Staked Page 4

  TABITHA:

  MIDWIFE

  When I awoke in Eric’s bed, the first thing I felt was hunger. I was also cold, colder than I’d ever been. Nothing felt right. Noises were too loud, my skin felt too tight, and there was a really strong odor. It smelled like crotch. I realized Talbot was standing over in the corner. I snarled at him without meaning to, and suddenly my gums felt like they were on fire. The sensation was a cutting, jabbing, tearing feeling. I fell off the bed and smacked my head against the floor. That hurt, too.

  I was on my feet again in an instant. The pain left, but my mouth still felt strange. Frightened, but excited, I ran my fingers along the inside of my mouth and there they were—fangs! Oh my God! He had really done it. I was a vampire! I looked back in Talbot’s direction; he was still there, silently watching.

  Low, thumping, and filled with what I needed, Talbot’s heart called to me. All other sounds faded into the background, a distant buzz. Talbot’s features blurred until I recognized him only by his scent. I’d always thought Talbot was human, but no human could have a scent like his, tangy and wild. His skin grew semitranslucent and I don’t know if it was an illusion or not, but I seemed to be able to see the blood coursing through his body. It wanted out. I wanted in.

  So I charged him. Surely Eric wouldn’t mind if I ate Talbot. Eric loved me and I was hungry. Thoughts that were not mine warred in my brain. Thinking rationally hurt. I didn’t need to think, I needed to feed.

  I can’t eat Talbot, I told myself unconvincingly.

  Of course you can, I disagreed. He’s food.

  No…he’s… I wasn’t even sure it really was Talbot now; his scent was gone, replaced with an odor that I couldn’t describe. It was what food smells like, what blood smells like.

  Talbot lashed out with his right hand and knocked me to the floor. I reacted instinctively, trying to scratch him, bite him, anything that would draw blood. He just laughed. God, how that pissed me off! Faster than I could understand, he was on top of me, straddling my thighs. One hand was on my throat and the other was on my chest pushing me down. He was so warm. My emotions went wild. Images passed through my head that would have made me retch the night before. I wanted him. I wanted him inside me and at the same time I wanted to rip his throat out. I wondered if I could have both if I was on top.

  I don’t know how long it took me to recognize the sound of my own name, but from the look on Talbot’s face he’d been using it for a while. I opened my eyes, not realizing that I had closed them, and saw fresh scratches on his face. He was holding both of my wrists in one hand above my head while he squeezed my throat with the other. I was writhing and bucking under him trying to get free. He was surprisingly strong. I could smell his excitement; the scent mingled with that of the blood pumping through his veins…so close, just under the skin. I think I started screaming then, because he tightened his grip on my throat and told me to stop.

  “One more scream out of you, Tabitha, and I don’t care how put out Eric will be, I’ll abort this little experiment. Now please try to be quiet. My hearing is better than yours and you’re hurting my head. I’m going to feed you.”

  I went still, but I was keening. I think that’s the word for what I was doing. I couldn’t help it. I was so hungry. “I need it,” I gasped. It was hard to speak with him choking me.

  “I know you do.” He sounded almost sympathetic. “But you have to be a good girl, or I really will kill you.”

  Staring at the slight trickle of blood running down his cheek, I strained to try and reach it with my tongue, even though his face was a foot or more from mine. I was vaguely conscious of a stream of babble coming from somewhere, as I stared at the blood. Someone was offering to perform a string of sexual acts ranging from simple to wild to outright depraved. Then I realized I was doing the offering. I would do anything for blood, or at least promise anything. I made myself stop. I hadn’t expected it to be like this.

  Talbot’s light brown eyes turned green; the pupils became slits again. I remembered walking outside the lion cages at the zoo, the smell of the great cats. That was the smell of him. Shock flooded me at the realization he wasn’t human, but then I was overcome by new images, dead lions, me crawling naked in their blood, lapping it up on all fours.

  I shuddered in revulsion. “What’s happening to me?”

  “You’re a vampire, princess, just like you wanted. You ever read ‘The Monkey’s Paw’?”

  I shook my head. My books were about vampires, not monkeys. My sister had been the bookish type, not me.

  “Why am I not surprised?” He laughed. I kept expecting his eyes to change back. They didn’t. Instead, I watched fangs grow in his mouth, uppers and lowers, different than Eric’s and mine. Ours were uppers only. Talbot’s fangs looked like an animal’s teeth had grown in, replacing his canines. It was hard not to keep staring at the blood on his cheek.

  “Here’s how this is going to work,” Talbot said. “I’m not going to release you until I can trust you not to go into a feeding frenzy….”

  His voice faded away as I turned my attention to the door. Outside I could smell more blood. I could hear it calling me. There was a heartbeat to go with it and another smell, a bathroom smell that was dreadful. It reminded me of the women’s restroom when I’d worked retail. Those women had been real skanks, but this smell was worse. My nostrils flared and I curled my upper lip. Another delicious heartbeat joined the first, but it brought with it even more yucky smells: age, smoke, and something else, something that reminded me of a hospital…some kind of sickness.

  Talbot slapped me. I tried to bite him, but his hand was off my throat and back on it before I could react.

  “Smell bad?” he purred. I nodded. I started keening again in spite of myself. So hungry. “I bet I smell pretty good, don’t I?” I nodded again. I was having thoughts about Talbot that I’d never had before. If I could have put those thoughts on film I was pretty sure a whole lot of horny guys would have ordered it on pay-per-view. Talbot shifted his grip from my throat to the top of my head and slammed it into the floor two quick hard times. I saw stars, but I tried to bite him anyway, so he did it again. Dazed, I simply lay back and waited for what would happen next. I’d be damned before I let myself cry in front of him.

  “It’s simple, Tabitha. Marilyn and Desiree are each outside with a pint of blood. They are going to come in one at a time and feed it to you. It will be cold.”

  I began to shake my head violently. “No. Hot! I need it hot! I want it from the vein. Let me rip their throats open. We can share. I can drink them and you can fuck them—or me if you want. You can take me from behind and—”

  “Shut! Up!” Talbot screamed and I tried to cover my ears. It was as if a gun had been fired next to my head. My ears rang. I thought he’d deafened me. I realized I was crying. The tears came rushing out and I couldn’t stop them. As I cried, I could smell more blood, and I knew it was coming from me.

  “Where’s Eric?” I whined. “I want Eric! He’d feed me. He wouldn’t let you do this to me. Let me go! When he finds out what you’re doing—”

  Talbot shouted again and all I could do was cry harder. Bastard. Didn’t he know how it hurt? Couldn’t he feel how I needed warmth as badly as I needed blood?

  “Eric knows what I’m doing. He sent me in here to feed you because all it would take is one slipup from him and you’d be one short-lived little vampire. You get two pints of blood and you get them cold because if you had it warm you’d lose control of yourself and I might have to kill you in self-defense. Two pints ought to dull the pain and clear your head. Then I can educate you a little and answer your questions, but here’s the thing. You have to keep the blood down and you have to drink both pints. Once the hunger starts to fade you’re going to want to stop drinking, but you can’t. I need you to have both pints in you so that you’ll have a little self-control. Okay?”

  I nodded. Two pints? God! Give me three pints. Give me a gallon! Let me drink the whole bar,
every patron. Two pints. Ha!

  Talbot called for Desiree and she came in. The smell of her grew stronger. She really did smell like a bathroom stall that needed cleaning. I realized that she must have just finished a set, because a sickening sweet smell of sweat and deodorant rolled off of her in waves, but as she drew near, the scent of the blood overwhelmed all of that. It wasn’t that it smelled good or bad, it was just blood and blood was what I needed more than any junkie has ever needed any drug. My muscles strained as I tried to pull free of Talbot to get to the blood.

  Desiree kept walking. In her hands, she held a blood bag. It moved back and forth, almost hypnotizing me as it bounced gently from side to side with the rocking motion of her strides. Talbot must have been giving her instructions, but I couldn’t hear them. Everything, my entire being, was centered on that pint of fluid. She knelt next to Talbot and opened one end of the bag before placing it over my open, eager mouth. I barely even tasted it. It didn’t matter that it was cold or what type it was, all that mattered was that I needed it.

  Before I knew it, I was finished with the bag and Marilyn was walking in while Desiree was hurrying out the door past her. Marilyn looked even more fragile than she had when I had last seen her. Her skin was wrinkled, her gray hair was unkempt, and she was wearing the same old-woman clothes she always wore. Her glasses made her eyes look huge and I could hear her labored breathing and the not quite steady beat of her heart. She smelled like smoke and I coughed as she came near. She gave me a disapproving look.

  “You were so afraid of dying that you had him do this to you?” She shook her head, then attached one end of some IV tubing to the blood bag. Unlike Desiree, Marilyn seemed practiced at this. She knelt next to me and gently slid the tube between my lips like a drinking straw. She wasn’t afraid at all, but I did notice that she was careful to keep her fingers out of reach. As I sucked greedily at the tube, she took a handkerchief from her pocket and began to wipe the bloody tears from my face. “Are you in love with him?”

  A growing calm spread out from the center of my body, slowly moving through each limb, filling me, sating my thirst. It had nothing to do with Marilyn’s words and everything to do with the blood. My senses seemed to dim slightly. Smells were still strong, but more bearable. I could still hear the beating of Talbot’s heart, but it was a faint rhythm, reassuring in its presence.

  Slowly, I began to notice the taste and texture of the blood. Before, I’d needed it and it wouldn’t have mattered if it had tasted like battery acid. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, either; it reminded me of milk, but with a strong copper taste, sort of like sucking on a penny—a cold penny. It certainly wasn’t the grossest thing I’d ever put in my mouth, and it definitely wasn’t my first taste of the stuff. Vampire boyfriend, remember? I kept drinking and Talbot smiled at me from behind friendly brown eyes. Whatever he’d been expecting, I’d proved him wrong.

  When I was done, Marilyn stood back. Talbot was still on top of me and I finally noticed that I was naked, on the floor, being straddled by a large man who was noticeably excited. Oh my God. I tried to cover myself and Talbot laughed as he let me up. “Oh, so now we’re modest,” he said jovially. “After all the things you were just offering to do to me?”

  I expected myself to blush, but nothing happened. I rushed over to the closet, grabbed one of Eric’s shirts, and ran into the bathroom. I looked into the mirror and saw nothing. I gasped. I should have expected this; I knew it would happen. But somehow it’s different when it’s you.

  Marilyn opened the door behind me, carrying my underwear and one of my dresses. “You look better than ever, Tabitha,” she said sadly. “You’ll just never be able to look in the mirror for reassurance. You might find your clothes are a little loose.”

  I got dressed under her watchful eye. The silence was uncomfortable. “I’ll just have to watch Eric’s reaction to see how good I look now, I guess. It won’t be so bad.”

  Marilyn shook her head and left the room. Dressed but shoeless, I followed her. “What? Is there something I don’t know? Did something happen to him?”

  Marilyn ignored me, walking out of the bedroom and shutting the door behind her. Talbot was leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed over his chest. “What’s her problem?” I asked him.

  “One thing you need to know about Eric, Tabitha. I’ve known him a long time and I know you think that this is going to be some wonderful eternal love thing, but I’ve seen this happen before and odds are—”

  “Odds are?” I asked.

  He let out a long breath before continuing. “Odds are he’ll ask you to leave.”

  What? That wasn’t possible. Talbot was playing some sort of sick game with me. My fangs came out and so did his. They didn’t hurt as much the second time. The sensation was more of an uncomfortable distension combined with a jaw-popping feeling that was nowhere near my jaw.

  “I love him,” I said. “I would do anything for him. I did this for him, so that we could be together.”

  Talbot’s voice was calm and steady like a judge delivering a death sentence. “I’ve only ever known Eric to love one woman, Tabitha, and she just walked out that door.”

  “Marilyn? But he can’t even sleep with her,” I argued. “She’s old! She’s nothing. I’m forever young. Look at me. I’ve got the body of a goddess. I can do things to him now that no human woman could ever imagine.”

  Talbot just stared at me. I tried to convince myself that he was lying, but there was a look in his eyes that wounded me. It wasn’t sadness, but a look of familiarity, like he’d heard it all before and some of it twice.

  “Did Eric ever say he loved you?” Talbot asked finally.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “What did he tell you when you asked?”

  “He…he would…” I could feel my lower lip begin to tremble. Whether it was rage, sadness, or despair, I didn’t know. Maybe all three. “He would say I was a moist warm tightness with all the necessary parts.” I was crying again. Talbot turned away.

  “One thing about Eric, he doesn’t hide his feelings. If he loved you, he’d have told you.” As he opened the door, Talbot looked back. “I’ll be right outside when you’re ready to learn the ropes.”

  He left me alone and all I felt was the cold.

  5

  ERIC:

  DEAD CAR

  They’d killed my Mustang. It lay on its back in the road, a dead metal cockroach leaking oil and antifreeze onto the asphalt. One of the wheel covers rolled across the road, the three-pronged center of the simulated knockoff hub blurring like a propeller until it hit the base of a streetlight with an insulting clang.

  The trucks skidded into a circle around the Mustang, completely blocking off the intersection. Two men stepped out of each truck. As I watched, long lupine claws pushed out through their fingernails and their human teeth dropped to the ground. The werewolves’ muzzles flowed forward, fangs bared. I’m sure they meant the display to be impressive, but it still looked to me more like bad special effects. At least they weren’t all the same generic brown as Wolfy from the alley. These six must have come out of the variety pack; there were two gray, two black, and two that looked more like werehuskies than werewolves.

  “So which two are the Cool Ranch?” I asked. They charged at me, and I fought for control. The red tinge to my vision faded even as I popped my fangs. This was important. I wanted to remember killing the bastards that had murdered my Mustang.

  The two gray wolves were a little faster than the others, so they reached me first. I caught one by the muzzle, flinging him across the intersection and through the glass front of an antique shop. The shop’s burglar alarm sounded as the other guy sank his fangs into my shoulder. I wondered if there was a little werewolf handbook that insisted the shoulder was the best place to bite a vampire. It hurt like an old wound, a remembered pain.

  The werewolf I’d thrown into the storefront recovered quickly and raced back to help his partner. When he r
ipped my belly open I definitely felt it, but I know what it’s like to be engulfed in flame and staked through the heart. In comparison, this was nothing. Pain is fleeting for the undead. Our nerve endings don’t work the same as those of the living. The initial damage registers, but unless the weapons are blessed or something, the ache doesn’t last.

  As the fight went on, I gained a little more respect for their methods. They worked well together, a real team. It made me miss fighting alongside Greta.

  “You assholes know you can’t kill me, right?” I tightened my grip on the muzzle of the gray that had gutted me and listened to his teeth crack. He kept right on tearing into me with his claws and his buddy kept chewing on my shoulder.

  They wanted me to scream or beg for mercy, but it wasn’t going to happen. The injuries didn’t annoy me that much. Vlads heal quickly and I heal quicker than most, but healing is hungry work and it did mean that I would need to feed again before dawn.

  I planted a foot on each of the grays’ chests, but before I could try to push off, the two black werewolves joined the fray and grabbed my legs. Still, I was winning, not the fight against the werewolves, but the fight against myself. The more I reined in my anger, bit it back, choked on it, the more I realized that I needed to talk to these guys, to see if I could stop this before it got even more out of hand and I was facing down twenty or thirty of them.

  Just then two more werewolves showed up in another matching truck. The werewolves that got out of it were brown. “You two must be the corn chips,” I told the newcomers. They didn’t get the joke, but one of the huskies hovering on the sidelines chuckled. I guess the huskies were the Cool Ranch.

  “Do you have anything to say for yourself, vampire?” asked one of the black-furred pair.

  I considered trying to bite the gray to get him off of my shoulder, but I answered the question instead. “Yeah, take me to your leader.” Once again only the huskies seemed to get the joke. Maybe my humor was too old. “Seriously, I want to talk to your Alpha…Willard or whatever his name is.” I sighed. “Why else do you think I’m not turning to mist right now?”