The store had been their mother’s.
They’d grown up cleaning shelves and learning the craft from her,
and they both missed her more than they could say—so neither ever
talked about it. They simply kept the store going, and Andy looked
for old and forgotten texts every weekend, while Min poured over
them every night, looking for a cure.
A cure.
Guilt washed over Min as she looked at the bundle of books
lying on the counter. She needed to ward off the house against the
vampire she’d bedded last night. That was of vital importance.
Without preparation, the vampire would most assuredly find a way
through her protections, and then she’d be dead, or tortured, or
even worse. So she couldn’t just fall into the books looking for
what was never there. She would have to put them off.
She needed to have her protections
bolstered and in place before nightfall. As she got up and poured
herself another cup of coffee, she told herself that she wasn’t up
for another fight tonight. But as her sore body moved to sit down
again her mind flashed upon what she’d been doing that had made her
so achy. The feel of his cold, smooth flesh, his hard muscles and
even harder sex, how he had ground himself against and into
her.
She shuddered and shook her head. When
she looked up Andy was staring at her, a smile on her
face.
“
What?” Min snapped
laconically.
“
Nothing,” Andy taunted,
leaning her elbows on the counter and getting that cloyingly
romantic, moonstruck look on her face. “It just looks to me like
you’re thinking scandalous thoughts this morning. Did you have a
date last night?”
Min almost lied to her. She felt so
ashamed, and yes, utterly moronic. But then she smiled and
admitted, “Kind of.”
Andy perked up like a cartoon dog being
offered a juicy steak. “Did he spend the night?”
Now that would be
something…
Maybe a secret hidden compartment for
daylight hours?
“
No,” her sister said,
cutting her off as she tried to speak, “you’d have him leave as
soon as you were—”
“
We’re through talking about
this,” Min cut her off. She just couldn’t wrap her head around what
she’d done, and talking about sex with her little sister wasn’t
much less disturbing. “And you’ve got the store to run
today.”
“
Yeah, yeah, yeah…take the
fifth. But whatever you did—or with whom—you really,
really
should do it
again.”
Min stood up and shooed Andy out
through the pantry to the back door, assuring her, “I have way too
much work to do to—”
“
Plan any immoral liaisons?”
Andy sang.
“
Goodbye!” Min shoved Andy
through the door, pushed it shut and threw the deadbolt. She had to
smile at her sister’s choice of words—
immoral liaisons
—and the rabid
enthusiasm she had for Min’s love life.
You really,
really
should do it
again.
Now that was a terrible, dangerous
idea. Stupid in fact. But the thought stayed with Min and warmed
her as she retrieved the family Recipe Book from behind the Oreos,
snagging the bag and taking it with her as she started searching
out protective charms and spells.
The thought of doing it all
again, and with the vampire, made her pulse race and her skin grow
hot. She pushed the thought out of her mind
. Not likely…well, almost completely unlikely.
The hulking bag of books her sister had brought
caught her eye. Andy had been gone over the weekend at a
conference—actually a bacchanal—and had found them more books to
work through. Min felt a pang of guilt as she reached out to take
one and then pulled back. She needed to work on warding off the
house. She needed more than just a few new tricks if she was going
to keep a vampire—probably a royally pissed-off vampire—at
bay.
And why is that?
her guilt chided.
“
Because I can’t mind my own
business,” she answered. She just
had
to save that vacuous blonde last
night. And she just had to invite a vampire into the house…for
sex—no, for
oh-my-god-I–can’t-even-stand
sex! And
because of that, the spell books on the table would have to wait.
She had to force herself not to rush as she poured over the Recipe
Book. She couldn’t afford to slap up shoddy castings. Second-rate
magicks would just get her killed.
The guilt welled up inside her again,
threatening to drown her.
For it meant Katarina, her mother,
would have to wait, too.
Chapter 8
When Luca returned the next night he
found the witch to be very resourceful. He’d expected maybe the
same trick of having no windows or doors on the house, or maybe the
chimney missing or sealed shut. He’d even imagined that there would
be a vacant lot where the house had been. But she’d outdone his
wildest dreams. There was neither a vacant lot nor an entrance-less
house on that corner…for there was no corner.
He didn’t know if it was just a glamour
that only he could see, or if she had made it so it bespelled
everyone. The block she lived on no longer had a corner, and her
house was gone. But it looked so real, and as he walked about it,
he found even the payphone gone.
Night after night Luca returned and
stared, and stalked, and scented the night air, never once finding
the merest whiff of her scent. Not a flicker that anything of her
had ever been there. Even when he knocked on the door to the other
houses on the block—all the other houses—he found nothing but real
live human beings. Somehow, someway, she was eluding him
completely.
Vampires do not dream. Some say they
have no souls, and thus no conscience to make them dream. But Luca
knew he had a soul. It had punished him those first horrible months
after the change; though no amount of guilt could keep the beast
that prowled inside him from hunting, from cutting a swath of
murder and blood across a continent. He also knew that that soul,
that conscience, had not stirred for most of his three hundred
years as a vampire. No, one didn’t lose their soul when you were
made a vampire. It just slowly withered from lack of use. Oh, maybe
god—if there was a god—maybe he slowly extracted your soul for each
and every murder you committed. That would explain it in a
metaphysical, theological way. And it would explain how sometimes
he saw the perfect lack of a soul, one to mirror his own, when he
would come across a truly vile murderer for his supper.
But now, every time he killed he felt
worse and worse. Going out of his way just to hide the bodies, even
when he was on the other side of the city from where the gypsy
witch lived. And the worse he felt, the more the guilt welled up
inside him, the more he thought he was losing his mind.
Had he ever really been caught in the
beautiful witch’s trap? Had she had her way with him? Had she
existed at all?
It was driving him mad.
He even caught the silly
blonde Min had saved from his clutches walking alone on the street
mere days later. He’d rushed her and pulled her into an
alley.
So silly, so stupid, so
pathetic.
Min had told her to stay inside
at night. He had heard her tell her to stay in for the next couple
of weeks. And yet there she was, wandering the streets,
unprotected. And yet from the hysterical fear he smelled rolling
off of her, she hadn’t thought she would run into him again. She
wasn’t suicidal, not out flaunting her neck cleavage sitting on a
tombstone in a stinking cemetery. No, she had just been out, with
another female friend, and she had the smell of French food and
wine still on her.
She was also tan. He could smell the
sun on her skin as he leaned into her shivering, frightened body,
and sank his fangs into her. He was so hungry, he always was. And
though he tried to force himself to feed every night, it wasn’t the
two or three a night he had made his usual diet. He was feeling all
the weaker for it. What he needed to do was drain the witless
blonde and then scare up another two…or more victims.
But instead of languishing in the
wonderful, terror-spiced blood of the whimpering blonde, he began
thinking of Min, and of how she had battled to save this one from
him.
He pulled his teeth from her neck and
looked down at her. She was pale again, and her lips were slack.
She wasn’t to the point of passing out yet, but she was getting
close. What on earth did Min see in this creature? Why in blazes
had she risked herself to save this?
He moved away from her, suddenly unable
to take her life, or any more of her blood. The blood in his mouth
actually turned sour on his tongue. He left her crying, though
still on her feet, in that dank, stinking alley, and rushed off to
haunt Min’s street again, wishing, hoping for a sign that she had
existed at all.
Now Luca stood exactly where he’d stood
a week ago, staring where he knew the house should have been,
except of course it wasn’t. He thought of the blonde he hadn’t
killed. He hadn’t even drunk enough from the woman to quench his
thirst. He needed to get this whole thing out of his system before
he starved to death, or went crazy from the hunger. He’d seen it
before. Scared, crazed creatures, so starved they could no longer
pass for human, even with vampire wiles. They were nothing more
than mindless monsters.
She’d
called them revenants. His sire had shown them to him when he
was young, when he was trying to live off the blood of animals,
which no matter how much he drank left him just as hungry, and more
crazed afterward. She’d shown them to him, being so very
gentle—which was a thoroughly alien tact for her. And then she’d
helped him find a victim, for he was utterly out of it, weakened
and monstrous looking, unable to morph from the feral bumpy
forehead and frothing fangs…and he was filthy! It had taken six
feedings before his vampire face could be hidden again. He’d lost
so much more control than he’d realized.
That night he’d pushed his conscience
aside and never looked back for it.
Something, some sound pulled him from
his reverie. It was the missing payphone ringing once more from
behind him. He looked behind himself. The payphone was indeed back.
When he turned back the house was back too, only one window showing
light in it. It also had the witch staring out of it, phone in
hand.
Luca smiled. He wasn’t crazy…or at
least he hadn’t imagined the witch, or the sex…he may still be
crazy though. He moved toward the payphone and snatched it from its
cradle. “I thought you’d never show yourself again…”
Nothing. Not even breathing
sounds.
“
Tricky one you are.” Still
nothing.
He turned and looked to the
window, finding the expression on the witch’s face intriguing. Not
only was there primal need there still, but something
surprising—loneliness. He knew that one well. He’d felt it so
completely after s
he
had left him, abandoning him without any explanation. He felt
the urge to say something utterly humiliating, and it slid from his
lips before he could stop it. “I missed you.”
A smile crept over her lips, those
luscious, red lips. And she laughed. “I really almost believe that,
vampire.” He didn’t like her calling him that. She knew his name,
she should use it. But he hadn’t used her name, and it was branded
on his soul like it was burned there with a silver cross.
“Min…please.”
There was a look on the
witch’s face, fleeting but definitely there. Surprise, and then
something deeper…
had
she missed him too?
Luca bit the inside of his cheek, the
taste of his own blood not even enough to hold his attentions from
her for long. Why was he feeling…anything? He was feeling such
angst about what the witch thought…what Min thought, and about him.
He shouldn’t be feeling like this. He should be feeling lust and
hunger for her blood, and that was all. Actually, he should be
angry still, ready to rip the woman’s throat out for having used
him, holding him to her against his will. It was pathetic that one
of his breed could’ve been so easily forced into servitude. But of
course that service had been the best, most mind-blowing sex he’d
ever experienced. Would he let her bespell him again? Or could he
find a way around it this time and take her as she needed to be
taken, as he burned to take her, as his beast craved.
“
You may come in the front
door this time, vampire.” The line went dead, and the window she
had been in disappeared right before his eyes. Actually, all the
windows, and the chimney faded away as if they had never existed.
But the front door stood there, worn and sturdy, beckoning. She
would no doubt have set her trap again over the threshold of that
door. If he had any sense at all he would find another way in. If
anything else, letting her have dominion over his body meant she
could stake him at any time. He would have to be insane to let her
bespell him again. But he walked carefully to the door, and without
another thought in his head he reached for the doorknob.
~*~
Min had made good use of her week,
reinforcing and expanding the wards around the house that same day,
and using that night, and every free moment she had away from the
shop since, to scour the tomes her sister had brought her. But no
matter how engrossed she tried to be in the books—what was truly
important—she still fantasized and daydreamed of the vampire, her
Luca.