The Reluctant Goddess (The Montgomery Chronicles Book 2)

by Karen Ranney

  I fingered the card in my pocket. I’d planned on calling the fortune teller before Dan and I got into it. Now, it was after five, with darkness falling over the land, as they say.

  With darkness came fear and Niccolo Maddock.

  I would do myself in before I subjected myself to another mind rape. And I wasn’t the type to do myself in, which meant I had to find a way to dissuade Maddock from pursuing me. Since he was the most stubborn creature I’d ever come across, it would probably be easier to terminate him with prejudice.

  Don’t you just love that expression? It means to kill someone, but it wraps it with so many words that it sounds almost benign.

  I hadn’t learned anything about Maddock from Kenisha. She hadn’t leaned over the table and confided that Maddock was beginning to fear water. Did I possibly know why? Nor had I come out and asked about Maddock’s health. I hadn’t wanted to alert the Council that something might be wrong with the duke.

  I didn't know very much about vampire politics. According to the Green Book, the consolidation of vampire lore and law, the Council had the final say about anything to do with vampires. Unless, of course, they broke a human law. Then, the humans got to adjudicate the infraction, but any punishment was doled out by the Council.

  So, if they discovered I’d deliberately tried to kill Maddock, I could just imagine what they’d do to me. Hello sun. Or, because I was a special snowflake, I would probably be chained in a maternity ward and inseminated every nine months.

  No, thank you.

  There were only twelve councils in the world, so each Council was responsible for large swaths of territory. The San Antonio Council, for example, was responsible for the western half of the United States, with the Mississippi River being the dividing line. The Trenton Council handled everything east of that.

  I knew Maddock was a Master, but I didn’t know if he was on the Council. How did you get to be one of the twelve members?

  If they decided I should die - for good - was their word law? Did I have any recourse with the civilian authorities? Did the fact that I was somehow different from other vampires make me subject to different rules?

  I didn’t know that either.

  I needed to inform myself about vampire politics. I was up against Niccolo Maddock and he had an impressive arsenal. I had nothing except for the fact that I was odd. Oh, and I could do the pushy thing.

  I grabbed my phone to call the vet to check up on Charlie, but I didn't turn it on. However, I did slow down, looking for a place to pull off to make the call. We’d recently passed a law that it was illegal to use your cell phone while driving. Plus, I’d seen enough serious accidents caused by texting that I never used my phone in the car.

  That simple little safety gesture probably saved my life.

  I saw the car a second before it struck me. By slowing, the engine compartment of the rental car took most of the hit. Otherwise, the other driver would've plowed into the driver side door.

  Somebody screamed but I don't think it was me. I'm remarkably calm in a crisis. I only start to shake later, when everything’s over.

  The street I was on was zoned commercial, filled with strip centers and neighborhood restaurants. The impact drove me half off the street and onto the sidewalk, leaving me staring at a bus schedule and a stop sign, both of them only inches from my windshield. I kept blinking, but my mind didn’t seem to work right.

  I felt like I would like to take a nap right now. Nothing hurt. I didn't think I was in any danger.

  I turned my head slowly to the left. The car that had hit me was black and newish looking, but I hadn't any idea what kind it was. I'm bad at makes and models of cars. All I know are colors and whether it's pretty. Jaguars and Bentleys, for example, are very, very pretty.

  The driver was an older man. His mouth was open, like a fish trying to breathe. His fingers waved in the air and for a moment I thought he was going to zap me like I’d zapped Dan.

  Pain pinched up my leg slowly, like a radioactive lobster doing the merengue from my ankle to my knee. I glanced down to find that I’d become a geyser. Blood was spurting from my leg, washing down the door, and pooling at my feet.

  Look at me. I was Old Faithful.

  I idly wondered if being a vampire was blunting the pain.

  Where was all that strength I was supposed to have as a vampire? I should've been able to push the crumpled door outward, but I couldn’t.

  The older man in the other car was still staring at me, a wild and frightened glance, as if he didn't know how he’d gotten there with the engine of his car merged with mine.

  Had he stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake? I wanted to reach out and touch him, to reassure him somehow. A small space, only yards, separated us. We were both trapped in a junkyard of crumpled metal.

  The rental car company was not going to be happy with me. Plus, there was dog hair on the front seat.

  I tried to throw myself to the right, allowing myself a small scream when moving my left leg. At first I thought I was going to have to leave it behind and become the first vampire amputee. Why had I never seen a vampire who was disfigured? And was disfigured the right word? Are we all judged by some sort of perfection meter at birth? Here, you're supposed to have two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes, all the regular inner working parts. If you don't, then consider yourself disfigured.

  As the English would say - what rubbish.

  Did vampires grow back parts? Is that why I’d never seen a one legged vampire?

  Were they lizards of the Brethren world?

  My thoughts focused on that question as I tried, once again, to move across the console. I was no longer Marcie Montgomery. I was Marcie Montgomery and companion, Agony, dressed for the evening in red gauze, a sparkling wrap from Versace around her shoulders. Although I was not a shoe person, Agony was and she danced on my injured leg in five inch spike heels with pointed toes.

  I don't know how many minutes passed. I wanted to help the man in the car. I needed to help him.

  The other driver was an older gentleman, nearly bald, who probably needed glasses but wasn't wearing any. His hands clenched the steering wheel in a ten/two position, his arms stiff. His mouth moved, but if he spoke to me, I couldn't hear him. The next instant he fell back, his mouth opening and his eyes closing.

  I’d never seen anyone die in front of me before.

  Sirens pierced the cotton wadding of my hearing, gradually getting louder. I was so very tired suddenly and lay my head back against the headrest.

  “You’re safe, Marcie,” Niccolo Maddock said beside me.

  I was having a nightmare. An awake nightmare. I stared through the windshield. When had it gotten dark? Where the hell was Charlie when I needed him? Oh, yes, at the vet because of me.

  Someone whispered to me and I could swear that I raised my right hand and waved at him regally, an indication that I was doing fine and if the carriage would just go a little bit faster, we could get to the church on time.

  “You will soon be free,” Maddock said.

  I turned my head very slowly, wondering why my left leg hurt so much.

  Il Duce was sitting beside me. Even though it was dark, I could see him perfectly. My dashboard lights were still on. Or maybe he was glowing. His eyes were funny, not red or anything, just very intent. The whole iris part was black. Didn’t he have brown eyes?

  I really had to do something about my leg.

  But first, I had to get rid of Maddock. Could I do the pushy thing to him?

  Looking into his eyes was like staring into the eyes of a shark devoid of any shred of humanity.

  I smiled at him, then remembered I was afraid of him.

  “I’m bleeding,” I said.

  “Yes, you are,” he said, his voice guttural.

  “Marcie!”

  Another voice intruded.

  I was becoming so popular.

  Dan was suddenly there, pulling open the passenger door. In the next moment, he grabbed
Maddock with one hand and punched him in the face with the other.

  Who knew, a five hundred something year old vampire can get a bloody nose?

  I was probably hallucinating because of the loss of blood, but I could swear he threw something at Maddock that looked like fairy dust, all sparkly green and blue.

  Maddock cursed, then abruptly disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived.

  I was abruptly transfixed with laughter. Fairy dust. Maybe Dan was a fairy and he just didn’t want to tell me he had wings.

  The laughter was banished by a very handsome man in a canary yellow suit asking me not to move. Move? I couldn’t move. Besides, where was I going to go? Could I disappear like Maddock?

  “Stay with me, ma’am.”

  When had I become a ma’am? I’d always been a miss. Had it happened one day when I wasn’t looking my best?

  People were talking around me. Another man in a yellow suit was telling me to stay awake. I wanted to laugh again, but the effort was beyond me. I heard words like shock, nervous reaction, keep her calm and they only made me more tired.

  Dan was there, his hands on my arm warm. He was the warmest thing about me. I was so cold I was beginning to shake.

  Metal screeched and tore, the noise so loud it finally silenced my thoughts. In the next instant, I was airborne. I was floating in the air and my knight was carrying me.

  A perfect time to do the damsel in distress bit and faint.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but if the doctor is cute, forget the fruit.

  The second time I woke up as a vampire in a hospital location, I knew immediately that I wasn't at the VRC – the Vampire Resuscitation Center.

  First of all, it smelled like flowers, not anything antiseptic. No, not flowers, but aftershave, something spicy and leathery at the same time. Orange Stetson? Down on the Lemon Grove Range?

  I blinked open my eyes to see Dan sitting beside me. I was in a hospital bed and there was medical paraphernalia all around me. I had a doozy of a headache and my stomach was getting used to being nauseous. My left side hurt a little. So did my left arm. But it was my leg that was the most uncomfortable.

  I glanced down to find I was in a cast from my ankle to mid thigh. Sheets had been piled around me in order to give me some modesty, but my toes looked a little blue and they were decidedly chilly.

  A man attired in a white coat stood at the foot of the bed staring down at a clipboard. He didn’t have a stethoscope, but I deduced that he was a doctor because he had Dr. Fernandez embroidered on his pocket.

  Did doctors even use a stethoscope nowadays? I tried to remember the last time I had been to the doctor before the VRC. Other than my gynecologist, I’d visited a Physician’s Assistant. He’d been heavily into blood tests and not so much a hands on examination. He was also one for giving me handouts. Every time I turned around, I got a new list of things I should be doing, eating, or avoiding.

  "I'm at the castle," I said.

  I turned my head very gently since I had a walloping headache and looked at Dan.

  “What was the sparkly stuff?”

  “Sparkly stuff?”

  “You threw something at Maddock.”

  He reached out and placed his hand on my arm.

  “You were badly injured, Marcie.”

  In other words, I’d imagined it.

  So, instead of taking me by ambulance to the hospital, Dan put me in his car and drove all the way back out to Arthur's Folly.

  When I said as much, Dan nodded.

  "I'm a vampire," I said, hoping it wasn't a shock to the doctor. "But I can still die if I lose enough blood."

  “You didn’t lose that much blood after we freed you from the car. Besides, it’s safer for you here.”

  I stretched my hands out in front of me. They looked almost translucent and there were four of them.

  "Do I need a transfusion?"

  All those vials of blood I had turned my nose up in the beginning now seemed like a good idea.

  “No,” Dr. Fernandez said. “We’ve stabilized you. You have an excellent prognosis.”

  I didn’t want to argue with the good doctor, but I wasn’t feeling all that excellent.

  “Did that poor man die?"

  Dan nodded.

  "What happened?"

  He shrugged. "He was elderly. His foot might have slipped. He might not have seen the stoplight.”

  “Maddock was there.” Had I summoned him accidentally?

  When I'd seen him at the accident, he'd appeared a little paler than usual, but that could have just been because it was just barely nightfall. Maybe I had disturbed his beauty sleep.

  If the man could come to me when I was in trouble, I had to make damn sure I was joyously happy from this moment on.

  “Or he might have been compelled."

  His eyes softened as he looked at me. I didn’t like being an object of pity.

  Had Maddock compelled that poor man to stop me? If so, he’d misjudged and badly.

  "Would you know?" I asked. "If you were under some compulsion, do you know?”

  How odd that the question had never occurred to me. Those few times I’d used compulsion I’d done so to ease the other person. The cab driver who had taken me to the vampire school and was afraid. I hadn’t considered that he might know I’d compelled him. Nor had I thought about the clerk at Walmart and the one at the convenience store.

  Had I compelled anyone else?

  I’d tried with both Mike and Dan, but they hadn’t been affected.

  "It depends," the doctor said, moving to the side of the bed. He reached out, grabbed my arm, his fingers pressing against my inner wrist. Was he measuring my pulse? Did he know my heart rate was really slow?

  "It all depends on the skill of the vampire," he continued. “The older ones know how to mask their signature."

  "And the newer ones?"

  He frowned, staring down at his watch.

  "They are not as adept. People come away from the event feeling as if they had to do something but not knowing why. There is some postulation that a great many mental diseases might have at its roots vampire compulsion."

  "So schizophrenia isn't really schizophrenia as much as a vampire whispering in your ear?"

  He dropped my arm and made a notation.

  "Exactly that."

  “Seems to me that vampires are responsible for a great many human ills," I said.

  How odd that I didn't really feel like a vampire. I kept referring to vampires as “them" as if they were separate group, which summoned another thought.

  If werewolves ran in packs, and witches had covens, what was a group of vampires called? A culture of bacteria, an army of caterpillars, a congregation of alligators, a troop of baboons. A horde of vampires? A nest of blood suckers? I finally remembered. It’s called a murder of vampires, like a murder of crows.

  How damn appropriate.

  "This is Dr. Fernandez," Dan said, about five minutes too late. “He's the GP on call."

  Of course the castle would have a doctor on call.

  "And you have your own hospital room, right?"

  "We have a nice little outpatient surgery next door," Dr. Fernandez said. "It's come in handy from time to time."

  Dr. Fernandez looked pointedly at Dan, evidently a signal because he stood and walked to the side of the bed.

  “Well, I’ll let you have some alone time with the doctor.” He reached out and handed me a little button, one that looked like a dog clicker. “Just press this and I’ll come running.”

  He evidently didn’t need to work for a living, but what did Dan do all day? When he wasn’t being employed undercover, that is. The question hovered on my lips, but I bit it back. Now was not the time to ask with a white coated witness standing there. I suspected Dan had a lot of secrets he didn’t want to share. He hadn’t been into sharing so far.

  I thanked him, closed my eyes, and listened as he left the room.

/>   “Are you going to give me bad news?” I asked, the second I heard the door close.

  I honestly didn’t know how much more bad news I could take before I went screaming off into the hinterlands.

  Let’s recap, shall we?

  I’m a vampire.

  My mother tried to kill me and, instead, killed an innocent person, um, vampire. Instead of being punished for her crime, my mother escaped and is probably, even now, coming after me with the weapon of her choice surrounded by a horde of similar nut cases.

  My grandmother is a witch who always knew what I was and was cuddling me with one arm while preparing to snuff out my life with the other.

  Are you with me so far?

  I’ve been befriended by a man who lives in a castle and who professes to hate vampires while being very kind to me.

  Oh, and I have a master vampire, a duke, wanting me to have his child.

  There are just times when you have to ignore reality. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any chocolate or booze around and they’re my ignore reality helpers.

  I opened my eyes a tiny bit to see him scowling down at the clipboard. It’s never a good thing when a doctor frowns.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t like your numbers.”

  “What numbers?”

  He didn’t answer me, but he lowered the clipboard and stared at me. His eyes seemed oddly sparkly and I had the sudden freezing thought that he was more than he should have been. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. What’s that old saying, that even paranoid people have enemies? I had my share.

  “Your white blood count.”

  My eyes were fully open now and I studied him. Dr. Fernandez was maybe Dan’s age, which I put in the mid-thirty range. In a few years, his high forehead wouldn’t simply be the sign of an intelligent man as much as a bald one.

  That’s one problem women didn’t have to worry about all that much. Sagging boobs, check. Spreading derriere, check. A face that revealed all the ravages of time, double check. Baldness? Not so much.

  I suspected Dr. Fernandez would mature into one of those men with a distinguished face. His face seemed unfinished now, almost as if the high cheekbones and sharp chin were waiting for a little age to mature them.