Real Vampires Don't Wear Size Six (11 page)

I jumped up and stepped unapologetically on numerous feet to get out of there. I ran across the lobby to the parking lot and saw that Josh’s car was missing. How long had I been watching the screen and not my fledgling? I looked around and realized no one was nearby so I shifted into my bird form, flying up so I could look for that black SUV. Oh, great. There are only thousands of black SUVs in Austin. I tried to figure out the logical places Penny might go with Josh.

His place? He’d said he had roommates. Definitely not my place, though I’d given her a key and the alarm code for the building. So her old place? Totally a possibility. I landed next to my car and quickly shifted back, then hit speed dial for Damian.

“Hello, Gloriana, how goes the mentoring?”

“Oh, fine, fine.” No way was I admitting failure to the head of the council. “You
are
paying me a stipend for this, aren’t you? This girl’s really racking up expenses. Synthetics, utilities, not to mention part of the rent. I was about to bring in another roommate when you dumped her on me. A paying roomie.” I heard Damian say something about submitting receipts. “Sure, whatever. You know, I was following her over to her old place to pick up the rest of her stuff and lost her in traffic. Could you give me that address?”

“Certainly. And as to a stipend . . . Well, I suppose that could be arranged. Half your rent, anyway.” Damian rattled some papers. “Here’s her address.” He read it to me. “The council is impressed that you were willing to do this. But there are still concerns. There have been reports of more demons scented in the area. Do you know anything about that, Gloriana?”

“Demons? You know how I hate those things. If I do run into them, I’ll tell them to fly straight back down to hell where they belong. You know that, don’t you, Damian?” I got into the car and started the engine, thinking about the address and trying to figure out where it was. I knew it was near the university, but that was a big area. Fortunately, Austin is laid out logically with numbered streets.

“Yes, Gloriana. Just be careful. Your last run-in with a demon should have convinced you how serious a problem they can be. By the way, Florence and Richard should be back soon from their honeymoon.” Damian seemed inclined to chat and I didn’t have time.

“I know. Can’t wait to hear all the details. Listen, got to go. Penny’s waiting. Talk to you later.” I hung up and headed out. If Penny hadn’t taken Josh back to her place, I had no idea where to look. And if she had, what was I going to do? Burst in on them? She already thought I was overprotective and interfering. But she had no idea what a dangerous situation she was in. Talk was cheap. Until she experienced it, she probably didn’t believe me about bloodlust. It wasn’t easy to control even in an ancient vampire. For a new one? Impossible.

I got onto a freeway and gunned my turbocharged motor. And what else was up here? My fledgling couldn’t even sit through a whole movie on a first date? I’d be damned if I’d mentor a slut. Okay, I realized that was a little bit of the pot calling the kettle. But, hey, rational thinking had been left back at the mall parking lot.

Maybe Penny was discovering the famous vampire libido along with the bloodlust. I hated to rain on that parade, but she just wasn’t ready for it. Not sex with a mortal anyway. If I could hook her up with a paranormal, she could have at it. I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw the exit for Penny’s street and crossed two lanes of traffic to take it. In minutes I’d found her address and followed my sense of smell to the right apartment in the vintage building. I should have known Penny would be on the ground floor. That height aversion.

She’d put on music and I heard her laughter behind the door. I knocked and she stopped laughing. I waited, tapping my foot in time to the tune, a top-forty hit. I knocked again, hard enough to rattle the doorframe. The music clicked off.

“Open up, Penny, or I’ll knock it down.” The door jerked open and Penny stood there, her fangs gleaming in the light from a dozen candles.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Penny growled.

“Thought you’d given me the slip? As if.” I shoved past her to see Josh sitting on the couch, the telltale look on his face that meant she’d whammied him. Yep, my little fledgling had put the guy into a trance. I didn’t see fang marks yet. I turned and reached behind her to slam the door shut.

“First,
you
tell
me
. Why the whammy, Penny? What’s Josh going to do while you have him under your little spell?” I stared hard at her.

“What do you think? That I’m so desperate I’ve got to put a guy in a trance before he’ll have sex with me?” She flounced over to the couch and sat close to him, even put her hand on his thigh. “I’ll have you know he was all over me before I did this to him.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he got the message that you were good to go when you agreed to leave the movie before it was over.” I sat across from her in a sagging leather chair. A fat orange cat stared at me from under a table across the room. I ignored it.

“I’d seen it before. Jenny dragged me to it the first week it was out. I wasn’t into vampires then and this time I could see how fake it was.” She rubbed Josh’s leg. “Isn’t he cute? He offered to take me to the vamp movie because he’d heard girls like it. You did such a great job of making me look good, he couldn’t keep his hands off me.”

“You do look good.” I shook my head. “But then you had to screw things up, didn’t you?”

Penny frowned. “What do you mean? You’re the one who burst in here, checking up on me.”

“Come on. Admit it. Josh is sitting there looking zoned out for only one reason.” I leaned forward and gave Penny a hard look. “Despite my warning, you were about to test drive your fangs on this mortal, weren’t you? You think I can’t see them?”

Penny swallowed and looked everywhere but at me. Finally she turned, chin up. “Yeah, so what? I can control myself. I’m not your ordinary fledgling, Glory. I can do this. Watch me.” She put her hand on his jugular.

“Stop right there.” I gripped her wrist. “This isn’t some intellectual exercise, damn it. This is bloodlust. Your eyes are dilated. Your fangs are down and I can see you’re about to lose it.”

“So?” Penny snarled. “Feel him. He’s so incredibly warm and that’s his heart pounding under my hand. Then there’s the smell.” She inhaled and a look of near ecstasy came over her face. “God, but he’s, he’s driving me crazy. He’s alive!”

I kept my grip on her, though she was trying to pull away. “Forget it, Penny. You can’t do it. Let him go. Plant the idea in his mind that he liked you, but he can’t call you again because you dumped him. You just can’t forgive him for leaving you on that hilltop. It’s the right thing to do.”

“No. I want to see him again. He—he makes
me
feel alive.” She leaned against him, gasping when he fell over to land on the couch. “Geez, this is ridiculous.” She grabbed him and straightened him back to a sitting position.

“That’s because he’s basically unconscious with his eyes open.” I sat on his other side to keep him propped up. “Give it up, Penny. Don’t you think it’s a little creepy to accept a date with a guy and then take advantage of him by drinking his blood?”

“Maybe.” Penny showed me her fangs. “But he left me on that hilltop, you know. No excuse is good enough for that. Especially considering what happened there. So maybe he owes me this. I can
hear
the blood going through his veins, his heart pumping. It’s calling to me. I . . . I want it. Need it. Bloodlust? What the hell? It’s fantastic.” She kept brushing her thumb over his jugular, then leaned in and inhaled again before she shuddered, forcing herself to sit back.

I knew what she meant. Wasn’t immune myself. But I’d had a long, long time to gain control over my urges. In a way, I almost envied her the newness of this experience. But it was a dangerous thing, easy to get out of hand.

“Slow down, Penny. I get it, I really do. But you’re letting your baser instincts take over. That’s not like you, is it?” Not according to what she’d told me, this genius teen.

“Maybe becoming vampire has changed more about me than just my sleeping and drinking habits.” Penny sighed, still staring at Josh like he was the last cookie in the jar. “Come on, Glory, you saw that movie. So much blood. Is it weird that it made me thirsty?”

“No. Even though I knew it was all faked, it made me thirsty too. But I can ignore my thirst when I have to.” I wondered if I should give in on this. At least I was here to stop her before anything too drastic happened. “You had two bottles of synthetic before your date. You aren’t really hungry, Penny, just drawn to the real deal. Am I right?”

Penny frowned like she was doing a gut check. “Guess so.” She kept stroking his jugular. “I can feel his pulse. So strong, so warm.”

“I may be sorry, but I’m going to teach you how to drink from a mortal safely. Even I realize I can’t dog you every waking moment.” I glanced at Josh. He was a healthy mortal, a fairly big guy who could spare a pint or two.

“No, you can’t. Better to train me than to just ignore the fact that I’m going to have this bloodlust issue.” Penny actually smiled, sure she’d won something here. “Do I just lay his head back?” She gazed at him hungrily. “Oh, God, thanks, Glory. I thought I was going to have to fight you for him.”

“And that wouldn’t have ended well, Penny.” I didn’t say that I knew I could take her. Let her keep her illusions. “Forget the neck for now. Too dangerous. Pick up his wrist.” I grabbed his other arm for a demo. “Find his vein. You can see it and feel it, of course. Easy, isn’t it?”

“Sure, it’s practically calling my name.” She pulled his arm up close to her mouth and her eyes closed. “Mmm.”

“Now open your mouth and your fangs will know what to do.” I sighed, not allowing myself to join in on the fun. “I’ll tell you when to stop and you’ll obey me if I have to physically pull you off to get you to do it.”

“Got it. I don’t want to kill him, Glory. He’s told me over and over again how sorry he was about that night on the hill. He’d just had too much to drink. He never should have been driving at all.” Penny’s hand was shaking as she held his wrist. When her fangs sank in, she was obviously surprised. Then her eyes closed and she moaned. I didn’t need to read her mind. A new vampire’s appreciation of real blood bordered on orgasmic. Penny gulped and sighed and clung to Josh’s arm like she’d never let it go. But I knew she’d have to and well before she’d want to.

“That’s enough.”

Her eyes popped open and she glared at me. She kept drinking.

I stood, one hand on Penny’s shoulder, one on Josh’s arm.

“I said let him go.”

Penny’s mental message was colorful and boiled down to “Ain’t no way.”

“You asked for it.” I gripped her hair, giving it a sharp tug, then ripped Josh’s wrist away, leaving her mouth smeared with blood.

“Bitch!” Penny snarled and hit at me, trying to make contact with Josh’s bleeding wounds again.

“I’ll slap the shit out of you, Penny. Calm down. Take a breath. I need to show you how to close these punctures.” I gave her hair another hard jerk and her eyes watered.

“
You
calm down. He’s mine. Give him back.” Her eyes narrowed and we were playing tug-of-war with poor Josh’s arm. She didn’t have my strength though and even one-handed, I was winning.

“What’s going on here?”

Both of us froze, Penny’s face smeared with blood, Josh’s arm between us. I knew at once who stood in the doorway staring at us in horror.

I paused to toss Josh off the couch and out of Penny’s reach, then grabbed the newcomer before she could run away screaming. I clamped a hand over her mouth and wrestled her inside, kicking the door closed behind us.

“You wanted to see your sister, Penny? Well, here she is.” I stared into big blue eyes, well aware that all the excitement and blood in the room had my fangs on full display. Yep, that did it. Jenny, Penny’s twin, slumped to the floor.

That
snapped Penny out of her bloodlust.

“Glory, what have you done?” She jumped up and ran over to Jenny, rolling her over to stare down at her pale face.

“Not a thing. She fainted.” I dragged Josh up off the floor where he’d landed after our little tussle and sat him in a chair. He was still staring blankly into space. To my amusement, the cat jumped into his lap and made himself comfortable. If Josh had been awake, I’m sure he’d have let out a few yelps as paws trod over his crotch.

“Jenny.” Penny patted her sister on the cheek. “Wake up.”

“Don’t think I’d be in such a hurry to do that. You’ve got blood smeared all over your face.” I checked Josh’s wrist, which was still bleeding sluggishly. I forced back my fangs when all I wanted to do was take up where Penny had left off.

“I’ll go wash it off.” Penny turned toward her tiny kitchen.

“Not yet. Get over here and do what I tell you.” I was not a happy camper. Can you tell? “You’ve got to close these wounds so that when Josh wakes up, he won’t be wearing evidence of your snack time.”