Legally Undead (21 page)

One room held what looked like a ridiculously large arsenal of weapons, mostly old-fashioned things like bows and arrows, but also a few more modern and, to my eyes, more lethal-looking guns.

In another room, some of the interior walls had been knocked out and the rooms combined to make enough space to hold a complete, if small, gym. A similar-sized room held a conference table, a dry-erase board, and a video monitor. “We call that the War Room,” Tony said.

“I see you have the requisite Big Board,” I replied. Tony grinned.

He led me all the way to the end of the hall. The door there opened up on a set-up much like the one in the front of the other suite. At the reception desk, however, was a bank of computers and other electronic equipment. Dominic sat at a terminal, typing rapidly. Whereas the waiting room on the other side consisted of typically uncomfortable waiting-room furniture—perfectly functional, but designed to seat a maximum number of people in a limited space—this waiting room held an over-stuffed couch and several cushy chairs. A large-screen TV took up most of one wall.

Nick and John were seated in two of the chairs, deep in conversation. They looked up as I came in.

“Hey, Dixie,” Nick said. “Come have a seat for a minute.”

I wobbled over and collapsed on the sofa. “Yeah?”

Tony quietly left the room.

“I just wanted to check in with you for a minute. You can tell me everything later, but I just wanted to make sure I’m clear on the basics.”

“Okay,” I said.

Tony returned with a small carton of orange juice and handed it to me. “Drink this,” he said. “You need to keep your blood sugar levels up.”

“Thanks,” I murmured, opening the carton and drinking almost half of it in one swallow.

“What do you want to know?” I asked Nick.

“You said you told Deirdre about the shop,” he said. “Did you tell her anything else about us? Names? Anything?”

“Nope. I told her I didn’t know anything except that you called your headquarters ‘the shop.’ I figure there’s a pretty good chance she knows some things, though, since she’s got Greg, and he knows Pearson.”

“And you’re absolutely certain that Greg is on her side.”

I shuddered. “Without a doubt.”

Nick looked at me speculatively.

“Look, Nick,” I said. “It was horrible. But I’ll go over every last second of it with you. Tomorrow.”

Nick nodded and breathed out a sigh. “You’re right. Tomorrow. You go get some rest. Tony? Show her to her room?”

I made it to the door before I turned around. “Hey.”

Nick looked up again. “Yes?”

“This isn’t anybody’s home, is it?”

“No. Not really.”

“Then how safe are we from vampires? Could they come in here even if no one invited them?”

Nick looked at me levelly for a long time before he answered.

“I don’t know, Elle. Right now, you and Malcolm have spent more time with the vampires than anyone else I know. Anyone alive, anyway.”

I nodded. That was the thing I liked best about Nick: he was always straight with me, even when he knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.

“But hey—don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll all be here while you sleep.”

Make that the second-best thing. My very favorite thing about Nick was that ever since I’d met him, he had been around to help me every single time I’d been in trouble.

* * *

I woke up the next morning—or afternoon, rather—with a start, wondering where I was. It took me a moment to decipher the sterile surroundings. Tiny room, white walls, mounted television. The shop. I remembered Tony showing me to this room the night before and giving me the final shot. He’d also handed me some sweatpants and a t-shirt.

“They’re probably too big,” he said, “but they’re bound to be more comfortable than that dress.”

I’d been glad for them; the thought of sleeping naked made me feel vulnerable. And it would be a long time before I felt comfortable with being vulnerable again.

I padded out of the room on bare feet and followed the smell of coffee out to the waiting room area. A little exploring revealed a small kitchenette off to the right of the reception desk. It held a sink, a coffeepot, a microwave, a one-burner hotplate, and a dorm-room-size refrigerator. Unlike most of the rooms in the suite, this one had a window looking out across the city. I hadn’t even been certain that we were in Manhattan until I saw the view. John stood over the counter with a measuring cup in one hand and a box of pancake batter mix in the other. He was reading the directions.

“Hey,” I said by way of greeting.

“Hey yourself. Sleep well?”

“Much better than I expected to.” I leaned against the edge of the counter. “You making breakfast?”

“Attempting to.” He smiled at me.

“Okay. So Nick’s the boss. Tony’s the doctor, and I’m guessing that Dominick’s the computer guy, right?”

“Right.”

“So what are you? Other than chauffeur. And den mother,” I said, pointing at the pancake mix.

“Chauffeur. Mechanic. Den Mother.” He opened the box and measured out some of the powdered mix. “And weapons specialist,” he added, pulling eggs and milk out of the refrigerator.

“So you’re really the guns guy.”

“Guns, crossbows, longbows, shortswords, broadswords; you name it, I’ve probably learned a little bit about it over the years.”

I suspected “a little bit” might be an understatement.

He finished stirring the batter and poured out several pancakes into the skillet.

“I’d offer to help,” I said, “but I’m a total disaster in the kitchen.”

“No problem. Want to serve the coffee as people get up?”

“Sure. How do you take yours?”

“Black. Nick takes sugar only, Dom takes milk only, and Tony won’t touch the stuff. He makes some vile-smelling tea. I suggest you just let him do it; don’t offer to help. You’d only be sorry.”

He pointed out the mugs and sugar and handed me the milk. I poured our two cups and handed John his, then poured a third.

“Know where Malcolm’s room is?” I asked.

“Third door on the right.”

“I’ll be back.”

I walked back down the hall with more than a little trepidation. I was worried about how Malcolm might handle the horrors he’d seen over the last couple of days. I was hoping that he wouldn’t blame me too much for not having told him sooner what we were really up against.

But I wouldn’t be able to hold it against him if he did.

I knocked softly on the door, then went in without waiting for an answer. Malcolm was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, curled up as tightly as possible. I could tell he wasn’t asleep.

“Hey, Malcolm,” I said softly. “I have coffee.”

He just curled tighter.

I sat down on the bed beside him.

“I think you’ll start feeling better if you sit up and drink this.”

There was a long silence. Then he slowly uncurled and gingerly eased himself to an upright position. But he didn’t take the coffee from my hand.

Nor did he look me in the eye. Instead, he stared at the floor.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever feel better again,” he said.

I leaned around so I could see his face.

“But coffee’s a start.”

He didn’t answer.

“Okay. I’m going to set it down on the bedside table here. I’ll be in the common room at the end of the hall. Just follow the smell of pancakes if you want to join us.”

I stood up to go, but he put his hand out and grabbed my wrist to stop me.

“Those really were vampires, weren’t they?”

“Yeah,” I said softly, “they really were.” I sat back down.

“At the end there, when you came in, I thought I was hallucinating. You came for me, right?”

“I did. I’m so sorry it took me so long, Malcolm. I didn’t know they had you.”

“But you knew what they were.” His hands played with the borrowed t-shirt he wore, rubbing the hem between his fingers.

“Yes.”

“Your boyfriend, too.”

“Ex. But yeah, him too.”

He looked up and met my eyes directly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought I was protecting you.” I wanted to say more, but anything else would sound like an attempt to justify myself. I didn’t want to do that. I’d been wrong, and if Malcolm thought so too, I wasn’t about to try to convince him otherwise.

He looked away again and the silence stretched out between us.

Finally, he broke it by saying, “At the end there, I thought I heard… Did you trade your blood for me?”

“Yes.” My voice was barely audible. I didn’t want to answer that, but Malcolm deserved the truth.

“So you know.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“The worst part of it is… the worst part…” his voice broke and be began to cry. “By the end, I was begging them to bite me.”

I wrapped my arms around him and he buried his face in my neck. I rocked him back and forth, whispering over and over, “It’s okay. You’re safe now. Shh. You’re safe.” We sat that way for a long time.

Chapter 18

Eventually Malcolm fell asleep again, still clutching me tightly. I gently disentangled myself from his grip, pulled a blanket over him, and went in search of Nick.

He was seated in a chair in the common room, sipping coffee and reading a newspaper. I sat down on the sofa across from him and leaned toward him, my elbows on my knees, hands clasped loosely in front of me.

“We are going to kill them, aren’t we?”

He folded the paper and set it aside.

“That’s certainly my plan. You want to join us when we do?”

“Absolutely.”

“How’s your friend?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Pretty shaken up at best. Permanently damaged at worst. I don’t even know how long they had him out there before Greg came to get me.”

“And how are you?” he asked.

I laughed bitterly. “I don’t know. Shaken up at best, damaged at worst. And they only had me for a few hours.”

“I think you’d better tell me everything.”

So I did. Even the parts I wanted to forget. He didn’t say anything, just leaned back against the chair and closed his eyes to listen.

When I got to the part about Deirdre’s bite, I faltered. I think that it would have been easier to tell had a male vampire been the one to elicit such a primal, physical response from me. I had never had any sexual interest in other women. I just wasn’t wired that way. The memory of Deirdre’s hands and mouth on my skin made me shudder. It also made me tremble. And it was the combination of those two things—repulsion and desire—that scared me the most.

In many ways, it was easier to talk about Greg’s bite. A few weeks before, I would have said that nothing could have been worse than being attacked by Greg. Now I knew better. I felt betrayed and violated by Greg, but I felt degraded by Deirdre. Humiliated. Ashamed of my own response.

I hated them both.

When I finally finished talking, Nick opened his eyes and began questioning me about the layout of the house. On one hand, I was relieved that he didn’t want to talk about the bites any more. On the other hand, I had questions that I needed answered.

“Wait.” I said. “I need to know something.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve read
Dracula
and I’ve seen all the horror movies. Am I going to turn into a vampire?”

“No. As far as we can tell, simply being bitten—even repeatedly—doesn’t turn humans into vampires.”

“Does it require some exchange of blood?”

“We don’t know. None of our people and none of our contacts has ever, to the best of my knowledge, seen a turning.”

“But it must happen quickly—otherwise, how was Greg able to leave the apartment so quickly the night he was turned?”

“Either that, or it’s a process that occurs over a period of several nights,” he said.

I thought for a moment. “That’s entirely possible. Greg often worked late at the office—at least, that’s what he said he was doing.” I felt much more comfortable talking about theoretical turning methods than I did discussing my own experiences of the night before. “So how do we kill them?” I asked.

“You realize, don’t you, that once we start killing them, there’s no stopping until we’ve wiped out every last one? You promised not to attack them. Killing even one of them will be tantamount to a declaration of war.”

My voice was grim. “Then I say we declare war.”

* * *

We spent most of the rest of that afternoon going over everything we knew. But first I took a shower in the converted bathroom in the middle of the hall and changed into yet another borrowed set of sweats. I spent a long time scrubbing every part of me that either Deirdre or Greg had touched.

I wished I could scrub my soul.

When I finally got back to the common room, Nick started by asking me to again tell him everything I remembered about the building Malcolm had been held in. He took notes while I spoke, and after a few minutes he called Dominick into the room.

Dom had some sort of architectural program that set up a blueprint of the building and eventually created a virtual representation of Deirdre’s mansion; we could “walk through” it room by room. I sat beside him and filled in the blank spots. I was amazed at how much I remembered once I saw the space again on the screen.

“No,” I said, “the ballroom wasn’t that close to the front door.”

Dom tapped a few keys and the screen re-loaded.

“Yeah. That’s it,” I said. “And the stairs curved more. Like that.”

“How many floors were there?” Dom asked.

“Three that I saw. There was another set of stairs that went down, though.”

Tony wandered through once to check on me and to give me some more antibiotics.

I kept waiting for Malcolm to come out of his room.

He never did.

At about 4:30, I suddenly remembered Millie.

“My cat!” I said, jumping up out of my chair. “I have to go home and feed my cat!”

“John’s already headed over there,” Nick said from his seat in the common room. “I sent him out to pick up supplies and told him to stop by your place. He’s going to change the locks and bring back some clothes for you. I’ll give him a call and tell him to gather up your pet, too. Anything else?”

“You kept a key to my place?” I asked.