Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 (15 page)

"Same here!" Aradia
exclaimed. "Fortunately, I’m not like most teenagers."

“Were you aware,” Goat
Chin asked, largely ignoring her response, “that large amounts of
liquor and other illicit substances were present at the party?" At
least he sounded a little less bored.

“Pretty hard to miss,”
she smiled. After a moment, she caught herself, and very politely
added, “Yes, officer.”

“Miss, have you been
drinking?” Soft Voice asked carefully.

“No, sir. Well, Fanta.
And a Mountain Dew. But no beer or rum mixers or anything.” She
decided to go ahead and answer the next question as well, “I didn’t
smoke anything either.”

“Miss, I’m going to
have to ask you to submit to a PAS, a preliminary alcohol
screening,” Soft Voice said, almost wincing.

Goat Chin started to
say, “If you refuse, we’ll have to take you in to the station,” but
he was cut off almost immediately by Aradia.

“Sure!” she exclaimed
with surprising enthusiasm. She’d never even seen a breathalyzer
before. It sounded fun.

One prolonged exhale
later, Aradia could no longer say she’d never taken a breathalyzer
test. She also could no longer say it sounded fun.

“Zero point zero,” Soft
Voice read, sounding obviously relieved. He had clearly been much
more nervous about the results than Aradia.

Goat Chin went back to
being bored.

“It’s awfully late for
you to be out alone, miss,” Officer Soft Voice said. “We’ll give
you a ride home now.”

Aradia thought the
situation through. She didn’t see that she had much choice.
Hopefully her folks hadn’t set the alarm.

"Thanks," she said.
"These shoes aren’t very comfortable to walk in. But before we go
anywhere, I saw a woman being attacked right over
there."

Drats, I should have
mentioned that sooner
, she chastised
herself.

"What woman?" Goat Chin
asked.

Aradia tipped her head
and pointed to the alley behind the Visitor’s Center. "Well,
they’re gone now. They were right over there though. Could you
check for blood?"

They exchanged another
glance. It was wordless, but Aradia interpreted it fairly easily.
Goat Chin was saying,
This is boring,
let’s go get some pizza or something
,
and Soft Voice replied,
We need to at
least check it out
.

Soft Voice
won.

Goat Chin escorted
Aradia to the back of the cruiser. Once he was confident she was
locked up and not going anywhere, he joined his partner. Goat
Chin’s hand hovered near his holster; Soft Voice held a Maglite at
about his ear level. The team carefully investigated the
alley.

Not too surprisingly,
they found no trace of the man and woman.
Vampire and woman
, Aradia
corrected. She’d hoped at least for some blood spatter. He’d been
practically dripping.

“Could you describe the
incident?” Soft Voice asked.

She thought for a
moment, then decided to be honest.

“The Vampire Murderer,”
Goat Chin said. “Not even the first tip we’ve gotten
tonight.”

Even Soft Voice seemed
to lose interest once she’d described his fangs. At first she got
angry, but then Aradia realized how it must have sounded to them.
Would she have acted any differently if she hadn’t seen it
herself?

Well, I can create
fireballs and see the future, so maybe I’d have given the claim
some credit
. She couldn’t really blame
them though.

Seeing their reaction,
Aradia had to wonder. They’d found no blood, she was tired, and
with the Vampire Murderer hunt going on, she did have vampires on
the brain.
Maybe I should chalk it up as
my imagination
.

Putting the vehicle
into drive, Soft Voice said, “I’m sorry that we did not introduce
ourselves sooner. I’m Officer Ortega. My partner is Officer
Manheim.”

“Pleased to make your
acquaintance,” she said. She decided to have some fun. “That was
against procedure, wasn’t it? Not declaring yourselves?”

Soft Voice, or Ortega,
rather, winced again. “As I said, miss, you have our apologies for
that.”

Aradia chuckled at the
situation.

“Where can we take
you?”

She gave her home
address.

While they were on the
way, Aradia could not help but ask, "Hey, can I ask you guys
something?"

Manheim went ahead and
replied, "Yes, you need a high school diploma to be a cop. No, I’ve
never killed anyone. Yes, we do sometimes get free donuts. No, you
can’t come in for police training after school."

"Um, what?" Aradia
said.

"Sorry little lady,"
Ortega said. "In fairness, those are the most common questions, but
aside from that, my partner has got some issues."

"I do not," Manheim
replied defensively.

"Issues?" said Aradia.
"Dude, it sounds like he's got a whole magazine
subscription."

Ortega and Aradia
shared a solid laugh. Manheim did not join them.

As they rounded a turn,
she said, "But hey, like I was saying, can I ask you guys a
question?"

Ortega said, "Sure kid,
shoot, no pun intended."

"I don’t know what it
meant, but I know what I saw tonight. Do you believe in vampires?"
asked Aradia.

Neither of them replied
right away.

After an awkward
silence, Manheim replied, "No. Why? Do you?"

Aradia did not respond,
but after a few minutes of quiet pondering, she muttered, "I don't
want to."

She turned to look
through the window and caught a glance of Tristan with his perfect
body, perfect good looks, and perfect...everything.

For a moment they made
eye contact. If her cops had seen him, they did not react, which
she suspected meant they had not. He was staring at her in
disbelief as she was driven away in the back of a cop
car.

Aradia added to
herself,
But I’m starting to think that
I don't have a choice
.

Chapter
Twelve

Aradia rushed down the
stairs Sunday morning and stormed the kitchen where her
father
was drinking a black coffee and munching on baby
carrots.

Noting her obvious agitation, he asked,
“What’s up, Rai?”

“How could you not have told me the
Vampire Murderer murdered again?” she fumed, staring him straight
in the eye.

He bit off half a carrot, chewed it
slowly, and set down the second half. He swallowed, took a swig of
his steaming hot coffee, and looked at his daughter. Frustratingly,
after all that time, his only response was, “What?”

“I had to hear it on TV! Breaking news,
another death, the same MO.”

“You watch the news on Sunday morning?”
her dad asked, surprised.

“Huh? No, I just wanted some background
noise while I got ready. I couldn’t miss it though.”

“Aradia, honey, you know I can’t share
those sorts of details.” Thoughtfully, he added, “It really
shouldn’t be on the news.”

“Well, somebody’s sharing the details,
because it is.”

“What’s your sudden interest in the
Vampire Murderer?” Ross Preston asked.

“Nothing,” Aradia replied quickly and
defensively. “Just that I’m making friends here, and somebody’s out
killing people, and…”

After she clearly wasn’t going to finish
her thought, her dad finished, “And you think that with your
abilities, you can help?”

“Well, you know it’s true.”

“Honey, you deserve to live your own
life. When the time comes that you decide what you want to be,
maybe you will go into law enforcement, or become a detective, or
run a private security firm. But until then, you get to be a
kid.”

“I’ve grown up a lot, dad.”

He looked at her and grabbed a baby
carrot.

When she was ten,
Aradia’s parents had told her, at her insistence, the story of how
they found her. None of her powers had yet developed fully, but it
was already clear that she had precognitive, telepathic, and
physical abilities, and she wanted to know why. Her parents had
always planned on telling her eventually where she came from, or at
least what they knew of it, so they obliged her
curiosity.

After hearing her
origin story, or at least what her adopted parents knew, Aradia had
started acting out. At first she became sulky and withdrawn. Soon
she was speaking back to and disobeying her parents, and before
long she was ditching school and experimenting with pot. To her
surprise, it wasn’t so difficult for a tween to get her hands on
restricted substances like cigarettes and marijuana.

During this time Aradia
tried to pretend her powers were nonexistent. She did not realize
that she was bottling up her powers the same way she was bottling
up her anger. She couldn’t keep her anger inside, and it found its
way out, mostly in the form of Aradia lashing out verbally at the
people she loved most, her parents. It never occurred to her that,
just as her anger was finding a way to escape the internal pressure
she was creating, so too might her powers.

Aradia had had a tough
go of it with friends. She always knew she was different, and as a
young kid she learned through unfortunate experiences that other
kids weren’t so accepting. She drew indrawn. She didn’t realize
what she was doing, of course, but she started separating herself
from her peers. When someone came along who might be a real friend,
she’d push them away before they had the chance to reject and hurt
her.

Most of the damage to
her social life she’d done herself.

She wasn’t a hermit,
though. She did socialize, just not with anybody who might really
be worth socializing. Her “friends,” then, usually ended up being
people who were too self-absorbed or too mean for anybody else to
bother with them.

That description pretty
perfectly fit Aradia’s friend Jona Lee Burbance. She was
short-tempered, shrewish, rude, and often quite cruel. Jona Lee was
a few years older than Aradia. Aradia looked older than she really
was, so they didn’t appear so unusual together. Whenever they hung
out, Jona Lee had constantly criticized Aradia, who had tried to
take the situation in stride.

On day, which began not
unlike many others, Aradia was cutting school to hang with Jona Lee
at the mall. Jona had belittled Aradia constantly about everything
from her shoes to her hair. Aradia felt her temper brewing, but she
mostly ignored the mistreatment.

They got bourbon
chicken for lunch at the food court. Jona Lee paid for both of
them. She pulled what was obviously a man’s wallet from her purse
and paid cash from it. Aradia knew Jona Lee was not seeing anyone,
but she said nothing and ate her chicken.

After lunch they smoked
cigarettes in front of the mall and Jona Lee told her she looked
inexperienced smoking, clearly intending it as an insult. After
that they went back to shopping.

Aradia stepped out of a
changing room to get her friend’s opinion. It would obviously be
negative; it almost always was. But it was the thing to
do.

Aradia was wearing
leggings, a loose purple top, and a leather jacket. Jona Lee made a
rude noise and was, of course, very negative. “Please, you’re way
too fat to pull that outfit off. You look pregnant,” she’d said. In
fairness, Aradia did look silly. She was twelve, she looked a few
years older, but she was trying on clothes designed for girls in
their late teens. She definitely was not fat, though. “You have no
fashion sense.”

Aradia said nothing and
turned back into the fitting room, closing the door and beginning
to undress. That was when her friend, Jona Lee, opened her mouth
one time too many.

“It looks like
something your idiot mother would wear.”

Aradia did not
hesitate. She didn’t think. She balled her fists and with all her
force slammed them into the door of the fitting room. Her pent up
anger and powers had found their escape.

The doors were
fashioned with mirrors on both sides. The inside mirror shattered,
and Aradia sliced both her fists pretty well. The outside mirror
shattered also.

The countless, tiny
shards of glass flew at Jona Lee like so many razor blades with
speed and trajectory which was not natural. She threw up her arms
instinctively to protect herself, shielding her eyes and much of
her face. The glass dug into her severely pretty much everywhere
else that was unguarded. Her outfit was skimpy, so that left a
large surface area which was lacerated.

Jona Lee quickly
transformed from bitchy teenager to bloody, screaming mess, and was
rushed to the hospital with Aradia accompanying her in the
ambulance.

Paramedics quickly
began minimizing the damage as best they could. The entire time,
Aradia sat huddled, whispering to herself over and over again,
"What have I done? What have I done?"

Jona Lee had no
permanent injury from the glass. Even the scarring was not too
noticeable, though it was extensive. Given the circumstances, she
basically had the best possible outcome.