Lynsay Sands - The Reluctant Vampire

“Here, let me help you with that,” Drina and Harper said as one, and moved toward her.

“No, no, I got it,” Stephanie assured them. “You two shove the coffee table out of the way, so we can start nest building.”

Smiling at the girl’s much more cheerful mood, Drina turned to help Harper shift furniture around to make room.

“So did you check out the movies?” Stephanie asked, as they finished situating the comforters and pillows.

Drina smiled faintly, knowing the girl probably already knew the answer. She seemed to know everything they thought and did.

“Drina voted for horror,” Harper announced. “Lights-out-huddling-on-the-floor-in-the-dark horror. But we can always do that second if you have another preference. First choice should go to you since you had to fetch everything for this excursion.”

“No that’s good. My first choice is horror too,” Stephanie said happily, grabbing the movie in question and opening the DVD case as she crawled over to the television and DVD on her knees.

“I’ll get the lights,” Drina said, hopping up and moving to the door, but then pausing to wait for Stephanie to get everything going.

“All set,” Stephanie announced, finishing up, and then dropping back amid the nest they’d built.

Drina flipped the light switch off and moved to join Harper and Stephanie on the floor. Stephanie had taken the near edge of the nest, leaving a spot between herself and Harper who had claimed the far end, and Drina settled into the spot, smiling when he slid his arm around her shoulders.

“It warmed up in here pretty quickly like you said, Harper,” Stephanie commented, as the FBI warning rolled offscreen and the movie trailers began. She pushed away the comforter she’d automatically pulled over herself as she spoke, and Drina glanced around, noting that it was much warmer than when they’d first entered the room. She almost pushed the comforter aside herself, but Harper caught her hand to stop her.

When she turned to him in question, he merely smiled and gestured that she should look toward the screen.

“Harpernus Stoyan, if you can’t behave yourself and go and turn all Roman hands and Russian fingers under that comforter, you’re going to have to sit on the couch,” Stephanie snapped, sounding for all the world like a stern schoolteacher.

Drina burst out laughing at Harper’s exaggerated groan, suddenly understanding what he’d been up to. She then pushed the comforter aside and shifted herself up onto the couch behind them to remove temptation, and said, “That’s okay, I’ll sit up here. I had nowhere to put my soda anyway sitting between the two of you.”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that,” Stephanie said, glancing down to the can on the floor beside her. Harper’s can too sat on the floor at his side since the two were on either end of the nest, but, in the middle, Drina hadn’t had anywhere to put hers and would have had to hold it through the movie. Now, however, she settled on the couch in the corner behind Stephanie, far out of Harper’s reach and temptation, and set her can on the end table beside the couch.

“Can you reach the popcorn?” Stephanie asked with concern, as Harper used the remote to skip through the commercial trailers.

“Just put it between the two of you, and I can reach down,” Drina assured her.

Stephanie did as she suggested, and then they all fell silent as the movie began. It started with a bang, of course, or actually an axing, and Drina rolled her eyes at the antics on screen. Truly, she liked horrors because they were always rather comedic to her. It never failed to amaze her how mortals could paint their own kind so damned stupid. She’d lived a long time and met enough mortals to populate a small nation but had never met a female mortal she thought would be stupid enough to go creeping out into a dark yard at night, unarmed and in a skimpy nightie, to investigate after hearing or seeing something there that disturbed or scared her.

And while Drina had dipped into enough male mortal minds to know that the majority of them seemed to think about sex with every fifth or sixth heartbeat, she was quite sure even they wouldn’t think it clever or exciting to drag a female away from the safety of the herd to indulge in a quicky when dismembered bodies of friends or partygoers were falling around them like snow in a Canadian winter.

Seriously, at one time she had actually considered it insulting to humans as a whole, but lately she’d started to find it an amusing reflection of the lack of intelligence of the moviemakers. Between that and the fact that a great majority of movies today appeared to be remakes, it made her wonder how the devil they made any money at all in Hollywood.

Drina almost groaned aloud as one of the characters locked themselves in a windowless bathroom to escape the axe-wielding psycho killer who simply axed his way through the door while the girl trembled in the tub waiting to die.

Couldn’t she even find something, anything, to try to hurt the guy with? Granted, perhaps not everyone kept scissors or other deadly items in their bathroom, but there was shampoo to squirt in his eyes and blind him, or even conditioner to squirt on the floor just inside the door so that the killer might slip and fall when he finally entered. That would at least give her the opportunity to race past and make a run for a smarter escape route. Surely anything was better than just standing there wailing and squealing and waiting to die with her boobs jiggling about? And it wasn’t like she didn’t have time to think while watching him slam the axe repeatedly through the door.

Shaking her head as the wailing, screeching, jiggling girl got the axe in the head, Drina reached for her drink, and then paused as motion in the backyard caught her eye. Frowning, she squinted, trying to make out what she’d seen. From her position, all she could see was the very back of the yard, and she’d thought she’d seen motion out there and a brief flash of reflected light.

Stephanie gasped in horror, and Drina glanced back toward the girl to see her cuddling a pillow and watching the screen wide-eyed as another character pretty much threw himself under the axe, or into it as the case may be.

Drina glanced back out the window, briefly, but then stood and stepped over Stephanie, heading for the door.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” she said quietly.

“Do you want us to pause it?” Stephanie mumbled, eyes glued to the screen.

“No, I won’t be a moment,” Drina said, and slipped quickly from the room.

Drina walked quickly into Elvi and Victor’s bedroom and right past their en suite bathroom, headed for the door to the hall. She didn’t have to go to the bathroom, of course. She’d only said that to keep from worrying Harper, and fortunately, Stephanie had been too wrapped up in the movie to read her and call her on the lie.

Not that there was anything to worry about, Drina thought. She’d probably just seen a neighborhood cat or something skulking across the yard or over the fence. But she was going to check it out anyway.

Armed and not in a nightie, she thought with a wry shake of the head as she hurried up the hall to the stairs and down to the first floor. Teddy, Alessandro, and Leonora were in the living room talking quietly while they awaited their shift sitting with Tiny and Mirabeau. They glanced over at the sound of her descending the stairs and Teddy immediately came out of the room.

“Problem?” he asked.

Drina shook her head. “I thought I saw something in the backyard, and I’m just going to take a quick peek around. I probably won’t even leave the deck.”

“I’ll come with you,” he said, moving to follow, but she shook her head as she walked into the pantry to don her coat and boots.