by J. R. Rain
“You sleep all day and stay out all night. My kind of platonic roommate. Sounds like it would work out pretty well.”
“I’m not jealous,” I said. “I just care about you, that’s all.”
“In that case, you’ll care about my friends.”
“So, some stranger you just met while boozing is now a ‘friend’”?
“If I wanted to be judged, I’d go back to night school,” she said. “You say you’re here to help me, so help me.”
“Fine,” I said, in a passive-aggressive tone. I followed her into the passageway. The foot traffic had picked up now, and the air was redolent with sunblock, rum punch, and perfume, all sprinkled with a little salt. Most of the passengers were fifty and up, grumpy stockbrokers wondering if their iPhones would work at sea and swinging seniors blowing their children’s inheritance. Parker ducked though a little hatch and I followed, climbing a cute little metal ladder to the next deck. Gentleman that I was, I didn’t even look up her summer skirt.
Not much, anyway.
The bar was pretty crowded, considering it was only a little after dark. It was open-air for the most part, except for one little corner that held a big-screen television showing a soccer game. Parker headed straight for a little table by the railing where a bearded guy sat alone in his flip flops, khaki cargo shorts, and Old Navy T-shirt. He wore sunglasses that reflected the flashing neon beer signs.
So Parker’s taste in men was hipster winos and weirdo vampires?
“Hi, Steve, this is the guy I was telling you about,” Parker said.
Steve looked me up and down—at least, I think he did. I couldn’t see his eyes. He could have been looking down into whatever fruity drink with little paper umbrella happened to be his drug of choice.
I looked at his neck, what I could see of it beneath that woolly dark beard. I’m a neck man; what can I say?
“He doesn’t look like much,” Steve said. He was probably early twenties, some douche-bag grad school dropout spending the last of his student-loan money. Too old to be cruising a recently-graduated high school honey like Parker, at any rate.
All I could do was smile. My fangs were in hibernation mode but if he annoyed me enough, maybe I’d give him a little show.
“He’s tougher than he looks,” Parker said, and I wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment or not. “He got me out of a major jam with my old man. I mean, seriously major.”
Steve nodded at the empty chairs around his round glass table. We sat, Parker close enough so that her knee brushed against his.
None of my business. I looked out across the black water, the glow of Tampa now a fuzzy tuft of yellow-orange on the horizon. We were officially at sea.
“So,” I said. “What’s this problem Parker was telling me about?”
Steve swiveled his head as if checking for eavesdroppers, then leaned forward. I noticed a strand of hardened cheese in his beard, probably from a drippy fish taco. Parker sure knew how to pick them.
“How do I know I can trust you?” he whispered over the Rolling Stones playing through the bar speakers.
I decided not to waste time on this clown. For all Parker’s faults, she had a pretty good radar for the unnatural. If something heavy was going down, I needed information. Otherwise, he was easy enough to ignore.
“Because,” I said. “I am a vampire and Parker is in recovery from a bitching case of demonic possession.”
Her mouth fell open, followed by Steve’s, and I swear I saw more cheese back there in his molars. I have good eyesight, even at night.
Then Steve slapped the table top, threw back his head, and let out a guttural howl of laughter. “Arooo,” he squealed. “And I’m a werewolf.” After he stopped laughing, he removed his sunglasses to wipe tears from his eyes.
No, he wasn’t a werewolf, because the sclerae around his pupils was white and not yellow. I’ve known werewolves, and this guy wasn’t even close. Damned liar.
“I like a guy with a sense of humor,” he said. “When the chips are down and danger grabs you by the balls, you got to know how to laugh it off. Amiright?” he asked, giving me a frat-boy punch in the biceps.
He must have expected his fist to go splat into some baby fat. Instead, it bounced off like a rubber mallet beating a shark’s hide. I didn’t even flinch. He looked at his hand and the grin disappeared somewhere inside his beard.
“Told you,” Parker said to him. “Now quit screwing around. In case you haven’t noticed, this is supposed to be a vacation.”
“Okay, then,” he said, all business now. “I have to deliver a very special box to a witch doctor in Belize, or he’s going to cast a lovely little spell on me and turn everyone on this ship into zombies from hell.”
“Hello,” Parker said sarcastically, maintaining our cover stories. “Witch doctors aren’t real.”
“Tell that to my parrot,” Steve said. “This witch doctor put a hex on him, and now Captain Sparrow is speaking in tongues.”
Chapter Four
Most witch doctors were charlatans. Most.
Years ago, I once met a witch doctor down in Honduras who enjoyed gathering nail and hair clippings of local villagers and turning their lives into living nightmares. Literally. He haunted their dreams and controlled their thoughts and made them do his bidding.
He was the reason the villagers diligently burned their clippings and shavings and lived in fear. He was a bastard, yes, but he certainly knew his way around curses. And once he was able to lift mine—long story—he turned out to be a lot of fun. Although not a vampire, he had a taste for chicken blood, and we drank together until the early morning.
When Parker was done scoffing at the idea of a witch doctor—and who was she to scoff at anything supernatural, at this point?—I said, “What’s in the box?”
Steve shook his head. “I can’t tell you. At least not now. Not until I can trust you.”
Many vampires are psychic. Many vampires are psychotic, too. I’m neither. I was, however, blessed—or cursed—with other skills, none of which helped me plumb this guy’s thoughts. Whatever was in the box would remain a mystery.
For now.
“So why do you need my help?” I asked. I was getting tired of Steve’s shifty eyes—and of the leering way he was looking at Parker. In fact, I was close to getting up and leaving altogether, if I didn’t smack the guy first. I think Parker sensed my irritation. She caught my eye and shook her head once.
How she sensed my irritation was a credit to her intuition, as I’m certain my face had remained stony and expressionless. Vampires have that way about them. I knew the implications of her reaction, and I wasn’t sure I approved.
Whenever I got close to a mortal, especially when real emotion was involved, we could sometimes dip into and out of each other’s thoughts. A sort of telepathic connection. I’ve learned to shield my thoughts in the past, and I might just have to start doing that around Parker.
I was certain, at this point, she was unaware that she might be gaining access to my thoughts and emotions. The thoughts and emotions of a vampire.
She was about to be in for a very big surprise.
For now, I’m certain she thought she was just acting on a feeling, a hunch, and sensed I was irritated, although my face revealed nothing. My actions revealed nothing.
It’s the way of the vampire. The connection, the telepathy. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve kept my distance from mortals.
Especially female mortals. Then again, there was much about Parker that was still a mystery, and I wasn’t going to make the mistake of underestimating her again. And I didn’t know how much of the demon, if any, was still lurking inside her.
And so I didn’t smack Steve around, even just a little. Instead, I waited for our new pal to sort through his own thoughts and decide how much he should really tell a complete stranger. Finally, he must have come to a decision, because he nodded to himself, looked around again, and leaned forward across the table.
&
nbsp; “I need your help,” he said, “because the witch doctor isn’t the only one who wants what’s in the box.”
Parker squinted at him sideways. I didn’t squint. I stared.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, I kinda stole what’s in the box.”
“Stole from whom?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
I made a move to stand. “Then you don’t need my help.”
“Wait,” he said, reaching out and grabbing my forearm. He flinched unconsciously, no doubt reacting to the iciness of my skin. But he was too scared and too stupid to notice. The cockiness was gone. The bravado was gone. Sitting across from me was a very scared man. “Can you really help me?”
I eased back down. “Maybe. Who did you steal the contents of the box from?”
He didn’t want to answer, but he did anyway, reluctantly. “Fine.” He took some air, then lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “Demande Jemarcus.”
I knew the name. In fact, I knew the name well, as did many.
“Who’s he?” asked Parker, scrunching up her cute face.
“A Jamaican crime lord,” I said. “And perhaps the biggest drug kingpin in the world.”
“Wow!” she said.
You really know how to pick them, I thought.
She snapped her head up and her mouth dropped open. Yeah, I thought, she’s got access to my thoughts. Damn.
“So what do you want from me?” I asked Steve.
“I need you to help me deliver the box.”
“And help keep you alive,” I said.
“I can pay you a lot of money,” he said.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You stole that, too?”
He shrugged. “Once a thief, always a thief. So what do you say?”
I should have said no. In fact, I was just about to tell the thieving scumbag to take a hike when a shot rang out and the water glass exploded next to me. I dove to my right and covered Parker. Steve dove under the table.
So much for a relaxing vacation.
Chapter Five
Legend has it that bullets can’t harm a vampire. But legend is the stuff that normal people pass around to help make sense of things they don’t want to understand. While bullets can’t kill me, they can slow me down because it takes energy to ward off the damage and to heal from the impact.
But silver bullets...hoo boy.
Even with enhanced vision, my eyes weren’t good enough to perform metallurgy on flying bullets to detect their mineral composition, so I preferred to avoid all bullets just on general principle.
As much as I enjoyed cuddling up with Parker under the table, I was more than a little curious about who was doing the shooting and which of us was the target. I rolled free and looked at the deck above, where shouts of alarm were still ringing. I made sure Parker was okay, then glanced over at Steve, whose face looked like he may have wet his pants. I didn’t stop to check his pants to find out.
Instead, I scrambled over to the metal staircase that wound up to the next deck. I could have easily scaled the wall and saved precious seconds but that would have drawn undue attention. Instead, I reacted like a mortal would, albeit a hyperathletic one.
The crowd had parted, obviously to make way for the fleeing gunman. I dashed through the opening before people could begin mingling and gossiping. Parker shouted my name from below. I was touched by her concern.
But it turned out to be a warning instead. Because a funny thing happens when people are screaming about shots being fired. It tends to draw the attention of law enforcement. And since I was the only one running, I was a natural suspect.
The two security guards came out of the crowd like ghosts, just all of a sudden there. They wore white uniform tunics like the regular crew, but had black trousers, badges, and mean-looking nightsticks dangling from their belts.
“Stop where you are,” said the one on the left, a thimble-headed guy who looked a little too happy at the prospect of beating me to a pulp.
“Freeze,” said the other, and her nightstick slid from its ring like this wasn’t her first rodeo.
I could have plowed right through them, severing their jugular veins with a fingernail as I passed, but then I’d have to jump ship. And not only would I then sink to the bottom and have to start walking, they’d also trace my absence to Parker, and then she’d be in trouble.
So I stopped and held my hands up in innocent surrender. “Somebody shot at us and I was chasing,” I said. “And if we don’t hurry, they’ll get away.”
“You fit the eyewitness description of the gunman,” said the woman holding the nightstick.
“I couldn’t have shot at anybody,” I said. “I was down there.” I pointed to the deck below, where the party seemed to be back in full swing.
A crowd had gathered around us, and a man in a straw hat and holding some kind of sissy pink drink said, “It’s him, awright. He was standin’ at da’ rail and den ‘Bang.’” The guy pointed his finger and wiggled it as if firing a gun.
“Come with us, sir,” said the woman with the nightstick. She was taking her rent-a-cop act to the extreme.
“But...the shooter is getting away,” I said.
“The proper term is ‘gunman,’” said the other security guard, taking me by the arm. He spun me around and applied cuffs to one of my wrists.
Of course, I could have yanked him off his feet and swung him around like a cowboy swinging a lariat, and I could have whipped him out so hard he would have flown thirty feet from the bow and splashed into the deep blue. But that would have left me with a lot explaining to do, and I didn’t have time for explanations. Not while someone was using me for target practice.
And apparently going to the trouble of setting me up in the bargain.
The crowd had largely turned its attention back to drinking, except for the witness who had fingered me. I gave him the evil eye but he didn’t even blink.
The female guard turned to him and said, “Are you willing to give a statement if we need to press charges?”
He nodded, a little too pleased to be in the spotlight. The era of reality television had turned everyone into a potential celebrity hungry for attention.
“Ask him what I did with the gun,” I challenged, as the goon guard gave me a pat-down to see if I was armed. His hands seemed to relish the task a little too much for my taste.
“Threw it over da’ side,” said the eyewitness.
“And nobody else saw me?” I asked. The other passengers had already lost interest, going back to mindless milling, drinking, flirting, and whatever it is that senior citizens did when they weren’t gambling.
The female guard said, “We take the safety of our guests very seriously, Mr...”
I couldn’t remember which fake name Parker had registered me under. And answering “Spider” probably wouldn’t have helped my cause any. So I said, “I don’t believe you have any authority to place me under arrest or detain me.”
The female rent-a-cop smacked her nightstick against her open palm. “We take the safety of our guests—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said. “But while your buddy here feels me up, the real gunman is getting away.” I gave the “gunman” a little extra emphasis for his sake.
I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d been set up. Steve had lured us to his table with a wild tale of a box full of bad voodoo, and he’d not been able to explain exactly why he needed our help. Even though he’d not impressed me all that much, that goofy beard of his didn’t exactly scream out “Dirty double-crossing scumbag.”
Parker? Nah. We’d been through too much together, and, besides, a stray bullet would do a whole lot more damage to her than to me.
There was a third option, one that gave me a little chill. Demande Jamarcus, the Mack Daddy Voodoo Priest/crime lord. Helluva combination. He might have enough mojo to make the real gunman look just like me, or hypnotize the eyewitness into thinking I was the guilty party. It was also possib
le he was even now making me look like the gunman instead of the other way around.
I should flash my fangs and see if the eyewitness is still so sure of the I.D.
“He’s clean,” the rent-a-cop said.
“I am always happy to cooperate with the boys in blue,” I said, even though they didn’t wear blue and one of them was a female. “But the real gunman is busy getting lost in the crowd. And according to the ship’s manifest, there are nearly a thousand people on board. So you might want to start searching for that weapon.”
“Fine,” said the female, reluctantly sliding her nightstick back into its ring on her hip. “Give me your name and room number in case we need more information later.”
“Yeah,” said the brains of the outfit. “It’s not like he’s going anywhere. Huh huh huh.”
By this time, Parker and Steve had come close enough to see I was not in imminent danger of walking the plank. I waved to Parker. “Hey, honey, these people need our cabin number and names.”
She gave the guards our fake names, which was actually her real name, Parker Cole. She’d registered me as Vlad, a cute little joke that luckily no one had picked up on. We live in a world where my kind is still considered a myth, despite all the movies, comic books, and breakfast cereals.
The eyewitness gave a disappointed scowl and sulked away as the guards released me. I fought the urge to tail him until he came to a shadowy nook, where I could drag him down and punch a couple of tiny holes in his neck.
But live and let live, they say.
I was about to suggest Steve finish our conversation about this mysterious voodoo box when Steve pointed up at the deck above—there were tons of decks on this ship—and gave a girlish squeal of shock.
I was quite sure I was getting my first look at Demande Jamarcus his own bad self.
Chapter Six
When I looked again, Demande was gone.
The upper decks were the luxury decks. The elevators up were manned by more rent-a-goons and needed key cards to even operate. Short of me scaling the wall and railings, which I could do in a blink, I had no way up.
