Chapter 52
What are you doing?”
“Oh, Betsy! This is
so inappropriate,” the Antichrist scolded.
The teenaged Eric
Sinclair also tried to protest, probably, but since he was facedown
in the gravel I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
I won’t lie: his
blood? His live blood, electric with the high-fat diet of the 1920s
(probably)? Unbelievable. His live blood was worth the huge pain in
the ass our time traveling had been. At least, I thought so. Laura
probably wouldn’t agree.
Make no mistake: I
always liked the taste of Sinclair; we often spent days and days
where we only fed off each other. But live Sinclair, yummy with
electrolytes and a healthy midwestern diet?
His blood sang with
meatloaf and roast duck and buttery biscuits and lamb and chicken
and radish roses and deviled eggs and potato salad and turkey and
oatmeal and veal and beans and jelly and crumb cake and ham and
gingerbread and beets and bread pudding and pork chops and rice
pudding and oh, my, what is this?
Teenage Sinclair was in excellent
shape, what with all the farming and being gorgeous and
suchlike.
Oofta.
Sinclair raised his
head. “Uh, miss? I think you might have fallen on me by
accident.”
“Go to sleep,” I told
him, sitting up. Then I yelped and shoved my hands forward so his
head didn’t clunk facedown into the gravel, but rather onto my
palms. Probably should have thought that one out.
“Okay,” I said,
looking up at Tina and Laura, who were staring down at us like
they’d seen a woman in her thirties molesting a teen—oh. Huh. Ew.
“Now you can bite him.”
“All right,” Tina
said cautiously. “I’m not quite sure how to proceed. Do I take you
to task for hurting a friend, a boy I think of as my
grandson?”
“Could we stop with
the ‘boy’ talk? He’s a grown man. Right? I’m not gross and
inappropriate. Right?”
“Or should I bite the
boy—”
“Dammit!”
“—and teach him all
the ways of a living death?”
“Trust me, he’s not
hurt. But he’s sure out cold. Ooof! Laura, I’m gonna carefully put
his head down and then stand up, so if you could—”
“Wait!” I heard a
tiny clinking, and Laura bent and picked something up as I lurched
to my feet. Sinclair’s yummy rich blood was making my head swim.
“This fell out of his pocket.”
“Oh!” I managed not
to snatch it out of her grip, just gently grasped it. “He’s not
gonna want to lose this; it’s Erin’s. I mean, it was Erin’s.” I
held out the tiny cross on the gold chain to Tina. It would be
mine, almost a hundred years from now. Sinclair would give it to
me, his most treasured possession, and he wouldn’t know
why.
At the time, I
wouldn’t know why, either. Only that the jackass vampire I couldn’t
ever seem to ditch had given me something of great value, great
personal value. And when he did, for
the first time I was able to see him as a person instead of a pain
in my ass.
Tina backed up very,
very slowly. “I can’t touch that. But you can.” She leaned forward
and seemed to peer at me. “You are a
vampire! I couldn’t tell before.”
“She probably figured
it out when you leaped on him and gnawed like he was your own
personal Chew-eez.”
“You’re very
unattractive when you’re all sarcastic and snarky like
that.”
“Who are you?” Tina asked. She seemed as intrigued as
she was startled ... maybe even frightened. Or just really weirded
out.
“No one of
consequence,” I said, ruthlessly stealing a line from The Princess Bride. “So, we’re out of
here.”
“Oh, thank God! I’ve
had enough of Hastings.”
“What’ve you got
against Hastings, Laura? It’s a perfectly nice river town. Um,
now. Because I don’t know that it’s
nice in the future or anything. I don’t have a clue.”
“Truer words,” Laura
muttered.
“So, best of luck
with everything. With the turning and the training and
such.”
“Ah ... thank you,
miss.”
I knelt, tucked
Erin’s necklace back into Sinclair’s pocket, smoothed his hair back
from his dirty cheek, and kissed him. “See you in the future,” I
whispered, and it would have been an awesome and touching moment,
except Laura grabbed my arm and hauled me off down the gravel road,
so the last thing Tina heard was the vampire queen yelping like a
stomped pup.