Stage Fright (Bit Parts)

by Scott, Michelle

  “Every Coney restaurant says that,” he teased.

  “This time it’s true. My uncle owns the place.” I nodded towards the cash register where my Uncle Mike was openly staring at the two of us. If I knew my uncle, he’d be on the phone to my parents in Florida in the next ten minutes to tell them that I was on a date. Then it would take me an hour-long explanation to undo the damage. Not that I cared. Isaiah was worth the trouble.

  “The gyros are the best,” I said.

  “I’ve never had one before,” he admitted.

  “You’ve never had one?! How can you call yourself a Detroiter? You’ve got to try one.”

  Jordan stopped ogling Isaiah long enough to come over and take our orders. When she asked what we wanted, Isaiah hesitated before ordering the gyro. For some reason, certain people have a prejudice against those sandwiches. I had a college classmate who’d insisted that they were made from dog meat.

  “Make that two,” I said, “and I’ll take a Coke as well.”

  After Jordan walked away, Isaiah’s phone chirped. When he looked at it, he frowned. “Perry wants to know if you dropped any dried beans today. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I smiled and told him about the earlier conversation about arithmomania. He shook his head, amused.

  When Jordan arrived with our food, her eyes lingered on Isaiah, taking in the well-toned forearms beneath the pushed-up sleeves of his sweatshirt. “Is there anything else I can get you?” When he said he was fine, she gave him a smile that could have melted a glacier. “I’m fine, too,” I added, but she’d already walked away, her hips swaying more than usual.

  Since I was half starved, I dug in without hesitation. Isaiah took a cautious bite of his gyro. “Okay, this is good,” he admitted. “Really, really good.”

  “Best in the city,” I said.

  “Personally, I’m a Lafayette Coney Island man myself.”

  I pretended to be outraged. “Shut your mouth! My uncle is standing right there. If he hears you say that, he’ll kick you out.”

  To my surprise, my Uncle Mike left his post by the cash register and walked over. “Don’t I know you?” he asked Isaiah.

  Isaiah wiped his mouth on a napkin and shook my uncle’s hand. “Isaiah Griffin.”

  My uncle’s eyes widened. “I knew it! My wife and I saw you at spring training with the Tigers a few years ago.” My uncle’s enthusiasm for Coney dogs and shish kabobs was only eclipsed by his love of the Detroit Tigers. Every year, he and my aunt took time off to watch spring training down in Florida. “You were the fastest runner the team has seen in years, yes?”

  The light behind Isaiah’s eyes died. “So they said.”

  “A car accident? Isn’t that what happened?”

  Isaiah nodded stoically.

  Finally, my uncle clued in to Isaiah’s misery. “I’m sorry.” He gave a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll leave you two alone. Dinner is on the house.”

  “That just proves you’re a celebrity,” I said after my uncle walked away. “No one eats here for free.”

  Isaiah didn’t smile at my poor excuse of a joke. He pushed his half-eaten gyro aside. “You ready to go?”

  “Sure.”

  He left Jordan a generous tip, thanked my uncle for the meal, and even signed a photo of Milos Coney Island that my uncle dug out from his office. But all the while, the grim, desperate look didn’t leave his eyes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “We can do this another time if you want,” I said. Isaiah hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the restaurant. We’d reached the parking lot of the old church but still sat in his Jeep. His hands were draped over the steering wheel, and he stared moodily at the night sky.

  “No, let’s do it,” he said. “I want to show you how to stay safe.”

  He reached for the door handle, but I put my hand on his shoulder, stopping him. “I bet you were an amazing baseball player.”

  His back tensed. “I loved the game.” He sighed and shook his head. “No, I worshiped the game. Everything I did, and every thought I had was focused on baseball.” He paused. “My grandma used to say that we become like the gods we worship. In my case, I became highly competitive. Bloodthirsty is what my college coach called me. I got addicted to winning. Now, I wonder if I’d focused less on the sport and more on the people in my life, maybe things would be different.”

  “You can’t let yourself think like that,” I said. “It will drive you crazy.”

  He took a deep breath, and slowly his shoulders relaxed. “You’re right. All I can do now is learn from my mistakes. People matter. Baseball is just a game.”

  “But a pretty kick-ass game,” I said. My Uncle Mike and Aunt Goldie weren’t the only ones who enjoyed the sport.

  He chuckled. “Amen to that.”

  When we walked into Holy Comics, Perry gave a wave from behind the counter. Wolf Mother played over the speakers, and a couple of teenagers argued good-naturedly while they browsed the bins. When they saw us, the taller one called out, “Isaiah, what would be the worst superpower ever? Cody says it would be deadly halitosis.”

  Isaiah frowned, as if giving the matter serious thought, but his eyes danced. “Elastic limbs like Plastic Man, but…” he held up his finger before the boys could object “…without the ability to pull them back in again. So that every time you stretched out your neck or your arms, they would stay that long forever.”

  Cody’s grin showed off his braces. “That would suck!”

  “You’d have to coil your arms at your sides like lassos,” his friend added.

  “How about the ability to feel someone else’s pain?” I asked. “For example, if your friend hits his head, you’d get stuck with the headache.”

  The kids had been shooting looks at me since I entered the store, but now Cody smiled and nodded. “Isaiah, your girlfriend’s pretty good at this.”

  “Ah, Cassandra isn’t…I mean, we’re friends, but…” Embarrassed, Isaiah cleared his throat and dodged the issue by asking me if I was ready to go downstairs.

  Perry’s eyes widened in mock horror. “You’re taking her down to the torture chamber? On the first date?”

  “It’s not a date,” Isaiah said with a glance at the two teens. “This is for her own safety. Besides, it’s fun.”

  “Of course you enjoy pain,” Perry said, “but are you sure that Cassie will?”

  I didn’t enjoy pain, but I did like the thought of being alone in the basement with Isaiah. “Bring it on,” I said.

  When I saw the ‘torture chamber’, I laughed. “My friend Andrew would love this.”

  Although I’d been downstairs to the church’s kitchen often enough, I hadn’t ventured into the rest of the basement. Beneath Holy Comics was an enormous activity room that Isaiah had converted into an ersatz dojo. In addition to the thick mat covering a large section of the floor, there was a weight bench, a treadmill, and a punching bag hanging from the ceiling. Like his apartment, the workout space was perfectly clean and orderly, yet I sensed that this was where the real Isaiah lived. When he took off his sweatshirt, his shoulders relaxed, and the weariness left his face. He didn’t exactly look peaceful, but he did look at home.

  “Is this your bat cave?” I teased.

  “I prefer to think of it as my fortress of solitude,” he corrected. He showed me to a tiny bathroom where I slipped into the stretchy yoga pants and old t-shirt I’d brought along for the occasion. Isaiah changed as well. His sleeveless t-shirt revealed his impressive muscles, and his gray sweatpants fell seductively low on his hips while at the same time hugging his tight butt. Lucky sweatpants.

  Before I stepped onto the mat, he took my elbow, stopping me. “Bow first,” he told me, and I did.

  Isaiah began by leading me through a few warm-ups: stretches, lunges, pushups, and something called back-break falls which basically meant throwing myself backwards onto the ground and then standing up again as quickly as possible. Physical activity has never been my strong suit, a
nd by the time we were finished, I was already sweating and panting. I wanted to make a few cracks about my flabbiness and his drill-sergeant mentality, but now that we stood on the mat, Isaiah’s look of fierce concentration had returned. So I put my silliness aside. It was like acting in that regard. You can clown around all you wanted between performances, but once you stepped onstage, you became professional. I had a strong feeling that the mat was Isaiah’s stage.

  When he showed me the best way to stake a rogue vampire, his eyes blazed as if he was reliving the moment he’d been attacked. “Rogues are faster and stronger than we are,” he said, “but they’re also predictable. They feed with animal instinct. The best way for you to take them down is to let them get close to you and then stake them.”

  “How close?” I asked, worried.

  “Very.” He handed me short, slightly curved, piece of lacquered wood.

  “No baseball bat?”

  “For you, this will work better. It’s called a tanto, a practice knife in Aikido. But I want you to pretend it’s a stake. When I get close to you, try to drive it into my chest. You’ll need to go under the breastbone and up,” he said, demonstrating on himself.

  “What if I hurt you?” I asked, thinking of how I’d injured his nose the previous night.

  “I can only hope you’re that good.”

  As it turned out, I wasn’t. Even with his limp, Isaiah was extremely quick, not to mention very strong. Although I tried, he knocked the tanto from my hand nine times in a row.

  “Keep a grip on it,” he told me.

  “I’m trying!”

  “Remember what happened at the Cipher! Use your anger.”

  Reliving my attack was the very last thing I wanted to do. Still, when Isaiah knocked the tanto from my hand a tenth time, I became so frustrated that the Cipher memory bubbled up unbidden. I shuddered as I remembered how the first vampire brutally sank her fangs into me, and how the second one’s mocking voice.

  This time, when Isaiah rushed me, I acted without thinking. In one fluid motion, I pivoted and drove the wooden tanto into his chest.

  At first, he looked surprised. Then he grinned. “You did it!”

  I was panting hard and close to tears.

  “You know what I just saw in you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Tiger eyes.”

  “Tiger eyes?”

  “Right. Like in that song, ‘The Eye of the Tiger’? You looked like you were ready to go to hell and take me with you. Tiger eyes.”

  I smiled.

  “Do it five more times, and I’ll let you take a break.”

  I started to protest, but he was already racing toward me. Immediately, I turned and stabbed him before he could put his mouth to my neck. “That’s one,” I said.

  Two hours after we’d gone down to the torture chamber, we sat on the floor near the punching bag drinking bottles of water. I’d sweated through my t-shirt and pants, and my hair was stringy. I knew my muscles would be sore later on, but right then, I was glowing.

  Isaiah had tied up his dreadlocks while we’d been on the mat, but now he loosened them. I longed to run my fingers down one.

  “Your neck is healing,” he said, nodding towards my burn.

  “A little aloe, and I’m good as new. How about your battle wound?”

  He shrugged and drank more water. “I’ve had worse.”

  No kidding. The man’s body was riddled with scars. High up on his shoulder was an inch-long, white line. I almost, but not quite, touched it. “What happened there?”

  He glanced down. “Torn rotator cuff.”

  My eyes widened. “A vampire did that?”

  “No, baseball did that.” He glanced over his body as if seeing it for the first time. “In fact, a lot of these scars are from my baseball days.” He drew up his left leg and pointed to a patch of skin that was lighter than the rest of him. “I got this when I slid into the third baseman’s cleats instead of the bag.” He lifted his shirt to show another mark on his ribs. “Spring training.”

  I wanted to kiss every scar. “I had no idea that playing baseball was more dangerous than hunting vampires.”

  His laugh was like a rumble of thunder. “It can be.”

  “What about vampire scars? Do you have any of those?”

  I regretted the question the moment I asked it. Immediately, his eyes filled with pain. “Only one that matters.” He drew up his right leg and massaged the back of his calf, grimacing as he did. “The vamp severed my Achilles tendon. Even after two surgeries and eighteen months of physical therapy, the damn thing still tightens up on me.”

  “Perry said Marcella did that to you.”

  Isaiah closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. To my surprise, he hummed a few bars of a very popular tune from a few years back. It was one of those one-hit wonder kind of songs that gets constant airplay for a few months before disappearing without a trace.

  “Wasn’t that called Cool Waters?”

  Isaiah nodded. “Marcella recorded that song.”

  “You’re kidding!” The woman who had sung Cool Waters had a smoky, break-your-heart voice whereas Marcella’s death rasp was more like break-your-eardrums

  “No, that was her. Because of Hedda’s influence, the song became very popular, but when Hedda collected her due and drank from Marcella, something went off. Maybe Hedda got greedy and took too much shine, or maybe there was something in Marcella herself that couldn’t handle being drained. I don’t know.”

  “So Marcella lost her voice.”

  “It’s like her voice was her soul, and when her soul was drained, her voice soured as well. In any case, Marcella didn’t react well to having her shine drained, and Hedda claims that the only way to save her life was to turn her into a vampire.”

  “When did Marcella come after you?”

  “Not long after she was changed, she slipped away from Hedda and found me. She was on a feeding frenzy. Apparently, the newly initiated are that way.”

  I shuddered, remembering Geoffrey’s bruise. If only Marcella had stopped at Isaiah’s neck, he might still be able to play ball. The fact that she’d purposely ruined his baseball career proved that vampires were vicious, cruel creatures.

  “Hedda tells me that Marcella is under control now, but after last night’s conversation, I’ve been wondering if the rogues are her work.” He closed his eyes, and his lips thinned. “Maybe I’m cleaning up after Marcella’s mistakes.”

  “You could be right. After all, Hedda would let her lover do whatever she wanted.”

  Isaiah’s eyes popped open. “What?”

  “I saw the pair of them together at the Muse. They were kissing, and Hedda called Marcella her love.”

  The angry fire I’d first seen in Isaiah that night in the Lamplighter burned brightly again. “Vampires have no soul. Whatever relationship those two have, it isn’t built on love.” Then the anger burned out as quickly as it had flared. Terrible sadness replaced it. Once again, he was heartache in a beautiful package, just as Elena had said.

  I slipped my hand into his, making him sigh. His shoulders relaxed a little. “Worst superpower ever?” I asked. “The ability to be a chameleon, but for smells only. Like after mowing the lawn, you would smell like cut grass. Or if you were standing near an outhouse, you’d smell like…well, an outhouse.”

  That coaxed a smile from his lips. “It would be handy if you were being chased down by bloodhounds, though.”

  “Can you imagine Superman being chased down by bloodhounds?”

  He laughed.

  I leaned my head against his shoulder. The fact that we were both damaged meant that we knew how to care for each other.

  We sat quietly for a time that stretched into minutes. I wondered if I tipped my head up just a little, would he try to kiss me? I was dying to find out if those luscious lips of his were as kissable as I’d…

  Footsteps clumped down the stairs, and a worried-looking Perry came into the room. “Houston, we’
ve got a problem.”

  We stood near one of the windows overlooking the church’s parking lot. The sodium arc lights revealed nine figures lingering by Isaiah’s Jeep. All of them looked up at the windows. One waved.

  “Rogues?” I asked Perry.

  “I’d say so. But brand-new ones with a few functioning brain cells left.”

  They might have had a few brain cells, but they were a motley-looking group. Their clothes were in tatters, and only three of them wore shoes. Despite the cold, one of the women dressed in a torn tank top and bootie shorts. The other woman looked like a soccer mom in her turtle neck and unraveling sweater. Two of the men wore business casual while the others had leather jackets and bandanas, like they’d been dragged off their barstools in a biker bar.

  “What makes you think they’ve got brain cells?” I asked.

  “The way they’re congregating. They should be off feeding somewhere, but it’s like they’ve got a plan.” Perry folded his arms as he watched them mill around Isaiah’s Jeep. “Though I have no idea what that is.”

  “They better not lay a finger on my ride,” Isaiah growled a moment before one of them punched the Jeep’s windshield so hard we heard the crack from inside the building.

  “That’s it!” Furious, Isaiah made for the counter. Reaching over it, he grabbed a bat and headed towards the door.

  “Hold up!” Perry said. “Before you start cracking heads, think this through. Something about this feels wrong.”

  At the sound of crunching metal, Isaiah hustled to the windows once more. One of the vampires had thrown his shoulder against the front end of the Jeep, leaving a dent so large it could have been made by a head-on collision with a semi-truck. This set off the vehicle’s alarm. The horn began blaring steadily.

  When the sound of crunching metal came again, even Perry couldn’t stop Isaiah from storming out the door. “Excuse me, Cassie,” he rumbled. “I have a problem I need to take care of.”

  I started to follow, but Perry grabbed my sleeve. “Stay here. You’re on holy ground, so they can’t touch you.”

  Staying in the church would be safe, but it felt wrong. I didn’t want to be the damsel in distress who relied on the knight to protect her. Besides, the vampires had already stolen my shine, what else could they take?