The Fertile Vampire (14 page)

My research on Pranic vampires resulted in nothing. A search of MEDOC, Il Duce’s company, resulted in a sizable chunk of information. Evidently, they were at the forefront of research on AIDS vaccines. If one of the easiest ways to kill vampires was by a blood borne illness, I could see why Il Duce had invested heavily in the medical field.
 

Had the emergence of AIDS killed many vampires? Something else I didn’t know. I was keeping a virtual notebook on my IPad. One of these days, I’d find someone who could answer all my questions. Someone who didn’t make me edgy like Il Duce and who I trusted - not like Doug.
 

 
There was one question, however, no vampire could answer and the more I thought about it, the more I wondered.
 

Had my grandmother been behind the hit and run?
 

My grandmother was thirty-seven when I came along, her youth the result of having married at eighteen and having a daughter who’d done the same thing. She was now seventy, did Tai Chi and lifted weights.
 

She was not a woman to underestimate.
 

But she wasn’t fond of vampires.
 

I missed the Nonnie of my childhood, the woman who had brusquely counseled me on the first appearance of my period. I’d been trying on swimsuits at the time and absolutely horrified to find my panties stained.
 

“It’s nothing to be concerned about, Marcie. Have you prepared?”
 

I nodded, too embarrassed to talk about the Kotex pads I’d stashed away under the sink at both my house and hers.
 

“We’ll go home now. After you’ve fixed yourself up, you can go out to the sun porch. I’ll bring you something to make you feel better.”
 

The miraculous process of becoming a woman was eased with a glass of warm milk, a heating pad, and the added bonus of a bowl of chocolate ice cream.
 

I wanted the same comfort now. Or maybe I just wanted answers. I wanted to find out if Nonnie hated vampires enough to try to kill me.
 

Even the idea was enough to kill my appetite, but only for an hour or two.
 

Three nights in, I dressed, put on makeup, and left the complex, watching for someone other than Dan following me, but his was the only car. As if he knew I was checking, he flashed his lights at me several times.
 

I hadn’t been reborn through the process of becoming a vampire. I was still me. My memories of family and friends were still intact. Regardless of how they’d treated me, I was finding it difficult to cut them out of my life.
 

Mary, my friend in accounting, was pregnant and it had been a difficult seven months for her. I wanted to know how she was feeling. Or how Jen, my next door neighbor, was doing after her chemotherapy appointment. Had she gotten any good news from her oncologist?
 

I couldn’t exactly knock on their doors and say, “Surprise! It’s me, your friend, the vampire.”
 

They’d already let me know how they felt by ignoring me. Neither of them had texted me, sent word, or come over. Not, come to think of it, that I would have shown up unannounced at a new vampire’s house. All they had were the myths. They didn’t know if I was going to suck all their blood and nibble on the marrow.
 

Another question - could a vampire be affected by the condition of his victim? Did a vampire become ill if he chose a cancer patient to nibble on? Or drunk if someone was inebriated?
 

I shook my head at myself and pulled in front of my grandmother’s house.
 

The loss of my friends hurt, but the treatment from my family was worse.
 

Most of my conversations with my mother consisted of things she didn’t like: my hair (she didn’t like it short or long), my fashion sense (I had none), my fingernails (I couldn’t stand hearing them tap on my keyboard so I kept them short), and various and sundry other criticisms.
 

I loved my mother because I was supposed to love my mother according to popular culture, the Bible and my grandmother. I didn’t understand my mother, but I tried to love her.
 

Dorothy, who preferred to be called Demi - and I have no idea why - was one of those women who was as needy as a sponge and had to have a man in her life. If she didn’t, she was miserable.
 

In between husbands, she’d have dear friends who came over to our house and spent the night or several nights until they were discarded for another friend. At least she never called them my uncles.
 

Whenever she was serious about someone, as in this one might be the next husband, I’d stay at Nonnie’s house. As my mother once told me, “It’s easier if you’re not here, Marcie.” So, I would pack my little red patent leather zippered suitcase and trot over to stay with my grandmother for weeks at a time. At least there I didn’t have to pretend to like the guy. Nor would I be bothered by the sounds coming from her bedroom.
 

My father was her first husband. The second was a welder who went off to work on an oil rig. We never worried about money during those years, but my mother had a problem being faithful. Bob was a good guy and I’d been sad to see him go.
 

“Sorry, kid,” he’d said on the way out the door. He’d ruffled my hair and gave me a quick hug.
 

I stared after him, blinking back tears, never knowing that with his departure my mother would descend into a death spiral, in a matter of speaking.
 

Some women were addicted to alcohol. Some were addicted to cigarettes or drugs. In my mother’s case, vampires were her drug of choice. If a vampire landed in The Swede’s Daughter, her favorite hangout, there was a ninety-nine point nine percent chance he’d be having breakfast at our house.
 

“Are you using protection?” I asked her once. “Can’t a vampire get an STD?”
 

“Don’t be churlish, Marcie.”
 

Since my mother wasn’t well read, the word startled me. I never did get an answer to either question.
 

When Paul first came into the picture, he seemed to inflame my mother’s obsession. I wasn’t the least surprised when she married him. I took refuge by visiting Nonnie as often as I could.
 

My grandmother was down to earth, a little brusque in her defense of my mother, and my salvation.
 

“She’s a cat in heat, that girl. Always has been. Always will be. I guess she’s got a powerful need.” She’d pointed her spatula at me. “Don’t you go and get yourself conflicted about a man, Marcie. They’re fine creatures and good for lots of things, but they’ll break your heart for sure. But vampires? They’re the lowest of the low. The dead who don’t have the sense to stay dead. Arrogant, they are and godless.”
 

During my trial, Nonnie had turned her face to the wall and refused to look at me.
 

My stepfather’s death had been sudden and shocking. He’d been working a construction site and a beam had fallen on him, decapitating him instantly.
 

My mother changed after that. Her love of men didn’t alter, but she made a point of avoiding vampires and even attended Al-Anon meetings, the chapter geared to help mortals overcome their fascination with vampires. I don’t know her success rate - it was one of those things we didn’t discuss.
 

I could cope with losing my mother, but Nonnie’s absence in my life was like an open wound.

She’d been my refuge, the one person who understood how lonely I was, how much I felt like an outsider in my own home. She knew how much I wanted my life to be different.
 

I leaned my head back and stared at her house. The emerald paint was transformed to black by the night, the blinding white of the trim and shutters looking like bones. I’d always loved this place. The sixty year old house was home to me in the way nothing else had been.
 

Sitting on a knoll like the queen of the neighborhood, the three story house was reached by a short walk from the curb, up four steps incised in the earth, then a longer walk to a wide screened in front porch. On either side of the steps was an aged Live Oak, the branches intersecting at the second floor level. In the summer, the trees created a shady oasis. Now they seemed to guard my grandmother’s home.
 

Three lights shone, two on the bottom floor and one on the second.
 

Nonnie was awake.
 

Once, I could have walked in, called out, expecting to be welcomed with a kiss to my cheek and a quick inspection. Was I sleeping well, eating enough, happy?
 

The words of a song came to me. “But that was yesterday and yesterday’s gone.”
 

Tonight I would go up the steps to the front door like a visitor, knock and wait to be welcomed. Or stand on the steps like a penitent when she didn’t open the door.
 

This after midnight world was unnaturally still, with not a breath of wind. The only movement was my own as I left the car. In a movie, a werewolf would come springing out of the forest or a vampire would sparkle.

I leaned against the right front bumper, staring up at the house.
 

I bet property taxes were a bear, but Nonnie had never complained. Nor had she ever mentioned money in any of our conversations. Plus, she was one of the few older adults I’d ever met who didn’t talk about when bread was a nickel and you could only get Coca-Cola in a small glass bottle. She lived in the present, had a smart phone, an IPad, and was delighted in technology.
 

What was she still doing up? Was she waiting for me? All my life, my grandmother had had an uncanny sixth sense. She’d known when I came to her house, crying, that my mother and I had the first of those gawdawful fights in my teenage years. She’d come to school more than once to bring me lunch. Once she’d arrived with a change of clothes when I’d had an accident of the menstrual kind.
 

I wouldn’t be surprised if she were waiting for me, which meant I had two choices. Get in the car and go home. Or take the long walk to the front door.
 

Of the two, only one choice was in doubt. I knew what would happen when I went home. Nothing. I’d sit and worry. But if I knocked on her door, I wasn’t sure what my grandmother would do.
 

I’m not an exceptionally courageous person. I would not, like some of the movies show, go into a basement if I heard a strange noise. Not that we have basements in San Antonio. But we do have attics and if I heard footsteps in the attic, the first thing I would do is get the hell out of the house. I’d call the police or someone else to investigate. I wouldn’t take a flashlight, go up the steps and call out, “Hello, is anyone there?”
 

Why, then, did I think knocking on my grandmother’s door was tantamount to investigating a noise in the attic?
 

Stress was making a band tighten around my head, a warning a headache was right there, waiting. I pressed two fingers against the bridge of my nose, took a deep breath and willed it away.
 

Toddler-like, it refused to budge.
 

I walked slowly up the steps and down the walk. I raised my fist to knock on the door as it opened.
 

Nonnie stood there, a foot shorter than me, as far from frail as a rock was next to a blade of grass. Her face, lined and weathered by life, was curiously expressionless. Not one speck of recognition warmed her faded blue eyes. Nor did her arms reach out to hug me.
 

“Marcela.”
 

She never called me that.
 

“Nonnie.”
 

We were two gunfighters facing each other down a dusty street.
 

Something flashed across her face. I wanted to capture the expression and study it because I’d never before seen my grandmother afraid and certainly not of me.
 

A curious buzzing now accompanied my headache. I pressed two fingers against my left temple but it had no effect on the sensation. The pain was growing, the headache a living thing trying to crawl out of my skull.
 

“Marcie, you have to leave,” she said.
 

Her face changed, sagged into sorrow. Her eyes watered and I wanted to ask what was wrong.

“Please, Nonnie,” I said, the words sounding as if they came from far away.
 

She took a step back.
 

I crossed her threshold, onto the porch where I used to do my homework. We had played Sorry and Clue here, both of us armed with frosty bottles of root beer and bags of chips.
 

My foot hit the weathered boards, painted green like the rest of the house.
 

Her face was the last thing I saw, tears rolling down her face as the buzzing consumed me.

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