too weak, that way.”

  “Or, and this is also very possible, you might be the one person out of all of the applicants that knows what fighting hunger is like. You aren’t any worse off that way than the rest of them. It won’t be easy, I’m not saying that, but I wouldn’t let that be what stopped you. Even if you feel hunger more than they do, or something like that, it will just make you stronger when you become a Vampire. If you want to give it a try, you’re in, by the way.” They all had been.

  Then, none of them seemed clinically insane, or stoned when they’d come in the door. That right there was enough to get her on their side. The rest of it was all in the training, and in how much they wanted it.

  Now all she had to do was come up with an actual program for them to follow.

  As soon as the last of them was out the door, she looked over at Ginger, and just watched her for a bit. The other Vampire had come a long way in the last weeks, and it would stick. She knew that as surely as she’d ever known anything.

  That part of what had been going on was due to Eve using magic on her, even if it hadn’t been on purpose, well, that was kind of neat, actually.

  Who didn’t want another superpower?

  If Keeley could be trusted, Eve had one now, if she could just learn to use it right.

  It seemed worth trying, if nothing else.

  Chapter fourteen

  The house, the one that she shared with Edom, was big enough for six people to not bump elbows, but only had the two of them there at any time. Even that was kind of not true, since she couldn’t even remember when both of them had been there. It was mainly due to the fact that for as long as her mind was willing to go back, Eve had pushed herself, and worked without end. It wasn’t really much of a life though.