Live fast, die young, and leave a bloodthirsty corpse.
That’s the saying of a new pack of fiendish predators infesting a New England town. They’re infected with the Ghost Heart, a condition that causes them to become irresistible and invincible…as long as they drink the blood of the living. But these vampires don’t live forever, and as the Ghost Heart claims them, their skin loses color and their hearts turn pale. When a young mechanic is seduced by the pack’s muse, he finds falling in love will break more than his heart.
Ghost Heart
John Palisano
Dedication
To Fawn, who found my Ghost Heart and made it whole again.
Special Thanks
I’d like to thank the endlessly inspiring creatives who make up the Los Angeles Chapter of the HWA. You have no idea how much you’ve meant to me. Now you do.
I’d also like to thank the amazing creative team at Samhain: Tanya Cowman, Kaitlyn Osborn, Christina Brashear, Jacob Hammer, Glenn Rolfe, and of course Don D’Auria, whose tireless championing of us authors has made all of this possible. It’s an honor to work with you.
“Live Fast, Die Young & Leave a Bloodthirsty Corpse!”
—graffiti found on the wall of the Universe
Chapter One
Minarette was the center of the Universe. I’d never seen such a stunning creature. I remember the night the club opened vividly. Music cranked and thumped. Everyone was having a good time. The place was packed with beautiful people. Minarette’s magnetic smile stood out. She seemed to be from another timeless place and era. Everyone was drawn to her.
All the focus did not go unnoticed among the girls, either. Some of them wanted to be near her, but there were others stalking along the sidelines, sneering and sipping their drinks—eyeing her like cheetahs tracking a gazelle.
The big guy in town—the one all the girls wanted to be with and all the guys wanted to be like—was this dude named Badger. He’d been sitting next to his girl, Tracy, watching the whole thing go down. After Tracy headed off to the ladies’ room, what did brilliant old Badger do? Headed over to Minarette and her entourage to introduce himself. He hung over there, laughed it up, while Minarette flirted, smiled and loved his attention.
Tracy rushed out of the bathroom, didn’t see Badger where she’d last left him, then spotted him with the object of her venom. She mouthed something like, “Oh, hells to the no”, and marched on over.
By now everyone in the general vicinity was watching things go down, you know, enjoying the real-life reality show unfolding in front of them in 3-D.
Minarette looked like she was trying to play it off, shrugged and turned toward a bald, scary, intimidating son of a gun next to her. He wasn’t amused.
Tracy got up in Minarette’s face. To her credit, Minarette just put out her hand and pointed her thumbs toward Captain Intimidation. That’s her guy, it seemed. Buzz off. Or else. Badger tried to pull Tracy away. Tracy, used to being the Queen of Sheba of our world, didn’t back down. Nope.
She swung at Minarette.
Freaking hit her in the side of the head.
For a second we all thought Minarette was going to go down.
Captain Intimidation didn’t budge. Obviously, he knew he didn’t need to.
Minarette recovered. Her chin lowered; her eyes looked like they would catch fire. She took a swing. It was unnaturally swift.
Tracy took Minarette’s hit in the mouth. Before she dropped, her nose exploded like a bloody sprinkler. It was everywhere, spraying all over everyone nearby.
She stumbled back three loping steps, trying real hard to keep her balance.
Didn’t work.
On the ground, Tracy held her face. Somehow, over the obnoxiously loud EDM, we all heard her whimpering. Badger hurried over, trying to comfort her, but she wasn’t having him. Not at first. She eventually relented, letting him lift her by the crux of the arm before leading her out. The folks that got hit with her blood scrambled away.
Minarette went on talking to her entourage without missing another beat. The big guy stared at me because he saw me staring at her. Even with his sunglasses on, I knew he’d caught on to me. I tried to watch them without really watching them. Didn’t work.
Later on we learned Tracy was rewarded with a broken nose and two lost upper teeth for her bravado.
Me? I fell head over heels in love.
Chapter Two
“Stop being such a bastard, Rick.” Jimmy pointed at me from across the shop. He always called me a bastard.
“I’m not a bastard just because I lost both my parents,” I said.
“I know, I know,” he said. “It’s a hard-knock life and all. Little orphan Ricky.”
We both laughed just a little.
“So why am I a bastard today?” I asked.
“This Jeep is why,” he said. “Why do we always have to take the damn recovery stuff all the time? It sucks.”
“They’re easy money. No angry owner. You know the drill. There’s no arguing over an amount. No chasing the check. It’s perfect.”
“And they’re disgusting,” he said. “I’m pulling stuff out of this one I don’t even want to know what it is. Pretty sure there was even a piece of brain in the ashtray. I’m not going to unsee that for a while.”
“Come on. You really think that there was something like that?”
Jimmy nodded. “And that’s just what I found with a quick surface clean. I’ve never seen so much junk and debris in a car. It’s revolting.”
Uncle Dave left me in charge a lot. I grew up working at the garage: Davey’s Service. I knew the business inside and out. A big part of what kept the shop afloat was the city jobs we’d won. We did a lot of the towing, but we also had a lot of the recovery vehicles—you know, from crashes. Real messes. Those were the ones that were untouchable by the other two wrecking places in town. They didn’t want to deal with them—didn’t want to get their pretty little hands dirty. Sometimes the accidents were so bad, no one would be able to ID the victims right away, or the damage was so severe, it’d take time to find the VIN number or some other way to figure out who’d been inside the wreck and who the car ultimately belonged to. Say the car was stolen or being driven by someone’s children—not so fun or easy to figure those out. Sometimes we’d get lucky, and there’d be a business card, or a wallet with next of kin, and a few phone calls would settle it.
That aspect of the job was often gruesome. Now, you may be thinking that what we were doing was really the job of the cops, right? Very true. We worked closely with the Whistleville police and emergency responders, of course. They’d grab the crash victims first, get to the poor bastards, bring them to the hospital and get ‘em patched up, if possible. Sometimes. We did our best. The biggest priority was getting the vehicle and debris out of the public’s view as soon as possible—especially if it was gruesome. The worst I’d ever seen was a little VW Bug that’d been driving too fast over a speed bump. There’d been blood and brains all over the roof. The pudgy guy they’d pulled out was still twitching when they put him on the stretcher. I remember him looking over at me. Hang in there, buddy, I’d prayed. You’re going to make it just fine. I thought that even though I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. Plenty of folks made it, after all, and lived normal lives after brain injuries. Some had parts of their brains removed, and things rewired themselves like mini-miracles. Who knows how those lucky chances work? I felt bad for the guy, and I really hoped he’d be all right, but often we never found out what happened after the first night the accidents occurred.
Once we had the vehicle at the shop, we didn’t hear much. Often, the adjuster wo
uld simply take our word for it that a vehicle was totaled, and we’d just have the damned things towed off to Joy’s junkyard. We’d get a few hundred bucks, and it’d be out of our hair.
Every once in a while, though, things could get complicated, like when we had to use a tow chain to pull a half-submerged Jeep out of the Whistleville River. There’d been no bodies and seemingly no trace of who’d driven the vehicle. There had been, however, several eyewitness reports saying they’d seen the Jeep, filled with kids, aim for the guardrails, speed up and drive right over the side, plunging a few hundred feet down into the December-cold water.
* * * * *
“All we have to do is a basic sweep,” I said to Jimmy. “Don’t go crazy.”
Jimmy said, “Makes no sense, though.”
He ran his left hand through his blond beard, which he almost always did when he was trying to figure something out. “Why is there blood and stuff all over the Jeep if they just went over the side? The bodies weren’t with the vehicle. Don’t the cops want to see this? Get samples?”
“Maybe they got hurt in the crash—you know, when they hit the water. There’d still be blood if that were the case. And maybe the cops got enough samples at the scene. Did you see them take any?”
“No,” he said. “But you’re right; they can be quick. Just doesn’t make sense that they’d want to ship this away before they figure out what happened, or who it happened to.”
“Maybe they were injured but were able to free themselves once they hit the water.”
“Could be,” he said. “No one’s found them, though, have they?”
“Nah,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“Weird.”
“Totally.”
We worked to clean up the Jeep. Mostly what I saw was mud. Neither of us found a wallet or any kind of identification. The only thing I found that was interesting was a CD. I had to use a piece of tape and a flat ruler to get it out of the player. It was something from Stan Getz. Hardcore jazz. “I thought these were young kids,” I said. “Why would they be listening to this and not EDM or something current?”
“And it’s a CD,” Jimmy said. “Who uses CDs anymore? It’s all on the phone now.”
“Right. Exactly.”
We wrapped things up by taking a bunch of digital pictures of the wreck. We covered all the angles. For the Jeep, we also captured the crushed tires, front hood and engine block. “Yup. This one’s a total,” I said. “Pretty sure Uncle Dave would back me up on that.”
“Easy.”
The phone rang. Officer Ventia. He said the one thing I always dreaded. “We’re going to need to hold the vehicle, Rick. We found something. The car’s considered evidence.”
When I went into the bay to let Jimmy know, he let out an enthusiastic “I knew it” and threw his hands up. “I just had a bad feeling about this one.”
“You’re always feeling something,” I said and laughed. For some reason that moment stayed with me. I imagined Jimmy as a little kid—saw the look on his face and the sparkle in his eye. That must have been what he looked like to his mother and father while he was opening his birthday gifts. That, to me, was extremely endearing.
“What can I say?” he said. “I’m a modern, emotional man.”
“Aren’t we all?” I said.
“Well, you’re not,” he said. “You’re like the ultimate man’s man.”
“I listen to Coldplay,” I said. “I get it. Come on. Give me a break.”
“Jesus, man. What does that have to do with anything?” he said. “Coldplay?”
“A lot,” I said, “because I’d really rather be listening to my metal and old school rap, and not this candy-assed, Cristal-name-dropping, modern hip-hop crap.”
“And that’s it right there,” he said. “See?”
“No. I don’t.”
“You said it. You’d rather not listen to a band like Coldplay.”
“I don’t see what the kind of music someone likes has any bearing on how deep their emotions run. For your information, they run quite deep,” I said. “I just don’t want to focus on all that sad shit. Life’s too short.”
“Got it,” he said.
“And now we need to hold this damn Jeep,” I said. “There’s a whole lot of pain-in-the-ass coming our way because of this.”
“Don’t I know it?” he said. “Guess we did all that work on it when we didn’t need to.”
“At least it made some of the day go by faster. It’s not like we’ve got all the bays filled with cars to fix.”
“We don’t have any of the bays filled with anything other than the Jeep, which we’re holding,” he said. “We’re dead right now.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Does that mean I can go home and hang out with Mary?” Jimmy asked.
“Without pay,” I said. “Probably. But you’d need to be on standby, just in case.”
“I can’t take a hit like that,” he said, his smile dropping. “I’ll do whatever to keep busy. Should I sweep the spray booth?”
I shook my head. “Go see Mary. I won’t dock you.”
“Really?”
I pointed to the door. “Before I change my mind, and before the phone rings again.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Wow. Thanks. This means a lot to me.”
“You mean a lot to me and my family. You deserve as much.”
“Thanks,” he said, and he went to the sink, washed up, grabbed his keys and jacket and was out the door.
I watched him pull his Civic out and almost make it out the front gate before my cell phone rang. I was really happy Jimmy wasn’t there to hear what it was. The Jeep was going to be a big problem for us.
* * * * *
Drizzle made everything better. Lots of people moan about the New England weather, but not me. I love rain. I love when it’s cool. I like bad weather. On the flip side, sunny days with blue skies annoy me, probably in the same way rain gets to most everyone else. That’s fine with me. There are fewer people out in the rain. I can sometimes get a sidewalk or a street or a patch of highway all to myself. It invigorates me. I enjoy the moisture on my face. After it’s done, everything’s clean. For me, though, the best part is while it’s happening.
Donovan’s was nearly empty, and for that I was grateful. Mike and Vanessa weren’t there yet, which gave me a chance to get settled and decompress. After I ordered an Anchor Steam from the bar, I searched for a booth right by the front window. They’d be able to see me from the sidewalk, and there’d be a great view for people-watching if anyone interesting happened to stroll by. You never knew, however unlikely that might be on a Tuesday night in Whistleville.
The first sip of beer was like heaven. It cooled my throat and calmed me down. I felt the stress of the day fall away. The gore-filled Jeep. The lack of jobs. That the whole shop was on my shoulders.
My Zen was short-lived. A tap on my shoulder. I heard Mike’s voice before I had a chance to completely turn around. “Bad news,” he said. “It’s just me. Vanessa’s not coming.”
“Shoot,” I said, turning fully around. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “She called in dead, I guess.”
“Damn it,” I said. “I was looking forward to seeing her. I never get to see my damn girlfriend anymore.”
Mike said, “Well, I’m going to go grab a beer.”
Something was off. Sensing he was holding things away from me, I thought about prodding him, but then thought better of it. Wouldn’t be worth it. If Vanessa was cheating on me again, I didn’t want to know. The last time was too much to bear. We’d barely recovered and reunited. Our relationship was chugging along well enough, and I didn’t want to rock the boat, nor did I want word to get back to Vanessa that I was acting the least bit insecure. She tended to recoil against such displays of
weakness.
Once I made my way back to the booth by the window, I found Mike close behind. “I should’ve gotten a second beer,” I said as I sat.
“That’s pretty funny, because you know me: I always think ahead,” he said, just as he put down a pitcher between us. “Next round’s on me.”
“Awesome,” I said. “I’ll get the refill.”
He sat. We drank.
“You still going to play?” he asked.
“Eventually,” I said. “I need to make cash and get ahead. The scene’s so small. Hard to justify that taking priority, you know?”
“Yeah. But we love it.”
“We do. I do,” I said. “Speaking of things we love—what do you think of that new girl, Minarette?”
“Piece of ass,” he said, his voice lower than normal. He took a big pull from his glass.
“Tracy punched her at the Universe last night,” I said. “Then she knocked Tracy out. One of the best things I’ve ever seen. I think Badger crapped his pants.”
Mike looked me over. “Aw, shit,” he said. “You’re in love again, aren’t you?”
I tried to keep my grin hidden. No such luck. “Well…”
“What about Vanessa?” he asked. “You were just mooning over her not being here.”
“I’ve got a big heart,” I said. “Plenty of me to go around, and Vanessa hasn’t exactly been a model girlfriend, let’s be honest. She’s really not giving me what I need.”
“And you think this Minarette girl will?” he asked. “She seems like a party girl. She’s got a huge entourage around her. Same shit, different chick.”
My heart sank. “You’re right.”
“I don’t know, man,” Mike said. “You’re a little young to be settling down with someone anyway. No one our age’s looking for that. We’re all just trying to have fun, you know?”
“Maybe I’m just looking to fill that void from my parents,” I said. “I want a family so bad, you know?”
“I get it,” he said. “You can always have my folks if you want them. You’re welcome to take them off my hands.”
Ghost Heart Page 1
