Lady of the Dead: A Lawson Vampire Mission (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  “Why?”

  “Curious.”

  “I’m a Scorpio,” I said. “I take it that’s what you’re after.”

  She blinked. “You are so intense.”

  “I am.” No sense denying what was obvious.

  “No, I mean like James Bond intense.”

  I eyed her again. “Is that a compliment?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I chuckled. “Exactly.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She ran one hand up my left arm and squeezed my biceps.

  “It means that you have no idea what I represent. You see a good-looking man with a level of intensity you’ve never seen directed your way before. It’s attractive and you want it, you want to feel what it’s like to be desired that way, to be taken that way. And yet, you’re far too worried about your own mediocre life to ever take that final step and relinquish control. You have a set life, a set of expectations, and the same sort of existence 24-7. You know what to expect and there are no surprises. There’s also no passion; no dreams; no spontaneity. What you are now is what you’ll be in ten years, twenty years. Just older. And with more regrets. Sure, you won’t think that you’ll regret anything now, but eventually you’ll have to face the truth that what you are isn’t exactly the nicest person in the world. You had dreams once. You gave them up. You had wishes and desires once. You failed to act on them. You could have had amazing lovers. You failed to give into the desire.” I stared at her. “All for this. But what exactly is this?”

  Silvia said nothing for a moment and I would swear there might have been a few tears in her eyes. But the bitch in her took over and the walls went back up. She was so used to not letting anyone in that when it finally happened and she realized she might be losing control of her precious mediocre existence, she went into full lockdown mode and there it was: she’d never admit that she’d ever done anything wrong. She’d never admit her weaknesses. She’d never aspire to anything away from the ordinary out of fear of losing the approval of others or the risk it entailed.

  “I don’t think I like you anymore,” she said finally.

  I shrugged. “I’m cool with that. A whole lot of people don’t like me. Some of them even try to kill me.”

  She finished her can of beer and wandered over to watch TV while I finished reassembling the weapons. When I was done, I helped myself to a Bombay Sapphire and tonic and sat down across from her. Every once in awhile, I’d catch her looking at me. It was easy enough to read her thoughts: she wanted to be pissed at me for giving her the straight dope on her life, but another big part of her wanted nothing more than to rip my clothes off and fuck like animals.

  But she wouldn’t.

  And that was something she’d have to live the rest of her life with.

  Some people would say that she was holding back because she was married, but that was bullshit. Women like Silvia only care enough about their marriage to maintain the status quo. Put something in front of them that they can’t have or shouldn’t have and they want it - in one way, shape, or form. I’d seen it enough times to know and no amount of denial was going to prove it wrong.

  Juarez returned a few hours later and looked surprised. Maybe he expected to find us in the sack. Guys like Juarez who married up are used to knowing their wives are desirable and maybe they also realize that they’re far luckier than they deserve to be. Silvia might have fooled around on Juarez in the past; hell, he might have scored himself a lover on the side as well - who knew? But marriages like Juarez and Silvia always seem to be one potential lover away from disaster anyway.

  “You get me what I need?” I asked.

  Juarez helped himself to a bottle of water from the fridge and drank it down. He looked a little scared. More so than when he’d left.

  “Yes. I have it.”

  “Okay, so let’s hear it.”

  Juarez sat down on the couch next to Silvia who seemed to be pouting now. Probably because her boring husband was back and she wasn’t going to be able to flirt with me anymore.

  “They call her the Lady of the Dead.”

  I sighed. “I already knew that.”

  “I do not know what her real name is, only that those I spoke with said she can do magic. That she can make the spirits of her enemies do whatever she wants.”

  I frowned. I hate it when magic is involved. Most of my missions don’t deal with it and for a long time, I doubted the shit even existed. But it does. And usually, it complicates things immensely.

  Which pisses me off.

  “What else?”

  “La Familia Catrina supposedly has a large facility out in the mountains to the west. It is supposed to be located over a supernatural nexxus. Where the Lady of the Dead can call forth the spirits to do her bidding.”

  This was starting to sound more and more like she might be some type of Invoker - those of my kind who can summon and control the spirits of dead vampires. And if that was the case, then I was going to have to make her death very quick indeed. I’d tussled with evil Invokers before and I didn’t much relish the thought of dancing with one again.

  “Can you show me on a map where the location is?”

  Juarez nodded. “It is located in a valley in the mountains.”

  I nodded. That was a bright spot. If I could position myself at a higher elevation, I could use the Vintorez to shoot down. I’d have to take a variety of factors into account, but if I could set up inside of three hundred meters, I’d have a very high probability of a kill shot. And I only needed to hit center mass on the target - not a head shot. That helped put things into the plus column.

  But only just.

  “All right, I’ll need transportation,” I said. “How far outside of the city is it?”

  “Perhaps sixty miles,” said Juarez. “Do you need anything else?”

  “Yes, I’ll need someone for overwatch while I take the shot on the target.”

  His face clouded. “What is overwatch?”

  “You take a position above me in the event that someone tries to come up behind me. You watch my back, in other words.”

  Juarez held his hands out to the side. “Senór, I am not a soldier like you. I have used a gun only a few times in my life. I fear that I would be more of a liability than an asset to you in this event.”

  I frowned. “I don’t have the luxury of being picky, Juarez. You’re on the ground and you know the score. That means I’m drafting you into my service. Like it or not, you’re with me on this.”

  Juarez attempted to stutter a few more excuses before he finally gave up with a mighty sigh that sounded like all of the air fleeing his lungs. “Very well.”

  I glanced at Silvia. “You okay with this?”

  She shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  Like I said, zero passion between these two. If they’d had any sort of an exciting marriage, Silvia would have shown more concern for the man she supposedly loved. So much for that.

  I glanced at my watch. “We leave in four hours. Once it gets dark. In the meantime, I suggest you send your wife back home and you get some sleep.”

  Juarez looked worried but nodded. I headed for the master bedroom to get my head down. As I left the room, I heard them talking softly. But even then, all I heard Silvia say was, “Don’t die on me.”

  I shook my head and sacked out, telling myself to come awake in three hours. That would leave enough time for a meal, a trip to the can, and time to make final preparations. Then I laid on my back on fell asleep instantly.

  3

  The sun was rapidly vanishing in the western sky as we drove out of Mexico City. I let Juarez do the driving partly because he knew the area better than me and partly because I knew it would help take his mind off of the fact that he was doing a lot more than he’d ever expected to do as a Loyalist. In his eyes, being a Loyalist was simply a matter of doing easy stuff and not saying anything about the vampire race. In exchange, he collected some nice cash and that was that.

  And
truthfully, most of the time, that’s really was all there was to it.

  But in certain situations - say when a Fixer needs to assassinate the leader of a drug cartel - Loyalists can be drafted in to do jobs they might not like. They can always say no, of course, but they’d probably be too scared to do that. We don’t spell it out, but they probably think they can be executed for not helping us. I don’t know of a single time that ever happened, because the idea of it is usually enough to convince them to do a little bit extra assistance, even when they might not want to.

  “How’d you guys meet?”

  He glanced at me, suddenly jerked back out of his own thoughts. “Excuse me?”

  “Silvia. How did you guys meet?”

  Juarez shrugged. “We grew up in the same neighborhood.”

  “Okay.”

  He shrugged again. “I guess eventually we just sort of found each other.”

  “So no sudden realization that you were madly in love with her?” I turned and watched the sun dip below the horizon.

  “She laughed at my jokes,” said Juarez. “I liked that about her. She was pretty.”

  “Did you guys ever talk about your dreams? What you wanted to do in life?”

  Juarez sighed. “Silvia knew what she wanted: someone to take care of her. She used to claim that she had all these ideas of going off and doing crazy things, but as I got to know her, it became apparent that it was all talk. She’s not especially interested in hard work or doing what it takes to see your dreams come true.”

  “And what about you?”

  Juarez smiled. “I am just happy to have a woman like that around me. I’m not exactly the best-looking guy on the planet. Can she be bothersome? Of course. She whines and complains worse than anyone I’ve ever known. But I have reached a point where I can mercifully ignore her. We have a good life. I suppose that is all one can ask from the gods.”

  The hell with that, I thought. I didn’t want just a good life. I wanted the kind of life I could look back with laughter and fondness of all the experiences - the good, the bad, the ugly - and know I’d squeezed every precious drop of juice out of my time here on the planet as was possible.

  Good enough never is.

  “Well, I’m happy for you two,” I said without really meaning it. “And how did you become Loyalists?”

  “One of your kind needed help one time in the city. We came across him. He was injured somehow - it happened so long ago I don’t even remember it clearly. But we helped him as best we were able and then he left. About a month later, he returned and offered us a job.”

  I grinned. “And how did you handle the revelation that there are vampires out there?”

  Juarez chuckled. “It freaked me out, to be honest. Silvia thought it was great. I think part of her wished she could be one.”

  So Silvia was probably a groupie. I wonder if the dude they’d helped had hung around for some extra help after Juarez had gone off to work. Sivia seemed the type that wouldn’t have a problem with a little fling. Hell, maybe she even had a souvenir picture on her iPhone of the encounter.

  As we drove further west, the mountains started rising up around us. I knew the region was famous for its volcanoes, but seeing them up close did a lot to dispel the notion that Mexico was a tropical paradise of just beaches. Away from the coast, the landscape changed a lot and I marveled at its beauty.

  Juarez slid the window down and started playing some music. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  I shrugged. “Do what you have to.” If it helped settle his mind and ensured I was going to have adequate support on the op, then he could have whittled while he drove for all I cared. I just needed to know that when he was watching my back, I could fully concentrate on killing my target.

  “So much for your promises,” sang Juarez.

  I smirked. “Dude, Johnny Hates Jazz? Seriously?”

  Juarez blanched. “Sorry, I think they are incredible. Such an underrated band from the 80s.”

  “Yeah, I got that part.” I looked out of the window. It amazed me sometimes, this thing I called a life. In the space of mere hours, I could go from the cool autumn weather of Boston to anywhere in the world; from eating a quiet lunch in a dive noodle bar in Chinatown to getting ready to eliminate a threat to the existence of my people. If anyone ever thought they knew what I was by looking at me, they were sorely mistaken. I doubted they could even fathom it anyway. I looked like a fit man in his late forties and was probably mistaken for a some type of businessman. If they only knew the truth.

  On second thought, it was better they didn’t. The average person these days barely had time or willingness to read a book, let alone think about the number of lethal people they passed by blissfully unaware on a daily basis.

  For their sanity, I was glad for them.

  4

  It took us six hours of hard driving to reach Patzcuaro. Juarez pulled off the road at the gas station and filled us up. I glanced around, seeing the usual assortment of small shops, stray dogs, and kids playing. I could have been in any third world country - they all had the tendency to look the same. The classes were divided as they always were: haves and have-nots. The have-nots made do as they always did, with laughter, hard work, and a grinding existence that would have crushed the souls of most other people.

  I didn’t know whether there was happiness in misery, but even as they shuffled along the dirt roads kicking at empty soda cans and plastic bags, the kids laughed and played. The adults smiled, too, hanging out with friends and enjoying the evening as it dissolved into the night.

  Juarez stuck his face in the window. “Are you hungry?”

  I shrugged. In truth, I needed a hit of juice before I even thought about heading out to set up for the hit. But I couldn’t very well sit in the cab of the truck and take a hit of human blood. The locals probably wouldn’t like that too much.

  “Chips and a Pepsi,” I said. I didn’t care that they were empty calories; the juice would provide me with everything I needed once I could take it under the cover of darkness.

  Juarez vanished again and returned after five minutes. He settled himself in the driver’s seat and cracked a Pepsi for himself and some type of candy bar. I tore open the bag of Doritos and chomped down on one.

  Across from the gas station, I spotted a Mercedes SUV tucked in down an alleyway. “La Familia?”

  Juarez squinted and then leaned back. “Perhaps. We are in a very poor part of the town. A Mercedes like that must be owned by someone of importance. Otherwise, it would be stripped as soon as the locals spotted it. They know what they can get for bringing in a car like that - with or without all of its parts. It would be more than most of them earn all week.”

  “But they won’t chance it,” I said. “No sense incurring the wrath of the cartel.”

  “Not when the cartel would show up at their house, kill them very slowly, and first make the offender watch as they brutally destroyed the rest of the family-”

  He broke off and I glanced at him. “What’s wrong?”

  Juarez sighed. “Mr. Lawson, I must apologize.”

  I frowned. “For what?”

  “I have heard things about the woman you seek. About La Familia. None of it sits well with me. I am terrified for my life and for that of my wife as well.”

  “Juarez, if you’re holding back on me, you’d better come clean right now. I’m not in the mood for surprises.”

  Juarez nodded. “They say, this woman that you seek - the Lady of the Dead - that she can kill your soul. That she can get the spirits of those she calls to help her to destroy your soul once and for all. That would mean no chance of an afterlife.” He looked at me. “Do you believe in god?”

  “I haven’t thought about it all that much, but considering what I’ve seen, I guess the answer would have to be yes. I know there’s an afterlife.”

  Juarez sighed. “Yes, yes, this is what I mean. If we run the risk of being known by the cartel, what is to stop them from coming after us
and putting my mortal soul in danger?”

  I looked out of the window. I’d been around Jack enough when he’d done the Invoker thing. I had some sort of idea how it all worked, even though I couldn’t do it. Truth was, calling up spirits freaked me out. I much prefer the security of a gun, or my body to do the damage I need to do to bad guys. Magic and me don’t mix all that well. But I’d never heard Jack talk about actually ‘killing’ a soul. To me, that seemed pretty far-fetched. Still, I couldn’t discount the fact that Juarez was truly terrified. No wonder he’d shit himself when I’d told him he was coming along as overwatch. It was the last thing he ever wanted to do. And as much of a bitch as Silvia might have been, he was clearly trying to protect her.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said finally.

  “Yes?”

  “Get me to the drop-off location. Once you do, you can pull back to some place here in town. Find a cheap motel and sack out for all I care. You don’t have to go out there and do this with me. That way, if things go really wrong, you won’t be held responsible.”

  Juarez looked shocked. But then he shook his head. “No, I will assist you-”

  I held up my hand. “You’ll be doing enough if you get me to the right location and then can come back in for the exfil. As long as you’re there when I need you, that will be enough. That way, there’s no potential for trouble once I leave Mexico.”

  “You would do that for me?”

  I nodded. “No sense leaving you and Silvia behind in a world of shit. Besides, someone - maybe even me - might need your help again some day. Better we have living Loyalists than dead ones with no souls.”

  Juarez broke out into a huge smile. “Oh thank you!” I thought he was going to hug me so I kept my hand up.

  “Just make sure you’re where I need you to be when I need you. If you leave me high and dry, I’ll kill you myself. And I’ll kill your soul, too.”

  Juarez nodded. “Yes, yes, absolutely.” He took a long pull on his Pepsi and then slid the can into the receptacle between us. “Shall we get going? It is not too much farther.”