Slayed (2 page)

“You will go to prom,” I whisper.

The first dress in the two-page spread is a light purple, one-shouldered, Greek goddess–style gown with a gold belt to cinch the waist. The moment I saw it I knew it was the perfect one for me. I open the scissors, slide one blade carefully along the crease to cut the page out, and then insert it in the opening of the plastic sleeve in the binder.

I turn to page eighty-one for the hairstyle—long, spiral curls. I don’t have a curling iron or hot rollers (Mom says we can’t afford to spend money on anything so frivolous) but if I want my hair to look like the model’s I can’t afford
not
to have one.

After I add the hairstyle to the binder I turn back to
page six to admire my “date,” a totally drool-worthy guy with a strong chiseled chin and straight blond hair framing ice-blue eyes that look into my soul. I stare at his six-pack abs above the pair of low-slung jeans he’s modeling.

I study his face and decide he looks like a “Brad.”

In my head I’ve dressed (and undressed)
Brad
in the dark gray tux on page one hundred twenty countless times this week. But Brad and I have no intention of going to the parent-sponsored after-prom party Jennifer-Kate insists is a
“totally fun and safe way to party.”

Instead, I giggle as he kisses my neck in the elevator on the way up to the fancy hotel room he booked for us. I burn with anticipation as he opens the door revealing a petal-strewn bed. He slides the dress off my shoulder and the satin caresses my skin as it falls to the floor. I step out of the fabric piled gracefully around my feet and he kisses me hungrily as we fall onto the bed with my six-inch heels still on. The scent of roses fills the air as our bodies press together. His lips devour every inch of my nearly naked—

“
Make a slight right onto route 1B and continue for one mile,
” the GPS announces.

“We should be there shortly, Doodlebug,” Dad says. “Make sure you have everything you need.”

I throw my magazine back into the crate as my cheeks burn. “Yeah, okay,” I choke out.

I quickly put everything else back, secure the knife strapped to my calf, and make sure it’s fully covered.

Reality check.

There will be no corsages, limos, fancy dresses, extreme heels, or impossibly hot Brads in my future. Only fangs, decapitated heads, traveling the country with my parents in this shit-can van packed with boxes of garlic, and sleeping in connecting hotel rooms—alone.

Sucks to be me.

Mom’s cell phone rings and we all sit up straight. We don’t get a lot of calls. “It’s the Bristol Police,” she says, a hint of concern in her voice. She takes a deep breath and then opens her phone. “Joy Van Helsing—may I help you?”

She nods. “As a matter of fact we’re almost there.” She pauses and turns to my father, wide-eyed. “We had a verbal agreement,” she huffs into the phone. “And we’ve come all the way from
Buffalo.
”

Dad looks briefly at her, shaking his head. “I knew we should have had them wire the money first,” he says a little too loudly. “There was something fishy about this one.”

Mom waves her hand to quiet him and I lean forward so I don’t miss anything. I’m hopeful this job might be canceled.

“Well, that’s ridiculous. You got our résumé and referrals—we’re government licensed and have a reputation
for being discreet. No one in town will be any the wiser as to why we’re there.”

I try to hear the muffled voice coming from her phone but can’t make anything out.

“That
incident
,” Mom snaps, “happened
thirteen
years ago when there was another person working with us, but I can assure you our record has been spotless since.”

She scoffs. “And how many vampires have
you
slayed?”

I can’t make out the muffled reply but I’m pretty sure he’s said—none. Most cops don’t even want to attempt to mess with vampires.

“Anyway,” Mom continues, “I’d love to know where you’re getting this
information
from.” She listens for a few seconds, her eyes narrowed. “Well, Officer MacCready, I happen to know a few things about
Mr. Harker
that he’s most likely left off his resume that might affect your decision about who is the best candidate to handle this job. If you’ll just give us a bit of your time we’d be happy to speak to you about it.”

A small smile breaks out on Mom’s face—something I see so rarely. “Wonderful. We’ll see you in a few minutes.” She shuts her phone and tosses it roughly in her purse, all business now. “Nathan Harker—after all these years! What the
hell
is he thinking moving in on our territory and bad-mouthing us to the police?”

“I can’t believe he’d do something like that,” Dad says quietly. “Not after everything we’ve been through.”

“Like Nathan cares about our past!” Mom shoots back. “And I haven’t a doubt in my mind he’s burned every bridge of his out west so he had no choice left but to move on to our territory without a moment’s care about how it would affect us.”

“Joy,” Dad says, his voice full of warning. “Let’s—”

Mom scoffs. “What? Let’s forget what happened? Not possible!”

“Who are you talking about, Mom?” I ask.

She turns to me and I see her pupils are wide and dark. “
The Harkers
. Nathan and Tyler Harker.”

“Harker?”
I ask. “As in
Jonathan
Harker, one of the slayers of Dracula?”

Mom takes a deep breath. “Unfortunately, yes. Although I’d bet good money Jonathan Harker is turning in his grave knowing his great-grandson screwed up so badly he had to stake his own wife!”

“Joy, please!” Dad admonishes. “This isn’t the time or the place….” His worried eyes connect with mine in the rearview mirror.

“She’s old enough, Vince, and if Nathan is going to be moving in on our territory, she needs to know what kind of a man he is. I can only imagine what’s become of the boy.”

Dad shakes his head. “Look, we’re almost at the station, let’s find out what’s going on and then you and I can discuss the best way to handle the Harker situation.”

Mom looks out the window, chewing on a hangnail. “Fine. Hopefully he’s still got a ways to go before he arrives in town.”

I lean all the way forward and look between the two of them. “Wait a minute. You guys can’t leave me hanging like this! What did the Harkers do? And what happened thirteen years ago?”

“Let’s just say we used to work with the Harkers but parted company after our divergent methods of hunting became too big to overcome.”

“But what about his wife?” I continue. “Is it really true he had to … stake her?”

Dad sighs.

“Yes, he did,” Mom says.

I lean back in my seat and stare at my parents. I’d imagined losing them hundreds of times to a vampire attack, but it never once occurred to me that they would get turned and one of us would have to …

I shudder. It makes sense. We often split up to get a job done faster or scout out an area. It would be easy to get turned and catch someone by surprise and what else could you do but …

A small laugh escapes my mouth. “Well, let’s just hope Dad never has to go there.”

“Daphne!” Dad says.

“Sorry,” I say bitterly. “But it’s not like it isn’t a possibility.” Anger wells up inside me like a crashing wave. For the millionth time I wonder why they didn’t quit after I was born and get some freaking normal jobs. Any jobs. Hell, I’d live in the worst trailer park in the world and proudly say my parents flip burgers for a living instead of doing this.

“Could you stake me?” I ask, the words coming out before I can stop them.

Dad shoots a look at Mom. “You had to go there.”

“This is Harker’s fault, not mine,” she insists.

“Could you?”

Mom turns around and faces me. Her cheeks are flushed and her jaw is clenched. “Yes, Daphne, I could.”

I look away from her, shaking my head. “I wish I could say I’m surprised,” I whisper.

Dad pulls the van into the police station parking lot and cuts the engine. He puts both of his hands on the top of the steering wheel and then rests his forehead on them.

We sit in silence for a few minutes and then Mom unbuckles her seat belt. “Daphne, you know what we’re up against. You know why we do this,” she says as she organizes the paperwork in her lap.

I look down at the binder filled with dreams and hopes I’ll never get to live. “I know why it has to be done; I just don’t know why it has to be
us
.”

Mom looks up at the roof and Dad reaches out and takes her hand. She bows her head and leans into him. “Who better than us?”

“It’s not fair,” I say. “Why don’t I get to choose whether or not I want to do this?”

“Look, Daphne, your mom and I each have our reasons. There have been some things from our past we wanted to
shield
you from—maybe that was the wrong approach. Maybe you’d be more accepting of what we do if we’d been up front with you.”

“Enough coddling her,” Mom says. “Daphne, we
need
this job. You know how tight money is. And with what the Harkers have told the police, we’re going to have some explaining to do. I just hope you’re mature enough to hear what we have to say and conduct yourself properly during the interview. None of your sulking. It was embarrassing watching your eye-rolling in the Buffalo office; that’s not the kind of behavior that will persuade someone to give us work.”

“Fine!” I snap.

“Maybe she should wait in the car,” Dad says. “We can talk to her later.”

Mom scoffs. “They’re expecting three slayers for the briefing. She’s coming with us.” She pulls down the sun visor and tilts her chin up, applying fresh lipstick in the faded mirror. She purses her lips and then flips the visor back up. “Are we ready?”

“Does my hair look okay?” I ask sarcastically. “Wouldn’t want to make a bad impression.”

Mom gives Dad an
ignore her
look and then they get out of the car. I shake my head, almost wishing I’d inherited Mom’s robotic lack of emotion. I open the door and think about the job we’re trying to secure, and all the jobs we’ve been on. My stomach churns and I swallow back some bile rising in my throat. What fresh nightmares could my parents have tried to
shield
me from? What could possibly be worse than this?

“So you see,” Mom continues,
“it wasn’t negligence on our part; we simply didn’t realize how far gone my father-in-law was.”

Officer MacCready sips his coffee and then swishes it around noisily in his mouth. “Leaving someone in his condition alone for any amount of time is never a good idea, and given his background, leaving him with a child—why, I might go so far as to call it gross negligence.”

Mom shakes her head rapidly. “No. I freely admit that was a
misjudgment
on our part. But you have to understand the pressure cooker we were in. And he’d never left a hotel room before so we had no reason to believe he’d leave.”

Officer MacCready picks up a sheet of paper on his
desk. “But he did, and that little
misjudgment
caused an innocent person to get staked. I know you people are working under extreme conditions, but that is a serious safety issue. You get full government healthcare; it would’ve been easy to have him committed.”

Dad nods but doesn’t say anything, and I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I guess this is why Dad hardly ever talks about his father. Vince Van Helsing Sr.—his brain destroyed by dementia—left me alone in a hotel room and staked a fourteen-year-old honor student, thinking she was a vampire.

Un-freaking-believable.

I stare straight ahead and try to reconcile the vague memories I have of my grandfather reading to me in hotel rooms with the fact that he murdered an innocent person. I was four when he was taken away by the police. Mom told me he was going to a nursing home. I guess I should be thankful they spared me the gory details of what really happened.

Mom sits up and folds her arms across her chest. “No question it was a horrific incident, but the bottom line is my husband and I were not directly involved and we were cleared of any wrongdoing. As you can see from our résumé our record has been spotless and citizens’ comp payouts have been minimal. The fact that Nathan Harker
brought this to your attention yet failed to mention his own unorthodox approach to extermination which resulted in having to stake his wife as she was attacking their own son speaks for itself.”

My mouth drops open and a queasy feeling overtakes me. This is getting worse by the second. I knew Mom would bring this up to help secure the job, but hearing her laying it out there—that Mrs. Harker was killed as she was actually trying to …

I bite my lip and try to erase the image from my head.

“Well,” Officer MacCready says calmly, like this isn’t stomach-turning news, “I called the folks heading up the Midwest/West Coast Vampire Control and that Harker fellow has himself a
bit
of a reputation. Seems he had a drinking problem. Authorities threatened to take his son, but …” He appraises Mom and Dad. “Well, you know how the government cuts you
specialists
some slack in the child-rearing department, among other things.”

Dad clears his throat. “Daphne here passed her GEDs with a ninety-five percent, and got her diploma at age fifteen. We in no way slacked off on her education.”

Officer MacCready’s eyes drift over to where I’m sitting in a corner and I turn away. It’s obvious he has little respect for my parents—can’t say as I blame him. Few people stick with the vampire-slaying gig for long, but
those who do are given tremendous leeway about how they run their affairs, including looking the other way while bringing children on hunts.

“Harker is a bit of a loose cannon,” Officer MacCready continues. “He’s been written up for quite a few unnecessary stakings made in front of citizens and you know the municipalities hate having to pay the comp money to keep people from talking, but he also has the ability to clean a town up quickly.” He shakes his head. “It kills me when the federal government refuses to foot the bill. Like we have crystal balls that can predict vampire infestations when we do our yearly budgets? Add in a bad winter where any surplus we had goes to snow removal and we’re screwed.” He leans back and his computer chair groans under his considerable weight. “Where the hell are we supposed to come up with comp money?”