From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (9 page)

Do You Really Want To Hurt Me

I hate surprises. Well, let me clarify that. If it is a set of d
iamond earrings, I love those. I’ve never been a flowers and candy sort of girl. Flowers die, and candy made me have to do ridiculous things like sit ups…and the most useless of all exercises: Jumping Jacks. Seriously, what the hell is Jack’s problem? Let’s totally take the part out of the equation where no sports bra that I’d ever found managed to keep the puppies in place. All a Jumping Jack does is let you feel which parts of you are jiggling more than they should. Basically…I hate Jumping Jacks.

But back to surprises.

Sitting on the hood of my brand new Corvette was a guy. You might be wondering if he was cute. Sure. He has a certain Brad Pitt thing working with his little bit of scruff and his sparkling eyes, but I think I may need to reiterate something. He. Was. Sitting. On. My. Corvette.

“You must be Ava,” he said this
like his butt was not leaving an imprint on the sweet, red paint of the hood of my Corvette.

“You must be—” And that was when the smell hit me. Chocolate cake dipped in Dumpster filth.

“My name is Jeremy Ames.”

“You’re a vampire,” I spat. “And you are sitting on my Co
rvette!”

He looked down like he was noticing that most beautiful a
utomobile for the very first time. Then he slid forward and stood up. I wanted to stake him right there.

But, Ava
, you are probably saying,
he looks like Brad Pitt? You could dunk Brad Pitt in raw sewage and I’d still ride him like a roller coaster.
Did you miss the part about him sitting on my Corvette? Or that he
slid
off of it?

“I may not eat you,” I snarled. “But I do know how to make your type turn into a little cloud of ash.” I patted the ba
g at my side, the one that still had stakes and holy water and all manner of killing implements that removed pesky undead or your money back.

“Belinda said you were a real interesting sort,” Jeremy laughed.

His fangs caught the light and flashed. If this were a movie, or one of those silly romance books, I would have found it ‘strangely attractive’ or some such nonsense. The only thing that found it was annoying.

“And what does that pain in the ass want?” I snapped as I shoved past the uncomfortably attractive—but still stinky—vampire. I rooted through my carry bag and found a crumpled tee shirt. I leaned in close and began removing the near-perfect butt print from the hood of my car.

“She has sent me to accompany you on your assignment,” Jeremy said.

“I don’t need, nor do I
want
help from one of her little toadies.”

“She said that you would refuse.
” Jeremy came up beside me. “Missed a spot.” He actually had the audacity to point! “But she told me to explain that Morgan insisted I join you now that you no longer have…” He stopped talking.

I looked at him and realized that no
t every vampire seemed to be able to hide their feelings. Jeremy looked openly cautious.

“Since you no longer…” Jeremy paused and seemed to co
nsider what he was about to say, basing his caution on the obvious look of disapproval on my face. “And these are her words, not mine, so please don’t do anything crazy.”

Did I seem like the kind of person to do anything crazy? Did I fly off the handle over little things? And who was this guy to imply that I might be unstable.

“Just spit it out!” I growled.

“Since you no longer have your silly pet human,” Jeremy said those words so fast that my brain had to add the spaces b
etween each one; otherwise it would have just sounded like so much gibberish.

I stared at him for a long moment. Actually, I was waiting for my fingers and toes to do their thing. However, nothing ha
ppened. I would have to think on this more later, but for now, I was going off of the assumption that nothing Belinda said would matter to me one way or the other anymore.

“Do you have any idea wh
at it is that I am doing?” I asked after taking one more look at my hood for any lingering butt prints.

“Not really,” Jeremy said with
a shrug. He reached inside the front left pocket of his much-too-loose-for my-liking jeans and pulled out a phone. “But it was important enough for Belinda to give me this.”

“A phone?” I wasn’t impressed. I had a phone. Hell, ever
ybody had one.

“This one has a tracking program.” Jeremy’s fingers flew over it and he held up the display for me to see.

“So she wants to know where you are…whoop-di-frickin’-do!”

“You don’t understand.” Jeremy stuffed it back in his poc
ket. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that I saw a hurt look flash across his face. “She doesn’t care where we go or what we do as long as we make our monthly tributes and don’t end up on the news.”

“So what you are saying is tha
t Belinda isn’t much of a hands-on type of leader?”

“That is putting it lightly,” Jeremy grumbled. “When I moved here from San Diego thirty years ago, I thought I would have it better. But I guess Erma Bombeck is right
.”

“Who?” I opened my door and put my stuff inside.

“This lady who used to have a column in the papers…not that anybody reads the paper anymore…”

Great. In all the books and movies, these cute vampires show up and get all
macho. They save the pretty girl or fight other vampires to defend her honor. They are badass dudes who sweep the girl off her feet whether she wants it or not.
I
get the sniveling philosophizer hung up on ‘the way things used to be’ or some such nonsense.

“Your point?” I gave him the
‘hurry up’ gesture with my hands.

“Just that Belinda never gives us a tracking phone. I hones
tly don’t think that she would notice if we were gone until the dues went unpaid.”

“Wait, you have to pay dues to her?” What kind of messed up situation was this? And I have read a few of those books now since Morgan said that some of them actually have nuggets of truth in them. I don’t recall anybody mentioning membership fees. This might be interesting later, but right now, I had
The Queen of the Zombies to deal with.

“…all of the Kiss leaders decided.”

Damn, I guess Jeremy had been talking. Oh well, I really do have enough on my plate right now. The last thing that I need to be worrying about is vampire politics. I mean, I wasn’t actually all that interested in regular politics, so the vampire’s problems were really his own.

“If you are going, then get in.”

I hopped in my car and allowed myself just a few seconds to bask in the comfort. Seriously, if this thing came with an option that gave vibrating seats, I would never need a man.

I glanced over at Jeremy who was dutifully fastening his seatbelt. He was either safety conscious…or has some doubt as to my ability to drive this baby.

Ladies, what in the world is wrong with men? I mean besides all of the really obvious stuff. They think they have the handle on everything. And if a lady gets in behind the wheel of a sports car, they act all crazy, like we don’t belong. Same thing with motorcycles. Let a gal cruise down the highway on her hog and you’d think she was Lady Godiva for all the stares that she gets. I got news for you, just because we don’t…doesn’t mean that we can’t. Seriously, boys, you can be replaced by a few inches of rubber and a couple of D-cell batteries, so I wouldn’t be too cocky. Hmm…that was almost a pun.

As I pulled out into the street, I noticed Jeremy try to casua
lly put his hands on the dashboard.
Fine…you want to have something to be afraid of, mister? Do any of you have the slightest idea what it feels like when the gas pedal hits the floor in the new Corvette?
I take back the comment about needing vibrating seats.

“Not much for being subtle, are you?” Jeremy yelled above Simon and the boys laying down their funky groove about a girl named
Rio
.

“What?” I batted my eyes and played the innocent. Of course, with my dark glasses on, I doubt he noticed.

“You always drive with this much anger?”

“How come when a guy drives fast, it is no big deal, but when a gal does it, it has to be about anger or
being crazy?”

“I
was talking about the gray skin.” Jeremy touched my arm.

It was only a slight touch, but it gave me a tingle. His finger was cool and it only ran down my skin for the briefest of m
oments, but it felt great. I had this sudden thought that it had actually been quite a while since I’d had sex. Well, with a partner at least. Just because I’m a ghoul doesn’t mean that I’m dead. Wait. Actually it does. But I still have my regular sex drive and all that jazz. I guess that might be confusing.

Wait a minute!
a voice screamed in my head. This is not one of those weird ‘paranormal romance’ thingies. I am not going to get caught up in one of those. Like I said, I’ve read enough of those books. They always start out fine, but somewhere along the line they become all about sex. The lead female usually turns into a bit of a whore. Sure, she tries to play it off as being a ‘strong, independent woman’ as she hops from bed to bed, but we are all thinking the same thing. Right?

I yanked the wheel hard to the right and slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop in the emergency lane. I took of
f my glasses and turned in the seat to give my full attention to the vampire beside me.

“I want you to pay very close attention,” I said.
“I have no idea why Belinda sent you. I am pretty sure Morgan is involved in this somehow—”

“You’ve met Morgan?” He asked it like somebody might
do if you say you have met Jesus. And let me clarify that a bit. Not ‘Have you found…?’ but in the literal sense of actually
meeting
the real life Jesus.

“Of course I have,” I snapped. I hated it when people inte
rrupted me. “What’s the big deal?”

“She only meets face-to-face with the upper echelon of the supernaturals in her district.”

Now he was acting like
I
was Jesus. He was staring at me with these great big eyes that belonged on a Japanese anime character.

“Stop changing the subject!” I snapped. “Now
, as I was saying…”
Damn. Now I couldn’t remember what I was saying
. Well, at least until I noticed that he had a pretty wide chest and that his shirt was open. Then it hit me like a dose of Spanish Fly.

“This isn’t some sort of hook up. Are you following me?” Jeremy nodded. “This is some sort of arrangement where you have been sent to spy on me or something.
We won’t be going all Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. You understand what I’m saying?”

Once again Jeremy simply nodded. But I was pretty sure that I detected a smirk.

After another of my ‘untouchable’ glares, (you know the kind, ladies)… We’ve all been to the club and had some guy start giving us more than a casual glance. He is sporting his backwards baseball cap and has that hideous lump in his lower lip that hides a big dip of some sort of nasty chew. You know that no amount of alcohol is going to be enough. You pull out that one special look that makes their little wee-wees shrivel. Of course they will tell their buddies that ‘she’s probably a lesbo’ or some such nonsense. Yeah, I used
that
look on him.

We rode in silence the rest of the way. To his credit, Jeremy sat there and even had the sense to tap along with my music. We were just taking the turn into downtown when the song
Fallen Angel
by Poison came on.

Now I have been known to hurt a few people’s feelings in my day with my ‘say it like it is’ nature. One of my big—ain’t that cute how I said ‘one’?—pet peeves is when people who have no business singing along choose to do so. There are a few people that nobody should ever try to sing with: Geoff Tate from Queensryche
, Rob Halford from Judas Priest, and Freddie Mercury from Queen. That last one isn’t because he has such a crazy range, but simply because Freddie has the voice of an angel and deserves respect. Very close on my list is Brett Michaels from Poison. I just think he is dreamy and I have vowed that I will drop everything and be on the first plane when he kicks the bucket. His sweet little ass is mine…literally.

Sorry, I tend to drift off a little when I start thinking about Mr. Michaels. Anyways, most people who sing along in the presence of others have no business doing so. Jeremy started singing and I already had one in the chamber. My standard que
stion is: “Hey, who sings this?” They usually are able to answer with the correct artist; in this case it would be Poison. I quickly follow that with: “Then maybe you should let them do it.”

That never fails to shut them up. Oh sure, you get the
‘hurt feelings’ look, but at least you get to listen to your song. Am I right?

However, Jeremy started in and I was so taken by his voice that I drove right past that laundry and pizza strip mall location that I’d come to that first night. In fact, before I knew it, I was at the outskirts of town. Now before you get the wrong idea, E
stacada is really small.