by J. R. Rain
“I don’t think I can kick the habit. I can only deny myself. Anyway, this attack on Nancy wasn’t so much about a need to feed, but to...”
“Hurt her?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I wanted to hurt her. To lash out at her. To finally...”
I let my voice trail off. No matter. Allison was there to pick up on my thoughts, as surely as if I had spoken them.
“To finally hurt the woman who had hurt you.”
I nodded, and felt like crap. Allison, of course, had only been a willing participant for my blood hunger. I had never attacked her or torn her up. When I had fed from Allison, it was more like…sipping a fine wine. It was never…violent.
“I think,” I said, as I worked through my feelings about Nancy, “that it was going to happen, one way or another, eventually.”
“I’m not following.”
“I had imagined doing just that to her—so many times, so many hundreds and hundreds of times. Maybe even a thousand or two. There was a lot of momentum behind those feelings. I’m not sure if I could have stopped myself. It was almost as if I had to act it out, just to get it out of my system.”
“Okay, I think I’m following,” said Allison, nodding. “Like you attracted it or something? What do those hippy-dippies call it...manifested? You manifested it.”
“I guess,” I said. “But on the bright side, I didn’t tear her head off and punt it over my back fence into the Pep Boys parking lot, which I had been imagining, too.”
Allison cocked an eyebrow at me. “Well, hopefully, it’s out of your system now.”
“Hopefully.”
“Sam...”
“How the hell am I supposed to know how this works? One minute she’s giving me sass, and the next I’m tearing through her throat and gorging on her blood so fast that it almost came out my nose. I didn’t exactly plan on doing it, you know. It was impulsive.”
“I know, Sam. But remember last time...”
I nodded. The last time I had fed from something living, I had torn it to pieces. The aforementioned neighbor’s cat. My hunger had been fueled by the entity within me, an entity I had permitted to grow stronger by doing just that: giving her fresh blood.
I knew better now, which was why I fed from clear plastic packets of filthy cow and pig blood. And I didn’t feed as often, or as much. Just enough to sustain myself. Just enough to keep my energy up, but not so much that it empowered her.
It was a fine balance, but one I had been straddling successfully for the past few months, despite my urges, my hungers.
“You’re going to have to be careful, Sam. Keep her dormant. Keep her weak.”
“I know,” I said, knowing that Allison was talking about the entity inside of me. “Now, can we quit making me feel like shit and get back to why you hate money?” I pointed at her salad.
“Hate money, how? Never mind. I get it. I hate money because I overspent on my salad...”
“Boy, did you ever.”
***
I was thirty minutes into some heavy traffic when my business appointment canceled on me. Via text.
I briefly considered going over there anyway and canceling my prospective client’s face, until I realized that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Still, it was a nice thought, whatever it was.
No, I thought. That’s her thinking.
I had let the genie out of the bottle, so to speak. Or, in this case, the demonic bitch. I had fed her human blood, and not from a willing and calm participant. With my violent attack on Nancy, I had given the dark bitch inside of me a renewed strength and hope and life...and that was never, ever a good thing. I had fed…evil.
Now, as I sat in traffic, I briefly considered how I could have gone about things differently with Nancy. The anger I had felt had risen up quickly. Had I even had time to talk myself down? I didn’t know. It had all happened so quickly. A sudden rage. A vicious attack. A gluttonous feeding from a pulsing throat.
Get up, I told myself now, and walk away. Better than attacking. Better than losing it all. And better than giving the entity within any life at all.
There was a tiny break in the traffic as people bailed off the nearest ramp, even crowding the dirt shoulder in their eagerness to get off this tedious stop-and-go parade of exhaust-belching cars. There was no way I was getting off into that neighborhood. I inched my car forward, maybe five feet.
Oh, joy, I thought.
I idly considered abandoning my vehicle on the side of the road and taking flight...except that I had never taken flight with Talos during the day. Would he even come? Could I transform? Did I need the silent magic of night to make the transition? I didn’t know, but I figured that someday I would find out.
I looked down at my phone and really wasn’t very surprised to see a restricted call. Who the restricted call was from was anybody’s guess...but I had my suspicions.
“Moon Investigations,” I said, making the effort to use my hands-free headset to answer so I wouldn’t get a ticket.
“Samantha, it’s Ted with the California State Parks.”
“Ranger Ted,” I said, my suspicions confirmed. We had met in the ranger station just outside Arrowhead. They now kept me on speed dial, ever since I had helped to bring home a sheriff’s missing wife a few months ago, a wife who wasn’t so much missing as she’d been held captive by a pack of werewolves. Long story. Ranger Ted, of course, didn’t know about the werewolf part, which was how I intended to keep it. Anyway, I’d also helped find a missing camp counselor and an arsonist.
My phone vibrated with another text. I looked down and saw that it was Nancy Pearson. Okay, maybe I was getting a little too close to my deceased ex-husband’s mistress. Chatting once or twice every few months seemed perfectly reasonable. But now, we were text message buddies? I ignored her text.
“Are they still keeping you hopping over there?” I said into the headset.
“Hopping? Yeah, that, too,” Ted said. “Got a minute?”
“I’m stuck on the 91 Freeway, what do you think?”
“Even on a Saturday?”
“Even on a Saturday,” I said.
“You see, this is why I work in the woods. No traffic in the woods, other than a few drunken yahoos and...”
“And what?”
“Poachers,” he said.
“Poachers?” I repeated.
“Right.”
“On the king’s land?” I asked, shocked.
He didn’t laugh at my sarcasm. “No, in the forest. We’ve found two dead bucks, field-dressed, and with their heads removed. They’re trophy hunters—for the antlers—and apparently, they wanted the meat, too, and might be coming back for it.”
“Are you telling me this to make me vomit up my Mango-A-Go-Go Jamba Juice?” I said, to try to sound as normal as possible. Truth was, I found his description very intriguing. Too intriguing.
It’s the bitch in me. Such a sicko.
“Sorry about the mango-whatever-you-just-said, but we need a good man—or woman—working the case. I’m stretched too thin with the forest fires on the north side. You interested?”
“Usual pay?” I asked.
“Another year,” he said, referring to my free national park pass.
“And how many am I at, now?”
“Four, I think. Non-transferable, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll swing by tomorrow morning.”
“On a Sunday?” He sounded impressed.
“The poachers,” I told Ted. “That’s when they’ll come back for the meat. If they field-dressed the carcass, they’ll be back before the flies lay eggs in it.”
“You’re right,” he said.
Now that I knew I had the day off, thanks to my canceling potential client, I wanted to be with the kids today.
“See you then.”
Traffic inched forward.
It was about ten minutes after we clicked off that I remembered Nancy Pearson’s text message. It was another two minutes before I
decided to actually read it while traffic was at a complete standstill.
He’s going to kill me, Sam. At working house. Please help...anything. He’s here now. Shit, don’t call
Don’t call. She was hiding. She was hiding right now. Or possibly hurt. Right now. Or even dead. Right now. All because I was too pissy to pick up my cell and look at her message.
The working house.
Yeah, I knew the place. It was a small home around the corner from my dead hubby’s strip club, a house where some of the girls serviced some of the customers...the high-roller customers. Nancy had described it to me. I had a vague idea of where it was. Vague was all I needed.
I looked at the traffic, looked at the text, and pulled over to the side of the road. I slipped between the two front seats and settled along the messy back bench...and closed my eyes.
And summoned the single flame.
***
I appeared in the alley behind the strip club.
I could do that: appear and disappear—or teleport, as Allison called it. Apparently, it was a rare gift among vampires. I had seen it used by the oldest vampire of all, Dracula, no less. I had watched him appear and disappear on command, masterfully, perfectly, and wipe out a clan of werewolves in the process.
I wasn’t quite that good...yet. But that’s the thing with immortals: we have all the time in the world.
One prerequisite was that I needed to know where I was teleporting. I might be undead, but appearing inside of a wall has got to hurt.
Now, as I appeared in the alleyway, I prayed like hell that there wasn’t a parked truck here, and that I didn’t manifest under its hood.
I was lucky this time. I appeared whole and intact and not as part of a combustible engine. The alley was mostly empty, except for a guy who had been looking through the Dumpster. Now, of course, he was running like a man who had just seen a woman appear in front of him out of thin air.
I grinned and headed for the house around the corner.
***
There were many houses around the corner, unfortunately. All small and surrounded by low metal fences.
I paused on the sidewalk, under the blazing sun, feeling weaker than I wanted to feel. I cast my thoughts in an ever-widening gyre, far enough out to see into the homes around me. Yeah, I can do that, too.
The neighborhood was quiet. The homes were close together. A man attacking a woman would have been heard by any number of nearby witnesses.
On a positive note, I was pleased when I realized that I genuinely cared about Nancy’s well-being. Granted, she wasn’t exactly priority number one. Hell, I was happy that I cared enough to come out here. The realization told me that I wasn’t a monster, and that I could, in fact, keep the monster in check.
Love, I thought again, shaking my head at the insanity of it all, as I stepped up onto her front porch. But it did make sense. Fight hate with love. Good versus evil and all of that.
I liked to think I was on the side of good.
There, the house to the left, was the closest house, in fact, to the strip club. The interior was in disarray, and I had seen blood.
I dashed off.
***
The door was locked.
That was, until I lifted my foot and kicked it in. Okay, not that I wanted to alarm this sleepy neighborhood, a neighborhood that was used to crime; a neighborhood, I suspected, that had learned to shut and lock its doors and windows and wrought-iron driveway gates.
I pushed the broken door all the way open, as the splintered wood from the doorframe caved inside.
The smell of blood and brains was strong. Almost too strong for even me to handle. The demon within me perked up, but I stamped her back in her place.
As the stench grew stronger, I stepped over a broken picture frame and drops of blood. And there was a bloody hammer neatly propped up in the far corner of the wall.
I found something else propped up in the next room, which was the kitchen. There, wedged between the refrigerator and the blood-covered cupboard, was the woman my ex-husband had cheated on me with.
It had been a clean shot with the hammer that had caved in her skull. One bash, I thought.
She had died, I assumed, instantly.
Her spirit was nowhere to be seen, which wasn’t necessarily rare. It just meant that she had moved on, much faster than most.
I stood over her, and stared down at her bulging eyes and blood-covered thighs and down into the hole at the top of her head.
The thing within me was interested in the corpse and all the blood, but the thing within me could go to hell.
I’m not psychic, nor do I want to be.
I had enough weird shit to contend with. I also didn’t want to have to deal with knowing the future, or even the past.
And so, I stood there, looking down at the corpse of a woman who had, I thought, loved my deceased ex-husband. She was a woman who had done her best to befriend me and to make things right. And she was a woman who was still turning tricks, despite my pleas for her to give it up.
‘Easy money,’ she had said.
Maybe I’m more psychic than I thought.
There were only a few who knew of this house, and who would use it:
The strip club’s elite customers. The politicians, the lawyers, the judges, and—dare I think it—the cops.
A club that my ex-husband had once owned provided top-tier clients with privacy for their dalliances. It was a strip club that would have, believe it or not, reverted to our kids, had the world known that Danny was really dead. I idly wondered if he had had a share of what the women earned in the working house. I shook my head. No, even Danny wouldn’t have gone that low. I hoped not, anyway.
The world, of course, only assumed he was missing, or was maybe on the lam from a debt, which was how I wanted to keep it. The world didn’t need to know that he was buried in a cavern under the Los Angeles River, along with two vampires.
A long story that was best kept secret.
I nodded, feeling fury build within me. Yeah, I cared about Nancy. I cared a whole helluva lot. And now, she was dead.
I turned and dashed through the broken door...
And headed to the strip club.
***
It was midday and, as a creature of the night, I wasn’t yet at full strength.
However, I had feasted on Nancy just the day before—just the day before she had been killed.
Bad week for Nancy, I thought, as I came up to the strip club’s back exit, the very exit that I suspected Nancy and her killer had used, what, twenty to thirty minutes ago.
The door was locked but not for long. So far, I’d yet to come across a lock that could keep me out. Or any vampire, for that matter. And, no, I didn’t need to be invited in. When would I ever get any shopping done? Or go anywhere, for that matter? Who would invite me into a mall? Or the gas station? Thank God that little factoid had been debunked. It was bad enough that I couldn’t see myself in a mirror. I didn’t want to have Anthony running into the Walmart or Target to get the managers to invite me in, too.
I paused and scanned my surroundings and made sure no one was standing directly behind the door. The space was empty. Good thing, because when I was done kicking the door in, the whole thing slammed back in a clanging cloud of dust.
To hell with invitations, I thought, and stepped into the strip club.
***
The crashing door got the attention of two strippers, both of whom came rushing out of a side room, and both of whom were bouncing in places—never mind.
I pointed to their changing rooms and they stared at me, then at each other, then bounced off into the changing rooms and slammed their doors shut.
At least they’re street-smart, I thought, and pushed through the back hallway.
Music thumped. Lights flashed. And on the stage was a completely nude, skinny, tattooed girl whose mother and father probably wept into their pillows at night. The lights were focused on the stage, around which one-dolla
r bills had been tossed, with the occasional fiver thrown in for good luck. Or a hope for more of a show.
It was midday—hell, not even one p.m.—and the strip club was nearly half full.
Ever the optimist, I thought, and surveyed the room. The stage itself was encircled with hundreds of white lights, which alternately flashed. Classy.
I’d been here before, back when I had applied for a job—long story—and I knew the layout fairly well. The layout wasn’t much: in the center, a raised stage. Single brass pole. Chairs circling the stage, filled with bored, albeit mildly turned-on, middle-aged men with nothing to lose. The girl on stage was completely nude, gleaming with sweat and looked, unbelievably, like she was enjoying herself. Dancing and cavorting and slinking and spreading, she seemed, well, into it.
Like they say, love what you do.
I shook my head and continued surveying the room. No one took an interest in me. Maybe because I had clothes on. The Hispanic bartender leaned a hip against the back counter and watched the dancing girl. If I had to guess, his mind was elsewhere. Working here, day after day, night after night, year after year, how many naked women had he seen? How many had it taken him to begin losing interest? Or, was it even possible for a guy to see too many naked women? I didn’t know, but the blank stare on his face suggested that it might be a possibility.
I continued scanning. Rick, who was the manager of the joint, was at the bar, his back turned to the dancer. Rick had, I think, the thickest neck I had ever seen. Even thicker than Kingsley’s.
There were, maybe, twenty customers. Most were seated around the stage. A handful were in the back booths. Single guys, sitting alone. Not talking. Hating themselves but interested in naked flesh even more.
From the back room to my right and from a dark corner, emerged a man with short, slicked-back dark hair, a man who, from all appearances, looked freshly cleaned up. Refreshed, even. He nodded to a bouncer type who was standing guard outside what I knew to be the private rooms. Or the sex rooms. The big guy returned his nod. The two looked, well, like they had a secret. I doubted the big black guy knew the secret extended all the way back to a murdered stripper in the house next door. I suspected the big bouncer had arranged for Nancy and this guy to be alone just outside of the club...and by arranged, I meant paid nicely.
