Blood Candy (33 page)

And now he was in her town, at her place of
work.

“Are you done daydreaming yet?”

Candy snapped back to reality when her
coworker, Julie Maronne, rushed down the aisle between packed
tables while balancing a loaded tray on one hand. Julie tossed a
sneer over her shoulder on her way by.

“Sorry,” Candy said, but her eyes instantly
drifted back to the vampire.

This was her fourth shift at Maronne’s Bar
& Grill, and the dining room along with the bar was completely
packed with the Sunday night crowd. The job wasn’t glorious or even
lucrative, but it got her out of the house, away from her mother,
and put a few dollars into her pocket. The bar was owned by Anthony
Maronne and staffed with his taskforce of Italian relatives, Julie
being one of the younger cousins or sisters or nieces, Candy wasn’t
sure which and she didn’t really care.

The work would have been more enjoyable if it
wasn’t for Julie, who seemed to be on a mission to make Candy’s
life more difficult than it already was. And so long as vampires
didn’t make unexpected visits.

Candy made her way to a table full of rowdy
rednecks, though her eyes never strayed far from the vampire. She
barely paid attention to the hoots and whistles aimed at the snug
fit of her dark blue uniform while she handed out drinks. She gave
them a pleasant smile and scribbled down their orders, even though
she knew these slobs wouldn’t leave much of a tip.

No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t
concentrate on anything. The vampire had been at the bar for less
than five minutes and he was already flanked by two women. If they
knew what he was, they’d run away.

It felt like a nightmare was clawing its way
out of a locked place in her mind. From a hidden vantage in the
drink station between the kitchen and the dining room, Candy
watched the vampire, though it didn’t appear he knew she existed,
so busy was he with the growing crowd of women around him. He was
doing this on purpose—she knew he was here to torment her, to make
a public display of it. The order pad crumpled in her hand, though
she was unsure who she hated more: the vampire or the trash
flirting with him.

No one else knew what he was, knew anything
about his dark secret; certainly not the promiscuous women hanging
all over him. Who could she tell? Who could she go to for help?
There was no one, but she wouldn’t let him get into her head. She
had to keep herself busy, to beat him at his own game and not
acknowledge him.

Since the busboys were swamped and falling
behind, Candy went out to clear one of her tables in the dining
room. But keeping busy didn’t clear her mind; not when the vampire
was sitting right there at the bar. Why was he here? Hadn’t she
made herself clear when she told him to leave her alone? Her
movements became frantic as she wiped the table, as she remembered
things she never wanted to remember again, until she swiped a plate
right off the edge. Dozens of eyes turned to her and the mess she’d
made. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she knew by
the sudden chill freezing through her veins that the vampire was
watching as well.

She rushed into the kitchen to escape the
unwanted attention. Why wouldn’t he leave her alone? He was doing
this on purpose, of that she was sure. There was no other reason
for someone like him to be out here in her small town, a place most
people considered the middle of nowhere. Glancing at a clock on the
wall, she saw it was five hours into her six hour shift. She didn’t
know if she could take another hour of this.

Julie Maronne smacked a serving tray onto the
counter loud enough that Candy jumped.

“You don’t get paid to stand
around.”

Like most of her family, Julie had black hair
and blue eyes, and those eyes were piercing straight through Candy.
Since Candy’s first night on the job, Julie had done nothing but
give her a hard time, which undoubtedly had something to do with
pointless drama from years ago in school. Candy didn’t say a word,
didn’t want to instigate, though plenty of choice words came to
mind. She only wished that Julie would give it a rest already; her
nerves were on edge and she didn’t have the patience to deal with
this right now. From the look on Julie’s face, she wasn’t about to
back off.

“I know what you’re doing.” Julie narrowed her
eyes and jabbed a finger at Candy. “You may be able to con my uncle
into giving you a job with a shake of your ass but that won’t fly
with me. I’ve been working here for three years and I’ll be damned
if you come in and take my tables.”

Candy bit her tongue, mostly because she
wanted to keep her job, and also because Julie was a good three
inches taller. Julie gave a satisfied half-grin as if the battle
had been won. A few of the greasy cooks were staring at the
spectacle, making Candy want to tell her where she could stick her
attitude right along with her precious tables.

“Don’t think I forgot what you and your
friends did,” Julie said before she walked away.

“Just ignore her,” one of the cooks said.
“She’s not happy unless she’s bitching about something.”

Candy grabbed a tray full of orders and went
to finish her shift, intent on heeding the cook’s advice. As she
tried to figure out what plate went to which boisterous redneck,
she felt an unmistakable chill seep into her skin, but every time
she turned around the vampire was only paying attention to one of
the trashy girls hanging all over him.

She couldn’t take it anymore. She didn’t care
if the vampire won whatever game he was playing, if he proved that
he could get into her head and break her down. She retreated into
the employee lounge and hid there like a frightened child. It was
less than two weeks ago when she and her friends were tormented and
nearly killed by a family of vampires and those memories were all
too fresh. Candy just wanted to forget, just wanted to return to
her life and never see another pair of fangs again.

“You okay, sweetie?”

Samantha Maronne walked into the lounge. She
was the veteran waitress on shift who had been training Candy over
the last week and her black hair was frazzled from too many trips
into the baking hot kitchen. Unlike Julie, Samantha was pleasant to
be around and had a motherly quality that made working with her
very easy.

“I’m fine,” Candy said, feeling stupid for
neglecting her work.

“Does this have anything to do with the young
man who was at the bar?”

“No,” Candy lied. “Why?”

Samantha gave her an empathetic look that
conveyed she’d been around for a while and knew a few things; that
they could talk if Candy wanted. Then she checked the watch on her
wrist and said, “You only have twenty minutes left on your shift.
Why don’t you head on home. I’ll finish up your last two tables and
give you the tip money tomorrow.”

“I can finish,” Candy insisted.

“Go on home.” Samantha pulled a piece of paper
out of her apron pocket. “That young man left this for you. Go on
and clock out. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After Samantha left the lounge, Candy stared
at the note for a long time. Written on the front in neat cursive
was her first name. The thought of throwing it away crossed her
mind, but what good would that do? Slowly, she unfolded the note
and read the brief message within.

Candy,

Sorry if I made you uncomfortable,
but we need to talk. It’s not over yet. Please call me.

Blake

She crammed the note into her pocket and
clocked out. She should have thrown it away. She shouldn’t have
ever read it. Now those words were stuck in her head—
it’s not
over yet
. No, that couldn’t be true. It was over. The vampire
family was dead. She had seen them all die. Candy grabbed her
handbag and headed out of the restaurant, ignoring one last parting
glare from Julie along the way.

Maronne’s Bar & Grill wasn’t far from her
mother’s house so she walked to work instead of wasting money on
gas now that her mother found it necessary to charge for rent. She
never thought her first summer after high school would have turned
out the way it had. It never crossed her mind that she’d have to
fight for her life against bloodsucking monsters. But those events
had led her to the friends she never would have met otherwise,
friends who meant the world to her, and she even managed to fall in
love during that nightmare. The world had a funny way of arranging
things.

The main street through town was illuminated
with regular intervals of streetlights and it was mostly empty at
eleven o’clock at night. The family owned shops crowding the street
were closed, but the bustling activity of encroaching corporate
America was interspersed here and there. The fast food joints
stayed open well into the night, capitalizing on a small town’s
desire for greasy burgers and overloaded burritos outside of normal
eating hours. Candy had lived here all of her life and she quickly
walked along this familiar route, her mind focused on a million
different things. At the moment, Julie’s attitude was the least of
her concerns.

She slipped her hand into the pocket of her
work pants, feeling the note inside. What did he mean by “it’s not
over yet?”

The eight-bit noises and flashing lights of
the arcade prompted her to jog across the street. The arcade didn’t
close until midnight during the summer and it was a place for
teens—and adults who thought they were still teens—to hang out all
night long without worry of the police hassling them. Once Candy
was across the street, she flipped open her cell phone to send a
text message to her boyfriend. Jimmy and his friends would know
what to do about Blake. They were shapeshifters, after all, and
they’d been dealing with vampires for years.

The parking lot of the local market was a
shortcut she often used to access her neighborhood as well as a
throughway for drivers intent on skipping the light at the end of
the street. As her feet led the way along the familiar path, she
brought up Jimmy’s entry in the cell phone and started typing out a
message for him to call as soon as possible. They had to suffer a
long distance relationship over the last week since the end of
their ordeal with the vampires, but they talked on the phone at
every available chance. Candy figured if love can conquer the vast
distances of oceans, then it can surely overcome the measly
distance of a small state like Massachusetts. Separation made the
heart grow fonder, or something like that.

Halfway through the text a rock skipped across
the asphalt. Candy glanced over her shoulder and saw two figures
approaching along the same route she had taken away from the
arcade. She picked up her pace, if anything because her nerves were
already on edge. The sound of shoes scuffling against the blacktop
told her the figures had picked up their pace as well. She checked
over her shoulder again, ready to run to the safety of the distant
streetlights in her neighborhood if need be.

“Look at what we have here.”

Candy yelped when she walked right into a tall
man wearing a wicked grin on his gaunt face. She instinctively took
a backwards step away, but the two figures behind her meant she had
nowhere to turn, and nowhere to run.