The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires (35 page)

“Do you really want to fight me?” John asked, his musical tenor lilting sweetly. “You’re just a silly human. You don’t know anything about fighting. And I’m so much stronger than you.”

My arms felt like lead, like lifting them would take a crane. He chuckled as I struggled to move my feet toward him. I groaned.

“Why don’t you just sit down, Iris?” he asked. “Just sit down and wait for Marchand to kill your little boyfriend. And then you and I will make another game out of finding your sister.”

His cold, cruel laugh brought the memory of that day at Cal’s house hurtling to the surface of my brain, his icy-cold, slimy hands on me and the vicious bite at my throat. I thought of the time he’d spent with Gigi and how easily he could have hurt her and how hard it would be for her to trust boys after this. He could have killed her, arranged it so she never came home, and I would never have known what had happened to her.

Anger as hot and consuming as any blaze spread through my chest, loosening my arms. And what really pissed me off was his confidence. He was so sure of my inability to strike at him that he didn’t move when my arms flexed, not even when I did run, loping across the lawn like an overcaffeinated cheetah. I slid across the grass, diving for the kind of home base that meant more than “not it.” I snagged the shovel, turning to see that
John had finally moved. He was sauntering toward me with the widest kid-in-a-candy-store grin I’d ever seen. He was enjoying this, the thrill of the chase, the taste of my fear. This was his game.

Well, olly-olly-oxen-free, asshole.

I stood, planting my feet wide. When John finally moved close enough, I swung the shovel handle like a bat toward his neck. Grunting with the effort, I landed it flat across his throat. He sank to his knees, clawing at his neck and making strange honking gasps.

I yanked his hair, stretching his neck back and making it even harder for him to speak. I whispered, “I don’t know anything about fighting. But I do know it’s hard to talk when you’ve been hit in the throat with a shovel.”

I swung again, splintering the wooden handle across his back. John fell to his hands and knees, honking all the way. I raised my arms over my head and plunged the jagged end through his back, pinning his heart in its descent into the dirt. John seemed to disintegrate in a wave. His skin turned gray and began to flake away to reveal his musculature, then a bare skeleton that exploded in a cloud of particles, leaving only a wavering wooden fragment sticking out of the ground.

With a triumphant cry, I looked up to see if anyone had seen me dispatch a vampire with a badass bon mot.

Of course not.

Having pushed himself back to his feet, Cal was too busy fighting off Mr. Marchand. The two of them were circling like feral dogs, searching for weaknesses, testing each other with random swings and swipes. They kept
changing position, so that neither could get a grip on the other. Mr. Marchand was surprisingly agile for an older guy, ducking and sidestepping every blow with a toe dancer’s grace. Although I supposed the whole “vampire reflexes” thing was an unfair senior-citizen advantage.

Cal was less smooth. He took every shot he could, swinging wildly. He didn’t retreat; he only advanced. He was fighting angry, which was not good. Unfocused vampire fighting usually led to staking. I yanked at the shovel handle, but in my zeal to stake John, I’d apparently used that supernatural “mother lifts a car off her toddler” strength you only read about in tabloids, because I could not pull that sucker out of the ground. I leaned against it, changed my grip, tried kicking it at the base, but nothing worked.

“Damn it.”

What were my options?
Think, Iris
, I commanded myself.
Think!

1. Running. Running as fast and far as my little feet could carry me.

Likely result:
Escape to a dark country road, where, knowing my luck, I would be kidnapped and murdered by a drifter. Also, Cal would probably die because it looked like he was losing the fight.

2. Finding a pointy tree branch and jumping into the fight.

Likely result:
A much faster and bloodier death than option 1.

3. Calling 911.

Likely result:
Dead Cal and injured cops. Also, I would have to run inside to find a phone, and the possibility of getting trapped in Mr. Marchand’s house of horrors was not appealing.

Wait.

I patted my pockets for other potential weapons and found the syringes. The first needle I pulled out was marked “Calix, Batch 1.” Was this the poison that left Cal incapacitated? If John hadn’t shown up with the lovely Scanlon sisters bait package, had Marchand planned on giving Cal another dose to persuade him to give up the information he wanted? Was this the stuff that made him weak and ill and immobile?

Because that I could use.

I jumped onto a nearby wrought-iron chair, waiting until they moved close. I uncapped the needle and held it like a dagger, poised behind Mr. Marchand’s neck. Or the area near Marchand’s neck if he had been standing less than ten feet away from me. Cal saw this and shook his head violently. I mimed stabbing, which made Cal growl. I assumed that meant no.

Seeing me seemed to help Cal focus. He concentrated on keeping Mr. Marchand’s back to me, which kept his
movements controlled, his anger in check. He swung, connecting his fist with Marchand’s nose. The old man’s head snapped back, and he stumbled. He snarled, advancing and kicking Cal’s legs out from under him. Cal landed on the grass with a thwump. He rolled as Mr. Marchand scissor-kicked down, just missing Cal’s solar plexus. But as he rolled, it shifted Mr. Marchand toward me, his back still turned.

When he was within leaping range, I launched myself at Mr. Marchand’s back. I wrapped my arm around his neck and my legs around his waist, clinging to him like a koala on crank.

Cal yelled, “Iris, no!”

Mr. Marchand roared indignantly and sank his fangs into my forearm, tearing viciously into my flesh. I screamed, pulling uselessly at the arm caught in his teeth.

“This was stupid! This was
so
stupid!” I yelled as he bucked and dodged. I used my good hand to stab the syringe into his neck and push the plunger.

All of this was enough to make Mr. Marchand shake me off of his back and throw me. I went flying, soaring through empty space and crashing into a thick oak tree. My shoulder bore most of the impact, with my injured arm flopping forward and hitting the bark with a distinct snap. With a wet shriek, I slid to the ground. My arm hung limp and useless at my side, the pain in my shoulder so hot and intense that I was grateful for the radiating agony of breathing through broken ribs to distract me.

Beyond the stabbing clutch of every breath, my side felt funny—heavy and sort of caved in. I tried to look toward the fighting vampires, but the movement tilted my world on its axis, and I dropped into a dizzy spiral. I clutched at my head, hypo forgotten, as a storm of howls and growling filled my ears. The noise was growing closer, almost at my feet. Unable to turn my throbbing head, I moved my fingertips along the cool blades of grass, anything to distract me from the nauseating waves of pain. I closed my eyes, losing myself in the welcoming darkness behind my eyelids.

I lost track of time. I opened my eyes to see the leaves moving gently over my head, then drifted off. There was a crunch and a screech, followed by silence. I awoke to find Cal kneeling at my side. He moved me to lean against him. I howled at the movement, clutching my injured arm to my chest. The vocal effort had me coughing, blood bubbling over my lips and into my good hand.

“Cal,” I rasped. He gingerly moved me into his lap, cradling my face against his neck. I whimpered, my uninjured fingers curling around his shirt collar.

“Shh, it’s bad,” Cal whispered. “You’re losing a lot of blood, and there is internal damage.”

I carefully moved my head back to give him my best unimpressed glare, under the circumstances. “Duh.”

My inappropriately timed sarcasm seemed to lift his spirits, or at least the corners of his mouth. They quirked up, then quickly dropped down. He stroked my cheek, so softly I could barely feel it. “Iris, you could—you could die. Do you want me to turn you?”

My hand dropped away from his chest. And for a moment, I wanted to say yes. I wanted the pain to be over. I wanted everything to stop. I wanted to stay with Cal forever. But there was Gigi to consider. Poor Gigi, who had already lost her parents and counted on me to be her whole family. If I was a vampire, if I “died” before she turned eighteen, they would take her away from me. I wanted to give her time to adjust to the idea. I wanted to have my last human moments with her, eating Peanut M&M’s and watching John Hughes movies. I didn’t want to show up on our doorstep with fangs.

And even with the crippling agony, I remembered the not-so-small problem of Cal’s wanting to leave my little backwater town the minute he could make tracks. And since he seemed to have just killed Mr. Marchand, that minute had arrived. When he’d asked me whether I wanted to be turned, he never specified that he would stay with me while I adjusted to being a vampire. What if he became bored with me? What if he didn’t know how to love someone after so many years? What if he turned me, only to leave me the moment I rose? I couldn’t handle that. Better that he left me human and damaged than alone for a foreseeable eternity.

“No.” I wheezed. “No. Get me to a hospital. Find Gigi.”

Cal’s expectant face fell for a second, and then he recovered and smiled down at me. He murmured something in Greek and kissed me on the forehead, just as I passed out.

Once your vampire guest “leaves the nest,” it’s doubtful that you’ll hear from him again. The undead are not big on thank-you notes and hostess gifts.

—
The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires

I
woke up. And Cal wasn’t there.

Gigi was sitting by my bedside, her head slumped against the mattress, drooling. There was a car-battery-sized box of Godiva truffles on the nightstand, along with a stack of Teresa Medeiros novels and an arrangement of white and purple irises. Next to the chocolates, Gigi had placed a picture of the two of us dressed in western gear for her high school’s Fall Festival. Our arms were slung around each other, and we were grinning like loons, which may have had something to do with the deep-fried Snickers bars we’d just consumed.

My eyes grew hot and prickly as I looked down at her sleeping face. I slipped my good hand over the dark, silky strands of her hair. I remembered braiding it into pigtails for the Fall Festival and the first time I’d helped her pin it up for a dance. Tears slipped down my cheeks.
She was growing up so fast. I’d almost missed it. I could have missed everything.

Ben came through the hospital-room door, trying to balance two fancy coffees and a bag stuffed with the blueberry scones that Gigi loved. I wiggled my uninjured fingers at him, and he stopped in his tracks.

Ben Overby had made a special trip across town to the Hollow’s lone Starbucks to get my sister to eat. His stock had gone up in my book, exponentially.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, grinning at me. “You’re awake!”

Gigi’s head shot up from the mattress. Her face had wrinkles where the rough sheets had bunched under her skin. And there was a patch of dried drool on her cheek. But Ben’s eyes lit up at the sight of her, even when she shrieked like a banshee and launched herself at me.

“Don’t you ever, ever do that again!” she cried, hugging me with one arm and slugging my leg with the other. “All that talk about being responsible, and do what I say, and then you get into a fistfight with vampires!”

“Well, technically, being thrown into the tree did most of the damage,” I said, yelping in pain when she halfheartedly slapped the side of my head. “I’m sorry!” I huffed as her weight squeezed the air out of my lungs. “Ow! Ben, get her off me!”

Ben looked pretty damned amused as he set the coffee and pastry aside and pulled my sister back into her chair. She promptly burst into tears and buried her face in Ben’s shirt. “Sorry, Miss Iris. She’s had three days to bounce between panic and pissed-off. You gave us quite a scare.”

“Three days?” I exclaimed.

“Ophelia Lambert, that creepy vampire chick, picked us up at the Dairy Freeze after you were brought here,” Ben said. “We called her as soon as we got to a main road, told her she needed to get to the Marchand house. She said the same thing you did, to get to a well-lit, populated place and stay there. She came to pick us up, said Mr. Marchand was dead and you were hurt.”

“Marchand is dead?”

Ben nodded. “Cal poisoned him, gave him some of the same stuff he was given but a much bigger dose. Ophelia said you would understand that. She told us that you were brought here but not to worry about the bills, because the Council would take care of whatever the insurance didn’t.”

“Massive internal bleeding!” Gigi yelled with sudden authority.

“You had massive internal bleeding,” Ben informed me calmly while my sister raged. “A few broken ribs, a wound on your arm that required surgery, a lot of broken bones on your left side, and a punctured lung.”