Modern Magic
Page 35
“No thanks, Black. And my first name is Detective.” She holstered her gun and reached behind her for a pair of handcuffs.
I snapped at that point. It had been a ridiculous night. I’d gotten handcuffed to a bowling alley chair, had my ass kicked by possessed middle-school girls, chased zombies all over Charlotte, been tossed through a windshield, narrowly avoided being trapped in a magic circle by a coven of witches and I was not about to be handcuffed again, even if it was by the sexiest cop I’d ever seen.
With less concern than usual for the consequences of my actions, I grabbed the cuffs from her, spun her around and snapped them shut on her wrists. With her hands secured behind her back, I tore off a strip of my T-shirt and balled it into a gag.
I turned her back to face me, looked the very angry detective in the face and said, “We are about to get a lot of things straightened out.” With that, I tossed her over my shoulder and started toward Mike’s car.
“Mike,” I hollered back over my shoulder. “Pop the trunk.” He and Greg had started moving about the same time I had, and by the time I got to the car with my kicking bundle of detective, they were close enough to open the trunk. I deposited my cargo, making sure not to drop her head on the jack or tire iron, and tucked her long legs into the trunk.
I leaned down until our faces were inches apart. With fangs on full display, I said, “I’m very sorry you have to ride in the trunk. And I’m very, very sorry about the level of gross going on in said trunk. But you’ve been a real pain in the butt tonight, and we’re going to my place to clear the air. So, I’ll be taking this.”
I removed her pistol from her side, then grabbed her portable radio. “And this is to make sure you behave on the trip. Oh, and I think I’ll take these, too.”
Her backup piece was a nice little .38 strapped to one ankle. I also relieved her of her cell phone and her spare handcuff keys. I slammed the trunk shut and got in the passenger seat. It was nice of Greg to read my mood well enough not to make me call shotgun. He got in the backseat and sat there, eyes wide. I told him tackling Mike was a nice save and then stared ahead.
“Let’s go home, Mike.”
“With her?” he asked.
“Yep. And we should probably not be too concerned about the speed limit or stop lights. The sun’s coming up fast, and I’d rather not be a sausage biscuit by the time we get home.”
Mike drove like a bat out of hell. He parked his car in back of the cottage, where it would be out of view from the road, and I carried our guest. Then Greg and I hauled ass downstairs before we started to smolder.
“Now here’s the deal,” I told the detective when I’d dumped her on the couch. “I’m going to take the gag out. Any screaming and I gag you again. We’ve been through a lot together tonight, and you should know by now that I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to take the handcuffs off, but you can’t have any of your guns back until I decide you’re not going to do anything irritating like shoot me. Ditto your portable and cell phone. And no one will be tracking you by the GPS in those toys, because I took the battery out of both of them. Capiche?”
She nodded and sat there glaring at me, not saying a word even after I took the gag out. I reached around behind her and unfastened the cuffs, and that’s when she made her move. She slammed her forehead into my nose hard enough to blur my vision, and shouldered me to the floor as she got off the couch and tried to bolt for the stairs. I grabbed one ankle and pulled her to the floor, and she spun around and kicked me in the side of the head for my troubles. I let go of her leg and lay there for a second as she scrambled to her feet and got into a fighting stance. I thought she was trying to get away, but she just gave herself enough room to maneuver and turned back to kick my ass.
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but you have messed with the wrong woman, assholes,” she said, keeping an eye on both Greg and I.
Greg held up his hands and said, “I’m not the one doing the messing, Detective. That’s all my partner’s idea.”
I’d regained my feet by this point and mimicked Greg’s hands-up pose. “We really don’t need to do this, Detective. I’m not going to hurt you, and I’m pretty sure you can’t hurt either of us.”
“Wanna bet?” she growled.
I realized in that moment that there is nothing sexier than a woman who can kick your ass. I shook my head, pushing inappropriate thoughts and images to the rear for the moment, and vamped out on her. I put on a burst of speed and picked up the cuffs from the floor behind her, snapped them back onto her wrists and threw her across the room onto the sofa before she’d even seen me move.
She flopped into a sitting position on the couch and stared at me, eyes a little wild. “How did you do that?”
I crossed the room in less time than it took her to blink and said from the arm of the couch beside her “I have a few talents. Now would you like me to explain them to you?”
She nodded silently.
“Are you sure? We can go a couple more rounds if you’d like, but if our little sparring match goes any further, I’m afraid it will get hard on the furniture. Not to mention you.” I hate intimidating women, especially pretty ones, but it had been a long night.
“I think I’m good,” she said.
“Great. I’m going to let you go now. If you attack me again, I’m going to knock the ever-loving crap out of you and hang you by your ankles from the rafters. Do you understand me?”
She nodded, a bit wary, and I reached behind her back to uncuff her again. This time we made it through without any headbutting or other unpleasantness, so I gave her back her handcuffs and keys.
“What are you?” she asked after a minute.
“Do you really want to get to the tough questions this quickly?” I asked. “How about a beer first? Or something stronger? We have a full bar.”
“Of course you do. Beer is good. Light if you have it.”
“Greg, a light beer for the lady. And a bourbon for me, if you don’t mind.”
He fixed the drinks while I kept an eye on our guest. When he delivered the drinks, he plopped down in the room’s one armchair. I got off the arm of the sofa and sat beside Detective Law, who slid as far down the couch as she could and still be sitting. Mike came into the room from where he’d been hiding in the safety of the stairs, grabbed a kitchen chair and pulled it over.
When we were all settled in, I looked over at Detective Law and laid it out for her. “We’re going to take a huge chance with everything we’re telling you tonight. Usually, whenever we get into a jam that we can’t talk our way out of immediately, we mojo the person into forgetting they ever met us. But for some reason we can’t mojo you. We’re going to tell you the whole story, with no BS. And when we’re done, we’ll see how you react. If things go the way I think they will, then we all get to figure out what next to do about all this.”
“All what? You mean the kidnapped girls and the pile of dead people in Marshall Park?”
“Yeah, that’s the beginning of it. There’s a lot more crap going on here, but there are some things you need to understand before we figure out what we’re doing next.”
I finished my drink in one pull and turned back to Detective Law. “We’re vampires.” I waited, but there was no reaction. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well, don’t you have anything to say to that?”
“Look, Jim, I’ve been a detective for the last ten years. This might surprise you, but you’re not the first person I’ve come across that thinks he’s a vampire. I figured that out a while ago. The black clothes, the fake fangs, the nighttime-only business hours. Obviously you’re part of some type of vampire cult or something.”
I sighed and tried again. “You’re missing the point. We’re not pretend vampires, we’re the real deal. We drink blood, we have fangs, we live underground in a cemetery, for crying out loud.”
“Sure, and I bet if I look in your crisper I’ll find bags of blood from some orderly
you bribed at a hospital, right? And you’re fast, but you’re no Superman. I live in the real world, pal. I deal with real monsters every day. Don’t drag me down here and give me some bullshit about things that go bump in the night. I . . .”
Her voice trailed off to nothing as I pulled her pistol out of my jacket pocket, ejected the magazine, and bent the barrel of her service weapon ninety degrees from normal.
“You wanted Superman?” I asked from my new spot across the room. “Was that strong enough for you?” I was suddenly sitting beside her on the couch again. “And how about fast? Will that do for fast?”
I dropped my fangs into place and leaned in very close to her face. “You’re welcome to check and see exactly how real these are if you like, Detective. I could certainly use a snack.”
She shook her head, her mouth opening and closing like a flounder on the deck of a fishing boat, so I leaned back to a more acceptable distance, retracting my fangs as I went. “We keep the fangs tucked away until we need them. They make it hard to talk, and they tend to cut our lips if we leave them out all the time.”
Mike piped up. “Not to mention the name of the game is for them to blend in.”
“We blend as best we can, and, yes, we do indeed bribe a guy at the hospital for our blood supply, but if pressed we can certainly take our meals on the hoof, as it were. Greg pretty much never eats take-out, but every so often I feel the need for a nibble. It reminds me exactly where I stand on the food pyramid—at the absolute top. Now do you believe me?”
She looked from me to Mike and back to me again. She shook herself slightly and refocused on Mike. “But I thought you were a priest? Are you some kind of vampire priest?”
Mike laughed and leaned back in his chair. “I am a priest. A human priest. I’m still very much alive, thank you. Jimmy and Greg and I grew up together, and we’ve been friends for far too long to let a little thing like turning into the living dead get in the way. I trust these boys with my life, and they trust me with their secret.”
She relaxed a little, probably relieved to know that we have a friend that we haven’t eaten. “You’re really vampires? You and the other one?”
“Yep, Greg. My best friend since junior high and now my undead business partner.” I pointed to him and he sketched a rough half bow from where he sat.
“And you really drink blood?”
“Yep.”
“And you really can’t go out in the sunlight?”
“Poof!” I confirmed.
“Holy symbols?”
“Bad juju for us.”
“Stakes?”
“Make us dead as doornails.”
“Decapitation?”
“Ruins our night forever.”
“Garlic?”
“Total myth. I love Italians.”
Law opened and closed her mouth as she realized the distinction I’d just made. I could tell she thought it was funny. Point for me. After a second’s pause, she asked, “Running water?”
“I shower every day, so running water is not an issue.” “Silver?”
“Hurts, but doesn’t kill. I’ve never been shot with a silver bullet, and it’s not an experiment that I’d care to try.”
“How?”
“How what?” I played for time. I figured we’d get to this question eventually. I wasn’t really crazy about the answer, but it was going to come out, and I had promised full disclosure.
“How did you two become vampires?”
“That’s a long story.”
“Well, I have all day. Because I’m not leaving until I’m satisfied you’re not as evil as all the stories make you out to be, and I don’t think you’re going anywhere until sundown.”
“All right, but I’m gonna need another drink.” I went to get more liquor, and a fresh beer for the lady, and settled in to tell her our story.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“We were those kids in the corner of the lunchroom, invisible unless you needed someone to pick on. Mike, Greg and I were a modern-day Three Musketeers, tied together by the absence of athletic ability and a remarkable lack of success with women. We made it through high school with slightly more than the normal burdens of angst, self-loathing and wedgies, and off we went to college. Greg and I went to Clemson together. Mike went off to seminary, and we didn’t see him again until a whole lot of things had changed.”
I looked over at Mike, and he gave me a slight nod. I’d erased some history, especially a big fight the three of us had right before high-school graduation. I’d said some pretty unkind things, including that I never wanted to see him again for the rest of my life. I didn’t. I’m not sure that he’s ever forgiven me for that. I haven’t.”
“Greg got a degree in computer engineering, and I managed to flunk, cut, drop and incomplete my way to a BA in English with a minor in psychology.” I’d had no idea what I wanted to do except drink beer and play video games, but there’s not a degree path in that, so I thought English would be the next best thing.
“One night a few weeks after graduation I met a girl in a bar. Unlike most girls I’d met in college, this one seemed interested. Thanks to my youthful stupidity and tequila, I believed a girl who was Playboy hot actually wanted to come back to our apartment with me. Of course, things probably would have worked out very differently if I had looked a gift horse in her mouth, but that would have ruined the story, wouldn’t it?”
“I brought her back to the apartment I was sharing with Greg, and we got involved. Then we got very involved. And right as I was about to reach the peak of my involvement—”
“I get it” Detective Law interrupted with a slightly pained expression on her face. “Sorry. Anyway, just at that special moment, she bit me. And I’m not talking a love nip. I’m talking a fangs-out, attack the carotid, drain you dry kinda bite. So she drained me, in more ways than one, and left me there, on my couch.”
“That was cold,” Law said.
“Yeah. Stone cold. She left me there, dead and naked from the waist down on my couch, which was how Greg found me a few hours later. And don’t think that hasn’t made for a few awkward moments in the last fifteen years.”
“He found you . . . dead? Alive? Were you a vampire then?”
“I was, and I was hungry. Greg got home a couple of hours after she’d killed me, and found my dead, naked body on the couch in front of the television. He tells me that he freaked out a little, checked me for a pulse, and then went to look for the cordless phone to call the police. But the damage was done. When he touched my neck, something inside me snapped awake. I could feel his pulse through his fingertips, and I could almost hear his blood calling to me. I sat up, conscious but not really in control of myself, and when I saw him on the phone, I snuck up behind him and drained him dry in the middle of the efficiency kitchen in our off-campus apartment.”
That was a vast oversimplification of things, but she didn’t need to know how sweet the blood tasted right from the spring, how amazing and hot and rich it felt as it went down my throat, taking my dead flesh and pouring life into it. It felt like I was forcing his blood down into my desiccated veins, and with every beat of his heart I could feel myself getting stronger, more alive than I had ever been. Everything around me had new color, every sound was crisper, every smell sharper, and the taste was like the most incredible wine and steak and chocolate all rolled into one set of overwhelming sensations.
And as I felt the life drain out of my best friend I didn’t care at all about what I was taking away from him, so focused was I on what I was getting out of the exchange. I could hear his heartbeat slowing in my ears, could feel the pulse in his veins getting weaker and weaker with every minute I stayed latched onto him like a pit bull with a T-bone. And I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I was killing my best friend. I didn’t care that I was drinking the life right from his throat like a comic-book monster. All I cared about was how amazing it felt.
“By the time I drank my fill, Greg was dead. I drained him com
pletely, and kept drinking until there wasn’t a spare drop lurking in his veins. I really freaked out then, and the only reason I lived through the morning was because I felt too awful about what I’d done to leave Greg’s body behind. If I’d run out looking for more food I would have burnt to cinders before I found breakfast.”
“I spent the next few hours alternating between freaking out over being a vampire and freaking out over killing my best friend. Every once in a while I’d freak out over how I was going to tell Greg’s mom. After a few hours of that, I collapsed on the couch and fell asleep. The combination of dying and coming back to life really took it out of me, I guess. When I woke up it was the next night, and Greg was awake, facedown in the fridge with his head in a bucket of fried chicken.”
“Kiss my ass. I was hungry,” Greg said from his chair. He’d sat through the whole story of his death without saying a word. I knew it still bothered him, but didn’t want to try to work group therapy into our confession with the pretty cop-lady.
“I don’t remember this asshole killing me, I just remember waking up and being hungrier than I’d ever been before. So I stuck my face in some leftovers and went to town. That turned out to be a really bad choice, since I was no longer able to process solid food.
“Fortunately, I was in the kitchen, so I was able to make it to the sink before the entire contents of my stomach came up in a spectacular mess. That left me hungrier than ever, and I could smell something coming from the living room, and it smelled good. I went in there to see what was for dinner, and the only thing there was Jimmy.”
I picked up the thread here. “By now I’d guessed a little about what was going on, and I had opened a vein in my wrist for Greg. He proved my theory right, and latched on like his life depended on it. Greg drank from my arm, and when I started to feel my strength lessen a bit, I pulled him off me. It wasn’t easy, but I got him off my arm. A few seconds later, he calmed down, and I explained to him what I thought had happened.”
Greg took over again while I went for another round of drinks. “As far as we can tell, the trait of vampirism is only passed on when the donor is drained completely. If the heart doesn’t stop, the donor does not become a vampire.”