Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  A newly minted vampire, left to its own devices, was a danger to the safety of every demesne. As a result, there were rules governing the existence of all who were reborn as creatures of the night. Broken down to basics, if you make another like yourself, you’re responsible for “it.” Teach it to exist subtly, hunt judiciously, and eliminate all evidence of feeding. It shouldn’t leave telltale corpses lying about or visible bite-marks on the living. It should learn how the delicate art of mental domination can erase those awkward memories that might otherwise require a bloodier solution to the problem of witnesses.

  And, most importantly, you bring it into the enclave where it must swear fealty to you and to the Doman, the ruler of the demesne who adjudicates all of the laws for that particular enclave. Any vampire attempting to exist apart from the watchful “protection” of its Sire’s society was declared rogue and automatically assumed to be a risk to all demesnes.

  “And it doesn’t really matter,” I said slowly, “whether this one was a rogue or a hunter.”

  If Robert Delacroix’s dance partner was a rogue, I could expect a dozen or more vampire regulators to be hot on his trail. If he wasn’t rogue, then it was likely that he was a rogue hunter hot on another newborn’s trail and that there would be others around like him—the cell phone practically guaranteed it. Either way, it meant that my home territory was about to come under a lot of undead scrutiny.

  And I had a bigger bounty on my head than any ordinary rogue.

  “So, the question is,” I continued aloud, “whether to hunker down and hope that I can stay off the radar as the Wild Hunt passes by or pull up stakes—”

  “So to speak,” Jen smirked.

  “—and move again. The problem is, it’s probably too late to make such arrangements without calling more attention to myself.”

  “Then you’d better hope Mama Samm is the only speed bump in your elaborate paper trail,” my ghostly conscience warned. “Seriously, Chris; I feel a constant prickling in my ectoplasm these days. It’s like there’s something very old and very evil hovering just beyond the range of my senses. I felt it coming closer just before I . . . went away. Something is out there, something terrible! And its power is growing! This might be a good time to call Olive and tell her—oh I don’t know—something like you’re taking a couple of weeks off to go fishing.”

  I considered it as I walked into the closet and punched in the combination on my gun safe. “Blowing town might be just as attention-getting as actually moving,” I decided finally, reaching in and withdrawing a box of ammo and a zippered pouch. “But I do think I’ll give up jogging for a couple of weeks.”

  I closed the safe and walked back out and over to the bed.

  “Now this looks like a bad idea,” she said.

  “I have a license to carry.” I unzipped the pouch and removed the handgun. “This is a ten-millimeter auto Glock 20.”

  “Does that mean it’s special?”

  “The Glock 20 ranks with the most powerful automatic pistols ever made.”

  “Isn’t Dirty Harry’s gun bigger?” she asked with that gee-whiz, innocent tone that signaled standard baiting mode. “Or is that just Hollywood special effects?”

  “If you add up the total foot-pounds of muzzle energy represented by the fifteen rounds in its high-capacity magazine, it’s more like: ‘Go ahead . . . make my week’.”

  She giggled. “Was that supposed to be Jack Nicholson?

  “Clint Eastwood.”

  “Don’t quit your night job.”

  Laying out the cleaning kit, I proceeded to strip the handgun down and repeat the cleaning and oiling process I had just completed two weeks before after visiting the shooting range.

  “I think this whole P.I. fantasy has gone to your head.”

  “If it had gone to my head I would be sporting a shoulder rig every evening as I chase after unfaithful husbands and follow up on insurance claims.”

  “Do you really think that will protect you from things that are already dead?”

  I grinned as I reassembled the Glock and wiped it down. “Well, it won’t protect me from your nagging but I don’t mind. You nag me when you’re worried about me.” I laid the pistol on the nightstand and picked up a pair of magazines. “As for stopping dead things, I’ve got some special loads that I’ve been wanting to try for a while.”

  “Why is it that every guy thinks a gat in the hand means the world by the tail?”

  “You watch too much Bogart.”

  “No, you watch too much Bogart,” she said. “I’d like to watch the Lifetime channel but you’ve always got the satellite set to Turner Classic Movies. If we had cable, I could go watch in the other room.”

  I opened the box and began loading bullets into the fifteen-shot magazines. “These are 10 mil Glasers.”

  “Wad-cutters?”

  “You didn’t learn that from watching Lifetime.” I held up the epoxy-jacketed projectile. “It’s the equivalent of a standard ‘Silver’ Glaser—which isn’t really. They call them that to differentiate them from ‘Blue’ Glasers.”

  “Who comes up with these names, anyway?”

  “Originally? The inventor, Colonel Jack Cannon, named it for his friend Armin Glaser. I’m not sure why or whether Armin’s still proud of his namesake. The idea was to produce a round that wouldn’t endanger innocent bystanders from over-penetration. APs and FMJs have a tendency to pass through various substances—bad guys, walls, cars—”

  “Honey, you’re lapsing into SEALspeak and losing me.”

  I thought about arguing that she understood perfectly since she was really—aw, hell with it. “Armor Piercing and Full Metal Jacket ordnance are designed for military use as you really need that penetrating ability.” Not to mention the fact that the Geneva Convention had decided they were more humane than mushrooming bullets and minié balls.

  “Law enforcement, on the other hand, needed bullets that could be used in populated areas, hostage situations, and so on. If you shoot the bad guy, you don’t want the bullet going through him and into the house across the street.”

  I paused as I considered the idea of the local cops using ammo that was outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

  “JSPs and JHPs—sorry—Jacketed Soft Points and Hollow Points were designed to mushroom or flatten once they entered the target, expending their energy on impact so they wouldn’t keep going.”

  “Sounds humane.”

  I knew that tone all too well. “Well, it is. For the innocent bystander.”

  “But for the person who’s shot, it makes a little hole going in and a great big hole coming out.”

  I nodded. “Except, for my purposes, it’s better if it doesn’t come out. That’s why I’m trying modified Glasers.” I started back to loading the ammo magazines. “The rounds are filled with birdshot covered by a crimped polymer end cap. Upon impact, the projectile fragments, with the birdshot spreading like a miniature shotgun pattern. The frag-spread guarantees most major arteries and blood vessels in the vicinity will be penetrated, causing immediate unconsciousness from catastrophic blood-pressure drop and possible death from exsanguination within minutes.

  “The ‘Silver’ Glaser uses slightly larger birdshot and has a couple of extra inches of penetration and stopping power over the ‘Blue’ version.”

  “Except,” she interrupted, “your so-called ‘Silver’ version uses actual silver for the birdshot, anticipating major damage to undead flesh. Sort of like the Lone Ranger using a shotgun.”

  I looked around again; this open-mouthed response was getting to be a habit.

  “Don’t look so surprised, Chris. I’d have to have been pretty inattentive all these years not to know how your mind works by now.”

  Well, that made one of us.

  * * *

  The dream slammed through my head with all the ugly power of last year’s memories of Bassarab’s barn.

  Four large, flaming braziers, one in each corner of the room, can’t provide
enough warmth or enough light to adequately illuminate the dark stone walls. She likes it that way. Even though she has many aboveground chambers as well as the courtyard to work with, she prefers the dark, underground warrens where she can practice in the eternal shadows beneath the keep.

  The Dark Arts aren’t so named on the basis of intent and final product alone.

  The sounds of the great Carpathian forest echo in these manmade canyons of dressed stone and iron-girt doors: the constant moaning of the wind, the screech of the owl, the scream of the lynx, the growls, yips, and howlings of the wolves . . .

  Only, there is no wind down here in the blocky bowels of Cachtice, no winged birds of prey, no four-legged animals—the beasts that inhabit this burrow, the hunters and the prey alike, walk upon their hind legs and make fading claims to being human.

  Other sounds shatter the auditory illusion: the harsh slap of leather upon splitting skin, the subtle hiss of the heated irons, the skeletal shiver of chains and the perverse squeal of hinges.

  And the soft pattering sounds of rain that falls, not from a cloud but from a spasmed clutch of flesh embraced by a metal cage of bars and blades and spikes.

  The moaning fades as if the wind—or something—has nearly died.

  She stands beneath the Devil’s showerhead like Botticelli’s Venus—if that master had painted his masterpiece during a scarlet period in counterpoint to Picasso’s blue. Clad in nothing but crimson from head to toe, she opens her eyes, making two hollow openings in a curtain of red. She cups her hands above her groin and scrapes her belly in an upward motion that fills her palms until her insolent breasts are given a second undercoating.

  Then she holds her unholy offering out to me, the thick, viscous (steaming!) blood dribbling between her fingers.

  Share my bounty, she says, her teeth surprisingly white and shockingly long.

  Share my power . . .

  I jolt awake to the shrill bleating of the telephone and a disturbing hardness between my legs.

  I rolled over and peered, bleary-eyed, at the telephone next to my bed: I had switched the ringer off but had forgotten the downstairs phone. The clock on my “night"stand proclaimed the time as 10:17 in the a.m. Picking up the phone was easier than getting up to close the bedroom door so I did.

  “Mr. Haim?”

  “Speaking.” But just barely. My mouth was dry and my throat clotted.

  “You’re the private investigator with the office in the old railroad car?”

  “Ummm.” A migraine started to unfold between my temples like an origami sculpture made of pig iron. It pulsed in counterpoint to the throbbing in my leg.

  “I want to hire you.” A small portion of my mind not occupied in cataloguing my misery noted that the voice belonged to a woman.

  “My office hours are eight p.m. to four a.m. I’m teaching a night class at the university and won’t be in until after nine tonight. Come see me at ten.”

  “I work the night shift.”

  “So do I. How did you get my home number?” It was unlisted, of course.

  “Mama Samm D’Arbonne gave it to me. She said you’d want to talk to me.”

  So all of a sudden the old fortune-teller was giving me referrals? I furrowed my brow. It hurt.

  “Did she say why?” I tried to arrange a ménage a trois between my head, the telephone receiver, and the pillow.

  “No sir . . .”

  “Is it a divorce case?”

  “No sir, it’s—”

  “If it’s important enough to take off work for, you can tell me after nine tonight. At my office.”

  “Well—”

  “Goodnight, Ms.—”

  “Delacroix. Chalice Delacroix. Good morning, Mr. Haim.”

  I sat straight up in bed as the receiver clicked on her end and a bloody iron rose bloomed behind my left eye. My turn to dial star-sixty-nine.

  “Ms. Delacroix? Sam Haim. I’ll meet you at my office at twelve noon. . . .”

  * * *

  Imagine Vanessa Williams and Halle Berry as the ugly stepsisters: Chalice Delacroix was Cinderella.

  Even half-blinded by the daylight and wearing polarized contact lenses behind EPF10 Ray-Bans, I could see why admirers at the funeral home had surrounded her last night. She was chocolate perfection in a black pants suit and crisp white blouse. All the more impressive as hardly anyone’s clothes are still crisp by midday between July and October in Louisiana.

  Most impressive of all: she held a doctorate in biology and worked in the genetics division at BioWeb Industries. Where her father was a janitor. Hmmm. . . .

  “My father’s funeral was supposed to take place today,” she said. “We should have lowered his casket into the ground two hours ago.” Her eyes glistened. They were moss green and liquid like deep woodland springs where only the surface seems still. “Now that there is no body to bury, there doesn’t seem to be much point.”

  I steepled my fingers and leaned my elbows on the desk blotter. “The body is missing?”

  She gave her head a little shake while she searched for the words or her voice. Maybe both. “My father’s body was vandalized. Stolen from his casket and . . . and . . .” She looked down and tears dripped into her lap, some finding the handkerchief clutched in her hand, some not. “It was shoved into the crematorium oven in the basement and half incinerated before the fires were extinguished. The medical examiner recommended that we complete the cremation process once the police are finished with their investigation.”

  “So the police are investigating?”

  “They’re running the paperwork.”

  “You’re anticipating racial bias?”

  She gave her head another little shake. “Nothing so virulent, Mr. Haim. This is, after all, the New South.” The irony in her inflection was nearly invisible. “But Robert”—she pronounced it “Robaire”—“Delacroix was an old and poor black man. He was already dead and there was no physical harm done to anyone else. Emotional harm doesn’t count for much when the court dockets are filled with stabbings, gunshot wounds, and lost and found bodies. The police would be unlikely to do more than push paper for an old and poor white man.”

  “So you want me to look into it.”

  She nodded and I resisted the impulse to take her hands in mine. “Did your father have any enemies?”

  She shook her head.

  “Ms. Delacroix,” I cleared my throat, “in order to do my job I have to know as much about your father as possible. That means poking around and asking personal questions—even embarrassing or insulting questions.”

  She nodded.

  “For instance, did your father gamble? Did he owe anyone any money?”

  “No. He was a custodian and he spent every spare dollar that he had to put me through medical school. Between the two of us, we still owe the government a good deal of money in student loans. Do you think the Feds might be upset that he defaulted by dying?”

  Now I did take her hands in mine. “Ms. Delacroix, I am sorry for your loss." You don’t know how sorry. “But there is a standard series of questions that come with an investigation like this . . .” Who was I kidding? There was nothing standard about Robert Delacroix’s assignation with a crematorium oven. “ . . . and I have to pursue every possible lead until I can reasonably prove a dead end. I promise to be discreet and remember that you and your father are the victims, here. But I wouldn’t be giving you your money’s worth if I didn’t consider every possibility.”

  “Money,” she said, withdrawing her hands from mine. “I don’t have much but I was thinking that if you were to speak with the management of the funeral home—”

  “I’m sure they’d be more interested in a settlement than a lawsuit.”

  She gave a little shake of her head. “I do not wish to extort money from them, Mr. Haim. I was simply thinking that it would be in their best interests to help bring this . . . vandal . . . to justice. That they might contribute to your expenses and we could fund your investigation j
ointly.”

  “I’ll talk to them. I’m sure something can be worked out. Plus I’m giving you a fifty percent discount over and above what they contribute to the case.”

  She looked a little startled. “Why?”

  “Because this isn’t a divorce case. And one further stipulation: if I don’t find out who did this, I won’t charge you one red cent.”

  She gave me a look that asked the question I dared not answer honestly.

  “Company policy,” I lied. “I guarantee results.”

  The truth was her father had saved my life. Robert Delacroix had already gotten my promise to avenge his death and protect his daughter. The creature that precipitated his fiery dissolution had already perished and discorporated in the furnace in question. And the only person that witnesses could place at the scene of the crime was yours truly. The fact that I had been front row and center when Chalice’s daddy ended up in the crematory oven didn’t mean that I could just fake an inconclusive paper trail and blow off the investigation. I couldn’t take money from the Delacroix family when the debt was mine here. And, whatever I might finally reveal to Ms. Delacroix, I needed to find out how many other red-eyed bloodsuckers with cell phones were hanging out in Northeast Louisiana.

  And what forces were at work when corpses climbed out of their graves and coffins to battle vampires and do business with a man trapped in the twilight realm between the living and the dead.

  Chapter Five

  Robert Vernon Delacroix was a fifty-three-year-old black custodian who had gotten a bad case of the flu and an even worse case of congestive heart failure during one of his coughing fits.

  That was the extent of the rather terse autopsy report that Olive had clipped to the file. It did not shine any light on Mr. D’s potential motives for dancing with my pop-eyed vampire. The fact of the autopsy, itself—removal of vital organs, including the brain—made the old man’s behavior even more unlikely as opposed to someone who was “merely dead.”

  Olive had also attached a printout of Mr. Delacroix’s credit report and had typed in a variety of forms to gather additional information should I choose to do so: an MV198G requesting a copy of his driver’s license, an MV15 for obtaining a copy of his license registration, a UCC-11 for listing such financial information as loans taken out by or liens against Mr. Delacroix, and a list of Internet websites for short-cuts to credit reports, tax assessments, and government databases. Each lead might not tell me much but put them together and I would find bits of information connecting to other bits of information that could tell me where to look next.