Vampires: The Recent Undead (8 page)

This whole business was so clichéd that she could only sigh. Still, a remote location would work for her, too.

She came back around to the driver’s side and got in.

“Where to, gun boy?” she asked.

His face reddened and she watched the veins lift on his brow.

“This isn’t some joke,” he told her, waving the barrel of the gun in her face. “You’re in way over your head now, kid.”

Apples looked at him for a long beat.

“You still haven’t said where to.”

He frowned. “Just drive. I’ll tell you where.”

“Okay. You’re the boss.”

She started the car and put it in drive.

“Turn right after the gate,” he told her.

She did as he told her, pulling out of the parking lot and turning right onto the Queen Elizabeth Driveway.

“So what’s your deal?” she asked as they went under the Lansdowne Bridge at Bank Street and continued west.

“Shut up.”

“Why? Are you going to shoot me? I’m driving the car, moron.”

“Just shut up.”

“Where’d you get my name and address?”

“I told you, just—”

“Shut up. Yeah, yeah. Except I’m not going to. So why don’t you stop sounding like a skipping CD and tell me what your problem is?”

“You’re the problem,” he said. “End of story.”

“Maybe. Except where does it begin?”

They’d driven under the bridge at Bronson now and the Rideau Canal on their right became Dows Lake. She noticed that they’d started draining the water in the canal in preparation for winter.

“Take a right at the lights,” he said, “and then a left on Carling.”

“Not unless you start talking, I won’t.”

“I’ve got two words for you:
Randall Gage
.”

“Those aren’t words, they’re a name. And they don’t mean anything to me.”

“You killed him.”

Apples made the right onto Preston Street and stopped at the red light waiting for them at Carling Avenue. She turned to look at her captor.

“I’m not saying I did,” she told him, “but how would you know anyway?”

She was always careful. There were never any witnesses.

“He told me you would.”

“It’s still not ringing any bells,” she said.

The light went to green and she made the left turn onto Carling. She could smell the first telltale hint of nervousness coming from her captor, could almost read his mind:

Why’s she so calm? Why isn’t she scared?

Because I’m already dead, moron.

“Well?” Apples asked.

“Randall was about five-eight, a hundred-and-sixty pounds. Blond, good looking guy. He used to come into the coffee shop where you work.”

A face rose up in Apples’s mind, sharp and sudden. She remembered Randall Gage now, remembered him all too well, though she hadn’t known his name. After the first time he’d seen her at the Second Cup where she worked, he seemed to come in every time she had a shift. “A. Smith,” he’d always read from her name tag, fishing for the first name, which she never gave him. Then he’d made the mistake of grabbing her after a late shift and forcing her into the back of his van. He’d bragged to her about other girls he’d snatched, how the last one hadn’t survived, so if she wanted to live, she’d better just lie back and enjoy it, but no problem there, sweetcakes, because this he guaranteed, she was going to enjoy it.

Rather than find out, she’d drained him.

And then not been able to get back to where she’d stashed his body when his three days were up and he rose from the dead. She’d had to track him for most of the night before she finally found him trying to hide from the dawn in somebody’s garden shed, the idiot. Like the sun was going to burn him.

“You still haven’t explained how you got my address,” she said.

“Legwork,” her captor said.

“Or what you plan to do to me.”

“Same as you did to Randall. Take the Queensway on-ramp,” he added as they passed Kirkwood Avenue.

Apples felt like driving the car into the nearest lamp post, but then she reminded herself that whatever remote location he was directing her to would benefit her as well.

“He raped and killed a twelve-year-old girl,” she said, her voice gone hard and cold.

Her captor shook his head. “He was never connected to anything.”

“He
told
me he did, you moron.”

“Don’t matter. You still had no right to kill him.”

“I never said I did.”

“He told me you were coming for him—called me up, told me your name, where you worked, what you looked like.”

Apples supposed that Gage hadn’t bothered to explain that he was already dead by that point.

“So what’s it to you?” she asked.

“He was my brother.”

Now, that, Apples could understand.

- 5 -

Who turned me? I never learned her name. She just said she liked the look of me—the inside look of me. She drained me, took me away and watched over me for the three days until I rose as a vamp. Then she cut me loose.

Yeah, of course we talked before I went home to face the music. She filled me in on the rules and regs. I don’t mean there’s vamp police, running around handing out tickets if you do something wrong. There’s just things you can do and things you can’t and she straightened me on them. Gave me the lowdown on all the mythology. Useful stuff. She never did get into why she turned me besides what I’ve already told you, so your guess is as good as mine.

No, I never saw her again.

- 6 -

“How did I kill him?”

“What?”

“Your brother. How am I supposed to have killed him?”

They were on the Queensway now, the multiple lane divided highway that bisected the city from east to west. Apples kept to the speed limit—100 kilometers—but they were already passing Bayshore Shopping Centre and about to leave the city. The last few kilometers they’d ridden in silence. The surviving Gage sibling rested his gun on his thigh and stared out the front windshield. He turned to Apples.

“That’s one of the things I need to know.”

“Have you ever killed anybody?” she asked.

He shrugged. “A couple of guys. Once was in the middle of a holdup, the other time in jail. I never got connected to either one.”

“How did it feel?”

“What the hell kind of a question is that?”

Apples shot him a glance. “Did it feel good? Did it feel righteous? Did you feel sad? Did it give you a hard-on?”

“How did it feel for you?”

“Like a waste.”

“So you did kill Randall.”

“I never said that.”

“Anybody looks at you, they see this sweet little kid—what are you, sixteen?”

I was when I died, she thought. And she hadn’t aged a day since. That wasn’t causing problems yet, but it would soon. Still, she only had to wait one more year. That was when Cassie turned sixteen and she planned to turn her. The thing about vamps is, they don’t get sick. And if you’ve got something wrong with you, it’s gone once you’re turned. Goodbye leg brace and asthma. Cassie didn’t know it, but Apples planned for them to be sixteen together. Forever.

“I’m nineteen,” she told Gage.

He nodded. “But everybody looks at you and just sees this sweet little kid. Nobody knows the monster hiding under your skin.”

Apples shot him another look. That was about as good a way to put it as any. How much did he know? And how many people, if any, had he told?

“I guess you’d know all about monsters,” she said. “Seeing how your little brother grew up to be one and you’re not exactly an angel yourself.”

Anger flickered in his eyes and the gun rose to point at her.

“You shoot me now,” she reminded him, “and you’re killing yourself as well.”

“Just shut up and drive.”

“I think we’ve already played that song.”

- 7 -

So what are my weaknesses? You mean, beyond getting staked or beheaded? Hey, how stupid do I look? Figure it out for yourself.

Just kidding.

Apparently, the way it works is that whatever meant the most to you when you were alive, becomes anathema to you when you’re dead. Not people, but things and ideas. So I guess if you did worship the sun, then it could fry you as a vamp. Same if you loved eating Italian, with all that garlic in the sauces. Or maybe you were way serious about church.

Here’s a funny fact: pretty much any vampire turned in the past few decades can be warded off with chocolate. And if not chocolate, then some kind of junk food, not to mention cigarettes, coffee or beer. Junkies are probably the biggest problem for normal people since you can only ward them off with needles and drugs. There’s not much by way of sacred icons anymore.

- 8 -

Apples kept following her captor’s directions. Eventually they exited the Queensway and drove down increasingly small back roads in the rural area west of the city. When they finally reached a bumpy track that was only two ruts on the ground with branches raking the sides of the car, he had her stop.

“Get out,” he said.

She did, stretching her back muscles and looking around her with interest. She didn’t get out of the city much, but ever since she’d been turned, she’d had this real yearning to just run in the woods.

Gage slid across the bench seat and joined her on her side of the car, the gun leveled at her once more.

“So you killed Randall because he told you some B.S. story about boffing some twelve-year-old.”

“Not to mention killing her.”

“So how was that your business?”

“Well, call me crazy, but I take offence to misogynist morons hurting kids.”

“So you’re just some do-gooder.”

“Not to mention his intention to do the same to me.”

Gage gave a slow nod. “But I still don’t get how you killed him. You’re just some—”

“Slip of a girl. I know.”

“With a big mouth.”

He frowned at her. His nervousness was a stronger scent now, some animal part of his brain already registering what the rest of him hadn’t worked out yet.

“I just don’t get it,” he said.

“And that’s where you made your mistake,” she told him. “That’s the question you should have asked yourself before you ever came by my house with your little party invitation and threatening my little sister.”

The gun rose, muzzle pointing at her head.

“You’re way out of your league, kid.”

“I don’t know.” She grinned, showing him a pair of fangs. “See, I’m faster than you.”

Her hand moved in a blur of motion, plucking the gun from his hand and flinging it a half dozen feet away.

“I’m stronger than you.”

She grabbed his hand and twisted it, bending it up around his back, exerting pressure so that he couldn’t move.

“And I’m hungry.”

She bit his neck and the hollowed fangs sank deep. He began to jerk as she drew the blood up from his veins, but it was no use.

It never was.

Afterwards, she sat down by his body and began to talk, conversing with the corpse as though it was asking her questions. She took her time in responding. After all, they had three days to wait.

Normally she would have simply stashed the body and come back when it was time for it to rise, but considering the problems she’d already had with his brother, she didn’t feel like tempting fate a second time with one of these Gage boys. She called home on her cell phone and luckily got the answering machine, which let her leave a message without having to explain too much. Her parents would still be mad when she got home, but hey, she was nineteen now, no matter how young she might look.

When she stashed the phone back in the pocket of her jacket, she went and found a good-sized branch that she could carve into a stake while she talked and waited.

- 9 -

Do I have any regrets? Sure. I can’t have babies, for one thing. Well, yeah, I can still have sex. I just can’t have a baby and that sucks. I always figured when I got old—you know, like in my twenties—I’d get married and have kids.

I miss eating, too. I mean, I can eat and drink the same as you, but I can’t process it, so afterwards I have to go throw it up like some bulimic. It’s so gross. Annalee—she works at the coffee shop with me—caught me doing it one time and it was really awkward. She’s all, “Don’t do this to yourself. Trust me, you’re not fat. You need help to deal with it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It’s not what you think,” I tell her. “I’ve just got a touch of stomach flu.”

“Every time you eat you throw up,” she says, and I’m thinking, what? Are you keeping tabs on me? How weird is that? But I know she just means well.

I guess the other thing I’m going to miss is growing old. I’ll always look sixteen, but inside I age the same as you. What happens when I’m all old and ancient? The only guys that’ll be my age—you know, in their thirties and forties—interested in being with me then are going to be these pedophile freaks. And who wants to hang out with sixteen-year-old boys forever?

But I didn’t choose it and I’m not the kind to get all weepy and do myself in. I figure, if this is what I am, then I might as well make myself useful getting rid of losers like you and your brother. I guess I read too many superhero comics when I was a kid or something.

And I really want this chance to give Cassie a shot at a better life. Well, a different one, anyway. She deserves to see what it’s like to walk around without her leg brace and bronchodilator.

Maybe she’ll join me in this little crusade of mine, but it’ll have to be her choice. Just like getting turned has to be her choice. I’ll give her the skinny, the bad and the good, and she can decide. And it’s not like we
have
to kill anybody. I only do it when losers like you don’t leave me any choice. Most times, I just feed on someone until they get so weak they just can’t hurt anybody for a long time. I check up on them from time to time—a girl gets hungry, after all—and if they’ve gone back to their evil ways, I turn them into these anemics again. They usually figure it out. When they don’t . . . well, that’s what stakes are for, right?

My weakness? I guess I can tell you that. It’s anything to do with Easter. I used to be an Easter maniac—I loved every bit of it. I guess because it’s like Halloween, a serious candy holiday, but without the costumes. I was never one for dressing up and scary stuff never turned me on. Good thing, the way things worked out. Imagine if the very thought of vamps and ghouls was my nemesis. I’d be long gone by now. But Easter’s tough. I have to avoid the stores—which is not easy, but better than trying to avoid Christmas—and play sick on the day itself.