A Little Undead (8 page)

“
If you can call someone
who devours souls a normal vampire, then sure. Listen I’m not
the guy to talk to. You want more information go find a vampire
hunter or something. The ones that lived longer than a month
generally knew what they were doing.”

I really wished he wasn't so
close to my bed. This would have been the perfect time to collapse on
top of it and hide beneath the covers.
'I wonder if I'm supposed
to go offer my fealty to the queen. I’m sure a vampire hunter
would point me in the right direction before staking me.'

I looked at the clock.
'4:30.
I need to get to work.'
As amazing as these revelations were, I
didn't want to lose my job.
'Choices, choices.'
I really
didn't want to leave him tied up and alone in my apartment, but if I
let him go who knew what he might get up to. And as far as bringing
him to the police department... that might be unwise. No one would
believe him if he said I was a vampire, but if he turned into a wolf
while in jail or had them bring me close enough to him for my fangs
to pop out, well, I knew how that ended. No stake and pitchfork
wielding villagers or lab-coat wearing scientists cutting into my
body, no sirree. And that was assuming they didn't think I was just
some species of zombie and pop a bullet in my head. “Erm, one
last question. How long do werewolves live.”

“
About a hundred years,
but we're healthy until at least eighty. And stop calling us
werewolves, we're lycans.”

'Now he's just being silly.
Even if I'm not a huge fan of the genre I know those words mean the
same thing. Close enough, anyways.'
Still, even if he was
pretentious and overly hateful towards vampires he probably wasn't
Mr. Chains, serial killer extraordinaire. It really didn't seem like
he was lying, which meant that given when his father died he was
probably too young or not even born at the time of the original case.
Even if it was possible that he didn't suffer from gray hairs like
the rest of humanity he really didn't act old enough to have
committed homicide over forty years ago.

“
Have you ever worn a dog
collar?”
I blushed, cheeks
burning from embarrassment.

'Oops. Didn't mean to say
that out loud, even if it would look fetching on him.'
He looked
like he had just swallowed a scoop of wasabi. “Forget I said
that.” Circling around the room to maintain my distance from
him I retrieved my taser. Reloading it with care I retook my spot at
the window. “So, wolf boy, if I let you go will you find it in
your heart to stop attacking me?” I was fairly certain he
wouldn't attack me again, at least not immediately. Still...
'This
might be a good time to start investing in silver, which will
hopefully hurt me less than it will hurt him.'
It's not as if I
had ever liked garlic before, and I'd never understood the draw of
pizza, but if my response to garlic was this strong now it could
seriously affect my dining plans in the future. If it turned out the
myths about vampires and silver were true too then my future wedding
jewelry needed some serious reworking.

Alex seemed to be growling under
his breath but he grudgingly gave his answer. “Fine, I'll stop
hunting you.” Weighing him with my eyes one last time I
gathered my courage and threw him the key for the handcuffs. As he
fumbled with the key I drew my handgun but only kept the taser locked
on him. I'd never fired it at a person before and didn't want to
start now, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Besides, even
though he charged me when I had the taser, he wasn't crazy enough to
rush someone with a real gun, was he?

As he stood up I caught him
staring longingly towards the paper towels. Paper towels which I had
no intention of lowering my guard to hand to him. “You're
really strange, whatever you are,” he said as he lifted the
door out of the way. “You know, it's funny, but you really do
smell almost human.”

“
Mmn,” I responded
as vague confirmation, not really sure what to make of that
observation. Soul searching was interrupted when I flinched as
splinters fell to the ground from the ruined door as he set it back
in place behind him. “He never said he'd pay for that door, did
he,” I muttered. On top of that my apartment now reeked from
the throw up and I was sporting a pair of ivory fangs that weren't
showing any sign of going away. I decided to deal with the easier of
the two problems first. Attacking the stain before it could set into
the carpet I was able to get the place back to rights. “Rich
indeed, I bet real vampires never have to clean their own floors.
Dracula had a mansion or a castle or something, didn't he?” He
was also a lady's man, and I couldn't keep a boyfriend for a week.
How was that fair?

Hopefully I'd gotten all the
splinters that had fallen so far. From what I heard they tended to
ruin the barefoot experience. My one lucky break was that the ant
farm hadn't gotten knocked over in the scuffle.
'4:55. I hope when
he said to come in after five he didn't mean precisely after.'
I
needed to stay on my toes for the time being. This was nothing at all
like the laid-back atmosphere in Haven. There the militia handled
everything noteworthy, I just had to keep Haegle happy during my
apprenticeship for a good recommendation and help him bring in the
occasional drunkard or surly twelve-year-old vandal. My worst
experience while working there was when one of the kids thought I was
thirteen and tried to hit on me. This Boston gig was a whole
different ballgame. Hopefully everyone would mellow out after Chains
was caught. If this was how the force always was I would really need
to start making some friends outside of work.

Then again, maybe I just hadn't
gone through the ritual hazing process yet like they had in all the
old movies. Still, my potential future as a police officer wasn't my
primary concern at that moment. No, that award belonged to the sweet
smell of honeyed chestnuts slowly driving me mad. It seemed utterly
tantalizing, even if a faint hint of copper was polluting its purity.
'Where is it coming from?'
I dug my fingers into my thighs to
try and distract myself from my growing hunger, nails pricking my
skin through my pants.
'No way...'
I held my hands up in front
of me, twisting them back and forth, disbelieving. My perfectly
trimmed nails were now just one step short of claws. Black and yet
faintly iridescent, they curved to sharp points an inch from my
fingertips.

“
Why won't it stop?”
I could sense the change now as all concern I had for the world
outside my body shrank away. I could feel the slow metamorphosis that
didn't see fit to stop at claws and fangs. A nervous, hungry energy
crept along my limbs, begging to be used, belying the hungry void I
felt at my center. My jaw creaked open as if to yawn, tense and eager
to bite. As the sun-limned windows suddenly burst into eye-burning
intensity I could bear it no longer despite the dark tint of my
sunglasses. Covering my eyes I ran to the bathroom mirror to see
what other changes were coming upon me that refused to stop despite
all my wishing.

How is it that one moment can
change an entire life? Plenty of people called me strange over the
years, even twisted, but I'd always had my family to fall back on.
I'd laughed at things that weren't meant to be jokes, and played with
spiders and snakes and things that most people seemed to have an
instinctual fear or loathing of. Even so, I'd always felt there was a
place I could belong, that I could help people, protect them from the
predators in this world. I'd never considered I could be anything
other than human. Now I wondered if I could ever be human again.
There was no white in my eyes, no shining blue iris – only a
terrifying violet so deep as to appear black. I was a predator.
Every movement of my hand in the lightless bathroom was caught with
utmost clarity, but the unmoving wall behind me was painted in shades
of gray to my unholy eyes. I knew what it meant: I was a creature
built to kill.

Hysteria gripped me as I finally
caught sight of it, that small splash of blood in my hair from when I
had broken his nose. I turned the shower on full blast, as hot as it
would go. My scalp burned as I scrubbed viciously, nails cutting at
my skin in my haste. Fear of my own transforming self was all that
allowed me to resist the temptation of consuming his spilled blood
rather than washing it away. I stripped out of my soaked uniform and
resolved to wash it twice before wearing it. The last thing I needed
was for some leftover drop of blood to set me off in the middle of
the police office.

'Is this all it takes? A few
drops of blood to turn me into a monster?'
I turned off the
water, slumping to the ground with my back against the toilet bowl.
'This isn't a game anymore. What if this time I don't turn back?
Maybe the transformation has gone too far and I'll be stuck as this
thing
forever.'
Water from my sodden hair trickled down my face, blurring further my
already teary eyes. I wanted to call Mom but something like this...
she'd never believe me. Besides, what could she do even if she did?

“
Why can't I remember!”
I pounded the floor, a tile cracking from the force. It was
infuriatingly difficult to remember anything before Haven. Every
time I felt a memory coming back it slipped out of my grasp like a
squirming eel. But there had to be something behind the fog in my
mind, something dark. They said I lost my memory in an accident, but
what if it was because I looked like this? It would have been no
surprise that they attacked me, only learning later that my heart
still beat. How much would they have rationalized away about my
appearance as a trick of the light if I reverted to normal after
being struck unconscious? '
Who am I? What am I? Was I ever even
human at all, or was I born as this abomination?'
One
thing was clear: no ordinary little girl walks out of a red zone with
a feverish little sister in tow singing Christmas carols. What kind
of monster might I have become to survive out there in the
zombie-infested wilderness?

'I'm stronger than this.'
At this point I had to be. Life certainly hadn't been all sunshine
and daisies up until now but my mood was dark enough to believe that
things would get worse before they got better. Despite my pessimism,
I felt a small glimmer of relief as I felt my jaw finally relaxed. I
was changing back to normal, however slowly. Dragging myself to my
feet as if I didn't feel strong enough to lift a car I stared into
the mirror. It wasn't my physical strength that was lacking, only my
will.

I didn't really look all that
different from my normal self. And now that my mouth wasn't hinged
open I looked less like a man-eating savage or mutant piranha-snake.
My skin wasn't green, I didn't have antennae coming out of my
forehead, and – at least so far – there had only ever
been two people I'd felt like drinking blood from. The taxi-cab
driver didn't count. I wasn't planning on ever getting stuck in a
confined space with someone ever again, or at least not without the
windows open. There was no reason to believe this condition wasn't
manageable.

'I wonder if I should get
checked for anemia. List of symptoms: Rapid physical transformation
and an incredible thirst for blood. Yeah, that would go over well.
They probably don’t hand out snack-packs of blood to just
anyone who walks in off the street.'
I
wasn't even entirely certain that they even did blood transfusions
anymore, considering organ transplants were forbidden due to the
Animator virus. The closest thing to open surgery that happened
these days was an appendectomy.

The water from the shower felt
itchy against my skin, even after toweling off. Though I regretted
the time wasted I couldn't deny the hair dryer was a good choice as I
ran it through my hair. The warmth and simple comfort of doing
something routine made my worries seem less frightening. With regret
I left my bastion of normality to step back into the chaos that was
my new reality. Hopping into my only spare uniform I shifted the
door aside with one hand, straightening my new apparel as I stepped
outside.
'At least I look good in sunglasses.'

Sunglasses at night were rarely
looked on as fashionable, but I was hardly the only strangely dressed
person on the public bus at six o'clock in the evening. Most
respectable folks didn't head back home with so little time to spare
before nightfall. I really wished I had chosen a seat closer to the
front. I kept my nose close to the window, but there was no hiding
the miasma of odors emanating from my fellow commuters. The
seductive scent of the blood beneath their skin was thankfully faint
enough to ignore due to my two seat buffer from the other passengers,
but my oddly sensitive nose kept picking out various offensive body
odors. At least the squelching of my feet in my still sodden boots
was annoying enough to keep my mind partially distracted.

Some amount of time later I
found myself staring from across the street at the police station,
wondering how I could possibly pull this off. So far I had shown no
signs of returning entirely to normal. My hands, currently stuffed
into my pockets, still sported fingernails that looked far more
threatening than even the most aggressive clip on nails I'd seen
outside of Halloween. Not to mention that the police force wasn't
exactly the proper environment for long nails: fake, real, or
supernatural. I could probably hide my fangs if I was careful of how
I spoke, but with the sun dipping below Boston's crowded skyline I
doubted wearing my sunglasses would fly for very long. Well, if
nothing else, my time on the bus had proven that while slightly
curious how human blood tasted in comparison to werewolf I wasn't
ravenously driven to attack normal humans. It really brought into
perspective all those fantasy stories about vampire versus werewolf
wars. The violent little things tasted like candy, it was a tragedy
bound to happen.