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

You two know each other?” Arissa was a tiny bit outraged. “And how could your mother… didn’t you say you were over four hundred years old?”

“When she found out what had happened to me, she demanded that she be turned, too. Said she couldn’t stand the thought of me living for so long alone.” He sighed. “What a mess. The vampire who bit me hadn’t gone too far, mainly because she was busy being snarled at by the werewolf in an alley. Anyhow, she – ”

“Stop. I’m really confused now. No snide remarks about that, either, wolf-boy.”

Blaine closed his mouth and took another bite of his sandwich.

“Okay. Guess we never got into details, did we.” Leander took a quick sip of his soda.

“No. I was too busy screaming and fainting, remember?”

Blaine choked.

“All right. It’s kinda complicated, but not too different from your own experience.” He took another sip and sat back. “The brief version is this: I was out with friends one night – ”

“Where? I mean, where are you from? Where did this happen?”

“Athens.”

“You’re Greek?”

“Yes.”

That explained the bod and the name. “Okay, go on.”

“Right. So anyway, I was out with friends. We were about to go raid the local tavern, but I dropped my money. We only had coins back then, and they scattered all over the street, so my friends told me to catch up, that they didn’t feel like waiting. When I was reaching for the last of the coins, I sensed someone behind me and stood up.

“A woman’s voice whispered to me not to turn around, and being young and incredibly stupid, I figured she was going to… erm, anyhow, what she did was bite me. Said she just needed a quick sip. Then she was gone, and I was left standing there, dizzy, feeling a bit sick, and then out of nowhere, this huge wolf came crashing into me. It knocked me down and went for my throat. I turned my head so I wouldn’t have to see it kill me, and only felt its teeth in my neck and shoulder.

“And then, to my complete surprise, it started acting like it was coughing up a fur ball or something, and jumped off. Before I could do anything else, the vampire was back. She bit her wrist and started pouring her blood down my throat. I remember thinking it was disgusting. Anyhow, she told me I had to go home, that I was now a werepire, and that someone would be contacting me. To my amazement, I had begun to heal almost immediately and was able to ask her what she was talking about. She kept looking over her shoulder – I found out later that she wanted to make sure the werewolf didn’t take off before she could track it and make sure it, uh, did the right thing once it was human again.

“Anyhow, she said that I would turn into a vampire on nights of the full moon and that I would live for hundreds of years. And then she was gone.”

“And you went home, and then?”

“I told my mother what had happened. At first she didn’t believe me – thought I was already drunk. But then I showed her the holes in my shirt, and pulled it back so she could watch the torn flesh knitting back together. Needless to say, she believed me after that, but then she freaked and said no way was I going to go through all that time by myself, and ran out the door to find the vampire.” He sighed again. “I love my mom. I really do. But as a mother, she didn’t realize what a horrible future she was describing – a young man stuck living with his mother for centuries. What are you laughing at?”

Arissa had doubled over in silent hysterics. When she could breathe again, she pointed at Leander and gagged out, “You – you’re a – a dweeb! A mamma’s boy werepire! Ack!”

That last sound was her reaction to Leander suddenly yanking her out of the chair, then sitting on top of her on the floor. “I am not a mama’s boy!” he grated.

She snorted, calm despite her position of disadvantage. “Then why are you reacting so violently?”

His nostrils flared. “Fine. I agree it looks like that. And I hate it, okay? Fact is, she came to grips long ago with the reality that I had to live my own life without her up my butt every minute of every day. She finally remarried, a bunch of times, actually. My father died of old age about three hundred and eighty-five years ago, and her latest husband adopted me, so he’s my step-father. And yes, I know Blaine. We all know each other, remember?”

“I do now. By the way,” she asked with false sweetness, “are you planning to sit on me all day?”

“What?”

“Get off me, Leander. You’re squishing me.”

“Oh.” He leaned forward, gave her a brief, hot kiss on the mouth and stood up.

She didn’t move. “What was that for?”

“Felt like it. You’re gorgeous. Sorry.”

She tapped her fingernails on the floor, pursing her lips. “I see.” Not that she’d minded. After all, she adored Leander, or thought she did. It was his dimples, really. Still. He could have asked, or chosen a more appropriate time. A more appropriate reason, too. Ah, well. She had time to help him with that. Centuries, it seemed. At least he had gotten past the angst of being celibate well enough to kiss her without doing anything more intrusive. Or painful.

“Riss?”

“Hm?”

“You gonna stay there all day?”

“I might.”

“Is she always this odd?” asked Blaine.

“I can hear you, you know.”

“Sorry, uh, Arissa, yes?”

“Yes.” Enough of this. She sat up and drew up her knees, clasping her hands at her ankles, and then stared at the two mythical pieces of eye candy cluttering up her sofa. With all this time at her disposal, why couldn’t she go out with both? she wondered. With Vlad, too. The possibilities made her smile. She stood. “Finish up. I have stuff to do, you guys, and really need to throw you out.”

They complied, thanking her when they were done, and headed for the door.

“I’ll talk to Kyria,” said Leander, one hand on the doorknob. “She’ll want you, Worthington and Vlad to get together soon, I believe. See you at school.” He gave her another quick, scorching kiss, surprising her again, and went out.

“Hey, sorry about all this,” Blaine said, the apology in his voice as real as his words. “I spent this past month trying to remember what I did, who I bit, and figuring out what to do about it. I probably should have just gone to the group and asked. Guess that makes me an idiot.”

“Well, maybe a little.” His distress looked so genuine, she couldn’t bring herself to excoriate his behavior any more than he already was. “Anyhow, I’m glad we finally met and can get this mentoring thing taken care of.”

“Me, too.” Then, like Leander, he planted one hell of a kiss on her lips and was gone before she could either thank him or kick him again.

“Wow. Hey, Mom, guess what happened to me today!” She shook her head and went back for her purse and books, realized she had totally missed her one class of the day, and grabbed only her purse. “May as well go do some shopping before work.” With a bemused smile, she went out, locked the door, and left.

NINE

 

“We tend to have furry children. Strong and healthy, but furry.”

“No zombies, though?”

“Not unless the former sex-partner of the child of two werepires happens to get a werewolf pregnant, but the resulting offspring aren’t exactly zombies. They’re usually just hairy, double-jointed narcoleptics.”

Arissa gave Blaine the look of doubt she reserved for people she suspected were pulling her leg. “Um, Kyria, is he joking?”

“Not even a little,” said the priestess. “I’ve met the only four in existence. It was, to say the least, a disconcerting experience.”

The Saturday after her first encounter with Blaine had brought with it a summons from the VP for both of them to meet at her home. She lived in a three-story house that on the outside looked like it belonged in a Vincent Price movie – dark grey clapboard and shingles with a black slate roof, crumbling gingerbread trim on the overhangs, dark shutters hanging at odd angles at the windows, the paint on them peeling, several spooky-looking turrets with creaking weathervanes that all spun in different directions, and about eight or nine chimneys. On Halloween, no one even ventured onto the street where it sat like an architectural vulture, much less attempted to navigate its rotted steps to reach the flaky black front door.

Kyria told them she had spent a small fortune getting it to look like that. She’d even had false windows set into the frames to block all views of what was really inside.

Upon arriving, Arissa had met Blaine at the wrought-iron front gate attached to two huge, weathered brick pillars, atop which sat pissed-off-looking gargoyles. During the winter holidays, she later found out, Kyria would tie festive red bows around their scaly necks, making them look simultaneously pissed-off and embarrassed.

But on this Saturday morning, they only glared down at the two visitors; it wasn’t hard to imagine them rolling their bugged-out stone eyes.

Before Arissa could try opening the gate, a voice had come out of one of the gargoyles, startling the girl so badly she almost screamed. “Welcome, dears,” said Kyria, sounding like she was in a tunnel. “I’ll open the gate, then I want you to stand behind the pillars. When they open, step in.”

Judging by his eyebrows – one raised, the other scrunched – Arissa concluded that Blaine had never been here either.

Kyria, it seemed, was either eccentric or maybe paranoid. She’d had an elevator built into each pillar by which the visitor was brought down to an underground passage running parallel with the front walk, and which ended at another elevator, this one old-fashioned and elegant, that brought them up into the house.

And what a house it was! The elevator opened onto a foyer with pink and white marble floors, sheer taupe drapes held aside by black satin bows at the arched doorways on either side, a sweeping staircase covered in thick, cream-colored carpeting, the walls paneled with what Arissa recognized as pecan wood. Gold-framed portraits and landscapes decorated these walls, all of it lit by the most beautiful chandelier the girl had ever seen, the crystals so sparkly, she wondered if they were actual diamonds.

As soon as they’d stepped out of the elevator, an elderly gentleman had appeared from one of the doorways, everything about him – his clothing, his stance, his demeanor – shouting, “Butler!” Intoning the words “this way, please,” he’d led them through several rooms, all of them filled with rich but tasteful decor, some of the items looking like they belonged in a museum.

Their brief but interesting journey ended at a library where they found Kyria sitting behind a desk, writing in what Arissa guessed was a journal; she was scratching along the page with a feather quill which she dipped into an ink bottle in front of the small volume. She’d looked up when they