The Awesome (7 page)

“That was fun,” she rasped, spitting the belt out onto the floor. “Should do it again sometime.”

I unlocked the handcuffs. “Sorry.”

“Had to be done.” Angry, red chafe marks encircled her wrists, and she rubbed at them while I worked the bungees off her ankles. “Might as well do the silver now, too.”

She grabbed a teaspoon from the table and bopped me on the forehead with it, a tight smile playing around her mouth. I snagged it from her with a smirk. If the holy water hadn’t purified a part of the wound, the silver would, and I ran the curved bottom of the spoon over each cut, careful to get under the flaps of torn flesh. She yelped when the silver made contact with residual flecks of taint, but it was nowhere near as bad as the holy water cleansing. I only had to grip her jaw once to hold her in place.

“That’s it,” I announced, eyeballing my work. I was pretty sure the thickest of the cuts would leave a scar—even purified it had an unsightly gape quality—but the rest of them had shriveled up tight, the ends puckering together like a days-old injury instead of a fresh one.

“Just think, one day I’ll be holding you down to fix your cuts. Won’t that be fun? A real mother-daughter bonding experience.” She picked up the cuffs to jingle them at me. “Literally.”

“Right. Last night taught me I’m going to be an apprentice for the rest of my life.”

“Booze is a cock-killer, Margaret, but it’s not the end of the world. It’ll happen. Remember it’s not your fault, okay?”

“I know it’s not.”

“Good. I’m going to hit the shower then. After that, dinner and Plasma, yeah?” She ruffled my hair like I was seven before making her way towards the bathroom. She stopped to turn on the stereo on her way. I watched her rifle through her CDs, pushing one into the player. A minute later Grace Slick’s questionably melodic voice talked about one pill making me larger, and another making me smaller. Mom shout-sang along, tugging her shirt off and throwing it onto the floor.

I followed in her wake, picking up her laundry and stuffing it into the hamper in the hall. Life’d never be dull so long as I raised my mother.

CHAPTER SIX

M
OM OFTEN WONDERED
why the van reeked like dirty people armpits—her words, not mine. She’d comment on it here and there, more as an ‘out loud thought to herself’ than an actual question. I generally ignored it, but today, watching her eat a nasty pile of sludgy looking food, I couldn’t resist poking her.

“Fish tacos. That’s why.”

She bit into a crunchy taco shell. “Huh?”

“Fish tacos. You want to know why it stinks in here? You eat gross food. Fish tacos are gross food.”

“Mmmm. Delicious fish tacos,” she said, offering me a bite. I shrank into my seat, putting my hand up as if to ward off a blow. The taco had pink fish meat swimming in a sea of guacamole. It looked like an Area 51 experiment gone wrong, and there was
no way
it belonged in my mouth.

“Get that out of my face.”

“It’s good for you, Margaret Jane. Fish is brain food.”

“It’s nasty looking! And it’s Maggie. Ugh. I want to punch you sometimes.”

“MWAH.”

We’d parked three blocks up the street from Plasma. Mom considered it a safe enough distance. Her fear was, if I was still mystically tagged as the big V, we wouldn’t get
one
fledgling vampire on a rampage, we’d get
many
. She’d taken down some old, powerful fangers over the years, but that was with daylight on her side and seasoned hunters backing her up. She’d taught me lots about killing monsters, but I was too green to be considered reliable. She had to approach this like she was on her own.

I wasn’t totally useless, though. My wrists were strapped with silver blades, I had a wooden stake across my lap, and there was a bucket of water balloons behind me. I’d specifically chosen the pale pink ones first, followed by the lavender and white ones. If I’d be hurling Molotov cocktail holy bombs at attacking vamps, I wanted them to be in pretty pastel colors. Because that was funny to me. Because I wasn’t right in the head.

“So how do they deal with a virgin that’s stupid enough to walk into the fanger bar?”

“They’re not allowed in,” Mom said, stuffing her taco mess into a bag and throwing it in the back. She laid her crossbow over her lap and popped the seat back so she could recline. “The bouncers work two ways at Plasma. They keep virgins out, and keep the baby fangs from going berserk. Plus a lot of the little ones have handlers.”

I’d heard of handlers before. They were more experienced vamps who palled around with initiates to keep them out of trouble, like a Big Brothers, Big Sisters program for the undead. DoPR had a very baseball approach to monsters: three strikes and you were out. Three separate incidents of violence against a norm, an agency would be contacted to hunt your ass. Extreme violence could get a hunter on you right away, no previous offenses needed. A responsible sire, meaning the big daddy vampire who bestowed his gift to the mini-vamp, would employ a handler to babysit his offspring so he could go do whatever it was old vampires did—being aloof or buying couture fashion or some crap— while someone else got to deal with all of the ugly, boring stuff. Ugly, boring stuff included keeping the fanglets from sinking teeth into an unsuspecting innocent.

“So tell me about the guy,” Mom said.

“What guy?”

“THE guy.”

“Ian? Oh. He’s tall. Uh. Dark hair.”

“And?”

“And what, he’s Julie’s cousin. She wants me to go out with them and some dude named John tomorrow.”

“You gonna go?” Mom sat up straighter, her eyes narrowing as she peered up the sidewalk. It wasn’t quite sundown yet, but the skies had gone that mulled cider gold of late day. Vamps would be venturing out any time now. Mom hoped to pique the interest of an early riser before it fed so it’d be weaker and easier to fend off. I followed her gaze and immediately spotted the vampire. She was short and squat, shaped like a pumpkin though she tried to hide her roundness by layering her lace and pleather. The clothes weren’t the giveaway to her lack of pulse, though. That was her pallor. She hadn’t seen sunlight in a while, and it gave her naturally-darker skin an ashen quality.

She looked our way for only a minute, but then ducked into the Plasma parking lot. I exhaled and sank back into my seat. “I don’t know. If I’m going, I mean. It’s not like I have anything in common with him. When I met him, he was trashed.”

“So you don’t know if you
don’t
have anything in common with him either. You must have seen something in him if you let him put his winky in you.” She grinned and pulled out her cigarette gum, popping a piece into her mouth.

“You’re gross. What I saw in him was the fact he was male and available.”

“So? You should go! See if you like him. My one regret being a hunter is I don’t do more normal people shit. Dates are fun and I’m all about fun. Besides, if you wimp out I’ll have to rag on you for the rest of your life.”

Considering what a pain my mother was on a normal day, her amping it up to prod me about Ian sounded excruciatingly annoying. “Fiiiiine.” I pulled out my phone, trying to remember Julie’s number. Since I only called her once a month, I didn’t have it memorized, but what I did have was my purse, and my purse had the receipt with Ian’s number on it. I picked up the pocketbook, dangling the strap off of my fingertip like handling it too long would disease me.

“Something wrong?”

“No. Just feels weird calling a guy who called me his ex-girlfriend’s name oh...” I glanced at the clock on the van stereo. “Ten hours ago.”

Mom scowled. “You didn’t mention that. Was he wasted?”

“Yeah.”

“Eh. Might have been a fluke. Only way to find out is to... fill in the rest of the sentence here.”

I filled it in by finding the receipt and dialing. Mom watched me, an awful grin plastered across her face. Not only did I have to deal with the choke-worthy reality of talking to Ian, but I had to worry that my mother would do something Janice-like and embarrass me while I talked to him. “What are you going...”

“Hey.”

Ian’s voice stopped me cold, and I licked my lips, sucking in a breath that probably made him think I was a mouth breather. I hated mouth breathers; I always pictured them shaped like the Death Star and stinking like Cheetos. “Hey. It’s Maggie.”

“’Sup?”

So we were back to “’sup”ing. I didn’t know how to answer it this time around, but I wouldn’t sweat it either. If he wanted to be uncommunicative, that was his prerogative, but I refused to work twice as hard to make conversation happen. If that’s what he expected from me, he could take a dump in his hat.

“Julie said something about hanging tomorrow night.” My eyes drifted to my mom and she winked at me, stuffing another piece of gum into her maw. “Didn’t know if you were game or not.”

“Oh, yeah. Cool.”

That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me?

I went quiet, embracing the awkward silence spreading between us. If something else had to be said, it was on him. Otherwise I’d linger on the phone line ’til he got sick of me and hung up. Let him call me a creepy stalker chick. I didn’t care. I’d been called far worse by my mother this week alone; when I didn’t put the dishes away after dinner on Wednesday she’d called me a pimple on the ass of humanity.

Surprisingly, Ian rose to the occasion. He took a deep breath, stammered for a few seconds, and I realized he was nervous. Was Ian
shy?
I’d heard this word ‘shy’ before, but its meaning, it did not compute. ‘Shy’ was like dinosaurs or the dodo bird—a thing I knew existed, but had never experienced firsthand. “Can I pick you up? Might be good to, like, talk alone first.”

I smiled for some inane reason. Mom noticed it, too, jabbing me in the side with a pointy finger. “Sure. What time?”

“Seven?”

I gave him my address and listened as he fumbled for a pen.

“Cool,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Hey can I—” He cleared his throat, and I swung my eyes to the van roof as I waited for him to assemble the thought. “—are you a hunter? Julie said. Well, she said.”

Screw you, Julie. That wasn’t your news to tell.

“Yeah. My mom is, and I’m a fourth year. Hope that’s not a problem.”

“Not at all. It’s cool.”

“It is?”

I was cool? This was news to me. Wait, no, that’s not right. Yes. I was cool. Yes, I knew this. I was awesome. Maggie Cunningham, The Awesome. Everyone should want my autograph.

“Yeah.”

“Sweet. Well, I gotta go. We’re out at a vampire thing now so...” My eyes strayed to my mother and she smirked before holding up her hands, making a circle with the pointer and thumb of one hand while poking a finger through it over and over with the other. I smacked at her wrist, then slammed my fist down on her upper thigh, trying to give her a charley horse. She cackled like the Wicked Witch. “Yeah, I gotta go.”

“Cool. See you tomorrow, Maggie.”

“Later.”

When I hung up, I hit Mom’s thigh over and over, looking for the sweet spot to cause a cramp.

“You bitch!” She shoved back at me, darting a hand in to give me the world’s worst titty twister. I howled aloud, shriek-laughing as I climbed from my side of the van to hers. We were so busy squabbling we didn’t notice the vampire rapidly approaching from my side of the car. In fact, we didn’t notice it ’til its hand punched through the passenger side glass to fist in my sweatshirt, yanking me backward.

“D
OWN,
M
AGGIE.
GET DOWN.”

When Mom had that tone, it brooked no argument. I tried to drop. Unfortunately, the fang had me in such a way that down didn’t
work
. It lurched its arm up, and I went with it, slamming my head into the roof of the van. It hurt, but not nearly as much as the shards of glass shredding through my sweatshirt to rip into my back fat, sending white hot pain sizzling down my spine.

I knew I shoulda lost those thirty pounds sooner.

“Shiiiiit!”

I reached for my mother, but she did one better and stuffed a water balloon at me. My brain cramped, not registering what I was supposed to do, but as soon as I figured it out, I lifted the balloon over my head and squeezed, breaking it over myself and the vamp holding onto me. It howled before relinquishing its hold, sending me sprawling over my car seat. Holy water dribbled down my shoulders, but something warmer and thicker dribbled down my sides. Blood.

Mom took the opportunity to launch a silver-tipped arrow through the broken window, which was met with a shriek. I lifted my gaze to look at my attacker, getting my first look at a frenzying vampire. The she-fang’s eyes were bloodshot and wide. A series of bulging veins stuck out at her temples and along the column of her throat, like one of those muscle-men you saw dragging eighteen-wheelers for competition on TV. Her mouth gaped open, far too many fangs gleaming white in my direction. Mom always said vampires had more than the two long incisors—that the movies got it wrong. She’d understated by a lot; this was more like piranha teeth, rows of sharp jags pointed out at odd angles. If they bit you, there’d be no polite side-by-side puncture wounds. There’d be gashes and pieces of flesh missing.