Chapter Twenty-Six: Homewreckers

Lisa claimed to know somebody who could help them track the cell phones of the coven's many familiars. She was referring to Salvador, of course. He did something with mobile APIs, which Vera understood to be something with app development for phones. With him and somebody who knew something about phone security, they'd have pretty much exactly what they needed. She brought out her phone to text him and noticed that she'd also received a cryptic text from her mother:

C: <Your father and I are coming, she'd texted.

C: <Where in Palmetto are you?

"This was at like three in the afternoon," Lisa said. "I must have missed it."

Vera, meanwhile, had received a message from her own mother:

A: <Why are the Mulberries at our house demanding to see Lisa?

"Shit." She showed the text to Lisa. The last thing they needed in their lives was parental drama.

But that was something that would have to wait until the morning. Vera wasn't about to call her mother and start drama in the middle of the night. She might normally deal with the drama fine, but she was in an especially sensitive mood after the night's events, and regular people like her mom tended to be a lot grumpier in the wee hours of the morning. So she got permission from Maxie to stay the night, and they retreated to Ellen's room to relax and then snooze through the early morning...

Only, when they got to Ellen's room, Hector was in there... rifling through Ellen's things. Vera had entered quietly – she and Lisa didn't make much noise unless they meant to – and so he didn't notice. At first, she thought he was probably up to something uncharacteristic, like snooping through the few things that Vera had in there, or something gross, like going through his cousin's undies. And for a moment, it looked like the former, except he slid open her drawer and then accessed a secret stash at the back of the dresser, taking out a baggie of various paraphernalia.

"What's that?" Lisa asked.

"Sweet fuck!" Hector said. He cursed and stumbled back onto Ellen's bed, and Lisa's reflexes had her leaping after him to snatch the baggie out of his hand.

"Wow... this is, like, a lot of drugs."

Hector rolled his eyes and scratched at the hairs of his close-cut beard strip. "Yeah... I have to hide it in here so Eva doesn't find it. She's into moderation." He pronounced the word with a sarcastic sneer.

"Eva's on our shit list right now," Vera said. "Are you about to partake?"

"Yeah. My sleep cycle's all fucked up, and a good dose of 'shrooms always sets me right."

Vera bit her lip – a gesture that Verne never used to do, but that was fast becoming one of her mannerisms. "Hector... buddy... this is kind of a big ask... but can we have some, too?"

Asking Hector for drugs wasn't a big ask in of itself. Hector wasn't the kind of guy who'd turn you down or ask for money. No, he'd give you drugs, and then remind you weeks or months later when he needed a favor, and he didn't even get bent out of shape if you said 'no'. He just wouldn't give you drugs any more. The big part of Vera's ask was that they'd have to drink the 'shrooms out of him. And, surprisingly, Hector was okay with that. He wasn't squeamish about a little blood loss and he had plans to recoup his favor immediately.

"You have to give me some of the venom, too. The red juvechrome stuff. I've never had a chance to play with that stuff, and at thirty thousand a pop, I'm never going to."

Vera watched him chowing down on about five grams of dried mushrooms with nothing to mask their flavor. On the few times that Verne and Hector had 'shroomed, it had always been with peanut butter and 'shroom sandwiches, but Hector was far less of a dilettante than Verne had been. She nudged him to get his attention. "If I give you a decent amount of crimson venom, it might make you my familiar... it would give me power over you."

Hector shrugged. "You're a vampire, Vera. If you want to, you can already make me do whatever you want... between you and a bengal tiger, the tiger's less deadly. But here the three of us are, just chilling on Ellen's bed. You're good people. If you tell me you won't fuck me on this, then I trust you."

Vera put her hand over her heart. "Hector Gomez, I promise that I will never fuck you."

Hector rolled his eyes and chuckled. "Yeah, har har. You know what, that's fine, too. After being a thing with Eva for a minute, I've decided that hot girl pussy is way too expensive, even when you aren't paying for it."

Vera wasn't sure how to respond to that – either the fact that Hector thought she was hot (which, she supposed, most guys did) or the fact that it definitely changed things between them. Really, none of her relationships had escaped unscathed, not even her relationship with Lisa. And she got plenty of chance to contemplate that… once the 'shrooms really started to kick in about forty minutes later and Vera sampled his blood with a few little nibbles on the back of his hand. With a sigh, she lay on the bed in the dark and ruminated on her new life, with Hector to one side waving his hand back and forth, and Lisa to the other side coming up with random rhyming couplets:

"The dutchess drank a dram of dank, and fucked the stable boy, the skank!" she giggled.

When Hector brought his hands up to make shadow puppets (even though there was no light source for him to make them with), it gave Vera an idea.

"Hey, can you make, like, a cross symbol?"

She'd remembered a snippet about 'exposure therapy' for phobias and, after  her LSD use earlier in the night, it seemed plausible that something like that might work for vampires. The theory was that exposure to phobia cues in a non-threatening setting could lessen the power of the phobia and that this effect could be greatly amplified by psychedelic compounds. And what was a vampire's aversion to holy symbols and unwelcome places but a phobia? So they crammed up like sardines on Ellen's bed and Hector drew (poorly) pictures of holy symbols and told them they were unwelcome.

"Begone foul temptress!" he chided with the wave of a 2x4 card.

They did that for a while, and Vera couldn't say whether it was working or not. She certainly didn't feel repulsed by the holy symbols or Hector's disinvitation. There was a little tingle of aversion, but that could easily have been the 'shrooms giving her anxiety. And within half an hour or so, her high was already beginning to fade – the flashes and patterns of color that had danced across her vision were growing fainter. Hector, though, still had a few hours of high to go. For good or for ill, vampires just metabolized drugs faster and only got high when they ingested those drugs with blood.

"This is stupid," Lisa said. "Hector telling me to leave while waving a picture of a cross or a pentagram..."

"That's a Star of David," Vera said.

Lisa flipped a lock of golden hair. "Whatever. It's not like it's a real holy symbol or like we're really unwelcome, so it's not even a good test."

Maybe Lisa was right and, in any case, Vera's high was fading and she was getting sleepy. She yawned and curled up, using Hector's shoulder as a pillow. Lisa did likewise on his other side, reaching across and meshing her fingers with Vera's. And Hector stared straight up at the ceiling, smiling the biggest grin Vera had ever seen on his face. She drifted off wondering whether she'd just gone through the weirdest night of her life.

+++++

"...I swear, baby."

And "Don't feed me that bullshit, motherfucker!"

Were the first words that Vera heard. Her skin prickled and burned and, as she snapped into consciousness, she realized the room was awash with sunlight. Next to her, Lisa was still rousing, and her skin was even worse off. It was badly blistered and leaking black blood in parts. Squinting against the blinding light, Vera threw the blanket over Lisa, pulled the sash shut, and zipped over to where Hector and Eva were arguing. Rather, Hector was half-cringing and Eva looked about one misconstrued comment away from giving him a beating.

It didn’t take much to figure out what had happened: Eva had come home, found Hector in bed with Vera and Lisa, and made the logical conclusion that they'd slept together (which, she supposed, they had in the literal sense). Then she'd thrown the sash open, presumably in a deliberate attempt to harm the two vampires, and then proceeded to lay into Hector. Before Eva could respond to the sash closing, Vera zipped over to her and pushed her against the wall with a palpable thump. Eva clawed at Vera's wrist, but she might as well have been struggling against a tree trunk.

"You try to kill me twice in one day..." Vera's voice came out as a terrifying hiss. "Give me one good reason to let you live."

"Fuck you, Vera," Eva spat. Her dark eyes were bloodshot and tears streamed down her cheeks.

Vera was about a second away from doing something inadvisable when Maxie stormed in wielding an old-school Smith & Wesson revolver. She pointed it at Vera, then at Eva, and then back at Vera. "This thing has cursed silver bullets which, so far as I know, work against vampires and people. If anybody hurts anybody else in my house, I'm shooting them in the fucking head. Am I clear?"

Vera showed Maxie the skin of the arm she wasn't using to threaten Eva. The blisters were already receding, but she was still visibly burned. "She tried to kill Lisa and me... again."

"She and her slut girlfriend slept with Hector..."

"We didn't," Lisa croaked. Her face was gradually recovering but still badly burned, her Photoshop-perfect features hidden beneath cracked and swollen blisters.

"I don't care who fucked who," Maxie said. "Eva, if you so much as lift another finger against my guests, you can drive your ass back to Memphis. I love you like a daughter, girl, but I won't have you defiling my household with violence. My house, my rules. And Vera, if you don’t let Eva go right now, I've got a very itchy trigger finger."

"Fine," Vera huffed. She released her grip and straightened Eva's shirt with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. "We didn't fuck Hector... we just got high and passed out... and Eva..."

"Shut it," Maxie said. "I don't want to fucking hear it. It's over. Done-zo. Okay? The five of us..." she swept her hands around in a circle... "are going to do some meditation. In the living room, right now."

Vera was certain that Maxie had glossed over a few relevant points, such as that Eva was clearly in the wrong here and she and poor, convalescing Lisa hadn't done anything wrong. She watched as a blister un-popped and slowly shrank back into Lisa's cheek, smoothing another spot back into perfect vampire skin. If she'd thrown open the sash five minutes earlier, Eva might have killed them both with sun exposure. So Eva was definitely in the wrong, as far as Vera was concerned, but Maxie insisted that now wasn't the time to parse out the blame of who'd tried to kill whom and why. So she padded into the living room and sat cross-legged on the linoleum floor.

Maxie guided them through a meditation. About the closest that Vera had ever been to meditation before that was getting stoned and staring at the same spot on the wall for fifteen minutes... which was pretty close in some ways. But she was skeptical of meditation's efficacy. First of all, Maxie arrayed a dozen 'focusing crystals' across the room, which Vera was pretty sure were bullshit... but Maxie was a witch, so who knew? Second, she and Lisa were vampires and, while she'd never heard it said that vampires couldn't meditate, she knew for a fact that their physiologies were pretty different. For instance, when Maxie led them through breathing awareness exercises, Vera realized that she sometimes went minutes without breathing. Sometimes, she breathed at a normal pace out of reflex, but the amount of air that she actually needed was a tiny fraction of whatever regular humans used. Ditto with paying attention to her heart rate. With her improved senses, it was actually easier to focus on Maxie's breathing and heart rate than her own, since her beats and breaths were so far apart.

Maxie walked them through a mindfulness meditation, having her pay attention to the incoming stream of sense impressions across her awareness. Vera did it effortlessly, each and every point along her body coming into clear focus the instant she considered it and staying in her mind until she let it go. No wonder vampires were capable of incredible physical feats – their physicality was deeply instinctive, but also intensely deliberative. And as her focus shifted from her body to her internal state, to the thoughts and sensations flitting below her second-to-second awareness, Vera found a tense core of stress and anxiety below where she'd even been aware of it, a bolus of strained emotions that had been guiding her actions without her even acknowledging them. And she teased those emotions apart, tracing them back to uncertainty, to jealousy and fear, to her family and her job, and especially to Lisa. Part of her was terrified that she was already losing her girlfriend, and that if that happened, she'd have lost everything she once cared about.

They'd been at their meditation for perhaps thirty minutes when Maxie shifted their focus. "Keep relaxed. Slow, steady breaths. Okay... now that we've reflected on ourselves a little, I want to turn our attention outward. Something that I think we all need called loving kindness meditation. Are we all on board with that? Eva?"

"Yeah, sure."

This kind of meditation was completely new to Vera. They went in a circle, taking turns focusing on each one of the group with thoughts of love and goodwill. As Maxie explained it, you didn't have to wish for people to get what they wanted if it would hurt you. That's not what it was about. It was about wishing well for others despite your disagreements, despite their flaws, for them to be happy and actualized. And when they were focusing on Eva, Vera hoped that she could find peace, that she and Hector could iron out their tiff or (preferably) break up amicably, that Eva could get around the anger that clearly drove her, and that she could find happiness in an outcome that didn't involve killing every vampire in the coven. And, Vera found, it was pretty easy to do. She wanted Eva to be happy... wanted anybody to be happy, really, so long as their happiness didn't require her or Lisa crisping up in the sunlight.

Maxie spoke softly: "Okay... now I want us to turn our loving kindness to the vampires, okay? Let's consider their happiness and fulfillment. Again, we'll envision a way in which that doesn't harm us in any direct way. But let's love them, for they are flawed and suffering beings, just as we are, and we may empathize with them. Loving kindness, okay?"

Eva was having a hard time of it. Her breaths got deeper and her heart rate went up. Vera could smell her sweating. And, Vera realized, she was doing a poor job, too, because she was focusing on Eva. This wasn't about any of them. She tried to love the elder vampires... tried to love Erasmus Moody. That was no easy thing to do. She tried to hope that he could cool his ambition, that he could focus on his own self-development and on his estate and familiars, that he could achieve what a vampire could really be. Vera had a vision of that: an elder vampire, centuries old with a host of familiars, all of them serving by their own choice and at their own leisure. A vampire unbound by demonic decree, using their vast influence and wealth to better the world, humans and vampires alike. Something like the Clandest Initiative, but one not guided by long-term Machiavellian goals. It could be a world where vampires could operate openly, for their best interests would align with those of everyday people, and where their strengths and weaknesses presented no horrors or dangers. A world where vampires didn't manipulate the levers of power behind the scenes, but were leaders and statespeople wielding centuries of wisdom. Vera felt that it could be done... but only if they expunged the demonic core at the center of the coven.

"I'm having a hard time feeling loving kindness for Abaddon," Vera said.

"I hope that's to be expected," Maxie replied. "Vampires only, dear... I think demons are a much more advanced subject for loving kindness."

They finished their session after about an hour and fifteen minutes – that was about all that most of them could take. Lisa was fidgeting. Hector was fidgeting. Eva was fidgeting. Maxie looked to be about done with it all, and Vera felt absolutely energized. Whether or not the focusing crystals had actually done anything, she'd got more than she'd expected out of the meditation. She'd gone from being one lightning-fast move away from gutting Eva to wanting to hug her. So she sidled up to Eva and hugged her.

"Um... ok," Eva said.

Vera buried her head against the crook of her neck, her soft hair pressing against Eva's. "I promise I didn't fuck Hector. I'm not even into dudes. Can we, like, not kill one another?"

"Yeah. I think we can not kill one another," Eva confirmed. "Maxie said she thought you had some kind of plan for getting the vamps... uh, the bad vampires?"

"Yeah, but I'm waiting to hear back from my tech guy... actually, Hector knows a lot of people. You should ask him if he knows anybody who can do some black hat hacking for us."

"Is that, like, a drug thing?"

Vera rolled her eyes. "No. It's a computer thing. Just ask him, ok?"

Hopefully, Eva would interpret that as a kind of truce, that Vera was going to let her be the gatekeeper between them and Hector. She was still Hector's best friend of seven years, but it seemed like she was going to have to tiptoe around Eva to make sure she was still seen as the good vampire. Before she could think much on it, Vera heard her phone vibrating down the hallway, the zzzt-zzzt-zzzt of her alarm. It was ten o'clock and she had work in an hour – her first day back after a week of vampiric chaos.

OvidLemma

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