Necromancing Nim (12 page)

—Haiku from
Vampire Poetry through the Ages
, Random House, 1999

Chapter Eight

I woke to the decidedly unpleasant smell of a vampire with sub-par hygiene. I was lying on my back on a hard surface. The angle of the light on my closed lids made me think it was the kitchen table, or maybe the island between kitchen and dining room. I hoped it was the latter—my kitchen table wasn’t all that sturdy. I opted to keep my eyes shut for the moment, hoping the vamp or vamps wouldn’t notice I was awake.

I had to wonder how they’d even managed to get into my house. While vampires in real life don’t require invitations, they’re very allergic to holy water, garlic and any religious symbols. All of which I have protecting my windows and doors. I’d never been attacked in or near my house by a vamp—until now—but given my line of work, the precautions seemed wise. Obviously, these morons had figured a way around it all. And around Rufus, who I hoped was still out in the yard. As farfetched as it seemed given Rufus’s general lack of sense or energy, I couldn’t help worrying they’d killed him to get in.

I felt woozy, even lying still, and my neck ached. The fucker had bitten me. I didn’t even want to think about the implications of that. If I did, I’d freak out, and I couldn’t afford to do that right now. I kept my breathing slow, hoping they’d be less likely to notice I was awake. It was hard, given the fact I was scared shitless, but I did the best I could. At the moment, none of them seemed to be too close to me, making it easier to let myself relax.

A voice rose, low and careful, from the vicinity of my living room.

“Yes, we have her.” A pause. “You tell me what I want to know, or you’re not going to be happy about what’s left of her when we’re done.” That didn’t help my relaxation any. The vamp was talking on the phone—but to whom? No way for me to tell, since I don’t have super-vampire hearing. One thing I could tell, though, was that the voice bore the faint edge of a Russian accent.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” The vamp’s voice rose, harsh and edgy. “How could you not fucking know?”

Another pause. I could practically hear the vamp’s teeth grinding from here. “Well, take your risks, then. But there’s not gonna be much left of her.”

I assumed he’d cut off the connection. Gone were the days when you could dramatically slam a phone down, more’s the pity. I heard him mutter under his breath; then aloud, he said, “C’mon. We gotta talk.”

Talking was good. Talking meant they wouldn’t get around to the torturing and biting and killing for at least a couple more minutes. Cautiously, I opened an eye, just a bit, to see what I could see.

I couldn’t see much. The lights that had blinded me when I’d first come in had been doused. It wasn’t pitch-black because I kept nightlights plugged in here and there, but it was still dark enough I wouldn’t be able to function particularly well.

I was, indeed, stretched out on the island between my kitchen and dining room. Turning my head very slowly, just a bit, I could see into the dining room, where three vampires stood in a small huddle. I could hear the mumble of their voices but couldn’t make out what they were saying. They all appeared to be wearing leather motorcycle gear, complete with chaps and boots. The leather must have protected them sufficiently from the vampire proofing to allow them inside. Well, hell. That sucked.

My eyes started to adjust, allowing me to also make out the fact that they’d trashed my house. This pissed me off rather more than the fact they’d bitten me and tossed me on my countertop like a slab of meat to be diced up for soup. I mean, I’d just cleaned the damn place. Vacuumed and everything. Now there was trash and shredded paper and possibly couch stuffing from the living room strewn everywhere. And it was a lot less stressful to think about what a pain in the ass it was going to be to clean again than it was to think about the fact I was likely to be really, really dead really, really soon.

“Just check the whole house again.” This from the vamp who’d been on the phone, the one who seemed to be more or less in charge. The other two nodded. I was gratified to see one of them touch his face and wince. As he turned to follow the boss’s orders, I could see a red smear across his cheek—burns left on him by my holy-water gun. They moved around the house, one down the hallway toward the back bedrooms, and I could hear them tossing things around. Bastards. The other vampire stood silently for a few seconds as if considering something, then moved toward me.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing again, letting myself drift. I felt almost separate from my body, so much so that I didn’t even flinch when he touched the wound on my neck. I was rather pleased with myself.

At first anyway. The vampire pressed his fingers against my neck, then the touch moved away. I heard a soft sound—he was sucking the blood off his fingers.

Eww. Don’t react.
I fell into my breathing, feeling nothing but the slow column of air moving in and out of my lungs. He touched my face, then began to slide his hand down my body.

God. What was he doing? I felt suddenly ready to move, to attack, though I remained completely relaxed inside my breath. Then I realized what he was doing—he was patting me down, searching for—

And then I realized what he was searching for. The stupid rock. The one Colin and Sebastian had decided to leave with me because nobody would try to find it here. So much for vampire logic. Somehow, my current guests had figured it out. Apparently, though, they hadn’t figured out that they needed to go through the cabinet with the coffee cups. You’d think that would be obvious.

The vampire continued to feel me up, searching my clothes for the hidden lump of stone, which he wasn’t going to find because I didn’t have it. His hands remained impersonal, though, sliding over me as if he were a cop or a TSA agent. I could put up with that, barely, especially if it meant staying alive instead of getting dead. Finally, he leaned back with a sigh, and I allowed myself a deep, careful breath of relief.

There was a soft, rustling sound close to my ear. “Did you find anything?” the boss vamp asked.

“Nothing,” said one, the other echoing with a negative grunt.

“You know,” one of the other vamps offered, “it could be, you know, inside her. No telling where she might hide it. Maybe she swallowed it, or, you know, stuck it up her cootchie or something.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” The boss vamp sounded disappointed in himself. I was a bit surprised he hadn’t thought of it too, but grateful, since I’d been unconscious and wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it at the time if he’d decided to administer a cavity search. It was nice to know boss vamp hadn’t stuck his fingers anywhere I didn’t want them. Not that I wanted them anywhere, point of fact.

“Well?” said the other vamp. “Get it done. Cavity search first, then cut her open if we have to.”

“You do it.”

Oh, great. Now they were fighting over who got to molest me.

I was still debating what to do—so were they, but I was trying to ignore the whole
you touch her; no, you touch her
thing—when one of them laid a hand on my thigh. That was just going too far. I was not going to submit to a cavity search on my own kitchen counter. Three against one or no, it was time to make a move.

I opened my eyes the barest peek to orient myself, then clenched my fist and slammed it into the offending vampire’s jaw. He flew back, obviously caught off guard—go me—and smacked his head on the kitchen table. I rolled off the counter and grabbed the nearest weapon—a half-full bottle of Irish Cream from the liquor cabinet. The vampire I’d hit didn’t get back up right away, but it was still two against one, and I didn’t like those odds.

I brandished the liquor bottle. “All right, somebody tell me what the hell is going on. Now.”

“We just want the stone,” boss vamp said. He didn’t look as nasty as he’d sounded; he was about average height and build, wearing hipster plaid and in serious need of a haircut.

“I don’t have it. How many times do I have to tell you that, fucktard?”

“Oh, good grief,” said boss vamp and picked up the toaster to swing at me.

The smoke alarm went off, the sound immediately followed by a flurry of barking from outside. I jumped, simultaneously startled and relieved. The barking offered confirmation that Rufus was still okay, but what was the deal with the smoke alarm? I didn’t smell any smoke. But both of the still-conscious vampires, instinctively twitching in the presence of fire or impending fire, ran for the door.

I sagged back against the kitchen counter, heart pounding furiously now, breath coming in ragged gasps. The smoke alarm continued to blare. With a shaking hand, I set down the liquor bottle and turned to go investigate.

Colin stood in the hallway, holding his hands out away from his sides. Smoke poured from his hands; he’d burned them badly. I could see the raw, red flesh across his palms. He scanned me quickly, his dark eyes taking me in from top to bottom. I’d never been so glad to see anyone. I’d certainly never been so glad to see him.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

I quickly established with Colin that, indeed, everything was not okay—in fact, everything was pretty damn fucked up.

“Hell of an idea you had, hiding that thing here,” I groused. “
Nobody’ll look for it at your place.
” I mocked his voice, making him sound cranky and constipated.

Colin finished the last couple of knots binding Unfortunate Vampire Number Three, who had knocked himself unconscious on my dining room table and thus been abandoned by his friends. Crappy friends, if you ask me.

“They shouldn’t have come here,” he responded flatly. He finished the knot and rose from his squatting position on the floor. Glancing at his hands, he made a face. I tried not to follow his gaze but did anyway. His palms were streaked with red and pink, like medium-well-done hamburger. He must have grabbed a windowsill somewhere in the process of breaking into my house.

“Why did they?” I said, then sighed and nodded toward Colin’s hands. Just the sight of them made me a little queasy. “Never mind. Do I have anything in my medicine cabinet that’ll help that?”

“Not really, but some burn ointment and gauze wouldn’t hurt anything, if you have them.”

I went to the bathroom to fetch some. When I came back, he was sitting at the table, staring down at his open hands. His face had fallen, oddly perplexed and a little pathetic.

“I haven’t been hurt like this in a long time,” he said as I took a seat next to him and opened the tube of ointment. “What the hell do you put on your windowsills, anyway?”

Suddenly unsure what to do, I fiddled with the ointment. We’d never had what you might call a touchy-feely kind of relationship, and even under these circumstances it seemed inappropriate to initiate contact. Seemingly oblivious to my dilemma, he moved his near hand closer to me, scooting his chair at the same time. Had he been human, I would have felt his warmth. He wasn’t. I was warm anyway.

I did not approve of this turn of events, but at his tacit invitation, I squeezed ointment onto his palm and began to spread it gently over the harsh burns. Touching him was strange. I’d spent a lot of time trying not to touch him, sidling around him through doorways and taking papers from his hands without making contact. Now here I was, smearing burn ointment across his wide palms. His hands were barely calloused, and his lifeline wasn’t nearly as long as you’d think it would be on an immortal sort.

“It’s a paste made of garlic and holy water,” I told him. “I refresh it every Friday. It’s on all the windowsills and the front door. Plus you saw the crucifixes and the mezuzah.”

“No, I didn’t, but that explains why my shoulder hurts.”

I’d never really noticed his hands before. His palms were square and impossibly wide, and the skin was soft. I slathered one last glop of ointment on the darkest of the marks, then positioned the gauze and began to tape it down. His fingers shifted as I worked, accommodating my touch. Or maybe I was tickling him. It was hard to say. “You must have bumped something on the way through the window. How’d you set off the smoke alarm?”

He gave a wry grin. “Just held my hands up to it. They were smoking like a son of a bitch.”

I couldn’t help a chuckle. “Good thought.” I fastened the last bit of tape and waited while he shifted to put his other hand in my reach. I hesitated again, having to overcome a surge of awkward near-embarrassment at touching him even though I’d already done it once. Each time I made contact it seemed like I was making some kind of promise. Like every touch was tacit agreement that more touching would be okay. More intimate touching. The kind of touching I’d never associated with Colin until just recently. I moved uncomfortably in my seat.
Down, girl.
It’s just first aid.

Finally I cupped the back of his hand and began to apply more ointment. “I’m glad you showed up.” I surprised myself by meaning it.

Colin nodded. “Bastard called, started making demands. Sebastian kept him on the phone while I hightailed it over here.”

“I heard him. He seemed like not a very nice person.” Colin’s other palm wasn’t burned as deeply, but the wounds were more extensive, covering most of his hand. One raw streak ran from the ball of his thumb to the base of his pinkie. “You got here fast.”

“Yeah, well. I’m a vampire.”

I shook my head, trying not to smile. “Of course.”