by J. R. Rain
As it was, the small arrow whipped through the air and plunged deep into his chest, exactly where I assumed its heart was.
What happened next still gives me nightmares to this day.
James P. Storm leaped back, staring down at the bolt protruding from his chest. He gripped the fletchings and pulled.
The bolt came out, along with a geyser of black blood that splattered the small room and turned immediately into steam. Indeed, the bloody hole in his chest gushed steam as well.
He stumbled backward and collapsed against some shelving, and as he hissed and steamed and bled, I ran over to Veronica and dragged her across the floor and out the door. I ripped off my jacket, wadded it up, and used it to plug the gaping wound in her neck.
With the jacket pressed firmly against her, I watched in horror and fascination as James P. Storm continued to hiss and steam. He looked at me confusedly, opened his mouth to say something, and then pitched forward onto his face.
Chapter Eleven
I was sitting in Detective Sparks office at the Central Station on Vallejo Street.
He and I had gone over and over the events at Borders Books and Music. He didn’t like my answers and had only grudgingly started to wrap his mind around the fact that something very strange had indeed gone on in his city.
He rubbed his eyes and drank some more coffee and stared at me for a long minute.
“So you really think this thing was a vampire?” he asked.
“I think this thing was a monster. But call it what you want.”
“A monster?” he said.
“It killed her parents and tried to kill her. It had its face buried in her neck and was drinking her blood. And when I shot it with the arrow, it turned to dust before my very eyes. What would you call that?”
“A long night of drinking.”
“No one was drinking, detective.”
“The Crime Lab analyzed the remains. Human DNA. They’re telling me that these remains are at least a hundred and fifty years old. They’re still testing them.”
I said nothing. What the hell was there to say to that?
Sparks said, “And you shot him with a silver arrow?”
“Yup.”
“And he just started smoking?”
“Like a chimney.”
“He say anything?”
“I think he was too busy smoking and dying,” I said.
We were silent some more. Veronica was in the hospital. Apparently, she was going to make it. Gladys and her husband were on their way up to be with her. At least Veronica had someone.
“So what am I supposed to do with all of this?” asked Sparks. He waved at the reports on his desk.
“You’ll think of something,” I said. “It’s why you make the big bucks.”
“They don’t pay me enough for this shit.”
“So am I free to go?”
He nodded wearily. “I’ll be in touch, Spinoza. We know where to find you.”
“Lucky me,” I said.
And left.
* * *
It was late evening, and I was sleeping fitfully in my office when someone knocked on the door.
I had been dreaming of my son, of course. Once again, we were in the forest and I was holding his hand, only this time his hand wasn’t charred. This time it was healthy and alive and soft and warm, and my little boy was looking at me with joy and love in his bright eyes.
This is different, I remembered thinking in my dream. Something is different.
My son nodded and swung my hand and I sensed great peace from him. He nodded again and laughed and squeezed my hand. I sensed something else. I sensed that he wanted me to move on. I had been about to ask him how when the knock came again.
My hand went automatically under my arm, gripping my pistol. I was a little jumpy these days after my run-in with the vampire.
“It’s open,” I said, reluctant as hell to release the image of my healthy and happy son.
Veronica opened the door and stepped inside. She was wearing tight jeans and a tank top. A far cry different than the loose-fitting boy jeans she had been wearing a week earlier at Borders. Her dark hair was still cut boyishly short and even from here I could see the red scarring around her neck. Her torn throat had needed a lot of stitches. I didn’t see any stitches now. She seemed pale and sickly and not as confident as she had been in her pictures. No surprise there, since she had nearly had her throat torn out.
“Can I talk to you?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She shut the door behind her, turned, and sat across from me in one of my client chairs. I released my grip on the pistol.
“I wanted to thank you for saving my life,” she said. Her voice sounded stronger than she looked.
Despite myself, my old shyness returned. I forced myself to power through it.
“Well, it was drinking your blood,” I said. “It was the least I could do.”
“Where did you learn to shoot a crossbow like that?”
“Maybe I was Robin Hood in a past life.”
She grinned, and seemed about to rub her neck, but stopped herself.
I asked, “So he really was a vampire?”
“Of course.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that my next question died in my mouth. I was left stumbling over words until I finally said, “So how many of them are out there?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I don’t think many. The ones who are really old and smart rarely kill anymore. They find other ways to get blood.”
“So, um, how many have you killed?”
“Just three. Storm would have been the fourth.”
“And he’s the one who killed your parents.”
“I hated him for so long.” She paused, composed herself. “I spent the past three years hunting him.”
“How did you find him?”
“I’m a hell of a detective,” she said.
“Maybe you could work for me someday.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Anyway, if you meet the right people and make the right friends, yeah, there’s a whole scene out there.”
“Scene?”
“Vampire scene.”
“Of course.”
She leveled her stare at me. Her eyes, I saw, were lightly bloodshot. “But you took care of him for me.”
“Spinoza the Vampire Slayer,” I said. “So he’s really dead?”
“Of course, you saw him turn to dust. That’s what happens to them when they die.”
I nodded. “Of course. Silly of me to ask.”
Veronica’s neck was surprisingly healed. Just a big red blemish. She saw me looking at her neck. Now she reached up and touched it self-consciously.
“It’s hideous,” she said.
“It’s not that bad,” I lied.
“You’re a bad liar. The doctors tell me that it’s healing surprisingly fast.”
“Ah, youth,” I said.
“Sure. Youth.” She smiled again and stood. She reached out a pale hand across my desk. “I just wanted to thank you, Mr. Spinoza, for saving my life. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you, and a monster would still be out there killing innocent people.”
“All in a day’s work,” I said, and shook her shockingly cold hand. I nearly winced at her icy flesh.
She saw my reaction and released my hand. “They’re always cold now, since the attack.”
“I, um, hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re a bad liar, Mr. Spinoza.”
I told her to call me if she ever needed any help or needed a job, and she assured me she would. At the door, she looked back at me and seemed about to say something, but decided not to.
As she turned to leave, I saw a fresh tattoo above her low-riding jeans. It was a tattoo of a black dragon.
I sat back in my chair and put my feet up on my desk and laced my hands behind my head, certain that I had just seen my second vampire.
The End
Spinoza returns
in:
The Vampire Who Played Dead
Now available
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Available now in ebookstores everywhere:
Bad Blood
by
J.R. Rain, Scott Nicholson and
H.T. Night
(read on for a sample)
Chapter One
Class was over.
I was making my way to my car in the dark, my backpack slung over my shoulder, when the girl came running up behind me. We had exited class together, junior year United States history, when I heard her fall into step behind me. I didn’t have to turn and look to know I was being followed. I didn’t even have to turn and look to know who it was, because I could smell her.
It was the new girl. Well, new as of two weeks ago. And she smelled of flowers and shampoo and clean clothing. She also smelled of curry, which is why I knew who she was, since most girls smelled of only flowers and shampoo.
I’ve always liked unique girls, as much as I can like anything.
I had just clicked my car door open, using the keyless remote, when I heard her footsteps pick up their pace. She was moving faster, coming up behind me. I heard breathing now—her breathing, and I might have heard something else, too. I might have heard, mixed with the sounds of cars starting and our classmates talking and laughing, I might have heard her heart beating.
And it seemed to be beating rapidly.
It should beat rapidly, I thought. Here be monsters.
My back was still to her as she stopped behind me. Her scent rushed before her, swirling around me like a dust devil, and I inhaled her deeply and spun around.
Her face was a little orange under the cheap streetlights. She had opened her mouth to speak, but instead she gasped. She hadn’t expected me to turn on her. Heck, maybe she even thought she had approached quietly.
Maybe she wasn’t sure she had wanted to talk to me. Maybe, just prior to my spinning around, she had decided to do the smart thing, turn herself around, and leave.
Maybe she had heard stories of me. Maybe she had heard that I was different from other students. That there was something odd about me.
I heard the stories, too. Mostly, of course, I overheard the whisperings behind my back. They didn’t know I could hear them. They thought they were being discreet. But I heard their harsh words. I heard their hateful stories. I heard them speak ill of me. I heard their laughter, but mostly I heard their fear.
I heard everything.
Her gasp hung in the air, much like her mouth hung open. She was a pretty girl. Long, blonde hair. Brown eyes impossibly round. She was small but curvy. She looked like a doll all grown up into its teen years.
“You are following me,” I said.
She closed her mouth. Some of the students spilling out into the parking lot watched us. In fact, most of the students were watching us. I ignored all of them. All of them, that is, except this new girl.
“Yes, sorry,” she said.
“Why are you sorry?” I asked. I turned and opened my car door. I tossed my backpack into the backseat.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” I said.
I heard her heartbeat clearly now. It thumped rapidly. It even seemed to labor a bit, which might mean she had some sort of heart condition, surprising for one so young. She looked once over her shoulder, and I could almost hear her thinking, although my hearing isn’t quite that good. She was thinking, and I would have bet good money on this, I can still leave now. Make up a good story, or even a bad one. Anything. Just leave. They call him a freak for a reason.
But she didn’t leave, and I knew why. Because they don’t just call me a freak.
They also call me Spider.
“You need help,” I said, draping an arm over my open car door, letting it support some of my weight.
She quit looking around and now she held my gaze, and as she did, her heartbeat steadied. She was no longer afraid. Then her eyes pooled with tears, but she did not look away even as the tears spilled out.
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you have a ride home?” I asked. I’d learned to never trust tears.
“I walk.”
I motioned toward the passenger seat. “Get in,” I said, “And let’s talk.”
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Arthur
The Grail Quest Trilogy #1
by
J.R. Rain
(read on for a sample)
It was coming on evening when my taxi arrived at the Number Three Hotel in Glastonbury, England, legendary location of King Arthur’s Camelot. At least, that’s what my travel guide told me, the signs along the way told me, and even my taxi driver told me. Hell, I was practically expecting a knight or two on horseback to escort us.
But no knight appeared and soon the cab pulled up in front of an ivy-covered doorway that led to an ivy-covered courtyard. Beyond was a large Georgian townhouse that doubled as a bed and breakfast.
The driver hopped out and ran around to the trunk and removed my bags, which he energetically stacked on the curb. I gave him a tip. Perhaps too big, because he suddenly smiled brightly, tipped his hat and I could practically hear him thinking, “Stupid American,” and quickly drove away, perhaps before I realized how many pounds I had given him.
Pounds or money was the least of my problems these days. Now, my sanity was another story entirely.
I briefly watched the vehicle’s tires bounce and wobble over the cobblestone road, and, with an undeniable feeling of impending doom, turned and looked up at the massive edifice that was the bed and breakfast.
The impending doom part might be an exaggeration. Okay, it probably was an exaggeration. But say that to my damn dreams. Dreams that have been plaguing me for the past three months or so.
Dreams that seem to be centered here, in Glastonbury.
Dreams that seem to be centered around a goblet. A chalice.
A grail.
The Holy Grail, in fact.
You’re crazy, you do realize that?
Crazy or not, the dreams had nearly become nightmares. Interestingly, it was only when I began making actual plans to come here to Glastonbury that my nightmares finally ceased.
Relieved, I was about to cancel the trip when the nightmares returned two-fold, stronger than ever. Rocking my world and my life. Consuming me completely with their haunting images.
I thought of this now as I stood there under gloomy skies as a light rain began to fall.
I’m here, I thought. So now what?
Yes, here I was in England, on what was officially a research trip for my next novel. After all, I had to justify the trip: to myself, to others, and to the tax man.
Unofficially, it was something else. Unofficially, I was here to put an end to my dreams. Something wanted me here badly enough to invade my nights and haunt my days.
No, not just something.
As the rain picked up, pelting my upturned face, I thought of the Holy Grail. The silver goblet filled with Christ’s blood. I was holding it in my dreams.
Holding it triumphantly.
Insane, I thought. I’m going insane.
If anything, you’re here to save your sanity, if it’s not too late.
Granted, others didn’t need to know I was going insane. No, that honor was reserved for me and me alone; or, at least, until my insanity was so obvious I couldn’t hide it anymore. Anyway, calling this a research trip—rather than, say, a fool’s errand—seemed the safest route to take, even if it confused the hell out of my editor.
Especially since my next novel was supposed to be a supernatural thriller about ghosts, tentatively titled Ghosts. Yeah, I know. I’m not great with titles.
Well, I had begun the ghost story, and had gotten quite a bit into it, when something unusual happened:
I hit a wall. I just couldn’t write it anymore. I discovered I was tired of writing about murder and mayhem. And I was tired
of thinking up new and creative ways of killing people.
So I decided to take a break from writing about murders.
And that’s when the dreams started.
* * *
Yeah, you’re losing your mind, James, I thought again, looking at the old-world, bed & breakfast before me.
And with the sun setting behind a row of gnarled elms, plunging the cobblestone street and hotel in shadows, I took hold of my two suitcases and headed for the ivy-covered courtyard door.
What awaited me within, I didn’t know.
But I was about to find out.
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Also available:
Dark Horse
Jim Knighthorse Series #1
by
J.R. Rain
(read on for a sample)
Chapter One
Charles Brown, the defense attorney, was a small man with a round head. He was wearing a brown and orange zigzagged power tie. I secretly wondered if he went by Charlie as a kid and had a dog named Snoopy and a crush on the little red-headed girl.
We were sitting in my office on a warm spring day. Charlie was here to give me a job if I wanted it, and I wanted it. I hadn’t worked in two weeks and was beginning to like it, which made me nervous.
“I think the kid’s innocent,” he was saying.
“Of course you do, Charlie. You’re a defense attorney. You would find cause to think Jack the Ripper was simply a misunderstood artist before his time.”
He looked at me with what was supposed to be a stern face.
“The name’s Charles,” he said.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“Glad that’s cleared up.”
“I heard you could be difficult,” he said. “Is this you being difficult? If so, then I’m disappointed.”
