The Cowboy and the Vampire: A Very Unusual Romance (The Cowboy and the Vampire Collection Book 1)

by Clark Hays

  Twenty blades flashed out across twenty exposed throats, flesh parted and a torrent of blood poured forth. Almost simultaneously, my knees gave out and I sank to the floor, barely stifling a scream. The bodies twisted, spasmed and their eyes rolled back in their heads as hideous death smiles swept across each face. I fought the urge to vomit, watching in horrified fascination as their life’s blood washed across their skin.

  From his bloody vantage, Julius made eye contact with me and smiled at my reaction, then drew a tiny blade from his vest. Two men were at my side, holding me up with grips of steel, forcing me to face the spectacle and not fall again. Although terrified, my sight was drawn to Julius who, with a delicate motion, pulled the knife across his own fingertips. Blood welled up from them and, never breaking our trancelike stare, he moved to the nearest body.

  One hand absently stroked the cold flesh, cupped the man’s genitals, lightly touched his hair, and then he slowly inserted his own bleeding hand deep into the gaping wound in the man’s throat. His hand lingered there for a few seconds, then he moved to the next body.

  The process was repeated at each lifeless body. Man or woman, young or old, he let his hands move sensuously across their bodies, trailing blood with them. The effort exhausted him, his face growing strained as he continued. Occasionally, he paused to lick a trail of crimson from some woman’s breast or the inner thigh of a man, his tongue languidly following the rivulets.

  This seemed to bolster his sagging strength, at least momentarily.

  After he touched the last man, Julius turned to the crowd, his face drawn and lips stained with blood. “We will welcome our new brethren to eternity when they awaken. For now, let the festivities continue.”

  He wrapped a white handkerchief around his damaged fingers and crossed the floor toward me.

  I struggled to break free and, to my surprise, the men let me go easily. I rushed toward the door, avoiding Julius. It was locked from the outside and I pounded on it futilely. Julius appeared next to me and quietly placed his hand on my shoulder.

  “Are you afraid?” he asked.

  I could only stare at him in disbelief.

  “Would you like to leave?”

  I nodded mutely.

  “Come,” he said, “let me see you to a taxi.”

  “Ric, where is Ric?” I whispered.

  “Your friend? Not to worry, we escorted him home before the celebration began. His presence was no longer appropriate, especially given his advanced state of inebriation. Have no fear. He is in good hands.”

  His soothing tone imparted a sense of calm as I struggled to comprehend what I had just witnessed. “Do not worry,” Julius said. “You are precious to me in ways you do not yet understand.” He drew a key from his vest pocket. “And do not fear for those whose deaths you watched. They will soon awaken to a new world.”

  His voice mesmerized me inside a dark silence but under that blackness, my fear was rising. I struggled to maintain the silence as he opened the door and, taking my arm, escorted me into the night. The air was cool and clear, free from the smell of death and sweat, and I breathed deeply, gratefully. I kept moving, unsure of anything except my need to get away from this madman. I had to reach the police quickly.

  “I shall be in touch, my sweet,” he said, after hailing a cab. As I bent down to get in the cab, he pulled me back to him and kissed me quickly, roughly on the lips. He tasted cold and metallic, like kissing a copper urn. Then he bowed low, saying something I could not quite hear, something about a queen. There was an edge of mockery in his voice.

  As I slid into the back seat, he directed the driver and paid him in advance. I could feel the power of his voice weakening its hold on me as we drove uptown. And then I began to scream.

  THREE

  Julius stood in the doorway of the apartment. The darkness from without and within met in him and he wore it about his features like a cape and cowl. He cleared his throat and one of the men already standing inside turned toward him.

  “She’s not here, sir.”

  Julius sucked in a dry breath. “Your passion for so eloquently stating the obvious never ceases to amaze me.”

  The young man bowed his head. “Sorry, sir.”

  “It is not supplication I desire. I merely want to know where she is.”

  “Julius,” a voice called from deeper inside.

  “Yes, Elita, have you news?”

  She stepped from the bedroom holding a note in one hand and a struggling, hissing cat in the other. Her emerald eyes blazed from the shadows and a pearl necklace looped around her throat glinted faintly, almost lost against the marble skin exposed there.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “I found this in the bedroom, a note detailing the feeding procedure for this delicate creature,” she said nodding at the cat, “named Felix.”

  “Hello, Felix,” Julius said as he stroked the terrified creature’s head, moving his hand as the cat lashed claws at him. “It would appear the queen has fled the castle.” He arched an eyebrow. “The question is, where might a frightened young thing seek sanctuary?”

  “Her friends, family?”

  “We can rule out family since she has none.” He smiled tightly. “But the photographer seems an obvious choice. Elita, take two and see what you may find.”

  She stepped past, dropping the note to the carpet, but holding the cat tighter against her chest. “Poor thing must miss his owner,” she said, stroking it softly. “I followed it home,” she said to Julius. “May I keep it?”

  He nodded and, in the silence of her departure, pointed a slender finger at one of the shadowy figures remaining. “Are you familiar with this type of machine?” He pointed to the darkened computer sitting impassively on the cluttered desk.

  “Yes, of course,” the young vampire said.

  “Then make it work on my behalf,” Julius said, taking up a position behind the chair. His attendant turned it on and the screen flared to life, lighting the dark room with pale indigo.

  Manipulating keys and mouse, the vampire scrolled through files scanning document titles until Julius tapped his finger to the screen.

  “Correspondence. Let’s take a look at that one.”

  Letter after letter flashed across the screen, mostly pertaining to business.

  “This is getting us nowhere.” He dragged his finger down the screen.

  “What exactly are we looking for, sir?”

  “What we are looking for, my young acolyte, is a clue. A name. A destination. Wait, what’s this?” His finger rested on a name. “Why, it seems she kept in contact with her little cowboy.” He smiled. “Isn’t that sweet. She has a hero.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Desard.”

  An impossibly thin vampire with a crooked smile detached himself from the shadows to stand beside Julius. “Yeah, boss?”

  “Find out where,” he studied the screen, “LonePine, Wyoming is. When Elita finishes, I want you two to take a little trip. Take as many as you like, but don’t come back without Elizabeth Vaughan.”

  “Yes, boss.” He slipped past into the hall.

  “And Desard,” Julius called, “I don’t want any loose ends remaining.”

  Desard leaned back through the doorway. “How loose is loose, boss?”

  “Use your discretion.” Julius turned back to the computer, his mind already moving in a new direction. “Go back to the main files. That one, Vamp.” He smiled a faint smile, a parody of happiness. “Let’s see how much our little queen thinks she knows.”

  FOUR

  It was past dark before I realized I’d wasted my whole day setting on my ass. I should’ve been up in the mountains watching the sunset and drinking a beer, all worn out from pounding fence posts, instead of sitting on the couch drinking a beer, all worn out from watching reruns. Rex was curled up on the recliner, raising his head from time to time to make sure I wasn’t going to do anything productive.

  Other than getting up to change channels on account of the remote was b
roken, the odds of productivity at this late hour were low. Mostly I just thought about how expensive it was going to be to fly out to New York City, and how I really didn’t want to go to a stinking sprawl of a place like that anyway, but fair was fair.

  Halfway through a twelve-pack of beer, and making pretty good time on the other half, I was letting my mind drift back on Lizzie and all the things I missed in particular, which was bringing a big, dumb grin to my face. All of a sudden, headlights swept across the trailer wall and Rex exploded out of his chair, barking like the devil himself was selling candy door to door.

  A car rattled across the cattle guard and the lights got brighter. I gave Rex a little kick with my stocking foot to turn his volume down. I figured it was Dad or, worse, Melissa Braver, coming to see how lonesome I was. Admittedly, I was mighty lonesome, but it wasn’t nothing either of them could help me with. I stood in the door with my shirt unbuttoned and my eyes shielded against the headlights. The car wasn’t familiar.

  About that time Rex quit barking and started wagging his little stump of a tail and whining. The headlights shut off and the door opened up and out stepped Lizzie. “Hey, cowboy,” she said.

  You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I stammered as she walked on up natural as can be.

  “Is this a bad time? I could come back later,” she said, smiling.

  I just drew her into my arms and kissed her for all I was worth, and felt her pull herself tight against me. Standing there, we were able to say hello without words for better of ten minutes. Then we moved inside and continued saying hello, still without words, for better than two hours.

  Later, she sat on the porch smoking. She was wearing nothing but one of my shirts with the sleeves rolled up and the tails tucked between her legs. Her bare skin glowed smooth like ivory in the porch light. Rubbing her hands together, she said, “It’s sure getting cold out here.”

  I said nothing because I was still feeling warm all over from what had just transpired between us. She blew out a stream of smoke and for an instant, a different kind of light surrounded her, like something from the past fondly remembered, making her look like an old-time photograph. She stubbed out the smoke, took my hand and led me inside to the couch.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said, wishing for words that sounded better. “But why are you here, and why the hell didn’t you call?”

  “I had to get away,” she said, and shrugged as if that answered everything.

  I waited for something else, but she didn’t say anything. “I suspect there’s a little more to it than that,” I said.

  She sighed and nodded, but said only, “Seems like forever since I saw you last.”

  “At least three months,” I said, which made her smile. “But that three months sure drug by. Couldn’t hardly think about nothing but when I’d see you again.”

  “Thanks for letting me know how much you missed me,” she said. “I figured you weren’t much of a letter writer, but I didn’t know your phone was broken.”

  “You know how the cowboy thing goes,” I said.

  She laughed. “No, I guess I don’t actually. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  I tried to think of something clever to say, but couldn’t. “Pretty damn boring, really. I’d much rather hear all about your exciting life in New York City.”

  Something dark passed over her like a shadow, only colder, and her response was cautious and forced. “A little too exciting, sometimes.”

  “Yeah? More exciting than usual? Must be, seeing as you up and left on such short notice. That ain’t like you.”

  “Is it that obvious?” she asked and I nodded. She sighed. “Remember that story I was working on? It got a little weird.”

  She sounded serious, so I reached for another beer. “What kind of weird?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m overreacting. It’s probably nothing. Some sick game I don’t understand.”

  I was quiet, figuring she’d spill when she was ready, as long as I didn’t say anything to stop the process. That’s a little something I’ve learned through the years. Out here, it’s pretty easy to observe human behavior, since there’s so few humans around. Not that small-town folks like myself are nosy, just interested. Besides, what else have we got to do? If I’ve learned anything, it’s that folks love to share their secrets, but only when they’re good and ready.

  And the quickest way to get them ready is to pretend you ain’t interested, and then be still and let nature take its course. I decided to just bide my time and let her do the talking.

  We sat silently, watching Rex scratch. He put his head against her thigh and she sighed and petted him. “I think someone’s after me,” she said. “That’s sort of why I came to see you. And I guess I just wanted to get away for a while.”

  “Because you were scared?”

  “A little, I guess. Mostly, I just needed to clear my head. Try to figure out if I’m imagining all this or not.”

  Honestly, I suppose I would have preferred some other kind of secret. I was pleased she thought I could offer her some sort of protection, but thinking she might be in danger set the hair on the back of my neck up straight. I stood up to stoke the fire to give me something to do while I got my rising concern under control. “Tell me more,” I said, rattling logs around with the poker.

  She stood next to me and brushed her fingers lightly against my temples, tracing the lines of my cheekbones, and then let her hands come to rest around my neck. “Remember last time I was here, I told you I loved you.”

  “Vaguely.”

  “I said it prematurely, it was the heat of the moment,” she said.

  I felt like someone kicked me in the gut.

  “But I do love you. I’m certain of it now,” she said.

  My knees got weak with relief, and knew I should say something back, and that something should be ‘I love you too.’ And I do love her, I do, which means it shouldn’t be harder to say those three words than any other three words in the English language, but for some reason when I tried to get them from my brain to my mouth they just sort of withered and blew off. There was a moment of silence that I hoped wasn’t as awkward as it felt. She pressed her finger to my lips.

  “Let’s not talk right now. Wait until morning.” She kissed me on the cheek, then lightly on the lips, and I felt my hands tremble as I circled them around her waist to kiss her back. I slipped one hand up her shirt, which was really my shirt, and cupped her breast, felt the nipple hardening against my calloused palm. Laying her down in front of the fire, I unbuttoned each button slowly, opening the shirt and falling in love again and again.

  She pulled my T-shirt off above my head, ran her nails down my back, and pressed against me. Her breath felt hot and ragged against my skin.

  Pushing me back, she looked straight into my eyes and I’d seen that look once before, from a bobcat in a trap. She whispered, “I love you, I love you,” over and over again, like saying it once wasn’t enough or even twenty times, sort of like she was chanting it.

  The next morning she woke close and wouldn’t hardly let go for me to start coffee. She kept one arm wrapped around my waist while I scrambled some eggs and I could feel her hair brushing across my neck and shoulders. I warmed up some pinto beans with a little salsa and fried a few strips of bacon.

  “Want toast?” I held up the bag and she ruefully shook her head at the sorry pieces of bread visible therein. I shrugged my shoulders. “Sorry, I didn’t have much advance time for shopping.”

  I reached the bread back toward the fridge and she wrinkled up her nose. “Don’t save it.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s already bad and it won’t get any better.”

  “It’ll be fine for French toast later on.” I set a plate full of food in front of her and took mine across the table. “Last night worked up a hunger,” I said.

  She smiled and poked at her plate, moving some e
ggs this way and that, and even going so far as to almost take a bite.

  “All right, looks like it’s time to talk,” I said finally, my plate damn near polished and me trying hard not to be too obvious in eyeing hers.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You ain’t hardly eaten a thing and said even less.”

  “I don’t eat breakfast. Ever.” She sighed. “I need a smoke.” She took her bag and opened the door, sitting in the doorway to light up. Snort wandered up to watch doleful from outside and Rex, engaged by her motion, thumped his stubby tail and lifted his head enough to watch, but decided instead to remain sprawled out in the patch of sunshine he’d claimed.

  “Like I said, I figured I should get away for a while.” She blew a thin stream of smoke toward the sun.

  “Well, you can’t get much more away than LonePine,” I said.

  “This is going to sound ridiculous, but hear me out,” she said. “You remember that vampire story I wrote to you about?” I nodded. “I went to this party, a vampire party, at an art gallery. A bunch of weirdos, but hey, a story is a story, or so I thought. Tucker, they killed twenty people right in front of me, in front of a hundred witnesses. But it was like these people were willing victims.”

  The words, once they started, tumbled out of her and I moved across to sit beside her.

  “They took off their own clothes and there was no one forcing them to go along with anything, they let themselves be tied up, seemed almost happy about it, then they offered up their throats to be slit. I thought it was a game, a joke but it wasn’t. I saw them die, all of them. It wasn’t fake blood, it wasn’t an act. I almost passed out, it was so horrible. And no one said a thing, no one tried to stop the killing. They just kept drinking their wine and chatting like it was the commonest of events.” She caught her breath on the last few words, talking fast, almost hysterically.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You watched a bunch of vampire weirdoes murder twenty people, and then they let you just waltz out of there?”