Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires

by Adrian Phoenix

  It was a single-action pistol. They call them single-action because you cock the hammer back manually and all the trigger does is let the hammer fall. It can go off accidentally if the hammer strikes the round in the chamber hard enough to discharge the bullet. In the Old West, most folks would only put five rounds in the gun to keep accidents from happening. Tabitha must have put in all six.

  I don’t get shot very often. All the vampire hunters I’d ever met used arrows, holy water, and crosses. Bullets hurt, but they don’t generally give any vamp but a Drone much trouble. The bullet went through the side of the mattress at an angle, lodging itself in my right butt cheek. It sizzled like fire. I yowled in pain. Rachel rolled off of me. I know I’m not a werewolf, but the bullet clearly did not like me.

  “Get it out!” I shouted. “It’s magic.”

  Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, my ass caught fire. Flames literally jetted out of the bullet hole in my butt. Rachel laughed uncontrollably while I fumbled with the sink. She laughed even harder when I sat in it. Cracks formed in the plaster around the corners. My ass still stung, but the lack of fire made things more bearable.

  I tried to pop my claws to dig the bullet out, but nothing happened. Shapeshifting didn’t work either. I even tried misting. I was that desperate, but I couldn’t change. Rachel ran out of the room and came back with a letter opener. She dug the bullet out, periodically splashing water on the wound to keep it from reigniting. Several agonizing minutes later she handed me a perfect little bullet with no signs of damage, just like the one I’d found out at the lake.

  “It’s not funny.” I dropped the bullet on the bed. She didn’t stop laughing and I realized I wanted to snap her neck. The anger was so sudden, so visceral that had I been another vampire, one who had the speed all the time, who didn’t have to hope it kicked in when he needed it, I think she would have been lying broken on the floor without my ever consciously deciding to act.

  “Oh, it’s funny all right,” she said, sobering slightly. She was going to get herself killed acting that way around me. At least that’s how I justified it in my head when I grabbed her left arm.

  “If you thought that was funny, you’re gonna love this.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked, a tinge of fear in her tone. Her heartbeat sped up.Don’t be mad, said a voice in my head that wasn’t mine.Forgive Rachel. Love Rachel. The smell of cinnamon hit me, enough to make blood tears well up around my eyes. I wasn’t mad anymore; but I was still mean.

  “Feeding,” I answered. I sank my fangs into her inner elbow, hitting the ulnar artery. It’s inefficient and painful for the donor, but it works. Rachel cried in short gasping sobs, but she didn’t fight me. Instead, she wiggled her feet nervously.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Taste hit my tongue, sweet and bitter like before.Leave, damn it, I thought at her.Don’t you understand, this is what I am? I’m a monster. You don’t want this.

  “Yes, I do,” Rachel whispered. “Yes, I do.”

  I let her go. She cupped her hand over the wound and her teeth dug into her bottom lip. Good one, Eric, I thought. Just beat the crap out of her next time, you fucking moron.

  “Did you get enough?” she asked. “Do you need the other one?” She let go of the wound and held out her uninjured arm.

  “No.” My voice cracked when I spoke. “That was…Look, I’m sorry. Do you need a doctor?”

  “I’m a thrall now,” she said through gritted teeth and indicated the choker and the golden padlock with her uninjured arm. “I can take care of it. Just give me ten or fifteen minutes and I’ll be good as new.”

  “Right.” I pushed open the bedroom door and slunk away, grabbing my jeans off the floor as I went. I slipped them on in the hallway and rested my head against the door. You’d think there was a monster inside me, a creature that wanted to hurt people, a creature to whom violence was the most favorable answer to all of unlife’s problems. Oh, right—a vampire!

  But to be honest, I don’t think just any vampire would have felt guilty about what I’d done, would have recognized the monstrosity. I did, and it didn’t feel much different than it might have felt when I was alive. You do what you have to do to get by. You try to stay out of trouble, but when life or unlife throws you lemons, you don’t make lemonade, you warm up your pitching arm and you throw them right back.

  There were presents lined up along the concession counter, each wrapped in different paper and bows. It looked more like Christmas than a birthday. I looked down over the rail to see Tabitha waiting for me in the sitting area below. I’d half expected to find her sitting there with blood running down her cheeks, ruining her makeup, but her cheeks were dry. She was upset, but she wasn’t crying. She was almost smiling, her lips pressed against each other in a thin severe line. I walked down the stairs, and sat down on the coffee table, my knees on either side of her.

  “Sorry you walked in on that,” I told her.

  “It’s your birthday,” she said matter-of-factly. “Besides, I told you that you could sleep with whoever you wanted. I was just…surprised, that’s all.”

  “I noticed that you found the gun.” I leaned closer, resting my hand on her knee. She was wearing too much perfume and her skin smelled like two or three different types of soap. She was covering up an odor she didn’t want me to notice. Probably corpse sweat again. She needn’t have worried.

  “I hope it didn’t hit the girl when it went off.” Tabitha’s words were faint, less than whispers. She hadn’t recognized Rachel. Thank God!

  “Nah, it hit me in the ass.” I laughed. “It was pretty funny.”

  “It didn’t sound funny.”

  “It wasn’t funny when it happened, but it’s funny now.”

  “Oh.” She looked left and right, anywhere but at me. “Do you want to open your presents?”

  “If you want.” I walked over to the concession stand with Tabitha in tow.

  “You don’t have to,” she whispered. “I did tell you that I’d try, you know, it, with a human and you. We could go upstairs.”

  “No,” I said too quickly. “No, let’s…do you know what I really want to do?”

  “What?” She had calmed down a bit, her body language more relaxed, more like the Tabitha I knew.

  “I want to get Greta and go kill those fucking werewolves.” I pulled her close. “Wanna come?”

  “You’re joking.” Her face lit up like New Year’s Eve. “Can I?”

  “You’ll want to change clothes first, but I can help you with that.” We exchanged a quick kiss. Her cold dead lips couldn’t match her sister’s heat, but I still cared for her.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she agreed with a slow smile.

  “You run across to the Demon Heart and get changed,” I said. “I’ll find out where Greta went off to.”

  “I thought you were going to help me change clothes,” Tabitha pouted.

  “I will,” I promised. “Just let me round up Greta and I’ll be right over.”

  Her eyes lingered on the stairs. “Okay,” she said slowly.

  Upstairs, Rachel was curled under the covers. She didn’t say anything when I walked in or when I slipped on the rest of my clothes. The silence was a relief.

  Without thinking, I picked upEl Alma Perdida . It didn’t burn my hand. I took the barrel in my left hand and touched the cross on the grip to my forearm, and it didn’t burn that either. It was hot, but not hot enough to burn. The bullets didn’t like me, but the gun seemed to think I was okay. Weird. I put it back in the box and tucked the box under my arm.

  “I’ll be back later,” I said.

  “Okay.” Rachel sounded tired and hurt. I fought the impulse to say anything else. Anything I said would have just made things worse. I’d never had a woman like her. She didn’t want to be a vampire and she liked being hurt, wanted it. I was going to have to get used to that.

  Thanks to the new thrall sense, I could feel Greta nearby, in the parking deck attached to the Pollux
. When I reached her, she was sitting on the hood of a Pinto looking up at the moon. Dried blood clung to her chin and throat and the matted tangle of her hair was plastered to the side of her head. Two half-naked teenagers lay in the backseat; their disembodied heads stared with sightless eyes from the roof of the car.

  “I was really hungry, Dad,” Greta offered apologetically.

  A cat, two pigeons, and a rat lay on the concrete next to the car. Greta’s eating problem in a nutshell.

  “It’s fine. No lectures tonight.” I took off my shirt and wiped gently at the blood on her neck. “It’s my birthday.”

  “The girl was supposed to be your present,” Greta sulked.

  The blood wouldn’t come off. She needed a shower and a change of clothes. “Why don’t you get cleaned up and then as part of my present you can help me do something important.”

  “Really?” Her expression was a mirror of Tabitha’s. Why do so many beautiful women think so highly of me? It’s like a kind of brain damage.

  “Yeah.” I dropped the shirt on the car hood and put an arm around her. “I want to go kill those werewolves and put an end to this whole mess. It’ll be just the three of us: me, you, and your new mom.”

  “Okay.” Greta got up slowly, uncertainly. “Where are the werewolves? I wouldn’t think they’d still be hanging around the park.”

  They wouldn’t? No, I guessed not. The campground at the State Park couldn’t have been a long-term living arrangement. They probably went there just to set up the confrontation with me.

  “Why do you think they picked the park?” I asked myself aloud.

  “Because they like the woods?” Greta offered.

  “No,” I said, still rolling the idea around in my head. “Because it’s not the city. It’s exposed. A vampire could take cover from the sun, but not the same way he might in the city. There are no sewers to hide in, no people to hide among, no way to diffuse the scent.”

  We will never surrender our land to one of your kind.That’s what William had said.No matter how many dead you lay on our doorstep, we will not give in.

  Our doorstep…the only place…no, damn it; I couldn’t remember. It was somewhere…somewhere…I’d been out there. I found the bullet that went in the magic gun, the one that led to the Highland Towers…Yesterday I knew, I’d remembered it, known it.

  “Son of a bitch,” I shouted. “What the hell do you call it, the place with the big lake…” I barely noticed the smell of cinnamon and then I remembered. “Orchard Lake. William said I left dead werewolves at his doorstep. If he was talking about the ones Froggy killed, then he meant Orchard Lake. That’s where they are,” I finished triumphantly.

  “Will there be fish?” Greta asked.

  Will there be fish? What the hell kind of question was that? “Yes, sweetheart,” I assured her. “There will be fish, but we’ll be there for the wolves.”

  30

  ERIC:

  ORCHARD DAM ROAD

  The drive out to Orchard Lake can take anywhere from an hour to ninety minutes, depending on traffic. The trip takes you from interstate to highway to County Road 58 where you wind through Keener and Tartarus, cutting through broad areas of wooded acreage and low mountains punctuated by small townships and the occasional empty strip mall.

  I pulled off of 58 onto Orchard Dam Road and parked in the driveway of an abandoned house. I was still driving Carl’s loaner. The car’s rear bumper was somewhere back at Bald Mountain State Park, or maybe the werewolves kept it as a trophy.

  There was a farm across the road, boasting a small herd of cattle and horses, a hobby farm by the looks of it. The entrance to Sable Oaks was just beyond, a broad stone arch lit by ground lights so that it blazed formidably. Two vampires dressed like Secret Service men, in earpieces and black suits, stood on either side of the entrance to the gated community. I’d flown south when I’d left Orchard Lake the other night, partially to avoid the place. Sable Oaks was for high society fangs, not me.

  I’d half expected to find two werewolves on this side, standing guard over Orchard Dam Road from the empty house where we’d parked. A weathered piece of cardboard announced that the house was for sale, but the number had been washed away by rain or bleached out by the sun. If it had really been for sale, then the same vampires who owned Sable Oaks would have undoubtedly snapped it up. I could easily imagine the reason the werewolf community had abandoned it. Too close to the undead.

  I waved cheerily at the two vampires, but they stared straight ahead, ignoring me.

  Greta unfolded out of the backseat and stretched her arms. “God, it’s nice to be out of there,” she said.

  “You could have traveled as something smaller.” I stepped out and closed the door, slamming it so it would catch. It bounced back open and fell off. Vampire strength: gotta love it.

  “No thanks,” Greta said. “I’ll leave the shapeshifting to you.”

  “Why?” asked Tabitha. She still looked happy to have been invited. She’d even dressed appropriately. Her jeans, tennis shoes, and old T-shirt weren’t as glamorous or sexy as the clothes she usually wore, but were much more sensible for fighting werewolves. I wondered if she would still be happy once the killing started. So far, she had killed only when under the influence of the doped blood Froggy had slipped into my reserve at the Demon Heart. As far as I knew, she hadn’t ever killed to feed.

  “I’m not an animal,” Greta answered.

  “So?” Tabitha walked around the car and stood next to me, her hand tucked possessively into the back pocket of my jeans.

  “So, I don’t like being anything I’m not,” said Greta. “It feels weird.” She rubbed her left arm, taking in her surroundings.

  “Being a cat feels awesome,” Tabitha said.

  “Not to me.”

  “Are you two done?” I asked. “It’s half past one and sunrise is at six eighteen.”

  “You checked?” Greta’s hands flew to her cheeks in exaggerated shock.

  “Ha. Ha,” I replied dryly. “Yes, I checked.”El Alma Perdida was in the glove compartment. I leaned across the interior of the car, flipped open the compartment, and pulled out the gun, measuring its heft in my hand. The gun hummed, its grip warm, but the crosses still didn’t bother me.

  “That is so odd,” said Tabitha. “I barely touched the thing and it burned the crap out of me. Why doesn’t it hurt you?”

  “Talbot told me that my aura and the gun’s looked the same, that the gun might be inherited. Did you find anything else out about it?” I asked.

  “Just that it was used by a guy named John Paul Courtney back in the Wild West.”

  Greta laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Tabitha.

  “That’s Dad’s real last name, Mom,” Greta told her.

  “Could you not do that? Call me Tabitha.”

  Greta shook her head. “I can’t do that, Mom. That would just be too weird.”

  Tabitha looked at me for assistance, but I couldn’t help on this one. Anytime I turned a girlfriend, Greta started calling her “Mom” until we broke up. The only exception was Marilyn. She had always called her “Mom” or “old Mom.” Maybe in Greta’s head, even though we’d never married, Marilyn counted as my first wife and that made her Greta’s real mother. Marilyn had certainly helped raise her, taken her to school, made her lunches, and picked her up at the end of the day.

  Marilyn had been furious when I turned Greta at twenty-one, but I’d had my reasons. Most humans don’t know what they’re getting into if they become a vampire, but Greta had known better than most. She’d spent twelve years with a vampire for a dad, watching what I did, how I was.

  I kept very little hidden from her, hoping that if she saw everything, if I took away the mystique, she’d change her mind. I’d expected her to grow to hate me, but she didn’t. To Greta, I’d always be her knight in shining armor, the hero who came in through the window one night and killed the bad guy. She didn’t care that if she’d been older, I mig
ht have also killed her.

  “I thought your last name was Jones,” said Tabitha, snapping me out of my fugue.

  “Alias,” I said. “Roger says we have to roll everything into a new identity every three or four decades so that no one at the federal level gets suspicious.”

  Courtney sounded familiar, but a lifetime away. “I used to be a Courtney, I guess. Marilyn would know.”

  What’s your father’s name?Marilyn asked again in my head. The truth was, I didn’t want to remember. I knew Marilyn’s name, though: Marilyn Amanda Robinson. It should have been Marilyn Robinson Courtney…

  “How can you not remember your last name?” asked Tabitha in amazement. Her hand was no longer in my pocket. She stood beside me, gesturing as she spoke.

  “I haven’t used it in forty years,” I replied defensively. I didn’t have time for this conversation. Talking about the past wakes up all the ghosts in my head. My brother, my parents—they were all better half remembered. I hadn’t made them proud when I’d been alive, hadn’t been what they wanted me to be. Even if I still had nieces and nephews out there, I didn’t want to know about them and they didn’t need to know about me. We weren’t part of the same world anymore.

  I began to walk up the road toward the marina. Greta fell in step beside me, but Tabitha blocked my path, hand on my chest. “But it’s your name,” she insisted.

  “So?” I stepped around her.

  “What do you mean ‘so’?” Tabitha moved to intercept me again. Her white T-shirt looked red in the sudden light from my eyes.

  “Why is it important to you that I remember it?” Now that I was away from Rachel, I felt more like my old self, my anger closer to the surface, harder to control. Tabitha couldn’t possibly understand the difference, but now that she had no heartbeat, it was difficult for me not to think of her as a thing, not a person, not a woman. She’d gone through the change, and she wasn’t my Tabitha anymore, just a convincing fake. The urge to crush that impostor, to tear it apart, brought my claws out. But then a look of surprise in her eyes that reminded me of the Tabitha I had given in to pushed that urge away and dimmed the red light in my own eyes.