Page 1 of Lucy

CHAPTER 1

Lucy

“Lucinda! Shit! Youkilled them?”

I rolled my eyes at Helvetica, Veti for short, and wondered for the hundredth time why I let her constantly criticize me. She could be such an old hag. Okay, she’s not that old, maybe three or four hundred years. But to my nineteen years on the planet that could have been several lifetimes, and if we were human, it would have been.

“I staked them,” I protested, motioning to the bloody stakes in my hand. “It was painless.”

One of the girls that had popped into our home coughed. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“And then you brought them back to life!” She threw her hands in the air in disgust.

“Um, so are we like zombies now?” the other girl asked.

I looked over at my prisoners. Two girls about my age were standing in the entryway to our home looking shell shocked.

I smirked. “You aren’t a zombie—not really.”

Veti stormed over to me and grabbed my arm. “Don’t talk to them! And technically they are zombies—a corpse revived by witchcraft. But that’s the least of our worries. What else did you do to them?”

“Nothing! I swear it!” I protested.

Veti’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want to explain to me why this one has your face?”

The girl in question did indeed have my face. It was eerie staring into someone else’s eyes when they so clearly mimicked my own. The only difference was our hair color. Where she was dark, I was light.

“This is so weird, it’s like seeing two Viv’s. By the way, my name is Joanie, and this is my sister, Vivian.” The other girl looked like the first, long dark hair and deep brown eyes. But she was curvier in shape and had a softer chin.

“Who are you?” Veti barked at the girls.

“We just told you. I am Vivian,” the one who looked like me answered. “And this is my sister, Joanie. Might I ask where we are and why you killed us?”

Joanie reached forward as if to touch the stake in my hand. It was still dripping with their blood. “Everyone calls her Viv. However, that’s not the important part. How in the bloody hell did you manage to bring us back to life?”

I shrugged. “Magic? Look, you might as well come in out of the foyer. It’s a bit—sticky, right now.”

I motioned for them to enter our humble home. Veti started squawking something or other but I ignored her. I had already killed them, so technically, I hadn’t broken any of Marcus’s rules. He never forbade me from bringing them back to life again—loopholes are my friend.

“My name is Lucinda, and this is Helvetica. We don’t get a lot of guests here in the Laos Caves.”

That was the understatement of the century. I can count on one hand the number of people that have visited, and only two of them were still breathing. They happened to be the girls that looked like passing out at any moment—resurrection was hard on a person.

Or so I am told.

“Veti, they need some blood. How about you get them some bagged, and we can figure out where they came from.”

She looked like she wanted to protest, but in the end, did as I asked. In a few moments she brought back two metal containers.

“Have you drunk from this device before?” I asked.

Joanie and Viv shook their heads.

“You have to remove the lid to break the seal. Then there are two holes for your fangs, and I sure you can figure it out from there. I am warning you though, it’s not what you are used to. We don’t have access to human blood here and survive on animals in the wild.”

Viv blinked. “How is that possible? I thought all vampires needed human blood to survive.”

Veti handed me the steel containers. She obviously wasn’t going to get that close to our new companions.

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