Blessed (6 page)

It meant so much to me that the Moraleses cared. But it was also going to be a major pain in the butt if I didn’t get on top of the situation. And fast.

I pushed my advantage as a grief-stricken waif. “I get what you’re saying. I do. Thing is, with losing my uncle and Kieren, working at Sanguini’s is the only thing I have left that seems normal. I mean, I hugely appreciate you and Dr. Morales taking me in.”

“But that’s a big change, too,” Miz Morales said, glancing around the bookish, boyish room. “Besides which, we’ve just plopped you in the middle of Kieren central.”

I took a chance on the broth. “I’d be thinking about him all the time anyway.”

She scratched behind her ear. “Me, too.”

Pity I’d never learned to read German, Latin, or any of the other languages in over half of the leather-bound books. I dismissed a handful of the rest as fiction, including a paperback copy of the novel
Dracula
by Bram Stoker. The spine wasn’t creased, and the first few pages were still stuck together at the top corners.

After hours of squinting at tiny print, I came across a red spiral notebook and, flipping it open, recognized Kieren’s handwriting. Jackpot.

Vampirism:

• Demonic infection that turns humans into the undead and rots the soul
  

Vampires:

• Exist indefinitely by drinking blood
  

• May travel in the company of werescavengers for victim-disposal purposes
  

Origin:

• Unknown; possibly created by Wolf sorcery to cull the human threat
  

Cinematic/Literary Myths:

• Don’t reflect/cast a shadow at all; must sleep on unhallowed earth; require invite to enter private homes; possess power over the weather and to enthrall others
  

• Carpathians: Count Dracula and his spawn
  

Powers:

• Neophyte: heightened strength, speed, reflexes, hearing (?), healing (?), climbing ability
  

• Young: ability to take wolflike form
  

• Age 50+: ability to turn into mist or dust
  

• Old Blood: ability to take batlike form
  

Vulnerabilities:

• Religious symbols (effect varies), holy water and wafers, sunlight (weakens), garlic, wild roses, being deprived of blood (may trigger blood lust)
  

Methods of Destruction:

• Fire, beheading, holy water, impaling (any stake/knife, not just wooden), or removal of the heart
  

Opposition:

• Wolves, Bears, Cats, interfaith coalitions, freelance hunters
  

Spiritual Status:

• Damned. Some theorize that neophytes can be saved if beheaded, their mouths filled with garlic, and their hearts staked; considered a controversial theory
  

Again with the eternal damnation.

My gaze flicked back up to
possibly created by Wolf sorcery to cull the human threat.

Kieren had
never
said anything about that. I wondered how long he’d known, what he’d felt about it. My Wolf man had been vocal about his hatred of vampires, but he’d softened his stance on the demonic infection after it had happened to me. Well, maybe not on the demonic part, but on the blaming of the infected themselves.

I slipped the paper into my backpack and resolved not to think more about it until tomorrow. My body could’ve kept going, but my brain needed rest, and as for my heart . . .

I still had the Moraleses and my “family” at Sanguini’s. But last night I’d had Kieren, too, and tonight our time together was a memory.

I pulled the spell book I’d hidden from Miz Morales out from beneath the pillow beside me, and a three-by-five photograph came with it. A photo of me, taken in August at the wedding of one of Meara’s bridezilla clients. Kieren and I had tagged along to help manage the event, but I’d quietly imagined that the night was ours.

I could hardly believe it. Kieren — studious, serious, at times maddeningly distant — had slept with a picture of me under — on? — the pillow beside him.

Crawling beneath the denim comforter, I rested my cheek on the cotton pillowcase where his cheek had rested, curled my body between the sheets that his body had warmed. Imagined him by my side. It almost didn’t seem possible. But Kieren might’ve loved me as much as I loved him.

In the dream, I’d gone back to the day Kieren had first mentioned getting a water bed, maybe a month after my parents had died. We were seated across from each other at a two-top at Fat Lorenzo’s, splitting an order of fried mozzarella sticks with dipping marinara. Some sauce had spilled onto the checked plastic tablecloth, and I wiped it up with a napkin.

“What if you start to Wolf out in your sleep?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “The claws go wild. The mattress leaks all over the place. You know how your mama is about her Berber carpeting.”

“The most important part of being a
Canis dirus sapiens,
” he replied, gesturing with a cheese stick, “is controlling the Wolf, regardless of circumstances. The water bed is a night-by-night test.”

Kieren had always been ungodly hard on himself.

“Besides,” he added, sipping his Coke, “what if I don’t always sleep alone?”

It had been the first time either of us had come close to hinting about sex.

The memory dimmed, replaced by his body pressed tight against mine on a thin twin mattress. It felt wrong, suffocating.

I smelled peppermint, blood, and Chianti. I heard the creak of the bedsprings and the clicking hearts of mice. “Kieren?”

A voice chuckled. “You’re the bee’s knees.”

Brad. He’d drugged me, entombed me in his basement. Just like the night I’d died.

I yanked at the thick ropes binding me to the rusted iron headboard. I remembered suspecting Kieren of Vaggio’s murder. I remembered Brad promising to never leave. How empowering it had felt, the way he’d thirsted for me.

Were those his lips nibbling beneath my breast? Didn’t they feel divine?

“Come morning at Sanguini’s, Miz Morales’s Endless Love van had already been towed for repairs. But The Banana — a yellow 1970 Cutlass convertible that had belonged to Uncle D — was now parked behind the Dumpsters and covered with a tarp. It hadn’t been there yesterday morning.

Bradley? God, I hoped not. So far as I knew, he really had left town. Detective Zaleski had swung by the Moraleses’ last night to report that APD had searched Brad’s house and it had looked like he’d packed up and shipped out for good.

The werecat Ruby? Possibly. It would’ve been nothing for her to snatch Uncle D’s keys. Zaleski had also mentioned that her DNA in Uncle D’s bedroom had been a match to that at Travis’s murder scene and on one of two sets of partial remains — identified as missing police officers — that had been found behind the bushes in my backyard. The medical examiner had determined that scavengers had gotten to the bodies.

Partial remains — where my little-girl sandbox had once been. It was all too gross and depressing to think about.

Just then, I heard a car engine and, running to the alley, spied the back end of a gleaming SUV with Illinois plates, turning west into the neighborhood. Black, not beige like Brad’s Ford Expedition, and much, much bigger.

I heard a footfall behind me and, fisting my hand, spun to face —

“Mornin’, Miss Quincie. Morning light. Lighter. Sure is bright, awful bright outside. Aren’t you awfully bright?”

Mitch. He was a dear pal and an Austin celebrity who, at sixty-plus, served as an unofficial ambassador for the local homeless community. He was also an early victim of one of Bradley’s “experimental” dishes and a full-blown vampire — one of many if I didn’t do something about it. And soon.

This morning I noticed that Mitch had traded in his famed flannel pj bottoms for camouflage cargo pants and that his latest cardboard sign read:

“That’s a very rectangular sign,” I said. “And your handwriting’s improving.”

Color me new to supernatural small talk.

“Yep, yep,” he replied. “Mitch wrote the words like they looked in his head. You got any to spare? Not words. No, not . . . Hardly anybody, nobody’s out anymore.”

Any blood to spare, he’d meant. I remembered the first glass of wine that Bradley had offered me, a ’99 Sonoma Zinfandel to wash down his rigatoni marinara. The bottle had been cold, refrigerated, as had nearly all the wine he’d served up, even though reds should be kept at room temperature. Contaminated and recorked — of course! Bradley had kept his own stash — for me, for himself — in the restaurant kitchen.

“Let’s see what’s in the fridge,” I said, reaching for my keys. It seemed foolish to let Mitch leave thirsty. Or me, either. “We’ve got to hurry, or I’ll be late for school.”

He puttered inside after me. “I see you look, that you’re looking like a regular girl again. Who’d you chomp?”

It had been Mitch who’d explained that after my “first bite,” I’d be better able to control my blood lust and hide my demonic features — the red eyes and fangs.

“Kieren,” I replied, shoving away the memory. The way his breath had become short and ragged. The way I hadn’t needed to breathe at all.

“Gonna miss, miss that boy. Too bad he’s dead.”

I froze with my hand on the fridge handle. Had Mitch heard something? “What?”

He looked confused. “Didn’t you drank, drink, suck him dry?”

“No, he’s . . .” Thank God Mitch had only been assuming. “I stopped in time. Kieren’s alive. He’s safe.” Or at least he had been the day before.

Leaning against the butcher block, Mitch scratched his stubbly chin. “Huh. That’s, it’s really something, Miss Quincie. It’s . . . something else.”

I suspected from his tone that Mitch had killed the first person he’d fed from and no doubt more since. I didn’t have high hopes that he’d ever adjust to a low-key preternatural existence. Mitch had barely scratched by as a human being.

I’d heard what Miz Morales had said about vampires and souls and inevitable damnation, and my foray into Kieren’s Wolf studies had only confirmed her words.

I knew I couldn’t let Mitch go on the way he had been, that I might have to take the axe from the safe and hunt him down. But, like me, he hadn’t chosen his fate. Maybe together we could find our way, at least for the time being. At least until I found some means of preventing the baby-squirrel eaters from turning toothy like us.