The Source (12 page)

And those poor
families who lost loved ones.  First having to deal with the heartache that
substance abuse causes, only to lose them because a hungry vamp wanted a five-star
meal instead of the furry wilderness equivalent of fast food.

As if listening to my
thoughts, Bree says, "Well, look at it this way, at least those humans
didn't die in vain.  I mean, they were drug addicts, but now their lives have
meaning."

I practically snort.
"That's rather elitist and uncompassionate."

Bree’s head twists
around as her fangs jut out.  She retracts them and says, "Hey, I'm here
to stop, possibly annihilate, the worst of my kind.  The least you could do is
be honest about the worst of yours."

Okay, I see fang so I
do not want to get into an argument with her.  For one, I didn't realize that
she’s a vampire.  My radar is still off.  Secondly, if my observation unnerved
her to the point that she seemingly wants to sink her teeth into me, I think
I'll leave that battle for another day.

Rick comes over and
sits on the first cot, facing me, hands folded in his lap.  I take a deep
breath and frown at him.  "You know how the female in each species tends
to be very dangerous, especially when there is a threat to her young or
herd?"

I nod.

"It's the same
with vampires," he says, "only in stereo.  Don't be upset about it. 
For her it was a natural reaction, being the predator she is.  You thought it
elitist and uncompassionate and from your view it was.  But from Bree's view,
from a predator speaking of their prey, it was rather benign and
almost...cuddly."

Bree whips her head
toward us. "You don't need to explain me to her."

Rick turns to address
her. "With all due respect Dr. Vinh, not all humans understand the subtle,
yet very important, differences between humans and vampires.  I would think
that we would all benefit from an open discourse to make working together on
the project less of a struggle than it has to be."

Bree tilts her head.
“Funny.  Abe and I don’t have such issues.”  She turns and walks out the door.

Rick shakes his head
and turns back to me.  He tries to smile. “Don’t let her get to you.”

“Are you saying that
to me or yourself?”

“A little of both,”
he admits. 

I look over his
shoulder and notice that Tucker and Abe are apparently trying to act like they
hadn’t witnessed our mini-drama.  They go back to their conversation and I try
to think of what to do with the next couple of hours.  Something that wouldn’t
draw unwanted attention from obsessive humans or pissy vampires.

“Why don’t you try to
get some sleep?” Rick asks.

My face scowling I
say, “What is up with you all?  Can you read my mind?”

“No, but I told you
about our special brand of empathy.  You’re projecting pretty loudly.”

“Well, I’m sorry for
the radio noise,” I say as I run my fingers through my hair, trying not to
scream at the top of my lungs.

“Let’s check out the
vampire sleeping quarters downstairs.  You can rest peacefully there for a
while until we need it.”  He stands up and holds his hand out to me.  I just
stare at his open palm.  “Come on.  The rest will be good for you.  Remember
that when the experiment happens, I won’t be there with you so I need you at
the top of your game.”  I look sharply at him.  “WE need you at the top of your
game.”

I stand up, ignoring
his hand. “Okay, lead the way ole wise one.”

“Hey, just because
I’m old enough to be your grandfather doesn’t mean you have to throw it in my
face.”

I tremble slightly. 
I have not even thought of things like that and now I feel a little gross at
the subtly romantic feelings I’ve had toward Rick.  Some people rob the cradle,
Emma Burcham robs the grave.  Lovely.

“It was a joke,” he
says as we walk to the door to the basement stairwell. 

“Well, thank God you
weren’t serious because it doesn’t make sense at all,” I respond sarcastically.

He looks back at me,
smiling. “My chronological age has nothing to do with how hot I am.”

“Keep telling
yourself that and maybe one day it will come true.  I mean, you have all of
eternity. Right?”

He opens the
stairwell door, grinning. “If I were only so lucky.”

When we get to the
bottom of the stairs Rick flips the light switch to reveal a couple of rows of
cots in an underground vampire sanctuary that makes the amenities at a two-star
hotel look respectable.  And I thought our initial meeting room was
minimalist. 

“Home sweet home?” I
ask.

“It will do for the
day,” he responds.

I grumble as I sit on
one of the cots. “Well, there better not be any rats in here.  I can’t deal
with beady-eyed creatures.  Must be the reason why Dr. Vinh rubs me the wrong
way.”

Rick sits down beside
me, slightly nudging me.  “Passive aggressiveness is really not becoming of
you.”

I sneer at him,
feeling like a dejected Elvis impersonator. “It’s not like I could say such things
to her face.  She would eat my face off.”

He laughs heartily,
“True, but there are other ways to express your discontent.”

“Well, you’ll have to
teach me those other ways when it comes to dealing with vampires.”

“I will,” he says,
“Right now, try to get some rest.”  He pats the cot then stands up to leave. 
“Sleep tight.  Don’t let the basement rats bite.”

I throw a pillow at
him as he heads up the stairs while laughing.

I lie down and fall
asleep quickly as I find myself in a parallel world where for some reason, I am
intimately interacting with Tucker.  It isn’t a sexual dream, although he seems
to be so close that I can smell his cologne.  We are in a dark theater,
watching a movie, but we are the only ones in the audience.  A private
screening.  So talking doesn’t bother anyone else. 

“I know you told me
to stay away for a while.  But I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine,” I
respond.  “I’m just distracted with this project.”

He nods, “I think we
all are.  Still, I do think about you irregardless.  I hate that things went
bad so quickly.”

I look away. “Tucker,
I would have loved it if we would have met under different circumstances and
you had approached me differently, but what’s done is done. We need to move
on.”

“But moving on doesn’t
mean moving away from each other.”

I take a deep breath,
weighing my words very carefully. “True.  But I don’t know where to go from
where we’ve been.  Is there a map for leaving psycho-ville?”  I look at him.

He becomes very
serious and turns in his chair toward me, “I’m sorry that you got that
impression of me.  Aside from the stuff when I called your home, I thought I
was just showing how much I liked you.  I didn’t realize that I was being scary
stalker-guy.  I’m really not that way.  I haven’t done anything since, have I?”

I continue looking at
him, taking in the fact that he hasn’t done anything else since.  And here we
are, sitting in a dark room alone and he hasn’t even tried to hold my hand or
lean against me.  His eyes have the saddest look in them as if the despair that
he was feeling is the same as someone lost in the mountains, knowing they were
never going to make it out alive.  I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him
or be completely creeped out by his level of emotion.

I decide to take the
middle path. “We can talk.  We can be friends.  Let’s just start there.”

He visibly relaxes.
“That’s all I ask.”  He places his hand on mine.

I jerk awake, nearly
falling off the bed.  Tucker stands up and comes around the side of the cot,
“Are you alright?”

“Ouch.  I scraped up
my hands pretty good.”  I sit up on the cold floor.  “What the hell are you
doing down here?  Were you watching me while I slept?”  A sick feeling begins
to wash over me. 

Tucker kneels down,
looking at my hands, “Um, no.  We were talking.   You were answering.  I
thought you were just resting your eyes.  Since you were responding, I didn’t
realize that you were actually asleep.”

My eyes narrow. “What
were we talking about?”

As he recounts the
entire conversation that I had thought was a dream, I completely miss the fact
that he has taken my hands into his and is looking at the damage done.

“We should go
upstairs and get these cleaned up and bandaged before the Bree and Rick get
back,” he says.

I pull my hands free.
“Where are they?”

Tucker leans back on
his heels. “They went for dinner,” he says, making quotation marks with his
fingers when saying the word dinner.

I struggle to get up
and Tucker leans in to help me to my feet.  My back goes rigid, as I don’t know
whether I should let him help me or not.

“This would be easier
on me if you could relax,” he says.

I allow Tucker to
help me up and follow him up the stairs.  Abe is snoring softly on the couch,
wrapped up in adult-sized fetal position.  We walk across the room to the back
corner where there is a bathroom.  He flips the light on, turns the faucets on
and waits for the water to get lukewarm.  He turns to me with a very serious
look on his face, as if he is daring anything to break his concentration.  He
gently takes my hands and holds them under the water, then begins to wash them
with the bacterial soap.  He takes such gentle care, cautious not to hurt me
again, that it makes me wonder if everything that had happened was just a
hiccup in his behavior.  Could he like me so much that he actually didn’t know
what to do, how to act?  Surely a guy couldn’t like me that much.  It’s like a
twisted version of my high school fantasies.

As he washes and
dries my hands, I try to really look at him, to see past his previous actions. 
He definitely isn’t unattractive.  And he has pulled himself together, his
clothes are no longer disheveled and his hair is properly placed in its neat
ponytail at the back of his neck.  So shiny and healthy looking.  Maybe he uses
Pantene.  I shake my head.

He looks at me as he
rifles through the medicine cabinet for gauze and medical tape. “What?  You
don’t want them bandaged?”

I half smile. “No,
they need to be bandaged.  Don’t want to get infection.”

He smiles and begins
wrapping my hands.  Once he finishes taping the gauze, Rick slams against the doorjamb,
a panicked look on his face.  I jump and squeal.  His fangs are extended and he
is glaring at Tucker.

“Horse piss and apple
butter, Rick!  You scared me half to death.”

He snarls, looking at
my hands. “What happened?”

“I fell and scraped
my palms.  Tucker was being nice enough to help me bandage them.  Why did you
come rushing to the bathroom?  Too much to drink at dinner?”

He looks at Tucker, and
then looks at me.  His teeth retract as he stares into my eyes.  “I smelled
your blood.”  He turns and walks away.

I look after him for
a moment then turn to Tucker, a questioning look on my face.  He shrugs and
says, “Vampires.  What are you going to do?  They hear everything, smell
everything.  Hell, when they went public, it even put an end to crop-dusting.”

“Crop-dusting?” I
ask.

He grins, “Yeah, you
know.  Subtly passing gas in a public place then quickly walking away to divert
blame.”

I can’t help rolling
my eyes, “God.  No more boy-secrets, okay?  With things like that, it’s no
wonder that West Virginians are regularly featured on PeopleofWalmart.com.”

Tucker laughs as we
walk back into the main room.  Rick and Bree are nowhere to be found, Abe is
still sleeping and Ms. Montgomery is still reading at the table.  I hadn’t even
noticed she was still there when we passed by.  Sometimes she melds with the
scenery.

  “Ms. Montgomery?” I
say as I approach the table.  “Did you by chance see which way Rick went?”

Without looking up
from her journal she says, “He and Bree went downstairs for the day.”  I can’t
figure it out.  How does she do that?  I’m beginning to think that she had eyes
on the sides of her head, more like a bird than a human.  A big, scary bird. 
Like a buzzard waiting to feed on the carcasses of the unfortunate.  Yuck.

I look at my watch. 
5:00 a.m.  Three more hours and we will be meeting for the experiment.  My
stomach gurgles in bile-worthy anticipation.  I should probably eat before we
do this.  A little food will help to settle my stomach.  I turn to see Tucker
sitting on the first cot.  He is watching me like he isn’t sure what I am going
to do next.  I walk over and sit on the second cot, lowering my eyes a bit.

“I figure we should
probably rest for a couple of hours before we have to, well, you know,” he
says.

“Yeah, you’re
probably right.  And my sleep was interrupted.”

“I said I was sorry. 
I really did think that you were awake.”

I smile at him,
lifting my eyes ever so slightly, “I know.  I was just teasing you.  Let’s get
some sleep.”