Divine Fantasy (20 page)

“Open your eyes,” he said. “Joyous, look at me. I need to see your eyes. I need to know if it worked.”

Feeling reluctant, I nevertheless complied. As I suspected, Ambrose was still partially in wolf form. His ears were slightly pointed, his eyes burning gold. He was also naked.

This should have been unnerving, but I’ve never seen any sight I loved more.

Then I looked lower and was nonplused. Damn, if he still didn’t have an erection. Instead of interrupting the mood, the vicious lightning had acted like some kind of electrical Viagra.

I shook my head, amused. “You have a one-track mind,” I muttered.

“At the moment, that seems to be true.” He shook his head and sounded chagrined. As I watched, his features again began to draw inward and become human.

“Then I guess I’m a very lucky girl,” I murmured. My voice was rough. It sounded passionate, but I suspect it was half the effects of the lightning constricting the muscles of my throat when I screamed and howled.

And then—Heaven only knows why—I started to giggle and blush. Maybe Miss Modesty was back in the driver’s seat and she just wasn’t ready to deal with an aroused he-wolf. Again.

“Ambrose?” I asked after a while. “When you said that the Dark Man had a ritual for changing his…patients? Well…” I trailed off and kept my face buried in his chest. I wasn’t sure how to frame my next question. There didn’t seem to a polite way to ask if the ritual always involved sex.

“Yes?”

I could feel the painful heat of an embarrassed blush burning through my cheeks, but my verbal filters were definitely not working at full efficiency because I went ahead and asked.

“You didn’t mean that he had sex with the bodies while he electrocuted them, did you?” Translation:
You didn’t have sex with him, did you?
While I was okay about what had happened with us in the minutes before I died, the image of Ambrose and the Dark Man together was…well,
eww
.

Ambrose started laughing. His chest shook hard enough to dislodge me. I was relieved to hear it.

“No. I just thought it might be more pleasant to have the lightning pass through me first so you wouldn’t suffer from the kinds of burns that I had. They heal quickly, but they’re disconcerting and painful that first time. And though I know you’re stronger now and could take more damage…” He stopped. “I just wanted it to be as pleasant as possible and thought maybe a distraction would help both of us.”

“It worked.”
Mostly
. Seeing his sudden concern, I wasn’t going to mention the pain like no other that had rounded out my climactic moment and spoiled some of the fun.

“Besides, I wanted you. Lust has been attacking me pretty much since we met.” His voice was still amused as he confessed. Probably because my face was still hot.

I swatted him without looking up. “So, you were being selfish and doing what you wanted. That’s typical. Men!”

“Partially selfish. If the beast had really done what it really wanted…” He stopped, no doubt deciding that it was wiser to keep his own counsel on this.

“You…wanted to…what? Kill me?” I asked in a small voice. I didn’t look up. “Really? I thought earlier, out on the road….”

“No. Eat you, maybe…and we would have done a great deal more, a great deal more violently than we did.”

“What do you mean?” I was under the impression that he had done just about everything that was legal.

A hand slid down over my behind and gave it a pat. I gasped as several ideas occurred to me. Lack of oxygen forced my face up to the air and I found him smiling at me. His expression had never been so relaxed. I wondered if he was teasing me but decided not to ask.

“You perv!” I joked.

“I fear so. You bring out my worst impulses.”

This idea was oddly flattering. Miss Modesty wasn’t used to being the object of perverted fantasies.

“You’re staring awfully hard at me now. I’m going to get a complex,” I said, raising a hand to my wayward hair and wondering if it was doing a Bride of Frankenstein thing.

“You look rather different,” he answered. “I think I like the changes.”

“I do? How do I look different? Is it my hair?” I rolled to my feet and scurried for the bathroom and the mirror there. Ambrose followed, pulling on his jeans. He was probably expecting me to freak out, though I had told him time and again that
I do not get hysterical
.

I didn’t get hysterical, but it was a near thing.

“Well.” The gods had apparently listened to my request for flawless skin. They had given it to me in spades, along with an extreme shade of pale. My eyes were also black and missing pupils. Just like Ambrose’s. Excepting that Ambrose’s eyes
were mysterious, dark and dangerous, and I looked about as scary and enigmatic as a gerbil. My hair had also curled itself into a golden nimbus that wouldn’t flatten no matter how many times I shoved it down.

“I look like a God-damned fuzzy hamster,” I said, a shade of dismay in my voice. “Look at this hair! Will it always be like this?”

This cracked Ambrose up, making him actually double over with laughter. It was then that I realized that my lover was still more than a bit high from the storm. For that matter, I was too, though my buzz was quickly fading. I waited patiently for his hilarity to cease.

“You don’t look like a hamster,” he finally managed to say. “Nor any kind of a rodent.” As compliments went, it left a bit to be desired. Ambrose realized this and added simply: “You’re beautiful. Now more than ever.”

That was slightly better. I reached for the door and pulled on a robe. I wasn’t actually cold. It was just force of habit. Miss Modesty didn’t go prancing about in the nude.

“What do we do now?” I asked, dreading what he might say. In his present mood, suggestions could be anything from an indecent and unnatural sexual proposition to a discussion about how to handle the many corpses littering the roadway. I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear either.

“Eat. Everything. I’m ravenous. Shifting always makes me hungry,” he said. And I suddenly realized
that I was absolutely starving too. My little bit of hot chocolate had been consumed a long time ago.

“We don’t need to do something with the bodies first? I mean, what if the snow plow comes around first thing this morning?” This was a token gesture to my conscience, in case it wasn’t in a deep coma and would chide me later.

“I’ve been thinking about the bodies,” he said, herding me toward the kitchen.

“Yes?” I didn’t ask when. Or how much.

“There is no way to disguise that the cemetery has been disturbed.” Ambrose opened a cupboard and got down all the jars of olives. He popped open a lid, ate a handful, spilling brine on the floor and on his bare chest. “Take these,” he instructed and then went to the refrigerator and grabbed the eggs.

“I don’t suppose there is any way to hide it,” I agreed as I fished out an olive. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

Ambrose picked up a frying pan and then started for the living room. It took me a moment to figure out that he was going to cook in the fireplace. It was then that I realized my vision was better than before. Much better. I hadn’t even noticed that we were wandering around in the dark.

“Whoa. This is great. I can see everything,” I muttered.

“So why don’t we haul the bodies back there?” Ambrose went on. “I’ll still burn them, just to be
safe, but at least they’ll be where they belong and no one will ask about what they were doing in the road.”

“They’ll be looking for vandals and not zombies,” I said, fishing out another olive. It tasted
sooooo
good. I almost moaned.

“And probably not until spring if I arrange another snowfall. We’ll be long gone by then.” Ambrose was being deliberately callous and I appreciated it. If he acted sensitively I might feel that I had to cry or something, and that would be dumb, because my parents turning into zombies and trying to eat me was a situation way beyond tears. “If we are very lucky, they might blame it all on the freak lightning storm. If I were the local sheriff, that’s what I’d do. To say anything else would be to invite in the tabloids, and the locals would hate that.”

Just then a knock fell on the back door. Ambrose and I froze and looked at one another.

“I didn’t hear anyone coming,” Ambrose said.

“Zombies don’t knock,” I replied. “Could it be…?”

Putting down the olives and the frying pan on the hearth, we walked back toward the kitchen. Standing in plain view of the narrow side window that framed the door were a tall man and a petite woman. Actually, they were more than a man and woman. The man radiated some kind of otherworldly power that I could feel even from across the room, and the woman was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, with hair the
red-gold that autumn leaves blaze right before their death. Both had the familiar jet-black eyes that had looked back at me from the bathroom mirror only moments ago, though neither looked remotely like a gerbil.

“Well, I’ll be damned. I recognize her,” Ambrose said softly, and opened the door. His tone was one of shocked wonder. “Ninon de Lenclos. Welcome—welcome. This is more than a surprise.”

It took a moment for Ambrose’s words to sink in, but when they did, I felt my brows rise. Ninon de Lenclos? The seventeenth-century French feminist?

“Hello, Ambrose Bierce. I assure you that the pleasure is all mine,” Ninon said. Her voice was vaguely accented, soft, the stuff of which wet dreams are made. At another time I might have been jealous of the way Ambrose stared at her; as it was, I was too stunned. “I’m sorry we’re late. The storm was violent and we didn’t dare interfere from the plane since these new machines are so full of sensitive avionics,” she apologized. “It seems we missed the party thanks to this delay. You are both well? No injuries?”

“Not really,” I heard myself say. “But we’re having a zombie roast later if you’d like to stay. I wouldn’t mind giving it a miss myself. Two of the soon-to-be-grilled are my parents. I’m still rather angry about that.”

Both the man and the woman looked my way. They did not appear upset at my words, just curious. Ambrose’s hand settled on my waist. I welcomed it, though of course I wasn’t that upset. I
don’t get that upset. It was just the electrocution. It had affected me like a dose of Pentothal.

“It’s shock,” Ambrose said. “Literally. She’s just risen, and we are both still a bit punch-drunk. The lingering storm isn’t helping, either. My IQ took a nosedive when the storm came in and hasn’t recovered yet.”

“And I’ve been turned into a werewolf, but please don’t worry. We’re glad to see you. Hi, I’m Joyous Jones,” I said, belatedly stepping forward and offering my hand. The woman took it first and then the man. I could feel a kind of power in them. They were like Ambrose and I, but somehow slightly different.

“And I’m Miguel Stewart. I’m…a vampire.” His touch was gentle, as though he expected me to be frightened at this announcement. I wasn’t, but that was because Ambrose was at my back and I had come to have utter faith that he would protect me. Also, I realized that I really was feeling a bit intoxicated and incapable of prolonged fear. Maybe Ambrose was right about the storm making us high. “I believe we spoke in the chat room last night.”

“Ah,” Ambrose said. His hand stroked me. I appreciated the warmth of his touch. For some reason I was starting to feel cold inside and the beginnings of a hangover headache were forming behind my eyes. “I thought that perhaps it was Alexandre who would come. I was sure he was…one of the Dark Man’s get.”

“He is, but we were closer,” Ninon said. “Dumas is still in the Philippines, but we were visiting New Orleans and able to get a late flight out. Alex is also death on computers. Much worse than the rest of us. Miguel is only newly changed, and the best suited among us for using modern electronics, so he contacted you on Alexandre’s behalf.”

“I understand,” Ambrose said. “I short out everything too. It gets worse every year. I fear that someday I won’t be able to travel by plane.”

They might have been discussing the inconvenience of seasonal allergies. I smiled politely and wondered distractedly what would happen the next time I tried to use the laptop. Or the phone. I thought that it was a good thing that I had sent in my book before I was changed. What if I had ended up erasing the damn thing?

Suddenly self-conscious about doing chitchat in my bare feet and bed-head, I tried smoothing down my hair. Just to further embarrass me, my stomach let out a loud rumble.

“Would you care to join us for breakfast?” I asked, tying my robe tighter. I felt more than disadvantaged standing about seminaked with wild hair while Ninon looked like she had stepped out of a safari shoot for
Vogue
magazine. “I’m afraid it’s just olives and scrambled eggs. I haven’t had time to grocery shop, what with the zombies and all.”

“What kind of olives?” Miguel asked as he inhaled. “Mmm…. garlic and jalapeño. My favorite.”

I found myself beaming at him. Yes, I had shot
my zombie mother, been infected with lycanthropy and electrocuted, but we had olives and new friends, even if one or both of these was a vampire. Maybe everything was going to be okay after all.