The windows held firm. Vampires mashed their faces flat, opening shark-like mouths but they couldn’t do more.
Lavinia looked shaken. Her eyes were wide and her breathing labored. Sally turned to her, trembling with shock. “It worked,” she said in a small voice. “How did you know? That they’d still, you know, even though we aren’t liv--”
The older woman regained some of her gravitas. “Shut your mouth. I knew it would work because I made up my mind. We are living in it. As of now. You and me. This is our home. We’re going places, kid.” But she looked less sure than she had inside the garage. And Sally, on fire one minute ago to hear Lavinia say those words, now wondered if she was being kidnapped by a crazy woman. She looked for a way out through the sea of vampires, torn between passion and rage that Lavinia hadn’t told her.
Then a comforting hand touched her knee. “Kid, stay with me here. Lemme put it a better way. This van is as of now my home, I locked my apartment and I won’t go back. I’m inviting you to share my home with me.” Sally met a pair of eyes big with apology and felt most of her desire flood back.
“You think about it.”
“I accept.”
The words were out before Lavinia finished hers. I get to get something too, Sally justified to herself in the amazed silence. I’m doing this run for KerriAnne but I get a gift too.
Lavinia’s eyes widened, then blazed again in that way that made Sally feel helpless and like it. “Good,” the older woman said. “Now. I’ll drive you where you gotta get. In a minute.”
She leaned back against the window, radiating a confidence that negated the whispering faces filling the space behind her head. She regarded Sally for a minute, hands resting on her thighs as Sally trembled, happily unsure what she was to do. Then Lavinia crooked her right index finger at Sally, come here.
Sally unbuckled her seatbelt, leaned forward and put her cheek against the crow face emblem, felt the softness of breast beneath. Lavinia’s arms came strong around her, pulled her up, brought Sally’s face to hers. Their eyes met again, taking Sally’s breath away. Then Lavinia kissed her, a warm, firm, moist kiss that turned wet and passionate as Sally’s mouth opened and she moaned.
Lavinia’s tongue stroked hers, sliding full and firm, bitter with night sleep but tasting somehow like the lavender flowers her eyes suggested. Sally’s arms went around her and she felt Lavinia’s hands on her back, strong, comforting, demanding. The tough hands stroked her face with tenderness, trembling with suppressed power.
Lavinia whispered in her ear, answering Sally’s unspoken why didn’t you tell me, “So if I think you need to wait to hear what I’ve decided, you wait. You want what I want, kid? Tell me now.” Lavinia’s lips wrinkled slightly, as if she hadn’t said it the way she wanted. But she was clearly asking Sally, do you want to play the way I want to play? Nothing is forced here.
And Sally, nearly blind with passion, couldn’t make herself say no. The vampire faces watched from a great distance and something felt wrong but she heard herself say, “I want whatever you want.” She wanted to call Lavinia something like “my lady” or more powerfully, “Master of all Masters” but she felt stupid and stopped herself. Passion makes you dumb, she thought, wondering dazedly what the hell she was doing.
Dimly pulling out of the warm sea, she kissed Lavinia again, made a move to sit up. But Lavinia was already setting her upright, though she smiled like a smoldering fire. “We gotta drive, kid. We gotta make this house move, huh? Where’m I going?”
Sally looked at the vampires pressed layers thick around every side. “Can you drive through all of them?”
“Let’s find out, huh? Buckle up again.” She turned forward, tightening her belt. Sally steadied her pounding heart and watched with moist puppy eyes as her new lover (!) gripped the wheel, stomped on the pedal. The camper surged forward, pushing against the vampires. They gave way just enough that the van could move but not enough that the women could see. It was like driving through thick fog.
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“Fuck do I know where I’m going?” Lavinia asked.
More in command again, Sally pulled out her phone. “GPS,” she answered proudly.
One minute later, the voice of the navigation system said, “Head down Main Street Too Wards McKinley Street. In two Hun Dread feet, turn left onto Wall Terr Street.”
“Fuck, I can’t hardly tell which way we’re facing!”
“Drive a little, I’ll tell you.” She thought she saw admiration and she looked down at the phone, very happy. As the van moved, the little arrow moved in the correct direction down the street on the map, but not fast enough. “You’re probably angling towards a building. Try nudging it to the right.” That seemed to do it. The arrow moved along Main Street at the right speed.
With their entourage of vampires, they started on the last leg of Sally’s journey. I’m going to make it! she thought. I’m actually going to make it! She let herself imagine greeting Bunt as he arrived, freeing KerriAnne, and then (she gasped) being driven off to some remote location, vampires all around but locked out, and giving her body to Lavinia. Several achingly nasty things Lavinia might make her do excited her giddy.
She didn’t want to look at the vague feeling of something wrong so she abandoned it instantly as the phone spoke. “Turn left onto Wall Terr Street.”
“Not quite yet!” Sally called quickly. She watched the blue arrow until it was exactly at the intersection with Walter Street. “Now! Left turn.”
Lavinia’s hands were tense on the wheel as she turned, her shoulders hunched. The camper pushed its way into the vampires on the left, and Sally felt like cheering as it crushed the foot of one. But then they melted just far enough away again that the van could turn. It was nerve-wracking to drive so completely blind.
The blue arrow crept along Walter Street. After what seemed like an hour, they reached Maston. “Keep going,” Sally called. Past Maston, a park would be on the left for one block, then they’d reach Uniform Ave., where the goal was. The hateful faces never left the windows. Those wicked eyes must have watched their kiss. What was she doing falling in love (something turned over in her stomach) in the middle of this vampire ice storm?
She was assaulted by a memory of her father, face frenzied but somehow pathetic, yelling that she was a disgrace to the family, that her grandparents and aunts and uncles would be ashamed. An immigrant to America after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, he had been pushed around and insulted and made to take work beneath his skills. His little family with his much younger wife (he had been 42 when Sally was born) was the only place where he had power. His family name Yan, with a rising inflection on the “a” which made it sound like a question to American ears, meant “strict, stringent, severe, tight, harsh,” and he’d seemed determined to live up to his name.
She felt again the sting on her cheek. He’d slapped her a hundred times before, but that time she’d been old enough to fight back. Her hand closed on his; she saw his face go dead as she defied him. “I’ll love who I want to, you pathetic old man!” She was shocked to find that she felt ashamed at not knowing enough Chinese to think of a good thing to call him. “You don’t know anything about me! I’ll never be your dutiful daughter. Fuck you!” she cried desperately, wishing she could speak firmly, and ran from the room. She knew she was in so much trouble. His voice called after her, ordering her to do what she was so clearly doing, “Leave this house and never come back!”
The GPS rasped, “In two Hun Dread feet, turn left onto You Knee Form Avenue, then your destination will be on the right.”
Sally came back to the present, trembling. She was falling head over heels in … something … with a woman who was – who was probably as old as her father in that hard memory!
She stole a glance at Lavinia, saw the wrinkles around her eyes and the grey lines in her dark hair. And she was going to let this woman dominate her like she never would have allowed her father to. But what was wrong with that? If it aroused her and was consensual, why did she feel that something was wrong?
Because … because Lavinia had not told her about her decision before they faced the vampires. Sally had said it was alright but it wasn’t.
But Lavinia had left behind her apartment and her whole life to help Sally. And, Sally reflected wryly, she hadn’t exactly told Lavinia about her own decision to break in!
“Turn now!” she called, dropping her tangled thoughts. Again, they bumped clinging bodies before the vampires melted away to the left.
And now they were on the street where the goal was. “In one Hun Dread feet,” the GPS voice announced, “your destination will be on the right.” 2741 Uniform Avenue. What was there? Why had Bunt chosen this place? “Keep going a little bit further, little bit more, just a few more feet aaannnddd stop!”
Lavinia braked smoothly, turned off the engine, looked over at her with concern. “Here we are, kid. So, where the hell are we? And just by the way, how the fuck do we get you into that building?”
Sally was silent.