by J. R. Rain
“And it was copyrighted today?”
I nodded. “Fang, you said that a young guy came in and told you about the Occult Reading Room.”
“Right.”
“Tell me more about him.”
“Like I said, he was a young guy. He came in and soon we were talking about Cal State Fullerton’s baseball team. They’re in the finals again this year—how their program can consistently put together some of the best teams in college—”
“Focus, Fang.”
“Yes, right. He finished his beer and mentioned he had to get back to work in the Occult Reading Room at Cal State’s library.”
“He said it like that? Not, ‘I have to get back to work’?”
“Yeah, you’re right. At the time, I thought it been a little specific, but I blew it off because he had my interest.”
I knew about Fang’s interest in the occult. His knowledge of the arcane had come in handy more than once.
He went on, “So, he told me more about the collection; in particular, its thoroughness on nearly all esoteric subjects.”
“And he wasn’t wearing a bow tie?”
Fang smiled. “Hardly. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.”
“Blue eyes and a pointy beard.”
“That’s him.”
I was thinking about that when my cell rang. I fished it off my van’s charger. Danny. “I have to take this,” I said to Fang.
“No prob,” he said, and leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I have to scoot anyway. Love ya.”
And before I realized what I was saying, I said, “Love ya, too.”
When he was gone, I answered the phone, and Danny didn’t waste any time getting to the point. “What the fuck did you do to our boy, you goddamned monster?!”
Chapter Thirty-one
“Calm down, Danny.”
“Don’t tell me to calm you down, you goddamn freak! You changed him, Sam. You fucking changed him. That’s why he’s so cold. That’s why his body temperature is dropping.”
“And that’s why he’s alive, Danny.”
“Fuck you, Sam. This is too much. This is just too fucking much. Unbelievable. I hate you, Sam. I hate you more than I’ve ever hated you.”
He went on like this for a few more minutes. I tried to speak, but couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Finally, when he took a breath, I said, “He was dying, Danny. He was dying. Do you understand? He would be dead now.”
“You don’t know that. How could you know that? You didn’t give him a chance. He could have pulled through.”
“No, he wouldn’t have. I saw his death, Danny. I saw it as plain as day.”
“Better he dies a human than be a freak like you.”
“You don’t mean that—”
“Go to hell, you bitch. I will never forgive you for this or forget this, and I am going to make it my life’s fucking mission to drag you down to hell where you belong.”
He clicked off, no doubt angrily, just as I received another call. It was from a restricted line. Restricted lines often meant one of two things: telemarketers or cops. In this case, it was the cops. In particular, Detective Sherbet.
“Samantha,” he said simply.
“Detective.”
“We have a situation here at the hospital. I need to see you asap.”
“What’s wrong? Is it my son?” My voice instantly went from calm to nearly hysterical.
“Your son is fine, Sam. No, this is something else, and we need to see you asap.”
Chapter Thirty-two
I was sitting with Detective Sherbet in the hospital break room, or one of its break rooms, after a very tense ride from Hero’s. My frantic mind had imagined every conceivable, horrific scenario, each one worse than the other.
But never had I imagined this.
The hospital was in complete anarchy. Police everywhere. A mother weeping uncontrollably. Nurses frightened. Doctors frightened. Hell, everyone looked frightened. A very grave Sherbet had shut the break room door behind him and sat across from me.
Detective Sherbet and I had become close over these past few months. Not so close that I had disclosed to him my super-secret identity, but pretty damn close. Sherbet, no idiot, was aware that some really freaky shit was going down in his city. He knew I was connected to it, and in fact, might be the freakiest of them all. To his credit, he had yet to confront me about who—or what—I might know. Rather, he’d been approaching this from the outside, nibbling away at the edges. Perhaps his approach was a good one: absorbing small details at a time.
Sherbet was a big man, but not as big as Kingsley or my new detective friend out of Huntington Beach. If anything, he looked like a panda bear: salt-and-pepper hair, way too round around the middle, serious yet playful. And, if necessary, tough as hell.
“We have a child missing,” he said simply. We were sitting at a round and heavily scarred table. His belly, I noted, actually rested on the edge of the table.
My own stomach sank. “What do you mean?”
“A patient, a child, was kidnapped not too long ago by an unknown male.”
My heart froze. “When?”
“Just over thirty minutes ago. Kidnapped here, from the hospital.”
“Oh my God.”
“The hospital is on lockdown. No one in or out. Absolute insanity.” As he spoke, Sherbet was watching me closely. The muscles along his hairy forearms moved just under his thin skin, as he clenched and unclenched his fists. “The city of Orange isn’t my beat, but the guys here are good friends of mine. When a child goes missing all available hands come running. When I first heard the report, I thought of your son here.”
“But he’s okay.” I knew this because I had already checked on him.
He nodded. “Sam, the boy was kidnapped from your son’s old room.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your son, from what I understand, was recently moved from ICU to immediate care.” I wasn’t following but he continued on. “Another boy took your son’s room. Within thirty minutes, he was gone.”
“Oh, my God.”
Through the closed doors, I could hear someone barking an order. A child was crying somewhere. In fact, many children were crying.
Sweet Jesus. What was going on?
Sherbet went on, “The parents were down in the cafeteria getting some coffee and preparing for another all-nighter when they got the news.”
“Were there any witnesses?” My voice sounded hollow and distant.
“Oh, yeah. A man comes in claiming to be an uncle. Charming, smooth as hell, apparently. Says everything right. Front desk lets the bastard right in. Same with the nurses up here. Against protocol left and right. Heads will roll. Yet these same people don’t remember letting the guy in. I don’t understand any of it.”
“They don’t remember letting him, but they let him in?”
“Something like that.”
“As in no memory of doing it?”
“Right.” Sherbet frowned at me. The muscles of his forearm continued to undulate.
“What happened next?”
“You’ll never believe it.”
“Try me,” I said.
“Better I show you.”
He led me out of the break room and over to the room I was so familiar with, the same room my son had occupied for the past few days. Except now there was something vastly different about the room.
The entire window was missing.
Chapter Thirty-three
Sherbet said, “A minute or two after stepping into the room, the nurses heard what sounded like an explosion. When they rushed in to investigate, the boy was gone and the window was broken.”
I was speechless. Beyond speechless. I couldn’t formulate words. All I wanted to do was run to my son again and check on him, to hold him close and protect him forever.
What the hell was happening?
“For the love of God, Sam, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,
Detective, I swear—” I stopped when a disturbing image came to mind. “What did the man look like?”
“Tall. Caucasian. Dressed in slacks and a blazer. A blue blazer—Sam, what’s wrong?”
“Just go on,” I said. I had braced myself against the wall. Although I had little use for my lungs, they suddenly felt constricted, as if an anaconda had curled around my chest and was squeezing, squeezing. “Was he wearing anything else?”
Detective Sherbet was watching me closely.
“A bow tie,” he said.
“Oh, shit.”
“What do you know, Sam? Dammit, what the hell’s going on here?”
“He was following me today.”
“Who was following you today?”
“The man with the bow tie.”
Sherbet blinked. “If he was following you, then why in the devil would he kidnap the boy?”
“The man was after Anthony, I think.”
“Sweet Jesus, Sam.”
“And got the wrong boy. He was just a few minutes too late.”
“Why would he want your son?”
“He’s trying to get to me.”
“Who’s trying to get to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why does he want you?”
That I did know. Or, at least, I suspected I knew. “I have something he wants.”
“Who is he, Sam? And dammit, don’t tell me you don’t know. You know something. I can feel it. You’re holding back and now is not the time to hold back. There’s a sick little boy out there who needs immediate medical attention, who’s terrified and possibly hurt.”
Sherbet had a son of his own, about the same age as Anthony, in fact. I thought about how Sherbet had been such a good friend to me. I also thought about how he was so close to the truth. To my secret. I looked into his eyes now. His desperate and wild eyes. I thought about the little missing boy—a missing boy that was supposed to have been Anthony. My heart broke for him and his family, and I realized that my secret could be a secret no more. At least not with Detective Sherbet.
“Can we talk somewhere more private?”
“No, Sam. We talk here.”
“Please, Detective.”
He didn’t like it. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll talk in my squad car.”
Chapter Thirty-four
His squad car was an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria, and he was parked in a handicapped spot directly in front of the hospital. The car was immaculate, as I suspected it would be. Not even a wadded-up bag of donuts, which I half expected to find.
As he slid in, he clicked the doors locked. “It’s just me and you, kiddo,” he said. “Now talk.”
“I have an artifact,” I started. “A very valuable artifact for some people. I suspect that whoever took the boy wants this artifact. No doubt he thought he was taking my son.”
“Ransom,” said Sherbet. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me.
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“And the man in the bow tie?”
“I have no idea who he is.”
“But he was following you?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
Sherbet absorbed these strange details silently, his fine investigative mind sorting them out mentally, labeling them and filing them in his mental file folders. “What’s the artifact, Samantha?”
Sherbet was staring at me. I could hear his heart beating steadily, strongly. Sherbet smelled of aftershave and potatoes.
I took a deep breath, held it, and looked my friend in the eye. Sherbet returned my stare, his eyes wide and hungry, searching for information.
“Please, Samantha,” he said. “Talk to me.”
I continued staring at him, and finally came to a decision. I said, “I’m not what you think I am, Detective.”
“What the devil does that mean, Sam?”
“When I was attacked six years ago, I was changed forever.”
“No shit, Sam. An attack like that would change any—”
“That’s not what I meant, Detective. It changed me in a physical sense. In an eternal sense, too.”
“Eternal? What the devil are you talking—wait. Good God, you’re not telling you’re one of those were-thingies?”
I smiled despite the seriousness of the situation. “No, Detective. I’m a vampire.”
Chapter Thirty-five
“A vampire?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you’re serious?”
“As a corpse.”
“I don’t know whether to laugh or be afraid.”
“You can laugh, if you want. Lord knows I’ve done it a few times. Of course, my laughter usually turns into tears. But you certainly don’t need to be afraid, Detective.”
Yet another police car pulled up to the hospital. A young officer dashed out and headed for the hospital’s main doors. Through it all, Sherbet hadn’t taken his eyes off me. I didn’t blame him.
“I have a secret, too,” he said finally.
“Oh no,” I said. “Please don’t tell me you’re the Werewolf King or something.”
He chuckled lightly. “No, but I would have loved to see the look on your face.”
“What’s your secret, Detective? Seems like a good night to spill them.”
“I’ve known you were a vampire for some time.”
“Really?”
“It’s the only thing that made sense. Your strange disease, the dead gang banger drained of blood, the punch through the bulletproof glass, the dead prisoner.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because it was a new theory and I was still debating whether or not I was going insane.”
“A question I’ve asked myself a thousand times.”
“I have another secret,” he confessed.
“I don’t think I can handle any more secrets,” I said.
“I’ve seen Twilight five times.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “You saw what five times?”
“Twilight. My boy loves it. He can’t get it enough of it. We’ve seen the sequels a few times, too. Also, I watched them for, you know, research.”
Detective Sherbet loved his boy. Of that there was no doubt. That he had been worried sick that his young son was showing early signs of homosexuality was almost comical. With that said, I had been touched by Sherbet’s ability to come to terms with the concept. If anything, he loved his boy even more. Still, the thought of the gruff detective sitting through the various naked torso scenes in Twilight and its sequels for “research” would normally have had me laughing so hard that I might have peed. But not tonight.
“Anyway,” he said, clearly embarrassed. “You could say I’m something of a vampire expert now.”
“I see,” I said, and now I did laugh. “I hadn’t realized I was sitting next to an expert.”
He laughed, too, but then quickly turned somber. “But those are just movies. This is real, isn’t it, Sam?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You really are a vampire.”
I shrugged, my old defense kicking in. “I don’t know what I am, Detective.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m the same person I’ve always been, except sometimes when I’m not. It means that I feel the same that I’ve always felt, except sometimes when I don’t. It means I act the same, think the same, and do the same things I’ve always done.
“Except when you don’t,” said Sherbet.
“Yes, exactly. It means I’m still me. I’m still a mom. I’m still a woman. I’m still a sister. And I’m still a friend.”
“But you’re also something else. Something more.”
I nodded. “And sometimes I’m that, too.”
We were silent for a minute or two. The detective’s heart rate, I noted, had increased significantly. “It happened six years ago, didn’t it?”
I nod
ded.
“It left you...the way you are now.”
“Yes.”
“You never asked for this, did you?”
I shook my head.
“And it’s ripped your life apart, hasn’t it?”
I nodded and fought the tears. Enough crying. I was sick of crying, but it felt so damn nice to be understood, especially by a man I respected and admired so much.
“And now you’re doing all you can to keep it together.”
Shit. The tears started. Damn Detective Sherbet.
He reached over and patted my hand. A grandfatherly gesture. A warm gesture.
“So you believe me?” I asked.
“I believe something. What that is, I don’t know. Most of me thinks you’re insane, or that I’m insane. Most people would think, in the least, that you’re a hazard to your kids.”
“Do you think I’m a hazard to my kids?”
“No. I think you’re a wonderful mother. I really believe that.”
“Thank you,” I said, moved all over again.
Sherbet touched the back of my hand again. My instinct was, of course, to retract my hand, but I didn’t. Not this time. His fingertips explored my skin, almost like a blind man would the face of his lover. “Your cold skin always confused me. And your skin disease never felt right.”
“Because it wasn’t.”
He nodded. “And Ira Lang...sweet Jesus. The visiting room.”
Sherbet was referring to the time a month or so ago when I had punched through a bullet-proof piece of glass to grab a piece of shit named Ira Lang, and proceeded to let him know what I thought of him threatening me and my kids.
“You killed him, Sam.”
I said nothing. I wasn’t admitting anything, especially to a homicide investigator.
“You nearly ripped his head off.”
I kept saying nothing.
“Of course, I should arrest you. For his murder, and for anyone else who’s gone missing or been killed on any of your other cases.” He turned his shoulder and propped a meaty elbow up on the seat’s head rest. “Just tell me one thing, Sam: do you kill people for blood?”