Page 57 of Accidental Vampire

I wanted to push the bond through her now, make her taste the alien emotions. Let her crash between the empty nothingness left by Warren, the hot anger at the very reminder of Saint, and this newfound terror over Tiffany. Give it all to her, let her take it. I’d rather only feel her petty little emotions than all this.

She held the boy’s wrist out to me, like an offering, an olive branch. Fuck, I wanted it so bad, not the boy or the blood, but the promise of everything it could hold. Or maybe it was nothing. Nothingness. It was all lies.

The boy cozied into Veronica, rapt adoration on his face. Any resemblance to Warren melted away. The gift she tried to make of him turned to a dagger in my heart. I curled my lip in disgust.

“That,” I indicated the boy with my chin, “upsets me.”

Everyone within earshot froze. It had been a long while since anyone was that bold with Veronica. Juliet was the only one to move, she reached up to the piano wire strung about her throat. Not a threat, not really, just a reflex, like cuddling your teddy.

In a fluid movement, Veronica picked up Juliet’s gun and fired it without looking. The mini explosion rang my ears, but I didn’t flinch.

That beautiful face, that face I had loved for a century and now worn by another, disintegrated. Red spray dappled Veronica’s perfect features and painted the brown velvet. The body tottered forward, making a wet nowise as it hit the table, a red pool spreading across the crisp white linen.

The boy dead, the gift rescinded. As simple as that.

The blood consumed everything in its wake, ensnaring forks, defiling napkins. It pooled to the edge and was drawn down by the hopelessness of gravity.

Sensation came back to my body. I could feel everything, more than I wanted. My hand cramped around Tiffany’s wallet in my pocket, the leather creaking as I squeezed.

No one had dared move yet, not even Veronica. She was waiting on my reaction. Did she expect me to swoon? What did she want from me? Horror? Delight? They all held their breath, waiting for a cue to know how to respond. My grip on the wallet was the only thing keeping me from fracturing.

Veronica set her smile on me like acid, burning off resistance. Blood had reached the floor, in tiny slow moving drips. It was reaching for me. It would consume me, too, eventually.

“Pet. Your happiness is everything to me. You don’t want this,” she gestured to the dead body. “I’ll give you anything.” The slight pout on her face making her even more beautiful. She wiped a finger across her lips to collect an errant drop of blood. I closed my eyes for a second, wanting to believe my happiness did matter. To her, to anyone.

I gave her my back. Another moment here, and I’d be lost. I’d be begging her to make the pain end. Make it all end. The crowd parted, funneling me toward the door.

“Lachlan.” She had picked up the bond between us and sent sharp static to berate my awareness. She knew she could force me to her. But that wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted me crawling to her, she wanted nothing left for me but her, the answer to everything, the cause of everything.

“I always come for what is mine.”

The words pounded my senses, screamed in my head, in what was left of my tattered soul. I found the street, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. It was a trick of the magic, but I could taste her, smell her. She filled all my senses. There was no Warren, no Saint. No Tiffany. There was nothing left of me, for me. I spat on the ground and walked downtown to find a more tangible source of nothingness.

THIRTY-SIX

TIFFANY

“I swear to god Lachlan, this is the last time I cart around your dead body.” Aurora said around grunts as she heaved Lachlan’s tall frame into the room. I froze, not quite getting what I was seeing. I didn’t know if I should laugh or scream watching little Aurora manhandle a lifeless body into the room.

“Oh my god, what happened?” I scrambled to ease him to the bed, but Aurora had it managed unloading him like, well, a dead body.

She wiped her brow and paused to catch her breath. I looked him over. No wounds, he wasn’t breathing.

“H.” Aurora was redoing her high pony and pulling the loose curls over her shoulder. “I told him the last time he did heroin I was not carrying him home. He never listens.” She flopped down on the bed.

“Heroin?” My voice did that high-pitched squeak thing. I pushed up his sleeve to look for needle marks.

“He swore off of it like 10 years ago. Everyone is doing fentanyl now, which is much less fun.”

“He’s not breathing.” Panic kicked my heart rate so high I could feel it in my temples. “Is he overdosing?” Every ounce of information from that Narcan training I took fled my brain. I could feel a pulse.

“Oh, probably.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Girl, there is a lot wrong with me in all the right ways.” She curled a lock of her pony around a finger. She noticed a spot on her shirt, making a disgusted sound as she tried to rub it out.

“Don’t you care?”

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