by Mandy Rosko
She pushed her glasses up her nose. "You were afraid she'd fly away before she could put you back to normal?"
He wouldn't have used the word afraid but … "Yes, something like that," he grumbled.
They both stared at the opposite wall for a time, silence again.
Jackie inexplicably giggled. "I guess you’re not a good boy anymore."
It took him a second to realize what she was referring to, and then he laughed too. "I guess not. Your mother probably likes it even less that Sarah and I dated."
Jackie winced again, and he immediately regretted his words though he knew he shouldn’t.
He had no loyalty to Jackie. Wanting her was not the same as dating her, and even if he was, the offhanded mentioning of a former girlfriend, whom he currently wanted nothing to do with after his cure was administered, did not count towards infidelity.
Still, he would miss the excuse of getting to kiss her when this was all over with. "Sorry, shouldn't have said that."
She cleared her throat. "I guess it's high time I got used to the fact that Carly's dated half the men in the state, so it shouldn't bother me that she got to you before you ever got to me."
He hadn't expected her to say that. "So, it doesn't bother you that she and I dated?"
She shrugged. "When we were kids I had a hard time finding boyfriends she hadn't previously been with, and the ones that I did usually found their way into her room eventually. I’d say I’m a little used to it by now."
She stopped speaking and blushed a deep shade of red. He knew she didn't understand why she told him that, and now he also knew that when he mentioned dating Sarah she was hurt.
He forced a smile and tried to lighten her mood. "I bet you saw a couple running out of her room scared, too."
She laughed, and Kyle felt a swell of accomplishment.
Mike rounded a corner and found them, honing in on Kyle. He stood away from the wall, ready for whatever information he gave. "What's she saying?"
"She's admitting it, even when we told her that Patty was calling for a lawyer she insisted she didn't need one. She confessed. Your mother's in there with her now that it's all over with," he said to Jackie.
She stepped forward. "What's going to happen to her now?"
Carter sighed and folded his large arms. "All depends on your friend here. Do you want to press charges?" He asked Kyle.
Kyle blinked. It had been so long since his life changed forever, and he imagined the day when he would finally find her and make her change him back. None of those fantasies ever involved a cop asking if he wanted to press charges against her. He was nearly rendered incapable of speech.
He looked at Jackie. Her arms were crossed and she leaned forward, her eyes on him, waiting with a held breath for him to make his decision.
He sighed and hated himself for not being able to give Sarah what she deserved. "As long as she can change me back then I'll just forget the whole thing happened."
"Well you see, that's part of the problem."
Kyle’s heart picked up its steady rhythm. Those weren't the words preceding good news. "What’s the problem?"
"According to her the spell was never supposed to last longer than a week. If you're still walking around at night as a vamp then it probably means you’re stuck like this."
***
If Jackie felt like she'd been punched in the gut when she had to phone the police on her own sister, then it was nothing compared to what Kyle must feel now.
His eyes bulged and mouth hung open as he stared at Mike in a blind stupor. He voice came out in a deathly whisper. "What did you just say?"
Mike seemed to be at a loss for words. "I don't know what to tell you, but I promise we've got people lookin’ into this. She told us what she used to make the dust you said she cursed you with, and we're gonna try and work with that."
Kyle ran his fingers through his hair and paced like a caged animal before facing Mike again. "She has to know how to fix this! She did this so she can fix it!"
Jackie shook her head. She reached her hand out and clasped his shoulder. "It doesn't always work that way."
"Think of a man made virus," Mike said. "It's a lot easier to create the disease than it is to cure it."
Kyle shook his head, purposely denying the truth now. She gripped his shoulder tighter but he shrugged her off.
Jackie pulled back as though burned and tried to tell herself she had nothing to be hurt about. This was something only he could deal with.
"No, no, no!"
Kyle punched his fists through the drywall. Mike grabbed his shoulders but Kyle pushed him off, so Mike shoved him back against the wall.
"If you wanna break something you go home and do it, unless you want me to arrest you too."
"I can't go home because I'm like this!" Kyle yelled back, his fangs extended, his eyes glowing slits and claws out and ready.
Their yelling attracted the attention of the other officers in the nearby area, all of whom came to see what the problem was. Upon seeing Mike containing an angry vampire, some put their hands on their weapons.
Jackie had to warn him. "Kyle, stop it."
He looked up and saw the attention he was drawing. He unclenched his fists and his angry face melted into something a little less grim. Mike waited a second before releasing him.
"Back to work. Everything's under control." Mike barked, and with some reluctance the uniformed men and women turned around and did as he told them.
Now Mike was the one to be angry. He pointed his large index finger in Kyle’s face. "Now look, acting like that right here has got to be the stupidest thing you can do and the next time it happens you will be the one in cuffs, do you understand?"
Kyle leaned against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor. "Yeah, I do."
Jackie made sure to be next to him when she knelt down, willing all of the pity or sympathy she felt to go away so he wouldn't feel it. She just wanted to be supportive.
He stared blankly ahead.
Mike sighed. "Like I said, I've got some people workin’ with the ingredients she gave. They're goin’ to try and counter ‘em.”
“But?” Kyle asked.
Mike fisted his hands in his pockets. “But it's not lookin’ good."
Kyle faced Mike, his eyes still glazed like he wasn't seeing what he was looking at. "What did she use?"
Jackie was also curious to know, and she looked at him too.
"That's part of the problem too. It was such a simple mixture …" He trailed off before seeing Kyle staring at him, waiting, then got back on track. "It was dried vamp blood mixed with stardust. She used her own enchantment to make the curse temporary, but she seemed to forget that a man can't just become a vampire for a few days and that's it. The stardust makes you turn at night, and using actual vampire blood is what's keeping you like this."
Kyle rubbed his face, and when Jackie put her hand on his shoulder again he didn't shrug her off.
"So, when Carly told mom and I that she was in New York all this time ...?"
Mike nodded. "She lied. Kyle was right that she did disappear right after cursing him for ending their relationship. When she was telling you that she was still in New York, she was really in Paris seeing the sights. Kyle, the reason your brother couldn’t find her either was because she changed the memories of everyone she worked with. Anyone who ever saw her wouldn't have known about her after she left.
“She couldn’t find much work there from what she told us, spent a lot of her money on expensive hotels and such. It explains why she came back to the city to begin with. Because she didn’t have the funds to keep living the lifestyle that she wanted, she came back for the emotional support of her mother.”
So the picture of her in Vogue and commercial for the perfume add was a lie, Jackie thought. "And her name? Sarah Valier?"
"Apparently she thought it was a better sounding name to be known as if she was going to model."
Jackie didn't think the name Sa
rah Valier was any better than Carly May Moore, but she said nothing about it.
Kyle remained silent through their exchange, and she couldn't blame him for it. She tried to understand what he felt, but really there was no way to understand something like that.
All this time of looking for her, hoping for a cure, only to find her and get his hopes up like that…it would be crushing to anyone to hear that nothing could be done. Jackie looked at Mike, silently willing him to give them a moment.
Thankfully, he was good at taking hints.
"I have some paperwork to finish up and a few more questions for Carly. Are you going to press charges?"
Jackie's heart somersaulted into her throat, and her breath caught on it while she waited for him to make the decision. She’d forgotten all about that part.
He shook his head after a moment and wiped his face. "No."
Mike nodded. "I'll let her know she can go then. I'll keep you posted on anything we might find to help you with."
He turned to leave, but then Jackie remembered she had another question. "Did you find anything on Dr. Clayton? Or why he might be sending ferals after me?"
He gave her what she thought was supposed to be a reassuring smile. He looked more tired and overworked to her. "Nothin’ yet, I'll let you know when I hear somethin’, don't worry."
When Mike left them Jackie sat down next to Kyle. He wouldn't look at her.
To think, a few hours ago she'd been so devastated that Carly was the one he'd dated in New York, and before that she'd been worried that when they met he would lose all interest in her in exchange for her sister.
Those worries seemed petty now in comparison to what he must be going through.
One thing she knew for sure was they couldn’t stay on the floor. "The carpet sure is nice, but I think we should move to those chairs over there."
He looked at her for the first time in a while. She smiled for him but he didn't return it. He got to his feet and sank in one of the black waiting chairs. She sat next to him.
Without thinking, she grabbed his hand from where it rested on his knee and threaded their fingers together.
He looked at her as though stunned she could do such a thing. If she was truthful with herself, she was stunned with her own behavior as well. She squeezed his hand rather than let go. She wanted to make him feel better, to bring hope back into his eyes.
"It's not all bad," she said.
"How is it not all bad?"
Slowly, carefully, she reached her hand out, hesitating only briefly before cupping his cheek and pulling his face towards hers.
She kissed his cold lips, pushing all her concentration, magic, and emotions into it. She cared too much to see him like this.
Like the times before, she could feel the heat returning to his flesh as she kissed him, warmth filling him up as though it were being poured in by a jug. Her magic tingling through her lips and into him as it turned him back into a human.
He was the one to pull away from her when the tingling stopped. She expected him to look at his hands for the confirmation that he was no longer a vampire, but he didn't. His eyes remained on her, and then they moved back down to her mouth.
No one had ever stared at her like that before.
His larger hands touched her face before his palms cupped her cheeks. He pulled her mouth to his again and she melted into him.
She sighed when their lips met again and closed her eyes. He released her face with one hand only to pull her body closer to his.
He had to know that he was cured and didn't need to kiss her any longer, but he wouldn't stop. She didn't want him to stop. She wrapped her arm around his neck to make sure he wouldn't stop.
They had to stop eventually. Making out, while wonderful and romantic, would not be so romantic when some cop or secretary walked by and saw them. A disappointed groan ripped from Jackie’s throat when it came to an end.
Then she realized she was leaning over the steel arm of the waiting chair while he held her, and she blushed. She tried inching back into her seat but he locked his arms around her, refusing to let her move.
He was still looking at her, and his hands still spread warm shivers through her clothes where he touched her. Through her back and shoulders. The most wonderful thing she ever felt.
He stared right through her, she squirmed a little, unable to help the self conscious feelings that sprang up and wishing she'd decided to wear her contacts and some eyeshadow.
He grinned at her, something real, and those self conscious doubts vanished. He raised his hand and pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. "I think this changes a few things."
She let out a single nervous laugh. "I hate it when things stay the same anyway."
ELEVEN
Mike stared at the yellow metal box connected to one of the collars found on the ferals. It was safely tucked inside a plastic bag, already dusted for prints—they were Charles Claytons—and any other clues that could be taken from them—there were none—and so he was free to turn it about and look while he mentally searched for all the holes. Any hint that he might have missed.
So far, there was nothing. Not on this collar, nor on any of the others that had been picked up.
He sighed. So much nothing.
"Parts are too common, no way of tracking it. It doesn't tell us anything we don't already know about Dr. Clayton except he's now taking his little obsession with semi-humans a bit too far …" He trailed off and put the bag on his desk that was littered with paperwork, pencils, pens, his phone, organizer, and an array of other things that couldn't help him find out more of what he needed to know.
A knock at his door brought him back to his office, and he looked up as Miller came in. The man’s face was grim.
Mike tensed in his chair. "What is it?"
Miller scratched the back of his shaved head. "We still can't find anything on where Clayton might be, or where he's finding so many feral vamps to put collars on."
"He's not."
Miller blinked. "What?"
Mike brought up the file on his computer that he'd been looking at and turned the monitor around. "Look familiar?"
Miller stepped forward and leaned in to get a good look at the face. Then he read some of the description next to the picture. "Vampires don't normally end up as a missing person’s file," he said.
"No, they're a little too tough ‘round the edges to just grab off the street. You have to be real crafty to be able to trick a vamp into trusting you enough to get close enough to kill ‘em, or kidnap ‘em."
Miller put it together. "This is one of the ferals?"
Mike turned his monitor around. "Dustin Frank, one of our recent deceased from last night's attack on Patty's Potions. You wouldn't be able to tell that now considerin’ his face is charred blacker than coal. And this picture was, as you can see, taken before he turned into a mindless, bloodthirsty animal."
Mike clacked on his keyboard and clicked his mouse a few times and brought up more files. Miller walked around his desk to look so he didn't have to spin the monitor again. "Anna Delores, recently reported missing and recently found dead, Jason Briggs, Mark Dalton, all were vampires who had the money and capabilities to buy their own blood, and were certainly healthy enough to go hunting for it themselves if they ran into a little financial trouble. All lived either in the city or around it. Their records range from squeaky clean to unpaid parking tickets. And now we find them crazed and dead."
Miller had one arm folded and held the other up to scratch his chin. "You're saying Clayton is kidnapping vampires and starving them until they're feral?"
"Bingo. That's exactly what I'm saying."
"When did they go missing?"
Mike leaned forward, proud that his younger partner was so fast to pick things up. "I already thought of that. They all went missin’ at different times, far enough apart to not cause much suspicion, the longest being nearly a year, except for Anna Delores. Either way it’s all more than enough time t
o starve a vamp."
"Clayton would need help for that. To catch a vamp instead of outright killing one would be tough job."
"Not to mention storing them before and after they turned, which means Charles Clayton has someone, or several someones, working for him."
Miller thought about it for a few seconds. "You think that same someone convinced him his daughter needed to die?"
Mike shrugged, and then stood to put on his coat. "Could be. I personally don't see the need to kill your daughter because she refuses to see things your way, but it doesn't mean that someone else out there wouldn't see it like that."
Miller followed him. "That's sick."
"Doesn't stop it from happenin’ though."
"Where are you going?"
Mike opened the door. "I'm going to give Jackie a ride home. Looks like Pat’s mad at her for turning in her sister."
Miller hesitated. "She already left."
Mike didn't move another step. She left without saying goodbye to him? "Who'd she go with?" He asked. She wouldn’t have gone off alone, not when it was this dangerous out there for her.
"McKane, the cursed vamp. He called for a cab and left with her. You sure it's a good idea to let him watch her like he does?"
Mike calmly shut the door and removed his jacket with a little more frustration. Trying to squash down the hurt while telling himself it was only a shared cab. Miller asked the question to try and take away from what was said before it.
Of course he'd thought it was a good idea. He'd checked out McKane's background and the man was damned good at what he did up until that little slip that put him where he was now. But it was slowly becoming apparent that it wasn't such a wise decision. "I would've taken them home."
Nothing to do now but get back to work and run around in more circles.
Miller only approached him when he was seated at his desk. "Listen, I know you like her and all, but don't you think it's time you took the hint?"
Mike sat at his desk and pulled out more papers, refusing to look at him. "If you and I weren't friends I'd be insulted that you think you can stick your nose where it don't belong."
