Burned, p.11
Burned, page 11
“Bullshit!” Tabitha’s eyes flared as red as mine. “He said he wanted a—”
“Never.” My slap sent her backward into the bedroom, where she clipped the wall and came to a stop. “At.” Tabitha rolled back to a ready position, but I was already behind her. “Fault.” Her skull cracked as I rammed her into the doorpost, increasing the damage she’d already done to it with Dad. Not that anyone would be able to tell. They’d wrecked the room and torn both the bathroom and bedroom doors off their hinges. Holes dotted the walls, and it looked like Tabitha had purposefully put Dad’s head through his television.
“You bitch!” Her claws caught the meat of my thigh, but who cared? There wasn’t any blood. I refused to bleed for her.
“If Daddy confuses us, it’s because we’re supposed to be confused, or we’ve been too stupid and have failed him by not understanding.” Tackling her was easy. She clawed great rents in my face and stomach as I wrestled her into position. “If he makes us sad, then we’re supposed to be sad, or we’ve failed him by reacting inappropriately to his actions.”
Ripping off an arm isn’t easy. The required strength isn’t the problem. It’s the leverage. But I’ve practiced. Ripping off a hand or a forearm isn’t so hard, but getting the whole thing off cleanly requires a special two-part twist and tug. You have to dislocate the shoulder, then tear the muscles without losing any of the arm. It seems to hurt a lot, too. Tabitha screamed a wounded-animal scream and went from fighting to trying to get away. Typical. It’s astonishing how much other vampires whine about pain.
“Greta!” Dad yelled my name, but I didn’t answer.
“I told you,” I hissed in her ear. “Do you remember?” I grabbed her cheeks with my left hand and forced her to look me in the eye, then I made contact and brought her into my head. With vampire telepathy, someone always has the upper hand. Whoever has the strongest will, the most agile mind, usually wins. I’m quite insane, so that gives me an edge. I took her to my special place of remembering, front row, center stage, at the Pollux. I wasn’t in my pajamas anymore, having clothed the mental me in jeans, a pink baby-doll WELCOME TO THE VOID shirt, and Skechers.
I kept Tabitha the way she was in the real world and pointed at the movie screen with her dismembered limb. “Right there!”
Public Safety Tip #2: Ignorance of the law may be a reasonable excuse, so I will educate you immediately before your sentence is carried out.
Darkness fell as the theater lights went down and my memory lit up the screen like a film.
We were in the hallway of the Pollux, right outside my room. It was shortly after we (by which I mean all Dad’s allies except Tabitha) found a way to regenerate Dad’s body after he’d been blown up in the first Demon Heart, back when it was a strip club. Tabitha had been nosing around the dressing rooms while drying off after a shower.
My hands slid across the surface of my door, making sure I’d closed it properly by giving it a gentle nudge.
“This is my room and my stuff,” I said, baring my fangs.
“I don’t want any of your junk.”
“You want my dad.”
“Maybe,” Tabitha said, rubbing her privates with the towel as she spoke. “I guess I do. I’m really not sure.”
“Cut off your head, stuff your mouth with garlic, stake you through the heart with any kind of hard wood”—I narrowed my eyes—“then bury your head and your body in two different plots on consecrated ground. That’s all it would take.”
“What?” Tabitha pulled her hands away from the towel as if that could conceal that she was so hot for my dad, she’d started touching herself at the mere mention of him.
“You’re so unimaginative.” I watched her hands, making sure she wouldn’t try to go for a claw. I hadn’t had the chance to fight her, so I couldn’t be sure how fast or slow she might be. “I know vampire hunters who would try that method first thing, and then you’d be gone forever.”
Her fingernails stretched into claws, but too slowly to be a real threat. Either that or she was trying to undersell her abilities. “Is that a threat?”
“No.” I poured on the speed, sliding around behind her and shoving her head at the floor. I sort of thought she’d catch herself, but she was so darn slow. She hit the floor face-first, breaking her nose, and started crying. It was hard not to feed on her then and there. Any vampires displaying that much weakness make me want to end them. By the time I realized what I was doing, I’d twisted her arms behind her back and broken them, and my fangs were at her neck. I almost forgot the rest of my sentence, what we’d been talking about . . . So I decided to make sure she understood how serious I am about protecting Dad. “This is.”
I zoomed around in front of her, and I could see a trace of a reflection in her blood on the floor. When I knelt on the ground to get a better look at it, the reflection was gone. Then I gave her my warning. She looked so pitiful that I had to fight not to pop her chest and tear out her heart. I mean, come on. She was crying! “Hurt my daddy,” I said, “and I’ll kill you.”
Tabitha, the one with me in her head, not the one on the screen, winced as the memory faded and the lights came back up. I blinked and broke the telepathic contact. “Do you remember now?”
“I never forgot.” Tabitha stared at me coolly, the pain in her shoulder obviously having subsided. “Eric wouldn’t, either. If you killed me, he’d remember it forever, and you’d see it in the way he—”
My laughter cut her off. “This is Dad we’re talking about, you moron. He forgets everything eventually!” I blinked away tears of blood, uncertain why I was shedding them. “Given long enough, he’d forget you, me, everyone. Everyone except her!”
Out in the street, Dad was trying to get to the front door. He’d had no way of knowing Fang was going to stop him. Fang and I had already talked this through. Fang knew what to do. It wouldn’t hurt Dad to land in the trunk with the bones. He’d be angry, but it was for his own good.
Tabitha took that moment to try to surprise me with her remaining arm, so I tore it off at the elbow. It wasn’t as elegant as taking off the whole arm, but she screamed. I growled.
“I keep what it takes to kill you in my bedroom, Tabitha, all the time . . . just in case.” I grabbed her by the neck, hauling her along behind me like a struggling cat. “Let’s go give Daddy the divorce he wants.”
“Hiya, slut.” I smelled the cinnamon and heard the voice in unison. Then I was on fire. “How ya been?”
I hate Auntie Rachel.
13
ERIC
MY CAR HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN
Only in Void City can a man wind up naked in the street, cornered by his undead car while trying to stop his daughter from murdering the wife he wants to divorce. Fang’s engine revved, and “Tubthumping” started playing over his stereo.
“Chumbawamba?” I shook my head. “Really?”
Fang revved his engine again.
“Really?” I said again. A plume of fire spat out the hole in the side of the Pollux, and I tried to use the distraction to go up and over Fang’s hood, but he was too fast, rocketing into reverse with such alacrity that I wound up on my ass. Fang took the opening and rolled over me. Whatever magic he uses to pull things against his undercarriage and eat them slammed me against him. To be honest, it looked sort of like a mass of purple glowing tentacles, but even with my true immortal nighttime powers, I could only see the energy in a very out-of-focus way.
“Dammit, Fang!”
Greta screamed, and Fang let go of me at once, rolling off as quickly as he could, replacing Chumbawamba with Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Coming.” I jumped to my feet and ran for the building, letting myself tap in to a little speed. It felt different than vampire speed, and doing it ran the risk of lighting me up spiritually, tipping my hand.
Greta is my little girl, and if saving her fucks up The Plan, then I’ll just get a new plan. I tapped in to the strength for a split second as I hit the sidewalk and jumped for the hole. My heart pounded in my chest, not the too-fast pounding of an out-of-shape human but a steady and efficient thump. Small strands of blue sparked between me and surrounding objects, then faded as I was airborne and released the strength.
“Greta?” I yelled. “Tabitha?”
Greta rolled on the floor in my bedroom, singed and yowling. Tabitha didn’t have pyrokinetic powers, which meant . . . I spotted Rachel, arms folded across her chest, in the bathroom doorway. She was wearing a blue dress this time, and if Greta hadn’t been hurt, I might have laughed. Tabitha stood behind her sister, feeding on Magbidion as her arms grew back. One arm seemed to be making more progress than the other.
“Hellfire doesn’t just burn the flesh, Greta.” Rachel’s voice was edged with menace. “I don’t want to burn you again . . . okay, well, I actually do, because you killed me in a very unpleasant fashion the last time I was alive, but your dad would be really pissed at me if I did, so please stay back.”
Greta wasn’t healing.
I opened the fridge and pulled out two of the bags labeled ERIC COURTNEY (only two more left, I noted) and handed them to Greta as I walked past. “Demon fire can be as slow to heal as holy wounds for vamps with that problem.” Greta snatched the first bag and bit into it.
“This is yours,” she said with her mouth full of blood, wounds healing readily now.
“Yup.” I stood between her and Rachel. “That’s enough, Tabitha.”
She reluctantly pulled her mouth from Magbidion’s throat. “I didn’t take too much,” she said defensively, “and your psycho bitch of a daughter tore my freakin’ arms off.”
“Oh, shut up,” Greta snarled, my blood dripping from her lips. “I didn’t even have enough time to end you.”
“You.” I pointed at Greta. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine now, Dad.” Her wounds were already fading.
“Good. Go get dressed and patrol with Evelyn.”
“But I have to kill Tabitha!” Greta was on her feet in a blink. “She created a disturbance that could have drawn attention to everything, and I get to kill people who—”
I cut her off. “I’ll handle the matter, Sheriff. Go.” She stood up to leave. “And be careful out there. You’re my girl.”
Greta smiled a smile designed to let me know I’d set the world to rights, but I suspected she was angry underneath. I watched her go, then walked over to my wardrobe and pulled out clean socks and underwear before crossing to my closet to dress.
Rachel whistled at me, and I blushed. “You shut up.” I pulled on my undies and jeans. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“I have a new task for you from Lady Scrytha.”
“Lovely.” I shrugged into a clean WELCOME TO THE VOID T-shirt and sat down on the edge of the bed to put on a pair of thick black socks. “Tabitha, are you rearmed over there?”
“Yes.” Her voice was sulky. “I’m still hungry, though.”
“I told you, you should have stuck them back on and healed that way.” Rachel crossed the room and pointed to what I assumed were Tabitha’s dismembered limbs. “It would have been a lot less draining.”
“That’s stupid.” Tabitha stalked out of the bathroom.
“No,” I corrected as I pulled on my combat boots, “it sounds stupid, but it’s pretty good advice. I’ve tried it both ways, and putting the severed limb back on feels weird but works better.”
“Well, pardon me.” Tabitha looked away. “It’s my first time having parts ripped off.”
I gave a noncommittal grunt and tied my shoes. “So, here’s the thing.” I grabbed a new black leather belt from my top drawer and slid it on, missed a loop, and got it right the second time. “I get that you’re mad at me.”
Tabitha scoffed. “You GET it, huh?”
“Yes,” I said calmly, “I do, but I can’t have you causing shit like this to happen in my home.”
“I didn’t cause anything, you fucking prick!” Tabitha’s eyes blazed red. “You wait until after we have some of the most tender, romantic sex we’ve ever had, and in the afterglow, you tell me you want a divorce . . . and I caused it?”
“I gave the most unromantically truthful and pessimistic warning to you during our wedding. I promised I would fail you eventually and that I’d try to be faithful but would not succeed. I wouldn’t even say ‘I do’ to the vows. I said, ‘I’ll do what I can,’ and you married me anyway.”
“I was being mind-controlled!” Tabitha spat.
“Exactly my point.”
“Not controlled,” Rachel corrected. “Heavily influenced but not strictly controlled.”
We both glared at Rachel.
“In demonic terms, it’s a very important technicality,” Rachel said with a shrug.
“I don’t think our ceremony counts. And if it did, the vows would have ended when I went to the underworld. But obviously, you think differently, so I offered to let you out of the marriage. You said no.” I walked back over to the fridge and pulled out the last two bags of my blood. “Look, I’m not going to argue with you while you’re still hungry. Here.” I handed her the bags, and she smirked.
“I didn’t know you’d taken to labeling them.”
“Ever since someone spiked them and no one noticed.” I pulled off the label, and the writing faded. “Magbidion made them for me. They identify the donor and detect most major contaminants or spells that affect vampires. I have twelve hundred of the things.”
“That’s clever,” Rachel said, squinting at the Post-it. “Simple but very hard to fool. Elegant, even.” She looked at Magbidion lying unconscious on the bathroom tiles. “You got a good deal when you enthralled him. Diaxicrotioush’nar has been scared shitless to come to collect on his debt because he saw what you did to the last demon you took down. Magbidion has a real flair for the sort of work you want him to do.” She smiled. “He uses magic so efficiently, too. His enchantments are nigh invisible, not a speck of magic wasted.”
Tabitha cleared her throat. “If you guys start making out in front of me, I’m attacking you both.” She’d downed the first bag of blood and was sipping on the next.
“So . . .” We waited in uncomfortable silence for Tabitha to finish the second bag.
“Okay.” Tabitha sat the empty bags in the sink. “That’s better.”
“Good,” I said. “Now fuck off.”
“What?” Tabitha snarled, and Rachel laughed.
“You’re a beautiful and intelligent woman, Tabitha,” I said softly. “You deserve someone who will love you. You won’t get him, ’cause your taste in men is shit, but I want you to be happy. You’ll never be happy with me. You need to figure out what you want to do with the rest of eternity and do it. The reason I insisted all the strippers who worked at the Demon Heart go to college was because you need that scrap of paper in this world for people to take you seriously. You’ve traded on your looks and men’s desire to get in your pants for so long that you think about that first and foremost: finding the right man and keeping him.”
I touched her cheek gently, almost afraid she’d bite me. “The right man won’t need to be kept, Tabitha. He’ll be too damn busy trying to keep you. I’m not that guy.”
“So . . .” Tabitha took a deep breath. “So what? You’re going to go back to screwing Rachel?”
“Been there.” I held up my hands as if warding off the thought. “Done that. It was a blast, but I wouldn’t go back in with a borrowed dick.”
“Oh, sure,” Rachel said, “you say that now, but—”
Tabitha and I both shushed her.
“Marilyn, then?” Tabitha asked.
“Probably not.” That seemed to take them by surprise. “Oh, I love her more than any woman I’ve ever known or ever will know. But unless something changes, that ship has sailed. Roger sabotaged it beyond all reasonable hope of repair.”
“Do I have to leave Void City?” Tabitha’s voice sounded distant, like it was just clicking that things were really over.
“Of course not.” I sighed. “You know, I think the worst thing about us as a couple is that maybe we were never meant to be more than friends. If I’d been my right age when I first met you, I’d have been too old for you. I could have been the dirty old man who steered you clear of the wrong guys and set you on the path to a great career in classical dance or psychology or some shit. We’re too much alike to make it as a couple.”
“You’re really not that much alike,” Rachel butted in.
“Really?” I asked, enumerating points on my fingers. “We’re both smarter than we look. We both have serious anger issues.” I grinned. “True, I’ve never learned to tie a cherry stem into a knot with my tongue, but . . .” I looked to Tabitha, hoping for something like a laugh.
“You’re giving me the ‘Let’s be friends’ speech?” Tabitha frowned, her eyes rimmed with anger. At least she wasn’t crying. “Fuck that!”
“I don’t want to have some ongoing war with you, Tabitha. I’ll give you a nice and official divorce settlement. Money. Your apartment. I’ll make sure Greta knows she doesn’t get to kill you.”
“Fine.” Tabitha’s face was torn between resentment, hatred, and maybe a glimmer of some positive emotion. “You’re right. My life can’t be about you.”
“Friends?” I held out my arms, offering a hug but fully expecting Tabitha to attack me again. Instead, she gave me the briefest of hugs.
“Go fuck yourself.” She pulled away. Her claws extended, but she didn’t seem to realize it. She wiped at her eyes, blinked, sniffed, and gave an irritated grunt, throwing her arms down by her sides. “Send my money and my shit to my apartment, asshole.”
Brushing past me, she transformed into a cat (probably to mess with her sister, who was always afraid of them) and sauntered off. She didn’t look back, and despite myself, I almost went after her. That was not part of any plan, though, so I stuck by my guns and stared out the hole in the Pollux. What a mess.
“I could have sworn she was going to attack you.” Rachel put an arm around my waist.
