by Eve Paludan
I hated that Fang looked like this and especially that he was Sam’s confidante and best friend. It meant that Sam would always be attracted to him, even if he was a serial killer. Which he was. Even if Sam were mine, which she wasn’t anymore, that charisma of his meant she would spend her days longing for Fang and what could have been and might still be. I wondered if he’d ever slept with her.
Since Sam and I were broken up again, her closeness with Fang was more perplexing and frustrating to me than ever. However, now, I wanted Fang for a friend. No. Not wanted, needed.
The bartender brought me a Scotch on the rocks and Fang a Perrier.
Only then did Fang say anything. “Before you speak, Kingsley, I want to apologize for what took place in the rented party room of my Echo Park blood club. Had I known the true purpose for the rental, I never would have rented it to Morrie and his entourage.”
“Thank you for that legal disclaimer.” I couldn’t keep the note of bitterness out of my voice. “I’m not here to talk about suing you for what happened to Jolie last night. That never even occurred to me. We’ve been through some shit together for Sam’s sake. Obviously, we both love her in some way. I believe that whoever she ends up with, she will choose him. Not us. And second, I would never hurt you unless you hurt her.”
Fang sat back and shook his head. “Also, Sam would be angry.”
“A bit late for that.”
“Oh, man, did she break up with you again?” Fang guessed.
“Yes, dammit. It was pretty dramatic, but luckily, there was no fork in her hand this time. She only threatened to snap off my hand and throw it into the garden if I so much as touched her.”
“Damn! I just gave her a pep talk about what a great guy you are. What the hell did you do this time?”
I laughed bitterly. “She caught me with the blonde wannabe rock star vampire in my bubble bath. Jolie Hart came to my home after she was assaulted in your rented party room. I was cleaning up her boo-boos with a sponge and just being kind to her—nothing else, I swear—but Sam caught me buck-naked with Jolie in the bathtub. And she was on my lap. With bubbles on her perky, real boobs.”
“So, not a lot happened then,” Fang said with a smirk.
“That’s not all.” I paused. “Sam saw me kiss Jolie on the forehead. It was an act of compassion that might have been poorly timed.”
Fang whistled low. “You werewolves are a special kind of stupid.”
“I’m a sucker for a woman in distress. I can’t say no.”
“You might just have a little too much of the big bad wolf in you.”
“That, too. If only you knew.” I briefly thought of Maltheus, the werewolf alter ego who stayed only in my head for most of the month.
Fang was saying, “I’m truly sorry you lost Samantha Moon again. Is it for good, this time?”
My voice may have quivered. “I think so. She actually broke up with me twice in one day.”
Fang rolled his eyes. “You didn’t call me here just to talk about Samantha, did you?”
“No. I came to show you a video of Jolie Hart blubbering a lot of nonsense to me about a vampire named Morrie who is supposedly Satan. She has to do all of this heinous stuff in her contract with him in order to write a song greater than ‘Stairway to Heaven’ that will eventually make it to number one on the Billboard charts.”
The mention of Morrie seemed to stop Fang short. After a moment, Fang lifted his glass. “Let’s finish our drinks, and you can play the video to me in my car.”
I tilted my head to one side. “You know something about Morrie, don’t you? Is he or isn’t he the Devil?”
Fang whistled low and long. Then he downed his Perrier. I did the same with my Scotch on the rocks. This didn’t sound good.
Chapter 8
Fang and I sat in his black air-conditioned Escalade. I started to get out my phone to show him the video of Jolie Hart and he stopped me. “Hang on with that. Let’s go to my house in Malibu and watch it.”
“You have a house in Malibu?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you had a place in Echo Park, where the blood club is.”
“That’s just my public place. If you’re going to be my friend, you should know where I live when I want to have a private life.”
That seemed like a pretty big offer, coming from Fang. “Are we gonna be that kind of friends?”
“Yeah. I’ve been wanting a non-vampire friend—someone I can trust. Like a real brother.”
I nodded. “I’d like that, too.”
“You don’t totally trust me, though. And I really want you to.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because we both love Samantha Moon. So we are equally miserable because neither of us has her.”
“The woman cannot be possessed. She can’t be had,” I said.
“You may be onto something there,” Fang said and pulled out of the parking lot.
I put my phone away. “You have a girlfriend, Fang.”
“I do, but she’s not Sam. Sam’s like, the one.”
“I think that way about her, too,” I admitted.
“Sam has a strong mind, Kingsley. We can’t fight over her, because she won’t pick the winner of some knock-out, drag-down fight. She’ll pick the one she loves the most.”
“Or neither of us,” I said. “You know she’s had other lovers. She always gets a lover when she breaks up with me. Remember Russell Baker, the boxer? I think she needs some kind of… of emotional validation from having a boyfriend.”
“If you think that, you don’t know her at all,” Fang said. “She’s stronger than that. I think she needs and likes sex as much as we do. She’s got passion simmering in those undead veins.”
“So, you’ve had her then?” I dared to ask.
Fang clucked his tongue against his teeth. “I may be a serial killer and a vampire, but a gentleman never kisses and tells.”
I realized then that he’d never had her. He would have bragged if he had. I smiled, satisfied.
He glanced at me in the side mirror, that sly vampire. “Don’t go there in your head, Kingsley, and we will be just fine. As friends. As bros.”
Fang turned on some music, and I realized it was Jolie Hart singing. It was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard. I wept the whole way to Malibu and when he pulled up to his beachside house and parked his sleek black car, he let the music finish.
I wiped my tears off my face with my sleeve. “How does she sing chords? How? And how does she have those arousing words?”
Fang spread his hands. “I don’t know if Morrie is the Devil or not, but he’s a very powerful vampire. I think he did something to her when he turned her.”
I nodded. “He intends to put a dark entity into Jolie Hart and make her his blood-bound bride of some vampire underworld. She’s utterly creeped out.”
“She told me,” Fang said. “That’s why I gave her your name. Come in the beach house and play me your video. We’ll put our heads together and figure out how to save her from this fate. Whatever it takes.”
“Whatever it takes?” I echoed. “You would fight vampire demons for Jolie?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because of where Morrie plans to get the dark entity to put inside Jolie.”
My stomach did a flip. “From where?”
“It’s Sam’s entity,” Fang said. “He plans to kill Sam and transfer her dark entity into Jolie’s body.”
Chapter 9
“Not just no, but hell no!” I spewed.
“That’s what I say, too.” Fang led me into an airy beachfront home with a living room facing the ocean. He pressed a button, and the glass wall receded. We instantly had the ocean breeze on our faces.
“What a place you have.” I tasted the salt spray on my lips.
“I know. I love it here. You’re the only one I’ve brought here,” Fang said.
“Not even your girlfriend?”
“N
o. If I were Superman, this would be my Fortress of Solitude.”
“But you let me come here and I’m not Lois Lane.”
“Don’t make me regret it,” Fang joked.
I nodded. “Sam ever see this place?”
“Not yet.”
“Her kids would love it,” I said.
He laughed bitterly. “Kingsley, you were the kid-friendly boyfriend. Not me. I envy your ability to connect with children and not want to suck their blood.”
The alarm must have shown on my face, because he waved it away. “A poor joke, but a joke nonetheless. I only suck the blood of the willing. And never children. That’s not my style at all.”
“Good thing you have a consensual blood club,” I said.
“The proceeds from the blood club bought this place,” he said, sweeping his hand around him. “Detective Rachel Hanner, who made me a vampire, left me her worldly goods and her substantial bank accounts. I’m a multi-millionaire. And yet, Kingsley, I’m not happy.”
“You should be. Look at this lifestyle.”
“I remain unfulfilled. I think about Sam all the time, but her kids do not compute into any equation of her plus me. I know at some level, Sam has already thought it through, too. Eventually, when she chooses one of us, she’s going to choose a family-friendly man. A werewolf.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Unless she waits until her kids grow up. When the kids are mostly gone and doing their own thing, she will choose you, a lover who understands her vampirism because he is a vampire.”
“Funny how we are both rooting for each other now,” Fang said.
“It’s easy to do when she isn’t in the room and our testosterone isn’t doing the talking.”
“True.”
I decided to push slightly. “How do you know that Sam’s dark entity is the one Morrie wants to put in Jolie?”
“The rooms in the Echo Park blood club have CCTV in them. Morrie isn’t especially savvy with technology, because he’s ancient. He has no clue that I have videos of everything that goes on in every room of the place.”
“Do you have tapes of him saying that about Sam’s entity?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have tapes of Jolie’s assault?”
“Yes.” He looked ashamed.
“And no one was watching the security cameras for the rooms at the time?” I asked.
“The man in question was otherwise occupied.”
“That guy should be fired.”
“That guy was me.” The chagrin in Fang’s voice was obvious. “I was busy doing my girlfriend over a desk instead of taking care of business.”
“Oh, Fang.” I shook my head. “I don’t know how you can bang your girlfriend when you’re in love with Samantha.”
“Says the hound dog who cheated on her.”
“Once! I did that once, and not with Jolie. Not only will Sam not let me forget it, but she apparently commiserated with you about it.”
“I’m her best friend. She tells me everything.” Fang sounded far too happy about it.
I growled. “Did she tell you that she stabbed me with a fork in a restaurant?”
He smiled back. “Yes. Her entity made her do it. You know that.”
“I wish that entity was out of Sam,” I admitted.
“Be careful what you wish for. Without it, she wouldn’t be the Sam you know. She would be weaker, not as intelligent, not as edgy, not as passionate.”
Fang had a point. “So, you’re saying we can’t have our cake and eat it, too?”
“Indeed.” He shut the motorized window panels with the ocean view and somehow turned them black—into a matte movie screen. He turned to the former windows, which were now a big screen movie theater, and plugged in his iPhone to some sort of media interface. Then he began to play the tape of Jolie Hart’s assault in bloody, living color. And sound. An assault she had agreed to in one of the clauses of her diabolical music contract. She’d agreed to provide all that the record producers asked of her, including drinking her blood. Every single one of them had taken their turn feeding on her. Even the mortals.
What they had done to Jolie Hart made me sick. I sat there horrified at what she had endured.
I came back to myself because Fang was sitting next to me, hugging me. The chill of his vampire body penetrated my clothing.
“We are not going to let them kill Sam, or put her entity into Jolie,” he said.
“Over our dead bodies,” I said.
“Don’t rush it,” Fang said. “We’re no good dead. Well, you aren’t.”
“I realize that Sam needs her entity,” I said. “It’s what makes her so strong. So sharp. So brave.”
“I see we are on the same page,” Fang said.
I stood up. “We have to save Sam and Jolie.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Why do you think I showed this ugly video to you?” He paused. “Where is Jolie right now?”
“I stashed her at Sam’s sister’s house.”
“Wait a minute. You stashed a brand-new vampire at Mary Lou’s house? A house with kids in it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I figured she would be safe there, and Mary Lou said it would be okay. It’s okay, right? I mean, Jolie doesn’t have an entity in her. She’s weak.”
“She still drinks blood and has a special song inside of her that controls mortals.”
“Damn!” Even as he said it, I realized the magnitude of my error.
“You damn foolish werewolf. We have got to get you a clue about the care and feeding of vampires.” Fang jumped up. “To the Batmobile!”
I stared at him. “Really?”
“What? Are you implying I just like saying it?”
Chapter 10
Now that we were in a big-ass hurry to retrieve Jolie from Mary Lou’s house where I’d stashed her hours ago, the speed limit on the Pacific Coast Highway became a hindrance instead of an asset. The top posted speed limit was a ridiculous 45 miles per hour on the straightaways and as low as 25 through the beach towns and certain intersections. At this hour on a Friday night, the term ‘highway’ was kind of a misnomer. There were stoplights all too often and traffic was so heavy that it was barely moving in places. At the turnoff to Pacific Palisades, we waited three lights deep to get through the intersection. I was starting to get really nervous about Jolie, the ‘weak’ vampire, being at Mary Lou’s house while the kids were there.
As we headed down the PCH in Fang’s near-replica of the classic Batmobile, I played for Fang the video of what Jolie had told me had happened to her.
We compared it to our recollections of the video Fang had played for me at his beach house. If anything, Jolie had underreported how much they had wounded her in their greedy munch-a-thon on her person.
Finally, we hit the freeway and traffic went much faster, fast enough for Fang to open up fifth gear on the Batmobile, passing everyone in the HOV lane. He headed toward Mary Lou’s house, which was near Sam’s house in Fullerton.
Mary Lou lived close to Placentia, where she worked in an insurance office. Since Fang was kind of my bro now, I told him that Mary Lou was working on a secret project. She’d been working as a claims adjuster for a few years, and now, she was studying for her private investigator’s exam.
“Wow. Sam doesn’t know?” Fang said.
“No, it’s going to be a big surprise.”
Fang didn’t look happy. “Kingsley, Sam should know that Mary Lou is planning to become a private investigator.”
“I agree,” I said. “But Mary Lou wants to line up her ducks before she tells her. I’ve been helping Mary Lou by advising her on how to meet the requirements. But she’s doing it all herself. She even has a gun now.”
“This information scares me,” Fang said. “Especially if Mary Lou is thinking of proposing a partnership with Sam. Sam works on very dangerous cases—serial killers, vampires and the like.”
“Mary Lou can start small. Surveillance on cheating husbands, Internet r
esearch, that kind of thing.”
“I suppose.” Fang still looked worried.
I could guess where his worries sprang from. “You think that Mary Lou isn’t just trying to become a private investigator, right? That she wants to be a vampire private investigator?”
“It crossed my mind.” Fang kept up his breakneck driving.
“Well,” I said, “I did ask Mary Lou if she had a desire to become a vampire. She told me it wasn’t about that.”
Fang looked across at me as if I were an idiot. “Werewolf, you don’t understand women. Not one bit. They have agendas. Far-reaching agendas.”
I was silent at first. “Cut me a break, vampire.”
“I can’t. Mary Lou is Sam’s family. She already got kidnapped once and they killed Danny in front of her.”
“She had a blindfold on.”
“But she heard everything. She knows everything. And she’s been mulling it over for months. She’s like a soldier back from a war. This whole thing is about post-traumatic revenge.”
“What’s your point?” I asked.
“I think that Mary Lou wants to become a private investigator so she can have the skills to hunt evil vampires.”
“You sound like you’ve been thinking about this a lot,” I said.
“Not that much. Vampires are the brains. Werewolves are the brawn.” He put up his hand for a fist bump. Which I did.
“So, if things go badly getting Jolie Hart out of Mary Lou’s house, you’re the mastermind and I’m just the guy who breaks down the door?”
Fang laughed. “Now you’re getting it.”
He whizzed past a police car. It accelerated to try to catch us, lights flashing. For a moment, I thought it might be close enough to push us off the road in a classic PIT maneuver, but Fang just accelerated away.
“You’re gonna get us thrown in jail,” I said.
“No, I won’t,” he replied, and pressed a button on the dashboard. Instantly, the color of the car went from black to white, while the more elaborate fins and protrusions of the Batmobile shape pulled back into the car, leaving something far more normal looking. He slowed down and kept pace with the traffic as he moved out of the HOV lane.
