Only Human (35 page)

He drinks from sixteen to twenty ounces at a time, how often he feeds depends on his level of activity. If he’s really active he may feed twice a day, really sedentary and he can go about three days. He’s currently working as a private investigator, which works out well since he can tell when people are lying or not. He’s incredibly strong, has great hearing, extraordinary night vision, a strong sense of smell, and is hard to kill.

He bought one of the historic homes near the University and is in the process of restoring it. He’s one hundred and seventeen years old, a baby compared to most of his friends. He wouldn’t tell me the circumstances of how he was turned, but explained the mechanics of it — the vampire must feed at least ten ounces of vampire blood to the human, though more is better, and then completely drain the human. If it works, the vampire rises at the next sunset, assuming there’s been at least five or six hours since the draining.

He can’t fly, but he can jump straight up around three stories, and he can jump down seven or eight stories with no problem. He might be able to jump from higher, but he hasn’t tried it since seven stories jars him pretty bad and eight stories hurts.

Alex doesn’t have any magical abilities, everything he does is a physical thing — smell, hearing, rapid healing.

As far as he knows, he can repair anything except having his head taken off, being set on fire, or silver entering his body when he can’t quickly get it out. A stake through the heart just pisses him off. Holy items were no problem to him, either, but silver is, again, very bad.

Part of me was impressed he trusted me enough to basically tell him how to kill him, but common sense told me he knew if I could kill Surtr, I could kill him. Telling me these things didn’t give me a leg up.

My thoughts also jumped off on a tangent, once again wondering why silver was bad to so many supernatural species. It’s bad to both types of vampire as well as most of the shapeshifters.

I brought my thoughts back to the present moment and kept up with the questions. Once again, Alex answered everything, and I learned he doesn’t have a problem with garlic more than any other food, and the only food that makes blood taste bad is asparagus. The look on his face made me want to laugh and hug him, but I kept asking questions.

He doesn’t exactly have mental powers, but he can use his voice and eyes combined to make humans want to do what he says. “I think,” he told me, “it’s a bit like what cats do to birds, or what some snakes do to their prey. My eyes alone won’t do it, and neither will my voice, but when used together they are a powerful combination.”

I needed to know if it would work on me. “Try it. See if you can affect me, please.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to do that, Kirsten.”

He looked genuinely distressed so I let it drop, but decided either he or someone else would be trying it at some point — I needed to know if I was susceptible.

Then he wanted to ask me questions. I told him I can kill things from the demons’ plane of existence, not just send them back, and then I explained why I probably wouldn’t be doing it too much anymore. He asked what else I could do, and I told him I’d learned to manipulate energies in a lot of ways.

I reminded him of how awed I’d been when I first found out I could make someone’s headache stop hurting by manipulating their aura or their energies, and then told him it’d taken me a few months to realize I could also
give
people a headache.

He asked who had taught me my more advanced skills, I told him I wasn’t comfortable talking about it, and he accepted it without argument.

“Surtr injured you,” he said, looking more serious than he had since he walked in my door. “You sustained a lot of damage, and Aaron gave you something to drink. I can tell you what it was.”

“If you can, that’d be great. I’m tired of being kept in the dark.”

“My blood, or the blood of any vampire like me, has healing properties in it for humans. He gave you vampire blood.”

I absorbed that a minute, and then had to make an effort to keep from gagging at the memory of drinking it. “Won’t that mean I can be turned into a vampire?”

“Only if your blood is drained in the next few days.”

“That’s why I can’t go to Abbott’s house? Because his vampires will smell the other vampire’s blood in me?”

“Yes.”

“Do the two races of vampires get along?”

“In this territory, mostly, but there’s still some antagonism here and there. Evolution gave them magical abilities, but knocks them out at dawn and gravely injures them in sunlight. We can be awake and even outside during the day, but we aren’t as strong and don’t have any magical abilities. They’re jealous of us because we aren’t banished from the sun, and we’re jealous of them for some of their abilities.”

“So, Abbott won’t want to be around me when I’m smelling like your kind of vampire?”

He tilted his head and looked…upset? I couldn’t be sure, but his next words clued me in. “Are you romantically involved with Abbott?”

Unsure of what to say, I opted for the truth. “I’ve only recently met him, but it seems to be the direction he and I are headed.”

“I don’t believe Abbott will have a problem, but some of his people will.”

“But, he’s the boss, right?” Everything suddenly fell into place and I added, “Wait, you’re saying it could cause political problems for him?”

“Yes.”

“Even though it was a one-time thing that apparently saved my arm? From what I’ve been told, and what I remember, I’d have lost my arm if they hadn’t given it to me.”

“You know Abbott is the one who made the arrangement for the blood, right? His blood won’t do it, and he asked one of his friends to meet Aaron and give it to him.”

“No, they didn’t tell me. Should I thank the vampire who, err,
donated
?”

Alex laughed, and I remembered once again what good friends we’d been, and how much I’d missed him. “You can if you want,” he said with a smile, “it’s someone I’d like you to meet. He’s a good friend of mine.”

My mind was spinning, this was Alex, my dear sweet Alex, and he’s friends with someone who is friends with Abbott. And Abbott and Alex are vampires, but different kinds of vampires.

Out of the blue, I remembered my vision quest. I’d hiked more than five miles into a wilderness area with two bottles of water, stayed on a small cliff shelf for three days, and then hiked out. On the final day, hiking out, I kept falling, and my hands were bloody and hurting. Someone walked beside me with their arm around me for probably a mile, and in my altered state I’d known that whoever it was wasn’t human, but wasn’t spirit, either. Now, I was betting it was Alex.

“My vision quest, you helped me walk out?”

He nodded. “Yes, and you saw me as a monster.”

“No, I saw you as other-than-human. This isn’t the first time you’ve referred to yourself as a monster. Do you regret being turned?”

He suddenly looked hard, like he was such good friends with this slice of anger, he isn’t even angry anymore about it. “I was turned without my consent. On the third date with a beautiful woman she turned me into a vampire, a monster. She put her blood in the wine without telling me, and when I’d had enough, she drained me.”

“That must have been terrible.”

He didn’t respond, so I went on. “I can understand your anger, and your first impressions of being a monster when you weren’t prepared for the change. However, you’ve been a vampire for so long, have you not been able to see yourself as something other than a monster?”

His voice was so low, so quiet, I had to strain to hear him. “But I
am
a monster. I did some horrible things in the early part of the last century, and then I spent a long time trying to figure out who I want to be. You met me while I was figuring it out.” He brought his voice back to a normal range. “All of the meditating and soul searching, I finally decided to use my powers for good.” He grinned. “That’s why I’m a private detective now.”

“I guess Aaron kind of went the same route, with his security work.”

He nodded.

“Your... the woman who turned you... I’m assuming you broke it off with her? You weren’t required to stay with her or anything, were you?”

“My maker, she’s called my maker.” He leaned against the back of the sofa, looked out the window a brief second, and I had the feeling it hurt his eyes and he’d done it to remind himself it would hurt.

He looked back to me and continued. “Since I was the third person she’d turned without consent and
her
maker didn’t approve, he killed her after she turned me. He then stepped into the role of my maker and taught me, though by then she’d already done a good bit of damage by teaching me bad feeding habits. By the time he realized what had happened and intervened, it was almost too late to save me.”

A few more things clicked into place and I touched his arm as I said, “I’d like to help you see yourself as the gentle soul you’ve become and not the monster she tried to turn you into.” He shook his head and I added, “Assuming you came here for my skills as a therapist, and not just as a way to get to talk to me?”

“I don’t want a therapist-patient relationship with you. I want our friendship back.”

The timer on my clipboard blinked at me to let me know we had five minutes left in the session. I thought about the Alex who had walked me out of the woods. The Alex who had taken me out for my twenty-fifth birthday and I’d gotten so drunk I couldn’t walk, and then he’d held my head while I puked later that night, and then cleaned me up and put me to bed without laying a hand on me. Yeah, I knew him. No matter what he was, he was good, and he was my friend, and I was glad to have him back in my life.

“We have about five minutes left and then I have to prepare for my next patient.” I pulled a card out and wrote my cell phone number and email address on the back and handed it to him. “When I’m at work, voice calls go straight to voice mail and text messages come down but don’t beep or vibrate to alert me. I check for text messages between clients but don’t usually check voice mail until the end of the day. Don’t be a stranger, I’d like to see you again. Soon.”

We hugged and said goodbye.

I sent a text message to Abbott telling him I thought I understood some things now, and I’d be at the theater that evening while Lauren practiced. I hadn’t tried to contact him in days — since the night he’d asked me not to go to the coterie house — and he hadn’t attempted contact with me, either. I’d give it one more shot, and then the next move was up to him.

Chapter Twenty-Four

After work I met my parents and Lauren at Panera Bread and then let Lauren drive us to the theater. She’d have to drive downtown eventually, so I was letting her take the wheel when traffic wasn’t too bad.

I had nothing I needed to do downtown, and if I went home I’d have to turn around and come back within twenty minutes of arriving, so I took up my post at the back of the theater.

No tablet this time, I just closed my eyes to think.

I’d killed someone who was once considered either a god or a giant, depending who was telling the story. Was that the way he’d said it? Close enough. Either way, it scared the bejeebers out of me to realize I had that kind of power. Also, having someone I was already close to and had met long ago turn out to be in this web of supernaturals I’d fallen into was just too coincidental.

But I trusted Alex, and didn’t think he was part of some nefarious scheme.

Aaron, though, was falling into a different category. While I didn’t think he’d ever hurt me on purpose, I was worried he’d get me hurt by keeping information from me. It pissed me off when he didn’t tell me things, and the fact he’d given me vampire blood seemed like information he should’ve conveyed.

I was deep in thought when someone sat down beside me. I hadn’t heard them walk up, which was disturbing, but I was so tired I didn’t have the energy to be scared. I opened my eyes to Abbott, and smiled. I was happy to see him, and his return smile told me he was glad I was happy to see him.

“My darling, how do you feel?” It shouldn’t have, but my heart soared at the possessive pronoun.

“I’m good, though I understand I probably don’t smell right to you at the moment.”

“Not true. You do not smell bad to me, just different than you usually do. Who have you been talking to? Aaron was not ready for you to know this yet.”

“Damn Aaron and his secrets.” I kept my voice low because sounds travel in the theatre, but I was royally pissed. “He’s going to get me killed by not giving me information I need one of these days.”

“That is between you and Aaron.”

“Thank you for arranging for the blood. My arm and I both appreciate it.”

He smiled and kissed my hand. “Give me a moment. I would like to ensure we are not overheard.”

The air around us changed, and I sensed something around us. Not trapping us, but…perhaps something like a dampener?

“What did you do?”

“I put us in a ball of energy. It will muffle our conversation and assure no one outside the barrier can make out individual words.”

“Can you teach me to do it?”

“Later. I ask again, who have you been talking to?”

I took a deep breath and plunged into the story. “Back in my twenties, when I was finding myself, I had a good friend who was finding himself at the same time. We explored the Native American stuff together, went to the same meditation group, that kind of thing. He was a very good friend, and then he had a job change and had to move to Portland Oregon and I never saw him again. Until this morning, and he looked exactly the same as he did fifteen years ago.”

“Alex. You are friends with Alexander Jones?”

“Yes.”

He looked pained. “Tell me, were you romantically involved with him?”

“No, it never went that direction. We never even kissed, not the first time. We were just great friends.”

He looked relieved. “In that case, I am pleased you have another ally in the supernatural world. With the speed with which you are gaining enemies, you’re going to need all the allies you can collect.”