She gave him a brief rundown on what she’dseen and what Harding had told her about his arrival at thealley.
“Do you have a phone?” Aiden asked when shefinished.
“Why?”
“I don’t know where mine is, and I have tocall a friend. This mess has to be cleaned up. The humans saw toomuch tonight, and they can’t know about our existence. Those weredead Savages there with me; their bodies need to be removed fromwherever they were taken. Probably the morgue.”
“Hate to tell you this, but there’scountless books, movies, and legends about vampires and theirexistence. The word is out.”
“The legend is out, the truth is not, and ithas to remain that way.”
“Oh!” Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth as sherecalled that she hadn’t told him everything. “One of those Savageswas still alive! Walt and Glenn were working on him! They took himin their ambulance!”
“Fuck, that’s not good. Can I use yourphone?”
“It’s in the ambulance. I put it in theglovebox at the start of every shift, with my wallet.”
Aiden’s teeth grated together as the splashof headlights illuminated the end of the road. “Maybe we can find apay phone.”
“Did you just crawl out of the coffin?”Maggie snorted.
“What?”
She rolled her eyes. “What century do youthink this is? When was the last time you saw a pay phone?”
“They’re still around, occasionally, andvampires don’t use coffins.”
“We’d have a better chance of stumblingacross gold on the street than a pay phone. And I’m glad coffinsaren’t an option for the undead.”
“I’m not undead. I have a heartbeat—”
“I’m aware.”
“I breathe,” he continued, “and I wasborn.”
“You wereborn?” she askedincredulously and shut out her mother’s screaming words when theytried to squirm their way back into her brain.
“Yes. Both my parents are turned vampires;those are vampires who were once human but were changed by anothervamp. I’m a purebred vampire as I was born to two vampire parents,and so were my nine siblings.”
“Ninesiblings?”
“Yes.”
“Your poor mother.”
His mouth quirked in a small smile. “We dotorment her.”
Maggie’s mind felt sluggish as she struggledto process the things he was telling her, but the harder she tried,the more lost she felt and the more her mother’s screams resonatedin her head.
“We’ll buy a cell phone,” Aiden stated.
The phone situation was an easier problem todeal with, so she decided to focus on it. “With what money?”
“I don’t need money.”
“And why not?” she demanded.
“Because I can get into their minds and makepeople do what I command.”
