Double Take - A.J. Cole (classic fiction txt) 📗

far enough into the realm of realization for her to get momentarily grossed out by the fact that she was sucking on her despised cousin’s neck. She pulled away, licking her lips to hide any telltale blood. “Just being affectionate to a relative I hardly ever see,” she replied.

Trina, meanwhile, opened her mouth to say something, but instead fell to the floor in an unconscious heap.

“Trina!” The girl’s mother went to Trina’s side, giving Arissa her opportunity.

Had Vlad not entered the room a few minutes later, the woman would have been headed for the family mausoleum. “Sip, Arissa! Not guzzle!”

Detaching her lips from the woman’s neck, she sat back on her heels. “Fine. If this is all I can have, may we go now? There must be a hundred jugulars out there with my name on them.”

Vlad didn’t answer right away. He was too busy keeping Arissa’s relatives alive. When he looked like he was sure he’d given the older woman enough blood to heal and restore her, he took care of Trina. Once this was accomplished, he pulled Arissa to the window and put out the lights in the room.

A few seconds later, Trina and her mother regained consciousness and jumped up, confused about having been lying on the floor in the dark.

“What happened?” Trina demanded, staring around, wild-eyed. She looked directly at her cousin and Vlad, but couldn’t see them in the dark, even though they could see her perfectly. Vlad whispered something, his eyes it by a slight glow, and then he fell silent, this behavior lasting maybe a tenth of a second.

“I – I think the lights went out,” said her mother uncertainly. “And then – then I came in to check on you – or – yes, that’s it. And we bumped into each other in the dark. How silly!” She let out a laugh that sounded more like a goose honking at its young, and started groping for the door.

Moving so fast that the curtains didn’t even twitch with their passing, Arissa and Vlad whooshed out the window, landing upright on the lawn with ease. They shared a grin before whizzing off again into the night.

By the end of which, Arissa was fully satiated and ready for some real fun.

“What do you mean, ‘real fun’?” asked Vlad when she mentioned it.

She frowned. “You know, I have no idea. I only know I’m not at all tired and feel like doing something, anything.”

“Good! That means I can take you with me to share one of my secret pleasures. Hope you’re up for it!”

“Midnight Bowling?” Arissa practically shrieked a few minutes later as he led her into the cavernous, noisy building with gaudy lighting and the aroma of feet.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Oh, geez. Nothing, Vlad. Nothing at all. Other than that besides the geek factor I’m a terrible bowler.”

“No, Arissa, dear, you’re a werepire in vampire phase. You can do everything well tonight.”

And as it turned out, he was right.

EIGHT

 

 

The actual full moon only lasted a matter of minutes, rather like a total eclipse. But to the naked human eye it appeared to sustain its fullness throughout the night, and into the next night as well. But for both the werewolf and the werepire, only during the first night in this phase did the moon have any effect. Thus, Tuesday morning found Arissa spazzing out of bed as usual when the alarm went off. The fangs were gone, she soon discovered, even if their retraction left her gums a tad sore. Other than that and the jumbled memories of an extremely weird night, it was as if nothing unusual had occurred.

Satisfied that no one was hanging around in her room watching her sleep, or in the other rooms leaving annoying notes and letters, she got ready for the day. After a normal breakfast, she grabbed her things and opened the front door.

She screamed.

A man was lying right outside the door. A naked man. His being curled up was the only reason the full-frontal thing wasn’t adding to the horror of the moment. Arissa, recovering her ability to breathe, gave him an experimental poke with her toe.

He moaned and started to uncurl.

“No!” She yelled. “Don’t do that – don’t move!”

“Huh?” He froze and opened one eye with which he peered up at her. The eye widened, the brow above it shooting into the stratosphere. He muttered an unacceptable word. He cleared his throat. “You have a blanket or something?”

“You have an excuse?”

“Wha – oh. For not being, er, dressed and all that?”

“Yeah. And all that.”

“I’m sorry, but… may I come in?”

“Are you out of your mind? Wait – what am I saying? Of course you’re out of your mind. I mean, what kind of guy who isn’t out of his mind would go to sleep in front of some girl’s apartment, totally… undressed and – and – I’m babbling, aren’t I. Crap! Who the hell are you?”

Covering the most vulnerable part of himself with both hands, he sat up. “Did anything bite you lately?”

Arissa was a smart young lady, able to draw conclusions quickly. Naked guy at her front door asking about her being bitten…“You.”

He used another bad word. “I knew it. Look, I’m really sorry.”

“Right. Are you back to finish the job?”

“No. Of course not. By the way, and if it’s any consolation, you have one hell of a kick – it took days before I could walk normally again.”

She smiled.

“Yeah, thought you might feel that way.” He stood, keeping himself covered, and looked down at her, frowning as if trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t end in him either being killed or arrested, but did a double-take and looked more closely at her eyes. “Are you kidding me? A vampire bit you, too?”

“Oval pupils gave that away, did they? And yes. Right after you took off. Lucky, lucky me. Allow me to introduce myself – I’m Arissa Martin, Werepire-At-Large. And you, my naked friend, are my werewolf mentor. In fact, that’s the only thing that’s keeping me from kicking you out on the street without the benefit of covering.” She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Wow. I had no idea.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

He shrugged and began to move his hands, but returned them to their jock-strap-with-fingers position at the last second. “Um… I don’t know. Or, well, I didn’t until you told me that. My instincts must have led me here, because normally I’d never seek out a, a, er, you know – ”

“A victim? Why not? Wouldn’t you want to introduce yourself as Leader of the Pack or something?”

“I – no! No, see, I’m not the leader, or as Hollywood has decided to call it, the ‘alpha’. I’m just a stinkin’ werewolf.”

“Ha! ‘Stinkin’ is right, buddy – when you’re in that form you smell really, really bad, if I remember correctly.”

“Not true. I usually smell no worse than a dog; the only reason I was kinda ripe that night was because when I was running through the woods looking for a snack, I accidentally stepped on a skunk, and it let me know exactly how it felt about that.”

She gave him a crazy look. “What? Who steps on a skunk? I mean, that had to take some mad skills, and frankly, I’d say you deserved… how’d you get rid of the smell?”

“Tomato juice. It seems to be the only thing that really works. And a boatload of disinfectant.” He shuddered.

Arissa sighed, feeling the beginnings of pity for this poor young man. Who, now that she wasn’t feeling quite so inclined to stab him with her shoe, she had to admit was quite good-looking. As was Leander. As was Vlad. This was getting ridiculous.

She stepped back from the door and waved him inside. As he passed, she didn’t even try to resist checking out his backside. She smiled.

“If you say I have a cute ass, I’ll hurt you,” he muttered, apparently aware of her gaze.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. It’s sexy, not cute.” She went to the bedroom after telling him to stay right where he was, and came out a second later with her quilt. “Here.” She threw it at him and gestured toward the sofa. “Make yourself comfortable while I arrange to get you some clothes.”

“How are you going to do that?”

By conjuring up your tailor who lives in the same region of hell you came from! her mind shrieked at him, startling her badly. Her eyes bugged out for a second and she turned away, taking out her cell phone. What the heck was that? Arissa wondered, waiting for Leander to respond.

“Hey, Riss! How’d it go last night?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it was good. I can tell you about it later. Right now I have a bigger problem.” She glanced over her shoulder at the werewolf, realizing she didn’t even know his name. “Remember you told me my werewolf mentor had to be the one who bit me, but that no one knew who he was or where to find him? Well, he found me. I opened my door to go to class, and there he was, naked as the day he was born, sleeping on my doormat. He needs clothes, I need to go to school, and I think you or Vlad should get over here ASAP. Looks like he’s about your size, maybe a bit… buffer? A little taller, too. I gave him a blanket and he’s – oh, for heaven’s sake, what is it now?” Someone had rung her doorbell while she was on that last sentence. She really hoped it wasn’t her mother.

The bell sounded again.

“Hang on,” she muttered into the phone. Giving the werewolf a slight glare, she went to the door.

“How’s this?” asked Leander, holding out a set of folded clothing.

She screamed.

 

*****

 

“According to Vlad, she does that a lot.”

“I can hear you, you know!”

The werewolf, who had finally introduced himself as Blaine Worthington, finished getting dressed right as Arissa came back into the living room carrying a tray of food.

“By the way,” she continued, setting the tray down on the part of the coffee table that wasn’t cluttered with magazines, books and an empty personal-size pizza box, “I probably wouldn’t have to scream so much if you guys would stop doing stuff that startles me.”

“Guess you startle easily.”

She glared at Blaine, wondering, as with Vlad, if that was really his name, or if he was an actor or something. “No, I’m just not used to finding naked guys on my doorstep, vampires watching me sleep, and… oh, forget it.” She threw herself onto the chair across from the sofa and waved at the tray. “Eat.”

“You sound like my grandmother.” Blaine grinned and reached for a sandwich.

“Oh yeah? How often did you make her miss school?”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know. I was simply making a point.”

Leander picked up one of the two soda cans sweating on the tray and popped it open. “Well! Now that you’re part of this, Worthington, I guess we’ll have to go see Kyria.”

“I figured. How’s your mom, by the way?”

“Cool. I finally convinced her to tell my step-father what was going on, and he was, well, he wasn’t okay with it, but he handled it better than I thought he would.”

“Hold it.