Sell-By Date: An Old World Short Story (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Contents

  Title page

  By Melissa F. Olson

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Sell-By Date

  Sell-By Date

  An Old World Short Story

  By Melissa F. Olson

  Dead Spots

  Trail of Dead

  Hunter’s Trail

  This ebook first published in 2014 by Westmarch Publishing

  Copyright © 2014 by Melissa F. Olson

  Kindle Edition. All Rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever without prior written permission by the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Edited by Roberta Oliver Trahan

  and Elizabeth Kraft

  Cover design by Roberto Calas

  For all of you who read and loved Molly, and asked for more.

  This is for you, with my thanks.

  I.

  Westwood Village, snuggled right next to the UCLA campus, is an adorable little mecca of nice restaurants, tolerant coffee shops, timeworn bars, and great movie theaters. Because it’s right next to the city’s biggest university, it’s also vampire paradise. Especially if, like me, you look maybe old enough to be a college freshman.

  It was a Sunday night in May, and I was leaning forward on my bar stool in Roberto’s Cabana, trying to get the human bartender to look my way. I was here to hunt, but I wanted a prop drink, something to help me blend in with the large crowd of twentysomethings. The bar was surprisingly packed for a Sunday night, but I knew that the students were in the middle of finals and had probably come to blow off steam and/or get wasted with their study groups. Wasted, transient young adults in good health, who are prone to low inhibitions and frequent blackouts? Like I said, vampire paradise.

  The sole bartender was in his late twenties, with a bit of that wild-eyed look universally shared by grad students who are grading papers and writing their own at the same time. He also had dark hair that was starting to silver prematurely and an endlessly put-upon expression as he focused on the customers clamoring for drinks at the other end of the bar. He was ignoring the few customers on this end, and finally I gave up for the moment and spun my stool around, leaning my back against the bar so I could survey the crowd for adequate prey. I didn’t actually have to feed tonight, since I’d fed the night before, but…well, what else was I going to do? I was the goddamned immortal undead. At this point I fed just to pass the time.

  There were plenty of potential blood donors, but the problem was culling one from the herd. Students were gathered in tight, excited clumps, talking or complaining or arguing about their exams. The human emotions were running high tonight – you could practically taste it on the air. Some of the kids seemed truly upset, while others were triumphant, beaming with some kind of relief I didn’t really understand. After a quick initial scan I glanced at the blonde co-ed next to me, who seemed to be at the bar alone. She was staring morosely into an empty glass that had once contained a cranberry-vodka, or something equally pink.

  As I watched, a twin trail of tears erupted from her eyes, making their slow way down her round cheeks, dripping onto the scarred wooden bar. She made no move to wipe the tears away, and I frowned with distaste. Honestly, who goes to a bar to cry alone? She was alone, though, so I looked her over a little more speculatively. The girl was cute rather than pretty, probably a size eight, which was actually considered overweight in this shallow town. The extra fifteen pounds she carried were distributed mostly in her hips and not at all in her bra, but then again, sexual attractiveness wasn’t important in my food. As far as I could tell, the sex-and-feeding thing was something my kind only did in the movies, or when they thought they were supposed to behave like vampires in the movies. I mean, when I was human, and my mother made me wring a chicken’s neck to be our family’s dinner, it wasn’t like I made out with it first.

  Before I could decide whether she’d make a good meal, though, the bartender finally remembered the total length of his bar and began making his way down to my end. Smiling beguilingly, I leaned way forward, letting my cleavage spill onto the bar. I waved a 10-dollar bill and called brightly, “Yo! Silver Fox!”

  The guy completely ignored me, which was surprising in itself. Then he actually beelined straight for the sad co-ed, lifting her empty glass away and wiping the table underneath it. “You okay, hon?” he said, as quietly as he could over the sound of cheery Spanish salsa music and arguing students.

  The sad blonde looked up, startled to see the bartender in front of her. She wiped at her cheeks with the heels of each hand, putting on a bleary smile. “I’m sorry, yeah, I just totally bombed this final” –her voice broke, and her face did that weird crumple thing that happens to women on nighttime soap operas, only not as pretty. “And I’m worried about my scholarship…” She trailed off, and the bartender just nodded sympathetically and put a clean pint glass in front of her, filling it with tap beer. “On me,” he said in the same low voice.

  For some reason, that only seemed to make the co-ed more upset. “Thank you, I–” she paused and let out a wrenching sob, one hand fluttering near her face like it might fan her off. “I can’t,” she wailed. She rose from the stool and fled toward the bathroom.

  “I’ll take it,” I said happily, dropping the ten on the bar and reaching out to grab the pint. As I pulled it toward me, though I felt the bartender’s hand close firmly on my wrist. I looked up at him in confusion. Had he not seen the money?

  “I don’t know how you got in here,” he yelled to me over the music. He was scowling now, and looked at me like I’d just urinated on the bar in front of him. “But I don’t have time to fuck around with fake ID’s right now. Get out of here or I’ll call the cops.”

  A flash of anger hit me like a lightning bolt through my usual fog of detachment. I had been turned into a vampire at the age of seventeen, which at the time was old enough for me to get married and start a family. Now, though, I couldn’t even get a friggin’ pint without a hassle. Silver Fox turned to go, taking the forbidden beer with him, but I reached out with vampire speed and snagged his hand. Surprised, he paused and met my eyes again. He opened his mouth to shout at me, but it was too late.

  Fixing my eyes on his, I opened up a connection between us so I could press his mind. I have no idea how this actually works, mind you, but it’s sort of like glaring at someone with your brain: you focus on them as hard as you can and mentally push your will into their brain. As vampire party tricks go, it’s my personal favorite.

  “You’ve seen my ID,” I said, keeping my voice as low as I could and still let him hear me. “You feel terrible about accusing me of being underage. You’ve decided to buy a round of drinks for everyone sitting at the bar, out of your own pocket.”

  The guy nodded, his face slack, his eyes eager to please me. “Now,” I commanded, and fear dawned in his eyes as the guy actually knocked over several glasses in his rush to do my bidding. I smiled. Some humans shoul
d learn a little fear.

  Yeah, okay, it wasn’t exactly the bartender’s fault that I looked like I should be picking out a prom dress instead of a tap beer. And I don’t make a habit of pressing minds in public - it’s kind of a no-no, what with the ironclad “don’t let the humans find out about us” business, but the guy had pissed me off. I’d worn my nicest, most adult clubbing outfit: a light green cashmere tank top with a cowl neck and skintight snakeskin leather pants. I looked fantastic from head to toe, and if the guy still thought I looked like a kid, well, maybe that was all the cause I needed for a little pettiness.

  As he started passing beer out to my end of the bar, splashing a little in his rush, I hopped off my stool and headed after the sad girl. I like feeding on female humans, because it’s easy to get them alone, and because they’re smaller and more manageable. Sure, vampires have evolved strength and speed to be able to bring down larger prey, but why work for it if you don’t have to?

  She had paused in her flight to the bathroom, stopping to talk to a male classmate seated at a table with another group of students. I slowed down, keeping an eye on them. He was talking to the sad girl with a look of compassion on his face, reaching out to touch her arm in a platonic-comfort kind of way. I could have made the effort to listen in if I’d wanted, but I had no interest in whatever “feel better” platitudes the guy was shoving at her.

  After a moment I got bored and figured this girl was a loss. I was just about to go back to the bar to see if my free round had earned me any trust from the barflies, but at that moment the girl tilted her head toward the bathrooms and said goodbye. Excellent.

  I followed the sad girl as she wound through the tables, keeping an eye on her generous hips with a bit of misguided envy. The poor thing had been born in the wrong era; when I’d been alive, every woman in my town had coveted hips like that, which supposedly made childbirth a breeze. Sure, this girl probably had a hard time buying modern jeans, but at least if she ever decided to have kids they’d pop out like little jack-in-the-boxes.

  What do you care, Molly? You’ll never have kids.

  The thought came out of nowhere, and I almost missed a step. It had been years since I’d had a thought like that. Like sharks and crocodiles, vampire bodies are designed to be perfectly efficient hunting machines, and as such they devote very little energy to functions like hormones and emotional reactions. We’re technically capable of human emotions, but they no longer come naturally after the end of our human lives. By the time we reach, say, fifty or so years past death, most vampires stop caring about the human world. And then they stop caring about much, period, until finally we just live in a haze of basic needs: blood, a place to pass the daytime hours, money to buy the comforts needed to blend in with humans.

  A friend of mine calls this transition the sell-by date. Most of the people you knew from your human life are dead. The world around you has changed, and you can no longer pretend you’re living a normal life. If you want to keep in touch with your human feelings you have to work hard at it, and I’ve never met a vampire who…well, cared enough to keep caring. Personally, I had held onto human feelings for a longer time than most, but I’d eventually reached my sell-by date too, when I’d been dead for ninety years. After that, well, I almost never thought of my previous life as a human, or the opportunities I might have missed by “dying” young.

  Shaking off the misplaced sense of loss, I allowed my predator’s tunnel vision to take over, focusing in on the sad girl. I followed her down a dimly lit hallway to the women’s bathroom, where she bumped open the door with her hip and went in. I counted to ten and followed.

  The ladies’ restroom was simple and clean, decorated in cautious beiges and rose-pinks, as though using any bright colors might make us chicks explode into spontaneous PMS. There was a long, fake marble counter with two sinks opposite three bathroom stalls, including an especially wide handicapped one at the end. I ducked my head, and saw the sad girl’s Doc Martens boots in the middle stall. I pushed in the other two doors just to be sure that there was nobody else in the bathroom. I felt the corners of my lips curl up.

  I went to the sink and pulled some mascara out of my handbag. There’s only so much you can do with lipstick or blush, but I’ve discovered that you can pretend to be working on your mascara for ages before anyone will think you’re stalling. I pulled out the wand and started fussing with my right eyelid, alternately clumping and de-clumping the top lashes at whim, until finally I heard a flush and the sad girl squeezed around the stall door and joined me at the sink. She’d blown her nose and dried her eyes a bit, but she still looked all weepy and gross. Humans.

  The girl filled a palm with hand soap and began scrubbing, waving her hands under the automatic sensor on the sink in front of her. Automatic sensors, that’s serious cultural progress. I remember when the concept of washing your hands after going to the bathroom was new. “Nice top,” I said casually, meeting her eyes in the mirror as I screwed the cap of my mascara back in.

  The sad girl glanced automatically down at her shirt, then met my eyes again. “Thanks,” she said hesitantly.

  I turned sideways to look at her directly, and she automatically copied my body language, facing me. “Hey, have you had the nachos here?” I asked.

  She opened her mouth to answer, but I had already opened the connection between us and begun pressing my will into her. “Give me your hand,” I commanded. The sad girl immediately stuck out her hand, and I took a very quick glance down to check the veins at her wrist. They were perfect. The whole biting someone’s neck thing is a total myth. Why go for an awkward grapple when you can just hold someone’s hand and sink your teeth into a great vein? It was easier to press the human if you maintained eye contact too, and the wrist is a much less suspicious place for someone to be injured – people get minor wounds on their hands and wrists all the time.

  My eyes went back up to continue the press, and I took a step backward, toward the handicapped stall. And then a shrill clanging erupted from the handbag tucked under my shoulder. What…oh, right. The cell phone.

  I sighed. I’ve had one of these stupid things for nearly a decade, but I never get used to it. There are only a few people with my cell phone number, though, and none of them are what you would call ignorable. “Hold that thought,” I told the girl. I dropped her hand and fished the phone out of my bag. The little display window read Dashiell. Well, shit. Glancing back up at the sad girl, I made a distinct effort to withdraw my will from her. It was only a second before she shook her head a little, confusion beginning to spread across her face. We were still more or less in front of the mirror, so I asked sweetly, “Did you find that lipstick you were looking for?”

  “Huh? Oh, right.” Her face relaxed as she bent down to her own handbag. Human brains are so easy. Always thirsty for the simplest explanation.

  I stepped back through the bathroom door, into the relative privacy of the dark hallway. “Hello, Dashiell,” I said, keeping my tone respectful. There are plenty of vampire lords who still force their underlings to call them “My Lord” or “my Liege” or at least “Sir,” but Dashiell’s fairly modern, for a dominus. That’s the preferred term for his class of vampires, by the way, not like a creepy S&M thing.

  “Molly,” he said smoothly. “I need you to come to the house. Right away.”

  “What did I do now?” I blurted, but there was no answer. I checked the phone screen. He’d hung up. Probably just as well.

  II.

  My car these days is a late-model Mini Cooper, which I’d chosen because it was quick, well-made, and small. Despite my best efforts to learn, I’m a terrible parallel parker. As it turns out, there are some things that vampire reflexes just don’t apply to. When I can’t find valet or a parking garage I need every advantage my car’s size can give me.

  Luckily there was a valet booth right outside Roberto’s Cabana, and one of the two Hispanic parking attendants brought my Mini around quickly, hopping out and handing
me the keys with a pleasant smile. I smiled back, handed him a $10 bill as a tip, and turned to climb behind the wheel. As soon as my back was turned, though, the parking attendant rejoined his friend at the valet booth, and my vampire hearing picked up his sniggered comment in Spanish about useless white children who get fancy cars with Daddy’s money. An image of my actual father popped into my mind, and my back stiffened. What was wrong with me tonight?

  I told myself that I should definitely let this one go. Telling these guys off wasn’t worth being late to meet Dashiell.

  Or was it?

  I wheeled around, glaring at the two valets, who immediately smoothed their faces into polite “How can I help you” smiles. “Mi padre ha muerto,” I told him. “Y me compré mi propio coche. Recuerde que la próxima vez que estés chupando penes por dinero, cabrón.” Both of their eyes bulged. I took one step forward, with my sweetest smile, and plucked the ten dollar bill out of the little shithead’s hand. My tires screamed as I peeled away from the bar.

  Hey, at least I didn’t eat him.

  Dashiell and his wife Beatrice live in an absolutely breathtaking Spanish Colonial mansion in Pasadena, located in the kind of old-money neighborhood where someone from Home and Garden is always ringing doorbells and begging to do a cover spread. The house doesn’t have a driveway so much as a miniature parking lot – although you don’t see many parking lots done in tiny Spanish tiles with a koi fountain in the middle. I parked by the fish and went to the front door, reaching for the bell. I loved this house, particularly the open-air atrium in the middle of the building, but it was way out of even my league. I’m financially very comfortable, even in an expensive, label-obsessed city like LA, but you have to be stupid rich to live around here.

  The door popped open before my hand got very close, which didn’t surprise me. Vampire hearing and all. Dashiell’s wife, Beatrice, swung the carved-oak door open with no effort at all, her lips curving up to display teeth that were still stained a faint pink from recent feeding.