by Ian Hall
I saw Elena’s car long before I saw her. She parked in the lot opposite, and teamed up with two other girls; both Hispanic, both heavier, nowhere near as good-looking. As she neared the door, she smiled at me, but I made an irritated face, and shook my head unperceptively. Elena caught on immediately, winked, and walked past without giving me another glance.
Once they were all inside, the bell rang loudly at my side.
I retraced my steps back to the car, and drove to her house. Two minutes later, I stood at the back door, knocking loudly.
An attractive forty-year-old walked across the kitchen and opened the door.
“Yes?” She had good looks, certainly, a striking enough woman, but no way she was Elena’s real mother. Not unless the father had been Orlando Bloom.
“Alan sent me,” I said, indicating that she should step to the side to let me in. Her face showed the same fear that I’d seen so often. She moved to one side.
“Ask me inside then,” I said, a bit more menacingly than I felt, playing the bad, ancient vampire to the core. She looked at me up and down, then shook her head, walking back into the kitchen.
“Come in, why don’t you.” She stood at the stove, supposedly interested in the pot of boiling water. As I walked inside, she turned. “Why can’t you leave us alone?” she snapped, baring her fangs as she did so. “First Alan, then Angela; now Alan’s back.”
I stuck my hands in my jacket pockets and walked to her side. “More comfortable.” I walked past her into the living room. I found it slightly untidy, but not dirty. Magazines covered the small coffee table in the center of the room. “Why so upset?” I asked, being as ambiguous as I could. I felt comfortable in my new role. I let myself fall onto the sofa.
“Look, we’re in Angela’s district.” She sat down on the chair opposite me. Her skirt rode up her thighs; nice legs. “We can’t be seen to be siding with Alan. She’d be down here in a second. Plus, Steve wouldn’t allow it. It’s the young against the old, and I’m sticking with the folks in power.”
Crap, this lady could talk. “Alan and Steve can work things out.”
She sat forward and bared her neck. A dozen puncture wounds showed; all old. “Alan’s lust will blind him. He needs vampire blood now, normal human blood doesn’t work. Not since that bitch tore his neck off. He fed here. He fed on us all. But no more. Now Steve and Angela protect me, and nothing you can say or do will change my allegiance.”
She never saw the dart hit her belly; she just looked at me slightly dazed, and tipped forward onto the table. She hit it with her face, smashing her nose into a hundred pieces. I fired again, the double-tap had been working well for me, and I didn’t want any screw-ups.
I flipped my phone open. “Clint? I need a cleanup on aisle four.”
“At your current location?”
“Yes, sir.”
As I waited on his arrival, I looked in all the kitchen drawers. Nothing.
Along the hall, her bedroom was the same. Seems vampires didn’t go much for paperwork. Bills, stuff like that, credit card statements. I mean, seriously, how do the undead get credit cards?
Elena’s room looked just as I’d imagined it. Pop posters on the wall; some short Ricky Martin lookalike. Schoolbooks.
Then I spotted the prospectus; Alucard Medical University, AMU, Phoenix. I skimmed through it. Chemistry and Environment Sciences were circled in blue pen. Dual Major. Elena was obviously a bright kid. Well, a bright vampire.
I heard a car draw into the driveway, way too early for Clint. I peeked round Elena’s curtains. In the driveway, a man got out of an old beater car. Groceries piled high in a paper sack.
I slipped into the hallway, watching the closed front door.
“Anita?” he called as he turned the key. The brown grocery bag almost concealed his whole face. I fired twice as he walked over the threshold. He crumpled like a sack of potatoes tipped off a truck. The wooden floor resonated, and I wasted no time in dragging the groaning man into the house.
Clint took another two hours to arrive. Large, white Ford van, reversing it into the driveway.
“Clean work,” he said as he looked over the trembling bodies. Another faceless figure followed him. “Meet Lightfoot.” I nodded at the new guy, the cleaner was obviously into Clint Eastwood movies to some great degree. Clint picked up the keys from the floor. “These from the Pinto outside?”
“Yes, sir.”
I told him of the lady’s rant, and mentioned that she should be questioned further.
He nodded. “Get yourself out of here.” He looked up at me. “Good clean work, Lyman, but don’t let it go to your head. Keep switched on out there; one lapse and you’ll be one of these. Look, I know what you are; you’re the Helsing’s equivalent of a young prodigy, but you’re maybe too cocky. Just watch yourself.”
“One last thing you need to do here, Clint. I need a slogan written on one of the walls; ‘Alan Rules Here.’ And I need it done in their blood.”
Well, the expression on Clint’s face looked priceless. Almost as if he sensed that a new layer of cool had enveloped me.
I walked away around the corner, and drove back to the High School. I felt sorry for Elena when she got home, but I had a job to do.
Day two, no Lyman. No response to my messages. I placed the first of two urgent calls that morning.
“Reynolds? I haven’t been able to get a hold of Lyman; I think he’s in trouble -”
As usual his tone remained professional, emotion-free. “Lyman’s all right, Mandy. He’s got himself wrapped up in something down in the Phoenix area. I’m down in Buckeye myself now. Lyman’s got me checking the place out.”
Irritating.
“Would you mind filling me in on what the situation is?”
“So far, two vamp executions, a male and a female, approximately mid-forties. I’m doing a search on new arrivals, ready for Lyman’s expertise.”
From what little I knew of Frank Reynolds, I’d come to believe the man only ever asked two questions in life: what’s the job and when do I get paid?
“Okay,” I said, feeling a cloud of worry lift off me, “tell the twerp to answer his goddamn phone when I call him…”
“Will do, Mandy. And you take care too, kid. I can get to you in a couple hours tops if you need my help.”
Man. I had my own personal guardian angel. One that carried a gun and had no trouble carting dead vampires around.
Now that I knew Lyman still numbered among the living, I placed my second call. This one to Howard Weeks. I’d all but depleted my reserve of Type-O; I had one bag left and knew I’d need to drain that one just to get through the day.
Mr. Weeks had never specifically stated he’d keep me fed but had said more than once that his resources were at our disposal and to let him know if ever we had need. Well…I had a major need.
He picked up immediately. “Miss Cross? How can I help you?”
“Hello, Mr. Weeks. This is going to sound like a strange request but…I’m out of food. Vampire-type food. Reynolds had set me up with some bags from a blood bank but they’re just about gone…”
“Say no more, Miss Cross. We’ll get you restocked. There’ll be a fresh supply at your door by midday. And we’ll begin sending regular shipments so you won’t find yourself in this predicament again.”
“Thank you, Mr. Weeks…and if you don’t mind, hold the vinegar.” By his silence, I knew he didn’t get my attempt at humor. “No Helsing blood. That stuff’s got too much kick for my taste.”
Finally a laugh. Half-assed, but a laugh nonetheless.
“Never you worry, Mandy.”
I hung up the phone, feeling satisfied that I could indulge in a good breakfast and not have to worry where lunch and dinner were gonna come from. Greedily, I pulled the last pack from my mini-fridge, gnawed a hole into one corner, and took a filling gulp.
“That’s it, puppy, take a big swallow.”
I spun to the sound of the voice, finding myself as co
mpletely alone as I should have been. Yet, somehow my eyes and my ears were not in agreement. Though I could see no one, clear as day, I could hear whimpering, like some excited dog - seeming from all around.
“Good puppy. Master will let you stay inside long as you don’t poopy on the carpet…”
My ears perked to the mockery, my spine crawled.
“Go ahead, girl - drink some more before master takes your bowl away.”
With shaking hands, I let the blood pack drop to the floor, my breakfast spilling onto dirty linoleum. The voice in my head led me to the bathroom mirror and my condemning reflection.
I snarled at her and she snarled back.
“Puppy’s got no teeth…”
I spun again, sticking my head through the door and still finding myself alone. Turning back to the mirror, I found only an expression of fear.
“Don’t do that,” I counseled myself, “those effing Helsings have taken enough from you; don’t give them your sanity, too!”
My reflection nodded. We had an accord. I took a deep breath and a long second to compose myself, then continued my daily routine, starting off - as always - inspecting the gaps between my teeth. The gums had completely healed over. If my fangs ever did decide to grow back, they’d have to push through skin to get there. I wasn’t looking forward to that flashback to babyhood. Of course, the alternative was never getting them back at all.
“You’re no puppy,” I said out loud. “You’re a de-clawed cat.
“Either way, you’re still a pet…”
“Shut up!” I yelled at my reflection.
She leered at me with some dumbfounded expression.
“The pet follows house rules, and in exchange, takes from the master what it needs,” I assured her.
She seemed satisfied, so I walked away before we could get into another argument.
To prove my own point, I took my Transperian/Grundec/Unicorps credit card down to the nearest beauty supply and loaded up on an assortment of new makeup, body wash, expensive shampoos - the works.
For good measure, I picked up hair dye; two colors: jet black and fire red. I hated to lose my signature blonde locks. Then again, if I was gonna do this right I might have to let Mandy Cross die for good and allow Lizzy Wilde to become a real person.
I would be following the vampire way anyhow. Get yourself killed. Move towns. Assume new identity.
“Whoever you’re going to be,” that voice crept back into my head, “you’re still the Helsing lapdog, Mandy Cross…”
“Fuck you,” I said aloud, throwing the last bag into the trunk and slamming the lid.
An old woman passing by nearly fainted at my expletive.
“Didn’t mean you!” I growled, feeling every bit the bad dog.
The voice in my head pealed with laughter. God that felt creepy.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when the phone rang. Chris. He knew never to call me unless something big was going down. I looked at the display; ten o’clock on a school day, so I figured there must be a good reason.
“Lizzy?” he talked in a hushed, muffled whisper; by the echo, I guessed he was calling me from the school bathroom.
“What’s up?”
“Tank and Dozer…the Mize brothers…they’re back at school.”
Shit.
“Have they approached you at all?”
“Yeah. They fed me this line of crap about some emergency back east with their grandmother. Now they want me to get together with them after school.”
“Tell them you have to work or something.”
“I already did that, but they said they’ll pick me up after my shift; I kept making up excuses but they’re pretty fucking determined to get me to go with them tonight.”
“Yeah, I bet they are. But, I’ll be there…” fangs or no fangs “when you get off work. I’ll head them off for you.”
That sounded awfully brave of me. Not that I had any clue how I would take them both on without any backup. Sounded like Lyman had his hands full down in New River - or wherever the hell he’d gone off to - and I wasn’t about to take Reynolds away from him.
As I geared up for a big throw-down in my head, I heard Chris talking again. His voice sounded far away from the phone; he obviously wasn’t talking to me anymore.
“Hey, guys. What’s going on?”
The reply was muffled but I could make it out, “School’s out for the day, buddy.”
It was one of the Mize boys.
Running for my car, all I could do was listen as they bludgeoned Chris, his painful collapse and the sound of the phone skidding across the bathroom tile.
One of them must have picked it up.
“Hey, Mandy Cross, your boyfriend’s heading off for a special lunch with Alan McCartney. Sorry that you’re not invited to this one, but Alan says you’ll be getting together soon; so, don’t leave town.”
I hissed back at him, “Tell Alan I’m not going anywhere. If he ever decides he’s ready to face a real vampire - I’ll be more than fucking ready for him!”
The Mize son-of-a-bitch laughed, “Yeah. He’d said you say that.”
With a couple of very ‘tasteful’ slogans written in blood on the wall, the picture in the Díaz household would be of Alan’s revenge against their apparent siding with Angela. It marked the beginning of my campaign of confusion in the vampire cells surrounding Phoenix. Basically I’d come up with a plan to utilize the fighting factions of vampire leadership. I just hadn’t told anyone, and I hadn’t really thought it through to any great degree, either.
My phone rang. As I looked at the display. Shit; four missed calls. It was Reynolds. “Hi, Frank, how you getting on down here?”
“You better phone Mandy, buddy. She’s kinda pissed at you.”
“Okay. Right now?”
“Better get it over with.”
I thought of waiting ‘til she cooled down, but then did the decent thing.
I phoned Mandy.
“Hello, you little shit! Where y’been?”
Wow, I’d been all geared up to tell her of the new plan. I hadn’t expected her to be that pissed at me. “What’s up, Mandy?”
“I’ll tell you ‘what’s up’, you jumped-up lunatic. Who the freak told you that you could waltz around for days not answering your phone?”
Ok, I guessed she was upset, and I’m not sure humor would placate her, so I just let her get it all out. “Sorry, Mandy. What’s up at your end?”
“They’ve got Chris!” She sounded frantic.
“Who’s got him?”
“Alan. Well, the Mize brothers, actually. But they said they were taking him to see Alan.”
So Alan directly controlled the two football linebackers. It made sense. Alan was recruited young, typical Amos style. Angela’s organization seemed to be older, like the Díaz folks.
“Okay, so the first thing you’ve got to do is calm down and think carefully.”
Well, the phone went berserk in my hand. Turns out that when Mandy’s upset, the last thing you do is tell her to calm down. Her diatribe finished with, “…besides, they’ve got Chris!” She almost wailed at me.
My head did the equivalent of a double-take. “Mandy, who the fuck is Chris?”
As Mandy gave me the full twenty-five minute version of her and Chris, I tried to put Elena out of my head. I listened to Mandy’s ‘love story’ and wanted to run to her aid and give her at least a shoulder to cry on, but I knew that I had set little Elena up with her folks’ death/disappearance and I needed to be in town to follow it through. She would be my ‘wedge’ into vampire politics here, and I didn’t want to just throw her away.
That and I quite enjoyed the extras that came with our association.
When Mandy had finished her diatribe, she’d made it very obvious that she cared deeply for this guy, but something about his whole story seemed wrong somehow. I asked about their meetings, and she went deeper into detail. By the time forty minutes showed on my phone, I had an idea that s
he might not like what I was going to suggest.
“Mandy, you said you met him after that Sheldon scumbag reported you to Alan.”
“Yeah.”
“And who approached who?”
“He talked to me first in the cafeteria…but, I was sitting straight across from the guy…”
“And from your description, he’s gorgeous? Dreamy? Darling eyes? The most beautiful man you’ve ever met?”
“If you’ve got a point, you’d better make it.” Her voice sounded testy.
“Those were your words.” My voice remained calm, I was building a house of cards here, and I knew one false step would send it crashing to the ground, and send Mandy away into danger. “Let me get my facts straight. He made first contact with you. He’s gorgeous, but has no girlfriend. He has a romantic interlude under a bridge, where he doesn’t try to kiss you, but lets the Mize twins drag him away to play pool. He’s the perfect vampire recruiter?”
“Oh, hell yeah, he’s everything that Alan was, and a lot more.” Mandy began to gush ‘Chris’ again.
No matter how I tried, I couldn’t tell her what I thought without proof.
“Mandy, I’ve got an urgent call to make. I’ll call you back in ten minutes. Don’t you dare do anything ‘til I call back!”
I hung up without asking for permission. Dialed Reynolds. “Frank, very urgent. I need to know when Chris McDonald started Harris High.”
“Okay, that’s maybe just more than a phone call away.”
“Urgent, Frank. Mandy’s life may depend on it.”
Click.
I sat in the car. This Chris guy seemed far too good to be true, and way too good-looking and girl-tempting not to have been already taken by Alan. Unless he wanted him clean for a purpose. And I felt certain that purpose was getting Mandy. Alan had provided the perfect lure, and she had taken the bait so fervently; hooked hard, they were now reeling her in.
My phone rang. Reynolds. “Frank?”
