by J. R. Rain
At age seven.
It was one thing to consider turning the handsome, love-struck Fang into my immortal lover, someone who wanted to fill my nights with pleasure and companionship, perhaps for the rest of my existence, which could be thousands of years, but who knew? It was quite another thing to doom Anthony, my precious, precious child, to that same fate—he would always be seven years old, and a vampire. I could not even imagine how to explain it all to him if the medallion did not work.
My heart gave a tremendous heave.
I didn’t know what to do. Who could possibly know what to do?
Time was running out.
My son was dying.
I tipped one of my wings and veered back toward the direction I had come.
My mind raced as I flapped hard, surging through the water, scattering tiny silver fish before me.
And then I came to a decision.
God, help me, I came to a decision.
I flapped my wings as hard as I could and burst free from the ocean and shot up into the night sky.
To be continued in:
Moon Child
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MOON CHILD
Vampire for Hire #4
Copyright © 2011 by J.R. Rain
All rights reserved.
Dedication
To Tatinha, with love and many beijos.
Acknowledgments
A big thank you to Sandy Johnston, Eve Paludan and Elaine Babich. My crew.
Moon Child
“To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
“The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever.”
—Herb Caen
Previous
I was flying over the Pacific Ocean.
It was the next night. I had spent the day by my son’s side, holding his hands, even as the doctors had raced in and out of the hospital room. Some screamed at me to get out of the way. One even shoved me out of the way. They fought for his life. They fought hard to save him.
I watched from his bedside as the doctors used all their skill and medicines and machines. One doctor told me to expect the worst. To start making preparations. I told him to go to hell.
My son, for now, was still hanging on. Still alive.
For now.
The ocean was black and infinite. Crazy, glowing lights zigzagged beneath the surface, some bigger than others, and I knew this was life. Ocean life. Some of the bigger shapes didn’t zig or zag so much as lumber slowly through the ocean, sometimes surfacing and blowing out great sprays of water that refracted the moonlight.
I flapped my massive wings languidly, riding the tides of night. Cold wind blew over my perfectly aerodynamic body.
It had been a hell of a day. The black halo around my son was so dense that it was nearly syrupy. He had only hours to live, I knew it. Danny was by his side. And so was my sister and my daughter. Sherbet had stopped by, and so had Fang and Kingsley. Mercifully, at separate times. Aaron King, Knighthorse and Spinoza all stopped by, too, each bringing flowers. Aaron King checked out my healed jaw, saw me talking, and just shook his head in wonder. Knighthorse and Spinoza were both irked that they had not been invited to the big showdown at the casino, until I reminded them that I was a highly trained federal agent who could take care of myself.
The air was cold, perhaps even freezing, but I felt perfectly comfortable. The moon was only half full overhead.
Had it really been only two weeks ago that the hulking monster who was Kingsley had appeared in my hotel suite?
I had checked on Maddie, too. The little girl was going to make it. She had needed a full blood transfusion. The black halo around her little body had all but disappeared.
The wind seemed to pick up from behind me, and I soared effortlessly. Below me, the pod of whales seemed to be keeping pace, their glowing bodies surfacing and spraying. I picked up speed and quickly swept past them.
I thought of the water. The dark water. The world seemed to slow down under water. Sound became muted, and light diffused.
I looked down again...stopped flapping, then tucked my wings in and dove.
* * *
I closed my eyes as I broke the surface.
My aerodynamic body cut easily through the water, and I shot down into the dark depths. But the water, much like the air, wasn’t truly dark. Sparks of light zipped through it, bright filaments that lit my way.
I flapped my wings and discovered, to my great surprise and pleasure, that I easily moved through the water, my wings expelling it behind me powerfully, moving me quickly along. Like a manta ray. I was a giant, bat-shaped manta ray.
I flapped my wings slowly but powerfully. Water surged past me, but did not hurt my eyes. This creature that I had become was amazingly adaptive and resilient.
I was amazingly adaptive and resilient.
But my son was not. No, my son was dying, and he would be dead within hours. I knew it. The doctors knew it. Everyone knew it. You did not need to be a doctor or psychic to see the encroachment of death.
I could stop his death. I could give him eternal life, in fact. I could have my baby boy by my side forever. Detective Hanner had told me how to do it. The process of transformation. Of turning mortal into immortal.
It was a crazy idea. A reckless idea.
But I could save him—and then later return his mortality to him with the medallion.
Maybe. No one seemed to know for sure.
I continued flapping, my heart heavy. A creature sidled up next to me. A dolphin. No, two dolphins. They kept pace with me, thrusting with their powerful tails. I knew very little about dolphins but if I had to guess, they looked perplexed as hell. I didn’t blame them. No doubt they had never seen the likes of me. A moment later, they peeled away, their auras leaving behind brightly phosphorescent vapor trails.
My son was going to die within hours. Maybe sooner.
This much was true.
I could save him. Giving him eternal life.
And I possessed a legendary medallion that could give him back his mortality. A loophole in death.
Not too many people had that option.
Not too many mothers. Desperate mothers.
I heard Kingsley’s words again. And what if you can’t change him back, Sam?
Anthony would be immortal. At age seven. Doomed to walk the earth forever. At age seven. To drink blood for all eternity.
At age seven.
It was one thing to consider turning the handsome, love-struck Fang into my immortal lover, someone who wanted to fill my nights with pleasure and companionship, perhaps for the rest of my existence, which could be thousands of years, but who knew? It was quite another thing to doom Anthony, my precious, precious child, to that same fate—he would always be seven years old, and a vampire. I could not even imagine how to explain it all to him if the medallion did not work.
My heart gave a tremendous heave.
I didn’t know what to do. Who could possibly know what to do?
Time was running out.
My son was dying.
I tipped one of my wings and veered back toward the direction I had come.
My mind raced as I flapped hard, surging through the water, scattering tiny silver fish before me.
And then I came to a decision.
God help me, I came to a decision.
I flapped my wings as hard as I could and burst free from the ocean and shot up into the night sky.
Chapter One
The ocean swept beneath me.
The waxing moon reflected off the ripping currents, keeping pace with my swiftly racing body. White caps appeared and disappeared and once I caught the spraying plume of a grey whale surfacing.
Some mothers would fault me for leaving my son’s side, I knew this. Some would even fault me f
or saving the life of a little girl while my son is sick in the hospital, that I should be by my son’s side at all times, no matter what. I get it. No doubt some would feel that I should be beating down doors looking for a cure, not resting until my son is healthy again. I get that, too.
Below me, a seagull raced just above the surface, briefly keeping pace with me, until I pulled away. I dropped my right wing, angling to starboard. The beaches appeared, and soon the exorbitantly expensive homes. A party was raging in the back of one of them. I passed in front of the moon, and I spied one or two of the party-goers looking up, pointing.
But I’m not like most mothers. In fact, I would even hazard to guess there are very few of us, indeed. I could see my son’s imminent death. I could see the doctors failing. I could see it, feel it, hear it.
And not only that, I knew the hour of his death, and it was approaching.
Fast.
The beachfront homes gave way to marshy lands which gave way to beautiful condos and hillside homes. I swept over UCI and into a low-lying cloud which scattered before me, dispersed by my powerfully beating wings.
I had a decision to make. I had the biggest decision of my life to make. So I had to think. I had to get away, even for just a few minutes to sort through it. I had to know that what I was about to do, or not do, was the right decision.
Until I realized there was only one answer.
I was a mother first. Always first, and if I had a chance to save my son, you better damn well believe I was going to save him.
I flapped harder, powering through the cloud and out into the open air. My innate sense of navigation kicked in and I was locked on to St. Jude’s Hospital in Orange.
Chapter Two
It was late when I swept into the parking lot.
I circled just above the glow of halogen lighting, making sure the parking lot was indeed empty, before dropping down next to my minivan.
To think that this hulking, winged creature owned a five-year-old minivan with license plates that were about to expire was laughable. No, it was incomprehensible.
I wasn’t worried about security cameras. They would capture nothing...except maybe a car door opening and closing...followed later by a spunky, thirty-seven year old mother who may or may not fully appear in the image, depending on whether I wore make-up. Without make-up, the camera would capture only the curvy outline of empty clothing.
Of course, knowing that I did not appear on camera prompted me to remember to wear make-up, including a light coating on my arms and backs of my hands. Still, no doubt there were hundreds of surveillance videos out there of an unseen woman. Want to know how to find vampires? Check surveillance video.
For now, though, I alighted near the van’s cargo door, which itself faced a listless magnolia tree. The tree was surrounded by some low bushes and curved pipes that I assumed had something to with the hospital’s plumbing. But what the hell did I know?
The area wasn’t quite big enough to accommodate a hulking, mythical monster, and I ended up trampling some of the bushes, breaking a branch and denting one of the pipes.
Life goes on.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the woman in the flame, watching me calmly, waiting. I focused on her, and she seemed to move toward me, or I to her. I was never sure which. The feeling that came next was difficult to describe, since there really was no feeling. As if awakening from a short nap, I gasped lightly, and raised my head. I was on one knee, which was digging into a small spider plant that had seen better days. I fluffed up the little plant and stood. Next, I reached under my fender and found the small hide-a-key that I kept there.
Shh. Don’t tell anyone.
I unlocked the minivan and slipped inside. My clothing was still there, and a few minutes later, after a quick dusting of foundation, I emerged from the minivan, purse in hand. The transformation from giant monster bat into a concerned mommy was now complete.
My life is weird.
I checked the time on my cell. It was just after 2:00 a.m. I would say the vampire’s hour, but the truth is, any time between sundown to sunup are the vampire’s hours.
My daughter Tammy was staying with my sister, and no doubt they had all gone home by now. After all, Anthony appeared, to all those concerned, to be fairly stable. It was only me and my heightened extrasensory perception that suspected that not all was as it seemed.
Indeed, I knew my son had only hours to live. If that.
I had taken some of that time to come to a decision.
And I had made my decision.
With the waxing moon overhead shining its silent strength, a strength I seemed to somehow draw from, I turned and headed for the hospital, knowing the staff there would allow me in to be with my sick son.
A sick son, I thought determinedly, who would be sick no more.
Chapter Three
“Hello, Samantha,” said Rob, the front desk security guard. Rob was a big guy who probably took steroids. You know there’s trouble when the night shift at a children’s hospital knows you by name.
I said “hi” and he smiled at me kindly and let me through.
At the far end of the center hallway was a bank of elevators. As I headed toward it, I heard a vacuum running down a side hallway. I glanced casually at the cleaning crew working away...and saw something else.
Crackling, staticy balls of light hovered around the cleaning crew. Many such balls of light. I knew what these were now. They were spirits in their purest forms. Some called them orbs, and sometimes they showed up on photographs. Many non-believers assumed such orbs were dust on the lens. But the camera could never fully capture what I could see. To my eyes, the balls of light were alive with energy, endlessly forming and reforming, gathering smaller particles of energy around them like mini-black holes in outer space. But there was nothing black about these. Indeed, they were often whitish or golden, and sometimes they appeared red. And sometimes they were more than balls. Much more. Sometimes they were fully formed humans.
As I swept past the hallway, a cleaning lady looked up at me. I smiled and turned my head just as one of the whitish electrified balls seemed to orient on me. Soon it was behind me, keeping pace with me.
I just hate being followed by ghosts.
And as the elevator doors closed in front of me and I selected the third-floor button, the ball of white light slipped through the elevator’s seam and joined me for a ride up.
It hovered just in front of me, spitting fire like a mini sun. It moved to the right and then to the left, and then it hovered about a foot in front of my face.
The elevator slowly rose one floor.
“It’s not polite to stare,” I said.
The ball of light flared briefly, clearly agitated. It then shot over to the far corner of the elevator and stayed there for the rest of the ride up.
The doors dinged open and I stepped out onto my son’s floor.
Alone.
* * *
Danny was there, sleeping.
He was sitting in one of the wooden chairs at the foot of the bed. His head had flopped back and he was snoring loudly up at the heavens. Probably irritating the hell out of God. One thing I didn’t miss from living with the man was all his damn snoring.
Well, that and the cheating.
My son wasn’t snoring. He was sleeping lightly. A black cloud hung over him, a black cloud that only I, and perhaps others like me, could see.
And it wasn’t so much as hovering as surrounding him completely, wrapping around his small frame entirely. A blanket, perhaps. A thick, evil blanket that seemed intent on obliterating the bright light that was my son.
The lights were off, although I could see clearly enough. The energy that fills the spaces between the spaces gives off an effervescent light. These were individual filaments, no bigger than a spark. By themselves, the light didn’t amount to much. But taken as a whole, and the night was illuminated nicely.
For me, at least, and others like me.
The frenetic
streaks of energy often concentrated around the living, and they now buzzed around my ex-husband, flitting about him like living things, adding to his own brilliant aura, which was presently a soft red with streaks of blue. I have come to know that streaks of blue indicated a state of deep sleep. The red was worry or strong concern. So, even in sleep, he was worried.
Worried for our boy.
Danny was a bastard, of that there was no doubt. He had proven to be particularly nasty and sleazy and underhanded. He was also confused and weak, and neither of those qualities were what I needed in a man. I needed a rock. I needed strength. I needed confidence and sympathy.
Not all relationships are meant to last forever, I had read once. And forever is a very long time for a vampire.
I stepped through the room and over to Danny’s side. His snoring paused briefly and he shivered inexorably, as if a cold wind had drifted over him.
Or a cold soon-to-be ex-wife.
I touched his shoulder and he shivered again, and I saw the fine hair along his neck stand on end. Was he reacting to my coldness or to supernaturalism? I didn’t know, but probably both. Probably some psychic part of him was aware that a predator had just sidled up next to him. Maybe this psychic alarm system was even now doing its best to awaken him, to warn him that here be monsters.
But Danny kept on snoring, although goose bumps now cropped up along his forearm.
I shook him gently and his snore turned into a sharp snort and I briefly worried that he would swallow his tongue. Then next he did what any woman would want to see.
His eyes opened, focused on me, and he screamed bloody murder.
And he kept on screaming even as he leaped backward falling over his chair, which clattered loudly to the floor. He landed on his back with an umph, as air burst from his lungs. He kept on trying to scream, but only a wheezing rasp came from his empty lungs. He scuttled backwards like a clawed thing at the bottom of the ocean.