by L.J. Hayward
Chapter 3
Oh come on. Like I was actually going to charge her extra. I even threw in the removal of the unconscious imps for nothing. Of course, she had to give me Mr Wibbles’ old carrier to put the overflowing bodies in. All in all, it was a very tidy room I walked out of two hours later. A trifle bare of ornamentation, but demon free, and that’s always a plus.
I shoved the two carriers full of slowly awakening imps into the boot of the Monaro and slammed it shut before they could deafen me. I selected some soothing music and the imps shut up for the trip home. It was heading toward sunset when I pulled into the driveway and clicked the garage door opener. I slid the black car in beside the Moto Guzzi and closed the garage.
Inside, I set the carriers down beside the stereo, tuned them into a classical station and then checked messages.
There were none. No missed calls, either. Not even a text.
It had to be faulty. Why else wouldn’t it record the many, many messages left by all the calls I’d sent to messages while I did an imp-ectomy on Mrs Arnold’s living room?
I went into Mercy’s room and, ignoring the snoring lump in the middle of the bed, rummaged around in the dirty clothes on the floor for her mobile. I rang my mobile on it. I left a message and checked my phone.
“You are a fun and considerate guy. Everyone loves you,” came through loud and clear. The up vibe of my message evened out the depression brought on by the fact nothing was faulty. It was true. No one had called.
I wasn’t about to say business was bad, but, well, it was. Six months since I’d proven my brass balls on the Primal calling itself Heather Veilchen; six months since I’d started—and ended—a battle between two rival vampire clans. Six months since I’d had a decent job. There’d been the odd vampire slaying or two and a brief and dirty plague of sprites up the road at the Sunshine Coast. Of course, the imp population had been on the increase for a while. I didn’t want to get bogged down playing lullabies for piddly little demons though. There was little profit in it, and no need for me to cart Mercy around the countryside. She was getting lazy.
Case in point, she was sleeping in a lot. The sun had set and she was still in bed. Once upon a time, she would have bounded out of bed with a spring in her step and blood lust in her eyes the moment the sun dropped over the horizon. Not so much these days.
I went back into her room. “Mercy, time to get up.”
The lump under the blankets shifted a bit and mumbled something.
“Come on, up and at ‘em, girl. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” Even my best drill sergeant voice got nothing more than a little white hand sneaking me the finger.
I went into the cage and ripped the blanket off the bed. Mercy spluttered and hissed, moving into a crouch with liquid ease. Her dark eyes flashed silver.
Hey, I don’t know about anyone else, but a girl not much over five feet, about as wide as my thigh, with a sweet heart-shaped face and bouncing curls of black hair isn’t that scary. Especially when she’s wearing PJs with My Little Pony on them.
“Whatever. It’s time to get up.” I spun around and walked out of her room.
In the kitchen, I made myself some lunner—think brunch but at the other end of the day. I was finishing off my bowl of cornflakes and grapes when Mercy slouched in. She’d showered and washed her hair. It was plastered down to her scalp and shoulders and dripped water onto her t-shirt (slogan—I’m Dressed and Out of Bed, What More Do You Want?) and track pants.
“Evening.”
She snarled at me and went to the cupboard hiding the blood fridge.
“Grumpy. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep.”
Mercy had made leaps and bounds forward in learning to act human, but sarcasm was still a lost cause with her. She glared at me and then glared at the locked fridge.
“I’m hungry,” she snapped.
“You ate two nights ago.”
“And now I’m hungry again.”
“Why? You’ve done nothing. I checked your haemoglobin this morning. It was fine then, it’ll be fine now. You don’t need any blood.”
She moaned and threw herself into a chair. “But I’m hungry.”
“You only think you’re hungry.”
Her head hit the heavy, wooden table with such force it jumped. I caught my bowl before it could shatter on the floor.
“Be careful with the furniture, Merce. Please. We can’t afford to replace anything if you break it.”
Her muttering was stifled by the table. I patted her head on the way to the sink.
“Do that a couple more times while shouting ‘I’ll never get it, never’ and I might take some pity on you. Otherwise, earn your keep.”
Dragging herself up with exaggerated weariness, she followed me into the living room. “But there’s nothing to do.”
I showed her the imps. She got down on her hands and knees and peered into the cages. They woke from their music induced stupor and hissed at her. Mercy growled and the cages rocked backwards as the imps all piled up at the end furthest from her.
“They’re really tiny,” she observed.
“Babies. I figure the big one is mum or dad. Maybe both. I think I read somewhere demons are hermaphrodites. Or they reproduce asexually. Either way, they shouldn’t be here. Take them out and drown them.”
In a lot of ways, Mercy was much like a teenager. She was turned when she was twenty-three, but her mental age was younger. In vampire years, she was barely a toddler. At two and bit years turned, she should have still been nothing more than a mouth on legs. Feeding was all that consumed a young vampire’s mind in the early years. Only when they reached the ripe old age of twenty or thirty did they start to slow down and learn a few words. At fifty, they could pass for a sulky adolescent. A lot of wild vampires didn’t make it that far. They were, relatively speaking, pretty fragile until they hit the half century. After that, it was a rapid incline until they could pass for human at a night club, then quickly on to making muster at a cocktail party. Around the 300th year, they could be in government and no one would know the difference.
It seemed that with a well planned diet and regimental training program, a vampire could roar through that process in no time at all. I’d stumbled on the process by accident while trying to help Mercy through the early stages of the transformation. The discovery, and Mercy’s subsequent awesomeness compared to other vampires her age, had drawn all sorts of nasty interest. The fight with the Primal Veilchen had been a result of that interest. And it was why I couldn’t quite understand why we hadn’t been inundated with avenging vampires since.
Mercy sighed as if I’d just asked her to lop off a limb and offer it to a hungry dog. She picked up the carriers and trudged outside with them. I followed her as far as the back door and watched as she went to the end of the dock in the backyard. Our house backed onto a salt water canal. The neighbours all had sleek boats at the end of their docks. We had nothing, if you discounted the grouchy vampire on her belly, dunking cat carriers in the water.
Demons don’t like salt. At least, imps don’t. It’s like Holy water for vampires. You dunk an imp in the ocean and you can almost hear the plaintive cries of ‘I’m melting’.
The water boiled around the carriers and thankfully the imps were suffocated before they could start yodelling again. When the water calmed down, Mercy lifted up the carriers, drained them of sludge and brought them back inside.
“Happy?” she demanded as she went past.
“Immensely.”
“Can I eat now?”
I went and got her a bag of O pos and she took it into her room. Moments later, I could hear the opening of Thor. Since Mercy had discovered Chris Hemsworth, Will Smith hardly got a look in.
Retreating to the office, I called Roberts.
“Hey,” he answered. “I was about to call you.”
“Yeah? Got a job for me?”
“Nah. I saw Jacob today. He was wondering if you wanted to come in for a Black Books marathon
.”
I scowled. “Why couldn’t he call me himself?”
“What am I? His secretary?”
“No, you’re mine. And you’re not doing your job properly. How come I’ve got no work?”
“What are you talking about? I gave you that job in The Gap.” There was a short pause. “Didn’t I?”
“You did, and I finished it today. More imps. Lots more imps. How did you get my card to a senior citizen anyway? Have you moved out of the pubs and clubs and onto the bowling greens? RSLs?”
Roberts was a rep for booze companies. He trawled the drunken rabble of the local watering holes with promotional gear and competitions to win, you guessed it, more alcohol. I’m not so great with crowds, so Roberts hands out my business cards whenever he overhears a conversation that might be of interest to me. It’s an agreement that works fairly well. Until now.
“No,” he answered slowly. “I do have a life, unlike some people whom shall remain named as you. I met the old duck at the theatre.”
I strangled back a laugh. “The theatre?”
“Yes, Carla and I went to see The Phantom of the Opera.”
“Hang on. Carla? What happened to Gale?”
Roberts sighed. “Do you remember that trip you dragged me on, up to the Sunny Coast?”
“The sprite invasion, sure.”
“I missed Gale’s birthday.”
The last serious relationship I had was at university with Halle, a girl with a sad Brad Pitt dependency. I’m now thirty-two. My memory might give out on me every now and then, but I still knew missing a birthday was a Big Deal.
“Ah man, I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would never have asked you along.”
“The sad thing was, she’d never told me it was her birthday. Apparently, I was just supposed to know.”
I sucked in a sharp, wounded breath. “That’s tough.”
“Yeah. But anyway, Carla’s better. Longer legs.”
“When do I get to meet her?”
Roberts snorted. “Never. Gale was ready to forget me an hour after meeting you.”
“Hey, that’s not fair and good job changing the topic of conversation. Why don’t I have any work?”
“Shit. Okay, here’s the reason. Mate, there is no work. I keep listening but no one’s talking.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“It’s the truth. Get your arse out of the house and come check it out yourself. No one’s got vampire problems, or troll issues, or ghoul troubles. I’m telling you, you must have cleaned up the town. There are no nasties out there for you to get all righteous on.”
I sagged back in the chair. “Well, that hardly seems fair. I was just hitting my stride. And Mercy’s at a stage where I don’t have to constantly be watching her.”
Me and my fat mouth.
“Hawkins!” Someone began pounding on the front door.
I lurched out of the chair. “I’ll call you back,” I snapped at the phone and hung up. Racing to the front door, I flung it open before Charles could knock it down.
“What’s the deal, Charles?” I demanded.
Charles was my neighbour. We didn’t get on so well. He thinks I’m weird. I don’t know where he’d get that idea.
“That… that… girl is in your backyard.”
Charles thinks I’m weird and he thinks Mercy’s retarded. He’s never quite come out and thought it openly, but he subconsciously believes I’m taking advantage of the poor, mentally deficient girl.
How do I know this? Because Charles has a very open mind and I have psychic superpowers. I’ve lost count of the number of nights I’ve been woken up by his dreams. I do, however, know how many times I’ve been woken up by Charles and his wife Sue having sex. They’re both screamers, but their emotional screaming is what gets me. If I didn’t regard Charles with so much contempt, I would probably blush whenever I saw him.
And right now, his stuttering words were matched by his stuttering mind. Flashes of Mercy in the backyard slapped me in the brain, along with Charles’ embarrassed lust.
“Dear God,” I muttered and, leaving Charles at the door, I ran through to the back of the house and out onto the patio.
There’s a narrow strip of grass between patio and canal. Mercy had put down a towel on the grass and was lying on it. The only thing she wore was a pair of sunglasses. The moonlight was like silk on her pale skin, caressing the curves and accentuating the peaks. She was flawless. You would never have guessed she’d almost died of severe wounds six months ago.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Sunbathing.”
I blinked several times. “Okay. As long as you’re doing it sensibly.”
Charles was still at the door when I returned.
“Is she still out there?”
“Yes.”
“Covered up?”
“No.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Sunbathing sensibly.”
He gaped at me like a fish out of water.
“Might I suggest,” I said as I turned him around and gave him a helpful shove toward home, “that you and Sue watch a movie tonight. Or play Scrabble. Or, if you want, look out the window at the naked girl and have some fun. Whatever. Goodbye, Charles.”
I shut the door before he could splutter a reply. Think about it. It could have been worse. He could have seen her dunking two occupied cat carriers in the water.
Of course, I wasn’t about to just let Mercy get away with it. In the kitchen, I got a bucket and filled it with water and all the ice in the freezer. I let it cool down and then went upstairs. I never go upstairs. I have no need to. Mercy and I have bedrooms on the ground floor. I have an en suite and she has a shower stall. The only need I have of a second storey is so I can dump several litres of freezing water on the naked vampire from the balcony.
She squealed and I’m certain I heard a muffled, female laugh from next door.
Mercy was in the living room when I came downstairs. Dripping, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Vampires run at a much higher operating temperature than humans. It would take drowning in Antarctic waters to affect them.
Thankfully, the phone rang. Mercy knows that’s often a sign of business (at least, it used to be), so she didn’t kill me before I could answer it.
“Night Call,” I said.
“Matt Hawkins?”
The voice sounded vaguely familiar. “Yeah. Who’s this?”
“Ivan Vorel. From Sol Investigations.”
Aah. “I didn’t expect to hear from you.” Ever again. His boss didn’t exactly like me. Pity. For a while there, his boss had been very much on my ‘like a lot’ list. Time—and no contact—had lessened that feeling.
“I know,” Ivan said. “Listen, are you able to come into the office tomorrow? I would like to talk to you.”
“Does Erin know you’re calling me?”
There was a long pause. “No. She won’t be in tomorrow.”
“Okay. I’ll be in around ten. Is that all right?”
“Yeah. Thanks. I really appreciate it.”
He hung up and I stared at the phone for a while. What could it mean that Ivan was willing to risk Erin’s ire by contacting me?
“Work?” Mercy asked.
“Could be. And it’s possible that it’s something big.”
Again, me and my fat mouth.
