by Rain, J. R.
Jesus, and what was that rotten smell?
Now with the door open, it was stronger. They smelled like they had just come from robbing a grave. Was that their breath or their body odor?
“You will know when vampires are near,” Michael had said. Well, if this was any indication of vampires, I damn well knew they were near. In fact, they’re here rang through my mind like a pop culture movie line.
“You got me,” I said, trying not to gag. “How can I help you?”
“We’d like to discuss some business with you,” said the taller one with the big hair. “May we come in?”
I studied him. He studied me. He certainly looked normal. His skin might have been a little too pale. His eyes might have been a little too penetrating. Then again, that could have been my imagination. Of one thing I was certain, both of these guys were cocky. And cocky generally meant trouble.
I suddenly recalled Michael’s further instruction about never inviting a vampire in—or even someone who might be a vampire. Or as Michael’s exact words had been: “Get into the habit of not inviting anyone in.”
And so, I stepped back and opened my arms, indicating that the two of them should come in. It was a universal gesture, surely. One that anyone would understand as “come in.” Neither of the men moved. My heart, I noted, was beating. Fast. I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears, rushing like a waterfall.
“I can hear your heart racing,” said the dark-haired one. He was leaning a shoulder casually against the doorframe. “Nervous?”
“Should I be?”
“We’re just here to talk,” said the taller one.
“Then talk.”
“Won’t you invite us in?”
“Haven’t we been through this already?”
“He knows, Stefan. He knows.”
“Fine. He knows.”
“We’ll just kill him when he leaves,” said the one who was not Stefan.
“You two are vampires,” I said, stunned.
“And why would you say a crazy thing like that?” said the taller one.
“Because you can’t enter my office unless I invite you in, verbally.”
“Someone’s been watching a little too much TV,” said the dark-haired one.
I grinned. “Funny, I always thought vampires were a little more fearsome.”
The bad boy vampire shouldered the other out of the way. “You have no idea.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He and his brother looked at each other. “Wouldn’t hurt to tell him,” said the dark-haired one. “Since he’ll be dead soon enough.”
The other shrugged and said, “I’m Stefan. This is my brother, Damon.”
“Brother vampires,” I said, surprised, although I shouldn’t have been. Truth was, other than my crash course in vampires last night, I knew next to nothing about the social structure of vampires. For all I knew, they always came in twos, although I doubted that. “How charming.”
Damon gave me a half smirk. “I like him, brother. Too bad we have to kill him.”
“We don’t know that yet,” said Stefan.
That they were talking so nonchalantly about my life should have concerned me more. Except they were just one more weird thing in a long line of weird things that had happened to me over these past few days. Not to mention, they didn’t scare me. Truth was, few things scared me. And two pretty boy vampires were going to have to do a lot more than stand around and make idle threats. Especially now that I seemed to be more than capable of taking care of myself.
Of course, I hadn’t put any of these newly acquired skills to the test. For all I knew, these two brothers must have had decades, hell, centuries, to master the art of the kill.
One thing they had mastered—or were proficient at, according to Michael—was something that was known as a compulsion; that skill was, literally, making their victims do as they said. The victim had no choice in the matter. Some vampires, according to Michael, had been known to have victims even kill themselves. For sport, for kicks. Toying with the living. The thought of that made me sick. But Michael had immediately alleviated my fears. Vampires could not compel other supernatural beings.
“I am a supernatural being?” I had asked the archangel.
“Oh, yes, Max,” Michael had said. “Very much so.”
I focused my thoughts on the present and looked at the two lanky vamps, each leaning against one side of the doorframe. They could have been poster boys for the latest vampire craze, from the pale skin to the clothes to the James Dean-type leaning on the walls. Hell, maybe they were the reason for the latest vampire craze.
“Does either of you have any information about the two campers who were killed last week, out by Mystic Falls?”
“I wouldn’t say I have much useful information,” said Damon, crossing his arms over his chest, “but they were certainly delicious.”
“You killed them?” I said. Hearing his total disregard for human life sent a chill through me. Worse was seeing his reaction now: The bastard enjoyed making me feel uncomfortable. A plague on the Earth indeed.
I said, “To what do I owe the honor of two bad-boy vampires showing up at my office door on a Tuesday morning?”
“We’re scouting the terrain,” said Damon.
Stefan, who seemed slightly more civilized, said, “What my brother means to say is that it has come to our attention that you might be so much more than a private eye.”
“Dick,” said Damon. “Private dick.”
I smiled. “So, is this what vampires do for all of time? Pick on the innocent? Harass them? Scare them? Lob lame quips back and forth to each other?”
“Lame? Ouch,” said Damon.
I crossed my arms over my chest, noting that my once furiously beating heart had calmed to a normal rhythm. “The two of you, if you are what I think you are, and if you possess the gifts that I think you possess, can be doing good in the world. You could be helping people. Hell, you could be superheroes.”
“Are you quite done, dick?” said Damon.
I could tell I had hit a nerve. Both seemed uncomfortable. “The two of you could have been vanguards in protecting the innocent, in helping the weak. Instead, I suspect, you prey on the innocent and weak because they are easy targets.”
Stefan looked at me long and hard, and I saw something in his eyes. Some kind of emotion. Some sort of humanity. Damon, instead, got as close to me as he could, before some sort of invisible force field kept him there just outside my door. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe not, but you know what I’m saying is true. You could be helping people, instead of hurting them. True, I don’t know you, or know your story, and maybe someday, your story will be told, but what I do know is that someone, somewhere, has had enough of you two—and perhaps enough of the whole lot of you.”
Damon gave me a half smirk. “And you know this how?”
“Because he made me know,” I said.
I raised my fist and directed my thoughts, and a sheet of flames appeared in my doorway.
That sent the vampire brothers scrambling, nearly falling over each other. I opened my hand and the fire disappeared.
Dear Bloody Diary,
We might have our hands full here. Which is also what I told Stefan when we got back to the boardinghouse where we live—a boardinghouse that now doubles as a fairly majestic estate home. Oh, the many, many people we have killed here.
Stefan was about to run his hands through his perfect hair, until he realized he didn’t want to mess it up. God, I can’t imagine spending an eternity worshiping my hair. But to each their own.
“I agree,” said my little bro. He was pacing now before the empty fireplace. His big hair paced right along with him. “Maybe we should just forget it. You saw what he did with the fire. I’ve never seen that. Ever.”
“A stupid parlor trick, Stefanovich,” I said and handed him some bourbon as I sat on the antique couch with my own drink in hand.
“So, the guy can make fire. Big deal.”
Stefan glanced at me, his drink half raised to his lips. “And what if that fire had been directed elsewhere. Like on us?”
“Then we would have dropped and rolled,” I said. “Look, if there is even the slightest chance that that douchebag detective can make us invincible, we have to look into it. We owe it to ourselves.”
Stefan took in some air and looked at me long and hard. “So, what do we do next?” he asked.
I grinned. “I have a plan.”
D. Salvatore
CHAPTER NINETEEN
* * *
The vampire brothers rattled me.
I was sure they were used to doing that. I was sure they’d spent a lifetime—many lifetimes—rattling the living. Rattling the humans. I did some research. Damon and Stefan Salvatore were born in the mid-1800s. They were both over 150 years old. Just thinking that, let alone seeing that, was enough to drive most men nuts. Or at least to drink.
Which was what I was doing now, here in the woods near Mystic Falls.
Now, I stood not too far away from where Gracie’s sister and her sister’s boyfriend had been killed. I had seen the face of the killer now … and there had been no remorse. No humanity. He was a killer through and through. Now, the brother, Stefan, I wasn’t sure about. But I suspected, in his one hundred and fifty plus years, he’d done his fair share of killing.
They were crafty. I could see that. They worked as a team. I could see that, too. Together, I was sure they could take down almost anyone they wanted.
Well, I wasn’t just anyone now, was I?
Nature had seen to that.
Nature had also put a big target on my vest.
“Thanks, Nature,” I said and threw a rock over the cliff and into the churning pool of water far below.
Those two brothers were … evil. I could feel it coming from them. Hell, I could smell it, too. And yet, I had seen them associating with others in town. In particular, the teenage girls in town. I hoped to God they weren’t doing the teenage girls.
Creeps, I thought.
Had they compelled their friends? Or did they actually have friends? Could vampires love? From what I had seen standing outside my office … the answer was no. But I had been wrong before.
That they were going to come gunning for me, I had no doubt.
Michael had prepared me for this, but the truth was I suspected I needed months of training to take on these two. What did I know of fighting bloodthirsty immortals? Not much, if anything. Just what Michael had told me.
And what was his role in all of this? Was he really the Archangel Michael? And what did I know about the Archangel Michael? Only that he was the baddest of all the good angels. So, in essence, I had been trained by a badass angel to kill some badass vampires.
There would be blood.
I hoped it would not be mine.
And so, to ensure it wasn’t mine, I had decided to come out here, in the quiet of the woods, to practice some of what Michael had taught and, perhaps, to add to it. After all, creating the wall of fire between me and the boys had occurred to me on a whim, and it had worked out perfectly.
What else could I do?
I spent the remainder of that afternoon alone in the woods and listening to the whisperings of nature spirits—and perhaps even being watched by the lost souls of two murdered campers—practicing my strange magic.
Because that is how I saw it: magic.
After all, how else could I explain that, with a wave of my hand and a centering of my thoughts, I could create a blazing fireball that hurled through the woods, to explode against a boulder in a shower of flames and sparks that disappeared into the night?
Or that I could pinpoint a blast of wind so powerfully as to send fallen logs tumbling over the cliff and down into the churning pool below?
Magic, I said.
As I stood there alone in the forest, breathing hard from the excitement of it all, I suddenly wondered if this was my own form of black magic.
Perhaps the entity wasn’t the Archangel Michael.
Perhaps he had been something darker, more sinister.
Maybe, I thought, but this much I did know: Michael was a puppy compared to the two Salvatore brothers.
As the day wore on, I continued practicing my own form of strange Earth magic, knowing there was a very good likelihood that I would need it soon.
Very soon.
Dear Blood Diary,
Tonight was one of the creepier nights of my existence, and that’s saying something.
There are many witches in this world. Okay, well maybe not many real witches, but they are certainly out there if you know where to look. Luckily, I’ve made it a pastime to keep track of such witches both good, and bad. Especially the very bad.
The very bad didn’t much care about upsetting the “balance of Nature” and all that other crap. The very bad could be bought, for the right price.
And this witch that I knew of in the backwoods of Virginia could be bought for a very special price. A human price. A price we were very willing to pay.
Once we arrived, and dropped the bound and gagged wino bum in her basement (what she was going to do with him was anyone’s guess, but I didn’t envy him for a minute), Helen had us sit with her in the center of her bare living room floor. Stefan looked a tad nervous, and I didn’t blame him. Witches were supposed to be our natural enemies. They were supposed to represent the balance of Nature. However, not all of them adhered to what they were supposed to do. We all have free will, still. Some of just choose to exert that free will by feeding on the living.
Hey, I didn’t make the rules … and I never asked for this either. As always, I could thank my brother for my eternal predicament.
Anyway, no reason to beat a dead horse over that.
Or an undead brother.
Helen’s name was the nicest thing about her. That face most certainly didn’t launch a thousand ships. Maybe a thousand nightmares.
Someone had gone to work on her face with a knife. I counted four slashes that never healed right. Her graying dreadlocks always reminded me of snakes. And once or twice, I’d swear they moved on their own accord. Like Medusa.
Anyway, we weren’t here to chitchat, and once she had us seated I told her why we were here.
“You wish to obtain information on the prophesied Elemental,” she said, nodding. Some of the candlelight caught her murky eyes. How she saw out of those cataract-laden orbs, I hadn’t a clue.
“You’ve heard of him, then?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s a him this time?”
“This time?”
“The Elemental has appeared a number of times, in different parts of the world, doing the job that some of us witches have forsaken. Yes, the Elemental can be either male or female.”
“Is the story true that the Elemental can make vampires invincible?” asked Stefan.
She turned her horrific face toward my brother. To his credit, he didn’t even flinch. “More than likely the Elemental will do its job, and destroy the likes of you.”
Stefan looked at me. I merely shrugged.
“That’s all well and good, but is the rumor true?”
“It’s no rumor, Damon the Vampire. Yes, the Elemental could be a source of eternal strength to your kind.”
“What must we do?” asked Stefan.
“Stay far away from him.”
“And if we don’t stay far away from him?” I pressed. “If we seek eternal invincibility?”
The old witch sighed heavily, and as she did so the candles surrounding them flared brighter. Yes, she was very much in tune with Nature. She looked forward, between Stefan and me, and said, “Then I suggest you feed on his heart.”
Stefan looked at me, but I was still looking at the old witch. “You mean actually, you know, feed on his heart?” I asked.
She nodded once, and with that, the candle flames winked out of existence.
D. Salvatore
&nb
sp; CHAPTER TWENTY
* * *
We were in my truck, which smelled like old French fries and a pretty woman.
It was late afternoon, and we were parked outside of town near the abandoned stone quarry. Below us was a massive open pit, its contents robbed by man, the Earth scarified by our presence here. Interestingly, I could almost feel the assault on the Earth, feel its life force being stolen, ripped away. Then again, I was an Elemental. Or, so I had been told.
For me, this didn’t feel like another client meeting. For me, this felt like something a little more. For Gracie Lockwood, not so much. That she might be feeling something similar for me was not only doubtful, but selfish on my part. My life had just gone from mundane to insane. How could I possibly inflict my life onto someone else?
And, for that matter, how un-freakin’-fair was it that I should meet a girl who made me catch my breath every time I saw her? I mean, I’d spent years and years alone, living peacefully and comfortably, eeking out a simple, if not unique, existence. That would have been an ideal time to meet my soul mate.
Soul mate, pal?
Wishful thinking. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what a soul mate was. All I knew was that the girl sitting next to me had captured my heart unlike any other in all my life.
My weird Elemental, fire-starting, rain-creating, wind-blowing heart.
I sighed as I looked out over the great pit, where miners had spent years removing gypsum and iron ore and God knew what else. The mine, long since depleted, had been abandoned for years now and sat like a scar on the Earth, just outside of town. Funny, I had never thought of it as a scar before. Truth be known, I had had no feelings about it.
