Nice Girls Don't Bite Their Neighbors (14 page)

—Siring for the Stupid:
A Beginner’s Guide to Raising Newborn Vampires

“O
w,” Gabriel said dully, as if he’d just stubbed his toe. He slumped against me and passed out.

Seeing the red-tinged grain of the wooden shaft sticking out of his skin, I felt a surge of panic. Did an arrow count as a stake? I realized that the arrow was lodged in the wrong side of his chest. He’d been shot about four inches too far to the right to do any permanent damage. But obviously, it still hurt like a bitch, because Gabriel was completely unconscious, the skin around his lips white and tense.

Fighting down my panic, I closed my eyes, focused my senses, and opened them to search for any signs of a human or a vampire nearby. There was no scent. No
movement in the distance. I could hear a skittering heartbeat, moving away from me quickly. I could hear the faint crackle of tree limbs as the human archer ran from the havoc he’d caused. His mind was racing, so scattered and hyped up that I couldn’t grasp at a single thought stream.

Should I chase him or help Gabriel?
Considering how much Gabriel was bleeding and the likelihood of being skewered myself if I caught the human, I decided to stay. I cupped my hand over the wound, thick red blood welling around my fingers and the arrow as I applied pressure.

I thought back to all of the bad Kevin Costner movies I’d seen involving dancing with wolves and Robin Hoods without the proper accent. When the hapless sidekick was skewered, Kevin would snap off the feathered end of the arrow and pull it out. I gently pulled Gabriel toward me and saw that there was no traditional feathered end to the arrow. It was a plain old sportsman’s arrow, like most of the deer hunters in the area would use.

I opened Gabriel’s shirt and saw that the flesh around the protruding arrowhead was withered and crackling. A reaction to the wood?

I reached over his shoulder and snapped off the notched end as close to his back as possible. Waking, Gabriel winced, leaning heavily against me.

“Ow,” he said again, sounding more annoyed. I took this as a good sign.

I wrapped my fingers around the arrowhead. “I’m not going to lie, this is going to hurt.”

“What?”

Without further preamble, I yanked hard. Gabriel yelped as the arrow slid free and clattered to the ground. The jolt of pain seemed to help him focus. His eyes narrowed, snapping to my face.

“Someone shot me with an arrow!” he exclaimed.

A nervous laugh bubbled up through my chest. “Yeah, sweetie, that’s why there was a narrow wooden cylinder sticking out your back.”

“Well, now that the initial panic is over, I find I am really pissed about it!” he grumbled.

I laughed, running my hand over my face. “Let’s get you into the house before he tries it again, OK?”

“You know, this is your fault, Ms. Spontaneous Outdoor Sex,” he grumped as I hauled him to his feet.

“Actually, you’re right. I should have known better,” I admitted, tucking his arm around my shoulders and supporting his weight as we walked. “Nothing good comes from us having sex outside. I just now recall Taseing you after the shop incident and then creepy Jeanine sending me pictures of our activities afterward.”

“We just need to do more thorough perimeter checks from now on,” he muttered.

“Why are you limping?” I demanded. “The arrow didn’t hit you in the leg.”

He stopped, his shift in weight pulling me to a halt, too. “I don’t know. It just seems like the thing to do after you’ve received an arrow wound.”

I sighed as he straightened his gait and walked normally. “You are so the guy for me.”

The wound had closed by the time we reached the
front door. Gabriel kept repeating, “Who the hell shoots an arrow at someone? Doesn’t anyone have any respect for the recent advancements in firearms?”

“What happened?” Jamie called as we passed the parlor door. Jettie had him ensconced on the couch with a bottle of Faux Type O, playing a video game while she showed him my high school yearbooks. Where was the loyalty? Honestly.

“Just a little mishap with a stray arrow,” I said through gritted teeth as I steered Gabriel down the hall to the guest bath, where we kept the medical supplies.

Jamie dropped his controller and followed us. The potential to see real carnage was more appealing than killing digital zombies, or whatever he was doing.

“Do you think it could have been a hunter?” I asked Gabriel. “They’ve strayed onto my land before. I try not to get too grumpy with them, because, well, they’re armed.”

“We could go look in the woods,” Jettie offered, appearing at my elbow. “See if there’s a suspicious character hanging around.” I nodded, and my ghostly friends disappeared through the front wall of the house.

“It’s nowhere near bow season,” Jamie said.

“So, you’re familiar with bow-hunting, are you?” Gabriel asked, his tone suspicious.

I smacked his good arm. “If you’re going to be accusatory, at least man up about it. Jamie, did you shoot Gabriel in the back with a bow and arrow?”

“What, am I going to get sent to time-out if I did?”

“That’s not really an answer,” Gabriel noted.

“No, OK, I didn’t shoot you. I was showing Jettie how to play
Madden NFL 11
on Wii.”

“When did we get a Wii?” I asked.

“This is what’s disturbing to you in this situation? Heretofore unaccounted-for gaming equipment?” Gabriel demanded.

I shrugged. “How am I supposed to take away privileges if I don’t even know what privileges he has?”

“Damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have told you!” Jamie exclaimed.

“Can we focus the conversation on my nearly being killed by a flying stake?” Gabriel asked, his pallor getting more ashen by the second.

“Jamie, could you grab Gabriel a couple of packets of donor blood from the fridge? Dick brought some by a while ago,” I asked, pulling out my cell phone. “I’m calling Dick.”

“Jane. Wait.”

“Gabriel, I know you’re probably kind of embarrassed. I’m not sure what to do here. Of everyone we know, I’d say it’s most likely that Dick has survived something like this.”

“I don’t feel very well,” Gabriel said, his voice strained as moisture pooled at the corners of his eyes.

Jamie scoffed. “I thought we don’t get sick. Aw, come on, Gabe, tears? I’m gonna find your man card and rip it—”

Suddenly, blood was streaming down Gabriel’s cheeks. Our tears had traces of blood in them, leaving rusty pink
streaks on our faces if we cried. Gabriel looked as if he was starring in a PSA about the Ebola virus.

“Jamie, shut up,” I commanded in a tone even Jamie couldn’t argue with. “Gabriel, what’s wrong? What hurts?”

Gabriel opened his mouth to answer, and a tidal wave of dark crimson poured out of his mouth and onto my hands. Jamie shrieked and scrambled back. I let Gabriel sink to the hallway floor and cradled his head in my lap. He coughed, spraying red streaks across an ancient family carpet.

Grandma Ruthie’s tinny, disembodied voice fluttered at my left ear, screeching, “Don’t let him bleed on my rug!”

I ignored her, concentrating on the blood that seemed to be seeping from Gabriel’s very pores. I sniffed at the arrow wound. The skin was starting to re-form around it, although blood had started to gush in waves from the puncture, soaking through his shirt and seeping onto my legs. I’d almost forgotten that Gabriel was still holding on to the arrow. I took it from his hand carefully. It smelled funny, bitter and metallic, with an undertone of sickly sweetness. The wood seemed spongy and weak, as if it had been submerged in water for a while.

“This is what you get when you lie down with a monster.” Grandma Ruthie sighed at my ear, clucking her tongue. “Nothing but blood and death and ruined carpet.”

“Shut the hell up, old woman! You laid down with more men than I ever could!” I screamed as Gabriel
retched against me, spilling blood over my jeans. “Gabriel, please, tell me what you need me to do.”

Jamie was kneeling beside me now, holding Gabriel’s legs as he thrashed and twitched. “Do we call an ambulance?”

I shook my head, bit my wrist, and pressed it to Gabriel’s mouth. “We have to flush out his system with new blood. It will help him heal. Same thing happened when I got silver-maced last year. Get my cell from my purse. Call Dick, tell him we need blood, any kind he has.
Now!
”

When Gabriel didn’t draw from the wound, I opened his mouth and dripped the blood past his lips. I could hear Jamie on the phone with Dick, his young voice pitched by panic. Gabriel’s eyes dropped closed, but I saw his throat working to swallow. This was a hideous feeling. The helplessness, watching as he suffered. This was what Dick had felt when I’d been sprayed last year. This was what Gabriel had felt on the side of the road when I was shot in the back and he came to my house to find me bleeding.

My blood seemed to help. Gabriel’s legs stopped twitching. His fingers wrapped around my arm, holding it to his mouth. I stroked his forehead and asked Jamie for a wet cloth to clean the rust-colored tears from his cheeks. Minutes passed silently, without comments from Jamie or Grandma Ruthie. My limbs were starting to feel heavy, cold. I could feel my body functions slowing down as the blood left my veins. I tried to remember the last time I’d fed and couldn’t. Clearly, my siring schedule
was a little more hectic than I’d thought. “He’s going to need more blood than what I can give him.”

Jamie shrugged as if he couldn’t figure out why I was telling him this. “OK.” I smacked his arm and glanced pointedly at his wrist. “Fine. I can’t believe this,” he grumbled, biting into his arm. “Ow! That hurts!”

“Be nice. I gave you my blood when you needed it.” I helped him bring Gabriel’s mouth to the freely seeping wound. This feeding was more detached, clinical. Jamie was leaning away from Gabriel as if he was afraid that someone would burst into the room and accuse him of being bromantic with his grandsire.

I was momentarily sidelined, with less blood circulating around my brain, and the panic was seeping in at the edges of my consciousness. What more could I do? Should I call the Council? What could they do for him? Vampires healed on their own. There were few medical treatments for us other than blood.

Suddenly, Gabriel broke away from Jamie’s arm, spewing all of the blood he’d just ingested over Jamie’s shoulder and onto the floor. Jamie cursed and wiped frantically at his clothes. Gabriel’s skin was cold and gray as I pulled him across my legs. I slid my hands down his cheeks, trying to wipe away some of the sticky crimson from his skin. His eyes wheeled frantically, searching the ceiling behind me. He couldn’t seem to focus on my face. I leaned close to touch my forehead to his. His chest gurgled as he panted against my cheek. His fingers plucked frantically at my sleeve, pulling me closer. My eyes burned with unshed tears.

“Just hold on, please?” I begged him. “We’re going
to get married. I want to spend the rest of my undead life annoying the living hell out of you. I can’t do that without you.”

Dick and Andrea burst through the front door, blanching at the sight of Gabriel curled in my lap. Dick murmured, “It looks like a Tarantino movie in here.”

Recognizing a starving vampire when she saw one, Andrea rolled up her sleeve and took my place by Gabriel. She cradled his head with a practiced air and had him latched onto her wrist before I could blink. Reluctantly moving away from him, I felt the hysteria I’d been tamping down clawing its way up my chest to my throat. My knees gave out, and Dick caught my elbows to keep me from collapsing bonelessly onto the floor like a rag doll. “Easy there, Stretch.”

“I don’t know what happened,” I said, wiping at my wet cheeks with shaking hands as Dick led me to the couch. “We were just walking outside. We were talking, laughing, and then there was this noise, a
ping
. And Gabriel had an arrow poking out of his chest—”

I sprang off the couch and grabbed the arrow from the floor. “Dick, who do you know who might work in a lab? A hospital, blood bank. Hell, I’ll take a high school chemistry teacher if they know what they’re doing.”

“Why? Don’t you think we should focus on Gabriel right now?”

I gingerly held up the arrow fragments. He leaned over to sniff the wood and made a sour face. “I want this tested for poisons, contaminants, drugs. I want to know why Gabriel reacted this way to this arrow.”

“We can be poisoned?” Andrea exclaimed. “Why didn’t I know this? I think that should be in the
Guidebook
somewhere.”

“I’m serious, Dick. I want to know what’s wrong with that arrow,” I told him.

Dick snickered. “Well, sure, I’ll just scoot on down to my crime lab and fire up the gas chromatograph.”

I glared at him. He grimaced. “Inappropriate humor is how I cope, Jane.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know a guy.”

He shrugged. “I know a guy.”

“Of course you do. You think you can get me results quick?”

“For a price.”

“There’s emergency cash in the library, stuffed inside a copy of
The Great Gatsby
. Take as much as you think you’ll need.” Dick lifted a brow. I squeezed his arm. “I trust you, Dick.”

“Shouldn’t I take my turn feeding him?” Dick asked, his forehead creased with concern for his old friend.

“I’ll take another turn before we take him upstairs,” I said, shaking my head. “It would be better to know what we’re dealing with now. Just go.”

Dick gingerly wrapped the arrow bits in a plastic kitchen baggie and told me to wash my hands, just in case whatever poison the arrow contained could be absorbed through the skin. He kissed Andrea on the top of her head as she continued to feed Gabriel, and slipped out the front door.

“You know, it’s at times like this that I’m really glad I’m
friends with Dick Cheney,” I said as Andrea squeezed my fingers with her free hand.