Fangs for Nothing (Vampire Hunting and Other Foolish Endeavors) Page 7

  “Yeah,” Xander replied in his regular voice. “It sounds all Mozarty.”

  “Shhh.” Rini shushed him. “Somebody’s down here.”

  “So?”

  “So,” she hissed, “whoever it is, they obviously don’t want us down here, or they wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble trying to make it look like you couldn’t get in.”

  “Oh,” Xander said in a much more subdued tone. “I get you.”

  We got to the end of the passage, and it opened up into a large room, which must have been the main entrance to the station. The ceilings were sky high, and there were carved wooden benches along the walls. Multiple large doors and tall, Art Deco windows were all tastefully blocked over with well-fitted pieces of parquet wood in a herringbone pattern. Glancing around, I realized that our cell phones were no longer the only source of illumination. Every few yards, the walls displayed Deco wall sconces with blue and green leaded-glass shades. The music had become very distinct although still not very loud. I scanned the room, trying to make sense of what we had discovered. Further into the refurbished station, there were Edwardian-looking couches upholstered in red velvet and dozens of tables covered with platters of fruit and cheese and half-drunk glasses of wine. “I guess somebody lives here,” Xander observed, pinching a grape from a tray.

  “Don’t eat that,” Rini said in a low, sharp voice, swatting the fruit out of his hand.

  “Hey…” He was about to protest, but then stopped.

  Someone else was in the room. There had been the distinct sound of another human—a little gasp and then a faint, “Oh.”

  “What was that?” I whispered, wheeling around to face the direction I thought the noise came from. The room was so big with such high ceilings that everything was all echo-y, and it threw off my audio sense of direction.

  Toward the far wall I saw movement. There was a large, ornately carved chair and what appeared to be a couple sitting on it, entwined and deeply embracing. Or maybe they weren’t embracing. They could have been struggling. In the dim light, it was hard to tell. There was another audible female gasp, and I rushed forward several steps, becoming more convinced that the girl was in distress. My footsteps echoed off the floor, and the man looked up, his eyes burning like two embers. His white shirt was open to the waist, revealing his bare chest. Blood dripped from his chin. He released the girl, and she slipped to the ground to squirm on a Persian rug. There was quite a bit of blood pouring from her neck, but it didn’t appear to concern her. She was too busy moaning and writhing in the throes of ecstasy.

  “Welcome,” the man smiled, the girl’s blood still dripping from some of his very pointy teeth. He rose from his richly carved and upholstered chair. He had thick dark hair that hung below his collar and spiraled into a disarray of curls. “Please forgive my appearance. I didn’t hear you come in, or I wouldn’t have been so preoccupied with…” He waved a vague hand in the girl’s direction.

  I was torn between concern for the girl and fear of the man. Her neck was bleeding pretty profusely. Involuntarily, I took a few more steps forward. The girl’s head lolled to the side, her eyes filled with a dreamy haze. Much to my horror, I recognized her. It was Lydia Sarducci.

  “Lydia,” I blurted. I was about to run to her, but Xander caught me by the shoulder and jerked me back. “Let go.”

  I struggled against his grip. “That’s Lydia. From the market.”

  “I know,” he shouted back in my face, shaking me as hard as he could. “And that,” he jerked his head toward the man, “is a vampire!”

  Chapter 9

  I stared at the vampire, my mouth hanging open. I was simply agog. He smiled back, pleasantly enough if you could ignore the gore dripping off his chin and staining the frilly shirt he was half wearing. Though handsome, there was something about the vampire’s skin that was just plain weird. It had a sort of waxy appearance. It was like when you get a jagged cut on your finger and there’s a large skin flap that you mash back down into the blood and wrap with a Band-Aid. You hope the skin will somehow all fuse back together, but when you look under the tape a few days later, the flap has this strange, slightly translucent quality like candle wax, and you know that portion of your flesh isn’t getting any blood. Well, that’s kind of how the vampire’s skin looked. But all over. It was as if his entire body wasn’t getting enough blood.

  It was that thought that broke me out of my trance. I spun around to face Xander and shouted, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  I didn’t have to say it twice; Xander was right there with me. We took off, sprinting back the way we had come. Rini was just standing there like a zombie, so Xander grabbed her by the arm and dragged her in our wake. She has stubby little legs, so there was no way she could keep up while we were running hell-bent for leather. I felt an extreme urgency to increase our speed, so I grabbed her other arm. When we hit the stairs, we hooked her under the armpits so we could take them two at a time. Bursting through the faux-water silk, we were no longer concerned about tearing the beautiful fabric. We fought our way through the crowd and scrambled out the exit.

  I don’t even know how we made it home alive. Xander was behind the wheel, driving like a maniac, shouting, “This is unbelievable. This is un-fucking-believable.” Rini wrapped herself into a tiny ball in the passenger’s seat and kept rocking back and forth. I was in the back seat completely gob smacked. It’s a miracle we didn’t get pulled over by the cops. I’m sure they would have hauled us down to the station for being on drugs, the way we were gibbering about vampires in Cleveland. As it was, none of us had so much as had a drink.

  In my room, alone in bed with the covers tucked under my chin, I couldn’t sleep. Several things were bothering me. The first being that vampires existed. Naturally. Secondly, these existing vampires were living in Cleveland, Ohio. Or at least, one of them was. The third problem was that we’d left Lydia Sarducci in the vampire’s clutches. I mean, I can’t believe we just left her there. In our defense, she was blissed out and appeared to be having one heck of a good time, so the likelihood we could have gotten her to her feet and dragged her out of there was slim, but still… And finally, we pretty much destroyed the silk water illusion as we barreled through it. There were still a ton of kids partying under the bridge when we made our hasty exit. God knows how many of them decided to follow the hallway to the lair of the vampire without the scummy faux water to keep them out.

  But what were we supposed to do? I couldn’t think of a plausible solution. The place was crammed full with Goth kids. I somehow doubted shouting, “Everybody, get out. There’s a vampire down here,” would have worked. In fact, it probably would have had the opposite effect.

  There was absolutely no way I could sleep. I’d drawn the curtains to my windows because I kept feeling like someone was lurking outside, looking in at me. A couple of times, I thought I heard the shriek of teenage girls, but it might also have been cars with bad brakes or something. I had two winter scarves double wrapped around my neck, which were making me sweat, and I was starting to itch. I also sharpened the crap out of every pencil I could get my hands on. I wasn’t sure how much wood was needed to officially qualify as a stake that would kill a vampire, but I knew there would be hell to pay if Grandma caught me sharpening her wooden spoons.

  I kept thunking myself on the forehead trying to absorb the new reality that had been thrust upon me. Over the last couple of years, Xander, Rini, and I had talked and joked and dreamed about vampires so much. Hell, we’d even taken a few jaunts around the country looking for them. But absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the fact that vampires truly existed and had taken up residence in my hometown.

  I don’t know when I finally dozed off, but I awoke the next morning to the sounds of an annoyed senior citizen standing over my bed. “Herbert. What’s that powder crap doing all over the house? It stinks to high heaven. What in the world were you doing?”

  I quickly burrowed under my pillow before she could execu
te her next early morning maneuver of throwing open the curtains to allow the sun to braise my eyeballs. “Uh, I don’t know, Grandma,” I said from my muffled position. “I was just…” I couldn’t think of a plausible excuse. “Just being stupid. I’ll get it cleaned up right away.”

  “Well, get it cleaned up right away,” Grandma ordered, lending legitimacy to my theory that she only bothered to listen to me half the time. Either that or her hearing was going. It was hard to tell.

  In the middle of the night, I had decided that scarves and pencils weren’t enough of a defense against the undead. I decided to block entry to all our doorways and windows by stringing up garlic. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any garlic, so I had to make garlic powder suffice. Yeah, okay, it sounded pretty stupid in the harsh light of day, but what can I say? I was freaked.

  I got up and immediately got busy vacuuming. Grandma would probably be willing to let the whole powder thing slide as long as A) I cleaned it up immediately and B) she didn’t realize I had used up all her garlic powder. All I had to do was replace the bottle with the exact same brand sometime before she started cooking dinner. And I would empty a little bit of it out before I slipped the replacement bottle in the spice rack. Finding a brand new, unopened bottle would definitely ignite her suspicions, and I really didn’t want to have to explain my behavior. As long as she didn’t discover the missing garlic bottle first, she would probably chalk up the whole smelly-powder-sprinkled-around-the-house thing to run-of-the-mill teenage stupidity. Like I said, she wanted to raise me to be a nice young man, but otherwise, didn’t want to know too much about the messy details of teenagedom.

  Luckily, there was a greengrocer only a couple of blocks from our house, and they carried a lot of spices. I was able to match the bottle, no problem. While I was there, I also picked up a dozen garlic cloves, just to be on the safe side. The longer I was awake, the more I became convinced that we had been the victims of some type of elaborate prank. It was possible that someone had slipped us something. But we weren’t drinking, so that didn’t make any sense. Whatever the truth was, I was pretty sure Violet Girl had something to do with it. Otherwise, why would she have knocked my phone into the fake slime? She wanted me to discover the faux water and follow the tunnel. At least, I thought she did. Or maybe she was just a bitch. Sometimes it was hard to tell with girls.

  When I got back from the store, I put the garlic in a freezer bag and shoved it in my closet. I felt kind of foolish wasting good money on vampire protection, but I did NOT want another night like the one I’d just had. If ten bucks worth of garlic would give me peace of mind so I could sleep, then it wasn’t too high of a price to pay.

  Grandma had left the Cleveland Plain Dealer on the kitchen table folded to display an article reporting that the bodies of a young couple had been found on the shores of Lake Erie. It must have been some type of suicide pact because they had both slit their wrists. I studied the school photos of the two that they’d included with the article. The girl had been pretty. I wondered why the guy had thought killing himself was a good idea when he had such a super-cute girlfriend. The article went on to say that in the last eleven months, fourteen teenagers had killed themselves, all using razor blades. The whole idea made my wrists tingle and my stomach clench, so I threw the paper in the recycling. If Grandma didn’t want me to “follow the trend” of killing myself, then it really didn’t make sense that she kept pointing out how popular suicide had become lately.

  When Grandma headed outside to continue her ongoing war with the snails over her tomatoes, I booted up my computer. I couldn’t be the only one that was feeling confused about our discovery. But no one was online, and I had no messages waiting. I sat there staring at the screen, considering whether I should enter the words vampire, bridge, and Cleveland into a search engine when an IM popped up on my screen.

  Turnover: Sherbie? You there?

  Sherbert: Yeah. Hi, Lana.

  Turnover: Hey!

  Sherbert: Hi.

  Turnover: I’m in Cleveland.

  Sherbert: Welcome.

  I knew I was being just a hint of a jerk, but I was dealing with the reality of vampires. Plus, being a pawn in some girl’s pursuit of Xander was not high on my list of things to do before I went to work at noon.

  Turnover: I’ve been here 24 hrs.

  Sherbert: Cool.

  To be honest, I had totally spaced that when she said she was coming in to Cleveland, she meant right away.

  Turnover: I thought you might IM.

  Sherbert: Sorry. Been busy.

  Turnover: What RU doing tonight?

  I don’t like when people use text-ese when IMing. I mean, a text is one thing, but is it really that much more difficult to type are you instead of RU when you’re using a keyboard?

  Sherbert: Sorry. Busy.

  Yeah, I was being quite the pill, but here again, 1) vampires 2) just because she wanted to use me as her stooge didn’t mean I had to be pleasant about it.

  Turnover: Tomorrow? Want to show me your town?

  I had to give Lana points for persistence. Most girls would have probably felt a little chilled by my cold reception and given up. While trying to decide how to respond, I glanced out the window and saw my grandmother, wearing her housecoat, eradicating some weeds with a hoe. She took weeds in her garden as a personal affront that was not to be tolerated. The way she was swinging that hoe, it looked like she was getting quite the workout.

  I knew Grandma would be on me again at some point in the near future about girls. Harassing me about dating was one of her favorite pastimes. If I brought Lana by the house once or twice, then faked heartbreak about her throwing me over for Xander, that should cool Grandma’s jets for a while. Or even better, I could pretend to have a relationship with Lana even after she went back to San Francisco. A long-distance relationship. That would probably keep Grandma off my back for the rest of the summer. And as a fabulous byproduct, give me more time to be on the computer IMing my “girlfriend” without Grandma worrying that the neighbors were trying to call to tell us our house was on fire.

  Sherbert: Sure.

  Turnover: Really? Great!

  We did some quick IMing about where, when, and who. I decided not to toy with her to the point of not inviting Xander along. Lana and I would be each other’s mutual pawns, and I might as well hold up my end. It was almost time for me to leave for the mall, so I had to get changed.

  Sherbert: See you tomorrow.

  Turnover: It’s a date.

  There had been no messages from Xander or Rini at all, so I had to bus it over to the mall for my pretzel shift. IMing Lana had distracted me from thinking about vampires, but the longer I was awake, the more I began to wonder if we had actually seen what we thought we saw. I mean, using public transportation really gives you a cold dose of reality. I could far easier believe in the existence of zombies on the bus than that a vampire was living under the Detroit-Superior Bridge.

  Rini was already working when I clocked in. Her dark hair was mussed, and her eyes were dark smudges. It was presumable that she’d also had a rough night. “Hey,” I mumbled. She barely glanced at me but gave me a nod as she rolled out some dough. “Xander here?” I asked. She jerked her chin toward the food court. He was slouching in a chair, searching for something on his phone. I felt irritated. You’d have thought with both of them headed for the mall, at least one of them could have bothered to offer me a ride. On any other day, I would have said something about it, but seeing that we’d recently escaped the clutches of a supposed vampire, I let it slide.

  Rini was not in a talkative mood. She barely said three words to me beyond telling me what to do for work and when to go on break. I tried a couple of times to bring up what happened the previous night, but every time I did, she said, “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  After a little while, I got frustrated and groused, “Well, when will you want to talk about it?”

  “Never,” was her terse respo
nse. That was fine by me. I had a headache from my all-night vigil of clutching freshly sharpened number 2 pencils, and Rini’s pissy attitude wasn’t helping it go away.

  Finally, I was given my fifteen minutes of freedom, and I headed for the food court. “Hey,” I grunted at Xander, shoving his feet off a chair so I could join him at the two top where he was sitting. I plunked a reject pretzel and some spicy mustard down in front of him. Xander fell on the food like a ravenous wolf.

  “Mmwphf,” he told me by way of a thank you.

  “So what’s up Rini’s butt?” I asked, making myself comfortable as I slouched in my chair.

  Xander shrugged. “It’s probably the whole vampire thing.”

  “Yeah. So? What do we think of that?”

  “What?” Xander managed between giant bites.

  “Did we actually see a vampire or not?”

  He eyed me for a moment, hovering over his last two bites of food. “Looked pretty real to me.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I had to agree. “It definitely looked real, but how could it be real? I mean, vampires in Cleveland. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  Xander wasn’t persuaded. “I know what I saw.”

  “Yeah, but maybe what we saw wasn’t what we thought we saw. Do you know what I mean?”

  This earned me a heavy-lidded look of irritation from Xander’s baby blues. After a moment, he said, “What are we supposed to do about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We could go look for that Lydia chick at the market tomorrow. Ask her what’s going on.”

  “Yeah.” I shifted uneasily in my chair. “Uh, that might be kind of difficult for tomorrow.”

  “Why’s that?” Xander tilted his head back slightly, mustard smeared across half his mouth.

  “Well…” I hedged. “Tomorrow, you kind of…well…” After another moment of stalling, I decided to just fess up. Sighing heavily, I blurted, “You have a date.”