The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

The sugar jar jittered dangerously in her grasp and she slammed it on the counter and decided to do without rather than risk spilling it. He had sent the cockroaches to this place to torment her, to try and make her leave, and she'd be damned if she'd do anything to feed them. Turning to the sink, Sondra rinsed her hands and face in cool water, then used a paper towel to pat her skin dry. Easy does it, she told herself. Ten more seconds and her hands were steady enough to fish a battered rectangular cake pan from the drawer by the oven and use it as a makeshift serving tray to hold the mugs. She nearly dropped it when she turned from the counter and found the younger of the cops standing directly behind her. His eyes met hers and she felt trapped for an instant, came perilously close to telling him everything, the whole corrupt story burning at the edges of her lips. On the battered aluminium surface, the mugs rattled against each other.

"I'll take that for you," Walters said. He reached for the pan and his fingers, cold like hers, brushed her arm. His face was unreadable but his touch left her oddly weak, disoriented. Standing before him in the small kitchen, Sondra saw that she'd been wrong about his build; he wasn't overweight at all. In fact, his entire body seemed to have elongated somehow and become lean, like a dog that looks soft and warm and sleepy until it stands up and stretches. Fear bubbled into Sondra's throat, but he only took her elbow with his free hand and guided her towards the living-room and his waiting partner, his flesh burning against her own like dry ice.

McShaw looked up from scribbling on his form and dropped his pen on to the coffee table, reaching eagerly for one of the mugs. Sondra sank on to the worn love seat with a feeling of relief that shattered when Walters settled loosely next to her instead of returning to his place on the old rocking-chair across the coffee table. Everything about the apartment was small: the rooms, the windows and the meagre amount of sunlight they permitted inside, the furniture; his thigh, bunched with muscle beneath the fabric of his slacks, pressed coolly against hers, but there was nowhere for her to move to get away. Was she suffocating here or was the pulse hammering in her throat simply getting in the way of the air trying to flow into her lungs?

"Okay," McShaw said after a moment. He made no move to pick up the clipboard he'd set on the table next to his pen. "Tell us about the other two times."

"I thought I saw him when I took the babies to the paediatrician at the free clinic last Tuesday," Sondra said hoarsely. She was proud of the way she kept her voice from shaking, from giving away her petty deception. "Following us again. But it was too crowded there and when we got out it was rush hour. He was gone."

"You thought?"

Sondra nodded but didn't elaborate. Let them discount this one if they wanted; it was a lie anyway, mere icing on an already poisoned cake.

"And when was the other time?"

"Last night. I took the babies up to the park for the fall festival. He w-was there, and he followed us home."

McShaw leaned forward. "Ms Underwood, if he followed you home last night, why did you wait until this morning to call us?"

Sondra looked at her hands, the knuckles red from scrubbing furiously at the filth of this place, the fingernails strangely white under the edges from baby powder. "I-I don't know," she whispered. "I guess I was hoping he would just go away, but when I got up this morning and I thought about it, I realized that's probably not going to happen."

"Has he ever tried to make contact? Threatened you?" Walters's voice was smooth and vaguely sweet , like one of those expensive frozen drinks the upscale restaurants served. She thought she heard all kinds of innuendo in it, as rich and varied as the variety of liquors dumped into the exotic glasses edged with garnishes made of fruit and plastic sticks.

Sondra's gaze found his unwillingly and she lost herself for a single, panicked moment, snapped back in time to answer before McShaw noticed her lag. "No." With a dying feeling, she realized how lame all of this must sound and she had to force the answer past her stiff lips. She had called too soon, they would never believe her; she was alone in her efforts to protect Mallory and Meleena, as she had been from the moment of their birth:

"We're going to have to call a doctor" the midwife said grimly. Sondra lifted her head and saw the woman's heavy, black face peering back at her through the inverted triangle of her spread legs and over the spasming mound of her bloated stomach. Apprehension made her southside accent run the words together. " You're bleeding too much and you've been in labour way too long."