AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Red and gold stars exploded at the base of my skull as I was blown off Dick ’s porch and onto the hood of my car. My frustration at being thrown through yet another windshield was superseded by the fact that my sleeves were on fire. It seemed to be a more pressing concern. I slapped them out just before a secondary explosion knocked me back again. The blast threw me off the car, thwacking the back of my head against the cement blocks supporting a nearby El Camino. The flames burned orange behind my eyelids. I slipped into a soft black place where the burns on my arms didn’t leave me screaming.
I was still able to be knocked unconscious. That was comforting. What was not comfortable was the cot I was currently chained to. I was lying in a dimly lit room that smelled of bleach and cement dust. Someone had taken the time to remove my smoldering clothes and put me in blue hospital scrubs. I jerked at the handcuffs binding my wrists and shrieked. Though healing, the burns on my arms were the color and texture of barely cooked hamburger.
“Agh, I am fortune’s bitch,” I moaned. Not exactly Shakespeare, I’m aware, but I was operating with a concussion. I sniffed at the chains. Under the tang of steel, I smelled something stronger.
“They’re reinforced with titanium,” a smooth, young female voice informed me from the darkness.
“Fortune’s bitch,” I said again.
Ophelia was sitting in a folding chair in the corner. Her fangs glinted as she offered a thin smile. “You do have a way with words.”
“What is going on?” I asked, trying to sit up. My very sensitive equilibrium told me this was a bad idea. “Who let the mariachi band loose in my head?”
Ophelia, who I could now see was wearing an obscenely short plaid skirt and a schoolgirl blouse, crossed to the foot of my bed. “I told you to behave yourself. I told you to stay under the radar.”
“I did,” I protested, the slightest hint of a whine creeping into my voice.
“Then how do you explain your being found unconscious outside a burning trailer belonging to one of the oldest vampires in the region?”
Not that again. “Look, for the last time, I didn’t do anything. I walked up to the door, and the trailer exploded. Wait! Was Dick inside? Is he dead?”
There were the shark eyes again, which were even scarier when they were flashing at me from the dark. “Considering the hour, we’re assuming he was inside. Of course, we wouldn’t find him if he was inside. The fire would reduce him to dust. The question is why you were stupid enough to knock yourself out before you were able to leave the scene of the crime.”
The terror was giving way to anger, which I assumed was a good sign. I demanded, “Why would I set Dick on fire?”
“Why would you set Walter on fire?” she asked.
“I didn’t set Walter on fire!” I shouted.
“Give me an explanation, Jane. Give me something to take back to the other council members, to the vampires who will demand justice. Give me some plausible reason for two men you are rumored to be involved with—whether that involvement is real or imagined, it won’t matter to the community—having both been set on fire. Explain why you were found outside Dick’s burning trailer after you were recently seen having a lovers’quarrel with him at a party.”
“That wasn’t a lovers’ quarrel! That was a friendly conversation!”
“You were seen hitting him repeatedly.”
“It was a friendly conversation that involved me hitting him repeatedly.”
Ophelia did not look convinced.
I sighed. “What’s going to happen to me? Is a vampire detective going to come in here and question me with a phone book and a rubber hose?”
I could see the amusement reach her eyes, but she refused to smile. “A tribunal has been called to discuss your case.
Depending on the outcome of that discussion, you may have a trial tomorrow.”
“A trial,” I repeated before realization dawned. “The trial? Wait, don’t I get a lawyer or a phone call or something?”
“No,” she said, uncuffing me. I sat up slowly. She was across the room and out of my reach in a glimmer of movement.
Where was the trust? “You’re accused of immolating two of your own kind. The Bill of Rights no longer applies to you.”
She turned toward the door, then whirled back on me. She stood by the cot, peering down at me with those glowing black eyes.
“I regret this. You seem to be an interesting vampire.”
“Then don’t do this!” I yelled. “Stop making an example of me for other young vampires. I’m a terrible example. More weird stuff happens to me in a week than is foisted upon the average person in an entire lifetime.”
“I regret this,” she repeated. “But I also regret the loss of Dick Cheney. Once upon a time, we were…close acquaintances.”
