by J. R. Rain
The place was only half full. Men in varying degrees of drunkenness and physical deterioration sat around the raised stage. Most were drinking beer. Some were drinking shots of the hard stuff. All were staring at the woman with her glittering breasts.
I stood where I was and took in the scene. So why did Danny keep coming here? So what’s the draw? Glittering fake breasts?
Maybe. Men have fought for far less.
I continued scanning, realizing I was going to need another hot shower tonight. Smoke filled the air, even though it was illegal to smoke in such establishments. I continued scanning. No one acknowledged me. No one cared that I was standing there at the entrance. A man to my left was currently getting what I assumed was a lap dance, although it looked like a lot of hard grinding. We called that dry humping in my day.
My stomach turned.
Other strippers were making their rounds, running their hands over customer’s shoulders and through their hair, offering them some sort of service or another. The men smiled and politely deferred. Many wanted to touch the women, and seemed to forcibly control themselves. Touching the women, I was certain, was highly illegal in such an environment. And, of course, this strip joint was a model in adhering to local laws. Minus the smoking and the dry humping. One man actually took a stripper up on her offer, and she promptly led him by the hand into a back room. Another very large man stood outside the door to this room. I shuddered to think what was going on in that back room.
Oh, don’t be such a prude, I thought. It’s just sex and lots of it.
I went over to the bar. A Hispanic bartender was talking to a customer with a thick neck. The bartender didn’t look at me. I finally got his attention and told him I wanted to speak to Rick.
The bartender motioned with his jaw, and the customer with the thick neck apparently wasn’t a customer at all. The man turned slowly and looked at me. “Waddya want?”
“Are you Rick?”
“Sure.”
“I’m looking for a job.”
Rick looked me over and somehow held back his excitement. “We ain’t hiring, sorry, toots.”
Toots? Feeling oddly rejected, I took a gamble. “Danny told me to talk to you about a job.”
“Danny, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Rick took in a lot of air, which somehow made his thick neck swell out even more. He studied me some more, lingering on my chest. I took in some air and puffed it out a little. Finally, he said, “Come back tonight at eleven when Danny gets here. Then we can all talk to him. But the last I heard, we ain’t hiring.”
I took another shot in the dark. “But Danny said he was the owner and what he says goes.”
“Look, whatever. Come back tonight and we can all have a pow wow.” His gaze lingered on me some more. “Let’s see your tits and see what we’re working with.”
I sucked in some air despite myself. I’ve been undercover before, but not like this. “You can see them tonight, with Danny.”
He shrugged and said, “Whatever,” and turned back to the bartender, and as I left, I realized that any feelings I had had for Danny, any lingering connection to the man that I had felt, had completely dried up and disappeared in that moment.
Chapter Forty-nine
I was sitting at a Denny’s in the city of Corona, drinking a glass of iced water. There was a hot cup of black coffee sitting in front of me, too, but I didn’t touch the black coffee. The coffee was there for show, and just to be ordering something.
I idly wondered how many vampires hung out at Denny’s. Maybe none. Maybe most vampires were out running through graveyards or having blood orgies, or whatever the hell else real vampires do.
The waitress came by and glanced at my full cup of coffee and asked if I needed anything else. I smiled and said no. She smiled and dropped off the check and left. I smiled just for the hell of it.
I had a notebook in front of me, open to a blank page. I was loosely holding a pen near the top of the blank page. As I sat there, I remembered the grounding steps from last time, and performed them now. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself securely tethered to the earth with glowing silver cords. Then I took in some air and held it for a few minutes and then let it out slowly.
A now familiar tingling appeared in my arm. The pen jerked in my hands. It jerked again, and now the tip was moving, writing. Three words appeared.
Good evening, Samantha.
I stared at them, knowing I should probably be freaked out, but I wasn’t. Whatever the hell was going on, I didn’t know, but I was game to go along for the ride.
I spoke by subvocalizing the words, that is, speaking them with barely a whisper, just loud enough for me to hear, and hopefully loud enough for my new friend to hear. But, of course, not so loud that I would get thrown out of Denny’s.
“Good evening, Sephora,” I said. “How are you?”
I’m well. And I can hear you just fine.
I smiled. “I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you earlier.”
There is no reason to feel sorry, Samantha. Remember, I’m always here.
“Yes, you said that. And where is here?”
Where do you think it is?
“Heaven?”
Close. Let’s call it the ‘spirit world’.
“And what’s that like, the spirit world?”
Oh, you know it well.
“I do?”
Indeed, a very significant part of you still resides in the spirit world.
“You totally lost me.”
You are much more than your physical body, Samantha. Do you understand the concept of a soul?
“Yes. I just don’t know if I believe in the concept of a soul.”
I understand. You live in this physical world of time and space. There isn’t, admittedly, a lot of evidence of a soul. Then again, there isn’t a lot of evidence for vampires, either. But both exist.
I nodded and sipped my ice water. The coffee had quit letting off steam. Quickly, when no one was looking, I poured a little out onto the table and then mopped it up with my napkin. Now the coffee at least appeared to have been sipped. I wrapped another napkin around the sopping wet napkin. The things I do to appear normal. Sigh.
“So some things are taken on faith, is that what you’re saying?”
Something like that, Samantha.
“You can call me Sam.”
I’ll do that...Sam.
“So what did you mean that a significant part of me still resides in the spirit world?”
The easiest way to describe this, Sam, is to say that not all of your soul is focused in your current physical body. Some of your soul—a large portion of your soul, in fact—still resides in the spirit world.
“And what’s it doing in the spirit world?”
Watching you, closely.
“This is a lot to take,” I said. “And weird.”
I understand. So take things slowly. There’s time. There’s no rush.
“And who are you, exactly?”
Just a friend, Sam.
“A good friend?”
The best.
“Okay, that makes me feel better,” I said, and as I said those words quietly, I felt a slight shiver course along the entire length of my body. Oddly, it was a comforting sensation. There was a good chance I might have just been hugged.
I’m glad you feel better, Sam.
“I want to ask you more about me, about what I have become, but maybe that can wait until another night.”
I’m always here, Sam.
And just like that, the electrified sensation left my body. I closed the notebook, put the pen back in my purse (along with the sopping napkin, which I had wrapped another napkin around), and paid my bill and left.
Chapter Fifty
The more I thought about delivering Orange County’s most notorious crime boss into the hands of the mild mannered Stuart Young, the more I realized I had given my perfectly bald client a death sentence.
And so I spent a
lot of that night thinking about what I could do about this dilemma. I thought long and hard, and somewhere near the break of dawn, I came up with an idea.
* * *
I spent all the next evening researching the plane crash; in particular, the victims on board. Because this was a military crash and because most of the victims were key witnesses to an important trial, getting the names wasn’t easy. I used every available contact I had in the federal government until finally a list was provided to me.
And once I had the list I went to work.
* * *
Two days later, on the night of the full moon, with Kingsley howling away deep inside his safe room—I hoped—I alighted on Jerry Blum’s wonderfully ornate alabaster balcony.
I tucked in my massive, leathery wings, focused my thoughts on the woman in the dancing flame, opened my eyes, and found myself standing naked on his stone balcony.
Naked but not without a plan.
My talons might be hideous and scary as hell, but they were good at carrying smaller objects. And one of them, this time, had been my daughter’s extra backpack. The backpack was full of, let’s just say, crime fighting gear.
Below me, I heard the muted sounds of men talking quietly among themselves. So far, I hadn’t been seen. The sliding glass door in front of me was wide open. Apparently, Jerry Blum never expected a giant vampire bat to alight on his balcony. From within the room, I heard the sounds of muffled snoring.
I stepped into his darkened bedroom. My eyes did not need adjusting. His spacious room was electrified with shining filaments of zigzagging light. Ghost light. Vampire light. There was a lone figure sleeping in a massive four poster bed. White gossamer sheets hung from the bed’s cross beams. Very uncrime lord-like.
The figure sleeping in the center of the bed was snoring softly, peacefully, contentedly. There was no evidence that this son-of-bitch stayed awake over the crimes against humanity he had committed.
There was a white cotton robe hanging over the wooden sleigh bed footboard. I slipped it on and assessed the situation. I was certain there were guards somewhere nearby, although none seemed directly outside the door. I didn’t hear them, nor was my sixth sense jangling. My sixth sense was telling me that, for now, I was safe.
Carrying the backpack, I went over to the side of the bed and looked down at the man who had presumably killed Stuart’s wife, a man who was powerful enough to bring down a government-owned airplane. There was a reason why I didn’t confront him directly and openly. He would have gone after me and everything I loved, too. I had to hunt him from afar.
I had another reason for being here. Before I condemned the man to death, I had to know if I had the right man. Sure, Jerry Blum was a bastard. But was he the bastard I wanted?
Well, let’s find out.
“Wake up, asshole,” I said.
Jerry Blum’s eyes popped open instantly. His hand snaked beneath his pillow, a practiced motion. He was fast, but I was faster. In a blink, his arm was pinned up over his head, driven into the mattress by my own hand, and I found myself leaning over him, staring down into his startled face. It was a face I had seen often: in the news, in books, and even in magazines. He was a celebrity crime lord, if ever there was one. Celebrity or not, he was a son-of-a-bitch. He was also quite handsome. Blum was in his late fifties, but he could have passed for his early forties. There was some gray at his temples, and there were fine lines that creased from the corners of his eyes and reached down to the corners of his mouth. These were not laugh lines. Worry lines, no doubt. Jerry Blum was not a big man, but I could feel his muscular body beneath me. Shockingly, amazingly, I found myself slightly turned on by the position I found myself in: pinning down a handsome devil in his bed in the middle of the night.
I shook off the feeling as soon as it registered.
He quit struggling, perhaps realizing it was doing him no good, and we stared at each other for a heartbeat or two. Ambient light made its way in through the open French doors. Laughter reached us from somewhere on his grounds, but not very close. A girl giggled. An airplane droned high overhead.
Jerry Blum had thin lips. Too thin for me. He breathed easily, his nostrils flaring slightly. He smelled of good cologne and something else. Lavender. But the scent wasn’t coming from him. It was coming from his bed; in fact, it was coming from his pillow. I knew something about aromatherapy. One sprinkled lavender on one’s pillow to ensure a good night’s sleep. No doubt Mr. Blum had been plagued by a lifetime of nightmares. Or not.
“Who the fuck are you?” he finally said.
“Your worst nightmare,” I said, and somehow managed to keep a straight face.
“Yeah, well, you look like a whore.”
He next tried to throw me off. Tried being the operative word here. He grunted and grimaced and bucked, but I didn’t go anywhere. Finally, he lay back, gasping, face contorted slightly in pain. I think he might have pulled something.
“You’re a very bad man, Mr. Blum.”
“And you’re a dead woman.”
“You’re closer than you think,” I said.
He opened his mouth to yell or scream and I used my other hand to slap his face hard. It was a nice slap, harder than I intended, but I didn’t care. His eyes literally crossed, then settled back into place. A moment later, he was staring up at me in a daze.
“No yelling or screaming,” I said.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. My stomach lurched. I purposely had not eaten tonight.
“Did Danny Boy send you up?”
“No.”
“So you ain’t no whore?”
“That’s a double negative, Mr. Blum.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
I found myself staring down at the fine trickle of blood that glistened at the corner of his mouth. Blood was food for me, sure, but it was also something else. The right blood—fresh blood—satisfied more than hunger.
I said, “Do you want the bad news, Jerry, or the really bad news?”
He fought me again, this time harder than before, doing his damnedest to buck me off him. But I didn’t move, and he quickly tired of this game, gasping. And that’s when I punched him. Hard. It was a straight jab into his left eye. I put a lot of strength behind the punch. I wanted it to hurt. The sound of bone hitting bone was sickening, and the punch drove his head deep into the pillow, where the goose down bloomed around him like a white flower, no doubt dousing him in peaceful lavender.
A very small voice protested what I was doing, as it had been doing all night long. It reminded me that I was a mother, a sister, a friend, an ex-federal agent, an ex-wife, a woman with a conscience and a heart. It reminded me that I was not a killer or a murderer.
And as Jerry Blum shook his head, as a deep cut along the edge of his orbital ridge dripped blood into the corner of his left eye, I listened to that voice. I listened to its arguments and I listened to its reasoning, and I decided, in the end, that Jerry Blum had to die.
But not yet. First, I needed information. First, I had to know.
I said, “You sabotaged an airplane carrying a half dozen government witnesses. The airplane crashed killing everyone on board.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I punched him again, harder than before, driving his head deeper into the pillow.
“Fuck,” he said. Blood was now staining his pillowcase, no doubt adding a nice coppery smell to the lavender.
I didn’t come here to beat up Jerry Blum. I didn’t come here to intimidate him. I came here to get a confession from him. And what happened after that, well, I was going to play that by ear.
“Tell me about the plane, Jerry,” I said.
“Do you have any idea who I am?”
“You’re Jerry Blum. Orange County’s biggest crime lord. You are untouchable. Your enemies shudder in your presence. You’ve destroyed lives and businesses and spread fear far and wide. Did I miss anything?”
“Yeah, I’m
rich. I can triple whoever’s paying.”
“Paying me to do what?”
“To kill me.”
“They didn’t pay me to kill you, Mr. Blum. I tossed that in as a freebie. Pro bono, so to speak.”
He lay back in his bed, bleeding. His nose was perfect, probably surgically altered. His teeth were perfect, probably dentally enhanced. He let out a long breath. His breath was tinged with the scent of blood. In fact, blood wafted up from him everywhere. He wasn’t bleeding a lot, granted, but a little bit of blood registered deeply with me.
I’m a shark, I thought, smelling blood in the water dozens of miles away.
“Tell me about the plane,” I said. The blood, quite honestly, was driving me fucking crazy.
“Go to hell, cunt.”
“Tell me about the plane, Jerry.”
He threw his face at me, lips pulled back, cords standing out on his neck. His eyes veritably bulged from their sockets. He fought and fought and screeched in frustration and anger and pain, and when he spoke spittle shot from his mouth in a steady stream. “Of course I killed them, you fucking freaky bitch! Just like I’m going to kill you. You can’t stop me, no one can stop me. I’m invincible. I kill who I want, when I want, and how I want. You understand, you crazy bitch? You understand? You’re a dead woman. Dead! And so is your client and anyone else you fucking know! And that’s after I fuck you every which way, you fucking whore! How dare you come into my house, how dare you come in here and—”
And that’s as far as he got.
“Enough,” I said.
I flipped Jerry Blum over and pulled his hands behind his back. I reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. I cuffed the bastard and then pulled a black, breathable hood over his face. I cinched it tight. He fought me like a demon on crack, bucking and twisting, but it did him no good.
When I was finished, I hauled him to his feet and threw him over my shoulder. I carried him to his beautiful alabaster balcony, where I set him down, along with my backpack, and ditched the robe. I closed my eyes and saw the flame and the hulking winged creature. When I opened my eyes again, I was easily five feet taller than I had been just seconds before. Jerry was still pinned beneath me, this time beneath one of my massive talons.