by J. R. Rain
It was late and the hills were mostly quiet and I was smoking again. The occasional car drove by, winding up and out of sight, or winding down and out of sight. The homes up here were far too big, and far too beautiful for a lowly private eye. Or even for a homicide detective. Yet, this is where Hanner lived...and lived well.
Detective Sanchez had called me on the way out and asked how the investigation was coming along. I hadn’t told Sanchez too much of what I knew. And I certainly hadn’t revealed Fang or Hanner’s identity. So, I debated about how much to tell him, and finally told him that I was following a very strong lead. He had asked how strong. I said I was going to the vampire’s lair. He asked if I really said lair, and I said I had and that I would fill him in later.
And lair it was, although it looked less like a lair and more like an opulent home. That a homicide detective lived up here—in the priciest part of Fullerton, no doubt with the attorneys and doctors and Starbucks franchisees, should have been an indicator that something was amiss. Undoubtedly, Hanner had been many things throughout her long life, and had amassed tremendous wealth.
Or not. Who knows. Maybe she had killed the owner of the house and assumed her identity. Truth was, I didn’t know much about Hanner.
Yes, we had sat together on her deck, drinking blood. Yes, she had been kind to me early on. She alone had cleaned up two of my messes, back when I had taken on two powerful vampires. One a Texan and the other, perhaps the oldest vampire of all, or one of the oldest. In both cases, witnesses at both scenes had to have their memories cleaned or replaced. Yes, she had been there for me.
As I smoked, hating the taste but enjoying the focus it gave my mind, I knew that it didn’t have to be this way with Hanner. She would have been my best friend, if a killing machine like Hanner could have a best friend. I’d never forget the hungry look in her eyes. The feral, wild look of a predator. Yes, she was very far gone. Her humanity often took a backseat to the darkness within.
The thing within.
But I had gone against the program, so to speak. I had bucked the system. As far as I knew, there was not a council of vampires. There was not an official hierarchy or a vampire leader, although I suspected some groups of vampires had banded together here and there. Yes, I thought Hanner was hoping she and I could band together, too, form our own sub-group. I had been on board as far as being her friend, or hanging out with her and learning from her. I had enjoyed our pleasant evenings together...
As a friend, Hanner was creepy at best. As an enemy, she was frightening. I thought she now fell into the latter category.
Now, she was forming a new union with a new vampire.
Fang.
And perhaps setting up another blood ring.
Or worse.
What was worse, I didn’t know. But the two of them were up to something. It had been many months since Fang had left with Hanner. I had been given the idea that it was far away, somewhere remote.
But what if it wasn’t far away?
What if it had been in my own back yard, so to speak?
What if Hanner and Fang had been in Los Angeles this whole time?
Maybe, I thought, and inhaled deeply on the cancer stick. Then again, they might as well have been a world away if I couldn’t find them.
Truth was, I would have let them be.
I would have let them run off together, to be the best goddamn vampires they could be.
That is, if they hadn’t left the bodies in Griffith Park.
That is, if they hadn’t compelled Detective Sanchez to come calling for Sherbet, and, in turn, me.
They were bringing me into something.
What, exactly, I didn’t know.
But I was going to find out.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I snubbed out my cigarette in the minivan’s ashtray, reminding myself later to clean it out before the kids got home. Yes, I no longer hid the fact that I was a vampire from my kids, but I still hid the fact that I smoked.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.
It was past midnight, and I felt strong and alert.
Of course, any vampire would be strong and alert. Hanner, for instance, was older than me by many decades, perhaps centuries. A concept that still boggled the mind and, as always, made me seriously question my sanity.
The moon was in its half state. It appeared and disappeared behind the taller trees that ran along this upscale neighborhood. A few cars came by. I was parked behind a bend, between two massive homes. Fullerton Hills might not be Beverly Hills, but these homes were damn nice in my book.
I drummed my fingers some more on the steering wheel, and decided to use what skills I did possess.
I closed my eyes and cast my thoughts out, wondering if I was close enough to Hanner’s house to get a good look inside and outside. Turned out I was close enough, although at the far edge of my abilities.
Still, I could see that there were two people inside. A lithe figure who seemed to be moving slowly around the house, and another, broader figure.
Hanner and Fang? No, that wasn’t right. Fang was taller than that, and not so broad-shouldered. The woman could have been Hanner, but I wasn’t sure. Technically, she was on the run from no one. This was her house. Why shouldn’t she be here?
I thought about that.
Hanner had made it personal by going after Fang. Yes, she had fulfilled his wish, but had gone behind my back to do so.
Worse, she was turning my friend into a killer.
Yes, Fang was a big boy, capable of making his own decisions. He had chosen this path. He had wanted to be a vampire from the time his damn canine teeth grew in too long, a fluke of nature that had led to a severe disorder, which led, in turn, to him killing his girlfriend. That murder had made national headlines. His ultimate escape from prison was big news, too. That he was never caught seemed mostly forgotten these days.
I had taken something precious from her—and from many vampires, no doubt. A steady supply of blood.
So, she had taken something from me.
I wasn’t a gunslinger, but I knew Hanner and I had a score to settle. It may not go down at high noon in the middle of Main Street, but it was going to go down somewhere, probably at midnight, and probably somewhere a lot more discreet than Main Street.
She knew I had her in my sights. She knew I wanted to take her down, and if I knew Hanner, who was proving to be one hell of a calculating bitch, she was going to come after me first.
I thought about that as I continued drumming my longish, freakish fingernails on the steering wheel.
Finally, I pulled out my cell phone and made a call. Allison picked up on the second ring.
“Hola, sweet cheeks,” she said. She sounded out of breath.
“What are you doing?”
“Lunges,” she said, breathing hard. “I happen to like my own sweet cheeks, thank you very much.”
“Are we done talking about our asses?”
“Fine, Grumpy Cat. Where are you? Wait. You’re outside a house. A big house. On a hill. I don’t know this house.”
“Detective Hanner’s house,” I said.
“Is she back in town?”
“No,” I said.
I gave her a peek into my own thoughts. Okay, more than a peek. I gave her access to everything I’d been dealing with for these past few days. And, unlike audible communication, the telepathic kind went quickly. Within a few minutes, she was fully caught up on my situation.
“I agree with you, Sam,” said Allison. “I think it’s a setup, too.”
“Setting me up for what?” I asked.
Allison glugged some water. I could imagine her throwing back her head and drinking intensely. Allison did everything intensely. But, again, I had to use my imagination. Unlike her, my remote viewing only went so far. Allison could see across miles; hell, continents. Me? I could only see a few hundred yards.
“I don’t know, Sam,” she said when she was done drinking. “But it can’t be
good. They’re willing to kill innocent people to set this trap for you.”
“You really think it’s a trap?”
“You’ve been a thorn in Hanner’s side for some time now. You could probably turn Fang against her, too. Fang, if I’m understanding you right, seems sort of indebted to her, but I don’t understand why he seems so indebted.”
I knew what she meant. He seemed unusually loyal.
Allison picked up on my concern. “Can he be compelled by her, Sam?”
“As far as I know, vampires can’t control other vampires. I can’t read another vampire’s mind. Or Kingsley’s mind. Or, I suspect, anyone or anything supernatural.”
“Either way, Sam, she fears you. You’ve proven to be stronger than her, and seem to have more powers.”
“I’ve proven to be a bigger freak, you mean.”
“No, Sam. That’s not what I mean. But think of it this way: she wasn’t able to recruit you, so she’s probably going to do the next best thing.”
I read her mind easily enough. “I thought of that, too,” I said.
“Let me help you, Sam.”
“No.”
“I have powers now. A lot of power. I’m stronger than you know—”
“No,” I said, cutting her off. “Out of the question. I’m dealing with Hanner.”
“I can help you, Sam—”
“No. End of discussion.”
“Why do you get to dictate when the discussion is over?”
“Because I’m the boss. You still work for me, remember?”
It was true. A few months ago, before heading out to the world’s creepiest island, I had deputized Allison, so to speak. She was, officially, a private eye in training.
“Fine,” she said, throwing a small tantrum. “But you can’t just walk into a trap, Sam.”
I looked at the dark house before me. “You think the house is a trap?”
“It can’t be good, Sam. None of this is good.”
“I have to stop her, Allison. And...”
“And bring Fang home?” she said.
“Maybe.”
“And what if he doesn’t want to come back, Sam? What if he’s too far gone?”
I didn’t have an answer to that. Instead, I said goodbye and, with her still protesting in my ear, I hung up.
And stepped out of my minivan.
Chapter Thirty
As I approached Hanner’s home, I cast my thoughts out again.
More reconnaissance. Yes, there was a woman upstairs, in the kitchen, moving slowly. Almost as if she were drugged. There was a broad-shouldered man sitting at the kitchen table, unmoving.
“Creepy,” I whispered.
I was about to return to my body when something told me to keep searching. For what, I did not know, but I’d learned to trust this something, this inner guidance system, so to speak.
So, I continued scanning the house, slipping in and out of rooms and hallways and bedrooms. I came across a door and pushed through it, and ended up going down a narrow flight of stairs. The stairs dead-ended into another door, which I mentally pushed through.
Basements were uncommon in California, but not unheard of, especially if someone was a psychopath or a vampire running a secret blood ring. Or both.
The room beyond was small and composed entirely of brick. My guess would be very thick bricks. Sound-proof bricks. There was a drain in the center. Most important, there was a young woman in the room, shackled to the wall, her arms above her head, whimpering uncontrollably. Like something out of a medieval dungeon. She looked like anything but a willing donor.
Jesus.
I snapped back into my body. I considered all my options, from calling Sherbet to breaking the girl out of the basement prison.
In the end, I decided on one course of action.
One obvious course.
I continued up the driveway and up the front steps. There, I gathered myself, and was about to break off the doorknob, when the door opened, and the broad-shouldered man smiled at me.
“Samantha Moon,” he said, stepping aside and gesturing toward the interior of the house. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Chapter Thirty-one
My inner alarm remained silent.
Except this seemed like a damn good time for my inner alarm to be going crazy, but it wasn’t. Not a peep. I opened my mouth to speak, to ask who, exactly, had been waiting for me, and who, exactly he was.
Instead, I studied the man before me. Thick, broad-shouldered, handsome. He wore a frozen smile. Not quite the demonic smile I’d seen recently at the Washington island, but pretty damn close.
“You’ve been expecting me?” I thought of my conversation with Sanchez. Had she compelled him to report to her, as well? I think probably, which is why he’d called at such a strange time. To follow up. To see where I was in my investigation. And report his findings.
“Yes, Ms. Moon. Won’t you please come in? We have some things we need to discuss.”
“Some things?”
“Yes.”
“What things?”
He smiled even bigger, and now it did look demonic. “Inside, Ms. Moon, if you don’t mind.”
“And if I do mind?”
He said nothing, only smiled and cocked his head a little, and it occurred to me that he didn’t have an answer for that question.
Or, I thought, he wasn’t given an answer.
I hadn’t come across many instances, if any, of another vampire compelling a mortal, but I thought I was seeing one now. Trusting my inner alarm, I nodded and stepped past him. He turned and watched me as I went, and shut the door behind me.
I knew Hanner’s home well enough. It was a big home, with the bottom floor dug into the hillside. The upper deck overlooked the rare Orange County woods and the many larger homes beyond, one of which I’d ventured into, meeting, perhaps, the creepiest man on planet earth. A man who had bargained with years from my son’s life.
But just as quickly as the old man entered my thoughts, he left again. After all, the smell of blood was thick upon the air.
My stomach growled, and I salivated like the ghoul that I was.
I ignored my stomach, too, and followed the broad-shouldered man through Hanner’s home, following a path from the front door to the dining area, a path I had taken a handful of times before this.
The house was dark, except for a single light in the kitchen. Back in the day, back when Hanner and I had been pals, I’d rarely ventured through the house. In fact, she had almost always made it a point to lead me from the kitchen to her balcony with its majestic view of the woodsy canyon.
I hadn’t known about the basement.
No, not a basement, I thought, as I followed the man into the kitchen, a dungeon—a torture dungeon.
I shuddered. And as I did so, I saw three figures waiting for me in the kitchen. Two were living, and one was very much dead.
The living figure was the woman I had seen in my surveillance of the house. She was sitting alone at the far end of a long dining room table. Before her was a cloth napkin. There was something clearly under the napkin, something small and lumpy. The cloth napkin was stained crimson. The woman, who was maybe in her early thirties, was smiling, too. That same serene and creepy smile.
The ghost behind her was of a woman, but decidedly younger, perhaps in her early twenties. The ghost was particularly bright and well-defined, which meant she’d died recently. At least, that was what my experience told me. Anyway, her ethereal, energetic body crackled with living shards of light, light so bright that I was stunned these two couldn’t see her. Then again, maybe they could and were ignoring her, but I doubted it. I had only to remember my pre-freak days, back when I couldn’t see such spirits, either. Those were good days.
It was obvious that her neck had been cut open with something sharp. Her staticy body was so well-defined that I could actually see ghostly hints of tendons and muscle inside of her exposed neck. Whoever she was, she’d been drained a
nd killed, right here in Hanner’s house.
The man, oblivious to the spirit, went over and stood by the side of the seated woman. They both smiled at me, both cocking their heads, both compelled to act against their wills.
“How do you two know Detective Hanner?” I asked them.
The man spoke. “We are her private source.” He sounded excited, like this was an honor, a privilege, and something as great as being chosen for the next manned mission to the moon.
“You live here?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered, sounding, if possible, even more excited. “We both do.”
I noticed their wedding rings. “Are you two married?”
“Yes,” said the woman. As she spoke, she kept her head tilted to the side. “We met Detective Hanner on our honeymoon.”
“How long ago?”
The man and woman continued staring at me, continued smiling and tilting their heads. “Over three years now,” said the man.
“You’ve lived here for three years?”
They both looked at me, blinked, and smiled. “Oh, yes,” they said in unison.
I shook my head and took in some air and continued smelling the strong scent of the red stuff. Blood, that is. Everywhere. In particular, something bloody under the napkin before the woman.
Hanner had met the young couple. Compelled them to follow her home while they had been on their honeymoon, no less. Probably the couple had met a certain specification for Hanner. I suspected they neither had family nor many friends. Few would look for them. And those who did would easily be turned away by a simple phone call that would reassure anyone concerned that they were okay. Hanner, in effect, had kidnapped them.
“Who’s in the basement?” I asked.
“A bleeder,” said the man.
“A bleeder?”
“Yes.”
“What’s a bleeder?”
“We bleed her for others, Samantha Moon. In fact, we have recently bled her for you. Would you care for a drink? It’s chilling in the refrigerator now.”
I should have shuddered. I should have recoiled in horror. I should have called Sherbet to come out and shut this craziness down.