by J. R. Rain
“Until you wipe my memory clean.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” I said.
He nodded and rubbed that spot between his eyes. His oversized ring caught some ambient lamplight and flashed brilliantly. He got control of himself, took in some air.
“Can we talk about something else now?” he asked.
“Like murder?”
He exhaled. “Like murder. After all, this is where the bodies were found. Come on.”
Chapter Four
We followed a narrow trail.
Dusk was a special time for me. The disquiet of the day was forgotten. That I could ever feel less than I did now was inconceivable. Now, at this hour, at this time of day, I felt like I could conquer anything and anyone. Literally. I was bursting at the seams. I wanted to climb the highest cliff or tree or whatever the hell was out here. The Griffith Observatory was nearby, with its massive dome that was visible for miles all around. It could see into the universe and all its secrets. Not my secrets, I thought. Yes, the observatory would work. Give the astronomers something to really look at.
Mostly, I loved that quiet moment just before I leaped, just before I was about to cascade out into the night, just before I was about to turn into something much greater than I am.
I felt the animal within me wanting out. Nothing that I couldn’t control, no. More of a polite request. A mild urging. Was the animal me? Maybe, maybe not. Whatever it was, I briefly inhabited it as this body of mine slipped away. To where, I didn’t know. And from where the creature came, I didn’t know that either.
Another world, I’d heard. Summoned from elsewhere.
Sanchez, who had been leading the way along the trail, looked back at me. “I’m hoping like hell that you just made all of that up.”
Oops. I probably should have closed off my thoughts. I didn’t want to overwhelm the poor guy. Better to break him in slowly. This was, I suspected, only the beginning of the freaky crap he was about to face.
Then again, maybe a part of me wanted the detective to see a little more, to know a little more about me. Why, I didn’t know. I felt a connection to the man. A professional connection, yes. Maybe even a brotherly connection. Or, maybe I wanted him to know what he was in for. What he had signed up for, so to speak.
Or maybe I had a crush on the man and had simply forgotten to shield my thoughts.
Maybe.
So, I did so now, shielding them with an imaginary wall that wasn’t so imaginary. It really worked.
“Yes,” I said, as I kept pace behind him. “Just a flight of fancy.”
“It didn’t seem fancy. It seemed real. I saw it. Or I saw you become something...huge.”
“Well, we all dream of being something a little more than we are, right?”
“That was a lot more. That was actually quite fucking cool.”
Soon, we were following a narrow trail that wound up into the park. Although the trail was dimming rapidly as the sky darkened, Detective Sanchez picked his way over the trail like a true expert. Myself, I wasn’t much of an expert. Although I had spent the early part of the summer hiking through trails on a remote and private island up in Washington State, I hadn’t sniffed a trail since then. And, if it hadn’t been for my enhanced reflexes and my own version of night vision, I was fairly certain I would have hit the dirt a few times. After all, if there was a tree root, I seemed to find it. Who knew vampires could be so clumsy?
We continued along, picking our way quickly, brushing past only slightly overgrown bushes and plants. For the most part, the trail was well-maintained. Beyond, through the trees, I could hear the steady hum of L.A. traffic. It was an angry hum.
Finally, after about twenty minutes of this, as the dusk was beginning to turn into night, Detective Sanchez fished a small flashlight from his pocket and clicked it on. He shined the beam just off the trail, to a flattened clearing that I suspected had been trampled to death by police activity.
And sitting next to the clearing, shimmering in and out of existence, was a ghost.
A young woman who was watching us.
Chapter Five
To my eyes, ghosts appeared as concentrated light energy.
How and why I could now see into the spirit world was still a mystery to me; although, truth be known, it’s probably one of the least mysterious things in my new life.
Well, relatively new life.
I’d been a vampire now for over seven years, long enough that I almost—almost—forgot what it was like to be mortal. To be normal. To sleep normally, to eat normally, to exist normally.
Then again, what was normal?
Certainly not me, I thought, as I approached the ghost sitting there on the boulder.
She wasn’t fully formed. In fact, she was exactly half there. As in, I could see one of her arms, but not really the second. One of her legs hung below her as she sat on the rock...and the other, not so much. The staticy light particles that composed her ethereal body crackled with bright intensity, which signaled to me that she was a new spirit. Then again, what did I know? I was still fairly new to all of this.
Still, I’d seen my share of ghosts. Hell, I saw them every day. But rarely, if ever, did I talk to them. Most didn’t seem capable of communicating. Most, I suspected, didn’t even realize they were ghosts. And those that did, had, quite frankly, seemed to have forgotten how to speak. Mostly, I ignored ghosts, because my life was freaky enough as it was.
But I didn’t ignore her.
I approached her carefully, nervous that she might disappear into the ether-sphere, as ghosts are wont to do. But she didn’t. She jerked her head up as I approached, and that made me wonder...could ghosts actually hear? Surely, they could. Or did she catch my movement? Perhaps they sensed sound waves, or vibrations.
So much I didn’t know.
I recalled a little boy ghost who’d come to my front door last year, a lost boy who had been murdered by a sicko who’d lived just down my street. Yes, the boy had definitely heard me and responded to my words.
Ghosts are weird, I thought, as I got closer. Then again, talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
“You’re all weird,” said Sanchez behind me. “And is there really a ghost here?”
“Yes, now shush. Don’t scare her way. Stay right there.”
I glanced back as he stopped in his tracks, holding up his hands. “Far be it from a homicide investigator to get in the way of a murder investigation.”
Shh, I thought to him, and added a mental wink. I liked him. Too bad he was married.
“I heard that.”
Oops.
As Sanchez chuckled lightly behind me, I continued along the dirt path, and soon approached the young lady who’d watched me the entire way. She wavered in and out of existence. What prompted a ghost to appear or disappear was beyond me, but I very much wanted to talk to her. I approached carefully, non-threateningly.
I knew there was a difference between ghosts and spirits. Ghosts were still tied to this world. Spirits came and went as they pleased. All looked the same to my eye...except spirits tended to be more fully formed and didn’t appear lost or confused or frightened.
This girl was all three.
Also, ghosts tended to take on the look they had at the time of their death...and as I approached the young lady, I could see the gaping wound in the side of her neck.
Vampires, I thought.
Or something mimicking a vampire. Or someone who wanted us to believe it had been a blood-sucker. Vampires, I knew, didn’t have to go for the jugular. The jugular was messy. Blood pumped uncontrollably from the jugular. It splashed on clothes and shoes and just made for a helluva cleanup. Much easier to drink from a controlled cut, on the arm or wrist, with no biting involved.
The damage to her neck was too obvious, too vampire-y.
Someone wants us to believe it’s a vampire, I thought.
But why? came Sanchez’s voice.
You’re still in my head?
&nbs
p; I guess, he thought back. Your words just keep appearing, and I keep answering like an idiot.
You’re not an idiot, but I’m going to close you out now. No offense.
Believe me, none taken.
I laughed and put up mental wall, thus sealing Sanchez out. The wall only stayed in place for so long. I’d noted that after a few hours, it tended to fade away, How all of this worked, I didn’t know, but I’d learned to work with it, rather than against it. Swim downstream, not upstream, as the saying went.
I’d long ago learned how to continuously tune out others. Generally, when I was with Detective Sherbet or my friend, Allison, I mostly pushed aside their own thoughts. Yes, I heard them, but they existed as small background noise that I could tune into, if I chose to. Mostly, I chose not to.
Only with Fang—and sometimes, here and there with Allison—did I pick up long-distance thoughts. Meaning, they didn’t have to be nearby. But with Fang’s ascension to immortality, well, he was forever cut off from me, just as all immortals were cut off from me.
Hey, I didn’t make the rules. I just did my best to live within them.
So, with my mental wall up, and with Sanchez’s own internal chattering reduced to low background noise, I approached the dead girl and stood before her.
Chapter Six
“Yes, I can see you,” I said. “And I know you can see me.”
She didn’t say anything. I had actually conversed with a ghost only a few times. And only then, I’d simply received impressions from them.
This girl wavered in and out of existence. I suspected I might lose her, and so I said quickly, “I want to help you.”
I was getting a very strong impression that she was terrified, even in death. Terrified by what had happened to her, and by what was happening now.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “No one can hurt you now...or ever again.”
Whether or not she heard me, I didn’t know. She continued staring at me, sitting there on the rock, her knees pulled up to her chest, head slightly tilted, revealing the ghastly wound that that somehow looked even more awful in death, a wound composed of tens of thousands of glowing light particles. The wound, I saw, was deep. Someone had literally torn open her neck. Yes, she would have bled to death quickly.
“I’m sorry someone hurt you,” I said.
She hugged her knees tighter. Her feet were mostly not there. Sometimes they wavered into existence, but mostly, her legs stopped at the ankles. She had been wearing Asics running shoes.
She’d been attacked in the park, while running.
As that thought occurred to me, I caught a psychic hit of her running up a trail. I turned...that trail there, which led off down the hillside and through a tangle of gnarly little trees. Yes, she’d been running up there when something powerful had overwhelmed her...knocking her down, pouncing on her.
And then pain. So much pain.
And that was it.
Her next memory was of sitting beside her dead, broken body.
That had a familiar ring to it. I, too, had been attacked in a different park, while running. Of course, I hadn’t been left to die, to bleed out, as I’m sure this girl had. I had been given vampire blood...no doubt by my attacker himself.
Of course, I would never know the truth, since my attacker—a very old and powerful vampire—was now dead at the hands of a vampire hunter named Rand. I’d recently had the pleasure of working with Rand and his merry band of vampire-hunting misfits, in a faraway land in a remote mountaintop castle. Lord help any vampire who crossed paths with those badasses.
Anyway, her plight was familiar to me, even if the end result was far different.
This could have been me, I thought. Dead and lost and wondering what the hell had happened to me.
Truth was, had I been killed that night, I probably would have never known what had happened to me. I had been hit hard and ravaged and it all had been a blur...and I had awakened the next morning in a hospital, lucky to be alive.
Lucky to be able to see my kids.
This girl wasn’t so lucky.
Then again, I had a certain fallen angel named Ishmael who had, no doubt, something to do with keeping me alive. Which led to another question: how had Ishmael managed to convince the old vampire to attack me—and to keep me alive? To feed me his blood?
I didn’t know...but suddenly, I wanted to find out.
But this girl hadn’t been part of a fallen angel’s nefarious plan to find love, to break his immortal bond with the living by turning a mortal immortal, thus freeing him from servitude.
A twisted, reckless way to go about love.
If it was love.
I suspected it was closer to an obsession. Anyway, luckily, the fallen angel, Ishmael, had mostly kept his distance. For now.
“Do you remember who attacked you?” I asked the girl. “What did they look like?”
She didn’t move, but the light filament around her, the thousands and thousands of light filaments, shook and scattered and reformed. She was sobbing.
Her attack had been violent, sudden. I knew this. She might not have seen her attacker. I hadn’t seen my attacker.
Or, if I had, I couldn’t remember.
But maybe someday I could remember.
And if I could remember the night I was attacked...maybe a lot of what happened to me would make sense.
Maybe.
As she wept, her etheric body shuddering, I saw something else: a bulge at the back of her neck. The bulge was undoubtedly caused by a protruding bone. Of course, in her current state...it was only a memory of a protruding bone. Not actual bone.
I went back to the edge of the clearing, where Sanchez was watching me. He had been intently scanning the surrounding area, ever the homicide cop.
“Had her neck been broken?” I asked.
“Did the ghost tell you that?” he asked. “And did I just ask you if a ghost told you something?”
“You did, and, no, you’re not losing your mind. At least, not at the moment. We’ll see how you hold up when this is all over.”
“And what’s this?”
I thought about that. The night was chilly, but nothing my immortal flesh couldn’t handle. The detective, on the other hand, kept both hands in his jeans pockets in an effort to look both cool and keep warm. Guys.
I said, “Someone wanted to make sure this attack was obvious.”
“Obvious that it was a vampire attack?”
“You catch on quick,” I said.
“So, is there some sort of vampire war that the rest of us mere mortals aren’t aware of?”
“You’ve been watching too much True Blood, detective. Vampires live discreetly, kill discreetly. The ones I know enjoy their anonymity and try like hell to exist in the real world.”
“So, why would someone want us to think this was a vampire attack?”
“A good question, Detective, but one I don’t know the answer to. At least, not yet. And the girl—”
“You mean ghost.”
“Yes, the ghost doesn’t know anything. She didn’t see who attacked her.”
Sanchez shivered a little. “Kind of creepy to think that these woods are full of vampires and ghosts.”
“And nervous cops with guns.”
“Touché ,” he said. “And you promise to wipe my memory clean of all of this later?”
“If you want.”
“I very much want.”
Chapter Seven
We were at Zov’s Bistro.
Yes, the same Zov’s Bistro where I often saw one of my favorite thriller writers. I loved his books, but I didn’t love his fake hair. He was here now, eating with his wife, and looking very serious while he did so. That was okay. I liked my thriller writers looking serious.
“Do you read his books?” I asked Allison as we were seated.
“Whose books?”
“His books.” I pointed at the little man, and told Allison his name.
“Never heard of
him.”
I stared at her. “Do you even like to read, Allison?”
“I read magazines.”
“Books, Allison. Do you read books?”
“Not really. They’re kinda, you know, boring—wait, I did just read a book.”
As she said the words, I saw the book in my mind’s eyes. Yes, Allison and I were deeply connected. Too connected. “You read a book on witchcraft?”
“On Wicca,” she said, lowering her voice. And this might have been the first time I’d ever heard Allison lower her voice. “There’s a difference.”
“Enlighten me.”
She was about to when the waitress came by and took our drink orders. White wine for me, red for Allison. I would have preferred a margarita, or something fun and foofy. Sadly, my body barely tolerated the white wine.
Zov’s Bistro was a quaint, upscale restaurant with reasonable prices in exchange for uncommonly good food. At least, that’s what I was told, since I hadn’t eaten regular food in seven years. No, I came here for the ambiance...and sometimes a raw steak. Raw steaks didn’t always do it for me. The blood that pooled around the steak had been warmed and seasoned and so wasn’t pure enough. Anything impure—i.e., not blood—was liable to get a violent reaction from me. And by violent, yes, I mean projectile vomiting.
The local writer, I noted, was staring at me. I remembered back in the days when he was bald. He looked good bald. He looked serious and kind of sexy. Like a literary Burt Reynolds. The fake hair looked disturbing. And it wasn’t just a little fake. It was a massive pile of it. Thick and proud and weird. In a way, I admired him for it. After all, if you’re gonna get transplants—and not fool anyone in the process—then, by God, you might as well go all in.
“You seem way too fixated on the poor man’s hair. I think it looks nice,” said Allison, picking up on my thoughts. Generally, I didn’t close my thoughts off to Allison. Lately, I’d been thinking of her more and more as a sister.
“I’m glad you think so,” said Allison, “because there is a good chance that, in a past life or two, we very well could have been sisters.”