by J. R. Rain
“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.
What he was was anyone’s guess.
“Where’s your father now?” I asked.
“He left last night for Mount Shasta.” And then she looked at me with huge, rounds eyes that were quickly filling with tears. “And he took my little sister with him.”
I frowned, letting this sink in. I had planned to leave tomorrow night, without Parker, but I could see I wasn’t going to be able to shake her. Not with her sister in potential dan
ger. Shasta was about nine hours from Seattle. If we left right away, we could get there by morning, and I could crash during the day.
I grabbed my keys. “Let’s go.”
“Let’s go where?”
“Road trip.”
Chapter Ten
Parker didn’t protest.
As I threw together my travel bag, she told me a little about her mother. And people call me a monster.
Apparently, Pops had a heavy influence on his wife, and she was the true tyrant in the house. Parker had suffered many beatings growing up and had rarely, if ever, been given any kind of freedom. Her mother had not always been like this. The change had only come within the past seven or eight years, which, coincidentally, was about when her father launched his cult.
Now with her mother passed out—apparently, she always passed out after taking her nightly dose of medication on top of the booze—Parker had taken the city buses to find her way.
She didn’t admit it, at least not yet, but I was certain she had followed me during the week. I knew she didn’t drive, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t followed me with a friend. Which meant that a friend now knew where I lived, too. I would have to find out who this friend was. I have my ways, but hopefully she’d just come clean. And if her friend was trustworthy or just minded her own business, then we wouldn’t have a problem. If the friend came snooping around, we’d have a problem.
Or, rather, they’d have a problem. A very big problem.
For now, though, I let it go. We had a more pressing matter. With my bag in hand, we hit the road. It was coming on 11 p.m. and I was going to have to eat some road to get there before dawn...and to check into a nice hotel with even nicer curtains. Thick curtains that kept the sun out.
Parker didn’t complain about not having enough clothes. She didn’t even ask to use the restroom. Instead, with her jaw set in grim determination, she sat by my side in my Mustang as I headed south through the bright lights of downtown Seattle.
* * *
Parker slept most of the trip.
Me, I was wide awake and feeling more alive than ever. I wondered what awaited us in Mount Shasta. That her father was dealing with something unknown and nefarious was a given. The evidence was there. The body, in particular. It had been drained dry, according to Parker.
I looked over at her now as we wound through the deep-cut canyons that would eventually lead to Mount Shasta. She was still sleeping, her head propped against the seatbelt mechanism. Not comfortable, but she didn’t seem to care. It was pitch black out and I shouldn’t be able to see her, but I could. The night was alive to my eyes, filled with light and color unseen to mortal eyes. I saw her every feature clearly. She was a pretty young girl. Too young for me, but someday she’d make a geeky teen boy the happiest geek on earth.
Had she known who—or what—was sitting next to her, I wondered if she would sleep so contently. Then again, when you’re raised by monsters, and her father was very much looking like something out of a Dean Koontz novel, perhaps an everyday, run-of-the mill vampire wasn’t a problem.
There had been a time in my past when Parker should have feared for her life. I have gained some semblance of control over the creature inside me. I didn’t have to kill to feed, and this epiphany had been a long time coming.
Many had died by my hand. By my mouth.
But never again.
Or so I hoped.
With the sky beginning to brighten in the east, and as my energy began to wane, the stunning Mount Shasta appeared on the far horizon. The mountain with presence, as I thought of it, and I was not the only one. Down through the ages, many had ascribed power and legend to the mountain, and for good reason. The mountain loomed above the smattering of foothills and lesser mountains like a white god. Its barren white slopes, striking in their purity, resonated on a soul level that needed to be witnessed to be felt.
Even in the darkness, with dawn on the eastern horizon, the upper slopes glowed with a radiance that seemed supernatural, and as the mountain loomed before us, we pulled into Mount Shasta City and to the first inn I could find.
Chapter Eleven
We got lucky.
Despite there being a New Age festival going on in celebration of the mountain, the inn had received a cancellation just hours before, and we were able to procure a room with two beds. And not just two beds, two bedrooms.
I did not return to high school to sleep with students. In fact, I had no interest in such activities. Such physical desires had died in me long ago. No, I enrolled in night school for the experience only. The same reason I do anything. For the experience.
I had been turned long ago at a young age, and it’s amazing what staying out of the sun does for your skin. That, and being immortal, of course. Had I looked any older, I would have enrolled in college, but I looked like an eighteen-year-old, which just so happened to be my age on the night my world had forever changed.
And I don’t mean that figuratively.
But that’s another story for another time. Although physical activity never exhausted me, I used the excuse of having driven all night and a need for sleep. This was partially true, of course. I had a need to sleep. A strong one, although it wasn’t so much sleeping as...biding my time, as I thought of it. Whether or not I actually slept was open to debate, but I saw myself as lying in a sort of catatonia. Somewhere between living and dead, surely, as my body waited for the sun to go down.
Yeah, I’m weird.
And Parker didn’t need to know any of this, either. Which is why once we got to the inn, she crawled immediately under the covers of the bed in the front room, not even flirting, while I slipped into the back room, pulled the drapes tight, and waited for dawn.
I didn’t have to wait long. Soon, I was out to the world. Or perhaps dead to this world in which I barely belong.
* * *
It takes a lot to stir me from the dark places I go during the day, and Parker, mercifully, had respected my wishes to sleep during the day. It wasn’t until evening, just before the sun had officially set, that she had finally roused me awake.
I drifted up from the dark depths to see her smiling face hovering over me.
“Boy,” she said. “You are almost impossible to wake up.”
I sat up. The returning of consciousness was always a bit disconcerting. I distinctly had the feeling of being away from my body. Where I was, I hadn’t a clue, but I was somewhere...and most certainly not in this room.
“Yeah, well, I sleep deeply.” Understatement of the year.
“You don’t snore or anything. I mean, you were just lying there...like a corpse or something. I couldn’t even hear you breathe.”
Which is why I suspected most vampires of the world avoided sleeping in hotel rooms with curious teenage girls. Myself, I’ve never tried a coffin, although I could see the value in it. Peace and quiet, although you could be mistaken for a corpse...and find yourself buried six feet under.
“It’s not nice to watch people sleep.”
“I’m bored. And hungry.” She got up and was about to throw open the curtain in my bedroom.
“Stop!”
She whirled, gasping. “What? What happened?” One of her hands had still snagged one corner of the curtain, and the light that suddenly filled the room, although faint, was enough to make me recoil. She dropped the curtain, frowning.
I said, “Sorry, but I have a...condition.”
“Condition?”
“Sensitive skin. I can’t be out in the sun for long.”
“But there’s no sun. In fact, the sun is almost set.”
“It hasn’t set.”
“How do you know.”
I knew. Trust me, I knew, but I said, “You can still hear the birds. C’mon, let’s eat. Now, get out so I can change.”
She left, but on the way out, she looked back at me once, frowning. “Need any help?”
I couldn’t tell if she was concerned or being coy. “Got it covered. See you in a few
.”
I smiled, got dressed, and removed a very special packet from the cooler inside my suitcase. The packet wasn’t as cute as Parker, but it was nourishing all the same.
* * *
The town of Mount Shasta City is quaint.
It sits at the base of the south face of the mountain. Mount Shasta is famous for its weird cloud formations that surround the peak, and that night was no different. Streaks of velvety contrails spread from the peak in three or four directions, as if the mountain were wearing a crown of thorns. Additionally, a weird, stacked plume rose directly above the mountain, sort of capping it.
I caught Parker staring at the mountain, her mouth slightly open. The mountain was stare-worthy; indeed, as we cruised the streets looking for a place to eat, I often saw people standing in doorways, smoking and staring...or walking and staring. Or just standing and staring.
The mountain was their deity. And if it wasn’t, it was damn close.
We found a Mexican restaurant called Lalo’s that had a full bar. The full bar part was important. We were seated next to a display of crystals that were for sale. I knew that Mount Shasta was a mecca for New Agers and their crystals. You can’t have a mountain that resplendent, with mystical stories that reach down through the ages, without somebody selling crystals. Apparently, the restaurant was cashing in on the hype, along with eight-dollar mixed drinks.
The crystals caught Parker’s eyes and she studied them intently. One in particular. A beautiful, violet-colored geode within a darker shell.
We ordered drinks and I promptly ordered a Bloody Mary. The waitress asked to see my ID and I showed her mine. It was a fake ID, and when the waitress was gone, I said as much to Parker. She snickered. Fake IDs were cool to teens...and absolutely mandatory for immortals.
When the waitress returned with our drinks—orange juice for Parker—I pretended to sip on the Bloody Mary. Pretended, because I couldn’t drink it. We next ordered food—or, rather, Parker did. I made an excuse that I was never hungry upon awakening and Parker bought it. She ordered a cheese enchilada and the waitress scooted off.
