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

the window to squint at it in the brighter light.

“My loft, two o’clock. Bring a notebook and pen. - Vlad”

“Absolutely, Your Friggin’ Majesty!” She balled up the paper and tossed it into the stainless-steel trash container next to the sink.

“My God!”

Arissa screamed.

“Well for the love of – go get dressed, young lady!”

Arissa glared. “What are you doing here, mother, and how did you get in without me hearing you?” She put her fists on her naked hips and glared some more.

Mrs. Martin closed her eyes. “Kindly put something on, Arissa.”

“Why? This is my home, and if you insist on barging in without warning – or knocking – you can just deal with what you find!”

“Fine! I apologize! Now please get dressed. I can’t talk to you like this.”

Grumbling the whole way, Arissa returned to her room, emerging a few minutes later in a pair of jeans and a large tee with a wide neckline. One side had slid off her left shoulder, giving her a casual air her mother would no doubt despise.

“Well. That will do, I suppose,” said her mother. “I called your job this morning to see if you wanted to meet for lunch, and was told you were very sick. They said you had called out yesterday, and probably wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. You don’t look sick to me, Arissa. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. You came over here, why? To see if I was okay?”

“Why else?”

“Hmm.” Oh, I don’t know, the girl thought with unreasonable sarcasm, maybe because you’re terminally nosy. “Thanks. I appreciate that, but as you pointed out, I’m not sick. I didn’t feel like working this week, is all.”

“Why not? This isn’t like you, dear. And what about school?”

“What about it?”

“Practicing being rude again, are we?”

Arissa looked away, thinking hard. This kind of thing was going to have to stop. Despite the occasional acrimonious exchange between her and her mother, she genuinely loved the woman. Not her habits or attitudes, necessarily, but her. After all, she really had done a good job of raising her, and while her unwelcome intrusions always went hand-in-hand with bad timing, Arissa believed she meant well. Maybe. Whatever. “Mom, we have to talk.”

“I should say so!”

“Coffee?”

Mrs. Martin narrowed her eyes. “Coffee, is it? That always means something of major consequences is about to be discussed, and don’t think I don’t know that. All right.”

Five minutes later, they were seated at the small kitchen table, the lovely aroma of Columbia’s best legal export wafting playfully around the room. Arissa finished stirring cream and sugar into hers, took a sip, and sat back. “Remember the day you came over and found that blood-stained shirt?”

“I do, indeed. Did you throw it away?”

“Mother! This is not about my clothing, so please try to stay focused here. And yes. Anyway, it didn’t get stained quite the way I described.”

“That sounds troubling, dear. Whatever do you mean?”

So Arissa told her. Everything: the werewolf assault and subsequent vampire attack, her death and re-animation, her new status as a werepire. And since this left the woman speechless, it seemed the right time to include details – Leander, Kyria, the interesting meetings that involved a strange society of monsters that somehow got along and felt warm fuzzies for the mini-monsters they had accidentally created. She explained how being a werepire worked, and even confessed, finally, to having bitten her cousin and aunt. When she was done, she drank some more coffee and waited for her mother’s reaction.

Mrs. Martin’s reaction consisted of her finishing her own coffee, getting up, collecting her purse and jacket from the living room, and heading for the front door. Before going out, she turned and said, “If you aren’t really dead, you will be. I will personally throttle you for throwing such a pack of insane lies at me, for imagining me to be stupid enough to buy such crap. This is the final insult, Arissa. I don’t know what else to say.”

Desperate now – more than anything, she wanted her mother to believe her – she came closer. “Look at my eyes, mother. At the pupils. Do they look normal to you?”

The woman peered up, her angry scowl slowly dissolving into something more perplexed. “What – what’s wrong with them? They’re the wrong shape!”

“Exactly. That’s from the werewolf poison. It changed my DNA. And if you still don’t believe me, wait until the next full moon and I’ll show you some other changes you’ll have a hard time with. Oh, yeah, and there’s this.” She ran into the kitchen.

To her mother, the girl looked like a smear of color that sped away into the other room at a horrifying speed, the movement so unnatural the woman almost fainted.

“Can a regular human do that?” asked Arissa from the table where she was once more seated.

Mrs. Martin eventually joined her daughter. “So – so you’re… you’re dead?” Her voice was shaking and tears had begun glistening in her reddening eyes.

“Yes, mother, but well, yes. Only as you can see, I’m also kind of alive, and will live for a crazy long time now, if that’s any consolation.” She gave the woman a hopeful look.

“Oh, my.” She sat down with a brief, light laugh. “Look at me – my knees almost gave out! Of course, we all know I’m too darned proper to let myself fall. That would have been too undignified. Heh!”

“I love you, mother.”

A tear spilled down the older Martin’s cheek and she took her daughter’s hand. “I love you, too, darling.”

THIRTEEN

 

 

“Does this mean we can all meet her now?” Vlad crossed his legs and sat back on the sofa.

“Absolutely not. You’ll scare the snot of out her without even trying.” Arissa sighed. She was at Vlad’s, having convinced her mother to go home and stop worrying. When she got to the vampire’s loft, she’d felt obligated to tell him what had happened, and to her surprise, he wasn’t upset.

“Well, it’s always best if our loved ones know,” he told her, explaining his reaction. “After all, we can usually trust them more than anyone else, yes? So! Now to why I asked you here. Open your notebook, please.”

She shrugged and complied, curious. “Ready.”

“Good. I am going to complete your education about the world to which you now belong.”

Arissa executed a silent “Yippee!” and uncapped her pen.

“The topic is categories,” Vlad began. “There are five of these, and the first one is the weres.”

“Weres, as in ‘werewolf’?”

“Exactly.” He sat forward. “Under the title word, ‘Weres’ you’ll make a list. Number One is Naturals. Got that?”

She nodded, scribbling.

“Now under ‘Naturals,’ list the following: Canines, Felines, Piscines, and Avians.”

Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble. “Okay.”

“Under ‘Canines’ you’ll write a sublist as follows: Wolves, Foxes, Coyotes, Dingoes, Domestic Dogs.”

Scritch, scribble, scribble, scritchery, scratch-scritch. “Got it.” Her hand was starting to ache.

“Great. Under felines, simply put ‘Wild Cats,’ under which you’ll list large, medium and small, and ‘Domestic Cats.’ Under – oh, sorry. I’ll wait. You know you can write like you can run, by the way.”

“I can? Will it still be legible?”

“Do you crash into things when you run?”

“Oh.” She took a deep breath, thought about writing quickly, and inside of a second, the list was done. “Wow!”

“Wow it is. All right. Let’s get this finished. Under Piscine, write Sharks, Morays, Cephalopods, Blue Catfish, and Behemoths. The subcategory is Ocean Mammals, under which you’ll list Orcas, Narwhals, Belugas and Dolphins. And then under ‘Avians’ you’ll put Owls, Eagles, Vultures, Ostriches and… well, this one is incredibly rare. Actually, I know of only one case.”

“One case of what?”

“Well, a man I once knew, many years ago now, was a werekeet.”

“A what?”

“He – he was nipped by an undead parakeet, and when in the presence of cats, he would transform into a – Arissa? Are you all right?”

The girl had dropped her notebook and doubled over, laughing so hard she wasn’t breathing. Not that she needed to. Tears began coursing down her face, her skin slowly going purple, and she slid off the chair. Clutching her stomach, she continued her silent hysterics, trying to picture a man transforming into a parakeet…

Ten minutes later, Vlad having gone off to the kitchen area where the part of her brain that was still functional heard the sound of running water and dishes being plunked about, followed by the sound of ice cubes being dropped into a glass and some kind of liquid being poured over it, Arissa drew in a deep, raspy breath and sat up. “Oh – my – God!” she shrieked. “How does something like that even work?! Holy cow! And how did the stupid bird… ” she started laughing again, “how does a parakeet become… whatever it is that can – oh, my God!” She keeled over again, only this time her hilarity was audible.

Vlad sighed, sat down with what her nose told her was bourbon, and stared off, sipping now and again, as Arissa got herself under control.

“You know,” she said a while later, her voice faint as she got back on the chair, “I can deal with the whole were-coyote, and werecat, even the idea of werefish, but a little para- ”

“Arissa, don’t you dare start again or we’ll never get through this.”

“Sorry.” Another snicker escaped, but she forced herself to stay sober this time.

“Thank you. Let’s move on. Next to each main descriptor in the Were category, put the trigger – that which triggers the transformation.” He then told her the obvious one – the moon – which of course pertained to all the Canines.

For the Felines, the trigger was the presence of any lactating mammal. Before Arissa could lose it over that one, he hastily explained the Piscine trigger, which was similar to the Canine one – the monthly tide shifts due to lunar activity. For the Avians, the trigger was, as he’d started to explain earlier, the presence of regular cats.

Once again, he swiftly changed the subject. “On to the next category!” He had her write the word “Undead,” and gave some details about the Vampire genre that she already knew, and some she didn’t. No major surprises, though. Included in this group were Zombies, which she already knew should belong there.

The third category, however, was disconcerting. This was the Shape-Shifter group, and included chupacabras, dragons (“Dragons?!” she exclaimed, stunned), Skinwalkers and Shamans. Category Four listed and defined Faerie Folk, among them the Sidhe, and the fifth group held other-dimensional and off-world beings. Most of these were harmless, but those that weren’t were horrific, like the incubus and succubus varieties. And yes, she was told, the Lizard People were real.

When he stopped talking, she looked over her notes, realizing she’d been given a written compendium that would make any believer in the supernatural proud. Or worried. “Is that it?”

“That’s it. Now you know what to look for; eventually, you’ll learn to recognize most of them immediately.”

Not sure she wanted to, she nonetheless nodded and thanked him. “So let me ask you a question, even though it has nothing to do with what you just told me.”

He shrugged and lounged back in the sofa again.

“What should I do about Reg, my mom, and Leander? Oh, and… crap, I can’t remember his name right now, but the Irish guy I