The Fertile Vampire (22 page)

The bookshelves were short enough you could pop up from bending down to get a book and find yourself face to face with another reader. Behind me were the librarian’s stations, more shelves and a series of meeting rooms.
 

I turned to stand in front of a section of books on sports. I liked the San Antonio Spurs because basketball was a game I could understand. I never figured out the lure of baseball. And football? I would occasionally check out the scores and a few of the players’ names so I could sound like I was interested to my male co-workers. In all honesty? I didn’t get football and I didn’t care.
 

My attention was caught by the whirr of the wall mounted clock over the wall dominated by a portrait of Abigail Ponder. I wandered closer to check, reading she was a former mayor of San Antonio.
 

When a group disbanded I took an empty chair where I could watch the door bearing the Al-Anon sign. They should call it Fang-Anon. Closing my eyes, I stretched my senses outward. I wondered if I could compel my mother to come to me. Whatever talent I possessed hadn’t worked on Dan.
 

The curious buzzing started in the back of my neck, reaching around on both sides to meet at the bridge of my nose. My eyes flew open and I searched the crowd of readers.
 

Nonnie wasn’t here.
 

But my mother was, standing in the open door of the meeting room glaring at me.
 

My mother, or Demi as she preferred to be called, was a beautiful woman. Her hair was thickly black, her eyes a bright sky blue. She had petite features in a heart shaped face. She was short and tiny, delicate and doll like, so different from me that when I was a child I repeatedly asked her if I was adopted.
 

She’d only given me a look, one I interpreted to mean she wouldn’t have bothered with me if I’d been someone else’s child.
 

Tonight she was wearing her signature after six lipstick. Even if I didn’t have a watch or couldn’t see the passage of the day, I’d know what time it was by the color of Demi’s lips. Pink Plunge began the morning, to be replaced by Poppy Passion at noon. Night brought out Love’s Lusty Pink.

 
Her dress was dark burgundy, a color favoring her. The white collar accentuated the shape of her face, making her look at least a dozen years younger.
 

My mother was a hard act to follow, especially since I tended toward statuesque, not doll-like. I was tall and buxom; my face was oval, not heart-shaped. My eyes were simply blue; they weren’t an odd shade that drew people’s attention. Nor did I have a faint, breathy voice always reminding me of clips I’d seen of Marilyn Monroe.
 

She came to stand in front of me.
 

“What are you doing here?” she asked, daggers in her gaze.

I worried about my mother’s overly emotional nature. She had to stop being so emotive. One day, she’d run dry.
 

“Nice to see you, too,” I said, standing. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

“I have nothing to say to you,” she said. “You’re dead.”
 

Funny, Paul had seemed alive enough from the sounds coming from their bedroom.
 

I walked across the room to a table set aside from the general pandemonium. I didn’t bother to glance back at her; if she was coming, she’d come. Nor did I command her in my thoughts yet. I needed information from my mother and I wanted the truth. I wasn’t above using my mind meld techniques if she didn’t start talking.
 

I sat, my purse in my lap, feeling like I needed something to shield me from my mother.
 

When she approached the table, I put my purse on the floor. Before she sat, I looked up at her.
 

“What is Nonnie?” I asked. “Does she have some power?”
 

I had expected several reactions from my mother: insult at the question, disbelief I had the nerve to ask such a thing. Maybe I even expected her to laugh.
 

Instead, she turned as white as her collar and dropped into the chair beside me.
 

“What did she do now?”
 

No, I hadn’t expected that response.

“When I was a little girl, she used to lock the back bedroom,” I said. “I was never allowed in there. But I saw it one day. It was empty, just a wooden floor and blacked out windows.”
 

She didn’t speak, but her gaze didn’t move from mine.
 

“She has a card club who comes to her house once a week,” I went on. “But they never came when I was staying there. How many women are in her card club, Mother?”
 

She frowned at me. If she had her way, I’d call her Demi.
 

“Twelve,” she said.
 

“She’s always growing herbs, more than she needs to cook.”
 

One of my mother’s hands rested on the table, fingers drawn up, knuckles pronounced. You can tell a woman’s age best from her hands. My mother’s hands looked much older than her face.
 

“She gives you something, doesn’t she? Something to make you look younger?”
 

She shook her head, her hair as long as mine, even more lustrous. Even in the glare of the fluorescent lights she looked lovely. No wrinkles marred the corners of her eyes or bracketed her nose and mouth.
 

I might even look older than my mother.
 

She’d looked younger ever since Paul died. As I stared at her, a terrible thought occurred to me, one making me lean back, away from her.
 

“Paul's death wasn't an accident, was it? Was it a quid pro quo, Mother? Did you let them kill him in order to look younger?”
 

“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice as thin as a steel wire. “You never understood.”
 

“Tell me.” How much more could I take?
 

“Paul didn’t die because of anything they gave me. He died because of you.”
 

She abruptly stood, staring at me as if she hated me.

“What do you mean?”

“You shouldn’t have lived. Everyone would have been better off if you’d died.”
 

“Why? What am I?”
 

Dirugu
came the far off voice of the Eagle Lady and I wondered if I was remembering what she said or if I was hearing her speak in real time.
 

I stood, the two of us now only three feet apart. We might as well have been separated by a continent. Or perhaps an entire world if the look on her face was anything to go by.
 

“What am I?”
 

“Ask your grandmother. She’s fought so damn hard to keep it a secret all your life. It’s time she told you.”
 

My mother turned and walked away.
 

I didn’t get a chance to tell her Nonnie had zapped me the last time I’d tried to talk to her.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
IVE

A vampire doesn’t fall far from the tree

I started adding up everything since Nonnie zapped me and it all made sense. My mother’s validation had been almost anticlimactic.
 

Her comment about Paul was a shock, however.
 

But I had no desire to get zapped again. Somehow, I had to get my grandmother to tell me what she knew.
 

Before leaving the library I went to the reference desk and asked for help on information about the Dirugu. In ten minutes neither the librarian, who was as pleasant in personality as appearance, nor her assistant could find anything. She promised to do more digging for me so I left her my number. I sent one last look toward the Al-Anon meeting room, walked out of the building and into the parking lot to climb Mount Ford once more.
 

“Any luck?” Dan asked when I settled into the seat.

I shook my head, unwilling to go into my family dynamics. My family was a train wreck, something I’d known when I was eight years old. Things hadn’t gotten better in the last twenty-five years.
 

“Where to?”
 

I didn’t know. I was stuck in a strange limbo. “Home, I guess.”
 

“About that.”
 

I turned, studied his profile, waiting.
 

“You’re not safe there,” he said. “I’m not the only one following you,” he added.
 

He looked at me, a study of shadows. The library was well-lit, the parking lot designed to alleviate the fears of the citizens of this northeast section of San Antonio. The bright halogen light didn’t promise safety and I knew that only too well. Look what happened at The Smiling Senorita.
 

“What do you suggest?” I asked.
 

I’d been rejected by my last relative. I was feeling lonely and abandoned, just like my dream and my townhouse was spooking me.
 

“I’ve got a house,” he said.
 

“You’ve got a house.”
 

He nodded, faced forward, staring out the windshield with his hands clasped tight on the steering wheel.
 

“It’s in Welfare,” he said. “My family’s place outside San Antonio.”
 

“What would Il Duce say?”
 

“He won’t know because I’m not going to tell him. Unless you do.” He gave me a swift glance.
 

I shook my head.
 

“I have no reason to trust you,” I said. “I don’t know you. Why do you care?”
 

“Because you don’t know who he is,” he said. “Because even if you’re one of them, I’d be willing to bet my baby cousin - and she’s three - knows more about vampires than you do.”
 

That stung, but it was the truth.
 

“So who is he? No, who are you?”
 

He reached down and started the truck, pulling out of the parking lot before he began to talk.
 

“I was born at Baptist Hospital, lived all my life in San Antonio. I went to Northeast ISD, Madison High School. I’m an only child. My mom is a pill but I love her. My father is dating a woman younger than me right now.”
 

He glanced over at me and I wondered if he had originally wanted to say something else, like her bra size was bigger than her IQ. But that would have been trite and Dan didn’t strike me as the trite type.

“I’ve got a degree in mechanical engineering and I’m a former Ranger, thanks to Uncle Sam. I was stationed in Iraq, then Afghanistan.”
 

“Yet you’re working as a bodyguard for a vampire.”
 

He clenched both hands tighter on the wheel.
 

“Why did you take a job with Maddock?”

“Maybe I didn’t have any built-in prejudice against vampires. Until I met Maddock.”

My stomach rolled. I wondered if it was hunger. We were going back to my apartment; I recognized the fast food restaurants along the way.
 

“What are you going to do for the rest of the night?” he asked.
 

Do research on a Dirugu. Call my grandmother. For that matter, I may go by my grandmother’s house again.
 

I shrugged. I didn’t feel all comfy telling Dan everything. He might be a great guy but I wasn’t in the market for a great guy right now. I wanted to figure out what was happening to me. Maybe afterward, I would be interested.
 

“Thanks for the invitation,” I said, when he pulled into my parking lot. “I appreciate it.”
 

“I wish you’d take advantage of it. No strings attached.”
 

I glanced at him.
 

He switched on the interior light so I could see him.

“I’m serious, Marcie. You’d be an honored guest. I want you safe.”
 

I glanced at my front door, wondering if I was going to have another case of the heebie jeebies tonight. It didn’t matter what I felt. I had to handle it myself. I was a grownup. I wasn’t a wuss. If I wasn’t a badass, at least I had to be brave enough to face the shadows.
 

“What’s your last name?” I asked, grabbing my purse.
 

“Travis,” he said.
 

I nodded, glad one mystery solved. “Thank you,” I said, grabbing my purse and leaving him. I knew he’d sit out there and watch. That was okay. It was cheating a little on the grownup scale, but it made me feel better anyway.
 

I unlocked my front door, flipped on the light and stood there, listening.
 

Nothing moved. No shadows melted into another shadow. My house was empty and lonely.
 

I almost turned around and walked back to Dan’s truck, changing my mind. Almost.