by Sloan Archer
I went into the bathroom and wet a washcloth with cold water. I sat next to Robert and draped it over his forehead. “That feels nice,” he murmured. He seemed to be falling back to sleep, which was worrisome since he’d just gotten up. Vampires weren’t napping types.
“Shh, it’s okay. Rest your eyes,” I soothed. “You’ll feel better when you get up.” I felt like a liar. Call it women’s intuition, but I could sense that something was wrong. I had a feeling.
Robert jolted upright. I tried to push him back into bed but he fought against me. While there was no real way to quantify how much stronger vampires were than humans, I guessed it was about ten thousand times. Robert could pick me up and throw me across the room like I was nothing more than a tennis ball if he really wanted to—not that Robert would ever hurt me. Not even if his life depended on it. Thankfully, he could hardly move because of his weakened state.
“Robert, you need to re—”
He looked me square in the face. His silvery blue eyes were horribly bloodshot. Then he said the scariest words I’d ever heard him utter: “I need to get up! Cobalt’s waiting.”
My blood turned icy in my veins. “What . . . did . . . you . . . say?” I choked out. Had he gone crazy?
“Cobalt! Poor old girl’s been locked in the stables all day. She’ll starve if I don’t feed her!”
I felt panic rise in my throat. I fought hard to swallow it down. I grabbed Robert’s chin and lifted his face so it was level with mine. His skin was moist and clammy against my hands, radiating heat like an oven. “Robert, honey, Cobalt is gone.”
“No!” he wailed. “She can’t be.”
“Cobalt was your horse back in England. We are in San Francisco. Don’t you remember?”
“You lie!” he screamed, thrashing against my hold. “I want to see my Cobalt!”
“You can’t, Robert!”
“Why? What have you done to her?”
Helpless, I gawked around the room for assistance, as if there’d be a nurse standing in the corner with a thermometer and a gurney. I thought of Carl, Robert’s loyal human driver and confidant for the past forty-five years. If anyone would be able to offer assistance, it would be Carl. But he was gone.
I cursed and then felt bad immediately. Carl had flown up to Seattle to be with his dying sister. Doctors had found a tumor in her brain and the prognosis was bleak. Robert had told Carl to take off all the time he wanted. The last thing he needed right now was for me to call and unload on him about Robert.
“Robert, Cobalt died in 1851. You told me so yourself. Don’t you remember? Please tell me that you remember!” Oh, God, what was I going to do?
The clouds over Robert’s eyes lifted. He rubbed the back of his head. “Of course she did. I don’t know why I said that.”
“Robert? What’s happening?” Scared out of my wits, I squeezed him tightly. It was like hugging a furnace. “You should go to the . . . Is there such a thing as a vampire hospital?”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Are you kidding me?”
“I think you need to see someone—a vampire doctor or something.”
“No such thing. We don’t get sick,” he argued.
“Clearly you do! Go and take a look in the mirror. You look like death warmed over.”
He said, “I’m fine.”
“You are not fine! You just asked me to take you back to England to see your dead horse! You hallucinated. Look at the sheets—they’re drenched in sweat. You’re sweating, Robert. Sweating!”
He pulled me close when I started bawling. “Aw, baby, I’m sorry if I scared you. I’ve been pretty swamped at work lately,” he said, sounding more like his typical self. “I think it’s finally caught up with me.”
“But what about all your symptoms? Your heart beating?” I thrust my hands towards the wet sheets. “When was the last time you had a fever? Sweated?”
He pursed his lips.
“Well?”
“1851.”
“Exactly!” I screeched. “In 1851—the last year you were human!”
“There’s not much I can do about it, Mercy.”
“Is there somebody you can call?”
“Who could I possibly call about this?”
“There’s Carl . . .”
Robert sighed. “Do you really want me to interrupt Carl’s time with his family so I can tell him that my heart started beating?”
“I . . . No, I don’t.”
Shivering, he pulled the covers up under his arms and sat back. “I admit that all of this is peculiar, but I’m willing to bet it will pass shortly.”
“Have you heard of anything like this happening to other vampires?”
“To be honest, I haven’t,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t occurred. I haven’t heard the names of highways in Shanghai, but they exist, don’t they?”
“I guess so,” I said with reluctance.
“And you know vampires don’t like to broadcast their weaknesses.”
“Could there could be others out there going through the same thing? Maybe there’s some kind of vampire flu going around,” I suggested.
“Could be.”
“I know you said that you’re not tired, but how about you close your eyes and try to sleep? I’ll come in and get you up in an hour. Sound good?”
“If you insist, Mom,” he teased.
I gave him a kiss and turned off the light. I went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. I drummed my fingers on the newspaper. I picked at a few spilt ends. What now? I’d lose my mind if I had to sit there for an hour, waiting to wake Robert.
My stomach growled, providing me with an idea of what to do.
I’d never been a nervous eater, but for some reason I was famished. You’d think with Robert being as sick as he was that food would be the last thing on my mind, but there I was, making a mental checklist of the refrigerator’s contents. It was dinnertime, though. And I doubted that Robert and I would be going out that evening with his health fluctuating the way that it was.
With so much time to kill, I opted to make seafood stir-fry from scratch. I pulled out all the ingredients from the fridge, making an extra effort to chop the garlic and ginger ultra fine for the sesame seed sauce. As I peeled the shrimp and rinsed the scallops, I was once again struck by how much life could change when a person had money. All the ingredients were the finest San Francisco had to offer: the seafood fresh from a Mission Street fishmonger, the herbs organic, the rice and soy sauce purchased from an authentic China Town market. All of these delicacies had been hand-selected by the personal shopper Robert had hired to keep his fridge stocked with human food. I’d never been so pampered. Prior to moving in with Robert, the closest I’d ever come to having a personal shopper buy me the makings of stir-fry was the time Liz had come home from the grocery with a surprise packet of Top Ramen.
It took me forty minutes to cook dinner, which gave me a perfect twenty to eat before I needed to check on Robert. The food was delicious, though I hardly enjoyed it, being so tense.
When I went into the bedroom, Robert was sitting up. He looked like hell.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“What are you cooking?”
“I made seafood stir-fry.” I fanned the air. “Oh no! Is the smell making you ill? I’ve finished it, so the leftover scent should go away—”
“No, it smells delicious.”
“But . . . You hate human food.”
He licked his lips. “Is there any left?”
“Uh, there is,” I said slowly. “But you can’t have any! It will make you sick. You drink blood. Remember? Want me to bring you some?”
“No.” He rubbed his cheek. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
I felt his forehead. “You’re burning up!”
“I’m not feeling so great.”
“I think you should rest some more.”
“I agree.”
I turned off the light. As I we
nt to shut the door, he mumbled a few words that I didn’t comprehend. “What’s that?” I said. “I didn’t quite catch you.”
“I asked if you’d like to go for a ride through the fields tonight, Leopold.”
“Get some rest, Robert.”
“Sure thing,” he murmured dreamily.
To stave off my panic, I reminded myself that, unlike Cobalt, at least Leopold was alive. Still, if Robert was talking to me like I was his maker, the situation was getting progressively worse.
I wondered . . . Perhaps Robert’s maker could offer some assistance. Leopold lived across the pond in London, but he and Robert remained close despite their distance. The bond between a vampire and the one who’d brought them over was unbreakable. I’d never met Leopold, but I’d heard all about him through Robert. Robert had talked about me to Leopold as well, so we knew each other kinda-sorta indirectly.
I went into Robert’s office and searched for his cell phone. I didn’t have to hunt around too much; it was sitting right on top of his desk. I trusted Robert implicitly (and was not one to snoop), so I’d never before tried to operate his phone. I’d recently gotten rid of my cell with a keyboard (I know, I know—welcome to the modern world, Mercy), so I was still getting used to phones that were devoid of buttons. Robert’s phone was really high tech, so I was at a loss. I gawped at it like an orangutan trying to decipher hieroglyphics before finally figuring out its basic operating functions.
When I tried to get Leopold’s number out of the contacts, however, I discovered that Robert’s phone was password protected. I shouldn’t have anticipated otherwise. Robert was a CEO and a vampire, so secrecy was essential. It crossed my mind to cut to the chase and ask Robert for the password, but I didn’t want to disrupt his rest. He was so out of it that he probably wouldn’t remember it, anyway, and he’d most certainly protest the idea of bringing in outside help.
I pocketed the phone, hoping that I’d eventually think of something. I used my own phone to call Liz. She’d only been vampire for a few weeks, but that was still a few weeks longer than my zero weeks of immortality. Maybe she’d have a suggestion.
Liz picked up on the second ring, sounding chipper as ever. “Mercy! What’s up?” she sang. “I figured you and your lover boy would be out this evening.”
“We . . . I . . . He . . .”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, alarmed. “Is everything okay? Are you hurt? Do you need help?”
“I’m okay, Liz. It’s Robert. It’s . . . There’s something wrong with him.”
“What happened?”
“I really don’t want to get into it over the phone. Can you come—”
“I’ll be there in fifteen.”
Good old Liz. Always there when you needed her. And she was a fast driver to boot. She arrived ten minutes later.
I felt guilty when I opened the door. “Oh, no, Liz! Did you have plans tonight?”
Her brows knit together. “What do you mean?”
“You look all fancy. Gorgeous. Were you and David going out?”
Confused, she looked down at herself. What, these old rags? “Um, no. We were just going to watch movies. Why?”
I tried to force a smile through all my anxiety. “Nothing. Vampirism suits you is all,” I commented flatly. And it did. Liz was a knockout as a human, but she virtually glowed as an immortal, even in her stay-at-home movie night mode. She had the bombshell body of a 1950’s pinup combined with long, wavy auburn locks of a Botticelli woman. Her blue eyes twinkled like sapphires.
She nudged past me as she let herself in. We had that sort of friendship.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
“Sure. Though . . . It may be easier if I show you. Come with me into the kitchen.”
“O-kay,” she said deliberately, following me.
I pulled the pan with the leftover stir-fry from the stove and thrust it under her nose. “What does this smell like to you?”
She retched. “Aw, God! Can you get that out of my face?”
“So, it doesn’t smell yummy to you, then?”
“No! That smells like ass! You know I don’t eat human food anymore.” She plugged her nose. “How would you like it if I shoved some blood under your nose? I can if you want. I’ve got a flask in my purse. It’s David’s.”
“Oddly, Liz, I have no desire to sniff your husband’s blood.”
She smiled impishly. “That’s too bad. He’s de-li-cious.”
I shuddered. I tilted my head toward the pan. “I figured as much about the stir-fry,” I muttered glumly.
“Mercy, what’s going on? Where’s Robert?”
“Robert,” I answered, “is in the bedroom, sleeping.”
“Sleeping? Still?” She checked the time on her phone.
“I don’t know what to do, Liz!” I cried, burying my face in my hands. “I think he might be genuinely sick.”
“Sick? How?” She touched my shoulder. “Tell me everything.”
When I finished rehashing the events of the evening, Liz, succinct as always, uttered just one word: Shit.
“Have you felt, um, sick at all?” I asked desperately. “Since you’ve become vampire? Has your heart ever started beating?”
“No. Not at all. But vampires usually don’t have health problems.”
“I know! Which is why I’m losing it!”
“Can I see Robert?” Liz asked. “Maybe if I saw him I’d come up with an idea.”
I led Liz toward the bedroom. I stopped when we got to the door. “He, uh, might say some odd things.”
“He isn’t going to be naked, is he? Should I cover my eyes?”
“No, you should be good,” I said. “He’s wearing pajama bottoms, though he was acting so crazy that he might have them on his head by now.”
Liz and I gasped when we opened the door. Robert was sitting up in I bed, his cheeks flaming pink. He had his fingers cupped under his mouth and blood was running down his chin. He was holding something.
I ran to his side. “Robert! What have you got?”
He opened his mouth to speak and gobs of blood sputtered out onto his lips.
Liz started chanting: oh shit-oh shit-oh shit!
“Not helping, Liz!” I screamed. “Help me!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Something! Anything!” I seized Robert by the chin and yelled, “Why are you bleeding? Did you cut yourself?”
He shook his head.
“What have you got? Open your hand Robert!”
I screamed when he did.
“Mercy? What are those?” Liz asked from across the room. She didn’t dare come closer.
“It’s . . . Oh my God!”
“What?”
“It’s his fangs! But . . .” The only time I’d ever seen a vampire lose their fangs was at death. It was the only solid piece of evidence they left behind that proved that they’d truly existed. Everything else—their body and hair—turned to ash or goo.
The phone in my pocket started to vibrate as I raced to get a towel. I ignored it. The call clicked over to voicemail and then started ringing again. And again. I ran back into the bedroom, threw the towel at Liz, and then looked at the phone: Leopold.
“Help him!” I ordered Liz, and then I answered the call.
“Leopold! Thank goodness! It’s Mer—”
“Is Robert dead?”
“What?”
“Is. Robert. Dead?”
“No. But . . .”
“But what?”
“I think Robert is . . . is . . .”
“Speak quickly, girl!”
“I think Robert is turningback into a human.”
3
Leopold had gone so silent on the other line that I initially thought that the call had disconnected. Many vampires I’d met were like that, though, speaking only when there was something that needed saying.
“Hello? Leopold?”
“I’m here. Robert is okay?”
&nb
sp; I paused. “I wouldn’t say that he’s tiptop, but he’s still with us.”
“Excellent.” He didn’t sound as hysterical as what would be expected, but Robert had mentioned before that Leopold was renowned for his calmness in high-stress situations. Whatever the case, I sure could have used some of Leopold’s cool as a cucumber attitude.
“I know we’ve never met, but I need your help, Leopold,” I said, struggling not to beg.
He asked, “Why do you believe Robert has reverted back to human?”
I outlined the night’s events: Robert’s flu-like symptoms, his food cravings and hallucinations, and, lastly, his fangs falling out. Leopold made little mm-hmm sounds as I spoke. I waited for his input after I finished.
“Hey!” Liz pitched a pillow at me. She held up the towel, saturated in Robert’s blood. “I could use some help here! Who is that?”
I cupped my palm over the phone. “I am trying to get help! It’s Leopold,” I hissed.
“Who in the hell is Leopold?”
“The vampire who made Robert!”
“Oh. Okay then.”
Liz went back to tending to Robert who, strangely, was starting to look better. He smiled at me placidly over Liz’s shoulder. I noted that his incisors were starting to grow back, not as pointy-tipped fangs but as regular human teeth.
“And you say all this started tonight?” Leopold asked.
“Yes.”
“That makes sense, I suppose,” he said.
“What does?”
“How much has Robert told you about the bond between a vampire and the one who made them?”
I shook my head, not that Leopold could see me. What did this have to do with anything? I wanted to shout at him to tell me what to do. “Some, I guess. I know that you’re the one who made him, if that’s what you mean.”
“Yes, I was the one who turned Robert. But that was not what I wish to explain.” He hesitated and then said, “For each year Robert and I continue to thrive, the bond we share weakens. When I first made Robert, I could detect his every emotion: anger, sorrow, happiness, love. I could also detect his physical discomfort. It’s been so long since I’ve made him, however, that now I feel only a mild twinge when Robert is in pain. I’m referring to physical pain in this instance, not emotional. I cannot feel his emotions at all anymore—I haven’t been able to for the better part of fifty years.”
