Pick Your Poison Read online

  I wanted to scream, scream at everyone to shut up and screw off, just shut the heck up and stop talking about me like I’m not even there, but at this very moment escape was at the top of my list.

  “Wait! Damn it, Norma! Wait!” Divit was still shouting after me, bellowing at this point.

  I pushed past people, faces blurring, swallowing the hiccup in my throat as my hand reached for one of the door handles.

  A large, olive-toned hand enclosed mine, a strong arm banding around my waist to hoist me up high in the air.

  Knowing who it was instantly, I screamed. Following on that, I let off a blood curdling shriek piercing enough to make anyone’s ears ring, ignoring Byron’s short howl of pain as Divit jerked me back.

  “Wait! You can’t leave yet!” Dragging me backwards, the stupid vampire was tugging me towards that damned sex-bathroom.

  The door was still standing there, like some strange, otherworldly portal, right there, smack dab in the middle of Callie’s living room.

  “I can leave whenever I want, you dried up sack of- Hey! Put me down! Help! Help! Kidnapping! Theft! Body snatching! Police! Help! 911! Anybody! Help me, you assholes! Don’t just sit there!”

  Divit hefted me over his shoulder as if I weighed nothing, ignoring the others’ protests, along with mine. Cursing under his breath, he palmed the skirts of my dress, pinning them down flat over my ass to cover it, to march me back to that stupid, ugly door.

  “I won’t go back in there! You can’t make me!” I shouted, my voice high and shrill as I beat at his back. “I screwed you once, you lecherous old fart! Lesson learned, you heartless, prissy, snobby...” I was so mad I couldn’t think of a word.

  “Toad?” Spira offered, eyeing us with wide, worried eyes.

  Tensing visibly as Divit hissed in her direction, her expression hardened and she hissed back. She tossed the vampire a dirty look as he turned to stare her down, though she didn’t intervene.

  “Wretch?” Mary smiled slyly, her gaze glittering maliciously. “Walking corpse? Asshole?”

  The two-faced demoness always was one for a good bit of gossip or an insult. For once, and I will say this only once, it was nice to feel like she was on my side for a change.

  “Yeah, what she said!” I shouted, pointing in the demoness’ direction.

  “I believe that’s good enough.” Divit ground his words out, swiveling around to glare at our audience. “Why don’t you all go mind your own fucking business. This,” he gestured at my ass and then himself, “is between us.”

  “Oh... I don’t know, I think this sort of involves all of us,” Stefan mused. “What say you, Normal?”

  “I won’t do it again! What are you, like a hundred?” I was still blathering, babbling and shouting at the top of my lungs. I didn’t care what stupid Stefan or anyone else had to say. “Two hundred? Five? You’re old enough to be my grandfather like five times over! It’s sick! It’s beyond- Ow! What the hell?!!”

  Divit’s hand came crashing down on my ass with a harsh slap and he hissed. “Enough. You didn’t think it was sick when you were screaming my name, did you, sweetheart? No, I believe you said you wanted it harder? Or was it... again? Now? More? I can’t remember. No, or maybe it was both, or all of it. You were shouting a lot of things. Either way, my age never came into question then, things were working just fine, and I never have, nor will I ever, attain grandfatherly feelings towards you. So, sweetheart, with all due respect,”—I huffed at that, interrupting him, but let him finish—“shut it.

  “Respect! Respect?! You don’t know the meaning of the word!” As my face went purplish red and I gurgled out a few strangled sounds, debating the merits of paranormal prison for staking a vampire, the room grew silent.

  “Touché, but neither do you.”

  More angry spluttering and stammering left my lips. When I finally felt composed enough, I went to open my mouth to argue but another smack came.

  “I know you,” he warned, smoothing a hand over my ass again, as if to soothe the sting. “Don’t even think about it.”

  A low growl ripped from my throat, producing a shocked chuckle from the stupid man. Does he not value his life at all?

  Reaching down, I gripped the ass of his leotard pants and pulled, giving them a good, wedgie-inducing yank until I thought I heard a grunt.

  “Byron does not think the vampire will be sitting without the pack of ice for a while, yes?” the wolf-man observed sympathetically, then ruined it by smirking.

  “Eh, he had it coming,” Mary commented idly, filing away at her nails as she sat on the arm of the big couch.

  Feeling I had not produced results fast enough, I gave another vicious yank. Divit cursed violently and dropped me in favor of coddling his good bits.

  As I flew towards Callie’s fancy rug, I threw my hands out to catch myself before I’d have landed on my fool head. Thumping on the floor hands first and then knees, I rolled to my feet.

  Scrambling around the big couch, I ignored Callie’s stunned, slack-jawed gaping in favor of a hasty exit. Shooting across the floor like I was sliding into first, the slick hardwood of the entryway easing my way, I skidded to a stop inches away from the heavy double doors. With my purse at my feet, right where it had fallen, I looped my arm through the strap and scooped it up.

  That much closer to freedom, I hopped up.

  Wrenching a door handle, I flung that heavy hunk of wood wide open and ran out, screeching, “Don’t you give me that look! I can’t believe you! You’re supposed to be my friend! Lose my number, Callendra! I mean it!”

  I never call her by her full name, ever, and that proved to the witch how serious I was.

  “Don’t even bother calling, ‘cause I won’t answer! I am done, so done! We’re done! I can-not believe you!” Hot footing it down the gravel drive, I couldn’t get my key in my car door fast enough.

  Hopping in, I jammed the key in the ignition, started it up, and had just put it in reverse when a hundred and something pounds of solid vampire came slamming into the side.

  Squealing, meaning to press on the brake, I panicked and hit the gas, sending him skidding along with me, hanging over my mirror and part of my hood as I screeched my little heart out.

  Finally realizing my error and correcting it, my crappy little hatchback came to a sudden and rather jarring halt. So did the hanger-on attached to my car like a Garfield cat.

  Divit groaned, grunting, and lurched towards my window.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, wincing.

  A little banged up but no less the worse for wear, my spandex sparkly vamp gripped the top of the door frame to lean down.

  “Roll down your window, sweetheart.” Not an ounce of sweetness entered that darkly intoned endearment, and I gulped past the lump in my throat.

  Oh, he’s mad.

  Eyes wide, I shook my head vigorously.

  Lips thinning, his eyes flashed, arms flexing, and I could have sworn I heard metal creak overhead. “Roll down the window... please.”

  Again, my head shook. “Can’t.”

  Divit’s jaw began to tick, right there in the corner. Running a hand through his hair in frustration, he hissed, hissed like a giant cat, flashing an impressive set of long, pointy looking fangs as his lips drew back.

  Swallowing hard, I thought about all the horrible things he said he was going to do to me when we got out of that bathroom, for torturing him.

  Listing to the right, my hand slid over the shifter and I put my car in drive.

  Divit caught it and went to grip my door handle, but it was too late. Already rolling forward, but not too fast, I let of the brake and let it roll. I was hoping he’d get the picture and back off. Maybe just, you know, go away.

  “Baby, wait! Roll down the damned window! We have to talk! Sweetheart! Listen! I need you to come back inside! The potion, th-the-the thing! It’s not done yet! What you said- What you said before you left- I-”

  And there it was. “Oh, so now I’m baby?” A short,
humorless laugh escaped me. I couldn’t help it. “Now I’m your sweetheart? Pfft. I’m your baby, am I? Because you need me again? Oh-ho-ho!”

  “No, I mean, yes. I mean- Would you just stop the car!”

  “No. No, I don’t think so. I really don’t think I will. How’s about you go fuck yourself, Captain Sparkly Vampire Pants,” both hands on the steering wheel, I pinky-waved, “and I’ll think about it, m’kay?”

  “You’re being unreasonable! Would you just-”

  Oh, of course I am. Silly me. Har-har. “No.”

  “Norma-“

  “No, and to whatever else you have to say, sweetly dead lover boy, gonna take a wild stab at it and just say no to that, too. Alrighty then?”

  “Grrrr.” Divit ran alongside my little red two door as it slowly picked up speed and I eased down the drive. By this point I was getting ready to make the turn onto the main road.

  “Norma Gene!” he bellowed angrily, stepping back to shout. “Stop that car and finish this with me, right now, or so help me!”

  Rolling my window down a crack, I scream-shouted back, “Or you’ll what? Eat me? Kill me? Dismember me for your pleasure? Suck the marrow from my bones? Wring my neck? You’ve already said enough to that effect, in great detail in the bathroom every time I pissed you off, I might add, remember?! Which is sick, by the way. And, hence, my swift get away. You have your chompers back, Freddy Mc Dead-y, and frankly, you already know they scare me.”

  “God... damn it!”

  “Sorry, but I’m sure it will wear off, and I think I’m much better off if I take my chances!” Stepping on it, I took off just as he flew at my bumper, leaving him to face-plant where my car should have been.

  His heartfelt, “Fuck!” could be heard loud and clear a half a mile down the road.

  Euphoria short lived—post Great Escape

  My machine kicked on, but I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to care.

  Click. “Genie? Genie, are you home? Look, I’m so sorry. Please come back. I had no idea any of that was going to happen when I’d cast. I really didn’t. I’d just thought it would be fun, you know? I wasn’t thinking about what could have happened, so much as what I’d wanted to.” There was a long pause after that. “Genie... if you’re home, please pick up...” Right before I thought she’d hang up or it would click off, I heard another voice.

  “Did she answer?” It was Stefan.

  “No.” Callie sounded on the verge of tears.

  “She’s fine,” Mary said casually.

  “My Mary, you do not worry enough,” Byron’s low voice rumbled. There was a note of disapproval in his voice.

  “Says you,” the demoness muttered back petulantly.

  “Should we go see if she’s home?” Duncan asked worriedly. “It’s been two days.” He’d been the only one not to utter a single word during that whole ordeal. He’d looked too shocked.

  “She is tough,” Spira assured everyone. “Norma is like a dragon, only human.”

  It clicked then and I felt sort of stupid, disappointed when I didn’t hear a certain dry, quick-witted jerk off prattling on about my whereabouts along with them.

  Unwrapping myself from my blanket cocoon on the sofa, I shuffled my way to my bathroom, still wearing the same clothes from yesterday.

  After having come home and having a mini panic attack, followed by a pathetic cry, I was too depressed and worn out to change, settling to sleep in the same clothes. I’d finally changed yesterday, but it was a hard won battle, and I’d settled on cartoon jammies and a tank top.

  Truth be told, a sick part of me had wanted to smell like him still.

  Frowning, with that thought in my mind, I flipped on the bathroom light and stepped inside. Tiny and white, almost clinical in appearance, with a small cabinet, mirror, sink, toilet, and typical bathtub-shower combo, I felt foreign standing in the middle of it.

  Shaking the feeling off, I turned to eye myself in the mirror, grimacing in disgust. I looked like a messed up oil painting of a clown with all that bright lipstick smeared across my face, black mascara and blue eye shadow tracking down my cheeks.

  Wow... Have I really been walking around like this for two days? Holy crap, I look mental. Glad I haven’t left my pity cave.

  “This, ladies and gentleman, is what a man-over—a man-hangover—looks like.” Thankfully, I planned to stay sober for a long time to come. “You’re one sick puppy, girl. Crying over a dickwad like him.” Wetting a cotton pad with warm water, I started trying to clean it off. “And for what? A long dong? Pfft. Get over it.” Stripping out of my clothes to put them in the hamper and dumping the ones from the night in question, still on the floor by the laundry hamper, straight into my little trash bin, I thought a nice, long, hot shower would be best.

  I’ll take a cue from an oldie but goodie and wash that man right outta my hair, I thought, and proceeded to do just that.

  And who’s there? Knocking, knocking on my chamber door?

  Steam wafted out of the bathroom as I opened the door. I smiled to myself as I adjusted the towel I’d twisted my hair up in.

  “Your mother let me in. I told her I was your boyfriend.”

  My expression froze as I turned slowly. There, rifling through my things as if he had the right to, was the damned asshole himself.

  “She’s too trusting,” he observed, studying a framed picture beside my bed. Tapping the wooden frame, he tilted it for a better angle. “Let me in with minimal explanation and just left me here.” Glancing up, calm as can be, brown eyes taking in my silky, blue bathrobe and plushy aardvark slippers with a strange aloofness that put my teeth on edge, he smiled.

  My toes crunched in my funky plush slippers until my feet cramped as I stared at him. The smile, that knowing curvature of his full and wholly masculine lips, was what did me in.

  Fidgeting in place, I blurted, “Did you hurt her?”

  “Hurt who?” His eyes strayed to my neck, where he examined his handy work; giant love bites having formed enormous, purplish, ugly looking bruises by the following morning dotted my skin. Walking around sporting those suckers tomorrow at work was going to prove interesting.

  “My mother.” Though I spoke low, he could still make out the tremor in my voice.

  “Why would I hurt your mother?” Brown irises flashed red, the devil in the man coming out to play.

  Lifting his shoulders in a careless shrug, he sighed noisily, an unnecessary act since he didn’t need to breathe.

  “I could have simply enthralled her to get my way, it’s true, but I didn’t even need that. She was just that easy.”

  Arms crossing over my chest to hide my shaking hands, my chin lifted. “Why are you here? And what do you want?”

  “As I’ve told you, I still need you.” Setting the frame back on my nightstand carefully, he rolled to his feet with a fluid grace that made me feel downright klutzy in comparison.

  In some ways going to Callie’s little shindigs had always made me feel the ugly duckling in a pond full of mutant swans—as if mutant swans was supposed to be the in thing. There was a certain gracefulness inherent in beings like Divit, a sort of predatory grace I’d never possess. Spira, and even Byron to an extent, had this sort of weird magnetism that was hard to mimic.

  Then there was Stefan’s cavalier yet dower attitude, his snark laced with biting charm—har-har—and Mary’s to match. They had a certain, I-don’t-give-a-shit-and-I’ll-do-what-I-wish level of I don’t give a shit-ness I couldn’t seem to reach. Was it an Other thing? Or had I missed the boat completely? Maybe I’m weird by human standards too, and I just haven’t realized it yet.

  Even Callie and Duncan, more normal along the spectrum, could be lumped in with that bunch. Me? Well... I didn’t fit in with them at all. I’m normal—one might say—at least by their set standards, so I guess I’m not supposed to.

  More so than ever, the more I thought on it, maybe because I’d been trying so hard for so long to get along before I’d finally said
fuck it all and given up—my odd social anxieties not withstanding—I’d begun to resent it, all of it. Everything had really started to rub. Maybe that was the real beginning of the end for me, or simply the crux of it all, but this all ends now.

  “I did my part, and now I’m done. You ‘made it count’, and I ‘found the way’. We bumped uglies and the door opened, end of story.”

  Divit didn’t say a word until he was directly in front of me, standing so close I could touch him if I just reached out.

  I didn’t.

  Balling my hands into fists, I tucked them under my breasts, as if to hug myself tight.

  “Ah, but it’s been two days and the door is still opened, so it would seem we have a little problem.”

  Reaching out tentatively, eyes fixed on my neck, his index finger traced along one of the raised bite marks his teeth had left behind.

  I shivered at his touch, gooseflesh breaking out all over my skin, but I refused to acknowledge it.

  “No.” Brushing his hand away, I took a step back. “We don’t. I did what I was supposed to, I’m done, so I guess you have a problem.”

  A shadow fell over the vampire’s face and he snatched my wrist. Tugging me towards him with a hard yank, he sent me smacking into his chest. My towel loosened as my head jerked. The thick bit of material atop my head unraveled as it tipped to the side, sending my hair tumbling around my face as it fell.

  Smoothing his hand along my palm, he pressed it to his chest, sliding it down. His eyes fixed on the wet strands of my hair dipping over my forehead as his skin rippled at my touch.

  Hissing once my fingers crept over his throbbing cock, he groaned, cupping my hand around his erection.

  Brown irises bled through with red met mine. “But, my sweet, you see, you said it doesn’t count. Which, if what the dear little witch has told me she believes has happened is true, then, yes, it is our problem.”