Free Hard Day's Knight by John G Hartness Page B

hanging in my eyes, which were a little too close together and split by a pointy nose that had freckles spread all along its not-inconsiderable length. But I was a lot less pale than I had been when I woke up that night, and my eyes no longer had the pale, lifeless look that I’d come to equate with my reflection. And yes, I have a reflection. The mirror thing is as ridiculous as the garlic thing, and makes no sense to me at all.

    “Okay, look, I did feed on the guy, but I didn’t drain him, and I didn’t really even drink that much. But that’s not why I look like this. That was at Phil’s.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about Lilith, and even if I did, I wasn’t sure how. I mean, he got bent out of shape about me feeding on a human, which is kinda the point of being a vampire. I figured he’d really flip out if I told him I’d fed on an immortal hottie.

    “What happened at Phil’s?” He still wasn’t looking at me, which meant I was still in trouble. I swear, sometimes this partnership is like being married. We fight all the time and neither one of us is getting laid.

    “There was someone there that Phil offered for me to feed from. He made it clear that it would be viewed as a serious breach of protocol for me to decline.”

    “Since when do we care about demonic protocol?”

    “Technically, Phil’s a fallen angel, which is different from a demon somehow. I think.”

    “Whatever. So who did you drink from this time?” Wow, he was going heavy with the guilt trip. He was making it sound like I just went around drinking from people willy-nilly all the time. And I quit doing that years ago after I got a really embarrassing rash. You can get all sorts of things from bad blood, and some of them take a while for even vampire metabolism to get rid of.

    “Her name was Lilith. The light’s green.” I really wanted him paying attention to the road and not to the name of my new acquaintance. After all, we’ve read the same comic books, so if I knew Lilith, I was pretty sure he would. And judging by the fact that he pulled into a Burger King parking lot and shut off the car, he recognized the name right off the bat.

    “
Lilith?
Like Adam’s first wife Lilith? Like the original feminist Lilith? Lilith who was condemned to walk the earth forever spreading lust through the souls of all she touches but unable to ever feel true love?” Okay, maybe he’d read way more comic books than I had, because all that lust stuff was new to me.

    “I guess.” I kinda sank down as far as the car seat would let me while Greg fumed. For all we’re the same age, he has a knack for making me feel like a stupid teenager all over again.

    “Well?” He asked after he took a few deep breaths and counted to twenty. In four languages.

    “Well what?” I thought I was maybe going to get out of this relatively unscathed. Four languages wasn’t too bad. Greg was fluent in seven, so anything under five meant he was only moderately pissed.

    “Was it good?” There was a little longing in his voice, and I had hope that he might just admit that he missed the taste of live blood.

    “Dude, you have no idea. It made me tingle in places I’d forgotten I had places. I saw colors that I don’t even have names for. I felt like I could run a marathon at noon in Arizona and not get the least bit crispy. It was amazing!” I could have gone on describing the feeling of feeding on Lilith, but the look on Greg’s face stopped me. He was scared. “What’s wrong?”

    “Listen to me, and listen very carefully. You can never feed from her again. No matter what, no matter who it insults. Legend has it that her kiss, her very touch is so addictive that priests have burned their Bibles just for a drop of her sweat. You have to stay away from her, or she could take you over completely. And a vampire under the control of a creature like Lilith is not a pretty picture.”

    He was right. I didn’t use much of my vamp powers in