One mocha and ten minutes later, they were raking the rocky beach for butter clams.
“I was so mad at Chuck when he came to bed this morning. He and Dom had a long talk before Dom left for Seattle. For Pete’s sake, if I had known he was leaving, I’d have gone out there and talked him out of it.”
“Chuck is a…” Mackenzie still couldn’t say the word.
“Vampire, dear? Yes, he is. That’s why he didn’t come down to the car to greet you last night, being that you’re of the sweetblood. He’s actually very charming. He and Dom are very close, almost like father and son, and he wanted to meet the girl who swept Dom off his feet. I sort of think that’s why Dom brought you all the way here.”
Even in the chill of the sea air, Mackenzie’s cheeks flared hot as she plucked several pale gray clams from the overturned sand and placed them in her bucket. “You’re obviously not a…a vampire. How…”
“How did that happen? How do we make it work?”
Mackenzie nodded. She told herself she was curious just for the sake of being curious. Like a detached reporter interviewing a witness, gathering information for a story.
“We met and fell in love. Just like two regular humans do. We talked about having me go through the change. You know, to convert me over to a vampire? We got married and even obtained Council permission. But when it came to the commitment ceremony a year later, I still couldn’t do it. I’ve got this huge blood phobia. As in psychiatrist-and-support-group phobia, and I couldn’t do it. The conversion process involves…”
Shirl stopped and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Well, let’s just say I couldn’t bear to go through it. But boy, did I consider it. A vamp and a human can’t conceive, but a vamp and a changeling can. I’d always seen myself with a whole brood…but I guess it wasn’t in the cards for me. God sure does have a sense of humor. Me with my blood phobia, falling in love with a vampire? Go figure.”
Mackenzie stooped down to turn over a rock and watched as a few tiny crabs skittered away to find another hiding place. A sense of humor? Like me being a sweetblood and Dom being a vampire?
The older woman meandered across the beach, which was sandier at the low tide mark than up at the top, her eyes glued to her shuffling feet. Mackenzie followed. They walked toward a large gathering of seagulls that flew off in unison, cawing their irritation into the wind. Evidently finding what she had been searching for, Shirl began raking the sand again.
“Is it hard for you and Chuck to think about? I mean, that you’ll…I mean…he’ll live so much longer…”
“That I’ll kick the bucket before he does? That I’ll age while he stays young?” Shirl held her hand up to her mouth as if she were going to tell a secret. “Thank God, I fell in love with an older man. Much older. Way older.” She snorted and slapped her thigh. “Can’t imagine what we’d have done if he were younger when we met.”
“If you were to do it all over again, would you still choose not to convert?”
“I don’t know, honey, but all I can say is that if I wasn’t so averse to blood, I’d be a grandmother by now.”
“WHAT HAVE YOU found?” Dom watched as Cordell’s dark, slender fingers flew across the dual keyboards and his head cranked left and right, scanning the huge monitor. He was vaguely aware that Lily had just entered the room behind him.
“I haven’t been able to hack into their main site. Their security is pretty tight. But from what I can tell, they’re stepping up their capture efforts. Look here. They’ve got several laboratories here in the States. Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando.”
Jackson elbowed Dom in the ribs. “Your buddies in the Orlando field office will be thrilled to hear this from you. Are you still not speaking?”
“Shut up, Jacks,” Lily said, as she came up behind him, a little out of breath. “Dom, I just got off the phone with my contact.”
“And?”
“It’s a breeding operation. Darkbloods are setting up a goddamn breeding operation.”
He felt his pupils dilate and the blood pounded between his ears. “With sweetbloods?”
“Yes, they’re capturing them to breed them. They’re keeping them alive, hoping they can successfully mate two sweetbloods to create more.”