Except the cords weren’t what was really troubling. No, my mind was on possession. On, in fact, losing my mind. Of having it being stolen by another.
“No!” I said, pacing faster and faster. Now, my foot did get caught in the Nook cord. I kicked it, and it came out. Along with all the other wires in the wall.
Cursing—but thankful I had something to distract me—I went about plugging all the wires back in, praying I got them right. A moment later, when I had successfully turned on my computer again, there was Fang’s response, waiting for me in the AOL message chatroom.
Hi, Moon Dance.
Chapter Ten
We hadn’t spoken in many months, not since Fang had shown up one night, here in my office, when he revealed to me that he had killed many.
Fang had been, of course, compelled to kill by a very old vampire, a vampire who was now dead, thanks to Kingsley. With the old vampire’s death, the connection had been severed and Fang had come instantly to my rescue, and for that I would be forever thankful to him. That he had killed many while not compelled was cause for much concern.
Now, of course, I was having a hard time remembering why the killing of innocent people had bothered me so much. After all, wasn’t killing in a vampire’s nature? Yes, it was. To kill and to feed and to grow stronger and stronger...
Yesss. Good, Sam, good.
I shook my head and ran my fingers through my thick hair. It was her, of course.
“Not me,” I said, gasping a little. “Go back to hell.”
I took a few deep, steadying breaths and looked again at the words on the laptop screen before me, framed around the AOL chat window.
Hi, Moon Dance.
I raised my fingers to the keyboard, and began typing...
* * *
Hi, Fang.
He didn’t immediately reply. I waited a few minutes, my clawed fingers hovering over the keyboard. The image of a gargoyle perched on the ledge of an old building came to mind. For some reason, I smiled.
No, she smiled. She liked dark things, disturbing things. Granted, gargoyles were hardly the things of nightmares. No, she was pleased that her thoughts were so quickly coming to the surface. That her thoughts were mingling easily with my own.
I shook my head again, fought off a brief wave of panic, and typed: You there, Fang?
A minute passed. My house was so quiet that I could literally hear my kids’ heartbeats. Anthony’s beat a little slower than Tammy’s. Was that because of the vampire blood in him? My heartbeat rate was only a fraction of that of a human’s. Had I committed my son to a lifetime of making excuses for who he was, and why he was different? Maybe. But the alternative was far, far worse. Better a lifetime of excuses than no life at all.
Not too long ago, the thing within had tried to escape using another means: procuring all four magical medallions, medallions meant to help vampires battle that which lives within them. At least, that was what the alchemist Librarian had told me, and Archibald Maximus should know, since he had created the medallions in the first place. Like all things in life, there was a loophole, a way for something good to be used for something bad. Turns out, the collecting of all four medallions at once could also release the demons within. On a desolate island in the Pacific Northwest, I had been lured to my destruction. That hadn’t quite happened, and my son, who had actually consumed one of the medallions in a liquefied form, could live on.
And live on he did, growing faster than other boys his age, stronger than other boys his age, and, if you asked me and his older sister, gassier than other boys his age.
I almost smiled. The thing within me didn’t want me to smile. It didn’t like innocent jokes. It didn’t like humor.
“Well, fuck you,” I said, and smiled anyway.
And that was when the AOL chatbox flickered and the status read: “Fang950 is typing.”
* * *
Hello, Moon Dance.
Fang and I used to have a strong telepathic link. So strong that we could often hear each other’s thoughts over a great distance. Now, since becoming a fellow creature of the night, that link was broken. He was inaccessible to me, and that was a loss greater to me than I was willing to admit.
You are up late, Fang, I typed.
Or early, he wrote back almost immediately.