SEVEN
Winter in Appalachia was no joke. The autumn had been warm enough, light enough. It had been gentle breezes and cool, clear nights. Winter was hard. The temperature dropped to twenty degrees as the middle of December approached. I had spent the past few weeks cleaning up my house, reading my grandmother's journals, learning magic, and, after some deliberation, letting the vampires visit from time to time.
I even started working with Jenny at the shop. While I had money on the way, my miniscule savings had dwindled now that I wasn't living with the vampires. There was a part of me that missed the lap of luxury that was the mansion with its friendly butler and handsome men, but I liked the ritual of work, the mindless monotony of scanning objects and greeting customers. I had always been good at it, and it felt good to be something that I was good at.
I don't know why I was surprised when Zane came to see me at work, but I was.
I had been doing the late-night stocking, when the smattering of customers that came in were exhausted truck drivers or construction guys who either had to work too late or too early and were desperate for the coffee that we kept perpetually prepared. My hands were wrapped around a couple of aspirin bottles when I felt his approach.
"Hey, Zane," I said, not bothering to turn around. "What's up?"
"How did you know it was me?" he asked in that voice like liquid gold.
I shrugged, continuing to stock pain medications. "Because you feel different. All of you guys do."
I could almost feel him smile. I turned around and blinked. "What are you so dressed up for?"
Normally, Zane stuck to t-shirts and jeans. Of all the Sons of Vlad, Zane tended to look the most normal. His long, lanky body wasn't wearing a t-shirt and jeans now. Okay, the pants were jeans, but they were so dark and crisp I had to assume that they were new.
His button-down green shirt was done in plaid. He wore one of the bolo ties around his neck, like cowboys used to wear. Tucked under his arm was a picnic basket.
"Where's the horse?"
He smiled slowly. "It's been a long time since I had horses."
I blinked. "You were a cowboy?"
I thought Zane had been the oldest of them? I vaguely remembered someone telling me that. Cowboys were new in the grand scheme of the world. There was no way he could be a cowboy and the oldest of Vlad's offspring.
"No, but I roamed with them for a time."
"How?" I asked.
"Have dinner with me, and I'll tell you."
I hadn't gone on a date with any of the vampires since I’d moved out. I had this paranoid idea that they, as a group, had decided to give me the space that I had demanded. It was smart of them. I really didn't feel like dating.
But it seemed Zane was ready.
"What did you bring?"
I plopped the last medication bottle into place and ran my hands over the short work apron.
"Soup and sandwiches."
I raised my brow. I could never say no to a good sandwich. Add in soup, and I was done for. I took a tentative sniff. "Tomato?" I asked.
His grin was amused and cheerful. "And grilled ham and swiss."
I nearly melted into my shoes. After moving out, I had pretty much been living off a diet of prepackaged and take out. It wasn't that I couldn't cook; I wasn't half bad in that department. It was just easier to pick something up from the shop on my way out the door, and I'd been craving easy things recently.
"Sold. Come on, we can eat in the back."
He followed me, and after a little arranging, we turned the employee table into an impromptu dating spot.
"I have to admit I thought you'd put up more of a fight," he said as he poured the soup from a container into simple white bowls. "You made a point of leaving when you did."
I shrugged, swirling my spoon through the soup. "You brought food; that's fighting dirty."
He split a long baguette sandwich into two pieces and handed me half. I knew that vampires didn't have to eat. They could, and most of the guys did, but blood was the only way they stayed alive. I wondered how they were feeding, and who they were feeding on. I had been told that biting gave them power over a person. In fact, I had nearly been bitten during my first encounter with the vampires.
"I wanted my chance."
I put my spoon back into the soup without taking the taste that I had been looking forward to. "Why?"
He looked up at me; his grin was still on his lips, but it wasn't as bright. "Why?"
"Yes, why?"
He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. "I could tell you it is because I want a woman."
I raised my brow at him. "Would you be telling the truth?
He shook his head. "No, I wouldn't. I like women; don't get me wrong, women are very nice. I prefer them. But getting women has never been all that hard for me."
I looked him over. I bet it didn't. Zane was, in a word, hot. Alan might be the most beautiful, but Zane had the kind of smoldering good looks that you expected a movie star to have. His long, lean body was made of nothing but muscle, and his smile could gleam. He also had just enough mystery swimming behind his eyes that most girls would just fall over themselves for a chance.
"So what is it?"
He pushed my food towards me. "Eat, please."
I gave him a look but brought my spoon to my lips. It was good. I took another bite, and he began to talk.
"I could say that it's the idea of having a capable woman like yourself as a companion. I could say a lot of things, but they would be lies. I try very hard not to lie. You saved my life, Lorena. I was nearly dead in that compound."
He had been. In an effort to break the prophecy, or rather transfer the prophecy from myself to my half-sister, they had taken the “born of vampire blood” part of it literally and tried to drain Zane completely. They had nearly succeeded, but, being a budding necromancer, I had felt him call out to me. I had saved him.
"So, this is...what? Repayment?"
He shrugged, his body moving like a panther inside of his plaid shirt. "Perhaps, but I don't like that word. You saved me; you rescued me from certain death, but in doing it, you saved us all."
I froze. "Wait, what?"
"Think about it. If the Order had succeeded in their creation, do you think magic would flow freely?"
I shook my head. "Well, no, that's sort of the point." Then, it hit me. "Oh, crap."
"Exactly. Without magic, we all die."
I shook my head. "All of you?"
"Our father has not been able to make a vampire in a century. I hear that the shifters are having trouble giving birth. Witches are being born weaker. I think, Lorena, that you and Jenny are the last witches that we have heard of being born. Magic is dying, slowly and surely it is. But you can save that; you can save us all, and if that means a child, then I will help you."
It was so bluntly stated. There was no romance offered, no promises of love. Just the steadfast certainty that he would help me save magic itself.
"What about love?"
He smiled and reached out, taking my hand in his. "You are a strong woman." When I opened my mouth to argue, he gripped my fingers a little tighter. "You rescued me at risk to yourself. That's brave. You haven't turned and run away after everything that's happened. That's strength. I like these qualities in a woman. You have imagination, you have kindness, and you care about others. Lorena, I do not love you right now, but I'd be a fool to think that, with a little time, I wouldn't fall for you."
My heart did a surprising dance inside of my chest. His words were good, very good. "You know me, but I don't know you."
"All you need to do is ask."
I opened and closed my mouth several times. All the questions I might have asked seemed to fall apart on my lips. "I...uhh…"
"I could start at the beginning, when I was human. I could tell you about my first fumbling years as a vampire. My favorite color, my favorite song."
I shook my head. Those were interesting thoughts, but at the end of the day, they were just statistics. After he had given me a rundown on the personality that he saw me having, I was more curious about his. Besides, after hearing Wei's sob story history, I wasn't sure that I wanted to know more about Zane's.
"Can all vampires do that voice thing?" I asked.
He ran his tongue across his lips and chuckled. "No. But I could do that when I was alive. I wasn't as good, but I have always had...a power of the voice."
I frowned. I wondered if all of the boys had their particular talents before they had been turned into vampires, and if those talents had just become heightened by becoming the undead. Or perhaps Vlad had picked them specifically for those talents.
"Really?"
"I was a speaker for my people."
"Who were your people?"
"They do not exist anymore. Most of them..." he went quiet for a moment. "Most of them were taken."
I didn't want to ask; it felt rude, but I found myself doing it anyway. "They were..." I fumbled.
He gave me a look. "Enslaved. Yes. They had been at war with another people, and, when many of our fighters were killed, they were sold to be taken to the New World. I was not. I was nearly dead, and thought that my life was over. Vlad saved me, and I wanted to save my people. I didn't, not then, but I tried."
I gripped his hand, still tucked in mine. I wanted to say that I was sorry. Slavery had been a craptacular thing, but “sorry” didn’t cover it. “Sorry” was for spilling a cold drink in someone's lap, not for the buying and purchasing of people to the point that he didn't even have a group to call his own anymore.
"But that was how I got to be a cowboy," he said after a moment of tense quiet. "When I helped liberate what little was left of my family, they went west."
"Really?"
He nodded. "I know movies like to show that whole Clint Eastwood version of the west, but that's not true."
I was intrigued. "Tell me."
"About the west?"
I took another bite of my sandwich. "Why not?"
He shrugged. "You gotta remember that the West wasn't settled by the European colonists first. It had been settled by Native Americans, and later by Mexico, and finally by the Chinese who built the railroads, and the freedmen who worked alongside them. It wasn't an easy place to live, but the people who lived there were strong. I saw my people settled down in what would become New Mexico and helped build them a homestead. It was the least that I could do."
"That was good of you."
He shrugged. "Maybe. I felt bad because I couldn't stay. And I could only help at night."
"What did they think about you being a vampire?"
He shook his head. "They didn't care. I think they wouldn't have cared if I were a demon itself, so long as I helped them get away from a life that wasn't theirs."
"Where are they now?" I asked.
He gave me a look. "What do you mean?"
I shrugged. "Well, it's my opinion that a guy who went above and beyond to help his family out wouldn't just abandon them completely. I get this idea that you know exactly where their descendants are. In fact, I'm starting to think that family means a lot to you."
He grinned. "Well, you'd be right. I'd like to say I know where everyone is, and what they are doing, but the small group that settled in that farmstead have spread out everywhere. A few still live in the same farmhouse in New Mexico, but I don't know where they all are."
"Tell me about the ones you do know about."
He did. For the next few hours, I was treated to stories of a family I had never seen but soon began to know. Zane had a way of telling a story that helped me see Grandmother Celeste, who liked small yapping dogs, and her son Antoine, who tended to drink too much on Saturdays, but worked hard the rest of the week, and his wife Jasmine, who was very involved with the local church in spite, or perhaps because of, her husband's drinking. They had three children, all of whom still lived at home and helped out on the farm. They hosted a family reunion around the fourth of every year.
"You mean he ate all the pudding?" I asked, poking at the last few crumbs of my dinner.
He leaned forward, his broad hands on his knees. "The entire can! Grandma Celeste told him that if he was going to open that big can of pudding, he was going to eat the entire thing. He got stubborn about it; Antoine can be stubborn, and he got out a spoon and ate the whole five pounds."
I giggled. I couldn't help myself. I could picture this man I had never met with his face all screwed up with stubbornness shoveling one bite of pudding after another into his mouth while his mother looked on in staunch disapproval.
"He has not touched pudding since."
"I bet not," I said, standing up and stretching. My spine crackled in response. How long had I been sitting here? I glanced down at my watch. "Holy crap, it's nearly dawn. Jenny will be coming in on shift any moment. I need to get the coffee ready."
He stood up and started packing. "I'm sorry to keep you so late."
"It's fine," I promised, "I had a good time."
He looked at me then. "Did you?"
I thought about it. "Yes, I did. Dates with Alan were always big, and Dmitri was intense. I've never been on a date with Wei, but this...this was good."
"I'm glad."
He took my hand in his and brought it to his lips, pressing a tender touch there. "Can I see you tomorrow night?"
I thought about that too. Wei's words about being with Zane were echoing in my ears. Then again, what choice did I really have? Alan was so woefully in love with Dmitri that I just couldn't see myself being with him, no matter how pretty he was. And Dmitri needed some major anger management counseling before I even dabbed a toe in that pool. Then there was Wei, the guy I wanted but who didn't want me. Okay, that wasn't fair. He wanted me, but he didn't want to want me, and as far as I was concerned, that was pretty much the same thing.
So, my choices, as far as I knew, were Zane or no one.
"Yeah," I said, "alright. I am off tomorrow. Maybe we could go out."
"Just maybe?"
I rolled my eyes in amusement. "Okay, we can go out tomorrow. What did you want to do?"
"We'll figure that out when I pick you up. Dusk?"
"It's a date."
He vanished into the dawn like a shadow, and I watched him go.
~~
I'd like to say I spent the whole day thinking about my date with Zane, agonizing over where we would go and what I ought to wear. I didn't. I would also like to say that I had spent it sleeping. I hadn't slept a full night's sleep in a month. At best, I got a few hours in before I'd wake up all over again. On the plus side, I was on level 926 in Candy Crush, and my to-be-read pile was dwindling. My dreams were still weird. Instead, I spent it vegging out on the couch and reading more of my grandmother's journals. I had resisted the urge to skip forward to my birthday. It seemed unfair to her memory to miss all the things that she had thought about up until that moment.
So far, I had read about her graduating school and taking a job as a seamstress alongside my great-grandmother. About Jake, who I knew was the name of my grandfather, finally asking her out on a date and the slow romance that built between them.
May 12th 1975
Jake and I went out with his cousins and their girlfriends to Main Street Cafe. We got milkshakes, and we danced to a band playing there. It was fun. It's always fun with Jake, but he kept his distance, didn't even try to kiss me goodnight. The boy confuses me. I know, I absolutely know that he and I exchange vows, but I can't, for the life of me, see how we are supposed to get to the altar if he won’t even make a grab for my hand.
May 27th 1975
I swear I don't care what my dreams have told me; I am through with that boy! I finally decided that I was a forward-thinking girl and flat out told Jake I wanted him to kiss me, and he went and got bug-eyed. Bug-eyed! Can you believe it?
And was it because he was a good Christian boy who wanted to wait until our wedding day to kiss me? Oh no, not even the slightest. He had been told that kissing a witch could kill a man. I could not believe my own ears! I asked him where he heard such poppycock and why on earth he had decided to go around with me if he never had any intention of ever kissing me.
Did I get an answer? Oh no, all he did was stumble over his words. It was as if he couldn't decide if he wanted to get mad at me or apologize. When I told him he could shove the piss poor apology that he was offering me where the sun didn't shine, he got all kinds of uppity.
He told me that I had put a spell on him! Can you believe it? He thought that he didn't really love me at all, but that I had used my witchy-ways to ensnare him. I told him that if I wanted to use magic to get a man, I would pick a far less idiotic one than him.
I have never been so rude as to walk away from someone when they were speaking to me, but I had no interest in listening to that foolish boy run his mouth any more. Maybe I'll go out with Richard Green. Now there is a boy who knows how to treat a woman, witch or otherwise.
I couldn't help but smirk to myself as I put the journal back down and wandered to the bathroom. My grandmother was feisty; I liked knowing that. I liked knowing that she didn't let people tread on her, and that she wasn't going to put up with stupid accusations. I also kind of liked that everything hadn't been so cut and dry for her.
A pang in my chest made me realize that I missed her. I missed this woman that I had never known. I wished she were here to talk to.
I plugged my curling iron in and lined up a bunch of my make-up on the top of my dresser, the one that used to be full of my grandmother's things.
"What are you doing?" Reikah asked. I hadn't heard her come in.
She was wearing one of my old pairs of jeans. They didn't fit her very well, but she couldn't wander around in her gray robes all of the time. She had taken some of my grandmother's clothes too. The top she wore would have looked more at home on a hippie, but she didn't seem to care what her clothes looked like.
"Getting ready. I'm going out with Zane tonight."
"Oh," she said, "will you sleep with him?"
I made a god-awful sound, like a monkey who had its tail stepped on. "What?"
"I assumed that is what this relationship is all about. To create a child. It would make more sense to get it over with, wouldn't it?"
I frowned at her. "Not for me. I'm kinda hoping the making of the baby is a fun part. Not just some...duty."
She shrugged. "Okay. I'm going out, anyway."
I looked at her. "You are?"
She nodded. "Jenny invited me to the Christmas concert at the school. Her cousins are participating."
"Oh."
She frowned at me. "What does that mean?"
How on earth was I supposed to tell her that Jenny had probably asked her out on a date? Did people with no interest in a physical relationship, as Reikah claimed, still go out on dates? Did the gender matter? Dear god, I needed to do some research before I shoved my foot in my mouth and said something incredibly rude.
"Is this a date?"
She shrugged. "I think she is interested, but I don't know if I am."
"Then why go on a date?"
"Are you interested in Zane?"
I had to think about that. I liked him, but I didn't know him well enough to say whether or not I was interested. "I could be."
"That's how I feel about Jenny."
I was confused, but it really wasn't my place to intervene. If they could end up in a happy relationship, then who was I to step in and make a mess of it? I looked her over. "Is that what you are wearing?"
She looked down at her clothing. "Is this the wrong outfit?"
I did my best not to wince, but I was pretty sure it showed on my face. "Well, if you two are just hanging out at home, I'd say it's fine, but you are going out for a Christmas pageant. It's kind of a big deal."
"I don't even know what a Christmas Pageant is."
"It's like a show with food. Everyone goes to a big community location; you'll be going to the school, and you watch the kids put on some kind of holiday-themed play, and then everyone sits down to a great big meal together. They've been doing them forever. My grandmother wrote about them in her journals."
She tugged at her shirt. "So..."
"I'll help you."
We spent the next thirty minutes helping one another get ready. Or rather, I helped her, and she did her best to help me. She was tiny. I tended towards the size ten side of things. Reikah, at best, was a size six. I didn't have a whole lot that worked. She was also self-conscious about showing off her legs. I guess all those years wearing gray robes had some lingering effects.
We found a green dress, a little outdated but long enough to satisfy her and festive enough to satisfy me. Then I began the long process of explaining make-up and the application thereof.
I'm no wizard with such things, but I knew enough to know that Reikah would never need more than a little to look amazing. Her skin was fantastic, and her eyes were already dark-lashed. All we did was add a little shadow to the lids and gloss to the lips.
For myself, who had no clue where I was going, I wore my nicest pair of jeans and a turtleneck in the same not-quite-blue and not-quite-green color as my eyes. I went a little heavier on the make-up, but I needed to cover up the circles beneath my eyes from lack of sleep.
God, I really wanted to sleep.
With a quick sweep of my brush through my hair, I decided that I was ready enough when the door knocked. It was too early for it to be Zane.
"Will you answer it?" Reikah asked, pulling out a few pins for her hair.
"Sure."
I wandered to the living room, a ghost cat in my wake, and opened the door for Jenny. She looked nervous, beautiful as always, but nervous. She peeked over my shoulder as I crossed my arms and leaned against the door frame.
"So," I said, raising my brow, "when were you going to tell me you were going on a date?"
She looked sheepish. "It's not a date, not really."
"Funny, because I just spent forty minutes helping her get ready. I don't do that when friends, or bicker buddies really, are just going to hang out."
"I thought she might want to see the Christmas Pageant."
I nodded. "I heard. So, this is just fun, then? Should I go tell her to change out of the vintage dress?"
"Don't you dare." Jenny charged up one step until the two of us were eye-to-eye. "Shoot, am I making some kind of mistake?"
I shook my head. "No, but talk with her before things go too far. Lots of talking."
She grinned. "What's a relationship without some kind of communication?"
I was going to have to accept that. Reikah chose that moment to come out of the room. I knew Reikah had come out because Jenny's eyes went wide and she seemed to completely forget that I existed. I was a little offended; then, I turned and realized that I couldn't blame the girl. Reikah looked amazing.
"H-hi there," Jenny, who always knew what to say and brimmed with confidence, stuttered.
"Are you ready?" Reikah asked.
"Oh, yes."
I got a series of goodbyes before they piled into Jenny's car and headed off into the evening. I wished them all the best. Maybe if they worked out, the rest of us stood some kind of chance.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and a shape began to form in front of me.
"Wow, that was prompt -- oh." I cut off abruptly when I realized the vampire forming in front of me was not Zane; it was Wei.
He was wearing what I referred to as his workout clothes, better thought of as a martial arts uniform, but not the terry cloth ones they had in modern shops, but older and more...I don't know...real. I looked him over; in each hand, he held a short staff.
"Lorena?" he asked.
"Yeah, what are you doing here?"
"I thought...we would continue your lessons."
I blinked. Right up until our random make-out sessions, Wei had been teaching me martial arts. I had never thought of myself as the kind of person who wanted to learn Kung Fu, but Wei was an excellent teacher, and it made me feel kinda powerful to learn how to move my body in a fight. Not that I had any expectations of getting into a hand-to-hand battle, but you never really knew.
"Tonight?" I asked.
His eyes traveled over my outfit. It wasn't a flashy getup, but it wasn't my normal jeans and a gamer shirt either.
"You have plans."
"She does."
Oh, this was good, I thought to myself as Zane appeared a few feet behind Wei. I nearly laughed. We were dressed similarly. Both of us wore slacks and a turtleneck, but he had added a vest to his. Wei's face went completely blank.
"I see."
I should have bit my tongue. I even told myself I didn't need to say anything. But my mouth had its own ideas. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means nothing. I am glad to see that you are taking my advice." His lip curled ever so slightly before returning to that perfect empty mask.
"Advice?" I spat the word back at him. I wasn't sure why I was so angry. No, I wasn't angry. I was pissed. I knew he was mad. Oh, he could hide it with his face all he wanted, but I was a necromancer, and I could feel his thoughts swimming against my skin. He wasn't okay. He was upset. What right did he have to be upset? "Is that what you call flat out telling me that I should take Zane as my prophecy partner?"
Zane stayed quiet, folding his hands neatly behind his back as he watched us. He might have been a tall dark statue. Wei's fingers tightened hard enough on the staff to make the wood creak.
"What would you call it?" he demanded.
I fumbled. I knew words. I was okay with them. I read a lot, but I couldn't think of a single term for what he had done, I just knew that I was mad about it. "I'd call it the weirdest ultimatum ever. Have this guy or nothing; that's pretty much what you did."
"It is your best choice."
"It's not my choice if you are the one making it."
His eyes flamed, but his face remained utterly impassive. I was so mad about that. Tears, for reasons I couldn't explain, were popping into my eyes, and the only thing keeping them back was the knowledge that I would ruin my half an hour’s worth of make-up.
He bowed. "It was wrong of me to arrive without announcement." His shape began to lose form.
I shot my hand out and grasped at that magic that made him the undead. My own particular power surged through me and coiled around him, locking him in place. "Oh, no you don't. You aren't pulling that disappearing crap on me again. You've done that to me twice already, dammit. You are going to stay here, and you are going to listen to me.
You love me. I know it. I don't understand it, but I know it. I can feel it every time you look at me, but you won’t let yourself have it because you are so afraid of losing it. Well, I got news for you buster; fear is a part of love. You are always afraid that you might not be good enough, that you might screw it up, that you might lose them, but for the love of crap, that's just the way it is. You want me...say so."
He gave me a look that was half heartache and half anger. Those tears I'd been holding back ran down my cheeks and ruined the perfect wings of my liner. Damn.
"You don't love me."
I wasn't entirely sure about that. "You haven't given me the chance."
I dropped him as suddenly as my magic had scooped him up. "You are so afraid you won’t even give me that. You know what? No. I'm done with this. I'm done with you. You kiss me, you touch me, you light my whole body on fire and then you leave me because I make you afraid. I could forgive you the first time, maybe even the second time, but this? Now...no. Yes. I choose Zane. I choose him, and you can go home and tell the others."
Wei opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. He bowed once to me, and began to vanish. I was almost sure I saw a tear run down his face as he left.
I crumpled to the ground and started to cry.