Chapter 15
It was morning when I walked out of the ocean. My sneakers were still on the beach, right where I left them. The kids that had been partying were still there, sleeping off last night’s revelry. I slipped into my sneakers and headed back to my condo. When I got there, I found John, he was sitting out front, on his motorcycle, a shiny black Buel.
“I was just about to leave,” he said when he saw me. “You just finish your morning swim or have you been working?”
“Working,” I said. I stopped next to John, leaned in, and gave him a quick kiss.
“Doing what?”
“Killing the world’s oldest vamp.”
“You killed a vampire last night?”
“I killed the Count, formally the world’s oldest vampire.”
“Why?”
“Couple of reasons.”
“Do I want to know what they are?”
“Probably not.”
“How’d you kill him?”
“Took him to the bottom of the ocean and watched the water pressure crush him like the arrogant little peanut that he was. So why are you here?”
“My first class isn’t until ten. Thought I’d stop by and see if you wanted to get some breakfast.”
“I do. Let me shower and change.”
John smiled, a mischievous smile. “You want me to come up with you?”
“I’m too tired for that. Not to mention too hungry.”
“One of those mornings huh?”
“It was a long night.” I gave John another peck on the lips and headed upstairs. Ten minutes later, I had showered, changed into jeans and a black tee shirt, and joined John downstairs.
“What are you in the mood for?” John said as I climbed on the back of the bike and he fired it up.
“Bacon, eggs, toast, pancakes, more pancakes.”
“Burned a lot of carbs did you?”
“Yep.”
There was a Denny’s just a couple of blocks away so John took me there. He knew me well enough to know that when I was hungry, really hungry, I was more interested in quantity than quality.
John’s a big guy, six foot four, two hundred and thirty pounds. Most of it muscle. Not surprisingly, he eats like a big guy. Even so, he can’t hold a candle to how much I can eat. Especially after a busy night.
While he ate a stack of pancakes, I pretty much downed everything on the breakfast menu, drawing the attention of every other person in the restaurant. We didn’t talk while we ate. John knew me well enough to know that when I was this hungry, I wasn’t interested in talking, I was interested in eating.
Unlike some humans, my eating habits didn’t seem to embarrass him. Once he finished eating, he just sat there, sipping his coffee and watching me eat. That was when Gladrielle appeared. She burst into the restaurant and surveyed the room, looking for me.
“You might want to leave,” I said, stuffing a bite of pancakes into my mouth.
John spun around and glanced at Gladrielle. She wasn’t trying to hide her appearance from the humans, not like she did when she was a regular elf. Her eyes were two black orbs. Her ears were pointed. She hadn’t even bothered to dress.
She was still wearing the slinky black negligee that she had been wearing last night. She didn’t even have any shoes on. It was pretty clear that as soon as she had freed herself from the vines that Elrod used to bind her, she set off in search of me.
How she found me, I have no idea. Maybe elves have really sharp noses. A lot of supernaturals do. They can track you across a busy city better than a bloodhound.
“Who is she?” John asked as Gladrielle stormed toward us.
“The dead vamp’s girlfriend.”
“She can’t be a vampire. Not if she’s walking around in the bright morning sun.”
“She’s an elf. A dark elf to be precise. She specializes in throwing fireballs, so if I were you, I’d leave, right now.”
John nodded and slid out of the booth. Gladrielle reached us just as John stood up.
“I don’t know who you are but you’re not going anywhere,” she said.
She grabbed John and tossed him back in the booth, handling him as if he were a child. Apparently, super strength was a standard option in immortal bodies, it didn’t seem to matter if they were male or female, vampire or elf.
“You want some breakfast?” I said. “I’m buying.”
I shoveled some more pancakes into my mouth. I wasn’t going to let Gladrielle interrupt my breakfast. Besides, if Gladrielle wanted to fight, I would need the energy.
“Where’s Eradu?” she said, glaring down at me.
She watched me eat for a few seconds, realized that she was hungry, and sat down next to John. Then she grabbed a bowl of oatmeal that I hadn’t gotten around to yet, found a spoon, and started eating.
“Where’s Eradu?” she said, as she ate.
“He’s moved on. You should too. You should go home, your flower garden isn’t looking too good right now. Neither are the ferns in your house.”
“I meant what I said. If you harmed him, I’ll gut you like a fish.”
“What will killing me get you?”
“Satisfaction.”
“Won’t bring the Count back.”
“You killed him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then where is he?”
“First you let him go.” I nodded at John. “Then I’ll tell you what I did with the Count.”
“You tell me where Eradu is or I’ll kill him. Turn him into a human barbecue.” She stopped eating and held her hand out. A fireball appeared, floating above her palm.
“You can’t harm him,” I said, downing my pancakes with a swig of orange juice.
“Why not?”
“Because he’s human. Supernaturals that kill humans are hunted down and executed.”
Gladrielle grinned. “I’m not a supernatural. I’m an elf. There’s a difference.”
“Not to the humans. As far as the humans are concerned, you’re another supernatural. Which means the laws that apply to me also apply to you. Besides, what would the other elves think? Killing a vamp is one thing, you can come back from that, but if you kill a human, I’m pretty sure there’s no coming back from that. You’ll be a dark elf forever. And I don’t think you want that.”
I stopped eating and looked at Gladrielle, curious to see how she’d respond.
For a minute, she did nothing. She just sat there. glaring at me. Finally, she slid out of the booth and nodded at John. “Go.”
John looked at me, checking to see what I wanted him to do. I nodded once, letting him know that he should leave. He slid out of the booth and headed for the exit without looking back. He knew me well enough, knew my work well enough, to know that when I wanted him to do something, he should do it, without question.
Once he was gone, Gladrielle sat back down and resumed eating my oatmeal. “The human is gone. Now where’s Eradu?”
“He’s dead.” I stopped eating and looked at Gladrielle, waiting to see how she’d respond to the news.
For a few seconds, she didn’t do anything. Then she grinned and shook her head. “He’s not dead. No way.”
“Yes, he’s dead. Which means there’s no reason for you to remain a dark elf. The Count is gone and he’s not coming back. You should go home, go back to your bed and breakfast, and your ferns, and your flower garden. I never should’ve brought you here. I should’ve handled the Count by myself.”
“You couldn’t handle him by yourself.”
“I could. I just didn’t know I could. There were a lot of rumors about him, and I believed them. But in the end, he was just another vamp. And like most vamps, he wasn’t nearly as tough as he thought.”
“He’s really dead?”
“He’s really dead.”
“Then so is the human that was just here.”
Gladrielle was testing me, to see how I’d react. She didn’t know who John was, didn’t know what he meant
to me. I figured my best bet was to call her bluff.
I went back to my stack of pancakes. Alright, if you want to get technical, it was my fourth stack of pancakes. But who’s counting. “You want to kill him, kill him. He means nothing to me.”
“You’re lying,” Gladrielle said.
“I’m a supernatural. An abomination, as your people put it. I lack the ability to feel empathy, or compassion, or love. You can kill all the humans you want and it won’t make a bit of difference to me.”
Gladrielle shook her head. “You’re not like the other supernaturals. You’re different. You care about people. You even cared about that vampire I killed. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have asked for my help.”
“You cared about people too. A couple of days ago. And you can go back to that. Go back to being who you were, who you are. You don’t have to remain a dark elf. You killed Titus to protect someone, someone you cared about. That’s not evil. You’re not evil.”
Gladrielle laughed, actually it was more of a cackle. The kind you’d expect to hear from an evil witch. “You know nothing about me, nothing about elves. You want to see evil. I’ll show you evil.”
I shoveled the last bite of pancakes into my mouth. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, I’m going to ruin your life, just like you ruined mine. I’m going to turn you into me.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you can’t turn me into a dark mermaid. There’s no such thing.”
“Maybe not, but I can destroy everything you care about, everyone you care about.”
Before I could respond, a pair of uniformed cops entered the restaurant. Not just any cops, it was Doug and Simkins.
A waitress met them at the door and pointed in our direction. Apparently, someone had called the police when Gladrielle burst into the place. Can’t say that I was surprised. Walking around barefoot, in nothing but a slinky negligee, with her long black hair all messed up, she did look like a crazy woman. Or in this case a crazy elf.
“I should’ve known you were involved,” Simkins said as they approached our booth.
“What can I do for you guys?” I said, topping my breakfast off with a sip of coffee.
“We got a report of a crazy woman wandering into the place. Could’ve saved us a lot of trouble if they mentioned that she had red hair and a bottomless pit for a stomach.”
I nodded at Gladrielle. “I think they were referring to my friend here.”
Doug and Simkins turned their attention to Gladrielle. When she turned to look at them, they retreated a step, taken back by the black orbs that served as her eyes. “Are these friends of yours?”
“The fat one is,” I said. “Actually, him and I are lovers. So whatever you do, please don’t hurt him.”
I don’t think she believed me, probably because I didn’t put enough feeling into my plea, but then I’m a mermaid, not an actress.
“I’ll have you know I just lost five pounds,” Simkins said.
“Five down, five hundred to go,” I said.
“Mind telling us what’s going on?” Doug said to me.
“This is Gladrielle,” I said. “She’s an elf. Actually, she’s a dark elf. I’m trying to convince her to give up her life as a dark elf and go home.”
“Aren’t you the humanitarian,” Simkins said.
“Are you and her friends?” Gladrielle asked Simkins.
Simkins laughed. Long and hard. “Low and I have been a lot of things over the years, but I don’t think anyone has ever called us friends.”
Doug turned to Gladrielle. “Look miss. I don’t know who you are or where you came from, but we got laws around here. You can’t walk around half dressed, threatening people and tossing them around like rag dolls.”
“Unless you're a mermaid,” Simkins said. “That’s pretty much how Low spends her days.”
“You and I should go to the beach together,” I said to Simkins. “Then people can point to us and say, ‘look, it’s a mermaid and a great white whale.’”
Simkins wasn’t fat when I first joined the force, but he had gained a lot of weight in the past couple of years. Now, he looked more like a cartoon version of a cop than a real cop, with his belly hanging over his belt.
Gladrielle wasn’t paying attention to the barbs Simkins and I were throwing at each other. She was focusing on Doug, eying him the way a hungry cat might eye a bird.
“You and Low are friends?” she said to Doug.
“My relationship to Miss Campbell is irrelevant,” Doug said. “Now, I’m going to have to ask you to leave this establishment. You’re making the other people here uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable?” Gladrielle said. “You mean as in too cold?”
“I mean they’re not able to enjoy their breakfast.”
“I think they’re cold,” Gladrielle said.
I realized what Gladrielle was about to do and shouted. “Run!”
Doug didn’t run, nor did Simkins. Not that Simkins could run, waddle maybe, but run, no freaking way. What they did was go for their guns. Not that it did any good. Before they could reach them, Gladrielle hit both of them with a fireball, setting their uniforms on fire.
I noticed that the building had a built-in sprinkler system, so I reached out with my mind, to the water flowing through the pipes. Then I ordered that water to burst out of the sprinkler heads and drench the restaurant.
A second later, the sprinkler heads came on, soaking everybody in the place, including Doug and Simkins. I ordered the water to concentrate on the two cops and their burning uniforms. It did. In a matter of seconds the fires were out.
I could hear Gladrielle cackle from near the door. “This is just the start, mermaid. Like I said, you ruined my life, now I’m going to ruin yours.”