by Diana Graves
BEING A MOM
AS QUIET AS only a vampire could ever be I crept into Damon’s apartment in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I passed my sleeping sister on the couch, bundled tight in a cocoon of pink cashmere. That blanket of Pepto-Bismol couldn’t possibly be one of Damon’s spare blankets. She must have brought it with her, fully intending to sleep on the couch. Had she and Everett been fighting again? They seemed so sweet and content last night. Guess it’s a newlywed thing. I slowly opened the door to my children’s tiny room. I had only a few hours before I’d have to go to bed and I wanted to see them first, but Damon was up. I could hear him muttering about in his room.
“Damn it,” I breathed.
My lip curled in a snarl. I still loved that guy, but I didn’t like him much right then. Maybe that’s where all the real pain came from. Not so much from his acts, but from how torn my heart was. I wanted to love him, but I couldn’t let myself. Call it pride or self-respect, but he all but made it impossible for us to go back to the way things were. Why couldn’t he have kept that bit of information to himself? Why couldn’t he just let me believe that he really loved me for me from the get go? My stomach hurt with anxiety at the prospect of seeing him, talking to him. I closed my eyes. Damn him. I wanted to stay and wait for them to wake, but I didn’t want to see him.
“Raina?” he asked from the hall.
I didn’t turn around to say, “Morning.” But that one word held all the mixed emotions I was feeling, and I knew by what he said next that he understood perfectly that I wanted to be left alone.
“I need to see some night staff before their shift ends and they leave. I should have talked with them last night, but it slipped my mind. We need to discuss your welcome back party for tonight,” Damon said.
I jerked my head around. “There’s not going to be a party tonight, Damon. I’m going to meet with Melvern and try to reason with Adia.”
“I’ve already spoken with him. Melvern’s agreed to come to the party early to help with Isobel.”
“I don’t want anybody making a big deal over me,” I said softer when Thomas moved in his bed. “I don’t want a party.”
“I’ll take care of everything,” Damon said, and he left the room, shutting the door behind him.
I listened as Damon got dressed, brushed his teeth, and made himself coffee. I heard him open the door to leave, and the tension in my shoulders eased a bit, only to be reignited when the telephone rang loudly.
“Hello Mrs. Kirkland-Jonas,” Damon said too loudly. I flinched, but the kid’s didn’t move at all. Heavy sleepers. I left the room to see why my mom was calling here so early in the morning.
When I entered the living room, Katie was just sitting up on the couch, having been woken by the phone, and Damon was setting the cordless back down on its charging base.
“Was that my mom?” I asking him.
“Yes, but I told her you were busy.”
“I heard,” I said, and then I looked down at Katie. “Why’d you sleep here?”
“Everett and I were arguing. I just couldn’t sleep in the same place as him. I thought I could come here and talk with you, but you were gone all night. Where were you?”
My eyes flicked to Damon. “I was out, having dinner with Alistair.”
“All night?”
I winced and changed the subject. “What were you two fighting about?” I asked.
“Same shit. Fauna said she’d need some time to find a suitable replacement and that makes sense. She can’t run the shop alone. But that also means our pets aren’t free from his magic yet.”
“He can’t help that,” Damon said.
“I know,” Katie shot back. “That fact doesn’t change how angry I am at him for having even put us in this situation.”
I sat down next to Katie on the couch and put my arm around her shoulder. “I understand. You can’t live in a house, knowing that the man you love is causing the animals you love pain. I’m with you there,—but he is trying. And consider this. If he stopped using them as his familiars, with the amount of magical items he’s making every day, he would be dead or worse within a week. I know it sounds terrible, but their temporary discomfort is worth his life.” Katie didn’t respond. Her eyes moved along the floor as she thought about it.
I looked at Damon, “Did mom say why she called?”
“No,” he said plainly.
“Her only daughter is alive after five years, Raina. I would imagine she’s kind of excited,” Katie said. “You should call her back. Here, you can use my phone,” Katie said as she dug through her purse for said phone.
“You’re probably right.” But Damon’s leering presence was bugging me. I looked at him impatiently, hoping he’d get the hint to leave already, but he was leaning casually against the wall, sipping his coffee. Why was he still here? “Weren’t you on your way out?” I asked him, while I accepted the thin white cell phone Katie was offering me.
He took a long swig of his hot coffee before answering me. “Yes.” He placed the cup in the sink and walked to the door, but he stopped there and looked back at me. He just stood there, watching. I thought about breaking my promise then and reading his mind, but I didn’t.
Katie tossed the blanket off her lap and began folding it neatly, small enough that it fit snuggly back into her overnight bag, which was sitting against the couch on the floor. She was looking comfy and cute in her aqua green pajamas, but she pulled a change of clothes out of her bag and stood up with them in her arms. I looked down at myself. I was still wearing my blue dress from the night before. I didn’t really have much else to wear. When everything calmed down a shopping trip was definitely in order.
“The screen should open to the contacts list,” Katie said before she left the living room to get dressed.
She was right. Mom’s number was the second number from the top, Anna, just after Alicia’s. Damn. I wondered if Alicia would be at this party Damon was throwing me. She was my best friend growing up after all. But since when did Katie and Alicia become all chummy; exchanging numbers and whatnot? Alicia was an ill-tempered ogre. She didn’t care for humans at all, least of all Katie. Oh well. I left that bit of curiosity alone for the moment and pressed the touch-screen, selecting my mom’s name and calling her.
The phone only rang once before she picked it up.
“Raina?” she asked at once. There was some tenderness in her voice. That was very unlike her.
“Yes.”
“Oh, by the gods,” she wept. “Raina. Thank the Goddess! My baby, you’re home.” Her voice was breaking up, and she took a great big inhale of air, fighting her body’s desire to openly weep. “Can I see you before sun up? I just want to hold you.”
The raw emotion in her voice made me want to cry a little, sympathy tears. I wished I could have said I’d be on my way. Darkness was a beautiful Native American vampire town high on Mount Rainier. I loved it, really. It was an amazing little tourist trap ran by vampires and designed in a steam punk mix of Native American and Victorian England. But it was a two-hour drive from Tacoma. “I would love to, but I don’t think I have the time to drive to Darkness before sunrise?”
She almost laughed. “Of course not. I’m not in Darkness right now. Ruy’s off on some collaboration with the police, and I don’t like being alone in his cabin in Darkness. It makes me feel isolated. I’m staying at home until he’s done.” Home, the house I grew up in. It was just over a mile or so from Bastion Fatal. Very doable.
“I can definitely be there before sunrise, just give me a few minutes to clean up and I’ll be over right away.”
“I’ll make breakfast,” she said.
“I’m on an all liquid diet, but thank you.”
“Oh! Right, I’m sorry.”
“No worries, I’ll see you soon. I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too,” she said, and there was so much emotion in her voice, a softness I seldom heard growing up. My death had definitely had an impact on her. My cold
, stoic mother seemed no more.
I ended the call and took a deep breath. “Arg, heavy emotions, man,” I said while I set Katie’s phone on the coffee table.
“There’s going to be a whole lot more of that tonight,” said Damon from the doorway. Shit. He was right. “If you’re leaving, I should stay and see to the kids.” I just nodded.
RECKLESS
KATIE ASKED IF she could come with me. It would have been faster for me to have just ran the entire way, but since she was coming we were driving. Well, she was driving. Legally, I was still dead, and I didn’t have a driver’s license.
Too many childhood memories came rushing in as we drove down Portland Ave, just a block from my mom’s house. Many of them weren’t particularly happy memories.
There was the old convenience store that made the best veggie burgers. I was once stoned by a crowd in that parking lot when I was twelve years old. I ended up in the hospital, covered in stitches and welts. No charges were filed against the people who did it. The police said there were no witnesses. That was bull shit.
We drove under the freeway overpass. When I was sixteen a few boys pushed me down on the cement under there and spit in my face until they got bored. No one stopped them and with the amount of spittle raining down, I dared not scream. Afterward they kicked dirt in my face and walked away laughing.
Portland Avenue was definitely the bad side of town, though Tacoma had many bad sides. It was the sort of place you didn’t walk about alone unless you were a glutton for trouble, especially if you were a young witch who couldn’t perform a lick of magic. My big red mahogany eyes were a giant billboard advertising loudly, Victim Waiting to Happen! …Maybe that was why I always kept my eyes down.
Oh, and there was my favorite memory coming up! Marco’s Bar. A drunken old fool came out while I was walking by one night after work. I think I was twenty, maybe nineteen. He stumbled into me and I helped him up, but he took one look at me and lost his mind. “I will cut off the sorceries from your hand!” he yelled, and he pulled a knife on me. I barely escaped from his clutches as he tried to cut me. What the hell was I thinking walking on my own on these streets?
“You were reckless,” Raphael said, and I agreed. “You’re still reckless.” I agreed with that, too.
“Thank you for being so quiet all night. I all but forgot you were even there while I was with Alistair.” He didn’t reply with the expected sarcasm. He didn’t reply at all. Instead I got a rush of emotion from him. He felt contented then angry. I was confused by him…again
“So weird,” I accidently said aloud.
“What is it?” Katie asked me. She spared a quick glance my way before looking back at the road.
I almost said nothing was weird, but there was something. I smelled blood, lots and lots of fresh blood…and something not so fresh. I smelt death. I looked at Katie with wide eyes, but she slammed her foot down on the brakes and I jerked forward.
“What the fuck?!” Katie shouted. I looked forward and found the source of her comment.
As we were turning onto my mother’s street we found it jam packed with police cars; no sirens, no lights and no cops. A chill ran down my back.
I took a deep breath. I had to be calm to be brave, and it took more bravery than I’d care to admit to open my door. “Go back to Bastion Fatal, Katie,” I said. “Tell Alistair what you’ve seen and call the police.”
“Nope,” Katie said, and she stepped out of the car. She took out her phone and dialed the police before putting her phone to her ear. I could hear it ringing and ringing. She gave up after the tenth ring. Hell, with all the police cars in front of us, I think they knew…
“Okay, the police aren’t answering. Go get help from the Bastion,” I said.
She put up a finger to tell me to be quiet. “I’m calling them,” she said, and when a man answered the phone she told him what he was to relay to Alistair. “We’re at Portland Avenue and Thirty First Street. We need help.” He argued about the time of day, but eventually agreed to pass on the message and she thanked him and ended the call. “Good?” she asked me.
“Good, now you can go. Alistair will be here shortly,” I said.
“No way am I leaving you here. We don’t know how long it’s going to take that desk jockey to give Alistair the message, five minutes, fifteen? Come on, let’s go check on Anna.”
I looked at her from over the roof. “You’re not staying. You’re going, now.” She wasn’t listening to me. She was buttoning up her pink jacket and giving me stubborn eyes. “Get out of here, Katie,” I said firmly.
“You don’t need to worry about me, Raina,” she said. “I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to worry you. But my job, what I’ve been doing for the past five years—I’m a bounty hunter.” I gave my pretty-in-pastels sister a dead-pan face of disbelief. “I’m pretty good at it, too.” She unzipped her purse, pink to match her jacket, and flashed me a flat-black gun the size of her hand. “I might not have fancy magic tricks, but I have fancy bullets.”
I sighed. “Damn it.” I hated that she became a hunter, just like I was. I mean, I knew she wanted to and I even agreed to train her, but I didn’t like it. It’s a dangerous job, and I always thought she’d change her mind once she got a real taste of it. Guess not. But if she’d been doing it well for five years then, “Fine.”
“What sort of cases have you worked,” I asked her while we walked between the abandoned police cars, making our way towards my mom’s house.
“The police don’t call me for help or anything, like they did you. I get most of my casework from word of mouth. I specialize in child abductions and abuse. I’m the person the parents go to when they’ve run out of every other option.”
“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be living like this.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
I could see my mom’s single story rancher now. It looked as it always had. A little piece of magic in a neighborhood of run down houses and apartments. While every other house had broken windows, peeling paint, dilapidated porches and neglected lawns, Mom’s house was a clean, well-kept beauty with a long green sloping lawn and a massive garden that I was not allowed to touch, due to my black thumb in all things that grew from the ground.
“I mean, you were meant to have a normal life. You know; finish high school, go to college, get a great job, get married and live happily ever after.”
Katie stopped walking with a police car standing between us and looked at me, and she looked offended. “I finished high school. Maybe not at the building. I graduated online to avoid shit people, who chose to take issue with who I was related to and my past. Fuck them. I don’t want to go to college. It’s a big fat waste of money and time. And I already have a great job and a great guy. I’m a hunter, like you were.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. I just—I just wanted a peaceful life for you. Not guns, danger and violence. You wouldn’t be standing there, holding a gun if it weren’t for me.”
She nodded. “I agree, I’d be dead. I’d be dead, because you saved me from my mom’s boyfriend. Jed would have killed me if it weren’t for you.”
Jed was a sexual sadist, who tortured and raped Katie and her mom in secret for years. Was that why she made a job out of saving other kids from abuse?
“No duh,” Raphael said in my mind.
I started walking again, “You saved yourself, Katie. All I did was not turn you away.”
“That’s more than anyone else did,” I heard her say from behind me.
I turned around to look at her, but whatever I had planned to say was lost when I saw what was coming up from behind her. A contorted figure emerged from the dark of early twilight, and it was moving fast. “Katie!” I screamed.
While she turned she brought up her gun, but the thing was already upon her. It pounced on her and I dove head first over the hood of the nearest police car to get to her. A loud shot rang through the darkness. I scrambled to my feet. My heart, pre
viously in my throat, fell to my stomach when I saw the thing lying on top of her. I ran to her side.
“Little help,” she said from underneath the thing, her hand alone was free to flop about.
I exhaled with relief and tossed the heavy thing off of my sister. Its head was a bloody ruin. She’d shot him point blank in the face. I helped her to her feet. She was bloody, but it wasn’t hers. Her blood would have been warm, fresh. The blood on her was hours old. It was gooey, thick and foul-smelling.
“Awe, fuck,” she groaned at the mess of her cute little outfit.
“I’d say that jacket is destined for the drycleaners.”
“Burn bin,” she corrected me. “What was that thing? If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a zombie or a ghoul or something.”
She was stretching her back and looking down at the thing. I was looking outward, sniffing the air and straining my ears to hear sounds in the distance. “Whatever it was, there’s more of them. I can hear them. They’re moving fast. They’re coming for us.”
“God damn it,” she said. “Shouldn’t we be running?” She looked jumpy, scared as shit. I was too, but I didn’t look it. I looked completely unruffled. I didn’t answer her right away either, and she got fidgety. She peeled off her blood soaked jacket and threw it to the snow covered ground. Underneath the jacket was a pale pink shirt with only trace amounts of blood. “Raina?”
I still couldn’t see them, but I could hear them and I could smell them. “Yeah, to my mom’s,” but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, I mean, really wrong. More wrong than a horde of ghouls or zombies coming to eat our faces.
Katie was off, running as fast as her human body would allow. I wasn’t running, but jogging slowly behind her, my eyes still looking deep into the dark. I was completely alert. When Katie hit the door hard and started knocking like mad, it hit me what was wrong. Besides violent stinking creatures advancing on us and a dozen abandoned police cars, there were no signs of life whatsoever. There were no cats scurrying by, no dogs barking, no birds chirping, and no people at all. It was just us and those things, and they were getting closer.
