Night Shift

by Charlaine Harris

  “I can’t apologize for all of mankind,” Lemuel said stiffly. “I can only tell you that I am sorry and hope you will excuse me. I’m afeared that in this case I was thoughtless.”

  She nodded, which might mean anything, and the rest of the distance to Marthasville was accomplished in silence.

  When Lemuel turned into the Cartoon Saloon parking lot, enlivened by larger-than-life versions of familiar cartoon characters, Christine assessed the hunting. She watched a drunken couple staggering to the Ford F-150 two slots away, and she smiled. There was no one else in the vampire’s line of sight or hearing. Quick as a wink, Christine opened the car door and was stationed by the truck door when the two humans reached it. Lemuel got out of the Civic but stayed a discreet distance away in a shadow.

  “What . . . ?” the man said. He’d been reaching for the door to open it for his female friend, and instead he’d touched Christine.

  “Sorry,” said the woman much more sharply. She was not as drunk as her companion. “This is a private party, gal.”

  “Please,” Christine said with a smile. “Pretty please.”

  She struck like lightning, drinking from the woman first, holding the man at arm’s length. Lemuel watched, a little enviously. He came over once a month as the bar was closing to get a sip or two, but never more often than that. There were several other bars in Marthasville, which was a college town, and when the mood for blood took him, he visited each of them in turn.

  Lemuel watched Christine, trying not to worry about her self-control. He was just about to go over and tap Christine on the shoulder to remind her that she couldn’t drain anyone when she switched from the woman to the man. So far, so good, he thought, turning his back to the scene. He settled against the car. Soon, Christine would be through feeding, he’d take her to a hotel, and the next night she’d be on her way to somewhere else. . . anywhere, as far as he was concerned.

  He need never see her again.

  Then Christine was walking across the crunchy gravel to the Honda, and the couple was in the truck. They both appeared asleep. But the truck was running, and that seemed odd.

  “What have you done?” he asked.

  The vampire looked sulky. “They were hard to handle. If you had helped me, I would have found it easy.”

  “All you had to do was call,” Lemuel said. “Have you killed them, Christine, after I gave you such specific directions?” His anger began to rise.

  “I think the woman is dead,” Christine said sullenly.

  Lemuel threw open the car door and went over to the truck, which was shut up tight with the engine running. Christine was hoping the humans would blame the deaths on carbon monoxide, but Lemuel knew there would not be any air in the lungs of someone no longer breathing. The man was alive, but sure enough the woman was dead. At least Christine had used a dab of her blood to close the puncture marks on both necks.

  Lemuel lost his temper. “You worthless bitch,” he whispered. He’d taken Christine out to feed, given her guidelines, afforded her an opportunity to get away from Joseph forever . . . and she had repaid him with this trespass. His fangs ran out with the outrage. He was going to damage her for this. The only question was how severely.

  Then Lemuel heard a sound that snapped him out of his anger . . . a revving engine.

  Lemuel whirled to see the Honda coming right at him, Christine at the wheel.

  He leaped straight up in the air, his feet barely clearing the car roof. Christine dented the truck at the spot where Lemuel had been standing. He managed to land on top of the car, knees bent, but his balance was off, and he tumbled to the ground. Just as Christine put the car in reverse, he rolled under the dented truck, and she missed him. He had his cell phone in his pocket, and he pulled it out and hit a button.

  “Hello, sweetie,” said Olivia. “On your way back?”

  “Report your car stolen,” he said, and hung up.

  Lemuel scrambled to his feet on the other side of the truck. His first impulse was to let Christine go for now. He could hightail it into the cover of town, laying low until she’d given up and driven the car away. But then he thought of the blow his name would take, even if he tracked down Christine afterward.

  The rare and feared vampire Lemuel Bridger had been bested by a weak bloodsucker younger than himself, other vampires would say, and they would challenge his territory . . . unless he solved this problem on the spot.

  For a second, Lemuel regretted calling Olivia. She should have contacted the police by now. They’d be watching for her car. If the police stopped Olivia’s car while the vampire was driving it, Christine would do her best to kill them. On the other hand, it was vital that Olivia be kept out of the trouble her vehicle had already caused.

  It flashed across Lemuel’s mind to call Joseph, who would be obliged to track Christine down and kill her for her rebellion since she was one of his nest.

  But Lemuel discarded that idea immediately. Joseph would never let Lemuel forget it. Lemuel was left with the appealing prospect of hunting Christine down and killing her himself, which he much preferred to do.

  It was worth buying Olivia a new car.

  Christine was cruising through the parking lot now, looking for him. While he’d been thinking, Lemuel had managed to keep out of Christine’s sight by adroit ducks and dodges. He had to stop her from leaving, and quickly. He was surprised that the collision hadn’t already alarmed the patrons of the bar. The noise level inside the Cartoon Saloon must be incredible.

  Lemuel flitted from one row of cars to the next, trying to be seen. Christine spotted him and roared around the end, accelerating with every foot. Another leap put Lemuel on top of a Mustang, and then a Dodge Ram.

  He and Christine played tag for a few more seconds. Even with his great strength, Lemuel was beginning to tire. Christine had gotten used to his leaping by now and was trying to time lunging the car at him to hit him where he would be.

  Time to shake things up and end this.

  Lemuel waited, waited, and then instead of jumping to the top of one of the next row of cars, he jumped on the hood of Olivia’s car, plunging his hand through the windshield and grabbing Christine by the throat while she was still gaping at him through the glass. In her struggle, her foot left the accelerator. She thrashed and fought and scratched wildly.

  Lemuel was not unscathed in this fracas. But he managed to gouge out a handful of her throat so she could not speak if she wanted to. He had to make sure she died before she could heal. He had to hurry. She was freshly fed, while he was getting weaker.

  At least the car was no longer moving, but was lodged (again) against the still-running truck with its two silent passengers.

  Lemuel, both arms through the windshield now that he didn’t have to hold on to the car, was tearing at Christine with his fingers hooked. His head, mashed against the edge of the windshield, forced his eyes to turn to the huge cutout of Yosemite Sam with lettering in his talk-bubble that read, “Park here, podnuh!” Lemuel made an effort to reach even farther through the broken glass, even deeper. He snapped Christine’s spine.

  Even a vampire had to stop fighting with a broken spine. She went limp, but he didn’t trust her and drove a finger through her eye to her brain.

  “Lights out,” he whispered, and came very close to losing consciousness. He thought he was dreaming when he saw Olivia appear beside the car with a stake in one hand, a gun in the other. He was so weak and addled that he opened his mouth to tell her he loved her, to beg her not to kill him. Instead, Olivia pulled open the car door and drove the stake into Christine’s chest.

  “You ruined my fucking car,” she snarled. She pulled the stake out and sank it in again. “Asshole!”

  “She’s very dead,” Lemuel said, feeling much more optimistic. “Olivia, can you give me a hand? And not one of Christine’s, please.”

  Olivia turned to
look at him for the first time. “Oh my God,” she said. “Lemuel!” She eased him off the hood of the car and held him up while he wrapped his right arm around her neck. They staggered over to Lemuel’s sports car.

  “Go back,” he said. “Open the doors of the truck and turn it off. Cover your fingers. No prints.”

  She ran back to the truck, which was still running, and did those things. “The woman is dead,” she said. “The man is still breathing.”

  “Time for us to skedaddle,” he said, and they climbed into Lemuel’s sports car and eased carefully out of the back of the Cartoon Saloon parking lot, onto a side street where all the businesses were closed.

  Olivia drove like a dream, never exceeding the speed limit and braking with such gentleness that it seemed surprising when the car actually stopped. She was trying to prevent jolting Lemuel.

  “You followed me,” he said, and closed his eyes to concentrate on his healing.

  “Not quickly enough. But aren’t you glad I did? I was almost to Marthasville when you called.” He could hear the muscles in her neck as her head turned. He had never been so attuned to someone before.

  “Why?”

  “Why’d I follow you? I sat behind the counter for five minutes, and every minute I sat I grew more worried. I didn’t trust that bitch. She looked at you with snake eyes. She was too resentful and too hungry.”

  “You should have . . .” But Lemuel couldn’t finish the sentence. Sharp stabs of pain accompanied the healing, and his body jerked in response.

  He felt her worry like a cloud filling the car. “I should have what?” she said tartly. “Should have killed her earlier? Should have remarked on how hungry she was? I figured you, as a vampire, should already know. Should have told you what a treacherous bitch she was?”

  Lemuel managed to nod.

  “Like you would have listened.” Olivia said nothing else, which was a blessing.

  “You left the shop closed,” Lemuel scolded weakly, when she parked his car behind the store.

  “Sue me.” She ran around to his side of the car to help him out.

  “I can walk,” he said, and began moving carefully in a straight course for the side door. He walked slowly, but steadily.

  Olivia ran ahead of him to unlock the door, and they paused for a moment on the landing while she relocked it. Then they went down the steps as quietly as they could, hoping they wouldn’t wake Bobo on the top floor. Lemuel’s apartment was open, as he’d left it, and he felt his way inside without turning on a light. He knew Olivia was hovering in the doorway of the bedroom.

  “Come in here, if you please,” Lemuel said. He’d taken off his clothes, which were probably ruined, and now he lay down on his bed. The worst of his wounds were healed, but he was exhausted. He wanted her closeness.

  “Let me feed you,” Olivia whispered.

  Lemuel felt her hand patting to determine where he was. Then she was on the bed beside him, her warm neck pressed to his cold mouth.

  Lemuel bit and felt her shiver, and then his mouth was filled with the most divine taste. Her flavor was bold and brave and bright, like Olivia. He was always mindful of the need for self-control with her, and he stopped just before he would have had to chide himself. He healed the ragged marks in her neck, and she shuddered again.

  “Olivia,” he whispered. Everywhere his body touched hers, he could feel the heat of her. “I admire you just as you are. But if you are ever weary of this life, I would gladly make you like me.”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she whispered back. “Let me think on it, Lemuel. Would we be able to stay together?”

  “I am not like most vampires, as you know. We’d be able to, as long as it suited us. I know there are disadvantages to being both energy and blood fueled. But there are some good things about it, too.”

  “Disadvantages?”

  Olivia already sounded sleepy. He put his arm around her. Possibly he could get her closer. “I can’t hide what I am,” he said. “Everyone who looks at me knows I am not human. And I’m not beautiful like so many of the blood vampires.”

  “You were changed by someone who loved you,” she murmured. “That has to make a difference.”

  Lemuel had never thought of that. He did now, lying with Olivia in his arms, both of them on the verge of sleep.

  “What happened to your wife?” Olivia said, suddenly sounding a bit more alert. It was not only Lemuel who was thinking of something for the first time.

  “The man who’d changed her. He came to woo her a few years later, and by that time we were strapped. Two energy suckers in an area with a thin population and very little transient traffic . . . it just wouldn’t work in those days. I was trying to live as I had when I was alive, plowing the fields at night, moving the cattle around then, too. That wasn’t working, either. I had never been anything but poor and a cowboy. I had always planted just enough for my wife and me. We’d never had any but stillborn children, thank God, because after our days and nights reversed, what would have happened to them?”

  “So this man came back? And he took your wife away with him?”

  “He did. By that time, we were broke with each other. She’d changed me to save my life, but the life we had together wasn’t worth it. Yet we didn’t have much of any idea of how to change it.”

  “Tell me the rest later?”

  “Surely.”

  “Night-night.”

  He smiled over her head in the darkness, and then they were both asleep.

  No customers came to Midnight Pawn in the hours before the sun was up, but three skunks, a fox, and seven opossums died under the traffic light that night.

  The creature underneath raised a finger. It had not moved in almost two hundred fifty years.

  22

  Bobo rose early in the morning and went to the front window to check for dead people. The Rev was heading away from the intersection with a wheelbarrow full of limp animals. Diederik was trailing after the old minister, so Bobo didn’t run down to offer his own help. He turned away, shaking his head. It was obvious this wasn’t going to be an ordinary day, and Bobo wondered if there would ever be an ordinary day again.

  Bobo dressed with some haste, and he took his bowl of oatmeal down to the shop with him. There was a new note beside the cash register, which he read with some bewilderment.

  Arthur Smith walked through the door within the hour. Since he was the sheriff, he didn’t have to wear a uniform, though he usually preferred to. Today, Smith was very well turned out in a navy blazer, sharply pressed khakis, and a starched white shirt. His tie was a cheerfully subdued plaid of blue and green and a hint of red.

  “Looking good,” Bobo said by way of greeting.

  “Thanks,” Arthur said uncomfortably. “Ah, I have a thing later.”

  “Okay. What can I do for you before you have your thing?” Bobo added together Arthur’s discomfort, the fact that he’d been seeing Magdalena Orta Powell very steadily, and Arthur’s romantic history. Bobo suspected that Arthur was about to get married again.

  “I can’t rouse your tenants.”

  Of course, Bobo had heard Arthur try the side door, so this was no news to him. He had wondered if he should intervene, but he’d correctly figured Arthur would come into the shop through the front door. “The side door stays locked until one of us goes out that way, Arthur. Of course you can’t see Lemuel, it’s daytime. I can’t believe you tried. Olivia worked the counter in here last night, too. Is this about her car?” (The note had said, “Bobo, my car was stolen last night, so people may show up asking for me. Olivia.”)

  “Yes, mostly,” Arthur said. He still looked grim. “Lemuel is all right?”

  “As far as I know. I can go check, if you want.”

  “That would be a relief to me.”

  Bobo went out the side door to the landing and downstairs.
He heard a little stirring in Olivia’s apartment, so he knocked softly. She opened the door so swiftly he was startled and stepped back.

  “What’s up?” she said. She’d just showered and was wrapped in a towel. Her auburn hair trickled drops of water on her shoulders.

  “Is Lem okay? The sheriff is upstairs asking. What happened?” Bobo whispered.

  “Lemuel’s fine. Tell Arthur I’ll be up in just a minute,” she said. “I can explain then.” Her voice was at a normal level. “You could shout and Lem wouldn’t wake up, you know.”

  “Right,” Bobo said, a little embarrassed. Up the stairs he went to relay Olivia’s message. He and Arthur had a calm exchange of pleasantries until she came in. She looked pale to Bobo, but he noticed she had put on makeup and an outfit that was nicer than her usual Midnight wear.

  “Arthur, thanks for coming in person about my car. Did you find it?” Olivia was all hopefulness.

  “We did find your car, but I’m afraid I have bad news,” Arthur said. “There was a small amount of ash that was a different color in the front seat. We think it was a dead vampire. And the car was wrecked. It had evidently bounced around like a pinball between the cars in the parking lot at the Cartoon Saloon in Marthasville.”

  “A dead vampire?” Olivia seemed genuinely startled. “I didn’t think there was enough left of them after they died. I mean, to tell a vampire was there.”

  “There was a pile of flaky stuff left,” Arthur said. “I’d never seen anything like it, but I’ve read about it in law enforcement journals. It matched the pictures I’ve seen of vampire remains.” He paused. “Were you were out last night?”

  “Briefly,” she said. “But most of the night, I was helping Lemuel. He had the night shift here in the pawnshop, as usual.”

  “And by ‘helping,’ you mean . . . ?”

  “Keeping him company,” she said promptly. “He’s my sweetie.”

  The idea of Lemuel as a “sweetie” made Bobo turn away with a grin.