The Mortal Touch

by Naomi Clark

  We whiled away a couple of hours, finishing the wine and sharing stories of our week. Bea’s job as an RN meant she had a constant supply of funny, sad, and gruesome tales to share. I, on the other hand, worked as an exhibit designer for the Maritime Museum, and my stories were a lot dryer. But by the time we were done with the wine and had moved onto our regular nightcaps, we were both smiling, and I felt relaxed and far removed from the dead vampire.

  “...So I told him, honey, you can tell us whatever you like, but you’d better have a much smoother lie ready for your wife, because nobody accidentally sits on those things.” Bea tossed back the last of her Cruzan Rum and checked her phone. “And I need to go!”

  I nodded, draining my own bourbon. Darkness had fallen outside. I’d felt it descend, and it made me edgy. I’d known before now there were vampires in Ridderport – there are vampires everywhere – but this was the first time I’d run into any of them, and I wanted Bea safely home, behind locked doors.

  “Shall we share a cab?” I asked.

  Bea gave me a quizzical look. “It’s such a beautiful night, though. I kinda fancy the walk.”

  “But it’s getting late,” I said weakly. “Don’t you just want to get home?”

  She checked her phone again. “I do want to get up for a run tomorrow. I guess...”

  “Great.” I hit the app on my phone and had us a cab booked in seconds. I was probably being paranoid, sure. I’d lived in Ridderport for nearly seven years without any paranormal problems, but tonight had gotten under my skin. I’d rather Bea thought I was being a little weird and pushy, and see her safely indoors, than take any chances.

  We reached her place first, and she kissed me on the cheek before hopping out and running up the driveway to her door. I made the cab driver wait until I saw her slip inside, then gave him the nod to carry on to my house.

  I’d lived thrifty when I was bounty hunting. Vampire killing wasn’t a well-paid job, or one with a long shelf-life for the average human. I wasn’t average, but I had also never planned to spend my entire life decapitating the undead. I’d had an eye on the future, so I’d lived thrifty. I’d lived in my ride, a Volkswagen bus from the 60s. I’d lived off ramen and worn the same clothes until they fell apart. And I’d stashed away every penny I’d saved so that when the time came, I could buy a real house, with electricity and running water. A simple dream.

  I’d retired a lot earlier than planned, but my last job had given me the last windfall I needed to buy that real home. It was unfortunate the same job had cost me everything else I cared about, but at least I had somewhere nice to wallow in misery.

  I lived on Easton Road, an area of Ridderport mostly populated by newly-weds and young families. My beat-up, lime-green bus looked out of place among all the SUVs and salons, and my front lawn had a noticeable lack of swing sets and colorful flowers. But my clapboard house, with its sky-blue siding and wrap-around porch, was everything I’d ever hoped for.

  Everything Elijah and I had planned for.

  It was my sanctuary, a space that was wholly mine, designed to please only me. It was my fortress, my safe space, and the one place I never expected to have to hide myself or be on guard.

  So I was really pissed off to get home and find a vampire waiting on the porch.

  Chapter Three

  I stood at the end of the drive as the cab sped away, trying to decide what to do. I chewed my lip and stared at my front door, anger and fear churning in my stomach. The vampire sat under the stark brightness of the security light, staring directly at me even though the light had to be blinding her. With her pixie crop and beige trench coat, she looked chic and harmless, which just goes to show that the right wardrobe can work wonders.

  She couldn’t enter the house – not because I hadn’t invited her in, but because of the wild roses crawling up the trellis on either side of the door. The scent of roses helped keep vampires away, and rose petals were also a ward against evil. I wasn’t much of a gardener, but I worked hard at my roses.

  So no, she couldn’t get into the house. But she could sit there in perfect stillness until sunrise, and nothing I could do would move her, unless I killed her. With half a bottle of wine and a glass of bourbon in me, I wasn’t exactly in peak fighting condition.

  “Georgia Jackson?” she called, her voice raspy, like she’d smoked dozens a day before dying. Maybe she had. Maybe she still did.

  Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if she had the wrong house? “Yes,” I said. “What do you want?”

  She plucked a leaf from the rose bush and flicked it disdainfully away with long, elegant fingers. “Not many people know that roses keep us out,” she remarked. “Are you afraid of undead visitors, Georgia?”

  “I’d think most sensible people are. What do you want?” I asked again.

  She stepped forward, closing the short distance between us. I held my ground, reaching into my bag for my knife.

  “Sensible people don’t believe in vampires,” she said, smiling broadly enough to show off her delicately pointed canines. “I have an invitation for you.”

  “To what?”

  “To meet Mr. Cold. I should add that declining isn’t an option.”

  “It’s not really an invitation then, is it?” I pointed out, mind racing. The vampire in the alley had mentioned Mr. Cold, too. I’d never heard the name before, but it wasn’t a leap to assume he was Ridderport’s master vampire. If so, I had no desire to meet him. Ever.

  I was fully aware that Ridderport had its vampire population when I moved here. That’s why I keep roses at my door. I was forever entwined with the undead, being what I was and having the past I did. But for the seven years I’d lived in this quiet New England town, I’d avoided running into its vampiric residents. I always figured I’d stayed under their radar – clearly, I’d figured wrong.

  The vampire smiled again, cold and taunting. “We can go now if you’re ready. You can drive.”

  “No,” I said, on general principles.

  She frowned. “No is not an option with Mr. Cold, Georgia.”

  “If he wants to meet me so badly, he can come here. Obviously he knows where I live.”

  She shifted her weight a little, as if preparing to strike. Instinct took over, and despite the slight wine-fuzz clouding my reactions, I struck first, swiping my blade across her cheek.

  “Stay back,” I warned. The potent scent of good, clean vampire blood hit me, and my jaw ached suddenly.

  Her eyes wide with surprise, she did step back. She drew her finger across her bleeding cheek, examining the ruby droplet she gathered on her fingertip. “Rude,” she commented, and licked her finger clean.

  She watched me while she did it, gauging my reaction through sly eyes.

  And I couldn’t help reacting. Beckett’s blood didn’t have this effect on me, I guess because there was something wrong with him. But this vampire’s blood, fresh and free of whatever poison killed him, this was a different story. I clenched my teeth, as if I could suppress the change creeping over me by sheer will alone. But I could already feel my fangs dropping, pushing through my gums with a sting of pain that made me whine despite myself.

  She smiled. “So it’s true what they say about you, Georgia Jackson. Interesting.”

  “Well you can tell them something else about me,” I hissed, baring my fangs at her. Too late now to pretend they weren’t there. “Tell them the next time a vampire shows up on my doorstep, I’ll be mounting their head over my fireplace. And if you know what they say about me, you know I can do it.”

  She cocked her head to one side, her expression wary. I liked to think I could still pull off the bad-ass vampire hunter routine, even with a seven-year hiatus behind me and a lot of alcohol inside me. If she actually decided to take her chances, I wasn’t sure how I’d do. She felt old enough to be powerful, and I’d need more than a shitty pocket knife and a good one-liner to take her out.

  But to my relief, she backed down, slinking around me and giving m
e a wide berth as she did.

  “Okay,” she said, her voice low and soothing, as if I was an angry dog. “I’ll be sure to tell Mr. Cold that. And that he can come visit you at home.” She smiled broadly. “There are a lot of ways to get rid of roses, after all.”

  I snarled and feinted at her. She was gone in a flash, as if she’d melted into the shadows. I stayed poised there, listening to the night and my own heartbeat for a minute or two. I heard the distant rush of the sea and the eerie cries of the whip-poor-wills that haunted the town. Legend said that the birds could hear a soul departing, so maybe these ones were telling me the vampire had gone.

  With my heart rate slowing and the adrenaline in my system fading, I surveyed my darkened street one last time. A few lights twinkled in my neighbors’ windows, a quiet reminder that the rest of the world was mundane and simple. I sighed and headed for my front door.

  As I unlocked it, Elijah appeared out of the darkness with a caw, and landed on my shoulder. His weight was reassuring, but painful at the same time. Once upon a time we could have taken the vampire out together.

  Inside I put on all the lights, unashamedly edgy, and went to the kitchen. Elijah flew to his perch by the window and gave me an expectant look. I poured him a bowl of pistachio nuts and set them down on the rustic wooden breakfast bar. The swirling dark surface was pock-marked and pitted from years of crow feet and beak abuse, and I watched with melancholy amusement now as he slammed his pistachios against the wood to crack them open.

  Wired and worried, I raided my fridge and found an energy drink and a tub of those bacon brownies Bea specialized in. My fangs were still down and the scent of the vampire’s blood was still strong in my nostrils. Only time would make the fangs retract and the smell fade, but in the meantime, I hoped some decent human junk food would sate the hunger I was feeling. I didn’t need blood. I never needed blood.

  But sometimes I really wanted it, dammit.

  “You think this Mr. Cold thinks I killed Beckett?” I asked Elijah as I gulped my energy drink. “You think I should have just gone and got it over with?”

  Elijah regarded me quizzically, dark eyes gleaming. I don’t know how much he understood anymore. Some days he seemed to be actively listening to me, processing what I said, and some days I think he looked at me and saw a giant, walking food dispenser. I sighed, wishing I hadn’t been drinking. I was never a happy drunk. I just had too many bad memories waiting for the floodgates to open.

  Still, I didn’t need anyone else’s opinion to know the vampires would be back. Gut instinct and experience told me tonight was the start of something, not the end. And I was rusty, not stupid. I crammed the last mouthful of sweet, salty brownie down my throat, and ran up to my spare bedroom.

  When I bought the house, this room had been a little girl’s nursery. The cotton candy pink walls, decorated with decals of fluffy clouds and smiling suns, made me wince every time I went into the room, but in seven years I hadn’t gotten around to redecorating yet. It had become a dumping ground for everything I didn’t have space for elsewhere, as is the tradition with spare rooms. A bag of clothes I was planning to donate to charity. A box of books I was supposed to be building a shelf for. A picture in a broken frame. That kind of crap. None of that was important.

  What was important was the deceptively small, scuffed wooden box stored under a pile of other boxes. It was stained black, worn and chipped by time and hard use. It looked like it might have been used for jewelry or tobacco or tea leaves a few hundred years back. There were no sigils on it. No magical symbols or runes, no curses carved in ancient lettering or images of demons torturing damned souls. It was just a box.

  But inside were the remnants of my old life.

  Nestled in a bed of dusty black velvet, lay a blade and a pistol, and a box of ammo. The stiletto blade was long and slender, needle-like, with an elegant African blackwood handle, streaked with purple and brown. The design of the blade made it perfect for deep thrusts. It wouldn’t kill a vampire, but it would make him pause long enough for me to gain an advantage, and sometimes that was the difference between life and death.

  The pistol was a battered Ghost TR01. It was ergonomic and comfortable, according to the marketing materials, but I didn’t care about things like that. All I cared about was that it worked. Like the stiletto, it wasn’t going to kill a vampire, but it would slow one down while I considered my options. And sometimes I didn’t just have to contend with vampires.

  I sat cross-legged in the mess of my spare room and toyed with the stiletto, my mind racing. I couldn’t afford to be retired if vampires were coming to my door. I couldn’t afford to be complacent or slack, or assume this would just blow over. I’d rather be paranoid now than dead later. And my visitor was right – there were plenty of ways to get rid of the roses at my door.

  So I needed a plan.

  Maine is an open-carry state, but I couldn’t see myself packing heat inside Ridderport’s Maritime Museum. The stiletto was my best option for immediate self-defense. Then, frankly, my best bet was to put as much distance between myself and an attacker as possible. Back in the day, when I’d gone after a vampire, I’d gone equipped to kill and destroy the remains. I didn’t have any of that equipment anymore, and I was living in a small city where I’d struggle to get it, where unusual activity would be noticed. If, in some bizarre scenario, I was attacked on the beach, I could drown and destroy a body that way, but it would take a particularly stupid vampire to put themselves into that situation.

  No, if someone was coming for me, they’d come for me here. I needed more than the stiletto.

  THE FIRST TIME I SAW a vampire was also the first time I met my father. My mother had raised me alone until I turned twelve, deflecting questions about my dad every time I raised the subject. The question didn’t seem to upset or anger her. “Not now, Georgia,” she’d say in a serene tone. “When you’re ready.”

  I’d never known what that meant. Ready for what? Some terrible revelation, I’d assumed, and spun dark fantasies in my head, because that was the kind of child I was. I’d wondered if I was a child of rape or incest, that my dad was in prison for murder or was leading a cult somewhere. I’d prepared myself mentally for something earth-shattering and psyche-breaking, and as it turned out, I was both way off and absolutely right.

  He’d come in the night, like a thief, like a predator. I might never have known if I hadn’t stayed up long past my curfew, reading comic books by flashlight under my duvet. My bedroom was next to my mom’s, and I’d heard her...heard noises that sounded like pain to me.

  Scared, I’d crept out of bed, grabbing the only weapon twelve-year-old me had, which was a tennis racquet. I stole to my mom’s bedroom door and flung it open with a war-cry.

  The sight that greeted me was as surreal as a nightmare.

  My mom, naked, kneeling in the middle of her bed. A strange man cradled her body, his head buried in the curve of her throat. Her pale skin stained red and sounds of ecstasy bubbling from her lips. One of her hands lost between her legs, the other knotted in the stranger’s hair. She was oblivious to me.

  He was not. He lifted his head and glanced round at me, smiling with my mother’s blood dripping from his mouth. With his dark hair and eyes, with shadows hanging thick in the room, he looked like pure evil.

  “Ah,” he said, his voice rich and soft. “You must be Georgia.”

  Chapter Four

  I learned a lot of things that traumatic night. The most important thing was that a tennis racquet was useless against a vampire. What you really wanted was a good set of stakes, preferably carved from ash or aspen. A stake in the heart would keep a vampire paralyzed while you decapitated them, dropped them in saltwater, or set fire to them. Or all three, if need be.

  I took the Ghost and the stiletto down to the kitchen and set about dismantling the gun to check and clean it. While I did that, I racked my brain, trying to think if there were any ash or aspen trees round Ridderport. The town was surr
ounded by wetlands once you got away from the coast, dominated by shrubs, herbs, and the occasional carnivorous plant. But I thought maybe there was black ash out there somewhere. I guessed I was going hiking in the morning.

  Once I was satisfied the gun was clean and operational, I packed it away again and went to bed. Elijah joined me, settling on the perch by the bedroom window. He gave me a sleepy little croak, tucked his head against his chest, and fell asleep without any further to-do.

  I lay awake, tossing and turning, occasionally punching my pillow in the vain hope that it would somehow make me sleep. But I was too wired. Too angry that my life had been disrupted like this. Did this Mr. Cold think I’d killed Beckett? Had that kid vampire told him so? Little shit.

  Somewhere in all my restless, bitter thinking, I realized that my fangs had retracted, leaving my jaw aching, but taking away the lingering bloodlust. Some of my anger faded along with the fangs. I had a plan. All I could do was stick to it until I had more information. It wasn’t great – I hated being in the dark, but I wasn’t prepared to go sticking my nose into vampire business unless it became totally necessary. If they sent someone else – Mr. Cold or otherwise – I was going to hurt them and hope that sent a clear enough message.

  With that resolution made, I eventually fell asleep. But my dreams were bloody and grim, and when I woke, I didn’t feel at all rested. I felt gritty and sore, and I didn’t have to fake sounding sick when I called into the museum’s HR department at nine. I genuinely sounded like my throat was full of tar.

  Lacey, our HR trainee took my call with real concern. “You’re never sick! Is it serious?”

  It was true. I guess it was one of the positive traits I’d inherited from dear old dad. I never caught colds or viruses, never had a cough or a fever my whole life. I had the robust immune system of a Clydesdale horse.

  “I think it’s just a touch of food poisoning,” I said, picking something that could feasibly take me out for a day or two, but wouldn’t look weird when I came back as healthy as ever. “I’m just gonna rest up and see how I feel tomorrow.”