Driftwood - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,8

"our victim is already dead."

That gave her something to think about, he could see; she leaned back in her kitchen chair and stared up at the ceiling for a minute. Finally she brushed her ear—a charming monkey gesture—and said, "Well, okay. Technically, the guy we're going to stake doesn't breathe and doesn't have a pulse, or not much of one, and he's been running around dead for at least sixty years.

But still. It's a very serious thing."

Burke managed to conceal another yawn.

"I can't believe," she said, shaking her head, "that you don't at least want the details."

"Oh, sure, I want them. Who, when, and how, I suppose. He's probably going to be a hard kill." He smiled and Serena shrank back in her chair. "You certainly were."

"Okay, first of all, when you grin like that, you've got about a million teeth. Second of all, the who is the vampire who made me, yeah. The when is as soon as I track the mother down, and the how—we have to stake him in the heart or throw him into a tanning bed or something like that."

"Crosses? Holy water?"

"Will hurt him but probably not kill him. And don't be waving any of those things around me, Boy Scout."

"Does the stake have to be made of—"

"Any kind of wood. And it has to be through the heart. Anywhere else, he'll just get right back up and keep coming." She added bitterly, "Don't ask me how I know this."

Burke ground his teeth. "Did he hurt you?"

"Huh? No. I mean… not physically."

"But you want him dead for making you dead."

"No. For making my friend dead. I want him dead for lying. He lied. He didn't tell me the truth. I mean the whole truth. He let me believe that whoever he bit would be a vampire. He didn't tell me… didn't—" She covered her face with her hands and went silent.

After a minute, Burke said, "He bit you."

"Yes."

"And you came back."

"Yes."

"You were lonely."

Serena's hands came down; her eyes were big with wonder. "Yes. Once the hunger—the being new, the being crazy of a new vampire—once that wore off, I found my friend. My best and greatest friend, Maggie Dunn."

"She missed you."

"She was so happy that I was alive. Sort of alive. You know. And—"

"You talked to your friend. Or Maggie asked you. It doesn't matter."

"That's right," she choked. "It doesn't matter."

"You thought, or she thought, being a vampire would be a fine thing. Friends forever. And your sire—the one who made you—

he obliged. He didn't tell you—what? Did he not perform all the rituals? Did he do it wrong out of spite, or to keep his pack's numbers down?"

"He didn't tell me, and I only found out later, that being a vampire… it's like the measles. It's something you catch. Or don't catch. You could get bit by the same vampire a hundred times, and ninety-nine of those times, nothing would happen. Or he'd drink too much and you'd die. But that one time, the hundredth time, you'd come back. I thought—I didn't know it was a fargin'

virus. I didn't know it was a damned head cold. And he didn't tell me. Didn't warn us."

"Your friend didn't come back."

"My friend." She took a shuddering breath and obviously wasn't used to it, because she almost tilted off her chair and onto the floor. "My friend died screaming. And I let it happen."

"And this was…"

"Nineteen sixty-five." She smiled. It was a wobbly smile, but it was there. "Free love, you know."

"Why… now?"

"I finally found him, that's why now. There's a new regime in place, and the king helped me track him down."

He blinked, processing this. "The king."

"King Sinclair. The king of the vampires. He made the Minneapolis librarian track Peter down for me."

"Peter?"

"Innocuous name for such a scum-sucking son of a bitch, isn't it? Anyway, the old boss didn't give two shits for problems like mine. I knew better than to even ask—we all just kept out of his way. It was a bad time for most of us. But then—"

"Things changed."

"I heard the new king and queen—"

"There was a coup for power? The old leader lost? Was killed?"

"Yeah. So I let things settle down a bit and then I went to St. Paul and—Never mind all that, point is, I got an address, I even got the name of the restaurant he runs."

"Your leaders—they know what you'll do when you find Peter?"

She nibbled on her lower lip. "The king does. He understands this kind of stuff.