The Last Family Road Trip Read online

  The Last Family Road Trip

  Vampire Innocent #4

  Matthew S. Cox

  Vampire Innocent #4

  © 2018 Matthew S. Cox

  All Rights Reserved

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living or undead is coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author.

  Cover and interior art by: Alexandria Thompson

  ISBN (ebook): 9781949174205

  ISBN (paperback): 9781949174212

  Contents

  1. Blood Gift

  2. A Matter of Logistics

  3. Are We There Yet

  4. Fiends of the Night

  5. Keeping Watch

  6. Take Out

  7. Cramped Quarters

  8. Strange Energy

  9. A Little Good, a Little Bad

  10. Snooping Around

  11. Family Time

  12. Night Eyes

  13. The Genuine Article

  14. The Right Moment

  15. An Unfortunate Escape

  16. Next Moves

  17. Lost Expedition

  18. The Ruins of Nope

  19. A Giant Problem

  20. Portal Roulette

  21. The Beast of Clark Caverns

  22. Fey Amaranth

  23. The Expedition

  24. The Sanguine Grove

  25. Wild Dreams

  26. Catching Up

  27. Love Bites

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books by Matthew S. Cox

  1

  Blood Gift

  Freedom is pretty damn complicated.

  I mean, most of us spend the first eighteen years of our life demanding more of it… and as soon as we have it, it’s like ugh… hang on. What’s this responsibility crap that comes along with it? Some kids get their freedom in smaller doses, others have a whole lot dumped on them all at once even if they’re not ready for it. Like this girl Mackenzie a grade ahead of me back in high school. Her parents both died during her junior year and she got stuck living with her useless aunt, so she wound up having to take care of her little sister as well as herself.

  So, yeah… she got too much independence too fast—and not in the way anyone wants it.

  In my case, I also got a boatload of freedom all at once and not entirely in a way I would’ve asked for. Not only did I hit the ‘you just turned eighteen’ plateau, I’ve also been given freedom from a lot of other small annoyances—like growing old or getting something awful like cancer for example.

  And one of the best parts: I’m now free from the constant worry that some sick bastard is going to attack me if I’m out alone at night—or during the day, or anywhere really. They say most women who are murdered die at the hands of husbands or boyfriends. Yay. I’m a statistic. And Argh! I really need to stop thinking about Scott.

  Okay, I admit I’m still a little concerned with being out during the daytime. If the stupid sun’s up—and it’s gloomy enough for me to set foot out of my room—I’m basically normal ol’ me.

  However, I’m feeling indestructible at the moment since it’s about half-past midnight. Stupid sun. I’m still not quite used to being able to disregard certain behaviors ingrained in my head from a young age. Of all the things that have changed for me after waking up as a vampire, not having to be hypervigilant all the time when I’m out somewhere alone is the hardest to get used to. I keep catching myself falling back to my old fears.

  It’s stupid, reckless, and so totally unlike me, but I’m looking forward to the moment some creep tries to grab me or something… as if I want to punish some random guy for all the years my friends and I spent being afraid of our own shadows.

  Speaking of grabbing, the echoes of two guys shouting at each other draws me into an alley somewhere in downtown Seattle. I think I’m on South King Street. The yelling comes from between the Phnom Penh noodle house and an I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-it-is building with square green sections between bricks. Kinda looks like someone converted an old fire station garage into a strip mall.

  Plastic banging echoes in the narrow space between buildings along with grunts and muttered curses. A ridiculous number of trash cans lines the wall on the left. Like wow… there’s gotta be thirty of them, a row extending all the way down the alley. Two lay toppled by a pair of guys brawling. I have no idea who they are or why they’re fighting, but they make as good a target as anyone.

  It’s pretty obvious the one getting his ass handed to him is way drunk. They both look about mid-twenties with a ‘hipster dock worker’ kind of air about them. I swoop in on the sober dude and toss him aside. He bounces off the wall to land atop the trash can row, stunned. In the time it takes him to recover his senses and scramble back to his feet, I grab the other guy by a fistful of his shirt, pull him nose to nose, and blank his memory of fighting or seeing me.

  “What the f—” Sober man stares at me, fist cocked, clearly not expecting a girl on the smaller side of average to have been responsible for his flight lesson.

  I drop the drunk guy, leaving him to crawl off home, and smile at the other dude. “Hey. You busy?”

  The guy points at me. “Did you just—?”

  “Of course not,” I say, forcing my thoughts over his. Hmm. These two guys know each other and the drunk one randomly started fighting for fun. Geez. What is it with boys?

  He stands there doing a spot on impression of a mannequin—or that guy who played teenage Anakin in the new movie—as I slip in close and sink my fangs into his neck. Ooh. His blood tastes like fried chicken. Wow. I can’t even remember the last time I ate that. With Sophia being a vegetarian and Mom going all health conscious, it would’ve had to have been a ‘home with Dad’ day. Probably before I turned twelve.

  Mmm. That’s a dangerous flavor for my brain to loan to blood. Perhaps I drink a little too much. Finger lickin’ good, right?

  Still, I don’t take enough to threaten the guy’s life, though he’s going to be fatigued for a day or two. In addition to making him forget me, I insert a craving for chocolate chip cookies and OJ before wandering off.

  For no particular reason, I decide to take advantage of no longer being frightened to walk around alone at night and keep on going. My world is, for the moment, reasonably tame. Family’s doing well. Friends are good. Boyfriend is good—well, mostly. Nothing’s wrong with him or us. At least, nothing more than my continuous guilt over if I’m doing something mean to him by taking up his girlfriend slot instead of a living girl. All at once a storm of guilt and possessiveness grips me. I don’t want to give him up. Does that mean I’m in love with him, too?

  So yeah, I’m almost back to normal except for the whole, you know, being undead thing.

  Best of all, I no longer have a homicidal psycho-bitch ex-actresses trying to kill me. Hopefully, she’s more afraid of the Shadows than she’s pissed off at me. My wounds from our last ‘conversation’ are all healed up, but sometimes I still feel a nip or twinge where her claws dug in. Whoever got the idea to call it a ‘catfight’ when a pair of women are trying to kill each other needs to burn in hell. Claws suck. If Dante hadn’t given me that little boost… Then again, I wouldn’t have dared confronting Petra without it.

  I spot a liquor store across the street and get an idea.

  The skinny old dude behind the counter gives me a ‘yeah right’ look when I walk in amid the peal of fake electronic bells. He proceeds to stare at me like he figures I’m going to steal something. I head to the back of the aisle, grab a six-pack of Busch from the cooler and walk up to the counter.

  “Let me guess, you’re buying it for your dad,” says the gu
y, smirking.

  “No, not my dad. It’s for a friend of mine who’s old enough to drink.”

  “Uh huh.” He folds his arms. His mostly-bald head glows like a beige pool ball in the glare from the fluorescent lights. “And you and your friends aren’t going to tip off into an alley somewhere with it.”

  “Nope.” I grin. “I don’t even like the taste of beer. It’s for a friend of mine.”

  He opens his mouth, but the command to go put it back in the cooler never makes it off his tongue. “You’re buying it for a friend of yours.”

  “Honest.” I hand over a $10 bill. “I’m not going to have even one drop of it.”

  The man robotically rings up the beer and hands me change. “Not a drop.”

  “Thanks.” I replace myself in his memory with Mrs. McMahan, my junior year English teacher. I have no idea if the woman drinks or not, but she’s the first face that pops into my head trying to think of an adult woman who kinda-sorta looks like me. Memory changes stick better when they’re subtle. She’s also got brown hair and is a little young for a teacher, but clearly over twenty-one.

  With my illicit haul in hand, I head out the door and slip into the alley. No, I’m not going back there to drink. I just don’t need a cell phone camera recording me leaping into the air.

  Did I mention I adore being able to fly?

  Fingers crossed, I zip across town to the apartment complex where I can usually catch Glim watching his ex-wife and sons. It’s almost one in the morning, so he may not still be there as his family would be asleep now.

  I glide in to land on the roof of the building he always perches on and emit a sigh at finding it empty.

  “Sarah,” says Glim from nowhere.

  Gah! I scream in my head while clamping a hand over my mouth. “Umm, yeah.”

  He fades into view standing by the edge, his long black coat fluttering like Batman’s cape around his legs. Okay, a really aesthetically challenged version of Batman with no money. Unusually strong moonlight makes his pale grey face glow, his yellow eyes sparkling like amber gems. “Your timing is impressive. I was seconds from departing.”

  “Whew.” I fake-wipe sweat off my forehead and hurry over to him. “Glad I caught you.”

  “Is something wrong?” He asks, one eyebrow creeping up.

  I still don’t know how he can talk with such large un-retractable fangs and not sound like he’s got cotton balls in his mouth. Mine aren’t even half the size of his and I sound like an idiot if I try talking with them extended. “No. Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to hang out for a bit and… I got an idea.”

  “Oh?” He draws the word out, smiling.

  “Yep.” I hold up the beer, his favorite. “No memory reading this time.”

  “Sarah, you know I can’t consume things like you.”

  I wag a finger at him. “Oh, but you can.”

  He smirks—I think.

  “Look, remember when you found me at Petra’s?”

  “That’s a sight I’ll not soon forget.” He eases himself down to sit, legs hanging over the side of the roof.

  I flop beside him cross-legged. “I met these other vampires who also kind of had a problem with her. One of them, a Fury, gave me a little of his blood. With it, I somehow inherited his, umm… fury for a little while.” I hold my arm out. “If he can let me share his rage for a little while, I can let you share my ability to drink not-blood.”

  Glim gives me the side eye.

  “What? Is there something dangerous about it? I didn’t like become a servant to that guy or something, did I?”

  “No.” He smiles around his fangs. “If the man had been an Academic, it might have been a concern, though not all of them can do such things.”

  “Ahh. No. Dante’s definitely not an Academic.”

  He looks down and away. For a moment, he stops being the eerie character he plays who pops in and out of black smoky clouds. Next to me sits a man I suspect is still not quite ready to accept that someone wants to hang out with him. Maybe suggesting he bite me is too intimate.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to. I just got the idea since you like this stuff. I can’t offer anyone super strength or mystical powers. I’m just a weaksauce little Innocent.” I bat my eyes at him, then put a hand on his arm. “But, sometimes it’s the little stuff that makes all the difference.”

  “Are you sure you’re only eighteen?” he asks, not looking up.

  “Last time I checked. Yeah, yeah. I know. My life ended before it started, but I don’t think of it that way. More like flipped channels to a different station.”

  Glim takes my hand in his coarse, scratchy grip, and makes a silly smirk at my small army of cheap plastic and fabric bracelets. “You are sure about this?”

  “Unless there’s some bizarre side effect or hidden meaning I’m oblivious to, yeah.”

  Dante didn’t explain it in too much detail, but as soon as Glim’s painless bite sinks into my wrist, I concentrate on my ability to eat food, that aspect of me that’s Innocent (the bloodline not the concept) and try to share it with him. He takes only a few sips, less than I did when borrowing fury, then closes the bite.

  Glim’s complexion goes from pale grey to a light brown like real-time colorization of a black-and-white film. He still has the odd features of a Shadow: the drawn cheeks, sunken eyes, and huge fangs, but his skin tone has become relatively lifelike.

  “This is… unexpected.” He studies his hands, turning them over.

  “Better have one or two before it wears off.” I offer him the six-pack.

  He pops a can open and takes a hesitant sip—quite a task around his fangs. For a second or two, he braces for a fit of violent puking, but when it doesn’t occur, he slugs down several gulps, and sits there with his eyes closed, savoring it. I figure his mind’s going back to another time and place. He’s got way more reason than I do to mourn a life lost.

  Not that I intended this as any kind of experiment, but noticing how his body reacts erases any temptation I may have to suggest he borrow my ‘lifelike’ nature to visit his sons. He still looks pretty damn gruesome despite the color change.

  “It’s been a long time.” He takes another sip, then lets out a gasp like he’s been stuck in the desert and finally found water. “Thank you, Sarah.”

  “You’re welcome. Is it weird that the first thing I think to do when I realize vampires can temporarily share stuff is bring you beer?”

  Glim threads his arm around my back. “It’s not weird. It’s… human.”

  I lean against his side. “I feel like I should do a whole lot more for you than a six pack of cheap beer for helping me with that psycho.”

  He chuckles and starts on the second can. “It’s not the expense of the beer that matters, but the thought behind it… and the memories it brings.”

  “Wonder if I could let another vampire deal with weak sunlight.”

  “Perhaps, but it wouldn’t be worth it. The temporary exchange only lasts an hour or two at most. Though, if you ever wanted to trick a vampire to death, that would be one way to do it. Assuming you are even able to convey that aspect of your nature.”

  I shiver. “An hour or two… what’s going to happen to you when this wears off?”

  “I imagine the beer is going to come back out.” He grins in an ‘I don’t care. Totally worth it’ way.

  We sit in silence, enjoying the starlight for a few minutes while he drinks his way into can three.

  “Something’s bothering you.” He stifles a burp. “And, no, I didn’t usually inhale it like this when I was alive. But… I’m on a timer and I can’t become intoxicated no matter how much I have.”

  “Yeah.”

  He lowers the can. “Yeah, something’s bothering you, or yeah you understand I cannot become intoxicated?”

  “Umm. Both.”

  “Do you wish to talk about it?”

  “My parents. Really, more my dad. He’s insisting we go on the family road trip again. E
very summer since I can remember, he’s always dragged us somewhere kooky. I think he got the idea from those movies with Chevy Chase… only our trips don’t usually end in disaster like that. They’re just painfully lame.”

  He chuckles.

  “Well, okay. When I was little, they were fun. Sometimes, he finds places to go that are kinda cool for kids. But past thirteen? Museums and stuff can’t really compete with my friends. Like who really needs to see a six-thousand-pound ball of twine?”

  “I’m sure he took you to Gettysburg.”

  “Yep. I was ten. We only got to see the place for three days since we had to drive. Most of that trip was in the car or motels. The only thing I really remember from actual Gettysburg was thinking ‘It’s so damn hot’.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Yeah. Ugh is right. So, anyway, he’s doing it again this year—or at least he wants to do it again this year. I don’t know if I should go. Most of me doesn’t want to.”

  “You’re afraid you’ll be a burden on the rest of your family.”

  I sigh and sulk for a moment until Glim’s arm around my back squeezes encouragingly. “Yeah. They can’t really go to any places that require being outdoors with me along. Not like it’s going to be overcast the whole time. I’d be okay if they went without me. I mean, I’m eighteen now. I don’t need to go explore Uncle Abner’s Great American Goat Farm or the Great Midwestern Museum of Unusual Cheeses.”

  Big fangs plus aluminum can plus laughing equals geyser of beer foam.