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My stomach cramped so hard from hunger that it nearly doubled me over. Oh, that was why. I went to the table where Newman had set the food down and picked up my hamburger. It wasn’t a great burger, but it was protein and the first food I’d had since breakfast, which was about seven hours ago.
“Blake, behind you!” Newman called.
I turned with the burger still in my hand. Barry the bartender was behind me with a baseball bat, as if being over a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than me wasn’t enough of an edge. “Get out of my club! Badge or no badge, we don’t serve monsters in here!”
Had he seen my eyes? No, if he’d seen my eyes glow from across the club, there’d be more people panicking, and everyone I could see was still watching the show. I mean, a girl-on-girl make-out session and now a fight—it was like a double feature. So why was Barry saying monster?
Phoenix called out behind me, “Let me go! Let me go to her! Please, please!”
“Let’s all calm down,” Newman said from behind me, projecting his voice above her pleading.
I looked at Barry through my sunglasses, and he avoided direct eye contact even through the darkness of the lenses. He recognized the symptoms of someone who had been mind-fucked by a vampire. Technically I wasn’t one, but I was getting to the point of if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . . well, you know the rest. I swallowed my bite of burger and tried to think of what to say to de-escalate things. If he swung on us with a baseball bat, then we could shoot him, because one good hit to the side of the head with a baseball bat can kill you just as dead as a bullet. I didn’t want Barry to die today because I’d lost control of my metaphysical extras.
“Put the bat down, Barry,” Newman said. If he hadn’t had to hold the struggling woman, he’d have probably had his gun out by now, but he literally had his hands full.
“You swallowed that,” Barry said, “but you can’t eat solid food.”
Barry had been around vampires enough to know that some of them pretended to eat. They were like people with anorexia who could cut their food up and move it around their plates so that it looked like they’d eaten, but it was another illusion.
I swallowed again and then opened my mouth wide enough for him to see there were no fangs. I even used a finger to draw my lips down so he could see better. “See, no fangs,” I said.
“What are you?”
“Would you believe I’m not sure anymore?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Barry sounded angry now instead of just scared, but he was starting to point the baseball bat toward the floor rather than hold it in a batter-up position.
“Put the bat on the ground, Barry. No one needs to get hurt,” Newman called out behind me. He still had to project over Phoenix’s voice.
Whatever I’d done to her was still done, because she wanted him to let her go so she could go to me, so I could finish. I’d had my moments of being mind-fucked over the years. I had let a vampire nearly drain me to death once, and I’d enjoyed it. I’d probably have enjoyed it right up to the time I died.
“You don’t call that hurt?” Barry asked, pointing with one finger past me at Phoenix. The bat came back up in a one-arm-swing position. Not an improvement.
I took another bite of burger, because until I had enough food in me, I was dangerous to others. I didn’t mind hurting people on purpose. I didn’t even mind using metaphysical abilities on them if it was the best tool I had, but doing it by accident, that wasn’t okay. I wasn’t even sure how to undo what I’d done to Phoenix. I’d had enough control to stop the ardeur from feeding on her, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever bespelled someone this completely without feeding. Luckily for me, I could eat my burger instead of her. If I’d been a real vampire, I wouldn’t have had that option. The real problem was I didn’t know how to fix her. I ate the last bite of burger, hoping that if my physical stomach was full, maybe that would help undo what I’d accidentally done to the woman.
“Barry, please believe me,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt Phoenix.”
“I’ll believe you when she isn’t crying for you to feed on her blood.”
He almost snarled that last part, wrapping two hands around the bat. It was in a position to take my head off if I didn’t duck. He was too close for me to even try for a gun. I’d never have gotten it out in time. When you’re this close, a baseball bat beats a gun. I had knives on me, and I had enough training that my knife would beat a bat, but I didn’t want to have to kill someone because of my mistake.
I felt movement behind me in time to move slightly to the side, so I saw Phoenix a second before I might have tried to deck her. She wrapped herself around me so tight that I had to struggle to keep one arm free to defend with and wrap the other one around her waist just so I could maybe keep her out of the fight if it started.
Newman had his gun out and pointed at Barry and his bat. Phoenix tried to kiss me again, but I turned my face so she had to kiss my neck instead. She didn’t see the gun or the bat or the danger. She saw only me. No, not even me. She was chasing the power, the ardeur.
If Jean-Claude had been here, he’d have known exactly what to do, because the power was originally his—the rarest power that could appear in the bloodline he was descended from. Of course, he would never have lost control of it like I had done. I could have dropped my metaphysical shields and contacted him mind to mind, but would that have made things worse or better? Since I wasn’t sure what was happening, I didn’t know. Shit.
“Put the bat down now,” Newman said. His voice was getting calmer.
I knew what that would have meant for me: I’d be getting ready to shoot. You have to control your breathing to aim well. It’s as hard as fuck to shoot well while you’re shouting. You have to control your breath, your heart rate, your pulse. Good aim comes from a place of deep silence. For me it was a place that had been filled with white static once. Now it was just quiet.
A second security guy came
up, carrying a cross in his hand and holding it toward me. If I’d been a vampire with glowing eyes, it would have glowed like a star in his hand, but it was just so much metal now.
“Thought you were a true believer, Sam,” Barry said, which meant he knew that holy objects work only if you believe in them, really believe, or if they’ve been blessed by someone holy.
“It should be glowing,” Sam said.
