The Vampire Files Anthology
Page 84
Barrett explained why he liked the idea. “Returning Miss DeLeon’s wrap gives me a reasonable excuse to call on her again, and yes, you have my word of honor I will be considerate of her feelings.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re the one who said I should get out and do something.”
“Just remember: make her cry and I will hurt you. So will Clapsaddle.”
“I will keep that foremost in mind, Mr. Fleming.”
He damned-well better.
“Though if this is your idea of a typical night on the town then my seclusion is preferable. Look at that—this was one of my best suits.” He put a finger through a bloody bullet hole in his coat’s upper shoulder.
“Welcome to my life,” I muttered.
“Good God in heaven, Mr. Fleming,” he said with a visible shudder. “I hope not.”
* * * * * * *
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The author hopes you enjoyed this novel of The Vampire Files and invites you to check out more of her books and ebooks at her website, vampwriter-dot-com.
The original draft of this novel contained a chapter about Jack Fleming’s train trip on the 20th Century Limited, but the author decided it slowed the flow of the story and removed it.
That chapter, now a short story called Drawing Dead, appears in the P.N. Elrod Omnibus. It is available on Smashwords, Kindle, and PubIt!.
Preview samples of it and all the other stories in that collection are on the vampwriter-dot-com website.
PRAISE FOR P. N. ELROD’S
The Vampire Files
“Very entertaining.”
—Mystery Scene
“Elrod’s got it down. A blend of the hard-boiled detective novel and the vampire tale … Good-natured fun.”
—Locus
“Fast … Intriguing.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Four stars … a lot of fun.”
—Rave Reviews
“Elrod’s sharp vampire’s-eye view of the powers of the undcad goes a long way … excellent … intriguing … Tight and effective.”
—Dragon
“The pace is fast … intriguing … An updated version of the-old pulp novels.”
—Science Fiction Review
“You won’t want to miss this series.”
—Cemetery Dance
“Builds to a frenzied climax, leaving the reader almost gasping for breath Be prepared to read the last half of the book in outsitting…. Should satisfy even the most demanding adventure-lover’s appetite for breathless, nonstop action and excitement.”
—Big Spring Herald
“The twists and turns are reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep”
—Tarriel Cell
Ace Titles by P. N. Elrod
The Vampire Files
BLOODLIST
LIFEBLOOD
BLOODOIRCLE
ART IN THE BLOOD
FIRE IN THE BLOOD
BLOOD ON THE WATER
A CHILL IN THE BLOOD
THE DARK SLEEP
LADY CRYMSYN
COLD STREETS
SONG IN THE DARK
THE VAMPIRE FILES: VOLUME ONE
THE VAMPIRE FILES: VOLUME IWO
RED DEATH
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
DEATH MASQUE
DANCE OF DEATH
The Vampire Files
VOLUME TWO
P. N. ELROD
ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 7(X), Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R URL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of die author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
THE VAMPIRE FILES: VOLUME TWO
Copyright © 2006 by Patricia Nead Elrod.
Art in the Blood copyright © 1991 by Patricia Nead Elrod.
Fire in the Blood copyright © 1991 by Patricia Nead Elrod.
Blood on the Water copyright © 1992 by Patricia Nead Elrod.
Cover art by Steve Stone.
Cover design by Annette Kiore.
Text design by Tiffany Estreicher.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
ACE is an imprint of The Berkley Publishing Group.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Art in the Blood: Ace mass-market edition / February 1991
Fire in the Blood: Ace mass-market edition / June 1991
Blood on the Water: Ace mass-market edition / June 1992
Ace trade paperback omnibus edition / September 2006
EISBN: 9781101573723
An application to register this book for cataloguing has been submitted to the Library of Congress.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
CONTENTS
ART IN THE BLOOD
FIRE IN THE BLOOD
BLOOD ON THE WATER
THE VAMPIRE FILES
VOLUME TWO
ART IN THE BLOOD
A special thanks to
my friends at OR AC.
I couldn’t have done it
without you.
And for Ben Beagle Elrod,
for your patience, courage,
and all the joy you so
freely gave. Ten years
was too brief a time.
Sleep tight, little guy.
Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.
—Sherlock Holmes, in The
Adventure of the Greek
Interpreter by A. Conan Doyle
1
HUNGRY and careless, I’d opened the vein more than necessary and the blood slipped past my mouth and dribbled down the animal’s leg. I shifted my right hand above the wound and applied pressure, which slowed the flow, and continued with my meal, siphoning off more than usual because I’d been on short rations the last few nights. I drank my fill and more, the excess partly due to curiosity; I wanted to know if I’d swell up like a leech or if I could get away with fewer feedings per week. The cow didn’t mind, she could afford to spare a quart or more—there’d just be that much less to spill out when they finally slaughtered her for someone else’s dinner.
I drew away, a handkerchief immediately at my lips so as not to spot my clothes, and tightened the pressure on the leg. It worked, and the bleeding eventually s
topped. My hand looked the same, at least—no puffiness there. I wondered how long it would take for the red to fade from my eyes. The usual time was only a few minutes, but there was no way to tell. These days I preferred to avoid useless mirrors and their many complications.
To spare my shoes from farmyard-style damage, I went incorporeal to get out and flowed past the wood corrals and their complaining occupants. It was a disorienting state, but I knew the route well and was soon back on the open street again, doing my best imitation of a normal man out for a walk. My car was parked less than a block away, but I always varied my route into and out of the Stockyards. Few people believed in vampires these days, but it never hurt to be careful.
The first aid to the cow had stained my fingers somewhat, so I took a swing past Escott’s office with a mind to borrow his washroom. His lights were on, which surprised me, for only yesterday he’d mentioned a dearth of business. I didn’t feel like his company just then and kept walking, but silently wished him luck as I passed. He detested being idle. A dripping tap in an alley down the street provided all the cleanup I needed, and I tossed the stained handkerchief into a trash can. Escott’s laundry service, which I shared now, had once asked if his houseguest suffered from frequent nosebleeds.
The car started up without fuss and I drove aimlessly, turning when the mood struck me and obeying the stop signals like a good citizen. I pulled up and parked near the Nightcrawler Club up on the north side and pretended it was only an impulse that took me there, and not some inner need.
They had a new man out front. He looked askance at my ordinary clothes, but let me in when I asked to see Gordy. The hatcheck girl was not new, I rarely forget dimples, but she didn’t know me from whosis, and put my plain gray fedora next to the flashier silk toppers with a friendly if impersonal smile.
I knew the place had been raided by the cops at least once since my last visit, and Gordy had taken the temporary shutdown as an opportunity to redecorate. The walls were bright with fresh paint, and the tables, chairs, and bandstand were now shiny black with gleaming chrome trim. The only thing unchanged were the costumes on the girls, which remained black with silver-sequined spiderwebs patterned on the happily short skirts. The leggy details were enough to keep me occupied until Gordy showed up.
He was puzzled to see me, maybe slightly wary as well, but when I stuck my hand out he took it. He was a big mountain of a man with a solid, but not crushing grip. He had no need to prove his strength against anyone, taking it for granted people could figure it out for themselves.
“ ’Lo, Fleming, what’s up?”
“This and that. Got a quieter place than here?” I gestured at the band across the dance floor below. They were just starting off another tune for the patrons.
He nodded, not one for much wordage, and led the way through a door marked PRIVATE. The soundproofing did its job and we were in the casino room, up to our eyeballs in stale smoke and the tight atmosphere of prolonged tension. Gordy nodded to a couple of tough boys in tuxedos guarding the money cage and threaded through the craps and roulette tables to the back exit. We took a short hall and some stairs up to an office I remembered very well. The redecorating had gotten this far with a new rug, paint, and paintings. His deceased boss’s boats had been replaced by green-and-brown pastorals. A canvas depicting a lush forest covered a section of the wall where six slugs from a .38 had embedded themselves one memorable night.
“Nice picture, huh?” he said, noticing my interest. There was a very slight humor coming from his eyes. “I like to look at it.”
“That’s what they’re there for.” I noticed it was not an ordinary store-bought print, but a real oil with a decent frame.
“Yeah.”
He pointed at a deep leather chair and settled into a wide matching sofa, taking up most of it. He wasn’t fat, just big, and I knew from experience he could move fast and light when he wanted to; the present slowness was all part of his camouflage. Large men were supposed to be-slow and stupid, so Gordy cultivated that image and thus kept a lot of people off balance. In his business an edge always came in handy.
“Want anything?” he asked, meaning refreshments.
I shook my head and with some caution removed my dark glasses. From his reaction I could tell my eyes were still quite red from the feeding.
“You look like you had a hell of a weekend.”
“I did.”
“You’re not the social type, Fleming, at least for places like this and mugs like me. You got a problem?”
“Yeah.”
He apparently recalled the last time he’d seen my bloodred eyes. “Trouble with Bobbi?”
“No.”
“Another woman?”
I couldn’t tell if he was being perceptive like Escott or if it was simply the next logical question for him to ask. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I killed her.”
The news didn’t exactly send him into a panic. “You need protection, a cleanup job?”
“No, nothing like that.”
He had one of those phlegmatic faces under his short-cropped blond hair; great for poker or making people sweat. “You need to talk about it?”
My instinct to come see him had been right, and I nodded, inwardly relieved.
“So talk,” he said. He wasn’t the soul of encouragement, but he settled back into the depths of the sofa to listen. I gave him a short version of how I’d killed the young woman and why I’d done it, just stating bald facts and not bothering with any defense. During the story he stared at yet another painting above and behind his desk, his eyes hardly blinking the whole time.
“I’m sure Charles knows about it, but he hasn’t said anything. I don’t think he ever will.”
“Smart guy, then,” he approved. “What about Barrett?”
“He apparently took the suicide at face value.”
“He probably wants to. How are you taking it?”
“I feel like …” But I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t put words to what I was feeling.
He raised a hand to call off the question and tried another. “You remember the war?”
“I was in it.”
This confused him, since I didn’t look old enough, but he continued. “You fight? You have to kill?”
“Yeah, I see what you’re getting at. This was different.”
“Why? Because it was a woman and in a nice house and not out in a field of mud with the noise and cold? She was killing people. You had to stop her. What’s the problem?”
“Living with it. Why me?”
He shifted his sleepy-looking eyes from me back to the painting. It was a soft overview of a farm near sunset, in one corner a boy was leading two plow horses back to the stable. “When I was a kid, I once knew a retired hangman. I asked him about it. He knew how to do it better than anyone else but he didn’t think much about it, it was just a job to do. I can’t say he enjoyed it, but he knew he was doing his part in making things cleaner.”
It seemed an odd statement coming from him, considering how he came by his living. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You either learn to live with it or you go crazy. Make up your mind.”
“Is that what you’ve done?”
He glanced over, again with faint humor. “I’m just a businessman.”
“That’s what Capone used to say.”
“Huh. He never talked about the dirty side of the business, not where he could be overheard. He’d pretend it wasn’t there. Maybe that makes him crazy. I know it’s there, I don’t enjoy it, but I’m good at it. And I’m not crazy.”
The humor was more pronounced, but under it was something hard and very cold. The base of my spine went stiff as I suppressed a shiver.
A few days, or nights, later I was just coming down from the upstairs bath when I heard Escott let himself in the kitchen door. His arms were full with a newspaper, raincoat, and several small cartons, and the latchkey got stuck in the lock
again. When he started to jiggle it loose he nearly lost the cartons. Drawing a breath to say hello I caught a strong whiff of Chinese food and rushed to rescue the soggy white boxes before his dinner ended up on the floor.
“Thank you,” he said as I transferred them to the counter by the sink. He extracted his key and glared at the lock for exactly one second, tossed his coat and hat on the table, and stalked into the dining room. He was back almost immediately with a screwdriver and small oil can, and began an energetic assault on the rusty mechanism.
“Your dinner’ll get cold,” I said, leaning against a doorway to watch the show.
“A distinct possibility, but I’d rather it be cold than suffer the indigestion this recalcitrant lock is likely to cause me.”
“You almost make me glad I’ve given up eating.”
His mouth twitched, whether from amusement at my remark or frustration at the job was hard to tell. Something gave, and he seized the oil can and attacked the breach in the lock’s defense while it was vulnerable. He experimented with the key, grunted with satisfaction, and put things back the way they were.
“Good evening, Jack,” he said, standing and dusting his knees off. It was his way of starting things over fresh. “How are you tonight?” His suit coat joined the raincoat on the table and he turned on the hot water in the sink to wash his hands.
“Fine. You look tired.”
“Thank you so much. I can assure you it is not from overwork.”
“You were busy the last few nights.”
“Yes, but that little—extremely little—job is resolved and I’ve nothing to do now.”