Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires

by Adrian Phoenix

  “How’d your parents end up in jail?”

  “They were arrested for fraud when I was sixteen. I testified.” I put my face in my hands. “I betrayed them.”

  Shane is silent for a few moments. Then he says, “Hey, don’t feel bad. Every teenager dreams of sending their parents to jail. My dad could’ve been convicted as a first-degree jagoff.”

  I snort—not quite laughter, but further from crying.

  “I’m sorry I judged you.” He hands me another napkin. “Can I do anything?”

  I blow my nose. “Play a happy song.”

  A long pause. “That was the happy song.”

  I laugh, and then I can’t stop laughing, even when my belly and cheeks start to ache.

  “What’s so funny?” he says.

  “You. I like you. I like being with you.”

  “Yeah, that’s hilarious.” He points behind me. “Dry your eyes and turn around.”

  “The fireworks?” I spin on the blanket and search the skies. “I don’t see—oh my God.”

  The field is ablaze.

  Dancing, flashing fireflies cover the landscape as far as I can see. Half of them loiter within the wheat while the others swoop and dart above, creating a 3-D display, like a mile-wide Christmas tree. The field sparkles in every hue of green, from aquamarine to chartreuse.

  “It’s boy meets girl times a thousand,” Shane says. “Or ten thousand.”

  “How do they know when they’ve found the right one? Or do they just pick the first firefly they see?”

  “If it were that spontaneous, it’d all be over in five minutes. They each look for a specific signal that tells them, this could be the one.”

  “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.” I hear the goopy sincerity in my voice. “Much better than Sousa and gunpowder, at least.”

  “I thought you’d like it. Which means I’m not completely wrong about you.”

  The guitar is in his lap, but it’d be so easy to crawl around it and kiss him, to remove it so I can pin him to the ground and press every inch of my body onto his. The look in his eyes says he wouldn’t stop me.

  “Play a song for the fireflies.” I sweep my hand toward the field. “Something to get them in the mood.”

  He watches me closely for a second, probably rewinding my words to check for a double meaning, then turns back to the guitar. “I think ‘Two Hearts’ by Chris Isaak would be appropriate.”

  “Never heard that one. But Chris Isaak? A little straightforward for your tastes.”

  “You’re not the only one with layers.”

  The song starts off slow and sad, lamenting the struggle to find love in the dark night. Then it pauses, and he gives me a mischievous glance. A moment later, it bounces into a jaunty, hopeful tune about life’s burdens being too much for just one person (or insect) to carry. He hits an admirable falsetto on the chorus, and I start to realize how damn good a singer he is.

  My feet start tapping of their own will. During the brief solo, Shane gestures with his chin for me to get up and dance. I kick off my shoes and hop onto the cool, soft grass. Then it’s me and the fireflies, jamming, falling in love with the summer night.

  I look back to see Shane watching me. He misses the high note and breaks into laughter without losing the rhythm. He starts the last chorus again when it comes around on the guitar.

  When it ends, he applauds, and I bow, then clap for him with outstretched arms like a prima donna thanking her conductor.

  Shane raises his wine. “To the fireflies.” He empties the glass and tosses it aside. “Here’s one for the mosquitoes.”

  He slams into Nirvana’s “Drain You,” squashing the sentimentality like a rolled-up newspaper on a—well, a mosquito. The harsh, growly parts of his voice take center stage to sing of a love based in disease and craving. I return to sit on the blanket.

  Shane looks at home in his body as he returns to the music of his soul. With every strum, his pale brown hair swings against the sharp bones of his cheeks and jaw. I watch his fingers fly over the fret board and grow warm imagining them on my skin.

  The solo alternates between a low, steady thrumming and wild bursts of intensity. As it builds to a crescendo, he glances at the landscape around us, probably deciding whether or not to do the scream.

  Just when I think he’s going to cop out to save his voice, he lets loose with a feral howl that sends a hot electric blast to the tips of my fingers and toes. It’s all I can do not to run away, or rip off my clothes.

  He shifts to the chords of the third-verse-same-as-the-first, snarling the lyrics like it’s a personal anthem. His voice and the guitar build a noise that could tear the leaves off the trees.

  The last chord soaks into the thick, humid evening. Shane sends me a feral gaze through a curtain of tangled hair. For the first time tonight, he looks like a vampire.

  I clap slowly, though the gesture feels shallow in the face of such power. “I didn’t know that song could be done acoustically. Those years of music theory really paid off.”

  “Not years. Months.” He refills his wineglass without looking at me.

  Clearly his abbreviated college career bothers him. I change the subject. “I have a new nickname for your kind. Mosquitoes.”

  “Nice.” He takes a long sip.

  “When was the last time you drank?”

  He holds up his glass.

  “I don’t mean wine.”

  “I know.” He stares into the red liquid depths. “I’m not an animal. I can control it.”

  “But you’d rather not.”

  “I’d rather do whatever it takes to get you and keep you.” He puts down the glass and focuses on the guitar. “That’s what I’d rather do.”

  The evening progresses, through Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan and Steve Earle and The Pogues and some people I’ve never heard of. Though I started the night nursing one glass of wine, the music, food, and absence of vampire attacks have relaxed me enough to have a second, then a third.

  The fireflies wink out one by one, as they either find their mates or give up for the night. I realize that if I were one of those bugs in the field, I would have turned off my blinky butt the moment Shane struck the first chord of “Ciara.”

  Finally Shane sets the guitar back in its case and shakes out his stiff fingers. He frowns at the empty wine bottle. “How are you going to drive us home?”

  “You could drive.”

  He looks away. “My other dark secret is that I can’t drive stick.”

  “Then I’ll teach you.”

  “I can’t learn new things the way a human can.”

  “Don’t listen to that Control propaganda. You learned the ‘Ciara’ song, didn’t you? You didn’t just happen to have it in your repertoire when we met.”

  “True.” He sighs and pulls the guitar out of its case. “One last tune, a eulogy for your transmission. How about ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’?”

  “No, play my song again. Please? I promise not to cry.”

  He shrugs. “Cry all you want. As long as I know I’m not the cause.”

  He plays “Ciara” again, his voice softer, fatigued from so many songs. It strains to hit the chorus’s higher notes, giving it a plaintive sound, as if he’ll never reach that angelic Ciara, but he’ll keep trying.

  This time, I don’t need to cry.

  16

  Twilight Zone

  I wake at 3 a.m. Friday morning to Cake’s irony-laced “Rock ’n’ Roll Lifestyle” and decide I’m too restless to listen to Shane’s program alone.

  Soon I pull into the radio station lot, parking less than ten feet from the front door. Before getting out of the car, I check my surroundings—nothing but shifting shadows of trees and the hesitant chirps of a few early cicadas.

  I step out of the vehicle. Immediately a cold presence permeates the humid night. Its gaze on my body feels like a hand with too many fingers. As I stride toward the building—not running, no matter how much I w
ant to—I almost wish I could wield a cross with conviction.

  Once inside, I shut and relock the front door behind me, then hurry downstairs.

  Sitting around the poker table, Regina, Jim, Noah, and Spencer greet me with varied amounts of enthusiasm.

  “Happy to take your money, honey.” Spencer pulls out a chair for me to sit in.

  Regina shakes her head at him. “Sucker.”

  I don’t sit. “Gideon lives an hour from here, right?”

  They share nervous glances. “Yeah, out in the mountains,” Regina says. “Why?”

  “Twice I’ve felt something watch me in the parking lot.” I rub my arms at the lingering chill. “Something cold.”

  “I knew it!” Regina slams the deck against the table. “Skywave didn’t make that threatening phone call after the party. It was Gideon, the skeevy son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Or one of his flunkies,” Jim adds.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Spencer says. “He’s always kept to himself.”

  “Who else is old enough to have that kind of aura?” Regina stands and stalks over to me. “When did this happen?”

  “The night I interviewed for the job, and again just now.”

  “Then he could still be outside.” She turns to the door. “If Monroe were here, the five of us could take Gideon.”

  “Wait.” Noah turns to me. “You said this happened the first time you come here.” I nod. “Then it cannot be Gideon. Before your campaign, we kept our secret. He had no reason to stalk you, or the station.”

  Regina huffs out a breath. “Then there’s another vampire besides Gideon after us?”

  “Maybe it’s Gideon now,” Jim offers, “but a different one that other night.”

  “If there’s more than one,” Spencer says, “then we don’t know what’s out there right now. We could be out-powered and outnumbered.”

  I scratch my neck to subdue the prickling. “What’s to keep them from coming inside?”

  “Besides the locks on the doors? Nothing.” Regina paces, looking ready to bite the head off a chipmunk. “The Control won’t give us extra security based on one phone threat, and they won’t change their minds over an intern’s goose bumps.”

  “You don’t have any weapons?” I ask them. “Stakes and stuff?”

  They look aghast at the mere suggestion. I guess it’s no different than humans who won’t keep a gun in the house.

  “Not unless you count Franklin’s pencil stash.” Regina crosses to the credenza next to the sofa, opens the top drawer, and pulls out a white box. “You might stop one of us with a handful of these, but they wouldn’t even make Gideon sneeze.”

  I suddenly wish I’d stayed in bed. “So what do we do?”

  Regina puts the pencils back. “We know he’s there, but he doesn’t know we know.”

  “That’s our advantage, then.” I sit in one of the empty chairs. “We know we can’t beat him by confronting him, so we act normal and wait for him to slip up.”

  Regina gives me an icy look. “That’s what I was about to say.” She comes back to her seat and picks up the cards.

  I pull my chair closer to the table. “Tell me more about Gideon.”

  Regina deftly shuffles the cards without looking at them. “He and all the other geezers live out in the sticks where no one’ll confuse them.”

  “Confuse them?”

  “When we get old, we get freaky,” Jim says. “Gideon runs a kinda sanctuary.”

  “How long can a vampire live?”

  Noah answers this time. “Most live about eighty years after our turning.” He straightens his pile of chips. “But a lucky one can live centuries.”

  Regina says, “I hear there are a couple two-hundred-fifty-year-olds working down in Colonial Williamsburg.”

  “That’s a myth.” Spencer points to the cards. “Let’s go.”

  They deal me in, and my chips start to trickle away. We don’t speak much, even between hands, each of us listening for signs of encroachment from outside. To distract myself, I focus on learning the vampires’ various styles of play.

  Noah is as conservative as they come, while Jim is at the other extreme, betting expansively and impulsively. I’m coming to realize his hippie veneer is just that; beneath the serene trappings of peace, love, and happiness lies a wild animal. Of the five, he probably has the highest body count. The fact that I can even speculate on such a topic gives me the chilly willies.

  Regina plays according to the numbers, calculating the odds of each hand with the speed of a supercomputer. Spencer is a poker genius, surprising me with flashes of superhuman intuition. Sometimes his eyes go eerily vacant, like a shut-down robot, but maybe he’s accessing some kind of collective card-player unconscious.

  After an hour without incident, Regina goes to their apartment and returns with three beers. She hands one to Spencer and one to me.

  “If you’re such a good con artist,” she says, “how come you’re so poor? Did you ship all the scam money to Switzerland for your retirement?”

  “No one uses Switzerland anymore—too strict.” I shuffle the cards, ineptly. “New Zealand is the hot new place for offshore accounts.”

  “Is that where your money is?” Jim asks.

  “What money? I’m small-time. I only use scores to pay off student loans.” I set the shuffled deck in front of Regina to cut. “I’m allergic to debt.”

  “Smart,” Noah says. “Debt is a kind of slavery.”

  “It’s a commitment.” Regina taps the deck in an offhand show of trust. “Con artists are afraid of commitment, aren’t they?”

  Instead of answering the question, I start dealing five-card stud, which automatically cuts off conversation, per Spencer’s rules. The cards feel crisp and slick; I bet they use a new deck every night.

  After the hand, I change the subject. “How are your podcasts coming?” In response to their blank looks, “That’s the thing where I record you yammering for fifteen minutes, then people can download it onto their computers and listen to it anywhere in the world.”

  Regina recovers first. “I thought I’d talk about Sunday matinees at CBGB, the big hardcore scene and the fights that broke out with the pigs in uniform.”

  “I’m gonna do rock trivia,” Jim announces. Everyone else rolls their eyes.

  “Of course you are,” Noah says.

  Jim’s head hoards useless knowledge like a hamster’s cheeks hoard granola. He pulls a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Ciara, you’re a typical civilian, I’ll test my trivia on you. If you know the answer, the question’s too easy.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “First category, real names. Ready? Robert Zimmerman.”

  I snap my fingers. “Bob Dylan.”

  “Just a warm-up. McKinley Morganfield.”

  “Um—”

  “Muddy Waters,” he says without giving me a chance to think. “Famous quotes category: Who called rock ‘n’ roll ‘the most brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious form of expression it has been my displeasure to hear’?”

  I shrug.

  Jim arches one brown eyebrow. “Frank Sinatra.”

  “Hoser,” Regina adds.

  Jim flips the paper over. “Bonus question: What Flint, Michigan, band generated the original members of Grand Funk Railroad?”

  Noah and Regina groan. Spencer furrows his brow.

  Jim looks at the other DJs. “Terry Knight and the Pack. You guys didn’t know that?”

  “No one gives a shit about Grand Funk Railroad.” Regina fake-spits on the floor.

  “That’s the point. The more obscure the trivia, the better.”

  “You need a mix of easy questions,” I tell him. “You can’t talk down to people if you want them to tune in again.”

  “Excuse me.” Regina slaps the bottom of her cigarette pack against the heel of her hand. “How long have you been a DJ?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “You think you know everything
because you’re from the so-called present, but you can’t even get your boyfriend to join you there.”

  “Shane’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Does he know that?” We lock eyes as Regina pulls a cigarette from the pack with her teeth and lights it. I hear the others shift in their seats. Finally Regina looks at them. “Leave us.”

  Spencer looks at his watch. “Almost bedtime, anyway.” He and Noah stand up.

  Jim stays seated, gathering the cards. “I want to see them fight.”

  Noah gives Jim’s hair a yank. “You heard Regina.”

  “Ow. Douche bag.” He gets up and slouches after them, rubbing his head. They enter the hallway and leave the door open behind them.

  I turn back to Regina. “Shane said you broke it off years ago, so what do you care?”

  “We stopped screwing, but he’ll always be my progeny, however freakishly oedipal that sounds.” She puffs smoke in my direction. “Either start taking him seriously or end it now.”

  “I do take Shane seriously.” I inhale her cloud of smoke without wrinkling my nose. “I would never hurt him.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew how easy it is to do.” Her eyes turn sad around the edges. “It’s like saying you won’t step on ants.”

  The music fades from the speaker over our heads, and Shane’s voice comes on.

  “WVMP 94.3, five fifty-four on a Friday. Weatherman says it’s another hot one, high of ninety-five and humid, so wear as little as you can get away with today.” His words reach thousands, but I feel like he’s speaking to me. “If you aren’t awake by now, a little White Zombie’ll fix that. Good morning, and good night.”

  The first throbbing chords of “More Human than Human” strain the ceiling speakers.

  Regina looks toward the stairs. “It’s light out by now. Safe for you to leave.”

  Sounds like a hint. “I’ve got work to do. Think I’ll just head to my desk.”