“I got Jeffrey’s attention. Even better, I got Irina’s. She bent right over and scooped me up into her cold arms. She smelled of roses and rot. Dee’s brother, the mortician, couldn’t have done her makeup better. She cooed, ‘She didn’t hurt you. How could she, the tiny little thing?’ I pinned my ears back and darted my eyes at Jeffrey who really was mad now. And Irina reacted just like I wanted. She turned her back on him. ‘Is bad Jeffrey scaring you? Don’t you worry. I don’t bite dogs.’ See, no dog eating. Your maker said so.”
Kyle couldn’t snark back. He fought the sparking of his nerves that signaled another seizure.
“She ran a sharp sparkly nail under my collar to lift the name tag.” Laylea fiddled with her tag, wishing it were silver as she rifled through rows of canned goods, condiments, and empty mason jars in the pantry. “She said ‘My name is Irina and you are safe with me, Lee. You have good taste like Irina. Maybe I trade this cursed necklace for a collar like yours.’ And I do have an awesome collar. Amal got it made for me, you know. Amal’s a good guy, like you. Maybe he’d know how to help. I could call him.”
“No.”
Laylea sighed. Kyle thought she might ignore him this time but she just kept talking and rifling through drawers. “You remember Irina’s necklace. A rough silver chain wrapped with silk through and around each ring with that delicate key of an older, harsher metal dangling right in front. I imagined it was formed to fit the smallest knot of a great tree. It would have sparkled against her pale skin, but she wore a strip of fabric crossing her collar bones that drew everyone’s attention to the cleavage beneath. Clever way to keep their attention from her washed out eyes and evil grin.” She seized a roll of duct tape from a drawer. The police had cut the roll from the strip dangling off Mrs. Cull’s chair and the brownies had stored it away. It was better than nothing.
She set the duct tape on the bookshelf and cocked a hip to imitate Irina. “‘We are having a contest, Lee,’ she told me. ‘I will reward the one who pleases me most.’ I tilted my head.”
“Which she adored,” he remembered.
“Duh. ‘Jeffrey was doing well, but he has scared you.’ That would have been a good time for you to get there. But you didn’t. Jeffrey pushed through the crowd, trying to plead his case with Irina. He shoved too hard on Cal, the owner of that small tie boutique over on Harrison. Cal shoved back which considering he’s eighty-three years old and a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet wouldn’t have been a big deal if Jeffrey hadn’t tripped backwards into Tricia.”
“The shot putter.”
“And personal trainer. Jeffrey shrank under Tricia’s glare and I worried for him, but before she could do anything, Detective Kyle Nellwin burst through the front door.”
“Never fear, the law is here.”
“Yeah. Too cool for school, you are.”
Kyle rolled his head away, “Irina thought so.”
“How would you know? You didn’t even look over. You just dropped a quarter on Beth’s corner of the bar and swaggered over to Seb. ‘Dee was busy doing her thing,’ you said. ‘What do you need, my man?’ And Seb said nothing.”
“The man’s got expressive eyes,” Kyle laid back. He tried to focus on his own memories. “And his eyes were promising to shut me out of glög for the whole season if I didn’t get to work.”
Laylea found a heavy pine box of silverware in the pantry. She hefted it out and set it in easy reach on the kitchen table. Instead of selecting a new knife, Laylea picked out what could best be described as a cocktail spork. “Plus he did his eyebrow thing, didn’t he?”
“Expressive eyes.”
“You turned around and said hi to Tricia, congratulated her on her performance in the GALA games. You acknowledged Jeffrey. Then you turned back to Seb.” She added the last accusingly.
“I had to be sure I had identified the same trouble Seb had called about.”
“I was being cuddled by a vampire.”
“How would I know she was undead?”
“What did that matter? She was in the middle of a brawl of the most harmless people in town.” He knew she was needling him into defending his honor, into remembering his honor. “Ned knits. Jeffrey’s an accountant.”
“A good cop does not assume.” Kyle broke off coughing.
Laylea took the coughing as a good sign. He was still breathing. Once Kyle had led her out of the bar into the little back courtyard, Irina had dropped her pretense of breathing. She inhaled only to speak. Even when she cried, it was in silent, bloody tears. “Why did you question her out back if you didn’t know she was supernatural?”
“Oh, I assumed she was a wyrdo of some sort. And not a nice one. If I questioned her on the street, another cop might stop to help and that’s no good. Then there’s your habit of changing in times of high stress.”
“You chose the courtyard for my safety.”
“For Seb’s, really.” He laughed and the sound turned into tortured keening.
He couldn’t hold off the seizure any longer. His head rammed the pillow and his back arched up as the visual, aural, and physical aspects of Irina’s memories hijacked his body.
Unwilling to watch, Laylea ran outside. She flung herself against the porch railing and sucked in great lungfuls of cold air. Something about the still damp blanket under hands shamed her. Kyle was suffering. His whole world was changing. He could never see his wife and daughter again or any of his friends. He’d have to drink blood. He could only go out at night.
Sure, if he went evil, she’d have to kill him. But he was fighting to stay good. The least she could do was to help him. She took once last breath and returned to the kitchen. She’d spotted a pile of black tablecloths in the pantry during her search. She took two of these over to Kyle.
He lay writhing in pain but no longer hijacked by his muscles. Emboldened by his weakness, Laylea rolled him to replace the bottom sheet as she’d learned to do when her brother Bailey got mono sophomore year.
A necklace of white stone with a silver cross fell out of his jean’s pocket. Laylea swept it off the mattress and into a pocket of her collar. She hurried to swap in the fresh bottom sheet so she could take her hand off of his bony, drenched back. Kyle cringed at the cool air that washed over him as she whipped open the tablecloth cum top sheet. But he nodded his thanks.
Laylea crouched, cocktail spork in hand, to offer him the glass of water he had so far ignored. Kyle reached for it and though he tried to take the glass, she had to hold it steady as he forced a swallow down.
He was trying to take another sip when his stomach convulsed. He gagged the water back up along with a smattering of deep red blood. Laylea tumbled backwards, scrubbing at the droplets that had landed on her skin. She changed.
Spork, water, phone all crashed to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle cried. “I’m sorry.”
Laylea focused on the problems at hand. She couldn’t pick the spork up. She couldn’t reach the box of silverware on the counter. She couldn’t wrap Kyle in duct tape with paws even if the adhesive would stick to a man dripping with sweat and shrinking more in on himself every minute.
On the upside, changing would have healed any disease the blood bore as it did any injuries she ever sustained. She could run. She could find Dee or Bailey or just run back to The Office and ask Seb what he knew about vampires. But the door was closed and the window screens latched shut. She was trapped, without thumbs, with a man who was slowly turning into a vampire. And a cat.
Laylea wriggled out of her clothes and took herself for a walk around the small apartment. Kyle watched as she paced, as far from him as she could get. She trotted tight against the radiator, hopped up onto the comfy chair and then to the top of the low bookshelf. She jumped to the kitchen table, down to the floor and slowed, sniffing under the counters before she continued by the back door, past the dead tree, and headed into the bedroom. At the hallway between the tree painting and the bedroom, he saw her catch whiff of something. She came
back out of the bedroom, nose to the ground. Her sniffer led her to the painting. The scent was faint but Laylea tilted her head at the artwork.
Kyle inhaled and she started. She’d forgotten him for a moment.
“The herbs,” he choked.
She barked.
“Not so innocent, Mrs. Cull.”
Laylea trotted the long way back to her friend. She circled around the pile of soaking sheets. She circled around the pet carrier holding Methuselah, every hair on its stinky cat body standing on end as it huddled in the farthest corner from Kyle. She circled around the wet floor with its remaining half-rune. Then she finally looked up at him.
Kyle’s eyes glowed even as the brown of his pupils continued to pale. He whispered, eyes piercing hers. “I’m not the only evil in this apartment.”
Laylea whimpered.
“Get the chain from Kelly’s barbecue. Key is on her kitchen windowsill.”
Laylea sat up on her haunches and waved her front paws at the man.
He stared at her for a full minute. Not breathing. The white washed noise of traffic rushing by outside slowly drifted through the pounding of Laylea’s heart in her ears. A woman laughed down on the street, oblivious to the tension three floors up. Laylea watched tears well in Kyle’s eyes. He blinked and one ruby drop splattered on the sheet.
“Change.”
7
Chains
She ran for the door. By the time she reached it, she had thumbs. She didn’t turn back for her clothes. Out the door and down the stairs, she fumbled Kelly’s key from her collar and jammed it in the lock, not bothering to lock the door again after she grabbed the chain key from the kitchen windowsill. She popped the six-inch long padlock and forced her trembling fingers to slow so they could unwrap the chain from the leg of the grill and the wooden slats of the porch.
Laylea wasn’t worried about being seen. She’d been neutered as a puppy, so she wasn’t a terribly feminine specimen dressed or naked. It was unlikely anyone would care if they spotted a girl as curveless as her, much less call her in for indecent exposure. They’d likely think she was a little kid.
Irina could have gotten herself arrested for indecent exposure without removing a stitch of clothing. She’d worked her significant feminine wiles on Kyle with no remorse. She couldn’t know how fiercely dedicated Kyle was to his wife and little girl. Still Laylea was impressed with his resistance. As was Irina, apparently. After five minutes, she dropped the seduction and answered his questions. More honestly than either Kyle or Laylea had expected.
“I am here in your city because I was led here, by this.” She brushed two delicate fingers over the iron key resting on her breast bone. Her fingers sizzled. “The Master, oldest of our kind with a foot still in the human world, Turned me solely so that I could protect this key. I woke from days of dying with this silver chain around my neck. It has no clasp.” She tilted her long neck to show Kyle, burying her face in Laylea’s fur for a moment as she turned. “For a century I suffered the silver against my skin. I walked into sunlight. I ran into fire. Each time I sought the true death I was rescued,” she spit the word, “by one of the Old Ones. A young gypsy took pity on me after one of these failures. He wove this silk you see to protect me from the constant burn of the links.”
Laylea wondered why she hadn’t simply worn turtlenecks but having no speech as a dog, hadn’t asked.
“I have travelled the world going where I wished though America never crossed my mind until I fell asleep on a bus from Banff to Vancouver and woke up in Seattle. Over the last century I discovered that I couldn’t get to Chicago. Every time I tried, I ended up elsewhere, until I fed on a kid who’d been getting high on cold medicine in the back of a big rig. He thought the sleeping pills I gave him were ecstasy. I slept until the trucker found us when he broke down just south of East St. Louis. The ephedrine in his blood woke me right up and I started walking north. My body, the charm the Master had placed on me pulled away, south, east, west. But the key pulled me north. I followed the key. This curse brought me here, here to this street. Maybe it is meant for you. It will work in no lock while it hangs on my neck. Take it! Take the key and I will leave your town. There is only one other demon in this town. The Master has no servants here to stop you. Take the key. I leave.”
Laylea’s fur sizzled. She’d looked away from Kyle’s controlled expression to see Irina was crying great bloody tears.
Irina leaned in to Kyle and whispered in his ear, “Unless you want me to stay.”
Laylea shook her head clear of the memory. She gathered the grill chain in her arms and scooted back upstairs to her vampire, the new Kyle. He lay still on the mattress, not writhing, not sucking the lifeblood from the cat, not moaning.
Laylea scanned the apartment as she gathered the wet sheets and tossed them out on the porch. She flipped the sheets and blankets. Then she went back in and surveyed Mrs. Cull’s apartment. There was the old claw-foot radiator against the wall, the lumpy comfy chair beside the bookshelf. Chaining him to the exposed gas line in the kitchen was probably a bad idea. The apartment had gotten its fill of gas yesterday.
Radiator it was.
Laylea bent to drag the mattress closer to the wall, landing on her butt when the mattress slid easily at her tug. Kyle weighed nothing. She wrapped the chain around all four legs of the radiator and fed it through the wider chain on the end put there for that purpose. With some reluctance, she shoved the chain under Kyle’s back and pulled it over his chest. She connected two links with the padlock and struggled to pull the heavy connection to his side, so it wouldn’t rest on his ribs.
Kyle woke at this. Old instinct made him draw a breath into his still lungs. Regret flooded him. He wished he were still unconscious. The confluence of his recollection of their first meeting with Irina’s memories had finally shorted him out. But he was back and all the pain came awake too.
The chain was good. But Laylea was still too close. He knew Irina’s memories were just memories. He knew they weren’t his. But her final plan overwhelmed him in his weakness. It took all he had to deny Irina’s desire for an eternal pet while Laylea sat there, tugging on the chain to make it lay comfortably on his ribcage.
He touched her hand, deliberately startling her. She dropped the lock in her haste to retreat.
“Sorry, I just—” she began.
“Leave it. It’s my turn for a chain.”
Laylea scrabbled over to gather her clothes. She dressed as Kyle forced his brain to focus on his own memories of yesterday.
He’d risked leaving Lee with the vampire to fetch bolt cutters from Seb’s storeroom. Not knowing the whole truth then, he’d agreed release Irina from her silver chain. He returned to find Lee snuggling her head against the dead woman’s face despite the bloody tears staining her fur. Kyle calmed Irina. He’d murmured and stroked her back as he would his daughter’s, as he would Lee’s when her parents hadn’t written in weeks. He wiped away the tears with his handkerchief. Then Lee lifted the chain with a paw and Kyle lifted the bolt cutters. Irina flinched when he brushed her exposed chest with the metal, but her skin didn’t sizzle against the steel.
One clip and the metal sagged, brushing the exposed skin above her breasts.
Here he clenched his teeth against the triumph in her memory. He must have made a noise because Laylea glanced over from the kitchen and Methuselah bumped the walls of her crate trying to back away again.
Like a storybook hero, Kyle had whipped out his folding knife and sliced through the silk until the necklace tumbled to the grassy cobbles of the courtyard. Lee barked at him. But Kyle knelt to gather up the key and chain and silk. Out of the corner of one eye he saw Lee shaking her head at him but he was entranced by the rapidly healing burn on Irina’s chest. The creature had grabbed him to her then. He didn’t resist her cold lips, even found himself leaning into the kiss, denying the screaming denials of his heart. She was the one who ended it. His wise heart skipped a beat when he registered the br
ight fangs descended from her lips. Still he couldn’t pull his gaze from the glow in her pale blue eyes.
Kyle reached up and gripped his chain. “I should have paid more attention to that kiss.”
Laylea spun. The roll of duct tape fell from her hands and rolled past the bookshelf. She backed against the kitchen table, feeling for the case of flatware. “Can you read my mind?”
He laughed, but stopped harshly. “Can I?”
“Could she?” Irina had treated her as a simple dog. Perhaps that just meant she hadn’t bothered trying to read Laylea’s thoughts. She didn’t react when Laylea barked at Kyle to leave the chain on the ground. She sagged, grabbing the scrub brush from where she’d dropped it. “Or maybe we were just talking about her and both of us are on the same train of thought.”
Kyle listened, trying to hear what Laylea wasn’t saying.
Stay good, Kyle, Laylea thought at him as hard as she could. Stay good or I’ll call Dee.
He didn’t hear her threat.
Laylea blinked first. When she did, Kyle shut his eyes and laid back against the wet pillow. Laylea scooped a handful of kibble from the cat food bag and crossed back to the rune. Methuselah huddled so far in the back corner of the crate, the whole front end tilted up off the ground. Laylea tossed most of the kibble in through the tiniest possible crack in the zippered front. The cat didn’t move.
“Eat. He’s a good guy. And now he’s tied up.”
Kyle rattled his chains as Laylea turned to spit the rotten taste of fear from her mouth onto the remaining paint of the rune.
“It’s a theme,” she continued with forced cheer. “Welcome to weak bondage week in Mrs. Cull’s apartment.”
Kyle couldn’t rise to the bait. He turned his head away, his thoughts consumed with dark fantasies of what he was becoming. He barely heard her chatter about yesterday’s murder, one of yesterday’s murders.
“I’ve been thinking about it. Whoever killed Mrs. Cull really kinda gets a ‘total fail’ in tying her up. Her left arm was free. Her chest, her legs, her right arm he bound tightly with several layers of duct tape. And there’s plenty of tape left over. The roll was sitting right there at her feet, dangling from where it secured her right arm to the chair. But her left arm was totally free. If she’d tilted the chair, she might have even been able to reach the alarm clock.”
Laylea: A Wyrdos Tale Page 4
