by J. R. Rain
My son took my hand and led me away, out of his room and into the hallway. I could smell my own burning flesh. If I looked hard enough, I might even see steam rising off my skin.
I said, gasping, “Are you okay, honey?”
“Of course, Mommy.”
I pulled my son in close and held him tight. Two men with crossbows. Vampire hunters. Here at my house. Following me.
“Who were those men, Mommy?”
“Bad men.”
“Were they robbers?”
I nodded but didn’t say anything. I pulled him in closer, and we stood like that in the hallway, holding each other tight, while the cool wind came in through the broken window, rattled the blinds, and eventually found us huddling together in the hallway.
Chapter Thirty-four
Have you pissed anyone off lately, Moon Dance?
It was nearly midnight, and, after working with a 24-hour glass service, I had contacted Fang and gotten him up to speed.
No more than usual, I wrote.
And you’re sure one of them wasn’t our vampire hunter from last year?
I shook my head, although I was alone in the room. I’m fairly certain. Randolph the vampire hunter worked alone, and this was a two-man crew. Besides, Randolph and I are on good terms.
Meaning what?
Meaning, I’m not very high on his kill list.
Randolph the vampire hunter doesn’t sound very catchy.
Maybe not, but he’s effective.
I still say you shoulda dropped his ass in the ocean. Why leave it to chance that he might return?
A judgment call.
A judgment call you might regret, he wrote, paused, then added: Sorry, Moon Dance. I’m just very, very protective of you, and two creeps showing up at your house with fucking crossbows scares the shit out of me. I mean, what if they had gotten a shot off at you, or your son?
It was nearly too horrible to contemplate, so I didn’t. Fang sensed this and changed the subject a little.
Have you talked to Anthony about, well, everything?
Mostly. I told him that we were different. I told him that we were stronger than most people. He said something about being superheroes, and I went with that for now.
Except that might do more damage than good, Moon Dance.
For now, it’s enough that he knows he’s different and needs to keep it secret.
Baby steps, wrote Fang, obviously reading my mind.
Yes, baby steps. Also...
But I couldn’t finish the thought. I stopped writing, but Fang, privy to my thoughts, had picked up on it. He finished it for me, writing: Also, you’re tired of hiding who you are.
Yes.
Will you tell your daughter?
I think so. Yes.
How do you think they will take it?
I don’t know, Fang. I only hope they don’t hate me.
Well, I, for one, would think you were the coolest mom ever.
Yeah, well, you’re also a freak.
I could almost hear Fang chuckling lightly on his end. On my end, I could hear Anthony snoring lightly and faint music issuing from Tammy’s room. The house creaked from somewhere and I nearly bolted to my feet.
Just the house settling. Calm down, Sam.
Easier said than done.
Earlier, Kingsley had offered to come over, but the big guy had an important court hearing in the morning, and I assured him I would be fine. Fang had offered, too, but I politely declined. Truth was, I doubted they would be back. Whoever they were, the element of surprise was gone. If they were going to attack, they were going to do it somewhere else.
And just who were they?
That was the question of the hour.
A minute or two passed before the pencil icon appeared again in the chatbox window, indicating Fang was typing a message, followed by: I’ve been doing some research into blood dealers, Moon Dance.
Oh?
He shielded his thoughts while he typed out his response. He didn’t want me to know his sources, which was fine by me. We all had our secrets.
Apparently, there’s a sort of hierarchy to blood.
What do you mean?
Degrees of desirability. For instance, animal blood is the lowest. Deceased human blood is next.
I recalled Detective Hanner’s comment about gathering blood from morgues and hospitals. I shuddered.
I wrote, And fresh human blood is the most desirable.
Not quite, Moon Dance.
What do you mean?
There’s another source of blood that’s even more desirable than human blood. Vampire blood. Apparently, Moon Dance, your blood fetches a pretty penny on the open market.
Jesus.
I suspect Robert Mason is far more dangerous than you realize.
Chapter Thirty-five
We were cuddling in front of an 80-inch Sharp flat screen TV, which was a little like cuddling in front of a portal into the fourth dimension.
The room was also equipped with surround sound speakers which made the sound seem to magically appear as if from nowhere. To this day, I haven’t a clue where those speakers are embedded. Most important, the room came equipped, at least part time, with a beast of a man who, despite his size, was a helluva cuddler.
We were cuddling and watching Matt Damon’s latest spy thriller when Kingsley turned to me and asked, “Would you like a drink?”
If he was offering wine or water, he would have said wine or water. Drink was Kingsley-speak for a very different kind of red stuff: blood.
I sat up, reached for the remote, and paused the movie.
“It’s really a simple yes-or-no question, Sam,” he said good-naturedly. Kingsley was wearing a t-shirt and workout pants, and both were filled to capacity. It took a lot of man to fill out an oversized pair of workout pants, but somehow Kingsley managed to do it. He also smelled of Old Spice. Simple. Manly. Yummy.
I turned to him. “May I first ask where you got your drink?”
He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Sam. I thought we discussed that.”
“No. You gave me a song and dance about vampires using various willing and unwilling donors. So, tell me, was this a willing donor? I think I have a right to know who I’m consuming, don’t you think?”
He turned and looked at me, his thick hair following over one shoulder. “Boy, I didn’t see this coming.”
Truth was, I didn’t either. At least, I hoped it wouldn’t. I knew there was a killer out there supplying blood, and I knew my current boyfriend purchased blood from...someone.
“If not tonight,” I said. “Then another night. I need to know.”
On the wall before us, Matt Damon used some impressive fight moves—and a lot of editing—to kick the unholy crap out of a spy that looked remarkably like a popular Hollywood star. In the kitchen nearby, I heard Franklin the butler humming to himself. Kingsley’s resident freak had a surprisingly sweet voice.
Kingsley said, “I buy the blood from a trusted supplier.”
I couldn’t read the mind of another immortal, but I didn’t need to be a mind-reader to know who he was talking about. I said, “Detective Hanner.”
His lower jaw dropped a little. For a man who was legendary for keeping his cool, this statement caught him by surprise. And it was all the admission I needed.
“How long has she been supplying you?” I asked.
He cracked his neck a little. Clearly uncomfortable. So much for openness in a relationship. “A number of years, Sam. I normally keep only a small amount on hand.”
“And here’s the million-dollar question, babe,” I said. “Where does Hanner get her blood?”
“Donors.”
“Willing donors?”
“Jesus, Sam. You’re closer friends with her than I am these days. You tell me.”
I shook my head. “You’ve known her a lot longer. Hell, you’re even a customer.”
Kingsley stood in one motion, so quickly that it boggled the mind. One smooth motion. Lik
e a spring being sprung. “Look, Sam. I’m not keeping anything from you. It’s just that your kind and my kind don’t generally discuss this topic.”
“The topic of blood?”
“Right.”
“It’s taboo,” I said.
“Sam, we all have skeletons in our closets. Especially us.” By “us,” I knew he was talking about creatures of the night. “I have them, you have them. We all have them. We couldn’t exist without collecting them.”
“So, what’s your point?”
“We don’t dig too deeply into each other’s lives, Sam. Dig deep enough into mine and you might not like what you find. And if I dig deep enough into yours, even in the short time you’ve been a vampire, I might not like what I find, either.”
“So you just stick your head in the sand?”
“Sometimes, it’s best not to know, Sam.”
I shook my head. “Real people are getting killed out there. Real people with lives and families and hopes and dreams. Slaughtered for blood. It’s not right.”
“Of course it’s not right.” He put his hand on my knee. “Let it go, Sam, okay? She’s not a killer. She’s one of us.”
I did not let it go. Could not let it go. The rest of the Matt Damon movie was lost on me, and as I absently watched the fight scenes, the chase scenes, and the bevy of cute buns, all I could think about was one person.
Detective Hanner.
Chapter Thirty-six
It was just after 9 p.m., and I was going through the missing person list again.
A sad list, to be sure.
The files were, of course, peppered with photos of the missing. Driver’s license pictures, family pictures, Christmas pictures. Pictures of couples holding hands. Pictures with co-workers. Only a small fraction of the missing were children. Three, in fact. Most of the missing were adults, and most were in their twenties.
In all, there were fifty-three missing-person cases in Orange County over a five-year span. Higher than even Los Angeles County, which, by my calculations, only had forty-one in the same period. And Los Angeles was nearly three times the size of Orange County.
That, in and of itself, was startling evidence.
There was an epidemic of missing people in Orange County, and so far, nothing had been made of it.
I studied the many pictures, trying to get a feel for them. Sometimes, I got blurry flashes, but the pictures and the files were too cold, too copied, too informal. Too old.
Over the past seven months, I’d enjoyed many goblets of fresh hemoglobin at Kingsley’s and Hanner’s. Looking at these files now, seeing these pictures now, spread before me in my living room, I was beginning to suspect with mounting horror that the blood I had consumed, the blood that had nourished my body, the blood that I had relished, belonged to these people.
Sweet Jesus.
Of course, I didn’t know that for sure. Truth was, I didn’t know what the hell was going on. Hanner had told me repeatedly the blood was from willing donors. But some of it was and maybe some of it wasn’t. Maybe that was enough for her to lie to my face.
I was sitting cross-legged in the center of my living room, immersed in the missing. Having these files was highly illegal, which is why I had discreetly copied them while Sherbet had been on a curiously long coffee break. Just long enough, interestingly, for me to copy all the files.
So here I was now, late in the evening, scouring the files like my life depended on it. And maybe it did. Two men with crossbows suggested it did. Fang’s recent revelation of the high desirability of vampire blood suggested it did.
Which was why my kids were presently staying with my sister, Mary Lou—which is where they would stay until I felt it was safe to bring them home again.
That Robert Mason was connected to all of this, I had no doubt. Sherbet agreed. For a case like this, a search warrant would do wonders. A suspect’s home was thoroughly searched, and such searches usually turned up something, especially if the suspect was guilty.
Unless, of course, the suspect was an ex-soap opera star with a small amount of fame. A judge was going to be extremely careful handing out a search warrant.
Unless I could find something connecting Robert Mason to another victim.
Or, in this case, to a missing person.
I looked down at the dozens of files spread before me. Somewhere in this mosaic of the missing, this patchwork of faces and files, was the evidence I needed.
I was sure of it.
So, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, exhaled and expanded my consciousness out, touching down on each file. In my mind’s eye, I saw a ball of light. I then slowly, carefully, opened my eyes and the ball of light remained, floating above the files.
This was weird. A damn new experience for me. Anything psychic before was generally done with my eyes closed.
I had created that light somehow. Could others see it? I didn’t know, but I doubted it.
Either way, I watched as this ball of light moved over the floor methodically, like a slow-moving unmanned spy drone.
I kept breathing calmly, easily.
The ball of light neared the outer edge of the files. Maybe this was a lame idea. This psychic stuff was still so new to me. Or maybe I was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe the missing in California had nothing to do with Robert Mason.
Maybe. Calm. Relax.
The fiery ball in my mind’s eye had begun to break up as my own thoughts grew more and more scattered. But I focused them again, and watched. And waited.
The light paused over a file. As it did so, a very strong knowing came over me. That’s the one. As if on cue, the ball of light began descending, until it finally rested on the file.
And then the light disappeared.
I gasped and reached for the file.
Chapter Thirty-seven
At first blush, there wasn’t much here.
A twenty-two-year-old male. Missing since last year. No evidence that he’d ever worked for the Fullerton Playhouse, or that he was involved in acting in any way. In fact, he was a computer salesman at Best Buy in Fullerton. His name was Gabriel Friday, and he was last seen going to work.
Except he never made it.
That was sixteen months ago.
Again, not much there. Of course, I didn’t need much. I just needed a connection to Robert Mason. As I flipped through the file, there was no surprise that Sherbet and I didn’t see one here. There was nothing obvious here. Nothing that would indicate a connection of any kind.
Maybe I was wrong. After all, who trusts random balls of light?
I did.
I shoved the file into a folder, checked the time on my cell, then headed out to Best Buy. In the least, I could finally see what the hell a Nook was.
* * *
The Best Buy night manager in Fullerton was a black woman named Shelley, who was shorter than me and looked far tougher. She led me to a small office behind the help desk and showed me to a seat in front of a metal desk.
“So you’re a private investigator?” she asked, easing around the desk.
“That’s what it says on my tax returns.”
She smiled easily. I suspected her easy smile could turn serious fast. “I’ve always wanted to be a private investigator. In a way, part of my job involves in-house investigations. Missing money. Missing shipments. Missing merchandise. Last month, I caught two employees loading up a minivan with Dyson vacuums.”
“They’re nice vacuums,” I said. “Almost worth going to jail over.”
She laughed. “And that’s exactly where they are now.”
“You’re kind of a badass.”
She leveled her considerable stare at me. “I’m a lot of badass, honey,” she said. “Maybe we should team up someday and fight crime together.”
I grinned. I liked her. A lot. “Our first order of business could be to take down an international vacuum syndicate.”
“With stakeouts?”
“Of course.”
“You�
�ve got yourself a deal.” She smiled. “Now, how can I help you, Ms. Moon?”
“I’m here about Gabriel Friday.”
“Gabriel. Was he found?”
I shook my head. “Not yet. I’m sorry.”
She was about to say something, then closed her mouth again. She nodded once, and I saw that she was, in fact, trying to control herself.
“Were you close to him?” I asked.
“I try to be close to all my workers, Ms. Moon.”
“Please, call me Samantha.”
She nodded. “Very well, Samantha. Yes, as close as a manager and computer geek could be. We talked as much as time would allow, which might only be a few minutes a week, but I always make the effort.”
“You said ‘geek’? A term of endearment?”
“A job title. He was part of the Geek Squad, our mobile support techs.”
“I see,” I said, and now my mind was racing.
She dried her eyes and looked at me directly. “Why do you ask about him, Samantha?”
I shifted in my seat. “I have reason to believe that his disappearance might be related to another case.”
I liked Shelley. She deserved the truth, no matter how hard it was for me to tell her. When I was finished, she ran both hands through her thick hair, then just kept them there, holding her head. She seemed instantly lost.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Oh, sweet Jesus. He was such a good kid, such a good kid. He didn’t deserve this. I got to know his mother through all of this. They weren’t close, and had a falling out, but she loved him so much. Missed him so much. We were all looking for answers. This can’t be the answer.”
As she buried her face in her hands, I moved over to her side and put my arm around her shoulder as she wept quietly for a few moments. I gently patted her shoulder and thought to myself that everyone should be so lucky to have a boss who cared so much.
When she had gotten control of herself, blowing her nose on a tissue and sitting a little straighter, I moved back around the desk and asked if she still had records of Gabriel’s clients.