“Look.” I turn in place, eyeing everyone around me… but don’t see anyone resembling the long-haired man. “Someone, maybe an outsider, maybe one of us, is testing weak points.”
Stefano jabs a finger at me. “You did not imply I am weak.”
Eleanor rolls her eyes.
“No. I’m talking about all of us as a whole. Like armor. Weak spots. Whoever is doing this knows information they would need to be close to us to obtain. They’re aware of the friction between us. They’re aware of me being at odds with St. Ives twice. They know Mr. Wolent is not fond of anarchists.”
Stefano rubs his chin. “Yet they do not know certain things about you.”
I’m sure he means my sunlight tolerance. Yeah. That. Stefano Bianchi is plenty old enough to read my mind whether I want him to or not. Must explain why he’s being fairly cordial to me since I’ve basically defended him here. Six other vampires accused him of attacking them. Me saying I believe it’s a lie casts doubt on their claims of his responsibility for other attacks.
“There’s one more little detail.” I concentrate on the brief image of the long-haired man I saw in the memories of Fred, Mike, and Mr. ‘Snake to the Face.’ “The humans commanded to kill anyone trying to help me escape sunrise were kidnapped and brought to a dark place. They didn’t see much before blacking out except for a flash of a face, illuminated only by the glow in the man’s eyes. Look at my thoughts. Does anyone recognize him?”
Having six or seven vampire elders all invade my head at once is super weird. Ever pluck a rubbery booger that feels like a strand wrapped around your entire brain peeling loose? Pretty much the same sensation.
Wolent, Stefano, Paolo, Aurélie, Pascal, and St. Ives exchange ‘no clue’ glances.
“It doesn’t prove much. Their memories could have been tampered with.” Paolo frowns. “The face could be manufactured.”
“Agreed.” St. Ives rubs the bridge of her nose. “Whoever did this may have inserted any image they wanted into those mortals’ minds.”
Pascal clasps his hands behind his back. “A red herring. The man those mortals believed they saw may not even exist.”
Damn. I look down. “Okay. True. I have no proof he exists for real. But someone is still poking at sore spots trying to cause problems and put your names on it.”
Wolent clears his throat, quieting everyone.
I scurry back to my spot in the circle beside Aurélie.
“It is time for caution.” Wolent shifts left and right, looking at everyone, mostly the other elders. “This is likely an outside party attempting to initiate a war among us. Only, the war they’re going to get is not going to be watching us tear each other’s throats out.”
Murmurs of agreement come from about a third of the crowd.
“But!” shouts Wolent, a hint of anger rising in his voice, face reddening. “If any of this turns out to be someone on the inside dicking with us, they’re going to learn what it’s like to experience unlife without skin.”
A few gasps come from around us. Paolo can’t resist an ‘oh please’ subtle eyeroll. I think it’s less the man isn’t afraid of what Wolent might be capable of, more an ‘oh there goes the Fury threatening violence again’ flavor of condescension.
Wolent either misses the look or ignores it. Given the mood he’s in already, my money’s on missed. When a Fury is naturally angry at something, it’s quite easy for them to go nuclear. The trigger doesn’t have to be related to anything. A car horn could sound outside and, next thing anyone knows, Wolent is throwing chairs through the wall. Fortunately, when the irrational rage hits a Fury and it’s not caused by a specific person, they usually lash out at the environment.
So, I keep my gaze on the floor.
Wolent walks up to me.
Crap.
“Sarah. You get one of these sons of bitches, you lop their heads off and bring it to me.”
He’s gotta be reacting to me standing here holding a damn katana. Weird no one said a word of protest about it. Yeah, totally normal for a girl to attend a meeting carrying a freakin’ samurai sword, right? And ack. Please mean vampire. Pleeeease mean vampire. If he doesn’t specify, I’m going to assume he’s not telling me to kill some mortal who’s been controlled.
“Yes, sir.” I nod. “Gladly. There’s one with a blue mohawk I’d love for you to see.”
Wolent spins away from me, pointing around the circle.
Whew. Out of the hot seat.
“That goes for all of us, not just the new kid.” Wolent makes a neck-slicing gesture. “Next time someone gives any of you shit, bring their damn head here. Rest of the body optional.”
More stares go around. Lots of confusion.
A true psycho would have no problem demanding we chop off the heads of his own minions. Wolent is neither a psycho nor sending minions out to attack other vampires. I don’t think anyone here sincerely considers the man unstable enough to demand heads if he’s responsible for any of the attacks. The quiet bewilderment must mean vampires are rearranging their opinion of what’s going on, moving Wolent away from suspicion.
Then again, this could technically be part of his plan. I don’t think it is, just saying… someone who really loves tinfoil hat websites might believe it. Wolent’s hiding his plans for world domination right under the flat earth information.
Oy. I mean, there’s ‘lick a hot stove to make sure it’s hot’ stupid and then there’s the flat earthers. They could probably play checkers against a literal rock and lose. Fluids in zero gravity environments coalesce into a spherical shape. They don’t form into square, flat tiles. Planets are essentially the same thing, matter coalescing into spheres in a vacuum. Yeah, good luck debating a flat earth idiot. I’d talk about the mechanism of action for fluids in a vacuum and they’ll think I’m talking about pouring water into their Hoover.
Before too long, vampires break into clusters for some ‘after-meeting discussion.’
Aurélie smiles at me. “The official meeting is over, cheri. Go attend to your lover.”
Ooh, I blush.
My ‘lover.’ Makes it sound so… I dunno, like we’re characters in a regency romance novel. My father’s betrothed me to the prince of Oregon, but I’m really in love with a poor boy from Seattle with no land or titles to speak of.
Aurélie laughs. “Oh, cheri, you simply must bring him to sit for a painting as soon as he is well.”
… and she’s in my thoughts. Heh, okay. Sitting next to Hunter for an hour is hardly a bad thing.
Tonight, though, I plan to sit next to him for a lot more than an hour.
21
Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Weird
I appreciate the ‘irony of swords.’
Carrying one around made it unnecessary to have one. No vampires jumped me on the way home. Fine with me. Hunter and I didn’t do anything more physically intense than lay in bed together holding hands watching a movie and/or talking. I know it’s possible for a vampire to give a mortal some blood and it triggers accelerated healing. But, I didn’t even bring it up, afraid adding even a few—literal—drops of weirdness into Hunter’s life more than I do already by simply existing would make it worse for him.
If ever anyone specifically goes after him because of me, my policy will change. Boosting him a bit to survive a definite threat, I can do. My feelings on Dalton amping Sierra up remain mixed, the whole ‘is the cure worse than the disease’ conundrum. What side effects will it have on anyone, especially a kid, to partake of vampire-like strength and reflexes? Is it going to slow her aging down? Could she possibly become addicted to it? I’ve read about some fictional vampire settings where drinking blood from a vampire two or three times makes someone into a mind slave.
Aurélie laughed when I asked her about that. She’d know. Used to be, she had a small retinue of men in her company she routinely fed blood so they could ‘keep up’ with her in bed. They partook just a teeny bit more than three times and didn’t become enslaved to he
r. She couldn’t comment on the addiction since it became impossible to determine if they’d become addicted to her or the blood.
Power is addictive no matter what form it takes, so I’m going to assume a mortal can become hooked on feeling superhuman. Wait, no. I don’t have to assume. Firsthand experience. Being superhuman is freakin’ awesome. It stinks when I’m offline.
So, yeah. It’s Saturday and I’ve gone a whole forty-eight hours without cutting a bitch. No, I’m not craving a fight. If this entire vampire war problem magically disappeared without explanation, I wouldn’t complain. Or wait, maybe I would… purely because problems like this don’t magically vanish on their own. I’d be too worried the red-eye man would be plotting some new scheme. By red-eye man, I mean the image from my three babysitters’ minds.
Of course, now even their memories are suspect. Can’t argue the suggestion it might be an illusion or a deliberate lie. If the dude I saw in their heads is real, whoever sent those three men to ‘ensure’ I roasted might have planted it there to fool me in case I escaped… or fool other vampires if they came to help.
Hold on… those three guys had been programmed to babysit me only until I immolated. Whoever arranged for me to hug a tree definitely expected me to turn into a screaming Roman candle as soon as the sun came up. Why would they feel the need to plant a fake image of a person in the heads of three mortals who wouldn’t be anywhere near my remains when any other vampires found me? Those men would’ve gone back to their ordinary lives, never being aware they’d guarded a vampire execution.
Nah. Stefano’s grasping at straws. Red-eye man has to be real. He might be a fooled proxy though, thinking he’s working for Stefano but not. Or Stefano knows exactly who I saw and he’s going to make sure the man dies for his failure. Assuming I’m wrong and he is really behind this, he’d have a reason to create doubt regarding the truth of what I saw in those guys’ heads.
He’s also a total asshole, so he might have said it purely to make me look foolish. Can’t go letting the ‘little girl’ you accuse of being reckless and idiotic appear too competent in front of everyone.
Since I’m awake, I call Hunter. I want to spend the day at his house with him, if the Universe permits it. Gotta make sure he’s awake, home, and it’s still okay for me to pop over. As of last night, he wasn’t sure if he’d be working or not. Having missed a few days, he really does need the money. It’s so darn tempting to ask him to quit working at least until he’s out of college, and give him money. After my ‘adventure’ in Ireland, I have a shameful amount in the bank. Freeing him from the need to work sounds pretty faerie tale, but there’s a big problem. He’d feel extremely guilty. It would also make me feel kinda weird, too. Like I’m some stuck-up rich bitch who always gets what she wants, because money. He’s been amazing so far, somehow not feeling inadequate as a man compared to me being all immortal and stuff. I’m afraid eroding all feelings of his self-sufficiency and independence could make him resentful.
And it’s not like the leprechaun gave me so much gold I could pay for everything for both of us forever. Not talking millions here, just a few hundred grand. Aurélie thinks she can help grow it to a million or more in a couple decades with her tricky accounting stuff—as long as I don’t spend it on bullcrap. It’s all legal, merely way over my head… the kind of banking corporations do. And sure, barring emergencies, my intention right now is to kinda pretend the money doesn’t exist. Let it grow and reinvest and grow or something. Whoo hoo. I guess I’m an adult now if I’m being responsible, right?
Wow, did I really just say ‘leprechaun?’
So, yeah. Holding back on throwing money around unless it’s an emergency. Like, if Hunter’s mom is about to lose their house, I might… no, I’d mind-control bank people to leave them alone. Whatever.
I lounge on my bed and call him, one hand on the katana. Not like I expect hostile vampires to randomly show up in my room, but strange things happening around me seem to be the norm these days. Getting into a sword fight wearing only a long T-shirt is like totally Quentin Tarantino. I picture myself covered in blood in a Mickey Mouse shirt, katana balanced over my shoulder, blood rolling down my bare legs from all the faceless dudes in suits I chopped to ribbons. A fine line exists between art film and schlock. Good thing I can fly, otherwise running barefoot in puddles of blood would turn it into slapstick.
I share this idle mental wandering with Hunter. He doesn’t grunt when he laughs, good sign. His rib is still sore but not enough for him to show pain. In an effort to balance some family time in the mix, we decide I’ll head over to his place after dinner time—assuming he ends up not going to work.
We’re in the middle of talking about all the stuff we might try doing later if he doesn’t feel too dizzy when someone knocks on my door. Taps are soft, so definitely one of the Littles. Can’t be a crisis or they’d have barged in.
“What’s up?”
My door opens. Sam peeks in, hesitant at first, as if he’s afraid he might catch Hunter and me doing something he doesn’t want to see. Realizing I’m here alone, he smiles and walks in. “Can you help me with something, or are you busy?”
“Is it important?”
“Kinda.” He flaps his arms once. “Not life-or-death urgent, but it’s maybe a little too much for me alone.”
“Paranormal weirdness?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“Someone threatening you?”
He shakes his head to the negative.
I sigh mentally. “Hey, Sam needs me for a bit. Can I call you back later?”
“Sure, hon. I need to finish up a bunch of stuff for school. See you tonight. If, umm, I end up having to work, I’ll text you. But we can still hang out after.”
“They really ought to ban working on weekends.”
Hunter laughs. “Then no one could go out to eat, hit a movie, or have fun on the weekend.”
“Oh, true. Okay. Love you.”
“Love you, too.” He smooches the phone.
I sit up, swing my legs off the side of the bed, and pat the mattress beside me. “Okay, bud. What’s going on?”
Sam hops up to sit. “I’ve agreed to do a favor for the demon in my closet. Before you freak out, I know it sounds bad, but it isn’t. He’s not gonna like take my soul or anything if I don’t do it.”
“You made a deal with a demon?”
“Not exactly.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Define exactly.”
“This isn’t him giving me something and now I need to pay for it. He just asked me to help him out with something and I said sure. I’m kinda like the C-Team.”
“The C-Team?”
He nods. “Yeah. Like the A-Team, but I’m only a kid and I don’t have guns.”
I chuckle. Wow. How many nine-year-olds even know about a television series from the Eighties. Thanks, Dad. Eh, maybe it’s not too weird. No worse than my father being a fan of the original Star Trek series.
“So, what’s this favor?”
“It’s not bad.”
“Must be bad if you won’t tell me what you have to do.”
Sam holds his hands up. “I’m just getting you ready for it.”
“That means it’s probably bad but you’ve constructed a rationalization for how it’s not as bad as it sounds. Any ‘truth’ you need to put someone in the right frame of mind before they’ll believe is not truth.”
He rolls his eyes. “Really, not as bad as you think. It’s like how you didn’t steal Coralie from the mystics.”
“Uh oh.” I rub my forehead. “You have to do something normal people would consider a crime but is really helping a ghost or something no one would believe exists?”
“Basically.” He swings his legs back and forth.
“Spill it, kiddo.”
Sam shifts to face me, one leg up on the bed. “Okay, so there’s this museum, right? And inside the museum is a little vase holding another demon. She’s not a bad demon. I don’t even have to take the vase.
Just break the seal on it to let her out.”
I stare at him. “Oh, this couldn’t possibly go wrong in any number of conceivable ways.”
“It’s a simple plan.” He smiles.
“The simpler the plan sounds, the bigger it blows up in everyone’s face.” I smirk. “I’m a little concerned you’re spending so much time around demons.”
“Don’t be prejudiced. They’re just like us. Some are nice. Some aren’t.”
“Oookay. So, let me get this straight. You are here to ask me to break into a museum and smash a jar?”
He shakes his head. “Not exactly. I have to do it. Open the vase, I mean. It doesn’t need smashing, just opening. I’m nine. I’ll just pretend to be an idiot kid who touches something he shouldn’t be touching. Not even gonna break anything. They’ll think I picked up the lid and put it back down.”
I flop over backward, staring up at the ceiling. “You telling me you don’t have to break it proves it’s going to get smashed. Most likely, the entire museum is going to end up on fire and covered in chocolate pudding.”
He laughs. “Chocolate pudding?”
“Sophia didn’t tell you?”
“No. What did she do?” He goes wide-eyed with delight. “Covered some place with pudding?”
“Technically… yes, but only one room.”
“Nice. Was it good?”
“She didn’t eat any.”
He gasps. “What’s the point of covering a room in pudding if you don’t even have any?”
“I have no idea, but I’m sure there’s a magazine dedicated to it somewhere.”
“Huh? What’s a magazine?”
I whistle. “Forget it. When you’re a little older, ask Dad to teach you about George Carlin. You’ll make his week.”
“Noted.” Sam nods once. “So, will you help keep me from getting in super deep trouble?”
“How do you know this demon in the bottle isn’t bad?”
“Olmaz said so.”
I sit up and furrow my brow. “Another demon. Did you consider he might be lying? And what the heck are you doing? Demons aren’t Pokémon. You shouldn’t be collecting them.”
Vampire Innocent | Book 11 | How To Stop A Vampire War In Six Easy Steps Page 20
