Gem - No Conspiracy

by Craig Jones

  I suddenly felt a churning in the pit of my stomach as I recalled Bradley’s earlier questions. Somebody did know about us, maybe the whole damn world.

  “What the frick is going on?” I said, trying to keep my vampire blood pressure from blowing a gasket.

  Katrina leaned forward and pushed Bradley out of the way to get a closer look at the screen. “Oh my god,” she squeaked. “Gem! That’s you!”

  “That’s what I saw in the mirror this morning. I was checking my gun, posing a little, okay, I do that sometimes, but somehow someone took my picture.

  “There’s more,” Bradley said, elbowing his way in again. He clicked on my picture, it had my name on it and our motto, ‘No Loose Ends’ emblazoned across the bottom. The picture grew bigger, and a brief description of my life appeared next to it.

  The New York underworld is no place for a lady… but no one told Gem.

  Katrina’s mouth hung agape.

  A sick feeling in my belly spread throughout my body like I’d been shot in the heart with a silver bullet. I glanced down at Bradley. He actually looked a little relieved at having unburdened himself of this nightmare and proved he was not insane.

  He clicked the mouse again. A new document appeared, pages of a book with the same picture of me looking at myself in the mirror. FREE Excerpt. Names appeared on the first page. Copyright by Craig Jones. Edited by Terry Wright. I wondered who the hell these people were.

  Bradley flipped to the next page. A block of text came up. He butted his knuckles on the screen. “Read this.”

  The Deal

  Maloney looked around my room and nodded like he approved of the extravagance surrounding him: the inch-thick carpet with its diamond designs, the half moon flock of the wallpaper, and the antique furniture, polished to a museum quality shine. The two goons he brought with him flanked the door, equally impressed, I could tell by their dropped jaws and roving, wanton eyes. One of them set a briefcase on the floor beside him. Finally Maloney’s eyes found me, and his expression turned from amazement to shock.

  “I didn’t expect you to be—”

  “A vampire?” I asked, feeling the touch of a smile form on my lips.

  “That’s exactly how it began,” I whispered. I would have shouted, but the breath had been sucked from my lungs.

  Katrina pushed Bradley’s hand off the mouse and began scanning ahead.

  I shouted, “Katrina, no, please don’t!”

  But she found it; she read the part where Maloney first asked me to kill her. Of course I’d said no, but then he forced me to change my mind by threatening to kill Angel. A four-year-old little girl, damnit, Maloney had no couth whatsoever.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that, Katrina.”

  Her chest hitched, and then she turned and sprinted from the room. I could hear her vomiting in the toilet.

  “So you knew nothing about this biographer?” Bradley asked. “Craig Jones?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “These two guys could take us all down, Gem. They know everything. What I’ve shown you is just the tip of iceberg. They know about Clayton, the botched job at the park, the dead woman, everything.”

  Katrina stepped back into the room. “Sorry about that. It’s not every day you read about someone plotting your murder.”

  I stroked her arm gently and glared at Bradley. “Who the hell is this Jones guy, anyway?”

  “Jones is from Wales,” Bradley said, reading from a bio next to a photo of a scruffy-haired hunk.

  “Where’s that?” Katrina asked.

  “Britain,” I said.

  “Some kind of tennis pro turned blabbermouth,” he added.

  “He’s going on my hit list,” I said, my fangs itching for his jugular.

  “Then who is Terry Wright?”

  “He’s the publisher,” Bradley replied. “It’s his Web site. He’s the ringleader.”

  “So he’s pulling the strings?” I suggested.

  “It’s more like he’s the Yoda to Jones’ Luke Skywalker,” Katrina offered.

  Both Bradley and I looked at her, confused by her reference.

  “Jones gets the scoop on us, then Wright hones the skills, trains him. They’re working together.”

  “It’s a conspiracy,” Bradley said.

  “So where’s Wright?” I asked Bradley.

  He brought up a photo of a well dressed man, hair going silver at the temples, smart-looking old guy. “Denver, Colorado.”

  I turned to Katrina. “Do you want to take a trip to the Rocky Mountains with me?”

  “Oh. My. God,” she said. “Are you going to kill Terry Wright?”

  “He’s on the top of my hit list, honey.”

  “Girls, girls,” Bradley shouted. “He’s probably heavily armed, heavily guarded.”

  I smiled “He won’t even hear us coming.”