Dead Certain (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 3) Read online

  Eve Benson: Vampire

  Dead Certain

  P.S. Power

  Orange Cat Publishing

  Copyright 2015

  Chapter one

  Eve stood, her legs feeling wobbly and raw underneath her. That was due to them being pretty damned close to brand new. A week and a half before they hadn’t existed, the old ones having been burnt off. Her arms were the same way. Existing now, and looking normal enough, but feeling odd and like they weren’t real, yet. It was all in her head though, she was ninety percent certain. Most things were, for Vampires. That had taken her a while to understand, but once she started to grasp the freaking idea, she’d been able to work with it.

  It wasn’t correct to claim that the whole thing came down to confidence or belief. That new age kind of thinking would get you exactly as far as it always had in life. Not very. No, you had to have the needed skills, and be willing to use them, no matter what it cost you. In this case she’d managed to use magic to increase her own healing rate.

  Sure, that meant she was incredibly awesome, she knew that one, but everyone had a healing ability, so it wasn’t that special. Even when she was a Human she had, which had been cool, now that she thought about it. Not having things bleed forever was a good trick. Now she was able to throw a bit more energy that way. That was all.

  Her legs were bare, just like her arms, but she only smelled a bit like a pork barbeque now. The charred flesh had been brushed away over the last days, as she’d gotten bored and things started growing back. Now she just needed to go and get a shower, then find the people, the beings, that had done it to her in the first place.

  The only problem with that, she knew without having to do the math on the equation, was that either one of them, Maggie Sims, who was an ancient and powerful Vampire, or Fram, the Greater Demon, would hand Eve her ass on a platter. In the Demon’s case, that would possibly be a literal thing, if she wasn’t careful. She really wanted them both dead though, and everything inside her heart cried out for vengeance. To get them for having hurt her and leaving her helpless.

  She hated that.

  Being strong and powerful was the entire reason she’d become a Vampire in the first place. It was also why she’d learned to control herself, even before it had happened, becoming dead like she had. So that she could be the best Vampire she could be. It had been that, or joining the Army.

  Then some assholes come along, and use their powers to turn her into a fucking float toy. Not that they would have known that. Being able to fly was a brand new thing. Her telekinesis hadn’t been that strong at first, so she hadn’t been able to float around, like a happy little fairy. In fact, she still couldn’t really do it very well. With all her effort, she could go about five or six feet up, and then had to land after about half a minute. The gift was really handy for fetching drinks from the front room of the shop though. By day five she’d learned to heat the water in the warming pan, and the tiny jars of animal blood even, using only her mind. Well, and the hot plate they had for it. She wasn’t making fire or anything. Even if she could figure out how to get that done, she’d probably have a mental block that way now. Fire being an actual thing for her now.

  People had come back to check on her, every six hours or so, and they’d restocked the blood a few times, so that she could change the energy links out regularly. Three times a day. That way none of her cows would be killed, exhausted by the effort of trying to re-grow her limbs magically.

  Shuffling a bit, Eve moved into the front area. Barefoot, her old clothing almost hanging off of her. She hadn’t asked for anything, so no one had given it to her. They would have thought of it, she was certain, but for some strange reason, everyone had been busy almost the whole time. Probably avoiding her.

  Like a little bit of healing was going to make her cranky? Smiling, she saw that David was behind the counter that night. He was cute, having hair nearly as dark as her own, and blue eyes. Hers were a plain brown color, but nice enough. On the good side they both looked fit. She’d been kind of afraid that she was going to stretch her already thin frame even more, lacking the needed mass to make things happen. Instead she seemed pretty much like she had before. Thin, but toned, and kind of hard for a girl, but not anorexic.

  The Vampire behind the counter wore a white apron, since it was the uniform there. It had green letters on it, that proclaimed the name of the place as Yoghurt World. That part was interesting now, since for a long time the idea had been for them, their kind, to stay secret. Hence setting up an embassy in a mall, disguised as a frozen treat shop. Which it was.

  A really high end one too, for all they looked like a generic chain store. Everything was made from scratch, except for the multi-colored sprinkles. They mainly did soft serve dishes though, which was, Eve decided right then, a problem. They should have some cones, and hard serve, too. That would mean losing some of the front counter space, but it wasn’t a bar. No one ate sitting up front, they used a booth, or left the place totally. It would probably take some lobbying to get that one through though.

  “Hey. I’m going to take off for a bit, then I’ll be back to finish the shift. Because Eve rules. You should memorize that last part.” She said it like that was a real thing. She hadn’t been working there for nearly eleven days, and David was good enough that he didn’t need her to come and babysit him. If anything the job would have been the other way around, except for one thing.

  He had construction skills, and she didn’t. That meant he could be useful in helping down at the other end of the mall, fixing the mess that Maggie had made. She didn’t mention that part though, waiting for a reaction, which was actually the decent looking guy, who seemed to be nearing thirty and had been dead at least that long, not aging from the point of his death, staring at her dumbly for about ten seconds.

  Then he faked a smile.

  If you wanted genuine expressions, you didn’t work with dead people. It was a thing that left in the days after you died, and took practice to get right again, for some reason.

  “All right, that’s impressive. Did you trade with one of the Demons for it? The arms and legs, I mean?”

  She shook her head, getting what he meant. The Greater Demons could do things like that, if they wanted. They weren’t limited by much of anything, she knew. In fact, her buddy Darla had offered to turn back time for her, so that the damage would have never taken place. The events still would have, but she’d declined the offer. It had come on day seven, and she’d been nearly certain that she was going to be walking inside a month anyway. It had happened faster than that though.

  Mainly because of the time she’d once spent locked in a box. Learning to use her powers in order to stay alive.

  Keeley had kind of tricked her into doing it, but now she thought it was kind of clear why that was. Her other Greater Demon friend had mentioned that she’d wanted her to do something like that, and had been looking for a way to get her to do it anyway, hadn’t she? Her kind rarely lied, after all. They didn’t have to. They were so powerful that telling parts of the truth was more than enough to get what they wanted. If they didn’t just take it. Almost no one could stop them, if they wanted to do something.

  So now she couldn’t even be secretly pissed at Keels for that one either. As much as the whole thing had sucked it had also bumped her up in power by ten or more times. Thankfully she had a handy Fram to blame for things, or she probably would have lost her mind totally.

  Eve realized that she was moving very fast already, and slowed her reactions, shaking her head no.

  “I didn’t need the help. It’s part of my being awesome thing. Anyone, any Vampire at least, can do this. It just
takes focusing on healing for a while. I wasn’t doing anything else, so it was worth trying, right? You could do it. Not that I recommend learning by having things burned off your body, if you get a choice. Start with paper cuts, or rug burns.”

  David grinned, and it looked nearly real. Charming, and very close to sexy. His eyes even sparkled a bit.

  “Good to know, if it ever comes up. Still, if I hadn’t seen you growing in the back like a houseplant for a week, I wouldn’t believe it was really possible for anyone. You’re coming back here? Why?”

  Eve wrinkled her nose, blinked several times, and tried to seem innocent, even though she knew she was being a pushy pain in the ass with the guy.

  “So that you can go and help clean up, and rebuild Princess Pretty Nail? If they’re doing that at all. Three of them died. I…” She sighed, knowing that nothing she could have done would have made any difference. She still felt like it should, regardless. “I should have gotten there sooner. Figured out that something was going to happen, and.” She went to a dead stop, not even breathing, the world suddenly turning into a wash of fire around her.

  It wasn’t real, just a flashback. Thankfully it turned from that into a vision of her being fucked up the ass when she was about ten, by her “Uncle Jerry”. That was what her mother had insisted on calling the drug dealers and pedo’s she sold her daughter to for drugs and cash. Uncles.

  Why not ruin everything for her, including the idea of proper family, while she was destroying her innocence? It worked out for her now though, since the burning to death thing was fresh and new, and a lot of people had used her for sex over the years. That the idea of being raped was a refreshing alternative to the horror that tried to interject itself would have probably informed a lot of people about how bad off she was mentally at the moment, but no one had asked, and she wasn’t planning to tell.

  David just nodded though. If he knew what she was really thinking or not, she couldn’t tell. It was possible, since some Vampires had various mental abilities, too. Maybe they all did, for all she knew. Fire starting, for one, as well as telepathy, empathy, and telekinesis. Even the ability to fly, though that was so rare that it was nearly a myth. Technically she could do it though, so she wasn’t going to doubt that others could manage it.

  Shaking her head, she grinned. It was an old, and very trained response, so it looked real enough for David. He was hardly the perfect face reader, as far as she knew anyway.

  “I need to go get a shower. Otherwise I’ll make the tourists hungry. Call it half an hour?” She didn’t know that she could run at the moment, her legs still feeling weak and uncertain, but it wasn’t a real thing. That was in her head, that feeling that her limbs would fall off at any moment, or that she’d be ambushed with fire again. Turning and looking at the back wall, she noticed that she was, after a fashion.

  The sun was coming up. Rising like it did every single day. She could feel it, a sense of warmth already, on the horizon. The pain would follow shortly. It always did.

  “Or, you can go and get some sleep and I’ll be back in a bit anyway?”

  “That one, if it’s all the same. I have to hold out until seven, and I swear it’s like being put to death each and every time. I really don’t know how you and the suck up crew manage it.”

  That would be Cormack and Barb, along with her, no doubt. The ones that could stay up all day, even if they were pretty young to manage it.

  “Really? I can tell you the secret, if you want. It isn’t hard.” She nearly snapped the words at him, not liking the idea that he was teasing her, but it came out all right. That was the real trick to being an adult and mature seeming Vampire. Not being an asshole to people. On the outside. Most of them still felt angry all the time, or so she’d heard. She did at least, and Lenore might have just been saying that to help her keep going at the time, but she thought it might just be a real thing. It was possible to relax and fight some of that one off though, along with hunger, so she did it, making herself seem peaceful.

  “Oh? What’s that then, not being a giant puss? I know it’s going to be something like that.”

  Eve blinked, nearly taken aback.

  “Um, Dave, if you already know the secret, then why aren’t you doing it already? That really is the whole thing, right there. Accept that there will be pain, and know that you can beat it. You can, so… What’s the problem?”

  That got something tossed at her, which she saw fly at her in slow motion as she moved into pure, and blistering, pain. It was as bad as being on fire had been, but instead of killing her, it just let her move so fast the world seemed to be in slow motion around her.

  It was just a white dish towel, and wasn’t even damp enough to fly at her very fast. She snagged it from the air, nearly throwing it back in anger, but just held it, and returned to her normal movement speed. The trick to not being a bitch was a bit like the rest of it. You just did it, and didn’t give up.

  David spoke then, sighing pretty well at her.

  “You know, back in my day the new kids were all just insufferable pains in the ass that wanted to kill you, and take over the world. Now we have… You.”

  Eve nodded at him, and folded the towel before setting it on the marble counter top.

  “So, still insufferable and pushy? Annoying, and really, really hot?” There was a grin with it.

  He froze for a bit, and then nodded.

  “All true. I was actually thinking scary, to be totally honest, though. You get your arms and legs blown off by a Vampire that The Bey told us he doubted he could defeat in battle, and drive her away, saving hundreds of lives. Then you re-grow your stems, and manage to move so fast when I toss things at you that I can’t even see you moving. To answer your question though, the reason I can’t do those things is because I’m a little girl. That should be clear, by comparison if nothing else. Ask anyone.”

  Eve shrugged. It just wasn’t true. If the man, the Vampire, was that big of a waste of space, he wouldn’t have been working at an embassy. You had to be a bad ass just to get an apron put on you. Being trusted to work the night shift, alone, well that meant he was expected to become something special one day.

  “Bull. Tell you what, I’ll stay with you all day, and you can start working on that? Yeah, it hurts like a mother fucker. I won’t lie about it. You know that one, since we all do, but things are getting real around here, in case you didn’t notice? Being dead during daylight hours is a huge liability now. A year ago it wasn’t a big thing, but if the Humans turn on us, and I have it on good authority that it’s the working plan, then you’re going to want to be alive and awake from now on. Still, let me get a shower first? You won’t be that useful today, but um… Could you get a call in to Nikki? The local Proctor? She started working on this with me, staying up, then I had a bit of a personal setback, which screwed up the schedule.” She nearly felt bad about it, for a short period of time.

  Not that Nicole had any real reason not to keep up with things, past the first day, or that the others shouldn’t have seen to it. Then, Eve hadn’t suggested it either, had she? No, she’d just sat in the back, consumed with the idea of revenge, and the fear that she’d never be able to really be whole again at all. She wasn’t really yet, but it would come. She hoped.

  Her power, her personal agency, had been stripped away from her, and that wasn’t a thing she was willing to allow. For that alone, a certain Vampire and the Greater Demon that had enslaved her were going to die.

  Oh, she knew it wasn’t fair, killing Maggie for it. She was trapped, and her ability to resist was gone too. In a lot of ways it had to be worse than what Eve had felt. The only way for a person to get free of a Greater Demon that held their will, what people called owning another’s soul, was for the Greater Demon to die. Not just be knocked out or made a little uncomfortable either. They had to go all the way down.

  Some of them could come back even from that, but she couldn’t see it as a great idea with Fram. After all, if she managed it,
by some miracle, taking him down like that, bringing him back would just give him a second chance to come for her.

  Would he be reasonable enough to see that revenge was stupid and a waste of time, once her goals had been reached? She didn’t really know. If Fram had been a Human man, or the Mage he’d pretended to be, then the answer would have been no, almost all the time. If he’d been a Vampire, then she’d be dead already, not having survived being weakened for so long.

  Great Demons though, they were often really sensible about things, and didn’t always hold a grudge. Some of them could, if they were insane, or if it was logical to remove a long term threat, but she just didn’t know what Fram would do, if she killed him and let him come back. Not that she had a clue how to do that last part.

  Kill him, and work out some kind of healing, to bring him back? Could she do that? Healing yourself was one thing, but another person? Other people had that kind of skill, but she’d never heard of a Vampire with it. Then, it wasn’t a battle ready ability, so maybe it was out there, but no one bothered to chat about it? Really, they might not even know it existed, if they did have it. Vampires didn’t try to fix people very often, did they?

  David the Vampire, good looking, and trim enough to be a catch if anyone was interested, groaned a bit. It was a sad sound, she decided.

  Pitiful.

  “Awww. Do I have to?” There was a slight bit of petulance to the tone, but it was mainly playful.

  “Yup. You and me in an hour, get Nikki out for it. I’ll be back.” She moved then, barefoot, walking into a field of white hot pain that moved through her entire being the whole time she used her speed. On the good side she didn’t have to physically run the whole time.

  That part was ridiculously easy, actually. She didn’t even get out of breath, if she tried doing that, without using her special powers for the jog.

  As much as she could Eve pushed and pulled herself through the world, the light of the sun daring to creep up at her, over the edge of the world, blinding her as she traveled. It was a real skill, not hitting anything harder than it could take, moving her body faster than two feet on the ground could cause her to go normally. It was like a combination of a slow jog and swimming, really. She hid from the cars that were on the road as they passed, even though people knew that Vampires, and other things, existed now. It was good practice for one thing, and for the other she didn’t want to cause anyone to crash, distracted by her as they would no doubt be. Especially men.