Hex Appeal

by P. N. Elrod

  This place was just sad. How many weddings, christenings and funerals had it seen? All that life past and gone, nothing to show for it but an ugly wreck and pale tombstones for people forgotten by time.

  I’ve been in older cemeteries, scarier ones, ones that closed down the club for Gothic atmosphere, but there’s a special bone-dust creepiness to the ones in Texas. I don’t know if it’s the way the wind hits the lonely tilted markers or the fire ants, but I don’t like them.

  “Should have brought more lights,” I muttered. I scrounged in my backpack for a flashlight but didn’t flick it on, else it would mess up my night vision. It felt good having a hunk of metal in my hand, especially one that doubled as a stun gun. I’d bought it on the Internet. Nifty toy.

  Ellinghaus heard, of course. He could pick up the stirrings of a groggy neo with six feet of earth between. He gave a neutral grunt. “May I suggest a campfire and s’mores?”

  He might have been kidding, it was hard to tell when he wore sunglasses, which was all the time.

  “Maybe later.”

  He grunted again, and I felt less creeped out. He’d reminded me that he had my back. The only danger I was in was from the insect life and my imagination.

  Ellinghaus opened the back doors of the ambulance, checked the mini fridge and snagged a plastic sports bottle that would have his preferred beverage in it. I never asked whether it was animal or human blood, as that’s considered to be a social faux pas in the community. If he wanted me to know, he’d say—if he even thought it was important. For instance, he’d never asked whether the sandwiches I stacked next to his blood supply were turkey or ham. What did it matter?

  He took a deep swig, gave a long, soft sigh, and I pretended not to hear. That was also something I should be used to by now, but it was less cool than his ability to float around or go invisible at will.

  Word had passed down to the bullpen from one of the Company seers that there was to be a return case on this date and at this particular spot in the great state of Texas. That was all she could give, and we’d not gotten a corresponding call from any vamp about registering his or her offspring. Some actively hated the red tape, but their “kids” got registered, like it or not, because they couldn’t hide their rebirth from the seers. I don’t know why some vamps kicked up such a fuss. It’s just paperwork and not like we put microchip trackers under the skin.

  At least I don’t think we do.

  Most flashes of the future that come to seers are not reliable. It’s to do with theoretical physics and how things are constantly in flux because people are constantly in flux. Michio Kaku’s multiple universe stuff is involved, and it all works to effectively neutralize specific predictability. That’s why you don’t find seers winning the lottery. If they could, they would, but they can’t, so they work, same as anyone else. Some still buy tickets, you never know.

  Prediction rules are different for the undead, though. Their passing and return somehow creates a short-term stability point for seers to pick up on with—what else—uncanny accuracy. That’s their story, and they’ve stuck to it for centuries. It’s easier to call it magic than to try explaining the equations to a liberal arts student who flunked algebra. (I’d not lost sleep over that one, having had no use for the subject. We can’t all be academically well-rounded.)

  Anyway, when the word came, my gut gave a strange flutter, and I said I’d take the job. I don’t have psychic gifts in league with seers, but I never ignore that feeling. I wanted to tackle this one even if I didn’t consciously know why.

  Five hours later I was in the ambulance the Company assigned permanently to Ellinghaus, who was on duty that week. The big Type III was his traveling home, and I tried to take it easy for the last mile as we lurched over a bad road, heading for, not unexpectedly, a cemetery next to the remains of a wood-frame church. I pulled up a few yards away, set the brake, and got out. There was an hour of sunlight left. Ellinghaus was still dead—I refused to think about it—leaving me on my own, so I made the most of it.

  It didn’t take more than a minute to find the fresh grave. No effort had been made to tamp down the soil or conceal it, but why bother? No one had been out here for years. I wouldn’t put it past the maker vamp to have picked this isolated spot for no other reason than knowing it would inconvenience a Company employee.

  I got my spell stuff together, nothing much, just sea salt in a five-pound container with a handle and perforations on the lid to make it into a giant shaker. Next, a small ice chest containing cold packs and a sports-drink bottle full of fresh bovine blood, then a change of clothes for whoever had been buried. Not knowing the sex wasn’t a problem, everyone started out with gender-neutral gray sweats. I opted for extra large and put them and some hospital scuffs neatly on the ice chest next to the grave.

  Then it was time to focus and chant, pacing around the site, sprinkling the salt as I went. Three circuits did the trick; gotta love those prime numbers.

  Vamps, being supernaturals, are subject to magical influences to a degree not shared by ordinary day-walking humans. For instance, if I put a holding circle around a regular person, he’d walk right through and not know it was there. But a vampire is held fast, unable to leave until I take it down. It’s a necessary precaution; most new vamps don’t wake up well and need a short adjustment period to get themselves together.

  Ellinghaus, finished with his breakfast or whatever he called it, put the bottle back in the fridge, then rummaged in a vertical storage locker where he kept a number of weapons behind a trick panel. He had the usual peacekeepers that vamps respect: stakes, fully charged Tasers, police-grade stun guns, a hickory baseball bat (no shape-shifting jokes, please), and several types of firearms—including a real machine gun from the 1920s—all with special ammo made from wood, silver, and garlic-smeared lead. One pistol fired tranq darts with enough drugs to stun a charging rhino. Two shots worked for most.

  My favorite, because it wasn’t lethal to humans, meaning I could use it without damaging myself, was a custom-made toxic green plastic pistol that could shoot holy water twenty feet. Some of the really rare Euro-breeds and a few old-school Dracs reacted to a squirt of that as though it were acid. Other breeds were immune, and the Company geeks were still trying to figure out why. For some reason, volunteers for experimentation were hard to find.

  The Company prefers to avoid violence, of course, but if things went very wrong, then Ellinghaus had to be prepared to deal with an organic killing machine every bit as fast, strong, and deadly as himself. He liked having the advantage several times over.

  Not all newborn vamps want to stick around to answer questions, even if their mentors insist; they want to cut loose and see if the hype’s true about their condition. (It is.) But there are rules to follow when you wake to the big change.

  The number one rule for all of us: stay off the human radar.

  It is inviolable.

  If one gets noticed, we all get noticed. So don’t get noticed.

  That’s hard to remember when you’re anxious to prove that you are the coolest apex predator on two legs.

  But really, it’s just not allowed. Break the rule, and you will be staked.

  The greater supernatural community has a zero-tolerance policy for grandstanding idiots. Ellinghaus was in charge of making sure the newbies knew there was policing and strict enforcement.

  Of course, there are plenty who attempt to challenge that. The sense of entitlement some of the Dracs and Euro-breeds have is almost childish, but they get nobbled. It’s that or be killed.

  The nobbling is magical, of course, buried in the registration process and quite painless.

  The rule’s been around (more or less) since Polidori blew the whistle on Lord Ruthven. Back then, if a vamp made a village too hot to plunder, he just hopped a horse or flew his shape-shifted batty ass twenty miles over to find some other place to misbehave.

  No more. The bad old days of rocking mayhem without consequences are gone. Since the
Industrial Revolution, the whole subculture’s gone conservative to survive.

  That’s okay with most because no one wants to end up in an experimental lab with inquisitive types vivisecting former humans down to their DNA. Or staked by fanatics who’ve seen one too many Hammer films—that’s a biggie on every vamp’s learning-experiences-to-avoid list. That sort of thing still happens, along with witch burnings, in third-world countries. I try not to think about it.

  Standard operating procedure is for someone like me to lay a complex restraining spell on new vampires before they know what’s happened. They have to obey the directive of the magic. Spell details are proprietary to the Company, but it works.

  Usually. I’d heard rumors of epic fails, but the real-deal reports were above my pay grade.

  On my initial look around, I found faded tire tracks. I pointed them out to Ellinghaus, and we agreed that whoever had buried the body had gone back up the pockmarked road I’d taken to get here. There was a small hope that the maker-vamp had just split to find shelter for the day, but with the sun long gone, I gave up on that.

  We had an orphan (or a body), and the maker, possibly killer, had a laughably long head start.

  * * *

  “Movement,” said Ellinghaus. He shouldered his baseball bat and returned to the grave. He went still in a way only his kind can when they’re not pretending to breathe and listened.

  Not a body down there. That was something.

  I boosted from the campstool (ow) and dug out my clipboard from the backpack. I was dressed in generic EMT clothes: khaki pants, crisp white shirt, the logo for a medical transportation company on the left pocket that matched the one on the sides of our vehicle. The business was a real one; our recovery/registration division is kept separate.

  It’s protective coloration on the road and intended to reassure new vamps who are understandably traumatized by their resurrection experience. Most initially think they’ve been in an accident, so an ambulance and kindly faces telling them everything’s going to be okay can help settle them down.

  Sometimes, it even works.

  “Female,” he added, his voice tight. “She’s screaming.”

  “I don’t like this part, either. Better give her some space.”

  He backed away, and I moved forward, clipboard in hand for something to hold; I’d have preferred the flashlight in my pocket. My heart rate went up though I couldn’t hear anything of the woman’s struggles below in the dark. I took my cues from Ellinghaus, who looked grim and even flinched.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Something snapped. Must be breaking through the coffin. That might make her a—” He rattled off the Latin name of a Euro-breed that can’t vanish and filter up to the surface like the Dracs or Chicago Specials. They have to dig themselves out.

  I was surprised about the coffin. Some mentors just wrap their neos in a blanket or body bag, bury them shallow, and wait. If this was an orphan, then why bother putting her in a box?

  “She went quiet,” he said.

  Whoever was down there might have gone into shock or heard us. I spoke clearly, addressing the mound of earth. “Hello! Please remain calm.”

  In my own defense, I did not come up with the Company-approved greeting. I’m certain they stole it from some airline’s lame emergency protocols.

  “My name is Marsha, and I’m here to help. Please follow the sound of my voice as best you can. Please remain calm and come to me…” I paused and looked at Ellinghaus, who gave a nod.

  “I think she heard.”

  I kept up the patter, halfway expecting to see a dirt-caked arm thrusting up from the earth. The instinct is to run like hell, but we’re trained to tough it out. My new instinct is to reach forward to help, but that would negate the holding spell, so I hung back, waiting.

  She abruptly appeared, naked and bruised, on top of the grave. Not a Euro-vamp after all, she had figured out how to dematerialize. She’d used up what air had been in her lungs and hadn’t drawn in more; her mouth hung wide in a soundless scream.

  At heart, Ellinghaus was an old-school gentleman and took his hat off, holding it in front of his face to block the view.

  It took a minute to get her attention; I told her my name and that I was there to help her.

  “Who are you?” she husked, breathing in so she could speak.

  I repeated my name and asked for hers.

  “Where am I?” Her voice rose high, and she suddenly realized she was naked and tried to cover herself. She made a terrible, keening sound: raw fear. It would escalate to sheer panic if I didn’t snap her out of it.

  “Hey!” I used my no-nonsense sergeant-major bellow.

  She twitched and went still, staring at me.

  I pointed at the folded sweats atop the cooler. “There are some clothes; put them on.”

  She hesitated.

  “Now!” I roared.

  That made her jump. Ellinghaus, too, a little. You can try a kindly, soothing approach, but in some situations it’s just going to prolong things. Most people respond to a direct order, at least until they pull themselves together enough to start asking questions. When they do, I go from bear to teddy bear.

  “What’s your name?” I asked after she pulled the top on. It hung halfway to her knees. The pants would be too long and big in the waist, but she could roll the legs and hold the rest up until I found a better size.

  “You first,” she snapped.

  Anger was good, much better than panic. We were close enough that I got a clear look at her in the light spill from the back of the ambulance. She was strangely familiar, though I was certain I’d never met her before. It’s that out-of-context recognition where you know the face, just from some other location. I told her my name again and repeated my question.

  “I’m—I’m Kellie Ann Donner. Have I been in an accident?”

  Oh, crap.

  I glanced at Ellinghaus. He put his hat on and took off his sunglasses. He never takes off his sunglasses.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded, tears beginning to tumble. “Who are you people?”

  * * *

  I hate being off the grid. There was no way to let HQ know about the volatile situation we’d gotten into. Not that they’d change procedure, that was set in stone, but at least someone back in the bullpen could pass word up to management so they could start figuring out what to do.

  That flutter in my gut came back. Why me? I wondered. Perhaps I’d had an inkling of this way back in my head, inspired by the news reports.

  A week ago, Kellie Ann Donner, a night clerk at a roadside gas stop in Alabama, had inexplicably walked off her job and vanished. While it is a rage-making and horrible fact that many young women go missing and are never found again, this one caught the public imagination due to the efforts of the franchise owner, who raised holy hell with the media about his missing employee. He insisted she was a bright, responsible girl and posted a half-million-dollar reward for her safe return, no questions asked. The hometowners beat the bushes for her, and hoards of private investigators, pseudo-psychics, reporters, and other helpful crazies wanting a crack at that cash were on the case. It was like the community shark-hunt scene from Jaws—the movie, I’d not read the book.

  CNN and other networks picked up and ran the story, that lady lawyer needled the Alabama authorities nightly on her show for not trying hard enough to find the girl, and the blurry video showing her departure had gotten more than a million hits on YouTube.

  I’d seen it. From a high angle, the camera recorded the store’s door opening, Kellie Ann seemed to speak to someone coming in, only no one was in front of her. For exactly twenty-two seconds she stopped moving, staring at something unseen, then left her spot at the counter and went outside. An exterior security camera caught her walking up to a plain white van, no plates visible, and getting in. Its door seemed to slam shut on its own, and the van drove off. You couldn’t see the make or who was driving.

  Poof, gone.
>
  The store, lights bright on the side of a lonely two-lane, stood empty for an hour until a patrol car pulled up, and the officer, seeking his usual coffee-and-donut break for his shift, radioed in the first report of the mystery.

  The Company was keeping a close eye on this one. We were certain in the bullpen that a rogue vamp was behind it since he wouldn’t show up on camera. The twenty-two seconds of blank staring would be when he’d hypnotized her. She’d be docile, under his complete control, perfect for a living blood bank. But who would be that stupid?

  For a week now, Kellie Ann Donner’s face had been impossible to avoid. Moderately pretty, a birthmark just off the right corner of her mouth, she smiled at America from her high-school prom picture while friends and family put on a brave front and wore yellow ribbons. Bunches of flowers were left before an improvised shrine at the gas station. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of other people went missing that week in America, but this was the one that caught the public imagination—along with that half-million-dollar reward.

  And now she was a vampire.

  The inviolable rule was about to be shot to hell and gone.

  Soon as the Company CEOs got my news—well, there had to be protocols in place. The simplest solution came to me, and I wanted to be wrong and hope they’d not go there. It wasn’t Kellie Ann’s fault. She was a victim. No need to make it worse.

  In the meantime, I was in charge of getting her safely to our HQ in Dallas.

  * * *

  “Yes, Miss Donner, you’ve been in an accident. I’m here to help you.” I held hard to my professional patience.

  Again, she wanted to know who we were, and I told her. Disorientation and short-term memory loss are normal. The latter usually includes how they died. The geeks think it’s a protective mechanism that kicks in because no one wants to remember that sort of thing.