I punched his shoulder and put my hand to my ear like a phone and ran my other hand like a big spider, I feared a bug had been planted here.
“– Oh. Ok.”
“Get your shirt on while I get some pants. I’ll be right back.”
-:- Nine -:-
A black driveway cut through familiar tall pines lining the road. Brett slowed the car and turned across the little crown of the road and gently into the downward sloped driveway. He stopped the car by the front steps. Even with my jeans, my pair of pink t-shirts, and my burgundy sweatshirt the prospect still chilled me. The moon cast ghostly streaks of light across the empty grazing field now empty of horses next door while the breezes held their breath in anticipation.
The house squatted firmly in the neatly landscaped property. I knew its masculine dark gray siding embellished with black and red trim from my daylight visits but in the crescent moonlight the colors mutated into a haunted shadowy contour trimmed in bloody danger. The wide cobble brick walkway leading to the front door noticeably absent of any cute walkway lights. I reminded myself that vampires did not need such features nor have a desire to appear cute. A solitary candle burned behind the opaque front door glass flickering out of the depths of the house. Dancing in fear of the vampire that lived here.
Brett stood behind me. His eyes skittering right and left. He rubbed his damp palms on his thighs too aggressively. He understood the type of creature living beyond this portal. I reached toward the door and pressed my hand against the hard smooth wood. Do I really want to do this? I took a short breath and knocked.
The door snatched open revealing Garin in pants but no shirt. My breath sucked in at seeing his sculpted body, a tingling ruffled through my nerves. His eyes commanded mine, smoldering from hostile anger not fully repressed. At the fringes of my sight I saw the length of the hallway littered with two sets of shoes sprawled passionately in confusion as a discarded line of breadcrumbs leading deeper into the house. His red shirt a bloody puddle spilled on the floor nearly to the living room.
Garin’s tongue balanced on his almost wicked lips that softened as his eyes plumbed mine. He asked, “What brings you here? Now?”
“Can we come in?”
Garin stepped onto the porch putting his arm out to herd us into the house. His eyes scanned the extents of his property. Only when confident nothing moved out there other than a great horned owl swiveling its head as it patiently hunted meadow voles did he follow us in and close the door.
“Who’s there?” asked Claire lounging on the couch. The candle light created shadows across her jaws accentuating the tight and hungry skin on her face. She wore one of Garin’s other shirts that hung low over her crossed thighs. Her dress cowered in a crumple against the patio door. Half-empty wine glasses filled from a pair of empty blue Massai bottles tottered carefully on the coffee table. When we entered the room she said, “Oh. It’s you again.” Garin’s dark eyebrows furrowed in the candle-light at Claire.
I accused Garin, “Why did you break into my apartment?”
His head jerked around, “I haven’t been over there since the last time with you. Why would I go there anyway? You told me we were done. I respected that.”
I looked at Claire.
“Not me either baby,” she rolled her eyes but then focused on me like that owl finding a meadow vole, “If I did I’d stay and have a drink of you first.”
Garin growled.
Brett said, “Someone removed drawings from the refrigerator that Anna’s nieces and nephews gave her and tossed the magnet on the counter.”
“Why Brett,” She bent her knees toward him. Her leg muscles flexed and pressed her knees tighter, “I didn’t know you came along,” Her shirt gaped seductively, split apart by the smooth arcs of her unsupported breasts.
“Why would someone take the drawings? Everything else is still there or are other things missing?”
Claire fixed her eyes on Brett and absentmindedly flicked the hem of her shirt tail more dangerously up her thigh. Attention getting like the fluttering of a serpent’s tongue testing and teasing the air. Her eyes almost as glassy as a viper, large, and mesmerizing.
“– Did you go over there, Claire?” asked Garin.
“Me? I don’t know where the tramp lives,” her eyes danced in anger at me. The slight curl of her smile returning as she caught Brett’s gaze again. “But when I find out it won’t be pictures I’ll take.”
“Claire – you need to behave.”
“Fine. But don’t blatantly accuse.” She moved her position on the couch as if she might be done playing. For now. She chewed one of her black-polished nails contemplating something.
I faced Garin, “Who do you think was there? Why take children’s drawings and not the cash or electronics or jewelry?”
Claire sighed, “You obviously miss the fine art of Halloween.” She picked up her goblet and took a sip, her eyes piercing mine, “You do that sort of thing to frighten the kiddies.”
“Doing a good job of it.” I said. Claire shrugged her shoulders as the flavor of the drink floated across her tongue.
Garin asked Claire, his hands pinching the back of the couch, “Did you do anything over there?”
“I told you. I don’t know where she lives. Maybe I should find out so I can inspect her security system. Might think she’s still some sort of farm-girl-moved-to-the-city that believes the world respects unlocked doors.”
Brett said, “The door had been locked but it showed abuse.”
“The dead bolt or the handle latch?” Garin asked
“Her apartment only has the deadbolt, no handle latch. The building door has a double set though.”
“The deadbolt is unlocked and locked from outside,” said Garin.
“So?” Brett moved his gaze between me and Garin.
“So if someone had entered they either left out a window or needed to re-lock the deadbolt.”
Brett’s brow wrinkled, “Picking a lock twice?”
“Might be the reason for excessive damage,” I said.
“Or just leaving it picked and open until they left again.”
Claire sighed, “And what does that mean, Master Garin?”
“Good thing you’ve remained pretty for five hundred years,” Garin mumbled. I never remembered him mumbling.
“Petulant young vampires notwithstanding, my love,” she batted her mascara slopped lashes at him.
My jealousy rose amid the fear and anger. Anger for too many different things that I couldn’t sort out. Not now.
Garin announced, “You’re both staying here tonight.”
“Great. Another evening gone,” Claire stood and walked toward the kitchen.
Brett stammered, “What?” I saw his eyes tracing Claire’s hips moving as her feet traced the walk of a runway model. Manipulating.
“Tomorrow when we’re thinking clearer we’ll figure out what’s next,” Garin flashed and like magic his arms filled with pillows and blankets from upstairs. He tossed them on the living room couches.
“I’ll watch the back of the house and Claire can stay on the front porch and guard the part of the front yard I can’t see –”
“– I heard that. Why didn’t you ask first?” Clair said from the kitchen.
“Get some sleep.”
“I’ll need some sweatpants if I’m sitting on the porch all night.”
Garin flashed again and had a pair for her. I barely blinked and she already sat on the porch steps. The front door swung closed in her wake but softly against the jamb, not quite latching. The sweatpants folded beside her on the edge of the step.
Stress and anger drained from me and my body lusted for sleep. I curled up on one couch while Brett laid on the other. I pulled a blanket over me and soon fell asleep.
Brett fidgeted in his sleep. The blanket sprawled across the back of the couch and cascaded over him to the floor. Except where one long leg languished over the edge of the cushion like a diving board suspended by his
hip and his foot behind his other knee. The blood rushing around his body picked up the coolness from his exposed knee and circulated it back under the warmth of the blanket. Brett wrinkled his nose and shook his head aside. Deep REM sleep flipped his eyes back and forth rapidly under his eyelids.
The front door whispered open and the cat quiet feet of a vampire padded softly along the hall and into the living room. She listened to his blood circulating. Claire glanced to the rear brick patio and saw Garin sitting in one of his pristine white Adirondack chairs arranged around the fire pit. Garin watched the woods and yard out toward the horse fences and the fruit orchard beyond.
She stalked around the couch. The tails of her shirt floated up her slight movement as she knelt next to Brett. She put the flat of her fingers above the height of the hairs on his knee and hovered her hand back and forth feeling the warmth of his leg – especially where the large artery ran through his thigh. Studying him. She leaned her head over his leg and smelled him. That smell of earthy humanness emboldened her. Quiet and serene in the room but full of energy under the blanket. Like enjoying the fragrance of a glass of wine before the first violent sip.
The vampire licked her lips. Her tongue compressing those full lips and moistening them in a generous arc. She bent her fangs down toward a wicked embrace with that artery. The tips of her fangs pressed against the skin. Slowly. The skin stretched down in two little puckers holding vainly against the savage points. But like biting into the casing of ball park franks the skin popped and in that rebound Brett’s flesh pushed the vein into those sharp points. And the blood flowed. Against the blood flow she released vampire venom that coursed like a narcotic drip back into his circulatory system. The femoral artery made the circulation of that venom rapid.
Brett moaned quietly in pleasure as the venom wrapped around his sleeping mind.
She laid her hand against his inner thigh and slid her touch along his smooth skin to his briefs in discovery. She reached over the intensity of the elastic and stroked her finger along his manhood. It yearned for her finger tips. It lifted and solidified. She petted him carefully and nudged back the elastic. She snapped up her head and her fangs retracted. She kissed and licked him. His heat throbbed in her mouth with each pump of his heart. She massaged him again with her fingers. He glistened as she climbed up on the couch to straddle his hips. The blanket pushed back with her knee as she did so. She guided him into her so she faced his legs and could watch Garin.
In a hazy dream, Brett moved his hands up to hold the sides of her buttocks as she moved rhythmically up and down. Her nipples thickened and her body washed in pleasure. She moved. He moved. She took. He gave. She took again and again as waves of orgasms splashed through her body. Her back arched and her strong sexual muscles squeezed and could nearly break him. No modesty in her action. Rough and slow. Hot and wet. She knew when to pause allowing Brett’s throbbing inside her to back away from its own cliff. She touched herself sustaining her own plateau while she paused. She’d had five hundred years to figure this out. A cougar of cougars wrapped in the body of a twenty-four year old.
Fast and slow the passion escalated. Intensity she grasped and rolled about with her hips intensifying the motions and their effects. Her shirt rubbed against her breasts and inflamed her nipples in resonance while she rotated her hips and moved her pelvis slowly up and down.
She became too much for Brett’s body. The venom dream wove between half wakeful reality and deep disturbed slumber. She surfed too close to the crest, taking too much, enjoying too much, and couldn’t halt his reflexes this time. The humming and rattling of his throws inside her brought more waves of pleasure as she climaxed in unison.
She stepped off the couch and straightened him up. She squeezed the sweat from his brow into his hair on her way back out the front door and licked the saltiness from her finger tips like finishing a bag of chips. She came into the cool night air, raised her arms and stroked fingers of both hands across her temples and out through her long black hair. A grin strove to find a settling place on her face as her toe nudged the door shut with a quiet click behind her. She sat down on the porch. The spasms between her legs and pelvis subsiding satisfyingly.
The old vampires fed this way. Saner, calmer, controlled, and as pleasurable as ripping a neck wide and lapping the blood from the garden hose. None of this Massai crap. This is why the old vampires like her had been so dangerous – they knew both sides of pain and pleasure and how to straddle the two. Brett might remember it as a dream but no matter, it would lead to nothing. She remembered how the dreams tormented the furor of puritanical groups. They fled from Europe, advertised as pursuing religious freedom, but in reality an escape from the vampires. But when the vampires followed them across the ocean the colonists’ response bled into the witch trials with their pitchforks and torches and rising mayhem. Mayhem. She liked that word. Claire’s face, brushed with the filaments of the waning starlight, smiled.
-:- -:- -:-
I awoke and groaned as I stretched awake. Garin glided across the kitchen from the door off the deck and into the living room. The sun already topped the trees at the edge of his property.
Brett flipped back his blanket. I saw his long legs and white underwear. His rippled stomach bunched up as he stood to pull on his pants. “Ouch!” He pulled his pants back down and looked at his leg like a bee sting, “What? … Shit. It was real?”
I collected myself, “What was real?”
“I had some really weird dreams,” he twisted his leg out and I could see below his bulging underwear that his leg scowled with two angry red dots.
Garin saw it too, “Claire!”
Claire strolled through the door with her carefully seductive cat walk. She tipped her head up. Her wicked grin displayed tips of fangs creasing her lips. “He didn’t seem to mind and I didn’t want to drink your girl – difficult to resist both of them in here.”
“Go,” Garin rushed Claire. “You have to go NOW!”
He picked her up and flung her from the open door across the yard toward the street. She bounded like an acrobat on an Olympic floor show landing on her feet in the gravel next to the pavement between the trees at the end of the driveway. I could see her flashing eyes and sharp furious shoulders. She saluted crisply with her fingers to her brow and flashed away into the burning mists.
Brett buttoned his pants and pulled his shirt over his head.
“Are you ok?” Garin asked Brett.
“Sure. It seemed like a dream.”
“It will but it’s not nice. A technique the older vampires often used to sip victims while they slept. Eventually someone wakes up or a family member sees the vampire feeding and then it’s pitchforks and torches.”
I folded blankets and started thinking about what I should do about the missing pictures and my apartment but a loud knock came at the door. Garin opened the door revealing Branoc standing there in his black trench coat. He examined us for a moment before saying, “The three of you need to come with me. We found more murdered vampires … With potential ties to you, Garin.”
-:- Ten -:-
Branoc drove us across town to one of the new sprawling technology parks. He cut the car through several open construction sites where new buildings arose from the dust like the Mayor had said in his Victorian Festival speech. Men wearing hard hats, flannel, and busted jeans. Large yellow bulldozers pushed concrete, re-bar, and rubble while cranes lifted steel I-beams. A construction dance swirling along the dust outside the closed windows of Branoc’s car. Then we drove into an older section of the technology park. Overgrown with twisted trees and shaggy lawns littered with accidental refuse bits dripping off delivery trucks and blown out of workers lunch boxes. Spent cigarette butts spun along the stained concrete ahead of the breeze.
A vile looking manufacturing plant shipping dock gaped before us. The exterior of the building constructed of corrugated and galvanized steel riveted to dusty black I-beams. A string of police cars and specially black
ed out sedans parked like employees along the otherwise vacant lot against the building. Thin streams of smoldering soot threaded out of tall smoke stacks to the blue sky.
“What is this place?”
Garin answered, “It’s been here a long time. An aluminum casting company. A dirty process but this place actually looks nice compared to some Kentucky and Tennessee plants I’ve been at.”
Branoc said, “We had the company close their operations and send everyone home while we get this figured out.”
I could see a red hot furnace in the bowls of the plant belching flame and soot like an oily dragon. Two lone silhouettes in overalls moved around the equipment.
“Those guys are working on safely shutting down the furnaces. That’s the last one.”
“They can’t have the aluminum freeze in the pots or they’ll be a week at getting it started again.”
“Thanks Garin,” Branoc turned the wheel to park the car, “The plant is a bystander here.”
“What do you mean?”
“They covered a few costs by renting out their upstairs offices. The lower floor houses the casting plant administration.”
“Who did they rent to?” I could see the plant’s sign stating Red Sands Casting Company but nothing about a second business.
“They thought a small robotic technology software business.”
“But it wasn’t?” asked Brett.
“No.”
Branoc led us to a metal door that wobbled from loose sheets caused from welds that fatigued and separated over the years.
“Hey, I recognize those,” I said, walking over to a weathered wood box full of aluminum castings with an orange sign stapled to two sides and scrawled with black marker “Bracket ‘309AC”. I picked one up and flipped it around, “This is the part I worked on writing those patent claims for Marilyn.”
“Small town.” Garin said, “I don’t see a plethora of attachment features.”
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #1 & #2) Page 25
