Vampire Eden (11 page)

"I liked Patrick plenty before you shot me with your arrow."

"Liked?" Cupid asked. "Or loved?"

"What difference does it make?" I shouted in exasperation. The few other diners who had filtered in turned to stare at me, doing a double take. "Why is my damn meal taking so long?"

"They drain the blood from the snakes in a tank in the back," Patrick said. "So I hear. I ordered you a big bowl."

I sighed, but my sigh sounded more like a growl. I dug my fingers into my hair like claws and tears filled my eyes.

"Poor Eden," Cupid purred. "So many times I tried to save you. The young man at Kennedy High School, before you dropped out. What was his name? Rob. Yes."

"Rob Newport? Oh, come on. He was in the chess club."

"Had you given him a chance," Cupid said, "you would have been happier than you could ever imagine you would be. He would've loved you, treated you kindly, and taught you that you were worthy of love. But you shunned him. Made fun of him. One day he had a love letter for you. He held it out and you walked on by. You even made fun of the shirt he wore. The rock band. Was it...Journey?"

"I love Journey."

"I know you did. But you mocked him for wearing it all the same. Thought that would make the girls like you better. Then that man you met in Austin, Texas, when you left Kevin to visit your last and only normal girlfriend. Before you ruined that relationship as well, starting some ridiculous drunken fight, acting crazy. You threw an iron, for God's sake. You can't expect anyone to stay after that. Not after a hot one. You're ironing skills needed work, too." He shuddered. "Never saw shirts so marred with creases." The man you met in Austin still thinks of you to this very day, wonders how you are. He pictures you as some kind of executive . I'll bet it would break your heart if you could read his mind, could see how highly he viewed you, how much he respected you. The times we succeed are but a fleeting memory, but the times we fail...oh, how those times ingrain themselves in our memory so deeply we cannot forget them. I remember the ones I failed to make fall in love, and you were one of them. The future I envisioned for you when I shot those boys with my arrow was so crystal clear, but you would have none. Why? Because you never loved yourself. Unfortunately, I cannot make a person love herself. You love Patrick. You know why?"

"Why?" I glared at him.

"It's really terribly superficial. Because right before you became a vampire, you saw yourself young again. You saw yourself in the midst of all the beauty, all of the joy, all of the heartache, all of the self-loathing, and all of the pain. You couldn't see your beauty before that, couldn't see it because there underneath your skin was a person you could never like. But you stood up to the vampires in the hour of your death, and there you found a brave person who finally connected with her own heart. Terrible timing if you ask me." He waved our bowl-haired waiter over. "Chicken chow fun and a pot of monkey tea, please."

"Who makes you this all-knowing, all-seeing being?" I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

"The voices," Cupid said curtly. "The ones you could not hear until Patrick here found you. The ones that speak sentences you still cannot decipher completely. Perhaps in time, you will learn to listen."

The old woman maneuvered her stocky body around the boy and placed a bowl filled to the rim with dark blood in front of me. "Use a spoon," she snapped as she placed a large one next to me on a napkin.

I bent my head down and dipped the spoon in the thick red liquid, bringing it to my mouth and slurping. I felt the blood course throughout my body as it ran down my throat, causing a pleasant, warm sensation to spread from my stomach out to the tips of my fingers and toes.

"Look at that," a young man with cheeks splattered with pimples said as he pointed and his friend turned. "She's eating the snake blood soup. Just what the doctor ordered." They laughed and stared at me. I bared my teeth and hissed with such ferocity Patrick jumped.

"Your canines are hanging out," Cupid said. "Bad form. Even in a place like this."

My hand ran down the points of my teeth, sharp and so long I presumed I resembled a saber-toothed tiger that had been caught in the wrong century and run down on the freeway.

"I'll take my chow fun to go," Cupid said as he wagged two fingers in the air to summon the waiter. "Forget the tea. I've suddenly lost my need for the comfort tea can bring and will require something of a harsher sort of...remedy."

I drank every drop, even lifting up the bowl and sucking up every drop of the sweet blood until the gauze bandages around my mouth were sopping wet. "Let's get out of here," I gasped to Patrick. "I need to sleep."

"So what do we do now?" Patrick asked Cupid.

"I suggest you call your friends at the CIA. And hang on to that bow I gave you. Use it when the time is right. It's great for killing more vampires and you will need it if you cross paths with Aoleon again. She will be flaming mad. Flaming. Not Hibachi. She burns while I stay cool. Always cool. Yet another reason for my nickname. King of the Dead." He smirked as he donned a pair of dark sunglasses with red hearts for frames, picked up the white cardboard box with the words
Come Again
stamped in red lettering and waddled to the glass doors, pushing one open and leaving a filmy handprint upon it as he trolled out onto the sidewalk.

Patrick hung up the pay phone across the street from the McClellan Airport landing field. "They're meeting us at the Tiki Towers in half an hour."

I shielded my eyes from the blinding rays of the sun that shone down and reflected on the glass windows of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. "My eyes hurt."

"Let's get you inside." Patrick threw his hand up in the air at several passing taxi cabs, each one filled with passengers. "It's a Saturday morning in April. There's no way we're going to find a cab."

We walked toward the south in the direction of the Tiki Towers. My skin felt hot, as if a very bad sunburn developed quickly upon my shoulders and face. The Tiki Towers loomed before us like a mirage. I knew it had to be a half a mile away. At least. In my ear, I heard a searing noise. "Patrick," I cried in desperation. "Something is happening."

Patrick took one look and ran out into the road in front of a pickup truck. The truck screeched to a halt and a gargantuan man jumped out. "What the hell!' the man shouted as he advanced toward Patrick. Patrick held his hands up in the air. I smelled the tips of my hair burning.

"Sorry, man, but my wife needs to get inside that truck. Please. The heat is killing her."

"I got a job I need to get to." The man pushed Patrick backward with his enormous hands and Patrick fell down on the ground. He immediately sprang back up and pushed the man in the chest.

"Sorry," Patrick said once again. "She needs that car. I'm a dealer at the Paradise. I'll take care of you. Free drinks, dinner. Whatever you want. Just let her get inside the car."

I screamed as I heard the skin on my scalp pop and sizzle. "Patrick!" I shouted. "Please!" I looked down at my hands. Blisters bubbled over the top of my skin. I covered my hair, my face, my body, as the intense heat seared through my very core. Throwing back my head, I shrieked at the sun.

"I don't give a damn!" said the man as he turned away. "Let her fry for all I care."

I crouched my hips and leaped upon the gargantuan man's back. I sank my teeth into his neck as he cried out and turned in circles. My fingers dug into him as I drained his blood dry, biting and sucking as he fell on the ground and swatted at me as if I were a giant mosquito.

"Eden, no!" Patrick tried to pull me off. I clung to the man until the quivering mass stilled. I jumped into the vehicle. My face and arms cooled as I was no longer in the direct line of the sun's rays. I still felt an overwhelming sense of danger as I blinked my eyes rapidly in an attempt to restore my blinded vision. I raised my head as a taxi rolled by. Its occupants, a late-middle-aged couple, stared at me in shock as the taxi driver slammed on the gas and sped away, leaving a loud screeching of tires in the cab's wake.

I wiped the blood from my chin and started the car. "Let's go to the Tiki." Patrick jumped in and I shifted the car in drive.

*   *   *

"Christine," I called as I pushed open the door to the model condominium that bore her nameplate.

"No way she survived the helicopter crash," Patrick said.

"I know," I replied. "I just want to make sure we're not barging in on anyone else. Christine?"

Christine's condo slash office was modernly furnished with smooth-lined couches and glass tables. A brass clock ticked on the white wall in the kitchen. A large window revealed a view of the desert and mountains beyond the Strip. The scene was dusky and dry next to a background of dusty blue sky. I drew the curtains and lay down upon the couch. "God, I'm tired."

Patrick lay down next to me and wrapped his arm around my waist. He looked down at me and reached for where the gauze was tucked under my chin. Slowly, he unwrapped the gauze from my face. "There you are."

"Am I beautiful again?"

"You're always beautiful to me. But I prefer you this way." He leaned forward and his lips met mine.

"Don't stop," I purred, as I brought his lips to meet mine again and again. When we were spent, we fell asleep in each other's arms to the sound of Christine Leavensworth's brass clock.

*   *   *

I awoke in a hospital bed with tubes sticking out of both of my wrists. Blood dripped from a bag attached to a tube that dangled from it and fed into my wrist. There were no other furnishings within the room I was housed in. I peeked over the edge at the stainless-steel floors and walls. "Hello?" I called. "Where am I? Patrick? Hello?"

No one answered. I rose from the bed and pulled the tubes out of my arms. A wall-to-wall filmed window loomed before me on my right. I walked toward it and knocked on the surface. "Hello? Is anyone there?"

I turned away from the filmed window. The large man from the pickup truck sat in the corner. "Good afternoon, Miss Sayers." Bandages had been applied to the back of his neck where I had bitten him.

"Hi," I said as I ran a hand through my tousled hair and pulled it back, not so much caring about how I looked but caring a lot about freeing my line of vision should he attack. "You, uh…healing up okay?"

"Fine, miss. Still wondering what happened. They sent me to look after you. Said I was to protect you now. It's my new job."

"They?"

A loud buzzing noise came from the door and it opened. A woman dressed in a suit walked in with two men who held guns in their hands. "Hi," she said as she gestured for me to sit down on the bed. "I've been assigned to your case. Laney Adams. CIA. Paranormal Unit. Please, sit down."

Obediently, I settled upon the edge of the bed. "Where is Patrick?"

"He is fine. We came to the Tiki Towers, tranquilized you both. Then we waited. When night fell, Aoleon came to find you. We shot her again with the silver arrow we recovered from the crash site. None of us believed it would work, but it was our last resort. We stunned her enough. Before we cryogenically froze her, we withdrew her venom and we have fed you some of it through the IV tube. Johnny Kent," Laney said to the large man, "hang out in the holding room until we check Eden out. Then you'll go to your new home next door to hers at the Tiki Towers."

"Wow," he smiled as the guards pulled the door open for him. "I really did win the lottery to get a job looking after this pretty lady. See you soon, Miss Eden Sayers." He shut the door behind him, whistling as he walked away.

A medic strolled in and bandaged my wrists up, then disappeared. I ran my hand up my arm from an imaginary chill. "Why are you doing this?"

"We need you to be our 'flesh bait,' as Aoleon used to call it. We need you to live so you can find the vampires and kill them. Until we have exterminated them all. Patrick is a zombie or something like a zombie and so is Johnny Kent. But Patrick is in possession of supernatural powers that we have yet to understand and so far, Johnny is not. You changed John Kent with intent to kill, something he will never remember. Or at least we believe he won't. The zombies control the workforce in Las Vegas, and without the workforce, the financial empire there will crumble. I promise that all of your needs will be taken care of and you will be given access to Aoleon's blood when you need it. I cannot fully change you into a vampire with her venom as it is against our regulations, and I don't believe it will work without her physically injecting you with it anyway."

"So...without her blood I will turn into an old woman and stay that way for hundreds of years before I die."

"Yes." The agent's soft, kind eyes did not blink as she returned my gaze.

"I have no choice."

"You do, Eden. We all have choices in life. More than we'll ever admit to ourselves."

"I need to talk about it with Patrick."

"Of course. Take all the time you need. He's in the cryo room where Aoleon has been stored."

The guards walked me down several halls, buzzing large steel doors open by placing their thumbs on a pad. They gestured into a huge room filled with creatures encased in glass. The reflecting eyes of an extraterrestrial stared at me through one of the tall cylinders. Its claws lit up on the glass and part of its enormous winding body resembled an umbilical cord as it curled around and around the alien's legs. I passed by man-sized creatures that resembled lizards, insects, even primates with mouths wider than their own faces and feet that looked like hooves or long toes with talons. A giant bear with the face of a man, covered from head to toe in white fur, snarled at me from a case as icicles dangled from his chin and teeth. Aberrations of nature surrounded me as I wove through the capsules in search of Patrick.