Lover Unveiled, page 2
Back when their parents had still been alive.
“Phone. Need my…”
She found the iPhone 6 in the pocket of her jeans. Her last double check? The mace canister she always had with her.
Pausing by the back door, she listened to all the quiet.
“I won’t be gone long,” she called out. Silence. “I’ll be right back.”
More silence.
With a sense of defeat, she lowered her head and slipped out into the garage. As the steel door slammed shut behind her, she locked the copper dead bolt with her key and hit the opener. The overhead light came on, and the cold, wet night was revealed inch by inch as the panels rolled up the tracks.
Her car was eight years old, a Honda Civic that was the color of a winter cloud. Getting in, she caught a faint whiff of motor oil. If she were human, instead of a vampire, she probably wouldn’t have noticed, but there was no avoiding the scent. Or what it meant.
Great. More good news.
Putting things in gear, she hit the gas and eased forward onto the driveway. Her father had always told her to back in, so she was ready in case she needed to get out in a hurry. In the event of fire, for instance. Or a lesser attack.
Oh, the sad irony on that.
Looking into the rearview, she waited until the garage door was locked back in place before hanging a right on her quiet street and speeding off. All the humans were settling into their houses for the night, hunkering down for the dark hours, recharging before work and school rearrived with the return of the sun. She supposed it was strange to be living so closely around the other species, but it was all she had ever known.
As with beauty, weird was relative.
The Northway was a six-lane byway running in and out of downtown Caldwell, and she waited until she was on it and cruising at sixty-one miles an hour before she got out her phone and made her call. She kept things on speaker and in her lap. There was no Bluetooth for her old car, and she was not going to risk getting pulled over for using a handheld—
“Hello? Mae?” came the frail, wobbly voice. “Are you on your way?”
“I am.”
“I really wish you didn’t have to do this.”
“It’ll be okay. I’m not worried.”
The lie stung, it really did. Except what else could she say?
They stayed connected without talking, and Mae had an image of the old female sitting beside her in the car, the embroidered housecoat and pink shuffle slippers like something Lucille Ball would have worn around her and Ricky’s apartment. But Tallah was barely mobile, even with her cane. There was no way she had the gumption for what was coming.
Hell, Mae wasn’t sure she could handle this.
“You know what to do?” Tallah asked. “And you’ll call me as soon as you’re back in the car?”
God, that voice was getting so weak.
“Yes. I promise.”
“I love you, Mae. You can do this.”
No, I can’t. “I love you, too.”
As Mae hung up, she rubbed her stinging eyes. But then she was all about the exits. Fourth Street? Market? She got nervous about missing the one she needed, and ended up leaving the highway too soon. Making an inefficient box pattern around a basket weave of one-ways, she found Trade Street and stayed on it, the numbers on the avenues going up through the teens and into the twenties.
When she entered the thirties, the commercial property values plummeted, the old-fashioned office buildings all boarded up, any restaurants or shops abandoned. The only cars around were either passing through or dead and picked clean, and forget about pedestrians. The cracked and debris-strewn sidewalks were empty, and not just because April remained inhospitable in upstate New York.
She was losing faith in the whole plan when she came up to the first of several packed-full parking lots.
And Jesus, it was about what was in them.
The vehicles—because they sure didn’t look like regular sedans and hatchbacks—were brilliant neon unless they were black, and they were styled like anime, all aerodynamic angles and scooped bumpers.
She was in the right place—
Scratch that. She didn’t belong here, but she was where she needed to be.
Mae pulled into the third lot on the same theory she’d bailed early on the highway: If she went much farther, she might overshoot things. And once she was inside the one-block boundary of rusted chicken wire, she had to go all the way to the back row to find a space. As she rolled along, humans who matched the fancy drag racers, versions of Jake Paul and Tana Mongeau, looked at her like she was a librarian lost at a rave.
This made her sad, although not because she cared about a bunch of humans’ opinions of her.
The fact that she knew anything about human influencers was courtesy of Rhoger. And the reminder of how things used to be between them was a door she had to shut. Falling into that black hole was not going to help her right now.
When she got out of her Civic, she had to lock the door with her key because the fob was dead. Tucking her bag against her body, she lowered her head and didn’t look at the people she passed. She could sense their stares, however, and the irony was that they weren’t eyeballing her because she was a vampire. No doubt her jeans and her SUNY Caldie sweatshirt were an offense to all their Gucci.
She wasn’t exactly sure where to go, but a trickle of people was funneling into a larger tributary of humans, and the lot of them were heading toward a parking garage. As she joined the eventual river of twenty-year-olds in all their hot-and-sexy, she tried to see up ahead. The entrance to the multi-leveled concrete stack was barricaded, but a line had formed outside a door that was off to one side.
As Mae took a spot and kept to herself, there was a good forty feet of single file going on and things were moving slowly, two men the size of semis growling at the chosen who were allowed in—and they did turn people away. It just wasn’t immediately clear what the data screen was, although no doubt Mae was going to be on the “yeah nope” list—
“You lost or something?”
The question had to be repeated before she realized she was being addressed, and as she turned around, the two girls—well, women—who were making the inquiry were looking as impressed as the bouncers were going to be when they tried to deny Mae entry.
“No, I’m not lost.”
The one on the right, who had a tattoo under the eye that read “Dady’s Girl” in cursive, leaned in. “I think you’re fucking lost.”
Her pupils were so dilated that her irises were invisible, and the eyebrows had been plucked to such a thin wire that they—no, wait, they’d been tattooed on, too. Fake lashes were tipped with little pink dots that matched the pink-and-black ethos of what was more costume than clothing, and there were piercings in places that made Mae hope the woman never had a runny nose or food poisoning.
And FWIW, one had to wonder whether the missing d had been intentional, or if the masterful work had been sold by the letter and someone’s pocket change had run out.
“No, I’m not,” Mae replied.
The woman stepped forward, breasts out like Barbarella, even though she probably had no idea who Jane Fonda was now, much less who the actress had been in the sixties. “You need to get the fuck out of here.”
Mae looked down at the cracked sidewalk they were all standing on. Weeds had muscled their way in through the seams, though everything was dried and dead thanks to the winter.
“No, I don’t.”
Next to the aggressor, the other woman lit up a cigarette and looked bored. Like maybe this happened a lot and her buddy’s drama had long lost its appeal—
“You fucking get out of here, fuck.”
Dady’s Girl punched both her palms into Mae’s shoulders with such force that it was ass-over-teakettle, the landing on the packed ground hard, the only good news that her purse’s broken strap held and nothing fell out. As stunned disbelief consumed most of the air space in Mae’s brain, she looked up.
Dady’s Girl was standing over her prey, all superhero-superior, hands on hips, high heels planted in a wide stance, the invisible cloak of her sadistic joy at having bullied someone waving over her shoulders.
The rest of the wait line was looking over, but no one was coming to any rescue, and nobody seemed as impressed with Dady’s Girl as she herself did.
Mae braced a palm on the concrete and pushed up back to level, rising to her full height—which, compared to the high-heeled GLOWer, was underdog status and then some.
“Get out of here,” the woman hissed. “You don’t belong.”
Those hands came out a second time, hitting the same place, like it was a well-practiced shot, a perishable skill that was kept in tip-top shape. But Mae had also just had some relevant practice. As she stumbled back, arms flapping, feet tap-dancing, her body better prepared for the tilting scramble, she had a moment of profound numbness. She felt nothing, not the bad balance, not the momentum-created wind in her hair, not the quick draw of cool air in her lungs.
It was a surprise that she managed to catch herself.
Dady’s Girl didn’t give her much time to recover. The woman rushed forward at a steep angle, like she was a linebacker—
Mae’s arm shot out of its own volition, the limb going tree limb. And the human female ran right into the open palm with the front of her throat. The instant contact was made, Mae’s fingers closed tight.
After which, the pushback came.
Mae started walking forward, escorting the woman off the sidewalk. And when Dady’s Girl struggled to accommodate the backward movement, those spiky heels catching on the ground, Mae helped things by lifting her up by the neck so that those shapely legs dangled. Meanwhile, long-taloned nails decorated with diamantés and swirls of pink clawed at the hold on that windpipe and got nowhere, the tips snapping off, one of them hitting Mae on the chin and rebounding into thin air.
Not that she cared. Not that she really noticed.
The parking garage was constructed of concrete that had been poured properly—so its walls offered a whole helluva lot of buck-stops-here. As Mae banged the woman against the slab, the body habitus was what gave way, breath exploding out of the lungs, those pink-tipped lashes flaring.
But that didn’t go far enough for Mae.
She put her free hand on the sternum and laid increasing pressure on the front rib bones… which translated to the lungs… and finally to the fiercely beating heart inside its cage of calcium and collagen bars.
The human woman’s eyes bugged out. Her jugular went from pounding to flickering. Her coloring became florid as barn siding.
In a low voice, Mae said, “You don’t tell me where I belong. Are we clear?”
Dady’s Girl nodded like her life depended on it. Which was the truth.
Meanwhile, on the periphery, the wait line had reoriented from its forward-to-back formation to a horseshoe around Mae, and there was chatter, dim but excited—
“Jesus Christ, y’all know you can’t be doin’ this shit!”
Members of the crowd were tossed aside like stuffed animals as one of the bouncers came forward. And when Mae took her eyes off Dady’s Girl to give him the once-over, he stopped short and blinked. Like he wasn’t sure he was seeing this right.
Like maybe a houseplant had turned out to be marijuana.
Or a man-eating species.
“Lady,” he said in an um-well-so tone. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Mae decided to follow the guy’s example with the onlookers. With a casual flick of the wrist, she empty-chip-bag’d Dady’s Girl and then primly retucked her shirt and straightened her jacket.
Staring up at the bouncer, she cleared her throat. “I’m here to see the Reverend.”
The bouncer blinked again. Then he said in a low voice, “How do you know that name.”
Mae moved her purse in front of her torso and covered it with both arms—even though the likelihood of her getting pickpocketed had just gone seriously south. Then she walked up so close to the guy that she could smell his fresh sweat, his faded cologne, and the hair product he’d used to make sure his high was high and his tight was tight.
Narrowing her eyes, she dropped her voice. “That’s none of your business and I’m done talking. You will take me to him right now.”
Another blink. And then, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
“Wrong answer,” Mae gritted. “That’s the wrong fucking answer.”
CHAPTER THREE
The Commodore Building, Luxury Living at Its Finest™
Downtown Caldwell
Balthazar, son of Hanst, had shoes that were soft as lamb’s ears on his feet. His skintight clothes were black. His head and most of his face were covered with a skull cap. His hands were gloved.
Not that vampires had to worry about leaving fingerprints.
As he lived up to all the silent, creeping myths about his species—or at least the ones the humans made up—he was a shadow among shadows, whispering through the high-ceiling’d rooms of the largest condo in the Commodore, cataloguing all manner of goodies that were on display in dimmed light.
The fucking triplex was like a museum. For someone who watched a lot of AHS.
Coming around another corner, and entering yet another small room with a theme to its objects, he stopped short. “What the…”
Like the other capsules he’d ghosted through, this one was filled with glass shelves. It was what was on them that was a surprise—and considering he had sauntered through an entire room full of Victorian surgical instruments, that was saying something.
Oh, and then there’d been the bat skeletons.
“You went and bought a bunch of rocks,” he murmured. “Really. Like you didn’t have anything better to do with your money.”
Through the darkness, Balz drifted over the fancy parquet floor to something that looked like a loaf of pumpernickel bread that had been overproved. The thing was egg-shaped with a semi-solid core, its outside limits full of holes, the whole production set up on some kind of Lucite stand. A little nameplate that was brushed gold read: Willamette Fragment, 1902.
Each of the hunks seemed to be named for a place: Lübeck, 1916. Kitkiöjärvi, 1906. Poughkeepsie, 1968.
None of it made any sense—
Dover, 1833.
Balz frowned. And then, before he could do any conscious math on the date and place, the past slammed into him: Instantly, he was sucked away from the luxurious, weird condo, teleported by memory back to the Old Country… where he and the Band of Bastards had been living on their own in the forests, scrounging for food, for weapons, for lesser kills. Ah, those rough and exciting earlier years. They’d been the veryopposite of where they were now, aligned with the Black Dagger Brother-hood and the First Family, crashing in a great gray mansion on top of a mountain, safe, sound, protected.
He missed some parts of the good ol’ nights. He wouldn’t change a thing about the present, though.
But yeah, back in March of 1833, in the Old Country, the bastards had been just rousing from the shallow cave they’d taken refuge in to avoid the sun during the day. Suddenly, overhead, a brilliant flash of light appeared to streak across the entire night sky, burning bright as a star and growing larger by the heartbeat, its tail a streamer of sparkling jewels.
They’d raced back into the cave and crouched down, arms over skulls to protect heads and faces.
Balz had thought that maybe the world was coming to an end, the Scribe Virgin finished with pussyfooting around with the species—or perhaps the Omega had discovered a new weapon against the vampires.
The explosion had been close by, the sound of the impact earsplitting, the ground quaking, stone particles falling on their shoulders as the structural integrity of the cave was challenged. After that… several minutes of waiting. And then they’d filed out and sniffed the air.
Iron. Burning iron.
They’d followed the metallic stench through the trees… to find a smoking burn pit with a small rock in the center. Like an odd, mystical bird-creature had laid a toxic egg.
Balz came back to the present and looked around again.
These were meteorites. All of these craggy chunks of God-only-knew-what had traveled through space and landed with fanfare on the earth. Only to be corralled here by a collector with a lot of money and an arguably clinical case of OCD.
“Fill your boots,” Balz muttered as he continued through.
It had taken him a couple of weeks to scope out this target—said research and stalking the anticipatory foreplay before the felonious orgasm. Husband was a hedge fund manager—which to Balz conjured up images of a man in a suit safeguarding $27.94 in bush trimmers. Wife was a former model—which meant she was still hot, just not photographed professionally now that she had a ring on it. Unsurprisingly, there was a nineteen-year age difference between the two, and given the life spans of humans, that wasn’t going to matter so much now when it was a case of late fifties vs. late thirties. Ten years from now? Twenty?
Hard to imagine that wife with the good bone structure and the superior posterior was going to find dentures and a walker worth rolling over for.
But whatever, when you were a manager of hedges that had funds, you needed a hot wife. You also required some real estate flex. Or six properties, as the case was. Here in Caldwell, the guy had purchased the top three levels of half the Commodore, and the layout of the triplex was logical. First floor was made up of big public spaces for entertaining—you know, for when you had to throw checks-for-canapés events to support local philanthropies. The second level was this rabbit warren of little rooms with their curated collections of space pebbles, nineteenth-century poke-and-tickle nightmares—and oh, yup, those three dozen bat skeletons that were like model ships only with wings.
Balz actually almost respected the guy’s taste.
As for the third floor? That was what he was after, and when he came up to the staircase, he ascended those marble steps on a whisper. Oil paintings by Banksy marked the curving wall, and up above, a chandelier strung with lead crystal prisms gleamed quietly, like a rambunctious debutante that had been told to pipe down at the ball. Up on the penthouse level, the wall-to-wall carpeting started, and there was a change in scents here, a flowery bouquet tinting the air with lavender, honeysuckle, and the lilting freedom that came with big fat bank statements.
