Jack Kursed (11 page)

"Whoa, now," Thomas said,
springing to his feet. "Let's all calm down. Andrea, if you'll come
back to the station with me, please. We've got some paperwork, and
I'll give Tiffany the required lecture I know you've both heard by
now."

Miss Simmons grabbed
Tiffany's hand and led her away from the booth. Thomas tried to
follow, but Jack grabbed his arm.

"Did you not see what just happened
there?"

Thomas rolled his eyes. "Let me guess.
Tiffany told you she's being abused."

"Do you really not see it?"

"We've been out to
Andrea's place many times. It always checks out. She has other
fosters, and none of them say anything is going on. Tiffany's cried
wolf so many times I wouldn't believe her if she said it was
raining."

"So, you'll dismiss her,
just like that? She's just running away all the time for the fun of
it?"

"I don't blame Tiffany for her
behavior. She's had a...rough childhood."

"Haven't all foster-kids?"

"Not like her. One parent dead, the
other left her to fend for herself in their apartment. The girl's
had it tough."

"Wow. Sucks to be her, I
guess."

"Yeah, well, it was nice meeting you.
You're such a charming guy."

"I hear that a lot."

Thomas joined Miss Simmons and Tiffany
and left the diner. Tiffany waved before being nearly dragged out
the door.

It was a shame. Jack
didn't like many people, and he avoided children as often as he
could. But Tiffany was okay. It was terrible she got stuck with
such a horrible foster-home.

Jack put her out of his mind and
finished his breakfast.

If the police didn't care,
he didn't either.

CHAPTER 5

Jack didn't arrive home until nearly
ten in the morning. He spent time at the beach watching the
sunrise, and then strolled through Cromfield Park. He liked
spending time at the park, a nice way to kill time in beautiful
weather.

He turned onto his street
and saw an unfamiliar Porsche parked behind his truck. His first
thought was of the neighbor's offspring, however, he drove a Jeep.
Jack wouldn't put it past the stuffy rich family to buy their teen
a new Porsche.

As he drew closer he saw
someone knocking on his front door. It was a woman, judging from
the shorts and bikini-top slowly coming into focus. No doubt she
had the wrong house. Jack had received one visitor over the past
month, and that was the annoying smelly man who hooked up his
cable.

He kept an eye on her as he walked up
the sidewalk. She knocked on the door once again, her back to him.
Very nice, athletic figure. Cut-off jean shorts that showed off
lean legs and a pair of sandals. Pale skin. Striking red
hair.

Jack froze on the sidewalk, near the
corner of his lawn. He couldn't believe it was her.

His normally calm mind raced. He knew
this moment would come eventually, even after nine
decades.

He never thought it would come under
the light of day.

She tilted her head back
and lifted her nose. He smiled as he watched her sniff the air, a
motion he'd seen many times before. Memories and a sense of déjà vu
flooded over him.

Victoria turned to face
him.

Gone were the long curls
she wore in the early twentieth century. Her beautiful red hair was
straight, just a little past her shoulders, and suited her well.
She still looked great, her looks aided by the supernatural. He
could only imagine how many heads she turned on the
beach.

He wasn't sure what he was supposed to
do. Part of him wanted to walk toward her and hug the only person
in his life that at one time he considered a friend, even family.
Another part of him wanted to spit in her face.

She smiled at him. He
tried to smile back, but it didn't quite come off right. He walked
across the lawn to meet her.

As she stepped off the
porch the morning sun touched her. She held a hand over her eyes to
block the light. Jack eyed her body, which she was definitely
showing off. Victoria wearing clothes designed for exposure to the
sun was a foreign sight to him.

"We can’t cure cancer," he
said. "There are millions of people homeless, starving. But I’ll be
damned if we’re not gonna figure out a way for a bloodsucker to get
a suntan. I love science and technology."

Victoria laughed and looked down at
herself.

"Well, suntan, no.
My skin won’t darken. But the sun feels
so
good. Who knew I had a bikini
body all these centuries? There’s an interesting story behind all
this. Care to hear it?"

"Nope. Not really."

She smiled. "Your loss."

"What are you doing here?"

"I was in the
neighborhood. Wanted to get some beach time, figured I’d look you
up. Can we go inside?"

Jack hesitated before
moving past her to his porch. Victoria walked behind him as he
unlocked the front door and stepped into the living
room.

"Nice place," she said.
"No pictures on any of the walls, no art. Plain, neutral colors. No
personality. It’s definitely you."

He spun to shoot her a glare, but
noticed the smile on her face. She was joking.

"Is it still Victoria?" he asked. "Or
are you on a new name now?"

"It’s Victoria. Took an
identity to get back to it, but I’m Victoria once
again."

"You always loved your
mother’s name."

Victoria smiled as she sat at the
breakfast bar. Jack moved in the kitchen, pouring himself a glass
of tea. He paused for a moment before grabbing a second glass and
holding it out to her.

"Oh, no, thank you. My sun
allergy may be gone, but I’m still a vampire. Blood only
here."

He put the glass away and sat across
from her.

"So, John Kursed," she said,
pronouncing his name correctly. "Real cute. I take it you handle
your own identity changes?"

"Just the name part,
because of a nice little mistake my last handler made. I spent the
last identity running around as Byron."

Victoria laughed. As conflicted as
Jack felt, he'd missed the laugh of his best friend.

"It’s not funny," Jack
said. "I had to kill the guy."

Victoria stopped laughing
as she studied his face.

"Gotcha," he said.

She laughed again as she brushed her
red hair behind her pale shoulders. Jack imagined she had no
trouble luring mortals into dark corners and robbing them of their
blood.

"So, John-"

"Jack, actually. Call me
Jack."

"Okay, Jack. What have you been up to
these past hundred years?"

Jack took a deep breath. What a
strange question. How did one go about catching up on a
century?

"Well, not sleeping,
obviously. I tried every drug they've come up with, both legal and
illegal, to see if it would counter the curse. No luck. I made a
little money here and there. I skipped the past few wars. I did
lend a hand in World War II, though. I’m not humanity’s biggest
fan, but didn’t really want to see Adolf Hitler running the
show."

Victoria shook her head.
"You know, you’re still human. Just because you’re cursed, doesn’t
mean you’re not human."

Jack smirked. She always
knew what he was capable of, but didn’t know some of the things
he’d done over the past century.

"Try not sleeping for two hundred
years, and see how human you feel," he said.

She simply nodded.
"Anyway, I know what you mean. I helped out in that war, too. Did
you know that one of Hitler’s aids-"

"Was a witch. Yeah, I
know."

Victoria was quiet a moment as
awkwardness settled between them.

"Well, half-witch," she said. "Only a
half-blood."

Jack scoffed. "Like that would have
mattered to you. All witches have to die, right?"

She leaned back, like
she’d been slapped across the face.

"Wow. One hundred years.
You can really hold a grudge, can’t you? Do you really want to
fight about this?"

Jack shot up from his
chair and paced in the kitchen. Events rushed back to him like it
was yesterday. He was again by the river outside Monterrey, looking
down at Annie's lifeless corpse.

"That was my chance,
Victoria. My
one
chance. You took it from me, just like that. You picked the
town of Monterrey over me. I was supposed to be your best
friend."

"I...no,
we
, saved that
town."

"And what good did it do?
They're all dead now."

"It wasn't just that town,
Jack. That witch…she was going to poison the water. Who knows how
many lives we really saved?"

"Are you not listening?
None of that matters. They're all dead now. But I'm still stuck
here."

Victoria stood up as well, keeping her
hands frozen on the counter.

"There you go again," she said.
"Thinking only about yourself."

"And this surprises you?"

"You can't see the big
picture. You can't see that those people we saved had families, and
then those families had families."

"Just like cockroaches."

"My point is...we
saved
thousands
of lives. We did a good thing, and you should be proud. But
no, not you. You're so miserable, always whining about your curse.
I've been alive twice as long as you, and I enjoy
life."

Jack stopped pacing and
held her gaze. The tension in the room was thickening.

"Do you really want
to compare conditions? Do you really want to compare being a
vampire with never sleeping, never dying, never
resting?
Hell, the sun doesn't even
bother you anymore."

"I told you before, you
are who you choose to be. And you choose to be a sad, lonely
asshole. I'm not gonna sit here and talk about who has it worse,
like children. Your problem, if we're gonna cut right through the
bullshit, is that a woman you cared about hurt you, and you never
recovered. Two hundred years, and you can't let it go. You haven’t
learned anything."

He smiled at the roundabout mention of
Angela. Waving her off, he looked into her green eyes
again.

"Cutting through the
bullshit, are we? You didn't kill that witch to save
Monterrey."

"Oh, is that so? Tell me then, why did
I do it?"

"Because you were afraid to be
alone."

Victoria blinked and stood
upright. She was an expert at hiding her emotions. They both were.
But they had known each other too long. Jack watched as she
clenched her right hand, only for a moment, and rubbed her fingers
together. A sure sign she was upset.

"I told you that I was
ready to accept death," he continued. "I had my will together and
everything. You weren't ready for that. For the first time, you had
an immortal friend that had been at your side for a century. You
weren't ready to let that go. You killed that witch because of your
own selfishness."

The vampire was quiet, her
face going blank. A few tense seconds passed. Finally, she leaned
on the breakfast bar, hiding her face. Jack thought he saw
weakness, only for a second. He was imagining things, as he knew
Victoria was the strongest person he ever met.

"I'm not sorry for
what I did," she said. "I'm not sorry for trying my best to be a
good person, and help people. I
am
sorry I lost my best friend. The twentieth
century was fun, but I missed you. I know we're not gonna agree on
this. But I was hoping somehow we could put everything behind us,
and be friends again. Is that possible?"

Jack said nothing, and Victoria
accepted his silence as an answer. She nodded shortly and took a
deep breath.

"Okay, then. It was nice seeing you
again."

She crossed the living room and had
one hand on the doorknob.

"Victoria."

She turned to face
him.

"You said blood only. So, you can't
eat?"

"Nope."

"Well, come hang out with me while I
eat a nice ham and cheese sandwich."

She smiled. "Funny. And you can watch
me take a nap."

He placed a hand over his
chest. "Ouch, my heart. Good thing I heal fast."

Jack locked the door behind him after
Victoria stepped on the porch. It would take some time to accept
her walking in the sunlight. She stopped halfway down his front
walk, studying his neighborhood.

"I thought you’d be in a
mansion somewhere, surrounded by a huge fence with twenty guard
dogs."

He laughed. "Part of the
reason I’ve got so much money is I don’t go crazy with
it."