The Vampiric Housewife (21 page)

    
Valerie laughed. “You certainly are adapting to the technology.”

    
He nodded vigorously. “Are we going to have to go to a human school?”

    
“I don’t think humans have classes at night.”

    
“Even better. Then I’ll definitely need a computer to learn. And there’s this thing called an Xbox. You play games on it. I saw a commercial where you got to shoot . . .” and he rambled on and on excited about all the new found toys. Valerie smiled.

   
John mindless wandered the many aisles of human food. God, they had a lot of different things to eat. Why did they need all that? He was glad to be a vampire and only drink blood. His hand touched the cell phone in his pocket. When he was supposed to be in the shower, he had tried to call Lisa. But a robot lady told him that he dialed the number wrong or that it was no longer in service. After three more attempts, he dialed the operator. She had never heard of Sangre Valley. He quickly apologized and hung up. He could write her a letter, but the mailman had probably never heard of Sangre Valley either. He really was never going to hear her voice again or get to say goodbye.

    
Amelia was looking at the magazine rack. Even humans had magazines like
Teen
and
Tiger Beat
, but the pop stars looked much different. The guys all looked girly and feminine, and the girls were boney and barely clad. Sixteen year olds seemed to have naked picture scandals or sex tapes floating around. The adult magazines weren’t any better.
Ten ways to a better Orgasm! Lose twenty pounds in three weeks! What he really thinks when you’re naked!
Then there were the far out tabloids, a cat that weighted one ton, George Washington was really a woman in drag, Obama was a space alien. Her eyes landed on one that had an exaggeration of a vampire on the cover.
Dracula living in Beverly Hills!
She picked it up. She knew it was fiction, but she was curious. A different kind of magazine caught her attention,
Teen Shonen
. It featured Japanese art in a comic book fashion called Manga. But they weren’t really comic books, something Amelia had never really been interested in, but more like graphic novels. She liked the art. It was like something she had never been exposed to before.

    
“Can I get these?” she asked her mom shyly.

    
“Sure,” Valerie said without looking at the magazines. “John, do you want anything?”

    
“No,” he said sullenly.

    
Valerie paid for the meat and the kids’ items, and they stepped out into the night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    
He had been stalking his dinner, a prostitute rotting away from the inside out, track marks up and down her arms, a body that was merely skin over bones. Her pelvic bones protruded beneath her filthy, glittering gold mini skirt, every rib countable through her thin halter top. It was her liver. Too much alcohol. Too many pills. Too many drugs. He could smell it on her, death. She was trying to trick, earn money for her next and final high, but her skin was jaundice, her hair a wild, frizzy afro, her step a painful stumble. No one would touch her. No one would pay for her. Even though humans could not smell the death lingering on her, they could sense it. A day, two at the most, and she would be a corpse. She would suffer in those two days except that he would end her life tonight.

    
That had been the plan anyway. But then he watched the family exit the market. He had been alerted that they were headed in this direction, but he hadn’t been tracking them, not yet. In their dated clothes, abnormally striking beauty, and metallic scent, there was no doubt that they were the Murray family.

    
The mother looked disoriented as they hit the street. Her anxious violet eyes flashed up. He had never seen violet eyes before, not on a human or a vampire. Nor had he ever seen eyes so dazzling. She was a stunning sight with her alabaster skin and reddish brown hair framing a classic face, her long, lean body beneath the blue dress. She looked up and down the sidewalk as if to get her bearings. She began to head north, but the eldest boy tugged at her arm and began to lead her south. From the other side of the street, he pursued them. They kept close together, the kids looking around, taking everything in, but the mother looked worried, checking the street signs, constantly searching around her for a familiar sign.

    
They were lost. And worse, they were being followed. Half a block behind them trailed two vampires. They must have caught the family’s unique scent. A male and a female. They were stalking . . . not necessarily for blood but curiosity. The family smelled of vampires—a blend of metal and the night’s cold, but they had beating hearts, they were alive. He had been prepared for that. No other vampire would dream such a thing was possible—a living, breathing vampire. Curiosity was not generally good among vampires. Thankfully they weren’t Venjamin’s men.

    
The
Don’t Walk
sign blinked red and the family stopped with the rest of the crowd. The vampires were advancing, their noses almost as active as a snake’s tongue. He could tell they didn’t believe what their senses were telling them. The mother didn’t look right. She hadn’t been eating enough and now the smell of so many humans was making her dizzy. She was swooning. The smallest child was studying the pretty woman next to him. He was sniffing her like a dog. His eyes, the same unusual color as his mother’s, were glued to her braceleted wrist. He was going to bite. Ethan couldn’t let that happen. It would not only call too much attention to the family, but to their own species.

    
With speed assigned only to his kind, he grabbed the child by the back of his shirt just as he exposed his fangs and went in for the bite.

    
“Hey!” the kid protested as the human girl distanced herself from them. Just then the mother’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she would have fallen on the pavement except Ethan swooped in to catch her. Now all three children were staring at him with apprehension. The two vampires had stopped dead in their tracks. Ethan gave them a menacing stare that conveyed that the strange group of vampires belonged to him and to back off. Slowly they retreated, but the rumors would spread.

    
“I’m here to help,” he told the kids. But Ethan didn’t have a gentle manner about him. They looked no more at ease.

    
“Did my Dad send you to find us?” the oldest one asked. The file had said his name was John.

   
“No,” he said and turned his attention back to the mother—Valerie—as she began to come to. When those rare eyes opened and looked up at him, there was a moment—no more than a split second though it felt like eternity—when the world around them dematerialized. The noises of the city, the buildings, cars, and people, they all vanished. Even his own body departed, and he fell into those violet eyes with a feeling of connection, a link that he had not known except once before. He blinked and the moment was gone. Terror filled her face. Quickly she pulled away and gathered her children around her. He could tell she wanted to call out for help, that in her old home she could have done so. Thankfully she had enough sense not to.

    
“Who are you?” she demanded placing her body between him and her children.

    
“I’m here to help you.”

    
“Dad didn’t send him,” John said.

    
“What do you want?” she asked.

    
“We need to get out of public view. You had two vampires stalking you. No, they weren’t working for Venjamin. But you aren’t like other vampires. You stand out, and they will come back with others to figure out just what you are. They’ll probably use their teeth to do that.”

    
“What do you know about Venjamin?”

    
“More than you do.”

Chapter Nineteen

The Blood and Guts of It All

    
The five of them stuffed into a booth in a grubby diner. Ethan ordered coffee and Cokes even though they wouldn’t drink them. It was part of blending in, he informed them. He had wanted her to take him back to their hideout where he could include Charlie in the discussion, but Valerie refused. She told him that she felt safer in public. Foolish of her, but a natural instinct he supposed. So far he was impressed by her. She was naïve but not stupid. And no push over. Not like any fifties housewife he had ever met. And he had lived through the fifties.

    
“Who are you?” she demanded. She didn’t ask him questions. She demanded things from him. It didn’t bother him. Instead he respected it.

    
“My name is Ethan Shanahan. I was told to keep an eye out for you, and if I found you I was to keep you safe and away from Venjamin.”

    
“How do you know about Venjamin? Are you from Sangre Valley?”

    
“No. But Venjamin’s experimental city is not a secret to all vampires. He . . . recruits us, made-vampires. Not everyone joins. There are vampires out there that do not like the idea of a human experimenting on us.”

    
“So you work for an organization that’s trying to stop Venjamin?” Amelia asked.

    
“Something like that.”

    
“How do I know this isn’t a trick, that you don’t secretly work for Venjamin?” Valerie asked.

    
Ethan couldn’t help but smile though not kindly. “Venjamin’s men almost caught you once. He wouldn’t risk trying to trick you into surrendering. He certainly wouldn’t have wasted his time when force would accomplish the task much quicker. I wish we could do this with your husband present. He would understand some things that you wouldn’t.” He could see from her expression that he had said the wrong thing. Now, she really wouldn’t budge.

   
 
“Dad is going to worry about us,” John reminded her, and Ethan watched her become even more heated. “We were just supposed to go to the market. We’ve been gone a long time.”

    
“I told you, we need cell phones!” Harry said.

    
Valerie looked at her son then turned her eyes back to Ethan. “I want to know about the experiment and Venjamin. What is his goal? Why does he want me and my family so badly?”

    
“I’m sure your husband explained that to you. So let me tell you what I’m going to do for you,” he said roughly. His patience was beginning to wane. “I’m going to get you and your family out of whatever motel or hotel you’re hiding in because if my people knew you were coming to New York, you can bet that Venjamin’s people do too. I stumbled upon you without even trying. Venjamin is trying. They will find you. Probably tonight. Once I have you in a secure location, I will obtain identification for all five of you—birth certificates, driver’s licenses, passports. Then we get on a plane and get you as far away from Venjamin as possible. He knows how Charlie thinks. He has his best friend and former hunting partner searching for him. It was stupid of you to come to New York. The other vampire tracking you has tasted your—“ He turned and looked at Amelia. “—blood and therefore has a connection to you which makes you easier to find. You don’t know how to blend into the human world. Charlie is doing a piss poor job at teaching you. So instead of sitting in this diner while Venjamin gets closer by the second, let’s get your husband and get your family to a safe refuge.”

    
Valerie’s head was spinning. She needed to feed. She needed to rest. How could she make the decision to trust this stranger? It could be a trap to lead them to Charlie. But Charlie wasn’t the one that Venjamin really wanted. And as experience told her, he did prefer force. The children were looking to her. John wanted his father. He still trusted Charlie despite all the lies. If Valerie had bought her husband’s lies for all those years, how could she know if a stranger was lying to her? But like the rest of her life, what choice did she have?

    
“Okay,” she surrendered.