Blood Hunt

6

Nat knew his people. When Garreth walked into the Main Street, a big-haired blonde reminiscent of the 1940's Claudia Darling offered to seat him. The AWOL Irene, her name tag told him. Verl hurried out of the kitchen to apologize profusely for no longer having a job available. All as predicted.

If he had listened to Nat, Garreth thought irritably, he could have slept the whole day in the earthy darkness of the barn instead of just most of it on his pallet on the floor of his room’s windowless bathroom.

A piercing whistle caught him by surprise…and the whistler. Sharon, in uniform, wearing the stitches and butterfly bandage on her chin like a badge of honor.

“Everyone,” she called to the handful of diners, “this is the man who saved my life last night! Garreth Mikaelian!” She ran over to throw her arms around him and kiss him.

Maybe he should have anticipated this, he thought in dismay, after Violet had gave him that huge smile and: “I hear you’re a hero.” when he came downstairs. He needed to fade into Baumen, not become a headline Lane was certain to hear about.

He tried shrugging off heroism. “It was no big deal.”

“It was big deal to me!” Sharon said.

Of course…and of course she was going to tell everyone about her rescue. Some hunter he was. Forget stealth, camouflage, or using a blind. Stand in the open like an idiot, shouting his presence. On the other hand…could he not have involved himself last night? No. It was who he was, as Nat said. He could not regret it despite the probable consequences for hunting Lane.

So with the damage done, he might as well have a little fun riding with Nat.

First, however, as long as he had no further need to tolerate daylight, his pallet in the hotel called him.

As he passed the desk, Violet hurried out to it. “You have a phone message, Garreth.”

His pulse stuttered in automatic anxiety. Who would call him, or even know he was here?

“Mary Catherine Haas asks please come see her. She’s Sharon’s grandmother. Here’s the address.”

She probably wanted to thank him for saving Sharon. Garreth sighed. A phone call would take care of that. “Would you look up her phone number for me?”

“No, no.” Violet put a hand over his. “She was very firm. She wants to see you.”

Well shit. He eyed the address, trying to remember the streets he rode down with Nat last night. “Where’s Poplar?”

“Just after the Pizza Hut.”

Farther than he wanted to walk in daylight.

“When you come back, park behind the hotel at the Methodist Church. The parking places out front will be filling with people coming to the five-thirty showing at the theater.”

Mrs. Haas’ house had a wheelchair ramp up to the porch. And fire at the door as usual. When he rang the bell, the woman answering startled him. Anna Bieber!

No, he realized a moment later. This woman’s hair had been shorn boy short and she used a walker. But the face and clear eyes were Anna’s, and they searched his face intently. “You’re Garreth? I’m Mary Catherine. Please come in.”

She led him to a livingroom furnished with the same kind of deep-cushioned chairs and couch Anna’s house had.

“Thank you for coming,” she said as they sat down. “Violet will have told you I’m Sharon’s grandmother, so first I have to thank you for her life. The Lord is mysterious and wonderful, bringing her cousin here from so far away in time to save her.”

Garreth started. “Excuse me? Cousin?”

“Yes. You see, I’m also Anna Bieber’s twin sister…”

That explained the likeness!

“…and I really asked to see you because I think my niece Mada is the grandmother you’ve been looking for.”

That caught him by surprise, too. “You do? Why?”

She sighed. “History repeating itself. Although we were more practical when Anna got pregnant. We got her a shotgun wedding to Ben Bieber. Even at fifteen and eager to drop our drawers for our Irish stallion every chance we got — Danny Shannon, a hired hand at our farm…” She smiled at the memory. “…we knew he wasn’t husband material.”

Garreth jacked his jaw back in place. His mind boggled at these two sweet elderly ladies as hormonal teenagers humping the hired hand then scheming to arrange marriage. “You made Ben think the baby was his?”

She shook her head. “He knew what he was getting. He and Anna had been wanting to marry, so she told Ben that Danny caught her in the barn one night, thinking she was me, and it being dark, she gave herself thinking, until too late, he was Ben, come for more than cuddling that time, and now she was in the family way. She knew Ben would insist on making an honest woman of her and he agreed with her suggestion they sleep together at least once so they could truthfully confess to fornication.” She smiled again. “Anna told me Ben marked his territory good and proper by rising to the occasion three or four times before morning.”

More information than Garreth needed. “So you think Mada got pregnant, too.”

She nodded. “In California, not Europe, and since the professor couldn’t marry her, she ended up at your grandmother’s boarding house using that false name.”

“What about the visitor calling herself Maggie Bieber?”

“I wasn’t here — my husband was in the Army and stationed at Fort Leavenworth for the early thirties — but I’m thinking ‘Maggie’ was Ben’s sister Adele. She always accused Anna of tricking Ben into marriage, and was outraged at Ben scraping together that tuition money in such hard times for another man’s bastard. Danny was long gone when Mada was born — we made sure he skedaddled before Anna went to Ben, for fear Ben would kill him — but everyone remembered him and that red hair marked her as his. Ben sent Mada to college to let her get away where no one knew or cared about her paternity. He hoped college worked better than sending her into town for high school did.”

With that family history and what the librarian said about Lane’s behavior and treatment in high school, no wonder she embraced being a vampire. It gave her the power to take revenge on the world.

He pulled his attention back to Mary Catherine. “How would Adele have known where Mada was?”

“She’d been widowed and was living with Ben. Except for several years after running away with the professor, Mada always keeps in touch with Anna…letters, phone calls. I think she did write in that time…from your grandmother’s about her situation…but Anna never got the letter because Adele intercepted it and got so mad she decided to go tell Mada just what she thought of her. Giving her name as Maggie Bieber let Mada know someone knew who she really was.”

The plausibility of the story and its smooth dove-tailing with his cover story left Garreth suddenly feeling as if he were wading and lost contact with the bottom…that reality was blurring, and with it his ability to distinguish between the true Mikaelian and role he played here.

Mary Catherine gave an emphatic nod. “I believe when Mada abandoned your father, she went on to Europe like she and the professor originally planned, and that’s why Anna believes she was there the whole time. Even though I’m sure Adele spitefully tried to convince Anna otherwise. Ask Mada about it if you’re here at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I don’t see how it would embarrass her now. Nothing does as far as I can tell. She tells the most scandalous stories about herself.”

No…the least scandalous stories, nothing touching the truth about her…Lane the vampire, the killer.

He gave Mary Catherine sincere thanks as he left. “You’ve answered important questions for me. I will stick around and see Mada.”

But he needed to arrange a logical way to do so.

Taking a back way to the hotel, he considered the most obvious option. Signing on to the local PD fit the I Ching advice Lien gave him when he left San Francisco, that acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. His conscience stung at trying for a job that deserved a commitment he knew impossible to honor, but if Grandma Doyle were right about his continued existence being only to bring Lane to justice, they would never learn he joined knowing it would be temporary. Not that Nat’s desire to recruit him made acceptance a slam dunk. He doubted Nat had hiring authority and who knew how whoever did might feel about it.