by J. R. Rain
We were quiet. The gym wasn’t. It was a cacophony of grunts and thumps and pounding. It sounded sexier than it was.
“Has the insurance money been awarded to Romero?” asked Allison.
I shook my head. “Not yet. These things take some time on the insurance company’s part.”
“And now?” she said.
“He paid to have his brother attacked. That will nullify the life insurance policy.”
“So, what will happen to Romero now?” she asked.
“He’ll be charged for soliciting Andre Fine to hurt his brother. There’s no way a murder charge will stick, not with something like dim mak.”
“Maybe he never meant for his brother to die,” she said.
“Maybe,” I said. “But he was willing to take that chance.”
Allison nodded. “His brothers won’t look kindly on what he did,” she said.
“I don’t expect they will,” I said. “I have no doubt that Romero’s life will be a living hell from this moment on.”
She nodded and squeezed my hand and rested her head on my shoulder, and, as she wept silently, I watched two young fighters in the center practice ring exchange a flurry of punches. Both were wearing padded helmets. Both were sweating profusely. More importantly, one of them was bleeding from his lip.
I was dismayed to discover that it was the blood, above all else, that interested me the most.
Chapter Forty-five
On Wednesday evening at 6:30, Russell Baker and I were jogging at Huntington Beach.
He was shirtless and jaw-droppingly sexy, and it was all I could do not to stare at him as we spoke. Staring at him while we spoke might have led to me running into a trash can. Still, I stole glances, every chance I had. I wondered if it was unethical to lust after my client.
“That’s a wild story, Samantha Moon,” he said. He always sounded so damn polite when he spoke to me. Too polite. I wanted him to sound...interested. This surprised the hell out of me. A few weeks ago, when he’d first appeared at my house, I had not thought of him as anything other than a client. But watching his fights, watching his skills, seeing the compassion in his heart, and his surprisingly peaceful aura for a fighter, well, something shifted.
That, and the fact that Kingsley had broken my heart all over again.
“It’s more than a theory,” I said.
“How can you be so sure, Samantha?” he said easily, smoothly, confidently.
“Call me Sam,” I said.
“Sure thing, Sam,” he said and looked at me and winked and something inside me did a sort of flip. My stomach? Or, perhaps, something further down?
I considered how much to tell Russell, and decided to keep things fairly sanitized for now. “Romero hired Andre Fine to deliver the dim mak to his brother.”
“The dim mak,” said Russell, shaking his head, “is only a myth.”
“Myth or not, Caesar Marquez died two weeks later during your match, from no apparent punch or series of punches from you. Most people I’d spoken to—from the referee to Jacky—don’t think you hit him hard enough to do any real damage.”
Russell shook his head. “I’m not sure if I should feel relieved or discouraged.”
“It is what it is,” I said, hating myself for using such a generic idiom, but I was finding being in Russell’s presence, jogging together at the beach, so damn exciting that I wasn’t thinking straight anyway.
“I suppose so,” said Russell smoothly. “Caesar was a tough fighter. It was hard to land anything on the guy.”
“Could he have been champ?” I asked.
“Maybe,” said Russell, and he looked at me and winked again. “’Course, he woulda had to go through me first.”
“Of course.”
I smiled. He smiled. His stomach muscles undulated. I somehow just missed running into a blue trash can.
Russell said, “You believe there’s something to the touch of death?”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“The police have gone through Andre Fine’s records. There’s evidence that he’d been paid for many such hits. For someone who wanted to preserve his legacy in fighting, he sure kept a nice paper trail of his illegal dealings.”
“What exactly do you mean by evidence?” asked Russell. He breathed easily, smoothly, his elbows relaxed at his sides.
“Investigators found evidence of nine paid hits, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Seven of the targets are dead.”
“Let me guess,” said Russell. “They died of unknown brain trauma.”
I nodded, although I don’t think Russell saw me nod. “Good guess.”
“Weird,” said Russell.
“Weird is right,” I said.
“So, maybe there’s something to this dim mak.”
“Maybe,” I said.
Russell looked at me. “Weren’t you afraid that he might hurt you?”
“Naw,” I said.
“I would have protected you,” he said.
And for some reason, that bravado seriously warmed my heart. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a while.”
He grinned and flashed his perfect teeth. “Except, why do I get the impression you don’t need any protecting?”
“Oh, I need some protecting,” I said.
He slowed down and so did I. He placed his hands on his hips and sucked in some wind, although I got the feeling he wasn’t very tired. By my estimate, we had jogged five miles.
“You’re not breathing hard,” he said.
“Nope.”
“You’re an interesting chick, Ms. Moon,” he said.
“Like I said, call me Sam.”
“Would you like to get some dinner, Sam?”
“I thought you would never ask.”
Chapter Forty-six
The evening was warm and the front door was open.
Outside, children played in the cul-de-sac, laughing and sometimes shouting. I heard the rattle of bikes and skateboards and scooters. Not surprisingly, I didn’t hear my own kids.
These days, they stayed in with me. Somehow, some way, we had grown closer, and for that, I was pleasantly surprised. My life had gotten easier, too. Feigning eating or stomach aches and avoiding mirrors had been more stressful than I realized. Now, such worries—at least around my kids—were gone.
Thank God.
Yes, they still had many questions: What did I eat? How often do I eat? Did I kill people? How strong was I? Could I kick Daddy’s ass? Could I fly? And so on.
I answered the ones that were age-appropriate, although I suspected my own daughter could look far deeper into me than anyone else ever could.
Dammit.
No secrets, I thought.
School was nearly out. The kids in the neighborhood were ready for summer. Everyone but my kids were ready. They were, at this very moment, playing a game of chess together since they had once again lost their TV, video games, computer games, iPod, iPad, Kindle, Nook, laptop, PS3, and phone privileges. Every now and then Anthony would yell that she was reading his mind and call out my name, in which I would shout back for Tammy to quit reading her brother’s mind.
Normal stuff.
Now, as I was folding laundry and watching the tail end of a new cable show called Vampire Love Story about, of all things, MMA fighters who happened to be vampires, a car pulled up in the cul-de-sac. I looked out the window. I didn’t know the car, but I sure as hell knew the tall figure who emerged.
It was Fang.
Chapter Forty-seven
We were sitting on my porch, legs and shoulders touching.
I didn’t mind touching Fang. I’d always liked Fang, and even now, I considered him one of my very best friends. What he thought about me, I didn’t know. Especially not now, not with his mind closed to me.
He had asked if we could talk alone. And with both kids home, alone meant sitting outside.
“You’re looking lovely as always, Moon Dance,” he said.
I couldn’t say the same for him. Unsurprisingly, he looked gaunt and pale. Unhealthy, at best. It was unusual for him, as he had always appeared the picture of health and vitality. He’d always been a good-looking guy, even back when I knew him only as my bartender.
Now, I found him sickly-looking. His once-handsome face was now skull-like. His cheeks sunken. Eyes dark hollows. Skin waxy. He was, I suspected, a living corpse. No doubt he was very much in need of a feeding.
“You look, um, well,” I said.
He chuckled. “Bullshit. I still haven’t had my first feeding, and I’ve only now recovered enough to function.”
I motioned to the Cadillac, where Detective Hanner sat quietly. “I assume she will provide you with your first feeding.”
“You assume correctly. We’re heading to her place now, and then...elsewhere.”
I snapped my head around. “Where?”
“I don’t know yet. But somewhere not close.”
“Why?”
Fang looked down at his hands, which he was opening and closing as if he was getting used to his body all over again. Or perhaps the thing inside him was getting used to Fang’s body.
I shuddered.
“She’s going to teach me, Sam.”
“Teach you what?”
“The one thing you were never taught, what you struggled with daily. What I did my best to help you understand.” He looked at me. “She’s going to teach me how to be a vampire. Her and others like her.”
“What is this place?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t tell me much. But it appears to be a sort of coven of vampires.”
Coven of vampires? I reached out and took his cold hand. Jesus, is that what I felt like?
“She’s going to teach you to kill, Fang.”
He said nothing, although he did squeeze my hand back.
“She’s going to teach you to kill innocent people. How to manipulate them, hurt them, take from them. She’s going to teach you how to use them.”
“I owe her everything, Moon Dance,” he said, and now released my hand. “I owe her my life.”
“No, you don’t.”
He moved away from me, just a few inches, but it might as well have been a few hundred feet. “She gave me the one thing that you wouldn’t.”
“I never denied you, Fang. I still needed to think about it. It wasn’t an easy choice.”
“For her, it was.”
“Because she’s using you, Fang. She’s going to train you to be a killer. To kill for her. For them. Don’t let them use you.”
“They gave me everything I ever wanted—something you never would.”
“But that doesn’t mean you have to kill for them.”
“They never said anything about killing, Moon Dance. They only want to help me, to teach me, to help me adjust.”
“For what purpose, Fang?”
“I’ll worry about that later, Moon Dance.”
We were quiet. Sitting in the driver’s seat was Detective Hanner. Her head was back. She appeared to be sleeping, but I suspected she was watching us. Indeed, every now and then I could detect a slight glow from her eyes. The flame within.
“I loved you, Moon Dance.”
“Loved?” I said, wincing at the past tense.
“Yes, loved. But you didn’t return my love. Not really. But most important, you didn’t trust me. You feared me on some level. And you denied me the one thing I wanted most in this world.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So, how could I know if your love for me was real, or an infatuation?”
He turned his head and looked at me sharply. I saw the deep pain, but I also saw something else. Deep resentment. “You knew, Sam. You knew better than anyone how I felt about you.”
And with that, he stood. He was about to walk away when he paused and, without looking at me, said, “Goodbye, Moon Dance.”
He was about to leave when I reached out and grabbed his cold hand. “Wait.”
He waited, still not looking at me.
I held his hand, which hung limp in my own. I debated on how much to say, what to say, and in the end, I could only say, “Goodbye, Fang.”
He stood there for a second or two, then released my hand.
And left.
The End
Samantha Moon returns in:
Moon Island
Return to the Table of Contents
MOON ISLAND
by
J.R. RAIN
Vampire for Hire #7
Moon Island
Published by J.R. Rain
Copyright © 2012 by J.R. Rain
All rights reserved.
Dedication
Dedicated to all the loving parents.
Acknowledgments
A special thank you to Sandy Johnston, Eve Paludan and Elaine Babich. My first readers and editors who do such a bang-up job.
Moon Island
“There, on our favorite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white...something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell.”
—Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Chapter One
“Someone killed my grandfather,” said the young lady sitting in my office, “and Detective Sherbet thinks you can help me.”
“I pay Detective Sherbet to say that. In donuts, of course. But not the pink ones. He has something against the pink ones.”
The young girl, who was maybe twenty-five, grinned and almost clapped. “He was eating a donut when I met with him!”
“No surprise there. He’s a good man.”
She nodded, still grinning. A very big grin. “I got that impression, except he said there was nothing he could do for me, since my grandfather’s death was ruled an accident.”
“Nothing he could do,” I said, “except recommend me.”
“Yes. He said I could trust you and that you would probably help, depending on your caseload.”
I looked down at my desktop calendar. My mostly empty calendar. There was an appointment in three days to meet with Tammy’s teacher...and that was it. The 15th was circled, which indicated that I was due a child support payment from Danny. I wasn’t holding my breath—and if I had, well, I could hold it for a very long time. So far, in seven months, Danny had given me precisely one payment, and that was because I had physically hauled his ass to the bank.
“I think I can fit you in,” I said. “Tell me why you think someone would want to kill your grandfather?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“But you think his death is suspicious.”
“Well, yes.”
“When did he die?”
“A year ago.”
“His death was ruled an accident?” I asked, making notes on a notepad in front of me.
“Yes.”
“How did your grandfather pass away, if I may ask?”
“He was found dead in his pool.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
The young lady nodded. She reminded me of myself. Short, petite, curvy, dark hair. And unless she drank blood and hung out with other creatures of the night, that’s where the resemblance ended. Her name was Tara Thurman. I seemed to have heard her name from somewhere, although I couldn’t place it now.
“Where did your grandfather live?” I asked.
“On an island.”
“An island?”
“Yes.”
“Catalina?” I asked, which was really the only habitable island off the coast of southern California.
“No. It’s in Washington State.”
“I didn’t know there were islands in Washington.”
“There are dozens of them.”
I nodded, and wondered if I had ever actually looked at a map of Washington. I didn’t think so. Then again, geography was never my strong suit. Catching bad guys, now, that was a d
ifferent story entirely.
“Lots of people live on the islands,” she went on. “Except for my grandfather’s island.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a private island. His is the only house, along with a few guest bungalows.”
I thought it was time for that map. I asked her to step around my desk and show me on Google Earth where he lived. She did, leaning in next to me, smelling of perfume that I didn’t recognize. She had me scroll above Seattle and—son of a bitch—there were various chains of islands scattered up there. No doubt the last Ice Age had had something to do with that, but I knew as much about ice ages as I did about maps of Washington State.
Next, she took over control of the mouse and positioned it over a speck of land above an island called Whidbey, and near another island called Lopez Island.
“I don’t see it,” I said.
“Hang on.” She magnified the page and soon, the very small speck of land became much bigger than a speck. As it took shape, the name of the island appeared on the screen.
I looked at Tara. “You’re kidding.”
“About the name? No, that’s what it’s called.”
“Skull Island?”
“Yes. I kinda like it. I used to love going there as a kid, especially telling my friends that my grandfather lived on an island called ‘Skull Island.’”
“Why is it called Skull Island?”
“There was a shipwreck there a hundred or so years ago. One person died, I think. Not to mention we’ve unearthed a Native American burial ground. The island, I think, must have been the scene of a horrendous battle. My family has found dozens of graves.”
“Sounds...creepy.”
“I guess so,” said Tara. “But my grandfather’s home is on the other side of the island.”