"Do you have peanut butter?" I asked, digging through a cabinet.
"Yeah." Daryl found a large jar inside a cabinet.
"Do you like peanut butter cookies?"
"Yes." He was smiling.
"Good. We'll have that." Daryl sat down at the small table inside the kitchen and watched while I put his peanut butter cookies together. I heard Weldon inside a room not far away, talking on the phone. I didn't listen in.
Daryl was busy eating a plate full of peanut butter cookies when Weldon emerged. He grabbed a handful for himself and poured out a glass of milk to go with them. "I heard you won't cook for Winkler anymore," Weldon said.
"Well, Phil shot me in the back and then Winkler blackmailed me. Go figure," I said, wiping my hands on a kitchen towel. I'd just finished washing the dishes by hand. No dishwasher here, thank you very much.
"You don't have legitimate ID," Weldon reminded me.
"Even if I did still have my own license, the photograph doesn't look like me anymore. Not even a good facelift would accomplish what happened to me. Besides, the ass**les who turned me stole my purse. What was I supposed to do? Go off to the police and say hi, I'm a new vampire. Can you please help get my purse back from the two vampires who killed me?"
"I have absolutely no advice for a new vampire," Weldon said. "Sorry. You haven't lost your talent in the kitchen, though." He stuffed another cookie in his mouth.
"That's me. Old stand in front of you and take bullets and then whip out a batch of cookies Lissa. What can I say? I'm multi-talented."
"That was Winkler on the phone earlier, asking how you were," Weldon informed me. "I asked him if he wanted to talk to you. He sounded like you might not be willing."
"He might be right," I said. "I'm going to go read, now. Let me know if you need something guarded or Bigfoot tracked." I went off to my room.
"For a leech, she's really pretty, dad," Daryl said. I heard him all the way through my bedroom door.
Chapter 9
People started arriving before dawn the following morning, driving vans, SUVs, trucks, RVs and rental cars. One vehicle had tires on it taller than I was. Eventually I stood in Weldon's front yard and watched all of them drive through, stopping in this spot or that and either hauling out a tent or going outside briefly to relieve themselves before climbing back into their van or whatever. Weldon came out a little while before sunrise with a cup of coffee in his hands to watch with me. "Must be some meeting," I said, as more vehicles drove past. It looked like most of Weldon's guests were male.
"It is," he nodded, sipping from his coffee cup. "Be ready to work when you get up later."
"Oh, sure. Do I have to watch all of them take a piss?"
"Not unless you want to, or I tell you to." He grinned at me.
"Well, have fun." I patted his arm and went inside so the sun wouldn't catch me again.
* * *
Winkler prepared me for the great outdoors before I left Corpus Christi. I was now the proud owner of hiking boots in a chocolate brown and I wore them now, along with jeans, a sweater, and my down jacket. The murmurs started as soon as Weldon, Daryl and I walked through the sea of tents. Campfires were going almost everywhere and people were eating, talking, laughing, grumbling, and as soon as I walked past them, whispering. About me. Somehow, the moment I came anywhere near them, they knew what I was. I heard everything from vamp to leech, and quite a few other derogatory terms that I didn't recognize. If I'd been able to flush, I would have. I suppose I no longer had the blood supply or the circulation to do it. Again, the missing FVM came to mind.
"Do they think I don't hear?" I asked Daryl, after hearing f**king vampire for perhaps the fiftieth time.
"They don't have enough experience around your kind," Daryl replied softly.
"They're not getting cookies," I snipped. Daryl chuckled.
There had to be at least five hundred people there, perhaps more, making the area surrounding Weldon's cabin extremely crowded. "Grand Master, I'm the Packmaster from Des Moines," a man came forward and offered his hand to Weldon.
"The one who took Corwin down?"
"Yes." Weldon took the man's hand and shook it.
"I liked Corwin, he was very effective," Weldon said. "See that you do justice to his Pack."
"Yes, Grand Master," the man almost bowed and got the hell out of the way. My head was spinning suddenly and my suspicions were confirmed when a huge wolf bounded past.
"Fuck," I muttered. Here I was, surrounded by something else that I'd thought myth—werewolves. And not only that, I was serving as bodyguard to the f**king Grand Master. How lucky was I? Winkler, Phil, Davis and Glen? All had to be werewolves, too. And Whitney. And Sam. And who knew who else? Was that what Gavin was? Is that how they could tell what I was? By the smell? "Jesus Christ," I said.
"What?" Daryl jerked to a halt beside me.
"Nothing. Winkler's a dead man," I said.
"Dad might object to that. Winkler's the Dallas Packmaster, you know. And Phil's his Second."
"They may both be dead," I retorted. "Your dad can object all he wants. Is Winkler coming, too?"
"No, he and dad had their meeting when we were in Corpus Christi," Daryl said. Weldon was greeting other werewolves and ignoring us. I was dutifully glancing around us, watching for anything suspicious while Daryl and I talked.
We walked through the whole, huge camp that night—Weldon talking to this one or that, seeing old friends and new faces. I continued to hear the comments regarding his vampire bodyguard, but I tuned them out after a while. What was I supposed to do? Challenge five hundred werewolves? No wonder Phil always smelled like a wet dog. That's exactly what he was. Winkler had a different smell to him, as did Davis and Glen, but I always thought it was the differences in people. Come to think of it, Gavin didn't smell like any of them. He just smelled good to me and I couldn't explain it.
Weldon settled down at a campfire after a while to have coffee and a sandwich with somebody while Daryl and I stood guard. The man Weldon was eating with looked old; he had gray in his hair while everyone else I'd seen looked younger. Except for this man, nobody looked more than forty.
"That's Thomas Williams," Daryl whispered to me after a while. "He's the oldest Packmaster we have. Dad figures he'll get challenged before next year's meet, so this is a goodbye meeting."
"Dear God," I muttered while scanning our surroundings. "How old is he?"