Vampire U (14 page)

"Good morning," I said, flashing what I hoped was a confident smile as I tried not to look at that single key.  "Do you know anything about cars?"  I arched my back a bit to accentuate my small breasts, and Carl's eyes slid off the computer monitor again.

He shrugged.  "Little bit."  My chest had apparently hypnotized him, and I got the sense that Carl didn't see many breasts that weren't on a computer screen.

"My engine's making a weird rattle, and I'm afraid to drive it any further.  Would you mind helping me figure out what the problem is?"  I batted my eyes, playing the role of hapless woman.

Carl shot out of his chair and hurried around the counter, puffing his pitiful, sagging chest up as he did so.  "Let's take a look," he said.

"Thanks so much!" I said.  "The key's in the ignition.  Hey, just in case, I'm going to call the towing company while you look at it.  Mind if I use your phone?"

Carl seemed to deflate a little when he realized I wasn't coming outside with him.  He hesitated, but I widened my smile until my lips hurt, trying my best to look like a helpless airhead.

"Go ahead," he said, pointing at the front desk.  "It's a local call, right?"

"Absolutely!" I said, hurrying around the desk.  Carl winced as I sat down in his chair, but I pretended not to see the stack of tattered porno magazines beneath the counter, and he turned and went outside as I made a show of picking up the phone.

I cradled the handset against my ear and held my breath as I watched him go out to Momma Bones's Buick.  He poked his fingers into the grill, searching for the hood latch.  When he didn't find one, he climbed into the car.  The engine started, and the hood popped up.

I waited until he got back out and turned away from the office.  While he stood in front of the car, staring down at the engine compartment with his hands on his hips, I jumped up out of the chair and turned to snatch the spare key to Room 10 off the wall.  Prickling fear tightened my shoulders, and I expected to hear a shout as Carl burst back into the office.  When I spun back around, he was still leaning over the open hood, exposing a generous amount of white cleavage above his sagging belt.

With a relieved sigh, I slipped the key in my pocket and went outside.  "Well, it's going to take them at least an hour to get here and..."  I paused, pretending to listen to the car.  It sounded exactly as it had all morning, but I grinned like a kid on Christmas morning.  "Oh!  You fixed it!  Thank you so much!  What did you do?"

Carl's mouth opened and closed for a few seconds.  "Fan belt was loose," he lied, his dull eyes steady and unrepentant.  "I tightened her up a bit."  His chest puffed out again, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

"You saved my life," I said.  "I was going to be late for work!  Thanks again!"

Carl's pale, drooping face brightened a bit, and he stammered something unintelligible.  Before I could make things any more awkward, I pushed the hood closed and got back in the Buick, waving as I backed out.  Carl stood and watched me as I pulled onto the street, and I kept an eye on him through the rear view mirror.  He turned and went into the office just as I turned a corner at the end of the street.

I circled the block pulled back into the Sherwood Inn's parking lot.  Room 10 was at the opposite end of the long building from the office, so even if Carl decided to look away from his computer and peer through the front office window, he couldn't see me.  I backed into the parking space next to the red Mercedes, just in front of the door to Room 10.  Bright morning sun bathed the car, but it couldn't reach below the deep awning.  I adjusted the car's side mirror with careful motions, craning my neck to look at the door behind me.

I climbed out and shut the door to examine my handiwork.  In the shadows beneath the awning, a rectangle of bright sunlight hit the door just below eye level, reflected from above by the mirror.  I'd seen direct sunlight destroy three vampires so far.  I just hoped a reflection would be as powerful.

I'd emptied Morgan's big handbag of all her belongings and filled it with the wooden gardening stakes I'd bought at Home Depot.  Now I slung the purse over my shoulder, comforted by their hollow rattle.  Standing in front of the door, I ignored the plastic "Do Not Disturb" sign that hung from the knob as I eased the key into the lock.  Both key and lock were worn from decades of use, and it slid in smoothly.  I felt a kind of giddy euphoria through the cloud of my exhaustion.  I knew I should be terrified of Vic, but I would be disappointed if I went through all this to find him gone.  I'd always imagined becoming an investigative reporter, and here I was, doing real detective work.  In mortal peril, I'd never felt more alive.  I was having 
fun!

Heart pounding, I turned the knob as slowly as I dared, but the metallic scrape of its internal mechanisms seemed louder than an alarm bell.  My chest felt tight as I pushed the door open and peered inside.  The sunlight reflected from the car mirror hit the far wall, cutting the gloom like a laser, but I had to squint as my eyes adjusted to the gloom.

No vampire lunged out of the shadows to tear my throat out, but the place looked like a heavy metal band had hosted a coke-fueled all-night orgy.  The mattress lay askew with one corner sagging toward the floor, and the sheets were a rumpled heap at the foot of the bed.  A garage sale painting of a shrimp boat hung askew above the headboard, and the pungent reek of sex assaulted my nostrils.

The bedroom was vacant, but I could hear the shower through the half-open bathroom door.  Someone was here.  It had to be Vic.  For a long moment, I stood on the threshold and listened to the sound of running water.  Here I still felt safe; the sunlight was just two steps behind me.  Still, I couldn't wait all day.

Fear scrabbled up and down my spine as I pulled out one of the gardening stakes and stepped into the room.  The door swung shut behind me with an audible click, cutting off the meager beam of sunlight and casting the room into a near darkness.  Fear boiled inside me, churning my guts into a hot stew.  A cold chill rippled across my sweat-dappled skin, and each breath I drew felt shallow and thick.

My sneakers made no sound on the cheap, worn carpet as I crept slowly toward the bathroom.  I stepped over the pile of sheets and peered through the crack between door and jamb, but saw nothing but swirling steam and a heavy shower curtain the color of overripe avocados.

What are you doing?
  The voice of reason screamed in my head, but I ignored it.  Beneath the swirling mass of fear, my anger ran like a current of energy as I remembered Vic's gloating smile in the moment before he sank his teeth into Morgan's neck.

That anger drove me forward - anger at what Vic had done to Morgan, and at myself for letting it happen.  I let Morgan's purse slide from my shoulder and set it quietly on the floor, then pushed open the bathroom door and stepped inside.  The plastic shower curtain was opaque, colored a dark green that had gone out of style two decades before.  Feeling less like the killer in 
Psycho
 and more like the helpless victim, I lifted the wooden stake and took hold of the shower curtain.  As I yanked it back, its cheap plastic rings sang on the steel rod as it slid aside to reveal...

Nothing but an empty yellow bathtub.  Water spewed from the showerhead and hit the back wall, running down cracked tiles and grout dappled by mildew.

Horror washed over me, yet even as I realized my mistake, I knew I'd come too far.  Hot panic welled up inside me like magma, and in a brief flash of self-awareness, I felt a subtle push in the back of my skull, so small I hadn't recognized the gentle psychic touch of a vampire.  Charging blindly in wasn't like me, nor was letting anger control my actions.

"Morgan's virgin roommate," a pleasant male voice said behind me as I cursed my reckless stupidity.  "What a nice surprise."  The terror in my chest squeezed my heart like icy fingers as I turned to face him.

Vic stood naked, wet droplets still glistening on his pale, perfect body.  He'd waited in the closet opposite the bathroom, I saw now.  He towered over me, blocking the bathroom doorway with the broad shoulders and athletic build of a running back.  His grin held no joy, but far too many teeth, some of them unnaturally sharp.  His cold blue eyes had gone dark, swirling with a deep red light.

He sniffed the air.  "Mander's toy, huh?" Vic said.  "The one Alex wants."  He laughed suddenly.  "The baddest brother in Beta chasing a hot piece of ass all over the city, and she drops herself in my lap."  Vic's smile disappeared, and a pointed tongue flickered out and traced a wet line across his bottom lip.  "My lucky day."

His eyes flickered upward, and I realized he was looking at the gardening stake, which I still held overhead, ready to bring down.  My hand shook, making its wooden point wobble.  With a cry, I thrust it toward him, aiming for the center of his chest.  Vic moved with the speed of a striking cottonmouth, knocking my weapon aside with a contemptuous slap before coiling an arm around my waist to draw me in.  He pulled me against him and clamped his other hand over my mouth an instant before I could scream.

"Shh," he said.  "None of that.  You're gonna come in here nice and quiet and let's figure out what to do with you."  He dragged me into the bedroom.  I wanted to struggle, but instead I froze like a frightened rabbit, quavering in his arms.

Vic's lips touched my ear, cold and smooth as a snake's scales.  "I'm going to take my hand off your mouth, but if you scream you're gonna regret it.  You clear?"

The rest of the motel was empty, and Carl was too far away to hear us.  I nodded my head, and Vic's hand slid downward.  His fingers stroked my neck, then glided over the curve of my breast, giving it a light squeeze.

He inhaled deeply, and his lips touched the vein on the side of my neck like two dead worms, making me shudder.  The heat of Mander's passion had made his skin's coolness seem warm, but Vic had no passion, only a cold, logical hunger.  He could have ended me right then, but he seemed to relish my terror.  He wasn't even trying to control my mind anymore, as though he wanted me fully aware for whatever happened next.

"Hmm," Vic said.  "You're more of a problem than your roommate.  If I give you to Mander, Alex will kill me.  If I give you to Alex, Mander will do the same.  But there's another way...  Neither of them will know I had you if I bleed you dry myself."  He laughed again, an icy metallic sound.  "In fact, they'll probably blame each other when you vanish."

He threw me on the bare mattress where Morgan had lain not so long ago, subjected to this monster's every whim.  I rolled onto my back and tried to scramble up, but Vic was faster.  He stood over me at the foot of the bed, his legs straddling mine.  His eyes blazed with red lust and violence, his dark intent clear.  He stretched his jaw open to expose long fangs dripping with saliva, and his muscles rippled with tension as he prepared to pounce on me.  His cock jutted from between his legs, rigid and engorged.

Once he was atop me, I knew I would never leave this room alive.  Survival instincts overrode my terror, and I swung my foot up, throwing my weight back onto the bed at the same time.  The front edge of my shin took Vic hard in his naked groin.

The vampire doubled over in pain, and for a moment, only a silent sigh escaped his open maw.  I threw myself to the side and scrambled out from under him.  He roared behind me, a wild sound that foretold murder.  I felt the air move behind my head as Vic swung at me with a wild right hook that would have decapitated me if I hadn't stumbled on the wad of bedclothes.  Instead of dying a sudden, bloody death, I fell hard on my knees and elbows, facing the door just a few feet away.  I scrambled for it, lunging upward at the doorknob with reaching fingers.

Whatever damage I'd done to Vic's crotch, it only pissed him off.  A claw-like hand clamped around my ankle just as my fingers curled around the knob.  He pulled me backward just as I gave my wrist a desperate twist.

The motel room's door flew open as he dragged me away, and the room brightened as the beam of sunlight I'd so carefully arranged shot into the room.  The vice-like grip on my ankle fell away, and I lunged into the doorway.  For a moment, I felt triumph, but then I heard Vic's mocking laughter.  I looked up and saw that the sun had moved in the few minutes since I entered the room, not much, but just enough to cast an elongated rectangular patch of light on the wall above the TV instead of deeper into the room.

"Nice try," Vic said behind me.  I waited for the killing blow, but none came.  I twisted around and saw him against the far wall, staring at the beam of light as though he'd been thrown in a pit with a rattlesnake.

I climbed to my feet, not daring to take my eyes off him.  I kept my body as close to the beam of sunlight as I could.  The door began to swing shut again, but I blocked it with the toe of my shoe.

"Don't try to run, girl," Vic said.  "If you do, I'm just gonna take it out on your friend Morgan."

Hearing her name from his foul lips filled me with hate.  "I didn't come here to run away," I told him.

He laughed again.  "Then what's your plan?  You want to have another go at me with one of those toothpicks?"  He mocked me with his grin.

"No," I said, slipping a hand into the pocket of my hoodie.  I pulled out the little compact mirror that I usually carried in my purse.  I didn't wear much makeup, but I'd used this one two nights and a lifetime ago when Morgan and I had stood in our dorm room getting ready for the Equinox Ball.  It seemed fitting that I have it now.

Vic's eyes widened in alarm as he realized what I held.  He tried to flee toward the sanctuary of the bathroom, leaping over the bed with unbelievable speed.

But light was faster.

I held the compact in the sunlight, turning my wrist to guide the bright circle of reflected light on the far wall.  A little twist, and it swept across the room like a burning comet.  The disc of light caught Vic right between his bare shoulder blades, touching his skin for just the briefest of moments, but it was enough.

Vic caught fire like a desiccated mummy soaked in gasoline.  His skin erupted in gouts of flame, and the muscle and bone in his back boiled away, leaving only soft gray ash.  His scream lasted only a moment, and then the fire consumed his lungs.  His throat.  His head.