The Fertile Vampire (16 page)

 
I stepped on the scale this morning and I was exactly the same weight I’d been a month ago. The ability to eat anything without gaining an ounce was one thing about being a vampire I could live with - in a manner of speaking.
 

Halfway to school, I noticed Dan the Driver behind me. I tapped my brakes twice, getting an answering flash of lights. Had he watched me scarf down my candy? I hadn’t asked what kind of vamp-servant he was. Were they all linked to a vampire by blood? Did the servant donate his blood as part of his employment contract?
 

Maybe Miss Renfrew would be forthcoming about the servant/vampire relationship.
 

Stopping at the store had been for a two-fold reason. I was hungry, true, but I also didn’t want to be early to class. I have a pathological need to be on time and I tried to delay at home. The little voice I’d obeyed all my life was tapping against the crystal of my watch.
 

You’re going to be late. Hurry. You can’t be late. Hurry.
 

I once read an article saying people who were always early were control freaks. They want to control the meeting, dictate when it should start, how it should be conducted. I didn’t think that was true. I was a control freak because my mother had been the opposite. Growing up always late for school, always having to go to the attendance office to get a note and lecture first thing in the morning had acted on my psyche.
 

I asked Santa for an alarm clock one year. Santa, in the guise of my surprised grandmother, had provided. From then on, I wasn’t late for anything. If my mother was still in bed when it was time to leave, I walked to school. My way way of dealing with the chaos of my mother’s life was to regulate my own.
 

Now I pulled into the school parking lot, wishing I’d noticed what the other Fledglings were driving. I didn’t park in the same place as the first night, but found a spot beneath a majestic tree whose leaves filtered the bluish parking lot lights.
 

October was chilly but only when the norther raced down across the state from Canada, losing ambition by the time it hit Central Texas. This was the time of year when natives smugly announced the average daily temperature was seventy-five something. The three days each winter when the temperature plunged to the teens, we cranked up the heat, put on our wooly things hidden in the back of the closet and suffered.
 

Tonight there was only a hint of chill, the warm air carrying it aloft like a gift. Here, a taste of winter to spice the senses, make you yearn for something white instead of green and ice instead of dusty winds from Mexico.
 

I sat in the car and waited, hoping the three of them would have entered the classroom. I suspected Miss Renfrew would be brusque and competent, moving the discussion to where it should be, on the things we needed to know, not speculation over Opie’s tragic death. I didn’t want to be at the business end of Kenisha’s venom, or have to commiserate with Meng. Nor did I want to meet Felipe’s sad puppy dog eyes and feel my skin shrivel as I fought back the feeling of being responsible.
 

As a commercial adjuster, I hadn’t been a delicate Southern Belle. My job requirements meant I had to go toe to toe with arson investigators, company owners, railroad inspectors, people who didn’t necessarily have my company’s best interests at heart. I had to know what I was talking about when I fought a claim, document it to hell and back and be willing to take the heat when defending my position.
 

In the thirteen years I’d worked as an adjuster, only two of my cases had been overturned by a supervisor. One was a train derailment and I’d thought the engineer should have been exonerated. Unfortunately, he’d later been convicted of texting while driving and that had called the earlier accident into play. The second time had been a huge mess - a developer had built over a portion of the Edwards Aquifer. The area had been riddled with limestone caves near the surface and a giant sinkhole had developed. My contention had been the developer should have done tests. My supervisor had disagreed since most of San Antonio was built over the Aquifer, our main source of drinking water.
 

I’d fought for my position in both cases and I hadn’t gone down without making a valiant effort. I’d been called a terrier, a bulldog, a scrappy little thing - a comment from a male co-worker who was nearing retirement. I didn’t bite his ankles because he was firmly fixed in the fifties.
 

Turning into a vampire, however, changed everything. I wasn’t on solid footing. I was unsure of myself. Plus, I didn’t know what my body - or my mind - was going to do at any moment. I wasn’t following what had been outlined in the “What’s Next?” pamphlet accompanying the Green Book.
 

Not only was I ferociously hungry all the time, I wasn’t pale and wan looking. I looked like I had a month ago, maybe better. My blue eyes sparkled. My hair had a sheen and rather than being a mousy brown, it had highlights. I’ve never had highlights. My skin downright glowed.
 

The rest was a mass of confusion.
 

I suspected Il Duce was right and I had the ability to call him. And Doug had showed up a little too conveniently at the funeral and hadn’t looked like he wanted to be there as if he’d been compelled. I didn’t want to test my theory on anyone else despite what Il Duce said.
 

Maybe I could compel people to leave me alone.
 

Fifteen minutes had passed since I pulled into the parking lot. I couldn’t stall any longer.
 

I grabbed the handle and gave the door a shove with my elbow while I grabbed my purse with my right hand.
 

The door wouldn’t open.
 

“Not now.”
 

I pulled the door handle, pushed against it with my left shoulder, but it was well and truly shut. I tried the door locks, but they seemed to work. When I’d tried to explain the problem to the mechanic at the dealership, he hadn’t been able to replicate the problem, ending up giving me the compassionate stare used by mechanics the world over.
 

You know what they’re thinking. “Poor dumb bunny.”
 

I tried it again. When it wouldn’t budge I tossed my purse to the passenger side of the car, placed my palms on either side of me, hoping I could clear the center console and gearshift without giving myself a proctology exam. The passenger door opened after a firm shove. I nearly rolled out of the car, finding myself on my knees, grateful I’d worn jeans.
 

I was reaching for my purse, half under the car, when I heard an odd sound. Not quite an explosion or a firecracker, but a combination of the two. A rat-a-tat-tat of noise combined with a plunk as they hit metal.
 

Gunshots.
 

Anyone with half a brain would have dropped to the ground and maybe crawled under the car. I think I was so surprised to be a witness to a drive by shooting it didn’t occur to me to drop and roll until long syrupy moments later. I threw myself behind a bush.
 

Where was she found?
 

Poor dumb bunny was hiding behind a bush. Guess she thought it was an iron bush or something.
 

The noise stopped, leaving a sterile kind of vacuum in its wake. Not a bird chirped. Not a frog croaked. Even the leaves on the trees overhead were oddly frozen.
 

When people streamed out of the orientation building, I finally stood, clutching my purse like it was a flotation device and I was in the middle of the ocean.
 

I made it across the street on shaky legs. People were staring at me. I couldn’t blame them. I had leaves in my hair and my jeans were covered in dirt. My top was probably drenched with the flop sweat of the truly terrified.
 

“Jesus, lady, you sure pissed someone off.”
 

I turned to find a young man with a goatee and bushy eyebrows staring at the parking lot.
 

After awhile, you begin to get accustomed to disaster. At least that’s what I told myself as I looked back at my car.
 

I wasn’t going to have to worry about opening that door any time soon, or ever. Silver dollar sized divots ran in a line from the tail lights to the hood. Both windows on the left side of the car were crazed and hanging by several large pieces, the sparkle of tiny fragments of glass littering the parking lot.
 

I wasn’t an automobile adjuster, but I knew enough to label my car a total loss.
 

Marcie copes.
 

Maybe I should have that carved on my tombstone. The situation as it currently was, however, I wasn’t going to have a tombstone. Nor was I sure that coping was what I was doing at this particular moment.
 

Shivers began from my stomach, radiating outward. My hands were cold, my feet twin blocks of ice. My lips were numb and if there was a brain cell currently at attention, it wasn’t making itself known. I stepped to the edge of the sidewalk, still clutching my purse to my chest. My stomach felt hollow or maybe it had simply dropped to my toes.
 

Dampness seeped up from the grass, wrapped around my ankles and stroked my calves.
 

I was shaking now, the urge to run almost more than I could bear. Fight or flight? Well, count me in on the flight side, honey. Draping the strap of my purse over my neck, I began to walk, increasing my pace as panic flooded me.
 

Marcie copes, my ass. Marcie was losing it, but I wasn’t about to have a meltdown in front of a dozen interested vampires.
 

My pace increased until I was loping along, a graceless gazelle in the night. My purse slapped against my back in a half hearted spank.
 

I began to run in earnest, my only desire to eat up the pavement, no destination in mind. I had to get away. I wasn’t even conscious of being myself as much as simply being, the days of running track in high school and college coming back to me with ease.
 

I didn’t have to labor for breath. I was breath. I was wind. I was part of the night, a creature that melted and surrendered to its environment. I was the gentle rush of leaves as I raced by, my sneakers pounding a relentless rhythm. I was me and not me, someone who was free of fear.
 

I heard a car or a truck or a lawnmower, some vehicle with an engine and took cover behind one of the trees. I knelt down, noting my heart was beating but not at an elevated rate. The runner I’d been marveled at the slow pace. Could I run forever? Could I run until the bones in my legs broke, then heal overnight only to run again?
 

Maybe I should in order to be safe.
 

I braced myself with an arm against the trunk, closed my eyes, and prayed. A simple prayer, one I’d uttered many times in the dark nights of my soul in the last month.
 

Help me
. Beyond that, I had no words. I didn’t know for what to ask. Understanding? An end to this? Relief? Consciousness? Acceptance?
 

Something wet nosed my armpit.
 

I screamed and jumped. Or jumped and screamed. Or maybe both were simultaneous. Suddenly I was away from the trunk, flat on my back, looking up at the lolling tongue of a furry monster.
 

One who whined and drooled on me.
 

I rolled away, sat up, and regarded the Golden Retriever.
 

“You’re a dog.”
 

It goes to show how spooked I was by the shooting I was now talking to a panting dog, one who sat on his haunches grinning at me in the faint moonlight.
 

“You’d better move,” I said. “I’m a wanted woman. People are shooting at me.” When they weren’t trying to run me down.
 

Pant. Pant.
 

I got to my knees, moving back to the relative safety behind the trunk, only to be followed.
 

“You really should move. You’re giving me away.”
 

Reaching out, I rubbed between his ears, which was probably not a smart thing to do. He could have rabies or ticks or fleas. He could have been hungry and wanted a Marcie Meal.
 

Instead, he lowered his head as if he craved attention as much as I did. I scratched him behind one ear. The blissful look on his face made me want to cry. How long had it been since anyone scritched him and told him what a good boy he was?
 

Although he wore a nylon collar, I couldn’t find a tag.
 

“Are you lost?”
 

He didn’t look scrawny and he was friendly. Stray dogs learned a caution around humans. Or maybe they’d been cautious before, which was why they were strays. Maybe they couldn’t bond with people. This dog didn’t have any problem bonding.
 

I wished I had something in my purse other than chocolate and realized I’d picked up some peanut butter cookies and hadn’t eaten all of them. I dug out the package which started his tail wagging. A difficult feat since he was still sitting but somehow he managed it which made his whole body shimmy.
 

“Do you like peanut butter?” I asked, giving it to him in pieces. “Every dog likes peanut butter, don’t they?”
 

He gave me the doggy equivalent of a smile.
 

“I don’t have any water,” I said. “I’m sorry. You’re on your own, there. You have to go home, now.”
 

He finished the last of the cookie, licked my palm and tilted his head like he was considering my words.

“No, you really have to go home. I hope you have a home. A dog as nice as you should have a home.”
 

I swear, he smiled at me.
 

“Go on.”