AN: Thanks to Project Team Beta, for amazing editing, to Furious Kitten, for helping me fix the ending, to Stephanie Meyer for inventing my characters, and to each and every one of you for reading.
~: Chapter 7: Freaks of the Week :~
Room 418, St. Petersburg, Ben Cheney
"Hello, Emmett."
No, too tentative.
"Hey, Emmett. What's up?"
Too casual.
"Hello, Emmett. I'm so glad you're here I don't even know where to begin. Please don't let her eat me."
Definitely too desperate. It was hard not to seem desperate given the situation.
Keep it together, Ben. Just a few more hours. Right. Just a few more hours and his vampire not-uncle would be here to rescue him from his vampire not-aunt. After which he would be free to get on with his life, provided he survived the rescue experience.
Nothing to worry about, according to Gramps. Emmett was totally going to be able to handle her. According to Gramps, she always listened to Emmett. He was going to be fine. It was all going to be fine, according to Gramps.
Of course, according to Gramps, vampires also never slept, sweated, or snored. Aunt Tanya was currently doing all three. For fun, she tossed, turned, kicked, and muttered, apparently having nightmares.
Ben would be having nightmares, too, but he'd decided that turning off the light with a vampire in the room just wasn't going to happen. Sleeping was out of the question because he wanted to wake up alive. Just a few more hours. He splashed some cold water on his face and exited the bathroom, reassuring himself with each step that he was going to live.
There was a moan from the lump on the bed in the corner, and Ben froze, every nerve in his body telling him to run away as fast and as far as he could. Gut instincts were really hard to fight. He knew she was going to regain full consciousness at some point, and he really wasn't prepared for it.
Are you there, God? It's me, Ben Cheney. I know we haven't talked much lately, but I'd really like to have the chance to get to know you better. To do that, I need you to help me live through the next few hours, okay? I'm too young to die. Way, way, way too young to die.
The room phone rang and Ben jumped about ten feet in the air, landing in a full-on defensive crouch. Who even had this number?
From under the covers on the bed, a pale hand shot out, capturing the phone on the second ring. Aunt Tanya lifted the phone off the receiver and pulled it swiftly back under the covers, offering a soft and non-descript greeting. Shit, thought Ben. This isn't going to end well.
There was a moment of silence, and then the covers fell away slowly as Aunt Tanya sat up. With one hand she pushed her matted hair off her face and with the other hand she extended the receiver.
"It's for you."
Ben eyed the phone like it was a live snake.
Aunt Tanya frowned, a crease appearing between her eyebrows as her eyes flickered between the phone and Ben. She shook the phone at him again. "It's for you."
"Who is it?" Ben asked, keeping his distance while his inner safe-keeper begged to be allowed to bolt.
"Your manager. Peter?" Her voice held a question, as if she may not have heard correctly.
Fuck my life, thought Ben. Of course it was his manager. Nobody else had the room number, and nobody else wanted his ass on a platter for canceling on the fight.
Nobody else had just set up a situation where he had to take a phone from the hand of a hungry vampire.
A hungry vampire who was shaking the phone at him again. No, actually, her whole arm was shaking, like the phone was too heavy for her to be holding it out like that. He frowned. Weren't vampires supposed to be super strong?
"You want him to call back?" Her voice was a little shaky, too. Ben shook his head.
"I'll talk to him." He crossed the room and took the phone. Aunt Tanya slumped back down, breathing heavily from the exertion, and Ben took a seat on the edge of the bed across from her. She had dark circles under her eyes like she hadn't just slept for nearly forty straight hours, and her gaze was firmly fixed off in the distance as she panted.
"Ben? Ben, are you even there?"
What? Oh, right, the phone. "Yeah, I'm here. What's up?"
"Was that the aunt?"
"Yeah."
"She feeling better?"
"What's it to you?"
His manager huffed. "Just showing some concern, which is more than you're doing for your career."
"She's awake now, if that's what you're asking. Thanks a lot for that, by the way." Ben meant that on a number of levels, one of which was promising God anything he wanted in exchange for a continued pulse. "You should have called the cell."
"I know you, Ben. You're asshole enough to see the caller ID and not pick up."
Ben sighed. It was true. That didn't mean it was nice to say out loud. Why was he antagonizing his manager over all this, anyway? He couldn't remember. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? And yes, I'm being an asshole. Again. Now what do you want?"
"Courtesy. Some respect. A winning lottery ticket."
"Keep dreaming. Is there a point to this call, or are you just bored?"
"Remember that fight yesterday? The one you were supposed to be at?" Peter chuckled as Ben sighed. "Good, you remember. Well, guess who else didn't show up for the fight?"
"Mother Teresa."
"Very funny, Ben. Your opponent, James. James did not show up for the fight."
"So? It wasn't like he had anybody to fight."
"But he did! They'd re-matched him when you cancelled, although they couldn't get a hold of his manager to confirm it. In fact, nobody could get a hold of his manager."
"So? It's weird, but maybe they left the country. What do I care if James and Laurent pulled a no-show?" From the bed, Aunt Tanya suddenly sat up again, hissing at him. Ben pulled the phone closer to his ear and turned slightly away from her in alarm.
"Peter, I'm going to have to go."
"No! Give me that phone." His auntie was all kinds of worked up. Ben handed the phone over without a fight. Some battles were just not worth it and this was definitely one of them. Just a few more hours. . .
"Ben doesn't want to talk about it, but I'm dying to hear about the fight and his missing opponents. I feel so bad about all of this." Ben's eyebrows went up. His auntie was definitely turning the charm level up to eleven with the huskiness of her voice. It was like she knew that flirting could get you everywhere with Peter. "Tell me everything you know, Peter. Tell me now. When were they last seen?"
Watching as she listened intently, Ben could see the tension in every line of her body. Her voice might be overly sweet, but it was at odds with the rest of her. She looked like a disaster zone—shirt torn, hair going everywhere, dark circles under her eyes—but her focus on the phone was absolute. Gradually, though, she relaxed as Peter babbled on, and then suddenly she was apologizing to Peter for the inconvenience, playing up how lucky it had been that she had found Ben in time, how unfortunate it was that she had these seizures, everybody in the family worked so hard to keep her out of the hospital, so nice of Ben to take on this inconvenience, Peter you were just too kind, blah, blah, blah. She hung up the phone with a smile.
The smile dropped the second the phone was back in the cradle. "You're safe," she said. "James can't get you from where he is now, and Laurent appears to be long gone."
Ben just looked at her, raising an eyebrow. "That whole charm show with Peter was just to find out about James and Laurent?"
"What?" she asked, collapsing back into her pillows. "It's not like I could tell him the truth."
Ben would have liked to have heard the truth, but Aunt Tanya just pulled the covers back over her head. Within seconds, she was snoring again, and Ben was back where he'd started, waiting for Emmett and wondering exactly when reality had stepped out.
Ben jerked awake with a gasp. He hadn't meant to fall asleep. All the lights were blazing, and he was sitting uncomfortably at the desk chair. According to his watch, several hours had disappeared, and the mid-afternoon light flooded the room.
A quick glance revealed that his auntie was still under the covers. Standing, he checked his neck in the mirror, feeling like a guilty bastard for doubting his safety but wanting to make sure he hadn't been a snack for the undead while he was off in dreamland. It was fine for Dad and Gramps to trust Aunt Tanya completely—from the safety of Ontario.
A soft knock at the door caught his attention, and he walked over, trying to peek through the eyehole but not seeing anything. He checked the chain and cracked the door warily.
"Hello?"
There was a soft chuckle from outside his field of vision. "Cautious. I like it."
"Who's out there?"
His so-called uncle, Emmett, stepped into the light, looking just like his pictures but bigger. Ben checked the hall fixtures for reference. No, maybe not that big or tall. He just had presence, filling the hallway with a certain authoritative strength that brooked no arguments. He wore all black with the thick cabling of his fisherman's sweater setting off the sharp angles of his jaw. Underneath short dark blond hair, topaz eyes flicked up and down the crack in the door, assessing Ben's caution and then asserting themselves.
"Let me in, Ben. I've come to help."
Unlatching the chain, Ben felt his inner chickenshit resist the urge to fling itself at Emmett's feet and sob with relief. Thankfully, before the blubbering started, his outer macho managed to deliver a solidly spoken, "Good to see you," and not flinch at Emmett's cool handshake.
Emmett, at least, fit perfectly with Gramps' descriptions of vampires. With inhuman speed, he entered the room, setting a black leather duffel bag down inside the doorway. Ben locked the door behind him and then watched, puzzled, as Emmett just stood in the entryway.
"She's asleep over there," Ben volunteered, surprised when Emmett snorted.
"She's no more asleep than you are."
The figure under the covers snored loudly in response. Emmett chuckled again and then proved his point by marching over to the bed and ripping the covers off, revealing an indignantly faking Aunt Tanya.
She flipped him the bird and scowled. "What are you doing here?"
Emmett regarded her for a moment, hands on his hips and a pensive look on his face. Ben watched from the edge of the room as a whole conversation seemed to happen between the two vampires without a word being uttered. He was completely unprepared for the audible dialogue, which Emmett precluded with a massive sniff.
"You smell."
Aunt Tanya grinned and then grimaced. "How bad is it?"
"I don't know what you've been up to lately, but before you start explaining everything to me, and I do mean everything, you are going to have a shower."
"That bad?"
"Worse than you can even imagine."
She sighed and pushed herself off the bed with an effort. Tentatively, she made her way toward the bathroom, grabbing on to pieces of furniture for balance along the way. As she approached the final stretch, Ben suddenly realized that he was between her and the bathroom.
He tried to sidestep at the same time she did, but she lost her balance and crashed into him, fisting his shirt to keep from completely falling over. Ben didn't even realize he'd started hyperventilating until Emmett spoke.
"Relax. At this point, she's just as human as you are."
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Aunt Tanya, hoisting herself back up and reaching for the bathroom door.
"Don't tell me you don't know how you feel. You're breathing, your heart is racing, and your reflexes are complete shit. You're human."
"How is that even possible?" gasped Ben, mentally talking his heart rate down out of the stratosphere.
Emmett gave Aunt Tanya a thorough once over before replying, taking in her tattered clothes and ragged appearance, before replying. "I don't know exactly, but as soon as she doesn't reek like the recycled dead, she's going to tell us all about it. Isn't that right, Tatyana?"
Aunt Tanya flipped them off again as she stepped into the bathroom and shut the door with an angry bang. It wasn't until the sound of the shower started that either one of them relaxed.
Ben reached up to rub the back of his neck nervously just as Emmett started to do the same. With a wry chuckle, Emmett completed the gesture and glanced around the room. His eyes flickered over the beds—one pristine and one rumpled—Ben's open suitcase, his phone in its cradle, the desk, the window, and back past Ben to the bathroom door. He sighed and took a seat on the edge of the made bed.
"Well, that went about as well as I could have expected, really. You holding up okay?"
Ben nodded and plopped himself back in his old friend, the desk chair. "Yeah, I guess so." He shrugged. "Stories from Gramps sound a lot less crazy now."
"He tell you a lot about her?" Emmett's tone was neutral.
"She's the aunt. She likes raw deer, cooking Russian food although not she's not as good as Aunt Rose, and scaring the snot out of the local stray dog population. I'm supposed to be nice to her or he'll off me in my sleep."
Emmett guffawed. "I can picture your Gramps trying to off you in your sleep. Feisty bastard. Always was." Emmett's eyes flicked over Ben again. "Never had your size, though. I bet you could take him."
Ben's brain tried to process getting into a real fight with Gramps, recoiled from the thought, and just blurted out the first thing that popped into his head. "Dad would feed me to the wolves."
That garnered another laugh from Emmett. Ben hadn't realized humans were that funny to vampires. Maybe it was the paranoia and the stress?
"Why are wolves so funny?"
"Your auntie thinks they're secretly people, and she's scared to death of them. It was the only way to tease her growing up. . . no wonder it's still a family threat!"
"Why is she scared of wolves? Gramps says she'll eat anything."
Emmett sobered up. "That she will." One crisp, serious nod accented the statement as he repeated it, "That she will."
He stood again and started to pace the room, raising the tension level. "Do you know what she's been eating lately?" Ben just looked at him. "Okay, do you know who she's been eating lately?" Ben kept up his stare. "Right. You don't want to think about what she eats."
Ben nodded. "There's a lot of stuff on the news, and I think she ate Gramps' dad, but that was a long time ago."
"Correct. That was a long time ago. Did she tell you about that?"
"She's been talking a lot in her sleep. Nightmares or something like that. Freaking me the hell out to be perfectly honest."
"Good." Ben shot him a look, and Emmett amended his statement, "Well, not the freaking. Just the talking. That's good. How about a starting place? What's she been saying?"
Ben rubbed the back of his neck again. "Where do I even start? In English? In Russian? Stuff that probably happened thirty or even fifty years ago? She's been all over the map."
"How about names? Throw me some names."
"Okay." Ben considered the collected ramblings of the last two days. "Rose is awesome. You're awesome. She loves you guys. She's sorry about Gramps' nightmares, and Grandma is prettier than her picture. Victoria is a sad bitch. Fucking Laurent fucking everywhere, double dipping little swine tit, or something like that." Emmett laughed and Ben pressed on, "James is a douche. Edward has a gun. My dad shouldn't have been an accountant; he's smarter than that. Riley's shipping service is shitty; kids should mail first class. Fuck the postal service. Aro can go to hell. The Vultures—"
"Volturi," Emmett corrected, watching in amusement as the litany continued.
"Whatever. The Volturi can all go to hell. She picked a basket. Arkady isn't supposed to be alive. Poor Arkady, that poor grandma. Her apartment will never be the same; she'll burn them back for Amalfi because it was too quiet. Felix's knife is in the purse with the plastic, but it's too damn big. Out damn spot, the wolves are coming. Wolves, Bells, wolves, woods, Canada, Germany, woods. James is a bastard. That's about all. I'm probably leaving some stuff out, but it ran together a lot, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me."
"No, probably not. It doesn't make that much sense to me either. Not all of it. We haven't been on great speaking terms for a while, and she liked to gloss over stuff anyway when she. . . after she hooked up with James." He looked away out the window at that, twitching the curtains aside to look out over the street again.
"James is her husband?" Ben let his confusion echo in his voice. "He's dead twice."
Emmett turned around sharply. "James is dead?"
"Uh, I think so. If he's not dead, she's having a lot of fantasies about killing him. I mean, I guess you guys don't really get divorced when you live forever and so. . . " Ben let his voice trail off. Emmett wasn't listening. He had whipped a cell phone out and pressed it up to his ear. His lips were moving, but Ben couldn't hear a damn thing.
Super sonic vampire speech. He'd been warned, but damn. Just damn.
The shower stopped.
Emmett hung up the phone. They both turned and looked at the bathroom door.
Nothing.
The hair dryer came on and Emmett sat on the edge of the bed, checking his watch. Ben rocked back in the desk chair.
Emmett checked his watch. Ben looked at his feet. His toenails needed clipping, but it could wait.
Emmett checked his watch again, the movement causing Ben to raise his head. Their eyes met, and they both gave the same grimace of male disgust before Emmett got up and went to the window, checking the street again.
"Watching for somebody?" Ben asked, trying for casual and almost making it. Vampire hordes are after you! Run for your life! was screaming through his brain.
"Just a habit. No one should know we're here because no one has known where she was for some time. It's been an issue of concern."
"Oh?" Ben's voice was a little squeaky. Creatures of the night are waiting just outside your field of vision to suck your blood! Abandon all hope now!
"Not for us. For others. Remember she's a danger to others."
Others. Right. Just a danger to others. "But what about now?"
"Human won't last." Emmett spoke of the human condition casually, like it was a trend on its way out already. "We should feed her though. I bet she's hungry."
"She mentioned that." About a hundred fucking times, actually. Ben just hadn't known what she was hungry for, although his overworked brain had given him plenty of suggestions. He picked up the room service menu off the desk and crossed to the phone by the bed. "What do you think she likes?"
"I have no idea. We never knew her as a human."
"Oh." Ben processed that, freaked a little, and then just rolled with it. "I'll ask her then."
"She doesn't know. She doesn't remember her human life." Emmett looked out the window again, still way too casual for Ben's racing mind.
"She was human before? There aren't vampire babies?"
Emmett's shoulders slumped a bit before he answered slowly. "No, there are no vampire babies. We're. . . we're oddities of nature. Frozen as we were and never more to be."
Ben didn't have anything to say to that, and something in Emmett's tone told him the subject wasn't really open for discussion. "I'll just get doubles of the stuff I like, okay?"
Emmett nodded, then flicked the drapes shut and marched smartly back to the bathroom door. As Ben finished ordering, he knocked lightly.
"Go away. I'm drying my hair."
"It's dry enough."
"Go away, Emmett."
"You have until the count of three and then I'm taking this door down. One, two. . . "
The door flew open and Emmett leapt back just in time to avoid Ben's shaving kit. The mini soaps followed, trailed by the shampoos and a wet washcloth.
"I didn't want you. I wanted Rose!"
"Rose is indisposed. Besides, I'm better at fighting if it comes to that."
"I can fight for myself."
"Oh, really?" Emmett stepped forward into the bathroom, shoving the door out of the way. There was a shriek, and then Ben got an eyeful of his aunt's legs as Emmett hauled her out of the bathroom like a sack of potatoes. There was a flurry of sparks and a twang as the blow dryer came out of the wall.
Clad only in a towel and hissing, his auntie's sudden perch on the desk would have been cute under other circumstances. As it was, Ben was pretty sure that the first one to laugh was going to die, even if she had to beat them to death with a mini soap.
"Why aren't you dressed?" asked Emmett sternly.
"I don't have any other clothes and I don't want to put my leathers back on. They—"
"Smell. Yes, I know." He pulled a brown paper packet out of the black leather duffel and tossed it to her. "Rose remembered your size."
Aunt Tanya missed the catch but pulled the packet close and ripped it open. "Pink? She got me pink? What does she think I am, twelve? I'm not wearing this!"
Emmett reached back in the bathroom and threw the leathers at her. "Then put these on again. You're eating and then we're going."
His auntie didn't even pick up the leathers from the floor. "When does the food get here?"
Ben spoke up. "About thirty minutes."
"Fine." She huffed her way back into the bathroom with the shreds of her pride and the pink clothes. Emmett picked up her clothes and rifled through the pockets like a professional before dumping them in the trash.
"What did you find?"
Emmett showed him. There was a set of passports in various names and a crumpled, wrinkled mess of about a dozen photos, retrieved from a pocket down the leg. Some Ben recognized as the duplicates hung in his own house: his grandfather as a boy, a family photo from his own childhood, and several of Rose and Emmett. There was one of Aunt Tanya that had clearly been ripped in half to remove an ex, and another that looked older than the rest of her smiling in the arms of a tall man with black eyes.
Emmett set that one aside and put the rest in his own pocket. "She'll want these later."
"I'll want what later?" asked Aunt Tanya, coming back out from the bathroom. The blouse was the only pink that showed. With the dark jeans, it didn't look so bad, thought Ben. Out of her leathers, she was less drunk-whore and more straight up hot. Vampire aunt! Knock it off, you perv, knock it off!
"Your pictures back."
"Oh yeah. I have the watch in my purse, too." Tanya started looking around for it. Emmett looked at Ben, and Ben shook his head. No purse.
"Um, you just kind of fell out of the sky with nothing." Ben didn't catch all of what followed—his Russian didn't extend to guttersnipe swearing. She was pissed, that was for sure, and Laurent was a douche in there somewhere, and James was dead again.
Emmett interrupted the tirade. "About James. . ."
She shut up abruptly. "I don't want to talk about it."
He nodded and picked up the photo off the desk. "You want to talk about this?"
"No."
"Great. So, tell me about James."
"He shot me."
"Obviously with something good, too. When?"
She looked at Ben. He shrugged, checking his watch. "I've only had you for two days and change."
"Almost three days ago."
Emmett whistled and walked slowly around Tanya, inspecting her. "You're in good shape if it's that recent. What did he have?"
"I had a sample in my purse."
"Well, we can ask him about it."
Tanya glared. "I burned him already."
Vampire divorce was a real bitch, thought Ben. Still if he was shooting at her. . .
"I take it you broke up, then?" asked Emmett.
"A while ago."
"Really?" Emmett made disbelief sound very, very subtle.
Another huff from his aunt. "Three years ago. I don't want to talk about it."
"Fine," said Emmett, going back to the photo. "When was this, and why haven't we heard about it?"
The silence was deafening. Emmett cleared his throat, and Aunt Tanya broke down.
"I don't know! I found it in Italy when he—" She clamped her mouth shut again abruptly.
"Keeping good company?" She just glared. Emmett prodded. "I think you're human in this picture."
"Don't think I haven't thought about that, too," she hissed, spinning around and sitting on the bed next to Ben. He tried to be subtle about scooting away, repeating danger to others, danger to others without much luck.
"Any leads?"
"I've been trying to keep a low profile."
Ben laughed. He couldn't help it. God, why do you let me sign my own death warrants in all caps?
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Have you seen the news?" Ben said. "You've made every local channel."
Both Emmett and Tanya swore. In unison. Same phrases, too. It would have been vamptastic had it not translated as, "We're fucked."
There was a knock at the door. All three of them jumped into a fighting stance. Ben shook himself loose from his panic first and walked over to the door, cracking it slightly. There was a moan behind him as the smell of meat and potatoes drifted in. Whipping out his wallet, Ben paid the bellhop at warp speed and turned around to discover he'd grown a shadow.
"That's my food." Her eyes were wide and her mouth was visibly watering.
Deciding not to point out that some of it was supposed to be his, too, Ben pulled the covers off the dishes and used them as shields when his auntie dove in for the kill. He thought he was being pretty subtle about it until he caught Emmett shaking with laughter out of the corner of his eye. "What?"
"Danger to others, Ben. She's only a danger to others." They both watched her suck down food at an alarming pace, moaning and exclaiming over the flavors. Ben was glad he'd decided against fighting her for his share.
"Won't she get sick, eating that fast?"
Emmett shrugged. "Maybe later. I don't really know." He walked past the ongoing carnage of auntie's first meal and started picking up the scattered pieces of Ben's shaving set. "Pack up. When she's done, we move."
Silverware clattered down. "Where are we going?"
"Somewhere safe." Emmett was deliberately vague, and Ben was surprised to see that when it came to his auntie, he, too, could recognize human panic when he saw it.
"I don't want to go with you."
"Do you have a better plan? Rose isn't mad at you. It was all about James anyway, and now that he's gone we can. . . ," Emmett gave an eloquent shrug, "we can put that chapter behind us."
Tanya did not look terribly convinced, but she started eating again, chewing thoughtfully. "I have a safe place here," she offered as Ben threw the last of his things in his bag.
"No good."
Her nostrils flared. "It's very good. And if I can't have my purse back, I want my other things."
"Which is more important, your other things or your human life?" Emmett straightened up and handed Ben his kit, tossing the other detritus from the bathroom into the trashcan by the desk.
"I don't want to give everything up just like that." She tried to snap her fingers and failed to make a sound. Frowning, she tried again and again, getting agitated that it didn't seem to be working. Emmett came over and stilled her hand.
"It'll get better."
"What if it doesn't?" she whispered. "I don't know how to be a human."
"So, what are you going to do?"
She just stood there, holding Emmett's hand and looking at Ben. Her vamp-style bravado was gone, leaving her coming across as lost and forlorn.
With tomato ketchup on her shirt. Ben pointed and she looked down, tears welling up in her eyes as she grabbed for a napkin to dab it off.
"Shit, shit, shit. I don't even know how to eat."
"You'll learn." Emmett paused. "So, are you coming with me or are you staying here?"
She threw down the napkin and just stared at it for a long moment before giving a monstrous sigh. Silence reigned, punctuated only by the sound of a stomach gurgling ominously. About the same time Ben realized that it wasn't his stomach rumbling, a look of serious alarm crossed his auntie's face.
Forty minutes and six courses later, Ben swore as the second taxi sped right by them. Auntie darling was hanging onto the parking meter next to him for dear life, her wide eyes darting everywhere with the panic only the dramatically nauseous can pull off with panache.
Emmett had been efficient. Realizing what was about to happen, he'd hauled the gurgling Tanya into the bathroom at vamp speed. Ben had sympathy vomited into the trash can by the desk, ensuring that both of them were feeling like shit while standing out on the sidewalk.
"You going to be okay?" Ben turned his attention back to his auntie, who was definitely not doing well.
"I'm touching things."
Oh yeah. Emmett had been adamant about her not touching things on the way out of the hotel, so Ben had carried her to the curb while Emmett stayed behind to deal with the room. It was all in Peter's name anyway, but Emmett had wanted to make some special arrangements to get the room cleaned quickly. Still, they were outside now, and Ben was equally adamant about not getting puked on.
"It'll be fine. We're outside now, and we're going to get a cab in a minute, so we're good."
She shook her head. "They'll smell me."
The unholy terrors implied by that they were all it took for Ben's paranoia to hit overdrive for the thirty-third time that day. He whipped his auntie back up into his arms and then just stepped in front of the next cab that tried to pass.
Screeching to a halt, the driver leaned out the window and shook his fist at them. Ben opened his mouth, but his auntie supplied the dialogue in a swift, biting tone. Whatever she said, it worked, because the driver threw it into park and hopped out to open the door for them.
Sliding into the back seat, Ben wasn't entirely surprised when his auntie refused to let go of him and sit up on her own. Since the bathroom incident, she was having a hard time managing her motor skills. It was probably for the best, since she hadn't been happy with Emmett's version of decision time.
He let her stay huddled in his lap as he gave directions to the driver, surprised that his voice was steady as the taxi took the corner at top speed. Evidently, some parts of his body were getting used to being around the undead. Just proves you really can get used to anything, he thought, watching the driver nearly nail a lanky blonde guy on his cell phone who was trying to cross the street.
Tanya groaned at the next corner when the speed of the cab threw them both into the side of the backseat.
"You going to make it?" Ben asked, concerned. She was starting to shake again, and her skin felt like it was on fire.
The answer was little more than a strained whisper.
"I don't think so."
AN: Fans of Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret may be cringing, but hopefully fans of Ben Cheney {the third} will understand.
Fan of Distilling Down? Review, review, review. . . Chapter 8 teasers are waiting!