Turning to Christine, Lucy explained. "He's a dufus, all right, if he thinks I would try to scare a real live monster with a water gun. This contains holy water." And before Val could comment, she added, "I also have regular mace and laced mace."
"Laced mace?" Val couldn't help but ask. He felt as if he were watching a train wreck.
"Yes." Lucy reached inside her purse and pulled out a mace bottle. "This one has silver nitrate for shape-shifters and gargoyles."
"I see," Val said. And he did. Her down-home weapons would be deadly if used correctly. But with Lucy… "That's why they're still in your purse?" he asked.
"I don't understand," Lucy said, but Val cut her off.
"Mais, non. Of course you don't. Cherie, nobody ever was protected by a weapon still in their purse."
Lucy looked at him as if he was crazy. "I know that."
"You do? Then why are they still in your purse?" he persisted, certain she must see reason before he turned five hundred years old. Not that five hundred was too far off.
"Because it all happened so fast," Lucy answered reluctantly. Suddenly she saw where his questions were leading, and it wasn't down a primrose path or anything so sweet-smelling. Dang, the man was sneaky, and he could go right for the jugular when he wanted. And yep, he definitely thought she was a fruitcake.
"Right. That's why preternatural predators are called predators—because they're lethal and fast. Very fast, Luce. Too fast for humans, smart or otherwise."
Scowling at him, Lucy shoved her mace back in her purse and began to walk away. Her walk was lopsided, since she had lost a shoe somewhere. Her clothes were sticking to her, and she heard herself squelching as she went, peach goo dripping into her eyes.
Humiliating! She could feel Val's eyes upon her, just as she heard the sound of the ambulance siren head down the alleyway.
But then a voice called out, "Wait up, Lucy! I'll drive you home."
It was a command, and Val turned and gave instructions to the other police officers to secure the scene, then asked Christine to accompany the victim to the hospital.
Lucy halted, listening to his instructions, and to his domineering tone of voice, and suddenly she shivered. She remembered all too well that voice whispering instructions in her ear as they had wild vampire sex. Instructions about where to touch him, where to bite him, and just where he was going to touch her.
Oh, how she wanted that back. She wanted him back, even if he was a tad authoritative. Even if he drove her crazy sometimes with his protective instincts and the draining way he sucked on her neck. She sighed. Her neck was very sensitive, and nobody knew how to suck one better than a vampire. They were experts at necking. In fact, they had probably invented neck-sucking, horny, toothy race that they were.
Val caught up just as Christine called out, "Hey, Lucy, that battle cry of yours—remember the Alamo? I like it."
Lucy turned around and nodded slightly, her eyes a bit glazed. "Thanks. It's my grandma's saying. Her only saying, really. She says it when she stubs her toe, when she's hoeing the garden, or before we eat."
"You need a battle cry to eat dinner?" Christine asked in confusion.
Val didn't let her answer. Grabbing Lucy's arm, he began escorting her to his car. He answered himself over his shoulder. "Not really. Lucy's grandmother is just mad as a hatter."
Lucy punched him on the shoulder. Christine stood still, grinning.
"She is not, Val. She's just… a little eccentric," Lucy said.
Val sighed. "Cherie, the woman wears a lamp-shade on her head to commune with Albert Einstein." And then the darkness swallowed them up.
Christine chuckled softly to herself. Val had his hands full with this one. Lucy Campbell would lead him a merry chase, and such a mess couldn't have happened to a better vampire. She wondered what Mr. Einstein would say about it all.
Chapter Fifteen
Close Encounters of the Sexth Kind
Lucy lived two miles from the House of Usher, so the ride home was fast and filled with lectures about not sticking her nose into police business. She could have been hurt. She could have been killed. She could have chipped a nail. She could have aged thirty years—or, on the other hand, she could have skipped thirty years of income taxes. Still, police concerns and finding DeLeon weren't foremost on her mind right now.
She let Val's stern lectures wash over her, and she thought about how best to take the bull by the horns. She had to frame her apology for mistrusting him in a manner that he would find irresistible. He had to forgive her and take her back into his life; she missed him too much for him to do anything else. But wearing smashed grapes and bananas on her clothes and peaches in her hair wasn't conducive to groveling—not unless she was apologizing to a fruit fly.
Outside her apartment, being the protective old-fashioned gentleman and eagle-eyed cop that he was, Val escorted her to her door like she knew he would. She asked him to come inside for a moment. She noted that he accepted with reluctance, almost as if he expected some form of ambush. Clever vampire.
She stalled him from asking any questions by saying she needed a quick shower. Then, ten minutes later she was out of the shower and dressed in a robe. Val eyed her with both trepidation and a hint of simple male appreciation.
"Okay, Lucy, what did you want to talk to me about?" he asked.
"Us."
"There is no us," Val reminded her firmly—although he had gotten misty just a moment before while holding her hand. She had given him both the best years of his life and the worst.
"There used to be an us," she suggested, "which was a good us, a great us. Now there isn't an us, but that doesn't mean there can't be an us again. And a great us, not just a good us, because without us, I do okay and sometimes not even okay."
Val's eyebrows wrinkled and he stared hard at her.
"That didn't come out quite like I imagined," Lucy said. Romantic it certainly wasn't. "I meant to say, I'd like us to have a second chance."
"I thought you hated my two-timing guts," Val replied somewhat coldly. Not that his voice didn't always sound a bit cold, him being undead as he was. "At least I remember you shouting that all over San Antonio."
"I didn't mean it! You had broken my heart—or at least I thought you had broken my heart until I learned tonight that I'd broken my own without your help. I'd suspected I'd been a big ol' fool. Now I know for sure." Lucy began to wring her hands, knowing that she was messing up her apology big time, but she couldn't seem to help herself. It was as if some babbling idiot had taken over her body, possessing her and causing her to blurt out inane things when this conversation might just be the most important one of her life.
Crossing his arms over his chest, Val asked quietly, "What are you trying to say?"
"I'm sorry. I was wrong about you," Lucy finally managed to get out. "I am so sorry."
"Chris told you the truth about that night?"
Lucy nodded.
"You believe her when you wouldn't even listen to me." Val bit out his words.
"When I first saw you two together, I was too hurt to listen to anything. My worst fears had come to life. I just wanted to lie down and die," Lucy explained, her eyes pleading with Val.
"What kind of love can there be without trust? With a woman not willing to listen?"
He stood so remote from her, as if he were on some distant cliff a thousand miles away. She had to bridge that distance. She fell to her knees, taking his hand in hers and bathing it with her kisses and tears. "I'm sorry, Val. I was stupid and I let my past dictate to me."