Chapter 7

Frank and Tanya walked through the door into their apartment, just having returned from breakfast. Tanya peeked in at their comatose houseguest.

"Nope, she's still out like a dead bulb," Tanya said.

"Well, I've got work to do, so I'll be back late this afternoon." Frank said, kissing his wife goodbye. "Hopefully, she'll just lie there the rest of the day. I'll bring 'Chinese' home."

"You hate Chinese food!" Tanya reminded him.

"Yeah, I know," replied Frank, "but I love you, and you love Chinese..." Frank knew she hadn't had any Chinese carryout for at least two years.

'For what you have to put up with, darling, you deserve a special treat!' Tanya imagined she heard in her head.

After Frank left, Tanya went into the living room, leaving Beth to sleep off the overdose of alcohol they'd forced down her throat earlier that morning. Tanya had a lot of work to do, too. She sat down and opened up her work file. There were some financial transactions awaiting her approval. There always were on Mondays. 'I hate Mondays!'

It was hours later and dark in the apartment when Tanya finished. She closed up her work file and it folded itself into the arm of the couch. She'd spent (well, allocated, but she liked to pretend she was splurging) almost a quarter of a million credits. 'Frank would be so proud!'

She stood up and stretched, groaning as stiff muscles that hadn't moved for hours were forced into motion, reaching for the ceiling. 'Wow! It's dark already. Must be overcast... '

"Lights, please," Tanya said to the wall. The room became brighter as pleasant, indirect lighting came on around the edges of the ceiling. It was only half past five, so Tanya decided to work on her stories.

"Console," she told the wall, and waited for the console on the couch to make its appearance. "Access Girls with Guns." She sat down and touched the monitor screen, bringing up her story and began reading:

Tanya stopped reading and said, "Begin recording: Jodie staggered to her feet, blood running down her front making a sticky lake of dark red against her nearly transparent white blouse period.

"Paragraph. Barbanne laughed and said comma quote, Are you ready to die comma deputy question mark. Crap. End recording.

"Edit. Word. Die. D, I, E. Edit. Word. Deputy. Capitalize. Edit. Word. Crap. Delete."

Tanya sighed. Each time she accessed this site, she checked to see if the sound bite program was working any better. It never was, although the Site Master continuously promised an updated version 'any day now.'

Sitting up, Tanya requested a keyboard. A virtual display appeared on the monitor – the lower half being the keyboard while the upper half displayed what was typed.

She began typing:

The wall clock chimed six o'clock and Tanya looked up from her typing.

'I'd better check on Beth, ' she decided. 'She's been awfully quiet all day... '

She finished typing:

"into Jodie's belly. Jodie fell backwards off her knees, crying in agony and curled up into a ball, still holding her gun."

"Save," Tanya commanded to the console. "Close file." Then she got up and entered the bedroom to look at her sleeping beauty. Beth was still out and evidently hadn't even moved from that one position all day. Tanya sat down on the bed and stroked Beth's hair.

"Hey, honey," she said softly. "It's nighttime. Time for all good little vampires to wake..." Tanya jerked her hand away in sudden terror. 'She's cold! Why is she so cold?' Tanya felt Beth's arms and stomach. Her body was cold to the touch... Room temperature cold!

Suppressing a shriek in her throat, Tanya leaned down and listened for a heartbeat, shaking with fear. Beth's breasts were cold against her ear, as well. Tanya shuddered with loathing at having to touch her cold, yet sexy, dead body.

Tanya sat up and stared down at the cold body on the bed, forcing herself to sit still and think. She was able to sit on the bed, but she wasn't able to keep from trembling.

She knew that breathing could be very faint and difficult to detect in a comatose person. She tried to remember her military training from all those decades ago.

'Find a mirror! That's it! I remember! A piece of glass – anything shiny! A spoon!'

Tanya grabbed the spoon off the dresser and looked at it closely. 'Is this shiny enough? Can I detect moisture from her breath with this?'

She polished it on her blouse, then held the spoon up under Beth's nose and waited, trembling so hard she bounced the spoon off Beth's soft lips several times. 'This isn't easy, you know! I'm trembling so hard I can't even hold this!

'There! I see it! She's breathing! Thank God!'

For just an instant, the tiniest amount of vapor had appeared on the spoon. Beth's body was cold, but she was alive. 'I've got to warm her up!'

Frantically casting about the room, Tanya jumped up and opened the storage wall. She pulled out an old-style electric blanket and unfolded it as she backed across the room, dragging the bulk of the blanket on the floor. Reaching the bed, she wrapped Beth as tightly as she could, set the blanket to draw energy from the wall receptacle and turned it on 'High Heat'.

The front door opened. Frank was home.

"Thank God!" Tanya cried anxiously as Frank stuck his head into the bedroom.

"What?" Frank asked, suddenly panicked. Tanya's skin was almost white. Her flesh was cold and clammy when he touched her. "Wow! What happened to you? You look scared to death!"

"I ... I thought she was..." Tanya said, her voice shaking. "I just walked in here and Beth was just lying there, not breathing. Her body was ice cold! I thought she was dead! But..."

"Is she all right?" Frank asked, breaking his hold on his wife and quickly walking over to the bed. He bent over Beth's blanket-wrapped body and forced open her left eyelid. Her pupil was enormously dilated. There were purple crystals in her retina. "Wow! She's really doped! What did you give her?"

"Nothing!" Tanya protested nervously. "I've been working all day! I checked her when you left and I checked her again five minutes ago! I just found her like that!"

"Alcohol doesn't turn your eyes purple." Frank informed her. "She's been drugged." He listened to her heart for a moment and took her pulse.

'She is really cold... ' he thought as he held Beth's limp wrist.

"Well, she's breathing, and you're warming her up, so..." Frank shrugged, "she should be all right. We'll just have to wait and see."

Tanya wasn't convinced. She was still worried sick. "She could still die! What would I tell Béla? 'Hi. You remember your sister, the one that traveled through the depths of space for thousands of millions of miles safely with you, the one that you gave to us and said, 'Take care of her?' Well, we dumped a gallon of booze down her and she croaked!' " Tanya's voice rose with hysteria as she spoke.

"Look. It's okay," Frank said, trying to sooth his wife's frayed nerves. "She's a vampire. They can survive anything! Well, almost. She'll be fine. Just let her sleep!"

Tanya didn't enjoy the Chinese take-out as much as Frank had hoped she would, but she ate everything that he didn't.

It was almost midnight. Frank was lying on one side of the bed and Tanya was lying on the other. Beth was between them, still wrapped up in the electric blanket. Beth's body was warm, now, and her heart was beating almost fifty beats a minute; her breathing slow, but regular.

They both jumped when Beth moaned almost inaudibly. She opened her eyes, and blinked, trying to focus on the face gazing so seriously at her from beneath disheveled piles of long, blonde hair. 'Elaine? No, Tanya ... I'm on Earth. It must be nighttime. I feel sick! Oh shit I'm gonna barf!'

Tanya saw that upchuck look on Beth's face and got out of the way!

'I didn't know I could move that fast!' Tanya thought as Beth threw up all over where Tanya had been lying only a second before. 'My god! That stinks! That's not even bile! It's something worse!'

The steaming, volatile mess Beth vomited up dissolved the bedclothes and ate halfway through the mattress before it stopped.

"Jeez, Beth, do you ever get heartburn?" Frank asked, trying to treat this new disaster with some semblance of lightheartedness. 'What is that stuff? It smells like... '

"She has been drugged!" Frank cried, suddenly recognizing the heavy narcotic aroma. He'd smelled it before. "Do you remember Evan Caldwell?"

Tanya nodded, her eyes wide with fear.

"He smelled just like that!" Frank informed them. "He was throwing up all over the place, then he just keeled over dead!"

Tanya let the information sink in. She remembered only too well. She had been there, too. Someone had drugged her assistant Evan and he'd died. The autopsy had stated 'Accidental Overdose', but Evan wasn't a user. She and Frank privately believed that Evan had been murdered, but after two years of following leads down blind alleys, they'd given up trying to find the killer.