Halfway to the Grave

"Nope, appears not. Good on you, that'll come in handy. Can't have you getting all weak-minded and forgetting your goals, can we? Probably it's your bloodline. It doesn't work on other vampires. Or humans who imbibe of vampire blood. Guess you have enough of us in you. Some humans are immune to it also, but only a very small percentage. Have to have extraordinary mind control or natural resistance not to let us in and meddle about. MTV and video games have solved that problem as far as most of humanity goes. That, and telly, as it were."

"Telly?" Who was that?

He grunted in amusement. "Television, of course. Don't you speak English?"

"You sure don't," I muttered.

Shaking his head, he frowned at me. "Daylight's burning, luv. We have a lot to cover. We've gone through the senses and the mind control, but don't forget our strength. Or our teeth. Vampires are strong enough to break you in half and carry the pieces with a finger. We can throw your car at you if we want to. And we'll rip you apart with our teeth. The question is, how many of our strengths do you have in you?"

Hesitatingly, I began to tick off my abnormalities.

"I can see very well and darkness doesn't affect me. I see as well at night as in the day. I'm faster than anyone I know, humanly speaking. I can hear things from far away, maybe not as far as you can. Sometimes in my room at night I could hear my grandparents downstairs whispering to each other about me..."

I stopped, judging from his look that I'd revealed too much about personal issues.

"I don't think I can control anyone's mind. I've never tried it, but I think if I could, people would have treated me differently." Dammit, there I was opening up again.

"Anyways," I went on, "I know I'm stronger than the average person. When I was fourteen, I beat up three boys, and they were all bigger than me. That was when I couldn't hide anymore from the fact that something was very wrong with me. You've seen my eyes. They're different. I have to control them when I'm upset so other people don't see them glow. My teeth are normal, I guess. They've never poked out funny, anyhow."

I glanced at him through lowered lashes. I'd never spoken of my differences to anyone like this before, even my mother. It upset her to know about them, let alone discuss them.

"Let me get this straight. You said at fourteen you truly realized your uniqueness. You didn't know what you were before? What did your mum tell you about your father when you were growing up?"

That was a very painful subject, and I felt a shudder go through me at the memory. A vampire was hardly the person I ever thought I'd be talking to about this.

"She never mentioned my father. If I'd ask, as I did when I was little, she'd change the subject or get angry. But the other children let me know. They called me a bastard from the time they could speak." I closed my eyes briefly, the shame still stinging. "Like I said, when I hit puberty I started to feel...even more different. So much worse than when I was a child. It got harder to hide my weirdness, like my mom told me to. I liked the night most. I'd wander for hours in the orchard. Sometimes I wouldn't even sleep until dawn. But it wasn't until those boys cornered me that I knew how bad it was."

"What did they do?" His voice was softer, almost gentle.

In my mind I could see their faces as clearly as if they stood before me.

"They were shoving me around again. Pushing me, calling me names, the usual stuff. That didn't set me off. It happened almost every day. But then one of them, I can't remember which, called my mother a slut, and I lost my temper. I threw a rock at him and busted his teeth out. The others jumped me, and I beat them. They never told anyone what happened. Finally, on my sixteenth birthday, my mother decided I was old enough to know the truth about my father. I didn't want to believe her, but deep down, I knew it was true. That was the first night I saw my eyes glow. She held a mirror up to my face after stabbing me in the leg. She wasn't being mean. She wanted me upset so I could see my eyes. About six months later, I killed my first vampire."

My eyes stung with unshed tears, but I wouldn't cry. Could not cry in front of this thing who had made me retell what I'd tried to forget.

He stared at me in a very peculiar way. If I didn't know better, I would say there was empathy in his gaze. But that was impossible. He was a vampire, they didn't do compassion.

Abruptly I stood. "Speaking of my mother, I have to call her. She'll be worried sick. I've come home late before, but I've never been out this long. She'll think one of you bloodsuckers killed me."

That caused his eyebrows to fly into his hairline. "Your mum knows you've been luring vampires with promises of shagging and then killing them? And she allows you to do this? Blimey, I thought you were joking when you said she knew you were putting a dent in our population. If you were my child, I'd have you nailed inside your room at night. Don't understand people nowadays, let their kids do anything."

"Don't speak about her that way!" I burst out. "She knows I'm doing the right thing! Why wouldn't she support that?"

His eyes bored into mine very steadily, clear dark pools of brown. Then he shrugged. "Whatever you say."

Suddenly he stood in front of me. I hadn't even had time to blink, he was so fast.

"You've got good aim when you throw things. Found that out last night when you chucked your cross at me. Just think, a few inches lower and you might have been planting daisies over my head by now." He grinned as if amused at the mental image. "We'll work to improve your speed and accuracy. You'll be safer if you can kill from a distance. You're too bloody vulnerable up close."

He grasped me by the upper arms. I tried to pull away, but he held on. Iron bars would have had more give.

"Your strength leaves much to be desired. You're stronger than a human man, but probably as weak as the weakest vampire. We'll have to work on that as well. Also, your flexibility is shit and you don't use your legs at all when you fight. They're valuable weapons and should be treated as such. As for your speed, well...that might be hopeless. But we'll give it a go anyhow. The way I figure it, we have about six weeks before we can get you out in the field. Yep, five weeks of hard training, and one week to work on your looks."

"My looks?" Outrage filled my voice. How dare a dead man critique me? "What's wrong with my looks?"

Bones smiled condescendingly. "Oh, nothing horribly wrong, but still something that needs fixing before we send you out."

"You-"

"After all, we're going after some big fish, luv. Baggy jeans and a mediocre appearance won't cut it. You wouldn't know sexy if it bit you in the arse."