Staked Read online

  “What else? Oh, if one of your snacks comes back as a ghost, tell me or Eric about it. We’ll get Magbidion to move them along. He’s cheaper than a guild mage and he’s pretty good at keeping under their radar. In addition, ghosts are less likely if you destroy the corpse completely. Don’t get caught and don’t leave any evidence behind.

  “Eric does a piss-poor job of getting rid of bodies, which is one of the reasons that he likes to eat in and one of the reasons he keeps Magbidion around. Eric tends to eat a little bit from several different people and he tends to prefer his employees. You already know that, but what you don’t know is that once you start feeding directly from the vein, it gets hard not to drink it all at once.

  “Blood bags are good, if you don’t mind it being cold or room temp. Eric usually feeds that way once or twice a week. Most vampires loathe cold blood. Eric doesn’t and you don’t seem to have that issue either, which puts you one up on a lot of them.

  “You can even try animal blood. Eric can’t drink it, his body rejects it rather violently, but most vampires can and some do so exclusively. If you choose to feed by killing people, Eric will be likely to make you leave sooner than he might otherwise. You may notice that he breaks his own rules. I wouldn’t suggest pointing the double standard out to him. He already knows.

  “For the first few months you may feel like you have to go to the bathroom. Don’t. The phantom sensations will fade more quickly if you don’t indulge them. Some vampires do continue those functions because it makes them feel more normal, but all that comes out is blood and it’s better not to waste it that way. You may also have bouts of panic when you feel like you’re suffocating. You don’t have to breathe anymore, but your mind can and will play tricks on you. After all, you’re used to breathing automatically and it can be disquieting once it sinks in that you only breathe when you consciously think about it.”

  Feeling a little bit like I was back in high school, I raised my hand. “When do you get to the powers part?” I asked when he acknowledged me. “I mean, I know I still need to know all this other stuff, but I should be able to do cool stuff, too. What can I do?”

  I don’t know how to describe Talbot’s look. He clearly disapproved, but there was something else in his eyes that made me feel there was more to it. “That kind of attitude can get you killed, but to answer your question: I don’t know. Eric has a lot of powers, real Dracula-type stuff. He’s a Vlad.”

  “Vlad?”

  “Vamps come in four flavors: Drones, Soldiers, Masters, and Vlads. They used to be called Serfs, Knights, Barons, and Kings.” He hopped up onto the stage, pacing back and forth along the very edge. “Remind you of anything?”

  “Should it?”

  “It should remind you of the feudal system. Vampire society is slow to change, but as time goes by the names get updated by the new recruits.”

  “So Eric is like a king?”

  “It’s not literal. It’s a classification of power levels. Vlads have all the powers in the book and tend to keep coming back no matter what you do to them, just like Dracula.”

  I knew my Eric was special…and as the offspring of a King, I should be special, too. “So that makes me a Queen, right?”

  “It has nothing to do with bloodline, and everything to do with personality, the strength of an individual’s character. I’ve always thought of it as a supernatural Rorschach test.”

  “Then what am I?”

  “I don’t know,” Talbot said, hopping off the stage and landing adroitly on his feet in front of me. “You’ll find out, in time, through experimentation. Roger could tell you for sure. He’s a Master.”

  “A master of what?” I smirked.

  “A Master vampire. Masters and Vlads can sense each other, tell who is who. Vlads can also announce themselves to other vampires, kind of like a psychic challenge, but it’s rude, so even if you are a Vlad, you don’t want to go around announcing yourself.”

  “Can’t Eric just tell me what I am when he gets back?”

  “You’d think so,” Talbot said, “but a sire can’t usually sense his offspring’s power level.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t make the rules. What I know mostly comes from what I’ve observed with Eric. In some areas, I’m just as uninformed as he is. Thralls are a good example. I know very little about them other than that they are humans that serve vampires and that Eric refuses to make one or to allow his offspring to make them. For now, though, let’s only worry about the basics.”

  I looked him in the eye to show I was paying attention, but I think he took it the wrong way.

  “Don’t try to mesmerize me either. Vampires can’t entrance c—my kind.”

  “I wasn’t,” I protested.

  “No harm done, but be careful looking other vampires in the eyes unless you trust them. As Melville said, ‘The eyes are the gateway to the soul.’ With vampires, he wasn’t kidding.”

  “So I can take over people’s minds?” I giggled.

  “You can,” Talbot replied, “but a human with strong will can resist you and a vampire with a stronger will than yours can take you over instead.”

  I yawned. I didn’t care about Talbot, didn’t want to be with him, didn’t need to know this stuff. I wanted Eric. I did try to listen as Talbot began to lecture on what he called “the second biggest threat to vampires,” but visions of Eric filled my mind. Despite what Talbot and Marilyn had told me, I had to see him. Even more so, I needed him to see me.

  Marilyn had been right about my clothes feeling loose. After I’d been fed the cold blood and Talbot had left the bedroom, I had wound up borrowing clothes out of Amanda’s trunk. Amanda was a charity case who’d overdosed on crack about a week before I’d moved in with Eric, and no one had ever come to claim her things.

  She’d had this whole black leather temptress thing going on and she’d been frighteningly thin. I dug through her outfits and put together an ensemble I thought Eric would go for. It wasn’t all that revealing, but it was what I call a highlighter outfit. What it didn’t show, it highlighted and underlined. I was wearing it now. Since it was made for the stage, it came off in sections and I could barely wait to see which parts Eric would want to take off and which ones he would want to leave on. Kelly and Desiree had both assured me I looked sexy beyond belief. They had also helped me with my hair and makeup; I already missed mirrors.

  Even the thought of Eric made me tremble in a way I hadn’t been sure that I would be able to as an undead. I ached for him. He could say all of the terrible things he wanted about me and claim I was nothing more to him than a sex toy, but I knew the passion he showed when we were together, the way he needed me, the way he sometimes just held me close for hours.

  If Eric didn’t love me, then why was I the only one he took into his bed? Candice wanted him and I knew he wanted her, but he had never been with her. He was faithful. Sure, sometimes he would have me dress up as other women, now and then even call me by their names, but that was just his way of spicing up the bedroom.

  All guys have fantasies, and Eric held none of them back from me. He trusted me with all of his darkest urges and most of them I was happy to fulfill, even if a few of them were a little nasty. Eric loved me, he had to love me, and what he’d said didn’t matter.

  “Anyone who says otherwise is a liar!”

  It dawned on me that I had spoken that last sentence aloud. Color was slowly bleeding back into my vision, replacing the red tint that I hadn’t even noticed until it started to fade. My fangs were out and as I looked down at my hands, I could see that my fingernails were longer than they had been. They were sharp and a little curved at the ends, like claws or talons. My skin had grown even paler than before, virtually a true white. Someone was growling. It was me. A rapid drumbeat pounded in my ears, throbbing.

  Talbot clapped. “Well, now we know that you have claws, you can make your eyes glow red, and you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying un
less you really do agree so vehemently about the third biggest threat to vampires.”

  I nodded. “Yes…I mean, no, I wasn’t listening.” As I calmed down, I noticed that I was standing up and that the pounding in my head was Talbot’s heartbeat. My claws retracted into fingernails again. It felt much weirder than the fangs had, the physical equivalent of the sound fingernails make on a chalkboard. My vision returned to normal, too, although my skin tone didn’t. Interesting. “I’m sorry, Talbot. It’s just that I want to see him. I need him.”

  “I know you do,” he said softly.

  “He does love me,” I insisted.

  “I hope you’re right, little girl.” In an unexpected move, Talbot put his arms around me and gave me a hug. The warmth of him encompassed me as if his heart beat inside my own chest. I fought the urge to sink my teeth into his flesh, but it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. The hug must have lasted less than a second, but when he stepped away I was trembling. He looked into my eyes and I saw what I thought was compassion.

  “Very good. You pass.”

  “Pass?” I asked, confused.

  “Do I look like a touchy-feely guy to you?” His eyes went slit-pupiled again and he roared at me, his bestial fangs looming large and dangerous between his jaws. This time he flashed claws, too, curved feline things, sharper than mine, with needle-thin points. His other smell resurfaced, too: jungle cat musk. “If you’d bitten me, I’d have ended you and told Eric you were too stupid to keep around.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” I shot back with more defiance than confidence.

  “I’d succeed.” He chuckled and let his features become human again. “I don’t know why I’m trying to impress you. I’ve been humanoid too long.” He sighed abruptly. “We’ll pick this up a little later. Why don’t we see if we can round you up another couple pints of blood and then you can experiment with your powers.”

  I nodded and followed him back across the street to the club. Powers. I’d show him powers.

  7

  ERIC:

  LITTLE SISTER

  Dawn was beautiful. The fiery tendrils of morning crimson bathed me in their warm glow. The sun, with typical brilliance, cast its loving gaze in my direction. Had I been alive, I would have turned to face it with joy, or more likely put on my shades to prevent my usual hangover from getting worse. Either way, I wouldn’t have fallen out of the sky and into the woods on account of it. I told you my time sense sucked. Admittedly, being ignited two mornings in a row was a bit unusual for me. It wasn’t my record—there had been a really strange week in El Segundo—but it was unusual.

  Flailing my fiery bat wings wasn’t helping the situation, so I turned human again as I fell. Strictly speaking, I suppose I should have been naked since I’d certainly been a naked bat, but it never works that way for me. I re-formed with all my clothes on just before I hit the root system of an oak tree. Fortunately for me, the trees would keep me shaded from the sun until it rose higher…a couple of hours, at least. My eyes started to close and I shook myself awake.

  Shit like this never seemed to happen to vampires in the movies. Where were my vampire groupies, my loyal henchlings? Where was fucking Renfield? I didn’t want to break into anyone’s house, but I didn’t want to be burned to ash, either.

  There were other options. I could hide under a car, or in a doghouse, or in a mailbox. I could dig a hole and bury myself, technically, but what I really wanted was for Talbot to somehow sense that I needed him and to come pick my burnt ass up and take me home.

  I walked through the woods, grateful that I lived in the South, where civilization and forest intermingle from the mountains to the beach. Lots of subdivisions extended right into the woods. Through the trees up ahead, I could see a long line of houses, the leading edge of suburbia.

  It had recently become highly fashionable to cut down as few trees as possible; in some areas, contractors built sidewalks and even porches right around existing trees. This subdivision was older, but at least the contractor had let the trees run right up to the property line of the houses, especially where the natural slope of the terrain made building a little more difficult.

  One guy was starting his car on my side of the street in the shadows while a woman was doing the same thing on the other side of the street in full sunlight. There were people in the houses. I could sense them. Some were asleep and others were waking, showering, getting ready, brushing their teeth. There were two people still in the nearest house, the one the man had just left. Both of them sounded female, one younger than the other: a mother and daughter.

  I moved from house to house along the shady side of the street, concealed by the trees. The houses were all two stories, most with vinyl siding, and each house had somebody home.

  I looked at my watch. It was 6:50 on a nice Sunday morning. Didn’t any of these assholes go to church? Back when I was alive, it had seemed like I was the only one who didn’t go to church on Sunday. How long had this been going on? What time did church service start now? Eight o’clock? Nine? I couldn’t wait that long; the sun would be really most sincerely up and this whole stupid subdivision would be bathed in light.

  I started toward the closest house, even though it had a family of four inside, but the same strange vibe I’d gotten last night, the odd discomfort that kept me from flying across the county road, repulsed me. It wasn’t the same feeling a blessed house gives off, it was something else, and it almost had a smell, like badly burned toast. It could have been anything, an amateur mage, a botched breakfast attempt…I was too tired to figure it out.

  Through the haze, one of the houses suddenly looked perfect. It smelled like freshly baked cinnamon rolls, and the aroma drew me closer nearly against my will. I’d never liked cinnamon rolls in life, but this was intoxicating, almost as much as pizza. If I’d been a cartoon, the scent might have lifted me off of my feet and carried me along.

  The wooden privacy fence was short enough to jump and there was an obliging shade tree that completely bridged the gap from fence to garage; only one person was home, plus the house had blacked-out windows in one of the second-story rooms. An amateur photographer would have just the sort of room I could use as shelter until Talbot could come pick me up.

  The door to the garage was locked. Rather than force it, I turned into a mouse and crawled under the space between the garage door and the concrete. I turned human again on the other side and looked around for a light switch. The garage smelled of old gasoline and bagged grass. Despite the noxiousness of the smell, I felt a twinge in the back of my throat. I was getting hungry. In the warmth and humidity of the garage, I caught myself falling asleep again. Being exposed to the sun by a goofball with a garage-door opener didn’t sound like fun to me, though, so I shook myself awake again.

  I usually go to sleep a few hours after dawn, but I can make it to early afternoon if necessary. Once or twice I’d managed to stay up all day, but each time, I’d passed out at sunset and slept clear through to the next one.

  The bulb blew when I tried to turn the lights on. I had almost been expecting it. It was the way things had been going since Friday night: one big fuckup after another. The inside door was locked. My foot did a pretty good job of opening it before I remembered that I was trying to be sneaky. Upstairs I heard a girl sit up in bed. It sounded like she was grabbing something off of the floor. “Mom?” she cried out. “Dad?”

  “Nope,” I said under my breath. “Not quite.”

  I heard footsteps. Hungry though I was, I didn’t want to eat this teenage kid, home alone on a Sunday morning. Wasn’t she supposed to be watching cartoons? Or was that Saturday? The door from the garage opened up into a little eating space adjoining the kitchen. I sped across the linoleum and into a sitting room that had been converted into a home office. Hanging blinds over the bay window were all that stood between me and an instant sunburn. A small stream of sunlight scorched my leg where one of the blinds was askew.

  Where to hide? I cons
idered my options quickly, racing the footsteps overhead. There were no good hiding places. I could smell her now. Her scent was familiar, somehow, and afraid. She also smelled a little excited, which got me a little excited, too, but if I wasn’t going to kill her, it was unlikely that I was going to force myself on her either.

  I’d always thought vampires turned into black cats, but it never seemed to work that way for me. Slowly but surely she came down the stairs. A white long-furred kitty waited for her. Of the various creatures I could turn into, it was usually a good bet that the cat would get the most sympathetic reaction. She came around the corner, saw me, and shrieked. Now, what kind of person is afraid of cats?

  She was a beautiful girl, dark haired, with smooth skin and bright green eyes. She looked like a younger, more attractive Tabitha. She was wearing a white tank top and panties. Despite the baseball bat in her hands, I was noticing things that I shouldn’t have been. And then I recognized her. She was the girl in the battered photo Tabitha carried in her purse. I cursed in whatever language it is that cats speak and turned into myself again.

  She froze, midscream. “So,” I said casually, “you must be Rachel.”

  She cocked her head to one side and began slowly backing away from me. “I’m Eric,” I offered lamely. “Your sister’s boyfriend?”

  She stopped and looked at me. Her fear was subsiding and I smelled something that it would have been better if I hadn’t. Was Tabitha’s whole family a big mob of vampire junkies? I wondered what would happen if I got Tabitha, Rachel, and their mother all in a room together. It was yet another image to be added to my internal wall of shame. Did all men have thoughts like these? If so, why wasn’t I smart enough to keep them to my subconscious?

  Roger had once told me that all I had to do if I wanted to rule the world was keep my mouth shut, my pants on, and my temper under control. “What about sunlight?” I’d asked him. He’d laughed at me and said that if I was strong enough to rein in the first three things, he was pretty sure even sunlight wouldn’t be a problem for me.