by J. R. Rain
Aaron Parker, aka Fang, found us a table in the darkest corner of the deepest part of the lounge. Music thumped from nearby speakers. There wouldn’t be a soul on earth who could overhear us. A waitress materialized out of the darkness like a ghost and took our orders. Aaron ordered for us. White wine for me. Jack and Coke for him.
“You remembered what I drink,” I said. I found myself feeling wary and highly exposed and vulnerable. I also found myself fighting a very strong desire to run. But to run was to leave a lot of questions unanswered.
To run was to screw everything up, and I didn’t want to screw everything up.
Aaron sat forward and studied me intently. I don’t like to be studied intently. He knew that, didn’t he? Interestingly, his look was the same look he’d given me many times at Heroes, a bar I frequented with my sister. Silly me, I had thought his probing glance had been an interest of a different sort. Now I knew differently. He had been stalking me. He had known who I was all along.
I instinctively looked away, feeling a bit like a freak at a carnival: “Come one, come all—see the real-life bloodsucker!”
Now that he was sitting across from me and not endlessly serving customers, I had a chance to really study him. I had always found him attractive. I’m sure he knew that. And my sister had an unhealthy crush on him that her husband really should probably be concerned about. Aaron Parker was tall. Perhaps one of the tallest men I had ever seen. I suspected he was an athlete and I resisted the urge to ask him if he played basketball. Aaron had full lips. The kind most women drool over. He had sad puppy dog eyes, as brown and bright as polished cherry wood. But it was his mouth that I found the most curious. He didn’t seem to know what to do with those beautiful lips of his. Sometimes he pulled them as if snarling. And sometimes they seemed to drape over his lower lip. Often they moved and shifted and I kept having the impression he was about to say something, but words rarely followed the movement. It was the oddest twitch I had ever seen.
Finally, his moving lips formed words. When he spoke, he did so softly. If not for my better-than-average hearing, I might have missed what he said: “I remember everything you tell me, Samantha.”
“Except I never told you my name.”
Now he looked away, suddenly embarrassed. He should be embarrassed. He had stalked the shit out of me. “Yes, I’ve known your name for some time.”
“It’s not nice to stalk people,” I said. “Especially someone who can kill you and deposit your body somewhere over shark-infested waters where it will never be seen again.”
Aaron’s eyes flashed briefly with amusement. “It was a chance I had to take.”
Our drinks came. It was late Sunday night and the bar crowd was thinning. No doubt only the hardcore drinkers were left...and a creature or two of the night. As we sat in the bar, toasting to good health and long life (which put a smile on my face), I was suddenly certain Aaron and I were being watched. I glanced over his shoulder, searching for the source, but there was only an empty stairway leading up to God knew what. Still, the electrified field that only I seemed to see, a field that consisted of glowing streaks of light that helped me see into the darkest of nights, seemed to be buzzing with more than usual activity. Light streaks zipped about as if energized by something unseen.
Something’s coming, I suddenly thought. What that I was, I didn’t know.
I turned back to Fang. “So how did you find me?” I asked, although I had already intuited the answer. Obviously, I had given the man enough clues about my life—in particular, the cases I had worked on—for him to find me. Quite simply, he had put two and two together. Even if two and two had come over the course of years.
He confirmed my hunch, and explained. To his credit, he looked a bit sheepish. Anyway, it had been one of my bigger cases four months ago that had gotten some national attention, a case that involved a runaway girl and a murderous dad. Despite my best efforts to remain anonymous, my name had appeared once or twice in the newspaper. I had, of course, mentioned to Fang that I was working on an important missing person case. By this point, I had already inadvertently dropped enough clues over the years to direct him to the general region where I lived. And once he knew the general region, well, it had just been a matter of scanning the local headlines for any news about a runaway.
I said, “So everything I ever told you....”
“I made notes,” he said. “I saved our messages. I poured over them later, searching for hidden clues about you. About how to find you. In the beginning, you gave me very little to work with. But you loosened up over the years.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. There was a creep factor here that was hard to ignore. But I also understood human nature. Or, at least, tried my damned best to. Yes, of course he had been curious about me. Who wouldn’t have been? I was a woman who was professing to be much more than a woman. And, admittedly, I had certainly been curious to find him, too, but I had never acted on it. I was a married woman at the time, working hard to keep things happy and seemingly normal.
Too hard.
A marriage shouldn’t have to be so much work. Love shouldn’t crush your soul. A relationship should add to your life, not take away from it. Something I’m only now beginning to understand.
But it was hard to remain mad at Fang...or Aaron. There was a gentleness to him that I never saw coming. His instant messages to me had exuded confidence. But I wasn’t seeing the confidence here. No, I was seeing a man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, who had anything but confidence. I was missing something here, and I wasn’t sure what it was.
I looked again at the teeth dangling from his neck. They were long and thick—but not quite as thick as shark teeth. They looked like dog canines. Big dog canines. I looked again at his twitching mouth, and saw him curl his upper lip down as if to....
As if to cover two massively prominent canines. Two unnaturally long canines.
“Those teeth,” I said, motioning to his chest. “Are yours.”
“Why, Moon Dance,” he said, and I sensed his old charm. “You are quite the detective.”
Chapter Three
I knew the story of the American Vampire, of course.
In essence, a young man with two extraordinarily long canine teeth had sucked his girlfriend dry. His trial had been as sensational as they get, and who could forget the images of the young man opening his mouth and exposing those two insanely long canines for all the world to see.
And here he was. In the flesh. Sitting across from me. A young man who had been tried and convicted of murder. A young man who had been deemed criminally insane. And there were very few who would argue that point.
And he’s Fang, I thought. This is crazy.
If I looked hard enough I could see the similarities, but the truth was, he looked nothing like the tormented young man whose image had been broadcast across the airwaves and newsrooms and the early Internet. Now his thick beard would make him nearly impossible to place, and I was almost certain he had had some nose work done. And as I looked again, I could see he was wearing brown contact lenses. Almost certainly his eyes had been blue originally. But the biggest difference was his great height. He had not been quite this tall when he was eighteen years old. Then again, it was hard to know for sure, since he had often sat petulantly next to his attorneys. Still, I would guess he had grown another five inches...perhaps enough to completely throw authorities off his trail.
He was, after all, an escaped convict—and allegedly responsible for two more deaths. A guard at the criminally insane prison and the owner of a creepy museum in Hollywood who had purchased Aaron’s teeth for a morally questionable display.
A sick display. There had been an outrage, of course.
But the outrage turned moot when the owner had been found dead some months later, and the teeth had been stolen.
The same teeth that now dangled from Fang’s neck.
The same fangs.
“You are a killer,” I said.
/>
“As are you, Samantha,” he said, sitting back and sipping casually on a drink that smelled strong enough to preserve a warthog. “We are both victims of circumstance. Never forget that.”
His faux brown eyes continued scanning my face. I could see the wonder in them; I could sense his awe. His thoughts were alive to me, nearly registering in my mind as my own. After all, I had a deep connection to Fang, deeper than I had ever thought possible with another human being, and although the man in front of me was largely a stranger, now that we’ve met in the flesh, our connection seemed only to intensify.
He closed his eyes and took in some air. “I can feel you, Moon Dance.”
I blinked. “Feel me how?”
“In my head. You’re there. In my thoughts. Just off to the side. Listening. Picking up words here and there.”
He cocked his head slightly to one side, like a dog listening to something on the wind. Now it was my turn to study his face. The man was gorgeous. Of that, there was no doubt. After all, there was a reason why my sister turned into a gibbering idiot every time he served us a drink. His brown hair was jauntily disheveled, or perhaps messily windblown. Mostly, it was his lips that commanded my attention. So full, especially the lower one. There was a spot of liquid on the bottom one and all I could think of doing was tasting that spot. Just that one, sexy spot.
His eyelids quivered, where I saw a brief flash of white, and realized his eyes had rolled up into his head. “Yes, there you are, Moon Dance.”
I said nothing. Music continued pumping through the bar. A very old drunk man got up from his stool and started slow dancing with himself. He spun himself once, twice, and I thought he might even dip himself, but luckily he bumped into the bar and grabbed hold of it. No one seemed to notice him but me.
And seemingly inside my skull, I heard a very faint, yet very distinct whisper: Hello, Moon Dance.
Fang opened his eyes and smiled at me.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s never happened before.”
Chapter Four
“It is common knowledge that vampires can control others with their minds,” said Fang.
“But I’m not trying to control you,” I said.
“Yet,” he said. “But if I find myself suddenly giving you a pedicure, I might suspect otherwise.” He winked.
I lifted my hand. “Trust me, there isn’t a file strong enough for these nails.”
“Let me see your nails, Moon Dance.”
“No.”
“Please.”
I sighed and held out my hands. He took them gently and did not flinch at the extreme cold of my flesh like most do. Indeed, shivering and smiling, he seemed to revel in the iciness. He next tapped the tip of my index finger. I felt like a horse being sold at auction. “You could disembowel a rhino with these things.”
“Or a bartender who lets my secret out.”
He grinned again. “I didn’t realize how feisty you were, Moon Dance.”
“We never had this much at stake, Fang.”
“We both hold equally damaging secrets. I, too, am trusting you to keep my secret safe.”
“You’re a convicted murder and an escaped prisoner.”
“And you’re a blood-sucking fiend.”
I studied him. The corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile, along with some of his beard. “Fair enough,” I said, sitting back. “So what’s this mind control business you’re talking about?”
He finished his drink and waved the waitress over. I had barely touched my own wine. When she was gone, he sat forward, resting his weight on his sharp elbows. “You have already mentioned your sixth sense, Moon Dance. You have even mentioned that you felt it is getting stronger.”
I nodded; it was.
He went on, “Well, your sixth sense is a little more far-reaching than you have thought; at least, that is my understanding.”
“How far-reaching?”
“Telepathy. Hypnosis. Mediumship.”
“One at a time,” I said. “Hypnosis?”
“You’ve seen Dracula, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you read the book?”
“No.”
“A vampire who’s never read Dracula?”
“I’ve been busy raising kids and trying to keep a husband happy. At least I’m batting .500.”
He smiled sadly. “I’m sorry he hurt you, Moon Dance.”
“So am I.”
“Want to change the subject?”
I nodded.
“Back to mind control. Dracula, you see, has the ability to induce hypnosis with just his gaze. You might want to look into it.”
I shook my head at his silly pun. “Fine. What about mediumship?”
“That’s speaking to the dead, either to those who have passed on or still linger.”
“Linger?”
“Ghosts, Moon Dance. You should be able to see ghosts.”
I scanned our surroundings. The electrified air, usually so alive with light filaments, seemed particularly erratic in here. To my eyes, the streaking lights zigzagged even more crazily, sometimes coalescing into bigger shapes. As I scanned the air around us, Fang continued speaking.
“You are a supernatural being, Moon Dance. A supernatural being in the world of mortals. You should be seeing things I could never, ever imagine.”
The squiggly lights in the bar flashed and zigzagged like thousands upon thousands of electrified fireflies. I watched as they whipped crazily around a nearby stairway, a stairway that led up into the black depths. The flashing lights began gathering together, collecting other squiggly lights. I had seen such things before but had dismissed them. They were just strange lights, right? Nothing more.
“Creatures of the night seem to attract each other, Samantha, whether they know it or not...or whether they want it or not. It is not a coincidence that the werewolf came into your life. Soon, I expect others like yourself to make appearances.”
“Like myself?”
“Vampires, Moon Dance. You cannot be an island for long. Not in this world of fantastical creatures.”
I continued studying the glowing object at the foot of the stairway. More light gathered around it. Now, if I looked hard enough, I could see shoulders, hips, and a head forming. Even what appeared to be longish hair. And then, amazingly, the light creature turned toward me. I couldn’t see its features, but I sensed its great pain. And then, buried deep in my mind’s eye, I saw a flash of a knife’s blade, heard a strangled cry, then weeping, and then...nothing.
“I see a ghost,” I said. “There by the stairway.”
I saw Aaron turn out of the corner of my eye. “I don’t see anything, Moon Dance. But I’m not surprised. This is supposedly one of the most haunted buildings in Fullerton.”
And just like that the vaguely humanoid column of light dispersed, scattering into a thousand glowing, fluorescent shards of energy.
Son of a biscuit, I thought, reciting my son’s favorite expression.
After a moment, Aaron Parker looked back at me. “So does it feel strange finally meeting me, Moon Dance?”
“Yes and no. A part of me wants to run back to my computer and continue this conversation there. I felt safe there. I felt open. I felt free to be me.”
“You don’t feel free now?”
“I don’t know how I feel, to be honest.”
“Do I feel a bit like a stranger?” he asked.
I nodded and I felt the tears come to my eyes. “Yes.”
“A stranger who knows your deepest and darkest secrets.”
I nodded, suddenly finding it hard to speak.
He said, “Do you regret meeting me, Moon Dance?”
I sat motionless for a long time before I reached out and took his warm hands in my mine. As I did so, he curled his long fingers around mine. “I don’t know,” I whispered, and it was perhaps the hardest three words I have ever spoken.
He continued holding my hands. Now he rubbed his thumb along my knuckles. His t
humb was rough, calloused. He was a grease monkey, no doubt. Tending bar at night, fixing up his classic muscle car during the day.
Fang tilted his head slightly. “Grease monkey is not a politically correct term, Moon Dance. We prefer to be called lubed primates.”
I snorted. “Sounds like a bad porno.”
“There are no bad pornos, Moon Dance.”
“Eww, and you just read my thoughts.”
“Yes,” he said. “I heard a few snatches here and there.”
“So how is it that you can read my thoughts?”
“I don’t have all the answers, Moon Dance.”
“Well, give it your best shot, big guy.”
He stared at me long and hard. As he did so, his tongue slid along his lower lip and seemed to be searching for something that was not there. I sensed his great sadness for what was lost. I suspected I knew the source of his sadness.
Finally, he said, “We are connected, Moon Dance. Or, more accurately, you have allowed me access into your mind.”
“So I can turn it off?” I asked.
“I don’t see why not,” he said. “And you’re right, Sam, I do miss them every day. More than you know.”
His teeth, of course.
Chapter Five
Instead of going home, I went to a place I was familiar with: The Embassy Suites in Brea. My home over the past month.
I parked the minivan in my old spot, and shortly said hello to Justin who was working the front desk. He smiled and nodded and seemed to have forgotten that I had checked out a week earlier. Of course, just last week, when I had busted my husband for running an illegal strip club in Colton, I had dressed the part of a stripper. I might be little, but I’m a curvy thing, and Justin the night clerk hasn’t looked at me the same since.
I felt his eyes on me all the way to the bank of elevators. At the ninth floor, I found a locked service door I had seen many times in the past. A service door I had taken note of. Why? Because the plaque on it read: Roof Access. Maintenance Personnel Only.