As it was still early in the season, snow was expected. The lake hadn’t had a chance to begin to freeze. Cars passed mine, and I was going at a pretty good clip, conditions considered. Vance clutched the dash in the nature of one not born and bred on twenty inches of snow in a night. His nervous grip amused me.
We made it to Ashtabula, only sliding nearly off the road once, and Vance directed me to go into the city rather than head down to the harbor. On Main Avenue, we turned into the parking lot of the old Sardee’s bar.
“Is this place even open?” I wondered doubtfully.
There were cars in the lot, but they could very well have parked here just to get spaces close to the surrounding buildings. Sardee’s certainly didn’t look like it had anything in it. White paint peeled off the brick of the squat and square structure standing two stories high in the middle of a lot backed by a cliff overlooking the gulf. The sign, painted in red, said Sar-ee’s, as the “d” was missing, no doubt taken by a storm similar to the one currently snow blasting the area. Boarded up windows covered with creative and colorful graffiti seemed dominated by black flowers. People had painted black roses, daisies, irises—the works, on the building.
One in particular caught my eye. It was a black tulip over a hastily scrawled,
for a good time, call…
“What’s with all of the black flowers?”
Vance got out, so I followed him. “Black flowers symbolize the paranormal. Like gang graffiti for the weird,” he explained.
Huh.
“So, is this place even open?”
“It is for us,” was his vague reply. He went to a door at the side of the building, knocked and a woman dressed in stereotypical goth garb opened it..
She bared fangs at us.
I blinked through snowflakes. I looked at my vampire, who copied the gesture. He, however, did it regally. Slowly parting his lips, he distended his teeth at her.
She nodded at me, and he answered, “Food. Let us in, it is fucking cold out here, Sheila.”
I followed him in, fury on slow boil in my gut.
Did he just tell her I am food?
He reached out to take my coat, and I moved away from him, pulling it tighter around me.
With an arched a brow, he put a hand on my spine to lead me into the bar. Darker even than the Galley, candles—mostly white and dripping wax—lit the room and a wall of mirrors backed the bar, reflecting the candlelight. The slow throbbing beat of the music reminded me uncomfortably of the sound of my pulse. Then again, maybe that was the intended atmosphere. The smell of the candles went from comforting to cloying, and I tried to change my train of thought.
A woman, obviously of Asian descent, with long shining black hair tended the bar, which seemed to be serving mostly blood.
Disconcerting, that.
A black sheath exposed a surprising amount of her flesh and small puncture wounds marked most of the visible skin on her body. She smiled at me as we entered.
I gulped.
I backed up a step, to run into Vance who rubbed his hands down my arms. Looking into my coat at my breast, I saw two small scabs much to my amazement. “I thought you licked my boob?”
“I did.” He ran his hand through my hair.
“Then why do I still have holes? Why does she?”
“Like I started telling you earlier, a vampire bite contains anti-coagulants. They keep the bite open so we can continue getting blood without clotting closing it. Although we can heal some wounds with its other properties, an actual bite gets so pumped up with anti-coagulants, it doesn’t close entirely, even with healing properties. If I were to bite you and not lick it, you would probably bleed out.”
“Thanks for not doing that,” I mumbled, thinking I was happy Mia told him not to kill me, as I had apparently given him a pretty darn good chance by letting him bite me.
He kissed the top of my head, and I forgave him the food comment. “Sit at the bar. I have to find my…underlings.”
Great,
I thought.
Just leave me alone in a room full of bloodsucking monsters.
Into my head, he said, Q
uit thinking things like that. You will be fine. You are with me, and I am a very important person. No one will touch you, but some
can
read your mind.
Oh.
Duly noted.
I sat and tried not to think about anything important when I wanted to digest everything from the last forty-eight hours. It’s really hard not to think, if you haven’t really been given a chance to in a while. He headed to a table at the back and everyone stood when he approached. They all looked reasonably important themselves, but they fell all over themselves to listen to Vance.
Odd.
My cell phone rang. I pulled it out and answered it.
The call immediately dropped.
The bartender walked over to me. “There isn’t much signal in here. You might have to go outside.”
I nodded. Vance appeared deep in conversation with the bunch of scary looking people. I did not want to face the big, bad, vampires, so I walked to the door. Once there, Sheila tilted her head at me in the way a cat tilts its head at a mouse.
“I gotta make a call,” I began. “Will you let me back in when I’m done?”
“No problem. You feed the master, you can get in anytime.” She smirked at my chest, which was visible through my open coat. I pulled it closed and zipped it.
Did she just call Vance
the master
?
Whatever
. I wanted to see who was trying to reach me. Unless someone died, I didn’t get a lot of calls at two in the morning. Walking out, a gust hit me, cold enough to cut through my coat and slice at my skin. I gritted my teeth and lowered my head against it. Probably I had a better shot of not freezing in front of the building, with it to shield me from the wind, so I made my way back toward the car. I almost slid once, cursed the ass-kicking boots, and leaned on the boarded up front door.
Redialing the unfamiliar last number that called, I couldn’t help but think I’d be be pissed if it was a wrong number and I came outside for nothing. The other end rang once before a masculine voice, mildly familiar, picked up and said, “Hello?”
“Hi, you just—”
“Janie! It’s me, Chance.”
“Hi. How did you get my number?”
“Mia gave it to me,” he replied. I tried to decide if he was being evasive, or if it was cell phone static.
“And?” I prompted.
“She is here with me. I hear you are at Red Roof.”
“I am at the old Sardee’s.”
Or Sar-ee’s. Whatever.
“Yeah, they renamed it when the vamps took it over. Anyway, I just wanted to say hi.”
“You called me to say hi?”
“Yeah. What, Mia?” He did not speak directly in the phone.
“Put her on.” Dread prickled my skin into goose bumps.
“She is tied up right now, but she said something about—” and the line died.
I called back and it went to voicemail.
Damn. Not good.
I stared at the phone as if it would reveal answers for a moment before turning and running into a man. “Sorry,” I muttered, absently.
“No problem.” His smooth voice poured over me. “Why are you out in this storm?”
I looked up at him. Tan with golden hair falling over his brow, his blue eyes seemed somehow familiar even in his golden face. “I had to make a call.”
“Weren’t you just in Red Roof?”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You came in with Vance?” He smiled a big friendly smile. I never trust strangers with big friendly smiles. They’re always either trying to sell something or find out something.
I hadn’t noticed him when I had been in the bar, but then again I hadn’t looked at everyone. “Yeah.” Where was this going?
“Would you mind giving him a little message for me?”
I don’t like him
, I decided,
whoever he is.
“He’s still in there. Tell him your self.” I moved to pass him, and with eerie speed, he caught my arm and pinned me to the door.
“No, I would rather
you
tell him.” I suddenly knew I had enough siren juice left to kick his ass. I am not sure exactly where the information came from, as I hadn’t really thought it through, but it just kind of occurred to me.
The knowledge might have showed in my eyes, because he shifted slightly to sniff at me. “What
has
he found now?” he asked, more to himself than to me.
I didn’t feel the need to answer and tried to decide how exactly I was supposed to kick his butt, but the information didn’t conveniently pop into my head. As he seemed to not really need me to have the conversation anyway, he continued. “Tell him that it would be wise to relocate his base of operations. Tell him that he has nothing left here, that the area will be taken care of. He will understand what that means.”
Well, that would be good, because I didn’t get it. I was cold and not in the mood for elusive messages. I pushed him off me. The cool thing was that I was strong enough to actually push him off, not just nudge at him like a girl.
He backed up and looked me up and down. I glared at back. I hoped I looked like I knew I could push him around, like I pushed around vampires all the time.
Yeah, right.
“Goodnight, little one.” And he was gone. It wasn’t like Max and Chance’s disappearance earlier. It was more like he ran away, but my eyes couldn’t follow it.
I waited for a moment.
Then I decided I would go back into the bar. It was freaking cold out. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched though. I resisted looking over my shoulder and knocked on the door.
When Sheila opened it, I ran in and shuddered from the cold.
She nodded at me, and I nodded back and returned to my barstool.
The bartender made her way back to me and sat a shot in front of me.
I half expected it to be blood. I mean, vampire bar, that was what everyone
else
was drinking…Instead it had a layer of blue, covered by a layer of indeterminate color, with a swirl of what looked like snot in the middle.
I sat staring at it. Finally, I looked back at her. She stared back at me.
“Um, what is this?”
“ATB.” She grinned. “It helps replace some of the iron you lost and will also warm you up.”
I shrugged. Deciding that she probably meant no harm, as Vance was in the room and apparently everyone knew he had bit me, I drank it. It tasted sweet. “What does ATB stand for?” She was right. I felt warmer.
“Ask The Bartender.” A fleeting smile flickered across her lips and she went to get someone what looked like V8, but was probably some blood cocktail.
Vance came up behind me. “Ready to go home?”
“Yeah.” I decided to tell him about the weird call and meeting in the parking lot once we were out of there. I didn’t slip on the way back out to the car, having a big hunk of vampire to lean on. I turned on the heater and headed back toward the harbor. “Did you find out anything?” Good wifely rule number one, ask how his day was before you tell him about yours so that he feels important. It grated on the feminist part of me that I was still acting like that.
“That no one wants in on this mess. That most of my people are laying low, and waiting to see who wins what appears to be a territorial power struggle.”
I nodded. “I got a call while you were over there.”
“Yeah.” He shifted in his seat, getting comfortable.
“It was Chance.”
“How did he get your number?” I could almost see the testosterone level in the car rise. He, I would guess, wasn’t too fond of Chance.
“Mia gave it to him, he said. And then he said she was busy and cut out.”
“Did you try calling him back?”
“Yeah, it went to voicemail. But then this guy came up and gave me a message for you.”
He looked at me. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” I purposely tried to round my eyes and give a dumb blond look.
“You know absolutely nothing about what is going on, and yet you keep finding out all of these juicy tidbits.”
“Dumb luck. Anyway, he said that there was nothing left here for you, that the area was going to be taken care of and for you to ‘relocate your base of operations,’ whatever that means.”
He stared at me. “They must have caught Mia.”
I swerved the wheel and nearly took out a mailbox.
“I mean,” he said, after catching the wheel and redirecting the car. “They must have her. As far as they know, she is really the only thing left in the area that they haven’t staked.”
I bit my lip. “So what you are saying is that they are going to kill my best friend?”
He didn’t answer.
“Are they or are they not going to kill Mia? And who are
they
?”
“I don’t know.” His answer left a lot to be desired.
“Jesus, Vance.” I grimaced at the fact that I now wailed like Vickie.
“It stands to reason it is someone bordering my area. They want to increase their own…we will borrow the term ‘base of operations,’ and so they are trying to take over my area of control.”
“Will you quit being so vague?” I yelled.
“But the only one,” he continued as if I hadn’t interrupted, “that could stand a chance is, well, there is no
way
.”
“Listen, you need to figure this whole mess out, and fast. I want my friend back.” I saw a Walmart sign and turned in.
“What are we doing here?”
I breathed out a sigh.
I got out, and he followed me.
I entered the store, not sure what I needed, but sure they had it.
At least three aisles were devoted to Christmas.
Christmas trees
, I thought.
Pretty Christmas trees.
I needed a little Christmas, right this very minute. I needed normal, and I needed sparkle-y fairy lights and tinsel.
Lots of freaking tinsel
. I gaped wildly at the aisles of Christmas with a bit of drool hanging off my lip. I looked up at my vampire with barely held sanity. “I’m gonna need your credit card.”
“You are scaring me. You look like a woman about to go on a binge.”