“Maybe I should bottle my blood,” she muttered. “I could probably make a small fortune.”
“Or a large one,” he said, amused by her wry sense of humor. “For fledglings the chance to enhance their power is too tempting to deny. It’s a matter of survival when so many are destroyed by older vampires. As far as I can tell, your blood doesn’t seem to hold the same allure for any of the ancient ones, and that’s a good thing.”
“How so?”
“Because I’m not the only one who can walk in the daylight.” Reaching inside his jacket, Andrei withdrew four short, sharp, wooden stakes and offered them to her. “You might want to keep these handy. . . .” He paused when she recoiled. “You got a problem with these?”
She looked up at him, her face pale. “I just don’t think I could drive one of those into someone’s heart.”
“No? You’d be surprised by what you can do when the necessity arises.”
“Isn’t it . . . messy?”
“No. That’s only in the movies.”
“Don’t I need a . . . a mallet or something?”
Andrei shook his head. “Vampires are powerful, but our flesh is as vulnerable as yours.” He dropped the stakes on the coffee table. “Any wooden stake will do, but those made of hickory or oak are the best. These are hickory.”
Tessa stared at them as if he had dropped a quartet of rattlesnakes on the table.
“There are only a few effective ways to destroy a vampire—a wooden stake in the heart, fire, or beheading.”
Tessa blinked at him, unable to believe she was having this conversation with Andrei. A little voice in the back of her mind whispered, Vampire. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you, and since you’ve made it pretty clear you don’t want me around, I want you to know how to protect yourself.”
“What about garlic? And silver?”
“Garlic stinks,” he said, shrugging. “Pure silver burns, but it won’t deter a hungry vampire.”
His gaze, so intense, unnerved her. Was he waiting for her to say more? What more was there to say, except, “Thank you for the information. And the advice.” She swallowed the urge to invite him to stay.
Andrei nodded curtly. “Take care of yourself,” he murmured.
He was almost out the door when she called, “Andrei, wait.”
He turned, one brow arched in question.
“Remember the fortune-teller? The one spreading those rumors about me?”
He nodded. “Madame Murga?”
“I looked her up on the Internet. I thought if I could find her I could ask her to stop talking about me. She died a few weeks ago.”
Andrei grunted softly. “Natural causes?”
“I guess so. It said she passed away in her sleep.”
“Somehow I doubt that. Be on your guard, Tessa,” he warned again, and left without another word.
Tessa stared at the wooden stakes. Taking a deep breath, she picked one up. It was solid, heavier than it looked. Andrei had said she would be surprised by what she could do if necessary. She tried to imagine driving that short piece of wood into Andrei’s heart. Swallowing the bile that rose in her throat, she dropped the stake as if it was on fire.
She shut the door, shot the dead bolt home, then collapsed on the sofa, wondering how her once mundane life had gotten so amazingly complicated.
And so dangerous.
* * *
Feeling the need for solace, Tessa rose early in the morning and went to church. And while she found the music soothing, concentrating on the sermon was impossible.
What was there about her blood that was any different from anyone else’s? There was nothing remarkable about her parents. They were just ordinary Americans. Her father had a little Cherokee blood, her mother was English and German. Certainly nothing out of the ordinary there. To her knowledge, there were no witches in her family, no Druids. Or elves. “Or orcs,” she muttered.
Maybe she needed to have a blood test . . . she dismissed the idea as soon as it occurred to her. She didn’t like doctors or needles. And what were the odds—if there was something supernaturally weird about her blood—that a doctor would be able to diagnose it?
From out of the past, the words of the gypsy woman echoed in her mind. “I see a man,” the fortune-teller had said. “He is old. Very old. He will come into your life in a moment of danger. He will watch over you and protect you. He will bring you death. And life.”
Andrei had brought death to those who attacked her.
“And life,” Tessa muttered on her way home from church. “What the heck does that mean? And why was Madame Murga spreading rumors about my blood in the first place?” What had she hoped to gain?