by P. Mattern
Kimbra slipped her small hand into one of Carey’s as they started walking back toward the RV, saying in a quiet voice,”I wish you’d be a little nicer to Avi, because of what he DIDN’T say. I think we can assume that if he didn’t kill you, then he’s in trouble.” She said, finishing by giving Carey a meaningful look and adding,”And when they find him, they will kill him too!”
Carey considered her words for a moment. “You’re probably right, K-and I’ll let up on the kid. But have you noticed the way he LOOKS at you? I think he’s crushing on you bigtime. And it makes me cranky.”
Kimbra stopped and turned to Carey, brushing her lips against his and then opening them slightly to allow a lingering kiss.
“You have nothing to be concerned about, Mr. Carey Crankypants! I’m yours, now and for always.”
When they reached the RV the couple sat silently in the twilight at a picnic table as nature began a symphony of wild bird calls, crickets, and other woodland sounds, their eyes searching the sky above them for the return of a circling bird of prey named Avi.
The next day was a busy one. Carey contacted the Residential Care Facility he’d contacted previously, ‘Merrywood Acres’, and after a tour of the premises, and filling out a lot of forms, saw his aunt safely situated in a private room with its own patio, bed/sitting room, mini kitchen and bathroom. Aunt Ida seemed to understand that she would be more comfortable there, and when the group left she was watching Jeopardy on TV and eating Good and Plenty candy out of a movie theatre sized box.
The next few days fell into a routine: Carey would do research in the library trying to get a line on some kind of ‘cure’ for his condition so that he could resume a human life with his very human and desirable girlfriend. He was still convinced, in spite of what Avi had told him, that his quasi-Hybrid status was reversible. Sometimes Avi and Kimbra came with him and spent their time reading or hanging out at the small coffee shop on the lower floor of the main library. Sometimes they elected to stay at the RV, which had been moved more deeply into the large parkland using some old roads that Avi had spotted when he was in falcon form. Sometimes the trio grilled outdoors, sometimes they cleaned up and headed into town to a tony restaurant to exchange stories and laughter. Avi had a penchant for Indian and Chinese food.
It wasn’t perfect, at least not yet. But Fort Hunt was beginning to feel like home.
The next day after the ‘official’ breakup with Fressenda was a school day for Charley. His undergraduate work was a breeze, but he felt as though he needed to spend more time in the library ,and more time on campus in general.
After all-how else was he going to meet a human female to sink his fangs into?
Fress still lingered in the periphery of his consciousness, but he stubbornly refused to feel badly. He knew that he would always love her and be grateful to her, and that gave him a modicum of peace. After all, their separation was more her idea than his. And as her surveyed his emotional landscape he realized the wisdom in dating other individuals. He felt some excitement about that-a young ,handsome, ripped vampire on his own. He felt a new freedom ,and it was a heady and intoxicating feeling. He even found he was able to compartmentalize all the negative emotions that surrounded his thoughts that Fress might be doing the very same things he was contemplating. It was all background noise at this point.
As he entered the library he noticed the student employee at the front desk surreptitiously checking him out. She was a completely different type than Fress, blonde, tall athletic-with some promising cleavage showing at the v-neck of her preppie sweater.
Breathing the air he found he could pick up her scent. AB blood type, something different. Stepping closer, he breathed in again. She was wearing a floral perfume on her neck and wrists. She looked good ,and she smelled deliciously feminine.’ Like a cupcake for vampires’ ,he thought.’ With lots of icing.’
Walking up to the desk he handed her a slip of paper on which he’d copied some references for a research paper, saying ,”Hi. Can you point me in the right direction for these? I don’t have enough time to wander aimlessly among the stacks.”
He could hear her heartbeats increase with his proximity and was utterly charmed by her instant sexual attraction to him.
She blushed slightly. Looking him in the face, she said,”These are located in the lower stacks. Would you like me to show you where they are?”
“If you would, please.” Charley answered smoothly.
The girl opened a small gate to the side of the library counter and saying, ”This way.” Walked slightly in front of him, giving him an opportunity to discover more about her.
The skirt she was wearing was short and outlined her heart shaped derriere perfectly. Her feet were encased in a pair of expensive looking tassled loafers, but she was wearing no socks or stockings. Catching up a little, he thought he could smell her femininity,her musk. He found it pleasant, potent and stimulating at the same time.
He wasn’t altogether sure if he wanted to feed on her or freak her. Maybe both?
She was talking,and even found his first reference volume for him. He thanked her politely, expecting that she would hurry off. Instead she paused for a few seconds to contemplate his face ,and when she spoke again her voice had taken on a more intimate quality.
“I think you’re hot.” She said.”If you hand me your cell I’ll put in my digits.”
Charley tried to control his expression. Inwardly he was astounded. Was it really just this easy to hook up with someone ? As she handed his cell back he glanced at the name.
“Thank you Macy .”he said smiling, and added ”For everything.”
He saw a fleeting self-satisfied smile pass over the girl’s features before she turned brusquely and walked away. And then it struck him.
This dating human females could be a very complicated business. Would he be able to make love to them without biting them? Did he have that kind of self restraint? Could he feed on them lightly enough not to turn them and then stun them so that they didn’t remember?
Regretfully his thoughts went to his friend Byron, who was convalescing in a medical center after receiving severe wounds in the process of rescuing his mother Mitzi. Being a dhampir ,half human and half vampire, his injuries were severe enough to require replacement muscle, skin and tissue. Currently he was in a comatose state awaiting various transplants. Byron was a notoriously experienced lover of women-human,dhamphir ,werefolk, Faery and vampire,sort of a vampire Cassanova in his own right. Byron was the one person Charley felt comfortable baring his soul to. Byron knew how to keep secrets and would have been a great sounding board.
Bleakly Charley considered the alternatives-Cass or Lux. Although he knew Cass was the more experienced of the two ,he decided Lux, with his Zen perspective, wouldn’t get hung up with the complexities, wouldn’t rat on him to Mitzi, and would give him solid and honest advice.
Lux it was then. He had to admit that in some ways he HAD been living in a baby’s dream with Fress. She always took care of everything ,just as his mother had when he was living(if you could call it that) as a mentally disabled man. Now he had responsibilities, and he needed information also. It would be a struggle to live up to the example of those around him. Already his darker urges were calling him to hunt and feed spontaneously and recklessly. And the campus atmosphere was overstimulating him in his current state.
So many bodies .So much blood. So little time.
He decided to play it safe and sublimate a few of his darker urges by sweet talking Buttercup into another feeding session. Hopefully his mother and Cass would be preoccupied.
This time he had urges ,and his urges gave him an agenda. This time he wanted to fang the wetnurse’s breast.
Fress sighed and looked behind her at the ornate brass clock on the wall at the public library. It was only three days into the work week and she was still disoriented because of her breakup with Charley. Even her thoughts were a mess. Usually if things got slow at work she could turn her thoug
hts to her more pleasant interactions with Charley-jokes they had told ,teasing they had done ,love they had made. Now those thoughts only caused heart pangs.
She was grateful to Lux for the perspective he’d given her, and she recognized that he did have a point. Her relationship with Charley had involved a larger nurturing component than a normal male/female relationship, due to the way Charley had been when it started. Too little time had elapsed since Charley was retarded ;and even though he had become better than her intellectual equal, his transformation lacked some of the socialization milestones that he would have attained in a progressive normal course of development.
At the same time she knew she loved Charley deeply, and their relationship had given her more joy than she had experienced in centuries. But Lux was right-she needed to back off for a while ,let Charley mature on his own, and become more of the man he was meant to be. Going straight from his mother’s nurturing to her nurturing was not going to assist him in achieving that.
Possessive by nature, she had also made peace with the idea that Charley needed to experience other women-it was a part of his development he had missed out on. She was willing to give him space-although she didn’t want any information on his future exploits . She just wanted him to be safe.
As for her own needs and desires she wasn’t sure…but the kiss with Daniel had been a wake up call, letting her know that she also needed some time to experience other beings. For the last nearly two centuries she’d devoted herself to being there for Cass and Lux ,her adopted family And she had been quite happy for the most part, keeping her distance from romantic relationships. Just the technological changes in the last 200 years had been dizzying and called for more complex measures of adaptation-just staying on her feet and figuring out the various details of her family’s survival had truly occupied her attentions.
Now, at last, perhaps it was her time. Smiling, she thought of the text she’d gotten from Daniel that morning: ’Hello. I must confess I pressured Merilee into giving me your number, although she yielded fairly easily. She and I decided we’re best as friends. Hope you are not offended, just want to make sure you have my number on the day you realize you want to call me, which I’ve convinced myself will be soon. Yours patiently,Daniel.’
Fress decided that Daniel hadn’t been fooling himself after all-she would call him as soon as she was off work. But first she wanted to get a play by play backstory from Merilee.
Suddenly her senses heightened in alert mode and in her peripheral vision she caught a fast moving glimpse of a teenaged boy with long shaggy razorcut hair hanging over his face and his hoodie pulled up over his head moving swiftly through the lobby toward the stacks. He was dressed in dark colors: long sleeved black shirt, black jeans and boots and a dark hoody several shades darker than burgundy. He seemed like a young man on a mission, and this was not the first time she had noticed him. He seemed to frequent the library for several hours at roughly the same time every day.
Fressenda was almost positive he was a vampire.
On impulse she slid down from her perch behind the desk and began to follow him, purposely staying some distance behind him so that if he WERE a vampire he wouldn’t pick up her scent.
Although she was following by at least 10 feet ,the boy suddenly stood stock still for about 3 seconds. Then, as if he had made a decision, he picked up his pace. As he approached the last of the rows of books on the first floor he abruptly veered off to the left and disappeared behind the stacks.
Undaunted, Fress picked up her own pace and caught up to the exit to the stairwell just as the door finished closing. Pushing through it she stopped for a nanosecond to listen for footfalls-and could hear some down below her, at least one and a half floors below. His scent however was all around her. Vampire scent, yes, but with some other pronounced element thrown in. Not exactly human ,she decided ,but something additional and unfamiliar.
She flew down the stairwell, discovering that not only had he traveled downward to the bottommost floor but had disappeared quickly into the stacks there. Fress stood in the doorway for a moment, her ears straining for any sound or movement.
And she heard his breathing. Inclining her ear slightly she could also hear the staccato bass thudding of his heart.”Hello?” she called softly ,her keen eyes searching through the rows of stacks for movement. This was the least used floor of the library, and housed the more obscure volumes in various classifications: abnormal psychology, mythos, tomes full of spells and charms-books that were rarely asked for or sought out by the average library patron.
Walking forward quietly, she started speaking in a low voice although she could not yet see anyone, ”My name is Fressenda. I work here at the library. I’ve noticed you here before. Is there something I can help you find?”
Her only answer was a slight scratching sound emanating from the right hand corner of the room which was completely obscured by the eight foot tall shelves of books. Quickly she rounded the last row and came face to face with the boy.
He was crouched several feet off the ground, standing in an impossible posture on a narrow cinderblock ledge underneath a high casement window that was barely above the ground level outside. The sound she’d heard was the boy attempting to force open the window-to escape she had to assume. There was an awkward silence. Then the boy turned his head and, looking down upon her, gave her a surprisingly malevolent look.
“Why are you chasing me?” he demanded flatly, his low and even voice trailing off into a hiss.
“Why are you running from me?” Fress countered.
Because I don’t want anything to DO with you.” the boy retorted, adding,”VAMPIRE.”
Seeing Fress’s surprised look he jumped down effortlessly from his perch ,dusting the sleeves of his jacket off with an air of nonchalance and added ,”Yeah. I could tell what you were the FIRST time I came here. So you’d better keep your distance-or you’ll be sorry!”
“Fine.” Fress said tersely.”So you know what I am. The question is…what are YOU? You’re certainly not human…”
The boys face convulsed momentarily at her pronouncement ,a strange expression passing quickly over his countenance before he could stop it, but within seconds he was back in control.
“More human than you….aaaah, but that wouldn’t take much now would it? You’ve been one of the damned for a long, long time. You know how I can tell..what was your name? Fressenda? It’s that cinnamon scent…The scent of an ancient female vampire. Rather pleasant, but it tells on you. You’ve been around for a couple of millennia, haven’t you?”
Fressenda nearly gasped, both at the boys rudeness and his apparently vast knowledge of vampire lore. She decided to ignore his remark for the time being.
“Well you’ve certainly been doing your homework-but why?? Why the research on a phyllum of creature you obviously despise. What are you looking for here? And what is your name?”
It seemed as if the boy were reluctant to reveal anything about himself. Seconds passed.
“Carey,” he said finally.
Fressenda’s prescience was kicking in big time. She saw a quick montage of visions –the boy running as if pursued, then violently attacked as he fell, and then left for dead. And the boy with a smaller being-a girl ,in the woods the two desperately holding each other.
“Carey I can’t explain how I know but I sense that you’re in some sort of trouble. I think I can help you…if you let me. If not for your own sake,,,for hers.”Fress finished.
Carey’s eyes narrowed.
“You see things.” He stated flatly.”But you’re not the one to help us. And I’m not about to have you and your friends make a meal out of my girlfriend. So no deal.”
Fress lifted an eyebrow.
“All the research you’ve been doing, obviously much of it on vampires, and you understand NOTHING about how we live in modern times. Well-I suppose that’s to be expected. You won’t find the information that you really need HERE. What’s you’re looking for mig
ht be available in a V-net library though. It’s really your choice to trust me –or not. I’m sure it’s not very comfortable living in the woods ,at least for your girlfriend. And you wouldn’t be the only one taking a chance, because it’s worrisome that I can’t figure out what you are…and I bet that’s the main reason you’ve been coming here-because you don’t know yourself what you are ,do you Carey?”
She didn’t expect him to give an answer, and she wasn’t going to wait for one. Turning on her heel she called back over her shoulder as she walked away ”Good to finally meet you Carey. You know where to find me if you change your mind. “
It was difficult for Fress to walk away, and she smirked as she recalled a point in her face-to-face conversation in which the boy had attempted to ‘stun” her-erase her memory so that she would leave him alone. His energy probe was deflected by her higher electromagnetic aura. Although he hadn’t reacted in any perceptible way, he must have been disappointed to see that she was immune to his attempt. And she was glad.
In a sense he had shown his hand. He doubtless had powers attached to his state of being, and had himself been changed somehow. But his “changed being” defied categorization.
That was probably the reason he had been haunting the library.
And it was good that he had in essence lost his impromptu ‘pissing contest’ with her. Because Maybe, just maybe, he would decide to accept her offer of help.
Carey left the library, more than a bit disturbed since his interaction with the Vampiress Fressenda. It was an encounter that had raised more questions, at least in his mind, than it answered. He wasn’t certain that he should accept her offer for assistance-he was itching to get back to the camper in the woods and discuss everything that had transpired with Kimbra and Avi .Once again he found himself grateful for her humanity-it grounded him. And her beauty-which enthralled him and lifted his spirits on a daily basis.
If there was an upside to his metamorphosis, it would be that he was more powerful in a dozen different ways, and if they were attacked he was confident in his ability to protect her.
