Vampires She Wrote

by Eve Paludan

  “I need all that to happen, but without the trauma part.”

  “Undeath doesn’t work that way. All of our lessons are hard.”

  I knew she was right. “Thanks, Sam. Good night.”

  “It’s good morning.”

  “Come for a free drink next week.”

  “You’re on.”

  Chapter 26

  Alone now, I stood and headed to the crash room in the back of my business. I plugged in my phone and set my alarm for sunset. I’d just gotten my pillows arranged the way I liked them when my phone rang.

  Kingsley’s name and number lit up the display.

  I answered. “What’s up, Kingsley?”

  “Thank God you answered.”

  “That sounds bad.”

  “It’s worse than bad. I need a place to stash a—there’s no other way to say it—a body.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?”

  “I wish. One of my legal clients, a werewolf, had a corpse dumped on his doorstep. I need a place to hide it for a day or two. Hopefully, not longer than three days.”

  “Oh, good grief.” I shook my head. “Is your client’s story really true?”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s innocent.”

  “You always say that.”

  “The way he described things has frame-up written all over it.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, it’s a mess, literally and metaphorically. Do you have some refrigerator space?”

  “My blood club has a refrigerated walk-in cooler, but can’t you stash it at your own house?”

  “I only have freezer space and that won’t do. Plus, I’m his lawyer. If the cops get close, I don’t want to be disbarred and slammed into prison for concealing evidence.”

  “Right. Who’s the corpse?”

  “My client’s ex-wife.”

  “Sounds like a defense lawyer’s worst-case scenario.”

  “Tell me about it. If I was working for the prosecution, I would already be congratulating myself for winning the case.”

  “Why do you need me to sit on the corpse for a few days?”

  “I need to do some investigation before the case blows wide open.”

  “Fine, bring it to my club.”

  “Thanks. You’re a great friend.”

  I chuckled. “They say there are three kinds of friends in this world. One who will kill for you and one who will help you hide the body.”

  “What’s the third kind of friend?”

  “One who will kill for you and help you hide the body.”

  “I didn’t ask you to kill for me,” Kingsley protested.

  “Not yet. But I get the feeling that we’ll be tiptoeing around some criminals.”

  “Yup, a blackmailer and a murderer or maybe two.”

  “Want me to assist you on this case?”

  “Please. I was kind of afraid to ask. You’ve just been through a lot.”

  “I’m up for it, bro. I need a greater purpose to get my mind off my own sorry ass.”

  “Thanks. Would you be daunted by bloodletting before it’s all over?” Kingsley asked.

  “Sounds like fun. I’ll be the cleanup guy on aisle two with his lips to the bloody floor.”

  Kingsley chuckled. “I like carrion, myself. The riper, the better.”

  “Kingsley, why don’t you just eat your client’s evidence?”

  “Very funny. Actually, if he’s telling the truth and he really isn’t the murderer, I might need that forensic evidence from the body to clear him if any charges do come down.”

  “Thinking ahead, I see.”

  “Always.”

  “That’s an interesting Catch-22 situation,” I said. “Hey, I’m at the blood club right now, about to get some shuteye in my crash room until sunset. I keep vampire’s hours, remember?”

  “Of course. I have a related problem.”

  “What?”

  “Tonight’s the full moon.”

  “It’s that time of month again? Your werewolf period?”

  “It’s not a ‘period.’”

  I smirked. “The hell it’s not.”

  “Focus, Fang. I have about a two-hour window between sunset and moonrise. That means I would have to come over tonight when you awaken, dump a body in your club’s walk-in refrigerator in Echo Park and get back to my house in Yorba Linda in time for my butler, Franklin, to lock me up in the basement before I get even hairier and start craving a carrion happy meal.”

  I laughed.

  “It’s not funny, Fang. It’s my werewolf life. Every month.”

  “Sorry I mocked you. We’ll figure out the timing. Should we call Sam?”

  “No!” Kingsley replied sharply.

  “Why not?”

  “I have a sick feeling that she’s going to be working this case as a consultant.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Right now, she might just be getting a call from the Palm Springs PD about a missing person case. She might not know it’s a murder. Yet.”

  “So, she’s for the prosecution and you’re for the defense?”

  “It’s the story of my life. I don’t plan it that way. It just happens. I swear, I won’t ask for a favor again for a long time.”

  “You don’t have to beg. Just bring the corpse now and let yourself in the back door. Don’t wake me because vampires are jerks when someone wakes them in the daytime.”

  Kingsley laughed deeply. “I won’t.”

  “After you stash the body in the walk-in fridge, let yourself out quietly and lock the door behind you. I’m texting you the alarm code for the service entrance.”

  When he got the text, he said, “Got it! Thanks.”

  After we hung up, I settled in for my day sleep. My heart was still hurting over the loss of Justine, but Sam and Kingsley were the not-so-secret tag team that kept me from descending into an abyss of full-on self-pity. I knew they were constantly contacting me and hanging out with me so I wouldn’t turn into a pathetic recluse.

  I was restless. Typically, I slept like the dead during the day, but this morning, I tossed and turned for quite a while. Just before I was about to fall asleep, a text came from Kingsley: The eagle has landed. Locking up now.

  I finally relaxed and texted back: Now, can I please sleep the sleep of the undead?

  He texted back: Sweet dreams.

  I would have loved to have a sweet dream right now...one with Justine in it.

  I was just getting ready to nod off for the day when my phone rang again. I looked at the display and the call was from a restricted number.

  I sat bolt upright and answered the call. “Who is this?”

  A gravelly deep voice said, “Hello, Fang. This is Genghis Khan.”

  Chapter 27

  “What do you want?” I blurted.

  “It’s what you want.”

  “You have nothing I want.”

  “I’ve got your pretty little girlfriend and her equally pretty little twin sister. And I’m going to kill them. Slowly.”

  “Don’t hurt them!”

  “After what you and Dracula and Justine did, why shouldn’t I make these women my next meal?”

  “Nooo!”

  Khan’s voice held back a barely controlled fury. “You killed the best of my men and released my female gladiators. You decimated my army and dismantled my pay-per-view video business. You caused me pain. Now, listen carefully to their pain.”

  I heard a smack on flesh and then a feminine cry of pain. And then, weeping.

  “Stop hitting them!” I shouted.

  “Only you can end their torment.”

  “Tell me how.”

  “You have something I want, Fang. Something of mine.”

  “I took nothing from the spoils of our battle in Koreatown. Not a trophy head. Not even one silver weapon. I didn’t drink one drop of enemy blood.”

  “No, you didn’t. Why not?”

  “I don’t drink the blood of my enemies. It’s tainted with evil.”
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  “You purposely denied yourself a drink of power?”

  “Yes.”

  “By now, you could have drunk the blood of so many fallen vampires and reaped their combined power. How foolish you are, Fang.”

  “I’m not a fan of stolen power. It’s bitter triumph.”

  “Power seized from the blood of the vanquished is always bitter. But you get used to the taste and the aftereffects. Or you can die, weak but noble. It was your choice and you’ve chosen poorly.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Before our battle in that basement, you robbed me.”

  I wracked my brain. “What are you talking about?”

  “The rings. Four ancient rings of unspeakable power? I want them back. Now!”

  The four rings I’d stolen off the two vampires in their home invasion of my Malibu place!

  I wasn’t even going to try to lie because I knew he would take it out on the women. “When I bring the rings, you will release the mortal women to me, unharmed!”

  “I didn’t say I would do that. This isn’t a prisoner exchange. I won’t fall for that ruse again from you or Dracula. That trick only works once and you’ve played that card. Bring me the rings, Fang. Now!”

  I received his text with an address in Playa del Rey and put it in my Google Map app.

  “Let me talk to Justine!” I shouted.

  “You’re in no position to demand anything,” he replied, but he handed her the phone.

  She was crying so hard that I could hardly understand her. In fact, it didn’t sound like her at all. I could have been talking to Celine, but I didn’t let on.

  “Are you all right, sweetheart?” I asked, as if it was Justine.

  “No. Khan is freaking out about some rings he says you took. He’s got some insane obsession with them. I don’t understand what they do.”

  “I’ll bring him the rings as fast as I can and get you both released.”

  “Fang, he’s going to kill you after you give him the rings. He’s hoping you’ll show up with Dracula so he can kill him, too.”

  “Shut up, you little fool!” Khan took the phone away.

  “How did you know I had the rings?”

  “I have the ability to track every one of my creations, whether dead or undead. When we recovered my assassins’ bodies from the ocean trench, their hands were wrapped in plastic, but the rings were missing.”

  That’s because they’re in my safe in Malibu.

  “I want to speak to them. I want to make sure they’re both alive.”

  “For now, they are.” There was the sound of flesh being smacked and a cry from each woman.

  “Stop that, you son of a bitch.”

  “You dare to insult the mother of Genghis Khan? If you do it again, your true love gets the blade instead of my fist.”

  My mouth went dry. “Stop hurting them! I’ve got your evil rings. And I’ll come there and shove them inside you, where the sun doesn’t shine.”

  “They work that way, too,” Khan said wryly. “Bring the rings. All four of them. No tricks this time, Fang.”

  “And you’ll release them unharmed,” I repeated.

  “You misunderstand. You’re showing up for your execution, Fang. Yours and theirs. It’s too bad Justine revealed my plan to you and told you not to bring Dracula. That would have been too much to hope for, to kill two birds with one stone. But at least you’ll get to die with your true love.”

  “Leave her alone. And her sister, too!”

  “The rings. Bring them. I texted you the address.”

  “I have to get them from where I hid them and drive to Playa del Rey. But I’ll come as quickly as—”

  Khan hung up.

  Furious, I almost threw my phone across the room when it rang again.

  It was from the restricted number again.

  I answered it. “I said I’m coming! Don’t do anything to them!”

  Khan laughed diabolically and it chilled me down my spine.

  Celine—or was it Justine?—was crying softly in the background. I could also hear the sound of some electronic device making a high-pitched sound as it charged and then there was a snap and a cry of pain.

  “They tased her! Don’t come, Fang. It’s a set-up! He’ll kill you when you hand over the rings.”

  When I heard him hit her again, I almost came out of my skin. “You’re going to die, Khan.”

  The gravelly voice spoke again. “Not before you do. Oh, I just looked through their phone contacts. I only called back to tell you that if you bring Samantha Moon with you to fight me, we’ll take her kids from the house in Fullerton. And kill them.”

  Jesus. “Leave Sam out of this. This has nothing to do with her or her kids.”

  “Samantha Moon is trespassing on my turf, too, but tonight is not her night to die. I’ll get her, too, eventually. When you won’t be there to save her.”

  “What am I going to do about sunlight? It’s going to be daylight before I can get there.”

  “That’s your problem,” Khan said. There was maniacal laughter and then, he hung up.

  I tried calling back, but it went directly to voicemail. I left one: “I’m coming as soon as I can. With the rings.”

  I texted Sam several times, without waiting for a reply. I told her to get herself and the kids to a safe place, and why. I told her not to come or help me, just to protect herself and her kids. I forwarded the same text messages to Kingsley, turned off my phone and threw it in a backpack, along with my phone charger, some clothes and of course, a packet of frozen blood.

  I drove like a madman to my house in Malibu and made it just before the rosy peek of dawn.

  I was still out of silver bullets because I hadn’t cast any more since Justine had used them all during the home invasion that had started all of this. So, I ran to the bedroom to look for the silver daggers that belonged to Justine. I hadn’t seen those since the night of the invasion. I wracked my brain and on a whim, I looked between the mattress and box spring on Justine’s side of the bed. And there they were in their scabbards. God bless my deadly vampire girlfriend. Her silver daggers went right into my backpack. Daggers that she could have easily used on me when she was under a compulsion. But she hadn’t.

  And now, the rings. I hoped and prayed that one of those rings would allow me to go out into the sunshine.

  I opened my wall safe to get them and put all four of them on the dining room table. First, I put on a ring that had a carving of a radiating sun on it. I gritted my teeth and stuck my arm through the curtains to let the sun shine on it. I felt nothing but comfortable warmth. I opened the drapes and stood fully in the sunlight without any ill effects whatsoever. No wonder Khan wanted this ring returned.

  I thought the other ring might let me eat regular food and not need to drink blood. I knew that Sam had a ring that did that. But I couldn’t have been more wrong about the powers of ring number two…

  I put on the ring that looked like it had a mesmerizing bird’s eye cut from a ruby and set in a gold bezel. I felt an immediate and overwhelming sense of suffocation, even though vampires don’t need to breathe.

  The next thing I knew, I fell.

  I writhed around on the floor, struggling as my skin stretched and my clothes tore from my body.

  As I got bigger and bigger, I tried to scream, but the sound came out as a bird screech.

  I was turning into something with wings. Wings that touched the walls of my living room, knocking down a large framed print of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.”

  I saw my reflection in the hall mirror, which vampires can’t do in their human-like form. I’d turned into a huge black primitive bird with massive, black-and-blue feathered wings—and ruby-red eyes on the sides of my sleek feathered head.

  I looked down in amazement at my silver-taloned feet and realized something: Genghis Khan’s flying army of vampire birds did not naturally possess their flying powers. It was his dirty little secret that their flying
abilities came from these bird’s-eye rings. What must have been lots of rings. That realization, however, did not explain how Justine had flown without a special ring.

  As I was pondering this strange and unexpected piece of intel, I noticed that I was swelling with a blind rage that moved outward from my chest to my extremities. The ring was indeed imbued with evil. I wanted to kill something very badly. I didn’t much care what it was, but I did my best to direct this rage toward Genghis Khan. I filled my mind with his hideous face and focused on the fact that I hated him. Loathed him. And yes, I wanted to disembowel him.

  I grabbed my backpack in my talons and tried out my wings by flapping them. Of course, I promptly banged my head on the vaulted ceiling.

  I screeched in pain and stubbornly flapped my wings even harder. My huge body lifted and I crashed through the kitchen skylight and rose up into the misty morning on a set of feathered wings that could have fit a pterodactyl.

  I flew about halfway to Playa del Rey before my Fang brain told my puny bird brain that I had forgotten two of the evil rings on the table at my house in Malibu.

  But it was too late to turn back now. I kept flying toward my destination as fast as I could. I didn’t want Khan to get impatient and kill Justine and Celine because I’d turned back for the two forgotten rings.

  I tried to plan my action. Timing was everything. My normal method of operation was to be a plotter, a planner. But my mission had just moved to what Justine would have called the pantser mode.

  I was indeed flying by the seat of my pants, with no plan.

  But just in case God was listening to the heart of a vampire who was a murderer, a thief, and a coward, I prayed:

  Let Justine live.

  Chapter 28

  I took to flying as if I’d been born to it.

  All of my life, I’d had flying dreams, even after I’d become a vampire. Now, doing it, for real, I felt like I’d always been meant to soar on great dark wings.

  However, deep inside this bird body was a loathsome evil that tried to take over my Fang brain with tentacles of death and destruction. I knew that it was Khan trying to use his ruthless dark master powers in the ring to try to control me.