by J. R. Rain
I was holding Tammy’s hand. These past few days, ironically, she had seemed inseparable from me. She had only run away for a few hours. It had been just long enough to miss her mommy.
The mall was surprisingly quiet for a Saturday evening, although there was the usual amount of squealing teenage girls. Trailing right behind the squealing girls was a group of giggling boys. This trend was repeated throughout the mall, on every level of every quadrant. From Macy’s to Nordstrom’s, from Sbarro’s Pizza to Wetzel’s Pretzels: laughing girls were followed closely by giggling boys.
Of course, there were whole families here, too. And couples shopping, and security guards strolling, and glass elevators elevating, and escalators escalating.
But none were as loud as the squealing girls.
“You don’t have a lot of friends,” I said after we stopped for pretzels.
I ordered two out of habit. I wasted more money that way, and as we continued our slow stroll through the mall, I broke off a big chunk of pretzel and just held it. I waited until Tammy turned to look at a poster of the latest Twilight movie, this one called Midnight Sun, and dropped the chunk of pretzel into a trash can. That was a damn shame, since it smelled heavenly and there were hungry folk in the world.
Tammy glanced over at me and smiled. I smiled, too, and pretended to swallow the non-existent pretzel.
I hated my life sometimes.
We continued like this until we got to the downstairs courtyard near JCPenney. When Tammy conveniently turned to look at something that surely caught her eye, I quickly disposed of the last of the pretzel—
But not in time.
She quickly glanced back at me...and only then did I realize that I’d been set up.
“Mommy?” she said.
“Uh, yes?” I had looked away, feigning interest in some shoes in a nearby window.
“Mommy, why have you been throwing away your pretzel this whole time? I’ve been watching you do it in all the windows.” She looked at her own reflection in the store window and stared at my hand-less sleeves. “Well, sort of watching you.”
Caught. Dammit.
“Mommy has a stomach ache,” I said.
“But you always have a stomach ache.”
“I know, baby. Sometimes Mommy is very sick.”
“But you’re always sick. If you didn’t want the pretzel, then why did you order it?”
“I wanted it, sweetie. Very badly.”
She stopped walking and took my forearm. Long ago, she had quit asking me about my cold flesh. Cold flesh and Mommy were one and the same. “Enough double talk, Mom.”
“Double talk?”
“Yes. Double talk. It means you are telling me one thing but mean another.”
“Oh, it does, does it?”
“Yes, it does. Mrs. Marks explained it to us the other day. And I realize that you do that a lot. Double speak.”
“You think so?”
“I know so, Mommy. For instance, if you wanted the pretzel so badly, then why not eat it? Then why pretend to eat it? And if you actually had a stomach ache, then why order it at all?”
I crossed my arms under my chest and leaned a shoulder against the window. I glanced at the time on my cell. He should be here any moment now. For once, I wished that Danny was early.
I said to Tammy, “I don’t know, honey. You tell me.”
“I think you do know, Mommy. I know lots of things these days.”
“What things?” I asked.
“Secrets.”
“Whose secrets?”
“Everybody’s secrets.”
“How do you know their secrets, honey?”
“I see them.”
“See them how?”
“I just see them. Like visions.”
“I see,” I said. “So, what secrets do you know about Mommy?”
“For one, you’ve been lying to me and Anthony for years.”
I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. My lips and tongue worked to form words, to no avail. Mercifully, across the mall, Danny appeared through the crowd, looking grim-faced and handsome and moving quickly.
“There’s another, slightly bigger secret,” she continued, following my gaze and seeing her dad approaching.
“What?” I asked with sickening dread.
“You’re a vampire.”
I think my eyes just about bugged out of my head, not that I could see my reflection. I pushed off the window just as Danny appeared and hugged Tammy. She hugged him back, but kept her eyes on me.
“Where’s Anthony?” he asked me gruffly.
“He’s with his cousins this weekend.”
“Fine. Tell him I miss him.”
“Will do,” I said. But I was looking at Tammy.
Danny nodded and was about to turn away with the palm of his hand on Tammy’s lower back, when he suddenly stopped. He looked at me curiously, then his daughter. “Everything okay here?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Tammy, “Ask Mommy.”
“Yes,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
“Fine, whatever,” said Danny, and now he took Tammy’s hand and led her off for his weekly visitation.
As she followed behind him, Tammy looked back once...and gave me a knowing smile.
Chapter Thirty-one
I was sitting in my minivan, admittedly shocked.
My innocent children were innocent no more. Gone were the days where they would blindly accept Mommy’s complaints of a tummy ache or of a rare skin disease or my even vaguer explanation that “Mommy is just cold.”
I started and tried to predict the significance of Tammy also knowing that her mother was the freak of all freaks. I wondered if there was any hope that my kids might still might grow up to be normal...and that thought alone nearly overwhelmed me. I buried my face in my hands all over again. I sat like that until the tears stopped.
As I sat there, face in my hands, two things occurred to me: one, how deep my hate was for the angel, Ishmael; and, two, that my daughter was steadily growing more psychic.
And when, exactly, did that happen?
I didn’t know or had been too busy to notice. And where did these gifts come from? I didn’t know that either. My son’s own great strength was far easier to explain away. That his sister would also have abilities was beyond me.
As I contemplated this, drying my eyes, a sudden and severe pain blasted through me, doubling me over, wracking my body. I doubled over, and knew immediately the source of the pain.
Fang.
Still doubled over in the driver’s seat, hands gripping the steering wheel, I shielded my thoughts, throwing up a mental wall around me. Immediately, the pain subsided, and then passed completely. But I knew the pain.
Intimately.
I had gone through it myself seven years ago, after my own attack. Fang was going through what I now knew was the transformation from mortal.
To immortal.
And I knew he was alone in his apartment, and scared shitless. I felt his fear, along with his pain. I took in a lot of air, drummed my fingers briefly on the steering wheel, and then headed out of the parking lot.
To Fang’s apartment.
Chapter Thirty-two
Fang.
My best friend. Perhaps even more than a friend. My mentor. His advice had been crucial. His guidance had been invaluable. It was safe to say that I might have—just might have—gone batshit crazy without his help.
No pun intended.
That he had stalked me and fallen in love with me were different matters entirely. That he had been a friend when I needed a friend the most was what I would always remember.
I was sitting across from him now in his small, one-bedroom apartment located at the edge of Fullerton, in a shabby complex where the great Philip K. Dick had once lived. Fang was lying on his couch in the fetal position, shaking violently. I was certain that he was not aware of me.
I was certain, in fact, that he was dying.
&
nbsp; According to Fang, this was the very complex where Dick—the author of Blade Runner , Total Recall, and Minority Report, to name a few of his more popular titles—had his reality-shattering religious and visionary experiences.
Except now, as I watched Fang curl tighter into the fetal position, I knew there was nothing religious or visionary going on here. What I was seeing was a man suffering horribly.
I knew the feeling; it wasn’t nice.
What was going on here, I knew, was death. His body wasn’t just changing into something out-of-this world. It was dying, pure and simple. And Fang wasn’t just dying, I knew. He was being...
Replaced.
Something else would inhabit him. Something dark and sinister—and looking for a foothold into this world.
Jesus.
The energy around Fang was interesting, to say the least. The deep black halo that surrounded him was infused with particles of light. I had never seen that before. I was witnessing something extraordinary.
I had only been to Fang’s apartment once, months ago. Back then, I was still on the fence with Fang, still open to the possibility of romance. He had served drinks and we had sat on this very same couch. He had played music and I knew his intention was to seduce me. There were some benefits to reading the guy’s thoughts, after all. But we never got very far. From the moment he put his arm around me, I had known that this was wrong. I had stood and told him that I was sorry but I had to leave.
Fang had looked mortally wounded, but had given me a sweet kiss on the cheek and told me to drive safely.
And now I was back, and watching him writhe and sweat and pant on the couch. That is, until I heard the sound at the door.
Detective Hanner of the Fullerton Police Department was standing in the entrance, watching me carefully. How she got in without me hearing her was disturbing. We stared at each other some more. My shoulders tensed. I was ready to move quickly if I had to.
But I didn’t have to. She nodded to me after a moment, then turned and quietly shut the door. Once done, she tossed her coat over the back of a dining chair and walked toward me. Her eyes didn’t exactly glow, not like Kingsley’s, but I could see what appeared to be tiny flickers of flames just behind her pupils.
“Good evening, Samantha Moon,” she said evenly. When she spoke to me alone, she always spoke differently, reverting to a slightly formal way of speech, tinged with a hint of an Eastern European accent. Perhaps it was her natural dialect from wherever it was she hailed.
My inner alarm began ringing. I watched her carefully, aware that there was also movement in the shadows to my right. The movement, I knew, was not from a physical form. Something had, I was certain, materialized within the shadows. A shadow within a shadow. My alarm grew louder. Now I saw it from the corner of my eye, creeping away from the far wall.
A living shadow.
Hanner, as far as I could tell, was unaware of the shadow. Or chose not to acknowledge it. “I would strongly advise you, sister,” she said, “that you not disrupt the changing.”
Outside of a creepy book that had once called out to me, I had never been referred to as sister before. I didn’t like it. It made my skin crawl. It made me feel less than human.
More than human, hissed a voice in my head. Always more than human.
And now I did turn—in time to see something step away from the wall. No, peel away from the wall like a pitch-black sticker. Although still dark as night, the two-dimensional shadow fleshed out, so to speak, into something three-dimensional, into something with depth and substance.
The entity soon stood before me, in the center of Fang’s living room, rising and falling gently on ethereal tides that I neither felt nor saw. It was tall, a foot or so taller than me. But narrow. Its shoulders were nearly non-existent. Shadowy hands ended in curved, shadowy claws that opened and closed below its narrow hips. It stopped before me and I knew it was regarding me.
You spoke to me, I thought.
Yesss, the entity hissed, and I saw that its head tilted slightly to one side. Black mist swirled around it, rising up from Fang’s carpet. You are a sssister of the night, Sssamantha Moon. You would do well to never forget that.
I knew that most supernatural entities did not have access to my thoughts, unless said entity was old enough or powerful enough, as was the case with Captain Jack last year.
And now, of course, this entity.
Can she see you? I asked it, indicating Hanner in my mind.
The entity paused only briefly before words appeared in my thoughts. No, child. Only you can.
Why?
There was another pause, this one much longer. That remains to be ssseen.
What do you mean? I asked. I sensed the thing before me was eager to move forward, to join its new host.
You are very, very sssensitive, Sssamantha Moon. Yesss, I am eager to claim my host.
I had another psychic hit, one that came to me with crystal clarity. You have been dead a long time.
The creature rose and fell silently. A very long time, Sssamantha Moon. Too long.
But you were once alive, I thought, as the hits continued. Once human.
Very astute, child. And now I will be alive again. Just as my brother isss alive again in you.
But why? I thought. I don’t understand.
It isss the way, came the reply. The only way.
With that, the shadow slipped past me. Hanner was stroking Fang’s hair, unaware of the approaching shadow behind her.
“No!” I shouted.
But as I spoke those words and as Hanner whipped her head up to look at me, the shadow poured forth into Fang, into the region of his heart. Fang gasped, his chest arched up. His eyelids fluttered wildly, and the dark halo I had seen around him, the halo once speckled with light, winked out of existence.
And with it, something else.
Fang’s presence in my mind.
He was gone.
Forever.
Chapter Thirty-three
Fang settled back down onto the couch. The shaking, I noted, had stopped. His panting, too, stopped.
I suspected, on some level, that his body had expired...that it was now being fueled supernaturally by the dark entity that had entered him. I also suspected his soul was now trapped in this supernaturally vivified body. Forever.
“His mortality ends,” said Hanner next to me. “And his immortality begins. Everyone should be so lucky.”
Fang was closed off to me. Our connection was forever severed. I had mixed feelings about that. My connection to Fang had been turbulent, at best. At times, it had been comforting. To know that I had instant access to someone who seemed to legitimately care for me—and perhaps even love me in his own way—was a rock I had relied on for many months now.
Except that Fang always had an ulterior motive. Considering how the man had grown up and issues he’d dealt with, his ulterior motive would surprise no one. That he stalked and befriended and ultimately loved a real vampire should be of no surprise either.
I had seen more than enough of Fang’s mind to know the man was single-mindedly obsessed. His desire to be a real vampire trumped anything, perhaps even his love for me.
As I looked at him now, lying there quietly, I noted that the wound in his neck—the wound I, myself, had felt just the night before—had already healed.
Yes, his desire to be a vampire had trumped even his love for me.
“Why did you do it?” I said to Hanner, without looking at her.
“I saw his potential, Samantha.”
“He’s not stable,” I said.
“I’m not looking for stability. I’m looking for potential.”
I nodded, understanding. “His potential to kill.”
“So much potential.”
“That’s why you turned him,” I said, looking at her. “To kill for you.”
She calmly looked up from Fang and at me. She held my gaze. The fire just behind her pupil flared brightly. “He is his own free man, S
amantha. But I am sure he will show his appreciation when I am done revealing to him all that I know.”
“You’re doing this because I shut down your operation,” I said. “You’re punishing me. You’re stealing my friend—”
“I’m giving him everything you wouldn’t, Samantha.”
“You’ll create a killer.”
“He will be tamed, Sam. Even the worst of our kind can be tamed.”
“Or what?”
“Or they are removed.”
“You mean killed.”
“You cannot kill what’s already dead, Sam. The entity within will simply withdraw, sacrificing its existence for the betterment of our kind.”
“And when the entity withdraws?”
“The body will perish. Instantly.”
“Jesus.”
Hanner winced slightly at my involuntary utterance, which I noted. The name “Jesus” had no effect on me, but it appeared to on Hanner.
Interesting, I thought.
“And what happens to his soul?” I asked.
“His soul?” asked Hanner, looking at me and making an almost comical effort to blink. “But whatever do you mean?”
“His soul,” I said, my voice rising. “Where is it?”
Hanner smiled and it was, perhaps, the most unpleasant smile I had ever seen on anyone. Ever. “Why, Samantha. His soul is long gone.”
A wave of panic swept over me. I wrapped an arm around myself. Hanner’s unpleasant smile remained frozen on her face. The smile was not human. She did not look human. She looked slightly misshapen, hunched. She looked like pure evil.
“You’re not Hanner,” I said. “You’re the thing that lives in her.”
“Very good, Samantha Moon,” she said. Or it said.
“And you’re trying to freak me out.”
Hanner continued smiling that wicked smile. Or the thing within her did. “Is it working, child?”
“Go to hell,” I said.
“Been there, done that,” it said in a monotone, tilting its head slightly.
“Where’s Hanner?”
“She’s here. Next to me. Waiting. I’ve come for the big show.”