by Night, H. T.
Heck, before I turned him into my enemy, maybe I could get him to help me with my homework.
According to his site, The Answer operated a resort called Cloudland in Mount Shasta, just over the Oregon line in California. The 300-acre property was billed as a retreat center, but if you read between the lines, you could see the customer base wasn’t your typical family with 2.3 kids.
Cloudland catered to those “seeking spiritual enlightenment through therapeutic treatment and holistic integration of the feminine divine.”
Now, the first question I’d ask if I were a woman is, “What’s a dude doing heading up a center marketed toward women?”
The first answer would be “money” and the second answer would be “sex,” but if you put them together, you probably got the real answer: “power.”
The fact that Erasmus billed himself as The Answer suggested he was on a power trip that would rival those of any modern-day politician, evangelist, military leader, or celebrity.
No wonder, as Parker had stated, men weren’t drawn to his little self-improvement center in the woods, although one had to consider that the odds were probably good if you were looking to hook up.
Unless, of course, access was one of those little avenues The Answer used to pile up the cash. Plenty of rich guys would pay a lot of money to get a chance at a vulnerable population of nubile young women.
The website didn’t show much, just a couple of pages of The Answer’s gibberish, a contrived concoction of all the best add-water-and-stir New Age religions. The articles were accompanied by a few photographs that showed flowering trees, a pond in a meadow, and a few women in muted cotton shifts frolicking in a flower garden with the snow-covered Mount Shasta towering majestically in the background.
All in all, it was presented as a pleasant way to spend a week and meditate in between lunches of little sandwiches made of cucumbers and watercress.
The prices weren’t listed, but when I went through the registration process, I found that a week’s stay cost $3,995, plus additional menus where one could sign up for day spas, intensive training sessions, and group therapy, all for “only hundreds more.”
If The Answer hadn’t started killing people, he probably could have done like all the other cult leaders of our times and make a mountain of money and retire in luxury on some deserted isle where followers never bothered him.
No, he was one of those weird ones—a sincere guy who apparently believed in his own brand of Armageddon.
In Plan A, I would have walked through the front gate holding Parker’s hand, blinking all wide-eyed and innocent, saying “Aw, shucks” a lot while I asked her dad what his favorite sports teams were.
Plan B and C were already out, and now I was at Plan D. I was a little concerned that I’d been working this case for less than 24 hours and I’d already used up a good chunk of the plan alphabet.
I registered for the following week, since night school was about to have its fall break.
I signed up as “Summer Rain,” which had actually been the real name of a real person at one point. I know, because I had the credit card to prove it. I suspected Summer was long dead, though, and probably wouldn’t mind a big hit to her credit rating in a few months.
Now all I had to do was make sure Parker stayed well out of the way while I took care of business.
Well, that and not flunk geometry.
Chapter Seven
Friday night. A week later.
Parker had cooled it a little with me, whispering that her dad had laid down the law and that I looked like “bad news.” Score points for Pops, because I was.
The following night, I would leave for the retreat in Shasta and see for myself what was going on. That I had registered under a female name didn’t stop me. Summer Rain, in this case, was going to turn out to be a dude.
Daddy and his creepy cult of women were just going to have to deal with it. But first I needed to recharge the old batteries.
I keep chilled blood in my refrigerator, behind some empty cartons of milk and an old watermelon that I really ought to toss.
Not the world’s greatest hiding place, granted, but I wasn’t too worried about that, and it’s not like I could hide it in the back of the toilet like a drunk hiding whiskey. I lived alone, as I had for many, many years. I had few guests, and fewer still randomly opened my refrigerator for anything. Still, on the off-chance that someone did, I would prefer not to explain the packets of blood that I kept in the fridge.
I had just fetched such a packet, which was provided to me at great cost from a contact who worked in a hospital. Do you ever wonder why phlebotomists take three and sometimes four vials of your blood? Don’t you think all that blood might be overkill? Well, it is. Some of the blood gets sold to folk like me.
The undead like me.
Many phlebotomists are the true drug kingpins of this world. Peddling the drug of blood.
The packets are handy, designed for impulse consumers. With a quick swipe, one end was open and I was guzzling it hard when there came a knock on my door.
One thing you don’t do is cross between a grizzly cub and its mother. The other thing you don’t do is disturb a vampire when he’s feeding. The image I had was tossing the cold, crappy blood and replacing it with some fresh, warm blood. The same blood currently pumping through the veins of whoever was standing outside my door.
In fact, it took all my inner strength, honed from years of self control, to not throw open the door, pin down whoever was standing there, and sink my teeth deep into their soft neck.
Oh, sweet Jesus.
Just drink. Drink.
I did, guzzling, feeling the warmth spread through my body, despite initially going down cold. Warmth and strength.
The knocking came again.
And I nearly tore myself away from the bag, thinking of that hotter, fuller bag standing mere feet away.
Nearly.
But I kept guzzling, and soon I was squeezing out the last few drops like a miser squeezing out the last of his cheap toothpaste. The bags of blood are perfectly measured out to give me all the fuel I need. Or crave, as I thought of it. I never drank too much, but Lord help you if I didn’t drink enough. If I didn’t drink enough, and I was still hungry, anything was fair game, including kittens and puppies and kindergarteners.
I never said I was a saint.
Just a guy with an unhealthy appetite.
With the last of the bag consumed, I tossed it in my trash compactor with the other empty bags of blood and headed to the door.
And when I peeked through the peephole, I could not have been more surprised to see Parker standing there.
Looking cute and impatient.
Chapter Eight
I unlocked the door and opened it. Parker stood there with a big smile on her face. I couldn’t tell if it was because she was embarrassed that she came to my apartment, or if it was because she was generally glad to see me.
“Hi,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Standing. Do you never answer your door?”
“No. I mean, how did you find me?
“You’re not the only one with secrets. Are your parents here?”
“Uh. Mom’s out visiting her sister.” I wasn’t sure I had a mom, or whether she was alive or dead. If you’re not a saint, you get to lie once in a while. “Come on in.”
Parker entered my house carrying a bright yellow purse. She walked over to my Victorian couch that cost more than all the furniture in the place combined and dropped her purse beside it.
“Please have a seat,” I said, sitting at my kitchen table that was virtually in the living room itself being that my apartment was as small as a New York loft.
“Did you sneak out?” I asked, not sure if she would tell me the truth. I trusted her, but I was beginning to catch on that she was no saint, either.
“Yeah, I did. My dad actually left on a big all-night road trip.”
“Road trip?”
; “It’s one of his little habits. For all I know, he’s dropping off dead bodies.”
Parker was staring at my mouth. She had a puzzled look with a hint of dread behind her eyes. She put a finger against her lips and did a wiping motion.
Crud, some blood had dropped on my cheek.
“What were you eating, strawberries?”
Strawberries aren’t dark enough. I had to think quick. “Actually,” I answered, “I was eating beets. Lots of iron.”
“That’s disgusting. You were eating beets. Beets have got to be the grossest vegetable. They look like they are dipped in blood.”
I smirked. She had no idea how appetizing that sounded. Blood was my catsup. Blood on just about anything sounded divine. “I’m a vegan at heart. And iron is good for the blood system. Everyone should eat more beets. Life would be better.”
“Still, beets are gross! They taste like ass.”
Usually, when someone said that, my first reaction was to ask how they knew what ass tasted like. But I kind of liked her, so I let it pass. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you find out where I lived?”
Parker began to stammer. “Well,” she said, “You’d be amazed how a short skirt and a pair of black nylons can persuade a horny nineteen-year-old administrative assistant in our school office.”
“He just gave it to you?”
“Yeah. I hope you’re not angry.”
“No, I’m not angry.” After all, how could I be angry at the poor nineteen-year-old that Parker just threw under the bus when I knew for a fact he was completely innocent. How did I know this? The administrative office doesn’t have my real address. Parker was up to something. Fair is fair, if she was going to stalk me and come over then she was going to answer some hardball questions. “I have another question for you.”
“Go ahead.” Parker appeared confident.
“How do you know for sure your father has killed anyone?”
Parker took my question in and nodded. She took her time to answer the question. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to make something up or if she was just preparing to tell me something insanely intense. “Well,” she said. “I don’t know for sure. I just know he’s the one in charge and about once every two months a girl very close to him disappears without a trace.”
“Without a trace? Don’t these girls have families?”
“That’s why it’s without a trace. Their families think they are still wrapped up in his cult. They think they are still with them at his compound, and because they are over the age of eighteen, there is nothing they can do about it.”
“So, these women go missing and no one questions it?”
“That’s my point, Spider. If they truly do leave and want out of life like the elders and my father lead everyone to believe, wouldn’t they go back home to their loved ones? None of them do. I have gone back to their homes and asked about them, and all the parents say that their daughter is wrapped up in a cult and they have no access to her. They usually say they haven’t seen them in months or even years.”
“And when these girls become missing from the compound? Your father claims they have left the movement?”
“Yes, he tells everyone that they have lost their way and have returned to their sinful nature. But they don’t return home. He leads us to believe that that’s where they were headed, or sometimes to Hollywood to become an actress, or Las Vegas to become a legal prostitute. Which amounts to the same thing, really. But none of them make it home. Ever.”
“Why do you think they are dead? Maybe they’re embarrassed to go home.”
“It doesn’t fit the profile of people who leave a cult. It is human nature to want to go back to where you were safest and to the ones you know love you unconditionally, regardless of your beliefs. Assuming you’re lucky enough to ever break your brainwashing.”
“Still, to claim that they’re dead. It’s a pretty big assumption.” I was trusting my gut on this, but my gut gurgles sometimes, especially after a recent feeding.
“They’re all dead. I know it.”
“Why do you know for sure?”
“One of them was my best friend...and I found her body.”
Chapter Nine
“So,” I said. “You have a body but you didn’t go to the police?”
She gave me a furtive glance from the couch. “This isn’t a police thing. It’s way too weird.”
“I take it your friend was murdered?”
“Worse than that.”
“What’s worse than that?” I hoped it wasn’t rape or some kind of kinky mutilation. That always sickened me.
“She was in the storage compartment of my dad’s Volvo. Like, where the spare tire is. I was...uh...trying to hide something from him, and then I found the thing he was hiding from me.”
“A body in the car. Even the cops could nail a case on something like that.”
“Cindy was naked, and all curled up like a fetus in the womb. I didn’t recognize her at first, but she had this single purple streak in her blonde hair. I’d gone with her to the stylist’s to have it done, because she said it would piss off her parents.”
“Did you ID her face?”
“I was afraid to touch her. I was freaking out. And it was almost like she wasn’t real, like she’d been bleached or something. Her skin was pasty white and she looked a little shriveled up like an old mummy. But she was only eighteen.”
The operative word here was “was.” Her aging had stopped. Once you’re dead, you pretty much stay at “dead” forever. Unless you’re like me.
“What’s your best friend doing joining a cult?”
“Why does anybody join a cult? She wanted to piss off her parents and get some good drugs, and maybe some group sex.”
“None of that stuff is on your dad’s website.”
“Yeah, right. Like you’d advertise a cult like that?”
“Yeah, it would get way too many applications. So she gave you some inside info. That’s how you figured out what was going on.”
“Yeah. She was only at Cloudland for two weeks before she texted me. You’re not supposed to have any form of outside communication there—”
“Rule of thumb for cult leaders everywhere. Isolate and re-educate.”
“The text was like, ‘This place is soooooo boring.’ Just like that, with six O’s and everything. Then she followed up with ‘All we do is meditate and tend the flower garden. If I have to pick one more weed, I’m going to turn into a goat.’”
“Doesn’t exactly sound like party time.”
“I texted her back, and I didn’t get another message for three days. Then one came that simply said, ‘I’m going home, Parker.’ And that was that. Until I found her body two weeks later.”
I got up from the kitchen table and strolled over to the couch, thinking. I was probably stroking the little stubble on my chin. I’ve heard I do that a lot. When I sat down, I was done thinking. Parker’s proximity pretty much brainwashed me.
“Well, that sounds reasonable enough,” I said. “She was bored and she went home. Maybe that wasn’t even her body you saw in your dad’s car.”
“Does it really matter if it was Cindy or not? I mean, that still makes him a killer.”
“But if you’re tying in this cult angle, and you have a reason to hold back from the cops, there’s a whole lot more than you’re telling me. To be honest, it feels like you’re setting me up for something.”
Her brown eyes flashed anger, like amber rotated in the fire. It’s one of my weaknesses. I like girls when they’re mad. And I tend to make them that way a lot. “Well, you’re the one playing ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ with me. Maybe you’re the one who has something to hide. The guy without a past, no hobbies, perfect tests in history, you only see him at night. I mean, tell me that doesn’t sound suspicious.”
I avoided her mesmerizing eyes, annoyed that she’d turned the whole thing around and put it on me. I wasn’t the one with a cult murderer for a dad. I almost made a
crack like “What is this, ‘An interview with a vampire’?” but I caught myself. If she was already asking questions, she might make the next leap of logic. Every time that happened, it ended up in one of two ways—either I made a fast exodus from town or somebody ended up dead.
“I say a corpse in a car trumps a weird loner in night school,” I said. “I thought you wanted my help, not to piss me off.”
She cooled down a little. Good. I hadn’t liked the way she was gripping the arm of the couch. The fabric was kind of delicate.
“That last text wasn’t hers,” she said. “I mean, it came from her cell, but she would never say ‘Parker’ like that in a text. I am always ‘P,’ just the letter, not the stuff you do in the toilet.”
“Thanks for clearing that up, Parker with a P.”
“My dad must have found the cell, did away with her, and then sent that little text to throw me off the trail. Probably sent the same message to her parents, too, so they’d be expecting her and then weeks go by before they call in the police. But since she’s eighteen, they’re not going to do anything, right? She’s a legal adult.”
“But why haul her around in the Volvo? Waiting for a good chance to dump her body? Sounds like he had plenty of chances, as much as he traveled.”
Parker shook her pretty head. “No. I don’t think he was finished with her.”
“Finished? You said she was dead.”
“I think she was his fast-food happy meal. Her blood had been drained, Spider.”
I thought about that. The guy didn’t sound like any vampire I’d ever heard of. Most creatures of the night that I’d crossed paths with tended to stay just that: creatures of the night. As in, they kept to themselves under the veil of darkness. I’d never heard of one who craved attention. Craved power. And could keep a suntan. One thing I was certain of, as Parker was watching me expectantly, was that he wasn’t a vampire.
