There are still so many questions I have for her. The more I think I know her, the more I realize I don’t.
“Jackson, be a dear and fetch me some water while I have a moment alone with our guest.” She asked.
“Sure.”
Jackson was walking off toward the kitchen when it struck him. She doesn’t want me to witness her feeding. He stopped and turned around, surprised to find himself blocked by one of Moselle’s guards.
“She said to get water.”
“I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
“The mistress will be fine now.”
“But I want to—”
“Go, she does not want you here now.”
Jackson took a few more steps and then looked over his shoulder. All he could see, past the guard, was a strange hazy purple glow and Moselle’s hand on the boy’s face.
Is that how it works? Is her hand like some sort of alien facehugger? The thought chilled him. Does something come out of her hand and go down the person’s throat? Oh God…she did that to me.
Jackson stepped to the right and then turned to the left—a move that allowed him to circumvent the guard.
“Get back here!” the guard commanded.
He dashed back to Moselle in time to see a burst of yellow light, like a camera flash, and watch the pizza boy collapse like a rag doll.
“Fuck! Is he dead?” he said to Moselle’s back, as she shivered from head to toe.
“No…” she answered, but her voice lacked confidence.
“Are you sure?” Jackson asked as he stepped closer.
“I needed more than normal, but I feel much better. Any longer—any less and I would have sustained some horrible scarring,” she said as she ran her hands down her arms. “You wouldn’t want this skin covered in marks would you, my love?”
Jackson knelt by the boy and pressed his fingers to his neck in search of a pulse. “I can’t feel anything.”
He looked up at Moselle; she appeared refreshed, like she had spent the day at the spa. “I think he’s dead, Moss.”
“Check his pulse.”
“I am.”
“Are you doing it correctly?”
“I think so.”
Moselle’s guards stepped in. They lifted the pizza boy off the floor, his body totally limp.
“What are you doing? What are they doing?”
“Their job,” she answered.
“Moselle?”
“If his soul has departed, Jackson, they will take care of the body,” she replied. “Worry not.”
“Worry not? I ordered that pizza. You killed him. They’re going to come looking for him. For me.”
“No they are not,” Moselle answered flatly. “My guards will take care of it.”
“Damn it, Moselle, you said you weren’t going to kill him. He was—”
“Jackson,” she interrupted. “I will tell you what my father told me long ago. The large fish feeds on the small fish which has feed on the even smaller fish. In time, the fishermen will catch that large fish.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you think happens next?”
Jackson shook his head.
“The large fish is prepared with butter and lemon and eaten by a prosperous man.”
Jackson ran his hand down his face and groaned. “That guy was eighteen or nineteen at most. A kid, Moselle, not a fucking fish.”
“There is a circle of life that all must be aware of.” Her voice rose as she spoke. “You eat meat, you understand?”
“Yeah, I watch the Discovery Channel, Moss. I’m aware of—”
“So then you understand.”
“Oh, I think I do.” Jackson folded his arms. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re the apex predator here, Moselle?” he asked sarcastically.
“I’m telling you that in this instance, I am the top of the food chain.”
“Unbelievable.”
She crossed her arms just like his and said, “This is who I am.”
“I guess it is.”
“And this is who you fell in love with, Jackson.”
He gazed down the hall the two guards had taken the body down. He couldn’t shake the feeling the kid had something to tell him. “You’re right,” he said when he looked at her again.
“Very well.” She straightened her robe. “I’m glad we sorted this out. Now, I need to get dressed so we can—”
“No, Moselle.”
“No?”
“I have to go. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” She sounded shocked. “Where are you going?”
“Home.” It occurred to him that he wanted to go somewhere else too. “I’ll swing by Sabrina’s apartment in the morning…or what’s left of it. Just in case she’s hanging around there.”
“I can go—”
“No. You stay here. You…rest.” Jackson set his mind on the collection of cars in her garage. “I’m going, and I’m taking one of your cars.”
I Spy with My Slime’s Eye
Cade pumped his fists. He had imagined himself punching a tree, its bark reduced to splinters, the sap coating his knuckles. He sat up, slouched back, and then sat up again. If the truck’s engine had not died, they would have been in Los Angeles already. It added another day and a half, and Joe’s nonstop yammering had made the trip feel even longer than that. Cade had to remind himself to focus on the positive: at least they were back on the road now.
“So we’ve played the license plate game and I spy,” Joe said from Leanne’s lap where he sat in the guise of a Chihuahua. “Now what do you guys want to play?”
“How about we play make a wish,” Natalia said as she pinched Joe’s back leg. “Nico grab his other leg and we pull.”
“Hey, yo, I’m just trying to keep things stimulating here.”
“Toss out window game. Very stimulating,” Nico said flatly.
“How about I toss you out the window?” Joe replied.
“You can try,” Cade and Nicodemus said together.
A moment of silence passed, where Cade watched Leanne tenderly stroke Joe as if he were a real dog. He wondered if telling her he wasn’t, for the tenth or eleventh time, would even matter.
“Oh, how about this one?” Joe started up again. “What’s your favorite book about your people?”
“About vampires?” Leanne asked.
“Yeah, about vampires,” Joe responded. “Okay, let me guess first. You, sugar belle, you like the Vampire Diaries. Am I right? Am I right?”
Leanne laughed. “I do. I do.”
“Ha!” He chuckled. “And Le Femme Nikita over here—”
“Natalia.”
“Nikita, Natalia…whatever,” Joe barked. “You…you like the them dark. Not Queen of the Damned, not Salem’s Lot…something like 30 Days of Night. It’s a graphic novel, but I guess it counts.”
“You are wrong. I have no time for books,” Natalia stated smugly. “I much prefer to watch television.”
“You would like 30 Days of Night, Natalia.” Cade nodded. “Joe’s right. Very dark and moody. Maybe we can find you a copy of it when we’re in town. Or you could always download the movie.”
“Thanks, pally.” He pointed his paw at Cade. “So I’m two for two and you…you’re easy. I already know you like the classics. Good ole’ Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
“It’s true.” Cade smiled briefly. “Nothing beats the classics.”
Joe turned around twice in Leanne’s lap before he sat back down. “Big guy over there, I doubt he can read.”
“I can read.”
“Well, unless you’re an Anne Rice fan, I’m tapped.”
“Nochnoy Dozor by Sergei Vasilievich Lukyanenko,” Nicodemus said. “First book I read in long time. Just before slumber. Still in pocket.” He patted his coat.
“Good for you,” Joe said.
“You’re gonna have to let me read that someday, Nico.”
Nicodemus nodded to Cade. “We trad
e.”
Joe barked until all attention was back on him. “Now—now guess mine.”
“You have a favorite vampire novel?” Leanne asked.
“No, silly, my favorite slime novel.”
“The Blob?” Nico guessed.
“That’s not a book,” Joe sighed. “Or was it? Anyway, that’s just insulting. I’m talking about something written by Tainted for Tainted.”
“So you’re saying something by R. L. Slime,” Cade supposed.
“You guessed it, pal. And I appreciate you calling him by his real name and not his pen name.”
Cade turned back around in his seat.
“R.L. Stine? The children’s author? I’ve read some of his books. I love them,” Leanne gushed. “Dunyasha gave me a set as a gift. I think there was a slime one…”
“The Blob that Ate Everyone,” Joe stated. “Great title. Great story. Great fun!”
Cade laughed. “I bet all the slime mommies read that to all their little slime-lings.”
“Hey, don’t you talk about my mother, bloodsucker!”
“Cade, you’re making your dog all mad, and now we’re going to have to put him down.” Natalia made a gun shape with her hand and fired it off at Joe. “Old Yeller-slime, style. Pow.”
“You guys, no respect. All youse: vampires, fairies, werewolves, elves, gnomes, humans—none of ya give us an ounce of respect and you know what I have to say to that?”
Cade rubbed his eyes and looked at Nicodemus, who had glanced in his direction. He did not have to ask to know what Nico was thinking because the same thought was in his head. Throw the slime out the open window. Throw him out like garbage. But Cade was not done with Joe. There’s just something missing. Something all too perfectly coincidental. Joe knows more than he’s telling and I aim to find out what.
“Ew, gross!” Leanne shouted.
Cade smelled the urine before he turned around. Joe was pissing on the back of Cade’s seat, a big smile across his canine lips.
“You like that, buddy boy?”
“Nico, pull over. We all need a break,” Cade said. “Before someone gets broken.”
“Da.”
Cade pointed at a sign down the dark road. “Rest stop in ten miles.”
Joe jumped up and down, from the floor to the seat between Leanne and Natalia. “You vampires, any of you ever even had a true friend, you know, someone outside your own kind?”
“Joe, we’ve all heard enough of your yipping,” Cade warned, trying to remain calm.
“’Cause, I’m right, pal.”
Cade sighed. “Right about what?”
“Vampires are damn racists.”
He shook his head. “Sabrina and—”
“Yeah, yeah, I knew you’d go there. That fairy fuck buddy of yours don’t count. Any of you? Come on. You got any friends?” Joe continued. “Just name me some that aren’t vampires.”
“I knew a harpy in Prague,” Natalia said.
“Were you friends?”
When Natalia paused, Joe barked but it sounded a lot like a laugh. “Exactly. How about you, Miss Sunshine?”
“Me?” Leanne asked. “Heavens no. I’ve always kept to myself. Right, Cade?”
“Look, Joe.” Cade’s voice rose. “We are taught not get involved with others—”
“But not you, right?”
“What?”
“Hey, big guy, you have any otherworldly friends other than yours truly?”
Nicodemus gazed back and shook his head.
“I know Gayte,” Natalia said, her voice more chipper.
“Who’s dat?”
Cade smiled. The slime was wrong about him. “Gayte is an Ancient Earth Spirit and he and I are close friends. He used to live under our caves.”
Natalia poked Joe in the side. “He’s my friend too.”
“Oh, I know Gayte too,” Leanne added. “I met him months before the slumber.”
“An Ancient?” Joe cocked his tiny dog head. “You guys are joking, right?”
“Not at all,” Cade answered.
“Okay, say I believe you. It still don’t disprove what I’m saying.”
“I’m also friends with Moselle.” Cade pointed to his phone. “The woman who just called. I’ve known her for a while. She’s Cursed Undead.”
“Fine. Fine. One vampire has some friends. But the rest of you…” Joe paused. “What about humans?”
Cade turned to look at Joe again; he had greatly tired of the slime’s argument and hoped the look he gave him might shut him up. Sadly, it did not.
“I have had many human friends, all talented members of the ballet,” Natalia stated proudly. “We danced and shared drinks. I even slept with some of them.”
Leanne fanned herself. “I had friends back during the war, other nurses.”
“Which war?” Joe asked Leanne.
“Take your pick,” she answered. “Civil War. World War I. World War II. I followed Cade until—”
“What are you getting at now, Joe?” Cade interrupted.
“Something I always wondered about, is all.” He jumped back into Leanne’s lap. “It just don’t make sense. You ever known a farmer who made a pig his pet before slaughtering it?”
“No.”
“So why would a vampire make friends with a human when humans are their food source?”
“We do what we must,” Natalia said. “I’ve never fed on other dancers or musicians in the ballet.”
“And you?” Joe pointed his nose at Leanne who shook her head. “Ever eat a nurse?”
“Joe, you’re forgetting something,” Cade interrupted.
“No, Cade, I’m not. I was born a slime, been a slime, will always be a slime. I know you all were human once. But I damn well bet you forget that sometimes.”
Cade finally got what Joe was saying. And he was right; vampires often forget they were once human. From sire to childe, the transformation was often described as walking through a door that closes and locks behind you; with no way back. While the memories of life were fresh, the reality of being human was not.
Everything alive is a source of food in our eyes. That alone requires us vampires to detach from the whole of humanity. We’re not racist, Joe, Cade thought. We’re prideful…prideful and afraid.
Nicodemus pointed at the mile marker. “Six miles.”
“Speed up some, Nico,” Cade said as he glanced back at Joe. “I could really use a moment alone.”
“Yo, me too. Me too.”
Death Proof
Jackson pulled the Chevy Nova SS to a street barricade the police had in place three blocks from where Sabrina’s high-rise apartment building had stood.
He had finally shaken the nagging sensation that he had to go straight home to his apartment; nothing waited for him there.
After a deep breath, he stepped out of the car, moved the barricade to the side, and then got back in.
Why am I doing this? I should just go back. This is stupid. This is how people get hurt, or worse…
He drove around the barricade and down the dark city block. The area had been fully evacuated; the Army Corp of Engineers feared the area around the sinkhole was unstable and would collapse under the weight of the larger standing buildings.
He drove slowly, peering up at the buildings. The world around him was so still, and a sort of smog defused the moonlight, giving everything an eerie feeling.
Jackson imagined all sorts of scum were hiding about: looters, thieves, gang members…monsters. But it was his concern that Sabrina would return to the site of her home in search of her belongings that scared him the most. She’d be easy prey out here…especially without Cade to protect her…or the National Guard…where are they?
Jackson turned off the headlights and coasted a few seconds before he pulled the car over. A giant crack in the pavement ran down the street toward him and branched out in all directions. It was a sobering sight.
Jackson had never been to Sabrina’s penthouse before, but he’d t
aken one of Moselle’s GPS units, and it had the address stored inside. He held it up over his head, outside the car, until it squawked. “In one thousand feet, turn left.”
“I can do that.”
He walked forward, wishing he had one of Cade’s guns, a baseball bat, or a hockey stick at least. It was so dark, he could barely see more than a car’s length ahead. He turned on his cell’s flashlight function, but it was hardly enough light to see the ground.
Jackson looked down at the street—it shimmered. Is that…oil? He knelt and ran his finger over the glistening substance and smeared his fingers together; it was oil.
Confused, Jackson walked on carefully. The smog seemed to get thicker and made it harder to breathe the closer he got to Sabrina’s, causing him to occasionally cough.
“In five hundred feet, turn left.”
The GPS’s voice startled him so badly, he nearly fumbled the thing. “Okay. Okay. Whoa,” he said as he lowered the volume.
Jackson turned down the next street and was greeted by a view that both stunned and amazed him. In the darkness, it looked like the entire city block was missing—gone in a giant murky hole in the ground.
Holy shit. This is something from a Michael Bay movie. Like a fucking meteor crashed here.
“You will arrive at your destination—”
Jackson paused the GPS before it could finish. He was not getting much closer than this.
The scent of rotten eggs overwhelmed him, and he had to put his hand over his face and cough. Was it coming from the hole, he wondered, or someplace else? The odor was so powerful, he wanted to gag. This was a mistake, he thought.
Jackson tried to imagine what the street block had looked like before. He had driven down this road before, but nothing looked familiar. Everything was damaged; streets signs were missing, and even the road—what was left of it—was so badly cracked, it looked more like a war-torn third-world country.
Jackson fanned his face and tried to take a full breath of air.
“Sabrina wouldn’t be here.”
As he turned, he could’ve sworn he saw a shadow move—something behind him. Something tall. “Hello?”
There was no response and that did not comfort him one bit. On the ground near his feet was a long bent piece of metal, flat on one side and rounded on the other. Jackson picked it up waved it around some.
Two Polluted Black-Heart Romances Page 17
