by Rob Cornell
Every set of eyes in the room focused on him. He tried to concentrate on a spot on the carpet, but even with his gaze cast down he could feel each woman’s pull.
And they knew exactly what they were doing to him.
A wet sound drew his gaze up despite his efforts not to look.
The pair on the chaise kissed and explored each other’s body with their hands, until one of them slid her hand between the other’s legs and drew a gasp from her. They both looked at him from the corners of their eyes.
He gritted his teeth and turned away. The swelling in his pants betrayed him. He tucked his hands in his armpits and pretended to study a renaissance era painting on the wall. The painting depicted a trio of naked woman by a pond. Lockman squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on breathing, in through his nose, out through his mouth.
Finally a voice with a Cajun accent spoke from the entrance. “Ah. I see you have met my beautiful ladies.”
Lockman opened his eyes and turned.
Jean LaRue looked like a shorn Santa Claus—round and red-faced, with not a single bit of visible hair. Not even eyebrows or lashes. He wore a deep red tuxedo, full with bowtie and cummerbund. The ruffled shirt under the tux had yellow stains on an otherwise pristine white. The collar made his neck look like bloated sausage.
LaRue smiled, revealing broken yellow teeth. “Would you like a moment with one or two? I can arrange a room for you…on the house, of course.”
“I’m not interested in your nymph bordello.”
LaRue’s gaze dipped to Lockman’s crotch. “Oh, I’d say you’re quite interested.”
“Let’s take this somewhere else.”
The fat Cajun signaled with a pair of fingers and the woman by the door sauntered over. “He’s yours if you want him.”
She smiled and sniffed the air. “I want.”
“Not interested,” Lockman said through clenched teeth.
“You can drain him,” LaRue continued as if he hadn’t heard Lockman. “Share him with the other girls if he’s too much.” He looked Lockman in the eye. “I don’t like threats. Even subtle ones.”
The woman LaRue had summoned came around and put a hand on Lockman’s chest.
His legs and arms tingled as if they’d fallen asleep. A hint of vertigo swayed over him. He grabbed the nymph by the wrist, twisted her hand off of him, then torqued her arm just right.
Her wrist bones snapped. She screamed and backed away, cradling her hand. Venom filled her eyes.
“You don’t touch this merchandise, you nymph bitch.”
She hissed at him.
LaRue’s face reddened. “Sharia is one of my most popular girls. You’ve just cost me a great deal.” He turned to the roomful of woman. “Take him.”
Lockman reached behind him and drew his gun, jammed the barrel in LaRue’s squishy neck. “Bad move, Pimp Daddy.”
LaRue gasped at a womanly pitch. He waved a hand. “Never mind, my dears.”
Lockman shoved LaRue out of the parlor and kicked closed the double doors. “You want to do this here in the hall with a gun to your neck, or should we start over and have a seat somewhere?”
“No need to get violent.”
“Of course not. Easier just to feed me to your nymphs.”
“Why don’t we retire to the study?”
“Sounds dandy.”
“You’re a eunuch.”
LaRue poured himself a cognac, hands trembling. “Hosting nymphs requires sacrifices.”
The study had built-in bookshelves covering every wall with leather bound books from floor to ceiling. None of the books looked read. Lockman wondered if some of them were even fake, simply decoration.
Lockman sat in one of a trio of armchairs arranged around a bronze ashtray that smelled of stale cigars.
“So you castrated yourself to make some money.”
After pouring himself his drink from the small table outside the circle of chairs, LaRue came around and sat across from Lockman. “Not some money. Great, heaping gobs of it.”
“Nice racket, turning clients into sex-addicts. Let the girls feed a little off of each one. You take all the cash. The clients keep coming back for more. Everybody’s happy.”
LaRue shrugged. “It’s a living.”
“Where’d you get the nymphs?”
“Does it matter? That’s not why you’re here.”
Lockman looked down at the gun he held in his lap. “It’s not. But I might come back later. Shut this place down.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“It’s what I was trained to do.”
“Oh.” LaRue’s eyes widened, getting it now. “Oh.”
Lockman leaned back. “Let’s talk about vamps.”
“You work with that woman.”
“What woman?”
“The one who came to see me asking similar questions.”
Teresa.
“What did you tell her?”
LaRue sipped his cognac, then rested the glass on his chair arm. “I’m small time. I keep locals sexually satisfied and they allow me to live well in turn. There’s no reason to bring me into this.”
“Into what?”
“Your war with the vampires.”
War? Teresa never mentioned anything about a war. Unless he simply meant the Agency’s stance on the supernatural. But that applied to all supernaturals, not just vamps. Besides, the Agency was long gone. If LaRue knew about the Agency, he had to know it no longer operated.
“What did the woman who came to see you ask about?”
“My ‘friends with the pointy teeth’ as you put it. She never got specific. Somehow she got it in her head that I had dealings with vampires.”
“Knowing her, I’m guessing she was right.”
“That’s ridiculous. Nobody deals with vampires unless they’re food.”
“That’s why just mentioning them spooked you into trying to kill me.”
LaRue lifted his glass of cognac to his nose and sniffed. He closed his eyes. “Divine.” He emptied the glass in one gulp like a shot. His eyes watered. He blinked, then focused on Lockman. “I share my secrets with you, you promise never to come back here.”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to resist those women.”
“I’m serious. I don’t need any trouble from ex-government agents who can’t let go of the glory days. There are far worse things out there than me.”
“It all depends on what you have to tell me.”
LaRue raised his glass. “Mind if I pour another?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.” He balanced the glass on the arm of the empty chair next to his, then rummaged in his coat pocket and withdrew a cigar. He took his time lighting it with a match, rolling it and puffing until he had the end evenly ablaze. He shook the match out and tossed it into the ashtray.
A cloud of sweet-smelling smoke wafted over to Lockman. It smelled expensive.
“I’m an amateur practitioner,” LaRue said around the cigar in his mouth. He puffed and pulled it out. “I require certain…materials to practice my hobby. Vampires are uniquely qualified to supply me with said materials.”
He meant blood. Lockman curled his lip. “What’s the arrangement?”
“I occasionally offer a customer to a vampire, and they provide what I need in return.”
“You feed them your clients and they give you blood? Why not drain them yourself?”
“Please.” LaRue grimaced through the smoke. “I’m not a savage.”
“My bad. Didn’t meant to insult you.”
A smirk tweaked LaRue’s puffy face. “‘My bad?’ You must have children at home. Do you love your children Mister…I don’t believe you told me your name.”
A ring of heat collared Lockman’s neck. He jumped out of his chair and crammed the barrel of his gun in between LaRue’s nose and one eye. “Don’t even think about threatening my family.”
LaRue’s wide eyes danced. He raised his hands, his burning cigar
pinched between two stumpy fingers. “I meant no threat, I assure you.”
Lockman jammed the gun a little harder against LaRue’s face. “Give me one more reason, and I’ll reassure myself with a bullet through your brain.”
“Understood.”
His concentration broken, Lockman found himself thinking about Jessie and Kate, wondering what they were doing. If they were safe. He compartmentalized the worries by promising himself to call after he finished with LaRue. He drew back his gun and fought the urge to pistol-whip the simpering eunuch.
“Tell me where to find your supplier.”
LaRue’s eyes widened even further. His lips formed a quivering O. “Not on your life.”
“How about on yours?” Lockman aimed at LaRue’s bulging gut.
“You’re not aiming for my head.”
“Gut shot means a slow, painful death. I figure that’s more convincing.”
“I don’t tell you, I bleed to death. I do tell you…I bleed to death.”
Lockman hiked a shoulder. “Guess it’s just a question of now or later.”
“I’ll have to shut down. Leave the state.”
“Careful. You might get me crying.”
The ruddy color in LaRue’s face drained away. Hairless and pasty white, his head looked like a lump of dough. “Then you get your way after all. Putting me out of business.”
“They call that killing two eunuchs with one stone.”
“How crude.”
Lockman poked his gun barrel into LaRue’s belly. “How about it, Pillsbury?”
Some of the color came back in LaRue’s cheeks. His lips peeled back, showing off his mouthful of broken teeth. “To hell with you. This is my home. I won’t leave.”
“Where are the vamps?”
LaRue shook. His jowls jiggled. “The vampire I deal with lives with a group that has taken over an old community center south of the Quarter. You could go knock on their door, have a chat.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
Sometimes groups of vamps would gather to form nests. Safety in numbers. But their competitive and predatory behavior kept these nests from lasting long or growing beyond a dozen or so vamps. “How long has the nest been there?”
LaRue laughed, though his expression didn’t change. “This is no nest. It’s more like a hostel, which appropriately sounds like hostile to me.”
The hairs on the back of Lockman’s neck stood on end. He thought about Teresa’s notes, the continued insistence that the New Orleans vampires had somehow organized. “Now I know why you’re so fat. You’re full of shit.”
“Oh no. I saw it in your eyes. You know it’s true.”
“Vampires don’t hang out in hostels.”
“Times have changed, Mr. Agent.” LaRue smiled. His eyes lit. “You don’t catch up, this new world will kill you.”
Chapter Twenty
Lockman had the number dialed. All he had to do was press SEND. His thumb hovered over the button. Maybe it was too soon to call. He didn’t want to crowd Kate. Not after the argument they had over him leaving to help Teresa. Still, LaRue’s hollow threat tolled in Lockman’s mind like a broken bell.
He moved his thumb from SEND to END and cleared out the number.
He wasn’t going to let a bottom-feeder like LaRue dislodge his focus. Kate and Jessie were safe. It was Teresa he had to worry about. He could call them after he checked out this “vampire hostel.”
The directions LaRue gave Lockman led him to a squat building with few windows and sun-flaked paint on nearly every painted surface. The abandoned community center looked like it used to be an abandoned school. Some of the faded lines on the asphalt lot in front still marked the bus line at the curb. One of the tall lamps that once illuminated the parking lot at night had tipped over and lay across the lot, rusted and cracked. The few windows in sight from the front all had boards over them and a generous dose of graffiti that featured crudely drawn penises every several feet.
Kids thought they were so damn funny.
Lockman had pulled Vera to the curb in front of the building. He peered out the window at the run down shell. Really a perfect place for a vamp nest. Lots of rooms insides. Plenty of dark hidey holes to curl up in during the day or leisurely feed on victims at night.
It didn’t look like any kind of hostel, that’s for sure.
This job would require a little more equipment than a gun, even one loaded with silver rounds. He tapped open a number of compartments in the car and loaded up. A belt that held a half dozen wooden stakes in elastic loops along the back. A bandolier of vials filled with holy water. Fitted silver-lined gloves. Cross bow with a sling so he could carry it on his back until he needed it. And the star of the show—a flamethrower with a portable fuel tank mounted below the barrel. The essential tool for all your vamp nest cleansing needs.
This wasn’t the first time Lockman had raided a nest solo. During the daylight, most vamps were easy kills. A few vamps always stayed awake to guard the nest. But if you had the right equipment and skill, you could take the guards out first and leave the sleepers for easy kills afterward.
The hardest part would be finding the guards in the building’s hallways before they found him.
“Guard the front,” he told Vera, more as a joke.
“I doubt any vampires will attempt to escape into the daylight.”
“Some of them might, after they’ve met me.”
Unlike most abandoned buildings of this ilk, the front doors didn’t have chains holding them closed. But when he pulled on one, it didn’t budge, apparently locked from the inside. Long boarded windows lined either side of the doors from top to bottom. Only about a foot wide, but enough to slip through sideways.
He chose the window to the right and kicked at the wood. Time and weather had softened the board. It only took a few kicks to break through. Another handful of minutes yanking pieces away to allow room to get through.
The air inside smelled like dead rat cooked in an oven. The humidity tripled. Each breath tasted like the sweat off a frog’s ass. If frogs sweat. He had no idea.
The darkness had only one beam of light coming through the window Lockman slipped in through. It illuminated enough for him to get his bearings. To the right, what once served as the main office. To his left, a pair of doors that led into what Lockman guessed was a gymnasium or cafeteria. The office door had long since fallen—or was torn—from the hinges and lay on the floor a few yards away. Inside, darkness swallowed everything. Lockman flicked on his headlamp—another gadget courtesy of Marty. The beam cut through the dark. He crept through the doorway and traced the floors, walls, and ceiling with the light. Rusted and empty filing cabinets lined the back wall. A gaping hole in the drop ceiling had mold growing around its soft edges. More mold covered the desk below the hole, a wet green and white mess with a gagging stench.
No vamps.
He backed out of the office and turned to the gym doors. These doors looked surprisingly sturdy and functional. Steel slabs with metal handles tarnished but secure. Cafeteria or gym, he didn’t expect the vamps to congregate in a large space like that. One or two of the classrooms deeper inside no doubt housed the nest. He couldn’t leave anything to chance, though. To do this right—and stay alive—he had to clear every room he passed.
He approached the doors, taking careful and quiet steps. He reached out a gloved hand while he hefted the flamethrower with his free hand and tugged at one of the handles. The door swung open with surprising ease.
The flesh along his arms prickled. Cold heat washed through him. Just by opening the door, he knew he had walked into something. What he found inside nearly stopped his heart.
Rows and rows of cots filled the large gymnasium. At lest fifty of them. Almost all of them occupied.
By vamps.
All brands of vamp. From the ugly originals with their scarred faces and bent ears to fresh turns, some of them so fresh they still looked human.
/> Nearly fifty vamps, all in one place, on cots? Cots?
The old gymnasium had been swept clean. A fallen basketball net, backboard and all, sat in one corner, obviously pulled there out of the way. None of the usual squalor found in most vampire nests. Every vamp wore clean clothes and looked well groomed. Even the originals looked as though their scaly skin and hairless heads had been washed. No drained victims piled in along the walls. No spatters of blood mixed with trash on the floor. The God damned place looked like a—
Like a hostel.
He backed up, scanning the large space with his head lamp. Nothing stirred. No guards standing about. Lockman’s eardrums pulsed in the silence. His gut twisted.
This wasn’t right. This wasn’t natural.
Not that anything about vamps was ever natural. But this set up, so neat and organized.
He sensed something, his instincts going wild, back of his neck hot and cold at the same time.
Then a faint sound. A rustling.
He swung his head lamp back and forth through the room, tracking along with the flamethrower. None of the vamps stirred.
Something wet hit his cheek like a rain drop. He wiped at the spot. His gloved hand came away smeared with red.
Lockman snapped his head up in time to see the vampire hanging like a bat by its feet in the rafters. The beast’s fanged mouth was wet and red. Unlike the sleeping vamps, this one was naked, it’s wrinkled white skin a web work of gray veins. An original in an altered form. Clawed hands. Clawed toes. Mouth nearly as wide as its face.
It hissed and dropped from the high ceiling.
Lockman jumped backwards out the gym door and landed on his ass on the cracked tile. Something crunched in his back pocket. He squeezed the trigger on the flamethrower, ignoring the pain that sparked from his coccyx up his spine.
The vamp had already hit the floor and ducked under the flame. It sprung at Lockman, keeping low, and pounced on top of him, knocking the flamethrower high. The ceiling tiles burst into flame.
Pinned under the vamp, Lockman had no leverage. The beast easily tore the flamethrower out of Lockman’s grip. It sputtered out and skated across the floor out of reach.
As the vamp lowered its bloody mouth toward Lockman’s throat, Lockman grabbed the thing around the neck. The vamp’s skin hissed and steamed against the silver-lined gloves.
