Better Off Dead (2 page)

His hair was short and brown, and could never, ever be messed up—she’d tried, in earnest.  And with a face like his you’d think he wouldn’t have to play dress-up just to get some action.  This, most of all, amused her.  Jeff Haas could have any girl in the school, and yet there he was, letting her degrade and humiliate him, all for the chance to get in her pants. 

Well, he is in my skirt,
or at least my mother’s skirt from when she actually was a catholic school girl.  What more did he really expect tonight? 
Jeff really looked great shirtless, and his legs were not only strong but rather shapely, accented by a thin dusting of brown hair. 

She had to give herself snaps.  Not two weeks into her senior year and she had the captain of the football team in naughty school-girl drag.

She could feel heat rise up under her skin and lick up her spine and ribcage.  Her cheeks burned.  She looked into the mirror of her vanity; she
was
starting to blush.  She smiled into the mirror.  Ever since she could remember, the mirror had always been her friend: she had yet to find one that wasn’t.

“Oh, dude...”  She looked up to see that Jeff had caught his reflection in the looking glass, and from the panic in his eyes, he didn’t like the view.

Just then two men with guns drawn and bulletproof vests with FBI emblazoned on them smashed through her bedroom door.  Their guns were big, sinisterly shiny, and pointed right at her.

She shrieked and dropped her cell phone, and shot up out of her chair.  

The two agents moved in forcing Lucy and Jeff back to the opposite wall.  

“I wasn’t really going to have sex with him…” she blurted.  “I swear!”

From behind her Jeff muttered, “Oh shit...”

The two FBI agents shot Jeff an ugly, disgusted glance, both agents moving their big shiny firearms between Jeff and Lucy.  They seemed unable to discern which was more of a threat: the muscular, nearly naked seventeen-year-old boy in the skirt, or the girl who’d gotten him into it.

“I can’t believe you’re going to arrest me for maybe having sex.”   She shook her head, as tears welled up in her eyes.  “It’s so unfair!” 

Thoughts rushed through her head, none making much sense, a few making her want to throw up.  Then suddenly she screamed a hysterical “Daddy!” 

The agents gave each other a look, and then one shook his head bitterly as he pressed the button of his walkie-talkie.  “The girl has been found, and there’s an unidentified teenaged male...will detain both until told otherwise.”

The other agent, with silver hair at his temples, told Jeff, “Son, put some clothes on.”  And Jeff leapt at the chance to get out of the skirt.  Thankfully he pulled his jeans on under the mini skirt before pulling the skirt off.  Hopping around, he tried to stuff himself into his jeans. 

Her head began to spin, her breathing quickened…she was starting to hyperventilate. 
Get a hold of yourself…

Jeff was buckling his fly when Lucy’s mother gave out a blood curdling scream, and they both turned to the bedroom door. 

Her mother’s screams turned to sobs of crying, and suddenly her father appeared in the hall by her doorway, his arms handcuffed behind his back, and another FBI agent pulled him to a halt in front of her door.  His usually perfectly pressed clothes were rumpled, the shoulder of his silk dress shirt was torn, and buttons had popped off.  A thin line of blood ran down his chin from his mouth. 

She stared with bewildered eyes at her father, not able to comprehend why the FBI was taking him away in handcuffs.  He looked in through her door, his face angry one moment and then horror-stricken the next.  He looked on the verge of tears—but then he caught sight of Jeff, still standing there, still shirtless, with his jeans still open.

Her father’s gaze turned steely, and red hot anger jerked back into his eyes.  All he said was “Lucy...”  The anger and disappointment in his voice was staggering.   

It said:
You’re not my good little girl.  Not you!
 
Not anymore..
.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak; she couldn’t even breathe.  She just stood there, staring at the angry stranger that had replaced her father.  A moment later another FBI agent joined the one with her father, and together they pushed him down the hallway in front of them. 

Her panicked scream made Jeff and the two FBI agents flinch.  She ran toward her bedroom door, but one of the agents grabbed her around the waist and kept her anchored to the spot as she cried out, “No, Daddy...no!”

She didn’t know how many times she blubbered and bawled this, or how long the agent held her.  She finally got control enough of herself to say, “Please...I have to see him.  I have to explain.” 
I have to tell him nothing happened.  Please, please, please!

“Miss,” The other agent said and lowered his firearm.  “He’s already gone.”

Gone? 
The word echoed in her head as her human restraint slowly let her go, and then sat her down on her bed like a rag doll. 

He’s gone...he’s just gone...Daddy’s gone...

She pulled her knees up to her chest and pushed her face into them.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat like this.  When she was younger she’d sit like this when she was upset or unsure of herself.  But she hadn’t let those thought touch her in so long.  Those feelings were so foreign, and so suddenly painful, that she shuddered when she finally took a breath.  The hot rivulets of her tears cascaded effortlessly down her face, yet she refused to utter a single sound.

She did not register it when the agents sent Jeff away, or when they searched through her room, checked the air conditioning vents, and pawed through her private bathroom.  She also hadn’t realized when they’d left her sitting on her bed in her room.  She sat there with her tear-wet cheek pressed against her knee, alone.

~*~

Across town, high above the city in a building still being built, Delia waited for him.  Standing at the edge of the scaffolding she peered out into the night.  Nothing separated her from the winds that whipped through her long blonde hair.  She did not turn as he approached, yet he was certain she knew he was there.

Gabriel strode toward her, breathing heavily from the climb—the service elevator incapacitated when the construction crew vacated for the night.  He ignored the sinking feeling that threatened to plummet him to his death, and moved up behind her.  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him.  

“Why always so high, Delia?” he said breathily.  “Are you trying to kill me?”

He could tell she was smiling.  “Testing you, maybe…or maybe I’m testing your love.”

He gave a little bark of laughter.  “How much more must you test that?  By now you should know how much I want you.”  He turned her around and gazed into her cool blue eyes.  Her arms were bare, her flesh cold to his touch.  He hadn’t gotten used to that enough to ignore it.  But someday he hoped he would.

She purposely closed her eyes.  “Want and love are not the same thing.”

Gabriel’s hands moved up and caressed her face, and then gently pulled her to him.  When their lips made contact a cool thrill sparked through his entire body.  She gasped as she fell forward, against his broad chest.  Even through the shirt he wore he could feel the chill of her touch.  He kissed her long and true.  There was no other woman on earth he desired, only her.

Delia pushed away from him and held a hand to her lips, the other outstretched to keep him at arm’s length.  “As I said, want and love are different.”

Gabriel took hold of her wrist and pressed her hand against his chest, right where his heart pounded with strong, hard beats.  “I love you...you know that!”

Her eyes glinted coldly as she appraised him with her gaze.  “But we’re stuck.”

“Don’t start that again.  I love you.  I’ve proven that time and time again.  I defy my own family to be with you.”

Delia hissed.  “They know nothing of us being together.  How is that defiance?  It’s cowardice!”

Gabriel still had her hand held to his heart.  “Does this heart beat the song of a coward?”

Her eyes bored cold and brutal into him.  “But your heart can’t tell your family about me.  Only you can tell them how much you love me.”  She glared at him, not blinking.  “That you choose me.”

Gabriel groaned and shook his head.  “And what would happen if I did?  What would happen if either of our families found out about us?”  He gently took hold of her chin and drew her face up until her eyes met his.  “If they had even a clue, there would be war, and you know it.”

“We could make them see!”  Her eyes flashed haughtily.  “Change their minds.”

“Our families?  Changing their minds after all this time?  The word impossible comes to mind.”    

“You won’t even consider it?”  She pushed away from him.  “Even if it was the only way we could be together?”

“I think about us being together every day.”  He pulled her to him again, buried his face in the cool, smooth flesh of her neck and inhaled her intoxicating scent.  “And I want nothing more than to tell my parents about us.”  He sighed, conflict storming inside him.  “Being in love should be a happy thing, something to celebrate.  Not something to hide at all costs.”

“If we were brave we would tell them, force them to accept us.” 

“Because that worked so well for Romeo and Juliet.”

Delia’s laughter was bitter as it rattled in her chest.  She pushed away from him again and rolled her eyes.  “I would have to fall for a freaking bookworm.”

Gabriel held out his hands beseechingly. 

“I am a warrior,” Delia said flatly.  “In six centuries I have neither run from a battle, nor hidden who I was.  I am vampire.  The strongest warrior of my people, and they would listen to me.”

“But would your father?” he said.  

Delia’s expression faltered as Gabriel continued. 

“He’s King, not you.  Would he listen to another word you said if you told him I was your man?”

For a brief moment Gabriel thought he had gotten through to her.  But then her back straightened and the steely resolve returned to her features.  “He would listen to me.  I would make him listen.”

“He’d kill me,” Gabriel groused.  “Then he would probably execute you.  Mingling of the species is against vampire sovereign law.  Not even he could change that edict.”

“Coward!” she spat, her expression menacing.   

“If there was a way,” Gabriel said, “you know I would do anything to be with you.”

Delia’s eyes snapped open wide and then sparkled as a smile flashed across her face. 

“What?”  He asked cautiously.

Her gaze flitted away from him, darting here and there as she seemed to be chasing a tantalizing thought.   She raised her hand; fingers outstretched, and then clasped shut as if she’d seized a thought out of thin air.  “I have an idea.”

Gabriel stared at her for a few beats.  “And would you like to share this idea?”

Delia’s gaze darted back to him, brimming with excitement.  “No…not yet.”  She turned and strode away from him, looking back at him over her shoulder as she came to the edge of the scaffolding.  “But soon…” 

She stepped off the ledge and disappeared out of sight.  Gabriel groaned and gritted his teeth and looked up in exasperation.  He hated when she did that.  He was certain she would land on her feet, unscathed, but he hated when she willfully tossed herself from such heights. 

“Show off!”

THE ALARM bleated a call that could easily wake the dead.  Lucy rolled over and squinted at the clock.  She’d managed to sleep through twenty minutes of its racket, yet didn’t feel a bit rested.  What she did feel was sore and old.  She pulled herself up in bed and turned the evil alarm clock off instead of punching it, hard—
the damned thing had cost her twenty-three ninety-five, plus tax. 
She looked around at what had been her bedroom for the last six months and once again felt poor.

Sore and old and poor...life was good.

It was a room in her Gram’s house, actually the room her mother had grown up in.  It had one little window, which she had forgotten to draw the curtains on, so now the afternoon sun was making the generic white walls glow like halogen floodlights.  Her private bathroom had been bigger than this room. 

She kicked off the covers and stumbled over a pair of black Dr. Scholl’s sneakers, and then walked gingerly on her always aching feet to
The Smallest Closet in the World!

Of course, she was reminded, as she opened its door to the half-dozen mix-and-match Wal-Mart sales rack outfits that comprised her entire wardrobe, that she really didn’t need the space.

When the FBI and the IRS had returned to Lucy’s family’s house three days after they’d taken her father into custody, it hadn’t been to tell them why they’d taken him—though they’d found out at the arraignment that he was charged with money laundering, tax evasion, extortion and, on a horrifying side note, immigrant slave labor trafficking.

No, they came for the house, the cars (including her red Mustang) and then went room by room and took anything of value.  In her case she lost absolutely everything.  Every piece of jewelry, cell phone, and every item of clothing and pair of shoes—even her damn socks had been designer label.  She got off with the tank-top/sweatpants ensemble she’d been wearing only because she was trying to work off some of her worry on the treadmill in the home gym.