My mouth opened to murmur a rejection, but I stopped before it left my mouth. It might affect the efficacy of… of everything. They whirled, caught in the remnants of the vampire child’s attacking speed. His fangs latched upon her neck, tearing. Her scream stopped, even as the two of them fell back. There was none of the tenderness of the vampire wooing his dinner, none of the pleasure I had heard could come from a feeding. A single strong sucking sounded and he started to drink, even as they fell into the far corner.
The woman lifted her knitting needles. She stabbed the child.
He screamed, the awful keening note of the undead brought to true death.
I shuddered, knowing I could do nothing to stop this violence. Terrible, horrible violence. A woman and undead child in mortal combat. No wonder the warding spell had gone horribly wrong. It had never been intended to protect against a child, no matter how feral.
Tears started in my eyes and trailed down my cheeks. I caught a breath that ached deep inside. But it wasn’t over.
Another pop sounded. Louder than the first. A man wearing an old-fashioned gray suit and carrying a black medical bag appeared in the room. He dropped the bag and pulled the woman and child apart. Blood pumped from a deep tear in her throat. Scarlet stained her white gown and splattered across the room. The child fell, a wooden knitting needle in his right side, the other in his chest, just to the left of center, a stake, positioned and angled in what looked like a deadly strike.
The woman’s blood pumped over the man’s chest. A stethoscope hung there—the Kerr Symballophone that now rested in the room. The child’s blood splattered as well, a few small drops hitting the man, his face looking fully human, and full of agony.
The three fell against the far wall, knocking over a small table. The man roared a single word, “No!”, vamping out so fast I couldn’t follow the action. He fell to the floor beneath the two, cradling the woman and pulling the stakes from the child. He tore his own wrist and dribbled his blood into the child’s mouth. The vampire scooped the woman’s blood into the mouth of the child as well.
But it was clear the undead child was true-dead. And the woman died as I watched, her pupils growing wide, her face going slack.
The vampire screamed, his fangs nearly two inches long, lifting to the light. His bellow was powerful. As he sat there, the two bodies embraced on his lap, the stethoscope slid to the floor. And he seemed to look right at me.
The vision of the spell faded.
From behind me, Jane said, “Well that sucked.”
“The only thing that makes sense,” I said, “is for it to be a bubble universe. That’s the only way he could see me looking at him.”
Evan finished chewing before answering. We were sitting in an all-night Taco Bell, and between them, Jane and Evan had devoured a table full of tacos, burritos, gorditos, and chalupas. Crumbs and wadded papers were everywhere. It looked as if a platoon of four-year-olds had had a food fight. “If it’s a bubble universe, then what’s powering it?” Evan asked when he swallowed. “Bubble universes—pocket universes—are theoretical in physics and unheard of in magic since Tomás de Torquemada’s time. And even then they were hearsay as much as heresy. No one’s ever claimed to have made one, or been freed from one, or even found one.” He picked up the last taco. “Bubble universes usually have their own time span, linear but not exactly like ours, like in the fairy tales where time runs differently in Fairy from human Earth. This is more like a time loop, where things happen over and over again, in which case he wouldn’t have seen you unless your viewing the loop disrupted it somehow.” Evan shrugged. “Of course, the vampire could have been looking at something on the floor in his time, not seeing you.”
“He saw me,” I said. “Totally, totally saw me. That electric eye-contact thing.”
Jane was sitting across from us, lounging back, one jeans-clad leg up on the seat beside her, her weapons stowed in our trunk. “He saw Molly,” she said. “No doubt. I was sitting behind her and I felt it too. Vamp zingers. When they vamp out, you can feel their gazes.” She sucked Pepsi through a straw and made a face. Jane liked Coke; Evan liked Pepsi better. The two had spent a friendly ten minutes arguing about the brands before the first part of the meal came. There had followed the silence of carnivores eating—the chomp of strong teeth and the crunch of bones—I mean tacos.
“So if we figure out how to break the spell,” I said, “and reintegrate the bubble of time with our universe… can we save the witch?”
“Molly,” Jane said gently. “She’s dead. She’s been dead since the little vamp tore her carotids out and the big vamp tried to save him instead of the witch.” When I looked confused, she explained, “The bigger vamp’s blood might have saved the witch, if he’d been fast enough. He made the wrong choice, and by not saving her, and by adding her blood and his son’s blood into the mix while the spell was trying to save her, he warped the spell and trapped himself in the bubble universe.”
“Holy crap. That makes sense,” Evan said through a mouthful of taco.
Jane and Evan shared a look that had volumes in it. “What?” I demanded. “No, don’t look at each other. Look at me. I do not need protecting. Tell me. What makes sense?”
“The vamp isn’t dead,” Jane said, her brows drawing down as she thought it through.
“Yeah,” Evan said, gesturing with the last bite of taco. “What she said. I’m guessing that his undead life is keeping the looped spell going, and if you break the spell, he’ll attack.”
“And because his undead life force has been powering the spell, he’ll be hungry,” Jane said. “Like hungry for seventy years. That kinda hungry. He’ll be insane with hunger. He’ll have to be put down.” She shrugged by making a tossing gesture with the Pepsi cup. “I’ll do it, if needed. Gratis. Consider it my way of saying thanks for all the dinners.”
“You bring the food half the time,” I said, putting asperity into my tone, feeling guilt worm under my skin. I knew how much Jane got paid to kill a vampire. I understood, logically, how dangerous it was. But unless we went back to Chauncey for money—which might look like a shakedown—that kind of money was not in the budget. Jane had to know that. And I really wanted to put the extra into savings for the new car. Hence the guilt.
“Whatever. Gratis,” she said. “That’s my deal. Take it or leave it. And if you leave it, you can either find another vampire hunter or appeal to the vamp clan up in Asheville. I hear sane vamps are real sweeties.”
“We’ll take it, Jane,” Evan said. “Thanks. So who was the witch?”
“Beats me,” Jane said. “Molly?”
I knew they were working together to protect me, and if I hadn’t been feeling like a thief, I’d have been gratified that they were working together on something. On anything. “Monique Ravencroft,” I said. “She disappeared in the early 1940s. No one has seen or heard of her since.”
“Ahhh,” Jane said. “Her, yeah. Makes sense. Her house was treated as a crime scene, with signs of a struggle and blood at the scene. But there was no body and no one was ever charged for her murder,” Jane said. When I raised my brows at her, she shrugged with the cup again and said, “I did a little research on the house. Found a cold case, a suspended investigation, at that address. No leads, and the principle investigator has been dead nearly fifty years.”